After a long and very painful illness of the same general nature as the disease which carried off Gen. Grant and now threatens the Crown Prince of Germany there died yesterday a young writer of New York. Emma Lazarus was the daughter of the late Moses Lazarus, a sugar refiner, belonging to one of the best-known and oldest Hebrew families of the city, and niece to J. H. Lazarus, the artist. The instinct to express herself in verse appeared very early. In 1866, at the age of 17, she published a volume of poems which created great interest in the circle of her family's friends and acquaintance, and led to flattering notice from persons eminent in fashionable society. She was, however, dissatisfied with so narrow a success and aimed for the wide field of readers. Although she never became a popular writer of books, but found her widest audience in the magazines, the steady courage with which she pursued literature told in the long run, notwithstanding the high ideals she held before her, which made her dislike sensationalism and such appeals to the public as are not artistic. Feeling strongly the responsibilities of a writer, and disdaining the ordinary methods of attracting notice, she devoted herself mainly to the cultivation of pure literature. Her reading was wide in German and French. The character of Goethe fascinated her, and she produced in 1874 "Alide," a prose romance founded on episodes in the early life of the German poet. Henri Heine was naturally a favorite; she enjoyed his biting wit and keen literary sense. Many of her translations from the verse of Heine were first published in The New York Times. In 1871 she published "Admetus and Other Poems," and found her work better appreciated in England than her native country. The Athenaeum and Westminster Review were very complimentary. The Illustrated London News preferred her conception of the old Greek tragedy of "Alcestis and Admetus" to the treatment of the same legend by Robert Browning, since she gave a reason for the self-sacrifice of Alcestis which other versions lack. Alcestis dies for her husband because she believes him necessary to the country--not because she happens to be his wife. When Hercules overcomes Death and saves her In the same volume appeared verses that showed a patriotic American spirit, but few that referred to her own religion or the history of her race. It was not for some years thereafter that she laid aside her diffidence as a Jewess and began to write poems directly for and about Jews and Jewish things. The delay may be undoubtedly referred to the narrow spirit of hostility which still pervades Christian communities, for her circumstances were such that most of her acquaintance was Christian, not Hebrew. When she struck the Hebrew lyre, however, it was with no uncertainty, and she then produced her very best work. "Spagnoletto," a drama founded on the life of the Neapolitan painter who bore that nickname, is a masculine piece of work, not suited for the stage, but intended for reading. But the Jewish poems collected in the volume called "Songs of a Semite" were more to the point, and must have made her co-religionists proud. They ring with indignation against the belated prejudices that remain over from the past among our worst heritages of bigotry. Set on the right track by these outbursts, she began the study of Hebrew and was at work on a series of translations from the Jewish bards of medieval Spain, when the first blow of her illness fell. Though she rallied and went abroad in apparent health and full of hope, her plans were destroyed before she could settle down from the excitement which a first visit to Europe creates in a sensitive soul. She lingered and only came home to die. Devoted to study and by nature extremely fastidious and critical, Emma Lazarus had comparatively few intimates, but they were constant and warm. Those to whom she never gave the pleasure of her wit, caustic retort, and clever repartees vied with her family in trying to make the intervals of suffering pleasant by all the devices that could be suggested. As a woman she was endowed with a personality no one could forget; as a poet she often rose to passages of great beauty, and showed conscience and skill in all she undertook.