Mrs. Rowe was a lady quite famous in her own time; to an elevated piety she united in her style of composition many of the faults of the age in which she lived; her works were tinctured by an ardent mode of expression little in harmony with the more frigid expressions of our own day. For Dr. Watts she entertained the highest esteem. She died suddenly, but in her cabinet were found letters for two or three of the friends who held the highest place in her affections, especially for the Countess of Hertford and Dr. Watts; the letter to the Doctor was accompanied by the manuscript of her “Devout Exercises,” which she requested him to publish after a complete and thorough revision. A portion of his correspondence with the Countess upon this we have already quoted; the volume is dedicated to the Countess as Mrs. Rowe’s intimate friend, and Watts, whose mind and heart were now in a state of quiet and holy calm, dispassionately reviews the merits of her various works; he does not altogether vindicate her ardent style, on the other hand, he is far from severely reprehending it; he remarks how in former years even grave divines had expressed the fervours of devout love to the Saviour much in the style of the Song of Solomon, and says, “I must confess that several of my compositions in verse written in younger life were led by those examples unwarily into this track.” Indeed, many of his hymns, especially those which are paraphrases of the Song of Solomon, are quite as ardent as anything we meet with in the writings of Mrs. Rowe. The love of Christ is a principle, but we should be sorry to think that in the heart of the believer it may not glow with all the fervour and force of a great passion; the language of the Apostle Paul shows us that it may, but his language is not coloured by the singular ecstasy of the Oriental mind; it is fervid, but the line is very distinctly marked between the expressions of a merely human passion, which, however pure upon the heart which utters them, may by hearts less holy and elevated seem to be almost the utterance of license, and even to colder though not less holy natures may seem to border on profanity. There are Christians still who delight in this doubtful method of expressing and setting forth the holiest affections. Watts in all his religious works had at all times the ardent and fervent words of a poetic and imaginative nature, but he considerably pruned both thought and speech as the years passed in study and seclusion brought a riper wisdom; he did not repress the ardours of the heart, but he gave to their expression a chastened and colder form; he was not satisfied indeed by light without love, but he clothed that love with a more sacred reticence. Mrs. Rowe’s writings have all an exceedingly unreticent character, but she lived apparently a holy life, realizing very greatly the ardours which gushed so glowingly from her pen, and it says much for all that she was in herself, that through