In every respect a remarkable and attractive character, her history may be safely studied as a model and example. There is not a house in Virginia where the story of her domestic virtues, were it properly told, would not be welcomed, and in which it would not do good. Had she not been encumbered with the cares of a large establishment and the rearing of a numerous progeny, to both of which she devoted herself with thorough self-abnegation, she would doubtless have turned her attention to the pursuit of literature and might have rivalled the fame of Hannah More, Maria Edgeworth, Caroline Burney, Frederica Bremer, Mrs. Stowe, or any of the distinguished female writers of America, past and present. A true type she was of the mothers of our Colonial and Revolutionary era, the mothers of those great and good men, bred amidst the trials of the border, who founded our Government upon the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. This is the picture, roughly sketched, of the character of that excellent woman attempted to be brought out by brief forcible touches from personal impression of her leading features, rather than by carefully weighed and balanced summaries. She was "one of many," a model of the mothers of Virginia from whom have sprung that long list of illustrious sons from Washington and Lewis to Lee and Jackson, men who have shed imperishable glory upon their race and country, and won for Virginia the proud title of being the "Mother of Statesmen as well as of States." In April 1847 a great sorrow fell upon that happy home of Montgomery Hall, by the death of the great and good head of it. Shortly after this event her health failed and she died surrounded by her children, July, 1850. An event of which the writer has never lost the impression, and in connection with which more than once have Gray's words recurred to memory, when, near the close of his life the poet, in writing to a friend says:--"I had written to inform you that I had discovered a thing very little known, which is, that in one's whole life one can never have more than a single mother. You may think this obvious and what you call a trite observation. You are a green gosling! I was at the same age very near as wise as you; I never discovered this with full evidence--I mean till it was too late. It is thirteen years ago and seems but as yesterday; and every day I live it sinks deeper into my heart." So it is in the author's case, he never knew the extent of his misfortune until it was irreparable. And now when looking back upon her life, after a quarter of a century, it is with a sorrow chastened, and brought into subjection, but not obliterated by time! Taking a retrospect of her life the writer can think of nothing with which her friends could reproach her, unless it be a disregard of her own health and comfort.