with little complacency that her powers were wasted in supineness or in trivial occupations; and early in 1790 he apostrophized her in the following sonnet : Thus speaks the Muse, and bends her brow severe : And crown thy youthful head with freshest bays, Those sacred gifts whose meed is deathless praise, And thy own Corsica has burst her chain! O let the song to Britain's shores rebound, Where Freedom's once-loved voice is heard, alas! in vain." This animating expostulation conspiring with the events of the spirit-stirring times which now approached, had the effect of once more rousing her to exertion. In 1790, the rejection of a bill for the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts called forth her eloquent and indignant Address to the Opposers of this repeal: her Poetical Epistle to Mr. Wilberforce on the rejection of the bill for abolishing the Slave Trade was written in 1791. The next year produced her Remarks on Mr. Gilbert Wakefield's Inquiry into the expediency and propriety of public or social Worship: and her Sins of Government Sins of the Nation, or a Discourse for the Fast, appeared in 1793. She also supplied some valuable contributions to Dr. Aikin's popular book for children, Evenings at Home, the first volume of which appeared in 1792: but her share in this work has generally been supposed much greater than in fact it was : of the ninety-nine pieces of which it consisted, fourteen only are hers*. * They are the following:-The Young Mouse; The Wasp and Bee; Alfred, a drama; Animals and Countries; Canute's Reproof; The Masque of Nature; Things by their right Names; The Goose and Horse; By this time, the effervescence caused by the French revolution had nearly subsided; and Mrs. Barbauld, who could seldom excite herself to the labour of composition, except on the spur of occasion, gave nothing more to the public for a considerable number of years, with the exception of two critical essays; one prefixed to an ornamented edition of Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination, the other to a similar one of the Odes of Collins; of which the first appeared in 1795, the second in 1797. Both are written with elegance, taste and acuteness; but, on the whole, they are less marked with the peculiar features of her style than perhaps any other of her prose pieces. No event worthy of mention occurred On Manufactures; The Flying-fish; A Lesson in the Art of Distinguishing; The Phoenix and Dove; The Manufacture of Paper; The Four Sisters.--In a new edition will be added, Live Dolls. till 1802, when Mr. Barbauld accepted an invitation to become pastor of the congregation (formerly Dr. Price's) at Newington Green; and quitting Hampstead, they took up their abode in the village of Stoke Newington. The sole motive for this removal, which separated them from a residence which they liked and friends to whom they were cordially attached, was the mutual desire of Dr. Aikin and Mrs. Barbauld to pass the closing period of their lives in that near neighbourhood which admits of the daily and almost hourly intercourses of affection,-a desire which was thus affectingly expressed by the former in an epistle addressed to his sister during her visit to Geneva in 1785: "Yet one dear wish still struggles in my breast, In fond affection as in blood allied, Have wandered devious from each other's side; J Allowed to catch alone some transient view, When evening bids each busy task be o'er,— The evening which was the object of these earnest aspirations had now arrived; and it proved a long, though by no means an unclouded one ;-twenty years elapsed before the hand of death sundered this fraternal pair. A warm attachment to the authors of what has been called the Augustan age of English literature,-on whom herown taste and style were formed,-was observable in the conversation of Mrs. Barbauld, and often in her writings; and she gratified this sentiment by offering to the public, in 1804, a Selection from the Spectator,Tatler, Guardian and Freeholder, with a Prelimi |