she delighted to hear them at their innocent sport, and to call them into her room to give them some token of her maternal kindness." She alone possessed fortitude, and peace, and joy, when the last hour came, for all else were overwhelmed with grief at such a loss. When all was over, they bore her body to its resting place, "and there planted the Cross, the emblem of her virtue, and the rose-bush, as her immortal crown," says Dr. White, who gives his account with much sympathetic feeling; and who is there that will not say the nunc dimittis and the amen, to such a life and such a death, without asking in what particular form of Christian faith this pure soul received the divine influence?

How cool, after this glowing picture, comes over the ima gination and the heart the spiritual image of Mary Lovell Ware, "a perfect woman, nobly planned;" a submissive and unshrinking servant of God and duty; one who loved and followed the Saviour with the docility of a child, yet never, perhaps, addressed to him one impassioned, endearing name, or shed even one of those "floods of tears" with which Mrs. Seton poured out the joys and sorrows of her heart at the foot of the cross. Considering that the two lives had one and the same aim, a stronger contrast can hardly be found than is presented by these striking exemplifications of the power of religion over the soul, nor, surely, a deeper lesson of toleration; but when shall we be as tolerant of uncongenial sectarian peculiarities as we find it easy to be of the sin, against which all sects unite in warring, each after its own natural, inseparable genius? Mrs. Seton would have mourned for Mrs. Ware as for a lost soul, all the more surely lost for those deluding virtues which would soothe the conscience that needed rather wounding; while Mrs. Ware, calm, reasonable, and self-governed, would look with a tender pity, scarcely consistent with respect, on the dramatic virtues and ecstatic devotions of the more tropical Saint. Can even we critics contemplate, with strict impartiality, the double exhibition of what seems almost like two religions, — passion and reason, dogmatism and induction, statement and inference, feeling and philosophy? We shall content ourselves with attempting to show the reader a saintly character, so different from

the one we have been looking at, that it is probable they agree in scarcely any thing beside strong affections and a determined devotion and self-consecration each to her own idea of Christian duty.

The biography of Mrs. Ware has been so widely read and remarked upon, that we shall attempt no labored abstract of it as a history, but simply recapitulate a few of the leading facts, with their dates. Mary Lovell Pickard was born at Boston in 1798, twenty-four years later than Mrs. Seton, - a very significant fact, considering that the Revolution intervened, and that the great protest of Unitarianism took place after the latter had been withdrawn from the shifting scene. Who knows to what degree the character of either might have been modified, had she been brought up under the same roof, and the same influences with the other? Dr. Bailey, the father of Mrs. Seton, whom her filial piety endowed with "every virtue under heaven," had undoubtedly many good qualities and no little professional skill; but he has come down to us traditionally as a rough and violent man, of somewhat reckless character, noted for profane language and a life of no great carefulness, even in exteriors. Mark Pickard, on the other hand, the father of Mrs. Ware, was a quiet, rather proud and shy English merchant, of literary tastes, and somewhat delicate and feeble in mind and body, as we judge from incidental mention in the memoir of his daughter. His wife was the daughter of James Lovell, and granddaughter of "Master Lovell," a teacher of the classics, a man of intellect and influence, often mentioned in Revolutionary letters and records. This lady possessed those sterling qualities which have power to shape whole families; but in her case, all interest was concentrated in Mary, her only child, from the first a little marvel of sweetness and good behavior. Mrs. Pickard was one of those women of whom we are apt to say, "she looks as if she were born to be an empress," an expression which usually indicates qualities of mind and person which few empresses have possessed, and which are, perhaps, quite as well bestowed on the little empire of home. She was literary, tasteful, musical, and skilled in all household matters, and found her highest pleasure in imparting to her docile

child all the feminine accomplishments within reach. In 1802, the family went to England, and remained a year and a half, visiting relatives and friends of both Mr. and Mrs. Pickard. Mary, though she was at the time but three years old, never forgot the enjoyment or instruction of that sojourn in the grand old fatherland. At the age of thirteen, she was sent to a boarding-school, but soon recalled by the illness of her mother, who died after a protracted illness, during which Mary was her constant attendant. School again, and the same staid, ever correct and exemplary character throughout, indeed, so correct and exemplary, that we are apt to fancy that there could be but little interest in watching her course. But at sixteen, she began to long for a more decidedly religious life, and, after due deliberation, united herself with the church. The usual guarded coolness of her expressions of sentiment may be judged from the fact, that her biographer thinks it necessary almost to apologize for her warmth in describing this period to a son many years after.

