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vi
preface to the

ges, nothing is lost, and all is safe in the hands of its Maker.

"The subject of this brief notice is little improved by education, and owes nothing to circumstances: thus adding another to the thousand proofs that genius, in its different degrees and kinds, is a gift, native in the soul, irrepressible in its growth by the greatest weight of calamity, and flourishing even in the cold shadow of Death.

"The author's story disarms criticism, and makes its way at once to the charity of the heart."Journal for Nov. 2d, 1833.

The eloquent observations of the Editor of the Literary Journal are to the same purpose.

"We solicit the attention of the reader to the preceding columns, containing the Memoir of William Taggart, and to the communications by which it is accompanied. His unstudied and unpretending narrative would repay perusal, were it merely for the fine exhibition of personal character which it contains. It, moreover, affords information respecting important events in the war of our Independence, and particularly illustrates some of the most interesting passages in the history of our own State.

"But these are not the strongest circumstances which recommend it to attention. We refer to it, not so much on account of its connexion with the memory of the dead, as with the fate of the living; with the condition of the surviving daughter, whose story, though brief, is terrible, and which cannot be repeated or heard without emotion. It has already been told, in the introductory remarks accompanying one of her poetical effusions which we inserted a few weeks since. The victim of a lingering and incurable malady, under which she has suffered for years; never losing the sense of physical pain, and perfectly conscious of the hoplessness of her condi-