ut of
their hands, which indicates not only an inherent taste for elegance and
neatness, but a habit of nice observation, and singular exactness of
judgement.

It has been so little the fashion, at any time, to encourage women to
write for publication, that it is more difficult than it should be, to
prove these truths by examples. Yet there are enough, within the reach
of a very careless and superficial glance over the open field of
literature, to enable us to explain, at least, and illustrate, if not
entirely to verify, our assertions. No _man_, we will venture to say,
could have written the Letters of Madame de Sevigne, or the Novels of
Miss Austin, or the Hymns and Early Lessons of Mrs. Barbauld, or the
Conversations of Mrs. Marcet. Those performance, too, are not only
essentially and intensely feminine; but they are, in our judgment,
decidedly more perfect than any masculine productions with which they
can be brought into comparison. They accomplish more completely all the
ends at which they aim; and are worked out with a gracefulness and
felicity of execution which excludes all idea of failure, and entirely
satisfies the expectations they may have raised. We might easily have
added to these instances. There are many parts of Miss Edgeworth's
earlier stories, and of Miss Mitford's sketches and descriptions, and
not a little of Mrs. Opie's, that exhibit the same fine and penetrating
spirit of observations, the same softness and delicacy of hand, and
unerring truth of delineation, to which we have alluded as
characterizing the purer specimens of female art. The same
distinguishing traits of woman's spirit are visible through the grief
and piety of Lady Russel, and the gayety, the spite, and the
venturesomeness of Lady Mary Wortley. We have not as yet much female
poetry; but there is a truly feminine tenderness, purity, and elegance
in the Psyche of Mrs. Tighe, and in some of the smaller pieces of Lady
Craven. On some of the works of Madame de Stael--her Corinne
especially--there is a still deeper stamp of the genius of her sex. Her
pictures of its boundless devotedness--its depth and capacity of
suffering--its high aspirations--its painful irritability, and
inextinguishable thirst for emotion, are powerful specimens of that
morbid anatomy of the heart, which no hand but that of a woman's was
fine enough to have laid open, or skilful enough to have recommended to
our sympathy and love. There is the same exquisite and