crown.

This is quite a different view from that which obtains generally; and if
Miss Kate Marsden should be able to prove her point, and bring before
them the pictures of what she may see on her journey to and from
Siberia, she will score a result such as has fallen to no one's
endeavour hitherto.

It is only now and then in a lifetime that we meet a woman capable of
such a grand work as this which Miss Kate Marsden has taken upon
herself; and the reason is that the qualifications necessary are so
rarely found in combination in one and the same individual. Many among
us may have one or other of the characteristics, but it is the existence
of them all in one person that makes the heroine and gives the power.

You cannot be an hour in Miss Kate Marsden's company without becoming
aware of her enthusiasm, her courage, her self-devotion, her
fearlessness, and above all her simple child-like faith. It avails
nothing that you place before her the trials, the horrors, the dangers,
the possible failure of such an undertaking as hers. The necessity of
the work to be done she considers imperative, and the certainty in her
mind that it is her mission to do it carries all before it.

The bravest among us would hesitate before deciding upon a tour in
Russia and Siberia, supposing it were one of pleasure or of scientific
research, because even under these favourable conditions we should be
subject to ignominious surveillance night and day, and the chances of
leaving the country when we pleased would be very small; but what can we
say of a young and delicate woman who, voluntarily and without thought
of self, deliberately walks into the country where deeds are done daily