FEMALE PROSE WRITERS, O.. -'.: Wil l'! jj.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. THE FEMALE PROSE WRITERS OF AMERIC A. WITH PORTRAITS, BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES, AND SPECIMENS OF THEIR WRI.TINGS. BY JOHN S. HART, LL. D FIFTH EDITION. PHILADELPHI A: PUBLISHED BY E, H. BUTLER & CO. 1866. Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1851, by E. H. BUTLER & CO., in the Clerk's office of the District Court of the United States, in and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. PREFACE. THE unwonted favour extended to "'Read's Female Poets of America," led to the belief that a work on the Female Prose Writers, constructed on a similar plan, would be not unacceptable to the public. In the preparation of the biographies, much difficulty has been experienced. Few things are more intangible and elusive, than the biography of persons still living, and yet, in the case of those who have pleased us by their writings, few things are more interesting. It seems to be an instinctive desire of the human heart, on becoming acquainted with any work of genius, to know something of its author. Nor is this mere idle curiosity. It is a part of that homage, which every mind rightly constituted, spontaneously offers to whateyer is great or good. This feeling of personal interest in an author who has moved us, is greatly increased where, as in the case of most female writers, the subjects of which they write, are chiefly of an emotional nature, carrying with them on every page the unmistakeable impress of personal sympathy, if not experience. Women, far more than men, write from the heart. Their own likes and dislikes, their feelings, opinions, tastes, and sympathies are so mixed up with those of their subject, that the interest of the vi PREFACE. reader is often enlisted quite as much for the writer, as for the hero, of a tale. Knowing, therefore, how general is this desire to become acquainted with the personal history of authors, I have taken special pains, in preparing a work on the Female Prose Writers of the country, to make the biographical sketches as full and minute as circumstances would justify, or the writers themselves would allow. The work contains two charming pieces of autobiography, now appearing for the first time, from two long-established favourites with the public, Miss Leslie and Mrs. Gilman. In almost all cases the information has been obtained directly by correspondence with the authors, or their friends. Where this has failed, recourse has been had to the best printed authorities. The work, it is believed, will be found to contain an unusual amount of authentic information, and on subjects where authentic information is equally desirable and difficult to obtain. The task of making selections has not been easy. I have studied, as far as possible, to select passages characteristic of the different styles of each writer, and at the same time to present the reader with an agreeable variety. Those who have not been led professionally, or otherwise, to examine the subject particularly, will probably be surprised at the evidences of the rapid growth of literature, among American women, during the present generation. When tIannah Adams first published her " View of all Religions," so rare was the example of a woman who could write a book, that she was looked upon as one of the wonders of the Western world. Learned men of Europe sought her acquaintance, and.entered into correspondence with her. Yet now, less than twenty years since the death of Hannah Adams, a ponderous volume of nearly five hundred pages is hardly sufficient to enrol the names of those of our female writers, who have already adorned the annals of literature by their prose writings, to say PREFACE. vii nothing of the numerous and not less distinguished sisterhood, who have limited themselves to poetry. A word in regard to the portraits. These have been made, wherever it was practicable from original paintings or drawings. NOTE TO THE REVISED EDITION. IN preparing this work for a new edition the biographies, in the case of authors still living, have been carefully revised and( brought up to the present time, and a considerable number of new names has been introduced, increasing materially the size of the work. SEPTEMBER, 18b4. CONTENTS. CATHERINE M. SEDGWICIK: PAGE BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE.. 17 MAGNETISM AMONG THE SHAKERS....... 19 THE SABBATH IN NEW ENGLAND.......... 24 ELIZA LESLIE: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE..... 26 AUTOBIOGRAPHY...... 27 MRS. DERRINGTON'S RECEPTION DAY........ 32 CAROLINE GILMAN: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE......... 49 AUTOBIOGRAPHY... 49 SARAH HALL: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE........ 58 ON FASHION....... 60 MARIA J. McINTOSH: BIOGRAPHIICAL NOTIC...... 63 TWO PORTRAITS....... 69 LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE...76 THE LOST CHILDREN... 84 I HAVE SEEN AN END OF ALL PERFECTION.. 90 SARAH J. HALE: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE... 93 FROMI "'WOMAN'S RECORD'..... 95 THE MODE..... 96 EMMA C. WILLARD: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE'..... 100 HOW TO TEACH. 103 WHAT TO TEACII.....103 CARE OF HEALTH....... 104 ON THE FORCE THAT MOVES THE BLOOD...... 105 ALMIRA HART LINCOLN PHELPS: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE..... 107 EDUCATION..... 108 ENERGY OF MIND. 108 EFFECTTS OF EXCITEMENTS... 109 THE CHILD AND NATURE ~.. ~... 110 2 (9) x CONTENTS. LOUISA C. TUTHILL: PAGE BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE.... 114 DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE IN TIHE UNITED STATES.. 114 CAROLINE M. KIRKLAND: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE....... 16 THE MYSTERY OF VISITING.. 117 LYDIA M. CHILD: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE....127 OLE BUL.... 129 THE UMBRELLA GIRL.131. EMMA C. EMBURY: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE..... 139 TWO FACES UNDER ONE HOOD 140 MARY S. B. SHINDLER: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE...... 153 A DAY IN NEW YORK... 158 CAROLINE LEE HENTZ: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE..... 162 AUNT PATTY'S SCRAP BAG.... 16,5 HANNAH ADAMS: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE...... 12 THE GNOSTICS..... 173 ELIZABETH F. ELLET: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE....... 177 5MARY SLOCUMB....... 178 E OAKES SMITH: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE.... 189 THE MYSTERY OF TIlE MOUNTAIN..190 THE ANGEL AND THE MAIDEN. 194 LOUISA S. McCORD: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE........ 198 THE RIGHT TO LABOUR. 199 ANN S. STEPHENS: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE.......... 204 THE QUILTING PARTY. 205 EMMA D. E. N. SOUTHWORTH: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE. 211 THE NEGLECTED CHILDREN IN THE ATTIC 216 THERESE LOUISE ALBERTINE ROBINSON (Talvj): BIOGRAPIIICAL NOTICE... 224 SLAVIC SUPERSTITIONS 225 FRANCES S. OSGOOD: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE.. 29 THE MAGIC LUTE..... ELIZABETH C. KINNEY: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE....... 237 OLD MAIDS ~.. 238 THE SONNET.... 240 HARRIET FARLEY: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE..... 244 ABBY1S YEAR IN LOWELL...... 246 MARY H. EASTMAN: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE...255 SHAIH-CO-PEE; THE ORATOR OF THE SIOUX.. 256 CONTENTS. xi S. MARGARET FULLER: PAGE BIOGRAPHICA, NOTICE..... 266 A SHORT ESSAY ON CRITICS 2. 268 CATHERINE E. BEECHER: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE........ 275 HABIT....... 277 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE......... 286 THE TEA ROSE......... 288 SARA H. BROWNE: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTI(......... 296 A SALUTATION TO FREDRIKR BRERIER.... 299 MARIA J. B. BROWNE: BIODGRAPIIICAL NOTICE........ 302 LOOKING UP IN THE WORLD.... 304 ELIZABETH BOGART: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE...... 316 ARTIUR MOBRY...... 318 RECOLLECTIONS OF CHIJ.T)D....... 321 JANE ELIZABETH LARCOMBE: BIOGRAPIIICAL NOTICE....... 322 THOUGHTS BY TIlE WAYSIDi.. 322 EMILY C. JUDSON: BIOGRAPIIICAL NOTICE..,... 325 LUCY DUTTON.. 326 MY FIRST GRIEF. 832 SARA J. LIPPINCOTT: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE..... 334 A DREAMI OF DEATH... 336 EXTRACT FROM A LETTER...... 339 ANNE C. LYNCH: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE..... 343 FREDRIRA BREMER. 346 MARY E. HEWITT: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE........ 354 A LEGEND OF IRELAND 355 ALICE B. NEAL: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE 6...,... 363 TIlE CEIILD LOVE....... 365 CLARA MOORE: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE...... 377 THE YOUNG MINISTER'S CIOICE....... 378 ANN E. PORTER: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE......... 387 COUSIN HELEN'S BABY..... 388 E. W. BARNES: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE...... 395 THE YOUNG RECTOR......... 395 ANNE T. WILBUR: BIOGRAPIIICAL NOTICE 4........ 402 ALICE VERNON......403 ELIZA L. SPROAT: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE..409 THE ENCHANTED LUTE.... 409 xii CONTENTS. SUSAN FENIMORE COOPER: PAGE BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE.... 413 SPIDERS......413 HUMMING-BIRDS. 415 WEEDS....... 418 ELIZABETH WETHERELL: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE..... 421 LITTLE ELLEN AND THE SHOPMAN... 424 AMY LOTHROP: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE......... 432 THE STORY OF THE PINE CONE.. 433 SPRING WEATHER.. 435 CAROLINE ORNE: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE...... 436 DR. PLUMLEY...... 438 CAROLINE MAY: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE..... 441 HANDEL...... 441 LUCRETIA AND MARGARET DAVIDSON.... 442 JULIA C. R. DORR: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE...... 447 HILLSIDE COTTAGE...... 448 MARY ELIZABETH MORAGNE: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE...... 453 THE HUGUENOT TOWN....455 MARY ELIZABETH LEE: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE.... 458 EXTRACT FROM A LETTER....... 460 MARY J. WINDLE: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE.4.... 463 ALICE HEATH'S INTERVIEW WITH CROMWELL... 464 FANNY FERN: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE........ 470 THE AGED MINISTER VOTED A DISMISSION...... 476 THE FASHIONABLE PREACHER....... 477 FATHER TAYLOR, THE SAILOR'S PRELACHER.. 478 THE BABY'S COMPLAINT.... 481 "MILE FOR BABES".... 482 UNCLE JOLLY.. 483 THANKSGIVING STORY...487 ALICE CAREY: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE.... 489 MRS. HILL AND MRS. TROOST... 491 FRANCES MIRIAM BERRY: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE....... 498 MRS. MUDLAW'S RECIPE fOR POTATO PUDDING. 502 ESTELLE ANNA LEWIS: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE...... 507 IMAGINATION....... 509 ART...... 510 CAROLINE CHESEBRO':: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE.. o... 512 THE PAUPER CHILD AND THE DEAD WOMAN..... ~514 ELIZA FARRAR: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE... 517 BROTHERS AND SISTERS...... 518 CO N T E N T S. xiii HANNAH F. LEE? PAGE BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE.. 521 BEGINNING LIFE. 522 LIVING. BEYOND THE MEANS. 523 CAROLINE THOMAS: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE. 525 TRIALS............526 ELLEN LOUISE CHANDLER: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE... 532 "I CANNOT MAKE HIM DEA'D"., ~ ~ ~ 9','~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~,.................:_;3-.::..:::l l:::l-i- -........... /............................................... PORTRAITS EXECUTED IN THE FIRST STYLE OF ART. SUBJECT. PAINTIER. PAGE FANNY FORRESTER ROTIIERMIEL FRONTISPIECE MISS SEDGWICK.. INGAM.... 17 MRS. KIRKLAND.... MARTIN.*.. 116 MRS. IIETZ.. IIENTZ... 162 SIRS. ELLET.... EAD....... 177 MRS. STEPHIENS CROOE...ME 204 MARGARET FULLER. HICKS. 266 MRS. NEAL., FURNESS.363 (15) ...........:::::_:::::::::::................ ~:..............:::: I~i i.........................-:.............::::::::............................::::j::...................iiiill~ii,::-:,l:i-ii~ij...................... - iil - ii~............................~~~~~~~~~~~~~V'iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii lii:::::i:_.....................................................................i ii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii ii I::......................................................................................................................................................il'li~~'ii l~iii liiii:ii~........................................::i i:::ij:::::-..................................................-:-:-:- -:::- -: _:-:::::;;~~~~`;....................................:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::..................................................................:ii::::::_:::::...............................................................................:::::::::;i:~~:,:::__ii::::i::~~................................................................................::-.....................................................................................:'::::::_:::::-:::::::-::-:::::::..................................................................................................................................-_::::i::::-:ii:I:::...................................................................................... CATHERINE M. SEDGWICK. Miss SEDGWICK holds about the same position among our female prose writers that Cooper holds among American novelists. She was the first of her class whose writings became generally known, and the eminence universally conceded to her on account of priority, has been almost as generally granted on other grounds. Amid the throng of new competitors for public favour, who have entered the arena within the last few years, there is not one, probably, whose admirers would care to disturb the wellearned laurels of the author of " Redwood" and " Hope Leslie." Miss Sedgwick is a native, and has been much of her life, a resident of Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Her father was the lIon. Theodore Sedgwick, of Stockbridge, who served his country with distinguished reputation in various stations, and particularly in the Congress of the United States, as Speaker of the House of Representatives, and afterwards as Senator, and who, at the time of his death, was one of the Judges of the Supreme Court of his own State. Ier brothers, Henry and Theodore, have both been distinguished as lawyers and as political writers. On the mother's side, she is connected with the Dwight family, of whom her grandfather, Joseph Dwight, was a Brigadier-General in the Massachusetts Provincial forces, and actively engaged in the old French war of 1756. Judge Sedgwick died in 1813, before his daughter had given any public demonstration of her abilities as a writer. Her talents seem to have been from the first justly appreciated by her brothers, whose judicious encouragement is very gracefully acknowledged in the preface to the new edition of her works, commenced by Mr. Putnam, in 1849. Miss Sedgwick's first publication was " The New England Tale." The author informs us in the preface, that the story was commenced as a religious tract, and that it gradually grew in her hands, beyond the proper limits of such a work. Finding this to be the case, she abandoned all design of publication, but finished the tale for her own amusement. Once 2 (17) 18 CATHERINE M. SEDGWICJK. finished, however, the opinions and solicitations of her.friends prevailed over her own earnest wishes, and the volume was given to the world in 1822. The original intention of this book led the author to give special prominence to topics of a questionable character for a professed novel, and the unfavourable portraiture which she gives, both here and elsewhere, of New England Puritanism, has naturally brought upon her some censure. The limited plan of the story did not give opportunity for the display of that extent and variety of power which appear in some of her later productions. Still it contains passages of stirring eloquence, as well as of deep tenderness, that will compare favourably with anything she has written. Perhaps the chief value of "'The New England Tale" was its effect upon the author herself. Its publication broke the ice of diffidence and indifference, and launched her, under a strong wind, upon the broad sea of letters. "Redwood" accordingly followed in 1824. It was received at once with a degree of favour that caused the author's name to be associated, and on equal terms, with that of Cooper, who was then at the height of his popularity; and, indeed, in a French translation of the book, which then appeared, Cooper is given on the title-page as the author.' Redwood" was also translated into the Italian, besides being reprinted in' England. The reputation of the author was confirmed and extended by the appearance, in 1827, of "Hope Leslie," the most decided favourite of all her novels. She has written other things since, that in the opinion of some of the critics are superior to either " Redwood" or " Hope Leslie." But, these later writings have had to jostle their way among a crowd of competitors, both domestic and foreign. Her earlier works stood alone, and "' Hope Leslie," especially, became firmly associated in the public mind with the rising glories of a native literature. It was not only read with lively satisfaction, but familiarly quoted and applauded as a source of national pride. Her subsequent novels followed at about uniform intervals; " Clarence, a Tale of our Own Times," in 1830; "Le Bossu," one of the Tales of the "Glauber Spa," in 1832; and "The Linwoods, or Sixty Years Since in America," in 1835. In 1836, she commenced writing in quite a new vein, giving a series of illustrations of common life, called "The Poor Rich Man, and the Rich Poor Man." These were followed, in 1837, by "Live and Let Live," and afterwards by "Means and Ends," a "Love Token for Children," and " Stories for Young Persons." In 1839, Miss Sedgwick went to Europe, and while there, wrote "Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home." These were collected after her return, and published in two volumes. She has written also a "Life of Lucretia M. Davidson," and has contributed numerous articles to the Annuals and the Magazines. Some of CATHERINE M. SEDGWICK. 19 her recent publications have been prepared expressly for children and young persons. " The Boy of Mount Rhigi," published in 1848, is one of a series of tales projected for the purpose of diffusing sentiments of goodness among the young. The titles of some of her other small volumes are "Facts and Fancies," " Beatitudes and Pleasant Sundays," "Morals of Manners," "Wilton Harvey," "Home," "Louisa and her Cousins," "Lessons without Books," &c. The quality of mind which is most apparent in Miss Sedgwick's writings is that of strength. The reader feels at every step that he has to do with a vigorous and active intellect. Another quality, resulting from this possession of power, is the entire absence of affectation of every kind. There is no straining for effect, no mere verbal prettinesses. The discourse proceeds with the utmost simplicity and directness, as though the author were more intent upon what she is saying than how she says it. And yet, the mountain springs of her own Housatonick do not send up a more limpid stream, than is the apparently spontaneous flow of her pure English. As a novelist, Miss Sedgwick has for the most part wisely chosen American subjects. The local traditions, scenery, manners, and costume, being thus entirely familiar, she has had greater freedom in the exercise of the creative faculty, on which, after all, real eminence in the art mainly depends. Her characters are conceived with distinctness, and are minutely individual and consistent, while her plot always shows a mind fertile in resources and a happy adaptation of means to ends. MAGNETISM AMONG THE SHAKERS. ONE of the brethren from a Shaker settlement in our neighbourhood, called on us the other day. I was staying with a friend, in whose atmosphere there is a moral power, analogous to some chemical test, which elicits from every form of humanity whatever of sweet and genial is in it. Our visiter was an old acquaintance, and an old member of his order, having joined it more than forty years ago with his wife and two children. I have known marked individuals among these people, and yet it surprises me when I see an original stamp of character, surviving the extinguishing monotony of life, or rather suspended animation among them. What God has impressed man cannot efface. To a child's eye, each leaf of a tree is like the other; to a philosopher's each has its distinctive mark. Our friend W.'s individuality might have struck a careless observer. He has nothing of the angular, crusty, silent 20 CATHERINE M. SEDGWICK. aspect of most of his yea and nay brethren, who have a perfect conviction that they have dived to the bottom of the well and found the pearl truth, while all the rest of the world look upon them as at the bottom of a well indeed; but without the pearl, and with only so much light as may come in through the little aperture that communicates with the outward world. Neither are quite right; the Shaker has no monopoly of truth or holiness, but we believe he has enough of both to light a dusky path to heaven. Friend Wilcox is a man of no pretension whatever; but content in conscious mediocrity. We were at dinner when he came in; but friend Wilcox is too childlike or too simple, to be disturbed by any observances of conventional politeness. He declined an invitation to dine, saying he had eaten and was not hungry, and seated himself in the corner, after depositing some apples on the table, of rare size and beauty. "I have brought some notions, too," he said, "for you, 13," and he took from his ample pocket his handkerchief, in which he had tied up a parcel of sugar plums and peppermints. B accepted them most affably, and without any apparent recoiling, shifted them from the old man's handkerchief to an empty plate beside her. " Half of them," he said, " remember, B, are for. You both played and sung to me last summer-I don't forget it. She is a likely woman, and makes the music sound almost as good as when I was young!" This was enthusiasm in the old Shaker; but to us it sounded strangely, who knew that she who had so kindly condescended to call back brother Wilcox's youth, had held crowds entranced by her genius. Brother Wilcox is a genial old man, and fifty years of abstinence from the world's pleasures has not made him forget or contemn them. He resembles the jolly friars in conventual life, who never resist, and are therefore allowed to go without bits or reins, and in a very easy harness. There is no galling in restraint where there is no desire for freedom. It is the " immortal longings" that make the friction in life. After dinner, B, at brother Wilcox's request, sate down to the piano, and played for him the various tunes that were the favourites in rustic inland life forty years ago. First the Highland reel, then "Money Musk." CATHERINE M. SEDGWICK. 21 "I remember who I danced that with," he said, " Sophy Drury. The ball was held in the school room at Feeding fields. She is tight built, and cheeks as red as a rose (past and present were confounded in brother Wilcox's imagination). I went home with Sophy -it was as light as day, and near upon day-them was pleasant times!" concluded the old man, but without one sigh of regret, and with a gleam of light from his twinkling gray eye. " There have been no such pleasant times since, brother Wilcox, has there?" asked B, with assumed or real sympathy. " I can't say that, it has been all along pleasant. I have had what others call crosses, but I don't look at them that way-what's the use?" The old man's philosophy struck me. There was no record of a cross in his round jolly face. "Were you married," I asked, " when you joined the Shakers?" " Oh, yes; I married at twenty-it's never too soon nor too late to do right, you know, and it was right for me to marry according to the light I had then. May be you think it was a cross to part from my wife-all men don't take it so-but I own I should; I liked Eunice. She is a peaceable woman, and we lived in unity, but it was rather hard times, and we felt a call to join the brethren, and so we walked out of the world together, and took our two children with us. In the society she was the first woman handy in all cases." "And she is still with you?" " No. Our girl took a notion and went off, and got married, and my wife went after her-that's natural for mothers, you know. I went after Eunice, and tried to persuade her to come back, and she felt so; but it's hard rooting out mother-love; it's planted deep, and spreads wide; so I left her to nature, and troubled myself no more about it, for what was the use? My son, too, took a liking to a young English girl that was one of our sisters-may be you have seen her?" We had all seen her and admired her fresh English beauty, and deplored her fate. "' Well, she was a picture, and speaking after the manner of men, as good as she was handsome. They went off together; I could not much blame them, 22 CATHERINE M. SEDGWICK. and I took no steps after them-for what was the use? But come, strike up again; play' Haste to the wedding.' " B..obeyed, and our old friend sang or chanted a low accompaniment; in which the dancing tune and the Shaker nasal chant were ludicrously mingled. B played all his favourite airs, and then said, " You do love dancing, brother Wilcox?" "Yes, to be sure-' praise him in the cymbals and dances!'" "Oh, but I mean such dances as we have here. Would not you like, brother Wilcox, to come over and see us dance?" "Why, may be I should." " And would not you like to dance with one of our pretty young ladies, brother Wilcox?" "May be I should;" the old man's face lit up joyously-but he smiled and shook his head, "they would not let me, they would not let me." Perhaps the old Shaker's imagination wandered for a moment from the very straight path of the brotherhood, but it was but a moment. His face reverted to its placid passiveness, and he said, " I am perfectly content. I have enough to eat and drink-everything good after its kind, too-good clothes to wear, a warm bed to sleep in, and just as much work as I like, and no more." "All this, and heaven too,"-of which the old man felt perfectly sure-was quite enough to fill the measure of a Shaker's desires. "Now," said he, "you think so much of your dances, I wish you could see one of our young sisters dance, when we go up to Mount Holy. She has the whirling gift; she will spin round like a top, on one foot, for half an hour, all the while seeing visions, and receiving revelations." This whirling is a recent gift of the Shakers. The few "world's folk" who have been permitted to see its exhibition, compare its subjects to the whirling Dervishes. "Have you any other new inspiration?" I asked. "Gifts, you mean? Oh, yes; we have visionists. It's a wonderful mystery to me. I never was much for looking into mysteriesthey rather scare me!" Naturally enough, poor childlike old man! "What, brother Wilcox," I asked, " do you mean by a visionist?" CATHERINE M. SEDGWICK. 23 "I can't exactly explain," he replied. "They see things that the natural eye can't see, and hear, and touch, and taste, with inward senses. As for me, I never had any kind of gifts, but a contented mind, and submission to those in authority, and I don't see at all into this new mystery. It makes me of a tremble when I think of it. I'll tell you how it acts. Last summer I was among our brethren in York State, and when I was coining away, I went down into the garden to take leave of a young brother there. He asked me if I would carry something for him to Yesta. Vesta is a young sister, famous for her spiritual gifts, whirling, &c." I could have added, for I had seen Vesta-for other less questionable gifts in the world's estimation —a light graceful figure, graceful even in the Shaker straight jacket, and a face like a young Sibyl's. " Well," continued brother Wilcox,' he put his hand in his pocket, as if to take out something, and then stretching it to me, he said,' I want you to give this white pear to Vesta.' I felt to take something, though I saw nothing, and a sort of trickling heat ran through me; and even now, when I think of it, I have the same feeling, fainter, but the same. When I got home, I asked Vesta if she knew that young brother.'Yea,' she said. I put my hand in my pocket and took it out again, to all earthly seeming as empty as it went in, and stretched it out to her.' Oh, a white pear!' she said. As I hope for salvation, every word that I tell you is true," concluded the old man. It was evident he believed every word of it to be true. The incredulous may imagine that there was some clandestine intercourse between the " young brother" and 1" young sister," and that simple old brother Wilcox was merely made the medium of a fact or sentiment, symbolized by the white pear. However that may be, it is certain that animal magnetism has penetrated into the cold and dark recesses of the Shakers. 