The little books were carefully put away as literary curiosities. Not long after this, Lucretia came running to her mother, painfully agitated, her face covered with her hands, and tears trickling down between her slender fingers- Oh, Mama! mama!' she cried, sobbing, how could you treat me so? You have not used me well! My little books! you have shown them to papa, --Anne-Eliza, I know you have. Oh, what shall I do?' Her mother pleaded guilty, and tried to soothe the child by promising not to do so again; Lucretia's face brightened, a sunny smile played through her tears as she replied, 'Oh, mama, I am not afraid you will do so again, for I have burned them all;' and so she had! This reserve 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." She soon after learned to write in more legible fashion, and in her ninth year produced the following lines, the earliest of her compositions which has been preserved :— ON THE DEATH OF MY ROBIN. Underneath this turf doth lie A little bird which ne'er could fly, 66 She studied hard at school, and when needlework was given her as a preventive against this undue intellectual effort, dashed through the task assigned her with great rapidity, and studied harder than before. Her mother very properly took her away from school, and the child's health improved in consequence. She now frequently brought short poems to her mother, who always received them gladly, and encouraged her intellectual efforts. The kind parent has given us a glimpse of her daughter, engaged in her eleventh year in composition. Immediately after breakfast she went to walk, and not returning to dinner, nor even when the evening approached, Mr. Townsend set forth in search of her. He met her, and as her eye encountered his, she smiled and blushed, as if she felt conscious of having been a little ridiculous. She said she had called on a friend, and, having found her absent, had gone to her library, where she had been examining some volumes of an Encyclopædia to aid her, we believe, in the oriental story she was employed upon. She forgot her dinner and her tea, and had remained reading, standing, and with her hat on, till the disappearance of daylight brought her to her senses. A characteristic anecdote is related of her cramming" for her long poem, Amir Khan. "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 check glowed with animation, her lips were half unclosed, her full dark eye was radiant with the light of genius, VOL. II.-31 and beaming with sensibility, her head rested on her left hand, while she 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, Or does some angel strike the sounding strings "The noise I made in leaving the room roused her, and she soon after brought me her 'Lines to an Æolian Harp.' In 1824, an old friend of her mother and a frequent visitor, the Hon. Moss Kent, happened to take up some of Lucretia's MS. poems which had been given to his sister. Struck with their merit he went to the mother to see more, and on his way met the poetess, then a beautiful girl of sixteen; much pleased with her conversation, he proposed to her parents, after a further examination of her poems, to adopt her as his own daughter. They acquiesced in his wishes so far as to consent to his sending her to Mrs. Willard's seminary at Troy* to complete her education. She was delighted with the opportunity afforded her of an improved literary culture, and on the 24th of November, 1824, left home in good health, which was soon impaired by her severe study. The chief mischief, however, appears to have been done by her exertions in preparing for the public examination of the school. Miss Davidson fell sick, Mrs. Willard sent for Dr. Robbins, who bled, administered an emetic, and allowed his patient, after making her still weaker, to resume her preparation for examination, for which she " must study morning, noon, and night, and rise between two and four every morning." The great event came off, "in a room crowded almost to suffocation," on the 12th of February. Emma, the daughter of Samuel Hart, and a descendant from Thomas Hooker, the founder of Hartford, was born at New Berlin, Conn., in February, 1787. At the age of sixteen, she commenced the career to which her life has been devoted as the teacher of the district school of her native town. After filling in succession the post of principal of several academies, she took charge of an institution of the kind at Middlebury, Vermont, where in 1809 she married Dr. John Willard of that state. In 1819, Mrs. Willard, at the invitation of Governor Clinton, and other distinguished men of the state of New York, removed to Waterford to take charge of an institution for female education, incorporated, and in part supported, by the legislature. In consequence of being unable to secure an appropriate building at Waterford, Mrs. Willard accepted an invitation to establish a school at Troy, and in 1821 commenced the institution which has long been celebrated as the Troy Female Seminary, and with which she remained connected until 1838. In 1830, Mrs. Willard made a tour in Europe,and on her return published her Travels, devoting her share of the proceeds of the sale to the support of a school in Greece, founded mainly by her exertions, for the education of female teachers. Mrs. Willard has, since her retirement from Troy, resided at Hartford, where she has written and published several addresses on the subject of Female Education, especially as connected with the common-school system. She is also the author of a Manual of American History, A Treatise on Ancient Geography, and other works which have had an extensive school circulation. In 1830 she published a small volume of poems, and in 1846 