Without pursuing any special order, I will mention Hypasia, the much
calumniated Aspasia, and the Athenian courtezan Leaena, who, when
put to the torture to make her betray her friends and accomplices in
a political conspiracy, bit out her tongue, and spat it in the face
of her tormentor.
In more modern times, as education is placed within the reach of
all, these "burning and shining lights" become less conspicuous,
set, as they are, amid a galaxy of scarcely less brilliant
luminaries. Instances might be cited by the dozen of women who have
taken degrees in theology, who have lectured in public, and been
celebrated as _savans_ and philosophers.
As for those who have received the dignity of canonization, the
Roman calendar alone is capable of keeping any account of them.
Yet amongst them, let us give one word of admiration to that brave
Irish Abbess,--Ebba of Coldingham, who, to preserve herself from
the brutality of the Danish soldiers, cut off her nose and lips. Her
nuns followed her example, and the enraged barbarians burnt them
all, together with their convent.
To whom do we owe the preservation of the New Testament but to the
heroic girl-martyrs among the first Christians, who, under the Roman
persecutors, endured unheard-of tortures, rather than betray the
hiding place of the Sacred Writings?
_En passant_ I may mention the first woman who used her literary
abilities to support her household, was Christine Castel, a French
woman by education, though by birth a Venetian. She lived in the
reign of the English king Henry IV.
Have you ever heard of Arnande de Rocas? She must have been a brave,
high-minded girl! When her native town was taken by the Turks,--
somewhere in the clark sixteenth century, when Turks were not the
civilized gentlemen that many of them now are,--she and a number of
her young and beautiful companions were placed in a vessel bound for
Constantinople,--their destination the Sultan's seraglio. In the
dead of night, she gained access to the powder magazine, and blew up
the ship, with her innocent companions and their captors.
Now let us come nearer home, and recal the name of Martha Bratton.
She was a woman for any country to be proud of, for she helped, hand
and heart, in establishing the freedom of her native country. Her
husband was a Colonel in the first army of America, and in his
absence she took charge of, and defended the ammunition and
supplies. Think of her courage in blowing up the powder, rather than
suffer it to fall into the enemy's hands! Think of her nobility
avowing the act that no one else might suffer for it. Threats of
instant death had no power to make her betray a trust. And she was a
womanly woman too, for she saved the life of an English officer, who
had rescued her by his intervention, and kept him concealed in her
house till he was exchanged.
Grizel Cochrane! It's not a romantic name, but what a romance in her
life.
Her father lay a prisoner in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, condemned to
death for high treason. Her grandfather, the Earl of Dundonald; was
moving heaven and earth to obtain his son's pardon. But it was known
that the warrant for his execution was on its way from London.
Grizel was only eighteen. But she was strong and resolute. She rode
on her own fleet horse two days on the road to England, where a
trusty friend lent her a suit of man's clothes and a pair of
pistols. Thus armed, she attacked the postman, robbed him of the
mail bags, and destroyed her father's death warrant. The time thus
gained saved his life.
A better Grizel this, I think, than the celebrated Grizel who is so
often held up as a model of womanly virtues.
Think of the peasant girl, inspired by spirit voices, throwing aside
the timidity of her country breeding, her youth, and her sex,
adopting the costume of a soldier, heading the armies of France,
leading them to victory, and placing the national crown upon the
head of the feeble Dauphin, much more of a girl than herself. Then
change the scene, and behold the bigoted and fanatical priests
conspiring against her; see her abandoned by her friends; abandoned
even by the English whom she had conquered; see her at last led
forth to the fatal pile, and her ashes cast into the Seine.
How different, yet how grand, is the gentle Heloise, more remarkable
for her faithful affection, than for her learning and talents,
choosing rather to be dishonored in the world's estimation, than to
injure her craven husband by avowing their marriage.
What Roman or Spartan mother excelled in heroism that Lady Seton,
who, while she saw from the beleagured tower the preparations of the
brutal English king to put her two sons to death, urged her wavering
husband rather to let them die for their country, than to save their
lives by ignoble surrender of his great trust. Her sons were
murdered, but her husband was not dishonored, and the town was
saved.
Who has not heard of the heroic Maid of Saragossa? No matter that
she was really the wife of one of the soldiers engaged in defending
the city, that she had come upon the ramparts to carry some
refreshments to her husband the story is not the less thrilling that
it was from _his_ hand that she snatched the burning fuse, and fired
the cannon near which he had fallen. Calling on the shrinking
soldiers to reload the gun, she avowed her resolution to stand by
it, and fire on the French enemy till they were beaten, or she was
dead. She turned the tide of battle, and will be remembered as long
as the world lasts.
