Page:A cyclopaedia of female biography.djvu/26

 night and day.'" That Abishag was considered the honourable wife of king David, and was so according to the customs of that age, there is no doubt. 

ACCA, OR ARCA-LAURENTIA, Was wife of the shepherd Faustulus, and nurse to Remus and Romulus. She was defied by the Romans, to whom the flamen of Jupiter once a year offered a sacrifice, on a holiday instituted to her honour. She lived about B. C. 760. 

ACCIAIOLI, MAGDALEN, of Florence, celebrated for her beauty and genius. She was a great favourite of Christina, duchess of Tuscany, and wrote poems in a very pleasing and elegant style. She died in 1610. 

ACCORAMBONI, VIRGINIA, [sic] born in 1585, of a noble family, in Gubbio, a little town of the duchy of Urbino. From her infancy, she was remarkable for her extraordinary beauty. Her father established his residence at Rome during her early youth; there she became the "cynosure" of the neighbouring nobility, as well as that of Rome. Her father named her to Francesco Peretti, nephew and adopted son of the cardinal Peretti of Montalto, afterwards Pope Sixtus V. In the family of her husband she was adored, and all her desires anticipated; when, in the midst of seeming prosperity and delight, Peretti was entrapped into a solitary situation, and murdered. Rumour attributed this assassination to the prince Paolo Orsini, who was madly enamoured of Virginia; nor was she free from suspicion of having consented to this crime. She certainly justified her accusers, by speedily uniting herself in marriage to the prince, From this step, sprang her melancholy catastrophe. Orsini was not young; he had grown enormously stout, and was afflicted with complaints that menaced him with sudden death. In order to provide for the possible widowhood of his young wife, he made a will, which, by endowing her largely, awakened the cupidity and animosity of his natural heirs. After his death, which happened, as had been anticipated, at the conclusion of an inordinate feast, the duchess took possession of her inheritance. She was not allowed to enjoy it long; her palace was entered by forty masked assassins, who cruelly plunged a dagger in her heart, and besides, murdered her brother, who resided with her.

She takes a place among the literary women of Italy, having been admired for her poetical talents during her life. And there exists in the Ambrosian library at Milan, a volume of her sonnets, full of grace and sentiment. 

ACLAND, LADY HARRIET, of Major Acland, an officer in that portion of the British army in America under the command of General Burgoyne, accompanied her husband to America in 1776, and was with him during the disastrous campaign of 1777, which terminated in Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga. Accustomed as she was to every luxury, she shrank from no hardship or danger, while allowed to remain with her husband; and her gentleness and conciliatory 