Under the title of "Traits and Trials of Early Life," Mr. Colburn published, in 1836, a small volume of prose stories for children. To those who direct the new class of readers she here sought to gratify and inform, rather than the youthful readers themselves, she stated her object to be, "to interest, rather than to amuse, to excite the imagination through the softening medium of the feelings." Sympathy, she remarks, is the surest destroyer of selfishness. There is a wide field indeed opened for the exercise of this virtue in the first and longest of her narratives, the history of two little wingless angels, called "The Twin Sisters;" but though a tale of singular beauty, and abounding in exquisite traits of character and examples of purest virtue, it is saddening even to pain. The author justifies this by saying, "I endeavour to soften the heart by a kindly regret for unmerited sorrow. The very youngest ought to know how much there is to endure in existence; it will teach them thankfulness in their own more fortunate lot, and meekness in bearing their own lighter burthens." The other tales are not less charmingly written, and they have the advantage of being more cheerful, showing, for the most part, how exertion, under difficulties, is rewarded by success. The maxim which was remembered when they were composed seems to have been, that early lessons of cheerful endurance cannot be better taught than by example; and that patience, fortitude, and affection, are ever strong in obtaining a mastery over the troubles that beset us, at what ever age or in whatever condition.

From the Reminiscences of her own Childhood, and the interesting romance she had built upon them, as contained in the fanciful history which