Finally, how needful is it to pray—"Lead us not into temptation." Snares lie all around us, whether old or young, and it is vain to seek an entire escape from their intrusion. The lad we are considering, had not gone out of his way to meet the temptation by which he fell. On the contrary, he was doing his duty, he was just where he ought to have been. Yet there the adversary found him, and there he finds every man. The very fact that one is in a lawful place and condition is apt to throw him off his guard. There is but one safeguard under grace, and that is habitual watchfulness. Without this the strongest may fall—with it, the feeblest may stand firm. O for such a deep and abiding conviction of the keenness of temptation and the dreadful evil of sin as to lead all to cry mightily unto God, and at the same time be strenuous in effort themselves—to pray and also to watch.
MEMOIR OF MRS. VAN LENNEP
The following review, written by Mrs. D.E. Sykes, of the Memoir of Mrs. M.E. Van Lennep, we deem among the finest specimens of that class of writings. The remarks it contains on the religious education of daughters are so much in point, and fall in so aptly with the design of our work, that we have obtained permission to publish it. We presume it will be new to most of our readers, as it originally appeared in the New Englander, a periodical which is seldom seen, except in a Theological Library.
An additional reason for our publishing it is, our personal interest both in the reviewer, who we are happy to say has become a contributor to our pages, and the reviewed—having been associated with the mothers of each, for a number of years, in that most interesting of all associations, "The Mother's Meeting."
For eleven years, Mary E. Hawes, afterwards Mrs. Van Lennep, was an attentive and interested listener to the instructions given to the children at our quarterly meetings—and it is interesting to know that her mother regards the influence of those meetings as powerfully aiding in the formation of her symmetrical Christian character.
An eminent painter once said to us, that he always disliked to attempt the portrait of a woman; it was so difficult to give to such a picture the requisite boldness of feature and distinctness of individual expression, without impairing its feminine character. If this be true in the delineation of the outer and material form, how much more true is it of all attempts to portray the female mind and heart! If the words and ways, the style of thinking and the modes of acting, all that goes to make up a biography, have a character sufficiently marked to individualize the subject, there is a danger that, in the relating, she may seem to have overstepped the decorum of her sex, and so forfeit the interest with which only true delicacy can invest the woman.
It is strange that biography should ever succeed. To reproduce any thing that was transient and is gone, not by repetition as in a strain of music, but by delineating the emotions it caused, is an achievement of high art. An added shade of coloring shows you an enthusiast, and loses you the confidence and sympathy of your cooler listener. A shade subtracted leaves so faint a hue that you have lost your interest in your own faded picture, and of course, cannot command that of another. Even an exact delineation, while it may convey accurately a part of the idea of a character, is not capable of transmitting the more volatile and subtle shades. You may mix your colors never so cunningly, and copy never so minutely every fold of every petal of the rose, and hang it so gracefully on its stem, as to present its very port and bearing, but where is its fragrance, its exquisite texture, and the dewy freshness which was its crowning grace?
So in biography, you may make an accurate and ample statement of facts,—you may even join together in a brightly colored mosaic the fairest impressions that can be given of the mind of another—his own recorded thoughts and feelings—and yet they may fail to present the individual. They are stiff and glaring, wanting the softening transition of the intermediate parts and of attending circumstances.
And yet biography does sometimes succeed, not merely in raising a monumental pile of historical statistics, and maintaining for the friends of the departed the outlines of a character bright in their remembrance; but in shaping forth to others a life-like semblance of something good and fair, and distinct enough to live with us thenceforward and be loved like a friend, though it be but a shadow.
Such has been the feeling with which we have read and re-read the volume before us. We knew but slightly her who is the subject of it, and are indebted to the memoir for any thing like a conception of the character; consequently we can better judge of its probable effect upon other minds. We pronounce it a portrait successfully taken—a piece of uncommonly skillful biography. There is no gaudy exaggeration in it,—no stiffness, no incompleteness. We see the individual character we are invited to see, and in contemplating it, we have all along a feeling of personal acquisition. We have found rare treasure; a true woman to be admired, a daughter whose worth surpasses estimation, a friend to be clasped with fervor to the heart, a lovely young Christian to be admired and rejoiced over, and a self-sacrificing missionary to be held in reverential remembrance. Unlike most that is written to commemorate the dead, or that unvails the recesses of the human heart, this is a cheerful book. It breathes throughout the air of a spring morning. As we read it we inhale something as pure and fragrant as the wafted odor of
"– old cherry-trees,
Scented with blossoms."
We stand beneath a serene unclouded sky, and all around us is floating music as enlivening as the song of birds, yet solemn as the strains of the sanctuary. It is that of a life in unison from its childhood to its close; rising indeed like "an unbroken hymn of praise to God." There is no austerity in its piety, no levity in its gladness. It shows that "virtue in herself is lovely," but if "goodness" is ever "awful," it is not here in the company of this young happy Christian heart.
We have heard, sometimes, that a strictly 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