by combining these two ingredients she could make different shades of yellow, blue, and green. The trunks of her trees she painted with coffee-grounds, and a mixture of India ink and indigo answered tolerably for sky and water. She afterwards discovered that the pink juice of the skokeberry did very well for lips, cheeks, and gay dresses. Mixed with a little indigo, it made a very bad purple, which the young artist, for want of a better, was obliged to use for her royal robes. In sore distress for a better purple, she squeezed the purple flowers of the garden and the field for the desired tint, but nothing answered the purpose, until, at dinner one day, she found the very hue for which she longed in the juice of a currant-andwhortleberry tart. She hastened to try it, and it made a truly gorgeous purple, but the sugar in it caused it to come off in flakes from her kings and emperors, leaving them in a sorry plight. At length, to her boundless, inexpressible, and lasting joy, all her difficulties were removed by her father's giving her a complete box of colors.

At school she was fortunate in her teachers. One of them was the late Pelatiah Perit, who afterwards won high distinction as a New York merchant and universal philanthropist. Her first serious attempts at poetical composition were translations from Virgil, when she was fourteen years of age. After leaving school, she studied Latin with much zeal under an aged tutor, and, later in life, she advanced far enough in Hebrew to read the Old Testament with the aid of grammar and dictionary. To these grave studies her parents were sufficiently enlightened to add a thorough drill in dancing. Often, when her excellent mother observed that she had sat too long over her books, she would get her out upon the floor of their large kitchen, and then, striking up a lively song, set her dancing until her cheeks were all aglow.

This studious and happy girl, like all other young people, had her day-dream of the future. It was to keep a school! This strange ambition, she tells us in her Autobiography, she feared to impart to her companions lest they should laugh at her; and she thought even her parents would think her arrogant if she mentioned it to them. The long-cherished secret

was revealed to her parents at length. Her mother had guessed it before, but her father was exceedingly surprised; neither of them, however, made any objection, and one of the pleasantest apartments of their house was fitted up for the reception of pupils. She was then a delicate-looking girl of about eighteen, and rather undersized. As soon as her desks were brought home by the carpenter, the ambitious little lady went round to the families of the place, informed them of her intention, and solicited their patronage, at the established rate of three dollars a quarter for each pupil. She was disappointed and puzzled at the coldness with which her project was received. Day after day she tramped the streets of Norwich, only to return at night without a name upon her catalogue. She surmised, after a time, that parents hesitated to entrust their children to her because of her extreme youth; which was the fact. At length, however, she began her school with two children, nine and eleven years of age; and not only did she go through all the formalities of a school with them, working six hours a day for five days and three hours on Saturday, but at the end of the term she held an examination in the presence of a large circle of her pupils' admiring relations.

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Afterwards, associating herself with another young lady, to whom she was tenderly attached, she succeeded better. A large and popular school gathered about these zealous and admirable girls, several of their pupils being older than themselves. Compelled to hold the school in a larger room, Lydia Huntley walked two miles every morning and two more at night, besides working hard all day; and she was as happy as the weeks were long. Her experience confirms that of every genuine teacherfrom Dr. Arnold downwards-that, of all the employments of man or woman on this earth, the one which is capable of giving the most constant and intense happiness, is teaching in a rationally conducted school. So fond was she of teaching, that when the severity of the winter obliged her to suspend the school for many weeks, she opened a free school for poor children, one of her favorite classes in which was composed of colored girls.

In the course of time, the well-known Daniel Wadsworth, the great man of Hartford fifty years ago, lured her away to that

city, where he personally organized for her a school of thirty young ladies, the daughters of his friends, and gave her a home in his own house. There she spent five happy years, cherished as a daughter by her venerable patron and his wife, and held in high honor by her pupils and their parents.