24 CATHERINE M. SEDGWICK. THE SABBATH IN NEW ENGLAND. THE observance of the Sabbath began with the Puritans, as it still does with a great portion of their descendants, on Saturday night. At the going down of the sun on Saturday, all temporal affairs were suspended; and so zealously did our fathers maintain the letter, as well as the spirit of the law, that, according to a vulgar tradition in Connecticut, no beer was brewed in the latter part of the week, lest it should presume to work on Sunday. It must be confessed, that the tendency of the age is to laxity; and so rapidly is the wholesome strictness of primitive times abating, that, should some antiquary, fifty years hence, in exploring his garret rubbish, chance to cast his eye on our humble pages, he may be surprised to learn, that, even now, the Sabbath is observed, in the interior of New England, with an almost Judaical severity. On Saturday afternoon an uncommon bustle is apparent. The great class of procrastinators are hurrying to and fro to complete the lagging business of the week. The good mothers, like Burns's matron, are plying their needles, making "auld claes look amaist as weel's the new;" while the domestics, or help (we prefer the national descriptive term), are wielding, with might and main, their brooms and mops, to make all tidy for the Sabbath. As the day declines, the hum of labour dies away, and, after the sun is set, perfect stillness reigns in every well-ordered household, and not a foot-fall is heard in the village street. It cannot be denied, that even the most scriptural, missing the excitement of their ordinary occupations, anticipate their usual bed-time. The obvious inference from this fact is skilfully avoided by certain ingenious reasoners, who allege, that the constitution was originally so organized as to require an extra quantity of sleep on every seventh night. We recommend it to the curious to inquire, how this peculiarity was adjusted, when the first day of the week was changed from Saturday to Sunday. CATHERINE M. SEDGWICK. 25 The Sabbath morning is as peaceful as the first hallowed day. Not a human sound is heard without the dwellings, and, but for the lowing of the herds, the crowing of the cocks, and the gossipping of the birds, animal life would seem to be extinct, till, at the bidding of the church-going bell, the old and young issue from their habitations, and, with solemn demeanour, bend their measured steps to the meeting-house; —the families of the minister, the squire, the doctor, the merchant, the modest gentry of the village, and the mechanic and labourer, all arrayed in their best, all meeting on even ground, and all with that consciousness of independence and equality, which breaks down the pride of the rich, and rescues the poor from servility, envy, and discontent. If a morning salutation is reciprocated, it is in a suppressed voice; and if, perchance, nature, in some reckless urchin, burst forth in laughter —"My dear, you forget it's Sunday," is the ever ready reproof. Though every face wears a solemn aspect, yet we once chanced to see even a deacon's muscles relaxed by the wit of a neighbour, and heard him allege, in a half-deprecating, half-laughing voice, "The squire is so droll, that a body must laugh, though it be Sabbath-day." Towards the close of the day (or to borrow a phrase descriptive of his feelings, who first used it), "when the Sabbath begins to abate," the children cluster about the windows. Their eyes wander from their catechism to the western sky, and, though it seems to them as if the sun would never disappear, his broad disk does slowly sink behind the mountain; and, while his last ray still lingers on the eastern summits, merry voices break forth, and the ground resounds with bounding footsteps. The village belle arrays herself for her twilight walk; the boys gather on " the green;" the lads an(l girls throng to the " singing-school;" while some coy maiden lingers at home, awaiting her expected suitor; and all enter upon the pleasures of the evening with as keen a relish as if the day had been a preparatory penance. ELIZA LESLIE. WE have room but for a brief preface to the charming autobiography of Miss Leslie, furnished to our pages by her friend Mrs. Neal, for whom it was recently written. All that is of interest in the personal history of this gifted lady, she has herself supplied. It only remains for us to point out the characteristics of her style, and the great popularity of her writings, to which she so modestly alludes. Her tales are perfect daguerreotypes of real life; their actors think, act, and speak for themselves; with a keen eye for the ludicrous, the failings of human nature are never portrayed but to warn the young and the thoughtless. Her writings are distinguished for vivacity and ease of expression, strong common sense, and right principle. In her juvenile tales the children are neither " good little girls, or bad little boys"-but real little boys and girls, who act and speak with all the genuineness and naivetd of childhood. No writer of fiction in our country has ever had a wider, or more interested circle of readers; and this is clearly proved by the increased circulation of all those publications in which her name has appeared as a regular contributor. It will be noticed that the autobiography is dated from the United States Hotel, of this city, where Miss Leslie then resided-a charm to its social circle, and sought out by distinguished travellers of many nations, as well as those of our own land. Her conversation is quite equal to her writings, a circumstance by no means common with authors; her remarkable memory furnishing an inexhaustible store of anecdote, mingled with sprightly and original opinions. Her early life will be learned from the following sketch. (26) ELIZA LESLIE.'27 LETTER TO MRS. ALICE B. NEAL. My Dear Friend: I was born in Philadelphia, at the corner of Market and Second streets, on the 15th of November, 1787, and was baptized in Christ Church by Bishop White. Both my parents were natives of Cecil county, Maryland, also the birth-place of my grandfathers and grandmothers on each side. My great-grandfather, Robert Leslie, was a Scotchman. He came to settle in America about the year 1745 or'46, and bought a farm on North-East River, nearly opposite to the insulated hill called Malden's Mountain. I have been at the place. My maternal great-grandfather was a Swede named Jansen. So I have no Eng7lish blood in me. My father was a man of considerable natural genius, and much self-taught knowledge; particularly in Natural Philosophy and in mechanics. He was also a good draughtsman, and a ready writer on scientific subjects; and in his familiar letters, and in his conversation, there was evidence of a most entertaining vein of humour, with extraordinary powers of description. He had an excellent ear for music; and, without any regular instruction, he played well on the flute and violin. I remember, at this day, many fine Scottish airs that I have never seen in print, and which my father had learned in his boyhood from his Scottish grandsire, who was a good singer. My mother was a handsome woman, of excellent sense, very amusing, and a first-rate housewife. Soon after their marriage, my parents removed from Elkton to Philadelphia, where my father commenced business as a watchmaker. He had great success. Philadelphia was then the seat of the Federal Government; and he soon obtained the custom of the principal people in the place, including that of Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson, the two last becoming his warm personal friends. There is a free-masonry in men of genius which makes them find out each other immediately. It was by Mr. Jefferson's recommendation that my father was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society. To Dr. Franklin he suggested an ELIZA LESLIE. improvement in lightning rods, —gilding the points to prevent their rusting,-that was immediately, and afterwards universally adopted. Among my father's familiar visiters were Robert Patterson, long Professor of Mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania, and afterwards President of the Mint; Charles Wilson Peale, who painted the men of the revolution, and founded the noble museum called by his name; John Vaughan, and Matthew Carey. When I was about five years old, my father went to England with the intention of engaging in the exportation of clocks and watches to Philadelphia, having recently taken into partnership Isaac Price, of this city. We arrived in London in June, 1793, after an old-fashioned voyage of six weeks. We lived in England about six years and a half, when the death of my father's partner in Philadelphia, obliged us to return home. An extraordinary circumstance compelled our ship to go into Lisbon, and detained us there from November till March; and we did not finish our voyage and arrive in Philadelphia till May. The winter we spent in our Lisbon lodgings was very uncomfortable, but very amusing. After we came home, my father's health, which had long been precarious, declined rapidly; but he lived till 1803. My mother and her five children (of whom I was the eldest) were left in circumstances which rendered it necessary that she and myself should make immediate exertions for the support of those who were yet too young to assist themselves, as they did afterwards. Our difficulties we kept uncomplainingly to ourselves. We asked no assistance of our friends, we incurred no debts, and we lived on cheerfully, and with such moderate enjoyments as our means afforded; believing in the proverb, that " All work and no play make Jack a (lull boy." My two brothers were then, and still are, sources of happiness to the family. But they both left home at the age of sixteen. Charles, with an extraordinary genius for painting, went to London to cultivate it. He rapidly rose to the front rank of his profession, and maintains a high place among the great artists of Europe. IIe married in England, and still lives there. My youngest brother, Thomas Jefferson Leslie, having passed ELIZA LESLIE. 29 through the usual course of military education, in the West Point Academy, was commissioned in the Engineers, and, with the rank of Major, is still attached to the army. My sister, Anna Leslie, resides in New York. She has several times visited London, where she was instructed in painting by her brother Charles, and has been very successful in copying pictures. My youngest sister, Patty, became the wife of Henry C. Carey, and never in married life was happiness more perfect than theirs. To return now to myself. Fortunate in being gifted with an extraordinary memory, I was never in childhood much troubled with long lessons to learn, or long exercises to write. My father thought I could acquire sufficient knowledge for a child by simply reading "' in book," without making any great effort to learn things by heart. And as this is not the plan usually pursued at schools, I got nearly all my education at home. I had a French master, and a music master (both coming to give lessons at the house); my father himself taught me to write, and overlooked my drawing; and my mother was fully competent to instruct me in every sort of useful sewing. I went three months to school, merely to learn ornamental needle-work. All this was in London. We had a governess in the house for the younger children. My chief delight was in reading and drawing. My first attempts at the latter were on my slate, and I was very happy when my father brought me one day a box of colours and a drawing-book, and showed me how to use them. There was no restriction on. my reading, except to prevent me from "reading my eyes out." And indeed they have never been very strong. At that time there were very few books written purposely for children. I believe I obtained all that were then to be found. But this catalogue being soon exhausted, and my appetite for reading being continually on the increase, I was fain to supply it with works that were considered beyond the capacity of early youthe-a capacity which is too generally underrated. Children are often kept on bread and milk long after they are able to eat meat and potatoes. I could read at four years old, and before twelve I was familiar, among a multitude of other books, with Goldsmith's 30 ELIZA LESLIE. admirable Letters on England, and his histories of Rome and Greece (Robinson Crusoe and the Arabian Nights, of course), and I had gone through the six octavo volumes of the first edition of Cook's Voyages. I talked much of Tupia and Oiniah, and Otoo and Terreoboo —Captain Cook I almost adored. Among our visiters in London, was a naval officer who had sailed with Cook on his last voyage, and had seen him killed at Owhyhee-I am sorry the name of that island has been changed to the unspellable and unpronounceable Hawaii. I was delighted when my father took me to the British Museum, to see the numerous curiosities brought from the South Sea by the great circumnavigator. The "Elegant Extracts" made me acquainted with the best passages in the works of all the British writers who had flourished before the present century. From this book I first learned the beauties of Shakspeare. My chief novels were Miss Burney's, Mrs. Radcliffe's, and the Children of the Abbey. Like most authors, I made my first attempts in verse. They were always songs, adapted to the popular airs of that time, the close of the last century. The subjects were chiefly soldiers, sailors, hunters, and nuns. I scribbled two or three in the pastoral line, but my father once pointing out to me a real shepherd, in a field somewhere in Kent, I made no farther attempt at Damons and Strephons, playing on lutes and wvreathing their brows with roses. My songs were, of course, foolish enough; but in justice to myself I will say, that having a good ear, I was never guilty of a false quantity in any of my poetry —my lines never had a syllable too much or too little, and my rhymes always did rhyme. At thirteen or fourteen, I began to despise my own poetry, and destroyed all I had. I then, for many years, abandoned the dream of my childhood, the hope of one day seeing my name in print. It was not till 1827 that I first ventured "to put out a book," and a most unparnassian one it was-"-' Seventy-five receipts for pastry, cakes, and sweetmeats." Truth was, I had a tolerable collection of receipts, taken by myself while a pupil of Mrs. Goodfellow's cooking school, in Philadelphia. I had so many applications from my friends for copies of these directions, that my brother ELIZA LESLIE. 21 suggested my getting rid of the inconvenience by giving them to the public in print. An offer was immnediately made to me by Munroe & Francis, of Boston, to publish them on fair terms. The little volume had much success, and has gone through many editions. MAr. Francis being urgent that I should try my hand at a work of imagination, I wrote a series of juvenile stories, which I called the Mirror. It was well received, and was followed by several other story-books for youth-" The Young Americans,"' Stories for Emma," " Stories for Adelaide," " Atlantic Tales," " Stories for I-Ielen,"'"Birth-day Stories." Also, I compiled a little book called "The Wonderful Traveller," being an abridgment (with essential alterations) of Munchausen, Gulliver, and Sincldbad. In 1831 Munroe and Francis published my "American Girls' Book," of which an edition is still printed every year. Many juvenile tales, written by me, are to be found in the annuals called the Pearl and the Violet. I had but recently summoned courage to write fictions for grown people, when my story of Mrs. Washington Potts obtained a prize from Mr. Godey, of the Lady's Book. Subsequently I was allotted three other prizes successively, from different periodicals. I then withdrew from this sort of competition. For several years I wrote an article every month for the Lady's Book, and for a short time I was a contributor to Graham's Magazine; and occasionally, I sent, by invitation, a contribution to the weekly papers. I was also editor of the Gift, an annual published by Carey & Hart; and of the Violet, a juvenile souvenir. My only attempt at anything in the form of a novel, was "' Amelia, or a Young Lady's Vicissitudes," first printed in the Lady's Book, and then in a small volume by itself. Could I begin anew my literary career, I would always write novels instead of short stories. Three volumes of my tales were published by Carey & Lea, under the title of Pencil Sketches. Of these, there will soon be a new edition. In 1838 Lea & Blanchard printed a volume containing 1" Althea Vernon, or the Embroidered Handkerchief," and "'Henrietta Harrison, or the Blue Cotton Umbrella." Several 32 ELIZA LESLIE. books of my fugitive stories have been published in pamphlet form, -the titles being "'Kitty's Relations," " Leonilla Lynmore," " The Maid of Canal Street" (the Maid is a refined and accomplished young lady), and "The Dennings' and their Beaux." All my stories are of familiar life, and I have endeavoured to render their illustrations of character and manners, as entertaining and instructive as I could; trying always "to point a moral," as well as to " adorn a tale." The works from which I have, as yet, derived the greatest pecuniary advantage, are my three books on domestic economy. The " Domestic Cookery Book," published in 1837, is now in the fortyfirst edition, no edition having been less than a thousand copies; and the sale increases every year. " The House Book" came out in 1840, and the "'Lady's Receipt Book" in 1846. All have been successful, and profitable. My two last stories are 6" Jernigan's Pa," published in the Saturday Gazette, and " The Baymounts," in the Saturday Evening Post. I am now engaged on a life of John Fitch, for which I have been several years collecting information, from authentic sources. I hope soon to finish a work (undertaken by particular desire) for the benefit of young ladies, and to which I purpose giving the plain, simple title of " The Behaviour Book."* U. S. Hotel, Phila., Aug. 1, 1851. ELIZA LESLIE. MRS. DERRINGTON'S RECEPTION DAY. MAJOR FAYLAND had departed on his return home, and Sophia's tears had flowed fast and long on taking leave of her father. Mrs. Derrington reminded her, by way of consolation, that to-morrow was "' reception day," and that she would then most probably see many of the ladies, who, having heard of Miss Fayland's arrival, had already left cards for her. "And what, dear aunt, is exactly meant by a reception day?" inquired Sophia. * The "Behaviour Book" has since been published. ELIZA LESLIE. 33' It is a convenient way of getting through our morning visiters," replied Mrs. Derrington. "'We send round cards at the beginning of the season to notify our friends that we are at home on a certain morning, once a week. My clay is Thursday. I sit in the drawing-room during several hours in a handsome demitoilette. Full dress is not admissible, of course, at morning receptions. Any of my friends that wish to see me, take this opportunity; understanding that I receive calls at no other time. They are served with chocolate and other refreshments, brought in and handed to them soon after their arrival. They talk awhile, and then depart. There are some coming in, and some going out all the time, and no one staying long. The guests are chiefly ladies; few gentlemen of this city having leisure for morning visits. Still every gentleman manages to honour a lady's reception day with at least one call during the season. I suppose you had no such things as morning receptions at the fort?" "No, indeed," replied Sophia; "our mornings were always fully occupied in attending to household affairs, and doing the sewing of the family. Afternoon was the time for walking or reading. But in the evening we all visited our neighbours, very much according to the fashion of Spanish tertulias." Next morning, when dressed for the reception, and seated in the drawing-room to wait for the first arrivals, Mrs. Derrington said to Sophia —" We shall now hear all about Mrs. Cotterell's great party which came off last night. I have some curiosity to know what it was like, being her first since she came to live in this part of the town." "Do you visit her?" asked Sophia. "Oh, no-not yet-and probably I never may. I am waiting to see if the Cotterells succeed in getting into society."'" What society,, dear aunt?" inquired Sophia. "I see, Sophy, that I shall be much amused with your simplicity," replied Mrs. Derrington; a"or rather with your extreme newness. In using the word society, we allude only to one class, and that of course is the very best." "'By that I understand a select circle of intellectual, refined, r 34 ELIZA LESLIE. agreeable, and every way excellent people," said Sophia; " men on whose integrity, and women on whose propriety there is not the slightest blemish, and who are admired for their talents, loved for their goodness, and esteemed for the truth and honour of their whole conduct."'" Stop-stop," interrupted Mrs. Derrington, "you are going quite too far. Can you suppose all this is required to get people into society, or to keep them there? The upper circles would be very small if nothing short of perfection could be admitted." "What then, dear aunt, are the requisites?" asked Sophia. " Is genius one?" "' Genius? Oh, no, indeed. It is not that sort of thing that brings people into society. It is mostly considered rather a drawback. Mrs. Goldsworth actually shuns people of genius. Indeed, most of my friends rather avoid them. I have no acquaintance whatever with any man or woman of genius." " I am sorry to hear it," said Sophia.'"I had hoped while in New York to meet many of those gifted persons whose fame has spread throughout our country, whom I already know by reputation, and whom I have long been desirous of seeing or hearing." " Oh, I suppose you mean lions," said Mrs. Derrington. "I can assure you that I patronize none of them; neither do any of my friends." "I thought the lions were the patronizers," said Sophia, " and that their position gave them the exclusive power of selecting their associates, and deciding on whom to confer the honour of their acquaintance." " Sophy-Sophy, you really make me laugh!" exclaimed her aunt. " What strange notions you have picked up, with your garrison education. Do not you know that people of genius seldom live in any sort of style, or keep carriages, or give balls? And they never make fortunes; unless they are foreign musicians or dancers, and I am not sure that the singing and dancing people are classed as geniuses. They are regarded as something much better." "' Is society composed entirely of people of fortune?" ELIZA LESLIE. "Oh, no; there are persons in the first circle who are not half so rich as many in the second, or even in *the third, or fourth." "s Then, if society is not distinguished for pre-eminence in talent or wealth, the distinction must depend upon the transcendent goodness, and perfect respectability of those that belong to it." "Why, not exactly. I confess that some of the persons in society have done very bad things; which after the first few days it is best to hush up, for the honour of our class. But then in certain respects society is most exemplary. We always subscribe to public charities. Charity is very fashionable, and so is church." "And now," continued Sophia, " to return to the lady who gave the party last night. Is not she a good and respectable woman?" " I never heard anything against her goodness, or her respectability." 6" She must surely be a woman of education." " Oh, yes; I went to school with her myself. B ut at all schools there is somewhat of a mixture. To give you iMrs. Cotterell's history-her father kept a large store in Broadway, and afterwards he got into the wholesale line, and went into Pearl street. Now, my father was a shipping merchant, and owned vessels, and my dear late husband was his junior partner. Mlr. Cotterell made his money in some sort of manufacturing business, across the river. He died two years ago, and is said to have left his family very rich. TTer daughter being now grown, Mrs. Cotterell has bought a house up here, in the best part of the town, and has come out quite in style, and been tolerably called on. Some went to see her out of curiosity, and some because they have an insatiable desire for enlarging their circle; some because they have a passion for new people; and some because they like to go to houses where everything is profuse and costly, as is generally the case with parventus." "And some, I hope," said Sophia, "'because they really like Mrs. Cotterell for herself." " She certainly is visited by a few very genteel people," continued Mrs. Derrington, " and that has encouraged her to attempt a party last night. But the Goldsworths, the Highburys, the Featherstones, and myself, are waiting to hear if she is well taken ELIZA LESLIE. up; and, above all, if the Pelharm Prideauxs have called on her. And besides, it may be well for us not to begin till she has gradually gotten rid of the people with whomn she associated in her hus-r ba nd's time. " "Surely," said Sophia, "she cannot be expected to throw off her old friends?" "' Then she need not expect to gain new ones up here. We can-m not mix with people from the unfashionable districts. Irs. Cotte-. rell may do as she pleases-but she must be select in her circle, if she wants the countenance of the Pelhan Plrideauxs." "' And who, dear aunt, are the Pelham Prideauxs?" inquired Sophia. G" Is it possible you never heard of them?" ejaculated Mirs. Derrington. "'To know Mrs. Pelham Prideaux, to be seen at her house, or to have her seen at yours, is sufficient. It gives the stamp of high fashion at once." "' And for what reason?" persisted Sophia. "' Because she is Mrs. Pelham Prideaux," was the reply. W" What is her husband?" said Sophia. " He is a gentleman who has always lived upon the fortune left him by his father, who inherited property from his father, and he from his. None of the Prideauxs have clone anything for a hundred years. The great-grandfather was from England, and came over a gentleman." "Surprising!" said Sophia, mischievously. 6And whom have they to inherit all this glory?" "An only daughter," replied Mrs. Derrington, " MIaria Matilda Pelham Prideaux." At this moment a carriage stopped at the door, and presently Mrs. Middleby was announced; and immediately after, two young ladies came in who were presented to Sophia as Miss Telford and Miss Ellen Telford. The conversation soon turned on Mrs. Cotte.rell's party. Mrs. Middleby had been there —the Miss Telfords had not, anld were therefore anxious to " hear all about it." " Really," said Mrs. Middleby, "it was just like all other parties, and like all others, it went:ff tolerably well. The company ELIZA LESLIE. 37 was such as one meets everywhere. The rooms were decorated in the usual style. Some of the people looked better than others, and some worse than others. The dressing was just as it always is at parties. The hostess and her daughter behaved as people generally do in their own houses; the company as guests usually behave in other people's houses. There was some conversation and some music. The supper was like all other suppers, and everybody went away about the usual hour." Mrs. Derrington was dubious about taking up the Cotterells.' I knew we should not get much information out of Mrs. Mid. dleby," said Miss Telford to Sophia, after the lady had departed. "' She always deals in generals, whatever may be the topic of conversation." "' Because her capacity of observation is so shallow that it cannot take in particulars," said Ellen Telford. 