One of the most interesting collections of poetry which have been lately published is the “Songs and Ballads of Cumberland.” How many people know anything of Miss Blamire? Yet she was the author of that most beautiful and pathetic of ballads beginning, “And ye shall walk in silk attire.” Every one will, therefore, thank the editor for the conscientious way in which he has issued her pieces, and given us some account of her life. It was she, too, who wrote that other beautiful ballad, worthy of Lady Anne Lindsay, “What ails this heart o’ mine?” which, in our opinion, is poetry full of truth and tenderness. Indeed, we should be disposed to look upon it as a critical touchstone, and to say that those who did not like it could not possibly appreciate true poetry.... We can only advise the reader to buy the book, and we feel sure that he, like ourselves, will be thankful to the editor.—_Westminster Review._ We like the Cumberland Songs a good deal better than the Lancashire ones which we reviewed a fortnight back. There is more go and more variety in them; the hill-air makes them fresher, and we do not wonder that Mr. Gilpin feels—now he has got “tem put in prent”— Aw England cannot bang them. We certainly cannot recollect a better collection.... While the author of “Joe and the Geologist” lives, we shall rest assured that the Cumberland dialect will be well represented in verse as well as prose, though we suppose he cannot love to describe the roaring scenes at weddings and the like that his predecessors witnessed.... The dialect is rich in reduplicated words—in good forms—in old English words; and the volume altogether is one that should find a place on the shelf of every reader of poetry and student of manners, customs, and language.—_The Reader._ The truly Cumbrian minstrel towards the close of the last century seems to have approached the Scotch in his pictures of rural courtship, and to have been still greater in his descriptions of weddings, as of some other festivities of a more peculiar character. He had a healthy and robust standard of feminine beauty, and his most riotous mirth was more athletic and less purely alcoholic than that which flourished in Burns’s native soil.—_The Spectator._ These Cumberland lyrics—till now scattered—are on the whole well worth the pains spent on their collection. In some cases, as in those of Relph and Miss Blamire, there is evidence of real genius for the ballad or the eclogue; and with respect to other writers, if the poetic feeling be less deep, humour and keen observation are displayed in dealing with the people and customs of a district which, in its lingering primitiveness and time-honored traditions, is richer in materials for fancy and character than regions which lie nearer the metropolis.—_The Athenæum._