Page:A cyclopaedia of female biography.djvu/296

 diction, and the lessons they inculcate are invariably of a pure moral tendency." Mrs. Embury has been very fortunate, (we do not say singularly so, because American marriages are usually happy,) in her married life. Mr. Embury is a scholar as well as a banker, and not only has he the taste to appreciate the talents of his gifted wife, but he also has the good sense to encourage and aid her. The result has been the most perfect concord in their domestic as well as literary life; the only aim of each being to secure and increase the happiness of the other, the highest improvement and happiness of both have been the result. Nor have the pursuits of literature ever drawn Mrs. Embury aside from her duties as a mother; her three children have been trained under her careful supervision, and her daughter's education she has entirely conducted. These traits of character, corresponding so fitly with the principles she has inculcated, increase greatly the value of her works for the young.

EMMA, of Lothaire, King of France, was the daughter of Otho, Emperor of Germany, and of his wife Adelaide. In 984, Lothaire having taken Verdun, left his wife there to guard it, who, the next year, was attacked by a large army. She repulsed them at first, and gave her husband time to come to her aid. Lothaire died in 986. Some writers have accused Emma and the Bishop Aldeberon of having poisoned him, but the charge has never been proved.

EMMA, of Richard the Second, Duke of Normandy, married Ethelred, King of England, with whom she fled, on the invasion of the Danes. She afterwards married Canute; and when her son Edward, called the Confessor, ascended the throne, she reigned conjointly with him. Her enemy, the Earl of Kent, opposed her; and when she appealed for assistance to her relation, the Bishop of Winchester, she was accused of criminal intercourse with that prelate; a charge from which she extricated herself by walking barefoot and unhurt over nine red-hot ploughshares, after the manner of the times. She passed the night previous to her trial in prayer, before the tomb of St. Swithin; and the next day, she appeared plainly dressed, her feet and legs bare to the knee, and underwent the ordeal, in the presence of the king, her son, Edward the Confessor, the nobility, clergy, and people, in the cathedral church at Winchester. Her innocence proved so miraculous a preservation that, walking with her eyes raised to heaven, she did not even perceive the least reflection from the heated irons, (if the old chronicle be true,) but inquired, after having passed over them, when they designed to bring her to the test.

The king, struck with the miracle, fell on his knees before his mother, and implored her pardon; while, to expiate the injury done to her and her relation, the reverend prelate, he devoutly laid bare his shoulders before the bishop, whom he ordered to inflict on him the discipline of the scourge.

Emma, however, stripped by Edward of the immense treasures she had amassed, spent the last ten years of her life in misery, in a kind of prison or convent at Winchester, where she died in 1502.