The Poetical Works | Page 2

proprietor to suspend its publication. It was some time before another such opportunity was given to the Canadian votaries of the muses of reaching the cultivated public. In the meanwhile, however, the subject of our sketch--who had, in 1851, become the wife of Dr. J. L. Leprohon, a member of one of the most distinguished Canadian families--was far from being idle. Some of her productions she sent to the Boston Pilot, the faithful representative in the United States of the land and the creed to which Mrs. Leprohon was proud to belong. She was also a frequent and welcome contributor to several of the Montreal journals. It is a pleasing evidence of her gentle thoughtfulness for a class which many persons in her position regard with indifference that she wrote, year after year, the "News-boy's Address" for the _True Witness_, the Daily News and other newspapers. One of her most pathetic poems, "The Death of the Pauper Child" may also be mentioned as a striking instance of that sweet charity which comprehended in its sisterly range the poor, the desolate and the suffering. The Journal of Education, edited by the Hon. P. J. O. Chauveau, himself an honor to Canadian Literature; the _Canadian Illustrated News_, edited by Mr. John Lesperance, distinguished both as a poet and a novelist; the Saturday Reader, the?Hearthstone, and other periodicals, both in Canada and?elsewhere, were always glad to number Mrs. Leprohon's productions among their most attractive features. She had always a ready pen, the result of a full heart and far-reaching sympathies, and, therefore, was frequently asked to write on subjects of current interest. Among her "occasional" poems; several of which are in this volume, may be mentioned the touching stanzas on the?"Monument to the Irish Emigrants," those on the "Old Towers" at the "Priest's Farm," those on the renewal of her vows by the Lady Abbess of the Congregation of Notre Dame, the poem on the?"Recollect Church," and the address "To the Soldiers of Pius The Ninth." One of her most important efforts of this kind was her translation of the Cantata composed by M. Sempé on the occasion of the visit of the Prince of Wales to Canada in 1860.
We have attempted such a classification of the poems as we thought would best show the range of Mrs. Leprohon's powers. Under every one of the headings which we have adopted the reader will find something to profit and delight. The lover of nature will find himself carried in fancy to the fairest or grandest of Canadian scenes; he who loves to indulge in reveries of the past can with her stand with Jacques Cartier on Mount Royal three centuries ago and survey the mighty expanse of forest, destined one day to be the home of a thriving people; those whose pleasure it is to read of heroic deeds will hear her sing of ennobling courage and fortitude that blenched not at death. But by many, we think, Mrs. Leprohon will be most cherished as she tells in sweet and simple rhyme of the tenderness of a mother's love, of a wife's devotion, a husband's loyal trust, of the pious offices of the domestic altar, of the parting by the death-bed that is not without hope, of the loved and lost that yet are "not lost but only gone?before." To illustrate these varied characteristics by quotation would demand far more, than our allotted space. We can, therefore, only refer the reader to the book itself, confident that in its pages he will find all that we have indicated and much more.
Just a word as to Mrs. Leprohon's prose writings. Though in this sketch we have dwelt upon her work as a poet, it is as a writer of fiction that she has won her most marked popular successes, that she has reached the hearts of the two great communities of which this province is composed. For no less than four of her most elaborate tales have been translated into French; these are, _Ida Beresford_, the _Manor House of Villerati, Antoinette de?Mirecourt,_ and Armand Durand. Besides these, she has written Florence FitzHarding, Eva Huntingdon, Clarence FitzClarence and Eveleen O'Donnell_. In the _Manor House of Villerai she has described with a skilful pen the manners and customs of the forefathers of the French Canadian people, such as they were at the period of the great contest which changed the destinies of Canada. In Armand Durand we have a courageous struggle with adverse fortune, which is at last crowned with success. The sad consequences of secret marriage, unblessed by parental consent, are unfolded in Antoinette de Mirecourt, one of the finest of Mrs. Leprohon's novels, and of which the French translation has lately been honored by a new edition. Of her merits as a novelist one of