Although this esteemed lady, of a noble family, enjoys a world-wide fame, there may probably be many to whom the succeeding lines, descriptive of her character and history, will be of interest. Her father was Lyman Beecher, D.D., born in 1771, and, until of mature age, he was brought up to the trade of his father, a blacksmith. After leaving it for a course of study at Yale College, New Haven, he entered upon the work of the ministry. For some time Dr. Lyman Beecher was pastor of a church at Lichfield, and here Harriet Beecher was born, A.D. 1812. Ultimately he removed to Boston; and in 1832 quitted it for Lane, in Cincinnati. Here Lyman Beecher took charge of the seminary, and sought to establish collegiate studies in connection with self-supporting labour. In this enterprise Professor Calvin Stowe took part, and for a time their work prospered. The slavery then existing in the United States led to its overthrow. The year 1830 had witnessed the French revolution. An agitation had sprung up in England against Colonial Slavery. American judicial courts had imprisoned and fined many who had spoken against slavery. All these historical facts called the attention of philanthropists in the United States to the evils and crime of slavery; Dr. Beecher's seminary could not resist the rising discussion that crowned iniquity! The mob threatened, and Kentucky slaveholders went over to urge it on to violence. To save the property, the trustees interfered, and calmed the mob by the assurance that slavery should not further be discussed in the seminary. Another rebellion came from within, for the students refused to obey the order of the trustees, and left the seminary in a body. For years Beecher and Stowe sought in vain to restore the prosperity of that seminary. In 1850 they returned to the Eastern States Stowe to the Professor's chair of Biblical literature in Andover Theological Seminary, and Lyman Beecher to the work of the ministry in Cincinnati.

  Harriet Beecher spent eighteen years in this Lane Seminary; having previously assisted her sister Catharine, in the conduct of a training school for female teachers. Cincinnati is a city situated on the northern bank of the Ohio; and upon the high hill, whose point, crowned with the observatory, overhanging the city on the west, was Lane Seminary. The village nearest to it was called the Walnut Hills and one of the prettiest in the environs. It was here, therefore, that Harriet Beecher lived, and helped her sister in teaching, until her marriage, at the age of twenty-five, with Professor Calvin E. Stowe, of the Seminary, over which her father then was President. But few of Mrs. H. Beecher-Stowe's numerous offspring have survived. Mrs. Stowe says:

"Charlie, the most beautiful of my children, and the most beloved, lies buried near my Cincinnati residence. It was at his dying bed and at his grave that I learnt what a poor slave-mother may feel when her child is torn from her. In the depths of my sorrow, which seemed to me immeasurable, it was my only prayer to God that such anguish might not be suffered in vain.

"There were circumstances connected withy this child's death of such peculiar bitterness of what might seem almost cruel suffering that I felt I could never be consoled for it, unless it should appear that the crushing of my own heart might enable me to work out some great good to others.

"His death took place during the cholera-summer, when in a circle of five miles around me, 9,000 were buried a mortality which I have never heard exceeded anywhere.

"My husband, in feeble health, was obliged to be absent the whole time, and I had sole charge of a family of fifteen persons. He did not return to me, because I would not permit it; for in many instances where parents had returned from a distance to their families, and to the infected atmosphere, the result had been sudden death, and the physicians warned me that if he returned, it would only be to die. My poor Charlie died for want of timely medical aid; for in the universal confusion and despair that prevailed, it was often impossible to obtain assistance till it was too late."

  Between 1835 and 1847, Cincinnati became the prominent battleground of freedom and slavery. It will not be clear to the reader how painfully familiar Mrs. H. B. Stowe became with the horrors of slavery. The road which ran through Walnut Hills, only a few feet from Mrs. Stowe's door, was ultimately a favourite route of "The Underground Railway," so called, and so familiar in the pages of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." The "railway" consisted of a noble line of Quakers and other anti-slavery friends, who lived at intervals, say, of fifteen or twenty miles, between the Ohio River and the Northern Lakes. These friends had combined to help fugitive slaves forward in their escape to Canada. A fugitive would be taken at night, on horseback or in a covered waggon, from station to station, as described, until he stood on a free soil, and found the British banner floating o'er his head. Or,

  Referring once more to the "Underground Railway," we may remind our readers that the first station north of Cincinnati was a few miles up Mill Creek, at the house of the pious and lion-hearted Vanzant, otherwise called Van Trompe in "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Such being the roadway, Mrs. Stowe would inevitably be roused, and frequently, by the rapid rate of the covered waggons, and the noisy galloping of the horses ridden by the constables and slave-catchers, who would be in hot pursuit as they madly passed her door. Vanzant (the "Honest John," as he was called) was always ready to turn out with his team, and the hunters were rarely clever enough to come up with him. He has long since filled a martyr's grave. Mrs. Stowe, therefore, during her long residence on the frontier of the slave states, by several visits to them, would naturally become familiar in observations of them, and furnish herself with ample material for her masterpiece on slavery. We cannot refuse one of Mrs. Stowe's sketches in 1840. "The slave-catchers, backed by the riff-raff of the population, and urged on by certain politicians and merchants, attacked the quarters in which the negroes reside. Some of the houses were battered down by cannon. For several days the city was abandoned to violence and crime. The negro-quarters were pillaged and sacked. Negroes attempting to defend their property were killed, and their bodies thrown into the streets. Women cruelly injured by ruffians, some afterwards dying of their injuries. Houses were burnt, and men, women, and children were betrayed in the confusion, and hurried into slavery. From the brow of the hill on which I lived, I could hear the cries of the victims, the shouts of the mob, the reports of guns and cannon, and could see the flames of the conflagration. To more than one of the trembling fugitives I have given shelter, and wept bitter tears with them. After the fury of the mob was spent, many of the coloured people gathered together the little left them of worldly goods and started for Canada. Hundreds passed in front of my house. Some of them were in little waggons. Some trudging along on foot after their household stuff. Some leading their children by the hand. And there were even mothers who walked on suckling their infants, and weeping for the dead, or kidnapped husbands they had left behind." Before concluding this sketch we would observe that, by the verdict of England's people, " Uncle Tom's Cabin' takes its place as a standard work amongst the beauties of English literature." As Earl Carlisle said: "Its genius, pathos, and humour, commend themselves." As The Rev. James Shermon said: "It is as irresistibly attractive to the learned and unlearned as Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress." It has been translated in France, Holland, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Russia, and Spain. The supreme joy, however, to Mrs. Stowe must have been that Providence has prolonged her valuable life to witness the consummation of her prayers and toils the abolition of slavery!

  May the closing years of Mrs. Stowe and Josiah Henson be happy and triumphant! May the fruits of their spiritual life-work swell the "multitude of the redeemed!" The night is short, and the morning will soon dawn!