FERDINAND AND ISABELLA.

LIVES
OF
CELEBRATED WOMEN:

BY THE AUTHOR OF
PETER PARLEY’S TALES.

BOSTON:
BRADBURY, SODEN & CO.
MDCCCXLIV.

Entered according to Act of Congress,
in the year 1844,

By S. G. GOODRICH,

In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of Massachusetts.

STEREOTYPED AT THE
BOSTON TYPE AND STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY.

WM. A. HALL & CO., PRINTERS,
12 Water Street.

5

PREFACE.

It is an oft-quoted proposition of Rousseau, that “the glory of woman lies in being unknown.” If this be true, we shall deserve little credit for placing before the world these brief sketches of a few of the sex who have acquired celebrity among mankind. We are disposed to think, however, that the oracular words of the Genevan philosopher—though they may coincide with the despotism of the lords of creation, who would arrogate, not merely the sceptre of power, but the trump of fame, entirely to themselves—like most other oracles, are liable to many exceptions.

It may indeed be true that the happiness of women is generally to be found in the quiet of the domestic circle; but that all, without distinction, should be confined to it, and that whenever one of the sex departs from it, she departs from her allotted sphere, is no more true than a similar proposition would be of men. Elizabeth of England, though little to be esteemed as a woman, did as much credit to her sex as her father did to his; and while he enjoys the renown of having achieved the reformation in England, she is entitled to the credit of having been not only his superior as a sovereign, but one of the greatest sovereigns that ever occupied a throne. Joan of Arc performed achievements for her country scarcely less than miraculous; and Hannah More afforded, by her pen, more efficient protection to the three kingdoms against the volcanic shock of the French revolution than the entire army and navy of Great Britain.

Will any one pretend that these persons would have better fulfilled their destiny, if confined to the quiet precincts of the fireside? If woman is only to be a housewife, why are gifts bestowed upon her, that make her often the rival, and sometimes the master, of the other sex, even in 6 the higher walks of ambition? Was Sappho’s harp, the mere echo of which has thrilled upon the ear of nearly thirty centuries, given only to be touched in the secluded harem of some Lesbian lord? Why had Sévigné such a magic pen, Roland so noble and dauntless a soul, the maid of Saragossa a patriotism so inspired and inspiring, if they were designed by their Creator only to preside over the nursery, the dairy, and the kitchen? If women are created but to attend to the comforts of the other sex at home, why are such spirits as those of the lovely and lamented Davidsons ever formed—spirits bursting with music and poetry, like the Eolian string, that gives forth its unbidden melody, only because God made it so? Was Mrs. Hemans designed but to serve her surly and unappreciating lord? Are Lady Montagu, Mrs. Barbauld, Madame de Stael, Miss Edgeworth, Miss Sedgwick, Hannah More, Mrs. Sigourney,—who must be regarded as among the most efficient civilizers of modern times,—to be set down as violators of a great law which should govern woman’s destiny? In short, shall we, in Christian countries, who make it our boast that we have elevated woman to free companionship with man, still look backward, return to the selfish philosophy of the Turk, shut woman up in the harem, and gloss over our despotism by quotations from the Swiss Diogenes?

While we repeat that, in general, women consult their true dignity and happiness by seeking a quiet domestic career, we still maintain that such among them as have endowments suited to exert a happy influence upon mankind at large, are as truly fulfilling their duty and their destiny, by giving them scope, as are the other sex in doing the same under the like circumstances. It is believed that the following pages, although they notice only a few of those women who have acquired a deserved celebrity, will furnish ample argument to sustain the ground we assume.

7

CONTENTS.

8

9

LUCRETIA AND MARGARET DAVIDSON.

“There stood on the banks of the Saranac a small, neat cottage, which peeped forth from the surrounding foliage—the image of rural quiet and contentment. An old-fashioned piazza extended along the front, shaded with vines and honeysuckles; the turf on the bank of the river was of the richest and brightest emerald; and the wild rose and sweetbrier, which twined over the neat enclosure, seemed to bloom with more delicate freshness and perfume within the bounds of this earthly paradise. The scenery around was wildly yet beautifully romantic; the clear blue river, glancing and sparkling at its feet, seemed only as a preparation for another and more magnificent view, when the stream, gliding on to the west, was buried in the broad, white bosom of Champlain, which stretched back, wave after wave, in the distance, until lost in faint blue mists that veiled the sides of its guardian mountains, seeming more lovely from their indistinctness.”

Such is the description which the younger subject of these memoirs gives us of the home of her parents, Dr. Oliver and Margaret Davidson, in the village of 10 Plattsburg, Vermont. Amidst scenery so well calculated to call forth and foster poetical talent, Lucretia Maria Davidson was born on the 27th September, 1808. Of her earliest childhood there is nothing recorded, except that she was physically feeble, and manifested extreme sensibility of disposition. She was sent to school when she was four years old, and there was taught to read and to imitate, in sand, the printed characters. Books now possessed for her a greater charm than childish sports. The writing paper began to disappear mysteriously from the table, and Lucretia was often observed with pen and ink, to the surprise of her parents, who knew that she had never been taught to write. The mystery remained unexplained until she was six years old, when her mother, in searching a closet rarely visited, found, behind piles of linen, a parcel of little books filled with hieroglyphics. These were at length deciphered by her parents, and proved to be metrical explanations of rudely-sketched pictures on the opposite page; the explanations being made in Roman letters, most unartistically formed and disposed. Not long after, Lucretia came running to her mother in great agitation, the tears trickling down her cheeks, and said, “O mamma! mamma! how could you treat me so? My little books—you have shown them to papa,—Anne,—Eliza! I know you have. O, what shall I do?” Her mother tried to soothe the child, and promised never to do so again. “O mamma,” replied she, a gleam of sunshine illumining the drops, “I am not afraid of that, for I have burned them all.” “This reserve,” says one whose kindred spirit could sympathize with that of 11 Lucretia, “proceeded from nothing cold or exclusive in her character; never was there a more loving or sympathetic creature. It would be difficult to say which was most rare, her modesty, or the genius it sanctified.”

It does not surprise us to learn that, under the guidance of pious parents, religion took a deep and enduring hold, at a very early period, upon so susceptible a child. From her earliest years, she evinced a fear of doing any thing displeasing in the sight of God; and if, in her gayest sallies, she caught a look of disapprobation from her mother, she would ask, with the most artless simplicity, “O mother, was that wicked?” Her extreme conscientiousness exhibited itself in a manner quite remarkable in a child. Some of the friends of the family thought their mode of education not the most judicious, and that her devoting so much time to study was not consistent with the pecuniary circumstances and the physical condition of the mother, who, being a confirmed invalid, was able to take little part in the ordinary family labors. Lucretia’s parents, however, did not concur in this opinion, and carefully concealed it from her; but she in some manner became aware of its existence, and voluntarily acted in accordance with it. The real feeling which prompted this conduct was artlessly made apparent by the incident which led her to return to her favorite occupation. When she was about twelve, she attended her father to a “birth-night” ball. The next day, an elder sister found her absorbed in composition. “She had sketched an urn, and written two stanzas under it. She was persuaded to show them to her 12 mother. She brought them blushing and trembling. Her mother was ill, in bed; but she expressed her delight with such unequivocal animation, that the child’s face changed from doubt to rapture, and she seized the paper, ran away, and immediately added the concluding stanzas. When they were finished, her mother pressed her to her bosom, wept with delight, and promised her all the aid and encouragement she could give her. The sensitive child burst into tears. ‘And do you wish me to write, mamma? and will papa approve? and will it be right that I should do so?’” The following are the verses:—

“And does a hero’s dust lie here?

Columbia, gaze, and drop a tear:

His country’s and the orphan’s friend,

See thousands o’er his ashes bend.

Among the heroes of the age,

He was the warrior and the sage;

He left a train of glory bright,

Which never will be hid in night.

The toils of war and danger past,

He reaps a rich reward at last;

His pure soul mounts on cherub’s wings,

And now with saints and angels sings.

The brightest on the list of Fame,

In golden letters shines his name;

Her trump shall sound it through the world,

And the striped banner ne’er be furled.

And every sex, and every age,

From lisping boy to learned sage,

The widow, and her orphan son,

Revere the name of Washington!”

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A literary friend, to whom these verses were shown, felt some doubts as to Lucretia’s being the real author of the stanzas, and suffered them to appear. The feeling that her rectitude was impeached made the sensitive girl actually ill; but a poetic remonstrance, which she prepared on the occasion, removed every doubt.

From what has been before said, it must not be supposed that Lucretia was suffered to abandon herself to literary avocations. She had her prescribed tasks in sewing, and other customary employments, which she generally performed with fidelity and with wonderful celerity; sometimes, however, the voice of her muse struck her in the midst, and “enchanted she dropped each earthly care.” One day, she had promised to do a certain piece of sewing, and had eagerly run for her basket; she was absent long, and on her return found that the work was done. “Where have you been, Lucretia?” said her mother, justly displeased. “O mamma,” she replied, “I did forget; I am grieved. As I passed the window, I saw a solitary sweet pea. I thought they were all gone. This was alone. I ran to smell it, but, before I could reach it, a gust of wind broke the stem. I turned away disappointed, and was coming back to you; but as I passed the table, there stood the inkstand, and I forgot you.” The following beautiful verses insured the forgiveness of her mother:—

“The last flower of the garden was blooming alone,

The last rays of the sun on its blushing leaves shone;

Still a glittering drop on its bosom reclined,

And a few half-blown buds ’midst its leaves were entwined.

Say, lovely one, say, why lingerest thou here?

And why on thy bosom reclines the bright tear?

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’Tis the tear of the zephyr—for summer ’twas shed,

And for all thy companions now withered and dead.

Why lingerest thou here, when around thee are strown

The flowers once so lovely, by autumn blasts blown?

Say, why, sweetest floweret, the last of thy race,

Why lingerest thou here the lone garden to grace?

As I spoke, a rough blast, sent by winter’s own hand,

Whistled by me, and bent its sweet head to the sand;

I hastened to raise it—the dew-drop had fled,

And the once lovely flower was withered and dead.”

All her short pieces were composed with equal rapidity; and sometimes she wished that she had two pair of hands to record as fast as her muse dictated. These she composed wherever she chanced to be when the spirit of poesy came over her. In the midst of her family, blind and deaf to all around her, she held sweet communion with her muse. But when composing her longer poems, as “Amie Khan,” or “Chicomicos,” she required complete seclusion. She retired to her own room, closed the blinds, and placed her Æolian harp in the window. Her mother gives this graphic description: “I entered her room,—she was sitting with scarcely light enough to discern the characters she was tracing; her harp was in the window, touched by a breeze just sufficient to rouse the spirit of harmony; her comb had fallen on the floor, and her long, dark ringlets hung in rich profusion over her neck and shoulders; her cheek glowed with animation; her lips were half unclosed; her full, dark eye was radiant with the light of genius, and beaming with sensibility; her head rested on her left hand, while she 15 held her pen in her right. She looked like the inhabitant of another sphere. She was so wholly absorbed that she did not observe my entrance. I looked over her shoulder, and read the following lines:—

‘What heavenly music strikes my ravished ear,

So soft, so melancholy, and so clear?

And do the tuneful nine then touch the lyre,

To fill each bosom with poetic fire?

Or does some angel strike the sounding strings,

Who caught from echo the wild note he sings?

But, ah! another strain! how sweet! how wild!

Now, rushing low, ’tis soothing, soft, and mild.’”

The noise made by her mother roused Lucretia, who soon afterwards brought her the preceding verses, with the following added to them, being an address to her Æolian harp:—

“And tell me now, ye spirits of the wind,

O, tell me where those artless notes to find—

So lofty now, so loud, so sweet, so clear,

That even angels might delighted hear.

But hark! those notes again majestic rise,

As though some spirit, banished from the skies,

Had hither fled to charm Æolus wild,

And teach him other music, sweet and mild.

Then hither fly, sweet mourner of the air,

Then hither fly, and to my harp repair;

At twilight chant the melancholy lay,

And charm the sorrows of thy soul away.”

Her parents indulged her in the utmost latitude in her reading. History, profane and sacred, novels, poetry, and other works of imagination, by turns occupied 16 her. Before she was twelve, she had read the English poets. Dramatic works possessed a great charm for her, and her devotion to Shakspeare is expressed in the following verses, written in her fifteenth year:—

“Shakspeare, with all thy faults, (and few have more,)

I love thee still, and still will con thee o’er.

Heaven, in compassion to man’s erring heart,

Gave thee of virtue, then of vice, a part,

Lest we, in wonder here, should bow before thee,

Break God’s commandment, worship, and adore thee;

But admiration, now, and sorrow join;

His works we reverence, while we pity thine.”

But above all other books she valued the Bible. The more poetical parts of the Old Testament she almost committed to memory; and the New Testament, especially those parts which relate the life of our Savior, was studied by her, and excited in her the deepest emotions. As an evidence of this we give the following verses, written in her thirteenth year:—

“THE GOOD SHEPHERD.

“The shepherd feeds his fleecy flock with care,

And mourns to find one little lamb has strayed;

He, unfatigued, roams through the midnight air,

O’er hills, o’er rocks, and through the mossy glade.

But when that lamb is found, what joy is seen

Depicted on the careful shepherd’s face,

When, sporting o’er the smooth and level green,

He sees his favorite charge is in its place!

Thus the great Shepherd of his flock doth mourn,

When from his fold a wayward lamb has strayed,

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And thus with mercy he receives him home,

When the poor soul his Lord has disobeyed.

There is great joy among the saints in heaven,

When one repentant soul has found its God;

For Christ, his Shepherd, hath his ransom given,

And sealed it with his own redeeming blood.”

We have now arrived at a period which most girls look forward to as an epoch in their life—the first ball! Lucretia had been to dancing-school, and took great delight in that exercise. In the hope of overcoming her painful timidity, her mother had consented to her attending the public assemblies of Plattsburg. She was fourteen. The day arrived, and the important subject of dress was the matter of consultation between Mrs. Davidson and her eldest daughter, Lucretia sitting by, absorbed in one of the Waverley novels. “What shall Lucy wear?” asked the sister. “Come, Lucretia; what color will you wear to-night?” “Where?” “Where? why, to the assembly, to be sure.” “Is it to-night? so it is!” and she tossed aside her book, and danced delighted about the room. The question of dress was now settled, and Lucretia was soon again absorbed in her book. At the hour for dressing, the delights of the ball again filled her imagination, and she set about the offices of the toilet with interest. Her sister was to dress her hair; but, when the time came, she was missing. She was called in vain, and was at length found in the parlor, in the dusky twilight, writing poetry. “She returned from the assembly,” says her mother, “wild with delight.” “O mamma,” said she, “I wish you had been there. When I first entered, the glare of light dazzled my 18 eyes; my head whirled, and I felt as if I were treading on air; all was so gay, so brilliant! But I grew tired at last, and was glad to hear sister say it was time to go home.”

About the same period, life received for her a new object of interest. Her little sister Margaret, the frequent subject of her verses, was born. The following are among the earliest stanzas addressed to her:—

“Sweet babe, I cannot hope that thou’lt be freed

From woes, to all since earliest time decreed;

But may’st thou be with resignation blessed,

To bear each evil, howsoe’er distressed.

May Hope her anchor lend amid the storm,

And o’er the tempest rear her angel form;

May sweet Benevolence, whose words are peace,

To the rude whirlwind softly whisper, Cease!

And may Religion, Heaven’s own darling child,

Teach thee at human cares and griefs to smile;

Teach thee to look beyond that world of woe,

To heaven’s high font, whence mercies ever flow.

And when this vale of years is safely passed,

When death’s dark curtain shuts the scene at last,

May thy freed spirit leave this earthly sod,

And fly to seek the bosom of thy God.”

Lucretia was now placed in trying circumstances. Her mother, after the birth of Margaret, was very ill; the infant, too, was ill; and, to add to their misfortunes, the nurse was taken sick. Lucretia’s eldest sister had recently been married, and had removed to Canada; so that upon her devolved great and manifold duties.

The manner in which she discharged these shall be 19 related in her mother’s own words. “Lucretia astonished us all. She took her station in my sick-room, and devoted herself wholly to the mother and the child; and when my recovery became doubtful, instead of resigning herself to grief, her exertions were redoubled, not only for the comfort of the sick, but she was an angel of consolation to her afflicted father. We were amazed at the exertions she made, and the fatigue she endured; for with nerves so weak, a constitution so delicate, and a sensibility so exquisite, we trembled lest she should sink with anxiety and fatigue. Until it ceased to be necessary, she performed not only the duties of a nurse, but acted as superintendent of the household.” Neither did she relinquish her domestic avocations when her mother became better; “she did not so much yield to her ruling passion as to look into a book, or take up a pen, lest she should again become so absorbed in them as to neglect to perform those little offices which a feeble, affectionate mother had a right to claim at her hands.” As was to be expected, her mental and physical health suffered; her cheek became pale, and her spirits dejected. Her mother became alarmed, and expressed her apprehensions. “I am not ill, mamma,” said she, “only out of spirits.” An explanation ensued, and the mother convinced the child that her duty did not require a total abandonment of the pursuits she longed for, but a judicious intermingling of literary with domestic labors. The good consequences of the change were soon manifest in the restored health and cheerfulness of Lucretia.

It was about this period (1823-4) that she composed 20 the longest of her published poems, “Amie Khan,” an Oriental tale, which would do credit to much older and more practised writers.

In 1824, an old friend of her mother’s, Moss Kent, Esq., visited Plattsburg. He had never seen Lucretia, but had formed a high opinion of her genius from some of her productions, which had been shown to him by his sister. Her appearance at this time was well calculated to confirm his prepossessions in her favor. She is thus described by her biographer: “Miss Davidson was just sixteen. Her complexion was the most beautiful brunette, clear and brilliant, of that warm tint that seems to belong to lands of the sun, rather than to our chilled regions; indeed, her whole organization, mental as well as physical, her deep and quick sensibility, her early development, were characteristics of a warmer clime than ours: her stature was of the middle height; her form slight and symmetrical; her hair profuse, dark, and curling; her mouth and nose regular, and as beautiful as if they had been chiselled by an inspired artist; and through this fitting medium beamed her angelic spirit.”

Charmed by all he saw and read, Mr. Kent at once made the proposal to her parents to adopt Lucretia as his own child. The proposal was in part accepted, and, in accordance with his wishes, it was determined to send her to the Troy Seminary. Her feelings on this occasion are thus made known by letter to her sister: “What think you? Ere another moon shall fill, ‘round as my shield,’ I shall be at Mrs. Willard’s Seminary. In a fortnight I shall probably have left Plattsburg, not to return at least until the expiration of 21 six months. O, I am so delighted, so happy! I shall scarcely eat, drink, or sleep, for a month to come. You must write to me often, and you must not laugh when you think of poor Lucy in the far-famed city of Troy, dropping handkerchiefs, keys, gloves, &c.; in short, something of every thing I have. It is well if you can read what I have written, for papa and mamma are talking, and my head whirls like a top. O, how my poor head aches! Such a surprise as I have had!”

She left home November 24, 1824, to appearance full of health and of delight at the opportunities of acquiring knowledge which were to be open to her. At parting she left the following verses:—

“TO MY MOTHER.

“O Thou whose care sustained my infant years,

And taught my prattling lip each note of love,

Whose soothing voice breathed comfort to my fears,

And round my brow hope’s brightest garland wove,—

To thee my lay is due, the simple song,

Which nature gave me at life’s opening day;

To thee these rude, these untaught strains belong,

Whose heart indulgent will not spurn my lay.

O, say, amid this wilderness of life,

What bosom would have throbbed like thine for me?

Who would have smiled responsive? Who, in grief,

Would e’er have felt and, feeling, grieved like thee?

Who would have guarded, with a falcon eye,

Each trembling footstep, or each sport of fear?

Who would have marked my bosom bounding high,

And clasped me to her heart with love’s bright tear?

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Who would have hung around my sleepless couch,

And fanned, with anxious hand, my burning brow?

Who would have fondly pressed my fevered lip,

In all the agony of love and woe?

None but a mother—none but one like thee,

Whose bloom has faded in the midnight watch,

Whose eye, for me, has lost its witchery,

Whose form has felt disease’s mildew touch.

Yes, thou hast lighted me to health and life,

By the bright lustre of thy youthful bloom;

Yes, thou hast wept so oft o’er every grief,

That woe hath traced thy brow with marks of gloom.

O, then, to thee this rude and simple song,

Which breathes of thankfulness and love for thee,

To thee, my mother, shall this lay belong,

Whose life is spent in toil and care for me.”

The following extracts from a letter to her mother tell us of the state of her feelings when established at the Seminary.

“December 24, 1824. Here I am at last; and what a naughty girl I was, when I was at aunt Schuyler’s, that I did not write you every thing! But to tell the truth, I was topsy-turvy, and so I am now. But in despite of calls from the young ladies, and of a hundred new faces, and new names which are constantly ringing in my ears, I have set myself down, and will not rise until I have written an account of every thing to my dear mother. I am contented; yet, notwithstanding, I have once or twice turned a wistful glance towards my dear-loved home. Amidst all the parade of wealth, in the splendid apartments of luxury, 23 I can assure you, my dearest mother, that I had rather be with you, in our own lowly home, than in the midst of all this ceremony.” “O mamma, I like Mrs. W. ‘And so this is my little girl,’ said she, and took me affectionately by the hand. O, I want to see you so much! But I must not think of it now; I must learn as fast as I can, and think only of my studies. Dear, dear little Margaret! Kiss her and the little boys for me. How is dear father getting on in this rattling world?”

The transplanting a flower of so delicate a constitution from the clear air of Lake Champlain to the close atmosphere of a city boarding-school, was followed by consequences which might have been expected. Almost from her arrival, Lucretia’s letters speak of ill-health and unhappiness, aggravated by the fear that her progress in studies, thus frequently interrupted, would disappoint the expectations of her kind benefactor, for whom she seems to have cherished the most affectionate and grateful feelings. Neither do the excitements of a large public seminary seem well adapted to one of so sensitive a nature. In the course of time, the public examination approached, and for the two months preceding it, she was kept in a state of constant agitation and dread, which is thus spoken of in a half-serious, half-jesting letter to her mother: “We are all engaged, heart and hand, preparing for this awful examination. O, how I dread it! But there is no retreat. I must stand firm to my post, or experience the anger, vengeance, and punishments, which will, in case of delinquency or flight, be exercised with the most unforgiving acrimony. We are 24 in such cases excommunicated, henceforth and forever, under the awful ban of holy Seminary; and the evil eye of false report is upon us. O mamma, I do, though, jesting apart, dread this examination; but nothing short of real and absolute sickness can excuse a scholar in the eyes of Mrs. W. Even that will not do in the Trojan world around us; for if a young lady is ill at examination, they say with a sneer, ‘O, she is ill of an examination fever!’ Thus you see, mamma, we have no mercy either from friends or foes. We must ‘do or die.’ Tell Morris he must write to me. Kiss dear, dear little Margaret for me, and don’t let her forget poor sister Luly; and tell all who inquire for me that I am well, but in awful dread of a great examination.”

She was interrupted, in her course of preparation for the examination, by an illness so serious as to require the attendance of a physician. But no sooner was she convalescent than she was suffered to renew her suicidal course. “I shall rise between two and four now every morning, till the dreaded day is past. I rose the other night at twelve, but was ordered back to bed again. You see, mamma, I shall have a chance to become an early riser here.” “Had I not written you that I was coming home, I think I should not have seen you this winter. All my friends think I had better remain here, as the journey will be long and cold; but O, there is at that journey’s end, which would tempt me through the wilds of Siberia—father, mother, brothers, sisters, home. Yes, I shall come.” “The dreaded examination is now going on, my dear mother. To-morrow evening, which will be the last, 25 is always the most crowded, and is the time fixed upon for my entrée upon the field of action. O, I hope I shall not disgrace myself. It is the rule here to reserve the best classes till the last; so I suppose I may take it as a compliment that we are delayed.” “The examination is over. E. did herself and her native village honor; but as for your poor Luly, she acquitted herself, I trust, decently. O mamma, I was so frightened! But although my face glowed and my voice trembled, I did make out to get through, for I knew my lessons. The room was crowded to suffocation. All was still; the fall of a pin could have been heard; and I tremble when I think of it even now.”

The expected visit to her home was relinquished, and she passed the vacation with her friends in the vicinity of Troy. An incident which occurred as she was crossing the Hudson on her return to Troy, is thus described: “Uncle went to the ferry with me, where we met Mr. P. Uncle placed me under his care, and, snugly seated by his side, I expected a very pleasant ride, with a very pleasant gentleman. All was pleasant, except that we expected every instant that all the ice in the Hudson would come drifting against us, and shut in scow, stage and all, or sink us to the bottom, which, in either case, you know, mother, would not have been quite so agreeable. We had just pushed off from the shore, I watching the ice with anxious eyes, when, lo! the two leaders made a tremendous plunge, and tumbled headlong into the river. I felt the carriage following fast after; the other two horses pulled back with all their power, 26 but the leaders were dragging them down, dashing, and plunging, and flouncing, in the water. ‘Mr. P., in mercy let us get out!’ said I. But as he did not see the horses, he felt no alarm. The moment I informed him they were overboard, he opened the door, and cried, ‘Get out and save yourself, if possible; I am old and stiff, but I will follow you in an instant.’ ‘Out with the lady! let the lady out!’ shouted several voices at once; ‘the other horses are about to plunge, and then all will be over.’ I made a lighter spring than many a lady does in a cotillon, and jumped upon a cake of ice. Mr. P. followed, and we stood (I trembling like a leaf) expecting every moment that the next plunge of the drowning horses would detach the piece of ice upon which we were standing, and send us adrift; but, thank Heaven, after working for ten or fifteen minutes, by dint of ropes, and cutting them away from the other horses, they dragged the poor creatures out more dead than alive. Mother, don’t you think I displayed some courage? I jumped into the stage again, and shut the door, while Mr. P. remained outside, watching the movement of affairs. We at length reached here, and I am alive, as you see, to tell the story of my woes.”

