“ It was one of the most distinguished of our female merchants Martha Buckminster Curtis - who planted, in Framingham, the first potatoes ever set in New England; and you will start to hear that our dear and honored friend Ann Bent entered on her business career so long ago as 1784, at the age of sixteen. She first entered a crockeryware and dry-goods firm; but, at the age of twenty-one, established herself in Washington, north of Summer Street, where we remember her. She soon became the centre of a happy home, where sisters, cousins, nieces, and young friends received her affectionate care. The intimacy which linked her name to that of Mary Ware is fresh in all our minds. What admirable health she contrived to keep we may judge from the fact, that she dined at one brother's table on Thanksgiving Day for over fifty years. She was the valued friend of Channing and Gannett; and her character magnified her office, ennobled her condition, gave dignity to labor, and won the love and respect of all the worthy. Less than two years ago, at the age of ninety, she left us; but I wished to mention both her and Miss Kinsley in this connection, because they were the first women in our society to confer a merchantable value upon taste.

“ Instead of importing largely themselves, they bought of the New York importers the privilege of selection, and always took the prettiest and nicest pieces out of every case. As they paid for this privilege themselves, so they charged their customers for it, by asking a little more on each yard of goods than the common dealer.

“I know nothing for which it is pleasanter to pay than for taste. When time is precious (and to all serious people it soon becomes so), it is a comfort to go to one counter, sure that in ten minutes you can purchase what it would take a whole morning to winnow from the countless shelves of the town.

“ Scientific pursuits cannot be said to be fairly opened to women here. The two ladies employed on the Coast Survey were employed by special favor, and probably on account of near relationship to the gentleman who had charge of the department of latitudes and longitudes. Their work is done at home. Some years ago, Congress made an appropriation for an American Nautical Almanac, and Lieutenant Davis was appointed to take charge of it. Three ladies were at one time employed upon the lunar tables. Lieutenant Davis told one of them: that he preferred the women's work, because it was quite as accurate, and much more neat, than the men's. In 1854, Maria Mitchell was employed in computing for this almanac, with the same salary that would be given to a man. I may say, in this connection, that a great many extra female clerks have been employed in Washington for

men.

- pp. 93-97.

many years. The work has generally been obtained by women who had lost a husband or a father in the service of his country; and, I am proud to say, such women have usually been paid the same wages as

During Mr. Fillmore's administration, two women wrote for the Treasury, on salaries of twelve hundred and fifteen hundred dollars a year; but the succeeding administration reformed this abuse, and very few are now at work.”

If Mrs. Dall will drive up her young friends of thirteen and fourteen to begin then to “ verify their credentials,” she will have struck at the root of the whole difficulty.

In “ The Opening of the Gates," — the third lecture, - she points out, in a feminine and practical way, the points where they may make a beginning. She adapts her suggestions to the city of Boston, where she delivers them ; but they will be found equally applicable in every large city of America. She acknowledges that she is discussing evils which belong to town life chiefly; but she shows distinctly that they have their close relations with the condition and position of women in the social order of our farming regions.

If the women who are pale and nervous because they “want a mission,” will give some personal experiment to some of the suggestions made here, they will be more like to forget their difficulties than they will in the fetichism which worships any neighboring minister, - or in the desperation that drives them through one

more of

gay

social life, any course of reading, which can be laid down by the nearest accessible philosopher. It is refreshing to step out from the accustomed discussions on the possibilities of the sex, to something which savors as much of Araby the blest as Mrs. Dall's discussions of fig-paste and candied fruits. And we will close our specimens of her agreeable book by this tempting morsel for the sweet teeth which remain to our readers.

season

or in

6

“ When I mentioned wood-carving to women, I was thinking, in part, of the immense annual demand for Christmas presents. In this connection, also, I should like to direct the attention of our rural women to the art of preserving and candying fruit. “But that is nothing new, you will say. Did not your Massachusetts census for 1845 enumerate certain picklers and preservers ?' Yes; but those women were merely in the employ of men carrying on large estab

66

lishments. What I would suggest is a domestic manufacture to compete with French candies, and to occupy the minds of our farmers' wives and daughters, to the exclusion of shirt-fronts and shoe-binding.

Every one of us, probably, fills more than one little stocking, on Christmas night, with candied fruit. If we belong to the “first families, and wish to do the thing handsomely, this fruit has cost from seventyfive cents to a dollar a pound; we knowing, all the while, that better could be produced for half or two thirds the money. Last year,

I

pur- . chased one pound of this candy, and examined it with practical reference to this question. Plums, peaches, cherries, apples, and pears, all tasted alike, and had evidently been boiled in the same syrup. Apple and quince marmalades alone had any flavor. Now our farmers' daughters could cook these fruits so as to preserve their flavor, could candy them and pack them into boxes, quite as well as the French men ; and so a new and important domestic industry might arise. The experiment would be largely profitable as soon as all risk of mistake were over; and perishable fruit at a distance from market could be used in this way. A few years ago, we had a rare conserve from Constantinople and Smyrna, called fig-paste. Now we have a mixture of gum Arabic and flour, flavored with essences ; made for the most part at Westboro, and called by the same name. Yes, we actually have fig-paste, spicy with winter-green and black-birch ! Now, what is to prevent our farmers' daughters from making this? from putting up fruits in air-tight cans, and drying a great many kinds of vegetables that cannot be had now for love or money? Who can get Lima beans or dried sweet-corn, that does not dry them from his own garden?

