From a Miniature by Holbein in the Collection of Sam.^l Rogers Esq.

WOMEN OF HISTORY:

SELECTED FROM THE
WRITINGS OF STANDARD AUTHORS.

BY THE
EDITOR OF "MEN OF HISTORY."

Biography is the most universally pleasant and universally profitable of all reading."

EDINBURGH:
W. P. NIMMO, HAY, & MITCHELL.
1890.

MORRISON AND GIBB, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.

PREFACE.

Women of History is a further development of the idea which suggested the companion volume, Men of History, viz.: "To exhibit views of the world's great men and women, as set forth in the best words of the best authors—to convey, as it were, at once impressions of History and Literature, and lessons in Biography and Style."

In the present case, it has not been considered necessary to attempt a classification of the subjects in the manner followed in the preceding volume, from the fact that the feelings and motives which generally influence the lives of celebrated women are of a nature different from those of the opposite sex, and from the consequent want of a standard sufficiently distinct to adhere to. A chronological arrangement, however, has been adopted, which, it is hoped, will to a considerable extent supply the want of classification.

CONTENTS.

WOMEN OF HISTORY.

LUCRETIA.

[B.C. 500.]
BAYLE.

ROMAN dame, illustrious for her beauty and the nobleness of her birth, and more for her virtue. She was married to one Collatinus, a relative of Tarquin, king of Rome. Her tragic story runs thus: Tarquin, not having been able to render himself master of the town of Ardea so promptly as he had calculated, besieged it in form, and the languidness of the operation comported very well with the inclination of the princes to amuse themselves in the way princes are in the habit of doing. At one of the suppers given by Sextus to his two brothers, and to Collatinus their kinsman, a question was raised, not as to the beauty of their mistresses, as is the custom in our day, but as to that of their respective wives. Each maintained that his wife was fairer than those of his companions; and the dispute rising high, Collatinus suggested a means of terminating it. "What is the use of so many words," said he, "we can in a very short time have the proof of the superiority of my Lucretia. Let us mount our horses; let us surprise our wives; and the decision of our question will be the more easy that they are not prepared for us." Inflamed by wine, the princes accepted the proposal, and they rode to Rome at the top of their horses' speed. They there found sitting at table the fair daughters of Tarquin, who were engaged in pleasure with companions of their own age. They next went to Collatium; and though it was now late at night, they found Lucretia in the midst of her servants, engaged in needlework. They all agreed that she carried off the palm, and thereupon returned to the camp; but Sextus, without uttering a word of his purpose, found his way secretly back to Collatium, and was received by Lucretia with that attention and civility that was due to the eldest son of the king, and without the slightest suspicion that he entertained any purpose other than what was honest and good.

After he had supped, he was conducted to the chamber intended for him—not to sleep, for he had other intentions. As soon as he thought that all had repaired to their beds, he stept, sword in hand, into the private chamber of the unsuspecting Lucretia, and after having threatened to kill her if she made any noise, he told her his passion—bringing to serve his purpose prayers the most tender, and menaces the most terrible; in short, employing all the arts by which an impassioned man might attack the heart of a woman. All was in vain: Lucretia was firm, and persisted in her firmness, altogether undismayed by the fear of death; but she trembled at the threat which he made to expose her to the last infamy of woman. He declared that, after despatching her, he would kill a slave, put his dead body on her bed, and make it be believed that the double murder had been the punishment of the adultery in which they had been surprised. Having accomplished his purpose, he retired, as pleased with himself and as proud of his triumph as if it had been a feat of honest war, and all conformable to the rules of gallantry.

Plunged in the deepest grief, Lucretia sent a message to her father, who was at Rome, and her husband, who was at the siege, praying that they might come to her immediately. They obeyed the message; she straightway informed them of all the circumstances of her dishonour, and entreated them to revenge her wrong. They promised that they would comply with her request, and set about endeavouring to console her by what means that were within their power; but she resisted all their efforts of consolation, and, drawing forth a dagger which she had concealed in her clothes, she plunged it into her heart. Brutus, who was present at this spectacle, found in it an occasion for which he had longed to deliver Rome from the tyranny of Tarquin, and he made such excellent use of it, that the royalty was abolished.

SAPPHO.

[B.C. 568.]
MURE.

CCORDING to established data, the more brilliant portion of Sappho's career may be placed in the first half of the sixth century before Christ, while her childhood and early youth belong to the close of the seventh. Her birthplace, according to the more trustworthy authorities, was Mitylene, the metropolis of the isle of Lesbos. Others make her a native of the neighbouring town of Eresus. Whether Sappho was ever married is doubtful; but the balance of evidence is strongly on the negative side of the question. She is familiarly alluded to by Horace as the "Lesbian maiden;" nor is there any notice of a husband, but on a single recent and very questionable authority, where the broadly indecent etymology of the names, both of the man on whom the honour is conferred, and of his birthplace, sufficiently proves them to be fictitious. How far the circumstance of her having had a daughter can be considered as admissible evidence of her having been married, is a point the settlement of which must depend on a closer inquiry into her moral habits. That such was the fact, however, is stated on respectable authority. The name assigned to the maiden is Cleis, the same as that of Sappho's reputed mother.

Sappho is described, by the only authors who have transmitted any distinct notices on the subject, as not distinguished for personal beauty, but as short of stature, and of dark, it may be understood swarthy, complexion. The laudatory commonplace of kalë, or "fair," which Plato and others incidentally connect with her name, no way militates against this account, as implying nothing more, perhaps less, than does the English phrase by which the Greek epithet has above been rendered, and which is as frequently bestowed in familiar usage on plain as on handsome women. Alcæus describes her simply as "dark haired" and "sweetly smiling." No notice is taken of her actual beauty, which an admiring lover would hardly have passed over in silence had it offered matter for warmer eulogy.

Of the extent to which Sappho was brought under the sway of the tender passion which, in one shape or other, formed the theme, with little exception, of her collective works, sufficient evidence exists in her only remaining entire composition, the first ode in the published collections. She there describes herself, in the most touching and impassioned strains, as the victim of an unrequited love, and implores the aid of Venus to ease her pangs by melting the heart of the obdurate or inconstant object of her affection. The person to whom this ode is supposed to refer, or who at least obtained, in the popular tradition, the chief and longest sway over the affections of Sappho, was a Lesbian youth called Phaon, distinguished for his personal attractions and irresistible power over the female heart. For a time he is described as having corresponded to her ardour; but, after cohabiting with her during some years, he deserted her, leaving her in a state of despair, for which the only remedy that suggested itself was that habitually resorted to in such cases—a leap from the summit of the Leucadian promontory into the sea. That she actually carried this purpose into effect was the popular opinion of antiquity, from the age, at least, of Menander downwards, and seems to have passed current as an authentic fact, even with the more intelligent authorities.

Both these points in the history of the poetess, her love for Phaon, and her leap from the Leucadian cliff, have been questioned with more or less plausibility by distinguished critics of the present age. In respect to the first, it has been denied not only that Phaon was the name of the hero of this tragical drama, but that such a person ever existed. The Leucadian leap of Sappho, though ranked by various modern commentators, like the name of her lover, among the mythical elements of her biography, will not perhaps be found, on a critical estimate of the circumstances connected with it, to offer any serious ground of scepticism.

Sappho, in the portrait of her character jointly exhibited in her own works and in the notices of her more candid and intelligent countrymen, appears as a woman of a generous disposition, affectionate heart, and independent spirit, unless when brought under the sway of those tender passions, which lorded over every other influence in her bosom. Of a naturally ardent and excitable temperament, she seems from her earliest years to have been habituated to the enjoyments rather than to the duties, much less the restraints, of Greek female life. Her chief or early occupations were the exercise and display of her brilliant poetical talents and elegant accomplishments; and her voluptuous habits are testified by almost every extant fragment of her poems. Her susceptibility to the passion of love formed, above all, the dominant feature of her life, her character, and her muse. Her indulgence, however, of this, as of every other appetite, sensual or intellectual, while setting at nought all moral restraints, was marked by her own peculiar refinement of taste, exclusive of every approach to low excess or profligacy.

In the portrait presented to us by the popular authorities of the present day, all the less favourable features of the above sketch are effaced; while the colouring of the remainder has been heightened to a dazzling extreme of beauty and brilliancy, exhibiting a model of perfection, physical and moral, such as was never probably exemplified in woman, and least of all in the prioress of an association of votaries of Venus and the Muses, in one of the most voluptuous states of Greece. The following is the summary of her various excellences, given by one of the popular organs of this amiable but fallacious theory: "In Sappho, a warm and profound sensibility, virgin purity, feminine softness, and delicacy of sentiment and feeling, were combined with the native probity and simplicity of the Æolian character; and, although endued with a fine perception of the beautiful and brilliant, she preferred genuine conscious rectitude to every other source of human enjoyment."

ASPASIA OF PERICLES.

[B.C. 470.]
GROTE.

SPASIA, daughter of Axiochus, was a native of Miletus, beautiful, well-educated, and ambitious. She resided at Athens, and is affirmed, though upon very doubtful evidence, to have kept slave-girls to be let out as courtesans. Whatever may be the case with this report, which is probably one of the scandals engendered by political animosity against Pericles, it is certain that, so remarkable were her own fascinations, her accomplishments, and her powers, not merely of conversation, but even of oratory and criticism, that the most distinguished Athenians of all ages and characters—Socrates among the number—visited her, and several of them took their wives along with them to hear her also. The free citizen-women of Athens lived in strict and almost Oriental recluseness, as well after being married as when single: everything which concerned their lives, their happiness, or their rights, was determined or managed for them by male relatives; and they seem to have been destitute of all mental culture and accomplishments. Their society presented no charm nor interest, which men accordingly sought for in the company of the class of women called Hetæræ, or courtesans, literally female companions who lived a free life, managed their own affairs, and supported themselves by their powers of pleasing. These women were numerous, and were doubtless of every variety of personal character; but the most distinguished and superior among them, such as Aspasia and Theodote, appear to have been the only women in Greece, except the Spartan, who either inspired strong passion or exercised mental ascendancy.

Pericles had been determined in his choice of a wife by those family considerations which were held almost obligatory at Athens, and had married a woman very nearly related to him, by whom he had two sons, Xanthippus and Paralus. But the marriage, having never been comfortable, was afterwards dissolved by mutual consent, according to that full liberty of divorce which the Attic law permitted, and Pericles concurred with his wife's male relations (who formed her legal guardians) in giving her away to another husband. He then took Aspasia to live with him; had a son by her, who bore his name; and continued ever afterwards on terms of the greatest intimacy and affection with her. Without adopting those exaggerations which represent Aspasia as having communicated to Pericles his distinguished eloquence, or even as having herself composed orations for public delivery, we may well believe her to have been qualified to take interest and share in that literary and philosophical society which frequented the house of Pericles, and which his unprincipled son Xanthippus, disgusted with his father's regular expenditure as withholding from him the means of supporting an extravagant establishment, reported abroad with exaggerated calumnies, and turned into derision. It was from that worthless young man, who died of the Athenian epidemic during the lifetime of Pericles, that his political enemies and the comic writers of the day were mainly furnished with scandalous anecdotes to assail the private habits of this distinguished man. The comic writers attacked him for alleged intrigues with different women; but the name of Aspasia they treated as public property, without any mercy or reserve: she was the Omphale, the Dejanira, or the Here, to the great Heracles or Zeus of Athens. At length one of these comic writers, Hermippus, not contented with scenic attacks, indicted her before the dikastery for impiety, as participant in the philosophical discussions held, and the opinions professed, in the society of Pericles by Anaxagoras and others. Against Anaxagoras himself, too, a similar indictment is said to have been preferred, either by Cleon or by Thucydides, son of Milesias, under a general resolution recently passed in the public assembly at the instance of Diopeithes. And such was the sensitive antipathy of the Athenian public, shown afterwards fatally in the case of Socrates, and embittered in this instance by all the artifices of political faction, against philosophers whose opinions conflicted with the received religious dogmas, that Pericles did not dare to place Anaxagoras on his trial. The latter retired from Athens, and a sentence of banishment was passed against him in his absence. But Pericles himself defended Aspasia before the dikastery: in fact, the indictment was as much against him as against her. One thing alleged against her, and also against Pheidias, was the reception of free women to facilitate the intrigues of Pericles.