At the spring vacation, Lucretia returned to her loved home; but the joy of her parents at once more embracing their darling daughter, was damped by observing that the fell destroyer had set its well-known mark upon her cheek. Her father called in another physician to consult with him, and, strange to say, it was decided that she should return to school in Albany, where she arrived May, 1825, and where her reception, 27 her accommodations and prospects, seem to have given her much delight, and where she entered upon her career of study with her wonted ardor. But her physical strength could not sustain the demands upon it. She thus writes to her mother: “I am very wretched: am I never to hear from you again? I am homesick. I know I am foolish, but I cannot help it. To tell the truth, I am half sick, I am so weak, so languid. I cannot eat. I am nervous; I know I am. I weep most of the time. I have blotted the paper so that I cannot write. I cannot study much longer if I do not hear from you.” Her disease appears now to have assumed a fixed character, and in her next letter, she expresses a fear that it is beyond the reach of human art. Her mother, herself ill, set off at once for Albany, and was received by her child with rapture. “O mamma, I thought I should never have seen you again! But, now I have you here, I can lay my aching head upon your bosom. I shall soon be better.”

The journey homeward, though made in the heats of July, was attended with less suffering than was anticipated. “Her joy,” says her mother, “upon finding herself at home, operated for a time like magic.” The progress of disease seemed to be suspended. Those around her received new hope; but she herself was not deceived, and she calmly waited for that great change which for her possessed no terrors, for her hopes as to the future rested upon a sure foundation.

But one fear disturbed her, to which she refers in the following, the last piece she ever composed, and which is left unfinished:—

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“There is a something which I dread;

It is a dark and fearful thing;

It steals along with withering tread,

Or sweeps on wild destruction’s wing.

That thought comes o’er me in the hour

Of grief, of sickness, or of sadness;

’Tis not the dread of death; ’tis more,—

It is the dread of madness.

O, may these throbbing pulses pause,

Forgetful of their feverish course;

May this hot brain, which, burning, glows

With all a fiery whirlpool’s force,—

Be cold, and motionless, and still,

A tenant of its lowly bed;

But let not dark delirium steal——”

She died on the 27th August, 1825. Her literary labors will surprise all who remember that she had not yet reached her seventeenth birthday. They consist of two hundred and seventy-eight poetical pieces, of which there are five regular poems, of several cantos each; three unfinished romances; a complete tragedy, written at thirteen years of age; and twenty-four school exercises; besides letters, of which forty are preserved, written in the course of a few months, to her mother alone. Indeed, we cannot but look upon Lucretia Davidson as one of the wonders of humanity. Her early productions excited even the admiration of Byron; and the delicacy, dutifulness, and exaltation, of her character seemed almost to have realized angelic purity and beauty of soul, in a tenement of clay.

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The little Margaret, as we have seen, was the object of Lucretia’s fondest affection. She used to gaze upon her little sister with delight, and, remarking the brightness and beauty of her eyes, would exclaim, “She must, she will be a poet!” She did not live to see her prediction verified, but to use her mother’s fond expressions, “On ascending to the skies, it seemed as if her poetic mantle fell, like a robe of light, on her infant sister.”

Though Margaret was but two years and a half old, the death of her sister made a strong impression on her, and an incident which occurred a few months afterwards showed that she appreciated her character. As Mrs. Davidson was seated, at twilight, conversing with a female friend, Margaret entered the room with a light, elastic step, for which she was remarked. “That child never walks,” said the lady; then turning to her, she said, “Margaret, where are you flying now?” “To heaven!” replied Margaret, pointing up with her fingers, “to meet my sister Lucretia, when I get my new wings.” “Your new wings! When will you get them?” “O, soon, very soon; and then I shall fly!” “She loved,” says her mother, “to sit, hour after hour, on a cushion at my feet, her little arms resting upon my lap, and her full, dark eyes fixed upon mine, listening to anecdotes of her sister’s life, and details of the events which preceded her death, often exclaiming, while her face beamed with mingled emotions, ‘O mamma, I will try to fill her place! Teach me to be like her!’”

Warned by their dreadful experience in the former instance, the parents endeavored to repress the intellectual 30 activity of Margaret. She was not taught to read till she was four years old; but so rapid was her progress after that period, under her mother’s instructions, that at six she read not only well, but elegantly, and was wont to solace her mother’s hours of protracted illness, by reading to her the works of Thomson, Campbell, Cowper, Milton, Byron, Scott, &c., in which she took enthusiastic delight, and in discriminating their beauties and defects, she showed wonderful taste and intelligence. The Scriptures were her daily study; not hurried over as a task, but she would spend an hour or two in commenting with her mother upon the chapter she had read.

“Her religious impressions,” says her mother, “seemed to be interwoven with her existence. From the very first exercise of reason, she evinced strong devotional feelings, and, although she loved play, she would at any time prefer seating herself beside me, and, with every faculty absorbed in the subject, listen while I attempted to recount the wonders of Providence, and point out the wisdom and benevolence of God, as manifested in the works of creation.”

About the age of six years, she began to exhibit a talent for rhyming. One of her earliest pieces, if not remarkable for poetical merit, is worthy of transcription, from the incident which gave occasion to its composition; it also exhibits in a striking manner that conscientiousness for which her sister was so distinguished, and a power of self-examination of rare existence in one so young.

Her mother reproved her for some trifling act of disobedience upon which she attempted to justify herself, 31 and for this aggravation of the fault was banished to her chamber until she should become sensible of her error. Two hours elapsed, and she continued obstinate; vindicating herself, and accusing her mother of injustice. Mrs. D. reasoned with her, exhorting her to pray to God to assist her in gaining that meekness and humility which had characterized our Savior, and reminding her of the example he had set of obedience to parents. An hour or two afterwards, Margaret came running in, threw her arms around her mother’s neck, and, sobbing, put into her hands these verses:—

“Forgiven by my Savior dear

For all the wrongs I’ve done,

What other wish could I have here?

Alas! there yet is one.

I know my God has pardoned me;

I know he loves me still;

I wish I may forgiven be

By her I’ve used so ill.

Good resolutions I have made,

And thought I loved my Lord;

But, ah! I trusted in myself,

And broke my foolish word.

But give me strength, O Lord, to trust

For help alone in thee;

Thou know’st my inmost feelings best;

O, teach me to obey.”

She took little pleasure in the common sports of children; her amusements were almost entirely intellectual. If she played with a doll, or a kitten, she invested it with some historical or dramatic character, 32 and whether Mary, queen of Scots, or Elizabeth, the character was always well sustained.

In her seventh year, her health became visibly delicate, and she was taken to Saratoga springs and to New York, from which excursions she derived much physical advantage, and great intellectual pleasure; but she returned to her native village with feelings of admiration and enthusiasm for its natural beauties, heightened by contrast. As her health began again to fail in the autumn, and the vicinity to the lake seemed unfavorable to the health of Mrs. Davidson, the family went to Canada to pass the winter with the eldest daughter.

Margaret grew stronger, but her mother derived no benefit from the change, and for eighteen months remained a helpless invalid, during which time her little daughter was her constant companion and attendant. “Her tender solicitude,” says Mrs. D., “endeared her to me beyond any other earthly thing. Although under the roof of a beloved and affectionate daughter, and having constantly with me an experienced and judicious nurse, yet the soft and gentle voice of my little darling was more than medicine to my worn-out frame. If her delicate hand smoothed my pillow, it was soft to my aching temples, and her sweet smile would cheer me in the lowest depths of despondency. She would draw for me—read to me—and often, when writing at her little table, would surprise me by some tribute of love, which never failed to operate as a cordial to my heart. At a time when my life was despaired of, she wrote the following verses while sitting at my bed:—

33

‘I’ll to thy arms in rapture fly,

And wipe the tear that dims thine eye;

Thy pleasure will be my delight,

Till thy pure spirit takes its flight.

When left alone, when thou art gone,

Yet still I will not feel alone;

Thy spirit still will hover near,

And guard thy orphan daughter here.’”

Margaret continued to increase in strength until January, 1833, when she was attacked by scarlet fever, under which she lingered many weeks. In the month of May, she had, however, so far recovered as to accompany her mother, now convalescent, on a visit to New York. Here she was the delight of the relatives with whom she resided, and the suggester of many new sources of amusement to her youthful companions. One of her projects was to get up a dramatic entertainment, for which she was to write the play. Indeed, she directed the whole arrangements, although she had never but once been to a theatre, and that on her former visit to New York. The preparations occupied several days, and, being nearly completed, Margaret was called upon to produce the play. “O,” she replied, “I have not written it yet.” “How is this? Do you make the dresses first, and then write the play to suit them?” “O,” replied she, “the writing of the play is the easiest part of the preparation; it will be ready before the dresses.” In two days she produced her drama; “which,” says Mr. Irving, “is a curious specimen of the prompt talent of this most ingenious child, and by no means more incongruous in 34 its incidents than many current dramas by veteran and experienced playwrights.”

Though it was the study of her relatives to make her residence in New York as agreeable to her as possible, the heart of Margaret yearned for her home: her feelings are expressed in the following lines:—

“I would fly from the city, would fly from its care,

To my own native plants and my flowerets so fair;

To the cool grassy shade and the rivulet bright,

Which reflects the pale moon on its bosom of light.

Again would I view the old mansion so dear,

Where I sported a babe, without sorrow or fear;

I would leave this great city, so brilliant and gay,

For a peep at my home on this fine summer day.

I have friends whom I love, and would leave with regret,

But the love of my home, O, ’tis tenderer yet!

There a sister reposes unconscious in death;

’Twas there she first drew, and there yielded, her breath:

A father I love is away from me now—

O, could I but print a sweet kiss on his brow,

Or smooth the gray locks, to my fond heart so dear,

How quickly would vanish each trace of a tear!

Attentive I listen to pleasure’s gay call,

But my own darling home, it is dearer than all.”

In the autumn the travellers turned their faces homewards, but it was not to the home of Margaret’s tender longings. The wintry winds of Lake Champlain were deemed too severe for the invalids, and the family took up its residence at Ballston. Margaret’s feelings upon this disappointment are thus recorded:—

“MY NATIVE LAKE.

“Thy verdant banks, thy lucid stream,

Lit by the sun’s resplendent beam,

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Reflect each bending tree so light

Upon thy bounding bosom bright!

Could I but see thee once again,

My own, my beautiful Champlain!

The little isles that deck thy breast,

And calmly on thy bottom rest,

How often, in my childish glee,

I’ve sported round them, bright and free!

Could I but see thee once again,

My own, my beautiful Champlain!

How oft I’ve watched the freshening shower

Bending the summer tree and flower,

And felt my little heart beat high

As the bright rainbow graced the sky!

Could I but see thee once again,

My own, my beautiful Champlain!

And shall I never see thee more,

My native lake, my much-loved shore?

And must I bid a long adieu,

My dear, my infant home, to you?

Shall I not see thee once again,

My own, my beautiful Champlain?”

But Margaret was happy; the family were reunited, and she had health sufficient to allow her to pursue her studies, still under her mother’s direction. She was fond, too, of devising little plans for intellectual improvement and amusement: among others, a weekly newspaper was issued in manuscript, called the “Juvenile Aspirant.” But this happiness was soon clouded. Her own severe illness excited alarming fears; and hardly was she convalescent, when, in the spring of 1834, intelligence was received from 36 Canada of the death of her eldest sister. This was a severe shock, for she had always looked up to this only surviving sister as to one who would supply the place of her seemingly dying mother. But she forgot her own grief in trying to solace that of her mother. Her feelings, as usual, were expressed in verses, which are as remarkable for their strain of sober piety as for poetical merit. The following are portions of an address—

“TO MY MOTHER, OPPRESSED WITH SORROW.

“Weep, O my mother! I will bid thee weep,

For grief like thine requires the aid of tears;

But O, I would not see thy bosom thus

Bowed down to earth, with anguish so severe;

I would not see thine ardent feelings crushed,

Deadened to all save sorrow’s thrilling tone,

Like the pale flower, which hangs its drooping head

Beneath the chilling blasts of Eolus!

. . . . . . . . . .

When love would seek to lead thy heart from grief,

And fondly pleads one cheering look to view,

A sad, a faint, sad smile one instant gleams

Athwart the brow where sorrow sits enshrined,

Brooding o’er ruins of what once was fair;

But like departing sunset, as it throws

One farewell shadow o’er the sleeping earth,

Thus, thus it fades! and sorrow more profound

Dwells on each feature where a smile, so cold,

It scarcely might be called the mockery

Of cheerful peace, but just before had been.

. . . . . . . . . .

But, O my mother, weep not thus for her,

The rose, just blown, transported to its home;

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Nor weep that her angelic soul has found

A resting-place with God.

O, let the eye of heaven-born Faith disperse

The darkening mists of earthly grief, and pierce

The clouds which shadow dull mortality!

Gaze on the heaven of glory crowned with light,

Where rests thine own sweet child with radiant brow,

In the same voice which charmed her father’s halls,

Chanting sweet anthems to her Maker’s praise,

And watching with delight the gentle buds

Which she had lived to mourn; watching thine own,

My mother! the soft, unfolding blossoms,

Which, ere the breath of earthly sin could taint,

Departed to their Savior, there to wait

For thy fond spirit in the home of bliss!

The angel babes have found a sister mother;

But when thy soul shall pass from earth away,

The little cherubs then shall cling to thee,

And then, sweet guardian, welcome thee with joy,

Protector of their helpless infancy,

Who taught them how to reach that happy home.”

. . . . . . . . . .

So strong and healthful did she seem during the ensuing summer, that her mother began to indulge hopes of raising the tender plant to maturity. But winter brought with it a new attack of sickness, and from December to March the little sufferer languished on her bed. During this period, her mind remained inactive; but with returning health it broke forth in a manner that excited alarm. “In conversation,” says her mother, “her sallies of wit were dazzling; she composed and wrote incessantly, or rather would have done so, had I not interposed my authority to prevent this unceasing tax upon both her mental and physical strength. She seemed to exist only in the regions of poetry.”

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There was a faint return of health, followed by a new attack of disease; indeed, the remainder of her brief sojourn in this world presents the usual vicissitudes attendant upon her disease—short intervals of health, which she devoted to study, amid long and dreary periods of illness, which she bore with exemplary patience. It would be painful to follow her through these vicissitudes. We need only note those events and changes which produced a marked effect upon her feelings, and which she has recorded in verse.

In the autumn of 1835, the family removed to “Ruremont,” an old-fashioned country house near New York, on the banks of Long Island Sound. The character and situation of this place seized powerfully on Margaret’s imagination. “The curious structure of this old-fashioned house,” says her mother, “its picturesque appearance, the varied and beautiful grounds around it, called up a thousand poetic images and romantic ideas. A long gallery, a winding staircase, a dark, narrow passage, a trap-door, large apartments with massive doors and heavy iron bolts and bars,—all set her mind teeming with recollections of what she had read, and imagination of old castles, &c.” Perhaps it was under the influence of feelings thus suggested that she composed the following

“STANZAS.

“O for the pinions of a bird,

To bear me far away,

Where songs of other lands are heard,

And other waters play!—

For some aërial car, to fly

On, through the realms of light,

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To regions rife with poesy,

And teeming with delight.

O’er many a wild and classic stream

In ecstasy I’d bend,

And hail each ivy-covered tower

As though it were a friend;

Through many a shadowy grove, and round

Full many a cloistered hall,

And corridors, where every step

With echoing peal doth fall.

. . . . . . . . . .

O, what unmingled pleasure then

My youthful heart would feel,

And o’er its thrilling chords each thought

Of former days would steal!

. . . . . . . . . .

Amid the scenes of past delight,

Or misery, I’d roam,

Where ruthless tyrants swayed in might,

Where princes found a home.

. . . . . . . . . .

I’d stand where proudest kings have stood,

Or kneel where slaves have knelt,

Till, rapt in magic solitude,

I feel what they have felt.”

Margaret now felt comparatively well, and was eager to resume her studies. She was indulged so far as to be permitted to accompany her father three times to the city, where she took lessons in French, music, and dancing. To the Christmas holidays she looked forward as a season of delight; she had prepared a drama of six acts for the domestic entertainment, and the back parlor was to be fitted up for a 40 theatre, her little brothers being her fellow-laborers. But her anticipations were disappointed. Two of her brothers were taken ill; and one of them, a beautiful boy of nine, never recovered. “This,” says her mother, “was Margaret’s first acquaintance with death. She saw her sweet little play-fellow reclining upon my bosom during his last agonies; she witnessed the bright glow which flashed upon his long-faded cheek; she beheld the unearthly light of his beautiful eye, as he pressed his dying lips to mine, and exclaimed, ‘Mother, dear mother, the last hour has come!’ It was indeed an hour of anguish. Its effect upon her youthful mind was as lasting as her life. The sudden change from life and animation to the still unconsciousness of death, for a time almost paralyzed her. The first thing that aroused her to a sense of what was going on about her, was the thought of my bereavement, and a conviction that it was her province to console me.” But Mrs. Davidson soon presents a sadder picture: “My own weak frame was unable longer to sustain the effects of long watching and deep grief. I had not only lost my lovely boy, but I felt a strong conviction that I must soon resign my Margaret. Although she still persisted in the belief that she was well, the irritating cough, the hectic flush, the hurried beating of the heart, and the drenching night perspirations, confirmed me in this belief, and I sank under this accumulated weight of affliction. For three weeks I hovered on the borders of the grave, and, when I arose from this bed of pain, it was to witness the rupture of a blood-vessel in her lungs, caused by exertions to suppress a cough. I 41 was compelled to conceal every appearance of alarm, lest agitation of her mind should produce fatal consequences. As I seated myself by her, she raised her speaking eyes to mine with a mournful, inquiring gaze, and, as she read the anguish which I could not conceal, she turned away with a look of despair.” There no longer remained room for hope, and all that remained to be done was to smooth the pathway to the grave.

Although Margaret endeavored to persuade herself that she was well, yet, from the change that took place in her habits in the autumn of 1836, it is evident that she knew her real situation. In compliance with her mother’s oft-repeated advice, she gave up her studies, and sought by light reading and trivial employments to “kill time.” Of the struggles which it cost her thus to pass six months, the following incident, as related by her mother, will inform us: “She was seated one day by my side, weary and restless, scarcely knowing what to do with herself, when, marking, the traces of grief upon my face, she threw her arms about my neck, and, kissing me, exclaimed, ‘My dear, dear mother!’ ‘What is it affects you now, my child?’ ‘O, I know you are longing for something from my pen.’ I saw the secret craving of the spirit that gave rise to the suggestion. ‘I do indeed, my dear, delight in the effusions of your pen, but the exertion will injure you.’ ‘Mamma, I must write! I can hold out no longer! I will return to my pen, my pencil, and my books, and shall again be happy.’” The following verses, written soon after, show the state of her feelings:—

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“Earth, thou hast but nought to satisfy

The cravings of immortal mind;

Earth, thou hast nothing pure and high,

The soaring, struggling soul to bind.

Impatient of its long delay,

The pinioned spirit fain would roam,

And leave this crumbling house of clay,

To seek, above, its own bright home!

. . . . . . . . . .

O, how mysterious is the bond

Which blends the earthly with the pure,

And mingles that which death may blight

With that which ever must endure!

Arise, my soul, from all below,

And gaze upon thy destined home—

The heaven of heavens, the throne of God,

Where sin and care can never come.

. . . . . . . . . .

Compound of weakness and of strength;

Mighty, yet ignorant of thy power;

Loftier than earth, or air, or sea,

Yet meaner than the lowliest flower!—

Soaring towards heaven, yet clinging still

To earth, by many a purer tie!

Longing to breathe a tender air,

Yet fearing, trembling thus to die!”

Some verses written about the same period show the feelings she held towards her sister Lucretia.

“My sister! with that thrilling word

What thoughts unnumbered wildly spring!

What echoes in my heart are stirred,

While thus I touch the trembling string!

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My sister! ere this youthful mind

Could feel the value of thine own;

Ere this infantine heart could bind,

In its deep cell, one look, one tone,

To glide along on memory’s stream,

And bring back thrilling thoughts of thee;

Ere I knew aught but childhood’s dream,

Thy soul had struggled, and was free.

. . . . . . . . . .

I cannot weep that thou art fled;

Forever blends my soul with thine;

Each thought, by purer impulse led,

Is soaring on to realms divine.

. . . . . . . . . .

I hear thee in the summer breeze,

See thee in all that’s pure or fair,

Thy whisper in the murmuring trees,

Thy breath, thy spirit, every where.

Thine eyes, which watch when mortals sleep,

Cast o’er my dreams a radiant hue;

Thy tears, “such tears as angels weep,”

Fall nightly with the glistening dew.

Thy fingers wake my youthful lyre,

And teach its softer strains to flow;

Thy spirit checks each vain desire,

And gilds the lowering brow of woe.

. . . . . . . . . .

Thou gem of light! my leading star!

What thou hast been I strive to be;

When from the path I wander far,

O, turn thy guiding beam on me.

Teach me to fill thy place below,

That I may dwell with thee above;

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To soothe, like thee, a mother’s woe,

And prove, like thine, a sister’s love.

. . . . . . . . . .

When all is still, and fancy’s realm

Is opening to the eager view,

Mine eye full oft, in search of thee,

Roams o’er that vast expanse of blue.

I know that here thy harp is mute,

And quenched the bright, poetic fire;

Yet still I bend my ear, to catch

The hymnings of thy seraph lyre.

O, if this partial converse now

So joyous to my heart can be,

How must the streams of rapture flow,

When both are chainless, both are free!—

When, borne from earth for evermore,

Our souls in sacred joy unite,

At God’s almighty throne adore,

And bathe in beams of endless light!”

Although the extracts from the works of this gifted being have been so extensive, we cannot forbear giving some portions of a piece written about the same period, and entitled—

“AN APPEAL FOR THE BLIND.

. . . . . . . . . .

“Launched forth on life’s uncertain path,

Its best and brightest gift denied,

No power to pluck its fragrant flowers,

Or turn its poisonous thorns aside;—

No ray to pierce the gloom within,

And chase the darkness with its light;

No radiant morning dawn to win

His spirit from the shades of night;—

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Nature, whose smile, so pure and fair,

Casts a bright glow on life’s dark stream,—

Nature, sweet soother of our care,

Has not a single smile for him.

When pale disease, with blighting hand,

Crushes each budding hope awhile,

Our eyes can rest in sweet delight

On love’s fond gaze, or friendship’s smile.

Not so with him; his soul chained down

By doubt, and loneliness, and care,

Feels but misfortune’s chilling frown,

And broods in darkness and despair.

Favored by Heaven, O, haste thee on;

Thy blest Redeemer points the way;

Haste o’er the spirit’s gloom to pour

The light of intellectual day.

Thou canst not raise their drooping lids,

And wake them to the noonday sun;

Thou canst not ope, what God hath closed,

Or cancel aught his hands have done.

But, O, there is a world within,

More bright, more beautiful than ours;

A world which, nursed by culturing hands,

Will blush with fairest, sweetest flowers.

And thou canst make that desert mind

Bloom sweetly as the blushing rose;

Thou canst illume that rayless void

Till darkness like the day-gleam glows.

. . . . . . . . . .

Thus shalt thou shed a purer ray

O’er each beclouded mind within,

Than pours the glorious orb of day

On this dark world of care and sin.

. . . . . . . . . .

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And when the last dread day has come,

Which seals thine endless doom,—

When the freed soul shall seek its home,

And triumph o’er the tomb,—

When lowly bends each reverend knee,

And bows each heart in prayer,—

A band of spirits, saved by thee,

Shall plead thy virtues there.”

Hitherto Margaret had sedulously avoided all conversations about her health, and seemed unwilling to let the feeling that disease had marked her for its victim take possession of her mind. But in the summer of 1838, she one day surprised her mother by asking her to tell her, without reserve, her opinion of her state. “I was,” says her mother, “wholly unprepared for this question; and it was put in so solemn a manner, that I could not evade it, were I disposed to do so. I knew with what strong affection she clung to life, and the objects and friends which endeared it to her; I knew how bright the world upon which she was just entering appeared to her young fancy—what glowing pictures she had drawn of future usefulness and happiness. I was now called upon at one blow to crush these hopes, to destroy the delightful visions; it would be cruel and wrong to deceive her. In vain I attempted a reply to her direct and solemn appeal; several times I essayed to speak, but the words died away on my lips; I could only fold her to my heart in silence; imprint a kiss upon her forehead, and leave the room, to avoid agitating her with feelings I had no power to repress.”

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But this silence was to Margaret as expressive as words. Religion had always been present with her, but from this period it engrossed a large portion of her thoughts. She regretted that so much of her time had been spent in light reading, and that her writings had not been of a more decidedly religious character. “Mamma,” said she one day, “should God spare my life, my time and talents shall, for the future, be devoted to a higher and holier end.” “O mother, how sadly have I trifled with the gifts of Heaven! What have I done which can benefit one human being?” The New Testament was now her daily study, and a portion of each day was devoted to private prayer and self-examination.

The closing scene of her life, which occurred on the 25th November, 1838, would lose much of its interest in the description, if given in other than the beautiful and touching language of her mother. It was night, and, at the entreaty of her husband, Mrs. Davidson had laid herself on the bed in a room adjoining that of her daughter. “Between three and four o’clock, the friend who watched came again, and said, ‘Margaret has asked for her mother.’ I flew. She held a bottle of ether in her hand, and pointed to her breast. I poured it on her head and chest. She revived. ‘I am better now,’ said she. ‘Mother, you tremble; you are cold; put on your clothes.’ I stepped to the fire, and put on a wrapper, when she stretched out both her arms, and exclaimed, ‘Mother, take me in your arms.’ I raised her, and, seating myself on the bed, passed both my arms around her waist; her head dropped on my bosom, and her expressive eyes were 48 raised to mine. That look I never shall forget; it said, ‘Tell me, mother, is this death?’ I answered the appeal as if she had spoken. I laid my hand upon her white brow; a cold dew had gathered there. I spoke—‘Yes, my beloved, it is almost finished; you will soon be with Jesus.’ She gave one more look, two or three short, fluttering breaths, and all was over; her spirit was with its God: not a struggle or a groan preceded her departure.”

Thus perished Margaret Davidson, at the early age of fifteen years and eight months. Her sister Lucretia had found in Miss Sedgwick a fitting biographer, and the memory of Margaret has been rendered more dear by the touching manner in which Irving has told her brief but wondrous story. We cannot better close our imperfect sketch, than to use the words of her biographer: “We shall not pretend to comment on these records; they need no comment, and they admit no heightening. Indeed, the farther we have proceeded with our subject, the more has the intellectual beauty and the seraphic purity of the little being we have endeavored to commemorate, broken upon us. To use one of her own exquisite expressions, she was ‘a spirit of heaven fettered by the strong affections of earth,’ and the whole of her brief sojourn here seems to have been a struggle to regain her native skies.”

