PEARSON, MARGARET,
Was an English lady, daughter of Samuel Patterson, an eminent book-auctioneer. She early manifested a taste for the fine arts; and on marrying Mr. Pearson, a painter on glass, she devoted herself to that branch of the art, in which she attained peculiar excellence. Among other fine specimens of her skill were two sets of the cartoons of Raphael, one of which was purchased by the Marquis of Lansdowne, and the other by Sir Gregory Page Turner. She died in 1823.
PEIRSON, LYDIA JANE,
Was born in Middletown, (Connecticut. Her father, William Wheeler, was a man of education and of a poetic turn of mind, and from him his daughter probably inherited her genius. From her earliest years. Miss Wheeler displayed that fondness for poetry and music which was to characterize her after life, and almost in her infancy was accustomed to compose verses, and sing them to little wild airs of her own. These first songs were all of God and nature, she being, like almost all children of genius, of a devotional cast of mind, and exquisitely sensible of beauty. Her powers of memory were unusually great; and in several instances she learned by heart whole books, such as "Falconer's Shipwreck," "The Lady of the Lake," "Lalla Rookh," Byron's "Bride of Abydos," "Corsair," etc. Although Miss Wheeler bega to write at such an early age, she did not publish any of her productions till after her marriage, esteeming, with a modesty natural to a refined and sensitive mind, her own writings too insignificant to interest any one. When she was fifteen years of age, her parents removed to Canandaigua, New York; and two years after, Miss Wheeler was married to Mr. Peirson, of Cazenovia, and removed with her husband into the unsettled wilds of Tioga county, Penn., where she has passed the last twenty years.
Her published poems would fill more than a thousand common octavo pages, and the half that she has written is yet unpublished. Her published prose exceeds her poems, of which she has issued two volumes—"Forest Leaves," in 1845, and "The Forest Minstrel," in 1847. Her writings are characterized by ease, grace, delicacy, and beauty, bearing marks of a genuine and sincere love of nature, and are evidently the outpourings of an earnest soul, full of deep and strong sensibilities.
PENELOPE,
Daughter of Icarus, married Ulysses, King of Ithaca, by whom she had Telemachus. During the absence of Ulysses, who went to to the siege of Troy, and was absent twenty years, several princes, charmed with Penelope's beauty, told her that Ulysses was dead, and urged her to marry one of them. She promised compliance on condition that they would allow her to finish a piece of tapestry she was weaving; but she undid at night what she had woven in the day, and thus eluded their importunity till the return of Ulysses.
Her beauty and conjugal fidelity have won for her the praises of poets, and a warm place in the heart of every pure-minded woman. Her character and example appear most lovely when contrasted with her celebrated contemporary Helen. The character of Telemachus, as drawn by Fenelon, is such as we should imagine
