with hopes to cheer.

"Peace, wing'd in fairer worlds above,"
Has ta'en thy form away from this;
Has beckon'd thee to seats of glory,
To realms of everlasting bliss.

So rich in piety and worth,
Too soon, alas! lamented one,
Thou hast been call'd away from earth,
And heaven has claim'd thee for its own.

CHAPTER III.

"'T is by degrees the youthful mind expands; and every day,
Soft as it rolls along, shows some new charm;
Then infant reason grows apace, and calls
For the kind hand of an assiduous care."
"Delightful task, to rear the tender thought,
To pour the new instruction o'er the mind,
To breathe the enlivening spirit, and to fix
The generous purpose in the glowing breast."

The period at length arrived, when it became necessary that Alida should
receive further instruction in the various branches of female
literature. With this view, her father thought proper to change the
place of her studies from the village school to the New-York Seminary.

It was his idea that nothing afforded so pleasing a prospect as the
graces of beauty, aided by wisdom and useful knowledge, and that care
should be taken that the mind should first be initiated in the solid
acquirements, before the embellishments of education should be allowed
to take up the attention or engross the thoughts; and that the first
purposes of the teacher should be directed to endeavour to cause the
mental powers of the scholar to be excited, in the first place, to
attain to whatever is most useful and necessary, and that suitable
application and industry was the only means whereby we may gain
celebrity in any art or science, or therein arrive at any degree of
perfection.

"His heart glowed with paternal fondness and interesting solicitude,
when he beheld the countenance of his child sparkling with intelligence,
or traced the progress of reason in her awakened curiosity when any new
object attracted her attention or exercised her imagination." Delightful
indeed were the sensations of a parent in the contemplation of so fair a
prospect, which in some degree recalled again to his bosom some
transient gleams of happiness.

The season was now far advanced in autumn, and the trees were nearly
stripped of their foliage; the radiant sun had in part withdrawn his
enlivening rays to give place to the approaching coldness of winter,
when Alida left her home, amid the innumerable regrets of her juvenile
compan