Page:The Daughters of England.djvu/187

176 language of one, who better knew what contradictory elements exist in a young, an ardent, and an affectionate heart, combined with an aspiring and commanding intellect.

"What is fame to woman, but a dazzling degradation. She is exposed to the pitiless gaze of admiration; but little respect, and no love, blends with it. However much as an individual she may have gained in name, in rank, in fortune, she has suffered as a woman. In the history of letters, she may be associated with men, but her own sweet life is lost; and though, in reality, she may flow through the ocean of the world, maintaining an unsullied current, she is nevertheless apparently absorbed, and become one with the elements of tumult and distraction. She is a reed shaken with the wind; a splendid exotic, nurtured for display; an ornament, only to be worn on birth-nights and festivities; the aloe, whose blossom is deemed fabulous, because few can be said to behold it; she is the Hebrew, whose songs are demanded in a 'strange land;' Ruth, standing amid the 'alien corn;' a flower, plunged beneath a petrifying spring; her affections are the dew that society exhales, but gives not back to her in rain; she is a jewelled captive, bright, and desolate, and sad !"