and beauty, the graceful bride of a very
attractive and elegant young man." Some books from her girlish library
now lie before me, dingy and time-worn, with her name in varying
handwriting from the early "Mary S. Potter" to the later "Mary S. P.
Longfellow." They show many marked passages and here and there a
quotation. The collection begins with Miss Edgeworth's "Harry and Lucy;"
then follow somewhat abruptly "Sabbath Recreations," by Miss Emily
Taylor, and "The Wreath, a selection of elegant poems from the best
authors,"--these poems including the classics of that day, Beattie's
"Minstrel," Blair's "Grave," Gray's "Elegy," Goldsmith's "Traveller,"
and some lighter measures from Campbell, Moore, and Burns. The sombre
muse undoubtedly predominated, but on the whole the book was not so bad
an elementary preparation for the training of a poet's wife. It is a
touching accidental coincidence that one of the poems most emphatically
marked is one of the few American poems in these volumes, Bryant's
"Death of the Flowers," especially the last verse, which describes a
woman who died in her youthful beauty. To these are added books of
maturer counsel, as Miss Bowdler's "Poems and Essays," then reprinted
from the sixteenth English edition, but now forgotten, and Mrs.
Barbauld's "Legacy for Young Ladies," discussing beauty, fashion,
botany, the uses of history, and especially including a somewhat
elaborate essay on "female studies," on which, perhaps, Judge Potter
founded his prohibition of the classics. Mrs. Barbauld lays down the
rule that "the learned languages, the Greek especially, require a great
deal more time than a young woman can conveniently spare. To the Latin,"
she adds, "there is not an equal objection ... and it will not," she
thinks, "in the present state of things, excite either a smile or a
stare in fashionable company." But she afterwards says, "French you are
not only permitted to learn, but you are laid under the same necessity
of acquiring it as your brother is of acquiring the Latin." Mrs.
Barbauld's demands, however, are not extravagant, as she thinks that "a
young person who reads French with ease, who is so well grounded as to
write it grammatically, and has what I should call a good English
pronunciation will by a short residence in France gain fluency and the
accent." This "good English pronunciation" of French is still not
unfamiliar to those acquainted with Anglicized or Americanized regions
of Paris.