education, and still more by temperament, he was engaged to the old forms of the New England Church. Not speculative, but affectionate; devout, but with an extreme love of order, he adopted heartily, though in its mildest form, the creed and catechism of the fathers, and appeared a modern Israelite in his attachment to the Hebrew history and faith. He was a man very easy to read, for his whole life and conversation were consistent. All his opinions and actions might be securely predicted by a good observer on short acquaintance. My classmate at Cambridge, Frederick King, told me from Governor Gore, who was the Doctor's classmate, that in college he was called Holy Ripley.

And now, in his old age, when all the antique Hebraism and its customs are passing away, it is fit that he too should depart, most fit that in the fall of laws a loyal man should die.'

XV

MARY MOODY EMERSON

THE yesterday doth never smile,

To-day goes drudging through the while,
Yet in the name of Godhead, I

The morrow front and can defy;

Though I am weak, yet God, when prayed,
Cannot withhold his conquering aid.

Ah me! it was my childhood's thought,
If He should make my web a blot
On life's fair picture of delight,

My heart's content would find it right.

But O, these waves and leaves,
When happy, stoic Nature grieves,
No human speech so beautiful
As their murmurs, mine to lull.

On this altar God hath built

I lay my vanity and guilt;

Nor me can Hope or Passion urge,

Hearing as now the lofty dirge

Which blasts of Northern mountains hymn,

Nature's funeral high and dim,

Sable pageantry of clouds,
Mourning summer laid in shrouds.
Many a day shall dawn and die,
Many an angel wander by,

And passing, light my sunken turf,

Moist perhaps by ocean surf,

Forgotten amid splendid tombs,

Yet wreathed and hid by summer blooms.
On earth I dream; I die to be:

Time! shake not thy bald head at me.
I challenge thee to hurry past,

Or for my turn to fly too fast.

"She is of too high a mind and dignity not only to seek, but almost to wish, the friendship of any creature. They whom she is pleased to choose are such as are of the most eminent condition both for power and employment, not with any design towards her own particular, either of advantage or curiosity, but her nature values fortunate persons. She prefers the conversation of men to that of women; not but she can talk on the fashions with her female friends, but she is too soon sensible that she can set them as she wills; that preeminence shortens all equality. She converses with those who are most distinguished for their conversational powers. Of Love freely will she discourse, listen to all its faults and mark its power: and will take a deep interest for persons of celebrity."

[LUCY PERCY, Countess of Carlisle, the friend of Strafford and of Pym, is thus described by Sir Toby Matthews.]

I

MARY MOODY EMERSON

WISH to meet the invitation with which the ladies have honored me by offering them at portrait of real life. It is a representative life, such as could hardly have appeared out of New England; of an age now past, and of which I think no types survive. Perhaps I deceive myself and overestimate its interest. It has to me a value like that which many readers find in Madame Guyon, in Rahel, in Eugénie de Guérin, but it is purely original and hardly admits of a duplicate. Then it is a fruit of Calvinism and New England, and marks the precise time when the power of the old creed yielded to the influence of modern science and humanity.

I have found that I could only bring you this portrait by selections from the diary of my heroine, premising a sketch of her time and place. I report some of the thoughts and soliloquies of a country girl, poor, solitary,—'a goody' as she called herself,-growing from youth to age amid slender opportunities and usually very humble company.

Mary Moody Emerson was born just before the outbreak of the Revolution. When intro