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We quote some remarks on Madame < lu DeffaruPs Letters , as being Mrs . Barbauld ' s testimony to the value of c < religious hopes and feelings : " " I ? m wading through the letters of Madame du DeiFand , in four volnmes . Have you read them ? Walpole and she
wrote every week , and they were continually grumbling at each other , yet they went on . Walpole , poor man , seems to have been terribly afraid that this old blind lady was in love with him ; and he had much ado to reduce her expressions of friendship to something of an English standard . This lady appears to have
been very unhappy . She was blind indeed , but she had every thing else that could make age comfortable ; fortune , friends , talents , consideration in the world , the society of all the wits fnd all the people of rank of Paris , or who
visited Paris , but she totally wanted the best support of all , religious feelings and hopes ; and I do not know any thing that is likely to impress their importance more on the mind than the perusal of these letters . You see her tired of life ¦» ¦¦ % M \ f
^ *¦* — — ^* •• ¦* " » — ** " » — w A . V-r « - •* . ^» ^/ * * — . V 4 * *^ ^* - ^~ r A JL . M . M . ^ m almost blaspheming Providence for having given her existence ; yet dreading to die because she had no hopes beyond death . A lady told me she would not .
on any account , let her daughter read the letters . I ihmk , for my part , they giTC in this view as good a lesson as you can pick out of Mrs . More ' s Practical Piety , which , if you have not read , I cannot help it . "—II . 68 , 69 .
A passing observation on Bible Societies may be seasonably extracted : " We have had a meeting here ( Stoke Newington ) for an auxiliary Bible Society . Many ladies went , not indeed to speak , but to hear speaking ; and they tell me they were much entertained and interested . I honour the zeal of these
societies ; but it is become a sort of rage , and I suspect outgoes the occasion . "II . 95 , 96 . Mrs . Barbauld sometimes moralizes , l > ut it is without affectation . There
is no sickly sentimentality in any of her reflections The following- passage from a letter to Mrs . Estlin , relating to her spending a day at Chigwell , shews in what manner she turned passing objects to a moral account : " The road to Chigwell is through a
part of Hainault Forest ; and we stopped to look at Fairlop oak , one of the largest in England ; a complete ruin , but a noble ruin , which it is impossible to see without thinking of Cowper ' s beautiful lines , ' Who lived when thou wast such / The immoveable rocks and mountains present us rather with an idea of eternity than of long life . There they
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are , and there they have been before tlie birth of nations . The tops of the everlasting hills have been covered with snow from the earliest records of time . But a , tree , that has life and growth like ourselves , that , like ourselves , was once
small and feeble , that certainly some time began to be , —to see it attain a size so enormous , and in its bulk and its slow decay bear record of the generations it has outlived , —this brings our comparative feebleness strongly in view . c Man passeth away , and where is he ?'—while * the oak of our fathers * will be the oak
of their children , and their children . 'JU 133 , 134 . Iii the Letters we find some allegories , a favourite species of composition with Mrs . Barbauld ; but those on the New Year , II . 6 i , 62 , and the Pedigree of Leisure , II . 72 , 73 , appear to us to be somewhat stiff and quaint , and the latter is open to other objections .
We find that the speech of the Cure ' of the Banks of the Rhone at the bar of the National Assembly , published in an early number of Mr . B . Flower ' s " Cambridge Intelligencer , " and
reprinted in The Christian Reformer , I . 225—228 , was a jeu d' esprit of Mrs . Barbauld ' s , written in 1791 . II . 260 . The Rhapsody on Evil , II . 272—276 , is familiar to us , but we know not where we have read it .
Of the pamphlets published by Mrs . Barbauld , there are reprinted here—* ' An Address to the Opposers of the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts ; " " Sins of the Government , Sins of the Nation ; or , a Discourse for the Fast , appointed on April 19 ,
17 ^ 3 ; " " Remarks on Mr . Gilbert Wakcfield ' s Enquiry into the Expediency and Propriety of Public or Social Worship . " The " Civic Sermons to the People / ' two we think in number , always attributed to Mrs .
Barbauld , are omitted ; yet the reader may see by a fine passage from them ia The Christian Reformer , IV . 442—446 , that they are not unworthy of the writer ' s reputation , high as it is and must ever be .
We do not pretend to criticise those works of Mrs . BarbauhTs that have been long- before the public . She has established her name as a beautiful writer ; she is , in our judgment , the first of English female authors ; and we should find it difficult to name more than two or three modern authors of the other sex who can stand a comparison with her in both verse and prose .
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562 Review . —Mrs . Barbauld ' s Works *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1825, page 562, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2540/page/46/
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