the Slave Trade (1781.) Mrs. Hannah More has also written several works of religious fiction, and above all, some charming poems; Florio (1786,) and the Blue Stocking, or Conversation.  The Blue Stocking is a burlesque name given to a lady’s coterie, in which several females attempted to start a sort of bureau d’esprit under the direction of Mesdames Robinson and Piozzi, a coterie innocent enough, but which excited the wrath of Mr. Gifford, the Editor of the Quarterly Review, who fulminated against it several satires in excessively bad taste, and written in a tone of disgusting pedantry.  The verses of Mr. Gifford are infinitely more ridiculous than those he pretends to correct.  Amongst the English ladies who have written romance, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs. Inchbald, and Lady Morgan, are worthy of especial note.  Several ladies, without having written works of great importance, have still produced poetical pieces of graceful beauty; in this number it is but justice to distinguish Mrs. Opie.  And lastly, in order to finish this hasty catalogue, we may remark that there have appeared in England, in our days, several ladies of a high order of literary, poetical, and at the same time, philosophical talent.  Lady Morgan herself has contrived to mix up history and romance in her writings, with great ability; but among the ladies, who inscribed their fame on monuments more durable than romantic stories, we must select for honourable mention the names of Joanna Baillie, Aikin, Benger, and Helen Maria Williams.  Miss Baillie, sister of the celebrated Dr. Baillie, the physician, is a woman of the highest talent.  It is not your pretty nothings, your elegant trifles, which occupy her genius; on the contrary, she has attempted in a series of dramatic pieces, to paint the most energetic passion of the human heart; and her pieces, written in the most elevated and Shakspearian tone, will always be regarded as the work of a superior mind.  John Kemble, in the part of Montfort, reached the sublime of agony.  In the writings of Miss Baillie there is a combination of the solemn and the poetical, which is rarely observed in women.  Miss Aikin has written some charming poems, far more beautiful than any I have met with in the writings of Miss Landon and Miss Mitford.  The Mouse’s Petition, by Miss Aikin, is a chef-d’oeuvre.  Miss Benger has published some historical works of great interest, which place her in the same line with Miss Aikin.  Lastly, there is Helen Maria Williams, whose muse, half English, half French, has published poems, sonnets, and other pieces of verse, besides several political and historical works.  This superior woman, at the same time that she gave birth, under the influence of sensibility and fancy, to works of inspiration, portrayed the details of the events of the French revolution, in the centre of which she threw herself, in 1792, from pure enthusiasm for liberty.—­Foreign Quarterly Review.