We have changed all that: we have had too many instances of women of talent and of genius to doubt their ability to excel--we make no exception--in any branch of literature whatever. We give them, on the other hand, no monopoly of elegance or grace, or delicacy of touch, as some affect to do. These qualities they are very likely to display; but they will be superior in them to authors of the male sex, only just so far as they are superior to those authors in genius and talent. There is still a practice in many critics to detect the style feminine from the style masculine. The sooner this is laid aside the better. There are styles which, speaking metaphorically, one may say have a feminine grace, or a feminine weakness. Such an observation has been made, by Sir James Mackintosh, on the style of Addison. But to pretend to say of a given page of composition whether a man or a woman has penned it, is absurd. We often hear it said, that none but a woman could have written the letters of Madame de Sévigné. If Cowper had been a woman, people would have said the same thing of his letters. They are unrivalled, at least in our own language, for grace and elegance, and wit and playfulness. No woman, we believe--and the epistolary style is supposed to belong by especial right to the female pen--has ever written such charming letters as those to Lady Hesketh, and his old friend Thomas Hill. As to the letters of Madame de Sévigné, they so evidently come from a mother to a daughter, that it is impossible to forget for a moment the sex of the writer. But if the qualities which have given them literary celebrity are, to be pronounced feminine, half the literature of France is of the same gender. Still less can we tolerate the affectation that pretends to discern a certain weakness, a tremulousness of the hand, when the pen is held by a woman. There is grace and elegance, but, forsooth, a certain hesitation--a want of vigour and certainty of touch. Nonsense. Take _Our Village_, by Miss Mitford, and the _Sketch-Book_, by Washington Irving: they are both of the graceful and elegant order of style; but the lady writes the English language with far more freedom, ease, and vigour, than the gentleman. The poetic element is mingled in her diction with far more taste and judgment. It glitters through her prose as the sunlight in the green tree--throwing its gold amongst the foliage, yet leaving it the same green, and simple, and refreshing object as before.