_Quarterly Review._--“Her last two publications are works of a higher stamp; works, indeed, of which no living poet need to be ashamed. The first of them is entitled The Sceptic, and is devoted, as our readers will easily anticipate, to advocating the cause of religion. Undoubtedly the poem must have owed its being to the circumstances of the times--to a laudable indignation at the course which literature in many departments seemed lately to be taking in this country, and at the doctrines disseminated with industry, principally (but by no means exclusively, as has been falsely supposed) among the lower orders. Mrs Hemans, however, does not attempt to reason learnedly or laboriously in verse; few poems, ostensibly philosophical or didactic, have ever been of use, except to display the ingenuity and talent of the writers. People are not often taught a science or an art in poetry, and much less will an infidel be converted by a theological treatise in verse. But the argument of The Sceptic is one of irresistible force to confirm a wavering mind; it is simply resting the truth of religion on the necessity of it--on the utter misery and helplessness of man without it. This argument is in itself available for all the purposes of poetry: it appeals to the imagination and passions of man; it is capable of interesting all our affectionate hopes and charities, of acting upon all our natural fears. Mrs Hemans has gone through this range with great feeling and ability; and when she comes to the mind which has clothed itself in its own strength, and relying proudly on that alone in the hour of affliction, has sunk into distraction in the contest, she rises into a strain of moral poetry not often surpassed:-- ‘Oh, what is nature’s strength? The vacant eye, By mind deserted, hath a dread reply,’ etc.”] SUPERSTITION AND REVELATION, AN UNFINISHED POEM. I. Beings of brighter worlds! that rise at times As phantoms with ideal beauty fraught, In those brief visions of celestial climes Which pass like sunbeams o’er the realms of thought, Dwell ye around us?--are ye hovering nigh, Throned on the cloud, or buoyant in the air? And in deep solitudes, where human eye Can trace no step, Immortals! are ye there? Oh! who can tell?--what power, but Death alone, Can lift the mystic veil that shades the world unknown? II. But Earth hath seen the days, ere yet the flowers Of Eden wither’d, when reveal’d ye shone In all your brightness midst those holy bowers-- Holy, but not unfading, as your own! While He, the child of that primeval soil, With you its paths in high communion trode, His glory yet undimm’d by guilt or toil, And beaming in the image of his God, And his pure spirit glowing from the sky, Exulting in its light, a spark of Deity. III.