He defended her successfully, and procured a verdict of acquittal; but we are not surprised to hear that his speech was marked by the strongest personal emotions, and even by tears. The dikasts were accustomed to such appeals to their sympathies, sometimes even to extravagant excess, from ordinary accused persons; but in Pericles, so manifest an outburst of emotion stands out as something quite unparalleled, for constant self-mastery was one of the most prominent features in his character.

XANTIPPE.

[B.C. 390.]
BRUCKER.

HE woman who could teach Socrates the virtue of patience deserves to be remembered. Xantippe, concerning whom writers relate so many amusing tales, was certainly a woman of a high and unmanageable spirit. But Socrates, while he endeavoured to curb the violence of her temper, improved his own. When Alcibiades expressed his surprise that his friend could bear to live in the same house with so perverse and quarrelsome a companion, Socrates replied, that being daily inured to ill-humour at home, he was the better prepared to encounter perverseness and injury abroad. After all, however, it is probable that the infirmities of this good woman have been exaggerated, and that calumny has had some hand in finishing her picture; for Socrates himself, in a dialogue with his son Lamprocles, allows her many domestic virtues, and we find her afterwards expressing great affection for her husband during his imprisonment. She must, indeed, have been as deficient in understanding as she was froward in disposition, if she had not profited by the daily lessons which for twenty years she received from such a master.

News being at length brought of the return of the ship from Delos, the officers to whose care Socrates was committed, delivered to him early in the morning the final order for his execution, and immediately, according to the law, set him at liberty from his bonds. His friends, who came early to the prison that they might have an opportunity of conversing with their master through the day, found his wife sitting by him with a child in her arms. As soon as Xantippe saw them, she burst into tears and said, "Oh, Socrates, this is the last time your friends will ever speak to you, or you to them." Socrates, that the tranquillity of his last moments might not be disturbed by her unavailing lamentations, requested that she might be conducted home. With the most frantic expressions of grief, she left the prison. An interesting conversation then passed between Socrates and his friends, which chiefly turned upon the immortality of the soul. After a short interval, during which he gave some necessary instructions to his domestics, and took his last leave of his children, the attendant of the prison informed him that the time for drinking the poison was come. The executioner, though accustomed to such scenes, shed tears as he presented the fatal cup. Socrates received it without change of countenance, or the least appearance of perturbation; then, offering up a prayer to the gods that they would grant him a prosperous passage into the invisible world, with perfect composure he swallowed the poisonous draught. His friends around him burst into tears. Socrates alone remained unmoved. He upbraided their pusillanimity, and entreated them to exercise a manly constancy worthy of the friends of virtue. He continued walking till the chilling operation of the hemlock obliged him to lie down upon his bed. Then, covering himself with his cloak, he expired.

ASPASIA OF CYRUS.

[B.C. 421.]
BAYLE.

HIS celebrated woman was of Photia, and daughter of one Hermotomus. According to the portrait left us by Ælian, she was very accomplished, both in body and mind. Her name, before she went to Cyrus, was Milto, for which the king substituted that of the famous mistress of Pericles. Her rearing under her father, who lost her mother when the child was born, was proportioned to his limited means; and, when very young, she was the cause of a peculiar grief to him, insomuch as, while she was extremely beautiful, she was rendered almost hideous by a tumour which grew upon her chin. The doctor to whom her father had sent her to get the tumour removed, returned the patient in the same condition in which she went, for the reason that he had got no fee; and Milto was consequently plunged in grief, every now and then examining her face in the mirror. It was said that she discovered in a dream the means of her cure; and when this was accomplished, her features were restored to their natural proportions, so that she became the fairest maiden of her time. She has been represented as having blonde hair, with a natural curl; large eyes; a nose slightly aquiline; small ears; a delicate skin, partaking of the rose and the lily; red lips; pearly teeth; her legs and arms formed in perfection; and a voice so mellifluous as to rival that of the sirens. These qualities, which were the gift of nature, were unadorned by artifice, for neither the inclination nor the ability of her father permitted of extraneous decoration.

It happened that some of those officers who commanded under Cyrus, son of the king of Persia, had observed Milto, and, considering her charms, sent her, against her own consent and that of her father, to their master, along with some other beautiful girls of Greek descent. When they presented her to Cyrus, he rose from the table and proceeded to amuse her by endeavouring to get her to drink according to the custom of the country. The three Greek girls who were with her were not of the humour of Milto; for, retaining in remembrance the instructions of their nurses, they played the rôle allotted to them, allowing themselves to be decked out for the occasion, and manifesting pleasure when Cyrus approached them, caressed them, or kissed them. They even vied with each other in the success of their powers of attraction; but Milto exhibited so much repugnance to the usage to which she had been so strangely destined, that it was not without force that she was made to submit to the necessary decoration of her person. Nor when these others were enjoying themselves with the mirth and laughter of their emulation to please the prince, did Milto cease to weep, not daring even to lift her eyes, in the shame of the situation in which she found herself placed. When Cyrus would request any of the others to sit near him, the request did not require to be repeated; but as for Aspasia, she paid no attention to it. While they allowed him to fondle them, she resisted even the touch of his finger, and used menaces in her defence, in the way of offended women. At length Cyrus put his hand upon her, when, rising indignantly from the table, she endeavoured to escape. But Cyrus did justice to her virtue, declaring that of all the girls who had been sent him, she alone had displayed the beauty of innocence and modesty; and he thenceforth loved her more than he had done any other woman.

Nor was it only by the qualities of her person that Aspasia exercised an influence over Cyrus: she ruled him also by her counsels. He consulted her on all occasions, even on the most difficult subjects, and never had cause to repent the advice which she offered him. It was indeed difficult to say whether she excelled more in the gifts of her person or those of her mind; and as influence such as hers goes a great way, she might have swayed the sovereignty if she had had greater mind to such kind of ambition. As for all that concerns rank and dignity, she was treated by Cyrus as his legitimate queen; and so far as could be known, he limited his affections to Aspasia, and her alone; so we might cease to wonder if this grand elevation of a poor Greek girl should make a noise at the court of the great king. Nor was this reputation of small service to her; for after Cyrus was slain, Aspasia was diligently sought after by Artaxerxes. She was found sorrowful and desolate, and it was not without resistance that she allowed herself to be dressed in the habit which he had sent her. At the first interview, Artaxerxes fell deep in love with her; but it was long before she could be prevailed upon to return his affection.

CORNELIA, THE MOTHER OF THE GRACCHI.

[B.C. 230.]
PLUTARCH.

IBERIUS Gracchus, though once honoured with the censorship, twice with the consulate, and led up two triumphs, yet derived still greater dignity from his virtues. Hence, after the death of that Scipio who conquered Hannibal, he was thought worthy to marry Cornelia, the daughter of that great man, though he had not been upon any terms of friendship with him, but rather always at variance. It is said that he once caught a pair of serpents upon his bed, and that the soothsayers, after they had considered the prodigy, advised him neither to kill them both, nor let them both go. If he killed the male serpent, they told him his death would be the consequence; if the female, that of Cornelia. Tiberius, who loved his wife, and thought it more suitable for him to die first who was much older than she, killed the male, and set the female at liberty. Not long after this he died, leaving Cornelia with no fewer than twelve children.

The care of the house and the children now entirely devolved upon Cornelia, and she behaved with such sobriety, so much parental affection and greatness of mind, that Tiberius seemed not to have judged ill in choosing to die for so valuable a woman. For though Ptolemy, king of Egypt, paid his addresses to her, and offered her a share in his throne, she refused him. During her widowhood she lost all her children except three, one daughter, who was married to Scipio the younger, and two sons, Tiberius and Caius. Cornelia brought them up with so much care, that though they were without dispute of the noblest family, and had the happiest genius and disposition of all the Roman youth, yet education was allowed to have contributed more to their perfection than nature. When her son Tiberius entered upon those public employments which plunged the family into so many misfortunes, some blamed his mother Cornelia, who used to reproach her sons, that she was still called the mother-in-law of Scipio, not the mother of the Gracchi.

Cornelia is reported to have borne all her misfortunes, including the murder of her two sons, with a noble magnanimity, and to have said of the consecrated places, in particular where her sons lost their lives, that "they were monuments worthy of them." She took up her residence at Misenum, and made no alteration in her manner of living. As she had many friends, her table was always open for the purposes of hospitality. Greeks, and other men of letters, she had always with her; and all the kings in alliance with Rome expressed their regard by sending her presents, and receiving the like civilities in return. She made herself very agreeable to her guests, by acquainting them with many particulars of her father Africanus, and his manner of living. But what they most admired in her was, that she could speak of her sons without a sigh or a tear, and recount their actions and sufferings as if she had been giving a narrative of some heroes. Some, therefore, imagined that age and the greatness of her misfortunes had deprived her of her understanding and sensibility. But those who are of that opinion seem rather to have wanted understanding themselves, since they knew not how much a noble mind may, by a liberal education, be enabled to support itself against distress, and that though, in the pursuit of rectitude, fortune may often defeat the purposes of virtue, yet virtue, in bearing affliction, can never lose her prerogative.

PORTIA.

[B.C. 42.]
PLUTARCH.

ORTIA, the daughter of Cato of Utica, was learned in philosophy, had a great and lofty spirit, joined to good sense and remarkable prudence. She was much attached to her husband Brutus. Of this latter one extraordinary instance is on record. She had reason to know that something weighed heavily on the mind of her husband, but she did not wish to interrogate him until she could prove by experience what she was able to suffer in her own person. With this view she took a small instrument with which the barbers of the time used to pare the nails; and, having dismissed from her presence her woman and servants, she inflicted a deep wound in her thigh, with the consequence of a great effusion of blood. The severe pain threw her into a fever, and Brutus having been thrown thereby into great grief, she addressed him thus:—"I, the daughter of Cato, was given to you, Brutus, not to be a partner of your bed and table only as a concubine, but to be the personal sharer in your fortunes, whether good or bad. As to your part of our contract of marriage, I have no cause to complain; but, on my side, what proof have I to offer of my devotedness to you, and how I could prove my love to you, if I did not know how to bear with constancy a secret infliction or a misfortune, which there might be any reason for keeping from the knowledge of others? I know that the feeble nature of women unfits them for keeping a secret; but good training, Brutus, and the conversation of good and virtuous people, exercise an influence over women's minds; and, as for me, I have that advantage in being the daughter of Cato and the wife of Brutus. Yet even to that I could not trust myself, until I had satisfied myself by experience that I was myself superior to pain and suffering." And having finished these words, she showed him her wound, and told him how she had inflicted it to prove herself. Brutus was astonished when he heard these words; and, lifting up his hands, prayed heaven for success to his enterprise, that he might be worthy of such a wife as Portia, whom he accordingly proceeded to comfort according to his power.

Soon afterwards Cæsar was killed, and Brutus, despairing of a fortunate issue to the affair, resolved to quit Italy, and so betook himself on foot to Elia, situated on the sea-board. There Portia, being to part from him and return to Rome, she tried to conceal the sorrow which preyed upon her heart; nor would she have failed in this, had not a picture which she saw proved too much for her resolution. The subject was taken from the Greek history, where Andromache accompanied Hector to that part of the city from which he was to issue for the war, and the representation included the incident, that while Hector returned into her hands their infant, the eyes of Andromache were fixed upon him. The similarity of the position of the parties to her own forced her to weep, and every time she returned to take another look, the tears burst again from her eyes.

When she heard of her husband's death, Portia made up her mind to die, and her intention by some means having become known to her friends, they watched her that they might avert so fearful a catastrophe; but she found means to elude their surveillance, and the device was strange. She snatched from the fire a handful of red-hot charcoal, and forcing it into her mouth, which, with wonderful resolution, she held firmly shut, she was choked to death.

OCTAVIA.

[B.C. 11.]
BAYLE.

