MISS ADAMS was indeed deserving of such interest. Her life is, in many respects, full of instruction. Among those who have overcome great and peculiar difficulties in the pursuit of knowledge, she holds a distinguished place. She became a literary woman, when literature was a rare accomplishment in our country. She has produced one work, her History of Religions, which is the best of its kind, eminent for its great impartiality. But it was not merely for her powers of mind that she was remarkable, but for her warm affections, her glow of gratitude, and her childlike simplicity. It is honorable to the community in which she lived, that an individual, destitute as she was of all adventitious claims to distinction, should have been properly estimated and respected. This note is prefixed by the gentlemen to whom she left the charge of publishing her manuscript. A. N. J. T. CHAPTER I. Being arrived at an age in which I cannot reasonably expect my life will be long continued, at the request of a highly esteemed friend I am about to give a concise outline of my past life; notwithstanding I am sensible that a retrospect of past errors, faults and misfortunes, will be exceedingly painful. I was born in Medfield, a country town about eighteen miles from Boston. My father early imbibed a love of literature, and prepared to enter the university. But as his constitution then appeared to be very infirm, and he was an only son, his parents were strenuously opposed to his leaving them. Accordingly, to his inexpressible disappointment, he was obliged to settle upon their large farm, without a suitable knowledge of, or taste for, agricultural pursuits. This induced him to open a shop, for the sale, principally, of English Goods and Books. His taste for reading continued unabated till his death, which took place at the advanced age of eightyeight years. From my infancy I had a feeble constitution; in particular, an extreme weakness and irritability in my nervous system. Hence I can recollect uneasiness and pain previous to any pleasurable sensations. My mother was an excellent woman, and deservedly esteemed and beloved; but as her own health was delicate, and she possessed great tenderness and sensibility, I was educated in all the habits of debilitating softness, which probably added to my constitutional want of bodily and mental firmness.