Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/427

Rh  of Turbeville, a Romish priest, to embrace his religion, but afterwards returned to the Protestant faith, and addressed a learned letter to him, in which she stated her reasons for doing so. She was extremely devout and charitable, devoting five days in every week to religious duties, and rising early, with other voluntary mortifications. A volume of her prose works on religious subjects were published, with a preface, containing an account of the author. She wrote and published also some religious poems. Female Worthies.

great wit and eloquence, as a speech preserved by Appian demonstrates; which, for elegance of language, and justness of thought, would have done honour to a Cicero or Demosthenes. What gave occasion to it was, that the triumvirs of Rome wanted a large sum of money for carrying on a war; and having met with difficulties in raising it, they drew up a list of fourteen hundred of the richest of the ladies, intending to tax them. These ladies, after having in vain tried every method to evade so great an innovation, at last chose Hortensia for their speaker, and went along with her to the marketplace, where she addressed the triumvirs, while they were administering justice, in the following words:

"The unhappy women you see here imploring your justice and bounty, would never have presumed to appear in this place, had they not first made use of all other means their natural modesty could suggest. Though our appearing here may seem contrary to the Jules prescribed to our sex, which we have hitherto strictly