Page:A cyclopaedia of female biography.djvu/120

 most learned men of the age. Her Latin and French poems, letters and treatises, for acuteness and solidity, have been classed with the ancient philosophers. She maintained a correspondence with many learned men in France and Italy. Francis the First, of France, was so charmed with the letters of this abbess, that he carry them about him, and showed them as models worthy of imitation. He went with his sister, Margaret of Navarre, to Tarascon on porpoae to see this celebrated lady. She died in 1547.

BEECHER, ESTHER CATHERINE, Daughter of the Rev. Lyman Beecher, D. D., was born September 6th., 1800, at East Hampton, Long Island, where she resided till she was about ten years of age. Being the eldest of thirteen children, (ten are now living, all of whom have displayed good talents and some marked genius,) her education was, by her wise parents, considered of essential importance. They knew, that if the eldest child was trained to go in the right way, the others would be almost sure to follow. On the removal of the family to Litchfield, Connecticut, in 1810, the little Catharine [sic] was placed at the best school for young ladies there to be found—that of Miss Sally Pierce; and the pupil was soon to excel the teacher. In a letter to a friend, Miss Beecher thus sketches herself at the age when, her education "finished," as the term is, she was preparing to take her part in the usual routine of woman's life; she says:—

"The prominent traits of my natural character, as developed in childhood and youth, were great activity of body and mind, great cheerfulness of spirits, a strong love of the ludicrous, and my imagination teeming with poetry and romance. I had no taste for study or anything that demanded close attention. All my acquisitions were in the line of my tastes, so that at twenty, no habits of mental discipline had being formed."

It was about this time an event occurred that for ever ended all Miss Beecher's youthful dreams of poetry and romance, and changed the whole course of thought and feeling as regarded her destiny in this life. But the Providence that withdrew her heart from the world of woman's hopes, has proved a great blessing to her sex and her country. In 1822 she opened a Female Seminary at Hartford, Connecticut, which received pupils from every State in the Union, and soon numbered from 100 to 160 of these treasures of home, committed to her care and guidance. In discharging the important duties thus devolved on her, she not only learned to understand her own deficiencies of education, but also those of all the systems hitherto adopted for female pupils; and a wish to remedy the want of suitable text-books for her school, called forth her first printed work, an "Arithmetic;" her second work was on the more difficult points of Theology; and her third, an octavo, on "Mental and Moral Philosophy." This, like the others, was prepared for her own pupils, and though it has been printed and introduced in one of our Colleges for young men as a text-book, has never yet been published. These works are important as shewing the energy of mind, and entire devotion to the studies she undertakes, which characterize Miss Beecher. In truth her school duties were then so arduous that her health gave way, and for a season, she was compelled to retire from her work.

In 1832, her father with his family removed to Cincinnati, Ohio.