She died with her "singing robes" about her, having composed, while confined to her bed in her last illness, these verses, expressive of her fear of madness:

There is a something which I dread,
It is a dark, a fearful thing;
It steals along with withering tread,

Or sweeps on wild destruction's wing.
That thought comes o'er me in the hour
Of grief, of sickness, or of sadness:
"Tis not the dread of death-'tis more,
It is the dread of madness.

Oh! may these throbbing pulses pause,
Forgetful of their feverish course;
May this hot brain, which burning, glows
With all a fiery whirlpool's force,

Be cold, and motionless, and still—
A tenant of its lowly bed;
But let not dark delirium steal......

The poem is unfinished, and it is the last she wrote.

MARGARET DAVIDSON, at the time of the death of Lucretia, was not quite two years old. The event made a deep and lasting impression on her mind. She loved, when but three years old, to sit on a cushion at her mother's feet, listening to anecdotes of her sister's life, and details of the events which preceded her death, and would often exclaim, while her face beamed with mingled emotions, "Oh, I will try to fill her place-teach me to be like her!" She needed little teaching. In intelligence, delicacy, and susceptibility, she surpassed Lucretia. When in her sixth year, she could read with fluency, and would sit by the bedside of her sick mother, reading, with enthusiastic delight and appropriate emphasis, the poetry of Milton, Cowper, Thomson, and other great authors, and marking, with discrimination, the passages with which she was most pleased. Between the sixth and seventh years of her age, she entered on a general course of education, studying grammar, geography, history, and rhetoric; but her constitution had already begun to show symptoms of decay, which rendered it expedient to check her application. In her seventh summer she was taken to the springs of Saratoga, the waters of which seemed to have a beneficial effect, and she afterward accompanied her parents to New York, with which city she was highly delighted. On her return to Plattsburg, her strength was much increased, and she resumed her studies with great assiduity. In the autumn

of 1830, however, her health began to fail again, and it was thought proper for her and her mother to join Mrs. Townsend, an elder sister, in an inland town of Canada. She remained here until 1833, when she had a severe attack of scarlet fever, and on her slow recovery it was determined to go again to New York. Her residence in the city was protracted until the summer heat became oppressive, and she expressed her yearnings for the banks of the Saranac, in the following lines, which are probably equal to any ever written by so young an author:

I would fly from the city, would fly from its care,
To my own native plants and my flowerets so fair,
To the cool grassy shade and the rivulet bright,
Which reflects the pale moon in its bosom of light;
Again would I view the old cottage so dear,
Where I sported, a babe, without sorrow or fear:
I would leave this great city, so brilliant and gay,
For a peep at my home on this fair summer-day.
I have friends whom I love, and would leave with
regret,

There a sister reposes unconscious in death,
But the love of my home, oh, 'tis tenderer yet;
"T was there she first drew, and there yielded her
A father I love is away from me now- [breath.
Oh, could I but print a sweet kiss on his brow,
Or smooth the gray locks to my fond heart so dear,
How quickly would vanish each trace of a tear:
Attentive I listen to Pleasure's gay call,
But my own happy home, it is dearer than all.

The family soon after became temporary residents of the village of Ballston, near Saratoga, and, in the autumn of 1835, of Ruremont, on the sound, or East river, about four miles from New York. Here they remained, except at short intervals, until the summer of 1837, when they returned to Ballston. In the last two years, Margaret had suffered much from illness herself, and had lost by death her sister Mrs. Townsend and two brothers; and now her mother became alarmingly ill. As the season advanced, however, health seemed to revisit all the surviving members of the family, and Margaret was as happy as at any period of her life. Early in 1838, Dr. Davidson took a house in Saratoga, to which he removed on the first of May. Here she had an attack of bleeding at the lungs, but recovered, and when her brothers visited home from New York, she returned with them to the city, and remained there several weeks. She reached Saratoga again in July; the bloom had for the last time left her cheeks; and she decayed gradually until the twenty-fifth of November,

when her spirit returned to God. She was then but fifteen years and eight months old. She was aware of her approaching change, and in the preceding September she wrote a short poem, characterized by much beauty of thought and tenderness of feeling, to her brother, a young officer in the army, stationed at a frontier post in the west, in which an allusion to the fading verdure, and falling leaf, and gathering melancholy, and lifeless quiet of the season, as typical of her own blighted youth and approaching dissolution, is pointed out by Mr. Irving as having in it something peculiarly solemn and affecting. "But when," she says:

"But when, in the shade of the autumn wood, Thy wandering footsteps stray;

When yellow leaves and perishing buds
Are scattered in thy way;

When all around thee breathes of rest,
And sadness and decay-

With the drooping flower, and the fallen tree,
Oh, brother, blend thy thoughts of me!"

