itself the idea of an awful sacrifice.” She agrees with Wordsworth, that Burns' “Scots wha hae wi Wallace bled” is “wretched stuff.” She justly despised all allegorical personifications. Among the books which she chiefly admired in her later days, are the Discourses of Bishop Hall, Bishop Leighton, and Jeremy Taylor; the “Natural History of Enthusiasm;” Mrs. Austin's Translations and Criticisms; Mrs. Jameson's “Characteristics of Women;” Bulwer's “Last Days of Pompeii;” Miss Edgeworth's “Helen,” and Miss Mitford's Sketches. The Scriptures were her daily study.—Wordsworth was then her favorite poet. Of Miss Kemble's “Francis” she thus speaks. “Have you not been disappointed in Miss Kemble's Tragedy? To me there seems a _coarseness_ of idea and expression in many parts, which from a woman is absolutely startling. I can scarcely think it has sustaining power to bear itself up at its present height of popularity.” We take from Volume I, the following passage in regard to Schiller's “Don Carlos,” a comparison of which drama with the “Filippo” of Alfieri, will be found in this number of the Messenger. The words we copy are those of Mrs. Hemans. The interview between Philip the Second and Posa, is certainly very powerful, but to me its interest is always destroyed by a sense of utter _impossibility_ which haunts me throughout. Not even Schiller's mighty spells can, I think, win the most “unquestioning spirit” to suppose that such a voice of truth and freedom _could_ have been lifted up, and endured, in the presence of the cold, stern, Philip the Second—that he would, even for a {725} moment, have listened to the language thus fearlessly bursting from a noble heart. Three of the most impressive scenes towards the close of the play, might, I think, be linked together, leaving out the intervening ones, with much effect—the one in which Carlos, standing by the body of his friend, forces his father to the contemplation of the dead; the one in which the king comes forward, with his fearful dreamy remorse, alone amidst his court, Gieb diesen Todten mir heraus, &c. and the subsequent interview between Philip and the Grand Inquisitor, in which the whole spirit of those fanatic days seems embodied.