Charlotte Corday! The name alone is enough to conjure up a moving
panorama before one's eyes. We see the beautiful, heroic girl,
nursing in the depths of her heart the project which, she fondly
hopes, will free her country from a hideous tyrant. It is not murder
that she contemplates, for she will give her own pure life for that
of the savage steeped in every crime. We see her on her journey to
Paris, gentle and affable, rousing no suspicion of the terrible
errand on which she is bound. We see her when the deed is done,
sitting calmly in the outer room, and thoughtfully passing her hand
across her brow. We see her before her judges, "Serene, and
resolute, and still, and calm, and self-possessed." We see her on
her way to the guillotine, unconsciously inspiring such a strange
and sudden passion, as surely never man felt before, and yet a true
love, as poor Adam Luz proved by writing her defence, and dying for
it and her. We may all join with the royalist lady, who fell on her
knees and called her _saint_, when she heard what she had done.
Alas! that it was done in vain! The tyranny that crushed France was
hydra-like, and for one head that was struck off, a hundred more
appeared.
"The mother of the country." Is not that a name that any queen be
proud to gain?
She lived in Saxony three hundred years ago, and is still remembered
by the peasantry as _Mother Anna_. What had she done to deserve the
title? She studied several sciences, and applied her knowledge to
promote the good of her people. She multiplied schools, and
encouraged education. She incited the people to redeem waste lands,
taking a spade in her own honest, busy hands, to encourage the
workers when the ground looked particularly unpromising. She
fostered trade and manufactures, and when she and her husband
travelled about, they took with them supplies of the best seeds for
raising fruit, and distributed them among the people. The good soul
was a careful housewife, and more than all, a self-sacrificing
Christian, teaching more by example than precept.
Amid all this hard work, public and private, she became the mother
of fifteen children. I have heard of ladies who complained being
fearfully overburdened with two or three.
The end of this noble woman was worthy of her life. She died of the
plague, caught while attending on the sick, like a true Christian
and _Mother_.
You may never be called upon to perform such acts of heroism as
distinguished many American women during the struggle for
independence; but it will be good for you to imbibe, from their
contemplation, a touch of the spirit which prompted them. Who would
not wish to resemble Mrs. Motte, when her large new house was
garrisoned by the English. The American generals, loth to destroy
the widow's home, hesitated to expel them by fire. She presented to
them the Indian bow with its apparatus for igniting the shingle
roof, counting ruin as nothing in the scale against patriotism.
Then, again, the gentlewoman succeeds the patriot as she receives
the vanquished foes in her poor termporary home, entertains them
hospitably, and, womanlike, endeavors to soothe the mortification of
defeat.
Picture to yourselves a group of despairing wretches, clinging all
night to a fragment of a wreck, and to the remorseless rock on which
it had been dashed. All through the stormy Autumn night they had
clung there, amid rain, and wind, and darkness, holding on still,
yet without hope; they are miles from the shore, and they know that,
as the tide rises, they must be swallowed up, one by one, or all
swept off at once by the hungry waves.
Far away, during that terrible night, they had seen a faint,
twinkling light. It was from a lighthouse--a sailor who was among
the group of miserable creatures, told them it was the Longstone
Lighthouse,--a mile away, too far for any one to see them down there
on a level with the sea; and even if they were seen, there was no
life-boat there, and no person but an old man and woman, with their
son and daughter. _They _could never bring a boat to their
deliverance.
There were fewer people than he supposed at that time in the
lighthouse, for the son was absent,--the only one, it would seem,
who might have had the strength and courage to venture to their
assistance. Besides, what chance was there that they would be
discovered?
Yet, at that very moment, clear, bright eye, looking through a
telescope for signs of the storm's cruel havoc, lights on them, and
takes in at once all the perils of their position. It is the eye of
a girl of eighteen; she has the courage of a Roman, the compassion
of a Christian. Calling to her father to accompany her, she hastens
to their boat. Remonstrance is in vain. She will not listen to her
parents, she will not wait a moment; all she thinks of, is those
unhappy sufferers, for the returning tide _must_ wash them off. If
her father will not go, she will go alone, and, live or die, make
the attempt to save them.
Her energy bears down all doubts; the boat is launched,--even the
poor wife and mother helping. And, ah! think of _her_, as she sees
it leave the rock to which it may never return. Think what _she_
gives to the service of mercy. She must have been a worthy mother of
such a daughter. Father and child, each take an oar, and pull, not
for their lives, but for the lives of others.
Ah! what a struggle that was, through a mile of angry, tumbling
waters, now from the crest of a wave catching a glimpse of thosethey
go to rescue, now sunk in a deep hollow that threatens to engulf
them. Through all, the little frail boat goes on its errand of
mercy. Can we not imagine how the wife and mother watched it through
the lighthouse glass? Let us take our post by her, and try to feel
for a moment as she felt. From her lofty post she can mark the
progress of the boat. It is slow but sure. When first it sank out of
her sight in the trough of a great billow, her heart sank too; but
see, rises again, and with it a prayer and thanksgiving ascend from
the mother's heart. The daughter rows with a manly strength,--no
signs of fatigue. Will they reach the wreck in time? Oh! the boat
goes so slowly, though those two devoted ones work so hard. On, on,
still on, nearer and nearer. Now comes the moment of greatest
danger. Ah! they are too eager to get in,--they will swamp the boat.
No, their very weakness prevents that. The stronger help the more
feeble; they are all in now; all safe so far; nine human beings
saved so _far_; but can eleven come safe to land? Once more the boat
mounts on the creasts of the waves, once more she sinks into the
hollows, and nearer, nearer, nearer she creeps on.
