and value to what they achieve. To be born a Jewess was a distinction
for Emma Lazarus, and she in turn conferred distinction upon her
race. To be born a woman also lends a grace and a subtle magnetism
to her influence. Nowhere is there contradiction or incongruity.
Her works bear the imprint of her character, and her character of
her works; the same directness and honesty, the same limpid purity
of tone, and the same atmosphere of things refined and beautiful.
The vulgar, the false, and the ignoble,--she scarcely comprehended
them, while on every side she was open and ready to take in and
respond to whatever can adorn and enrich life. Literature was no
mere "profession" for her, which shut out other possibilities; it
was only a free, wide horizon and background for culture. She was
passionately devoted to music, which inspired some of her best poems;
and during the last years of her life, in hours of intense physical
suffering, she found relief and consolation in listening to the
strains of Bach and Beethoven. When she went abroad, painting was
revealed to her, and she threw herself with the same ardor and
enthusiasm into the study of the great masters; her last work (left
unfinished) was a critical analysis of the genius and personality
of Rembrandt.

And now, at the end, we ask, Has the grave really closed over all
these gifts? Has that eager, passionate striving ceased, and "is
the rest silence?"

Who knows? But would we break, if we could, that repose, that
silence and mystery and peace everlasting?