Severe comments having been made by some papers, on Mrs. SIGOURNEY’s conduct in publishing a private letter of Mrs. SOUTHEY’s in her “Pleasant Memories,” we have pleasure in giving the following statement, which has appeared in an American paper, and evidently proceeds, says the Athenaeum, from Mrs. SIGOURNEY: -
 
“Having contemplated visiting Dr. SOUTHEY, at Keswick, Mrs. SIGOURNEY, on leaving England, wrote to Mrs. SOUTHEY, regretting that the accounts that she had received of Dr. SOUTHEY’s extreme illness had derived her of the pleasure of seeing him.” In reply to this Mrs. SOUTHEY wrote, under the date of April 3rd, 1841, as follows: -
 
“Permit me thus familiarly to address one, whose name, at least, has long been familiar to me,and toward whom, having seen some specimens of her beautiful poetry, I cannot feel as toward a stranger.” And thus closing - “It will please me to think, that I shall be held in kindly remembrance, in a far-off land, by one whose genius was held in honour of him who was (humanly speaking) my light of life.”
 
With regard to the alteration of Mrs. SOUTHEY’s letter, or the “interpolation of phrases implying intimacy and ejaculations of pathos,” it is enough to say, that there is not the slightest foundation for the charge.  We are able to state this confidently, after a careful examination and comparison of the manuscript with the printed page. The only remaining charge is, that of having published Mrs. SOUTHEY’s letter without authority. We cannot answer this better than by stating the simple fact, that, since the appearance of Mrs. SIGOURNEY’s book, she has received a cordial letter from Mrs. SOUTHEY, in which she, (Mrs. SOUTHEY) fully approves, to use her own words, of “the publication of those few words of mine, to which you have done too much honour - both to them and their writer.”