HE grand-niece of Julius Cæsar and sister of Augustus, was one of the most illustrious dames of ancient Rome. She was married first to Claudius Marcellus, who was consul in the year of Rome 704; and very soon after his death she married Marc Antony, a union very much desired by the friends of both the parties, as likely to conciliate Antony and Cæsar, and thereby promote peace. Octavia, herself a highly virtuous woman, was well formed to promote this desirable object; but her husband afterwards so completely abandoned himself to his passion for Cleopatra, that he seemed to have lost all rational control over himself. Before he fell under this slavery of an unholy love, Octavia by her counsels exercised much power over him for good; but now matters were changed, and he left her in Italy, when in 717 he sailed from Tarentum for the East. Some time after, she went forth upon the world to try to find him; but having learned from letters received from him that he desired she should stop at Athens, she arrested her steps at that city, even while she was aware that he was merely deceiving and laughing at her. She then returned to Rome, but would not, though recommended by Augustus, remove from the house of her husband; there she remained, taking upon her domestic cares and managing all things as if she still had in the faithless Antony an object of admiration. She evinced towards his children by Fulvia, his former wife, the same affection she had hitherto shown them, and reared and educated them with the same vigilance. She was willing to suffer all, but that the injuries she received at the hands of her husband should be the cause of a civil war, and in subsequently obeying his command to leave his house, her only regret was that she saw that it would be held to be the cause of political commotion. By such conduct she injured the character of Antony, even while she was not aware of the effects of her conduct; for the natural consequence was an increase of the indignation and contempt for the man who could leave such a woman for such another as Cleopatra.

The war which followed terminated, as every one knows, by the entire ruin of Marc Antony. Subsequently fortune seemed to promise Octavia a high measure of happiness. She had a son of great promise, who married the daughter of Augustus, and was viewed as the heir of the Empire; but he died in the flower of his age, and this was a shock to Octavia for which she would receive no consolation. She plunged herself into solitude and incurable melancholy. She could bear to see no image of Marcellus her son, nor even to hear his name mentioned. Hating all mothers, she raved principally against Livia, to whose son passed the honours and glory that were promised to her own. Sunk in darkness and solitude, she would not even see her brother Augustus, nor would she hear the songs of praise which had been offered to the many virtues of the son she had so dearly loved. Not even the glory of her brother had any influence in ameliorating her melancholy, if it was not that she viewed his success with aversion; and thus segregated from all human sympathies, she lived only in the exercise of the solemn offices of religion.

CLEOPATRA.

[BORN B.C. 68. DIED B.C. 29.]
MERIVALE.

ER personal talents were indeed of the most varied kind; she was an admirable singer and musician; she was skilled in many languages, and possessed intellectual accomplishments rarely found among the staidest of her sex, combined with the archness and humour of the lightest. She exerted herself to pamper her lover's [Antony's] sensual appetites, to stimulate his flagging interests by ingenious surprises, nor less to gratify the revival of his nobler propensities with paintings and sculptures, and works of literature. She encouraged him to take his seat as gymnasiarch, or director of the public amusements, and even to vary his debauches with philosophy and criticism. She amused him by sending divers to fasten salt-fish to the bait of his angling-rod; and when she had pledged herself to consume the value of ten millions of sesterces at a meal, amazed him by dissolving, in the humble cup of vinegar set before her, a pearl of inestimable price.

Her lover attended upon her in the forum, at the theatre, and the tribunals; he rode with her, or followed her chariot on foot, escorted by a train of eunuchs; at night he strolled with her through the city, in the garb of a slave, and encountered abuse and blows from the rabble of the streets; by day he wore the loose Persian robe, and girded himself with the Median dagger, and he designated as his palace the prætorium or general's apartment. Painters and sculptors were charged to group the illustrious pair together, and the coins of the kingdom bore the heads and names of both conjointly. The Roman legionary, with the name of Cleopatra inscribed upon his shield, found himself transformed into a Macedonian body-guard. Masques were presented at the court, in which the versatile Plancus sank into the character of a stage buffoon, and enacted the part of the sea-god Glaucus in curt cerulean vestments, crowned with the feathery heads of the papyrus, and deformed with the tail of a fish.

But when Cleopatra arrayed herself in the garb and usurped the attributes of Isis, and invited her paramour to ape the deity Osiris, the portentous travesty assumed a deeper significance. It had been the policy of the Macedonian sovereigns to form an alliance between the popular superstitions of their Greek and Egyptian subjects. Ptolemæus Soter had prevailed on the native priesthood to sanction the consecration of a new divinity, Serapis, who, if not really of Grecian origin, was confidently identified by the Greeks with their own Pluto, or perhaps with Zeus. The Macedonians had admitted with little scruple their great hero's claims to be the offspring of Ammon, the king of gods, who was worshipped in the Oasis of the desert. The notion that a mere man might become exalted into union with deity, favoured by the rationalising explanations of their popular mythology already current among the learned, had gradually settled into an indulgent admission of the royal right of apotheosis. Antony had assumed the character of Bacchus at Athens. In the metropolis of Grecian scepticism this could only be regarded as a drunken whim; but when he came forward in Alexandria as the Nile-God Osiris, the Bacchus or fructifying power of the Coptic mythology, he claimed as a present deity the veneration of the credulous Egyptians.

Another scene follows the death of Antony. When the ceremonies of interment were finished, Cleopatra allowed herself to be led to the palace of her ancestors. Exhausted with fever by the vehemence of her passionate mourning, she refused the care of her physician, and declared that she would perish by hunger. Octavius [the conqueror of Antony] was alarmed at the avowal of this desperate resolution. He could only prevail upon her to protract her existence by the barbarous threat of murdering her children. He held out also the hope of a personal interview, and again her vanity whispered to her not yet to despair. The artless charms of youth which, as she at least deemed, had enchained the great Julius at a single interview, had long since passed away; the more mature attractions which experience had taught her to cultivate for the conquest of her second lover, might fail under the disastrous ravages of so many years of indulgence and dissipation; but time had not blighted her genius; her distresses claimed compassion; and from pity, she well knew, there is but one step to love. In the retirement of the women's apartments she decked her chamber with sumptuous magnificence, and threw herself on a silken couch in the negligent attire of sickness and woe. She clasped to her bosom the letters of her earliest admirer, and surrounded herself with his busts and portraits, to make an impression on the filial piety of one who claimed to inherit his conquests and sympathise with his dearest interests. When the expected visitor entered, she sprang passionately to meet him, and threw herself at his feet; her eyes were red with weeping, her whole countenance was disordered, her bosom heaved, and her voice trembled with emotion. The marks of blows inflicted on her breast were visible in the disorder of her clothing. She addressed him as her lord, and sighed as she transferred to a stranger the sovereign title she had so long borne herself, and which she had first received from her conqueror's father.

The young Roman acknowledged the charms of female beauty, and had often surrendered to them; but he knew also his own power of resisting them, which he had already sternly practised, and he now guarded himself against her seductions by fixing his eyes obdurately on the ground. Despairing of conquest, she threw herself upon his mercy, handed to him the list of her treasures, and pleaded piteously for bare life. A slave, interrogated and threatened perhaps with torture, declaring that some of her effects were still withheld, she flew at him and tore his face with her nails. Cleopatra had tasked her powers of fascination, and she knew that they had failed. She heard without surprise that even within three days she was to be conveyed away with her children, to adorn the conqueror's triumph. She formed her plan with secresy and decision. She directed her attendants to make ready for the voyage, and repaired with her female companions to Antony's mausoleum. She gave orders for a banquet to be served, and in the meanwhile embraced the dead man's bier, and mingled her tears with the wine she poured upon it. Soon after, she commanded all her attendants to leave her except her two favourite women, Iras and Charmion, and at the same time she sent a sealed packet to be delivered to Octavius. It contained only a brief and passionate request to be buried with her lover. His first impulse was to rush to the spot and prevent the catastrophe it portended; but in the next moment the suspicion of a trick to excite his sympathy flashed across him, and he contented himself with sending persons to inquire. The messengers made all haste; but they arrived too late; the tragedy had been acted out, and the curtain was falling. Bursting into the tomb, they beheld Cleopatra lying dead on a golden couch in royal attire. Of her two women, Iras was dying at her feet, and Charmion, with failing strength, was replacing the diadem on her mistress's brow. The manner of Cleopatra's death was never certainly known.

MARIAMNE.

[B.C. 28.]
MERIVALE.

ISTORY hardly presents a more tragic situation than that of the devoted Mariamne, the miserable object of a furious attachment on the part of the monster [Herod the Great] who had slain before her eyes her uncle, her brother, and her grandfather. Herod doted upon her beauty, in which she bore away the palm from every princess of her time; the blood which flowed in her veins secured to him the throne which he had raised upon the ruins of her father's house; but her personal and political claims upon the royal regard made her doubly obnoxious to the sister [Salome] of the usurper, who felt alike humiliated by either. Mariamne was imperious: she despised the meaner parentage both of Herod and Salome, and was disgusted with the endearments of her husband, stained with the blood of her murdered kinsmen. She rebuked him impetuously for his barbarities, repelled his caresses, and denied him his rights over her person, while she maintained inviolate against all others the dignity of her conjugal virtue.

Herod was apprehensive of her influence with the people, to the detriment of his own upstart family, and her resentment was inflamed by discovering that he had given orders on leaving Judea, that she should be put to death in the event of his being sacrificed by Octavius. There was little need of artifice to effect the destruction of one who laid herself open so fearlessly to the wrath of a tyrant, however he might be besotted by his love. The foes of Mariamne pretended that she had plotted to poison her husband. She was seized, examined, and sentence of death formally passed upon her. The sentence may have been intended only to intimidate her; but its execution was urged by the jealous passions of Salome, and Herod's fears were worked upon till he consented to let the blow fall. Her misery was crowned by the craven reproaches of her mother Alexandra, who sought to escape partaking her fate by basely cringing to the murderer. But she, the last daughter of a noble race, endured with constancy to the end, and the favour of her admiring countrymen has not failed to accord to her a distinguished place in the long line of Jewish heroines.

They recorded with grim delight the tyrant's unavailing remorse, his fruitless yearnings for the victim he had sacrificed, the plaintive exclamations he made to echo through his palace, and the passionate upbraidings with which he assailed her judges. He strove, it was said, by magical incantations to recall her spirit from the shades, and, as if to drive from his mind the intolerable recollection of her loss, commanded his attendants always to speak of her as one alive. Whether or not the pestilence which ensued might justly be regarded as a divine judgment, the sharp disease and deep settled melancholy which afflicted the murderer formed a signal and merited retribution for his crime.

JULIA DOMNA.

[240.]
GIBBON.

HE second wife of the Emperor Severus deserved all that the stars could promise her. She possessed, even in an advanced age, the attractions of beauty; and united to a lively imagination a firmness of mind and strength of judgment seldom bestowed on her sex. Her amiable qualities never made any deep impression on the dark and jealous temper of her husband; but in her son's [Caracalla's] reign she administered the principal affairs of the empire with a prudence that supported his authority, and with a moderation that sometimes corrected his wild extravagances. Julia applied herself to letters and philosophy with some success, and with the most splendid reputation. She was the patroness of every art, and the friend of every man of genius. The grateful flattery of the learned has celebrated her virtue; but, if we may credit the scandal of ancient history, chastity was very far from being the most conspicuous virtue of the Empress Julia.

She had experienced all the vicissitudes of fortune. From an humble station she had been raised to greatness, only to taste the superior bitterness of an exalted rank. She was doomed to weep over the death of one of her sons, and over the life of the other. The cruel fate of Caracalla, though her good sense must have long taught her to expect it, awakened the feelings of a mother and of an empress. Notwithstanding the respectful civility expressed by the usurper [Macrinus] towards the widow of Severus, she descended with a painful struggle into the condition of a subject, and soon withdrew herself, by a voluntary death, from the anxious and humiliating dependence.

[So far Gibbon; to which Guizot adds:] This princess, as soon as she heard of Caracalla's fate, entertained the idea of starving herself to death. She was reconciled to life by the respect with which Macrinus treated her, by whom she was permitted to retain her court and establishment. But if we may draw any safe conclusion from the curtailed text of Dion and Xiphilin's imperfect abridgment, she conceived new ambitious projects, and aspired to empire. She wished to follow in the steps of Semiramis and Netocris, whose ancient country bordered on her own. Macrinus ordered her immediately to quit Antioch, and retire wherever she would. Recurring to her original design, she died of hunger.

ZENOBIA.

[300.]
GIBBON.