It was in 1815, while residing in Hartford, that her fame was born. Good old Mrs. Wadsworth having obtained a sight of her journals and manuscripts, in prose and verse, the secret accumulation of many years, inflamed her husband's curiosity so that he too asked to see them. The blushing poetess consented. Mr. Wadsworth pronounced some of them worthy of publication, and, under his auspices, a volume was printed in Hartford, entitled, "Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse." The public gave it a generous welcome, and its success led to a career of authorship that lasted forty-nine years, and gave to the world fifty-six volumes of poetry, tales, travels, biography, and letters.

So passed her life till she was past twenty-eight. She had received offers of marriage from clergymen and others, but none of her suitors tempted her to forsake her pupils; and she supposed herself destined to spend her days as an old maid. But another destiny was in store for her. On her way to and from her school, "a pair of deep-set and most expressive black eyes sometimes encountered hers, and spoke "unutterable things." Those eyes belonged to a widower, with three children, named Charles Sigourney, a thriving hardware merchant of French descent, and those "unutterable things" were uttered at length, through the unromantic medium of a letter. The marriage occurred a few months after, in the year 1819.

For the next fifteen years she resided in the most elegant mansion in Hartford, surrounded by delightful grounds, after Mr. Sigourney's own design; and even now, though the Sigourney place is eclipsed in splendor and costliness by many of more recent date, there is no abode in the beautiful city of Hartford more attractive than this. Mr. Sigourney was a man of considerable learning, and exceedingly interested in the study of languages. When he was past fifty, he began the acquisition of modern Greek. Mrs. Sigourney became the mother of several children, all of whom, but two, died in infancy. One son

lived to enter college, but died at the age of nineteen, of consumption. A daughter still survives, the wife of a clergyman.

After many years of very great prosperity in business, Mr. Sigourney experienced heavy losses, which compelled them to leave their pleasant residence, and gave a new activity to her pen. He died a few years since, at the age of seventy-six. During the last seven years of Mrs. Sigourney's life, her chief literary employment was contributing to the columns of the "New York Ledger." Mr. Bonner, having, while an apprentice in the Hartford "Courant" office, "set up" some of her poems, had particular pleasure in being the medium of her last communications with the public, and she must have rejoiced in the vast audience to which he gave her access, the largest she ever addressed.

Mrs. Sigourney enjoyed excellent health to within a few weeks of her death. After a short illness, which she bore with much patience, she died in June, 1865, with her daughter at her side, and affectionate friends around her. Nothing could exceed her tranquillity and resignation at the approach of death. Her long life had been spent in honorable labor for the good of her species, and she died in the fullest certainty that Death would but introduce her to a larger and better sphere.

B7EB.C

THE POET VIRGIL.

IN a Broadway bookstore, this morning, I heard a school-boy ask for a Virgil. The clerk vanished into the distant recesses, and returned with seven editions of the poet, from which the young gentleman was requested to choose the one he desired. In the same store there were also two different translations of the works of Virgil into English. I suppose that here, on this continent of America, which was not discovered until Virgil had been dead fifteen hundred years, there could be found half a million copies of his poems. It is eighteen hundred and eighty-five years since he died; but no day passes during the travelling season that does not bring to his grave, near Naples, some pilgrim from a distant land. Such is the magic of genius, or, rather, such is the lasting charm of a piece of literary work that is thoroughly well done.

Virgil was born seventy years before the birth of Christ, at a village near Mantua, on the banks of the Mincio, in that Northern province of Italy, which the Italians wrested, not long ago, from the dominion of hated Austria. Who should possess the birthplace of Virgil was one of the questions which the late war in Europe happily and justly decided. His father was a man of very humble rank, as the fathers of great poets have usually been. The received tradition is that, early in life, his father entered the service of a peddler, who, to reward his fidelity, gave him his daughter in marriage, and settled him upon a small farm near Mantua. Of this union, and upon this farm, the poet was born. He was of a delicate constitution, and of a reflective, retiring cast of character, which induced his father to give him advantages of education not usually bestowed by Roman farmers upon their sons.

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