where she died In 1806. As a poetess, she evinced a lively and highly cultivated imagination, great harmony in versification, combined with a high polish in her compositions. She published two volumes of poetry, at Berlin, 1800, "Amanda and Edward," at Frankfort, 1803, Spanish and Italian novelettes, in 1804, and various other minor tales.
BRIDGET, or BRIGIT,
And by contraction, St. Bride, a saint of the Romish church, and the patroness of Ireland, lived in the end of the fifth century. She was born at Fochard, in Ulster, soon after Ireland was converted, and she took the veil in her youth from the hands of St. Mel, a nephew and disciple of St. Patrick, She built herself a cell under a large oak, thence called Kill-dare, or the cell of the oak, and being joined by several women, they formed themselves into a religious community, which branched out into several other nunneries throughout Ireland, all of which acknowledged her as their foundress. She is commemorated in the Roman martyrology on the first of February.
BRIDGMAN, LAURA,
A pupil in the Boston Institution for the Blind, has attained a wide-spread celebrity through her misfortunes, and through the efforts made by her benevolent instructor, Principal of that Institution, to redeem her from the appalling mental darkness, in which the loss in early childhood of the faculties of sight, speech, and hearing, had involved her. As yet, her history is only known through the "reports" made from time to time to the trustees of that Institution, by Dr. Howe. From these we derive the following information, which we read with some regret, that in the modesty which always accompanies exalted worth, he has said so little of his own noble exertions in throwing light upon that darkened spirit.
Laura Bridgman was born in Hanover, New Hampshire, on the 21st. of December, 1829. She is described as having been a very sprightly and pretty infant, with bright blue eyes. She was, however, so puny and feeble, until she was a year and a half old, that her parents hardly hoped to rear her. She was subject to fits, which seemed to rack her frame almost beyond its power of endurance, and life was held by the frailest tenure; but when a year and a half old, she seemed to rally; the dangerous symptoms subsided; and at twenty months old, she was perfectly well. Then her mental powers, hitherto stinted in their growth, rapidly developed themselves; and during the four months of health which she enjoyed, she appears (making due allowance for a fond mother's account) to have displayed a considerable degree of intelligence.
But suddenly she sickened again; her disease raged with great violence during five weeks, when her eyes and ears were inflamed, suppurated, and their contents were discharged. But though sight and hearing were gone for ever, the poor child's sufferings were not ended. The fever raged during seven weeks; "for five months she was kept in bed in a darkened room; it was a year before she could walk unsupported, and two years before she could sit up all day."