ODERN Europe has produced several illustrious women, who have sustained with glory the weight of empire; nor is our own age destitute of such distinguished characters. But if we except the doubtful achievements of Semiramis, Zenobia is perhaps the only female whose superior genius broke through the servile indolence imposed on her sex by the climate and manners of Asia. She claimed her descent from the Macedonian kings of Egypt, equalled in beauty her ancestor Cleopatra, and far surpassed that princess in chastity and valour. Zenobia was esteemed the most lovely, as well as the most heroic of her sex. She was of a dark complexion (for in speaking of a lady, these trifles become important). Her teeth were of a pearly whiteness, and her large black eyes sparkled with uncommon fire, tempered by the most attractive sweetness. Her voice was strong and harmonious. Her manly understanding was strengthened and adorned by study. She was not ignorant of the Latin tongue, but possessed in equal perfection the Greek, the Syriac, and the Egyptian languages. She had drawn up for her own use an epitome of Oriental history, and familiarly compared the beauties of Homer and Plato under the tuition of the sublime Longinus.

This accomplished woman gave her hand to Odenathus, who, from a private station, raised himself to the dominion of the East. She soon became the friend and companion of a hero. In the intervals of war, Odenathus passionately delighted in the exercise of hunting; he pursued with ardour the wild beasts of the desert,—lions, panthers, and bears,—and the ardour of Zenobia, in that dangerous amusement, was not inferior to his own. She had inured her constitution to fatigue, disdained the use of a covered carriage, generally appeared on horseback in a military habit, and sometimes marched several miles on foot at the head of the troops. The success of Odenathus was in a great measure ascribed to her incomparable prudence and fortitude. Their splendid victories over the great king, whom they twice pursued as far as the gates of Ctesiphon, laid the foundations of their united fame and power. The armies which they commanded, and the provinces which they had saved, acknowledged not any other sovereigns than their invincible chiefs. The senate and people of Rome revered a stranger who had avenged the captive emperor; and even the insensible son of Valerian accepted Odenathus for his legitimate colleague.

With the assistance of her most faithful friends, Zenobia [after the death of her husband] immediately filled the vacant throne, and governed with manly counsels Palmyra, Syria, and the East, above five years. By the death of Odenathus, that authority was at an end which the senate had granted him only as a personal distinction; but his martial widow, disdaining both the senate and Gallienus, obliged one of the Roman generals, who was sent against her, to retreat into Europe, with the loss of his army and his reputation. Instead of the little passions which so frequently perplex a female reign, the steady administration of Zenobia was guided by the most judicious maxims of policy. If it was expedient to pardon, she could calm her resentment; if it was necessary to punish, she could impose silence on the voice of pity. Her strict economy was accused of avarice; yet, on every proper occasion, she appeared magnificent and liberal. The neighbouring states of Arabia, Armenia, and Persia, dreaded her enmity, and solicited her alliance. To the dominions of Odenathus, which extended from the Euphrates to the frontiers of Bithynia, his widow added the inheritance of her ancestors, the populous and fertile kingdom of Egypt. The Emperor Claudius acknowledged her merit, and was content that, while he pursued the Gothic war, she should assert the dignity of the empire in the East. The conduct, however, of Zenobia was attended with some ambiguity; nor is it unlikely that she had conceived the design of erecting an independent and hostile monarchy. She blended, with the popular manners of Roman princes, the stately pomp of the courts of Asia, and exacted from her subjects the same adoration that was paid to the successes of Cyrus. She bestowed on her three sons a Latin education, and often showed them to the troops adorned with the imperial purple. For herself she reserved the diadem, with the splendid but doubtful title of Queen of the East.

When Aurelian passed over into Asia, Zenobia would have ill deserved her reputation had she indolently permitted the Emperor of the West to approach within an hundred miles of her capital. The fate of the East was decided in two great battles, so similar in almost every circumstance, that we can scarcely distinguish them from each other, except by observing that the first was fought near Antioch, and the second near Emesa. In both, the Queen of Palmyra animated the armies by her presence, and devolved the execution of her orders on Zabdas, who had already signalised his military talents by the conquest of Egypt. After the defeat of Emesa, Zenobia found it impossible to collect a third army. Palmyra was the last resource of the widow of Odenathus. She retired within the walls of her capital, made every preparation for a vigorous resistance, and declared, with the intrepidity of a heroine, that the last moment of her reign and of her life should be the same.

The firmness of Zenobia was supported by the hope, that in a very short time famine would compel the Roman army to repass the desert; but fortune, and the perseverance of Aurelian, overcame every obstacle. It was then that Zenobia resolved to fly. She mounted the fleetest of her dromedaries, and had already reached the banks of the Euphrates, about sixty miles from Palmyra, when she was overtaken by the pursuit of Aurelian's light horse, seized, and brought back a captive to the feet of the emperor. Her capital soon afterwards surrendered, and was treated with unexpected lenity. Subsequently, when provoked by the intelligence that the Palmyrenians had massacred the governor, Palmyra felt the irresistible weight of his resentment. But it is easier to destroy than to restore. The seat of commerce, of arts, and of Zenobia, gradually sunk into an obscure town, a trifling fortress, and at length a miserable village.

VALERIA.

[BORN 276. DIED 315.]
GIBBON.

HEN Diocletian conferred on Galerius the title of Cæsar, he had given him in marriage his daughter Valeria, whose melancholy adventures might furnish a very singular subject for tragedy. She had fulfilled and even surpassed the duties of a wife. As she had not any children herself, she condescended to adopt the illegitimate son of her husband, and invariably displayed towards the unhappy Candidianus the tenderness and anxiety of a real mother. After the death of Galerius, her ample possessions provoked the avarice, and her personal attractions excited the desires, of his successor Maximin. He had a wife still alive, but divorce was permitted by the Roman law, and the fierce passions of the tyrant demanded an immediate gratification. The answer of Valeria was such as became the daughter and widow of emperors, but it was tempered by the prudence which her defenceless condition compelled her to observe. She represented to the persons whom Maximin had employed on this occasion, "that even if honour could permit a woman of her character and dignity to entertain a thought of second nuptials, decency at least must forbid her to listen to his addresses at a time when the ashes of her husband and his benefactor were still warm, and while the sorrows of her mind were still expressed by her mourning garments." She ventured to declare, that she could place little confidence in the professions of a man whose cruel inconstancy was capable of repudiating a faithful and affectionate wife.

On this repulse, the love of Maximin was converted into fury; and as witnesses and judges were always at his disposal, it was easy for him to cover his fury with an appearance of legal proceedings, and to assault the reputation as well as the happiness of Valeria. Her estates were confiscated, her eunuchs and domestics devoted to the most inhuman tortures, and several innocent and respectable matrons, who were honoured with her friendship, suffered death on a false accusation of adultery. The empress herself, together with her mother, was condemned to exile; and as they were ignominiously hurried from place to place before they were confined to a sequestered village in the deserts of Syria, they exposed their shame and distress to the provinces of the East, which, during thirty years, had respected their august dignity.

Diocletian made several ineffectual efforts to alleviate the misfortunes of his daughter; and, as the last return that he expected for the imperial purple which he had conferred on Maximin, he entreated that Valeria might be permitted to share his retirement of Salona, and to close the eyes of her afflicted father. He entreated; but as he could no longer threaten, his prayers were received with coldness and disdain, and the pride of Maximin was gratified in treating Diocletian as a suppliant, and his daughter as a criminal. The death of Maximin seemed to assure the empresses of a favourable alteration in their fortune. The public disorders relaxed the vigilance of their guard, and they easily found means to escape from the place of their exile, and to repair, though with some precaution, and in disguise, to the court of Licinius.

The behaviour of Licinius in the first days of his reign, and the honourable reception which he gave to the young Candidianus, inspired Valeria with a secret satisfaction, both on her own account and on that of her adopted son. But these grateful prospects were soon succeeded by horror and astonishment, and the bloody executions which stained the palace of Nicomedia sufficiently convinced her that the throne of Maximin was filled by a tyrant more inhuman than himself. Valeria consulted her safety by a hasty flight, and, still accompanied by her mother Prisca, they wandered about fifteen months through the provinces, concealed in the disguise of plebeian habits. They were at length discovered at Thessalonica; and as the sentence of their death was already pronounced, they were immediately beheaded, and their bodies thrown into the sea. The people gazed on the melancholy spectacle, but their grief and indignation were suppressed by the terrors of a military guard. Such was the unworthy fate of the wife and daughter of Diocletian. We lament their misfortunes; we cannot discover their crimes; and whatever idea we may justly entertain of the cruelty of Licinius, it remains a matter of surprise that he was not contented with some more secret and decent method of revenge.

EUDOCIA.

[BORN 393. DIED 460.]
GIBBON.

HE story of a fair and virtuous maiden, exalted from a private condition to the imperial throne, might be deemed an incredible romance, if such a romance had not been verified in the marriage of Theodosius. The celebrated Athenais was educated by her father Leontius in the religion and sciences of the Greeks; and so advantageous was the opinion which the Athenian philosopher entertained of his contemporaries, that he divided his patrimony between his two sons, bequeathing to his daughter a small legacy of one hundred pieces of gold, in the lively confidence that her beauty and merit would be a sufficient portion. The jealousy and avarice of her brothers soon compelled Athenais to seek a refuge at Constantinople, and, with some hopes, either of justice or favour, to throw herself at the feet of Pulcheria [the sister of Theodosius]. That sagacious princess listened to her eloquent complaint, and secretly destined the daughter of the philosopher Leontius for the future wife of the emperor of the East, who had now attained the twentieth year of his age.

She easily excited the curiosity of her brother by an interesting picture of the charms of Athenais—large eyes, a well-proportioned nose, a fair complexion, golden locks, a slender person, a graceful demeanour, an understanding improved by study, and a virtue tried by distress. Theodosius, concealed behind a curtain in the apartment of his sister, was permitted to behold the Athenian virgin. The modest youth immediately declared his pure and honourable love, and the royal nuptials were celebrated amid the acclamations of the capital and the provinces. Athenais, who was easily persuaded to renounce the errors of paganism, received at her baptism the Christian name of Eudocia; but the cautious Pulcheria withheld the title of Augusta till the wife of Theodosius had approved her fruitfulness by the birth of a daughter, who espoused, fifteen years afterwards, the emperor of the West.

The brothers of Eudocia obeyed the imperial summons with some anxiety; but as she could easily forgive their fortunate unkindness, she indulged the tenderness, or perhaps the vanity, of a sister, by promoting them to the rank of consuls and prefects. In the luxury of the palace, she still cultivated those ingenious arts which had contributed to her greatness, and wisely dedicated her talents to the honour of religion and of her husband. Eudocia composed a poetical paraphrase of the first eight books of the Old Testament, and of the prophecies of Daniel and Zechariah; a cento of the verses of Homer, applied to the life and miracles of Christ; the legend of St Cyprian, and a panegyric on the Persian victories of Theodosius; and her writings, which were applauded by a servile and superstitious age, have not been disdained by the candour of impartial criticism.

The fondness of the emperor was not abated by time and possession; and Eudocia, after the marriage of her daughter, was permitted to discharge her grateful vows by a solemn pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Her ostentatious progress through the East may seem inconsistent with the spirit of Christian humility. She pronounced, from a throne of gold and gems, an eloquent oration to the senate of Antioch, declared her royal intention of enlarging the walls of the city, bestowed a donation of two hundred pounds of gold to restore the public baths, and accepted the statues which were decreed by the gratitude of Antioch. In the Holy Land, her alms and pious foundations exceeded the munificence of the great Helena; and though the public treasure might be impoverished by this excessive liberality, she enjoyed the conscious satisfaction of returning to Constantinople with the chains of St Peter, the right arm of St Stephen, and an undoubted picture of the Virgin, painted by St Luke. But this pilgrimage was the fatal term of the glories of Eudocia. Satiated with the empty pomp, and unmindful, perhaps, of her obligations to Pulcheria, she ambitiously aspired to the government of the Eastern empire; the palace was distracted by female discord; but the victory was at last decided by the superior ascendant of the sister of Theodosius.

The execution of Paulinus, master of the offices, and the disgrace of Cyrus, prætorian prefect of the East, convinced the public that the favour of Eudocia was insufficient to protect her most faithful friends; and the uncommon beauty of Paulinus encouraged the secret rumour, that his guilt was that of a successful lover. As soon as Eudocia perceived that the affection of Theodosius was irretrievably lost, she requested the permission of retiring to the distant solitude of Jerusalem. She obtained her request; but the jealousy of Theodosius pursued her in her last retreat; and Saturninus, count of the domestics, was directed to punish with death two ecclesiastics, her most favoured servants. Eudocia instantly revenged them by the assassination of the count. The furious passions which she indulged on this suspicious occasion seemed to justify the severity of Theodosius; and the empress, ignominiously stripped of the honours of her rank, was disgraced, perhaps unjustly, in the eyes of the world. The remainder of the life of Eudocia, about sixteen years, was spent in exile and devotion. The approach of age, the death of Theodosius, the misfortunes of her only daughter, who was led a captive from Rome to Carthage, and the society of the holy monks of Palestine, insensibly confirmed the religious temper of her mind. After a full experience of the vicissitudes of human life, the daughter of the philosopher Leontius expired at Jerusalem in the sixty-seventh year of her age, protesting, with her dying breath, that she had never transgressed the bounds of innocence and friendship.

