’Died, on the 26th instant, in the eighteenth year of her age, Miss Sarah Matilda Hoffman, daughter of Josiah Ogden Hoffman.  Thus another youthful and lovely victim is added to the ravages of that relentless and invincible enemy to earthly happiness, the consumption.  In the month of January we beheld this amiable and interesting girl in the glow of health and spirits, the delight of her friends, the joy and pride of her family; she is now cold and lifeless as the clod of the valley.  So falls the tender flower of spring as it expands its bosom to the chilling blight of the morning frost.  Endowed by nature with a mind unusually discriminating, and a docility of temper and disposition admirably calculated to reap profit from instruction, Miss Hoffman very early became an object of anxious care and solicitude to the fondest of fathers.  That care and solicitude he soon found richly rewarded by the progress she made in her learning, and by every evidence of a grateful and feeling heart.  After completing the course of her education in a highly respectable seminary in Philadelphia, she returned to her father’s house, where she diligently sought every opportunity to improve her mind by various and useful reading.  She charmed the circle of her friends by the suavity of her disposition and the most gentle and engaging manners.  She delighted and blessed her own family by her uniformly correct and affectionate conduct.  Though not formed to mingle and shine in the noisy haunts of dissipation, she was eminently fitted to increase the store of domestic happiness, to bring pleasure and tranquillity to the fireside, and to gladden the fond heart of a parent.

’Religion, so necessary to our peace in this world and to our happiness in the next, and which gives so high a lustre to the charms and to the virtues of woman, constantly shed her benign influence over the conduct of Miss Hoffman, nor could the insidious attempts of the infidel for a moment weaken her confidence in its heavenly doctrines.  With a form rather slender and fragile was united a beauty of face, which, though not dazzling, had so much softness, such a touching sweetness in it, that the expression which mantled over her features was in a high degree lovely and interesting.  Her countenance was indeed the faithful image of a mind that was purity itself, and of a heart where compassion and goodness had fixed their abode.  To the sweetest disposition that ever graced a woman, was joined a sensibility, not the fictitious creature of the imagination, but the glowing offspring of a pure and affectionate soul.

’Tenderness, that quality of the heart which gives such a charm to every female virtue, was hers in an eminent degree.  It diffused itself over every action of her life.  Sometimes blended with a delicate and happy humor, characteristic of her nature, it would delight the social circle; again, with the most assiduous offices of affection,