In poetry, the abundant work of women during the last half-century shows a development corresponding to that traced in the field of fiction. As the flood of sentimentalism slowly receded, hopeful signs began to appear; the rather vague tints of a bow of poetical promise. The varying verse of Mrs. Oakes Smith, Mrs. Kinney, Elizabeth Lloyd Howell, and Harriet Winslow Sewall, represents, in different degrees, a general advance. The “little vagrant pen” of Frances Sargent Osgood, as she confessed, “wandered lightly down the paper,” but its fanciful turns had now and then a swift, capricious grace. The poems of Sarah Helen Whitman, belonging to the landscape school of Bryant, are of marked value, as are also the deeply earnest productions of Mrs. Anna Lynch Botta; which display anew distinctness of motive, possibly attributable to the influence of Longfellow. The same influence is felt in some of the early work of Alice Cary; whose individual strain of melancholy melody clings to remembrance, its charm stubbornly outliving our critical recognition of defects due, in great measure, to over-production. Emily Judson sometimes touched finely the familiar chords, as in the well-known poem of motherhood, “My Bird.” The tender “Morning Glory” of Maria White Lowell, whose poems are characterized by a delicate and childlike simplicity, will be remembered. In 1873 a critic not generally deemed too favorable to growths of the present day, recorded the opinion that there was “more force and originality,—in other words more genius,—in the living female poets of America than in all their predecessors, from Mistress Anne Bradstreet down. At any rate there is a wider range of thought in their verse, and infinitely more art.” For the change first noted by Mr. Stoddard there is no accounting; the tides of genius are incalculable. The other gains, like those in fiction, are to be accounted for partly by the law of evolution working through our whole literature, by the influence of sounder models and of a truer criticism, and by the winnowing processes of the magazines; partly also, by the altered position and improved education of women in general—not necessarily of the individual, since change in the atmosphere may have important results in cases where other conditions remain unchanged. The poems of Mrs. Howe express true womanly aspiration, and a high scorn of unworthiness, but their strongest characteristic is the fervent patriotism which breathes through the famous “Battle-Hymn of the Republic.” The clear hopeful “orchard notes” of Lucy Larcom—it is impossible to refrain from quoting Mr. Stedman’s perfect phrase—first heard long since, have grown more mellow with advancing years.