“ Do not let our medical friends feel too indignant if I recommend to these same women the manufacture of pickles. The use of pickles, like the use of wine, may be a questionable thing; but, like liquors, they are a large article of trade : and, if we must have them, why not have them made of wholesome fruit, in good cider-vinegar, with a touch of the grandmotherly seasoning that we all remember, rather than of stinted gherkins, soured by vitriol and greened by copper ? There are many sweet sauces, too, - made of fruit, stewed with vinegar, spice, and sugar, — which cannot be obtained in shops, and would meet a good market. How easy the whole matter is, may be guessed from this fact, that, sitting once at a Southern table, the table of a genial grand-nephew of George Washington, who bore his name, -I was offered twenty-five kinds of candied fruit, all made by the delicate hands of his wife ; and seven varieties in form and flavor, from the common tomato." pp. 137 - 140.

.

ART. VI. – JOHN CALVIN.

1. Leaders of the Reformation. (Art. John Calvin.) By John TUL

LOCH, D. D. Boston: Gould and Lincoln. 1860. 2. The Life and Times of John Calvin. By PAUL HENRY, D.D.

Translated from the German by HENRY STEBBINGS, D. D.,

F. R. S. New York: Robert Carter and Brothers. 1854. 3. The Life of John Calvin. By Thomas H. DYER. New York:

Harper and Brothers. 1850. 4. History of the Life, Works, and Doctrines of John Calvin. By

J. M. V. AUDIN. Translated from the French by Rev. JOHN

McGill. Baltimore: John Murphy. 5. Westminster Review. (Art. Calvin at Geneva.) No. 137. July,

1858.

AMPLE materials for a true understanding and just appreciation of the labors and merits of Calvin are now before the American reader. Henry's Life is a rich placer, rather than available metal. It contains ore which will amply reward the careful miner. He has given us two huge, ill-arranged, and not very readable volumes, full of the results of patient research, and bearing everywhere the marks of two very different sentiments, - a genuine love of truth and a thoroughness of idolatry for his hero not common even in biographers. The result is, that you have for the most part the real facts, from which you may form your own judgment; and you have also extravagant theories and special pleadings, from whose influence you must sedulously guard yourself. Dyer's work, on the contrary, is clear, methodical, quite interesting, and, though neither so full nor profound as the former, apparently free from the influence of prejudice. Audin gives us the Romish view. His book is abusive without being vigorous ; bitter and not witty; full of the parade of original research, yet carrying no conviction. Its chief value consists in furnishing an antidote to Henry's undue adulation. Tulloch's article is a popular sketch, on the whole marked by a candid and liberal spirit, but from its brevity necessarily omitting the consideration of some points of largest interest and importance.

. The article in the Westminster Review, entitled “ Calvin at

VOL. LXIX. -5TH S. VOL. VII. NO. I. 7

Geneva," is a very ingenious attempt to prove that Calvin's destruction of liberty at Geneva was the salvation of liberty in Western Europe. Overstating the value of the Reformer's really great influence, and apparently overlooking other forces which existed independently of him and would have worked out their results had he never lived, the author draws from the acknowledged premise that theological dissent providentially widened into political rebellion, the enormous and questionable inference that Calvin was the great bulwark of freedom, against which the waves of tyranny beat in vain. For those who wish to study Calvin's own words, we have the excellent edition of his great work, published by the Presbyterian Board of Education, and translations of all or most of his Commentaries. So that without reference to the more minute works in French and Latin, the English reader possesses the means of forming an intelligent judgment concerning the character and work of the great Reformer.

The time of Calvin's appearance was auspicious. The Reformation had passed through its first stage. A great spiritual movement had been successfully inaugurated. What the age now wanted most was a man who could give a spiritual direction to the discordant energies and aspirations of the times. Emphatically that man was John Calvin. Differ as we may in our estimate of his character and works, no one can doubt his ability to give wide and permanent sway to his own ideas of truth. A man bold in the fields of theological inquiry rather than in the actual conflict of man with man; by nature a recluse; his proper weapon the pen, and not the sword or the eloquent tongue ; lacking the fiery courage which impelled Luther to go forward when the bravest might well draw back ; lacking too the kindling warmth and genial sympathies of the Saxon,—he yet had qualities which especially

fitted him to meet and satisfy the great religious demand of

Not indeed a great original discoverer in the realms of truth, he was gifted with a mind vigorous, precise, and logical, and which shrank from no deduction of his reason, however terrible; with a persistent will which nothing could daunt or turn; and, above all, with that power of classification,