This species of poetry sets forth the inward occurrences of the writer’s or speaker’s own mind—concerns itself with the thoughts and emotions. It is called lyric, because it was originally accompanied by the music of that instrument. Purely lyrical pieces are from their nature short, and fall into several divisions, which are again subdivided into psalms and songs. Passion, genius, a teeming brain, a palpitating heart, and a soul on fire, are necessary to lyrical composition. The poetry that lives among the people, must indeed be simple—but the simplest feelings are the deepest, and when adequately expressed, are immortal. The song-writer and the psalmist are equally divine; and the rich and noble melodies which they send abroad from their resounding lyres, the world claims as an inheritance. True lyrics themselves may be weak and wandering, but the children of their brains are strong and immortal. Empires may pass away, but the ecstatic ether which they breathe on the world, shall remain. That sweet psalm, “The Lord is my Shepherd,” was drawn by David from the strings of a well-tuned instrument, and it expresses the feelings of Christians in the nineteenth century, just as well as it did those of the devout in the long ages before Christ. The child commits it to memory, and the dying believer sings it with a heart empty of care and full of gladness. In “Auld Robin Gray,” Lady Anne Barnard spoke from her _inmost heart_. It instantly became popular, and has come down to us entire, as if all things had conspired that such a perfect, tender, and affecting song of humble life should never perish; but must be sung and wept over while the earth endureth. The lyric poetry of a country is characteristic of its manners. _BIOGRAPHY._ In the year 1786, George Browne, Esq., an eminent Liverpool merchant, married Miss Wagner, daughter of the Imperial and Tuscan consul. All the offspring of this marriage were distinguished by superior gifts, cultivated talents, and refined taste. Felicia Dorothea, the fifth child, was born in Duke Street, on the 25th of September, 1793, and was early found to be endowed with the two most coveted of earthly gifts—beauty and genius.