stances under which many of them were written, condemned, and partly destroyed by herself, as if unworthy to hold a place among her papers, her extreme youth and loveliness, and the melancholy fact of her dying before she had time to complete others, will, I trust, make them not less interesting to the reader of taste and feeling.
"The allegory of 'Alphonso in search of Learning,' was written at the age of eleven. It was suggested to her infant mind by seeing a cupola erected upon the Plattsburg Academy, upon which was painted the Temple of Science.
"The poem of 'Chicomico' was written after a severe illness which confined me many months to my bed, during which time Lucretia made a resolution that if I ever should recover, she would give up her 'scribbling,' as she called it, and devote herself to me; at my earnest entreaty, however, she resumed her pen, and the first thing she produced was 'Chicomico,' prefaced by the following lines:—
To have touched thy dear strings again—never—O, never.
To have sprinkled oblivion's dark waters upon thee,
To have hung thee where wild winds would hover around thee;
But the voice of affection hath called forth one strain,
Which, when sung, I will leave thee to silence again.'
"This beautiful tribute of affection has ever been one of the most cherished relics of my child, and I deeply regret that the irregular and unconnected state of the manuscript obliges me to withhold the whole of the first part.
