tained in a letter to the Rev. Dr. Keith, as

follows:

"Mrs. P. and myself have been reading the very valuable little volume, Memoirs of Mrs. Ramsay, which you sent me by. Mr. Hulburt. My opinion of that excellent lady's piety and learning, had been great, ever since I was capable of forming an opinion, and had an opportunity to do it. But I can truly say, that these Memoirs have disclosed such a rare assemblage of mental and moral excellencies, that until I read them, the half was not known to me. What a wonderful faculty she must have possessed, of keeping concealed her superior qualities under the veil of so much apparently entire unconsciousness of her own uncommon superiority. Surely, if in any instance, the left hand has not been allowed to know what the right hand doth, it is in this, I know not how to express the exalted opinion I now entertain of her unusual merit. I do not know when I have read any thing with more interest and delight. This may, in part, be owing to my having had the honour and pleasure of a per

sonal acquaintance with her; but I am sure that, independent of that circumstance, the effect would have been nearly the same What a model of female excellence, in every point of view, do her biography and letters exhibit. I hope with you, and cannot but believe, that these Memoirs will prove a blessing to many readers."

Charlestown, Mass, May 1, 1812.

MEMOIRS.

MARTHA LAURENS RAMSAY was born in Charleston, S. C. on the third of November, 1759. She was the daughter of Henry Laurens and of Eleanor Ball, and born in the ninth year after their marriage. By the father's side she was of French extraction. Her great grand parents were born in Rochelle, and suffered in the famous siege of that place. They were Hugonots, or Protestants. Being, by the revocation of the edict of Nantz, compelled to leave their native country, they came to America in the latter end of the 17th century. Her maternal ancestors migrated from Devonshire in England, and settled in South Carolina about the same time.

In the first year of her life she had the smallpox so severely that she was supposed to be dead, and as such was actually laid out preparatory to her funeral. This was done un'er an open

B

window, instead of the close room in which she had been kept, according to the absurd mode of treating the small-pox in 1760. Dr. Moultrie, coming in at this crisis, pronounced her to be still alive, probably recalled to life by the fresh air of the open window. Under other circumstances she would shortly have been buried, as was then commonly done, with persons who died of the small-pox in that year of extensive mortality. A valuable life was thus providentially saved for future usefulness.

Martha Laurens early discovered a great capacity and eagerness for learning. In the course of her third year she could readily read any book, and, what is extraordinary, in an inverted position, without any difficulty. In youth her vivacity and spirits were exuberant.

Feats

of activity, though attended with personal danger, were to her familiar; great exertions of bodily labour; romantic projects; excesses of the wildest play were preferred to stagnant life; but from all these she could be turned off in a - moment to serious business. As she grew up, the same activity was exerted in acquiring the useful and ornamental parts of female education. She very soon acquired a grammatical knowledge of the French language; a considerable eminence in reading, writing, arithmetic, English grammar, geography, the use of the globes. She even acquired a considerable