de mortuis nil nisi bonum principle, which I venture to suggest
is a very bad principle. Let us apply this loving tenderness to
our living neighbours, and judge the dead according to their
merits. Thus the living will be doubly benefited, and no harm be
done to the dead. Still, the evidence before us--including that
exclamation about his "best of mothers "in one of Chopin's
letters, written from Vienna, soon after the outbreak of the
Polish insurrection in 1830: "How glad my mamma will be that I
did not come back!"--justifies us, I think, in inferring that
Justina Chopin was a woman of the most lovable type, one in whom
the central principle of existence was the maternal instinct,
that bright ray of light which, dispersed in its action, displays
itself in the most varied and lovely colours. That this
principle, although often all-absorbing, is not incompatible with
the wider and higher social and intellectual interests is a
proposition that does not stand in need of proof. But who could
describe that wondrous blending of loving strength and lovable
weakness of a true woman's character? You feel its beauty and
sublimity, and if you attempt to give words to your feeling you
produce a caricature.

The three sisters of Frederick all manifested more or less a
taste for literature. The two elder sisters, Louisa (who married
Professor Jedrzejewicz, and died in 1855) and Isabella (who
married Anton Barcinski--first inspector of schools, and
subsequently director of steam navigation on the Vistula--and
died in 1881), wrote together for the improvement of the working
classes. The former contributed now and then, also after her
marriage, articles to periodicals on the education of the young.
Emilia, the youngest sister, who died at the early age of