HYPATIA.

[415.]
BRUCKER.

O the list of Alexandrian philosophers must be added the celebrated Hypatia, whose extensive learning, elegant manners, and tragical end, have rendered her name immortal. Hypatia was the daughter of Theon, a celebrated mathematician of Alexandria. She possessed an acute and penetrating judgment, and great sublimity and fertility of genius; and her talents were cultivated with assiduity by her father and other preceptors. After she had made herself mistress of polite learning, and of the sciences of geometry and astronomy, as far as they were then understood, she entered upon the study of philosophy. She prosecuted this study with such uncommon success, that she was importuned to become a public preceptress in the school where Plotinus and his successors had taught; and her love of science enabled her so far to subdue the natural diffidence of her sex, that she yielded to the public voice, and exchanged her female decorations for the philosopher's cloak. In the schools, and other places of public resort, she discoursed upon philosophical topics, explaining, and endeavouring to reconcile, the systems of Plato, Aristotle, and other masters. A ready elocution and graceful address, united with rich erudition and sound judgment, procured her numerous followers and admirers. But that which reflects the highest honour upon her memory is, that although she excelled most of the philosophers of her age in mathematical and philosophical science, she discovered no pride of learning; and though she was in person exceedingly beautiful, she never yielded to the impulse of female vanity, or gave occasion to the slightest suspicion against her chastity.

The extraordinary combination of accomplishments and virtues which adorned the character of Hypatia, rendered her house the general resort of persons of learning and distinction. But it was impossible that so much merit should not excite envy. The qualifications and attainments to which she was indebted for her celebrity, proved in the issue the occasion of her destruction. It happened that at this time the patriarchal chair was occupied by Cyril, a bishop of great authority, but of great haughtiness and violence of temper. In the vehemence of his bigoted zeal, he had treated the Jews with severity, and at last banished them out of Alexandria. Orestes, the prefect of the city, a man of a liberal spirit, highly resented this expulsion, as an unpardonable stretch of ecclesiastical power, and a cruel act of oppression and injustice against a people who had inhabited Alexandria from the time of its founder. He reported the affair to the emperor. The bishop, on his part, complained to the prince of the seditious temper of the Jews, and attempted to justify his proceedings. The emperor declined to interpose his authority, and the affair rapidly advanced to the utmost extremity. A body of about five hundred monks, who espoused the cause of Cyril, came into the city with a determination to support him by force. Meeting the prefect as he was passing through the street in his carriage, they stopped him, and loaded him with reproaches, and one of them threw a stone at his head and wounded him. The populace, who were by this time assembled on the part of the prefect, routed the monks, and seized one of their leaders. Orestes ordered him to be put to death. Cyril buried his body in the church, and gave instructions that his name should be registered among the sacred martyrs. Hypatia, who had always been highly respected by the prefect, and who had at this time frequent conferences with him, was supposed by the partisans of the bishop to have been deeply engaged in the interest of Orestes. Their resentment at length arose to such a height, that they formed a design against her life. As she was one day returning home from the schools, the mob seized her, forced her from her chair, and carried her to the Cæsarian church, where, stripping off her garments, they put her to death with extreme barbarity, and, having torn her body limb from limb, committed it to the flames. Cyril himself has, by some writers, been suspected of secretly prompting this horrid act of violence; and if the haughtiness and severity of his temper, his persecution of the Jews, his oppressive and iniquitous treatment of the Novatian sect of Christians and their bishop, the vehemence of his present indignation against Orestes and his party, and, above all, the protection which he is said to have afforded to the immediate perpetrator of the murder of Hypatia, be duly considered, it will perhaps appear that this suspicion is not wholly without foundation. Hypatia was murdered under the reign of the Emperor Theodosius II., in the year 415.

THE WIFE OF MAXIMUS.

[454.]
GIBBON.

N the time of the emperor Valentinian [454], Petronius Maximus, a wealthy senator of the Anician family, who had been twice consul, was possessed of a beautiful wife; her obstinate resistance served only to irritate the desires of Valentinian, and he resolved to accomplish them either by stratagem or force. Deep gaming was one of the vices of the court; the emperor, who by chance or contrivance had gained from Maximus a considerable sum, uncourteously exacted his ring as a security for the debt, and sent it by a trusty messenger to his wife, with an order, in her husband's name, that she should immediately attend the empress Eudoxia. The unsuspecting wife of Maximus was conveyed in her litter to the imperial palace; the emissaries of her impatient lover conducted her to a remote and private bed-chamber; and Valentinian violated without remorse the laws of hospitality.

Her tears when she returned home, her deep affliction, and her bitter reproaches against her husband, whom she considered as an accomplice of his own shame, excited Maximus to a just revenge; the desire of revenge was stimulated by ambition; and he might reasonably aspire, by the free suffrage of the Roman senate, to the throne of a detested and despicable rival. Valentinian, who supposed that every human breast was devoid, like his own, of friendship and gratitude, had imprudently admitted among his guards several domestics and followers of Ætius. Two of these, of barbarian race, were persuaded to execute a sacred and honourable duty by punishing with death the assassin of their patron; and their intrepid courage did not long expect a favourable moment. Whilst Valentinian amused himself in the Field of Mars, with the spectacle of some military sports, they suddenly rushed upon him with drawn weapons, despatched the guilty Heraclius, and stabbed the emperor to the heart, without the least opposition from his numerous train, who seemed to rejoice in the tyrant's death.

The injury which Maximus had received from the emperor Valentinian appears to excuse the most bloody revenge. Yet a philosopher might have reflected that, if the resistance of his wife had been sincere, her chastity was still inviolate, and that it could never be restored if she had consented to the will of the adulterer. A patriot would have hesitated before he plunged himself and his country into the inevitable calamities which must follow the extinction of the royal house of Theodosius. The imprudent Maximus disregarded these salutary considerations; he gratified his resentment and ambition; he saw the bleeding corpse of Valentinian at his feet, and heard himself saluted emperor by the unanimous voice of the senate and the people. But the day of his inauguration was the last day of his happiness. He was imprisoned in the palace; and after passing a sleepless night, he sighed that he had attained the summit of his wishes, and aspired only to descend from the dangerous elevation.

The reign of Maximus continued about three months. Meanwhile his wife, the cause of these tragic events, had been seasonably removed by death; and the widow of Valentinian was compelled to violate her decent mourning, perhaps her real grief, and to submit to the embraces of a presumptuous usurper, whom she suspected as the assassin of her deceased husband.

THE LADY ROWENA.

[450.]
VERSTEGAN.

ITH this troop of German people, there came over to England [400-500] the most fair Lady Rowena, whom some Saxon authors call Ronixa, who, as our chronicles say, was the daughter of Hengist; but I find in some of that country-writers, from whence she came, that she was his niece, which is the likelier of both, considering that Hengist is not likely at that time to have been old enough to have had such a daughter, and that he was as young, when he came into Britain, as before has been said, may appear by the many years which he lived after his coming hither.

As this lady was very beautiful, so was she of a very comely deportment; and Hengist, having invited King Vortiger to a supper at his new-builded castle in Kent, caused that after supper she came forth of her chamber in the king's presence with a cup of gold, filled with wine, in her hand, and, making in very seemly manner a low reverence unto the king, said, with a pleasing grace and countenance, in our ancient language, "Wacs heal hlaford kining," which is, being rightly expounded, according to our present speech, "Be of health, Lord King." For as was is our verb of the preterimperfect tense or preterperfect tense, signifying have been, so wacs, being the same verb in the imperative mood, and now pronounced wax, is as much as to say grow, be or become, and wacs-heal, by corruption of pronunciation, afterwards became to be wassaile. The king, not understanding what she said, demanded it of his chamberlain, who was her interpreter; and when he knew what it was, he asked him how he might again answer her in her own language. Whereof being informed, he said unto her, Drink heal, that is to say, drink health.

Of the beauty of this lady, the king took so great liking that he became exceedingly enamoured with her, and desired to have her in marriage; which Hengist agreed unto, upon condition that the king should give unto him the whole county of Kent; whereunto he willingly condescended, and, divorcing himself from his former married wife, he married with the Saxon Lady Rowena. She was the first Saxon queen of England.

OLGA.

[500.]
GIBBON.

female, perhaps of the basest origin, who could avenge the death and assume the sceptre of her husband Igor, must have been endowed with those active virtues which command the fear and obedience of barbarians. In a moment of foreign and domestic peace, she sailed from Kiow to Constantinople; and the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus has described with minute diligence the ceremonial of her reception in his capital and palace. The steps, the titles, the salutations, the banquet, the presents, were exquisitely adjusted, to gratify the vanity of the stranger, with due reverence to the superior majesty of the purple. In the sacrament of baptism she received the venerable name of the empress Helena, and her conversion might be preceded or followed by her uncle, two interpreters, sixteen damsels of a higher, and eighteen of a lower rank, twenty-two domestics or ministers, and forty-four Russian merchants, who composed the retinue of the great princess Olga.

After her return to Kiow and Novogorod, she firmly persisted in her new religion; but her labours in the propagation of the gospel were not crowned with success, and both her family and nation adhered with obstinacy or indifference to the gods of their fathers. Her son Swatoslaus was apprehensive of the scorn and ridicule of his companions; and her grandson Wolodomir devoted his youthful zeal to multiply and decorate the monuments of ancient worship. The savage deities of the north were still propitiated with human sacrifices: in the choice of the victim, a citizen was preferred to a stranger, a Christian to an idolater, and the father, who defended his son from the sacerdotal knife, was involved in the same doom by the rage of a fanatic tumult. Yet the lessons and example of the pious Olga had made a deep though secret impression on the minds of the prince and people; the Greek missionaries continued to preach, to dispute, and to baptise; and the ambassadors or merchants of Russia compared the idolatry of the woods with the elegant superstition of Constantinople. They had gazed with admiration on the domes of St Sophia, the lively pictures of saints and martyrs, the riches of the altar, the number and vestments of the priests, the pomp and order of the ceremonies; they were edified by the alternate succession of devout silence and harmonious song; nor was it difficult to dissuade them that a choir of angels descended each day from heaven to join in the devotion of the Christians.

But the conversion of Wolodomir was determined or hastened by his desire of a Roman bride. At the same time, and in the city of Cherson, the rites of baptism and marriage were celebrated by the Christian pontiff; the city he restored to the emperor Basil, the brother of his spouse; but the brazen gates were transported, as it is said, to Novogorod, and erected before the first church as a trophy of his victory and faith. At his despotic command, Peroun, the god of thunder, whom he had so long adored, was dragged through the streets of Kiow; and twelve sturdy barbarians battered with clubs the misshapen image, which was indignantly cast into the waters of the Borysthenes. The edict of Wolodomir had proclaimed that all who should refuse the rites of baptism should be treated as the enemies of God and their prince; and the rivers were instantly filled by many thousands of obedient Russians, who acquiesced in the truth and excellence of a doctrine which had been embraced by the great duke and his boyars. In the next generation, the relics of paganism were finally extirpated [and all this resulted from the baptism of Olga, which may be fixed as the era of Russian Christianity].

THE LADY ELFRIDA.

[950.]
HUME.

AS the daughter and heir of Olgar, Earl of Devonshire; and though she had been educated in the country, and had never appeared at court, she had filled all England with the reputation of her beauty. King Edgar himself, who was indifferent to no accounts of this nature, found his curiosity excited by the frequent panegyrics which he heard of Elfrida; and, reflecting on her noble birth, he resolved, if he found her charms answerable to their fame, to obtain possession of her on honourable terms. He communicated his intention to Earl Athelwold, his favourite; but used the precaution, before he made any advances to her parents, to order that nobleman, on some pretence, to pay them a visit, and to bring him a certain account of the beauty of their daughter.

