The pious and excellent Mrs. JEAN WOOD, who died in this city some
years since, was the relict of General James Wood, a distinguished
officer of the revolution, and afterwards Governor of Virginia. The
qualities for which she was remarkable, were familiarly known to a very
large circle of friends, by whom, at least such as survive her, her
memory is still held dear. She was indeed in the justest sense, a
mother in Israel,--a lady of shining christian benevolence, whose
kindly feelings towards her race did not consist in mere sentiment
only,--but were evinced in a life of active, useful, and unostentatious
charities and labors of love. Her piety moreover, though profound and
ardent, was free from austerity; and there was a grace and cheerfulness
in her manner and conversation, which won upon all of every age and
condition who approached her. Well known as she was however, and
universally respected for her virtues, there were but few comparatively
who were apprised of her varied endowments or who knew that her
practical good sense and experienced judgment were united to the
lighter attractions and more ornamental graces of the intellectual
character. Literature was to her the solace which refreshed the
intervals in her works of goodness; it furnished that balmy repose to
the spirit,--which it often needs amidst the conflicts and agitations
of human life, even in its most favored condition. The proud, the
selfish and avaricious, or the gay and luxurious, may each indulge in
his own enjoyment or follow his own delusive phantom,--but next to the
consciousness of doing good, there is no earthly happiness so pure and
unalloyed as that which springs from the silent communion with our own
spirits, or with the marvellous and multiform external objects which
surround us. "There is a pleasure in poetic pains which only poets
know." There is an exalted sense of enjoyment in contemplating all that
is beautiful and good in the moral and physical world, and this indeed
constitutes the empire of poetry in its more general and unrestricted
sense. We do not claim for Mrs. Wood very extraordinary powers in this
enchanting department of literary effort,--for how few of the thousands
who have ever essayed to climb the hill of Parnassus have reached its
highest pinnacle; and on the contrary how many have been content to
tune their unambitious lays in humble seclusion--without courting or
even desiring renown. Mrs. Wood wrote neither for fame nor the public
eye, and it is this circumstance alone which will impart an additional
interest to the natural and unstudied effusions of her muse. Her
numerous friends and relatives will at least experience a melancholy
pleasure, in tracing in these _memorolabilia_ of their deceased friend,
some of those qualities of mind and heart, which rendered her in life
an object of respect and love,--and in death,--of veneration and
regret.
The first poem we have selected, entitled "Retrospection," appears to
have been written in 1809--when a severe illness threatened the life of
her husband. In the frame of mind natural under such circumstances, she
recalls the principal sorrows of her life, and among them there was
none more poignant than the loss of an only child, a daughter of
eighteen years old. The closing lines will indicate the source to which
she was accustomed to look in the season of human affliction.