A Treatise on the Motive Powers which produce the Circulation of the Blood, a work which attracted much attention on its appearance; and in 1849, Last Leaves of American History, a continuation of her "Manual." п In K Gad of th Timp ist! In the spring vacation she returned home. Her mother was alarmed at the state of her health, but the physician called by her father to aid him in the treatment of her case recommending a change of scene and air, she was allowed to follow her wishes and return to school, the establishment of Miss Gibson at Albany being at this time selected. She had been there but a few weeks when her disease, consumption, assumed its worst features. Her mother hurried to her, and removed her home in July. It is a touching picture that of her last journey. "She shrunk painfully from the gaze her beauty inevitably attracted, heightened as it was by that discase which seems to delight to deck the victim for its triumph." She reached home. "To the last she manifested her love of books. A trunk filled with them had not been unpacked. She requested her mother to open it at her bed-side, and as each book was given to her, she turned over the leaves, kissed it, and desired to have it placed on a table at the foot of her bed. There they remained to the last day, her eye often fondly resting on them." She wrote while confined to her bed her last poem: There is a something which I dread, The fear was a groundless one, for her mind was calm, collected, and tranquil during the short period that intervened before her death, on the 27th of August, 1825, one month before her seventeenth birthday. THE WIDE WORLD IS DREAR. (Written in her sixteenth year.) Oh say not the wide world is lonely and dreary! Oh say not that life is a wilderness waste! There's ever some comfort in store for the weary, And there's ever some hope for the sorrowful breast. There are often sweet dreams which will steal o'er the soul, Beguiling the mourner to smile through a tear, That when waking the dew-drops of mem'ry may fall, And blot out for ever, the wide world is drear. There is hope for the lost, for the lone one's relief, Which will beam o'er his pathway of danger and fear; There is pleasure's wild throb, and the calm "joy of grief," Oh then say not the wide world is lonely and drear! There are fears that are anxious, yet sweet to the breast, Some feelings, which language ne'er told to the KINDAR BURIAL SERVICE-VERSIFIED. We commend our brother to thee, oh earth! Oh air! he once breathed thee, thro' thee he sur vived, And in thee, and with thee, his pure spirit lived: Oh fire! we commit his dear reliques to thee, To its mansion of bliss, in the star-spangled skies. Oh water! receive him; without thy kind aid He had parched 'neath the sunbeams or mourned in the shade; Then take of his body the share which is thine, For the spirit hath fled from its mouldering shrine. MARGARET MILLER DAVIDSON, at the time of her sister's death, was in her third year, having been born March 26, 1823. Her life seems in almost every respect a repetition of that of her departed sister. The same precocity was early developed. When she was six years old sho read the English poets with "enthusiastic delight." While standing at the window with her mother she exclaimed See those lofty, those grand trees; At her mother's request she wrote down the little impromptu, but committed it to paper in a consecutive sentence, as so much prose. The act was, however, the commencement of her literary career, and she every day, for some time after, brought some little scrap of rhyme to her parent. She was at the same time delighting the children of the neighborhood by her improvised stories, which she would sometimes extend through a whole evening. Her education was conducted at home, under her mother's charge. She advanced so rapidly in her studies that it was necessary to check her ardor, that over exertion might not injure her health. When about seven years old, an English gentleman who had been much interestel in the poems of Lucretia Davidson, visited her mother, in order to learn more concerning an author he so much admired. While the two were conversing, Margaret entered with a copy of Thomson's Seasons in her hand, in which she had marked the passages which pleased her. The gentleman, overcoming the child's timidity by his gentleness, soon became as much interested in the younger as in the elder sister, and the little incident led to a friendship which lasted through life. During the summer she passed a few weeks at Saratoga Springs and New York. She enjoyed her visit to the city greatly, and returned home with improved health. In the winter she removed with her mother to the residence of a married sister in Canada. The tour was undertaken for the health of her parent, but with ill success, as an illness followed, which confined her for eighteen months to her bed, during which her life was often despaired of. The mother recovered, but in January, 1833, the daughter was attacked by scarlet fever, from which she did not become free until April. In May the two convalescents proceeded to New York. Margaret remained here several months, and was the life and soul of the household of which she was the guest. It was proposed by her little associates to act a play, provided she would write one. This she agreed to do, and in two days “produced her drama, The Tragedy of Alethia. It was not very voluminous," observes Mr. Irving, "but it contained within it sufficient of high character and astounding and bloody incident to furnish oat a drama of five times its size. A king and queen of England resolutely bent upon marrying their daughter, the Princess Alethia, to the Duke of Ormond. The Princess