last promotion to the skies"--showed, as they
sang on earth, that they were all worthy to sing in heaven. But what
were their hymns to those that are now warbled around us from many
sister spirits, pure in their lives as they, but brighter far in their
genius, and more fortunate in its nurture? Poetry from female lips was
then half a wonder, and half a reproach. But now 'tis no longer
rare--not even the highest--yes, the highest--for Innocence and Purity
are of the highest hierarchies; and the thoughts and feelings they
inspire, though breathed in words and tones, "gentle and low, an
excellent thing in woman," are yet lofty as the stars, and humble too as
the flowers beneath our feet.

We have not forgotten an order of poets, peculiar, we believe, to our
own enlightened land--a high order of poets sprung from the lower orders
of the people--and not only sprung from them, but bred as well as born
in "the huts where poor men lie," and glorifying their condition by the
light of song. Such glory belongs--we believe--exclusively to this
country and to this age. Mr Southey, who in his own high genius and fame
is never insensible to the virtues of his fellow-men, however humble and
obscure the sphere in which they may move, has sent forth a volume--and
a most interesting one--on the uneducated poets; nor shall we presume to
gainsay one of his benevolent words. But this we do say, that all the
verse-writers of whom he there treats, and all the verse-writers of the
same sort of whom he does not treat, that ever existed on the face of
the earth, shrink up into a lean and shrivelled bundle of dry leaves or
sticks, compared with these Five--Burns, Hogg, Cunningham, Bloomfield,
and Clare. It must be a strong soil--the soil of this Britain--which
sends up such products; and we must not complain of the clime beneath
which they grow to such height, and bear such fruitage. The spirit of
domestic life must be sound--the natural knowledge of good and evil
high--the religion true--the laws just--and the government, on the
whole, good, methinks, that have all conspired to educate these children
of genius, whose souls Nature had framed of the finer clay.

Such men seem to us more clearly and certainly men of genius, than many
who, under different circumstances, may have effected higher
achievements. For though they enjoyed in their condition ineffable
blessings to dilate their spirits, and touch them with all tenderest
thoughts, it is not e