And first, in the _character of her subjects_. Every unprejudiced observer must be aware of the almost identity between the subjects of Mrs. Hemans and the subjects of Mrs. Sigourney. The themes of the former lady are the unobtrusive happiness, the sweet images, the cares, the sorrows, the gentle affections, of the domestic hearth--these too are the themes of the latter. The Englishwoman has dwelt upon all the "tender and true" chivalries of passion--and the American has dwelt as unequivocally upon the same. Mrs. Hemans has delighted in the radiance of a pure and humble faith--she has looked upon nature with a speculative attention--she has "watched the golden array of sunset clouds, with an eye looking beyond them to the habitations of the disembodied spirit"--she has poured all over her verses the most glorious and lofty aspirations of a redeeming Christianity, and in all this she is herself glorious and lofty. And all this too has Mrs. Sigourney not only attempted, but accomplished--yet in all this she is but, alas!--an imitator. And secondly--in points more directly tangible than the one just mentioned, and therefore more easily appreciated by the generality of readers, is Mrs. Sigourney again open to the charge we have adduced. We mean in the structure of her versification--in the {113} peculiar turns of her phraseology--in certain habitual expressions (principally interjectional,) such as _yea!_ _alas!_ and many others, so frequent upon the lips of Mrs. Hemans as to give an almost ludicrous air of similitude to all articles of her composition--in an invincible inclination to apostrophize every object, in both moral and physical existence--and more particularly in those mottos or quotations, sometimes of considerable extent, prefixed to nearly every poem, not as a text for discussion, nor even as an intimation of what is to follow, but as the actual subject matter itself, and of which the verses ensuing are, in most instances, merely a paraphrase. These were all, in Mrs. Hemans, mannerisms of a gross and inartificial nature; but, in Mrs. Sigourney, they are mannerisms of the most inadmissible kind--the mannerisms of imitation.