consciousness of doing good, there is no earthly happiness so pure and unalloyed as that which springs from the silent communion with our own spirits, or with the marvellous and multiform external objects which surround us. "There is a pleasure in poetic pains which only poets know." There is an exalted sense of enjoyment in contemplating all that is beautiful and good in the moral and physical world, and this indeed constitutes the empire of poetry in its more general and unrestricted sense. We do not claim for Mrs. Wood very extraordinary powers in this enchanting department of literary effort,--for how few of the thousands who have ever essayed to climb the hill of Parnassus have reached its highest pinnacle; and on the contrary how many have been content to tune their unambitious lays in humble seclusion--without courting or even desiring renown. Mrs. Wood wrote neither for fame nor the public eye, and it is this circumstance alone which will impart an additional interest to the natural and unstudied effusions of her muse. Her numerous friends and relatives will at least experience a melancholy pleasure, in tracing in these _memorolabilia_ of their deceased friend, some of those qualities of mind and heart, which rendered her in life an object of respect and love,--and in death,--of veneration and regret. The first poem we have selected, entitled "Retrospection," appears to have been written in 1809--when a severe illness threatened the life of her husband. In the frame of mind natural under such circumstances, she recalls the principal sorrows of her life, and among them there was none more poignant than the loss of an only child, a daughter of eighteen years old. The closing lines will indicate the source to which she was accustomed to look in the season of human affliction. RETROSPECTION. Why should mysterious Heaven bestow A warm and feeling heart-- Yet doom it naught but pain to know, And rankle in its smart? That it might agonize and bleed At every suffering pore, The soft affections why decreed To centre in its core? The tender ties my heart has proved That heart has held most dear, And those most dearly, fondly loved, Have cost the bitterest tear! A tender parent's weeping nurse My early youth I pass'd; And Heaven did but those tears disperse To bid them flow more fast: For rich in worth, a youth appear'd-- I gave my virgin heart; But Hymen scarce our vows endeared Ere we were doomed to part: He, through war's ravaged fields to roam Eight sad revolving years-- I, droop'd, a widow'd wife at home, In unavailing tears: But ah! the pang was yet to feel, (The worst the heart can know,) The pang no earthly power can heal, The climax of all woe!