Her later poems do not seem to me superior to some written in her eleventh year, and the prose compositions included in the volume of her Remains, edited by Mr. Irving, are not better than those of many girls of her age. One of her latest and most perfect

pieces is the dedication of a poem entitled Leonore to the spirit of her sister Lucretia: Oh, thou, so early lost, so long deplored!

Pure spirit of my sister, be thou near! And while I touch this hallowed harp of thine, Bend from the skies, sweet sister, bend and hear. For thee I pour this unaffected lay;

To thee these simple numbers all belong : For though thine earthly form has passed away, Thy memory still inspires my childish song. Take, then, this feeble tribute-'tis thine ownThy fingers sweep my trembling heart-strings o'er, Arouse to harmony each buried tone,

And bid its wakened music sleep no more! Long has thy voice been silent, and thy lyre

Hung o'er thy grave, in death's unbroken rest; But when its last sweet tones were borne away, One answering echo lingered in my breast. Oh, thou pure spirit! if thou hoverest near, Accept these lines, unworthy though they be, Faint echoes from thy fount of song divine, By thee inspired, and dedicate to thee!

Leonore is the longest of her poems, and it was commenced after much reflection, and written with care and a resolution to do something that should serve as the measure of her genius, and carry her name into the

future. It is a story of romantic love, happily conceived, and illustrated with some fine touches of sentiment and fancy. It is a creditable production, and would entitle a much older author to consideration; but its best passages scarcely equal some of her earlier and less elaborate performances.

The following lines addressed to her mother, a few days before her death, are the last she ever wrote:

Oh, mother, would the power were mine
To wake the strain thou lovest to hear,
And breathe each trembling new-born thought
Within thy fondly listening ear,
As when, in days of health and glee,
My hopes and fancies wandered free.
But, mother, now a shade hath passed
Athwart my brightest visions here;
A cloud of darkest gloom hath wrapped
The remnant of my brief career:
No song, no echo can I win,
The sparkling fount hath dried within.
The torch of earthly hope burns dim,

And fancy spreads her wings no more,
And oh, how vain and trivial seem

The pleasures that I prized before; My soul, with trembling steps and slow,

Is struggling on through doubt and strife;
Oh, may it prove, as time rolls on,

The pathway to eternal life!
Then, when my cares and fears are o'er,
I'll sing thee as in "days of yore."

I said that Hope had passed from earth—
"I was but to fold her wings in heaven,
To whisper of the soul's new birth,

Of sinners saved and sins forgiven:
When mine are washed in tears away,
Then shall my spirit swell the lay.
When God shall guide my soul above,
By the soft chords of heavenly love-
When the vain cares of earth depart,
And tuneful voices swell my heart,
Then shall each word, each note I raise,
Burst forth in pealing hymns of praise:
And all not offered at his shrine,
Dear mother, I will place on thine.

In 1843, a volume entitled Selections from the Writings of Mrs. Margaret M. Davidson, the mother of Lucretia Maria and Margaret Miller Davidson, was published, with a preface by Miss Sedgwick. There is nothing in the book to arrest attention. Mrs. Davidson has some command of language and a knowledge of versification, and the chief production of her industry in this line is a paraphrase of six books of Fingal. Her writings are interesting only as indexes to the early culture of her daughters.

THE maiden name of Mrs. HEWITT was MARY ELIZABETH MOORE, and she is a native of Malden, a country town about five miles from Boston, in which city she resided until her removal to New York, in 1829, about two years after her marriage with Mr. James L. Hewitt, now of that city.

Mrs. Hewitt's earlier poems appeared in The Knickerbocker Magazine and other periodicals, under the signature of "Ione," and in 1845 she published in Boston a volume entitled Songs of our Land and other Poems, which confirmed the high opinions which

THE SONGS OF OUR LAND.

YE say we sing no household songs,
To children round our hearths at play;
No minstrelsy to us belongs,

No legend of a bygone day-
No old tradition of the hills-
Our giant land no memory fills:

We have no proud heroic lay.
Ye ask the time-worn storied page-
Ye ask the lore of other age,

From us, a race of yesterday!

Of yore, in Britain's feudal halls,

Where many a storied trophy hung
With shield and banner on the walls,

The Bard's high harp was sternly strung
In praise of war-its fierce delights-
To "heroes of a hundred fights."

The lofty sounding shell outrung!
Gone is the ancient Bardic race:
Their song hath found perpetual place
Their country's proud archives among.

The stirring Scottish border tale

Pealed from the chords in chieftain's hall, The wild traditions of the Gael

The wandering harper's lays recall. Bold themes, Germania, fire thy strings; And when the Marseillaise outrings, With patriot ardor thrills the Gaul : All have their legend and their song, Records of glory, feud, and wrong—

Of conquest wrought, and foeman's fall.
Fond thought the Switzer's bosom fills
When sounds the "Rans des Vaches" on high:
A race as ancient as their hills

Still echoes that wild mountain cry.
He springs along the rocky height,
He marks the lammergeyer's flight,

had been formed of her abilities from the fugitive pieces that had been popularly attributed to her. Her compositions in this collection show that she has a fine and wellcultivated understanding, informed with womanly feeling and a graceful fancy, and they are distinguished in an unusual degree for lyrical power and harmony as well as for sweetness of versification.