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MRS. ADAMS.

The materials for preparing the memoirs of those American ladies whose virtues were conspicuous, and whose position in society imposed upon them great duties, and gave them an extensive influence in their day, are, in general, exceedingly scanty. Happily, the piety of a descendant has, in the present case, supplied the deficiency; and in a mode the most satisfactory. We are here not only made acquainted with the everyday life and actions as they were exhibited to the world around, but are admitted to the inmost recesses of the heart, and all its hopes and feelings are laid open to us. There are few who could bear such an exposure; but in respect to the subject of our present sketch, a nearer acquaintance and more rigid scrutiny serve only to increase our veneration, and to confirm the verdict which her contemporaries had passed upon her.

Abigail Smith, afterwards Mrs. Adams, was born on the 11th of November, 1744. She was the daughter of the Rev. William Smith, the minister of a small Congregational church in Weymouth, Massachusetts, and was descended on both sides from the genuine stock of the Pilgrims.

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The cultivation of the female mind was neglected in the last century, not merely as a matter of indifference, but of positive principle; female learning was a subject of ridicule, and “female education,” as Mrs. Adams tells us, “in the best families, went no further than writing and arithmetic; in some, and rare instances, music and dancing.” But Mrs. Adams did not have an opportunity of receiving even the ordinary instruction. She was never sent to school, the delicate state of her health forbidding it. But this is hardly to be considered matter of regret, for constant intercourse with her pious and talented relations had an influence upon her character of even greater value than the learning of the schools. The lessons which made the deepest impression upon her mind were imbibed from her maternal grandmother, the wife of Colonel John Quincy. “I have not forgotten,” says Mrs. Adams, to her daughter, in 1795, “the excellent lessons which I received from my grandmother, at a very early period of life. I frequently think they made a more durable impression upon my mind than those which I received from my own parents. Whether it was owing to the happy method of mixing instruction and amusement together, or from an inflexible adherence to certain principles, the utility of which I could not but see and approve when a child, I know not; but maturer years have rendered them oracles of wisdom to me. I love and revere her memory; her lively, cheerful disposition animated all around her, while she edified all by her unaffected piety. This tribute is due to the memory of those virtues, the 51 sweet remembrance of which will flourish, though she has long slept with her ancestors.”

But though the list of accomplishments thought essential for a young lady’s education was so scanty, it must not be supposed that the mind was left wholly uncultivated. On the contrary, few women of the present day are so well acquainted with the standard English authors, as those of the period of which we are now speaking. The influence which they had on the mind of the subject of this memoir, is apparent throughout her published correspondence, not only in the style, in the fondness for quotation, but in the love of fictitious signatures, of which the “Spectator” had set the example. The social disposition of youth renders an interchange of thoughts and feelings between those of the same age essential to their happiness. The sparse population, and comparatively small facilities for locomotion in the last century, rendered personal intercourse difficult, and a frequent interchange of letters was adopted as a substitute. This, as an exercise for the mind, is of great value, as it induces habits of reflection, and leads to precision and facility in expressing ideas.

A few of Mrs. Adams’s letters, written at an early period of her life, have been preserved, and from one of these—addressed to a married lady, several years older than herself, which will account for a gravity which is beyond her years and ordinary disposition—the following extracts are made. It is dated at Weymouth, October 5th, 1761.

“Your letter I received, and, believe me, it has not been through forgetfulness that I have not before this 52 time returned you my sincere thanks for the kind assurance you then gave me of continued friendship. You have, I hope, pardoned my suspicions; they arose from love. What persons in their right senses would calmly, and without repining, or even inquiring into the cause, submit to lose their greatest temporal good and happiness? for thus the divine, Dr. Young, looks upon a friend, when he says,—

‘A friend is worth all hazards we can run;

Poor is the friendless master of a world;

A world in purchase for a friend is gain.’

* * * You have, like King Ahasuerus, held forth, though not a golden sceptre, yet one more valuable,—the sceptre of friendship, if I may so call it. Like Esther, I would draw nigh and touch it. Will you proceed and say, ‘What wilt thou?’ and ‘What is thy request? it shall be given thee to the half of my’ heart. Why, no, I think I will not have so dangerous a present, lest your good man should find it out and challenge me. * * * And now let me ask you, whether you do not think that many of our disappointments, and much of our unhappiness, arise from our forming false notions of things and persons. We strangely impose on ourselves; we create a fairy land of happiness. Fancy is fruitful, and promises fair, but, like the dog in the fable, we catch at a shadow, and, when we find the disappointment, we are vexed, not with ourselves, who are really the impostors, but with the poor, innocent thing or person of whom we have formed such strange ideas. * * * You bid me tell one of my sparks—I think that was the word—to 53 bring me to see you. Why, I believe you think they are as plenty as herrings, when, alas! there is as great a scarcity of them as there is of justice, honesty, prudence, and many other virtues. I’ve no pretensions to one. Wealth, wealth is the only thing that is looked after now. ’Tis said Plato thought, if Virtue would appear to the world, all mankind would be enamored of her; but now interest governs the world, and men neglect the golden mean.”

At the age of twenty, Miss Smith became the wife of John Adams, afterwards president of the United States. Connected with this event, an anecdote is related, which, as an indication of the fashion of the day, and of the disposition of the bride’s father, is too good to be passed over. Mary, the eldest daughter of Mr. Smith, was married to Richard Cranch, an English emigrant, and, as it would appear, with the approbation of all parties; for, upon the Sabbath following, he preached to his people from the text, “And Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken from her.” But Abigail was not so fortunate; for her match, it would seem, met the disapprobation of some of her father’s parishioners, either on account of the profession of Mr. Adams,—that of the law,—which was then an obnoxious one to many people, who deemed it dishonest; or because they did not consider Mr. Adams—the son of a small farmer—a sufficiently good match for the daughter of one of the shining lights of the colony. Mr. Smith, having become aware of the feeling which existed, took notice of it in a sermon from the following text: “For John came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and ye say, He hath a devil.”

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The first ten years of Mrs. Adams’s married life were passed in a quiet and happy manner; her enjoyment suffering no interruptions except those occasioned by the short absences of her husband, when he attended the courts. In this period she became the mother of a daughter and three sons, of whom John Quincy Adams was the eldest.

All are familiar with the distinguished part performed by Mr. Adams in the scenes which immediately preceded our revolution. In all his feelings and actions he had the sympathy and support of his wife, who had thus in some measure become prepared for the stormy period which was at hand.

Mr. Adams, having been appointed one of the delegates to the congress to be held at Philadelphia, left home in August, 1774; and on the 19th of that month, we find the following letter addressed to him by his wife:—

“The great distance between us makes the time appear very long to me. It seems already a month since you left me. The great anxiety I feel for my country, for you, and for our family, renders the day tedious, and the night unpleasant. The rocks and the quicksands appear on every side. What course you can and will take is all wrapped in the bosom of futurity. Uncertainty and expectation leave the mind great scope. Did ever any kingdom or state regain its liberty, when once it was invaded, without bloodshed? I cannot think of it without horror. Yet we are told, that all the misfortunes of Sparta were occasioned by their too great solicitude for present tranquillity; and from an excessive love of peace, they 55 neglected the means of making it sure and lasting. * * * I have taken a very great fondness for reading Rollin’s Ancient History. I am determined to go through it, if possible, in these my days of solitude. I find great pleasure and entertainment from it, and I have persuaded Johnny to read me a page or two every day, and hope he will, from his desire to oblige me, entertain a fondness for it. I want much to hear from you. I long impatiently to have you upon the stage of action. The 1st of September may, perhaps, be of as much importance to Great Britain, as the ides of March to Cæsar. I wish you every public and private blessing, and that wisdom which is profitable for instruction and edification, to conduct you in this difficult day.”

She perceived, at a very early period, that the conflict would not be speedily settled, and of the personal consequences to herself she speaks in the following affecting terms: “Far from thinking the scene closed, it looks as though the curtain was but just drawn, and only the first scene of the infernal plot disclosed: whether the end will be tragical, Heaven alone knows. You cannot be, I know, nor do I wish to see you, an inactive spectator; but, if the sword be drawn, I bid adieu to all domestic felicity, and look forward to that country where there are neither wars nor rumors of wars, in a firm belief that, through the mercy of its King, we shall both rejoice there together.”

Indeed, from this period till she joined her husband in Europe, in 1784, she enjoyed very little of his society. Had the state of the times rendered it safe or agreeable for her to have accompanied her husband 56 in his journeys and voyages, the circumstances of the family would not have allowed it. Without hereditary fortune, with no opportunity of practising in his profession, and now serving the public for a price which would not defray his actual and necessary expenses,—Mr. Adams would have been, in his old age, in the lamentable condition of many of the most active patriots of the revolution, who, devoting their years of vigorous manhood to the service of their country, were left, in their declining days, in a state of penury,—had he not possessed in his wife a helper suited to the exigency. She husbanded their small property, the savings of years of professional prosperity; she managed the farm with skill; and in all matters of business she displayed a degree of judgment and sagacity not to be exceeded. All the powers of her mind were now called into activity, and her character displayed itself in the most favorable colors. The official rank of her husband imposed high duties upon her; her timid neighbors looked to her for support and comfort, and she was never found wanting.

The absence of Mr. Adams relieved his wife from one source of anxiety—that for his personal safety. As the conflict in the early periods of the revolution was confined to the vicinity of Boston, and as the feelings of parties were more exasperated here than elsewhere, he would have been in the greatest danger at home. It was a comfort to her that her husband should “be absent a little while from the scenes of perturbation, anxiety, and distress,” which surrounded her.

As from her residence she could be an eye-witness of few of the events, the details of which she relates, 57 her letters are of most value as furnishing a lively exhibition of her own and of the public feeling. One event, which passed under her own observation, she thus describes: “In consequence of the powder being taken from Charlestown, a general alarm spread through many towns, and was pretty soon caught here. On Sunday, a soldier was seen lurking about, supposed to be a spy, but most likely a deserter. However, intelligence of it was communicated to the other parishes, and about eight o’clock, Sunday evening, there passed by here about two hundred men, preceded by a horse-cart, and marched down to the powder-house, from whence they took the powder, and carried it into the other parish, and there secreted it. I opened the window upon their return. They passed without any noise,—not a word among them,—till they came against the house, when some of them, perceiving me, asked me if I wanted any powder. I replied, No, since it was in so good hands. The reason they gave for taking it was, that we had so many tories here, they dared not trust it; they had taken the sheriff in their train, and upon their return they stopped between Cleverly’s and Eltee’s, and called upon him to deliver two warrants.[1] Upon his producing them, they put it to vote whether they should burn them, and it passed in the affirmative. They then made a circle and burnt them. They then called a vote whether they should huzza, but, it being Sunday evening, it passed in the negative. * * * This town appears as high as you can well imagine, and, if necessary, 58 would soon be in arms. Not a tory but hides his head. The church parson thought they were coming after him, and ran up garret; they say another jumped out of his window, and hid among the corn; while a third crept under his board fence, and told his beads.”

In the midst of her public cares and anxieties, she did not neglect her sacred duties as a mother. The care of the education of her four children devolved entirely upon her, and “Johnny” was at an age to require much attention. This subject occupied much of her thoughts; and, indeed, the greatest value of her published correspondence consists in the hints which it gives us of the course of culture pursued in producing those glorious fruits of which other generations have had the enjoyment. She carefully guarded against the contagion of vice at that period when the mind and heart are most susceptible to impressions. “I have always thought it,” she says to her husband, “of very great importance that children should, in the early part of life, be unaccustomed to such examples as would tend to corrupt the purity of their words and actions, that they may chill with horror at the sound of an oath, and blush with indignation at an obscene expression. These first principles, which grow with their growth and strengthen with their strength, neither time nor custom can totally eradicate.” By precept, and much more by example, she sought to instil principles, and to form habits, which should lead to the practice of every virtue. Can we be surprised at the abhorrence which her “illustrious son of an illustrious mother” has ever exhibited to oppression, when we find her thus expressing her sentiments in 59 behalf of the oppressed, at a time when the subject of which she speaks had not excited any attention either in Europe or America?—“I wish sincerely there was not a slave in the province; it always appeared to me a most iniquitous scheme to fight ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have.”

During the recess of Congress, Mr. Adams was at home, but left it again for Philadelphia on the 14th April, 1775. Four days afterwards the expedition to Lexington and Concord took place. The news of this event reached Mr. A. at Hartford; he, did not, however, yield to his anxieties and return, but contented himself by sending home encouragement and advice. After saying that he never feels any personal fear, he adds, “I am often concerned for you and our dear babes, surrounded as you are by people who are too timorous, and too much susceptible of alarm. Many fears and imaginary evils will be suggested to you, but I hope you will not be impressed by them. In case of real danger, fly to the woods with my children.”

Mrs. Adams might be excused for entertaining fears; her residence was near the sea-coast, and the enemy sent out foraging expeditions: the point of destination was perhaps some island in the harbor; but of this there could be no certainty. Of one of the alarms thus occasioned, Mrs. Adams writes to her husband as follows: “I suppose you have had a formidable account of the alarm we had last Sunday morning. When I rose, about six o’clock, I was told that the drums had been some time beating, and that three alarm guns were fired; that Weymouth bell had 60 been ringing, and Mr. Weld’s was then ringing. I sent off an express to learn the cause, and found the whole town in confusion. Three sloops and a cutter had dropped anchor just below Great Hill. It was difficult to tell their designs: some supposed they were coming to Germantown, others to Weymouth: people, women, children, came flocking down this way; every woman and child driven off below my father’s; my father’s family flying. The alarm flew like lightning, and men from all parts came flocking down, till two thousand were collected. But it seems their expedition was to Grape Island, for Levett’s hay.” “They delight,” says she, on another occasion, “in molesting us upon the Sabbath. Two Sabbaths we have been in such alarm that we have had no meeting; this day we have sat under our own vine in quietness; have heard Mr. Taft. The good man was earnest and pathetic. I could forgive his weakness for the sake of his sincerity; but I long for a Cooper and an Elliot. I want a person who has feeling and sensibility; who can take one up with him,

And ‘in his duty prompt at every call,’

Can ‘watch, and weep, and pray, and feel for all.’”

The battle of Bunker’s Hill followed soon, and, from the top of the highest house in Braintree, Mrs. Adams beheld the conflagration of Charlestown. But she does not lose her courage. In writing to her husband, she seeks to lessen his anxieties. “I would not,” says she, “have you be distressed about me. I have been distressed, but not dismayed. I have felt for my country and her sons, and have bled with them and for them.”

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The appointment of General Washington to the command of the army, then stationed at Cambridge, inspired new confidence. Mrs. Adams thus speaks of the impression made by her first interview with him and General Lee: “I was struck with General Washington. You had prepared me to entertain a favorable opinion of him; but I thought the half was not told me. Dignity with ease and complacency, the gentleman and soldier, look agreeably blended in him. Modesty marks every line and feature of his face. Those lines of Dryden instantly occurred to me—

‘Mark his majestic fabric! he’s a temple

Sacred by birth, and built by hands divine;

His soul’s the deity that lodges there;

Nor is the pile unworthy of the god.’

General Lee looks like a careless, hardy veteran, and, by his appearance, brought to my mind his namesake, Charles XII. of Sweden. The elegance of his pen far exceeds that of his person.”

The horrors of war were now aggravated by those of pestilence. From the British army in Boston, the dysentery had spread into the surrounding country. Mrs. Adams and her whole family were attacked. “Our house,” she writes to her husband, September 8, 1775, “is a hospital in every part, and, what with my own weakness and distress of mind for my family, I have been unhappy enough. And such is the distress of the neighborhood, that I can scarcely find a well person to assist me in looking after the sick.” Again on the 25th she writes, “I sit with a heavy 62 heart to write to you. Woe follows woe, and one affliction treads upon the heels of another. My distress in my own family having in some measure abated, it is excited anew upon that of my dear mother. She has taken the disorder, and lies so bad, that we have little hope of her recovery.” On the 29th, “It is allotted me to go from the sick and almost dying bed of one of the best of parents, to my own habitation, where again I behold the same scene, only varied by a remoter connection—

‘A bitter change, severer for severe.’

You can more easily conceive than I can describe what are the sensations of my heart when absent from either, continually expecting a messenger with the fatal tidings.” “The desolation of war is not so distressing as the havoc made by pestilence. Some poor parents are mourning the loss of three, four, and five children; and some families are wholly stripped of every member.”

But the hand of the pestilence was stayed, and her country again engrosses her thoughts. She very early declares herself for independence, and wonders how any honest heart can hesitate at adopting the same sentiment. An attempt to drive the enemy from Boston is meditated, and she tells us that she has been kept in a state of anxiety and expectation. “It has been said ‘to-morrow’ and ‘to-morrow’ for this month; but when this dreadful to-morrow will be, I know not. But hark! The house this instant shakes with the roar of cannon. I have been to the door, and 63 find it a cannonade from our army.” The militia are all ordered to repair to the lines. The result was thus related: “I have just returned from Penn’s Hill, where I have been sitting to hear the amazing roar of cannon, and from whence I could see every shell which was thrown. The sound, I think, is one of the grandest in nature, and is of the true species of the sublime. * * * I could no more sleep than if I had been in the engagement: the rattling of the windows, the jar of the house, the continual roar of twenty-four pounders, and the bursting of shells, give us such ideas, and realize a scene to us of which we could form scarcely any conception. * * * All my distress and anxiety is at present at an end. I feel disappointed. This day our militia are all returning without effecting any thing more than taking possession of Dorchester Hill. I hope it is wise and just, but, from all the muster and stir, I hoped and expected more important and decisive scenes. I would not have suffered all I have for two such hills.” The British soon afterwards evacuated Boston, and Massachusetts never again became the theatre of war.

In 1778, the fortitude of Mrs. Adams received a new trial. Her husband was appointed one of the commissioners at the court of France. The sea was covered with the enemy’s ships; and, should he escape these and all the natural dangers of the seas, and arrive at the place of his destination in safety, rumor said that he would there be exposed to one of a more terrific character, “to the dark assassin, to the secret murderer, and the bloody emissary of as cruel a tyrant as God, in his righteous judgments, ever suffered 64 to disgrace the throne of Britain. I have,” continues Mrs. Adams, writing soon after her husband’s departure, “travelled with you across the Atlantic, and could have landed you safe, with humble confidence, at your desired haven, and then have set myself down to enjoy a negative kind of happiness, in the painful part which it has pleased Heaven to allot me; but the intelligence with regard to that great philosopher, able statesman, and unshaken friend of his country,”—alluding to a report of Dr. Franklin’s assassination in Paris,—“has planted a dagger in my breast, and I feel with a double edge the weapon that pierced his bosom. * * * To my dear son remember me in the most affectionate terms. Enjoin it upon him never to disgrace his mother, and to behave worthily of his father. I console myself with the hopes of his reaping advantages under the careful eye of a tender parent, which it was not in my power to bestow.” Mr. Adams was accompanied by his eldest son, John Quincy Adams, and, after incurring various hazards from lightning, storm, and the enemy, arrived in France. The maternal solicitude of Mrs. Adams relieved itself in part by writing letters to her son filled with the warmest affection and the most wise counsel. She urges it upon him “to adhere to those religious sentiments and principles which were early instilled into your mind, and remember that you are accountable to your Maker for all your words and actions. Great learning and superior abilities, should you ever possess them, will be of little value and small estimation, unless virtue, honor, truth, and integrity, are added to them. Dear as you 65 are to me, I would much rather you should have found a grave in the ocean you have crossed, than see you an immoral, profligate, or graceless child.”

As has already been said, Mrs. Adams managed her husband’s money affairs at home. A short extract from one of her business letters to him may be interesting, and will show how a matter always troublesome was in such times doubly so: “The safest way, you tell me, of supplying my wants, is by drafts; but I cannot get hard money for bills. You had as good tell me to procure diamonds for them; and when bills will fetch but five for one, hard money will exchange ten, which I think is very provoking; and I must give at the rate of ten, and sometimes twenty, for one, for every article I purchase. I blush whilst I give you a price current; all meat from a dollar to eight shillings a pound; corn twenty-five dollars, rye thirty, per bushel; flour two hundred dollars per hundred pounds; potatoes ten dollars per bushel, &c. I have studied, and do study, every method of economy; otherwise a mint of money would not support a family. I could not board our sons under forty dollars a week at school. * * * We have been greatly distressed for grain. I scarcely know the looks or taste of biscuit or flour for this four months; yet thousands have been much worse off, having no grain of any sort.” Nor were things then at the worst; for in October, 1780, we find “meat eight dollars, and butter twelve, per pound; corn one hundred and twenty dollars, and rye one hundred and eight, per bushel; tea ninety dollars, and cotton wool thirty, per pound.” But our readers must not suppose that this was entirely owing to a 66 scarcity of products; these prices are in “continental money,” seventy dollars of which would hardly command one of “hard money.”

Hitherto Mr. Adams’s residence had seemed too unsettled to render it worth while for his wife to undertake a long and dangerous voyage to meet him. But after the acknowledgment of our independence by Great Britain, a commission was sent to Mr. Adams as first minister to that court; and it was probable that his residence there would be sufficiently long to justify him in a request to Mrs. Adams to join him. The feelings of the latter on the subject were thus expressed before the appointment was actually made: “I have not a wish to join in a scene of life so different from that in which I have been educated, and in which my early, and, I must suppose, happier days have been spent. Well-ordered home is my chief delight, and the affectionate, domestic wife, with the relative duties which accompany that character, my highest ambition. It was the disinterested wish of sacrificing my personal feelings to the public utility, which first led me to think of unprotectedly hazarding a voyage. This objection could only be surmounted by the earnest wish I had to soften those toils which were not to be dispensed with; and if the public welfare required your labors and exertions abroad, I flattered myself that, if I could be with you, it might be in my power to contribute to your happiness and pleasure.” “I think, if you were abroad in a private character, I should not hesitate so much at coming to you; but a mere American, as I am, unacquainted with the etiquette of courts, taught to say the thing I 67 mean, and to wear my heart in my countenance,—I am sure I should make an awkward figure; and then it would mortify my pride, if I should be thought to disgrace you.”

In spite, however, of this reluctance, she embarked on board the Active, a merchant ship, for London. Of this voyage Mrs. Adams has given a most graphic and not very agreeable picture; and nothing can present a greater contrast than her dirty, close, narrow quarters, on board a vessel deeply loaded with oil and potash,—the oil leaking, and the potash smoking and fermenting,—with the floating palaces in which the voyage is now made. The culinary department was in keeping with the rest of the ship. “The cook was a great, dirty, lazy negro, with no more knowledge of cookery than a savage; nor any kind of order in the distribution of his dishes; but on they come, higgledy-piggledy, with a leg of pork all bristly; a quarter of an hour afterwards, a pudding; or, perhaps, a pair of roast fowls first of all, and then will follow, one by one, a piece of beef, and, when dinner is nearly completed, a plate of potatoes. Such a fellow is a real imposition upon the passengers. But gentlemen know but little about the matter, and if they can get enough to eat five times a day, all goes well.” Yet the passengers, of whom there were a number, were agreeable, and, as the wind and weather were favorable, the voyage did not last more than thirty days.

She hoped to have found Mr. Adams in London, but he was at the Hague; and “Master John,” after waiting a month for her in London, had returned to the 68 latter place. She received, however, every attention from the numerous Americans then in London, refugees as well as others, many of whom had been her personal friends at home. Ten days were spent in sight-seeing, on the last of which a servant comes running in, exclaiming, “Young Mr. Adams has come!” “Where, where is he?” cried out all. “In the other house, madam; he stopped to get his hair dressed.” “Impatient enough I was,” continues Mrs. A.; “yet, when he entered, we had so many strangers, that I drew back, not really believing my eyes, till he cried out, ‘O my mamma, and my dear sister!’ Nothing but the eyes, at first sight, appeared what he once was. His appearance is that of a man, and on his countenance the most perfect good-humor; his conversation by no means denies his stature.”

Her first year in Europe was spent at Auteuil, near Paris, and she seems to have enjoyed herself, in spite of her ignorance of the language; though she sometimes expresses her longing for home and the enjoyment of social intercourse with her friends in America. Her letters, during this period, present us with a lively picture of the state of society and of manners. We have space only for her account of her first visit to madame de la Fayette. “The marquise met me at the door, and with the freedom of an old acquaintance, and the rapture peculiar to the ladies of this nation, caught me by the hand, and gave me a salute upon each cheek. She presented me to her mother and sister, who were present with her, all sitting in her bedroom, quite en famille. One of the ladies was knitting. The marquise herself was in a chintz gown. She is a 69 middle-sized lady, sprightly and agreeable, and professes herself strongly attached to Americans. She is fond of her children, and very attentive to them, which is not the general character of ladies of high rank in Europe. In a few days, she returned my visit, upon which I sent her a card of invitation to dine. She came. We had a large company. There is not a lady in our country who would have gone abroad to dine so little dressed; and one of our fine American ladies, who sat by me, whispered to me, ‘Good heavens! how awfully she is dressed!’ I could not forbear returning the whisper, which I most sincerely despised, by replying that the lady’s rank sets her above the little formalities of dress. The rouge, ’tis true, was not so artfully laid on, as upon the faces of the American ladies who were present. Whilst they were glittering with diamonds, buckles, watch-chains, girdle-buckles, &c., the marquise was nowise ruffled by her own different appearance. A really well-bred Frenchwoman has the most ease in her manners that you can possibly conceive of.”