Speaking of the lack of interest in the ministrations to which she was accustomed, she says,

"The final effect upon me was, by throwing me more upon myself, to open a new source of instruction to my mind; and I can now remember with great pleasure, and a longing desire for the same vivid enjoyment, the hours I passed in my little room, in striving by reading, meditation, and prayer, to find that knowledge and stimulus to virtue which I failed to find in the ministrations of the Sabbath."

How would Dr. Hall have relished the office of father confessor to our Catholic saint, who, on the same topic, - the efficacy of preaching, thus bursts forth:

"It seems to me that those who have light and grace already might be trusted to keep them; and I would not stop, night or day, till I reached the dry and dark wilderness where neither can be found, where such horrid crimes go on for the want of them, and where there is such a glorious death to be gained by carrying them. O Gabriel, if I was light and life, as you are, I would shout like a madman alone to my God, and roar and groan and sigh and be silent, all together, till I had baptized a thousand, and snatched those poor victims from hell. And pray, madam, say you, why does not your zeal wave its flame

through its own little hemisphere? True; but rules, prudence, subjection, opinions, etc., are dreadful walls to a burning soul, wild as mine. For me, I am like a fiery horse I had when a girl, whom they tried to break by making him drag a heavy cart, and the poor beast was so humbled that he could never more be inspired by whips or caresses, and wasted to a skeleton till he died."

It were curious to compare the religious experience, emotions, and progress of these two remarkable American women, if there were room here to run the parallel fully. Perhaps the two passages we have just quoted may be taken as suggesting all. Certain it is, that we have every reason to believe Mrs. Ware's feelings were as deep and practical as Mrs. Seton's, and Mrs. Seton's as sincere and operative as Mrs. Ware's. Strange difference to be produced by temperament and association! Various domestic troubles helped to teach the young disciple of Channing—for such had Mary Pickard become, while all her family continued attached to the Episcopal Church the necessity of something more stable than this world can give as a foundation for happiness. Through all trials she passed nobly, calmly, and with deep humility; fulfilling each duty as it presented itself, yet caring always for the lamp kept burning at the secret shrine, which no hurry of business, such as often fell to her lot, no seductions of pleasure, which seem to have been but little in the way, ever led her to forget. Her father evidently did not quite relish her religious predilections, and he often rallies her on her "fondness for the clergy," a point of no unusual jealousy among gentlemen not clerical. When she is to return from Baltimore, he writes, "I am afraid you will wait till the end of the month for the parson; your being so fond of parsons is rather ominous; and you had better be almost any man's wife than a parson's."

At twenty-five, Mary lost her father, and felt herself alone in the world. So entirely had she been devoted to one after another of her relatives through long illness and decline, that when this last one was laid at rest, she says, "I seem to hang so loosely on the world, that it is of little importance where I am." But now opened upon her that new scene, which was to render her name a "household word" wherever the Eng

lish language is spoken. Her only relatives on the father's side were in England, and she had known them only as a child, twenty years before. But to them she was resolved to go, not because they were prosperous and happy, but because some of them, at least, were far otherwise, and her strong feeling of family affection, as well as her sense of religious duty, prompted her to see what was to be done among them. She says, "I go with very moderate hopes about seeing the wonders and beauties. I must be satisfied with seeing people, not things. I shall have no right to travel much, and no advantages not common to the most insignificant; nevertheless, if I can attain my principal object, all the rest will be unexpected gain." A friend describes her at this time as "worn to the bone" by care and trial, and concludes a eulogium upon her by saying, "I am afraid of adoring her, so I may as well hold my peace."

In England, she began by sacrificing all the time and attention that the ill health of the American friend with whom she travelled required, and seeing almost nothing, as a tourist, for the first two or three months. Afterwards, we find her among her relatives at Burcombe House, near Salisbury, where she remained nearly a year. That she found few pleasures in this sojourn, which, though among worthy people, was in a lonely region, where, she says, "except a call from Lord and Lady Pembroke, when they are in the neighborhood, or a visit from some travelling acquaintance, scarcely any one enters the house except the family," we may judge from the following passage in one of her letters: —

"I would not return without seeing and doing all that may be in my power; but that I do look forward with a feeling of desire such as I never knew before, to the period when I shall find myself at home, it would be folly to deny. The greatest evil I find in this state of constant preparation for enduring is that I am getting into a quiescent state of inaction, not being quite enough at ease to exert my own powers freely. I am losing that activity of mind which I rather hoped to increase. .. I am fated to find trouble wherever I go, and ought to be truly grateful when it is such as I can relieve."

In July, when she was longing to be at home, an opportunity offered for her to visit her father's relatives in the north of 15

VOL. LXXVII.

NO. 160.