She accompanied them, and there for two years superintended an Institution for Female Education, opened in that city. Since then Miss Beecher has been engaged in maturing and carrying into effect a great plan for the education of all the children In America. For this end she has written and journeyed, pleaded and laboured, and for the last ten years made it the chief object of her thoughts and efforts.
The example of Miss Beecher is of Angular interest In manifesting the power of female talent directed, as hers has ever been, to objects clearly within the allowed orbit of woman's mission. She has never overstepped nature; she gives authority and reverence to the station of men; she hastens to place in their hands the public and governing offices of this mighty undertaking, which is destined to become of more importance to America's interest than any projected since it became a nation. Next to having free institutions, stands Christian education, which makes the whole people capable of sustaining and enjoying them. It is only by preparing woman as the educator, and giving her the office, that this end can be attained.
The printed writings of Miss Beecher have been connected with her governing idea of promoting the best Interests of her own sex, and can scarcely be considered as the true index of what her genius, if devoted to literary pursuits, might have produced. Her chief intellectual efforts seem to have been in a direction exactly contrary to her natural tastes; hence the romantic girl, who, till the age of twenty, was a poet only, has since aimed at writing whatever she felt was most required for her object, and, of course, has chosen that style of plain prose which would be best understood by the greatest number of readers. Besides the three works named, Miss Beecher has prepared an excellent book on "Domestic Economy, for the use of Young Ladies at Home and at School," which has a wide popularity.
BEHN, APHRA,
A celebrated English poetess, was descended from a good family In the city of Canterbury. She was born In the reign of Charles the First, but in what year is uncertain. Her father's name was Johnson. He was related to Lord Willoughby, and by his interest was appointed lieutenant-general of Surinam and thirty-six islands, and embarked for the West Indies when Aphra was very young Mr. Johnson died on the passage, but his family arrived at Surinam, where Aphra became acquainted with the American prince Oroonoko, whose story she has given In her celebrated novel of that name. She relates that "she had often seen and conversed with that great man, and been a witness to many of his mighty actions; and that at one time, he and Imoinda his wife. Were scarce an hour in a day from her lodgings." The intimacy between Oroonoko and the poetess occasioned some reflections on her conduct, from which she was subsequently cleared.
The afflictions she met with at Surinam, in the death of her parents and relations, obliged her to return to England, where, soon after her arrival, she married Mr. Behn, an eminent merchant in London, of Dutch extraction. King Charles the Second, whom she highly pleased by the entertaining and accurate account she gave him of the colony of Surinam, thought her a proper person to be entrusted with the management of some affairs during the Dutch.