6" But here comes }M[rso Honeywood —we will stay to hear what she says." Mrs. Hloneywood w;ras introducedl, and on being applied to for her account of Mrs. Cotterell's party, she pronounced it every way charming; and told of some delightful people that were there. " Among them," said irs. Honeywood, " was the dashing widow, Mrs. Crandon, as elegant and as much admired as ever. She was certainly the belle of the room, and looked even more captivating than usual, with her blooming cheeks, and her magnificent dark eyes, and her rich and graceful ringlets, and her fine tall figure set off by her superb dress, giving her the air of a duchess, or a countess at least." W' What was her dress?" inquired Sophia. " Oh, a beautiful glossy cherry-coloured velvet, trimmed with a profusion of rich black lace. On her head was an exquisite dresshat of white satin and blond, with a splendid ostrich plume. She was surrounded by beaux all the evening. The gentlemen almost neglected the young ladies to crowd round the enchanting widow, particularly w-hen she played on the harp and sung. They would scarcely allow her to quit the instrument; and, indeed, her music was truly divine. There was quite a scramble as to who should have the honour of leading AMrs. Crandon to the supper-table." IS3 ELIZA LESLIE. After some further encomiums on the widow Crandon, anid on everything connected with the party, Mrs. Honeywood took her leave, first offering seats in her carriage to the Miiss Telfords, which offer they accepted. Mrs. Derrington rather thought she wouzld take up the Cotterells. The next of the guests who had been at Mlrs. Cotterell's party was Miss Rodwell; and she also gave an account of it. " Mrs. Cotterell and her daughter are rather presentable, and they care visited to a certain degree," said Miss Rodwell 6' and I understand that Mirs. Pelham Prideaux does think of calling on them. I knew that I should meet many of my friends, or of course, I could not have risked being there myself. But, under any circumstances, the company was too large to be select, A party cannot be perfectly coeztne il fat, if it numbers more than fifty. Mrs. De Manchester says, that to have the very cream and flower of New York society, you must not go beyond thirty. And, though an Englishwoman, I think, in this respect, she is right." " The Vanbombels, to be completely select, invite none but their own relations," observed Mrs. Derrington.'And for the same reason," rejoined Miss Rodwell, " the Jenkses invite none of their relations at all. But who do you think I saw last evening? Poor Crandon, absolutely! I wonder where Mfrs. Cotterell found her? She mutst have been invited out of compassion; it certainly could not have been for the purpose of ornamenting the rooms. Most likely Mrs. Cotterell did not know that poor Crandon is so entirely passe, nobody minds cutting her in the least. There she was rigged out in that old dingy red velvet that everybody was long ago tired of seeing. It is now quite too narrow for the fashion, and looks faded and threadbare. She had taken off the white satin trimming that graced it in its highi and palmy days, and decorated it scantily with some coarse brownish, blackish lace. And then her head, with its forlorn ringlets, streanming down with the curl all out, and a queer yellowish-white hat, and a meagre old feather to match t' Such an object! I wish you could have seen her! But, poor thing, I could not help pitying her, foI she looked forlorn, and sat neglected, and was left to her ELIZA LESLIE. 39 self nearly all the time; except when the Cotterells talked to her from a sense of duty. She played something on the harp, but nobody seemed to listen. I know that ITwas talking and laughing all the time, and so was every one else. People that are ill-dressed should never play on harps. It shows them too plainly." " And they should never go to parties either," said Mrs. Derrington. " Poor MNrs. Crandon, has she no friend to tell her so? But I never heard before that she had fallen off in her costume. The report may be true that her husband's executors have defrauded her of a considerable portion of her property. However, I have lost sight of her for some years." "And then," said Miss Rodwell, "it was not to be expected that Crandon could sustain herself permanently in society, considering how she first got into it."'6I own," resumed AMrs. Derrington, "11I was rather surprised when I first saw Mrs. Crandon among us. It was, I believe, at Mrs. Hautonberg's famous thousand dollar party, the winter that it was fashionable to report the cost of those things; so that, before the en(l of the season, parties had mounted up to twice that sum. How did she happen to get there, for it was certainly the cause of her having a run all that season? I never exactly understood the circumstances." "' Oh, I can tell you all about it," replied Miss Rodwell;'" for I was in the secret. Mr. Crandon was a jobber, and had realized a great deal of money, and they lived in a fine house, and made a show, but nobody in society ever thought of noticing them. After a while he took her to Europe, and they spent several months in Paris, and Mlrs. Crandon (who, to do her justice, was then a very handsome woman) fitted herself out with a variety of elegant French dresses, made by an exquisite artiste, and with millinery equally rechzerhe'. When she came home, the fame of all these beautiful things spread beyond the limits of her own circle, and we were all dying to see them (particularly the evening costumes), and to borrow them as patterns for our own mantuamakers and milliners. But while she continued meandering about among her own set, we had no chance of seeing much more than the divine bonnet 40 ELIZA LESLIE. an(l pelisse she wore in Broadway, and they only whetted our appe, tite for the rest. So at one of Mrs. Hautonberg's soirees, a coterie of us got together and settled the plan. Mrs. Hautonberg at first made some difficulty, but finally came into it, and agreed to commence operations by calling on Mrs. Crandon next day, and afterwards sending her a note for her great thousand dollar party, which was then in agitation. So she called, and IMr. Hautonberg was prevailed on to leave his card for Mr. Crandon. They came to the party, thinking themselves highly honoured, and we all made a point of being introduced to the lady, and of showing her all possible civility, and of being delighted with her harp-playing. You may be sure, we took especial note of all the minutie of her dress, which I must say far excelled in taste and elegance every other in the room. And no wonder, when it was firesh from France. Well, to be brief, she was visited and invited, and well treated, and her b)eautiful things were borrowed for patterns; and by the time she had shown them all round at different parties, imitations of them were to be seen everywhere throughout our circle. The cherry-coloured velvet and the white hat and feathers were among them. She gave a grand party herself, and as it was at the close of the season, we all honoured her with our presence. Poor woman, she really thought all this was to last. Next winter we let her gently down; some dropping her entirely, and a few compassionately dragging on with her a while longer. Indeed, I still meet her at two or three houses." " I am very sure she was never seen at Mrs. Pelham Prideaux," observed ]Mrs. Derrington, " even in the winter of her glory. Her French costumes would have been no inducement to Mrs. Prideaux, whose station has placed her far above dress." "Mrs. Prideaux is rather too exclusive," said Miss Rodwell, somewhat piqued.'V What an enviable station!" renzarked Sophia, "'to be above dress." "'7ell," continued Mrs. Derrington, to Miss Rodwell, " what did you think of Mrs. Cotterell's party arrangements? How were the decorationss, the supper, and all things thereunto belonging?" ELIZA LESLIE. 41 "Oh! just such as we always see in the best houses. All in scrupulous accordance with the usual routine. Yet somehow it seemed to me there was a sort of parvenu air throughout." " What were the deficiencies?" asked Mrs. Derrington. "'Oh! no particular deficiencies, except a want of that ind(escribable something which can only be found in the mansions of people of birth." Sophia could not forbear asking what in republican America could be meant by people of birth. To this Miss Rodwell vouchsafed no reply, but looking at her watch, said it was time to call for Mrs. De Manchester, whom she had promised to accompany to Stewart's. She then departed, leaving Mrs. Derrington impressed with a determination not to take up the Cotterells. The stopping of a carriage -was followed by the entrance of Mrs. and Miss Brockendale. The mother was a lady with an ever-varying countenance, and a restless eye. She was expensively dressed, but with her hair disordered, her bonnet crushed, her collar crooked, her gown rumnpled, one end of her shawl trailing on the ground, and the other end scarcely reaching to her elbow. Her daughter's very handsome habiliments were arranged with the most scrupulous nicety; and the young lady had a steadfast eye, and a resolute and determined expression of face. All her features were regular, but the tout eczsem6le was not agreeable. After some very desultory conversation, Mrs. Derrington recurred to the subject that was uppermost in her mind, iMrs. Cotterell's party; and on finding that the Brockendale ladies had been there, she again inquired about it; observing that much as she had heard of it in the course of the morning, she had still obtained no satisfactory account. " How did it really go off?" said she, addressing Miss Brockendale; but the mother eagerly answered, and the daughter finding herself anticipated, closed her lips firmly, and drew back her head. "Oh! delightfully,' exclaimed Mrs. Brockendale. "Everything was so elegant, and in such good taste, and on such a liberal scale." "; How were the rooms decorated?" asked Mrs. IDerringtoir B 42., ELIZA LESLIE.' Oh! superbly, with flowers wreathed around the columns." " MIrs. Cotterell's rooms have no pillars," said Miss iBrockendale, speaking very audibly and distinctly, and addressing herself to Sophia, near whom she was seated. " W ell, then," continued Mrs. Brockendale, " there were wreaths festooned along the walls. You cannot say there were no walls." " There were no wreaths except those that ornamented the lamps and chandeliers," said Miss Brockendale, always addressing Sophia. " Oh! yes, the flowers were all about the lights. That was what made them look so pretty. One thing I am certain of, the rooms were as light as (d1sy. There must have been five hundred candles." "' There was not one," said Miss Brockendale to Sophia. " The rooms were lighted entirely with gas." " Well, it might have been a sort of gas. I declare my head is always so filled with things of importance, that I have no memory for trifles. This I know, that the furniture was all crimson velvet trimmed with gold-colour." "' It was blue satin damask trimmed with a rich dark brown," said her daughter to Miss Fayland. 4' Well, the crimson might have had a bluish cast. I have certainly seen crimson velvet somewhere. The truth is, almost as soon as we entered, I saw my friend Mr. Weston, the member of Congress (either from Greenbay or Georgetown, I forget which), and so we got to talking about Texas and things; and that may be the reason I did not particularly notice the rooms. I almost got into a quarrel with this same Congress-man about the President, who, in spite of all I could say, Mr. Weston persisted in declaring has never threatened to go to war with Germany." "Neither he has," said Miss Brockendale, this time directing her looks to her mother.'" Then he has set himself against railroads, or injured the crops, or invited over five hundred thousand millions of Irish." " I-3 has done none of these things." "He has done something, I am very sure. Or, if he has not, some other President has. I never can remember how the Presi ELIZA LESLIE. 43 dents go, and perhaps I am apt to mix them up, my head being always full of more important objects." "I hear there was a very elegant supper," said Mrs. Derrington.' I believe there was. But all supper-time I was talking about the tariff, and the theatre, and the army and navy, and I did not notice the things on the table. I rather think there was ice-cream, and I am almost positive there was jelly." I- Hlad you fine music?" inquired MIrs. Derrington.'It seems to me that I heard music. But I was talking then to M[r. Van Valkenburgh, who has travelled over half the world; mostly pedestrian, poor fellow!" "Ile is not a poor fellow," explained her daughter to Sophia. "' Ie is a rich bachelor, and a great botanist, and entomologist; and when he rambles on foot, it is always from his own choice." "Augustina," said her mother, "do not you recollect we met iMr. Van Valkenburgh somewhere in Europe, when we were travelling with the Tirealls?" "I never was in Europe," said Augustina to Sophia. "When mamma went over, she took my sister Isabella, but left me a little girl at boarding-school." "So you were a little girl at boarding-school; I remember all about it," continued Mrs. Brockendale, "and I did take Isabella, because she was grown up. She is married now, poor thing, to a man that never crossed the Atlantic, and never will, and so her going to Europe was of no manner of use. What a strange girl she was. When we were at Venice she would make me go everywhere in a boat-even to church." "You could not well go in anything else," remarked Augustina. "And then at Venice, she highly offended the showman by ringing the great bell of St. Mark's." " She could not get at it." " Then it must have been at St. Peter's, or St. Paul's, or else Notre Dame. Any how, she rung a bell." "My sister has told me," said Augustina, turning to Sophia, 6 that coming out of a village church in England, she took a fancy 44'ELIZA LESLIE. to pull the bell-rope, as it hung invitingly down just within the entrance; and she greatly scandalized the beadle by doing so, still she pacified him with a shilling." "' But now about Mr. Van Valkenburgh," proceeded Mrs. Brockendale, 6" this I am certain- of, that we met him on the Alps, and we were joined up there by old General Offenham and his son, who was much taken with Isabella. It might have been a match, for the young man will be a half-millionaire one of these days; but he has fits, and rolls down mountains. So that rather discouraged us, and we thought that nobody would ever marry him. Yet, afterwards, at Paris, or Portsmouth, or some of those places, the widow Sweeting snapped up young Offenham, for her third husband. So Isabella might as well have taken him."'My sister," said Augustina, turning to Sophia, "is happily married to a man of sense, as well as of large fortune, and high respectability." " Mr. Van Valkenburgh," pursued Mrs. Brockendale, "4was telling how delightful he found the literary society of England. I wish I had been in it, when I was there. He became acquainted with them all. He even knew Shakspeare." 1' -is plays, of course," said Sophia. C' Oh! no, the man himself. Shakspeare called on him at the hotel, and left his card for Mr. Van Valkenburgh." " Excuse me," said Sophia, "' Shakspeare has been dead considerably more than two hundred years." "' Ah! my dear young lady," observed Mrs. Brockendale, " you know we must not believe all we hear." "; Mamnma, we had best go home," said her daughter, who had sat for some moments looking as if too angry to speak, leaving to Sophia the explanation concerning Shakspeare. Mrs. Brockendale rose to depart. 4 If it was not Shakspeare that called on him, it must have been Dr. Johnson," said she. " Any how, it was some great author." They then took their leave, Miss Brockendale expressing a desire to be intimately acquainted with Miss Fayland. " Poor Mrs. Brockendale," said Sophia, " her head reminds me ELIZA LESLIE. 45 of a lumber room, where a11 sorts of things are stonwed away in confusion. My father thinks that a defective memory is generally the result of careless or inattentive observation. But perhaps this lady was never gifted with the capacity of seeing or hearing things understandingly.'' "I do not wonder that the daughter has no patience with the mother," said Mrs. Derrington. " However, they are persons of birth, and live handsomely, and are visited. We cannot expect everybody in society to be alike. Unfortunately, l]r. Brockendale, who was a most excellent man, and doated on his queer wife, and tried hard to improve her, died ten years ago, and since losing his guidance, she has talked more like a fool than ever. And worse than all, every article of her dress seems to be continually getting into disorder. As soon as her things are put right, they somehow get wrong again." The next visiters were two rather insipid ladies, and soon after came in a remarkably handsome young man, dressed in the most perfect taste, but without the slightest approach to what is called dandyism. He had the air distingue' which foreigners say is so rarely to be found among the citizens of America. He was introduced to Sophia as Mr. Percival Grafton, and she thought he looked exactly like a young nobleman, or rather as a young nobleman ought to look; and she was still more delighted with his conversation. After some very pleasant interchange of ideas with Miss Fayland, he inquired of Mrs. Derrington if she had yet become acquainted with Mrs. Cotterell and her charming daughter. "Not yet," was the reply. "Then let me advise you by all means not to delay what I am sure will afford much pleasure to yourself and Miss Fayland. The Cotterells are delightful people; polished, intelligent, natural, and having'air cornmme ilfaut, as if it had been born with them. Miss Cotterell is one of the loveliest girls I have ever seen; and does infinite honour to the system on which her mother has educated her." "Does she dress well?" inquired Mrs. Derrington. "Charmingly," replied Grafton, "c and she could not do other -6g ELIZA LESLIE. wise, her good taste is so apparent in everything. She dresses well, talks well, moves well, and plays and sings delightfully. I heard her speaking French to Madame St. Ange, with the utmost fluency and elegance. She is really a most enchanting girl." " You seem to be quite smitten!" remarked Miss Walerly, one of the insipid young ladies. "Not to admire such a woman as Amelia Cotterell would evince the most pitiable insensibility to the united attractions of beauty, grace, and talent. But in the usual acceptation of the phrase, I am yet heart-whole. How long I may remain so is another question." Mr. Grafton then turned the conversation to another subject, and he soon after took his leave. "Do you know, Mrs. Derrington," said Miss Milkby, the other insipid young lady, "'it's all over town already, that Percival Grafton is dying in love with Amelia Cotterell. So you must not believe exactly all he says about her and her mother." "- He really seems delirious," said Miss Waterly. Mrs. Derrington became again dubious about taking up the Cotterells. But her doubts grew fainter as she reflected that Percival Grafton was a young gentleman of acknowledged taste in all that was refined and elegant; being himself a person of birth, and'. to the manner born" of the best society. Even his grandfather was an eminent lawyer, and Percival himself had been inducted into that high profession. While Mrs. Derrington sat, "pondering in her mind," Sophia was endeavouring to entertain the Misses Waterly and Mlilkby, when her aunt suddenly started from her reverie, and, her face beaming with ecstatic joy, advanced in eager elmp2resseeme nt to receive a lady, whom the servant, throwing wide the door, announced as Mrs. Pelham Prideaux. When Mrs. Derrington had a little recovered the first excitement of this supreme felicity, and placed her high and mighty guest in the easiest fauteuil, and seen her well served with refreshments, she recollected to introduce her niece, Miss Sophia Fayland. The two other misses had long been within the pale of Mrs. Prideaux's notice, and they timidly hoped she was well. ELIZA LESLIE. 47 This arbitress of fashion, this dictatress to society, was a woman of no particular face, no particular figure, no particular dress, and no particular conversation. But she was well aware of her position, and made use of it accordingly. Mrs. Derrington, whose whole morning had been one long thought of the Cotterells (whenever she had a new thought she always pursued it d l'outrclnce), said something about the party of last night. "Were you there?" asked Mrs. Prideaux. "Oh! no. Mrs. Cotterell has come among us so lately, I know not exactly in what circle she will be." "You might have gone," said Mrs. Prideaux, " I intend calling on her." " Do you, indeed?" exclaimed Mrs. Derrington, with glad surprise. And Sophia's face brightened also; for she longed to know the Cotterells, and she saw that all doubt was now over. Miss Waterly and Miss Milkby now acknowledged that they had both been at the party, and that they had liked it. "' When do you make this call, my dear Mrs. Prideaux?" asked Mrs. Derrington. " I have not exactly determined on the day," was the reply.;' I hope Sophia and I may have the pleasure of meeting you there," said Mrs. Derrington.'"When you have fixed on the exact time, will you let us know?" "' Certainly, I can have no objection," answered Mrs. Prideaux, graciously, " provided I know it myself.'How kind you always are! It will be so delightful for us to be at Mrs. Cotterell's together. Will it not, Sophy'?" " On consideration, I cannot make this call before next week," said Mrs. Prideaux. "' Oh! never mind. Consult your own convenience. We will wait for you." " Where does Mrs. Cotterell live?" inquired the great lady. Miss Waterly and Miss Milkby now both spoke together, and designated the place. Mrs. Prideaux condescendingly thanked them for the information. "Then," said she to Mrs. Derrington, " as I must pass your ELIZ.A LESLIE. door in going there, I may as well call for you in my carrilage whenever I do go." Mrs. Derrington was too happy at this unexpected glory; and Miss Waterly and Miss Milkby too envious. All these young ladies could do was to accompany Mrs. Prideaux when she departed, and be seen leaving the door at the same time with her. She heonoured them with a bow as they lingered on the door-step, when her no-particular-sort-of-carriage drove away. Unluckily, there chanced to be no spectators but a small party of German emigrants, and two schoolboys. Perhaps some of the neighbours might have been at their windows. The following Monday and Tuesday, Mrs. Derrington and Miss Fayland stayed at home all the morning ready-dressed, waiting in vain for M.rs. Prideaux to call for them in her carriage.' Surely," said Sophia, "' she will apprise us in time?"' She may probably not think of doing so," replied Mrs. Derrington. At last on Wednesday the joyful moment arrived when the vehicle of Mars. Pelham Prideaux, with that lady in it, drew up to the door of Mrs. Derrington, who ran down stairs, followed by her niece; and in a very short time they arrived at the mansion of the Cotterells. CAROLINE GILMAN. OF our living authoresses, no one has been so long before the public, and at the same time retained her place so entirely in its affections, as Mrs. Caroline Gilman. Her first publications, which were poems, commenced as early as 1810. Among these, " Jephthah's Rash Vow," and " Jairus' Daughter," attracted particular attention. Her importance as a prose writer begins with the " Southern Rose Bud," a weekly juvenile paper, which she began in 1832, and continued for seven years. This miscellany contains a large amount of valuable literature, and is especially rich in contributions from Itrs. Gilman's own pen. Her other publications have been as follows: " Recollections of a New England Housekeeper," " Recollections of a Southern Matron" (both running through a large number of editions), " Ruth Raymond; or Love's Progress," " Poetry of Travelling," "' Tales and Ballads," 1"Letters of Eliza Wilkinson" (written during the invasion of Charleston by the British), "Verses of a Lifetime,"'"The Oracles from the Poets," "' The Sibyl," and several juvenile books now collected under the general title of I Mrs. Gilman's Gift." The following graceful piece of autobiography will serve the double purpose of a specimen of her style, and a narrative of her life. 3IY AUTOBIOGRAPHI Y. I AM asked for some "particulars of my literary and domestic life." It seems to me, and I suppose at first thought, it seems to all, a vain and awkward egotism to sit clown and inform the world who you are. But if I, like the Petrarchs, and Byrons, and tIemanses, greater or less, have opened my heart to the public for'7 (49) 'x)B C A R OCAROLINE GILMAN. a series of years, with all the pulses of love and hatredc and sorrow so transparently unveiled, that the throbs may be almost counted, why should I or they feel embarrassed in responding to this request? Is there not some inconsistency in this shyness about autobiography? I find myself, then, at nearly sixty years of age, somewhat of a patriarch in the line of American female authors-a kind of Past 5Master in the order. The only interesting point connected with my birth, which took place October 8th, 1794, in Boston, Mass., is that I first saw the light where the Mariners' Church now stands, in the North Square. My father, Samuel Howard, was a shipwright, and to my fancy it seems fitting, that seamen should assemble on the former homestead of one who spent his manhood in planning and perfecting the noble fabrics which bear them over the waves. All the record I have of him is, that on every State thanksgiving day he spread a liberal table for the poor, and for this I honour his memory. My mother descended from the family of the Brecks, a branch of which is located in Philadelphia as well as in Boston, and which, by those who love to look into such matters, is traced, as far as I have heard, to 1703 in America. The families of 1794 in the North Square, have changed their abode. Our pastor, the good Dr. Lathrop, minister of the " Old North," then resided at the head of the Square-the Mays, Reveres, and others, being his neighbours. It appears to me, that I remember my baptism on a cold November morning, in the aisle of the old North, and how my minister bent over me with one of the last bush-wigs of that century, and touched his finger to my befrilled little forehead: but being only five weeks old, and not a very precocious babe, I suppose I must have learned it from oral tradition. I presume, also, I am under the same hallucination, when I see myself, at two years of age, sitting on a little elevated triangular seat, in the corner of the pew, with red morocco shoes, clasped with silver buckles, turning the movable balusters, which modern architects have so unkindly taken away from children in churches. CAROLINE GILMAN. 