In June, 1784, Mr. Adams took up his residence in London. His situation and that of his wife was far from being a pleasant one. The hostile feelings towards Americans, engendered by so many years of warfare, and exasperated by the mortification of ill-success, had not subsided. The loss of his North American colonies was severely felt by the king, who had too much good sense, however, to suffer his feelings to appear in his intercourse with the new minister; but the queen, who, though exemplary in the discharge of domestic duties, was weak-minded, proud, and petulant, 70 could not conceal her bitterness, and her conduct towards Mrs. Adams was hardly civil. Perhaps, however, the account of it given by the latter is colored by her own prejudices against the royal family, which, throughout her life were expressed in the strongest language, and which, towards the king, at least, were entirely unjust. Her presentation at court could not but be somewhat embarrassing and awkward to all parties. The manner in which it passed shall be related in her own words. “The ceremony of presentation is considered as indispensable. One is obliged to attend the circles of the queen, which are held in summer once a fortnight, but once a week the rest of the year; and what renders it very expensive, is, that you cannot go twice the same season in the same dress, and a court dress cannot be used any where else. I directed my mantua-maker to let my dress be elegant, but as plain as it could be, with decency; accordingly it is white lutestring, covered and full trimmed with white crape, festooned with lilac ribbon and mock point lace, over a hoop of enormous extent; a narrow train of three yards, which is put into a ribbon on the left side, the queen only having a train-bearer. Ruffle cuffs, treble lace ruffles, a very dress cap, with long lace lappets, two white plumes, and a blond lace handkerchief—this is my rigging. I should have mentioned two pearl pins in my hair, ear-rings and necklace of the same kind. * * * ‘Well,’ methinks I hear you say, ‘what is your daughter’s dress?’ White, my dear girls, like her mother’s, only differently trimmed; her train being wholly of white crape, and trimmed with white ribbon; the petticoat, which is the most 71 showy part of the dress, covered and drawn up in what are called festoons, with light wreaths of beautiful flowers; sleeves white crape, drawn over the silk, with a row of lace round the sleeve, near the shoulder, another half way down the arm, and a third upon the top of the ruffle, a little flower stuck between; a kind of hat cap, with three large feathers, and a bunch of flowers; a wreath of flowers upon the hair. * * * We were placed in a circle round the drawing-room, which was very full, I believe two hundred persons present. The royal family have to go to every person, and find small talk enough to speak to all, though they very prudently speak in a whisper. The king enters, and goes round to the right; the queen and princesses to the left. The king is a personable man, but with a red face and white eyebrows. The queen has a similar face, and the numerous royal family resemble them. When the king came to me, Lord Onslaw said, ‘Mrs. Adams;’ upon which I drew off my right hand glove, and his majesty saluted my left cheek, then asked me if I had taken a walk to-day. I could have told his majesty that I had been all the morning preparing to wait upon him; but I replied, ‘No, sire.’ ‘Why, don’t you love walking?’ says he. I answered that I was rather indolent in that respect. He then bowed and passed on. It was more than two hours after this, before it came my turn to be presented to the queen. She was evidently embarrassed when I was presented to her. I had disagreeable feelings too. She, however, said, ‘Mrs. Adams, have you got into your house? Pray, how do you like the situation of it?’ whilst the royal princess looked compassionate, 72 and asked me if I was not much fatigued. Her sister, Princess Augusta, after having asked your niece if she was ever in England before, and her answering, ‘Yes,’ inquired of me how long ago, and supposed it was when she was very young. And all this with much affability, and the ease and freedom of old acquaintance. * * * As to the ladies of the court, rank and title may compensate for want of personal charms; but they are, in general, very plain, ill-shaped, and ugly; but don’t you tell any body that I say so; the observation did not hold good, that fine feathers make fine birds.” Referring to this same occasion in a subsequent letter, she says, “I own that I never felt myself in a more contemptible situation than when I stood four hours together for a gracious smile from majesty, a witness to the anxious solicitude of those around me for the same mighty boon. I, however, had a more dignified honor, as his majesty deigned to salute me.”

Of other sources of annoyance Mrs. Adams thus speaks: “Some years hence, it may be a pleasure to reside here in the character of American minister; but, with the present salary, and the present temper of the English, no one need envy the embassy. There would soon be fine work, if any notice was taken of their billingsgate and abuse; but all their arrows rebound, and fall harmless to the ground. Amidst all their falsehoods, they have never insinuated a lisp against the private character of the American minister, nor in his public line charged him with either want of abilities, honor, or integrity. The whole venom is levelled against poor America, and every effort to make her appear ridiculous in the eyes of the nation.”

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It would have been difficult to find a person better adapted than Mrs. Adams for the trying situation in which she found herself. In other times, a woman of more yielding temper, who could adapt herself more readily to those about her, would, perhaps, answer better. Love of country was engrained in her; for her “the birds of Europe had not half the melody of those at home; the fruit was not half so sweet, nor the flowers half so fragrant, nor the manners half so pure, nor the people half so virtuous.” Three years’ residence in England produced no change of feeling. In anticipation of a return to her home, we find her writing thus: “I shall quit Europe with more pleasure than I came to it, uncontaminated, I hope, with its manners and vices. I have learned to know the world and its value; I have seen high life; I have witnessed the luxury and pomp of state, the power of riches, and the influence of titles, and have beheld all ranks bow before them, as the only shrine worthy of worship. Notwithstanding this, I feel that I can return to my little cottage, and be happier than here; and, if we have not wealth, we have what is better—integrity.”

Soon after Mr. Adams’s return, he was elected vice-president of the United States, and took up his residence, at least during the sessions of Congress, first at New York, and afterwards at Philadelphia. The “court” of General Washington was much more to the taste of Mrs. Adams than that of George III.; the circle at the first “drawing-room,” she tells us, was very brilliant; that “the dazzling Mrs. Bingham and her charming sisters were there; in short, a constellation of beauties.”

The next eight years of her life, during which her 74 husband held the office of vice-president, were passed with few incidents to disturb her happiness. Another generation, the children of her daughter, who was married to Colonel Smith, were receiving the benefits of her instruction and experience.

A residence at Philadelphia was not favorable to her health, which, never having been very firm, about this period began decidedly to fail. The bracing air of Quincy was found to be more congenial. For this reason, she was not with her husband at the time when his official duty required him to announce himself as the successor to General Washington; and to this circumstance we are indebted for the following letter,—written on the day on which the votes were counted by the Senate,—in which, says her biographer, “the exalted feeling of the moment shines out with all the lustre of ancient patriotism, chastened by a sentiment of Christian humility of which ancient history furnishes no example:”—

“Quincy, February 8th, 1797.

“‘The sun is dressed in brightest beams,

To give thy honors to the day.’

And may it prove an auspicious prelude to each ensuing season. You have this day to declare yourself head of a nation. ‘And now, O Lord, thou hast made thy servant ruler over the people. Give unto him an understanding heart, that he may know how to go out and come in before this great people; that he may discern between good and bad. For who is able to judge this thy so great a people?’ were the words of a royal sovereign, and not less applicable to him who is invested with the chief magistracy of a nation, 75 though he wear not a crown, nor the robes of royalty. My thoughts and my meditations are with you, though personally absent; and my petitions to Heaven are, that the ‘things which make for peace may not be hidden from your eyes.’ My feelings are not those of pride or ostentation. They are solemnized by a sense of the obligations, the important trusts, and numerous duties, connected with it. That you may be enabled to discharge them with honor to yourself, with justice and impartiality to your country, and with satisfaction to this great people, shall be the daily prayer of your

A. A.”

Never has this country witnessed such scenes as characterized the struggle between the two great political parties which divided the people during Mr. Adams’s administration. As the representative of one of these, he was assailed with an asperity and malignity to which, happily, succeeding electioneering furnishes no parallel. Accustomed to take a warm interest in political events, it could not be expected that Mrs. Adams should cease to do so when her husband was the chief actor; nor is it surprising that she should have felt what she deemed the ingratitude of his countrymen in casting aside so long-tried and faithful a servant. Retirement to private life was to her a source of rejoicing rather than of regret. At her age, and with her infirmities, she was far happier at Quincy, overseeing the operations of her dairy, whilst her husband, like Cincinnatus, assumed the plough. She has left a record of one day’s life; and from this we suppose other days varied but little. It is in a letter to her granddaughter, dated November 76 19th, 1812. “Six o’clock. Rose, and, in imitation of his Britannic majesty, kindled my own fire. Went to the stairs, as usual, to summon George and Charles. Returned to my chamber, dressed myself. No one stirred. Called a second time, with a voice a little raised. Seven o’clock. Blockheads not out of bed. Girls in motion. Mean, when I hire another man-servant, that he shall come for one call. Eight o’clock. Fires made. Breakfast prepared. Mr. A. at the tea-board. Forgot the sausages. Susan’s recollection brought them upon the table. Enter Ann. ‘Ma’am, the man is come with coal.’ ‘Go call George to assist him.’ Exit Ann. Enter Charles. ‘Mr. B. is come with cheese, turnips, &c. Where are they to be put?’ ‘I will attend to him myself.’ Exit Charles. Just seated at the table again. Enter George, with, ‘Ma’am, here is a man with a drove of pigs.’ A consultation is held upon this important subject, the result of which is the purchase of two spotted swine. Nine o’clock. Enter Nathaniel from the upper house, with a message for sundries; and black Thomas’s daughter for sundries. Attended to all these concerns. A little out of sorts that I could not finish my breakfast. Note; never to be incommoded with trifles. Enter George Adams from the post-office—a large packet from Russia, (to which court her son J. Q. Adams was then minister.) Avaunt, all cares! I put you all aside, and thus I find good news from a far country. Children, grandchildren all well. For this blessing I give thanks. At twelve o’clock, by previous engagement, I was to call for cousin B. Smith, to accompany me to the bridge at Quincy Port, being the first day of passing it. Passed 77 both bridges, and entered Hingham. Returned before three. Dined, and, at five, went to Mr. T. G. Smith, with your grandfather—the third visit he has made with us in the week; and let me whisper to you, he played at whist. Returned. At nine, sat down and wrote a letter. At eleven, retired to bed. By all this you will learn that grandmother has got rid of her croaking, and that grandfather is in good health, and that both of us are as tranquil as that bold old fellow, Time, will let us be. Here I was interrupted in my narrative. I reassume my pen upon the 22d of November, being this day sixty-eight years old.”[2]

From 1801 until her death, in 1818, Mrs. Adams resided at Quincy. Cheerful and retaining the possession of her faculties to the last, she enlivened the social circle about her, and solaced the solitary hours of her husband. She lived long enough to see the seeds of virtue and knowledge which she had planted in the minds of her children, spring up and ripen into maturity; to receive a recompense, in addition to the consciousness of duty performed, for her anxiety and labors, in the respect and honors which her eldest son received from his countrymen.

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MRS. WASHINGTON.

Martha Dandridge was born in the county of New Kent, Virginia, in May, 1732. Her education was entirely of a domestic character, there being no schools in the region where she dwelt. As she grew up, she was distinguished for personal beauty, pleasing manners, and general amiability of demeanor. She frequently appeared at the court of Williamsburg, then held by the royal governors of Virginia, and became a general favorite.

At the age of seventeen, she was married to Daniel Park Custis, of her native county, and the new-married couple were settled at the White House, on the banks of the Pamunkey River. Mr. Custis devoted himself to agricultural pursuits, and became an eminently successful planter. They had four children, two of whom died at an early period. Martha arrived at womanhood, and died at Mount Vernon, in 1770, and John perished at the age of twenty-seven, while in the service of his country, at the siege of Yorktown, in 1781. Mr. Custis died at about middle age, leaving his widow, still young, yet possessed of an ample fortune. Beside extensive landed estates, she had £30,000 sterling in money.

MRS. WASHINGTON.

Mrs. Custis was sole executor of her husband’s will, and she appears to have been well qualified to discharge the duties which devolved upon her. She conducted her affairs with surprising ability, and the concerns of her extensive fortune seemed to thrive under her management. In 1758, Colonel Washington, then twenty-six years of age, became accidentally acquainted with the fair widow, and, after a brief courtship, they were married. This occurred in 1759. Soon after, they removed to Mount Vernon, which henceforward became their permanent residence.

Mrs. Washington had no children by this second marriage. Martha and John Custis were, however, fully adopted into the affections of her present husband. In discharging her various domestic duties, and rearing her children, time flowed smoothly on for almost twenty years. In 1775, Washington, being appointed commander-in-chief of the American army, proceeded to Cambridge, and did not return to Mount Vernon till after the peace of 1783, except in a single instance. In December, she proceeded to Cambridge, and joined her husband. Here she remained till spring, having witnessed the siege and evacuation of Boston. She then returned to Virginia.

During the war, it was the custom for the general to despatch an aid-de-camp to Mount Vernon, at the close of each campaign, to escort his wife to head-quarters. The arrival of Lady Washington, as she was now called, at the camp, was an event always anticipated with pleasure, and was the signal for the ladies of the general officers to join their husbands. The appearance of the aid-de-camp, escorting the 81 plain family chariot, with the neat postilions in their scarlet and white liveries, was deemed an epoch in the army, and served to diffuse a cheering influence even amid the gloom which hung over our destinies, at Valley Forge, Morristown, and West Point. She always remained at head-quarters till the opening of the campaign, and she often remarked, in after life, that it had been her fortune to hear the first cannon at the opening, and the last at the closing, of the several campaigns of the war.

During the whole period of the revolutionary struggle, she preserved her equanimity, together with a degree of cheerfulness which inspired all around her with the brightest hopes of final success. The glorious results of the campaign of 1781 were, however, associated with an event most afflictive to her. John Custis, now her only child, had accompanied Washington to the siege of Boston, and had witnessed the most important events of the contest. At Yorktown, he was one of the aids of Washington, and lived to see the surrender of the British army on the 19th of October; but he died soon after of camp fever, which was then raging to a frightful extent within the enemy’s intrenchments.

The war being closed, Washington returned to Mount Vernon. His time was now occupied in the peaceful pursuits of private life. He cultivated his lands, and improved his residence at Mount Vernon by additional buildings, and the laying out of his gardens and grounds. He occasionally diversified his employments by the pleasures of the chase. Much of his 82 time, however, was occupied in discharging the grateful duties of hospitality. His fame was spread far and wide, and his home was crowded with guests, among whom were often seen illustrious strangers from foreign lands. During this happy period, Mrs. Washington performed the duties of a Virginia housewife, and presided at her well-spread board, with an ease and elegance of manner suited to her character and station.

The period at length arrived when Washington was again to leave his home, and enter upon public duties. Being elected president of the United States, he set out, in the spring of 1789, to join Congress at New York, then the seat of the general government. Accompanied by his lady, he proceeded to that city, every where received by crowds of people, showering upon him their most grateful homage. At Trenton, New Jersey, he was received in a manner which is said to have affected him even to tears. In addition to the usual military compliments, the bridge over the creek running through the town was covered with a triumphal arch, supported by thirteen pillars, entwined and ornamented with flowers and laurel, and bearing on the front, in large gilt letters, this inscription:—

“THE DEFENDER OF THE MOTHERS

WILL BE THE

PROTECTOR OF THE DAUGHTERS.”

Here were assembled the mothers and daughters dressed in white, each bearing a basket of flowers, 83 which were strewn before the chief, while they sang it chorus,

“Welcome, mighty chief, once more,

Welcome to this grateful shore;

Now no mercenary foe

Aims again the fatal blow,

Aims at thee the fatal blow.

Virgins fair and matrons grave,

Those thy conquering arms did save,

Build for thee triumphal bowers;

Strew, ye fair, his way with flowers,

Strew your hero’s way with flowers.”

Arrived at New York, the president’s establishment was formed upon a scale partaking at once of simplicity and dignity. “The house was handsomely furnished; the equipages neat, with horses of the first order; the servants wore the family liveries; and, with the exception of a steward and housekeeper, the whole establishment differed very little from that of a private gentleman. On Tuesdays, from three to four o’clock, the president received the foreign ambassadors and strangers who wished to be introduced to him. On these occasions, and when opening the session of Congress, he wore a dress sword. His personal apparel was always remarkable for being old-fashioned, and exceedingly plain and neat.

“On Thursdays were the congressional dinners, and on Friday night, Mrs. Washington’s drawing-room. The company usually assembled about seven, and rarely staid exceeding ten o’clock. The ladies were seated, and the president passed round the circle, 84 paying his compliments to each. At the drawing-rooms, Mrs. Morris always sat at the right of the lady president, and at all dinners, public or private, at which Robert Morris was a guest, that venerable man was placed at the right of Mrs. Washington. When ladies called at the president’s mansion, the habit was for the secretaries and gentlemen of the president’s household to hand them to and from their carriages; but when the honored relicts of Greene and Montgomery came, the president himself performed these complimentary duties.

“On the great national festivals of the fourth of July and twenty-second of February, the sages of the revolutionary Congress and the officers of the revolutionary army renewed their acquaintance with Mrs. Washington. Many and kindly greetings took place, with many a recollection of the days of trial. The members of the Society of Cincinnatus, after paying their respects to the chief, were seen to file off towards the parlor, where Lady Washington was in waiting to receive them, and where Wayne, and Mifflin, and Dickenson, and Stewart, and Moylan, and Hartley, and a host of veterans, were cordially welcomed as old friends, and where many an interesting reminiscence was called up, of the head-quarters and the ‘times of the revolution.’

“On Sundays, unless the weather was uncommonly severe, the president and Mrs. Washington attended divine service at Christ Church; and in the evenings, the president read to Mrs. Washington, in her chamber, a sermon, or some portion of the sacred writings. No visitors, with the exception of Mr. Trumbull, of Connecticut,—who 85 was then speaker of the house, and afterwards governor of Connecticut,—were admitted on Sunday.

“There was one description of visitors, however, to be found about the first president’s mansion, on all days. The old soldiers repaired, as they said, to head-quarters, just to inquire after the health of his excellency and Lady Washington. They knew his excellency was, of course, much engaged; but they would like to see the good lady. One had been a soldier of the life-guard; another had been on duty, when the British threatened to surprise the head-quarters; a third had witnessed that terrible fellow, Cornwallis, surrender his sword; each one had some touching appeal, with which to introduce himself at the peaceful head-quarters of the president. All were ‘kindly bid to stay,’ were conducted to the steward’s apartments, and refreshments set before them; and, after receiving some little token from the lady, with her best wishes for the health and happiness of an old soldier, they went their ways, while blessings upon their revered commander and the good Lady Washington were uttered by many a war-worn veteran of the revolution.”[3]

In the autumn of 1789, General Washington made a tour to the Eastern States. Soon after his return, Mrs. Washington addressed a letter to Mrs. Warren, of Boston, giving an account of her views and feelings at that period, which, as it is interesting for the information it contains, and alike creditable to the head and heart of the writer, we present to the reader. It is dated December 26th, 1789.

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“Your very friendly letter of last month has afforded much more satisfaction than all the formal compliments and empty ceremonies of mere etiquette could possibly have done. I am not apt to forget the feelings which have been inspired by my former society with good acquaintances, nor to be insensible to their expressions of gratitude to the president; for you know me well enough to do me the justice to believe that I am fond only of what comes from the heart. Under a conviction that the demonstrations of respect and affection to him originate in that source, I cannot deny that I have taken some interest and pleasure in them. The difficulties which first presented themselves to view on his first entering upon the presidency, seem thus to be in some measure surmounted. It is owing to the kindness of our numerous friends in all quarters that my new and unwished-for situation is not indeed a burden to me. When I was much younger, I should probably have enjoyed the innocent gayeties of life as much as most persons of my age; but I had long since placed all the prospects of my future happiness in the still enjoyments of the fireside at Mount Vernon.

“I little thought, when the war was finished, that any circumstances could possibly happen, which would call the general into public life again. I had anticipated that, from that moment, we should be suffered to grow old together in solitude and tranquillity. That was the first and dearest wish of my heart. I will not, however, contemplate with too much regret, disappointments that were inevitable, though his feelings and my own were in perfect unison with respect to our predilection for private life. Yet I cannot blame him 87 for having acted according to his ideas of duty in obeying the voice of his country. The consciousness of having attempted to do all the good in his power, and the pleasure of finding his fellow-citizens so well satisfied with the disinterestedness of his conduct, will, doubtless, be some compensation for the great sacrifices which I know he has made. Indeed, on his journey from Mount Vernon to this place in his late tour through the Eastern States, by every public and every private information which has come to him, I am persuaded he has experienced nothing to make him repent his having acted from what he conceived to be a sense of indispensable duty. On the contrary, all his sensibility has been awakened in receiving such repeated and unequivocal proofs of sincere regard from his countrymen.

“With respect to myself, I sometimes think the arrangement is not quite as it ought to have been,—that I, who had much rather be at home, should occupy a place with which a great many younger and gayer women would be extremely pleased. As my grandchildren and domestic connections make up a great portion of the felicity which I looked for in this world, I shall hardly be able to find any substitute that will indemnify me for the loss of a part of such endearing society. I do not say this because I feel dissatisfied with my present station; for every body and every thing conspire to make me as contented as possible in it; yet I have learned too much of the vanity of human affairs to expect felicity from the scenes of public life. I am still determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learned from 88 experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, and not on our circumstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us in our minds wherever we go.

“I have two of my grandchildren with me, who enjoy advantages in point of education, and who, I trust, by the goodness of Providence, will be a great blessing to me. My other two grandchildren are with their mother in Virginia.”

In the spring of 1797, bidding adieu to public life, Washington took leave of the seat of government, and returned to Mount Vernon, prepared in good earnest to spend the remainder of his days in retirement. He accepted, indeed, the command of the army of the United States, soon after; but this did not draw him from his home. In 1799, he died, after a brief illness. His affectionate partner was at the bedside when his spirit departed. “It is all over now,” said she. “I shall soon follow him. I have no more trials to pass through.” About two years after, she was seized with bilious fever. Being perfectly aware that her end was at hand, she assembled her grandchildren at her bedside, discoursed with them of their duties in life, of the happy influences of religion, of the consolations it had afforded her in hours of affliction, and the hopes it offered of a blessed immortality; and then, surrounded by weeping relatives, friends, and domestics, the venerable relict of Washington resigned her life into the hands of her Creator, in the seventy-first year of her age.

Few women have figured in the great drama of life, amid scenes so varied and imposing, with so few faults, 89 and so many virtues, as Martha Washington. Identified with the Father of his country in the great events which led to our national independence, she partook much of his thoughts, views, and counsels. In the dark hours of trial, her cheerfulness soothed his anxieties, and her devotional piety aided him in drawing hope and confidence from Heaven. She was indeed the fit partner of Washington, and, in her sphere, appears to have discharged her duties with a dignity, devotion, and consistency, worthy of her exalted destinies.

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MADAME DE STAEL.

Jacques Necker, born of Protestant parents at Geneva, was sent, at the age of fifteen, to seek his fortune at Paris. After serving as a clerk in the banking-house of Vernet, he passed into that of the eminent banker Thelusson, where he displayed such a capacity for business, as to lead to his admission into the house as a partner. In a few years he acquired a large fortune, and withdrew from active business, but remained at Paris as minister of the republic of Geneva to the French court. His “Eloge de Colbert,” which gained the prize in the French Academy in 1773, and his essay on the corn laws, first drew towards him the attention of the public, which finally settled upon him as the only person capable of preserving the country from that bankruptcy upon the verge of which it was standing; and Louis XVI., notwithstanding his religious bigotry, was compelled to appoint Necker to the office of director-general of the finances, in 1785, being the first Protestant who had held office since the revocation of the edict of Nantes.

There resided with Madame Thelusson, as companion, a Swiss lady, named Curchod, the same who had the fortune to excite in the bosom of the historian 91 Gibbon, for the first and last time, the passion of love. There is, however, no undue praise in the following description which he has given of her: “The personal attractions of Mdlle. Curchod were embellished by the virtues and talents of her mind. Her fortune was humble, but her family was respectable. Her mother, a native of France, had preferred her religion to her country. Her father, with the moderation of a philosopher, was content with a small salary and laborious duty in the obscure lot of minister of Cressy, a small village in the mountains of Switzerland. He bestowed a liberal and even learned education on his only daughter. She surpassed his hopes by her proficiency in the sciences and languages; and in her short visits to Lausanne, the wit, the beauty, and the learning, of Mademoiselle Curchod were the theme of universal applause. The report of such a prodigy awakened my curiosity; I saw and loved. I found her learned without pedantry, witty in conversation, pure in sentiment, and elegant in manners.” After the death of her father, she supported herself and her mother by teaching young ladies at Geneva; from whence she removed to Paris.

The character of Necker gained her admiration, her respect, and her love. She married him; and, from that time, the great business of her life was to make him happy. To divert him after the cares of business, she sought to make her house agreeable. She had not the light and gay manners of a Parisian lady, but she had a native grace and sweetness, and a solidity of talent, which caused her society to be sought for by the learned and intelligent, and her drawing-rooms to be filled with the beaux esprits of Paris.

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Her only daughter, Anne Louisa Germaine, born in 1766, became her next object of solicitude. She wished that her education should be perfect; she wished her to know every thing, and thought that her mind could not be stored with too many words and facts; she introduced her, even in infancy, to the brilliant circle of her own friends, and learned men were almost her only companions. It was therefore with a transport of delight that the child received, at the age of eleven, a young girl, whom her mother wished her to make her companion, and who afterwards described her thus: “She spoke with a warmth and facility which were already eloquent, and which made a great impression on me. We did not play like children. She at once asked me what my lessons were, if I knew any foreign languages, and if I went often to the play. When I said, I had only been three or four times, she exclaimed, and promised that we should often go together, and, when we came home, write down an account of the piece. It was her habit, she said; and, in short, we were to write to each other every day. We entered the drawing-room. Near the arm-chair of Madame Necker was the stool of her daughter, who was obliged to sit very upright. As soon as she had taken her accustomed place, three or four old gentlemen came up, and spoke to her with the utmost kindness. One of them, in a little round wig, took her hands in his, held them a long time, and entered into conversation with her, as if she had been twenty. This was the Abbé Raynal; the others were Messrs. Marmontel, Thomas, the Marquis de Pesay, and Baron de Grimm. We sat down at table. It was a picture to 93 see how Mademoiselle Necker listened. She did not speak herself; but so animated was her face, that she appeared to converse with all. Her eyes followed the looks and movements of those who talked; it seemed as if she grasped their ideas before they were expressed. She entered into every subject, even politics, which at this epoch was one of the most engrossing topics. After dinner, a good deal of company arrived. Each guest, as he approached Madame Necker, addressed her daughter with some compliment or pleasantry; she replied to all with ease and grace. They delighted to attack and embarrass her, and to excite her childish imagination, which was already brilliant. The cleverest men were those who took the greatest pleasure in making her talk.” When she was not in society, she was kept constantly at her books. She wrote a great deal, and her writings were read in public and applauded. This system of education had its natural results. Praise, and reputation, and success in society, became as necessary to her as her daily food: her understanding, brilliant, but not profound, gathered knowledge by cursory reading and from conversation—not by hard study; hence it was superficial.

