ographer of Washington, thinks
"that the poems contained in her published volume, exhibit the most
favorable evidence on record, of the capacity of the African intellect
for improvement." When the Rev. George Whitefield died, at
Newburyport, Mass., in 1770, the same writer from whom we quote these
facts, says: "It was quite natural, his demise being much talked of in
religious families, that our sable Phillis should burst into monody.
That expression of grief I have before me. Of the most rhetorical
preacher of his age, it is not inspiring to read:

"He prayed that grace in every heart might dwell.
He louged to see America excel."

Phillis married badly, and died at the age of thirty-one, in 1784,
utterly impoverished, leaving three little children. Her own copy of
her poems is in the library of Harvard College. When she died it was
sold for her husband's debts.

In a letter thanking her for an acrostic on himself, General
Washington said: "If you should ever come to Cambridge, or near
headquarters, I shall be happy to see a person so gifted by the muses,
and to whom Nature has been so liberal and beneficent in her
dispensations."

Was there ever any story, which had such a hold upon the readers of a
generation, as "Charlotte Temple"? It is said 25,000 copies were sold
soon after publication--an enormous sale for that day. Mrs. Rowson,
who wrote the book, was a daughter of a lieutenant in the Royal Navy;
she was an actress in Philadelphia, and afterward kept a school in
Boston for young ladies, where she died, in 1824. Her seminary was
highly recommended.

Women in the last age naturally drifted into the didactic. They should
have the credit of trying always to be useful. They go through so many
pages, seeking to give the little people some notion of botany, of
natural history, of other branches of human intelligence. There is no
book cleverer in its way than Miss Hannah Adams' "History of New
England," of which the second edition was published in Boston in
1807. The object of this lady was, as she tells us in the preface, "to
impress the minds of young persons with veneration for those eminent
men to whom their posterity are so highly indebted." All the tradition
is that Miss Adams was a wonderfully learned lady. She is best known
by her "History of the Jews." She wrote pretty good English, of which
this may be considered a specimen: "Exalted from a feeble state to
opulence and independence, the Federal