Athelwold, when introduced to the lady, found general report to have fallen short of the truth; and being actuated by the most vehement love, he determined to sacrifice to this new passion his fidelity to his master, and to the trust reposed in him. He returned to Edgar, and told him that the riches alone and the high quality of Elfrida had been the ground of the admiration paid her, and that her charms far from being in any way extraordinary, would have been overlooked in a woman of inferior station. When he had by this deceit diverted the king from his purpose, he took an opportunity, after some interval, of turning again the conversation on Elfrida. He remarked that though the parentage and fortune of the lady had not produced on him, as on others, any illusion with regard to her beauty, he could not forbear reflecting that she would, on the whole, be an advantageous match for him (Athelwold), and might, by her birth and riches, make him sufficient compensation for the homeliness of her person. If the king, therefore, gave him his approbation, he was determined to make proposals in his own behalf to the Earl of Devonshire, and doubted not to obtain his, as well as the young lady's, consent to the marriage. Edgar, pleased with the expedient for establishing his favourite's fortune, not only exhorted him to execute his purpose, but forwarded his success by his recommendations to the parents of Elfrida; and Athelwold was soon made happy in the possession of his mistress. Dreading, however, the detection of the artifice, he employed every pretence for detaining Elfrida in the country, and for keeping her at a distance from Edgar.

The violent passion of Athelwold had rendered him blind to the necessary consequences which must attend his conduct, and the advantages which the numerous enemies that always pursue a royal favourite would, by its means, be able to make against him. Edgar was soon informed of the truth; but before he would execute vengeance on Athelwold's treachery, he resolved to satisfy himself with his own eyes of the certainty and full extent of his guilt. He told him that he intended to pay him a visit in his castle, and be introduced to the acquaintance of his new married wife; and Athelwold, as he could not refuse the honour, only craved leave to go before him a few hours, that he might the better prepare everything for his reception. He then discovered the whole matter to Elfrida, and begged her, if she had any regard either to her own honour or his life, to conceal from Edgar, by every circumstance of dress and behaviour, that fatal beauty that had seduced him from fidelity to his friend, and had betrayed him into so many falsehoods.

Elfrida promised compliance, though nothing was further from her intentions. She deemed herself little beholden to Athelwold for a passion which had deprived her of a crown; and, knowing the force of her own charms, she did not despair even yet of reaching that dignity of which her husband's artifice had bereaved her. She appeared before the king with all the advantages which the richest attire and the most engaging airs could bestow upon her, and she excited at once in his bosom the highest love towards herself, and the most furious desire of revenge against her husband. He, however, had to dissemble these passions; and, seducing Athelwold into a forest on pretence of hunting, he stabbed him with his own hand, and soon after publicly espoused Elfrida.

THE COUNTESS OF TRIPOLI.

[1150.]
SISMONDI.

HE knights who had returned from the Holy Land spoke with enthusiasm of a countess of Tripoli, who had extended to them the most generous hospitality, and whose grace and beauty equalled her virtue. Geoffrey Rudel, a gentleman of Blieux, in Provence, and one of those who were presented to Frederick Barbarossa in 1154, hearing this account, fell deeply in love with her without having seen her, and prevailed upon one of his friends, Bertrand d'Allaman, a troubadour like himself, to accompany him to the Levant. In 1162 he quitted the court of England, whither he had been conducted by Geoffrey, the brother of Richard I., and embarked for the Holy Land. On his voyage he was attacked by a severe illness, and had lost the power of speech when he arrived at the port of Tripoli. The countess, being informed that a celebrated poet was dying of love for her on board a vessel which was entering the roads, visited him on shipboard, took him by the hand, and attempted to cheer his spirits. Rudel, we are assured, recovered his speech sufficiently to thank the countess for her humanity, and to declare his passion, when his expressions of gratitude were silenced by the convulsions of death. He was buried at Tripoli, beneath a tomb of porphyry, which the countess raised to his memory, with an Arabic inscription.

I have transcribed his verses, "On Distant Love," which he composed previous to his voyage. They began thus:—

"Angry and sad shall be my way,

If I behold not her afar;

And yet I know not when that day

Shall rise, for still she dwells afar.

God, who has formed this fair array

Of worlds, and placed my love afar,

Strengthen my heart with hope, I pray,

Of seeing her I love afar."

JANE, COUNTESS OF MOUNTFORT.

[1350.]
HUME.

N the time of Edward III. of England and Philip of France, a contest arose for the principality of Brittany between the Count of Mountfort, the half-brother of the last duke, and Charles of Blois, the husband of his niece. Mountfort was besieged in Nantz. This event seemed to put an end to the pretensions of Mountfort; but his affairs were immediately retrieved by an unexpected incident, which inspired new life and vigour into his party. Jane of Flanders, Countess of Mountfort, the most extraordinary woman of the age, was roused, by the captivity of her husband, from those domestic cares to which she had hitherto limited her genius, and she courageously undertook to support the falling fortunes of her family.

No sooner did she receive the fatal intelligence, than she assembled the inhabitants of Rennes, where she then resided; and, carrying her infant son in her arms, deplored to them the calamity of their sovereign. She recommended to their care the illustrious orphan, the sole male remaining of their ancient princes, who had governed them with such indulgence and lenity, and to whom they had ever professed the most zealous attachment. She declared herself willing to run all hazards with them in so just a cause; discovered the resources which still remained in the alliance of England; and entreated them to make one effort against an usurper, who, being imposed on them by the arms of France, would in return make a sacrifice to his protector of the ancient liberties of Brittany. The audience, moved by the affecting appearance, and inspirited by the noble conduct of the princess, vowed to live and die with her in defending the rights of her family.

All the other fortresses in Brittany embraced the same resolution. The countess went from place to place, encouraging the garrisons, providing them with everything necessary for subsistence, and concerting the proper plans of defence; and after she had put the whole province in a good posture, she shut herself up in Hennebonne, where she waited with impatience the arrival of those succours which Edward had promised her. Meanwhile, she sent over her son to England, that she might both put him in a place of safety, and engage the king more strongly, by such a pledge, to embrace with zeal the interests of her family.

Charles of Blois, anxious to make himself master of so important a fortress as Hennebonne, and still more to take the countess prisoner, sat down before it. Frequent sallies were made with success by the garrison; and the countess herself, being the most forward in all military operations, every one was ashamed not to exert himself to the utmost in this desperate situation. One day she perceived that the besiegers, entirely occupied in an attack, had neglected a distant quarter of their camp, and she immediately sallied forth at the head of a body of two hundred cavalry, threw them into confusion, did great execution upon them, and set fire to their tents, baggage, and magazines; but when she was preparing to return, she found that she was intercepted, and that a considerable body of the enemy had thrown themselves between her and the gates. She instantly took her resolution. She ordered her men to disband, and to make the best of their way, by flight, to Brest. She met them at the appointed place of rendezvous, collected another body of five hundred horse, returned to Hennebonne, broke unexpectedly the enemy's camp, and was received with shouts and acclamations by the garrison, who, encouraged by the reinforcement, and by so rare an example of female valour, determined to defend themselves to the last extremity.

It became necessary, however, to treat for a capitulation, and the Bishop of Leon was already engaged for that purpose in a conference with Charles of Blois, when the countess, who had mounted to a high tower, and was looking towards the sea with great impatience, descried some sails at a distance. She immediately exclaimed, "Behold the succours—the English succours—no capitulation!" This fleet had on board a body of heavy-armed cavalry, and six thousand archers, whom Edward had prepared for the relief of Hennebonne, but who had been long detained by contrary winds. They entered the harbour under the command of Sir Walter Manny, one of the bravest captains of England; and, having inspired fresh courage into the garrison, immediately sallied forth, beat the besiegers from all their posts, and obliged them to decamp.

But notwithstanding this success, the Countess of Mountfort found that her party, overpowered by numbers, was declining in every quarter, and she went over to solicit more effectual succour from the king of England. Edward granted her a considerable reinforcement, under Robert of Artois, who embarked with a fleet of forty-five ships, and sailed to Brittany. He was met in his passage by the enemy; an action ensued, where the countess behaved with her wonted valour, and charged the enemy sword in hand; but the hostile fleets, after a sharp action, were separated by a storm, and the English arrived safely in Brittany. A long and bloody war thenceforth ensued between England and France.

LAURA DE SADE.

[BORN 1310. DIED 1348.]
SISMONDI.

ETRARCH reproached himself with fostering a passion which had exerted so powerful an influence over his life, which he had nourished with such unsubdued constancy for one-and-twenty years, and which still remained sacred to his heart so long after the loss of its object. This remorse was groundless. Never did passion burn more purely than in the love of Petrarch for Laura. Of all the erotic poets, he alone never expresses a single hope offensive to the purity of a heart which had been pledged to another. When Petrarch first beheld her, on the 6th of April 1327, Laura was in the church of Avignon. She was the daughter of Audibert de Noves, and wife of Hugues de Sade, both of Avignon. When she died of the plague, on the 6th of April 1348, she had been the mother of eleven children. Petrarch has celebrated, in upwards of three hundred sonnets, all the little circumstances of their attachment; those precious favours which, after an acquaintance of fifteen or twenty years, consisted at most of a kind word, a glance not altogether severe, a momentary expression of regret or tenderness at his departure, or a deeper paleness at the idea of losing her beloved and constant friend.

Yet these marks of an attachment so pure and unobtrusive, and which he had so often struggled to subdue, were repressed by the coldness of Laura, who, to preserve her lover, cautiously abstained from giving the least encouragement to his love. She avoided his presence, except at church, in the brilliant levees of the papal court, or in the country, where, surrounded by her friends, she is described by Petrarch as exhibiting the semblance of a queen, prominent amongst them all in the grace of her figure and the brilliancy of her beauty. It does not appear that, in the whole course of these twenty years, the poet ever addressed her unless in the presence of witnesses. An interview with her alone would surely have been celebrated in a thousand verses; and as he has left us four sonnets on the good fortune he enjoyed in having an opportunity of picking up her glove, we may fairly presume that he would not have passed over in silence so happy a circumstance as a private interview.

There is no poet in any language so perfectly pure as Petrarch, so completely above all reproach of levity and immorality; and this merit, which is equally due to the poet and his Laura, is still more remarkable when we consider that the models which he followed were by no means entitled to the same praise. The verses of the troubadours and the trouvères were very licentious. The court of Avignon, at which Laura lived—the Babylon of the West, as the poet himself often terms it—was filled with the most shameful corruption; and even the popes, more especially Clement V. and Clement VI., had afforded examples of great depravity. Indeed, Petrarch himself, in his intercourse with other ladies, was by no means so reserved. For Laura he had conceived a sort of religious and enthusiastic passion, such as mystics imagine they feel towards the Deity, and such as Plato supposes to be the bond of union between elevated minds. The poets who have succeeded Petrarch have amused themselves with giving representations of a similar passion, of which, in fact, they had little or no experience.

"How jeering crowds have mocked my love-lorn woes;

But folly's fruits are penitence and shame,

With this just maxim, I've too dearly bought—

That man's applause is but a transient dream."

THE COUNTESS OF RICHMOND.

[1495.]
TYTLER.

ENRY VII. is supposed to have been influenced by the advice of his mother, the Countess of Richmond, to whose opinions he was accustomed to listen with deference, and whose amiable qualities were likely to make an impression on her grandchildren. She was, in truth, a remarkable woman; and her dutiful and affectionate biographer, Bishop Fisher, who was also her chaplain, has fortunately left us a fine portrait of her character. Her piety and humility were great, though slightly tinged with asceticism. She rose at five in the morning, and from that hour till dinner, which in those primitive days was at ten, spent her time in prayer and meditation. In her house she kept constantly twelve poor persons, whom she provided with food and clothing; and, although the mother of a king, such was her active benevolence that she was often seen dressing the wounds of the lowest mendicants, and relieving them by her skill in medicine. She also evinced her respect for learning, both by her own works, and by munificent endowments for its encouragement. She was a mother to the students of both universities, and a patroness to all the learned men of England. Two public lectures in divinity were instituted by her, one at Oxford, and another at Cambridge; but those generous efforts were surpassed by her last and noblest foundations, the colleges of Christ and St John in the latter university. It was right that such a benefactress to knowledge should be embalmed in an epitaph by Erasmus.