Her physical strength could not endure this constant straining and excitement of the mind. At fourteen, her physicians ordered that she should be removed to the country, and should give up all study. Madame Necker was deeply disappointed: unable to carry her system of education to the fullest extent, she abandoned it altogether; henceforth she took little interest in the talents of her daughter, and, when she heard her praised, would say, “O, it is nothing, absolutely nothing, 94 in comparison to what I intended to make her.” This carelessness on the part of her mother, developed in the young girl an ardent affection for her father, which she dwells upon in her writings with so much fervor. There existed between them the most unreserved and open communication of thought. He delighted in her talents, which she exerted for his entertainment, and to amuse his hours of leisure. Her superior success in this last particular even excited the jealousy of her mother, who sought by reproof to check the outpouring of her wit and imagination. Mademoiselle listened with respect to the reproof, but took the first opportunity to escape from her mother’s side, and shelter herself behind her father’s chair, where she soon collected the cleverest men in the room to listen to her sallies, and to be charmed by her eloquence.

As has already been said, her career of authorship began at a very early age. When a little older, she composed tales and plays, which were received with rapturous applause by the company to which, in accordance with French custom, they were read; but which in print appear flat enough. At the age of fifteen, she made her appearance before the great public as the author of an anonymous political pamphlet in defence of an act of her father’s, which had excited a great clamor on the part of the ultra-royalists, and was the cause of his resignation of office.

The position which her father held in France, during her early years, exercised a very important influence on the character and feelings of Mademoiselle Necker. Despised as a plebeian and detested as a reformer by 95 the queen and the court, he was regarded, by the moderate of all parties, as the only man who could save France, and was worshipped as an idol by the people at large. No sooner was it known that he had resigned, than “all France,” as she says,—that is, all who were eminent for wealth, for talent, or for rank, excepting the few attached to the court,—came to visit him, and to express to him their regrets, their fears, and the hope that he would soon return to office. She heard that consternation pervaded Paris; all fearing ruin for that country which Necker had abandoned. It is not surprising that she should conceive for him a passionate admiration; should regard him as superior to all in modern times, and as answering the beau ideal of Grecian or of Roman patriotism. Nor is it wonderful that his persecution by the court should have excited feelings of resentment and disgust towards a form of government under which such things could take place.

Necker remained a short time in France, and then returned to Coppet, an estate which he purchased on the banks of the Lake of Geneva, from whence he watched the course of events, feeling certain that he should at last be recalled to the helm. An occasional visit to Paris, or the publication of a political pamphlet, served to keep him in the public remembrance.

At the age of twenty-two; Mademoiselle Necker was married. To her, marriage was merely a convenience. It was necessary to give her a position in society—admittance at court. She did not look for a lover, not even for a friend or companion, in her husband. He must be of noble birth, and a Protestant. The Baron 96 de Stael, the Swedish ambassador, had both these requisites; he was, moreover, an amiable and honorable man. He had received positive assurances from his sovereign, that he should be continued for many years at the court of France, and she, having made a distinct contract that she should never be obliged to go to Sweden, except with her own consent, accepted his proposals of marriage.

We have a portrait of her as she appeared at this period, written in a style then much in fashion: “Zalma advances; her large dark eyes sparkle with genius; her hair, black as ebony, falls on her shoulders in waving ringlets; her features are more marked than delicate, yet they express something superior to her sex. ‘There she is!’ every one cried, when she appeared, and all became breathless. When she sang, she extemporized the words of her song; the celestial brightness of composition animated her face, and held the audience in serious attention; at once astonished and delighted, we know not which most to admire, her facility or perfection. When her music ceased, she talked of the great truths of nature, the immortality of the soul, the love of liberty, of the fascination and danger of the passions: her features meanwhile have an expression superior to beauty; her physiognomy is full of play and variety; the accents of her voice have a thousand modulations; and there is perfect harmony between her thoughts and their expression. Without hearing her words, the inflection of her tones, her gestures, her look, cause her meaning to be understood. When she ceased, a murmur of approbation ran round the room; she looked down 97 modestly; her long eyelashes covered her flashing eyes, and the sun was clouded over.”

Meantime affairs in France were rapidly approaching to a crisis. Minister succeeded minister, but each left the ship more inextricably involved than his predecessor. The failure of the crops, and consequent distress of the poorer classes, increased the turbulence of the people and the distress of the court. At length, in 1788, seven years after his resignation, the queen and the court were compelled to confess that the only hope of safety was in recalling Necker, and to join in the general solicitation that he would take the helm.

His name revived the public credit; the pressing wants of the treasury were supplied; by importing grain, he removed the fears of famine. His position at this period was one to gratify his highest ambition; his return had been a triumph over the court; and the people were eager to prostrate themselves at his feet. But his talents were those of the financier only; as a statesman, he was sadly wanting. The example of the Americans had excited in the minds of a portion of the nobility an indefinable and romantic longing for something called liberty; the middle classes, who possessed the most intelligence, education, and wealth, were indignant at being excluded from most places of honor, and at being obliged to bear the whole burden of the taxes, from which the nobles and the clergy were exempt; the great body of the people, who were in the condition of slaves, had the wrongs and outrages of many centuries of oppression to avenge: all these classes, though agreeing in nothing else, were united in demanding a change. On the other side, 98 the queen, supported by her royal brothers-in-law and a portion of the nobles, resolutely set themselves against any innovations.

Necker did not agree entirely with either party; he was in favor of a limited monarchy; the British constitution appeared to him, as it did to his daughter, the perfection of government. But he had not the decision and energy requisite for insuring the success of his own opinions. The well-disposed but weak monarch yielded to the more daring counsels of the court, and prepared to crush at once their opponents by force. But these measures were concerted without the knowledge of Necker, and before they could be executed, he must quietly be got rid of. Accordingly, on the 11th of July, 1789, as he was about to sit down to dinner, he received an order to quit France within four and twenty hours, and without exciting observation. Necker obeyed to the very letter. He and his wife, without changing their dress, stepped into the carriage, as if to take the usual evening airing, and travelled night and day till they reached Brussels.

Madame de Stael was informed of this event on the morning of the 12th, and on the 15th, having been advised of their route, she set off to join her parents. “When I reached them,” says she, “three days after, they still wore the full dress which they had on, when, after a large dinner party, and while no one suspected the agitating position in which they were placed, they silently quitted France, their friends, their home, and the power which they enjoyed. This dress, covered with dust, the name assumed by my father for the sake of avoiding recognition in France, and so detention 99 through the favor in which he was still held,—all these filled me with feelings of reverence, that caused me to throw myself at his feet, as I entered the room of the inn where I found him.”

While thus exhibiting his respect for the king, Necker, by another act, displayed his love for the people. To purchase a supply of corn for the starving population of Paris, Necker had negotiated a loan of two millions of livres, for which his own personal security was to be given. The transaction was not completed at the period of his exile, and, lest this should occasion any delay, he wrote at once to confirm his guaranty.

No sooner was Necker’s dismissal known, than Paris rose in insurrection. An army of one hundred thousand men was arrayed in a night; on the 14th of July, the Bastile was destroyed, and the king was forced to attend in person at the Hotel de Ville, and to express his approbation of the acts of the revolutionists. A courier, bearing an order of recall, overtook Necker at Frankfort. He hesitated, but at last determined to comply. “What a moment of happiness,” says Madame de Stael, “was our journey to Paris! I do not think that the like ever happened to any man who was not sovereign of the country. * * * The liveliest acclamations accompanied every step; the women threw themselves on their knees afar off in the fields when they saw his carriage pass; the first citizens of the different places acted as postilions; and, in the towns, the inhabitants took off the horses to drag the carriage themselves. It was I that enjoyed 100 for him; I was carried away by delight, and must not feel ungrateful for those happy days, however sad were the ones that followed.” “O, nothing can equal the emotion that a woman feels when she has the happiness of hearing the name of one beloved repeated by a whole people. All those faces, which appear for the time animated by the same sentiment as one’s self; those innumerable voices, which echo to the heart the name that rises in the air, and which appear to return from heaven after having received the homage of earth; the inconceivable electricity which men communicate to each other when they share the same emotions; all those mysteries of nature and social feeling are added to the greatest mystery of all—love—filial or maternal—but still love; and the soul sinks under emotions stronger than itself. When I came to myself, I felt that I had reached the extreme boundary of happiness.”

The triumph was of short duration: striving to act a middle part, Necker incurred the distrust of both parties. His want of capacity, also, to rule the tempest, was most evident; his propositions were weak and inconsistent; but his daughter saw not this: the loss of the confidence of the king and of the favor of the people, was attributed by her to their ingratitude and perversity; in her eyes, her father was still the greatest of men. His resignation and departure from France was to her a subject of mortification, however. As he passed on his way to Switzerland, the same people who, the year before, had swelled the acclamations of triumph and joy, now met him with reproaches 101 and revilings. At one place he was detained as a prisoner, and only released in pursuance of a decree of the National Assembly.

His daughter remained at Paris. Although excluded theoretically from the exercise of any political power, there is no country where the women take so active a part in politics as in France. Madame de Stael was not a woman to forego the exercise of rights which custom had given her sex: accordingly we find her deeply involved in all the political intrigues of the day, and her drawing-room the scene of the most important political discussions.

During the dreadful days of August, 1792, she exerted herself to the utmost to save the lives of her friends; fearlessly traversing the streets filled with the lowest wretches of both sexes; visiting the victims in the obscure houses in which they were concealed, and taking them into her own house, which, from the protection which the law of nations throws over an ambassador, she trusted would be to them a sanctuary. But those now in power heeded little the law of nations: the police demanded to search her house; she met them at the door, talked to them of the rights of ambassadors, and of the vengeance which Sweden would take if they persisted in their demand; she rallied them upon their want of courtesy, and finally, by argument and gayety, induced them to abandon their intention.

Although it was apparent that her personal safety was endangered, she could not bear to leave Paris, the theatre in which so exciting a drama was being acted. With her passports ready, she yet lingered until the 102 2d of September, when the news of the advance of the foreign troops into France excited the Parisians to madness, and led to the commission of those horrible excesses which have left an indelible stain on the French name. She then set out for Switzerland; but even now her love of effect and of display was exhibited. She left her house in a coach drawn by six horses, with the servants in full livery, trusting for safety to her title as wife of an ambassador. But she had hardly left her own door, when the carriage was surrounded by a host of furious women, who compelled the postilions to drive to the office of the section of the city to which she belonged, from whence she was ordered to the Hotel de Ville. This was at the opposite side of the city, and she was three hours in making her way thither through crowds of ferocious wretches thirsting for her blood. She was detained at the Hotel de Ville during the remainder of the day, and in the evening was conducted by Manuel to his own house. On the next day, she was suffered to leave the city attended by her maid alone, and accompanied by a gendarme.

At Coppet she found personal safety; but not even the society of her father could render its quiet agreeable to her. Her activity found some exercise for itself in affording protection to those who were so fortunate as to escape from the fangs of the Revolutionary Tribunal. She also wrote an eloquent appeal in behalf of the queen, and “Reflections on the Peace,” which was quoted by Fox, as full of sound political views and just argument.

No sooner had the fall of Robespierre rendered 103 Paris a comparatively safe place of residence, than she hastened thither, eager to bear a part in the busy scenes which were taking place. Her return formed an epoch in society; it was the signal of the revival of refinement. She became the centre of a brilliant circle, composed of the most distinguished foreigners, and of the most eminent men of France. In the society of women she took no pleasure; she loved to be surrounded by those who could appreciate her talents, and could discuss those questions which are foreign to the general tastes of women. But it could hardly be called discussion: her own opinions were delivered like oracles, and if she ever asked a question, it was in such an indeterminate way that no one felt called upon to reply. In this connection one little peculiarity may be mentioned: in public she always held in her hand, which, by the by, was well-formed, some plaything, which she twirled between her fingers; in summer, it was a twig of poplar with two or three leaves at the end; in winter, it was a rolled paper; and it was usual, on her entrance at a party, to present a number of these, from which she made a selection.

The influence which she had acquired excited the alarm of the revolutionists; she was denounced in the Convention and attacked in the newspapers. But this moved her not, so long as by her eloquence she could make converts to her own opinions—opinions adopted hastily, and without reflection, which were, therefore, often changing, and frequently contradictory.

At length Bonaparte appeared upon the stage; and at their first interview, Madame de Stael felt that he was a man not to be dazzled or won. He had just 104 returned from the conquest of Italy. She thus speaks of the impression he made on her: “I could not reply to him, when he told me that he had visited Coppet, and felt much regret at passing through Switzerland without seeing my father. To a feeling of admiration succeeded one of fear—a feeling that was experienced by all who approached him, and which resulted solely from his personal attributes; for at this time he held no political power, but had himself fallen under the suspicions of the Directory. I soon learned that his character was not to be defined by the words in ordinary use; that he was neither gentle nor violent, mild nor cruel, according to the fashion of other men. The feeling of fear was only increased by subsequent intercourse with him. I had a confused feeling that no emotion of the heart ever influenced him.”

In all that Madame de Stael says of Napoleon, there is an evident feeling of pique, and of mortified vanity. Hitherto triumphant in society, she now met with one upon whom all her powers were tried in vain. An opportunity of testing this occurred at an early period. Bonaparte proposed to the Directory the invasion of Switzerland; upon which she sought a conference with him, in the hope of turning him from his purpose. He viewed the interference as impertinent, and the matter entirely out of a woman’s province: from deference to her reputation, however, he entered into a discussion of the matter, and, having said as much as he thought ought to convince her, turned the conversation to other subjects, much to Madame de Stael’s mortification, who could not bear to be treated like a mere woman.

When Bonaparte became first consul, Madame de 105 Stael did not hesitate to express openly her dissatisfaction at his rising power. Joseph Bonaparte, of whom she was fond, remonstrated with her. “My brother,” said he, “complains of you. ‘Why,’ said he, yesterday, ‘does not Madame de Stael attach herself to my government? What does she want? The payment of the money due her father? She shall have it. To remain in Paris? I will permit it. In short, what does she want?’” “The question is not what I want,” replied Madame de Stael, “but what I think.”

There was one thing which operated as a check on her, and that was, the fear of being obliged to leave Paris. The possibility of such a catastrophe filled her with wretchedness. Away from the society and the excitements of that capital, she was the victim of ennui: her own brilliant powers of mind furnished her with no protection; she had no internal resources for happiness. Hear her own confession: “In this point was I vulnerable. The phantom of ennui forever pursues me; fear of it would have made me bow before tyranny, if the example of my father, and the blood which flowed in my veins, had not raised me above such weakness.”

The “dispensation of ennui” she viewed as the most terrible exercise of Bonaparte’s power. But even her fear of it would not control the ruling passion: she continued to discourse on politics, though to a constantly diminishing audience, and to excite those with whom she possessed influence to oppose the measures of government, until the forbearance of that government was exhausted, and she received advice from the minister of police to retire for a short time into the 106 country. This she terms the commencement of a series of persecutions by Bonaparte—a reproach which is not deserved; for it could not be expected that any government, much less one whose power was not yet established, would submit to a constant opposition, which exhibited itself not only in epigrams, always a most powerful weapon in France, but, as she herself confesses, in direct political intrigues; the interference, too, being by one who had small claims to be called a Frenchwoman. She was the daughter of a Swiss, and the wife of a Swede, of which latter character she more than once made use to secure her own personal safety and that of her friends. What course could the government have adopted of a milder character? There was no personal violence, nor threat of any: she was banished from the theatre of her hostile influence, and forbidden to circulate her works there.

Not long after the banishment of Madame de Stael from Paris, Bonaparte passed through Switzerland, on his way to Italy. Having expressed a wish to see Necker, the latter waited on him. After a two hours’ conversation, the aged minister left Napoleon, fascinated, like all who approached him, by his powers of pleasing, and gratified, as well by this mark of respect, as by the permission which he obtained for his daughter to reside at Paris.

The publication of her work on “Literature” restored Madame de Stael to popularity. Her salons were again crowded, but chiefly with foreigners, for she still remained upon bad terms with the first consul. “She pretends,” said he, “to speak neither of politics 107 nor of me; yet it happens that every one leaves her house less attached to me than when they went in. She gives them fanciful notions, and of the opposite kind to mine.” Wounded vanity had no doubt a large share in producing her state of feeling. Upon him, as we have before seen, all her powers of fascination were exerted in vain. Indeed, he seems, in his treatment of her, to have been wanting in his usual tact. She was one day asked to dine in company with him. As she had heard that he sometimes spoke sarcastically of her, she thought he might perhaps address to her some of these speeches, which were the terror of the courtiers. She prepared herself, therefore, with various repartees. But Bonaparte hardly appeared conscious of her presence, and her consolation for the neglect was the conjecture that fear had been the cause of his forbearance.

The early attempts of Madame de Stael in novel-writing gave no promise of superiority in that department of literature. Four tales, published in 1795, were as weak in plan and in execution as they were deficient in moral taste. It is a sad illustration of the state of moral feeling in the community, that a mind, naturally so well-intentioned and powerful, could be so debased, especially of one who had, at all times, a deep sense of religion, and who had been educated in the strict principles of Calvin. “Delphine,” which appeared in 1802, is marked by the same faults of a moral character, and its tendency was so marked, as to incur the censure even of French critics, “who dared,” as Madame de Stael indignantly exclaims, “to blame a book approved by Necker.” That the censure was 108 merited, no right-minded person can deny. The defence which Madame de Stael felt called upon to put forth is weak, inconclusive, and abounding in sophistries. The misfortunes of the heroine are, indeed, the consequences of her actions, but these results are made to appear her misfortune, and not her fault. Fascinated by the eloquence of the author, our hearts are enlisted on the side of the sufferer, whatever may be the decision of our judgment.

Though deficient in some of the requisites for a novelist, especially in dramatic talent, Madame de Stael was eminently endowed with one essential faculty—that of delineating character. In Delphine, it was said the character of the author herself was exhibited, and that Madame de Vernon, in whom we have a perfect picture of social Machiavelism, was drawn from Talleyrand. “I am told,” said he to her, “that you have put us both in your novel in the character of women.” Even if this had been the occasion of offence to the wily courtier, he was too sagacious to disclose it.

Madame de Stael was at Coppet, passing the summer, when her father published a work called “Last View of Politics and Finance.” In this he points out the progress which Bonaparte was making towards despotic power. Irritated at this attack, the first consul forbade the return of the daughter to Paris, from whence she had conveyed such false impressions to her father.

But, much as she loved her father, she could not content herself away from Paris. Genevese society contrasted sadly, in her estimation, with the brilliant circle of her Parisian friends. Hoping, amidst the excitements which attend the commencement of a war, 109 to be overlooked, she ventured, after the rupture of the peace of Amiens, to establish herself at the distance of thirty miles from her beloved capital. The first consul was informed that the road to her residence was crowded with her visitants. She heard that she was to receive an order to depart, and she sought to evade it by wandering from the house of one friend to that of another. It was at length received, and the intercession of Joseph Bonaparte, and other friends of the first consul, was of no avail.

Loath to appear in disgrace among the Genevese, and hoping, amid new scenes, to forget her griefs, she resolved to visit Germany. “Every step of the horses,” she tells us, as she left Paris, “was a pang; and, when the postilions boasted that they had driven fast, I could not help smiling at the sad service they did me.”

The enjoyment which she derived from the attention and kindness with which she was every where received, and from the vast field of knowledge which opened itself to her, was interrupted by the sad news of the illness of her father, followed quickly by intelligence of his death. She at once set off for Coppet. Her feelings, during the melancholy journey, are beautifully and naturally recorded in the “Ten Years of Exile.” This work, which was not published until after her death, is the most interesting of her writings, and the best as it respects style. It was commenced at Coppet, and feigned names and false dates were substituted for the real, for the purpose of misleading the government, whose perfect system of espionage 110 would otherwise have rendered fruitless her most careful endeavors at concealment.

Her fears for the consequences of a discovery were natural; for she expresses most freely her opinions of the character and conduct of the great ruler of France, which take their coloring from her feelings, highly excited by the persecution of which she conceived herself to be the victim. Here are also recorded her observations on the various countries which this persecution compelled her to visit. But the work is far more valuable and interesting from the traits which it unconsciously discloses of the character of the author herself; and any diminution of our preconceived ideas of the absolute dignity of her nature, is more than compensated by the abundant proofs of the kindness and honesty of her disposition.

Her first occupation, after the death of her father, was to publish his writings, accompanied by a biographical memoir. Her passion for him took a new turn. Every old man recalled his image; and she watched over their comforts, and wept over their sufferings. It mingled with her devotions. She believed that her soul communed with his in prayer, and that it was to his intercession that she owed all the good that befell her. Whenever she met with any piece of good fortune, she would say, “It is my father who has obtained this for me.”

In happier days, this passion sometimes was the occasion of scenes not a little amusing to the bystanders. Her cousin and biographer, Madame de Necker Saussure relates the following anecdote: She had 111 come to Coppet from Geneva in Necker’s carriage, and had been overturned on the way, but received no injury. On relating the incident to Madame de Stael, she inquired, with great vehemence, who had driven; and, on being told that it was Richel, her father’s coachman, she exclaimed, in an agony, “Mon Dieu! he may one day overturn my father!” and ordered him into her presence. While waiting his coming, she paced the room, crying out, “My father, my poor father, he might have been overturned;” and, turning to her cousin, “At your age, and with your slight person, the danger is nothing; but with his bulk and age—I cannot bear to think of it!” The coachman now came in; and the lady, usually so mild and indulgent with her servants, in a sort of frenzy, and in a voice of solemnity, but choked with emotion, said, “Richel, do you know that I am a woman of genius?” The poor man stared at her in astonishment, and she went on, yet louder, “Have you not heard, I say, that I am a woman of genius?” The man was still mute. “Well, then, I tell you that I am a woman of genius—of great genius—of prodigious genius! and I tell you more—that all the genius I have shall be exerted to secure your rotting out your days in a dungeon, if ever you overturn my father!”

To recruit her health, which was wasting with grief, she next undertook a journey into Italy. Hitherto she had appeared totally insensible to the beauties of nature, and when her guests at Coppet were in ecstasies with the Lake of Geneva, and the enchanting scenery about it, she would exclaim, “Give me a garret in Paris, with a hundred Louis a year.” But 112 in Italy she seems to have had a glimpse of the glories of the universe, for which enjoyment she always said she was indebted to her father’s intercession.

The delights which she experienced in that enchanting country are imbodied in the novel of “Corinne.” Her representation of its society evinces a want of intimate acquaintance with it, but it is a lively and true picture of the surface. In this work her peculiar talent as a novelist is richly displayed. In the characters of Comte d’Erfeuil, Corinne, and Oswald, we have not only examples of the most true and delicate discrimination, but vivid portraits of individuals, in whom are imbodied the most pleasing peculiarities of their respective nations. A purer morality displays itself in Corinne; the result, rather than the object, of the book. She does not seek, by logical demonstration, to enforce a moral axiom, but the influence of the spirit which emanates from the whole is purifying and elevating.

Madame de Stael was forbidden to approach within forty leagues of Paris; but, after hovering about the confines of the magical circle, she at last established herself within it, at a distance of only twelve leagues from the city. So long as she was contented to remain in obscurity, in the society of a small circle of friends, and to maintain a strict silence on the subject of politics, her violation of the imperial mandate was overlooked. But the publication of Corinne put an end to the indulgence, and she was ordered to quit France.

The tedium of her life at Coppet was somewhat relieved by the visits of her friends, and of distinguished foreigners. She was occupied, too, by her 113 work on Germany, which was completed in 1810. To superintend its publication, she took up her abode at the permitted distance from Paris, at the old chateau of Chaumont-sur-Loire, already notable as the residence of Diane de Poitiers, Catherine de Medicis, and Nostradamus.

She submitted her book to the censor, and expunged such passages as were objected to. She now deemed herself safe in publishing it. Ten thousand copies were already printed, when an order was issued by Savary, minister of police, for the suppression of the work. The impressions were seized, and, the ink being obliterated by a chemical process, the paper was returned to the publisher. The manuscript was demanded, and the author ordered to quit France in twenty-four hours; but, upon her remonstrance, the time was extended to eight days. “Your exile,” says Savary, “is the natural consequence of the course of conduct you have constantly pursued for many years. It is evident that the air of France does not agree with you.” The true reasons for the suppression of her work were not assigned, but were turned off with the remark that “It is not French; and that the French are not yet reduced to seek for models in the countries which she admired.”

In 1810, M. de Rocca, a French officer, who was yet suffering from dangerous wounds, received in Spain, arrived at Geneva. His personal condition and his reputation for brilliant courage heightened the interest excited by his youth and noble physiognomy. He first saw Madame de Stael at a public assembly. She entered the ball-room, dressed in a 114 costly but unbecoming style, and followed by a train of admirers. “Is this the far-famed woman?” said Rocca; “she is very ugly, and I detest such straining for effect.” A few words of sympathy, set off by the music of her voice, effected a complete revolution in his feelings. Wishes and hopes apparently the most extravagant took possession of his heart—for she was now a widow. “I will love her so much that she will marry me,” said he, and his words were soon fulfilled; but the event was carefully concealed until the death of Madame de Stael; for she was peculiarly sensitive to public opinion, and refused to acknowledge a marriage which might have excited ridicule—so great was the disparity of age and of condition between the parties. She was unwilling likewise to change her name. “Mon nom est a l’Europe,” said she to M. Rocca, when, on a subsequent occasion, he jestingly asked her to marry him.

For this marriage, as well as for her former one, Madame de Stael has been severely censured. Many apologies, if any be really necessary, may be found for her. Since the death of her father, she had felt, more than before, the want of an essential accessory to her happiness. Speaking of the asylum which she hoped to find in England, she said, “I feel the want of love, of cherishing, of some one to lean upon; if I can find in that country a man possessing real nobleness of character, I will gladly yield up my liberty.” Heartbroken and disappointed, both as a woman and an author, she had returned to Coppet, to find her residence there more irksome and unhappy than ever. She was advised not to go farther than ten leagues 115 from home; and fear lest she should involve her friends, induced her to forbid their coming to her. Her fears were not altogether without reason. Regardless of the advice she had received, she made the tour of Switzerland with M. de Montmorency, and the consequence to him was exile from France. Another friend, the beautiful and celebrated Madame de Recamier, paid for a few hours’ intercourse by exile to Lyons.

