This passionate desire for instruction was at length gratified. When she was about sixteen, a gentleman, a stranger at Plattsburg, saw, by accident, some of her poems, and learned her history. With the prompt and warm generosity of a noble mind, he immediately proposed to place her at school, and gave her every advantage for which she so ardently longed. Her joy on learning this good fortune was almost overwhelming. She was, as soon as possible, I)laced at the Troy Female Seminary, under the care of Mrs. Emma Willard. She was there at the fountain for which she had so long thirsted, and her spiritual eagerness could not be restrained. "On her entering the Seminary," says the Principal, "she at once surprised us by the brilliancy and pathos of her compositions—she evinced a most exquisite sense of the beautiful in the productions of her pencil; always giving to whatever she attempted to copy, certain peculiar and original touches which marked the liveliness of her conceptions, and the power of her genius to embody those conceptions. But from studies which required calm and steady investigation, efforts of memory, judgment and consecutive thinking, her mind seemed to shrink. She had no confidence in herself, and appeared to regard with dismay any requisitions of this nature."—In truth, she had so long indulged in solitary musings, and her sensibility had become so exquisite, heightened and refined as it had been by her vivid imagination, that she was dismayed, agonized even, with the feeling of responsibility, which her public examination involved. She was greatly beloved and tenderly cherished by her teachers; but it is probable that the excitement of the new situation in which she was placed, and the new studies she had to pursue, operated fatally on her constitution. She was, during the vacation, taken with an illness, which left her feeble and very nervous. When she recovered, she was placed at Albany, at the school of Miss Gilbert—but there she was attacked by severe disease. She partially recovered, and was removed to her home, where she gradually declined till death released her pure and exalted mind from its prison-house of clay. She died, August 27th., 1825, before she had completed her seventeenth year.
In person she was exceedingly beautiful. Her forehead was high, open, and fair as infancy; her eyes large, dark, and of that soft beaming expression which shews the soul in the glance; her features were fine and symmetrical, and her complexion brilliant, especially when the least excitement moved her feelings. But the prevailing expression of her face was melancholy. Her beauty, as well as her mental endowments, made her the object of much regard; but she shrunk from observation—any particular attention always seemed to give her pain; so exquisite was her modesty. In truth, her soul was too delicate for this "cold world of storms and clouds." Her imagination never revelled in the "garishness of joy;"—a pensive, meditative mood was the natural tone of her mind. The adverse circumstances by which she was surrounded, no doubt deepened this seriousness, till it became almost morbid melancholy—but no external advantages of fortune would have given to her disposition buoyant cheerfulness. It seems the lot of youthful genius to be sad; Kirke White was thus melancholy. Like flowers opened too early, these children of song shrink from the storms of life before they have felt its sunbeams.
The writings of Miss Davidson were astonishingly voluminous.
