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302   SARAH LOUISA P. SMITH. 

Who now will face the foeman? 
Who break the tyrant's chain?
Their bravest one lies fallen,
Ans sleeping with the slain. 
Now let our hymn 
Float through the aisle, 
Faintly and dim, 
Where moonbeams smile; 
Sisters, let our dirge be said
Slowly o'er the sainted dead!

There's a voice of woman weeping, 
In Warsaw heard to-night, 
And eyes close not in sleeping, 
That late with joy were bright; 
No Festal torch is lighted, 
No notes of music swell; 
Their country's hope was blighted, 
When that son of freedom fell! 
Now let our hymn
Float through the aisle,
Faintly and dim,
Where moonbeams smile;
Sister, let our hymn arise
Sadly to the midnight skies! 

And a voice of love undying, 
From the tomb of other years, 
Like the west wind's summer sighing 
It blends with manhood's tears; 
It whispers not of glory, 
Nor fame's unfading youth, 
But lingers o'er a story 
Of young affection's truth. 
Now let our hymn
Float through the aisle,  


LYDIA JANE PEIRSON.   303 

Faintly and dim, 
Where moonbeams smile; 
Sisters, let our solemn strain 
Breathe a blessing o'er the slain! 

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LYDIA JANE PEIRSON. 

The pleasant city of Middletown, Connecticut, was the birthplace of "The forest minstrel," Mrs. Peirson. Her parents, (whose surname was Wheeler,) were both persons of great intelligence and piety, and afforded their daughter every facility for obtaining a good education. Her poetical tastes were quickly developed, and fondly encouraged by her father, who was himself a passionate lover of poetry, flowers, music, and of whatever makes life beautiful.  Some of her earliest recollections are of singing her own rhymes to little wild airs of her own composition, as she sat at twilight among the flowers her father had planted, and taught her to cultivate. In her happy childhood's home she remained until her sixteenth year, when her father removed to Canadaigua, N. Y. Here, at the age of seventeen, she married, and two years after, went with her husband and his family to Liberty, Tioga County, where she breasted the hardships of pioneer life in one of the wildest norther counties of Pennsylvania. For a long while her dwelling-place was a log-cabin in the woods, five miles from any house, and twenty from any village where there was a store, or a house for public worship. Her privations and inconveniences were many, and her sorrows too; but she poured out her soul in song, and found—to use her own words—that her "converse with poetry, wild-flowers, and singing birds, was nearly all that made life endurable." She is still a dweller of the forest, but has exchanged the log-hut for a beautiful farm in the midst of those dense woods. Not long ago we received from the Hon. Ellis Lewis, of Lancaster, a short account of the way in which this pleasant change was brought about; and have since seen the interesting story in print, from which we feel no hesitancy in transcribing. "A number of years ago, when the best talents of Pennsylvania were called into 

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