the most noted of the most reputed class of their day. In a colony founded so exclusively upon motives of religious zeal as Massachusetts was, it necessarily followed that the ordinary distinctions of society were in a great degree subverted, and that the leaders of the church, though without worldly possessions to boast of, were the most in honor everywhere. Education was promoted only as it was subsidiary to the great end of studying or expounding the Scriptures; and whatever of advance made in the intellectual pursuits of society, was rather the incidental than the direct result of studies necessary to fit men for a holy calling. Hence it was that the higher departments of knowledge were entered almost exclusively by the clergy. Classical learning was a natural though indirect consequence of the acquisition of those languages in which the New Testament and the Fathers were to be studied; and dialectics formed the armor of which men were compelled to learn the use, as a preparation for the wars of religious controversy. The mastery of these gave power and authority to their possessors. They, by a very natural transition, passed from being the guides of religious faith to their fellow-men, to be guardians of education. To them, as the fountains of knowledge, and possessing the gifts most prized in the community, all other ranks in society cheerfully gave place. If a festive entertainment was meditated, the minister was sure to be first on the list of those to be invited, and to be placed at table. If any assembly of citizens was held, he must be there to open the business with prayer. If a political measure was in agitation, he was among the first whose opinion was to be consulted. Even the civil rights of the other citizens for a long time depended, in some degree, upon his good word; and after this rigid rule was laid aside, he yet continued, in the absence of technical law and lawyers, to be the arbiter and the judge in the differences between his fellow-men. He was not infrequently the family physician. The great object of instruction being religious, the care of the young was also in his hands. The records of Harvard University, the child and darling of Puritan affections, show that of all the presiding officers, during the century and a half of colonial days, but two were laymen, and not ministers of the prevailing denomination; and that of all who in the early times availed themselves of such advantages as this institution could then offer, nearly half the number did so for the sake of devoting themselves to the service of the gospel.

But the prevailing notion of the purpose of education was attended with one remarkable consequence. The cultivation of the female mind was regarded with utter indifference. It is not impossible that the early example of Mrs. Hutchinson, and the difficulties in which the public exercise of her gifts involved the colony, had established in the public mind a conviction of the danger that may attend the meddling of women with abstruse points of doctrine; and these, however they might confound the strongest intellect, were nevertheless the favorite topics of thought and discussion in that generation. Waiving a decision upon this, it may very safely be assumed, not only that there was very little attention given to the education of women, but that, as Mrs. Adams, in one of her letters, says, "it was fashionable to ridicule female learning." The only chance for much intellectual improvement in the female sex was to be found in the families of that which was the educated class, and in occasional intercourse with the learned of their day. Whatever of useful instruction was received in the practical conduct of life came from maternal lips; and what of further mental development, depended more upon the eagerness with which the casual teachings of daily conversation were treasured up, than upon any labor expended purposely to promote it.

Abigail Smith was the second of three daughters. Her father, as has been already mentioned, was the minister of a small Congregational Church in the town of Weymouth, during the middle of the last century. She was born in that town, on the 11th of November, 1744, O. S. In her neighborhood there were not many advantages of instruction to be found; and even in Boston, the small metropolis nearest at hand, for reasons already stated, the list of accomplishments within the reach of females was probably very short. She did not enjoy an opportunity to acquire even such as there might have been, for the delicate state of her health forbade the idea of sending her away from home to obtain them. In a letter written in 1817, the year before her death, speaking of her own deficiencies, she says, "My early education did not partake of the abundant opportunities which the present days offer, and which even our common country schools now afford. I never was sent to any school. I was always sick. Female education, in the best families, went no further than writing and arithmetic; in some few and rare instances, music and dancing." Hence it is not unreasonable to suppose that the knowledge gained by her was rather the result of the society into which she was thrown, than of any elaborate instruction.

This fact, that the author of the letters in the present volume never went to any school, is a very important one to a proper estimate of her character. For, whatever may be the decision of the long-vexed question between the advantages of public and those of private education, few persons will deny that they produce marked differences in the formation of character. Seclusion from companions of the same age, at any time of life, is calculated to develop the imaginative faculty at the expense of the judgment; but especially in youth, when the most durable impressions are making. The ordinary consequence, in females of a meditative turn of mind, is the indulgence of romantic and exaggerated sentiments drawn from books, which, if subjected to the ordinary routine of schools, are worn out by the attrition of social intercourse. These ideas, formed in solitude, in early life, often, though not always, remain in the mind, even after the realities of the world surround those who hold them, and counteract the tendency of their conclusions. They are constantly visible in the letters of this volume, even in the midst of the severest trials. They form what may be considered the romantic turn of the author's mind; but in her case they were so far modified by a great admixture of religious principle and by natural good sense, as to be of eminent service in sustaining her through the painful situations in which she was placed, instead of nursing that species of sickly sensibility which too frequently, in similar circumstances, impairs, if it does not destroy, the power of practical usefulness.

At Mount Wollaston, a part of Braintree, the town next adjoining Weymouth, lived Colonel John Quincy, her grandfather on her mother's side, and a gentleman who for very many years enjoyed, in various official situations, much of the confidence of the Province. At his house, and under the instruction of his wife, her grandmother, she appears to have imbibed most of the lessons which made the deepest impression upon her mind. Of this lady, the daughter of the Reverend John Norton, nothing is now known but what the frequent and cheerful acknowledgment of her merit, by her disciple, tells us. "I have not forgotten," says the latter to her own daughter, in the year 1795, "the excellent lessons which I received from my grandmother, at a very early period of life. I frequently think they made a more durable impression upon my mind than those which I received from my own parents. Whether it was owing to the happy method of