51 My father died before I was three years old, and was buried at Copp's Hill. A few years since, I made a pilgrimage to that most ancient and interesting cemetery, but its grass-covered vaults revealed to me nothing of him. My mother, who was an enthusiastic lover of nature, retired into the country with her six children, and placing her boys at an academy at Woburn, resided with her girls in turn at Concord, Dedham, Watertown, and Cambridge, changing her residence, almost annually, until I was nearly ten years old, when she passed away, and I followed her to her resting-place, in the burial-ground at North Andrews. Either childhood is not the thoughtless period for which it is famed, or my susceptibility to suffering was peculiar. I remember much physical pain. I recollect, and I think Bunyan, the author of Pilgrim's Progress, describes the same, a deep horror at darkness, a suffocation, a despair, a sense of injury when left alone at night, that has since made me tender to this mysterious trial of youth. I recollect also my indignation after a chastisement for breaking some china, and in consequence I have always been careful never to express anger at children or servants for a similar misfortune. In contrast to this, come the memories of chasing butterflies, launching chips for boats on sunny rills, dressing dolls, -embroidering the glowing sampler, and the soft maternal mesmerism of my mother's hand, when, with my head reclined on her knee, she smoothed my hair, and sang the fine old song "In the downhill of life." As Wordsworth says in his almost garrulous enthusiasm, Fair seed-time had my soul, and I grew up Fostered alike by beauty and by fear; Much favoured in my birth-place." I say birth-place, for true life is not stamped on the spot where our eyes first open, but our mind-birth comes from the varied associations of childhood, and therefore may I trace to the wild influences of nature, particularly to those of sweet Auburn, now the Cambridge Cemetery, the formation of whatever I may possess of 52 CAROLINE GILMAN.: the poetical temperament. Residing just at its entrance, I passed long summer mornings making thrones and couches of moss, and listening to the robins and blackbirds. The love of the beautiful then was quite undeveloped in social life; the dead reposed by roadside burial-grounds, the broken stone walls of which scarcely sheltered the sod which covered them~ Now all is changed in those haunts of my childhood, and perchance costly monuments in Mount Auburn have risen on the sites of my moss-covered thrones. Our residence was nearly opposite Governor Gerry's, and we were frequent visiters there. One evening I saw a small book on the recessed window-seat of their parlour. It was Gesner's Death of Abel; I opened it, spelt out its contents, and soon tears began to flow. Eager to finish it, and ashamed of emotions so novel, I screened my little self so as to allow the light to fall only on the book, and, while forgotten by the group, I also forgetting the music and mirth that surrounded me, I shed, at eight years, the first preluding tears over fictitious sorrow. It was formerly the custom for countrypeople in Massachusetts to visit Boston in throngs on election day, and see the Governor sit in his chair on the Common. This pleasure was promised me, and a neighbouring farmer was good enough to offer to take ime to my uncle Phillips's. Therefore, soon after sunrise, I was dressed in my best frock, and red shoes, and with a large peony called a'leetion posey, in one hand, and a quarter of a dollar in the other, I sprang with a merry heart into the chaise, my imagination teeming with soldiers, and sights, and sugar-plums, and a vague thought of something like a huge giant sitting in a big chair, overtopping everybody. I was an incessant talker when travelling, therefore the time seemed short when I was landed, as I supposed, at my uncle Phillips's door, and the farmer drove away. But what was my distress at finding myself among strangers! Entirely ignorant of my uncle's direction, I knew not what to say. In vain a cluster of kind ladies tried to soothe and amuse me with promises of playmates and toys; a sense of utter loneliness and intrusion kept me in tears. At CAROLINE GILM.AN. 53 sunset, the good farmer returned for me, and I burst into a new agony of grief. I have never forgotten that long, long day with the kind and hospitable, but werony PNillipses. If this statement should chance to be read and remembered by. them, at this far interval, I beg them to receive the thanks which the timid child neglected to give to her stranger-friends. I had seen scarcely any children's books except the Primer, and at the age of ten, no poetry adapted to my age; therefore, without presumption, I may claim some originality for an attempt at an acrostic on an infant, by the name of Howard, beginningHow sweet is the half opened rose l;Oh, how sweet is the violet to view! Who receives more pleasure from them, Here it seems I broke down in the acrostic department, and went onThan the one who thinks them like you'? Yes, yes, you're a sweet little rose, That will bloom like one awhile; And then you will be like one still, For I hope you will die without guile. The Davidsons, at the same age, would, I suppose, have smiled at this poor rhyming, but in vindication of my ten-year-old-ship I must remark, that they were surrounded by the educational light of the present era, while I was in the dark age of 1805. My education was exceedingly irregular, a perpetual passing from school to school, from my earliest memory. I drew a very little, and worked the "Babes in the Woods" on white satin, in floss silk; my teacher and my grandmother being the only persons who recognised in the remarkable individuals that issued from my hands a likeness to those innocent sufferers. I taught myself the English guitar at the age of fifteen from hearing a schoolmate take lessons, and ambitiously made a tune, which I doubt if posterity will care to hear. By depriving myself of some luxuries, I purchased an instrument, over which my whole soul was poured in joy and sorrow for many years. A dear friend, who shared my desk at school, was kind enough to work out all my 54 CAROLINE GILMAN. sums for me (there were no black-boards then), while I wrote a novel in a series of letters, under the euphonious name of Eugenia Fitz Allen. The consequence is that, so far as arithmetic is concerned, I have been subject to perpetual mortifications ever since, and shudder to this day when any one asks me how much is seven times nine. I never could remember the multiplication table, and, to heap coals of fire on its head in revenge, set it to rhyme. I wrote my school themnes in rhyme, and instead of following "Beauty soon decays," and " Cherish no ill designs," in B and C, I surprised my teacher with" Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll, Charms strike the sight, but merit wills the soul." My teacher, who at that period was more ambitious for me than I was for myself, initiated me into Latin, a great step for that period. The desire -to gratify a friend induced me to study Watts's Logic. I did commit it to memory conscientiously, but on what an ungenial soil it fell! I think, to this day, that science is the dryest of intellectual chips, and for sorry quibblings, and self-evident propositions, syllogisms are only ecqualled by legal instruments, for which, by the way, I have lately seen a call for reform. Spirits of Locke, and Brown, and Whewell, forgive me! About this period I walked four miles a week to Boston to join a private class in French. The religious feeling was always powerful within me. I remember, in girlhood, a passionate joy in lonely prayer, and a delicious elevation, when with upraised look, I trod my chamber floor, reciting or singing Watts's Sacred Lyrics. At sixteen I joined the Communion at the Episcopal Church in Cambridge. At the age of eighteen I made another sacrifice in dress to purchase a B]ible with a margin sufficiently large to enable me to insert a commentary. To this object I devoted several months of study, transferring to its pages my deliberate convictions. I amt glad to class myself with the few who first established the CAROLINE GILMAN. 55 Sabbath School and Benevolent Society at Watertown, and to say that I have endeavoured, under all circumstances, wherever my lot has fallen, to carry on the work of social love. At the age of sixteen I wrote "Jephthah's Rash Vow." I was gratified by the request of an introduction from Miss Hannah Adams, the erudite, the simple-minded, and gentle-mannered author of the History of Religions. After her warm expressions of praise for my verses, I said to her, 4" Oh, Miss Adams, how strange to hear a lady, who knows so much, admire me!" "3 My dear," replied she, with her little lisp, "'my writings are merely compilations, Jephthah is your own." This incident is a specimen of her habitual humility. To show the change from that period, I will remark, that when I learned that my verses had been surreptitiously printed in a newspaper, I wept bitterly, and was as alarmed as if I had been detected in man's apparel. The next effusion of mine was 1"Jairus's Daughter," which I inserted, by request, in the North American Review, then a miscellany. A few years later I passed four winters at Savannah, and remember still vividly, the love and sympathy of that genial community. In 1819 I married Samuel Gilman, and came to Charleston, S. C., where he was ordained pastor of the Unitarian Church In 1832, I commenced editing the "Rose Bud," a hebdomadal, the first juvenile newspaper, if I mistake not, in the Union. Mrs. Child had led the way in her monthly miscellany, to my apprehension the most perfect work that has ever appeared for youth. The " Rose Bud" gradually unfolded through seven volumes, taking the title of the " Southern Rose," and being the vehicle of some rich literature and valuable criticism. From this periodical I have reprinted, at various times, the following volumes: 4 "Recollections of a New England Housekeeper;" "Recollections 56 CAROLINE GILMAN. of a Southern Matron;" "Ruth Raymond, or Love's Progress;" "Poetry of Travelling in the United States;" "Tales and Ballads;" "Verses of a Lifetime;"'"Letters of Eliza Wilkinson, during the invasion of Charleston;" also, several volumes for youth, now collected in one, and recently republished, as "Mrs. Gilman's Gift Book." The "Poetry of Travelling," "Tales and Ballads," and "' Eliza Wilkinson," are out of print. The " Oracles from the Poets," and " The Sibyl," which occupied me two years, are of later date. On the publication of the "Recollections of a New England Housekeeper," I received thanks and congratulations from every quarter, and I attribute its popularity to the fact that it was the first attempt, in that particular mode, to enter into the recesses of American homes and hearths, the first unveiling of what I may call the altar of the Lares in our cuisine. I feel proud to say that a chapter in that work was among the first heralds of the temperance movement, a cause to which I shall cheerfully give my later as well as earlier powers. My ambition has never been to write a novel; in the " Matron" and "' Clarissa Packard" it will be seen that the story is a mere hinge for facts. After the publication of the " Poetry of Travelling," I opened to a notice in a review, and was greeted with, " This affectation will never do." It has amused me since to notice how " this affectation" has spread, until we have now the " Poetry of Teaching," and the "' Poetry of Science." My only pride is in my books for children. I have never thought myself a poet, only a versifier; but I know that I have learned the way to youthful hearts, and I think I have originated several styles of writing for them. While dwelling on the above sketch, I have discovered the difficulty of autobiography, in the impossibility of referring to one's faults. Perchance were I to detail the personal mistakes and deficiencies of this long era, I might lose the sympathy which may have followed me thus far. I have purposely confined myself to my earlier recollections, CAROLINE GILMAN. 57 believing that my writings will be the best exponents of my views and experience. It would be wrong, however, for me not to allude, in passing, to one subject which has had a potent influence on my life, I refer to mesmerism or magnetic psychology. This seemingly mysterious agency, has given me relief when other human aid was hopeless, and I believe it is destined, when calmly investigated, to be, under Providence, a great remedial agent for mankind. My Heavenly Father has called me to varied trials of joy and sorrow. I trust they have all drawn me nearer to him. I have resided in Charleston thirty-one years, and shall probably make my final resting-place in the beautiful cemetery adjoining my husband's church-the church of my faith and my love. 8 SARAH HALL. MRS. SARAH HALL was born at Philadelphia, on the 30th of October, 1761. She was the daughter of the Rev. John Ewing, D. D., who was, for many years, Provost of the University of Pennsylvania, and Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church at Philadelphia. At the close of the revolutionary war, in the year 1782, she was married to Mr. John Hall, the son of a wealthy planter in Maryland, to which State they removed. Here she spent about eight years, upon a beautiful farm on the shores of the Susquehanna. After their residence in MIaryland, they settled in Philadelphia, where Mr. Hall filled successively the offices of Secretary of the Land Office, and Marshal of the United States, for the district of Pennsylvania. Endowed by nature with an ardent and lively imagination, she early imbibed a keen relish for the beauties of polite literature, and devoted much time to such pursuits. When the Port Folio was established by Mr. Dennie in 1800, she was one of the literary circle with which he associated, and to whose pens that work was indebted for its celebrity. Elegant literature was at that time more successfully cultivated in Philadelphia than in any other part of the Union. To write for the Port Folio was considered no smlall honour; and to be among the favoured correspondents of MJr. Denrie was a distinction of some value, where the competitors were so numerous, and so highly gifted; for among the writers for that work were a number of gentlemen, who have since filled the most exalted stations in the Federal government, both in the cabinet and on the bench, and who have, in various ways, reaped the highest rewards of patriotism and genius. Some of the most sprightly essays and pointed criticisms which appeared in this paper, at the time of its greatest popularity, were from the pen of Mrs. Hall. When the Port Folio came under the direction of her son, the late (58) SARAH HALL. 5f John E. Hall, who was its editor for more than ten years, she continually aided him in his labours; and her contributions may readily be distinguished, as well by their vivacity as the classic purity of their diction. She survived but a few months that son, her eldest, whom she had encouraged and assisted in his various literary labours for about twenty years. She studied the Scriptures with diligence, and with prayer-with all the humility of Christian zeal, and with all the scholar's thirst for acquisition. By such means, and with the aid of the best libraries of Philadelphia, Mrs. Hall became as eminent for scholarship in this department of learning, as she was for wit, vivacity, and genius. Her "Conversations on the Bible," a practical and useful book, which is now extensively known, affords ample testimony that her memory is entitled to this praise. This work is written with that ease and simplicity which belongs to true genius; and contains a fund of information which could only have been collected by diligent research and mature thought. While engaged in this undertaking, she began the study of the Hebrew language, to enable herself to make the necessary critical researches, and is supposed to have made a considerable proficiency in the attainment of that dialect. When it is stated that she commenced the authorship of this work after she had passed the age of fifty, she being then the mother of eleven children, and that during her whole life she was eminently distinguished for her industry, economy, and exact attention to all the duties belonging to her station, as the head of a numerous family, it will be seen that she was no ordinary woman. In a letter to a literary lady in Scotland, written in 1821, IMrs. Hall makes the following remarks, which will be read with interest, as showing the change that has taken place in the last thirty years:-' Your flattering inquiry about my'literary career' may be answered in a word-literature has no career in America. It is like wine, which, we are told, must cross the ocean to make it good. We are a business. doing, money-making people. And as for us poor females, the blessed tree of liberty has produced such an exuberant crop of bad servants, that we have no eye nor ear for anything but work. We are the most devoted wives, and mothers, and housekeepers, but every moment given to a book is stolen. The first edition of the' Conversations' astonished me by its rapid sale; for I declare to you, truly, that I promised myself nothing. Should the second do tolerably, I may perhaps be tempted to accede to the intimations of good-natured people, by continuing the history to the end of the Acts of the Apostles. Yet I found so much difficulty in the performance of the first part, having never written one hour without the interruption of company, or business, that I sent off my last sheet as peevishly as Johnson sent the Fitins of his Dictionary to Miller, almost 60 ~aAIRAH HALL. vowing that I would never again touch a pen. In fact it is, as your friend says, v She that would be a notable housewife, must be that thing only."' Mrs. Hall died at Philadelphia, on the 8th of April, 1830, aged 69. A small volume containing selections from her miscellaneous writings, was published in Philadelphia, in 1833. This volume contains also an interesting sketch of her life, from which the present notice has been compiled. ON FASHION.* MOST of you writers have leaped into the censor's throne without leave or license; where you were no sooner seated, than, with the impudence one might expect from such conduct, you have railed, with all the severity of satire and indecency of invective, against our folly, frivolity, forwardness, fondness of dress, and so forth. You can't conceive what a latitude is assumed by the witlings of the day, from the encouragement of such pens as yours. Those well dressed young gentlemen who will lay awake whole nights in carving the fashion of a new doublet, and who will criticise Cooper without knowing whether Shakspeare wrote dramas or epic poems, these wiseacres, I say, saunter along Chestnut street, when the sun shines, and amuse themselves with sneers against our sex: and in nothing are we so much the object of their ridicule as in our devotion to fashion, on whose shrine, according to these modern peripatetics, we sacrifice our time, our understanding, and our health. We have freedom of the press, and freedom of religion, and why should we not enjoy a freedom of fashions? What do these sapient gentlemen wish? Would they have a dress for females established by an act of the Assembly, as doctors of medicine have been created in Maryland? "' Which dress aforesaid of the aforegoing figure, colour, materials, fashion, cut, make, &c., &c., all the good spinsters of Pennsylvania shall wear on all highdays and holydays, under pain, &c., &c." Horrible idea!What tie us down to the dull routine of the same looks, the same bonnets, the same cloaks?-take from us that charming diversity, that delightful variety, which blooms in endless succession from * Addressed to the editor of the Port Folio. SARAH HALL. 2I week to week, with the changes of the season-make us tedious to ourselves, and as unalterable and unattractable as an old family picture-or, what is equally out of the way and insipid, an old bachelor? But some of you talk of simplicity of nature; of the gewgaw display of artificial charms; of deforming nature's works by the cumbrous and fantastical embellishments of art, and so forth. Now, sir, if you will pin the argument to this point, I shall have you in my power. Pray, is nature simple, barren, tedious, dull, uniform, and unadorned, as you old bachelors would have us to be, so that we might resemble your comfortless selves? Look at the trees-are they all of the same colour? Are they not so infinitely diversified in their shades and figures, that, to an observing eye, no two are alike? Observe the flowers of the garden: do they exhibit the same sombre or pale hue? Do they present that dull simplicity which you recommend to us, whom your gravest philosophers allow to be the handsomest beings in creation? Do you prefer the dull uniformity of a trench of upright celery to the variegated bed of tulips? What would you say of a project to reform nature by robbing the rose of its blushing red, the lily of its silver lustre, the tulip of its gorgeous streaks, the violet of its regal purple, and allowing the vale to be no longer embroidered with their various beauties? or, of blotting from the clouds their golden streaks and dazzling silver, and banishing the gay rainbow from the heavens, because they are not of a uniform colour, but for ever present more varieties and combinations of beauties than our imagination can paint? And shall not we, who, at least, pretended to have the use of reason, imitate nature? Nature has given for our use the varied dyes of the mineral and vegetable world, which enables us almost to vie with her own splendid gild ing. Nature made us to be various, changeable, inconstant, manycoloured, whimsical, fickle, and fond of show, if you please, and we follow nature with the greatest fidelity when, like her, we use her beauties to delight the eye, gratify the taste, and employ the mind in the harmonious varieties of colour and figure to which fashion resorts, and to which we devote so much time and thought. 62 SARAH HALL. Attend to these hints, and if you properly digest them, I have no doubt so sensible a head as you possess must nod assent to my doctrine, that to study fashion and be in the fashion is the most delightful and harmless employment upon earth, and the most conformable to our nature. But if you should be so perverse as to think erroneously on this subject, I advise you to keep your observations to yourselves, or to have your heads well wigged the next time you come amongst us. MARIA J. McINTOSH. THE Clan McIntosh is noted in the earliest Scottish history, as the leader in that powerful confederation known as the "' Clan Chattan." This family sided with the House of Stuart in its last bold struggle for power, and the whole Highland force fought under its chief, Brigadier-General McIntosh. With the defeat of the Royal family came the fall of their faithful adherents and the confiscation of their property, and with one hundred and thirty Highlanders John Moore McIntosh accompanied Oglethorpe's party,. and settled on the Altamaha, in the district now called Georgia. The refugees carried with them their love for the fatherland, even to the names of its hills. They styled their frontier settlement New Inverness (since changed to Darien), and the county received, and still bears, the family title of McIntosh. Colonel William McIntosh, the son of the first settler of the new colony, fought as an officer in the French and Indian wars, and died leaving a son, Major Lachlan McIntosli, who was the father of Miss M[aria J. McIntosh, the subject of the present sketch. By profession Major McIntosh was a lawyer, but with the readiness that warlike times engender, at the first summons of danger he stepped from the legal arena to the higher joust of arms, and fought, with the enthusiastic bravery of a Georgian, through all our revolutionary war. After the establishment of peace, he married a lady of the name of Maxwell, and settled in the practice of his original profession at Sunbury, Liberty county, in Georgia, where our author was born, and where she has spent the greater portion of her life. This place is a small village, beautifully situated at the head of a bay or long arm of the sea. The house of 3Major McIntosh, a stately old mansion, commanded a full view of the water, and was, for years, a general gathering place for the gentry of the State. The remembrance of the (63) 64 MARIA J. McINTOS H. generous hospitality, the faithful adherents, the graceful society, and the luxuriant beauty of nature, that displayed itself in and around the family mansion, is still vivid in the mind of our author, and shows itself in the fervour and enthusiasm of her language whenever she writes of the land of her childhood. But the day-dreams of youth were doomed to a sad awakening. Miss McIntosh, in 1835, after the death of both her parents, left her native place, to reside in New York, with her brother, James MI. McIntosh, of the U. S. Navy. With the change of residence came a change in the investment of her property. The whole of her ample fortune was vested in New York securities just previous to the commercial crisis of 1837, and the lady awoke from her life-dream of prosperity, in a strange city, totally bankrupt. By an almost universal dispensation of Providence, which ordains means of defence and support to the frailest formations of animal life, with the new station was granted a power of protection, of pleasure, and maintenance, unknown to the old. New feelings and powers came into life. Thoughts that before were scarcely formed, emotions that had never shaped themselves into expression, and ideas of the high and holy in life that had been hitherto unshapen dreams, suddenly attained a new growth. Hundreds of seeds that hung to the tree when all was sunshine, were shaken to the earth by the blast, watered by the storm, and sprung to a vigorous life,-until, at length, the very subject of misfortune blessed the evil that had been changed to a good. Two years after the loss of her property, Miss McIntosh had completed her first work. It was a small volume, bearing the marks of a feeling, religious mind, and written in a pleasant, easy style, suitable for children, and bore the name of' Blind Alice." Few understand how sensitive is the anxiety of an author for his first work; how he watches and criticises his dearest feelings when they are about to be made public property, and issued to the world. But how much greater must be this sensitive dread when the author is a woman, and a woman whose whole life and support are cast upon that one venture? Miss McIntosh had all these feelings to struggle with in their fullest strength, and, in addition, the delays and difficulty of obtaining the publication of a work by a new writer. For two years the manuscript of this little volume lay alternately on the table of the author and the desk of the publishers. At last, in January, 1841, it was issued anonymously. Its success was complete; and with renewed energy the author resumed her pen, and finished and published in the summer of the same year "' Jessie Graham," a work of similar size and character. " Florence Arnott," " Grace and Clara," and " Ellen Leslie," all of the same class and style, appeared successively, and at short intervals, the last being published in 1843. These works are generally known as "Aunt Kitty's Tales." They MARIA J. McINTOSH. were received with constantly increasing favour, as the series ptrnceeded, and, after its completion, were republished in England with equal success. They are simple tales of American life, told in graceful and easy language, and conveying a moral of beauty and truthfulness that wins love at once for the fictitious character and the earnest writer. And many a girl, as she read of the charities of Harriet Armnand, of Florence Arnott, and O'Donnel's cabin, and the nameless Aunt Kitty, who wove a moral with every pleasure, a lesson with every pain, and yet so secretly that the moral could never be discerned until the tale was finished, has laid down the book and wondered involuntarily who Aunt Kitty was. In the year 1844, she published "Conquest and Self-Conquest." This work is a fiction of a more ambitious character than any of the preceding. The hero of the tale is a midshipman. One portion of the plot is laid in the city of Washington, another at sea. It is then changed to New Orleans, and again to the piratical island of Barrataria, on the Mexican coast. Frederick Stanley, the hero of the story, is made to feel that constant self-restraint will win self-comi-mand, and that self-comm and will rule his own happiness and the minds of others. In the same year appeared another work, entitled "Woman an Enigma." It is an attempt to delineate, not moral principles that are well defined —not religious duties, that are more easily depicted, —but the ideal, impalpable, varied substance of woman's love. This seems to be a natural ground for a woman to walk upon, when she has passed the days of girlhood, and arrived at such a distance from the scenes of passion as to look back with a calm eye on the rush of early thoughts. The first scene in the book opens in a convent in France, where young Louise waits upon a dying friend, and the friend leaves her ward as an affianced bride to her brother the Marquis de!Montrevel. The vow is duly made between the noble courtier and the trusting girl. Louise is then taken to Paris by her parents and introduced to fashionable life, with its gayeties and seductions, while the Marquis is absent on his estate. The new world of pleasure has no effect on the novice, save so far as it stimulates her to excel, that she may the more be worthy of hler husband's love. She mingles in the dance to acquire grace, in the soiree to learn the styles of fashionable life, and all for the sole purpose of being the better fitted to be the companion and wife of the high-born noble. But the absent lover hears of the brilliant life of his so lately timid girl, and, ignorant of the mighty power that impels her to the exertion, scorns the supposed fickleness that will give to the many that regard which he had hoped to have won exclusively for himself. Then follows the' portion of the work which most perfectly pictures the author's ideas of womanly love. The earnest toil of the poor girl for the pittance of a smile that is rewarded by jealousy with a sneer; the pas 9 66 MARIA J. McINTOSH. sionate pride of the wounded woman; the stern sorrow of the man; and the final separation, are all true to the instincts of that master feeling. In 1845 appeared "' Praise and Principle," a fiction of the same size as the others just named. The hero of the story, Frank Derwent, is an American boy, and is introduced to the reader while at school. Having opposed the only relative from whom he could hope for assistance, he is thrown wholly on his own resources, yet by the practice of great self-denial, by energy and a steadfast adherence to truth and principle, he attains a high position as a lawyer, and wins the hand of a fair client. The foil to this character is Charles Ellersby, a school companion of Frank, and a competitor'in the world for the praise that Frank discards for the love of the dearer right. Frank wins an honourable name and a happy home, while Charles receives, as a bitter punishment, that curse of manhood, a fashionable wife,-and in a year is ruined. The whole work illustrates the character of the author, and her constant endeavour to write not so much for the entertaining powers of the tale, which is for a day, but for the inner life of the story, that is for all time. "The Cousins, a Tale for Children," appeared in the latter part of the same year. This is a small volume, originally written for the series of Aunt Kitty's Tales, and is the last work she has published anonymously. In 1847 was published "Two Lives, or To Seem and To Be," and with it the name of the author, who had heretofore been unknown. The success that it won may be estimated by the fact that it reached a seventh edition in less than four years fiom its publication. In 1848 appeared " Charms and Counter Charms," a work of greater size and power, and on the most complex plan of any yet written by our author, and received with so great favour that it is already in its sixth edition. Mliss McIntosh here treats of a subject that woman seldom attempts, and the bearing of the tale is mainly on this one point; namely, the necessity of the marriage rite not only for the morality of the world, but for the morality, happiness, fidelity, and religion of any individual couple. Euston Hastings, the hero of the story, a man somewhat on the Byronic order, whom having seen you turn to watch, scarcely knowing why, wins and marries a young girl, Evelyn Beresford. But before the marriage, and after the engagement, he declares to the lady of his choice his so-called liberal views on the subject of religion. Not long after, Evelyn asks his views in regard to marriage. The man of the world replies-'I answer you with confidence, because I know such is your affinity with purity and truth that you will discover them though they appear in forms which conventionalism condemns; and I tell you, without disguise, that I think marriage unnecessary to secure fidelity where there is love, and insufficient where there is not." The revelation of these foreign views does not, however, alienate the MARIA J. McINTOSH. 