Not so looked the Iphigenia in Aulis. Her forty years had seen her in
anguish, in sacrifice, in utter loneliness. But those pains were borne
for her father and her country; the sacrifice she had made pure for
herself and those around her. Wandering alone at night in the vestal
solitude of her imprisoning grove, she has looked up through its
"living summits" to the stars, which shed down into her aspect their
own lofty melody. At forty she would not misbecome the marble.

Not so looks the Persica. She is withered; she is faded; the drapery
that enfolds her has in its dignity an angularity, too, that tells of
age, of sorrow, of a stern resignation to the _must_. But her
eye, that torch of the soul, is untamed, and, in the intensity of her
reading, we see a soul invincibly young in faith and hope. Her age is
her charm, for it is the night of the past that gives this beacon-fire
leave to shine. Wither more and more, black Chrysalid! thou dost but
give the winged beauty time to mature its splendors!

Not so looked Victoria Colonna, after her life of a great hope, and of
true conjugal fidelity. She had been, not merely a bride, but a wife,
and each hour had helped to plume the noble bird. A coronet of pearls
will not shame her brow; it is white and ample, a worthy altar for
love and thought.

Even among the North American Indians, a race of men as completely
engaged in mere instinctive life as almost any in the world, and where
each chief, keeping many wives as useful servants, of course looks
with no kind eye on celibacy in Woman, it was excused in the following
instance mentioned by Mrs. Jameson. A woman dreamt in youth that she
was betrothed to the Sun. She built her a wigwam apart, filled it with