most perversely and dolorously in love with a mysterious cavalier, who figures at her father's court under the name of Sir Percy Lennox, but who, in private truth, is the Spanish king, Rodrigo, thus obliged to maintain an incognito on account of certain hostilities between Spain and England. The odious nuptials of the princess with the Duke of Ormond proceed: she is led, a submissive victim, to the altar; is on the point of pledging her irrevocable word; when the priest throws off his sacred robe, discovers himself to be Rodrigo, and plunges a dagger into the bosom of the king. Alethia instantly plucks the dagger from her father's bosom, throws herself into Rodrigo's arms, and kills herself. Rodrigo flies to a cavern, renounces England, Spain, and his royal throne, and devotes himself to eternal remorse. queen ends the play by a passionate apostrophe to the spirit of her daughter, and sinks dead on the floor. The "The little drama lies before us, a curious specimen of the prompt talent of this most ingenious child, and by no means more incongruous in its incidents than many current dramas by veteran and experienced playwrights. "The parts were now distributed and soon learnt; Margaret drew out a play-bill in theatrical style, containing a list of the dramatis personæ, and issued regular tickets of admission. The piece went off with universal applause; Margaret figuring, in a long train, as the princess, and killing herself in a style that would not have disgraced an experienced stage heroine.” In October she returned home to Ballston, the family residence having been changed from Plattsburgh, as the climate on the lake had been pronod too trying for her constitution. She amused he family, old and young, during the winter, by writing a weekly paper called The Juvenile Aspirant. Her education was still conducted by her mother, who was fully competent to the task, and unwilling to trust her at a boarding-school. She studied Latin with her brother, under a private tutor. When she was eleven her delicate frame, rendered still more sensitive by a two months' illness, received a severe shock from the intelligence of the death of her sister, resident in Canada. A change of scene being thought desirable, she paid another visit to New York, where she remained until June. In December she was attacked by a liver complaint, which confined her to her room until Spring. During this fit of illness her mind had remained in an unusual state of inactivity; but with the opening of spring and the faint return of health, it broke forth with a brilliancy and a restless excitability that astonished and alarmed. 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. Fugitive pieces were produced every day, such as The Shunamite, Belshazzar's Feast, The Nature of Mind, Boabail el Chico, &c. She seemed to exist only in the regions of poetry.' We cannot help thinking that these moments of intense poetical exaltation sometimes approached to delirium, for we are told by her mother that the image of her departed sister Lucretia mingled in all her aspirations; the holy elevation of Lucretia's character had taken deep hold of her imagination, and in her moments of enthusiasm she felt that she had close and intimate communion with her beautiful spirit.'" In the autumn of 1835 the family removed to a pleasant residence, "Ruremont," near the Shot Tower, on Long Island Sound, below Hell Gate. Here Mrs. Davidson received a letter from her English visitor, inviting Margaret and herself to pass the winter with him and the wife he had recently married at Havana. May art M. David for The first winter at the new home was a mournful one, for it was marked by the death of her little brother Kent. Margaret's own health was also rapidly failing-the fatal symptoms of consumption having already appeared. The accumulated grief was too much for the mother's feeble frame. "For three weeks," she says, "I hovered upon the borders of the grave, and when I arose from this bed of pain-so feeble that I could not sustain my own weight, it was to witness the rupture of a blood-vessel in her lung, caused by exertions to suppress a cough." "Long and anxious were the days and nights spent in watching over her. Every sudden movement or emotion excited the hemorrhage. 'Not a murmur escaped her lips,' says her mother, during her protracted sufferings. "How are you, my love? how have you rested during the night?" "Well, dear mamma; I have slept sweetly." I have been night after night beside her restless conch, wiped the cold dew from her brow, and kissed her faded cheek in all the agony of grief, while she unconsciously slept on; or if she did awake, her calm sweet smile, which seemed to emanate from heaven, has, spite of my reason, lighted my heart with hope. Except when very ill, she was ever a bright dreamer. Her visions were usually of an unearthly cast: about heaven and angels. She was wandering among the stars; her sainted sisters were her pioneers; her cherub brother walked hand in hand with her through the gardens of paradise! I was always an early riser, but after Margaret began to decline I never disturbed her until time to rise for breakfast, a season of social intercourse in which she delighted to unite, and from which she was never willing to be absent. Often when I have spoken to her she would exclaim, "Mother, you have disturbed the brightest visions that ever mortal was blessed with! I was in the midst of such scenes of delight! Cannot I have time to finish my dream?" And when I told her how long it was until breakfast, "it will do," she would say, and again lose herself in her bright imaginings; for I considered these as moments of inspiration rather than sleep. She told ne it