Our poetess laid her splendid powers on the altar of God. Deep chastened affection, and nobleness of faith glow and sparkle in her life as well as in her verse, with a rare brilliancy. “She is a Christian,” to quote the words of a popular writer, “not in the sense of appreciating, like Carlyle, the loftiness of the Christian type of character; not in the sense of adopting, like Goethe, a Christian machinery for artistic self-worship; nor even in the sense of approaching, like Wordsworth, an august but abstract morality; but in the sense of finding, like Cowper, the whole hope of humanity bound up in Christ, and taking all the children of her mind to Him, that He may lay His hand on them and bless them. It is well that Mrs. Browning is a Christian. It is difficult, but possible, to bear the reflection that many great female writers have rejected that gospel which has done more for woman than any other civilizing agency; but it is well that the greatest woman of all looks up in faith and love to that eye which fell on Mary from the cross.” _SECTION VII.—CHARLOTTE NICHOLLS._ [_CURRER BELL._] “I turn from the critical unsympathetic, public,—inclined to judge harshly because they have only seen superficially and not thought deeply. I appeal to that larger and more solemn public, who know how to look with tender humility at faults and errors; how to admire generously extraordinary genius, and how to reverence with warm, full hearts, all noble virtue.” E. C. GASKELL. _WORKS OF FICTION._