Among the more recent productions of Mrs. Hewitt are some elegant translations, which illustrate her taste and learning and fine command of language.

The startled chamois bounding by; He snuffs the mountain breeze of morn; He winds again the mountain horn,

And loud the wakened Alps reply! Our fathers bore from Albion's isle

No stories of her sounding lyres: They left the old baronial pile

They left the harp of ringing wires. Ours are the legends still rehearsed, Ours are the songs that gladsome burst By all your cot and palace fires: Each tree that in your soft wind stirs, Waves o'er our ancient sepulchres,

The sleeping ashes of our sires!

They left the gladsome Christmas chime,
The yule fire, and the misletoe;
They left the vain, ungodly rhyme,

For hymns the solemn paced and slow;
They left the mass, the stoled priest,
The scarlet woman and the beast,

For worship rude and altars low:
Their land, with its dear memories fraught,
They left for liberty of thought-

For stranger clime and savage foe.
And forth they went-nerved to forsake
Home, and the chain they might not wear;
And woman's heart was strong to break

The links of love that bound her there:
Here, free to worship and believe,
From many a log-built hut at eve

Went up the suppliant voice of prayer.
Is it not writ on history's page,
That the strong hand grasped our heritage?
Of the lion claimed his forest lair!
Our people raised no loud war songs,
The shouted no fierce battle cry-
A burning memory of their wrongs
Lit up their path to victory:

With prayer to God to aid the right,
The yeoman girded him for fight,

To free the land he tilled, or die.
They bore no proud escutcheoned shield,
No blazoned banners to the field-

Naught but their watchword "Liberty !"
Their sons-when after-years shall fling
O'er these, romance-when time hath cast
The mighty shadow of his wing

Between them and the storied past-
Will tell of foul oppression's heel,
Of hands that bore the avenging steel,

And battled sternly to the last

By their hearth-fires-on the free hill-side:
So shall our songs, o'er every tide,

Swell forth triumphant on the blast!
E'en now the word that roused our land
Is calling o'er the wave, "Awake!"
And pealing on from strand to strand,
Wherever ocean's surges break :
Up to the quickened ear of toil
It rises from the teeming soil,

And bids the slave his bonds forsake.
Hark! from the mountains to the sea,
The old world echoes "Liberty!"

Till thrones to their foundations shake.

And ye who idly set at naught

The sacred boon in suffering won,
Read o'er our page with glory fraught,

Nor scoff that we no more have done :
Read how the nation of the free
Hath carved her deeds in history,

Nor count them bootless every one-
Deeds of our mighty men of old,
Whose names stand evermore enrolled
Beneath the name of Washington!
Oh, mine own fair and glorious land!
Did I not hold such faith in thee,
As did the honored patriot band

That bled to make thee great and free-
Did I not look to hear thee sung,
To hear thy lyre yet proudly strung,

Thou ne'er had waked my minstrelsy:
And I shall hear thy song resound,
Till from his shackles man shall bound,
And shout, exultant, "Liberty!"

THE TWO VOICES.

A VOICE went forth throughout the land,
And an answering voice replied
From the rock-piled mountain fastnesses
To the surging ocean tide.

And far the blazing headlands gleamed
With their land-awakening fires;
And the hill-tops kindled, peak and height,
With a hundred answering pyres.

The quick youth snatched his father's sword,
And the yeoman rose in might;
And the aged grandsire nerved him there
For the stormy field of fight:

And the hillmen left their grass-grown steeps,
And their flocks and herds unkept;

And the ploughshare of the husbandman
In the half-turned furrow slept.
They wore no steel-wrought panoply,
Nor shield nor morion gleamed;
Nor the flaunt of bannered blazonry

In the morning sunlight streamed.
They bore no marshalled, firm array—
Like a torrent on they poured,
With the firelock, and the mower's scythe,
And the old forefathers' sword.

And again a voice went sounding on,

And the bonfires streamed on high;
And the hill-tops rang to the headlands back,
With the shout of victory!

So the land redeemed her heritage,
By the free hand mailed in right,
From the war-shod, hireling foeman's tread,
And the ruthless grasp of might.

THE AXE OF THE SETTLER.

