Mrs. Gaskell has perhaps done more than any woman of this century, not confessedly devoted to our cause, to elevate the condition of her sex, and disseminate liberal ideas as to their needs and culture. The first part of her career was one of those brilliant successes which startle us into surprise and admiration. It was checked midway by the publication of her life of Charlotte Bronté, the best and noblest of her works. Checked, because condemned in that instance without a hearing, she could never afterwards feel the elastic pleasure which was natural to her in composing and printing; and, for three long years afterwards, never touched her pen. I would not allude to this subject, if every notice of her, since her death, had not done so; repeating the old censure, as a matter of course. Here in America, we exculpate her. The public was wrong, in the first place, inasmuch as it has come to demand biography before biography is possible. The publisher was wrong, in the second; for he ought to have known, and could easily have ascertained, how plain a statement the English law would permit. The public was still further wrong, when it attributed misapprehension and carelessness to a woman whom it very well knew to be incapable of either. I, for one, shall never forgive nor forget the officious censure given by one who must have known that the legal apology tendered, in Mrs. Gaskell's absence, to protect her pecuniary interests, had the unfortunate effect to put her in a position where explanation and self-defence were alike impossible. Mrs. Gaskell had deserved the steady confidence of the public.