every quality to
endear her to all by whom she was known. Naturally endowed with the
sweetest disposition, virtue seemed never to cost her any effort. Her
pure and tranquil spirit pursued its even course like the docile
stream that bathes with equal gentleness, the foot of the rock which
holds it captive, and the valley which it at once enriches and adorns.
With her death was concluded the tranquillity of my youth, which till
then was passed in the enjoyment of blissful affections and beloved
occupations."

Jane soon found her parental home, indeed, a melancholy abode. She was
truly alone in the world. Her father now began to advance with more
rapid footsteps in the career of dissipation. A victim to that
infidelity which presents no obstacle to crime, he yielded himself a
willing captive to the dominion of passion, and disorder reigned
through the desolated household. Jane had the mortification of seeing
a woman received into the family to take her mother's place, in a
union unsanctified by the laws of God. A deep melancholy settled down
upon the mind of the wounded girl, and she felt that she was desolate
and an alien in her own home. She shut herself up in her chamber with
her thoughts and her books. All the chords of her sensitive nature now
vibrated only responsive to those melancholy tones which are the
dirges of the broken heart. As there never was genius untinged by
melancholy, so may it be doubted whether there ever was greatness of
character which had not been nurtured in the school of great
affliction. Her heart now began to feel irrepressible longings for the
sympathy of some congenial friend, upon whose supporting bosom she
could lean her aching head. In lonely musings she solaced herself, and
nurtured her own thoughts by writing. Her pen became her friend, and
the resource of every weary hour. She freely gave utterance in her
diary to all her feelings and all her emotions. Her manuscripts of
abstracts, and extracts, and original thoughts, became quite
voluminous. In this way she was daily cultivating that power of
expression and that force of eloquence which so often, in subsequent
life, astonished and charmed her friends.

In every development of character in her most eventful future career,
one can distinctly trace the influence of these vicissitudes of early
life, and of these impressions thus powerfully stamped upon her
nature. Philosophy, romance, and religious sentiment, an impassioned
mind and a