was not sleep. I never knew but one except Margaret, who enjoyed this delightful and inysterious source of happiness-that one was her departed sister Lucretia. When awaking from these reveries, an almost ethereal light played about her eye, which seemed to irradiate her whole face. A holy calm pervaded her manner, and in truth she looked more like an angel who had been communing with kindred spirits in the world of light, than anything of a grosser nature.'" It was during this illness that Margaret became acquainted with Miss Sedgwick. The disease unexpectedly yielding to care and skill, the invalid was enabled during the summer to make a tour to the western part of New York. Soon after her return, in September, the air of the river having been pronounced unfavorable for her health, the family removed to New York. Margaret persevered in the restrictions imposed by her physicians against composition and study for six months; but was so unhappy in her inactive state, that with her mother's consent she resumed her usual habits. In May, 1837, the family returned to Ballston. In the fall an attack of bleeding at the lungs necessitated an order from her physicians that she should pass the winter within doors. The quiet was of service to her health. We have a pleasant and touching picture of her Christmas, in one of her poems written at the time. TO MY MOTHER AT CHRISTMAS. Wake, mother, wake to hope and glee, To the sleigh-bells gaily ringing, It comes when all around is dark, "Tis meet it so should be, For its joy is the joy of the happy heart, It does not need the bloom of spring, Its wild and sinful dreaming. Then we shall hail the glorious day, The spirit's new creation, And pour our grateful feelings forth, A pure and warm libation. Wake, mother, wake to chastened joy, This happy Christmas morning. The winter was occupied by a course of reading in history, and by occasional composition. In May the family removed to Saratoga. Margaret fancied herself, under the balmy influences of the season, much better-but all others had abandoned hope. It is a needless and painful task to trace step by step the progress of disease. The clos ing scene came on the 25th of the following Noveiber. The poetical writings of Lucretia Davidson, which have been collected, amount in all to two hundred and seventy-eight pieces, among which are five of several cantos each. A portion of these were published, with a memoir by Professor S. B. F. Morse, in 1829. The volume was well received, and noticed in a highly synpathetic and laulatory manner by Southey, in the Quarterly Review. The poems were reprinted, with a life by Miss Sedgwick, which had previously appeared in Sparks's American Biography. Margaret's poems were introduced to the world under the kind auspices of Washington Irving. Revised editions of both were published in 1850 in one volume, a happy companionship which will doubtless be permanent. A volume of Selections from the Writings of Mrs. Margaret M. Dvidson, the Mother of Lucretia Maria and Margaret M. Davidson, with a preface by Miss C. M. Sedgwick, appeared in 1844. It contains a prose tale, A Few Eventful Days in 1814; a poetical version of Ruth and of Ossian's McFingal, with a few Miscellaneous Poems. Lieutenant L. P. Davidson, of the U. S. army, the brother of Margaret and Lucretia, who also died young, wrote verses with elegance and ease.t EMMA C EMBURY. MRS. EMBURY, the wife of Mr. Daniel Embury, a gentleman of wealth and distinguished by his intellectual and social qualities, a resident of Brooklyn, New York, is the daughter of James R. Manly, for a long while an eminent New York physician. She early became known to the public as a writer *The following lines were addressed from Greta Hall, in 1842, by Caroline Southey, "To the Mother of Lucretia and Margaret Davidson." Oh, lady! greatly favored! greatly tried! But from the dust, the coffin, and the pall, ✦ Some lines from his pen, entitled Longings for the West, are printed in the South Lit. Mess. for Feb. 1943. of verses in the columns of the New York Mirror and other journals under the signature of “Ianthe." In the year 1823 a volume from her pen was published, Guido, and Other Poems, by Ianthe. This was followed by a volume on Female Education, and a long series of tales and sketches in the magazines of the day, which were received with favor for their felicitous sentiment and ease in composition. Constance Latimer is one of these, which has given title to a collection of the stories, The Blind Girl and Other Tales. Her Pictures of Early Life, Glimpses of Home Life or Causes and Consequences, are similar volumes. In 1845 she contributed the letter-press, both prose and verse, to an illustrated volume in quarto, Nature's Gems, or American Wild Flowers. She has also written a volume of poems, Love's TokenFlowers, in which these symbols of sentiment are gracefully interpreted. In 1848 appeared her volume, The Waldorf Family, or Grandfather's Legends, in which the romantic lore of Brittany is presented to the young. Emrene 6. Contrary These writings, which exhibit good sense and healthy natural feeling, though numerous, are to be taken rather as illustrations of domestic life and retired sentiment than as the occupation of a professed literary career. Of her poetry, her songs breathe an air of nature, with much sweetness. BALLAD. The maiden sat at her busy wheel, Her heart was light and free, I looked on the maiden's rosy cheek, A year passed on, and again I stood But her look was blithe no more; "The gathered rose and the stolen heart Can charm but for a day." Oh, well I knew what had dimmed her eye, The maid had forgotten her early song, And the stolen heart, like the gathered rose, |
