Page:A cyclopaedia of female biography.djvu/782

This page has been validated.
760
WAR. WAS.

her in literary pursuits. She entered warmly into the contrast between England and America, and corresponded with Samuel and John Adams, Jefferson, Dickinson, Gerry, Knox, and many other leading men of the time; these often consulted her, and acknowledged the soundness of her judgment, on many of the important events before and after the war. Mrs. Warren often changed her residence during the war, but always retained her habits of hospitality. She wrote two tragedies, "The Sack of Rome," and "The Ladies of Castile," many of her other poems, and a satire called "The Group," to alleviate the pangs of suspense, while her Meads were actively engaged, during the revolution. She was particularly celebrated for her knowledge of history; and Rochefoacanld, in his "Travels in the United States," speaks of her extensive reading. Mrs. Warren died October 19th., 1814, in the eighty-seventh year of her age. Her writings were published in 1805, under the title of "The History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, interspersed with Biographical, Political, and Moral Observations," in three volumes. This work she dedicated to Washington; and it is now considered valuable as a record of the events and feelings of those revolutionary times.

WARWICK, MARY, COUNTESS OF,

Was the thirteenth of the fifteen children of the great Earl of Cork, founder of the illustrious house of Boyle. Mary married Charles, Earl of Warwick, whom she survived five years. Prom her liberality to the poor, her husband was said to have left his estate to charitable uses. The fame of her hospitality and benevolence, advanced the rent of the houses in her neighbourhood, where she was the common arbitress of all differences. Her awards, by the judgment and sagacity they displayed, prevented many lawsuits. She died April, 1678.

WASHINGTON, MRS. MARY,

Mother of George Washington, the hero of the American revolutionary war, and the first president of the United States, claims the noblest distinction a woman should covet or can gain, that of training her gifted sou in the way he should go, and inspiring him by her example to make the way of goodness his path to glory.

"Mrs. Washington was descended from the very respectable family of Ball, who settled as English colonists, on the banks of the Potomac. Bred in those domestic and independent habits, which graced the Virginia matrons in the old days of Virginia, this lady, by the death of her husband, became involved in the cares of a young family, at a period when those cares seem more especially to claim the aid and control of the stronger sex. It was left for this eminent woman, by a method the most rare, by an education and discipline the most peculiar and imposing, to form in the youth-time of her son those great and essential qualities which gave lustre to the glories of his after-life. If the school savoured the more of the Spartan than the Persian character, it was a fitter school to form a hero, destined to be the ornament of the age in which he flourished, and a standard of excellence for ages yet to come.

At the time of his father's death, George Washington was only ten years of age. He has been heard to say that he knew little