Oh! how many young and buoyant hopes are entombed in a kind father's grave! How crushing is that dispensation which quenches the light of a father's counsel and affection forever! There is a corner of the heart which is never chilled but by one misfortune; there is a chord in the bosom which vibrates but once in the longest existence; it wakes all its woe when the cold earth sends back upon the ear its unearthly echo as it falls on the coffin of a beloved father.

The light of the family was now extinguished, the home of Mary was the abode of blighted and crushed affection. She did not seek for sympathy or consolation where Nature pointed-her surviving parent; for, in her tenderest years, she had sought for it there, in vain.

The family was now to be dispersed, and no more to be sheltered by one common roof.

I can readily conceive that such a scene as this inspired those touching lines of Gray:

"For him no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care;
No children run to lisp their sire's return,

Or climb his knee the envied kiss to share."

They were to be driven out upon the wide

world to buffet its storms and be assailed by em

barrassments and misfortunes, which never molested their own happy fireside. While they were one family, and the hand of time had not divided their circle, these rough waves broke harmlessly around their dwelling. But at midnight a voice was heard, " Behold the bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet him.” The summons of death was the knell of Mary's domestic happifor in the decease of her father she lost her

all, and was left an orphan indeed. Charity to the living demands of us to say no more. Let the judgment day reveal the sequel.

"Her childhood was baptized in tears."

CHAPTER II.

"I go, I go!-And must mine image fade
From the green spots wherein my childhood played,
By my own streams?

Must my life part from each familiar place,
As a bird's song, that leaves the woods no trace
Of its lone themes ?"

MRS. HEMANS.

It was the misfortune of Mary to be torn from her home almost every year. Her family removed from place to place, and she was thus deprived of one efficient cause of benign influence. For it is essential in the formation of finished character, that the heart shall have fastened upon the familiar and endearing associations of Home-that these associations shall be permanent, and enlist the noblest emotions of the soul. The character and the feelings depend very much upon the nature of every-day scenes.

There cannot exist in the bosom any very ardent love of home and the family hearth, unless that hearth is consecrated by a thousand happy recollections.

When we are torn from our fire

sides, just as the heart begins to beat with animation and delight to the remembrances which cluster around them, the guardian influences of home lose their power; we sigh for the bliss of past days, and their brightness only now and then gleams upon the bosom, to awaken the consciousness "how much I have lost.”

Such a fortune would have clouded the spirit and chilled the sensibilities of almost any other heart; for when we are expelled from our early, our first shelter from the agitations and turmoil of the world, how often do we murmur at the dispensations of Providence, and give up the asylum of our infancy, not only with tears, but complaint.

But although for many years Mary had no rest for the sole of her foot, yet she kissed the hand that dealt the blow; for her experience it was true that "what God wills he also sanctifies."

She trod a secluded walk of life, and in her biography no events of excitement or stirring incident will be recorded; but her fortunes were so peculiar, her life so remarkable, and her exit so brilliant, that with striking appositeness may be inscribed upon every page of her history this sublime and revealed truth,

"There is a Divinity that shapes our end."

The unsettled state of her family caused her many privations. Her opportunities of education were extremely limited. She was secluded by the habits of the family from general or cultivated society.

A part of this early period of her life was passed in a neighboring town, where she was in a great degree deprived of the means of literary improvement and religious instruction.

"The sound of the church-going bell" was not heard at the humble dwelling of her mother. A public library never poured its lights over her path. But her ardent desire for an education, prompted her to attend with great assiduity such district schools as were successively sustained within her reach.

But she was often interrupted by severe attacks of illness, which usually confined her to the house for some weeks; and it is well known that the common schools of this country are not adapted to give much impulse to mind or fan the fires of Genius. They are not equal to the exigencies of the age, conducted on the present system; and were it not for other and superior