seclusion, and the few and simple traits of her history before her
appearance in the field could only have been known to the domestic
circle. Her biographer has gathered them up with a brotherly devotion.

No! Man is not willingly ungenerous. He wants faith and love, because
he is not yet himself an elevated being. He cries, with sneering
scepticism, "Give us a sign." But if the sign appears, his eyes
glisten, and he offers not merely approval, but homage.

The severe nation which taught that the happiness of the race was
forfeited through the fault of a Woman, and showed its thought of what
sort of regard Man owed her, by making him accuse her on the first
question to his God,--who gave her to the patriarch as a handmaid,
and, by the Mosaical law, bound her to allegiance like a serf,--even
they greeted, with solemn rapture, all great and holy women as
heroines, prophetesses, judges in Israel; and, if they made Eve listen
to the serpent, gave Mary as a bride to the Holy Spirit. In other
nations it has been the same down to our day. To the Woman who could
conquer a triumph was awarded. And not only those whose strength was
recommended to the heart by association with goodness and beauty, but
those who were bad, if they were steadfast and strong, had their
claims allowed. In any age a Semiramis, an Elizabeth of England, a
Catharine of Russia, makes her place good, whether in a large or small
circle. How has a little wit, a little genius, been celebrated in a
Woman! What an intellectual triumph was that of the lonely Aspasia,
and how heartily acknowledged! She, indeed, met a Pericles. But what
annalist, the rudest of men, the most plebeian of husbands, will spare
from his page one of the few anecdotes of Roman women--Sappho!
Eloisa! The names are of threadbare celebrity. Indeed, they were not
more suitably met in their own time than the Countess Colonel Plater