LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY. RS. SIGOURNEY, who was born in 1791, was one of the first American women who gained real distinction by the pen, and she stands among the few who so charmingly illustrate the first period in our national literature. She wrote much, both in prose and in verse, most of it of a gentle didactic character. Her maiden-name was Huntley. When very young, she established a girls' school at Norwich, Connecticut, and the habit of instruction appears in almost everything she has written. Her first volume is entitled Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse. After two years of successful teaching she gave up her school, and in 1819 married Mr. Sigourney, a merchant of Hartford, whither she had removed her residence. Always inspired with a sense of duty and an ardent desire to do good, she used in her writings the form of letters as the most natural mode of conveying good advice; thus

we have Letters to Young Ladies, To Mothers, To my Pupils, and in 1865—the year of her death-she published her last volume, entitled Letters of Life. She was a ready writer, a pleasant poet, a good preceptor and an excellent example to her sex.

MRS. ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH.

THIS graceful and voluminous writer, HIS graceful and voluminous writer, whose maiden-name was Prince, was

born in 1806 at a town, not far from Portland, Maine, which was then called North Yarmouth, but now Cumberland. She was of old Puritan and Huguenot descent. In 1823, before she was seventeen years old, she married Mr. Seba Smith, one of the leading journalists of his State, widely known as the original "Major Jack Downing." Financial troubles overtook her husband, and to aid him she began to write. She soon became known under various noms de plume, which her diffidence suggested, as a sweet poet, a graceful essayist, a dramatist and a novelist. Among her best poems are "The Acorn," The Brook," "The Lost Angel " and "The Sinless Child.” Her principal tragedy is The Roman Tribute. Among her novels those best known are The Western Captive, Bertha and the Lily and The Newsboy. She has written many harmonious sonnets and My Autobiography, from which the character and motive of her life may be gathered from her own introspection.

66

MRS. ELIZABETH F. ELLET.

MRS. ELLET was the daughter of Dr.

W. N. Lummis, and was born at Sodus, on Lake Ontario, in 1818. At the age of seventeen she married Dr. William H. Ellet, first a professor in Columbia College, New York, and afterward at Columbia, South Carolina. She began to write very early in 1833 she published a translation of Silvio Pellico's Euphemia of Messina, and in 1845 a tragedy entitled Teresa Contarini, which had some success upon the stage. She wrote

ROBERT BLAIR.

ALICE AND PHOEBE CAREY.

TH

HESE gifted poetesses were born on a farm about eight miles from Cincinnati, in 1820. They began early to write verses. Alice was always delicate in person and health, while her sister was strong and well. They wrote at first for the Cincinnati newspapers, and as their pieces became known they were welcomed as contributors to the leading magazines. In 1847 they began to write for the National Era, at Washington, and were emboldened to publish, in 1850, a volume of poems contributed by both. This was so well received that they formed, in 1851, the somewhat hazardous plan of removing to New York city and supporting themselves by literary effort. In this they were successful. Living at first most frugally, they were enabled to increase their comforts from time to time; and at last they gathered at their house on stated evenings men and women distinguished in literature and art. They were now both regular contributors to the Tribune, the Independent and other influential papers. They were Universalists -devout and excellent women. The religious sentiment is finely displayed in the piece entitled Nearer Home," by Phoebe Carey. There is beautiful pathos in the poem (which has been placed in our collection)

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OBERT BLAIR was minister of the

ROB

parish of Athelstaneford, in East Lothian. His son was a very high legal character in Scotland. The eighteenth century produced few specimens of blank verse of so powerful and simple a character as that of "The Grave." It is a popular poem not merely because it is religious, but because its language and imagery are free, natural and picturesque.

The latest editor of the poets has, with singularly bad taste, noted some of this author's most nervous and expressive phrases as vulgarisms, among which he reckons that of friendship "the solder of society." Blair may be a homely, and even a gloomy, poet in the eye of fastidious criticism, but there is a masculine and pronounced character in his gloom and homeliness that keeps it most distinctly apart from either dulness or vulgarity. His style pleases us like the powerful expression of a countenance without regular beauty. He was born at Edinburgh, Scotland, A. D. 1699, and died A. D. 1746.

THOMAS CAMPBELL.

HE wife of Xanthus was well born and wealthy, but so proud and domineering withal as if her fortune and her extraction had entitled her to the breeches. She was horribly bold, meddling and expensive, as that sort of women commonly are; easily put off the hooks, and monstrous hard to be pleased again; perpetually chattering at her husband, and upon all occasions of controversy threatening him to be gone.

It came to this at last-that, Xanthus's stock of patience being quite spent, he took up a resolution of going another way to work with her, and of trying a course of severity, since there was nothing to be done with her by kindness. But this experiment, instead of mending the matter, made it worse, for upon harder usage the woman grew desperate and went away from him in earnest. She was as bad, 'tis true, as bad might well be, and yet Xanthus had a kind of hankering for her still; besides that, there was matter of interest in the case; and a pestilent tongue she had that the poor husband dreaded above all things under the sun.

But the man was willing, however, to make the best of a bad game, and so his wits and his friends were set at work, in the fairest manner that might be, to get her home again. But there was no good to

be done in it, it seems; and Xanthus was so visibly out of humor upon it that Æsop in pure pity bethought himself immediately how to comfort him.

Come, master," says he; "pluck up a good heart, for I have a project in my noddle that shall bring my mistress to you back again with as good a will as ever she went from you."

What does my Æsop but away immediately to the market, among the butchers, poulterers, fishmongers, confectioners, etc., for the best of everything that was in season. Nay, he takes private people in his way too, and chops into the very house of his mistress's relations as by mistake.

This way of proceeding set the whole town agog to know the meaning of all this bustle, and Esop innocently told everybody that his master's wife was run away from him and he had married another; his friends up and down were all invited to come and make merry with him, and this was to be the wedding-feast. The news flew like lightning, and happy were they that could carry the first tidings of it to the runaway lady; for everybody knew Esop to be a servant in that family. It gathered in the rolling, as all other stories do in the telling, especially where women's tongues and passions have the spreading of them.

The wife, that was in her nature violent and unsteady, ordered her chariot to be made ready immediately, and away she posts back to her husband, falls upon him

sings:

"Rattle his bones over the stones;

conveyed,

Behold what respect to a cloddy is paid,

laid low

can!

"Rattle his bones over the stones;

sad

end,