There can be little doubt that the advice and instructions of this exemplary woman must have had a considerable influence in directing the education of the royal progeny, and we may perhaps trace to the influence of her example that early love of letters which was shown by young Henry. Erasmus, who was then in England, has left us so pleasant a picture of the royal school-room at this time, that I need make no apology for introducing it. "Thomas More," says he, "who had paid me a visit when I was Montjoy's guest, took me, for the sake of recreating the mind, a walk to the next country-seat. It was there the king's children were educated, with the exception of Arthur, who had then attained majority. On entering the hall the whole of the family assembled, and we found ourselves surrounded not only by the royal household, but by the servants of Montjoy also. In the middle of the circle stood Henry, at that time only nine years old, but bearing an expression of royalty, a look of high birth, and, at the same time, full of openness and courtesy; on the right stood the princess Margaret, a girl of eleven years, afterwards married to James IV. of Scotland; on the left was Mary, a child of four years of age, engaged in play; while Edmund, an infant in arms, completed the group. More, with Arnold, our companion, after paying his compliments to little Henry, presented a piece of his own writing. I forget what it was. As for me, I was not anticipating such a meeting; and, having nothing of the kind with me, I could only promise that I would shortly show my respect for the prince by some similar present."

ELIZABETH WOODVILLE.

[1490.]
HUME.

ACQUELINE of Luxembourg, Duchess of Bedford, had, after her husband's death, so far sacrificed her ambition to love, that she espoused in second marriage Sir Richard Woodville, a private gentleman, to whom she bore several children, and among the rest Elizabeth, who was remarkable for the grace and beauty of her person, as well as for other amiable accomplishments. This young lady had married Sir John Gray of Grobie, by whom she had children; and her husband being slain in the second battle of St Alban's, fighting on the side of Lancaster, and his estate being for that reason confiscated, his widow retired to live with her father at his seat of Grafton, in Northamptonshire. The king [Edward IV.] came to the house after a hunting-party in order to pay a visit to the Duchess of Bedford; and as the occasion seemed favourable for obtaining some grace from this gallant monarch, the young widow flung herself at his feet, and with many tears entreated him to take pity on her impoverished and distressed children.

The sight of so much beauty in affliction strongly affected the amorous Edward. Love stole insensibly into his heart under the guise of compassion, and her sorrow so becoming a virtuous matron, made his esteem and regard quickly correspond to his affection. He raised her from the ground with assurances of favour. He found his passion increase every moment by the conversation of the amiable object, and he was soon reduced in his turn to the posture and style of a supplicant at the feet of Elizabeth. But the lady, either averse to dishonourable love from a sense of duty, or perceiving that the impression which she had made was so deep as to give her hopes of obtaining the highest elevation, refused to gratify his passion; and all the endearments, caresses, and importunities of the young and amiable Edward, proved fruitless against her rigid and inflexible virtue.

His passion, irritated by opposition, and increased by his veneration for such honourable sentiments, carried him at last beyond all bounds of reason, and he offered to share his throne as well as his heart with the woman whose beauty of person and dignity of character seemed so well to entitle her to both. The marriage was privately celebrated at Grafton. The secret was carefully kept for some time. No one suspected that so libertine a prince could sacrifice so much to a romantic passion; and there were in particular strong reasons which at that time rendered this step to the highest degree dangerous and imprudent.

JOAN OF ARC.

[BORN 1412. DIED 1431.]
DE QUINCEY.

HAT is to be thought of her? What is to be thought of the poor shepherd girl from the hills and forests of Lorraine, that, like the Hebrew shepherd boy from the hills and forests of Judea, rose suddenly out of the quiet, out of the safety, out of the religious inspiration, rooted in deep pastoral solitudes, to a station in the van of armies, and to the more perilous station at the right-hand of kings? Daughter of Domrémy, when the gratitude of thy king shall awaken, thou wilt be sleeping the sleep of the dead. Call her, king of France, but she will not hear thee. Cite her by thy apparitors to come and receive a robe of honour, but she will be found en contumace. When the thunders of universal France, as even yet may happen, shall proclaim the grandeur of the poor shepherd girl that gave up all for her country, thy ear, young shepherd girl, will have been deaf for five centuries. To suffer and to do, that was thy portion in this life; that was thy destiny; and not for a moment was it hidden from thyself. Life, thou saidst, is short; and the sleep which is in the grave is long! This pure creature—pure from every suspicion of even a visionary self-interest, even as she was pure in senses more obvious—never once did this holy child, as regarded herself, relax from the belief in the darkness that was travelling to meet her.

Joanna, as we in England should call her, but, according to her own statement, Jeanne (or, as M. Michelet asserts, Jean) D'Arc, was born at Domrémy, a village on the marshes of Lorraine and Champagne, and dependent upon the town of Vancouleurs. The situation, locally, of Joanna was full of profound suggestions to a heart that listened for the stealthy steps of change and fear that too surely were in motion. But, if the place were grand, the time, the burden of the time, was far more so. The air overhead, in its upper chambers, was hurtling with the obscure sound; was dark with sullen fermenting of storms that had been gathering for a hundred and thirty years. The battle of Agincourt, in Joanna's childhood, had re-opened the wounds of France. The famines, the extraordinary diseases, the insurrections of the peasantry up and down Europe—these were chords struck from the mysterious harp of the time; but these were transitory chords. By her own internal schisms, the church was rehearsing, as in still earlier forms she had already rehearsed, those vast rents in her foundations which no man should ever heal. It was not wonderful that in such a haunted solitude, with such a haunted heart, Joanna should see angelic visions, and hear angelic voices. These voices whispered to her for ever the duty, self-imposed, of delivering France. Five years she listened to these monitory voices with internal struggles. At length she could resist no longer. Doubt gave way, and she left her home for ever, in order to present herself at the dauphin's court.

It is not requisite for the honour of Joan, nor is there, in this place, room to pursue her brief career of action. That, though wonderful, forms the earthly part of her story; the spiritual part is the saintly passion of her imprisonment, trial, and execution. The noble girl had achieved, as by a rapture of motion, the capital end of clearing out a free space around her sovereign, giving him the power to move his arms with effect; and, secondly, the inappreciable end of winning for that sovereign what seemed to all France the heavenly ratification of his rights, by crowning him with the ancient solemnities.

But she, the child that at nineteen had wrought wonders so great for France, was she not elated? Did she not lose, as men so often have lost, all sobriety of mind, when standing on the pinnacle of success so giddy? Let her enemies declare. During the progress of her movement, and in the centre of ferocious struggles, she had manifested the temper of her feelings, by the pity which she had everywhere expressed for the suffering enemy. She forwarded to the English leaders a touching invitation to unite with the French, as brothers, in a common crusade against infidels, thus opening the road for a soldierly retreat. She interposed to protect the captive or the wounded; she mourned over the excesses of her countrymen; she threw herself off her horse to kneel by the dying English soldier, and to comfort him with such ministrations, physical or spiritual, as his situation allowed. She sheltered the English that invoked her aid in her own quarters. She wept as she beheld, stretched on the field of battle, so many brave enemies that had died without confession. And, as regarded herself, her elation expressed itself thus:—On the day when she had finished her work, she wept; for she knew that, when her triumphal task was done, her end must be approaching.

Next came her trial. Never from the foundations of the earth was there such a trial as this, if it were laid open in all its beauty of defence, and all its hellishness of attack. Oh, child of France, shepherdess, peasant girl! trodden under foot by all around thee, how I honour thy flashing intellect, quick as God's lightning, and true as God's lightning to its mark, that ran before France and laggard Europe by many a century, confounding the malice of the ensnarer, and making dumb the oracles of falsehood! Woman, sister, there are some things which you do not execute as well as your brother, man; no, nor ever will; but I acknowledge you can do one thing as well as the best of us men—a greater thing than even Milton is known to have done, or Michael Angelo—you can die grandly, and as goddesses would die, were goddesses mortal. The executioner had been directed to apply his torch from below. He did so. The fiery smoke rose upwards in billowing volumes. A Dominican monk was then standing almost at her side. Wrapped up in his sublime office, he saw not the danger, but still persisted in his prayers. Even then, when the last enemy was racing up the fiery stairs to seize her, even at that moment did this noblest of girls think only for him, the one friend that would not forsake her, and not for herself; bidding him, with her last breath, to care for his own preservation, but to leave her to God.

JANE SHORE.

[1460.]
HUME.

HIS lady was born of reputable parents in London, was well educated, and married to a substantial citizen; but, unhappily, views of interest more than the maid's inclinations had been consulted in the match, and her mind, though framed for virtue, had proved unable to resist the allurements of Edward [the Fifth], who solicited her favours. But while seduced from her duty by this gay and amorous monarch, she still made herself respectable by her other virtues; and the ascendant which her charms and vivacity long maintained over him, was all employed in acts of beneficence and humanity. She was still forward to oppose calumny, to protect the oppressed, to relieve the indigent; and her good offices, the genuine dictates of her heart, never waited the solicitations of presents or the hopes of reciprocal services.

But she lived not only to feel the bitterness of shame imposed on her by this tyrant, but to experience in old age and poverty the ingratitude of those courtiers who had long solicited her friendship, and been protected by her credit. No one among the great multitudes whom she had obliged had the humanity to bring her consolation or relief; she languished out her life in solitude and indigence; and, amidst a court inured to the most atrocious crimes, the frailties of this woman justified all violations of friendship towards her, and all neglect of former obligations.

[Such is the picture of Jane Shore. Her misfortunes were partly due to the cruelty of the protector Gloster. The same author says:] The protector asked the council what punishment those deserved that had plotted against his life, who was so nearly related to the king, and was entrusted with the administration of government. Hastings replied, that they merited the punishment of traitors. These traitors, cried the protector, are the sorceress, my brother's wife, and Jane Shore, his mistress, with others, their associates. See to what a condition they have reduced me by their incantations and witchcraft; upon which he laid bare his arm all shrivelled and decayed. But the councillors, who knew that this infirmity had attended him from his birth, looked on each other with amazement; and, above all, Lord Hastings, who, as he had since Edward's death engaged in an intrigue with Jane Shore, was naturally anxious concerning the issue of these extraordinary proceedings. Certainly, my Lord, said he, if they be guilty of their crimes they deserve the severest punishment. And do you reply to me, exclaimed the protector, with your if's and your and's? You are the chief abettor of that witch Shore. You are yourself a traitor, and I swear by St Paul that I will not die before your head be brought me. He struck the table with his hand. Armed men rushed in. The councillors were thrown into the utmost confusion. Hastings was seized, was hurried away, and hastily beheaded on a timber-log which lay in the court of the Tower. Two hours after a proclamation, well penned and fairly written, was read to the citizens of London, enumerating his offences and apologising to them, from the suddenness of the discovery, for the sudden execution of that nobleman, who was very popular among them. But the saying of a merchant was much talked of on the occasion, who remarked that the proclamation was certainly drawn from the spirit of prophecy. And the protector, in order to carry on the farce of his accusation, ordered the goods of Jane Shore to be seized, and he summoned her to answer before the council for sorcery and witchcraft. But as no proofs that could be received even in that ignorant age were produced against her, he directed her to be tried in the spiritual court for her adulteries and lewdness, and she did penance in a white sheet at St Paul's before the whole people.

CATHARINE OF ARRAGON.

[BORN 1483. DIED 1536.]
TYTLER.

AS first married to Henry VIII.'s elder brother, Arthur, who died before he concluded his sixteenth year. Henry VII., divided between his policy and his conscience, first contracted her to his son Henry; and afterwards, when the latter reached his fourteenth year, becoming alarmed, insisted on his formally renouncing the engagement. Yet, strange as it may appear, this renunciation was not communicated to her father, nor to the princess, for whose marriage with Henry a papal dispensation had been procured. Meanwhile, Henry's heart became touched by the amiable qualities of Catharine, who showed no disinclination to the match; and on the 3d of June, about six weeks after his father's death, the marriage took place, which was afterwards the cause of such important changes. It was followed by the ceremony of the coronation, performed at an excessive cost, and with great magnificence. The age was one of feudal splendour; and the pageant, as it has been abridged by an amiable modern historian, presents us with a lively and peculiar picture of the times.

