THERE ARE ANGELS NOW ON EARTH. THERE are angels now on earth, Here and there, without their_wings; Pure as if a heaven-birth Lightened round their wanderings. Of loving thoughts so kith and kind, She brightens with her glorious mind. Her life has been a holy-day. There is but one I know in feature, Her's the only face in nature To make our dreams of Heaven true. Let me pause-as I do often, One yet dearer than all other, Pure all other thoughts above Man's last best angel is his mother, And Earth's best love-a Mother's love. WOMAN AND HER POETS. By the Editor. It is a beautiful world, this world of ours, with its change of Seasons, its variety of aspects, its lovely living things, its healthful, o'er-arched canopy, and its broad green girdle of deep waters that nourish and sustain it. And it is a good world for Man, with its Spring-time of Promise and its Harvest-time of By permission of the Author of the "Essays on Shakespeare's Female Characters," this paper has been inserted to bring back to the Readers mind the parpose of those Essays. Plenty, with its delights, and studies, and occupations that he may multiply a thousand-fold, even to the limit of his own wondrous powers of thought. It is for him, the Lord of the Creation, who securely lays his hand upon the mane of the lion, and bids the elephant be still that he may bear him-for him who proudly ploughs the angry deep, and plunges into the murky recesses of the mine-for him, whose mighty monuments are on the heath and on the hill; in the populous city and the solitary desart:-it is for him that nature paints her ever-revolving pictures of terror or of beauty: pours forth her music of sadness or of joy: opens wide upon his mental vision the volume of her countless harmonies, and bids him mark in her majestic features the smile of Intellectual Loveliness. For him, the tree throws wide its pillared shade, or floats a living thing upon the pathless waters-for him, the creeping herb yields forth its precious properties of healing-for him, all other creatures live for his pleasure and die that he may live. The flowers grow round his footsteps, purifying his breath with theirs, and shedding the influence of their beauty upon his heart; the mirthful stars illumine his pathway, or the bright sunshine lights up his eye that he may never feel alone or uncompanioned. But if his eye dim, or his foot falter, or his hand trembleaye, or his heart sicken, when care, or disease, or old age, or death shall overtake him; by his side God hath raised up a second self-faithful as his shadow, beautiful as his dreams, and holy as his hopes: and in that Creature, all that is dark in his own nature, all that is harsh in his own frame, is rounded and softened and spiritualized-she is to be his beckoner to the pleasant places of the earth; his inspirer in the lofty task, his companion in the rugged track, and God hath called herWoman. To pourtray the simplest, commonest object in Nature is a perilous task-men have died in attempting to paint her most beautiful Creations-where then shall we look for a picture of Woman? The Painters have sometimes succeeded, or Raffaelle, Guido, Titian, Reynolds, and Woman's own painter-Correggio; have lived in vain. But these productions are priceless treasures, hoarded by the wealthy-who are in this a Nation's worst misers, where they might become her noblest benefactors. The Musicians have made Woman the shrine for their sweetest melodies and loftiest imaginings. All our old Ballads are consecrated to them and to Love. And a song even now owes its greatest charm to the inspiration of their beauty and constancy. But Music falls prostrate before Gold, and is locked up in her proud and frigid Temples. The Human Voice, the world's sweetest instrument, is bought and sold, bartered away, to the luxurious and the idle. The rich are weak in this. How much less would the Poor think of their poverty, where they able to reach this holy source of happi ness. Denied this avenue to the Beautiful and the True, where Woman's nature has been so sweetly and justly studied-we turn to the Poets-the Philosophers of the Heart: the Historians of the Passions-and the Poets of our own land at least may be consulted by all. There are in many of them vivid pourtrayals of the sex, and almost all, especially the poets of the earlier part of the Seventeenth Century, evince a feeling of delicacy very honorable to themselves in the treatment of the Female Character. The Una of Spenser and the Eve of Milton are glorious creations and deserve, nay demand separate consideration. They would confer immortality on any poet, age, or nation, whence they proceeded. The SoldierPoets of the time, Raleigh and Sydney threw some flowers around the sex and the elder Dramatists, although they failed in any single character, yet teem with frequent illustrations of her virtues. We are ashamed to speak of Dryden or Pope, as Woman's poets. We should pollute the theme by detailing the names of the licentious Poems-Poems? did we say-away with the word!