67 woman's heart, and Evelyn is soon bound to her husband by the same holy tie that he considers a conventional form. But Evelyn loves with an engrossing passion. With a strength of feeling that demands a constant return, and forgetting the hundred busy things that are calling a man's attention, she desires the whole time and the whole regard of her husband. This selfish, exclusive love, that engrosses the object when it submits, and is thrown into tears when it does not, produces the natural consequence on a man to whom perfect liberty is an accustomed right. He seeks for the regard from other persons, that he cannot receive from his wife without a corresponding degree of personal restraint. This course produces another result on Evelyn. She feels wounded and becomes reproachful. Instead of winning him by her charms, she calls him to her society by her rights, until at last Hastings leaves secretly for Europe, and is supposed to have fled with another lady. The blow falls fearfully heavy on one who had centred all her hopes on the dearly loved husband. Everything is forgotten but her mighty love, and she follows him abroad. A valet accompanying leads her to Rome, and she meets her husband. He is struck by her devotion and the wrongs he has inflicted. He provides her a house and every attention, and they reside together happy in the love which is at last acknowledged above every consideration. But it is on this express agreement, that Evelyn is not to be known as his wife, and that they are free to part whenever either of them may choose Hastings has the liberty that he so dearly prizes, and Evelyn the lover that she regards more than all the world besides. It is in this curious relation that the power of the writer is shown. The most ultra case is taken upon which to build the argument for the holiness of the marriage vow. A couple are duly married, and the marriage is made public to all the world. They live together for a time as man and wife. They are then separated, and again come together, not on the strength of the marriage rite, but only on their mutual love. But does this new connexion produce the happiness to Evelyn that she desired? On the contrary, there is a sense of wrong in every pleasure. She looks at her own servants with shame; and between her and every flower she touches, every kiss she receives, there seems springing up a consciousness of guilt. At length Hastings is taken ill, and lies unconscious and near to death. Evelyn watches by his side with tearful fidelity, and in agony unutterable attends him through the dark valley, and at length sees him recovering with feelings of joy and childlike happiness But during the course of this weary illness she is made to see the right way, even amid the darkness by which she had been surrounded; and, when Euston has entirely recovered his health, the young wife (lhougli 6u8 MARIA J. McINTOSH. not bearing the name) flees from the land of beauty and the arms of her lover, in an agony of grief, leaving behind her a letter explaining her change of views and the cause of her departure. At last, in the heart of the sensualist, the crust of worldliness is broken up, and Euston Hastings, roused from the guilty selfishness of his life, leaves Rome to seek the wife who has become his all in the world. He finds her'in Paris, and they are again united, not by any wavering passion, but by holy love and marriage, which gains a higher beauty from the bright faith and exquisite description of its able defender. This work, though a high-wrought tale of fiction, is really an exposition of a theory, and the reader frequently finds himself laying aside the book to think, Is that theory really so? and finds that, after the work is read, there is within the fabric of the tale, an inner temple of right and wrong; where are engraven principles that are pervading his memory equally, if not more constantly than the plot of the fiction. " Woman in America; Her Work, and Her Reward," the next succeeding work in the order of publication, was issued in 1850. In this work, the author, apparently tired of teaching only through the medium of fiction, addresses herself to reasoning and argument. We read here the ideas of a religious woman, well acquainted with all grades of American society, in an earnest tone denouncing the servility of her sex to the rules of fashion and opinion, modelled not by the good and virtuous, but by the dissolute societies of Europe, and forms and customs made not after the model of a naturally honest, or even commonly virtuous ideal, but copied after the ever-changing, never true, leader of some dissolute or fastidious circle-it may be, of Paris, it may be of Saratoga. The only rule that seems never to have changed among this class of people until it is embodied in their social confession of faith, is "' Money makes the man." M,5ahogany doors are closed to the gentleman-labourer, that are flung wide open to him when he becomes a millionaire. White arms are outstretched to the banker, that are folded in scorn to his approach when a bankrupt. " Evenings at Donaldson Manor," was published as a Christmas Guest, for the year 1850. It was a collection of tales that had appeared at different times in periodicals.'The Lofty and the Lowly" is a work depicting the peculiar social characteristics of the North and South. It has had a large sale both in this country and in England. It will be obvious to every one familiar with Miss McIntosh's writings, that she is a delineator entirely of mental life. The physical in man, in animals, and nature, is never used, except so far as is necessary to bring forward the mind and its virtues, desires, and principles. She has apparently excluded from her attention everything that did not absolutely belong to the moral life. MARIA J. McINTOSH. 69 Evelyn and Euston live for a summer on the Tiber, but not the faintest tinge of the golden light, or the lowest breath of Roman air enters within their villa. Hubert Falconer builds a frontier cottage, but he never listens to the sighing pines, or treads the forest aisles. Mind, with its wayward creeds, can alone be seen in the Imperial City. Feelings right and wrong, and promises faithfully performed are more to Hubert than earth, air, and water, and the glorious gifts of Nature. Miss McIntosh still further restricts herself in the characters of her story, and selects only the common ones of practical life, as though anxious for the principle alone, and the fiction that would draw the reader off from the moral is discarded. In her quiet pages there never occurs the extreme either of character or passion. It is only the system of conscience-the rule of right-the law of God that is portrayed, and the more marked characters, or the more easily delineated beauties and feelings of'life and nature are left with a rigid indifference to those whose, design is to please more than to instruct. Yet the reader, when the book is closed, and he has gone to his daily labour, or mingles in social life, finds lingering in his brain, and warming in his heart, a true principle of honour and love that is constantly contrasting itself with the hollow forms by which he is surrounded, and if he fails to bear himself up to that high ideal of principle which he feels to be true, he still walks a little nearer to his conscience and his God, and long after the volume is returned to the shelf and forgotten, a kindly benediction is given to the noble influence it incited. And thus will it be with the author that lives in the hearts and not in the fancy of her readers. And long after she is returned to the great library of the unforgotten dead, a blessing wide as her language, and fervent as devotion, will descend on the delineator of those lofty principles that showed the nobleness of simplicity, and the holiness of truth. The extract which follows is from "' Woman in America." TWO PORTRAITS. PERMIT US, in illustration of our subject, to place before you a sketch of an American woman of fashion as she is and as she might be-as she must be to accomplish the task we would appoint her. Examine with a careful eye " the counterfeit presentment" of these two widely differing characters, and choose the model on which you will form yourselves. And first, by a few strokes of this magic wand-the pen —we will conjure within the charmed circle of your visions the woman of fashion as she is. 70i MARIA J. McINTOSH. FLIRTiLLA,-for so noted a character must not want a name, —m1ay well be pronounced a favourite of nature and of fortune. To the first she owed a pleasing person and a mind which offered no unapt soil for cultivation; by favour of the last, she was born the heiress to wealth and to those advantages which wealth unquestionably confers. HIer childhood was carefully sequestered from all vulfar' influences, and she was early taught, that to be a little lacdy was her highest possible attainment. At six years old she astonished the e'lite assembled in her father's halls, and even dazzled the larger assemblages of Saratoga by her grace in dancing and by the ease with which she conversed in French, which, as it was the language of her nursery attendants, had been a second mother-tongue to her. At the fashionable boarding-school, at which her education was, in common parlance, completed, she distanced all competitors for the prizes in modern languages, dancing, and music; and acquired so much acquaintance with geography and history as would secure her from mistaking Prussia for Persia, or imagining that Lord Wellington had conquered Julius Caesar-in other words, so much knowledge of them as would guard her from betraying her ignorance. To these acquirements she added a slight smattering of various natural sciences. All these accomplishments had nearly been lost to the world, by her forming an attachment for one of fine qualities, personal and mental, who was entirely destitute of fortune. From the fatal mistake of yielding to such an attachnient she was preserved by a judicious mother, who placed before her in vivid contrast the commanding position in which she would be placed as the wife of Mr. A-, with his houses and lands, his bank stock and magnificent equipage; and the nzediocre station she would occupy as Mrs. B-, a station to which one of her aspiring mind could not readily succumb, even though she found herself there in company with one of the most interesting and agreeable of men. Relinquishing with a sigh the gratification of the last sentiment that bound her to nature and to rational life, she magnanimously sacrificed her inclinations to her sense of duty, and became Mrs. A —. From this time her course has been undisturbed by one faltering feeling, one wavering thought. She has visited London MARIA J. McINTOSH. 71 and Paris, only that she might assure herself that her house possessed all -which was considered essential to a genteel establishment in the first, and that her toilette was the most rech1erche that could be obtained in the last. She laughs at the very idea of wearing anything made in America, and is exceedingly merry over the portraitures of Yankee character and Yankee life occasionally to be met in the pages of foreign tourists, or to be seen personated in foreign theatres. She complains much of the promiscuous character of American society, dances in no set but her own, and, in order to secure her exclusiveness from contact with the common herd, moves about from one point of fashionable life to another. attended by the same satellites, to whom she is the great centre of attraction. Her manners, like her dresses, are imported from Paris. She talks and laughs very loudly at all public places, lectures, concerts, and the like; and has sometimes, even in the house of God, expressed audibly her assent with or dissent from the preacher, that she may prove herself entirely free from that shockingly American mauctvaise lionte, which she supposes to be all that keeps other women silent. Any gentleman desiring admission to her circle must produce authentic credentials that he has been abroad, must wear his mustaches after the latest Parisian cut, must interlard his bad English with worse French, and must be familiar with the names and histories of the latest ballet-dancers and operasingers who have created a fever of excitement abroad. To foreigners she is particularly gracious, and nothing throws her into such a fervour of activity as the arrival in the country of an English Lord, a German Baron, or a French or Italian Count. To draw such a character within her circle she thinks no effort too great, no sacrifice of feeling too humiliating. It may be objected that all our descriptions of the fashionable woman as she is, relates to externals; that of the essential character, the inner life, we have, in truth, said nothing. But what can we do? So far as we have yet been able to discover, this class is destitute of any inner life. Those who compose it live for the world and in the world. Home is with them only the place in which they receive visits. We acknowledge that few in our count'r 72 MARIA J. McINTOSH, have yet attained to so perfect a development of fashionable character as we have here described; but to some it is already an attainment; to many-we fear to most, young women of what are called the higher classes in our large cities-it is an aim. Nobler spirits there are, indeed, among us, of every age and every class, and from these we must choose our example of a woman of fashion as she should be. On her, too, we will bestow a namea name associated with all gentle and benignant influences-the name of her who in her shaded retreats received of old the ruler of earth's proudest empire, that she might " breathe off with the holy air" of her pure affection, "that dust o' the heart" caught from contact with coarser spirits. So have we dreamed of EGERIA, and Egeria shall be the name of our heroine. Heroine indeed, for heroic must be her life. With eyes uplifted to a protecting Heaven, she must walk the narrow path of right, —a precipice on either hand,never submitting, in her lowliness of soul, to the encroachments of the selfish, and eager, and clamorous crowd, —never bowing her own native nobility to the dictation of those whom the world styles great. " Resisting the proud, but giving grace unto the humble," if we may without irreverence appropriate to a mortal, words descriptive of Him whose unapproachable and glorious holiness we are exhorted to imitate. In society, Egeria is more desirous to please than to shine. Her associates are selected mainly for their personal qualities, and if she is peculiarly attentive and deferential to any class, it is to those unfortunates whom poverty, the accidents of birth, or the false arrangements of society, have divorced from a sphere for which their refinement of taste and manner and their intellectual cultivation had fitted them. Admission to her society is sought as a distinction, because it is known that it must be purchased by something more than a graceful address, a well-curled mustache, or the reputation of a travelled man. At her entertainments, you will often meet some whom you will meet nowhere else; some promising young artist, yet unknown to fame,-some who, once standing in the sunshine of fortune, were well known to many whose vision is too imperfect for the recognition of features over which adversity MARIA J. McINTOSH.: 73 has thrown its shadow. The influence of Egeria is felt through the whole circle of her acquaintance; —she encourages the young to high aims and persevering efforts,-she brightens the fading light of the aged, but above all is she a blessing and a glory within her own home. Her husband cannot look on her-to borrow Longfellow's beautiful thought-without "reading in the serene expression of her face, the Divine beatitude,'Blessed are the pure in heart.' " Her children revere her as the earthly type of perfect love. They learn, even more from her example than her precept, that they are to live not to themselves, but to their fellow-creatures, and to God in them. She has so cultivated their taste for all which is beautiful and noble, that they cannot but desire to conform themselves to such models. She has taught them to love their country and devote themselves to its advancement-not because it excels all others, but because it is that to which God in his providence united them, and whose advancement and true interest they are bound to seek by all just and Christian methods. In a word, she has never forgotten that they are immortal and responsible beings, and this thought has reappeared in every impression she has stamped upon their minds. But it is her conduct towards those in a social position inferior to her own, which individualizes most strongly the character of Egeria. Remembering that there are none who may not, under our free institutions, attain to positions of influence and responsibility, she endeavours, in all her intercourse with them, to awaken their self-respect and desire for improvement, and she is ever ready to aid them in the attainment of that desire, and thus to fit them for the performance of those duties that may devolve on them. "Are you not afraid that Bridget will leave you, if, by your lessons, you fit her for some higher position?" asked a lady, on finding her teaching embroidery to a servant who had shown much aptitude for it. "If Bridget can advance her interest by leaving me, she shall have my cheerful consent to go. God forbid that I should stand( in the way of good to any fellow-creature-above all, to one whoml, 10 71'\IBMARIA J. McINTOSH. by placing her under my temporary protection, he has made it especially my duty to serve," was her reply. In the general ignorance and vice of the population daily pouring into our country from foreign lands, Egeria finds new reason for activity, in the moral and intellectual advancement of all who are brought within her sphere of influence. Egeria has been accused of being ambitious for her children. "I am ambitious for them," she replies; " ambitious that they should occupy stations that may be as a vantage-grouncl from which to act for the public good." Notwithstanding this ambition, she has, to the astonishment of many in her own circle, consented that one of her sons should devote himself to mechanical pursuits. She was at first pitied for this, as a mortification to which she must certainly have been compelled, by her husband's singular notions, to submit. "'ou mistake," said Egeria, to one who delicately expressed this pity to her; " my son's choice of a trade had my hearty concurrence. I was prepared for it by the whole bias of his mind from childhood. HIe 7will excel in the career he has chosen, I have rio doubt; for he has abilities equal to either of his brothers, and he loves the object to which he has devoted them. As a lawyer or physician he would, probably, have but added one to the number of nze'diocre practitioners who lounge through life with no higher aim than their own maintenance." "But then," it was objected, "he would not have sacrificed his position in society." Egeria is human, and the sudden flush of indignation must have crimsoned the mother's brow at this; and somewhat of scorn, we doubt not, was in the smile that curled her lip as she replied, " My son can afford to lose the acquaintance of those who cannot appreciate the true nobility and independence of spirit which have made him choose a position offering, as he believes, the highest means of development for his own peculiar powers, and the greatest probability, therefore, of his becoming useful to others." Our sketches are finished —imperfect sketches we acknowle(lge them. It would have been a labour of love to have rendered the MARIA J. MIcINTOS-. 75 last complete-to have followed the steps of Egeria-the Christian gentlewoman-through at least one day of her life; to have shown her embellishing her social circle by her graces of manner and charms of conversation, and to have accompanied her from the saloons which she thus adorned, to more humble abodes. In these abodes she was ever a welcome as well as an honoured guest, for she bore thither a respectful consideration for their inmates, which is a rarer and more coveted gift to the poor than any wealth can purchase. Having done this, we would have liked to glance at her in the tranquil evening of a life well spent, and to contrast her then with Flirtilla-old beyond the power of rouge, false teeth, and false hair, to disguise-still running through a round of pleasures that have ceased to charm,-regretting the past, dissatisfied with the present, and dreading the future,-alternately courting and abusing the world, which has grown weary of her. LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY. JUsTICE has hardly been done to MIrs. Sigourney as a prose writer. She has been so long, and is so familiarly, quoted as a poet, that the public has in a measure forgotten that her indefatigable pen has sent forth almost a volume of prose yearly for more than a quarter of a centurythat her prose works already issued number, in fact, twenty-five volumes, averaging more than two hundred pages each, and some of them having gone through not less than twenty editions. She has indeed produced no one work of a thrilling or startling character, wherewith to electrify the public mind. Her writings have been more like the dew than the lightning. Yet the dew, it is well to remember, is not only one of the most beneficent, but one of the most powerful of nature's agents-far more potential in grand results than its brilliant rival. When account shall be made of the various agencies, moral and intellectual, that have moulded the American mind and heart during the first half of the nineteenth century, few names will be honoured with a larger credit than that of Lydia H. Sigourney. The maiden name of this most excellent woman was Lydia Howard Huntley. She was born in Norwich, Connecticut, September 1st, 1791, of Ezekiel and Sophia Huntley. Being an only child, she was nurtured with special care and tenderness. But, besides the ordinary parental influences, there was in her early history one circumstance of a peculiar character, which, according to the testimony of those who have known her best, contributed largely and most happily to the moulding of her mind and heart. I refer to the remarkable intimacy that existed between the gifted and brilliant young girl and an aged lady that lived for many years in the same house. Madam Jerusha Latlhrop; the lady referred to, was the relict of Dr. Daniel Lathrop, and daughter of Joseph Talcot, one of the Provincial Governors of Connecticut. Madam Lathrop is reported to have been gifted by nature with strong (76) LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY. 77 powers of mind, and a dignity of person and manners that commanded universal respect. Her character had been matured by intercourse with men of powerful intellect, and by participation in great and trying scenes. The parents of Mrs. Sigourney resided under the roof of Madam Lathrop, who had been bereft of her husband and children, and though the households were separate, the latter manifested fiom the first a tender solicitude for their infant daughter. As the mind:f the child began to unfold itself, and to give promise of future richness and depth, the attachment became mutual, and in a few years an enduring confidence, an almost inseparable companionship, was established between the little maiden of six and the venerable woman of eighty. The following glimpse into the chamber of Madam Lathrop is from one entirely conversant with the subject. For its substantial correctness as to fact, we are permitted to quote the authority of Mrs. Sigourney herself. It is quoted, not only as a beautiful episode in human life, but also as affording a key to some of the most charming peculiarities of Mrs. Sigourney's writings. " ethinks we stand upon that ancient threshold; we enter those lowbrowed, but ample rooms; we mark the wood-fire gleaming upon crimson moreen curtains, gilded clock, ebony-framed mirror, and polished wainscot; but what most engages our attention, is the venerable occupant and her youthful companion. There sits the lady in her large arm-chair, and the young friend beside her, with face upturned, and loving eyes fixed on that beaming countenance. We can imagine that we hear, in alternate notes, the quick, gushing voice of childhood, and the tremulous tones of age, as question and reply are freely interchanged. And now we are startled, as the tremulous voice unexpectedly recovers strength and fulness, and breaks forth into some wild or pathetic melody-the ballad or patriotic stanza of former days. The young auditor listens with rapt delight, and now, as the scene changes, with light breath and glowing aspect, she sits attentive to the minute and lively details of some domestic tale of truth, or striking episode of our national history-treasuring up the diamonddust, to be fused hereafter, by her genius, into pellucid gems. As night closes round, and the light from the two stately candlesticks glimmers through the room, the lady takes the cushioned seat in the corner, and the young inmate spreads out upon the table some well-kept, ancient book, often perused, yet never found wearisome; and beguiles, with incessant reading, all too mature for her years, the long and lonely knitting hours of her aged friend." This glimpse into the parlour of Madam Lathrop is no fancy sketch. The evening was usually closed by the singing of devotional hymns, and the repetition, from memory, of favourite psalms, or choice specimens of serious verse. The readings were mostly of devotional works. Young's Night Thoughts stood highest upon the list, and had several 7T- LYDIA II. SIGOURNEY. times been read aloud, from beginning to end, by the young student, at an age in which most children can scarcely read, intelligibly, the simplest verse. Other tomes, and some heavy and sombrous, were also. made familiar to her young mind, by repeated perusal; but as the upper shelves of the lady's library contained some volumes of a lighter character, the curiosity of childhood would render it pardonable, if now and then those shelves were furtively explored, or some old play or romance withdrawn, to be read by stealth in the solitary chamber. The chamber, to the young student, is a sacred precinct. There, not only is the evening problem and the morning recitation faithfully prepared for the school, and the borrowed book pored over in delightful secrecy, with no intrusive eye to note the smiles and tears and unconscious gesticulation, that respond to the moving incidents of the tale-but there, too, in silent and solitary hours, the light-footed muse slips in, and makes her earliest visits, leaving behind those first faintly dotted notes of music, which are for a long time bashfully kept concealed from every eye. Madam Lathrop watched with entire complacency the dawning genius of her young favourite. The simple, poetic effusion occasionally brought from that solitary chamber and timidly submitted to her inspection, was sure to be received with encouraging praise, and to kindle in the face of her aged friend that glow of approbation which was the highest reward that the imagination of the young aspirant had then conceived. The death of her venerable benefactress, which took place when she was fourteen years of age, was the first deep sorrow which her young heart had known. It was a disruption of very tender ties-the breaking up of a peculiar intimacy between youth and age, and she could not be easily solaced for the bereavement. Nor has her mind ever lost the influence of this early association. It has kept with her through life, and runs like a fine vein through all her writings. The memory, the image, the teachings of this sainted friend, seem to accompany her like an invisible presence, and wherever the scene may be, she turns aside to commune with her spirit, or to cast a fresh flower upon her grave. Mrs. Sigourney has been remarkable through life for the steadfastness of her friendships. Besides the venerable companion already commemorated, she became early in life very tenderly attached to one of her own age, whose history has become identified with her own. This was Anna MIaria Hyde; a