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Among the author’s less elaborate compositions, however, “The Angel’s Visit,” written since the publication of her “Child of the Sea,” is, perhaps, upon the whole, the best — although “The Forsaken” and “La Vega” are scarcely, if at all, inferior.

In summing up the autorial merits of Mrs. Lewis, all critical opinion must agree in assigning her a high, if not the very highest rank among the poetesses of her land. Her artistic ability is unusual; her command of language great; her acquirements numerous and thorough; her range of incident wide; her ­invention, generally, vigorous; her fancy exuberant; and her imagination — that primary and most indispensable of all poetic requisites — richer, perhaps, than any of her female contemporaries. But as yet — her friends sincerely believe — she has given merely an earnest of her powers.

JOEL T. HEADLEY.

THE Reverend MR. HEADLEY — (why will he not put his full title in his title-pages?) has in his “Sacred Mountains” been reversing the facts of the old fable about the mountains that brought forth the mouse — parturiunt montes nascetur ridiculus mus — for in this instance it appears to be the mouse — the little ridiculus mus — that has been bringing forth the “Mountains,” and a great litter of them, too. The epithet, funny, however, is perhaps the only one which can be considered as thoroughly applicable to the book. We say that a book is a “funny” book, and nothing else, when it spreads over two hundred pages an amount of matter which could be conveniently presented in twenty of a magazine: that a book is a “funny” book — “only this and nothing more” — when it is written in that kind of phraseology, in which John Philpot Curran, when drunk, would have made a speech at a public dinner: and, moreover, we do say, emphatically, that a book is a “funny” book, and nothing but a funny book, whenever it happens to be penned by Mr. Headley.

We should like to give some account of “The Sacred Mountains,” if the thing were only possible — but we cannot conceive that it is. Mr. Headley belongs to that numerous class of authors, who must be read to be understood, and who, for that reason, very seldom are as thoroughly comprehended as they should be. Let us endeavor, however, to give some general idea of the work. “The design,” says the author, in his preface, “is to render more familiar and life-like, some of the scenes of the Bible.” Here, in the very first sentence of his preface, we suspect the Reverend Mr. ­Headley of fibbing: for his design, as it appears to ordinary apprehension, is merely that of making a little money by selling a little book.

The mountains described are Ararat, Moriah, Sinai, Hor, Pisgah, Horeb, Carmel, Lebanon, Zion, Tabor, Olivet, and Calvary. Taking up these, one by one, the author proceeds in his own very peculiar way to elocutionize about them: we really do not know how else to express what it is that Mr. Headley does with these eminences. Perhaps if we were to say that he stood up before the reader and “made a speech” about them, one after the other, we should come still nearer the truth. By way of carrying out his design, as announced in the preface, that of rendering “more familiar and life-like some of the scenes” and so-forth, he tells not only how each mountain is, and was, but how it might have been and ought to be in his own opinion. To hear him talk, anybody would suppose that he had been at the laying of the corner-stone of Solomon’s Temple — to say nothing of being born and brought up in the ark with Noah, and hail-fellow-well-met with every one of the beasts that went into it. If any person really desires to know how and why it was that the deluge took place — but especially how — if any person wishes to get minute and accurate information on the topic — let him read “The Sacred Mountains” — let him only listen to the Reverend Mr. Headley. He explains to us precisely how it all took place — what Noah said, and thought, while the ark was building, and what the people, who saw him building the ark, said and thought about his undertaking