illustrates the effects of her early training; gentle, refined, and exclusive, she has no conception of the depths of human character nor the scope of human experience, and has not found the sublime heights to which a human being through suffering can attain. She does not possess that most contagious and popu lar of elements-cheerfulness, nor yet is she generous and warm-hearted. In her presence one is impressed with the repose and dignity of her bearing, and the entire refinement of her ladylike deportment; but the life-giving principles of impulsive affection and openhanded liberality, which keep the heart young long after the bloom and elasticity of youth have departed forever, are not characteristics of hers.

Mrs. Polk's position in her native State and in the South were such that her means of doing good were immense, holding a position such as no other woman of her section has, until recently, held-that of a President's wife-it has been in her power to wield a mighty and beneficial influence. Had she chosen any art or mode of ameliorating the condition of those about her, or of adorning and rendering attractive social life in her own circle, in the numberless ways which to one in her situation were easy and practical, the good she might have done would have been incalculable; but her morbid exclusiveness rendered her unsociable, and her Christian virtues, too much inclined to austerity, closed her house to every form of gayety.

She might have been a Roland or a Nightingale. She chose rather to be the representative of her hus

band's name and greatness, and was satisfied to rest in the shadows thereof.

ry, and is a pure becoming extinct.

She was born in the dawn of the nineteenth centutype of a class which is rapidly With her will pass away many of the excellences and not a few of the foibles of a class modelled after the aristocracy of the old world on their graftings in the new. Her life has been spent in an age and country where chivalric honor to woman is a matter of national pride, yet in a land of slaves and slavery. The young and middle-aged of our day will never know the opportunities of time and means which she, half a century ago, enjoyed; for the South is changed, and verily old things have passed away and all are new. The present generation, thrown more upon their own resources and passing through the perplexities of change and misfortune, will grow away from the old regime, and may perhaps lose many of their virtues with too few of their faults.

During the late civil war, she suffered in common with the people of the South, losing much of her valua ble property, but was fortunately left with sufficient means to enable her to live in her usual style of comfort. Her sympathies were with the section of country in which she was reared, but her conduct was throughout befitting her station, and no expression or action of hers is a reflection of aught save refined bear ing and high-toned sensibility.

Surrounded with comforts and luxuries, and enjoying the companionship of her relatives and friends, Mrs. Polk glides calmly down the vale of years, with

the memory of a past all brightness, and the hopes of a future all peace. The life-time imitation of a pure

and useful standard of excellence has rewarded her with a glorious fame, and she dwells among the friends of her youth, honored and respected, trusted and beloved.

MRS. ZACHARY TAYLOR.

THE importance attached to Presidential honors is not in our country the inheritance of persons born to the wearing of them. Monarchial governments, by tradition and law, designate not only who is the "chief magistrate," but also provide candidates in advance for the succession. People, therefore, born to such high estate, are always, from infancy onward, objects of world-wide interest; and the minutest acts of their lives, before they achieve their inherited position as well as after, are subjects of note from a thousand pens.

In our own country, the popular will selects its candidates for the highest office within its gift as often from those who have suddenly received popularity, as from those who have, by antecedent history, become known to fame. It is probably true that, just before the breaking out of actual hostilities between this country and Mexico, there was no military officer-his long and faithful public service considered-who was as little known to the country at large as General Taylor.

That the future "Lady of the White House" who was buried in the seclusion of his retired private life, should be little known out of her domestic circle, is, therefore, not surprising; and that a family, the members of which had always courted seclusion and were satisfied with making perfect the narrow circle of their accepted duties, should shrink from publicity and no

tice, is not to be wondered at; and, as a consequence, there is but little left to afford material for the pen of the historian.

Mrs. Taylor and her daughter "Betty," who for a while shone forth as the acknowledged "first ladies of the land," never sympathized with the display and bustle of the White House, and they always performed such official duties as were imperatively forced upon them, by their exalted position, as a task that had no compensation for the sacrifices attending it.

The key to Mrs. Taylor's life was touched by General Taylor himself, who, when receiving from an appointed speaker, at Baton Rouge, the official announcement that he was elected President of the United States, among other things said:

"For more than a quarter of a century, my house has been the tent, and my home the battle-field." This statement, which might have been used with propriety as figurative language by any officer who had been, for more than a quarter of a century on active duty, was litterally true of General Taylor's experience. He was emphatically a hard-working officer: either from choice or accident, his public life was never varied by those terms of "official repose" which give officers a rest at Washington, at West Point, or at head-quarters in some large city.

On the contrary, General Taylor, from the time he entered the army as a lieutenant until he laid aside his well-earned commission as a Major-General to assume the highest responsibility of Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, had never been out of what might be termed the severest frontier duties.