he painting by C. Y. Turner.
_We are told of Priscilla, "the Puritan Maiden" in Longfellow's poem_
The Courtship of Miles Standish, _and we are entirely at liberty to
account her a real personage if we desire to do so. It is at least
certain that Miles Standish was the valiant captain pictured by the poet
and that John Alden to whom the poet ascribes the office of deputy-wooer
was of the Pilgrim Fathers._]

In the same vessel that brought Lady Arabella to the inhospitable shores
of America there came another woman whose name better deserves memorial,
as far as is concerned lasting influence of life, than does that of the
saintly lady commemorated by Cotton Mather. Anne Dudley was the daughter
of an old servitor of the Count of Lincoln, the father of Lady Arabella,
and was herself married to Simon Bradstreet, destined to be governor of
Massachusetts. She was as devout and devoted as Lady Arabella herself,
and she was of yet finer stamp in that she was a poet. She was a Puritan
of the Puritans; her father was later elected to be governor of the
colony, preceding his son-in-law in that distinguished position, so that
Anne Bradstreet must have been from the beginning of her life permeated
with the very spirit of Puritanism. One would not think that such
training and environment would be favorable to the fostering of the
poetic faculty; severity of creed and the aesthetic soul do not often go
hand in hand. Yet she was the first professional poet of New
England,--indeed, probably of America; and, if fault be found for
calling her a poet of America when she was not a native product, answer
may be made that the New Englanders strenuously claimed her as their own
under the title of the Tenth Muse, and that she was, if not a product of
the soil of Massachusetts, at least a product of the spirit that made
that soil sacred. She was very young, not yet twenty, when she arrived
at Plymouth, and most of her poems were written during the first decade
of her residence in the colony. Since, in this portion of our history
there are few feminine names upon which to expatiate, it may not be a
waste of space to give in full the title page of the first volume of
poems issued by the "American Sappho":

"THE TENTH MUSE--Lately sprung up in America; or Severall Poems,
compiled with great variety of Wit and Learning, full of delight.
Wherein especially is contained a complete discourse and description of

(ELEMENTS.