Other duties now claim the attention of the anxious watcher. Fires
must be kindled, and food must be prepared, or the good work will be
left unfinished; and from time to time she runs to the window to
watch their progress.
The keel grates upon the beach,--voices are heard; they are all
safely housed, and the loved girl comes up smiling, happy in the
success of her good deed, and all unconscious that her name is
henceforth famous through the world.
England need not envy France her Charlotte Corday, while the name of
Grace Darling shines, in letters of gold, upon the pages of her own
history.
The renowned Hugh Grotius had a wife who ought to be called the
renowned Mary Grotius.
When he was condemned for his political writings, to be imprisoned
for life, she accompanied him, though the hard condition was, that
she too was to remain a prisoner. After a while she was allowed to
go out occasionally. She borrowed books for him, which were carried
to and fro, with his linen, in a chest. When long custom had made
the guards careless in examining this chest, she packed her husband
in it one fine day, and sent him to the wash, staying in the prison
herself, and pretending that he was ill in bed.
She was let out too, after some severe treatment.
There was a woman who never performed any grand, heroic action, who
lived a quiet, domestic life; did nothing brilliant, wrote no poems,
suffered no martyrdom. For thirty-eight years she was a ministering
angel to her husband; and he was not an invalid, whose caprices
tried her temper, and made her life a lasting trial. On the
contrary, his health was good, and his spirits ever equal.
Yet the world is much indebted to that woman. She was to her husband
what the cipher is after the figure one. Alone, it is a unit; with
the cipher by its side, it becomes ten.
She was the wife of John Flaxman, the Sculptor.
"Down with the Austrian woman," shouted the infuriated mob of Paris,
supposing that they saw before them the ill-fated Marie Antoinette.
An officer corrected their mistake, and the lady, just rescued from
the most terrible of deaths,--that of being torn to pieces by
savages,--said to him, "Why undeceive them? You might have spared
them a greater crime."
She was the same, who, when asked her name and rank before the
revolutionary tribunal, replied, with dignity, "I am Elizabeth of
France, the aunt of your king."
She was compelled to witness the execution of twenty-four of her
fellow-prisoners, and then met her own death without a complaint.
Among savage nations what could be more terrific than a volcano? And
when, in addition to its natural mysteries, a cunning priesthood has
invested it with the attributes of a malignant and revengeful deity,
who but an enlightened and civilized person would dare to approach
it? It was _tabooed_, and whoever insulted it, would be destroyed by
its shower of liquid fire.
It is hard to shake off the prejudices and superstitions of a life-
time. Yet Kapiolani, a woman of Hawaii, who had already done much to
raise the character of her countrymen, set the heathen priests at
defiance, declared the volcano to be the work of a merciful God, and
boldly descended some distance into its crater. There she composedly
praised the Lord in the midst of one of His wonderful works. The
effect of her faith upon the minds of her countrymen was wonderful.
"In all that is known of Assyria, the most ancient empire of the
earth, every extant fragment, moral or material, bears evidence of a
sex to which that land of wonders owes the immortality of its
grandeur. The name of Semiramis has preserved (what Sardanapalus
could not destroy, nor Cyrus bury under the ruins of Babylon,) the
memory of the greatest combination of wealth, power, art, and
magnificence, which the world had till then witnessed, or has since
conceived. For the greatest capitals of the most powerful and
refined of modern states, supposed to have reached the acme of
civilization, have but one epithet to mark their supereminence; and
Rome and London (in boast, or in reproach,) have each been called
the Babylon of their own proudest times.
"Babylon, with its hundred gates and towers, was founded by a woman
of low origin and destitute youth, who attained to supreme power by
her genius alone; and though all that has been ascribed to her may
not be strictly true, though Diodorous Siculus in his enthusiasm may
have exaggerated, and Ctesias may have too vividly colored his
brilliant delineations of her greatness, yet that such a woman lived
and reigned in Assyria, that she founded its capital, and influenced
her age by her works and her talents, that she built cities, raised
aqueducts, constructed roads, commanded great armies in person, and,
both as conqueror and legislator, was among the earliest agents of
Asiatic civilization, there remains no room for historic doubt.
"Her passage over the Indus, her conquests on its shores, the
brilliant triumphs she obtained abroad, the astute wisdom with which
she met conspiracy at home, and the bold confidence she expressed in
the decisions of posterity, are stubborn facts. These obtained for
her the sympathy of the greatest character and conqueror of a nearer
antiquity; but Alexander, taking Semiramis for his model, vainly
tried to restore her gorgeous city, on her own plans, and with her
own views.
"Posterity has nobly ratified the appeal of Semiramis to its
verdict. At the end of three thousand years, her life and character
have been taken as the inspiration of its genius, and the spell of
its attraction. Semiramis, however, has paid the penalty of her
sex's superiority, and has been the mark of calumnious pedantry
through succeeding ages."
*Since the above was in type, Mlle. Nilsson has several times sung
"Way down upon the Swanee River" at her concerts.