to found; nor that at sixty-seven she could cross the ocean, and mingle in the exercises and enjoy the honors of the World's Educational Convention, and thence make the tour of France, Switzerland, Germany, and Belgium tributary still to her zeal for observation and learning.

But not alone in these literary and educational works has Mrs. Willard used her great powers. Her religious character has been also as carefully educated, and an effective Christian culture has been a constant aim and triumph in her work. Uniting with the Episcopal church in Burlington, she has ever since been a devout and worthy communicant. In all her study and work, her appeal has been to God's word for her standard and law. She spoke with great deliberation in her weighty charge to those whom she would commission with the solemn trust of teachers, when she said to them, in all the seriousness of her earnest convictions: "So far, however, from depending on set times for the whole discharge of the duty of training the young to piety and virtue, you are, during all your exercises, to regard it as the grand object of your labors."

Of her active and wide-reaching benevolence the record has been a private one. Yet many and timely have been her benefactions which the angel has recorded on high. We know this much, that scores of the young women whom she has aided to secure the education, which, without such aid, they could not have secured, are still grateful for her quick sympathies and generous aid. It is safe to say that twenty thousand dollars would not now make Mrs. Willard's exchequer good for these offerings to the cause of woman's education.

But we cannot linger longer on these lessons of her useful and honored life. Mrs. Willard is still living, and as we might, from all we have learned of her former life, expect, her latest years are not without their rich and worthy fruits. The serene dignity of age well befits now the form which

forty years ago was radiant with womanly beauty. Under the shadow in her own dear seminary, she can but rejoice in this proud monument of her life.

Here, surrounded with the trophies of her life-work, embosomed in the love of those whose young affections she drew to herself, and cheered by that precious religious hope which has purified her life, long may she yet enjoy with us the rewards of her long life, so nobly and worthily spent for her sex and race!

MRS. MARIANNE P. DASCOMB.

Hardly less positive need we be in assigning the second place on our list of educational pioneers to the excellent and popular principal of the Ladies' Department of Oberlin College. Since 1835, she has held, in this Western institution, a place of great responsibility, and during all those years she has shown herself every way worthy the confidence she has inspired. True she has never presumed to claim for herself any such position; yet for this very reason she is all the worthier of it. True she may not have arrested the gaze of the world, like many another woman whose life has been a glittering show, yet we shall find her to be one of those quiet and silent forces, which are noiselessly working out the most useful and even the grandest problems of the age and

race.

Who has not noticed how men and women of exceedingly defective character, and even of very limited ability, are often lifted, in spite of themselves, into notoriety, and, for a while at least, enjoy a reputation for goodness and power, for which the unthinking world do not fail to honor them? Or who has failed to see how others, of great native

ability and of rarest excellence of character, have been so retiring and modest, or so overshadowed by showier presumers, as scarcely during their lifetime to attract our attention? Has not noisy and blaring pretence always seemed at least to win its way more readily than highest merit? — even as the lightning's flash is more sure of winning your attention than the most genial sunbeam of the loveliest morning. And, still, who has not also seen how certainly Providence at length reverses all this seeming experience of life? He lifts the lowliest to the loftiest place. He makes the weakest the strongest. He confounds what men call wisdom, by establishing what they have pronounced folly. He, at length, brings worthy merit out of its obscurity into the clearest light; and, over the dazzle and glory of all mere gilded radiance, sooner or later spreads the pall which covers all its empty shams. And when this rectification comes, who does not see how real was the merit before undiscovered, and how exceedingly thin and worthless the gilding which so dazzled the eye?

Possibly the sketch we here attempt may justify these reflections. We shall have to speak of a character which has never courted the world's notice, yet one to which the world is certainly under no small obligation. With no brilliant display of personal charms, no parade of talents, no exciting incidents to kindle to an impassioned glow our admiration, we shall still find, at every step in our review, ample reason for the place we have assigned to one of the world's true and faithful and successful workers. As a pioneer in establishing and sustaining the fullest curriculum of studies for woman yet reached, embracing a mental discipline as severe and thorough as that which has been required of young men,especially, as pioneer in a movement which has done so much towards supplying our broad West with their great and efficient institutions for the advanced culture of woman, — she certainly deserves well of her sex and her race. Very com

petent authority, Mrs. Caroline H. Dall, of Boston, has well characterized her fitness for the post of lady principal at Oberlin. "The splendid endowment of Vassar College," she says, "could not give to Oberlin a woman better suited to this purpose than Mrs. Dascomb."

Let us, then, briefly trace the educational career of this gifted and successful woman. We must do this, in full knowledge of two special hindrances to our attempt, - the extreme modesty of Mrs. Dascomb's character, which shrinks sensitively from all public exhibition and criticism; and the fact that her entire educational life has been so intimately associated with that of so many other educators, so that it may be difficult to decide of any particular result, how much of it is due to her agency, or what part of it she should share with her associates.

Marianne Parker, a child of Christian parents, of good New England stock, which itself was of best English puritan blood, was born in Dunbarton, N. H., in 1810. She was the seventh of eight children, five daughters and three sons, whom her mother, Martha Tenney, had borne to her father, William Parker. At the early age of four she became fatherless; and with a large family of children, and but a small patrimony, was left to such care and culture as her mother, who was an excellent woman, could supply. The children were therefore, of necessity, early taught the lessons of economy and mutual helpfulness. The elder members of the family cheerfully fitted themselves to aid their mother in caring for the younger; and these in their turn were trained in habits of thoughtful and helpful industry. It was thus that that interesting group were best disciplined and trained to lives of great usefulness. Those days of preparation were well and wisely spent. The physical and social culture then furnished was of incalculable value to them all. The necessities which imposed such burdens may have been trying to

both the mother and her young charge; but its fruits in after years even until now have proved an exceeding reward.

We cannot wonder when, in later years, we find how all of that group have worked themselves up into positions of honored usefulness, such as only earnest and intelligent workers can fill. How like the story of how many New England families of fifty years ago it reads!

Three of the sisters in due time became the wives of three ministers, and the fourth that of a professional and useful teacher. Of the brothers, the eldest, after graduating at college, became a successful teacher; the second, on whom the care of the home and widowed mother fell, has done good service in the church and world; and the third is still, as for the last quarter of a century, an approved minister of Christ. A whole family thus given to the cause of learning and religion is just the source from which we might expect a pioneer and leader, or at any rate an efficient promoter, of some needed movement in education or in ethics.

And such a character we believe we have in the subject of this sketch. From the first she gave indications of possessing large native ability. To her natural inquisitiveness was added clear and quick perception, with a corresponding fulness of the reasoning faculty; and so, under the stimulus of the home and early school culture which she enjoyed, she made rapid progress in acquiring knowledge. Nor was she deficient in such social and affectional qualities as are needed to constitute one the best and most serviceable of friends; or to give one the firmest hold on the confidence and affections of others, and so the most efficient power for good or evil over them.

In early girlhood she is reported to us as "one of the best of playmates," and in maturer years we find her as sympathetic and affectionate and persuasive as then; while to these merely companionable qualities she has added the power and authority of a dignified and matronly grace.