Imagination conjured up new terrors. The fear of imprisonment seized her, and she resolved to escape. The choice of a route perplexed her. She passed her life, she says, in studying the map of Europe, to find how she could escape beyond the wide-spread poison-tree of Napoleon’s power. She at length departed. England was the point of destination.

Passing through Germany, she was received at St. Petersburg with great distinction by the emperor, and, thence passing on her way, spent eight months at Stockholm with her old friend Bernadotte, crown prince of Sweden; with whom at Paris, in the early days of Bonaparte’s career, she had been discovered concerting measures to stop his progress towards absolute power—a discovery which furnished an apology for the treatment she received.

The “Ten Years of Exile,” which, after an intermission of several years, had been resumed, closes at Stockholm. In England, she met with a most cordial reception. Fashionable society courted her as a lion; the more intelligent and highly educated sought her for her genius.

Her work on Germany was published in London, and 116 raised her reputation as a critic to the highest point. She was among the founders of the philosophical school of critics; who, not wasting their attention on the conventional forms of composition, look to the intrinsic qualities which constitute literary excellence. But she was not sufficiently dispassionate always to form a correct judgment. Her enthusiasm and susceptibility made her too indulgent. As she would often be thrown into ecstasies by a wretched hand-organ in the street, so she would be in raptures with verses, the melody of which pleased her ear. She would repeat them with great pomp and emphasis, and say, “That is what I call poetry! it is delicious! and all the more that it does not convey a single idea to me.”

“Germany” was a gift of the greatest price to France. Her standards in literature had been fixed a century before, and to alter or advance them was deemed a work of impiety. A natural result was a want of vigor and of originality. She had imposed her fetters, too, on foreign nations. The cold, artificial spirit of the age of Louis XIV. long pressed, like an incubus, upon the literary spirit of Germany. But about the middle of the last century, the spell was broken. A literary revolution took place in that country, and, from being destitute of all national literature, Germany became possessed of one the most characteristic. To furnish a literary and mental portraiture of this emancipated nation, was a work requiring a rare combination of talents, and one which was executed by Madame de Stael with singular ability.

She hailed with delight the overthrow of Napoleon, 117 which opened to her the way to Paris. But she never joined in the senseless cry which was raised, that he had neither talents nor courage. “It would be too humiliating for France, and for all Europe,” she said, “that, for fifteen years, it had been beaten and outwitted by a coward and a blockhead.” Her joy was, however, tempered by grief and indignation, that the soil of France, “cette belle France,” should be desecrated by the feet of foreign invaders. To avoid witnessing the humiliating spectacle of Paris in the possession of barbarians, she retired to Coppet, where, in 1816, she renewed her acquaintance with Lord Byron, whose genius fascinated her, and who had been chief favorite while she was in England. She now gave him much advice as to his conduct, which he met by quoting the motto to “Delphine,”—“Man must learn to brave opinion,—woman to submit to it.” But she no longer defended the truth of this epigraph. Always religious, the principles of Christianity now mingled more intimately in her sentiments.

Time, too, had wrought a change in her character: she was much softened, and appreciated more justly the real blessings and misfortunes of life. In her own family she found sources of happiness. Her children were dutiful and affectionate, and the marriage of her daughter to the Duke de Broglie gave her pleasure. Her chief cause of disquietude was the ill health of her husband, in anticipation of whose death she composed a book, with the title, “The only Misfortune of Life, the Loss of a Person beloved.” But she was not destined to be the sufferer now. She had ever despised the accommodation of the body, and gave herself no trouble about 118 health. She affected to triumph over infirmity, and was wont to say, “I might have been sickly, like any body else, had I not resolved to vanquish physical weakness.” But nature was not to be thus defied. Her health failed, and the use of opium aided the progress of disease. But sickness threw no cloud over her intellect; “I am now,” she said, “what I have ever been—sad, yet vivacious;” but it displayed the moral beauties of her character in a more striking light. She was kind, patient, and devout. Her sleepless nights were spent in prayer. Existence no longer appeared to her in its gayest colors. “Life,” she said, “resembles Gobelin tapestry; you do not see the canvass on the right side; but when you turn it, the threads are visible. The mystery of existence is the connection between our faults and our misfortunes. I never committed an error that was not the cause of a disaster.” Yet she left life with regret, though death possessed for her no terrors. “I shall meet my father on the other side,” she said, “and my daughter will ere long rejoin me.” “I think,” said she, one day, as if waking from a dream, “I think I know what the passage from life to death is; and I am convinced that the goodness of God makes it easy; our thoughts become confused, and the pain is not great.” She died with the utmost composure, at Paris, July, 1817.

Her husband survived her but a few months. “Grief put a period to his already precarious existence. He withdrew from Paris, to die beneath the beautiful sky of Provence, and there breathed his last sighs in the arms of his brother.”

The chief works of Madame de Stael, and her peculiarities as an author, have already been spoken 119 of. One work, published after her death, and the most powerful of all, remains to be mentioned. In the “Considerations on the French Revolution,” she sought to blend the memoir with the philosophical history. The faults are what might have been expected. The details, too minute for the one, are too scanty for the other. In the selection of these she was biased by her personal feelings, but to a degree far less than was to be anticipated. Her feelings were warm and excitable; she had lived in the midst of the events of which she speaks; she had herself been an actor, and her father had borne a conspicuous part, in them; indeed, one grand purpose of the work is to exculpate him. That she should, under these disqualifying circumstances, have produced a work so temperate, and on the whole so impartial—one that exhibits such philosophical depth and comprehensiveness of vision—excites in us wonder and admiration. But it is not as a history that the work is interesting and valuable. It is that it exhibits to us the impressions made by the great events of which she speaks, and the scenes which she witnessed, upon a powerful and original mind. It abounds with profound reflections and brilliant remarks. The style, eloquent and impassioned, is in a high degree conversational, and, as we read it, we almost expect to hear the sound of the voice. The remarkable talent for discrimination and delineation of character, which distinguish her as a novelist, lead us to regret that it did not come within the design of the work to furnish us with historical portraitures of the distinguished personages of the period. The few which she has given us, increase our regret, and mark her as a mistress in the art.

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LADY HESTER STANHOPE.

The third Earl of Stanhope, father of the subject of our present sketch, possessed abilities which qualified him for any station; yet he devoted his ample fortune, his time, and his thoughts, to mechanics and to experiments in science and philosophy; with what success, the Stanhope printing press, many improvements in the process of stereotype printing, and his various papers on the electric fluid, are evidence. He married a daughter of the great Earl of Chatham; and of this marriage, Lady Hester Stanhope was the earliest fruit. She was born in 1776.

LADY HESTER STANHOPE.

Genius was the only inheritance she received from her father. Upon the death of her mother, which happened when she was young, she was received into the house of her uncle, William Pitt, the younger, and was there brought up. Between this minister and his brother-in-law there was little sympathy of opinion. Stanhope was an enthusiast for the improvement of social institutions, and hailed the French revolution as the beginning of the change which he hoped for. So confident was he in those views, as to urge upon his children the necessity of qualifying themselves to earn a living by some honest calling. He could not 122 approve the measures which the minister now adopted; and, as his children adhered in principle to their uncle, he renounced them, saying, “that, as they had chosen to be saddled on the public purse, they must take the consequences.”

The genius and originality of Lady Hester made her an especial favorite with her uncle. She presided at his table, and he evinced his respect for her abilities, by employing her, after his retirement from office, as his secretary. Though to the multitude this great statesman appeared cold and unbending, with his intimates, and those whom he received into his private friendship, he was cheerful and affable; to women he was polite in the extreme, and, in the midst of his gravest avocations, would rise to pick up his secretary’s fallen handkerchief. Devoted to the affairs of state, Pitt paid no attention to his own pecuniary concerns, so that the only provision he could make for his niece at his death, was to recommend her to the favor of his king and country, who acknowledged their obligation to him by bestowing upon her a pension of twelve hundred pounds, annually.

Soon after the death of her uncle, she left England, and spent some years in visiting the chief cities of continental Europe. Her rank, her beauty, and her fortune, were alone sufficient to attract crowds of suitors; but they were all rejected. After satisfying her curiosity in Europe, she embarked, with a numerous retinue, for Constantinople, with the determination of making a long sojourn in the East, and taking with her a large amount of property. A storm overtook the vessel on the coast of Caramania, fronting 123 the Island of Rhodes; the vessel struck against a rock, and soon went to pieces, burying Lady Hester’s jewels and other property, to a large amount, in the waves. Her own escape was almost miraculous. The piece of the wreck on which she had taken refuge was cast on the shore of a small, desert island, where she remained twenty-four hours, without help or food of any kind. At last, some fishermen of Marmoriga, who were in search of the remains of the wreck, found her out, and brought her to Rhodes.

Her resolution was not daunted by this disaster. She returned to England, collected the remains of her fortune, and, after investing a portion of it in the English funds, embarked once more for the East, taking with her articles for presents, and whatever else might be of service in the countries she designed to visit. Her voyage was prosperous, and she landed at the site of the ancient Laodicea, now called Latakia, between Tripoli and Alexandretta, on the coast of Syria.

In the neighborhood of this place she fixed her residence, and entered upon a course of preparation for her intended journeys into the most inaccessible parts of Arabia, Mesopotamia, and the desert. She strengthened her body by diet and exercise, and, from being weak and debilitated, became strong and vigorous as an Amazon. She studied the Arab language, and sought for intercourse with the various classes of Arabs, Druses, and Maronites of the country.

After having become perfectly familiar with the language, manners, and usages, of the country, she organized a large caravan, and, loading her camels 124 with rich presents for the Arabs, set out on her travels. She visited every place worthy of notice in Syria. At Palmyra numerous hordes of wandering Arabs assembled round her tent, to the number of forty or fifty thousand, and, charmed by her beauty, her grace, and her splendor, proclaimed her queen of that once imperial city, and delivered firmans into her hand, by which it was agreed that every European who should receive her protection might proceed in perfect safety through the desert, paying to them a certain fixed tribute.

The newly-proclaimed queen herself ran great hazard, on her return from Palmyra, and narrowly escaped being carried off by a tribe hostile to those of that region. She, however, received notice of her danger in season—by the swiftness of her horses, and a twenty-four hours’ journey of almost incredible extent—to place herself and her caravan out of the reach of the enemy. The next few months she passed at Damascus, protected by the Turkish pacha, to whom the Porte had highly recommended her.

Satisfied, at length, with a life of wandering, Lady Hester settled herself on one of the mountains of Lebanon, near the ancient Sidon. Quitting this place, the traveller enters upon a wild and barren country. Hill succeeds to hill, and all are divested of vegetation or soil. At last, from the top of one of these rocks, his eye rests upon a valley deeper and broader than the rest, bordered on all sides by more majestic but equally barren mountains. In the midst of this valley the mountain of Djoun rises, with a flat summit covered with a beautiful green vegetation. A white wall 125 surrounds this mass of verdure, and marks the habitation of the “Sittee Inglis,” or “English lady.” It is a confused assemblage of small cottages, each containing one or two rooms, without windows, and separated from one another by small gardens. All the verdure was the result of her own labor; she created what to Eastern eyes might seem a paradise—gardens containing bowers of fragrant vines, kiosks embellished with sculpture and paintings, with fountains of marble; and arches formed of orange, fig, and lemon-trees.

Here she resided for many years in a style of Eastern magnificence, surrounded by a concourse of household officers, and a numerous retinue of young females,—upon whose education she employed herself,—and a host of servants, black and white. She held friendly intercourse with the Sublime Porte, with the various pachas, and with the chiefs of the numerous tribes of Arabs and others about her. Such was the state in which she lived, and the influence which she exerted, that she might well imagine herself “Queen of the Desert.”

But the splendor of her reign was soon dimmed. Her treasures were not large enough to bear the unlimited draughts upon them. Her Arab friends, whose affections were only to be preserved by constant gifts, cooled towards her when these became less rich and less frequent; those who had accompanied her from Europe, died or deserted her; and she was at length left in a state of absolute retirement.

Some sources of influence still remained to her; one of these was in that power which the strong-minded 126 and educated always exercise over the weak and ignorant. Astrology—a science long banished from Europe—still holds its sway in the East. The opinion went abroad that Lady Hester could read the stars, and procured for her that respect among the common people, and, to a certain extent, that personal security, which had formerly been purchased with the shawls of Cashmere, and the rich silver-mounted pistols of England.

But whilst practising these arts upon others, she became herself the victim of strange delusions. She came by degrees to believe that the history of all was written in the stars, and that she had there read the history of the world. The Messiah was soon to appear upon the earth, and by his side, mounted upon a milk-white mare of matchless beauty, which was then in her stable, she was to witness the conquest of Jerusalem, and the establishment of his kingdom. She had, too, in her stable the mare upon which her companion was to ride. This animal, in all other respects of beautiful proportions, had behind the shoulders a cavity so large and deep, and imitating so completely a Turkish saddle, that one might say with truth she was foaled saddled. The appearance of an animal with this peculiarity, in itself a deformity, served as an incitement to credulity, and to keep up the delusion. The animal was watched with the greatest care by two grooms, one of whom was never to lose sight of her. No one had ever mounted her, and from her bearing one might have fancied that the creature was conscious of the admiration and respect which were entertained for her by all around, and felt the dignity of her future mission.

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The talent which Lady Hester was supposed to possess was put in constant requisition by her credulous neighbors; nor was her power ever exercised for bad purposes. She used it to calm the passions of the violent; to induce the unjust and the oppressor to make reparation for their wrong-doings; and put it to other good uses, of which the following anecdote, related by herself, will furnish an example: “An Arab suspected his wife of talking too much with strangers in his absence, and one of his neighbors confirmed his suspicions. He went home, proceeded to strangle the unfortunate woman, and, when she became insensible, he dragged her to some distance, and commenced interring her: the first heap of sand which he threw upon her recalled sensation; she manifested symptoms of life, and he repented of his vengeance; he brought her to me half dead; told the story of her supposed guilt, but owned he was premature in strangling her, as he should have first got me to consult her star, to ascertain if she really deserved to die or not. I sent the woman to the harem, had her bled, and taken care of till she recovered, and then I summoned the man before me. ‘My good friend,’ said I, ‘your wife’s star has been consulted; take her back in peace, and thank God you have her; for it is written in the stars, “On vain surmises thou shalt not strangle thy wife, neither shalt thou hearken to the slanderers of her honor.”’ The man immediately held out his hand to his gentle rib; she kissed it, and forth he walked, desiring her to follow him, with the most perfect indifference. I asked the woman if she were afraid of another act of violence. She calmly replied, ‘Is he 128 not my husband? Has he not a right to kill me, if he suspects me of doing wrong?’”

Lady Hester believed in the science of astrology to the fullest extent. She believed that we are all children of some one of the celestial fires which presided at our birth, and of which the happy or malignant influence is written in our eyes, on our foreheads, in our fortunes, in the lines of our hands, in the form of our feet, in our gesture, in our walk. She believed that, from these various elements, she could read the character and destiny of any individual who was but for a few moments in her presence. In accordance with her belief, she thought that skilful astrologers should be appointed to every district, to consult the heavenly bodies at the birth of every child; the nature of each natal star to be registered by them, and kept secret till the period of education, which is to be adapted to that particular calling which the star of every human being indicates.

The following somewhat poetical description of the personal appearance of Lady Hester is given by a traveller, who, in 1832, was suffered to visit her—a favor rarely granted to Europeans: “I was introduced into her cabinet by a little negro child. It was so extremely dark, that it was with difficulty I could distinguish her noble, grave, yet mild and majestic features, clad in an Oriental costume. She rose from the divan, advanced, and offered me her hand. She appeared to be about fifty years of age; but she possessed those personal traits which years cannot alter. Freshness, color, and grace, depart with youth; but when beauty resides in the form itself, in purity of expression, in 129 dignity, in majesty, and a thoughtful countenance, whether in man or woman, this beauty may change with the different periods of life, but it does not pass away—it eminently characterized the person of Lady Hester Stanhope.

“She wore a white turban, and on her forehead was a purple-colored woollen fillet, which fell on each side of her head as low as her shoulders. A long, yellow Cashmere shawl, and an immense Turkish robe of white silk, with flowing sleeves, enveloped all her person in simple and majestic folds, while an opening of these folds upon the bosom displayed a tunic of rich Persian stuff, covered with flowers, which was attached round the neck by a clasp of pearls. Turkish yellow morocco boots, embroidered with silk, completed this beautiful Oriental costume, which she wore with that freedom and grace, as if she had never used any other from her youth.”

Though Lady Hester retained her power over the lower classes by means of their superstitious fears, the neighboring chiefs were not to be thus restrained, and some of them sought by robbery to indemnify themselves for the loss of the accustomed presents. Hoping to coerce her into a renewal of them, they harassed her by petty vexations; her camels were seized; her servants were beaten; and at length, when she retaliated, a firman was procured, forbidding any Mussulman, on pain of death, to remain in her service, or to carry water to her house. The severity of the last prohibition may be judged from the fact that the water for the use of her house and garden had to be brought from a river three or four miles distant. Her appeal, 130 however, to the Porte procured the withdrawal of the firman, and saved her gardens from the destruction which a want of irrigation would soon have produced.

In 1837, a new source of vexation to Lady Hester arose. The British government, having received information that some of her English creditors were in a state of destitution, appropriated the pension which Lady Hester had so long received to their relief. This met with a spirited remonstrance on the part of her ladyship, who called to her aid the Duke of Wellington and other opponents of the whig administration. Failing in these efforts, she appealed to the queen herself, but with no better success. She did not long survive this new source of mortification. On hearing of her illness, the British consul at Beyroot, accompanied by Mr. Thomson, an American missionary, hastened to her assistance; but, on their arrival, nothing was left for them to do but to pay the last sad offices to her remains. She died on the 23d of June, 1839.

Various and opposing motives have been assigned for the unusual conduct of Lady Hester: we think, however, its explanation is to be found in an eccentric imagination, a turn for adventure, and that love of power which is inherent in the human breast. We can hardly consider it more extraordinary that one English lady should be found willing to accept a government under the sunny skies of Syria, than that so many English officers should seek for sway on the burning shores of Africa and the East Indies.

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HANNAH MORE.

Hannah More was the youngest but one of the five daughters of Jacob More, who, after receiving an education for the church, bounded his wishes by the possession of a school at Stapleton, England, upon obtaining which, he married the daughter of a respectable farmer; and to the soundness of her judgment in the culture and regulation of her children, the credit and success which attended them are, in a great degree, to be attributed.

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Like other intelligent children, Hannah More displayed at an early age a desire for knowledge and a love of books. To supply the want of the latter, her father was accustomed to relate to his children, from memory, the most striking events of Grecian and Roman history, dwelling much on the parallels and wise sayings of Plutarch. He would also recite to them the speeches of his favorite heroes in the original languages, and then translate them into English. Hannah thus acquired a taste for the Latin classics, an acquaintance with which she carefully cultivated, in defiance of her father’s horror of blue stockingism, which was extreme, and which probably prevented his instructing her in Greek.

The bent of her mind displayed itself at an early age. Every scrap of paper, of which she could possess herself, was scribbled over with essays and poems, having some well-directed moral. Her little sister, with whom she slept, was the depositary of her nightly effusions; and, in her zeal lest they should be lost, she would sometimes steal down to procure a light, and commit them to paper. The greatest wish her imagination could frame, was that she might some day be rich enough to have a whole quire of paper; and, when this wish was gratified, she soon filled it with letters to depraved characters, of her own invention, urging them to abandon their errors, and letters in return, expressive of contrition and resolutions of amendment.

HANNAH MORE.

Her elder sisters, having been educated with that view, opened a boarding-school for young ladies at Bristol; and under their care the school education of Hannah was completed. While yet a pupil, she 133 attracted the notice and enjoyed the friendship of many eminent men. She delighted to study the sciences with Ferguson, the astronomer; and such was his opinion of her taste and genius, that he submitted his compositions to her for the correction of errors in style. Of her conversational powers at this period an anecdote is related. A dangerous illness brought her under the care of Dr. Woodward, an eminent physician. On one of his visits, being led into conversation with his patient on literary subjects, he forgot the purpose of his coming; till, recollecting himself when half way down stairs, he cried out, “Bless me! I forgot to ask the girl how she was;” and returned to the room, exclaiming, “How are you to-day, my poor child?”

In her seventeenth year, she appeared before the public as an author. The class of books, now so common, called “Readers,” and “Speakers,” was then unknown. Young persons were in the habit of committing to memory the popular plays of the day, which were not always pure in their sentiments, or moral in their tendency. “To furnish a substitute,” as the youthful moralist tells us in her preface, “for the very improper custom of allowing plays, and those not of the purest kind, to be acted by young ladies in boarding-schools, and to afford them an innocent, and perhaps not altogether unuseful amusement, in the exercise of recitation,” she composed a drama, called the “Search after Happiness.” Her object was to convey instruction in a pleasing form, and the intention was well executed. The plot is of the simplest kind, and one not calculated to kindle the fervors of 134 poetry. Four young ladies betake themselves to the retreat of a virtuous lady, who, with her two daughters, has renounced the world and fixed herself in a secluded spot—to receive from her, as from an oracle, instructions which shall guide them in the way which leads to peace and contentment.

Among the pupils of the Misses More were two Misses Turner, who were in the habit of passing the vacations at the house of a bachelor cousin of the same name. They were permitted to bring some of their young friends with them, and took the two youngest of their governesses, Hannah and Patty More. “The consequence was natural. Hannah was clever and fascinating; Mr. T. was generous and sensible: he became attached, and made his offer, which was accepted. She gave up her interest in the school, and was at much expense in fitting herself out to be the wife of a man of fortune.” The day was fixed more than once for the wedding, and Mr. Turner each time postponed it. Her sisters and friends interfered, and broke off the engagement, and would not suffer her to listen to any of his subsequent proposals. To compensate her, as he said, for the robbery he had committed on her time, and to enable her to devote herself to literary pursuits, Mr. Turner settled upon her an annuity; and at his death, to show that he still retained his esteem, he left her a legacy. The distress and disturbance which this event occasioned her, led to a resolution, on her part, never again to incur a similar hazard—a resolution the strength of which was tested by actual trial.

Among the favorite sports of Hannah’s childhood 135 was the making a carriage of a chair, and playing at riding to London to visit bishops and booksellers—a day-dream which became a reality in 1784. Of the circumstances which led to the journey we have no record. A few days after her arrival in London, she was, by a fortunate accident, brought to the notice of Garrick. A letter written by her to a mutual friend, describing the effect produced upon her mind by his representation of Lear, was shown to him, and excited in him a curiosity to see and converse with her. The desire was gratified; they were reciprocally pleased, and Miss More was soon domesticated with Mr. Garrick and his affectionate wife; and, for the next twenty years, she spent six months of each year under their hospitable roof. Through them she was at once received on terms of cordial kindness into their wide and splendid circle. She was welcomed as a sister spirit by the coterie which she has so elaborately eulogized in the “Bas Bleu.” She has often been heard to describe, very humorously, her raptures on her first introduction to a “live author,” and her sisters long remembered her strong desire to get a sight, from some hiding-place, of Dr. Johnson. She was now to meet him face to face. The first interview was at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s. She had been prepared by Sir Joshua for finding him in one of his sombre moods, but was surprised and delighted at his coming to meet her, as she entered the room, with good-humor on his countenance, and a macaw of Sir Joshua’s on his hand; and still more at his accosting her with a verse from a morning hymn, which she had 136 written at the desire of her early and firm friend, Dr. Stonehouse.

A few extracts from the sprightly letters of a sister who accompanied her, will furnish the best picture of the scenes in which Miss More now bore a part. “Hannah has been introduced to Burke—the Sublime and Beautiful Burke! From a large party of literary persons assembled at Sir Joshua’s she received the most encouraging compliments; and the spirit with which she returned them was acknowledged by all present.” “The most amiable and obliging of women—Miss Reynolds—has taken us to Dr. Johnson’s very own house! Can you picture to yourselves the palpitation of our hearts as we approached his mansion? Miss Reynolds told the doctor of all our rapturous exclamations on the road. He shook his scientific head at Hannah, and said, ‘she was a silly thing.’ When our visit was ended, he called for his hat to attend us down a very long entry to our coach, and not Rasselas could have acquitted himself more en cavalier. I forgot to mention, that, not finding Johnson in his parlor when we came in, Hannah seated herself in a great chair, hoping to catch a little ray of his genius: when he heard of it, he laughed heartily, and told her it was a chair on which he never sat. He said it reminded him of Boswell and himself, when they stopped a night at the spot—as they imagined—where the weird sisters appeared to Macbeth; the idea so worked upon their enthusiasm that it deprived them of rest; however, they learned, the next morning, to their mortification, that they had been deceived, and were quite in another part of the country.”

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Johnson was not always, however, in the humor to swallow the flattery which she lavished upon him; Mrs. Thrale records a surly enough rebuke which the doctor administered to her: “Consider, madam, what your flattery is worth before you choke me with it.” As he was complaining, upon another occasion, that he had been obliged to ask Miss Reynolds to give her a hint on the subject, somebody observed that she flattered Garrick also; “Ay,” said the doctor, “and she is right there; first, she has the world with her; and, secondly, Garrick rewards her. I can do nothing for her. Let her carry her praise to a better market.” But in this flattery there was no want of sincerity and no disingenuousness. At the age of thirty-one she had brought to London the fresh, ecstatic enthusiasm of a country girl of seventeen; when, instead of having Johnson pointed out to her as he rolled along the pavement of Fleet Street, and gazing at Garrick from the side boxes, she found herself at once admitted to the inmost circle of the literary magnets—it is not wonderful that her feelings should overflow in language and gesture rather too warm for the acclimated inhabitants of the temperate zone.

