moral, or mental progress? In these respects, how get up to, or keep pace with, other and more favored people?—how get in the advance?—how ascend, at last, without a single competitor, the highest scale of human eminence? Phillis Wheatley did all, and more than this. A sold thing, a bought chattel at seven years, she mastered, notwithstanding, the English language in sixteen months. She carried on with her friends and acquaintances an extensive and elegant epistolary correspondence at twelve years of age, composed her first poem at fourteen, became a proficient Latin scholar at seventeen, and published in England her book of poems, dedicated to the Countess of Huntington, at nineteen; and with the mantle of just fame upon her shoulders, sailed from America to England to receive the meed due to her learning, her talents, and her virtues, at twenty-two. What one of America's paler daughters, contemporary with her, with all the advantages that home, fortune, friends, and favor bring,—what one ascended so far up the hill of just fame at any age? I have searched in vain to find the name upon the literary page of our country's record.
"O Wheatley!
What degrading hand, what slavish chain,
What earthly power, could link thy nobler soul
To baser things, and check its eagle flight?
Angel of purity, child of beauteous song,
Thy harp still hangs within our sight,
To cheer, though thou art gone."
The succeeding extract from his poem "The Coming Man" is very suggestive, especially at this time.
