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LYDIA MARIA CHILD.

S it better to be born great or to achieve greatness? To be born to some high state and position demanding reverence for the antiquity of a name, or respect for the extent of entailed possessions? or, on the other hand, by the exercise of our own powers, in works of mercy and labours of love, attain a foremost position amongst the great and mighty men and women who have blest the earth while they lived upon it? Such service often entails calumny, the pointing of the finger of the scorner, the ill-will and the ill-word of the malicious and the wicked. It requires labour to give such service, and a bold heart and a resolved mind to continue it. A life of " doing good" is a life of hard work, not always, nor even often, recognised and rewarded by men, but much more frequently passed by as an interested work, prompted by some unworthy motive and having some selfish ends. Nowhere is this experienced more than in America, where the philanthropist is publicly stigmatized, his name execrated, and his life imperilled; where his labours are represented as destructive of law and order, and where he is described as a pest and disturber, that all men would do well to hunt from the face of the earth.

The "social institution" of slavery has bred for America more ills than the Civil War, huge, vast, and past computing as they are. Its evils are not entirely the evils experienced by the slave, although they rise mountains high, and startle by their enormity and complicity. Its evils have reference to the dealer and holder of the slave, to the outraging and abnegation of the feelings and sensibilities of some of the finest human beings, physically and intellectually, that live on the earth; for, unquestionably, the Southern men of America may be so described. What have they lost by slavery? Seeking a licence for the "institution" in the pseudo-Christian teaching of slave-holding ministers, who do not hesitate to declare that the system is God-appointed, and that its recognition is enforced in the pages of inspiration! They have had their sensibilities blunted; the natural feelings of virtue and morality deadened and destroyed; they have been converted from men into brutes; from human beings, with feelings and sympathies, to savages who torture and lash their victims. Standing in the holy relations of husbands and fathers, they have surrounded their homesteads with examples of fraud and cruelty; in the very presence of their wives and children they have caused the marriage contract to be violated, and the rights of humanity to be outraged and contemned. How could the mind of the child be instructed in lessons of honesty and morality in the presence of such violations of honesty

and morality? To tell the child that the slave was something less than a human being-that he had not the intellect and capacity of human beings, was a falsehood so palpable than ran the risk of detection on the instant. And then if the child by any surreptitious means became acquainted with the facts in relation to the history of the negro race-to the literature of that race-to the lives of Toussaint L'Overture, Hannibal, Zhinga, Frederick Douglass, Josiah Henson, William Wells Brown, Moses Roper, Henry Bibb, Henry Highland Garnett, and Samuel R. Ward—might it not utter some exclamation like that of Bishop Warburton, "Gracious God! to talk of men as herds of cattle; of property in rational creatures-creatures endowed with all our faculties, possessing all our qualities but that of colour, our brethren both by nature and by grace-shocks all the feelings of humanity, and the dictates of common

sense!"

To the infinite credit of America, this dark spot upon its escutcheon has had the protest of earnest lives and continued labours. The excellent of that land—and that land has produced some of the most excellent of the earth-amidst contumely and contempt, have united themselves together in a band of brotherhood with the one great and glorious object— the extinction of the overwhelming curse of slavery. Amongst that company of philanthropists we add the name of Lydia Maria Child; who, in the great work,

although not quite so prominent as some other leaders, was not less resolved or resolute, as far as in her lay, to achieve the work she had given herself to do. How often has the spirit of this woman found utterance in the words of the poet

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'Say, what of the night, watchman, what of the fight?

Doth gloom yet the bright Sun of Freedom enshroud ? Are the strongholds of slavery yet on the height?

Is the back of the negro yet broken and bowed? Then send forth a voice to the nations around;

Bid the peoples arise, many millions as one; And say This our brother no more shall be boundThis wrong to God's children no more shall be done!"

Miss Francis, Mrs. Child's maiden name, was born. in Massachusetts, but passed the greater portion of her earliest years in the State of Maine, now so famous in relation to its prohibitory " Maine Law." Here, amidst the wild scenes which surrounded her home, she listened to the traditions of the early settlement of the Pilgrim Fathers in the New England States, and learned of their earnestness in prayer, energy in business, and bravery in war; their submission to circumstances as to God's providence; their resignation without complaint in sickness, in want, and in privation; their indomitable perseverance, their consistent regard for human rights, coupled with a deep sense of justice and a profound reverence for truth. These things sank in her mind, and became more to her than the teaching of the schools, or than any literary associations, of which little was to be found

in or about her home. Her strong ardent temperament enabled her to become possessed, in no light or transient manner, of the many rugged beauties and aspects of nature that continually met her view; so that in after life she could infuse into her writings a charm and spirit all redolent of the freshness of

nature.

The circumstance that led to Miss Francis becoming an author is thus stated. She was at the time on a visit to her brother, the Rev. Conyers Francis, who was the pastor of a church at Waterton, Massachusetts. One Sunday afternoon, amusing herself with a number of the "North American Review," in which there was an eloquent chapter setting forth the adaptability of early New England history to the purposes of fiction, she seized a pen, and under the inspiration of the moment, although she had never had a thought on the subject of becoming an authoress, she wrote, as it was afterwards printed, the first chapter of her first book, "Hobomok; a Story of the Pilgrims,' which she finished in six weeks, and published in 1824, to the great delight of the public and satisfaction of the critics. From that time, having discovered her vocation, she has worked long and well; no one perhaps of all the female American writers has had a wider influence, or has more conscientiously used her talents for the general good, than the author of "Hobomok." The next work which proceeded from her pen was "The Rebels; a Tale of the Revolution,"