We remember having read the "Pictures of Private Life" with interest of no common kind, and with a corresponding anxiety to know something more of the author. In them were apparent the calm enthusiasm, and the _analytical love of beauty_, which are now the distinguishing features of the volumes before us. We have perused the "Poetry of Life" with an earnestness of attention, and a degree of real pleasure very seldom excited in our minds. It is a work giving evidence of more profundity than discrimination--with no ordinary quantum of either. What is said, if not always indisputable, is said with a simplicity, and a scrupulous accuracy which leave us, not for one moment, in doubt of what is intended, and impress us, at the same time, with a high opinion of the author's ability. Miss Stickney's manner is very good--her English pure, harmonious, in every respect unexceptionable. With a strong understanding, and withal a keen relish for the minor forms of poetic excellence--a _strictness_ of conception which will ever prevent her from running into gross error--she is still, we think, insufficiently alive to the _delicacies_ of the beautiful--unable fully to appreciate the _energies_ of the sublime. We were forcibly impressed with these opinions, in looking over, for the second time, the chapter of our fair authoress, "On the Poetry of Language." What we have just said in relation to her accuracy of thought and expression, and her appreciation of the minor forms {124} of poetic excellence, will be exemplified in the passage we now quote, beginning at page 187, vol. i. "There can scarcely be a more beautiful and appropriate arrangement of words, than in the following stanza from Childe Harold: The sails were filled, and fair the light winds blew, As glad to waft him from his native home; And fast the white rocks faded from his view, And soon were lost in circumambient foam; And then it may be of his wish to roam Repented he, but in his bosom slept The silent thought, nor from his lips did come One word of wail, whilst others sate and wept, And to the reckless gales unmanly moaning kept. "Without committing a crime so heinous as that of entirely spoiling this verse, it is easy to alter it so as to bring it down to the level of ordinary composition; and thus we may illustrate the essential difference between poetry and mere versification. The sails were _trimm'd_ and fair the light winds blew, As glad to _force_ him from his native home, And fast the white rocks _vanish'd_ from his view, And soon were lost _amid the circling_ foam: And then, _perchance, of his fond wish_ to roam Repented he, but in his bosom slept The _wish_, nor from his _silent_ lips did come One _mournful word_, whilst others sat and wept, And to _the heedless breeze their fruitless_ moaning kept.