thinks, to Sir Henry Killigrew, when about to be sent ambassador to France, which, as the times were troublesome, was not a desirable mission.
KIRCH, MARY MARGARET,
Of Leipsic, Germany, was the daughter of Matthias Winkelman, a Lutheran divine. She married, in 1692, Godfrey Kirch, an eminent astronomer, of Luben, in Lower Lusatia, who, when appointed royal astronomer, in 1700, in the academy of sciences at Berlin, found in his wife an intelligent assistant, and an able calculator. She discovered, in 1702, a comet; and. In 1707, she observed that remarkable Aurora Borealis which the astronomers of Europe noticed in their memoirs. The husband died in 1710, and the following year his wife published "A Discourse on the approaching Conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn, &c." She was equally eminent for her private virtues as for her talents, and died at Berlin, in 1720, aged fifty.
KIRCHGESSNER, MARIANNE,
Was born, 1770, at Bruchsal. The loss of her eye-sight, in her fourth year, by the small-pox, seemed rather to have augmented than lessened her talent for music. In the sixth year of her age, she astonished her auditors by her execution on the piano. Taught by Schmittbaur, in Carlsruhe, she made the most extraordinary progress. In company with Mr. Bassler (her biographer,) she travelled, in her tenth year, over Germany, where she received everywhere great applause; and, 1794, she went to London. Her abode there, of three years, besides the perfecting of her art, was useful to her on account of her eye-sight having become partly restored. In November, 1796, she visited Copenhagen, and went from thence to St. Petersburg; and after having gained just approbation and well-merited reward in all these places, she chose the beautiful village of Gahles, near Leipsic, for her dwelling-place. She remained there until 1807, in the society of her friend, Mr. Bassler, when she intended to go back to her native country; but at Schaffhausen she had a violent attack of fever, of which she died, on the 9th. of December, in her thirty-eighth year.
KIRKLAND, CAROLINE M.,
Whose maiden name was Stansbury, was born in New York. At an early age she was married to Mr. William Kirkland, a scholar of great acquirements, and also highly esteemed as a man of much moral excellence of character. At the time of their marriage he resigned a professorship in Hamilton College, and established a seminary in the town of Goshen, on Lake Seneca. A few years afterwards he removed with his family to the then new State of Michigan, and made that experiment of "Forest Life," which gave opportunity for the development of Mrs. Kirkland's lively and observant genius, and also furnished material for her racy and entertaining works on Western manners and habits.
In 1839, her first book, "A New Home—Who'll Follow? or, Glimpses of Western Life.—By Mrs. Mary Clavers, an Actual Settler," was published in Boston. The freshness of feeling and piquancy of style displayed in the work, won the public voice at once, and its author gained a celebrity very flattering to a literary