The same hyperbolical style is to be found in the letters intended only for the eyes of her sisters. “Mrs. Montagu is not only the finest genius, but the finest lady, I ever saw; she lives in the highest style of magnificence; her apartments and tables are in the most splendid taste; but what baubles are these when speaking of a Montagu! Her form—for she has no body—is delicate to fragility; her countenance the most animated in the world; she has the sprightly vivacity of 138 sixteen, with the judgment and experience of a Nestor. Mrs. Carter has in her person a great deal of what the gentlemen mean when they speak of a ‘poetical lady:’ independently of her great talents and learning, I like her much: she has affability, kindness, and goodness; and I honor her heart more than her talents; but I do not like one of them better than Mrs. Boscawen; she is at once learned, polite, judicious, and humble.” At a party at which all these and other luminaries were collected, Dr. Johnson asked Miss More her opinion of the new tragedy of “Braganza.” “I was afraid,” says she, “to speak before them all, as I knew there was a diversity of opinion: however, as I thought it a less evil to dissent from a fellow-creature than to tell a falsity, I ventured to give my sentiments, and was satisfied with Johnson’s answering, ‘You are right, madam.’”

Stimulated by the approbation of such judges, Miss More turned to literature with redoubled energy; and from this period, the important part of her personal history may be read in that of a succession of works, all in their season popular; all commendable for moral tone; considerably above mediocrity in literary execution; and some of them worthy to survive their age.

After her return home, she one day laughingly said to her sisters, “I have been so fed with praise, that I think I will try what is my real value, by writing a slight poem, and offering it to Cadell.” Accordingly she wrote and sent him “Sir Eldred of the Bower,” a ballad in the style which Dr. Percy had rendered popular. Cadell offered her a price far exceeding her idea of its worth; adding that, if she would ascertain what Goldsmith 139 received for the “Deserted Village,” he would make it up to the same sum. With the public the poem met with a success which its merits by no means justify. At a tea-visit in her own lodgings, where she had Johnson all to herself,—and as she tells us he ought always to be had, for he did not care to speak in mixed companies,—the new poem was discussed. The leviathan of letters, instead of expressing his contempt for compositions of this class, and treating her to a new stanza,—like

“I put my hat upon my head,

And walked into the Strand,

And there I met another man

With his hat in his hand,”—

indited the following, which she proudly engrafted on the original in the second edition, no doubt receiving the compliment as paid to the author, rather than to the heroine:—

“My scorn has oft the dart repelled

Which guileful beauty threw;

But goodness heard, and grace beheld,

Must every heart subdue.”

In her early life, Miss More was subject to frequent attacks of illness, which she was wont to say were a great blessing to her, for they induced a habit of industry not natural to her, and taught her to make the most of her well days. She laughingly added, it had taught her to contrive employment for her sick ones; that from habit she had learned to suit her occupations to every gradation of the capacity she possessed. “I 140 never,” said she, “afford a moment of a healthy day to cross a t or dot an i; so that I find the lowest stage of my understanding may be turned to some account, and save better days for better things. I have learned also to avoid procrastination, and that idleness which often attends unbroken health.” These habits of order and industry gave her much time for intellectual pursuits, even amidst the dissipations of the city.

At her first introduction to its brilliant society, Patty More seemed to have some apprehensions that her sister “Hannah’s head might not stand proof against all the adulation and kindness of the great folks.” But these effected no change in her deportment; her simplicity remained unsullied; home and the society of her sisters had lost for her none of its charms. Her good sense and firmness of character were subjected to a yet more severe trial upon the production of the tragedy of “Percy.” Nothing could exceed the zeal which Garrick displayed to insure its success. Miss More thus speaks of it in a letter to her sister: “It is impossible to tell you of all the kindness of the Garricks; he thinks of nothing, talks of nothing, writes of nothing, but ‘Percy.’ When he had finished his prologue and epilogue, he desired I would pay him. Dryden, he said, used to have five guineas apiece, but, as he was a richer man, he would be content if I would treat him with a handsome supper and a bottle of claret. We haggled sadly about the price; I insisting that I could only afford to give him a beef-steak and a pot of porter; and at about twelve, we sat down to some toast and honey, with which the temperate bard contented himself.” She 141 adds in the same letter, “What dreadful news from America!—Burgoyne’s surrender.—We are a disgraced, undone nation. What a sad time to bring out a play in! when, if the country had the least spark of virtue remaining, not a creature would think of going to it.”

The success of “Percy” was prodigious; greater than that of any tragedy for years. She received for it about six hundred pounds, which, she tells us, “her friend Mr. Garrick invested for her on the best security, and at five per cent., and so it made a decent little addition to her small income.” Cadell paid one hundred and fifty pounds for the copy-right, and it proved a very successful speculation. The first edition, of four thousand copies,—a very large one for those days,—was sold off in a fortnight.

Though the patronage of Garrick and the popularity of the author contributed in no small degree to its success, yet the tragedy itself possesses intrinsic merits. The plot is simple. Bertha, the daughter of Lord Raby, is betrothed, in early youth, to Earl Percy. His family incur the displeasure of Lord Raby, and, during the young earl’s absence in the Holy Land, he compels his daughter to marry Earl Douglas, the hereditary enemy of the Percys. The proud spirit of Douglas is chafed to find that his own ardent love is met only with cold and respectful obedience. He suspects the preëngagement of her affections, and his jealousy rouses him to fury, when Percy is found in the neighborhood of his castle. In the catastrophe, all the principal personages are involved in a common destruction. In the development of the plot the author 142 displays considerable imagination, and much dramatic skill. The interest is well sustained; the didactic spirit sometimes breaks forth, as in the conclusion of the following extract, in which Lord Raby laments the sombre and melancholy spirit with which the jealousy of Douglas has infected his whole household:—

“——Am I in Raby castle?

Impossible! That was the seat of smiles;

There cheerfulness and joy were household gods.

But now suspicion and distrust preside,

And discontent maintains a sullen sway.

Where is the smile unfeigned, the jovial welcome,

Which cheered the sad, beguiled the pilgrim’s pain,

And made dependency forget its bonds?

Where is the ancient, hospitable hall,

Whose vaulted roof once rung with harmless mirth;

Where every passing stranger was a guest,

And every guest a friend? I fear me much,

If once our nobles scorn their rural seats,

Their rural greatness, and their vassals’ love,

Freedom and English grandeur are no more.”

The following passage, in which Bertha seeks to exculpate herself for the breach of faith with which Percy, whom she meets by accident after his return, charges her, is full of pathos:—

“I could withstand his fury; but his tears—

Ah, they undid me! Percy, dost thou know

The cruel tyranny of tenderness?

Hast thou e’er felt a father’s warm embrace?

Hast thou e’er seen a father’s flowing tears,

And known that thou couldst wipe those tears away?

If thou hast felt, and hast resisted these,

Then thou may’st curse my weakness; but if not,

Thou canst not pity, for thou canst not judge.”

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Encouraged by the success of “Percy,” and urged by Garrick, Miss More composed a second tragedy, called the “Fatal Falsehood.” The whole was completed, and four acts had been revised by Garrick, when death deprived her of that warm and disinterested friend. Miss More pays the following tribute to his memory: “I never can cease to remember with affection and gratitude so warm, steady, and disinterested a friend; I can most truly bear this testimony to his memory, that I never witnessed, in any family, more decorum, propriety, and regularity, than in his; where I never saw a card, or ever met—except in one instance—a person of his own profession at his table. All his pursuits and tastes were so decidedly intellectual, that it made the society and the conversation which was always to be found in his circle, interesting and delightful.”

The success of the “Fatal Falsehood” was great, but not equal to that of “Percy.” We must content ourselves with making one extract, in which she characterizes “Honor,” as it is technically called:—

“Honor! O yes, I know him. ’Tis a phantom,

A shadowy figure, wanting bulk and life,

Who, having nothing solid in himself,

Wraps his thin form in Virtue’s plundered robe,

And steals her title. Honor! ’tis the fiend

Who feeds on orphans’ tears and widows’ groans,

And slakes his impious thirst in brothers’ blood.

Honor! why, ’tis the primal law of hell!

The grand device to people the dark realms

With noble spirits, who, but for this cursed honor,

Had been at peace on earth, or blessed in heaven.

With this false honor Christians have no commerce;

Religion disavows, and truth disowns it.”

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One more tragedy, the “Inflexible Captive,” completes Miss More’s labors in this department of literature. She arrived at the conclusion that, by contributing plays, however pure, to the existing stage, she should be using her powers to heighten its general attraction as a place of amusement; and, considering the English theatre as, on the whole, the most profligate in the world, she resolved to abjure it and all its concerns forever—an instance of self-love sacrificed to principle hardly to be paralleled. When her works were collected, the tragedies were allowed to take their place, in order, as the author tells us in a preface written in her happiest manner, that she might ground on such publication her sentiments upon the general tendency of the drama, and, by including in her view her own compositions, might involve herself in the general object of her own animadversions.

She makes no apology for the republication of her “Sacred Dramas,” though they may, perhaps, be regarded as falling within the range of some of her criticisms on the old Mysteries and Moralities—pieces “in which events too solemn for exhibition, and subjects too awful for detail, are brought before the audience with a formal gravity more offensive than levity itself.”

As a general poet, Miss More was, at this period, the very height of the fashion. Horace Walpole thought himself honored in being permitted to print some of her pieces in the most lavish style of expense, at the press of Strawberry Hill. But fashions in literature are scarcely more lasting than those in dress. Her poems are now immersed in Lethe, except a few terse couplets, which have floated down to the 145 present generation on the stream of oral citation, and are now often in the mouths of people who fancy that they belong to Swift or Gay. Many of her poems are, however, worthy of a better fate. They are distinguished by purity and elevation of sentiment, ease and strength of diction, and harmony of versification. In the last particular she received great praise from Johnson, who pronounced her to be “the best versificatrix in the English language.”

We will give a few extracts. The first is from “Sensibility,” a poem in which she claims for that quality the place which Mrs. Grenville, in a then well-known ode, arrogated for “Indifference.”

“Sweet sensibility! thou keen delight!

Unprompted moral! sudden sense of right!

Perception exquisite! fair virtue’s seed!

Thou quick precursor of the liberal deed!

Thou hasty conscience! reason’s blushing morn!

Instinctive kindness e’er reflection’s born!

Prompt sense of equity! to thee belongs

The swift redress of unexamined wrongs;

Eager to serve, the cause perhaps untried,

But always apt to choose the suffering side;

To those who know thee not no words can paint,

And those who know thee know all words are faint.

She does not feel thy power who boasts thy flame,

And rounds her every period with thy name.

As words are but th’ external marks to tell

The fair ideas in the mind that dwell,

And only are of things the outward sign,

And not the things themselves they but define,

So exclamations, tender tones, fond tears,

And all the graceful drapery feeling wears,—

These are her garb, not her; they but express

Her form, her semblance, her appropriate dress;

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And these fair marks,—reluctant I relate,—

These lovely symbols, may be counterfeit.

There are who fill with brilliant plaints the page,

If a poor linnet meet the gunner’s rage;

There are who for a dying fawn deplore,

As if friend, parent, country, were no more;

Who boast, quick rapture trembling in their eye,

If from a spider’s snare they snatch a fly;

There are whose well-sung plaints each breast inflame,

And break all hearts—but his from whence they came.”

The “Bas Bleu” is a sprightly portraiture of what she considered to be the right constitution and character of social conversation. It is a vivacious image of that circle of gay and graceful conversers from whose appellation it takes its name. It was first circulated in manuscript, and we find Miss More apologizing to her sister for the shortness of a letter, on the ground that she had not a moment to spare, as she was copying the “Bas Bleu,” for the king, at his request. Dr. Johnson pronounced it to be “a very great performance.” To the author herself he expressed himself in yet stronger terms. She writes to her sister, “As to the ‘Bas Bleu,’ all the flattery I ever received from every body together would not make up his sum. He said—but I seriously insist you do not tell any body, for I am ashamed of writing it even to you—he said, ‘there was no name in poetry that might not be glad to own it.’ You cannot imagine how I stared; all this from Johnson, that parsimonious praiser! I told him I was delighted at his approbation; he answered quite characteristically, ‘And so you may, for I give you the opinion of a man who does not rate his judgment 147 in these things very low, I can tell you.’” The following extract will give some idea of its merits:—

“What lively pleasure to divine

The thought implied, the printed line!

To feel allusion’s artful force,

And trace the image to its source!

Quick Memory blends her scattered rays,

Till Fancy kindles at the blaze;

The works of ages start to view,

And ancient wit elicits new.

But wit and parts if thus we praise,

What nobler altars shall we raise?

Those sacrifices could we see

Which wit, O virtue! makes to thee,

At once the rising thought to dash,

To quench at once the bursting flash!

The shining mischief to subdue,

And lose the praise and pleasure too!

Though Venus’ self could you detect her

Imbuing with her richest nectar

The thought unchaste, to check that thought,

To spurn a fame so dearly bought,—

This is high principle’s control,

This is true continence of soul.

Blush, heroes, at your cheap renown,

A vanquished realm, a plundered town

Your conquests were to gain a name—

This conquest triumphs over fame.”

“Florio” is a metrical tale of a young man of good principles and right feelings, who, from deference to fashion, has indulged in vanities and follies bordering on depravity, which he lays aside in disgust when virtue and good sense, in alliance with female loveliness, have made apparent to him the absurdity and danger of his aberrations. In the following extract the 148 reader will recognize some of the oft-quoted couplets of which we have spoken:—

“Exhausted Florio, at the age

When youth should rush on glory’s stage,

When life should open fresh and new,

And ardent Hope her schemes pursue,

Of youthful gayety bereft,

Had scarce an unbroached pleasure left;

He found already, to his cost,

The shining gloss of life was lost,

And Pleasure was so coy a prude,

She fled the more, the more pursued;

Or, if o’ertaken and caressed,

He loathed and left her when possessed.

But Florio knew the world; that science

Sets sense and learning at defiance;

He thought the world to him was known,

Whereas he only knew the town.

In men this blunder still you find:

All think their little set—mankind.

Though high renown the youth had gained,

No flagrant crimes his life had stained;

Though known among a certain set,

He did not like to be in debt;

He shuddered at the dicer’s box,

Nor thought it very heterodox

That tradesmen should be sometimes paid,

And bargains kept as well as made.

His growing credit, as a sinner,

Was, that he liked to spoil a dinner,

Made pleasure and made business wait,

And still by system came too late;

Yet ’twas a hopeful indication

On which to found a reputation:

Small habits, well pursued, betimes

May reach the dignity of crimes;

And who a juster claim preferred

Than one who always broke his word?”

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The death of Garrick may be considered an era in the life of Miss More. His wit, his gayety, his intelligence, added to his admiration of her genius, and the warmth of his friendship for her, formed the strongest spell that held her in subjection to the fascinations of brilliant society and town life. The early feeling which prompted the infant wish for “a cottage too low for a clock” was still fresh in her bosom. The country, with its green pastures and still waters, still retained its charms for her. “I have naturally,” she writes, “but a small appetite for grandeur, which is always satisfied, even to indigestion, before I leave town; and I require a long abstinence to get any relish for it again.” After the death of her friend, she carried into execution the resolution she had long cherished, of passing a portion of her time in retirement in the country. With this view, she possessed herself of a little secluded spot, which had acquired the name of “Cowslip Green,” near Bristol.

Still, however, her sensibility to kindness would not let her withhold herself entirely from her London friends; her annual visits to Mrs. Garrick brought her back into contact with the world and its crowded resorts.

From her earliest acquaintance with society, she had seen with sorrow the levity of manners, the indifference to religion, and the total disregard of the Sabbath, which prevailed in its higher circles. Not content with holding herself uncontaminated, she felt it to be her duty to make an effort for a reformation, and with this end she published “Thoughts on the Importance of the Manners of the Great to General Society.” To 150 appreciate the value of the effort, we must remember that these “Thoughts” were not the animadversions of a recluse, but of one who was flattered, admired, and courted, by the very people whom she was about to reprove; that the step might probably exclude her from those circles in which she had hitherto been so caressed. But the happiness of her friends was dearer to her than their favor. That the probable consequences did not ensue, does not diminish her merit. This work and the one which speedily followed it, “An Essay on the Religion of the Fashionable World,” were popular beyond hope, and the wish of Bishop Porteus, “that it might be placed in the hands of every person of condition,” was almost realized. It is unnecessary to dwell on these works; they are too well known; they established her reputation as a great moral writer, possessing a masterly command of language, and devoting a keen wit and a lively fancy to the best and noblest of purposes.—After giving one extract from the most vigorous of her poems, “Slavery,” written to aid the efforts which Clarkson and Wilberforce were making in behalf of the African slave, and in which she heartily sympathized, we will pass on to new scenes, in which Miss More’s benevolent spirit exhibits itself in a yet more active manner.

“O thou sad spirit, whose preposterous yoke

The great deliverer, death, at length has broke!

Released from misery, and escaped from care,

Go, meet that mercy man denies thee here.

And if some notions, vague and undefined,

Of future terrors, have assailed thy mind;

If such thy masters have presumed to teach—

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As terrors only they are prone to preach;

For, should they paint eternal mercy’s reign,

Where were the oppressor’s rod, the captive’s chain?—

If, then, thy troubled soul has learned to dread

The dark unknown thy trembling footsteps tread,

On Him who made thee what thou art depend;

He who withholds the means accepts the end.

Thy mental night thy Savior will not blame;

He died for those who never heard his name.

Nor thine the reckoning dire of light abused,

Knowledge disgraced, and liberty misused:

On thee no awful judge incensed shall sit,

For parts perverted or dishonored wit.

When ignorance will be found the safest plea,

How many learned and wise shall envy thee!”

In withdrawing herself from general society, Miss More had cherished the hope of devoting herself to meditation and literary leisure. But there was no rest for her but in the consciousness of being useful. In the course of her rambles in the neighborhood of her residence, she was shocked to find the same vices, against which she had lifted up her voice in high places, existing in the peasant’s cottage, in a different form, but heightened by ignorance, both mental and spiritual. Though in a feeble state of health, she could not withhold herself from the attempt to effect a reformation.

In this she had no coadjutors but her sisters, who, having acquired a competency, had retired from school-keeping, and had, with her, a common home. Provision was made by law for the support of clergymen; but the vicar of Cheddar received his fifty pounds a year, and resided at Oxford; and the rector of Axbridge “was intoxicated about six times a week, and was 152 very frequently prevented from preaching by two black eyes, honestly acquired by fighting.”

She commenced operations by seeking to establish a school at Cheddar. Some of the obstacles she encountered may be best related in her own words. “I was told we should meet with great opposition, if I did not try to propitiate the chief despot of the village, who is very rich and very brutal; so I ventured to the den of this monster, in a country as savage as himself. He begged I would not think of bringing any religion into the country; it made the poor lazy and useless. In vain I represented to him that they would be more industrious, as they were better principled; and that I had no selfish views in what I was doing. He gave me to understand that he knew the world too well to believe either the one or the other. I was almost discouraged from more visits; but I found that friends must be secured at all events; for, if these rich savages set their faces against us, I saw that nothing but hostilities would ensue: so I made eleven more of these agreeable visits; and, as I improved in the art of canvassing, had better success. Miss W. would have been shocked, had she seen the petty tyrants whose insolence I stroked and tamed, the ugly children I praised, the pointers and spaniels I caressed, the cider I commended, and the wine I swallowed. After these irresistible flatteries, I inquired of each if he could recommend me to a house, and said that I had a little plan which I hoped would secure their orchards from being robbed, their rabbits from being shot, their game from being stolen, and which might lower the poor rates. If effect be the best proof of eloquence, 153 then mine was good speech, for I gained in time the hearty concurrence of the whole people, and their promise to discourage or favor the poor as they were attentive or negligent in sending their children. Perhaps the hearts of some of these rich brutes may be touched; they are as ignorant as the beasts that perish, intoxicated every day before dinner, and plunged in such vices as make me begin to think London a virtuous place.” The vicarage house, which had not been occupied for a hundred years, was hired for a school-house; “the vicar,” she says, “who lives a long way off, is repairing the house for me; and, as he is but ninety-four years old, he insists on my taking a lease, and is as rigorous about the rent as if I were taking it for an assembly-room.”

The prejudices of the poor were more difficult to be overcome than those of the rich. Some thought that her design was to make money, by sending of their children for slaves; others, that, if she instructed them for seven years, she would acquire such a control as to be able to send them beyond seas. But she persisted, and her success was great beyond expectation. In a short time, she had at Cheddar near three hundred children, under the charge of a discreet matron, whom she hired for the purpose.

Encouraged by this success, she extended her field of operations, and established schools at several other villages. The nearest of these was six miles from her home; the labor and fatigue of superintending the whole was therefore very great. But she declined an assistant for reasons stated in a letter to Mr. Wilberforce, who had offered to seek for one. “An ordinary 154 person would be of no use; one of a superior cast, who might be able to enter into my views, and further them, would occasion an expense equal to the support of one or two more schools. It will be time enough to think of your scheme when I am quite laid by. This hot weather makes me suffer terribly; yet I have now and then a good day, and on Sunday was enabled to open the school. It was an affecting sight. Several of the grown-up lads had been tried at the last assizes; three were children of a person lately condemned to be hanged; many thieves; all ignorant, profane, and vicious, beyond belief. Of this banditti I have enlisted one hundred and seventy; and when the clergyman, a hard man, who is also a magistrate, saw these creatures kneeling round us, whom he had seldom seen but to commit or to punish in some way, he burst into tears.”

Her plan was not limited to intellectual and spiritual instruction. The children were taught to sew, to spin, and to knit. Nor were her labors confined to the advancement of the well-being of the young; she sought to introduce branches of manufacture, suitable to the strength and sex of the women, and she arranged with master manufacturers to buy the products of their labor. She sought to establish habits of economy by getting up associations, in which each contributed a portion of her earnings, on condition of receiving a support in case she should be disabled from labor. This was a work of difficulty. Though the subscription was only three half-pence per week, yet many could not raise even this: such were privately assisted. Other inducements, besides considerations of providence, 155 must be held out to the improvident. “An anniversary feast of tea was held, at which some of the clergy and better sort of people were present. The patronesses waited on the women, who sat and enjoyed their dignity. The journal and state of affairs was read. A collateral advantage resulted from this. The women, who used to plead that they could not go to church because they had no clothes, now went. The necessity of going to church in procession on the anniversary, raised an honest ambition to get something decent to wear, and the churches on Sunday were filled with very clean-looking women.”

Similar machinery was brought into exercise to advance the cause of her schools. Two years after the first attempt, we find this apology for not sooner writing to a friend: “I have been too busy in preparing for a grand celebration, distinguished by the pompous name of Mendip Feast; the range of hills you remember in this country, on the top of which we yesterday gave a dinner of beef, and plum pudding, and cider, to our schools. There were not six hundred children, for I would not admit the new schools, telling them they must be good for a year or two, to be entitled to so great a thing as a dinner. Curiosity had drawn a great multitude, for a country so thinly peopled; one wondered whence five thousand people—for that was the calculation—could come. We all parted with the most perfect peace, having fed about nine hundred people for less than a fine dinner for twenty, costs.”

It would require a large volume to speak of all Miss More’s labors in behalf of erring and suffering humanity. 156 At one time, we find her engaged, in the most harassing and embarrassing situations, spending days and nights with armed Bow Street officers in searching the vilest haunts for a young heiress, who had been trepanned away from school at the age of fourteen. The details of another of her attempts to alleviate suffering, exhibit so strikingly the genuine liberality of her heart and conduct, as to be worth relating. She was one day informed that a woman, who called every day for stuff to feed a pig, was, with her husband and children, perishing with hunger. She lost no time in endeavoring to rescue this miserable family, and soon discovered that the woman was possessed of more than ordinary talent. She produced several scraps of poetry, which evinced much genius. It occurred to Miss More that this talent might be made the means of exciting a general interest in her behalf, and raising a fund to set her up in some creditable way of earning a subsistence. She accordingly took a great deal of pains in instructing her in writing, spelling, and composition; and, while the object of her charity was preparing, under her inspection, a small collection of poems, she was employed in writing to all her friends of rank and fortune, bespeaking subscriptions. Mrs. Montagu cautioned her not to let her own generous nature deceive her as to the character and temper of her beneficiary. “It has sometimes happened to me,” she writes, “that, by an endeavor to encourage talents and cherish virtue, by driving from them the terrifying spectre of pale poverty, I have introduced a legion of little demons: vanity, luxury, idleness, and pride, have entered the cottage the moment poverty vanished. 157 However, I am sure despair is never a good counsellor.”

For thirteen months, Miss More’s time was largely occupied in the woman’s service, and the result of her efforts was the realization of a sum exceeding three thousand dollars, which was invested for the woman’s benefit under the trusteeship of Mrs. Montagu and Miss More. The result is made known in a letter from the latter to the former. “I am come to the postscript, without having found courage to tell you, what I am sure you will hear with pain; at least it gives me infinite pain to write it. I mean the open and notorious ingratitude of our milk-woman. There is hardly a species of slander the poor, unhappy creature does not propagate against me, because I have called her a milk-woman, and because I have placed the money in the funds, instead of letting her spend it. I confess my weakness; it goes to my heart, not for my own sake, but for the sake of our common nature. So much for my inward feelings; as to my active resentment, I am trying to get a place for her husband, and am endeavoring to increase the sum I have raised for her. Do not let this harden your heart or mine against any future object. ‘Do good for its own sake’ is a beautiful maxim.” The milk-woman presently put her slanders into a printed shape; and Mrs. Montagu, on reading the libel, found one thing Miss More’s letter had not prepared her for. Here is her comment: “Mrs. Yeardsley’s conceit that you can envy her talents gives me comfort, for, as it convinces me she is mad, I build upon it a hope that she is not guilty in the All-seeing Eye.” The last allusion which Miss More 158 herself makes to the behavior of “Lactilla” is on the occasion of a second publication of hers, in which the generous patroness was again, after a lapse of two years, maligned and insulted with a cool bitterness that may well be called diabolical, and is in these words, addressing Horace Walpole: “Do, dear sir, join me in sincere compassion, without one atom of resentment. If I wanted to punish an enemy, it should be by fastening on him the trouble of constantly hating somebody.” Mrs. Montagu and Miss More resisted with exemplary patience the woman’s violent importunities to be put in possession of the principal, as well as interest, of her little fortune, fearing that it would be consumed in those vices to which it was apparent she was addicted. At length, they gave over the trust to a respectable lawyer, who transferred it to a merchant of Bristol; and he was soon harassed into the relinquishment of the whole concern.

