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.
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