young lady whose sterling worth and fine mental powers were graced and rendered winning by uncommon vivacity and sweetness of disposition, unaffected modesty, and varied acquirements. The friendship of these two young persons for each other was intimate and endearing. They were companions in long rural walks, they sat side by side at their studies, visited at each other's dwellings, read together, wrought the same needle-work pattern, or, with paint and pencil, shaded the same flower. The neighbours regarded them as inseparable; the names of Hyde and LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY. 79 Huntley were wreathed together, and one was seldom mentioned without the other. Youthful friendships are, however, so common, and usually so transient, that this would scarcely demand notice, hut for the strength of its foundation. It appeared to be based upon a mutual, strong desire to do good to others; a fixed purpose to employ the talents which God had given them, for the benefit of the world upon which they had entered. In pursuance of this object, they not only addressed themselves to the assiduous cultivation of their mental powers, but they engaged with alacrity in domestic affairs and household duties; and they found time, also, to make garments for the poor, to instruct indigent children, to visit the old and infirm, read with them, and administer to their temporal comfort, and to watch with the sick and dying. Among the plans for future usefulness which these young friends revolved, none seemed so feasible, or so congenial to their tastes, as that of devoting themselves to the office of instruction. This, therefore, they adopted as their province, their chosen sphere of action, and they resolutely kept this object in view, through the course of their education. The books they read, the studies they pursued, the accomplishments they sought, all had a reference to this main design. After qualifying themselves to teach those English sciences which were considered necessary to the education of young females, together with the elements of the Latin tongue, they went to Hartford and spent the winter of 1810-1i1 principally in attention to the ornamental branches, which were then in vogue. Returning from thence, they entered at once, at the age of nineteen, upon their grand pursuit. A class of young ladies in their native town gathered joyfully around them, and into this circle they cast not only the affluence of their well stored minds, and the cheering inspiration of youthful zeal, but all the strength of their best and holiest principles. Animated, blooming, happy, linked affectionately arm in arm, they daily came in among their pupils, diffusing love and cheerfulness, as well as knowledge, and commanding the most grateful attention and respect. The cordial affection between these interesting young teachers was itself a most important lesson to their pupils. One of the privileged few, writing after a lapse of forty years, thus testifies to the lasting impression it produced upon their young hearts. " Pleasant it is to review those dovelike days —to recall the lineaments of that diligent, earnest, mind-expanding group; and to note again the dissimilarity so beautifully harmonious, between those whom we delighted to call our sweet sister-teachers-the tawo izse2larables, inigmitables. It was a matter of admiration to the pupils, that such oneness of sentiment, opinion, and affection, should co-exist with such a diversity in feature, voice, eyes, expression, manner, and movemen t, as the two friends exhibited." After a pleasing association of two years, the young teachers parted, each to pursue the same line of occupation in a different sphere. But 80 LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY. another separation, fatal and afflictive, soon took place. The interesting and accomplished Miss Hyde was taken away in the midst of usefulness and promise-mowed down like a rose-tree in bloom, March 26th, 1816, at the age of twenty-four. Of this beloved companion of her youth, Mrs. Sigourney wrote an interesting memoir, soon after her decease; and she again recurs to her with gushing tenderness, in the piece entitled " Home of an early friend,' written nearly thirty years after the scene of bereavement. In flowing verse? and prose almost as harmonious as music, she has twined a lasting memorial of the worth of the departed, and of that tender friendship which was a marked incident in her own young life. Before the death of her friend, she had transferred her residence to Hartford, and again entered, with fresh enthusiasm, upon the task of instruction. In this path she was happy and successful; it was regarded as a privilege to be received into her circle, and many of her pupils became life-long friends, strewing her subsequent pathway with flowers. In Hartford, she was at once received as a welcome and cherished inmate of the family of Madam Wadsworth, relict of Col. Jeremiah Wadsworth, whose mother was a Talcot, and nearly connected with the revered Madam Lathrop. The mansion-house in which Madam Wadsworth and the aged sisters of her husband dwelt, stood upon the spot now occupied by the Wadsworth Athenseum. It was a spacious structure; unadorned, but deeply interesting in its historic associations. To the young guest it seemed a consecrated roof, whose every room was peopled with images of the past; nor was her ear ever inattentive to those descriptive sketches of the heroic age of our country, with which its venerable inhabitants enlivened the evening hours. The poem, "On the Removal of an Ancient Mansion," is a graphic delineation of the impressions made on her mind by her acquaintance with the threshold and hearth-stone of this fine old house, and her communion with its excellent inmnates. Another member of the same family, Daniel Wadsworth, Esq., had always manifested a lively interest in her mental cultivation. le had known her in childhood, under the roof of Madam Lathrop, and had there seen some of her early effusions, both in prose and verse. At his earnest solicitation, she made a collection of her fugitive pieces, and under his patronage, and with his influence and liberality cast around her as a shield, she first ventured to appear before the public as an author. Mr. Wadsworth's regard for her suffered no diminution till his death, which took p)lace in 1848. Few authors have found a friend so kind and so true. Of her affection for him and his amiable wife, her writings contain many proofs. Her Monody on the death of Mr. Wadsworth has the following noble stanza: - " Oh, friend! thou didst o'ermaster well The pride of wealth, and multiply LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY.. 81 Good deeds not clone for the good word of men, But for Heaven's judging ken, And clear, omniscient Eye; And surely where' the just made perfect' dwell, Earth's voice of highest eulogy Is like the bubble of the far-off sea,A sigh upon the grave Scarce moving the frail flowers that o'er its surface wave." We have thus far glanced at the principal scenes and circumstances, which appear to have had an influence in forming the character of Mrs. Sigourney, and preparing her genius for flight. As Miss Huntley, she gave no works to the press except those to which allusion has been made, viz: " Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse,' and a memoir of her friend, Miss Hyde. The "Sketch of Connecticut, forty years since," was, however, one of her earliest productions, though not published until 1824. It is honourable to her sensibilities, that so large a portion of these works was prompted by the grateful feelings of the heart. Her later emanations are enriched with deeper trains of thought, and melodies of higher and more varied power, but these are the genuine outpourings of affection-the first fruits of mind, bathed in the dew of life's morning, and laid upon the altar of gratitude. The marriage of Miss Huntley with Charles Sigourney, Esq., merchant of Hartford, took place at Norwich, June 16th, 1819. Mrs. Sigourney's domestic life has been varied with frequent excursions and tours, which have rendered her familiar with the scenery and society of most parts of her own country, and in 1840, she went to Europe, and remained there nearly a year, visiting England, Scotland, and France. "Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands," published in 1843, and " Scenes in my Native Land," published in 1845, afford sufficient evidence that travelling has had a conspicuous agency in giving richness and variety to her productions. A personal stranger to Mrs. Sigourney, acquainted only with her varied literary pursuits and numerous writings, might be disposed to think that they occupied her whole time, and that she had accomplished little else in life. Such an assumption would be entirely at variance with the truth. The popular, but now somewhat stale notion, that female writers are, of course, negligent in personal costume, domestic thrift, and all those social offices which are woman's appropriate and beautiful sphere of action, can never prop its baseless and falling fabric with her example. She has sacrificed no womanly or household duty, no office of friendship or benevolence for the society of the muses. That she is able to perform so much in so many varied departments of literature and social obligation, is owing to her diligence. She acquired in early life that lesson-simple, homely, but invaluable-to make the most of passing time. Hours are seeds of gold; she has not sown them on the wind, but planted them in good ground, and the harvest is consequently a hundred fold. 11 LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY. Authentic report informs us that no one better fills the arduous station of a New England housekeeper, in all its various and complicated departments. Nor are the calls of benevolence unheeded. Like that distinguished philanthropist, from whom she derives her intermediate name, she is said to go about doing good. Much of her time is devoted to the practical, silent, unambitious duties of charity. Nor must we omit the crowning praise of all-the report of her humble, unceasing, unpretending, untiring devotion. We may not conclude this brief review of the life of Mrs. Sigournev. without allusion to a recent afflictive stroke of Providence, which has overshadowed her path with a dark cloud, and almost bowed her spirit to the earth with its weight. She was the mother of two children; the youngest, an only son, had just arrived at the verge of manhood, when he was selected by the Destroying Angel as his own, and veiled from her sight.* A sorrow like this, she had never before known. Such a bereavement cannot take place and not leave desolation behind. Around this early-smitten one, the fond hopes of a mother's heart had clustered; all those hopes are extinguished; innumerable, tender sympathies are cut away; the glowing expectations, nurtured for many years, are destroyed, and the cold urn left in their place. But the Divine Hand knows how to remove branches from the tree without blighting it; and though crushed and wounded, the faith of the Christian sustains the bereaved parent. Her reply to a friend who sympathized in her affliction, will show both the depth of her sorrow, and the source of her consolation-"God's time and will are beautiful, and through bursts of blinding tears I give him thanks." The amount of Mrs. Sigourney's literary labours may be estimated from the following list of her publications, which is believed to be nearly complete. The works are all prose, and all 12mo., unless otherwise expressly stated: "' Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse," 267 pages, 1815; " Biography and Writings of A. M. Hyde," 241 pp., 1816; "Traits of the Aborigines," a poem, 284 pp., 1822; " Sketch of Connecticut, forty years since," 280 pp., 1824; "Poems," 228 pp., 1827; "Biography of Females," 112 pp., small size, 1829; "'Biography of Pious Persons," 338 pp., 1832, two editions the first year, now out of print, as are all the preceding volumes; "Evening Readings in History," 128 pp., 1833; " Letters to Young Ladies," 295 pp., 1833, twenty editions; "Memoirs of Phebe Hammond," 30 pp., 1833; " How to be Happy," 126 pp., 1833, two editions the first year, and several in London; "'Sketches," 216 pp., 1834; "Poetry for Children," 102 pp., small size, 1834; "Select Poems," 338 pp., 1834, eleven editions; " Tales and Essays for Children," 128 pp., 1834; "Zinzendorff and other Poems," 300 pp., 1834; "tIlistory of Marcus Aurelius," 122 pp., 1835; " Olive Buds," 136 pp., 1836; * Andrew M. Sigourney died in Hartford, June, 1850, aged nineteen years. LYDIA'H. SIGOURNEY. 83 "'Girls' Reading Book," prose and poetry, 243 pp., 1838, between twenty and thirty editions; "Boys' Reading Book," prose and poetry, 247 pp., 1839, many editions; "Letters to Mothers," 296 pp., 1838, eight editions; " Pocahontas and other Poems," 283 pp., 1841, reprinted in London;'" Poems," 255 pp., small size, 1842; "Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands," 368 pp., prose and poetry, 1842; "Child's Book," prose and poetry, 150 pp., small size, 1844; " Scenes in my Native Land," prose and poetry, 319 pp., 1844; " Poems for the Sea," 152 pp., 1845; " Voice of Flowers," prose and poetry, 123 pp., small size, 1845, eight editions in five years; "The Lovely Sisters," 100 pp., small size, 1845; " Myrtis and other Etchings," 292 pp., 1846; "Weeping Willow," poetry, 128 pp., small size, 1846, six editions in four years; "Water Drops," prose and poetry, 275 pp., 1847; " Illustrated Poems," 408 pp., 8vo., 1848; "Whisper to a Bride," prose and poetry, 80 pp., small size, 1849; " Letters to my Pupils," 320 pp., 1851; " Olive Leaves," 308 pp., 1851; "Examples of Life and Death," 348 pp., 1851; "The Faded Hope," 264 pp., 1852; " Memoir of Mrs. IIarriet Newell Cook," 252 pp., 1852; another about to go to press, &c. Besides these voluhnes, forty in number, she has produced several pamphlets, and almost innumerable contributions to current periodical literature. She has moreover maintained a very extensive literary correspondence, amounting in some years to an exchange of sixteen or seventeen hundred letters. Perhaps no one, who has written so much as Mrs. Sigourney, has writ. ten so little to cause self-regret in the review. The secret of this lies in that paramount sense of duty which is the obvious spring of her writings, as of all her conduct. If it has not led her to the highest regions of fancy, it has saved her from all those disgraceful falls that too often mark the track of genius. Along the calm, sequestered vale of duty and usefulness, her writings, like a gentle river fresh from its mountain springs, have gladdened many a quiet home, have stimulated into fertility many a generous heart. Some of her small volumes, like the "' Whisper to a Bride," are unpretending in character as they are diminutive in appearance, but they contain a wealth of beauty and goodness that few would believe that have not examined them. Of her larger volumes, none are more widely known than the " Letters to Young Ladies," and "' Letters to Mothers.' "Letters to my Pupils," just published, will probably be equally popular, as they are equally beautiful. The scraps of autobiography, so gracefully mixed up with her reminiscences of others, will add a special charm to this volume for the thousands who have felt the genial influence of her teachings and writings. The first of the extracts which follow is from "Myrtis and other Etchings." 84 LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY. THE LOST CHILDREN. "6 I ask the moon, so sadly fair, The night's cold breath through shadows drawn,' Where are they who were mine? and where?' A void but answers,'All are gone."' Miss H. F. GouLD. THERE was sickness in the dwelling of the emigrant.. Stretched upon his humble bed, he depended on that nursing care which a wife, scarcely less enfeebled than himself, was able to bestow. A child, in its third summer, had been recently laid to its last rest beneath a turf mound under their window. Its image was in the heart of the mother, as she tenderly ministered to her husband. " Wife, I am afraid I think too much about poor little Thomas. He was so well and rosy when we left our old home, scarcely a year since. Sometimes I feel, if we had but continued there, our darling would not have died." The tear which had long trembled, and been repressed by the varieties of conjugal solicitude, burst forth at these words. It freely overflowed the brimming eyes, and relieved the suffocating emotions which had striven for the mastery. " Do not reproach yourself, dear husband. His time had come. He is happier there than here. Let us be thankful for those that are spared." " It seems to me that the little girls are growing pale. I am afraid you confine them too closely to this narrow house, and to the sight of sickness. The weather is growing settled. You had better send them out to change the air, and run about at their will. AMary, lay the baby on the bed by me, and ask mother to let little sister and you go out for a ramble." The mother assented, and the children, who were four and six years old, departed, full of delight. A clearing had been made in front of their habitation, and, by ascending a knoll in its vicinity, another dwelling might be seen environed with the dark spruce and hemlock. In the rear of these houses was a wide expanse of ground, interspersed with thickets, rocky acclivities, and patches of forest LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY. Y5 trees, while far away, one or two lakelets peered up, with their blue eyes deeply fringed. The spirits of the children, as they entered this unenclosed region, were like those of the birds that surrounded them. They playfully pursued each other with merry laughter, and such a joyous sense of liberty, as makes the blood course lightsomely through the veins. " Little Jane, let us go farther than ever we have before. We will see what lies beyond those high hills, for it is but just past noon, and we can get back long before supper-time." " Oh! yes, let us follow that bright blue-bird, and see what he is flying after. But don't go in among those briers that tear the clothes so, for mother has no time to mend them." "Sister, sweet sister, here are some snowdrops in this green hollow, exactly like those in my old, dear garden, so far away. How pure they are, and cool, just like the baby's face, when the wind blows on it! Father and mother will like us to bring them somle.' Filling their little aprons with the spoil, and still searching for something new or beautiful, they prolonged their ramble, unconscious of the flight of time, or the extent of space they were traversing. At length, admonished by the chilliness, which often marks the declining hours of the early days of spring, they turned their course homeward. But the returning clue was lost, and they walked rapidly, only to plunge more inextricably in the mazes of the wilderness. "' Sister Mary, are these pretty snow-drops good to eat? I am so hungry, and nay feet ache, and will not go!" " Let me lift you over this brook, little Jane; and hold tighter by my hand, and walk as bravely as you can, that we may get home, and help mother set the table." " We won't go so far next time, will we? What is the reason that I cannot see any better?"'"Is not that the roof of our house, dear Jane, and the thin smoke curling up among the trees? Many times before, have I thought so, and found it only a rock or a mist." As evening drew its veil, the hapless wanderers, bewildered. LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY. hurried to and fro, calling for their parents, or shouting for help, until their strength was exhausted. Torn by brambles, and their poor feet bleeding from the rocks which strewed their path, they sunk down, moaning bitterly. The fears that overpower the heart of a timid child, who, for the first time finds night approaching, without shelter or protection, wrought on the youngest to insupportable anguish. The elder, filled with the sacred warmth of sisterly affection, after the first paroxysms of grief, seemed to forget herself, and sitting upon the damp ground, and folding the little one in her arms, rocked her with a gentle movement, soothing and hushing her like a nursling. "Don't cry! oh! don't cry so, dearest; say your prayers, and fear will fly away." "l How can I kneel down here in the dark woods, or say my prayers, when mother is not by to hear me? I think I see a large wolf, with sharp ears, and a mouth wide open, and healr noises as of many fierce lions growling." "Dear little Jane, do say,' Our Father, who art in Heaven.' Be a good girl, and, when we have rested here a while, perhaps He may be pleased to send some one to find us, and to fetch us home." Harrowing was the anxiety in the lowly hut of the emigrant when day drew towards its close, and the children came not. A boy, their whole assistant in the toils of agriculture, at his return from labour, was sent in search of them, but in vain. As evening drew on, the inmates of the neighbouring house, and those of a small hamlet, at considerable distance, were alarmed, and associated in the pursuit. The agony of the invalid parents, through that night, was uncontrollable; starting at every footstep, shaping out of every breeze the accents of the lost ones returning, or their cries of misery. While the morning was yet gray, the father, no longer to be restrained, and armed with supernatural strength, went forth. amid the ravings of his fever, to take part in the pursuit. With fiery cheeks, his throbbing head bound with a handkerchief, he was seen in the most dangerous and inaccessible spots-caverns-ravines -beetling cliffs-leading the way to every point of peril, in the phrensy of grief and disease. LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY. 87 The second night drew on, with one of those sudden storms of sleet and snow, which sometimes chill the hopes of the young spring. Then was a sadder sight-a woman with attenuated form, flying she knew not whither, and continually exclaiming, "My children! my children!" It was fearful to see a creature so deadly pale, with the darkness of midnight about her. She heeded no advice to take care of herself, nor persuasion to return to her home. "They call me! Let me go! I will lay them in their bed myself. How cold their feet are! What! is Jane singing her nightly hymn without me? No! no! She cries! Some evil serpent has stung her!" and, shrieking wildly, the poor mother disappeared, like a hunted deer, in the depths of the forest. Oh! might she but have wrapped them in her arms, as they shivered in their dismal recess, under the roots of a tree, uptorn by some wintry tempest! Yet how could she imagine the spot where they lay, or believe that those-little wearied limbs had borne them, through bog and bramble, more than six miles from the parental door? In the niche which we have mentioned, a faint moaning sound might till be heard. " Sister, do not tell me that we shall never see the baby any more. I see it now, and Thomas, too! dear Thomas! Why do they say he died and was buried? He is close by me, just above my head. There are many more babies with him-a host. They glide by me as if they had wings. They look warm and happy. I should be glad to be with them, and join their beautiful plays. But 0, how cold I am! Cover me close, Mary. Take my head into your bosom." "Pray do not go to sleep quite yet, dear Jane. I want to hear your voice, and talk with you. It is so very sad to be waking here alone. If I could but see your face when you are asleep, it would be a comfort. But it is so dark, so dark!" Rousing herself with difficulty, she unties her apron, and spreads it over the head of the child, to protect it from the driving snow; she pillows the cold cheek on her breast, and grasps more firmly the benumbed hand by which she had so faithfully led her, through 88 LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY. all their terrible pilgrimage. There they are!-The one moves not. The other keeps vigil, feebly giving utterance, at intervals, to a low suffocating spasm from a throat dried with hunger. Once more she leans upon her elbow, to look on the face of the little one, for whom as a mother she has cared. With love strong as death, she comforts herself that her sister slumbers calmly, because the stroke of the destroyer has silenced her sobbings. Ah! why come ye not hither, torches that gleam through the wilderness, and men who shout to each other? why come ye not this way? See! they plunge into morasses, they cut their path through tangled thickets, they ford waters, they ascend mountains, they explore forests —but the lost are not found! The third and fourth nights come and depart. Still the woods are filled with eager searchers. Sympathy has gathered them from remote settlements. Every log-cabin sends forth what it can spare for this work of pity and of sorrow. They cross each other's track. Incessantly they interrogate and reply, but in vain. The lost are not found! In her mournful dwelling, the mother sat motionless; Her infant was upon her lap. The strong duty to succor its helplessness, grappled with the might of grief, and prevailed. Her eyes were riveted upon its brow. No sound passed her white lips. Pitying women, firom distant habitations, gathered around and wept for her. They even essayed some words of consolation. But she answered nothing. She looked not toward them. She had no ear for human voices. In her soul was the perpetual cry of the lost. Nothing overpowered it, but the wail of her living babe. She ministered to its necessities, and that Heaven-inspired impulse saved her. She had no longer any hope for those who had wandered away. Horrid images were in her fancy-the ravening beast-black pits of stagnant water-birds of fierce beak-venomous, coiling snakes. She bowed herself down to them, and travailed as in the birth-hour, fearfully, and in silence. But the hapless babe on her bosom, touched an electric chord, and saaved her from despair. Maternal love, with its pillar of cloud and of flame, guided her through the desert, that she perished not. Sunday came, and the search was unabated. It seemed only LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY. 89 marked by a deeper tinge of melancholy. The most serious felt it fitting to go forth at that sacred season to seek the lost, though not, like their Master, girded with the power to save. Parents remembered that it might have been their own little ones who had thus strayed from the fold, and with their gratitude, took a portion of the mourner's spirit into their hearts. Even the sad hope of gathering the dead for the sepulchre, the sole hope that now sustained their toil, began to fade into doubt. As they climbed over huge trees, which the winds of winter had prostrated, or forced their way among rending brambles, sharp rocks, and close-woven branches, they marvelled how such fragile forms could have endured hardships by which the vigour of manhood was impeded and perplexed. The echo of a gun rang suddenly through the forest. It was repeated. Hill to hill bore the thrilling message. It was the concerted signal that their anxieties were ended. The hurrying seekers followed its sound. From a commanding cliff, a white flag was seen to float. It was the herald that the lost was found. There they were-near the base of a wooded hillock, half cradled among the roots of an uptorn chestnut. There they lay, cheek to cheek, hand clasped in hand. The blasts had mingled in one mesh their dishevelled locks, for they had left home with their poor heads uncovered. The youngest had passed away in sleep. There was no contortion on her brow, though her features were sunk and sharpened by famine. The elder had borne a deeper and longer anguish. Her eyes were open, as though she had watched till death came; watched over that little one, for whom, through those days and nights of terror, she had cared and sorrowed like a mother. Strong and rugged men shed tears when they saw she had wrapped her in her own scanty apron, and striven with her embracing arms to preserve the warmth of vitality, even after the cherished spirit had fled away. The glazed eyeballs were strained, as if, to the last, they had been gazing for her father's roof, or the wreath of smoke that should guide her there. Sweet sisterly love! so patient in all adversity, so faithful unto the end, found it not a Father's house, where it might enter with 12 90 LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY. the little one, and be sundered no more? Found it not a fold whence no lamb can wander and be lost? a mansion where there is no death, neither sorrow nor crying? Forgot it not all its sufferings for joy at that dear Redeemer's welcome, which, in its cradle, it had been taught to lisp-" Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of Heaven." "I HAVE SEEN AN END OF ALL PERFECTION." I HAVE seen a man in the glory of his days, and in the pride of his strength. He was built like the strong oak, that strikes its root deep in the earth-like the tall cedar, that lifts its head above the