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 with his attendant guards, when springing from the bushes, they demanded the despatches. Taken by surprise, the men yielded, gave up the papers, and were put on their parole. The despatches were immediately sent to General Greene.

MARTIN, MRS. BELL, daughter of Mr. Martin, a rich commoner. She inherited a very large landed property, several estates of which were in Ireland.

Miss Martin married her cousin, whose name was Bell; he took her family name by act of parliament. Mrs. Bell Martin was an authoress of some repute. She wrote "Julia Howard," a novel of considerable merit, and also several works in the French language.

But she was more eminent for her virtues than her genius. During the troublous times of the famine in Ireland, Mrs. Bell Martin attempted, in the spirit of true humanity, to prevent the poor people on her estates from suffering the horrible privations endured by the labourers in general. Her tenants amounted to as many as twenty thousand, and her lands to over two hundred thousand acres. She caused important improvements to be made, in order to give work and wages to the people, till her own means became straitened. Then, obliged to retrench her expenditures, she left her own country to travel in America and learn the manner of living in a republic where all are said to be in comfort. She was taken ill on the voyage, and died ten days after reaching New York, near the close of 1850

MARTIN, SARAH, has won for herself the fame most desirable for a woman, that of Christian benevolence, unsurpassed in the annals of her sex, was born in 1791. Her father was a poor mechanic in Caister, a village three miles from Yarmouth. Sarah was the only child of her parents, who both died when she was very young; she had then to depend on her grandmother, a poor old widow, whose name was Bonnett, and who deserves to have it recorded for the kind care she took of her granddaughter.

Sarah Martin's education was merely such as the village school afforded. At the age of fourteen, she passed a year in learning the business of dressmaking, and then gained her livelihood by going out and working at her trade by the day, among the families of the village. In the town of Yarmouth was the county prison, where criminals were confined; their condition is thus set forth in the "Edinburgh Review," for 1847, from which we gather our sketch:—

"Their time was given to gaming, swearing, playing, fighting, and bad language; and their visitors were admitted from without with little restrictions. There was no divine worship in the jail on Sundays, nor any respect paid to that holy day. There were underground cells, (these continued even down to 1836,) quite dark, and deficient in proper ventilation. The prisoners describe their heat in summer as almost suffocating, but they prefer them for their warmth in winter; their situation is such as to defy inspection, and they are altogether unfit for the confinement of any human being." 