The two volumes thus completed in 1842 were lent to us by a lady whose well-earned literary reputation gave us the assurance that she would not bestow her praise upon a work whose merit merely consisted in the remarkable circumstance that it was written by young women, not highly educated, during the short leisure afforded by their daily laborious employments. She told us that we should find in those volumes some things which might be read with pleasure and improvement. And yet we must honestly confess that we looked at the perusal of these closely-printed eight hundred pages as something of a task. We felt that all literary productions, and indeed all works of art, should, in a great degree, be judged without reference to the condition of the producer. When we take up the poems of Burns, we never think that he was a ploughman and an exciseman; but we have a painful remembrance of having read a large quarto volume of verses by Ann Yearsly, who was patronized in her day by Horace Walpole and Hannah More, and to have felt only the conviction that the milkwoman of Bristol, for such was their authoress, had better have limited her learning to the score and the tally. But it was a duty to read the "Lowell Offering." The day that saw us begin the first paper was witness to our continued reading till night found us busy at the last page, not for a duty, but a real pleasure. The qualities which most struck us in these volumes were chiefly these: _First_--there is an entire absence of all pretension in the writers to be what they are not. They are factory girls. They always call themselves "girls." They have no desire to be fine ladies, nor do they call themselves "ladies," as the common fashion is of most American females. They have no affectations of gentility; and by a natural consequence they are essentially free from all vulgarity. They describe the scenes amongst which they live, their labors and their pleasures, the little follies of some of their number, the pure tastes and unexpensive enjoyments of others. They feel, and constantly proclaim without any effort, that they think it an honor to labor with their hands. They recognize the real dignity of all useful employments. They know that there is no occupation really unworthy of men or women, but the selfish pursuits of what is called pleasure, without the desire to promote the good of others by physical, intellectual, or moral exertions. _Secondly_--many of these papers clearly show under what influences these young women have been brought up. An earnest feeling of piety pervades their recollections of the past, and their hopes for the future. The thoughts of home, too, lie deep in their hearts. They are constantly describing the secluded farm-house where they were reared, the mother's love, the father's labors. Sometimes a reverse of fortune falling upon a family has dispersed its once happy members. Sometimes we see visions of past household joy through the orphan's tears.