In the year 1792, affairs wore a very gloomy and threatening aspect in England. French revolutionary and atheistical principles seemed to be spreading wide their destructive influence. Indefatigable pains were taken, not only to agitate and mislead, but to corrupt and poison, the minds of the populace. At this crisis, letters poured in upon Miss More, from persons of eminence, earnestly calling upon her to produce some little tract which might serve to counteract these pernicious efforts. The intimate knowledge she had shown of human nature, and the lively and clear style of her writings, which made them attractive, pointed her out as the proper person for such an effort. Though she declined an open attempt to stem the mighty torrent, 159 which she thought a work beyond her powers, she yet felt it to be her duty to try them in secret, and, in a few hours, composed the dialogue of “Village Politics, by Will Chip.” The more completely to keep the author unknown, it was sent to a new publisher. In a few days, every post from London brought her a present of this admirable little tract, with urgent entreaties that she would use every possible means of disseminating it, as the strongest antidote that could be administered to the prevailing poison. It flew with a rapidity almost incredible into the remotest parts of the kingdom. Government distributed many thousands. Numerous patriotic associations printed large editions; and in London only, many hundred thousands were distributed.

Internal evidence betrayed the secret of the authorship; and, when the truth came out, innumerable were the thanks and congratulations which bore cordial testimony to the merit of a performance, by which the tact and intelligence of a single female had turned the tide of misguided opinion. Many affirmed that it contributed essentially to prevent a revolution; so true was the touch, and so masterly the delineation, which brought out, in all its relief, the ludicrous and monstrous cheat, whereby appetite, selfishness, and animal force, were attempted to be imposed under the form of liberty, equality, and imprescriptible right.

The success of “Village Politics” encouraged Miss More to venture on a more extensive undertaking. The institution of Sunday schools, which had enabled multitudes to read, threatened to be a curse instead of 160 a blessing; for, while no healthy food was furnished for their minds, the friends of infidelity and vice carried their exertions so far as to load asses with their pernicious pamphlets, and to get them dropped, not only in cottages and in the highways, but into mines and coal-pits. Sermons and catechisms were already furnished in abundance; but the enemy made use of the alluring vehicles of novels, tales, and songs, and she thought it right to meet them with their own weapons.

She therefore determined to produce three tracts every month, written in a lively manner, under the name of the “Cheap Repository.” The success surpassed her most sanguine expectations. Two millions were sold in the first year—a circumstance, perhaps, new in the annals of printing. But this very success, she tells us, threatened to be her ruin; for, in order to supplant the trash, it was necessary to undersell it, thus incurring a certain loss. This, however, was met by a subscription on the part of the friends of good order and morals.

The exertion which it required to produce these tracts, to organize her plan, and to conduct a correspondence with the committees formed in various parts of the kingdom, materially undermined her health. She continued them, however, for three years. “It has been,” she writes, “no small support to me, that my plan met with the warm protection of so many excellent persons. They would have me believe that a very formidable riot among the colliers was prevented by my ballad of ‘The Riot.’ The plan was settled; they were resolved to work no more; to attack the mills first, and afterwards the gentry. A 161 gentleman gained their confidence, and a few hundreds were distributed, and sung with the effect, they say, mentioned above—a fresh proof by what weak instruments evils are now and then prevented. The leading tract for the next month is the bad economy of the poor. You, my dear madam, will smile to see your friend figuring away in the new character of a cook furnishing receipts for cheap dishes. It is not, indeed; a very brilliant career; but I feel that the value of a thing lies so much more in its usefulness than its splendor, that I think I should derive more gratification from being able to lower the price of bread, than from having written the Iliad.”

That Miss More’s efforts in behalf of virtue should be opposed by those against whom they were aimed, will not surprise us. But she was attacked from a quarter whence she had a right to expect sympathy and support. The nature of the attack will be learned from a letter written some years afterwards: “I will say, in a few words, that two Jacobin and infidel curates, poor and ambitious, formed the design of attracting notice and getting preferment by attacking some charity schools—which, with no small labor, I have carried on in this country for near twenty years—as seminaries of vice, sedition, and disaffection. At this distance of time,—for it is now ended in their disgrace and shame,—it will make you smile when I tell you a few of the charges brought against me, viz., that I hired two men to assassinate one of these clergymen; that I was actually taken up for seditious practices; that I was with Hadfield in his attack on the king’s life. At the same time they declared—mark 162 the consistency—that I was in the pay of the government, and the grand instigator of the war, by my mischievous pamphlets. That wicked men should invent this, is not so strange as that they should have found magazines, reviews, and pamphleteers, to support them. My declared resolution never to defend myself certainly encouraged them to go on. How thankful am I that I kept that resolution! though the grief and astonishment excited by the combination against me nearly cost me my life.”

There is not space to go at large into an account of this persecution, which was continued for several years. The most inveterate of her enemies was the curate of her own parish, who was named Bere, and the most distressing result to herself was being obliged to discontinue the school at that place. But, whilst laboring so earnestly for the poor and the humble, Miss More was still mindful of the wants of the higher classes, and, in the midst of her anxiety and distress, which very seriously affected her health, she found time to compose the “Strictures on Female Education,” for their benefit. All her practical admonitions, and all her delineations of female excellence, were afterwards brought together in the character of Lucilla, in the novel of “Cœlebs in Search of a Wife,” who is a true representative of feminine excellence within the legitimate range of allotted duties. She did not venture on publishing this work without much anxious hesitation. “I wrote it,” she says, “to amuse the languor of disease. I thought there were already good books enough in the world for good people, but that there was a large class of readers, whose wants had 163 not been attended to—the subscribers to the circulating library. A little to raise the tone of that mart of mischief, and to counteract its corruptions, I thought an object worth attempting.” It was published without her name, and though many at once recognized the style, she herself did not acknowledge it till it had passed through many editions. It excited such immediate and universal attention, that, in a few days after its first appearance, she received notice to prepare for a second edition; and shortly afterwards she was followed to Dawlish, whither she had gone to try the effect of repose and the sea air, in restoring her health, by the eleventh edition.

Her works at an early period were duly estimated in the United States, and of the “Cœlebs” thirty editions had been issued before the author’s death. It is not a little creditable to the public taste, that a work so full of plain and practical truth should be so well received. In “Cœlebs,” as well as in some of her smaller productions, Miss More evinces her power of invention, and gives proof that, had she chosen to employ fiction as the vehicle of instruction, her imagination would have afforded her abundant resources; but habit and the bias of her mind led her in another course: a certain substantiality of purpose, a serious devotion to decided and direct beneficence, an active and almost restless principle of philanthropy, were the great distinctions of her character.

When the education of the Princess Charlotte became a subject of serious attention and inquiry, the advice and assistance of Miss More were requested by the queen. Bishop Porteus strenuously advised that the 164 education should be intrusted to her; but, when the latter required that the entire direction should be given to her charge, this was thought, by those in power, to be too great a confidence. They were willing to engage her in a subordinate capacity; but this she declined, and so the negotiation ended. Her ideas on the subject were given to the world under the title of “Hints for forming the Character of a Young Princess”—a book which subsequently was a great favorite with her for whose benefit it was intended, and doubtless contributed to the formation of those virtues and principles which made her death so much lamented.

In the country Miss More had hoped to find retirement. But Barley Wood—a place to which she had removed, about one mile from Cowslip Green—was any thing but a hermitage. “Though,” she says, “I neither return visits nor give invitations, except when quite confined by sickness, I think I never saw more people, known and unknown, in my gayest days. I never had so many cares and duties imposed upon me as now in sickness and old age. I know not how to help it. If my guests are old, I see them out of respect, and in the hope of receiving some good; if young, I hope I may do them a little good; if they come from a distance, I feel as if I ought to see them on that account; if near home, my neighbors would be jealous of my seeing strangers, and excluding them.” Her epistolary labors were enormous. She laid it down as a rule never to refuse or delay answering any application for epistolary advice, enduring the incessant interruptions with indefatigable kindness.

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In spite, however, of all the interruptions of company and of sickness; for, as she tells us, “From early infancy to late old age, her life was a successive scene of visitation and restoration,” she found time and strength to compose a series of works on “Morals,”—the last of the three being produced in the seventy-fifth year of her age.

In 1828, Miss More was subjected to the severest trial, perhaps, of her life. After the death of her sister Martha, who had been the manager of the domestic economy of the sisterhood, affairs at Barley Wood got into sad confusion. Dishonest and dissolute servants wasted her substance. After trying in vain to correct the evil by mild remonstrance, she sank quietly under what seemed inevitable, and determined to take the infliction as a chastisement to which it was her duty to submit. At length, however, her friends interposed, and represented to her the danger of her appearing as the patroness of vice, and thereby lessening the influence of her writings. It was determined that her establishment should be broken up. At a bleak season of the year, on a cold and inclement day, after a long confinement to her chamber, she removed to Clifton. From her apartment she was attended by several of the principal gentlemen of the neighborhood, who had come to protect her from the approach of any thing that might discompose her. She descended the stairs with a placid countenance, and walked silently for a few minutes round the lower room, the walls of which were covered with the portraits of her old and dear friends, who had successively gone before her. As she was helped into the carriage, she cast one pensive, 166 parting look upon her bowers, saying, “I am driven, like Eve, out of paradise; but not, like Eve, by angels.” From the shock of the discovery of the misconduct of her servants, Miss More never recovered. After her removal to Clifton, her health was in a very precarious state. To her friends and admirers it was painful to see her great and brilliant talents descending to the level of mere ordinary persons; but the good, the kind, the beneficent qualities of her mind suffered no diminution or abatement. So long as her intellectual faculties remained but moderately impaired, her wonted cheerfulness and playfulness of disposition did not forsake her; and no impatient or querulous expressions escaped her lips, even in moments of painful suffering. Thus free from the infirmities of temper, which often render old age unamiable and unhappy, she was also spared many of the bodily infirmities which often accompany length of years. To the very last her eye was not dim; she could read with ease, and without spectacles, the smallest print. Her bearing was almost unimpaired, and, until very near the close of her life, her features were not wrinkled or uncomely. Her death-bed was attended with few of the pains and infirmities which are almost inseparable from sinking nature. She looked serene, and her breathing was as gentle as that of an infant in sleep. Her pulse waxed fainter and fainter, and her spirit passed quietly away on the 7th of September, 1833.

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MRS. BARBAULD.

Anna Letitia Barbauld, a name long dear to the admirers of genius and the lovers of virtue, was born at the village of Kibworth Harcourt, in Leicestershire, on June 20th, 1743. She was the eldest child and only daughter of John Aikin, D.D., and Jane, his wife, daughter of the Rev. John Jennings, of Kibworth, and descended by her mother from the ancient family of Wingate, of Harlington, in Bedfordshire.

That quickness of apprehension by which she was eminently distinguished, manifested itself from early infancy. Her mother writes thus respecting her in a letter which is still preserved: “I once, indeed, knew a little girl who was as eager to learn as her instructors could be to teach her; and who, at two years old, could read sentences and little stories in her wise book, roundly, without spelling, and, in half a year more, could read as well as most women; but I never knew such another, and, I believe, never shall.”

Her education was entirely domestic, and principally conducted by her excellent mother, a lady whose manners were polished by the early introduction to good company which her family connections had procured her; whilst her mind had been cultivated, and 168 her principles formed, partly by the instructions of religious and enlightened parents, and partly by the society of the Rev. Dr. Doddridge, who was for some years domesticated under the parental roof.

In the middle of the last century, a strong prejudice still existed in England against imparting to females any degree of classical learning; and the father of Miss Aikin, proud as he justly was of her uncommon capacity, long refused to gratify her earnest desire of being initiated in this kind of knowledge. At length, however, she in some degree overcame his scruples; and, with his assistance, she enabled herself to read the Latin authors with pleasure and advantage; nor did she rest satisfied without gaining some acquaintance with the Greek.

The obscure village of Kibworth was unable to afford her a suitable companion of her own sex: her brother, the late Dr. Aikin, was more than three years her junior; and as her father was, at this period, the master of a school for boys, it might have been apprehended that conformity of pursuits, as well as age, would tend too nearly to assimilate her with the youth of the ruder sex, by whom she was surrounded. But the vigilance of her mother effectually obviated this danger, by instilling into her a double portion of bashfulness and maidenly reserve; and she was accustomed to ascribe an uneasy sense of constraint in mixed society, which she could never entirely shake off, to the strictness and seclusion in which it had thus become her fate to be educated.

Her recollections of childhood and early youth were, in fact, not associated with much of the pleasure and 169 gayety usually attendant upon that period of life; but it must be regarded as a circumstance favorable, rather than otherwise, to the unfolding of her genius, to be left thus to find, or make, in solitude, her own objects of interest or pursuit. The love of rural nature sank deep in her heart. Her vivid fancy excited itself to color, animate, and diversify, all the objects which surrounded her; the few but choice authors of her father’s library, which she read and re-read, had leisure to make their full impression,—to mould her sentiments, and to form her taste. The spirit of devotion, early inculcated upon her as a duty, opened to her, by degrees, an exhaustless source of tender and sublime delight; and while yet a child, she was surprised to find herself a poet.

Just at the period when longer seclusion might have proved seriously injurious to her spirits, an invitation given to her learned and exemplary father to undertake the office of classical tutor to a highly respectable academy at Warrington, in Lancashire, was the fortunate means of transplanting her to a more varied and animating scene. This removal took place in 1758, when Miss Aikin had just attained the age of fifteen; and the fifteen succeeding years, passed by her at Warrington, comprehended probably the happiest, as well as the most brilliant, portion of her existence. She was at this time possessed of great beauty, distinct traces of which she retained to the latest period of her life. Her person was slender, her complexion fair, with the bloom of perfect health: her features were regular and elegant; and her light blue eyes beamed with the light of wit and fancy.

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A solitary education had not produced on her its most frequent ill effects, pride and self-importance; the reserve of her manners proceeded solely from bashfulness, for her temper inclined her strongly to friendship, and to social pleasures; and her active imagination, which represented all objects tinged with hues “unborrowed of the sun,” served as a charm against that disgust with common characters and daily incidents, which so frequently renders the conscious possessor of superior talents at once unamiable and unhappy.

Nor was she now in want of congenial associates. Warrington academy included among its tutors names eminent both in science and literature; with several of these, and especially with Dr. Priestley and Dr. Canfield and their families, she formed sincere and lasting friendships. The elder and more accomplished among the students composed an agreeable part of the same society; and its animation was increased by a mixture of young ladies, either residents in the town, or occasional visitors, several of whom were equally distinguished for personal charms, for amiable manners, and cultivated minds. The rising institution, which flourished for several years in high reputation, diffused a classic air over all connected with it. Miss Aikin, as was natural, took a warm interest in its success; and no academic has ever celebrated his alma mater in nobler strains, or with a more filial affection, than she has manifested in that portion of her early and beautiful poem, “The Invitation,” where her theme is this “nursery of men for future years.”

About the close of the year 1771, her brother, after 171 several years of absence, returned to establish himself in his profession at Warrington—an event equally welcome to her feelings and propitious to her literary progress. In him she possessed a friend with discernment to recognize the stamp of genius in her productions, and anticipate their fame, combined with zeal and courage sufficient to vanquish her reluctance to appear before the public in the character of an author. By his persuasion and assistance, her poems were selected, revised, and arranged for publication; and when all these preparations were completed, finding that she still hesitated and lingered,—like the parent bird, who pushes off its young to their first flight, he procured the paper, and set the press to work on his own authority. The result more than justified his confidence of her success; four editions of the work were called for within the year of publication, 1773; compliments and congratulations poured in from all quarters; and even the periodical critics greeted her muse with nearly unmixed applause.

She was not permitted to repose upon her laurels. Her brother, who possessed all the activity and spirit of literary enterprise, in which she was deficient, now urged her to collect her prose pieces, and to join him in forming a small volume, which appeared also in the year 1773, under the title of “Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose, by J. and A. L. Aikin.” These likewise met with much notice and admiration, and have been several times reprinted. The authors did not think proper to distinguish their respective contributions, and several of the pieces have, in consequence, been generally misappropriated. The fragment of “Sir Bertrand,” 172 in particular, though alien from the character of that brilliant and airy imagination which was never conversant with terror, and rarely with pity, has been repeatedly ascribed to Mrs. Barbauld, even in print.

Having thus laid the foundation of a lasting reputation in literature, Miss Aikin might have been expected to proceed with vigor in rearing the superstructure; and the world awaited with impatience the result of her further efforts. But an event, the most important of her life, was about to subject her to new influences, new duties, to alter her station, her course of life, and to modify even the bent of her mind. This event was her marriage, which took place in May, 1774.

Her husband, the Rev. Rochemont Barbauld, was a dissenting minister, descended from a family of French Protestants, who had taken refuge in England in the reign of Louis XIV. Mr. Barbauld was educated in the academy at Warrington, and, at the time of his marriage, had been recently appointed to the charge of a dissenting congregation at Palgrave, in Suffolk, near Diss, in Norfolk, where he had announced his intention of opening a boarding-school for boys. This undertaking proved speedily successful—a result which must in great part be attributed, first to the reputation, and afterwards to the active exertions, of Mrs. Barbauld. She particularly superintended the departments of geography and English composition, which latter she taught by a method then unusual, but which has since been brought much into practice. Her plan, according to the statement of Mr. William Taylor, of Norwich, one of her first 173 pupils, was, to read a fable, a short story, or a moral essay, aloud, and then to send them back into the school-room to write it out on slates in their own words. Each exercise was separately examined by her: the faults of grammar were obliterated, the vulgarisms were chastised, the idle epithets were cancelled, and a distinct reason was always assigned for every correction, so that the arts of inditing and criticising were in some degree learnt together. Mrs. Barbauld also instructed the pupils in the art of declamation; and the pleasing accomplishments of good reading and graceful speaking have probably never been taught with more assiduity or with better success than by herself. After a few years thus devoted, Mrs. Barbauld was solicited to receive several little boys as her own peculiar pupils; and among this number may be mentioned Lord Denman, the present Chief Justice of England, and the celebrated Sir William Gell. It was for the use of these, her almost infant scholars, that she composed her “Hymns in Prose for Children.”

In 1775, Mrs. Barbauld published a small volume entitled “Devotional Pieces, compiled from the Psalms of David, with Thoughts on the Devotional Taste, and on Sects and Establishments.” About the same time, she wrote that admirable little volume, “Early Lessons,” a publication which has ever since been a standard work, and, though frequently imitated, yet remains unrivalled amidst all its competitors.

This little volume was written for the use of one of her nephews, who had been adopted by Mr. Barbauld and herself, in consequence of their having no child of their own. In the present day, when parents are in 174 possession of the labors of many clever persons for aiding the task of early instruction, it is difficult to form a correct estimate of the value of Mrs. Barbauld’s “Early Lessons.” At the time of its first appearance, as at present, there was a multitude of books professedly written for children, but few adapted to the comprehension of a child of very tender age, that were not at the same time injurious from their folly or puerility.

It would seem that the value of a book which was not only free from these objections, but calculated to impress upon the mind of the child just ideas and noble principles, could not fail to be appreciated by every parent and teacher; but there are those who maintain that the reformation begun by Mrs. Barbauld is an evil. It would seem that, in putting “Mother Goose’s Melodies,” “Jack the Giant-Killer,” and other works of the kind, into the hands of children, as soon as they begin to read, we are likely to distort their minds by grotesque representations, which may exert a lasting and pernicious influence on their understandings; that we set about teaching what is false, and what we must immediately seek to unteach; that we inculcate the idea upon the young mind that books are vehicles of fiction and incongruity, and not of truth and reason.

If the works alluded to produce any effects, they must be of this nature; and on some minds they have probably had a fatal influence. Yet such is the prejudice engendered by early associations, that many grave persons, whose first reading was of the kind we have mentioned, lament the repudiation of “Mother Goose” 175 and her kindred train, and deem it a mistake to use books in their place founded on the idea of Mrs. Barbauld’s works—that truth is the proper aliment of the infant mind, as well calculated to stimulate the faculties as fiction, and that its exhibition is the only safe and honest mode of dealing with those whose education is intrusted to our care.

The success of the school at Palgrave remained unimpaired; but the unceasing call for mental exertion, on the part of the conductors, which its duties required, so much injured their health, that, after eleven years of unremitting labor, an interval of complete relaxation became necessary; and Mrs. Barbauld accompanied her husband, in the autumn of 1785, to Switzerland, and afterwards to the south of France. In the following year they returned to England, and, early in 1787, took up their residence in Hampstead, where, for several years, Mr. Barbauld received a few pupils.

In 1790, Mrs. Barbauld published an eloquent and indignant address to the successful opposers of the repeal of the corporation and test acts. In the following year was written her poetical epistle to Mr. Wilberforce, on the rejection of the bill for abolishing the slave trade. In 1792, she published “Remarks on Mr. Gilbert Wakefield’s Inquiry into the Expediency and Propriety of Public or Social Worship;” and in 1793, she produced a work of a kind very unusual for a female—a sermon, entitled “The Sins of Government Sins of the Nation.” In all these works Mrs. Barbauld showed those powers of mind, that ardent love for civil and religious liberty, and that genuine 176 and practical piety, by which her life was distinguished, and for which her memory will long be held in reverence. In particular, her “Remarks on Mr. Wakefield’s Inquiry” may be noticed as being one of the best and most eloquent, and yet sober, appeals in favor of public worship that has ever appeared.

Our youthful readers will be pleased to learn that Mrs. Barbauld wrote some of the articles in that entertaining work by her brother, Dr. Aikin, entitled “Evenings at Home.” These contributions were fourteen in number. It would be useless to distinguish them here, or to say more concerning them than that they are equal in merit to the other parts of the volumes. These papers, trifling in amount, but not in value, comprise all that Mrs. Barbauld published from 1793 to 1795, when she superintended an edition of Akenside’s “Pleasures of Imagination,” to which she prefixed a critical essay. In 1797, she brought out an edition of Collins’s “Odes,” with a similar introduction. These essays are written with elegance, and display much taste and critical acuteness.

Mr. Barbauld became, in 1802, pastor of a Unitarian congregation at Newington Green, and at this time he changed his residence to Stoke Newington. The chief inducement to this removal was the desire felt by Mrs. Barbauld and her brother to pass the remainder of their lives in each other’s society. This wish was gratified during twenty years, and was interrupted only by death. In 1804, she published a selection of the papers contained in the Spectator, Guardian, Tatler and Freeholder, with a preliminary essay, in which is given an instructive account of the state of society 177 at the time the papers originally appeared, and of the objects at which they aimed. This essay has been much admired for its elegance and acuteness. In the same year, Mrs. Barbauld prepared for publication a selection from the correspondence of Richardson, the novelist, prefixing a biographical notice of him, and a critical examination of his works.

About this time, Mrs. Barbauld’s husband, to whom she had been united for more than thirty years, fell into a state of nervous weakness, and at last died, in November, 1808. From the dejection occasioned by this loss, Mrs. Barbauld sought relief in literary occupation, and undertook the task of editing a collection of the British novelists, which was published in 1810. To these volumes she contributed an introductory essay, and furnished biographical and critical notices of the life and writings of each author; these were written with her usual taste and judgment. In the next year, she composed and published the longest and most highly-finished of her poems, entitled “Eighteen Hundred and Eleven.” The time at which this poem appeared was by many persons looked upon with gloomy forebodings, and the matters of which it treats were considered as indicative of the waning fortunes of Great Britain. It was perhaps owing to the spirit of melancholy prediction by which it is pervaded, that the poem was not received by the public as it deserved. It is written throughout with great power and in harmonious language; its descriptions are characterized by deep feeling and truth, and its warnings are conveyed with an earnestness which is the best evidence of the sincerity of the author.

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The unfair construction applied to her motives in writing this poem probably prevented Mrs. Barbauld from appearing again as an author. Her efforts were confined to the humble task of administering to the gratification of a circle of private friends. Although arrived at years which are assigned as the natural limit of human life, her fancy was still bright, and she continued to give evidence by occasional compositions of the unimpaired energy of her mind. Her spirits were greatly tried, during the latter years of her life, by the loss of her brother, who died in 1822, and of several cherished companions of her early days, who quickly followed. Her constitution, naturally excellent, slowly gave way under an asthmatic complaint, and on the 9th of March, 1825, after only a few days of serious illness, she died, in the eighty-second year of her age.

In domestic and social life, Mrs. Barbauld was characterized by strong sense, deep feeling, high moral principle, and a rational but ardent piety. She passed through a lengthened term of years, free from the annoyance of personal enmities, and rich in the esteem and affection of all with whom she was connected. The cause of rational education is more indebted to her than to any individual of modern times, inasmuch as she was the leader in that reformation which has resulted in substituting the use of truth and reason for folly and fiction, in books for the nursery. She has also shown that a talent for writing for youth is not incompatible with powers of the highest order. Her epistle to Mr. Wilberforce is full of lofty sentiment, and, at the same time, is most felicitously executed. We give a specimen of her writing in a lighter 179 vein, which has been justly celebrated for its truth and humor.

“WASHING-DAY.

“The muses are turned gossips; they have lost

The buskined step, and clear, high-sounding phrase,—

Language of gods. Come, then, domestic muse,

In slip-shod measure, loosely prattling on

Of farm, or orchard, pleasant curds and cream,

Or drowning flies, or shoes lost in the mire,

By little whimpering boy, with rueful face;

Come, muse, and sing the dreaded washing-day.

Ye who beneath the yoke of wedlock bend

With bowed soul, full well ye ken the day

Which week, smooth gliding after week, brings on

Too soon; for to that day nor peace belongs,

Nor comfort. Ere the first gray streak of dawn,

The red-armed washers come and chase repose;

Nor pleasant smile, nor quaint device of mirth,

E’er visited that day: the very cat,

From the wet kitchen scared, and reeking hearth,

Visits the parlor—an unwonted guest.

The silent breakfast meal is soon despatched,

Uninterrupted save by anxious looks

Cast at the lowering sky, if sky should lower.

From that last evil, O, preserve us, heavens!

For, should the skies pour down, adieu to all

Remains of quiet: then expect to hear

Of sad disasters—dirt and gravel stains

Hard to efface, and loaded lines at once

Snapped short, and linen-horse by dog thrown down,

And all the petty miseries of life.

Saints have been calm while stretched upon the rack,

And Guatimozin smiled on burning coals;

But never yet did housewife notable

Greet with a smile a rainy washing-day.

But grant the welkin fair; require not, thou

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Who call’st thyself perchance the master there,

Or study swept, or nicely-dusted coat,

Or usual ’tendance; ask not, indiscreet,