[1] It may be proper to state, that in preparing the Essay and Sketch for publication, no liberty has been taken with the author’s composition, farther than to render the language correct. For the satisfaction of any persons who may wish to see the manuscript, it can be inspected at the publishers.--ED. To an ordinary mind the preparation of the latter would have been even more difficult than the former. Here was the opportunity for and danger of egotism. But here also was the opportunity for the exhibition and proof of real talent, and of genuine piety. To sink self, and to elevate principles, should be the sole object of autobiography. To effect this in a sketch is even more difficult than in a tale of life. It requires the hand of a master to give off with the pencil those few but telling touches that convert surface into substance, and place on the blank void forms of life, and grace, and comeliness. And no less talent does it demand to portray in words those truthful and instructive scenes which the homes of the godly present, amid which our authoress lived and was nourished, and of which it may justly be said that she is herself one of their noblest ornaments. Our authoress has learned by experience, and has ably developed in her sketch, some of the most useful and valuable lessons of life. One of these is beautifully and powerfully given in the following words: “How often are opportunities of doing small acts of kindness and usefulness let slip, while we are sighing over our narrow sphere and our limited means of serving God or benefiting man!” Would it not be a melancholy and unwholesome sentimentality that should sit down and lament over itself as having no space capacious enough for its designs, and no arena worthy of its visions, instead of contenting itself with the many common opportunities of doing good which every-day life supplies? It may sound, indeed, well to sigh over oneself in such circumstances, “Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air;” and, by appropriating the idea to our own condition, hug ourselves with the fancy that we would, if we might, make ourselves widely useful in our generation; but far nobler, surely, and far more worthy of our imitation, is the devout and holy thought expressed in the following stanza: “The trivial round, the common task, Should furnish all we ought to ask; Room to deny ourselves; a road To bring us, daily, nearer God.”