THOU conqueror of the wilderness,
With keen and bloodless edge-

Hail to the sturdy artisan

Who welded thee, bold wedge! Though the warrior deem the weapon Fashioned only for the slave,

Yet the settler knows thee mightier
Than the tried Damascus glaive.
While desolation marketh

The course of foeman's brand,
Thy strong blow scatters plenty
And gladness through the land:
Thou opest the soil to culture,

To the sunlight and the dew; And the village spire thou plantest Where of old the forest grew.

When the broad sea rolled between them And their own far native land,

Thou wert the faithful ally

Of the hardy pilgrim band. They bore no warlike eagles, No banners swept the sky; Nor the clarion, like a tempest,

Swelled its fearful notes on high.

But the ringing wild rëechoed
Thy bold, resistless stroke,
Where, like incense, on the morning
Went up the cabin smoke :
The tall oaks bowed before thee,
Like reeds before the blast;
And the earth put forth in gladness

Where the axe in triumph passed.
Then hail! thou noble conqueror,

That, when tyranny oppressed,
Hewed for our fathers from the wild
A land wherein to rest :
Hail, to the power that giveth

The bounty of the soil,
And freedom, and an honored name,
To the hardy sons of toil!

A THOUGHT OF THE PILGRIMS.

How beauteous in the morning light,

Bright glittering in her pride,
Trimountain, from her ancient height,
Looks down upon the tide :

The fond wind woos her from the sea,
And ocean clasps her lovingly,

As bridegroom clasps his bride.

And out across the waters dark,

Careering on their way,
Full many a gallant, home-bound bark
Comes dashing up the bay:
Their pennons float on morning's gale,
The sunlight gilds each swelling sail,

And flashes on the spray.

Not thus toward fair New England's coast, With eager-hearted crew,

The pilgrim-freighted, tempest-tost,

And lonely May Flower drew:
There was no hand outstretched to bless,
No welcome from the wilderness,
To cheer her hardy few.

But onward drove the winter clouds

Athwart the darkening sky,

And hoarsely through the stiffened shrouds
The wind swept stormily;

While shrill from out the beetling rock,
That seemed the billows' force to mock,
Broke forth the sea-gull's cry.

God's blessing on their memories!

Those sturdy men and bold,
Who girt their hearts in righteousness,
Like martyr saints of old;
And mid oppression sternly sought,
To hold the sacred boon of Thought
In freedom uncontrolled.

They left the old, ancestral hall

The creed they might not own;
They left home, kindred, fortune, all-
Left glory and renown:

For what to them was pride of birth,
Or what to them the pomp of earth,

Who sought a heavenly crown?

Strong armed in faith they crossed the flood:
Here, mid the forest fair,
With axe and mattock, from the wood

They laid broad pastures bare;
And with the ploughshare turned the plain,
And planted fields of yellow grain

And built their dwellings there.

The pilgrim sires!-How from the night
Of centuries dim and vast,

It comes o'er every hill and height—
That watchword from the past!
And old men's pulses quicker bound,
And young hearts leap to hear the sound,
As at the trumpet's blast.

* Boston-built upon three hills-was originally named, by the early settlers, "Trimountain."

And though the Pilgrim's day hath set, Its glorious light remains

Its beam refulgent lingers yet

O'er all New England's plains:
Dear land! though doomed from thee to part,
The blood that warmed the Pilgrim's heart
Swells proudly in my veins !

Go to the islands of the sea,
Wherever man may dare-
Wherever pagan bows the knee,
Or Christian bends in prayer-
To every shore that bounds the main,
Wherever keel on strand hath lain-
New England's sons are there.
Toil they for wealth on distant coast,
Roam they from sea to sea:
Self-exiled, still her children boast

Their birthplace 'mong the free;
Or seek they fame on glory's track,
Their hearts, like mine, turn ever back,
New England, unto thee!

THE CITY BY THE SEA.
CROWNED with the hoar of centuries,
There, by the eternal sea,
High on her misty cape she sits,

Like an eagle-fearless, free.
And thus in olden time she sat,
On that morn of long ago;
Mid the roar of Freedom's armament,
And the war-bolts of her foe.

Old Time hath reared her pillared walls,
Her domes and turrets high:
With her hundred tall and tapering spires,
All flashing to the sky.

Shall I not sing of thee, beloved?

My beautiful, my pride!

Thou that towerest in thy queenly grace, By the tributary tide.

There, swan-like crestest thou the waves That, enamored, round thee swellFairer than Aphrodité, couched

On her foam-wreathed ocean shell.

Oh, ever, mid this restless hum
Resounding from the street,

Of the thronging, hurrying multitude,
And the tread of stranger feet-

My heart turns back to thee-mine own!
My beautiful, my pride!

With thought of thy free ocean wind,

And the clasping, fond old tideWith all thy kindred household smokes, Upwreathing far away;

And the merry bells that pealed as now On my grandsire's wedding-day :

To those green graves and truthful hearts,
Oh, city by the sea!

My heritage, and priceless dower,
My beautiful, in thee!