good, whose examples are supposed to make the world better than they found it ;-yes, and the world will be better, in no small degree, than this excellent woman either found it, or made it, or left it at her decease, if, by the perusal of these pages, the humble Christian is encouraged, the weak one strengthened, the mourner comforted, or the poor made rich in faith; and it is the nature of the volume before us, under the blessing of God, to do this, and much more, for its readers, according to their circumstances, wants, or temptations.

In Mrs. Huntington, we have an exemplification of Christian character in the female sex, rising into grace, expanding into beauty, and flourishing in usefulness, from infancy to youth, and from youth to womanhood; then, without reaching old age, translated to Paradise, "like a tree planted by the rivers of water," that brought forth its fruit in due season, and whose leaf also withered not; being cut down in its prime, and remembered only as the glory of the place where it grew. There were no extraordinary incidents in her brief existence; she occupied no eminent station in society; she was endowed with no splendid talents; but on account of these very deficiencies, (defects they were not) something more excellent, yet attainable by all, having been found in her, she may be presented as a model to others passing through the same ordinary circumstances, whereby they may form themselves to meet every change, till the last; and in that last, be perfectly prepared for a state beyond the possibility of change for ever. Having left no memorials of herself which can otherwise attract curiosity, or com

mand admiration, than to cause those who have patience to contemplate her quiet course, to magnify the grace of God in her, these memorials, from wanting every other interest but the best, will be more estimable, because more applicable to the personal feelings, conflicts, and duties, of the greatest number of readers. What was good for her, must be good for them; what she was, they may be; what she is, they may become.

Hence

The memoirs and writings of great and gifted personages are undoubtedly more stimulating than those of humbler and better beings; but they are so much beyond general experience and sympathy, that to most who peruse them, they are history and romance, rather than real and every-day life. such works are esteemed and enjoyed in proportion as they excite the imagination, or exercise the intellect, rather than as profitable illustrations of what we ourselves may perform, or attain by imitation. Yet, even in the biography of heroes and kings, philosophers and poets-minds of the first order, men of the first magnitude the most delightful passages are those in which we can claim kindred with them, as beings of like passions with ourselves, in the retirement of domestic life, in their bosom joys and sorrows; compassed with infirmities, on the bed of sickness, and in the agony of death; acting, feeling, thinking, as we ourselves might have done, or may hereafter be soothed by the recollection that so they did. In truth, all that is common to all, is of equal, intense, and eternal importance to each. Of this this that is most common, this that is most important the volume before us is full; pre

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senting, in succession, the trials of life, from childhood to middle age, in nearly every form in which the mind, the affections, the body, or the soul-the mortal and the immortal faculties can encounter, endure, or overcome them: from the exhilarating transport with which in health, and amidst felicity, we view the earth full of the goodness, and the heavens covered with the glory of the Lord, to that anguish of heart, under the burthen of which we hear nothing but the groans of creation, and see 'nothing but the vices and miseries of our species.

Mrs. Huntington's experience, here recorded in her genuine Letters, written for the eye of friendship only, and her Diaries, written for the eye of her own spirit, in which it might see, and from time to time compare itself with itself, more perfectly than it could in the mirror of memory, her experience, thus recorded, gives to the reader a peculiarly intimate and affecting knowledge of the most secret emotions of her individual heart; yet not to gratify impertinent, indelicate curiosity; for such is the nature of these discoveries, that they can be interesting and intelligible to those alone, who have proved the same discouragements and revivals in following hard after the Lord, and serving him in the beauties of holiness. To such, the Volume on which we are entering will be a treasury of things new and old; the more valued the more deeply it is searched, and the more attractive, in proportion as it is studied for purposes of edification. In every page will be found some lesson or precept, some warning or precedent, to guide the Christian inquirer in nearly every circumstance of bodily, mental, or spiritual difficulty.

She had enjoyed, and she had suffered, all the comforts arising out of the endearing relationships of life, and all the anguish which the bereavement of each of these in turn could inflict. Parents, sisters, husband, children, she had known, and loved, and lost, and long lamented too; yet had she found the consolations of the Gospel abounding amidst her deepest afflictions. Her love and resignation to Him who gave and took away, at his pleasure, but for her profit, continued to increase, as her affections were loosened below, and fixed on things above, while the very ties that once bound her to earth were employed by the hand of mercy to draw her up to heaven.

There is a refined and elevated sympathy awakened towards the dead, whom we thus recognize only as of the ineffable number of influential beings, whose lives are prolonged in their history, and whose souls may be said to transmigrate through the persons of their imitators; or whose thoughts, enshrined in their writings, are communicated to innumerable minds, like sun-beams, refracted on rain-drops, or gliding through colourless crystals. This ennobling sympathy, by indulgence, grows into an affection, and that affection into a virtue, because it is attached to virtue as its object, and is the parent of virtue in ourselves, when we are made conformable to that which we love and admire. But though the present Volume may be a blessing to all into whose hands it may come, and to whose hearts it may speak in that pure and beautiful language which the spirit of the writer herself would hardly disown in her beatified state; yet to the better sex especially to the

young, the beloved, the betrothed, the wedded, and the bereaved among them, this book deserves to be a manual for daily perusal, and nightly meditation. All that a daughter, or a sister, a wife, a mother, or a widow can feel, is either briefly but clearly, or largely and glowingly set forth. Her simple and unreserved confessions will be found the more immediately profitable, because nothing happened to her beyond what may come to each of themselves, in the ordinary course of Providence. Notwithstanding her extraordinary natural vivacity, she was, from an early age, such a sufferer, by the martyrdom of sensibilities too exquisitely touched by joy or woe, that she might say, "I die daily;" yet held she fast, and faster she held it to the end, the hope which she had in the Gospel. This alone sustained her under the heaviest dispensations, and this bore her through them triumphantly at last. "I delight to do thy will, O God." This phrase expresses the sum of her character, as here exhibited; this was the burthen of her prayers, the object of her faith, the prize of her high calling in Christ Jesus her Lord; and this, we may believe, is now the crown of her rejoicing in his presence. To mothers, but above all, to widowed mothers, these pages may be earnestly recommended for diligent study; and if they have the happy effect of forming one mother like their author, they may be deemed a greater bequest to a world lying in wickedness, than a thousand elaborate productions of unsanctified genius, which, while they elevate man as an intellectual being, too often alienate him from God, as a being in search of knowledge at the price of death.