Page:A cyclopaedia of female biography.djvu/620

 of Fidelma Partenide. She died 1726. Her remaining works are two dramas, "Tomici," and "La Donna Illustre." She produced beside many canzonetts and sonnets, and poems in various collections.

PARADIES, MARIA THERESA, at Vienna, 1753, was as remarkable for her life as for her distinguished musical talent. At the early age of four years and eight months, she was, by a rheumatic apoplexy, totally deprived of her sight. When seven years old, she was taught to play on the piano and to sing; and three years after, she sang the Stabat Mater of Pergolesi, in the church of St. Augustin, in Vienna, accompanying herself on the organ. The empress, Maria Theresa, who was present at the performance, gave her immediately an annuity of two hundred florins. Soon the young musician advanced so far, as to play sixty concertas with the greatest accuracy. In the year 1784 she set out on a musical journey, and wherever she appeared, but especially in London, (1785,) she excited, by her tare endowments, as well as by her misfortune, admiration and interest. She often moved her audience to tears by a cantate, the words of which were written by the blind poet Pfeffel, in which her own fate was depicted. Her memory was astonishing; she dictated all her compositions note by note. She was also well versed in other sciences, as geography and arithmetic. In company, she was cheerful, entertaining, witty, and highly interesting. During the latter part of her life she presided over an excellent musical institution in Vienna.

PARDOE, JULIA, the daughter of a field-officer in the British army, whose family is of Spanish extraction. She was born at Beverley, in Yorkshire, and early manifested great indications of genius, having at the age of thirteen produced a volume of poems, and a few years later an historical novel of the time of William the Conqueror, called "Lord Morcar of Hereward." A warmer climate being recommended, on account of certain consumptive symptoms which it was thought she manifested. Miss Pardoe went to Portugal, where she spent about fifteen months, contributing during that time to various periodicals. The fruits of her observations on that country were, on her return to England, published in two volumes, entitled "Traits and Traditions of Portugal." The work was dedicated, by express desire, to H.R.H. the Princess Augusta, who manifested a warm interest in the fortunes of the young authoress; it quickly went through two editions, and was followed shortly after by two novels—"Speculation" and "The Mardens and the Daventrys." These established her reputation as a novelist. But she did not at the time pursue this opening to literary fame and fortune. In 1835, during the fearful visitation of the cholera at Constantinople, we find Miss Pardoe there, and in the following year is published her account of what she sees and hears on the shores of the Bosphorus, in that popular book "The City of the Sultan." The vivid sketches of oriental life of which this book consists, rendered it extremely fascinating to general readers; and the interest which it created, heightened by the knowledge that its author had, at some risk to herself, penetrated behind the veil which had hitherto hidden many of the "peculiar institutions" of