trictly religious education has a
tendency to restrict the intellectual growth of the young, and to mar
its grace and freedom. We have been told that it was not well that our
sons and daughters should commit to memory texts and catechisms, lest
the free play of the fancy should be checked and they be rendered
mechanical and constrained in their demeanor, and dwarfish in their
intellectual stature. We see nothing of this exemplified in this memoir.
One may look long to find an instance of more lady-like and graceful
accomplishments, of more true refinement, of more liberal and varied
cultivation, of more thorough mental discipline, of more pliable and
available information, of a more winning and wise adaptation to persons
and times and places, than the one presented in these pages. And yet
this fair flower grew in a cleft of rugged Calvinism; the gales which
fanned it were of that "wind of doctrine" called rigid orthodoxy. We
know the soil in which it had its root. We know the spirit of the
teachings which distilled upon it like the dew. The tones of that pulpit
still linger in our ears, familiar as those of "_that good old bell_,"
and we are sure that there is no pulpit in all New England more
uncompromising in its demands, more strictly and severely searching in
its doctrines.

But let us look more closely at the events of this history of a life,
and note their effect in passing upon the character of its subject.

MARY, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Hawes, of Hartford, Conn., was
born in 1821. Following her course through her youth, we are no where
surprised at the development of any remarkable power of mind. She was
prayerful and conscientious, diligent in acquiring knowledge,
enthusiastic in her love of nature, evincing in every thing a refined
and feminine taste, and a quick perception of the beautiful in art, in
literature, and in morals. But the charm of her character lay in the
warmth of her heart. Love was the element in which she lived. She loved
God--she loved her parents--she loved her companions--she loved
everybody. It was the exuberant, gushing love of childhood, exalted by
the influences of true piety. She seems never to have known what it was
to be repelled by a sense of weakness or unworthiness in another, or to
have had any of those dislikes and distastes and unchristian aversions
which keep so many of us apart. She had no need to "unlearn contempt."
This was partly the result of natural temperament, but n