should distinguish females? Vile degradation! are they not fit to be ministers of state, orators, admirals, and generals? What, indeed, are they not fit for, and why should man, proud man, arrogate to himself offices and stations which women are equally well calculated to fill? Here was a wide field spread for me. I rejoiced in the future glory of the female sex.

I now despised, more than ever, all that are called feminine employments, and shut myself up almost entirely in my attic, rapt in sublime speculations. Once I ventured to a debating club in the neighborhood, in order to make an oration on the rights of women; but, forsooth, the men present, jealous and base-minded as they were, would not allow me to speak; and I returned indignant to my garret and my meditations.

I pored incessantly over an old worm-eaten volume of the lives of illustrious women; wrote a bitter satire against the law in France which excludes women from the government; and composed a treatise, in folio, to prove the falsehood of Mahomet's assertion, that women have no souls. These different employments occupied me nearly six years, at the end of which my father died, leaving me five pounds, his book-stall, and his blessing.

While the money lasted, I gave myself no concern about a provision. I collected my book legacy into my attic, which I still retained, the rest of the house being let out in different compartments. Here, then, I enjoyed myself in all the indolence of genius, till my money was nearly exhausted, and then I began to think of exerting my energies for a livelihood. For my poems, as being the first offspring of my brain, I entertained a particular affection, and so resolved to make one effort more to bring them to light.

I therefore transcribed them afresh, and commenced, myself, an application to the booksellers. After the usual routine of dancing attendance, and being repulsed, I at last

·

met with one more discerning than the rest, or, at least, who knew the taste of the times better; for on this I will not be positive. To be short, he agreed to print them, and allow me a small share of the profits of the sale.

They were published, and I now found that what was pronounced mere trash," from a child of eleven years old, was, more than thirty years after, thanks to the happy revolution in public opinion, styled "simplicity, tenderness pathos, feeling, strokes of the heart, touches of nature." I might claim the merit of being the founder of the new school, instead of submitting to be called a disciple of it; but time has a little checked my ambitious thoughts, and I shall not contend for that honor.

I now lived in clover for some time, but Poverty again knocked at my door; so once more I was obliged to keep her out. I determined to write a novel, and accordingly produced one in seven volumes; for which Mr.

gave me the usual consideration. If you have not read it, and wish to do so, it is entitled Horrification, or the History of Five Thousand Ruined Castles. Not choosing to put my name to it, I described it in my preface as the first attempt of a young lady of seventeen. If the public had seen me in reality, they might have smiled at the contrast; but my purpose was answered, and the critics had compassion on my youth.

My next work was a Treatise on Experimental Philosophy, for the use of young ladies at boarding-schools, which work was accompanied with plates, illustrative of the various processes, in describing which I found my surgical and anatomical skill of great service to me. This last work was highly extolled, far above my two former, of which I now proudly avowed myself the writer; and I had the satisfaction of finding that both poetry and novels were giving way, in female estimation, to the sublimer pursuits of philosophy. I am now going on to my fifty-first year, and trace with

delight the rapid progress of my sex toward complete illumination. As to myself, I look on it that I am quite on an equality with the most learned men, either of my own or past days, and only jealousy on their part would lead them o say otherwise. But I begin to think that I am perhaps growing tedious, and shall therefore hasten to conclude.

Having entirely lost the idea of the meanness of publishing a book by subscription, if you will do me the favor to print this my history, it will be the means of informing the world that I am at present engaged in a work, to be entitled the Lady's Instructor, or The Whole Art of becoming Learned made Easy. It will be but small, as the process is a very simple one.

CRAMP; difficult. SMATTERING; slight, superficial knowledge. SAT IRE; a discourse or poem, in which wickedness or folly is exposed with severity. ELEGY; a poem expressive of sorrow and lamentation. PERICRANIUM; the membrane that invests the skull. PERICARDIUM; the membrane that invests the heart. ABSTEMIOUS; sparing in diet, refraining from the free use of food.

Betmine.

FOURTH OF JULY.

FARTHEST; ěst, not ist; sound r. FIRST; sound rst. FARMS; sound rmz. FORTH; sound rth. STARS; sound rz. FLASHING; given its ringing sound. LIBERTY; er as in her. CHILDREN; drěn, not drun.

MAINE, from her farthest border, gives the first exulting

shout,

And from New Hampshire's granite heights, the echoing peal rings out;

The mountain farms of stanch Vermont prolong the thundering call,

And Massachusetts answers, "Bunker Hill! ” a watchword

for us all.

Rhode Island shakes her sea-wet locks, acclaiming with the

free,

And staid Connecticut breaks forth in joyous harmony.

The giant joy of proud New York, loud as an earthquake's

roar,

Is heard from Hudson's crowded banks to Erie's crowded shore.

Still on the booming volley rolls o'er plains and flowery

glades

To where the Mississippi's flood the turbid gulf invades ; There, borne from many a mighty stream upon her mightier

tide,

Come down the swelling, long huzzas from all that vallev wide.

And wood-crowned Alleghany's call, from all her summits

high,

Reverberates among the rocks that pierce the sunset sky; While on the shores and through the swales round the vast inland seas,

The stars and stripes, 'midst freemen's songs, are flashing to the breeze.

The woodsman, from the mother, takes his boy upon his

knee,

And tells him how their fathers fought and bled for liberty. The lonely hunter sits him down the forest spring beside, To think upon his country's worth, and feel his country's pride;

While many a foreign accent, which our God can under

stand,

Is blessing Him for home and bread in this free, fertile land.

Yes, when upon the eastern coast we sink to happy rest,
The Day of Independence rolls still onward to the west,
Till dies on the Pacific shore the shout of jubilee,
That woke the morning with its voice along th' Atlantic Sea

O God, look down upon the land which thou hast loved so well,

And grant that in unbroken truth her children still may

dwell;

Nor, while the grass grows on the hill and streams flow through the vale,

May they forget their fathers' faith, or in their covenant fail : Keep, God, the fairest, noblest land that lies beneath the

sun;

"Our country, our whole country, and our country ever

one."

GEORGE W. BETHUNE

TURBID; muddy, foul with extraneous matter.

REVERBERATE; to return or send back a sound, to echo. SWALE; a corruption from vale. a local word in New England, signifying a tract of low land. COVENANT; an agreement or contract between parties.

ANALOGY BETWEEN THE DECAY OF NATURE AND OF MAN.

SHADOWS; give o its long sound. ASSUMES; long u. SOBERNESS; er as in her. SENTIMENTS; ĕnts, not unse. KINDRED; drěd, not drid FIELDS; ldz. GENERAL; er as in her. ELOQUENT; long o. SOLEMN : ěm, not um. SOOTHING; given its ringing sound.

THERE is an even-tide in the day,- an hour when the sun retires, and the shadows fall, and when nature assumes the appearances of soberness and silence. It is an hour from which every where the thoughtless fly, as peopled only in their imagination with images of gloom; it is the hour, te 98, 149.

r 297, 312