—of those jingling fopperies which disgraced age of Charles the Second. Nor will we here enter on the pages of the philosophical Pope-philosophical in the coldest sense of the word. Since then, many and nobler spirits have arisen to assert the true dignity of Woman's worth. the We turn first to the Dramatists of the age. Talfourd, Bulwer, Sheridan Knowles, and Taylor. Would that we could praise them honestly. They have achieved nothing. Our Literature might have been recovered,—their time was justly chosen-but their Genius was too meagre, too shallow for the work. Talfourd's plays are as cold as classical; he has created statues not men and women-they are but the beautiful relievos of his mind's Ideal. Sheridan Knowles has become weak from looking too much at Shakespeare. His vision has been impaired, not his mind enlightened. He is sometimes very ef fective and generally in his quieter scenes, but his simplicity is occasionally pure simpleness. His women are all cast in one mould. They all reflect the same feelings and frailties. They look like the studies from a Lay Figure; he has dressed them in some of the sweetest and most delicate Ideas that man ever conceived-they would be admirable, were they but real. Taylor's fame is hardly yet grown to its full height-but he will sink like the rest--not into oblivion-but desuetude. His Dramas are full of fine, manly thought, and he has chosen a noble field-the struggle of mind with matter-of Thought for its freedom. But his fruit grows all upon one tree and stales upon us; and he wants what no Dramatist can do without-fertility of imagination. Of Bulwer's plays-with two exceptions as to the Female character-Pauline and La Valliere-it is difficult to speak with praise. They are but ingeniously contrived novels in dialogue-ambitious melodramas breeched into the manhood of five-act plays-and yet for all that they are thoughtful, elegant, and picturesque. They lack, however, life. The Lady of Lyons keeps its place on our stage from the force of Pauline's love. Her character is so English that every audience sympathises with her. We have seen the play at least half-adozen times, and never tire of watching the growth and constancy of her passion. Claude, although a fine fellow, seem a mere sentimentalist beside her. And the noble La Valliere! That the great? Louis had been but worthy of her love. Her History was a Poem, and Bulwer was in love with his theme. She is the best woman he has created-the loftiest-purest-truest. Of the lesser lights of the Drama we will not speak. Would that that best of Lord High Chamberlains, a better Taste could at once sweep from the stage the nauseating sentiment; the inflated, feculant horrors; the ribaldry and grimace: that now make up the phantasmagoria called a play. There are streaks of light along the horizon. These ghosts of a nation's crimes are looming off-taking with them too-let us thank the Gods!— the impotent abortions-of tale-tract-and poem-that have for the last ten years stopped the healthy current of public feeling. Where, we ask, with a few fine exceptions-and in those only appealing to the more educated classes-are to be looked for a faithful, earnest, honest portrait of Woman. We return right gladly to the true Poets. Very many masterly sketches amongst them: Thomson's Musidora, and Campbell's Gertrude of Wyoming, have delighted us. Nor must we forget Coleridge; and those who have read him are little likely to forget the impassioned Sara, or the gentle Genevieve. But there are others ranking higher in the empire of Poetry who have chosen the task of describing Woman. Of these the most prominent, and, indeed, the best are, Scott, Shelley, Byron, Moore, Burns, Bulwer, and James. Of one we have already spoken, but in his less popular character of a Dramatist. Scott, Bulwer, and James are called Novelists, a foolish word for anything of real merit. They are essentially Poets: Poets treading in the loftiest track, for they seek by the agency of Fiction to make real Life happier. Our fountains of feeling are they, where the wearied and the worldly drink, and better, far better, would gross, selfish, reckless Man be, were he to think less of the gold that walls up his heart; less of the partizanship that warps his mind; less of the luxury that weakens his body: better, far better, for each and for all, were they to seek the pages of the Poet, and learn thence the privileges in the duties of their Existence. And-for it needs nor argument nor illustration-how much better and happier would the lot of Woman be. There is but one Shakespeare and there never can be another. The world has reached its Meridian, and he has been our Noonday Sun. Of all the master minds we have enumerated, Scott has approached him more nearly than any other man, living or dead. But even he wants the warmth of his vitality, the broad truth of his Philosophy, the depth and concentration of his Intellect. Yet Scott occupies a noble place in the minds of men, and— what a Poet would esteem far more an abiding place in the hearts of Women. His Amy Robsart, his Alice Lee, his Mary Stuart, his Lucy Ashton, his proud Rebecca, and-greater than all the rest his Jeanie Deans-live in the memory of daydream and reverie, and dwell in the least-trodden, purest corner of our souls. Shelley has too wild, too etherial an idea of the Sex, and yet there is something wonderfully fine in the conception of Laone. But it wants reality. She, like many other of his spiritual creations, lives in our dreams. We think of Laone when highwrought enthusiasm has taken us from the working-day world to the land of anticipation. We think of the Laones of the Hereafter. Strange that Shelley-professing so miserable an abstraction as his word-religion really was, should have been, in essence and direction-so spiritual a man. God has written His greatest truths upon the foreheads of his deniers. Then, again, his Beatrice-for power of thought, and earnestness of feeling, is, perhaps, amongst modern creations unequalled. But even her strength of soul has something supernatural about |