On the day preceding the solemnity, the king and queen went from the Tower to Westminster, through the tapestried streets, lined with the city companies in their best display. Beneath a robe of crimson velvet, furred with ermine, the king wore a coat of raised gold, with a tabard shining with rubies, emeralds, great pearls, and diamonds. Nine children of honour, on great coursers, and dressed in blue velvet, powdered with fleur-de-lis in gold, represented the nine kingdoms which he governed or claimed,—England, France, Gascony, Guienne, Normandy, Anjou, Cornwall, Wales, and Ireland. Following her richly-dressed retinue, the queen was seen seated on a magnificent litter or chariot, borne by two milk-white palfreys. Her person was clothed in embroidered satin, with her hair hanging down her back at great length, beautiful and goodly to behold, and on her head a coronal, set with many rich and orient stones. After the procession and coronation had terminated, the jousts and tournaments succeeded, and were peculiarly magnificent. The king and queen were stationed on a rich edifice made within the palace of Westminster, where, from a fountain and its cascades, at many places red, white, and claret wine poured out of the mouths of various animals. The trumpets sounded to the field; and the young gallants and noblemen, gorgeously apparelled, entered it, taking up their ground, checking their horses, and throwing them on their haunches; and they afterwards tourneyed together.

Time passed. It was now five years since Henry had separated himself from the society of his queen, and solicited a divorce; and for three years he had lived in such familiar intercourse with Anne Boleyn, that no doubt could be entertained regarding the nature of the connection between them. The situation of the Marchioness of Pembroke at length confirmed this in the most unequivocal manner; and the king, becoming alarmed for the legitimacy of his expected offspring, determined to make her his wife. The marriage was performed, the parties separated as quietly as they had assembled; and Viscount Rochfort was despatched to communicate the event to the king of France, and request him to send a confidential minister to England.

The divorce from Catharine was accomplished for the king by the ingenuity of his councillors. Intimation was now sent to Catharine that she must in future be contented with the style of dowager Princess of Wales; all persons were prohibited from giving her the title of queen, and her income was reduced to the sum settled upon her by Prince Arthur, her first husband. The ungrateful intelligence was conveyed to her personally by the Duke of Suffolk; and, considering the general mildness of her deportment, was received with unwonted indignation. She declared that she was, and ever would remain, the queen; and that before she would renounce that title, she would be hewn in pieces. As to her removal to any other residence, where she was to have a new household, and commence a new life as princess dowager, she peremptorily refused to give her consent. "They might bind her with ropes, but willingly she would never go."

ANNE BOLEYN.

[BORN 1507. DIED 1536.]
TYTLER.

ISTRESS Anne Boleyn was the daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn. She returned from France in 1527, under circumstances which were favourable not only to the acquisition of all elegant accomplishments, but to the strengthening of her understanding, and the improvement of her mind. As early as 1515, she had been sent over to that kingdom to be attendant on the Princess Mary, the wife of Louis XII. On the death of this monarch, and the return of his widow to England, Anne entered the household of Queen Claude, in whose palace she remained till she was seventeen. At this time Margaret, Duchess of Alençon, the sister of Francis, became deeply attached to her, and on the demise of the queen she was taken into her family. Here she probably remained till the marriage of that princess with the King of Navarre in 1527, an event which, as it took her protectress from Paris, seems to have occasioned her recall to England, where she immediately became one of the maids of honour to Catharine.

It has been the fashion of many writers of the Roman Church to represent Anne Boleyn as having led a singularly profligate life in her early youth, but there appears no ground for so slanderous an attack. That the education of a youthful and beautiful female in one of the most corrupted courts of Europe should produce austere or reserved manners was not to be suspected, but no evidence deserving of a moment's credit has been adduced to prove the slightest impurity of life; the tales against her being evidently the after-coinage of those misguided zealots who, by destroying her reputation, imagined they were performing a service to religion.

When she first appeared in court she was a lovely young woman in her twentieth year. She is described as possessing a rare and admirable beauty, clear and fresh, with a noble presence and most perfect shape. Her personal graces were enhanced by a cheerfulness and sweetness of temper which never forsook her, and her education had secured to her all those female accomplishments which were fitted to dazzle and delight a court. She danced with uncommon grace, sung sweetly, and, by the remarkable vivacity and wit of her conversation, retained the admiration of those who had at first been only attracted by her beauty. On her arrival at court, Anne was welcomed by the homage and adulation which her youth, her loveliness, and accomplishments inspired; and there seems some ground for believing that Henry became enamoured of her almost immediately. But he concealed, it is even said he struggled with, his incipient passion.

Dissimulation, however, with his majesty was now at an end. Henry had never been taught to restrain his passions; his past life, though outwardly decent, had not been remarkable for constancy; his love of pleasure, and his frequent opportunities of meeting the beautiful Anne at court, exposed him to perpetual temptation; and he at length declared himself, with the confidence of a monarch who felt that he had only to make known his predilection, to be accepted as a lover. But in this he was mistaken; for, although compelled to listen to his solicitations, the lady fell upon her knees and made the following answer: "I deem, most noble king, that your majesty speaks these words in mirth to prove me; if not, I beseech your highness earnestly to take this answer in good part, and I speak it from the bottom of my soul. Believe me, I would rather lose my life than give encouragement to your addresses." Henry, however, in the common jargon of the libertine, declared that he would live in hope; when his perseverance in insult drew forth this spirited reply: "I understand not, mighty king, how you should entertain any such hope. Your wife I cannot be, both in respect of my own unworthiness, and also because you have a queen already. Your mistress, be assured, I will never be."

[The subsequent history of this unfortunate lady, her marriage with Henry after the divorce of Catharine, the false charges brought against her, her unhappy death under the axe, the reader will remember, along with the legend yet preserved in Epping Forest.] On the morning of the day which was to be her last, Henry went to hunt in that district, and as he breakfasted surrounded by his train and his hounds under a spreading oak which is yet shown, he listened from time to time with a look of intense anxiety; at length the sound of a distant gun boomed through the wood. It was a preconcerted signal, and marked the moment when the execution was completed. "Ah ha, it is done!" said he, starting up; "the business is done; uncouple the dogs, and let us follow the sport." On the succeeding morning he was married to Jane Seymour.

MARGARET ROPER.

[DIED 1544.]
BALLARD.

HE learned, ingenious, and virtuous daughter of the famous Sir Thomas More, who intended his daughters to be such invaluable wives as he has described: "May you meet with a wife who is not always stupidly silent, nor always prattling nonsense; may she be learned, if possible, or at least capable of being made so. A woman thus accomplished will be always drawing sentences and maxims of virtue out of the best maxims of antiquity. She will be herself in all changes of fortune, neither blown up in prosperity, nor broken with adversity. You will find in her an ever-cheerful, good-humoured friend, and an agreeable companion for life. She will infuse knowledge into your children with their milk, and, from their infancy, train them up to wisdom. Whatever company you may be engaged in, you will long to be at home, and retire with delight from the society of men into the bosom of one who is so dear, so knowing, and so amiable. If she touches her lute, or sings to it any of her own compositions, her voice will soothe you in your solitudes, and sound more sweetly in your ear than that of the nightingale. You will spend with pleasure whole days and nights in her conversation, and be ever finding out new beauties in her discourse. She will keep your mind in perpetual serenity, restrain its mirth from being dissolute, and prevent its melancholy from being painful."

As Margaret had, in the early part of her life, by an unwearied application and industry, made herself well acquainted with the learned languages, so she seems afterwards to have been as eagerly bent on the prosecution of the studies of philosophy, astronomy, physic, and the Holy Scriptures, the two last of which were recommended by her father as the employments of the remaining part of her life; so that one might imagine from hence that the chief of her learned and most admired compositions were wrote at that time when her thoughts were free from all uneasiness and perplexities of temporal affairs. But soon after this the scene was changed, when her principal delights and enjoyments seemed to have their period in the untimely loss of her invaluable father. Upon the oath of supremacy being tendered to Sir Thomas, and his refusal to take it, he was sent to the Tower, to the inexpressible affliction of Margaret [Mrs Roper], who, by her incessant entreaties, at last got leave to pay him a visit there, where she made use of all the arguments, reason, and eloquence she was mistress of, to have brought him to a compliance with the oath; but all proved ineffectual, his conscience being dearer to him than all worldly considerations whatsoever, even that of his favourite daughter's peace and happiness. I shall add, from Dr Knight's "Life of Erasmus," that "after sentence was passed upon Sir Thomas, as he was going back to the Tower, she rushed through the guards and crowds of the people, and came pressing towards him. At such a sight, as courageous as he was, he could hardly bear up under the surprise his passionate affection for her raised in him; for she fell upon his neck, and held him fast in the most endearing embraces, but could not speak one word to him; great griefs having that stupifying quality of making the most eloquent dumb. The guards, though justly reputed an unrelenting crew, were much moved at this sight, and were, therefore, more willing to give Sir Thomas leave to speak to her, which he did in these few words: 'My dear Margaret, hear with patience, nor do not any longer grieve for me. It is the will of God, and therefore must be submitted to.' And he then gave her a parting kiss. But after she was withdrawn ten or a dozen feet off, she comes running to him again, and falls upon his neck; but grief again stopped her mouth. Her father looked wistfully upon her, but said nothing, the tears trickling down his cheeks—a language too well understood by his distressed daughter, though he bore all this without the least change of countenance. But just when he was to take his final leave of her, he begged her prayers to God for him, and took his farewell of her. The officers and soldiers, as rocky as they were, melted at this sight; and no wonder, when even the very beasts are under the power of natural affections, and often show them." "Good God," adds the same elegant writer, "what a shocking trial must this be to the poor man! How could he be attacked in a more tender part?"

After Sir Thomas was beheaded, she took care for the burial of his body, and afterwards bought his head, when it was to have been thrown into the river. She likewise felt the fury of the king's displeasure upon her father's score, being herself confined to prison; but after a short confinement, and after they had in vain endeavoured to terrify her with menaces she was released, and sent to her husband.

ELIZABETH LUCAS.

[BORN 1510. DIED 1537.]
BALLARD.

HE daughter of Mr Paul Withypoll, was born in London in the year 1510. She had a very polite and liberal education given her by her father; and, having an excellent genius, she became exquisitely skilful in all kinds of needlework; was a curious caligrapher; very knowing in arithmetic; an adept in several sorts of music; and she was a complete mistress in the Latin, Italian, and Spanish tongues; all which attainments were acquired at the age of twenty-six.

I can say nothing more concerning her than what her monument-inscription informs me, which, though a rude composition, I will here exhibit, as it was engraved on a plate of brass in the south aisle of the parish church of St Michael in Crooked Lane, London, being unwilling to omit anything that may preserve the memory of so ingenious a person.

"She wrought all needle-works that women exercise

With pin, frame, or stool; all pictures artificial;

Curious knots, or trailes, what fancy could devise;

Beasts, birds, or flowers, even as things natural;

Three manner of hands could she write them fair all;

To speak of algorism or accounts in every fashion,

Of women, few like (I think) in all this nation.

"Dame Cunning her gave a gift right excellent,

The goodly practice of her science musical,

In diverse tongues to sing and play with instrument,

Both viol, and lute, and also virginall,

Not only upon one, but excellent in all;

For all other virtues belonging to nature,

God her appointed a very perfect creeture.

"Latin, and Spanish, and also Italian

She spake, writ, and read with perfect utterance;

And for the English she the garland wan

In Dame Prudence' school by grace's purveyance,

Which clothed her with virtues from naked ignorance

Reading the Scriptures to judge light from dark,

Directing her faith to Christ, the only marke."

GASPARA STAMPA.

[1500.]
HALLAM.

HE was a lady of the Paduan territory, living near the small river Anaso, from which she adopted the poetical name of Anasilla. This stream bathes the foot of certain lofty hills, from which a distinguished family, the counts of Collalto, took their appellation. The representative of this house, himself a poet as well as soldier—and, if we believe his fond admirer, endowed with every virtue except constancy—was loved by Gaspara with enthusiastic passion. Unhappily she learned, only by sad experience, the want of generosity too common to man; and sacrificing, not the honour, but the pride of her sex, by submissive affection, and finally by querulous importunity, she estranged a heart never so susceptible as her own. Her sonnets, which seem arranged nearly in order, begin with the delirium of sanguine love. They are extravagant effusions of admiration, mingled with joy and hope; but soon the sense of Collalto's coldness glides in and overpowers her bliss. After three years of expectation of seeing his promise fulfilled, and when he had already caused alarm by his indifference, she was compelled to endure the pangs of absence, by his entering the service of France. This does not seem to have been of long continuance; but his letters were infrequent, and her complaints, always vented in a sonnet, become more fretful. He returns, and Anasilla exults with tenderness, but still timid in the midst of her joy.