ic description: "I entered her room,--she was sitting with
scarcely light enough to discern the characters she was tracing; her
harp was in the window, touched by a breeze just sufficient to rouse
the spirit of harmony; her comb had fallen on the floor, and her long,
dark ringlets hung in rich profusion over her neck and shoulders; her
cheek glowed with animation; her lips were half unclosed; her full,
dark eye was radiant with the light of genius, and beaming with
sensibility; her head rested on her left hand, while she held her pen
in her right. She looked like the inhabitant of another sphere. She
was so wholly absorbed that she did not observe my entrance. I looked
over her shoulder, and read the following lines:--

'What heavenly music strikes my ravished ear,
So soft, so melancholy, and so clear?
And do the tuneful nine then touch the lyre,
To fill each bosom with poetic fire?
Or does some angel strike the sounding strings,
Who caught from echo the wild note he sings?
But, ah! another strain! how sweet! how wild!
Now, rushing low, 'tis soothing, soft, and mild.'"

The noise made by her mother roused Lucretia, who soon afterwards
brought her the preceding verses, with the following added to them,
being an address to her AEolian harp:--

"And tell me now, ye spirits of the wind,
O, tell me where those artless notes to find--
So lofty now, so loud, so sweet, so clear,
That even angels might delighted hear.

But hark! those notes again majestic rise,
As though some spirit, banished from the skies,
Had hither fled to charm AEolus wild,
And teach him other music, sweet and mild.

Then hither fly, sweet mourner of the air,
Then hither fly, and to my harp repair;
At twilight chant the melancholy lay,
And charm the sorrows of thy soul away."

Her parents indulged her in the utmost latitude in her reading.
History, profane and sacred, novels, poetry, and other works of
imagination, by turns occupied her. Before she was twelve, she had
read the English poets. Dramatic works possessed a great charm for
her, and her devotion to Shakspeare is expressed in the following
verses, written in her fifteenth year:--

"Shakspeare, with all thy faults, (and few have more,)
I love thee still, and still will con thee o'er.
Heaven, in compassion to man's erring heart,
Gave thee of virtue, then of vice, a part,
Lest we, in wonder here, should bow before thee,
Break God's com