trees of the forest. He feared no danger —he felt no sickness-he wondered why any should groan or sigh at pain. His mind was vigorous like his body; he was perplexed at no intricacy, he was daunted at no obstacle. Into hidden things he searched, and what was crooked he made plain. He went forth boldly upon the face of the mighty deep. He surveyed the nations of the earth. He measured the distances of the stars, and called them by their names. He gloried in the extent of his knowledge, in the vigour of his understanding, and strove to search even into what the Almighty had concealed. And when I looked upon him, I said with the poet, " what a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!" I returned-but his look was no more lofty, nor his step proud. His broken frame was like some ruined tower. His hairs were white and scattered, and his eye gazed vacantly upon the passers by. The vigour of his intellect was wasted, and of all that he had gained by study, nothing remained. He feared when there was no danger, ar.d where was no sorrow he wept. His decaying memory had become treacherous. It showed him only broken images of the glory that had departed. His house was to him like a strange LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY. 91 land, and his friends were counted as enemies. He thought himself strong and healthful, while his feet tottered on the verge of the grave. He said of his son, " he is my brother;" of his daughter, "I know her not." He even inquired what was his own name. And as I gazed mournfully upon him, one who supported his feeble frame, and ministered to his many wants, said to me, "Let thine heart receive instruction, for thou hast seen an end of all perfection!" I have seen a beautiful female, treading the first stages of youth, and entering joyfully into the pleasures of life. The glance of her eye was variable and sweet, and on her cheek trembled something like the first blush of the morning. Her lips moved, and there was melody, and when she floated in the dance, her light form, like the aspen, seemed to move with every breeze. I returned-she was not in the dance. I sought her among her gay companions, but I found her not. Her eye sparkled not there -the music of her voice was silent. She rejoiced on earth no more. I saw a train-sable and slow-paced. Sadly they bore towards an open grave what once was animated and beautiful. As they drew near, they paused, and a voice broke the solemn silence: " Man that is born of a woman, is of few days and full of misery. IIe cometh up, and is cut down like a flower, he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay." Then they let down into the deep, dark pit, that maiden whose lips but a few days since were like the half-blown rosebud. I shuddered at the sound of clods falling upon the hollow coffin. Then I heard a voice saying, " Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust." They covered her with the damp soil, and the uprooted turf of the valley, and turned again to their own homes. But one mourner lingered to cast himself upon the tomb. And as he wept.he said, " There is no beauty. nor grace, nor loveliness, but what vanisheth like the morning dew. I have seen an end of all perfection!" I saw an infant, with a ruddy brow, and a form like polished ivory. Its motions were graceful, and its merry laughter made other hearts glad. Sometimes it wept,-and again it rejoiced,when none knew why. But whether its cheek dimpled with smiles, 92 LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY. or its blue eyes shone more brilliant through tears, it was beautiful. It was beautiful because it was innocent. And care-worn and sinful men admired, when they beheld it. It was like the first blossom which some cherished plant has put forth, whose cup sparkles with a dew-drop, and whose head reclines'upon the parent stem. Again I looked. It had become a child. The lamp of reason had beamed into its mind. It was simple, and single-hearted, and a follower of the truth. It loved every little bird that sang in the trees, and every fresh blossom. Its heart danced with joy as it looked around on this good and pleasant world. It stood like a lamb before its teachers-it bowed its ear to instruction-it walked In the way of knowledge. It was not proud, nor stubborn, nor envious, and it had never heard of the vices and vanities of the world. And when I looked upon it, I remembered our Saviour's words, " Except ye become as little children, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of Heaven." I saw a man, whom the world calls honourable. Many waited for his smile. They pointed to the fields that were his, and talked of the silver and gold which he had gathered. They praised the stateliness of his domes, and extolled the honour of his family. But the secret language of his heart was, " By my wisdom have I gotten all this." So he returned no thanks to God, neither did he fear or serve him. As I passed along, I heard the complaints of the labourers, who had reaped his fields-and the cries of the poor, whose covering he had taken away. The sound of feasting and revelry was in his mansion, and the unfed beggar came tottering from his door. But he considered not that the cries of the oppressed were continually entering into the ears of the Most High. And when I knew that this man was the docile child whom I had loved, the beautiful infant on whom I had gazed with delight, I said in my bitterness, " Noow, have I seen an end of all perfection!" And I laid my mouth in the dust. SARAH J. HALE. MRS. HALE, so widely known by her efforts to promote the intellectual condition of her sex, is a native of Newport, New Hampshire. Her maiden name was Sarah Josepha Buell. Her husband, David Hale, was a lawyer. By his death, she was left the sole protector of five children, the eldest then but seven years old. It was in the hope' of gaining for them the means of support and education, that she engaged in authorship as a profession. Her first attempt was a small volume of poems, printed for her benefit by the Freemasons, of which fraternity her husband had been a member. This was followed by "Northwood," a novel in two volumes, published in 1827. Early in the following year, Mrs. Hale was invited from her native State to Boston, to take charge of the editorial department of " The Ladies' Magazine," the first American periodical devoted exclusively to her sex. She removed to Boston, accordingly, in 1828, and continued to edit the magazine until 1837, when it was united with the " Lady's Book" of Philadelphia. The literary department of the " Lady's Book" was then placed in her charge, and has so remained ever since. She continued, however, for several years to reside in Boston, to superintend the education of her sons, then students at Harvard. In 1841, she removed to Philadelphia, where she still lives. While living in Boston, Mrs. Hale originated the noble idea of the' Seaman's Aid Society," over which she was called to preside, and of which she continued to be the president until her removal to Philadelphia. This institution, or rather 1IMrs. Hale as its animating spirit, first suggested the plan of a " Home for Sailors," and showed its practicability by establishing one in Boston, which became completely successful. The many establishments of this kind, now existing in various ports, all took their origin in that of the Boston "' Seaman's Aid Society," and in the ideas and reasonings of their first seven annual reports, all of which were from tblte (93) 94 SARAH J. HALE. pen of Mrs. Hale. Nothing that she has ever written, probably, has been more productive of good than this series of annual reports; and though they may be, firom their official character, such as to add nothing to her literary laurels, they certainly form an important addition to her general claims to honour as one of the wise and good of the land. Besides "Northwood," which was republished in London under the title of "A New England Tale," her published works are: "Sketches of American Characterj" " Traits of American Life;" "Flora's Interpreter," of which more than forty thousand copies have been sold, besides English reprints; "The Ladies' Wreath," a selection from the female poets of England and America;" " The Good Housekeeper, the way to live well, and to be well while we live," a manual of cookery, of which large and very numerous editions have been printed; "Grosvenor, a Tragedy;" "' Alice Ray, a Romance in Rhyme;" "Harry Guy, the Widow's Son, a Romance of the Sea" (the last two written for charitable purposes, and the proceeds given away accordingly); " Three Hours, or the Vigil of Love, and other Poems," in 1848; "A Complete Dictionary of Poetical Quotations," a work of nearly six hundred pages, large octavo, printed in double columns, and containing selections, on subjects alphabetically arranged, from the poets of England and America; "The Judge, a Drama of American Life," published, in numbers, in the Lady's Book, and about to be given to the world in book form. Mrs. Hale has also edited several annuals4' The Opal," " The Crocus," &c., and prepared quite a number of books for the young. A large number of essays, tales, and poems lie scattered among the periodicals of the day, sufficient to flu several volumes. These she proposes to collect and publish, in book form, after concluding her editorial career. By far the most important and honourable monument of her labour is the volume now passing through the press, entitled " Woman's Record." This is a general biographical dictionary of distinguished women of all nations and ages, filling about nine hundred pages, of the largest octavo size, closely printed in double columns. Mrs. Hale has been engaged for several years upon this undertaking, the labour of which was enough to appal any but a woman of heroic spirit. It needs no prophetic vision to predict that this great work will be an enduring " Record," not only of woman in general, but of the high aims, the indefatigable industry, the varied reading, and just discrimination of its ever to be honoured author. The first extract from the writings of Mrs. Hale is taken from the work last named, and is in some measure a continuation of the present bio, graphical notice. SARAH J. HALE. 95 FROM " WOMIAN'S RECORD." A FEW words respecting the influences which have, probably, caused me to become the Chronicler of my own sex, may not be considered egotistical. I was mainly educated by my mother, and strictly taught to make the Bible the guide of my life. The books to which I had access were few, very few, in comparison with the number given children now-a-days; but they were such as required to be studied-and I did study them. Next to the Bible and The Pilgrim's Progress, my earliest reading was Milton, Addison, Pope, Johnson, Cowper, Burns, and a portion of Shakspeare. I did not obtain all his works till I was nearly fifteen. The first regular novel I read was " The Mysteries of Udolpho," when I was quite a child. I name it on account of the influence it exercised over my mind. I had remarked that of all the books I saw, few were written by Americans, and none by women. Here was a work, the most fascinating I had ever read, always excepting "' The Pilgrim's Progress," written by a woman! How happy it made me! The wish to promote the reputation of my own sex, and do something for my own country, were among the earliest mental emotions I can recollect. These feelings have had a salutary influence by directing my thoughts to a definite object; my literary pursuits have had an aim beyond self-seeking of any kind. The mental influence of woman over her own sex, which was so important in my case, has been strongly operative in inclining me to undertake this my latest work, " Woman's Record." I have sought to make it an assistant in home education; hoping the examples shown and characters portrayed, might have an inspiration and a power in advancing the moral progress of society. Yet I cannot close without adverting to the ready and kind aid I have always met with from those men with whom I have been most nearly connected. To my brother* I owe what knowledge I possess of the Latin, of the higher branches of mathematics, and of mental philosophy. He oftei, lamented that I could not, like himself, have the privilege of a i The late Judge Buell, of Glen's Falls, New York. SARAH J. HALE. college education. To my husband I was yet more deeply indebted. He was a number of years my senior, and far more my superior in learning. We commenced, soon after our marriage, a system of study and reading which we pursued while he lived. The hours allowed were from eight o'clock in the evening till ten; two hours in the twenty-four: how I enjoyed those hours! In all our mental pursuits, it seemed the aim of my husband to enlighten my reason, strengthen my judgment, and give me confidence in my own powers of mind, which he estimated much higher than I. But this approbation which he bestowed on my talents has been of great encouragement to me in attempting the duties that have since become my portion. And if there is any just praise due to the works I have prepared, the sweetest thought is-that his name bears the celebrity. THE MODE. WHAT a variety of changes there has been in the costumes of men and women since the fig-leaf garments were in vogue! And these millions of changes have, each and all, had their admirers, and every fashion has been, in its day, called beauttiful. It is evident, therefore, that the reigning fashion, whatever it be, comprehends the essence of the agreeable, and that to continue one particular mode or costume, beautiful for successive ages, it would only be necessary to keep it fashionable. Some nations have taken advantage of this principle in the philosophy of dress, and have, by that means, retained a particular mode for centuries; and there is no doubt the belles of these unfading fashions were, and are, quite as ardently admired, as though they had changed the form of their apparel at every revolution of the moon. In some important particulars these fixed planets of fashion certainly have the advantage over those who are continually displaying a new phasis. They present fewer data for observation, and consequently, the alterations which time will bring to the fairest nerson are less perceptible, or, as they always seem the same, less SARAH J. HALE. 97 noted. There are few trials more critical to a waning beauty, than the appearing in a new and brilliant fashion. If it becomes her, the whisper instantly runs round the circle; "how young she looks!" -a most invidious way of hinting she is as old as the hills;-if it does not become her, which is usually the case, then you will hear the remark, " what ain odious dress!"-meaning, the wearer looks as ugly as the Fates. The contrast between a new fashion and an old familiar face instantly strikes the beholder, and makes him run over all the changes in appearance he has seen the individual assume; and then, there is danger that the antiquated fashions may be revivedand how provoking it is to be questioned whether one remembers when long waists and hoops, and ruffled-cuffs were worn!-A reference to the parish-register, or the family-record, would not disclose the age more effectually. Nor are the youthful exempted from their share in the evils of change. It draws the attention of the beholder to the dress, rather than the wearers; and it reminds bachelors, palpably and alarmingly, of the expense of supporting a wife who must thus appear in a new costume every change of the mode. Now, as it is fashion which makes the pleasing in dress, were one particular form retained ever so long, it would always please, an(d thus the unnecessary expense of time and money be avoided; and the charges of fickleness and frivolousness entirely repelled. We have facts to support this opinion. Is not the Spanish costume quite as becoming as our own mode? and that costume has been unchanged, or nearly so, for centuries; while the French and English, from whom we borrow our fashions, (poor souls that we are, to be thus destitute of invention and taste!) have ransacked nature, and exhausted art, for comparisons and terms by which to express the new inventions they have displayed in dress. We are aware that a certain class of political economists affect to believe that luxury is beneficial to a nation-but it is not so. The same reasoning which would make extravagance in dress commendable, because it employed manufacturers and artists, would 13 SARAH J. HALE. also make intemperance a virtue in those who could afford to be drunk, because the preparation of the alcohol employs labourers, and the consumption would encourage trade. All these views of the expediency of tolerating evil are a part of that Machiavellian system of selfishness which has been imposed on the world for wisdom, but which has proved its origin by the corrupting crimes and miseries men have endured in consequence of yielding themselves dupes or slaves of fashion and vice. We do hope, indeed believe, that a more just appreciation of the true interests and real happiness of mankind will yet prevail. The improvements, now so rapidly progressing, in the intellectual and civil condition of nations must, we think, be followed by a corresponding improvement in the tastes and pursuits of those who are the elite of society. Etiquette and the fashions cannot be the engrossing objects of pursuit, if people become reasonable. The excellencies of mind and heart will be of more consequence to a lady than the colour of a riband or the shape of a bonnet. We would not have ladies despise or neglect dress. They should be alwaCys fit to be seen; personal neatness is indispensable to agreeableness -almost to virtue. A proper portion of time and attention must scrupulously be given to external appearance, but not the whole of our days and energies. Is it worthy of Christians, pretending to revere the precepts of HIM who commanded them not to "take thought what they should put on," to spend their best years in studying the form of their apparel? Trifles should not thus engross us, and they need not, if our citizens would only shake off this tyranny of fashion, imposed by the tailors of Paris and London, and establish a national costume, which would, wherever an American appeared, announce him as a republican, and the countryman of Washington. The men would probably do this, if our ladies would first show that they have sufficient sense and taste to invent and arrange their own costume (without the inspiration of foreign milliners) in accordance with those national principles of comfort, propriety, economy, and becomingness, which are the only true foundation of the elegant in apparel. It is not necessary to elegance of appearance, nor to the pros SARAH J. HALE. 99 perity of trade, that changes in fashion should so frequently occur. Take, for instance, the article of shoes. What good consequence results from a change in the fashion of shoes? If we have a becoming and convenient mode, why not retain it for centuries, and save all the discussions about square-toed, round or peaked-and all the other ad infinitum changes in cut and trinm mings? And if the hours thus saved were devoted to reading or exercise, would not the mind and health be more improved than if we were employed in deciding the rival claims of the old and new fashion of shoes to admiration? Such portions of time may seem very trifling, but the aggregate of wasted hours, drivelled away thus by minutes, makes a large part of the life allotted us. We by no means advocate an idle and stupid state of society. Excitement is necessary; emulation is necessary; and we must be active if we would be happy. But there are objects more worthy to call forth the energies of rational beings than the tie of a cravat, or the trimming of a bonnet. And when the moral and intellectual beauty of character is more cultivated and displayed, we hope that the " foreign aid of ornament" will be found less necessary; and when all our ladies are possessed of "inward greatness, unaffected wisdom, and sanctity of manners," they will not find a continual flutter of fashion adds anything to the respect and affection their virtues and simple graces will inspire. EMMA C. WILLARD. MRS. WILLARD is more known as a woman of action than as an author. She has devoted the greater part of a long and most useful life to the cause of female education, in which her efforts, both as a theorist and a practical teacher, have been crowned with signal success. Her prominence as a writer, however, does not by any means correspond to that assigned to her by common consent as an educator. Still, she has found time in the midst of other duties of a most urgent character, to make several valuable contributions to the cause of letters. Mrs. Willard is the daughter of the late Samuel Hart, of Berlin, Connecticut, where she was born in February, 1787. Her father was descended on the maternal side, firom Thomas Hooker, minister, and on the paternal side, from Stephen Hart, deacon of the original church in Hartford, Connecticut. Minister Hooker and deacon Hart were among that large company of emigrants who came over in 1630, and settled the town of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Five years after its settlement in 1635, a fresh colony swarmed from the parent hive at Cambridge, including the "minister" and the "deacon" just named, and settled the town of Hartford. The love of teaching appears to have been a ruling passion in nMiss Hart's mind, and was developed in her early years. At the age of sixteen she took charge of a district school in her native town. The following year she opened a select school, and in the summer of the next year was placed at the head of the Berlin Academy. During this period, being engaged at home throughout the summer and winter in the capacity of instructress, she managed in the spring and autumn to attend one or other of the two boarding schools at Hartford. During the spring of 1807, Miss Hart received invitations to take charge of academies in three different states, and accepted that from Westfield, Maiassachusetts. She remained there but a few weeks, when, upon a second (100) EMMA C. WILLARD. 101 and more pressing invitation, she went to Middlebury, in Vermont. Here she assumed the charge of a female academy, which she retained for two years. The school was liberally patronized, and general satisfaction rewarded the efforts of its preceptress. In 1809, she resigned her academy, and was united in marriage with Dr. John Willard. In 1814, Mrs. Willard was induced to establish a boarding school at Middlebury, when she formed the determination to effect an important change in female education, by the institution of a class of schools of a higher character than had been established in the country before. She applied herself assiduously to increase her own personal abilities as a teacher, by the diligent study of branches with which she had before been unacquainted. She introduced new studies into her school, and invented new methods of teaching. She also prepared " An Address to the Public," in which she proposed "' A Plan for Improving Female Education." A copy of this plan was sent to Governor De Witt Clinton, who immediately wrote to Mrs. Willard, expressing a most cordial desire that she would remove her institution to the state of New York. He also recommended the subject of her " Plan" in his message to the legislature. The result was the passage of an act to incorporate the proposed institute at Waterford; and another to give to female academies a share of the literary fund; being, it is believed, the first law ever passed by any legislature with the direct object of improving female education. During the spring of 1819, Mrs. Willard accordingly removed to Waterford, and opened her school. The higher mathematics were introduced, and the course of study was made sufficiently complete to qualify the pupils for any station in life. In the spring of 1821, difficulties attending the securing of a proper building for the school in Waterford, Mrs. Willard again determined upon a removal. The public-spirited citizens of Troy offered liberal inducements; and in May, 1821, the Troy Female Seminary was opened under flattering auspices; and abundant success crowned her indefatigable exertions. Since that period, the institute has been well known to the public, and the name of Mrs. Willard, for more than a quarter of a century, has been identified with her favourite academy. Dr. Willard died in 1825; Mrs. Willard continued her school till her health was impaired, and in 1830 she visited France. She resided in Paris for several months, and from thence went to England and Scotland, returning in the following year. After her return she published a volume of travels, the avails of which, amounting to twelve hundred dollars, were devoted to the cause of female education in Greece. It may be proper to add, that she gave the avails of one or two other publications to the same object. In 1838, Mrs. Willard resigned the charge of the Troy Seminary, and returned to Hartford, where she revised her Manual of American History, for the use of schools The merits of this work, of her smaller United 02 EIMMA C. WILLARD. States History., and of her Universal History, have been attested by their very general use in seminaries of education. Since 1843, she has completed the revision of her historical works, revised her Ancient Geography, and, in compliance with invitations, has written numerous addresses on different occasions, being mostly on educational subjects. In the winter of 1846, Mrs. Willard prepared for the press a work which has given her more fame abroad, and perhaps at home, than any of her other writings. This work, which was published in the ensuing spring, both in New York and London, developed the result of a study which had intensely occupied her at timnes for fourteen years. Its title is " A Treatise on the Motive Powers which produce the Circulation of the Blood " and its object is nothing less than to introduce and to establish the fact, that the principal motive power which produces circulation of the blood is not, as has been heretofore supposed, the heart's action, that being only secondary; but that -the principal motive power is respiration, operating by animal heat, and producing an effective force at the lungs. Of this work, the London Critic thus speaks: " We have here an instance of a woman undertaking to discuss a subject that has perplexed and baffled the ingenuity of the most distinguished anatomists and physiologists who have considered it, from Hervey down to Paxton; and what is more remarkable, so acquitting herself as to show that she apprehended, as well as the best of them, the difficulties which beset the inquiry; perceived as quickly as they did, the errors and incongruities of the theories of previous writers; and lastly, herself propounded an hypothesis to account for the circulation of the blood and the heart's action, eminently entitled to the serious attention and examination of all who take an interest in physiological science." In addition to the compends of history which she has written, she has invented, for the purpose of teaching and impressing chronology on the mind by the eye, two charts of an entirely original character; one called "The American Chronographic," for American History, and the other for universal history, called the " Temple of Time." In the latter, the course of time from the creation of the world is thrown into perspective, and the parts of this subject wrought into unity, and the more distinguished characters which have appeared in the world are set down, each in his own time. This, in the chart, is better arranged for the memory, than would be that of the place of a city on a map of the world. In 1849, she published "' Last Leaves from American History," containing an interesting account of our Mexican War, and of California. The poetical compositions of Mrs. Willard are few, and are chiefly comprised in a small volume printed in 1830. The details in the foregoing sketch are taken chiefly from Mrs. Hale's "Woman's Record." EMIMA C. WILLARD. 