Page:Letters of Life.djvu/351

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LITERATURE.
339

cull its poetical elements. This attempt supplied the title for a book of three hundred pages, the greater part of whose contents were miscellaneous, and which passed only through two or three editions.


1835.

20. "Margaret and Henrietta."

Two lovely sisters, the only children of their parents, beautiful in person, highly educated, and early summoned, gave a subject to this small volume of about one hundred pages. Sympathy with the mourning mother, and a desire to console her, was the motive for its composition; yet it has been widely circulated far beyond my expectation, and amid many Sunday-school libraries incites to imitation of these models of goodness and piety.


1835.

21. "Marcus Aurelius."

I had long been solicitous of selecting some era which might serve to imbue the young mind with a love for historical knowledge, yet leave it undazzled by the pomp of military achievement. This induced the choice of one of the most faultless of the Roman emperors, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. To possess myself of any fact that might add interest to the analysis, I studied some of the more ancient authors both in Latin