Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/372

358 and maintained a great number of protestants in her castle, who had fled to her for refuge. She interceded strongly for the prince of Conde, when he was imprisoned at Orleans in the time of the young king Francis; but afterwards was displeased with him, because neither she nor her ministers approved the protestants taking up arms. Female Worthies.

from ancestors who had changed their residence from Milan to Venice, and had uniformly added to the respectability of their rank by their uncommon learning, she began at an early age to prosecute her studies with great diligence, and acquired such a knowledge of the learned languages, that she may with justice be enumerated among the first scholars of the age.

The letters which occasionally passed between Cassandra and Politian, demonstrate their mutual esteem, if indeed such an expression be sufficient to characterize the feelings of Politian, who expresses, in language unusually florid, his high admiration of her extraordinary acquirements, and his expectation of the benefits which the cause of letters would derive from her labours and example. In the year 1491, the Florentine scholar made a visit to Venice, where the favourable opinion he had formed of her writings was confirmed by a personal interview.

"Yesterday," says he, writing to his great patron Lorenzo de Medicis, "I paid a visit to the celebrated Cassandra, to whom I presented your respects. She is