It is remarkable, that in the latter years of the eighteenth century, and also during the whole course of our revolution, there appeared in England a whole school, as it were, of female authors, whose pure and graceful productions are disfigured by no exaggerations, nor are they of that sombre character which distinguishes the modern literature of their country. Of the lady-authors of England, the most celebrated is Lady Wortley Montagu, the contemporary of Pope, who has left poems, but more especially letters, highly remarkable for their talent and philosophy. It is impossible to give here the names of the authoresses who appeared all on a sudden about half a century after Lady Wortley Montagu. One of the earliest of them was a lady of the same name, Mrs. E. Montagu, the author of the Essays on Shakspeare, and Mrs. Anna Laetitia Barbauld, who wrote numerous poems and admirable hymns for children. There is great beauty in the Epistle of Mrs. Barbauld to Wilberforce, on the subject of the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1781.) Mrs. Hannah More has also written several works of _religious fiction_, and above all, some charming poems; Florio (1786,) and the Blue Stocking, or Conversation. The Blue Stocking is a burlesque name given to a lady's coterie, in which several females attempted to start a sort of _bureau d'esprit_ under the direction of Mesdames Robinson and Piozzi, a coterie innocent enough, but which excited the wrath of Mr. Gifford, the Editor of the _Quarterly Review_, who fulminated against it several satires in excessively bad taste, and written in a tone of disgusting pedantry. The verses of Mr. Gifford are infinitely more ridiculous than those he pretends to correct. Amongst the English ladies who have written romance, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs. Inchbald, and Lady Morgan, are worthy of especial note. Several ladies, without having written works of great importance, have still produced poetical pieces of graceful beauty; in this number it is but justice to distinguish Mrs. Opie. And lastly, in order to finish this hasty catalogue, we may remark that there have appeared in England, in our days, several ladies of a high order of literary, poetical, and at the same time, philosophical talent. Lady Morgan herself has contrived to mix up history and romance in her writings, with great ability; but among the ladies, who inscribed their fame on monuments more durable than romantic stories, we must select for honourable mention the names of Joanna Baillie, Aikin, Benger, and Helen Maria Williams. Miss Baillie, sister of the celebrated Dr. Baillie, the physician, is a woman of the highest talent. It is not your pretty nothings, your elegant trifles, which occupy her genius; on the contrary, she has attempted in a series of dramatic pieces, to paint the most energetic passion of the human heart; and her pieces, written in the most elevated and _Shakspearian_ tone, will always be regarded as the work of a superior mind.