103 HOW TO TEACH. IxN searching for the fundamental principles of the science of teaching, I find a few axioms as indisputable as the first principles of mathematics. One of these is this:- He is the best teacher who makes the best use of his own time and that of his pupils: for TIME is all that is given by God in which to do the work of Improvement. What is the first rule to guide us in making the best use of Time? It is to seek first and most to improve in the best things. He is not necessarily the best teacher who performs the most labour; makes his pupils work the hardest, and bustle the most. A hundred cents of copper, though they make more clatter and fill more space, have only a tenth of the value of one eagle of gold. WHAT TO TEACH. WHAT is the best of all possible things to be taught? Moral Goodness. That respects God and Man: God first, and man second. To infuse into the mind of a child, therefore, love and fear towards God-the perfect in wisdom, justice, goodness, and power-the Creator, Benefactor, and Saviour-the secret Witness and the Judge —this is of all teaching the very best. But it cannot be accomplished merely in set times and by set phrases: it should mingle in all -the teacher's desires and actions. The child imbibes it when he sees that the instructor feels and acts on it himself. When the youth is untruthful, when he wounds his companion in body, in mind, in character, or in property, then show him that his offence is against God; that you are God's ministers to enforce his laws, and must do your duty. Be thus mindful in all sincerity; judge correctly, adopt no subterfuge; pretend not to think that he is better than he really is; deal plainly and truly, though lovingly, with him: then his moral approbation will go with you, though it should 104 EMMA C. WILLARD. be against himself, and even if circumstances require you to punish him. The voice of conscience residing in his heart is as the voice of God; and if you invariably interpret that voice with correctness and truth, the child will submit and obey you naturally and affectionately. But if your government is unjust or capricious-if you punish one day what you pass over or approve another, the dissatisfied child will naturally rebel. Next to moral goodness is Health and Strength, soundness of body and of mind. This, like the former, is not what can be taught at set times and in set phrases; but it must never be lost sight of. It must regulate the measure and the kind of exercise required by the child, both bodily and mental, as well as his diet, air, and accommodations. The regular routine of school duties consists in teaching acts for the practice of future life; or sciences in which the useful or ornamental arts find their first principles; and great skill is required of the teacher in assigning to each pupil an order of studies suitable to his age, and then selecting such books and modes of teaching as shall make a little time go far. CARE OF HEALTH. WHEN I am speaking to Young Girls (the Lord bless and keep them), I am in my proper element, Why should it be otherwise? I have had five thousand under my charge, and spent thirty years of my life devoted to their service; and the general reader will excuse me if I add some further advice to them, which the light of this theory will show to be good. If it is so, others may have its benefit as well as they; but it is most natural to me to address myself to them. Would you, my dear young ladies, do the will of God on earth by being useful to your fellow beings? Take care of health.-Would you enjoy life? Take care of health; for without it existence is, for every purpose of enjoyment, worse than a blank. No matter how EMMA C. WILLARD. 105 much wealth, or how many luxuries you can command, there is no enjoyment without health. To an aching head what is a downy pillow with silken curtains floating above? What is the cushioned landau, and the gardened landscape to her whose disordered lungs can no longer receive the inspirations of an ordinary atmosphere? And what are books, music, and paintings to her whose nervous sufferings give disease to her senses, and agony to her frame? Would you smooth for your tender parents the pillow of declining life? Take care of health.-And does the " prophetic pencil" sometimes trace the form of one whose name perhaps is now unknown, who shall hereafter devote to you a manly and generous heart, and marriage sanction the bond? Would you be a blessing to such a one? then now take care of your health; or, if you hesitate, let imagination go still further. Fancy yourself feeble, as With untimely age, clad in vestments of sorrow, and leaving a childless home to walk forth with him to the churchyard, there to weep over your buried offspring. Study, then, to know your frame, that you may, before it is too late, pursue such a course as will secure to you a sound and vigorous constitution. OF THE FORCE THAT MOVES THE BLOOD. WHIEN circulation is our life, it behoves us to consider well its causes, that we may add reason to instinct in its healthful preservation. That the blood travels through the system by its own volition, none believe; but that it is an inert mass, which will only move as it is moved. What then are the forces which move inert bodies? Are there any which may not be resolved into one of these three: —impulse, gravitation, and heat; of which the latter has the greater range in point of degree, being in the expansion of a fluid from warm to warmer, the most gentle of all imaginable forces, while in other states it is the most powerful of any known to man. 14 106 EMMA C. WILLARD. It is, then, to one or more of these forces that we must look for the motive powers which produce the circulation; and the human circulation has peculiar difficulties to encounter. Man does not enjoy his noble erect position without some countervailing disadvantages. The long upright column of his blood, spreading at its base, presents no trifling force to be moved. And this force is to be overcome by means so gentle, that the mind, the dweller in this house of clay, shall not be disturbed by its operations.-Again: the parts of the body are to be used by the mind as instruments, and ten thousand different motions are to be performed at its bidding.-What but Almighty Wisdom could have effected these several objects! And is it not most reasonable to suppose that this wisdom would assign for these purposes, not any one of the forces which move matter, but combine them all-? Gravitation by itself cannot produce a circulation by any machinery. Impulse alone could not carry on a circulation without existing in such an excessive degree that it must disturb the mind and endanger the body. But heat, the antagonist force of gravitation, by the lessening or increasing of the maximum and minimum differences, can operate more or less forcibly as occasion requires, and at the same time so gently and so quietly, that the mind shall take no cognisance of its operation as a moving force. It can be so placed, that by its expansive force it shall lift gravitation when that obstructs the way; and by its transmission, leave to it the course when its presence as a force would become hurtful. Why, then, should we hesitate to conclude that this is the principal force employed, since we know it exists in the human system? And if it is the principal agent which does actually perform. this great work, then if the quantity afforded be small, so much the more perfect the machine; for so much the less will it be likely either to endanger the body or disturb the mind, and so much the more praise is due to the Mighty Artificer. ALMIRA HART LINCOLN PHELPS. MRS. PHELPS is the daughter of Samuel Hart, already mentioned, and the sister of Mrs. Emma Willard. Like her elder sister, Mrs. Phelps has been engaged most of her life in the business of education, and in the preparation of scientific and educational text books. These, and her miscellaneous writings, entitle her to a place in the present collection. Mrs. Phelps was born in 1793, at Berlin, Connecticut. She was educated chiefly by her sister, Emma. At the age of eighteen, she spent a year at the Seminary of Miss Hinsdale, at Pittsfield, Massachusetts; and soon after was married to Simeon Lincoln, the editor of the " Ccnnecticut Mirror," Hartford. Mrs. Lincoln was left a widow at the age of thirty. Being thrown by this event upon her own resources, she commenced preparing herself in the most thorough manner for what was henceforth to be her chosen office, the education of the young. For this purpose she studied the Latin and Greek languages, and the natural sciences, applying herself at the same time to the cultivation of her talents for drawing and painting, and spent seven years in the Troy Seminary, engaged alternately in teaching and study. In 1831, Mrs. Lincoln was married to the Hon. John Phelps, of Vermont, and the next six years of her life were spent in that State. In 1839, she became Principal of a Female Seminary at Westchester, Pennsylvania. She subsequently removed to Ellicott's Mills, in Maryland, to establish, with the aid of her husband, the Patapsco Female Institute. Mr. Phelps died in 1849. Mrs. Phelps's first publication was a work known as " Lincoln's Botany." It appeared in 1829, and had a large circulation. The next work, a " Dietionary of Chemistry," though mainly a translation from the French, contained much original matter. After her second marriage, she published "' Botany" and " Chemistry" for beginners, and also a course of lectures on education. These lectures were afterwards published as a volume in (107) 108 ALMIRA HART LINCOLN PHELPS. Harr Frs' School Library, under the title of the " Female Student." Some of her other works have been " Natural Philosophy for Schools," " Geology for Beginners," a translation of Madame Necker de Saussure's "Progressive Education," " Caroline Westerly, or the Young Traveller," and "' Ida Nornlan, or Trials and their Uses." EDUCATION. THE true end of education is to prepare the young for the active duties of life, and to enable them to fill with propriety those stations to which, in the providence of God, they may be called. This includes, also, a preparation for eternity; for we cannot live well without those dispositions of heart which are necessary to fit us for heaven. To discharge aright the duties of life requires not only that the intellect shall be enlightened, but that the heart shall be purified. A mother does not perform her whole duty, even when, in addition to providing for the wants of her children and improving their understanding, she sets before them an example of justice and benevolence, of moderation in her own desires, and a command over her own passions: this may be all that is required of a heathen mother; but the Christian female must go with her little ones to Jesus of Nazareth, to seek his blessing; she must strive to elevate the minds of her offspring by frequent reference to a future state; she must teach them to hold the world and its pursuits in subserviency to more important interests, and to prize above all things that peace which, as the world giveth not, neither can it take away. ENERGY OF MIND. CAN we find no cause why the children of the rich, setting out in life under the most favourable circumstances, often sink into insignificance, while their more humble competitors, struggling against obstacles, rise higher and higher, till they become elevated in proportion to their former depression? Have we never beheld a plant grow ALMIRA HART LINCOLN PHELPS. 109 weak and sickly from excess of care, while the mountain pine, neglected and exposed to fierce winds and raging tempests, took strong root and grew into a lofty tree, delighting the eye by its strength and beauty? If we look into our State Legislatures, our National Congress, and the highest executive and judicial offices in the country, we do not find these places chiefly occupied by those who were born to wealth, or early taught the pride of aristocratic distinctions. Most of the distinguished men of our country have made their own fortunes; most of them began life knowing that they could hope for no aid or patronage, but must rely solely upon the energies of their own minds and the blessing of God. EFFECT OF EXCITEMIENTS. STRONG excitements have an unfavourable effect upon the nerves of young children. We know this to be the case with ourselves, but are apt to forget that things which are common to us may be new and striking to them. My child was, on a certain evening, carried into a large room brilliantly lighted and filled with company. He gazed around with an expression of admiration and delight, not unmixed with perplexity; the latter, however, soon vanished, and he laughed and shouted with great glee; and as he saw that he was observed, exerted himself still farther to be amusing. He was then carried into a room where was music and dancing; this was entirely new, and he was agitated with a variety of emotions; fear, wonder, admiration, and joy seemed to prevail by turns. As the scene became familiar, he again enjoyed it without any mixture of unpleasant feelings. But the effect of these excitements was apparent when he was taken to his bed-room; his face was flushed, as in a fever, his nervous system disturbed, and his sleep was interrupted by screams. 110 ALMIRA HART LINCOLN PHELPS. THE CHILD AND NATURE. THE expression of the emotions of young children, when first viewing the grand scenery of nature, affords a rich treat to the penetrating observer. At eight months old, my child, on being carried to the door during a fall of snow, contemplated the scene with an appearance of deep attention. He had learned enough of the use of his eyes to form some conception of the expanse before him, and to perceive how different it was from the narrow confines of the apartments of the house. The falling snow, with its brilliant whiteness and easy downward motion, was strange and beautiful; and when he felt it lighting upon his face and hands, he held up his open mouth, as if he would test its nature by a third sense. A few weeks after this he was taken, on a bright winter's day, to ride in a sleigh (this scene was in Vermont). The sleighbells, the horses, the companions of his ride, the trees and shrubs loaded with their brilliant icy gems, the houses, and the people whom we passed, all by turns received his attention. If he could have described what he saw as it appeared to him, and the various emotions caused by these objects, the description would have added a new page in the philosophy of mind. How often are the beauties of nature unheeded by man, who, musing on past ills, brooding over the possible calamities of the future, building castles in the air, or wrapped up in his own self-love and self-importance, forgets to look abroad, or looks with a vacant stare! His outward senses are sealed, while a fermenting process may be going on in the passions within. But if, with a clear conscience, a love of nature, and a quick sense of the beautiful and sublime, we do contemplate -the glorious objects so profusely scattered around us by a bountiful Creator, with the interesting changes which are constantly varying the aspect of these objects, still our emotions have become deadened by habit. We do not admire what is familiar to us, and therefore it is that we must be ever ignorant of the true native sympathy between our own hearts and the external world. LOUISA C. TUTHILL. AMERIOANS have excelled in the preparation of books for the young One of the most successful writers in this line, and a writer of more than ordinary success in other departments of prose composition, is Mrs. Louisa C. Tuthill. Mrs. Tuthill is descended, on both sides, from the early colonists of New Haven, Connecticut, one of her ancestors, on the father's side, being Theophilus Eaton, the first Governor of the colony. Her maiden name was Louisa Caroline Huggins. She was born, just at the close of the last century, at New Haven, and educated partly at New Haven and partly at Litchfield. The schools for young ladies in both of those towns at that time were celebrated for their excellence, and that in New Haven parti. cularly comprehended a course of study equal in range, with the exception of Greek and the higher Mathematics, to the course pursued at the same time in Yale College. Being the youngest child of a wealthy and retired merchant, she enjoyed to the fullest extent the opportunities of education which these seminaries afforded, as well as that more general, but not less important element of education, the constant intercourse with people of refined taste and cultivated minds. In 1817, she was married to Cornelius Tuthill, Esq., a lawyer, of Newburgh, New York, who, after his marriage, settled in New Haven. Mr. Tuthill himself, as well as his wife, being of a literary turn, their hospitab.e mansion became the resort for quite an extensive literary circle, some of whom have since become known to fame. Mr. Tuthill, with two of his friends, the lamented Henry E. Dwight, youngest son of President Dwight of Yale College, and Nathaniel Chauncey, Esq., now of Philadelphia, projected a literary paper, for local distribution, called " The Microscope." It was published at New Haven, and edited by Mr. Tuthill, with the aid of the two friends just named. Through the pages of the Microscope, the poet Percival first became known to the public. Among the con(111) 112 LOUISA C. TUTHILL. tributors were J. C. Brainerd,* Professors Fisher and Fowler, iMrs. Sigourney, and others. Mrs. Tuthill wrote rhymes from childhood, and as far back as she can remember was devoted to books. One of her amusements during girlhood was to write, stealthily, essays, plays, tales, and verses, all of which, however, with the exception of two or three school compositions, were committed to the flames previous to her marriage. She had imbibed a strong prejudice against literary women, and firmly resolved never to become one. Mr. Tuthill took a different view of the matter, and urged her to a further pursuit of liberal studies and the continued exercise of her pen. At his solicitation, she wrote regularly for the 1 Microscope" during its continuance, which, however, was only for a couple of years. MAir. Tuthill died in 1825, at the age of twenty-nine, leaving a widow and four children, one son and three daughters. As a solace under affliction) Mrs. Tuthill employed her pen in contributing frequently to literary periodicals, but always anonymously, and with so little regard to fame of authorship as to keep neither record nor copy of her pieces, though some of them now occasionally float by as waifs on the tide of current literature. Several little books, too, were written by her between 1827 and 1839, for the pleasure of mental occupation, and published anonymnously. Some of these still hold their place in Sunday school libraries. MIrs. Tuthill's name first came before the public in 1839. It was on the title-page of a reading book for young ladies, prepared on a new plan. The plan was to make the selections a series of illustrations of the rules of rhetoric, the examples selected being taken from the best English and American authors. The "' Young Ladies' Reader," the title of this collection, has been popular, and has gone through many editions. The ice being once broken, she began to publish more freely, and during the same year gave to the world the work entitled " The Young Lady's Home." It is an octave volume of tales and essays, having in view the completion of a young lady's education after her leaving school. It shows at once a fertile imagination and varied reading, sound judgment, and a familiar acquaintance with social life. It has been frequently reprinted. Her next publication was an admirable series of small volumes for boys and girls, which have been, of all her writings, the most widely and the most favourably known. They are 16mo.'s, of about 150 pages each. " I will be a Gentleman," 1844, twenty-nine editions; "I will be a Lady," 1844, twenty-nine editions; "Onward, right Onward," 1845, fourteen editions; "Boarding School Girl," 1845, eight editions; "Anything for Sport," 1846, eight editions; "A Strike for Freedom, or Law an'd Order," 1850, three editions in the first year. In 1852 Mrs. Tuthill commenced a new series, intended for girls and boys in their teens. "[Braggadocio," 1852; "Queer Bonnets," 1853; X See Whittier's Life of J. C. Brainerd. LOUISA C. TUTHILL. 113 "Tip Top," 1854; "Beautiful Bertha," 1854. These have passed through several editions, and have been even more popular than the former series. Had Mrls. Tuthill written nothing but these attractive and useful volumes, she would have entitled herself to an honourable place in any work which professed to treat of the prose literature of the country. They hare the graces of style and thought which would commend them to the favourable consideration of the general reader, with superadded charms that make them the delight of children. During the composition of these juvenile works, she continued her occupation of catering for " children of a larger growth," and gave to the world, in 1846, a work of fiction, entitled "' My Wife," a tale of fashionable life of the present day, conveying, under the garb of an agreeable story, wholesome counsels for the young of both sexes on the all-engrossing subject of marriage. A love for the fine arts has been with Mrs. Tuthill one of the ruling passions of her life.. At different times, ample means -have been within her reach for the cultivation of this class of studies. Partly for her own amusement, and partly for the instruction of her children, she paid special attention to the study of Architecture in its esthetical character, enjoying, while thus engaged, the free use of the princely library of Ithiel Town, the architect. The result of these studies was the publication, in 1848, of a splendid octavo volume on the " IHistory of Architecture," from which an extract is given. She edited, during the same year, a very elegant octavo annual, "' The Mirror of Life," in which several of the contributions were by herself. "The Nursery Book" appeared in 1849. It is not a collection of nursery rhymes for children, as the title has led many to suppose, but a collection of counsels for young mothers respecting the duties of the nursery. These counsels are conveyed under the fiction of an imaginary correspondence between a young mother, just beginning to dress her first baby, and an experienced aunt. There are few topics in the whole history of the management and the mismanagement of a child, during the first and most important stages of its existence, that are not discussed, with alternate reason and ridicule, in this clever volume. Mrs. Tuthill is at present engaged upon a series of works, of an unambitious but very useful character, grouped together under the general title of " Success in Life." They are six volumes, 18rnmo's of about 200 pages each, and each illustrating the method of success in some particular walk in life, by numerous biographical examples. The titles of the several volumes are: " The Merchant," 1849; "The Lawyer," 1850; " The Mechanic," 1850;' The Artist," 1854; "The Farmer," and "The Physician," not yet published. In 1838, 3irs. Tuthill left her much-loved native city, where until this time she had continually resided, and passed four years in Hartford, Connecticut; from thence she removed to Roxbury near Boston. The health Of her family requiring a change of climate, she went, in 1846, to Philadelphia. Since 1848 Mrs. Tuthill has resided at Princeton, New Jersey 15 114 LOUISA C. TUTHILL. DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE IN THE UNITED STATES. DoMESTIC architecture in this country must be adapted to the circumstances and condition of the people. As it is an art originating from necessity, the progress of society must change the architecture of every country, from age to age. As wealth and refinement increase, taste and elegance must be consulted, without destroying convenience and appropriateness. We can no more adopt the style of architecture than the dress of a foreign people. We acknowledge the flowing robes of the Persian to be graceful and becoming; they suit the habits and climate of the country. The.fur-clad Russian of the north has conformed his dress to his climate, and made it rich and elegant; yet, as he approaches his neighbours of Turkey, his dress becomes somewhat assimilated to theirs. France is said to give the law of fashion in dress to the civilized world; and the absurdities that have resulted from following her dictates, have produced ridiculous anomalies in other countries. In adopting the domestic architecture of foreign countries, we may be equally ridiculous. England, our fatherland, from some resemblance in habits and institutions, might furnish more suitable models for imitation than any other country; yet they would not be perfectly in accordance with our wants. Our architecture must, therefore, be partly indigenous. Our associations of convenience, home-comfort, and respectability are connected with a certain style of building, which has been evolved by the wants, manners, and customs of the people. Any great deviations from a style that has been thus fixed, cannot be perfectly agreeable. We must improve upon this style, so that domestic architecture may in time be perfectly American. Man in his hours of relaxation, when he is engaged in the pursuit of mere pleasure, is less national than he is under the influence of any of the more violent feelings that agitate every-day life. Hence it is that in our country there is danger that our villas will be anything rather than national. The retired professional man, the wealthy merchant and mechanic, wish to build in the country. Instead of consulting home-comfort and pleasurable asso LOUISA C. TUTHILL. 115 ciation, they select some Italian villa, Elizabethan house, or Swiss cottage, as their model. Ten chances to one the Italian villa, designed for the border of a lake, will be placed near a dusty highroad; the Elizabethan house, instead of being surrounded by venerable trees, will raise its high gables on the top of a bare hill; and the Swiss cottage, instead of hanging upon the mountain-side, will be placed upon a level plain, surrounded with a flower-garden, divided into all manner of fantastic parterres, with box edgings. Our country, containing as it does, in its wide extent, hills and mountains, sheltered dells and far-spreading valleys, lake-sides and river-sides, affords every possible situation for picturesque villas; and great care should be taken that appropriate sites be chosen for appropriate and comfortable buildings; comfortable, we say, for after the novelty of the exterior has pleased the eye of the owner for a few weeks, if his house wants that half-homely, but wholly indispensable attribute, comfort, he had better leave it to ornament his grounds, like an artificial ruin, and build liimself another to live in. Cottages are at present quite " the rage" in many parts of the United States. Some outr4 enormities are styled Swiss cottages. The larger and better kind of Swiss cottages are built with roofs projecting from five to seven feet over the sides; these projections are strengthened by strong wooden supports, that the heavy snow which falls upon the roofs need not crush them. Utility and beauty are thus combined; but there is no beauty in such a cottage in a sunny vale, where the snow falls seldom or lightly. On the Green Mountains, or among the White Hills, it might stand as gracefully as it does among its native Alps. Walnut and chestnut trees are always beautiful accompaniments to the Swiss cottage. The same care should be taken to render the cottage comfortable, as the villa; and in this point, unfortunately, there is often a coniplete failure. There is no absolute need that this should be the case. A cottage or a farm-house may be picturesque without sacrificing one tittle of its convenience. The great and leading object should be utility, and where that is absolutely sacrificed in architecture, whatever may be substituted in its place, it cannot be considered beautiful. CAROLINE M. KIRKLAND. MRS. KIRKLAND, formerly Miss Caroline M. Stansbury, was born and bred in the city of New York. After the death of her father, M[r. Samuel Stansbury, the family removed to the western part of the State, where she was married to Mr. William Kirkland, an accomplished scholar, and at one time Professor in Hamilton College. After her marriage she resided several years in Geneva, and in 1835 removed to Michigan; lived two years in Detroit, and six months in the woods-sixty miles west of Detroit. In 1843 she returned to New York, where she has lived ever since, with the exception of a visit abroad in 1849, and another in 1850. Mr. Kirkland died in 1846. She was first prompted to authorship by the strange things which she saw and heard while living in the backwoods. These things always presented themselves to her under a humorous aspect, and suggested an attempt at description. The descriptions, given at first in private letters to her friends, proved to be so very amusing that she was tempted to enlarge the circle of her readers by publication. "A New Home —Who'll Follow?" appeared in 1839; "Forest Life," in 1842; and "Western Clearings," in 1846. These all appeared under the assumed name of "Mrs. Mary Clavers," and attracted very general attention. For racy wit, keen observation of life and manners, and a certain air of refinement which never forsakes her, even in the roughest scenes, these sketches of western life were entirely without a parallel in American literature. Their success determined in a great measure Mrs. Kirkland's course of life, and she has since become an author by profession. An " Essay on the Life and Writings of Spenser," prefixed to an edition of the first book of the "Fairy Queen," in 1846, formed her next contribution to the world of letters. The accomplished author appears in this volume quite as shrewd in her observations, and as much at home, (116) :::::::~80!ELE00005 iEEE i!:. lkig ~:. i-!!0 i- E S~S -::iiiii::ii d:'E:::i:~ iiiii iiiiiiiii iiiii.Eg....:-.....?..:::.::::: i l:Is?-:,;B/