I
paint her character that she may be as widely loved."
With pride, he shows her freedom from all personal affections; that,
though tender and gentle in an uncommon degree, there was no room for
a private love in her consecrated life. She inspired those who knew
her with a simple energy of feeling like her own. "We have seen," they
felt, "a woman worthy the name, capable of all sweet affections,
capable of stern virtue."
It is a fact worthy of remark, that all these revolutions in favor of
liberty have produced female champions that share the same traits, but
Emily alone has found a biographer. Only a near friend could have
performed for her this task, for the flower was reared in feminine
seclusion, and the few and simple traits of her history before her
appearance in the field could only have been known to the domestic
circle. Her biographer has gathered them up with a brotherly devotion.
No! Man is not willingly ungenerous. He wants faith and love, because
he is not yet himself an elevated being. He cries, with sneering
scepticism, "Give us a sign." But if the sign appears, his eyes
glisten, and he offers not merely approval, but homage.
The severe nation which taught that the happiness of the race was
forfeited through the fault of a Woman, and showed its thought of what
sort of regard Man owed her, by making him accuse her on the first
question to his God,--who gave her to the patriarch as a handmaid,
and, by the Mosaical law, bound her to allegiance like a serf,--even
they greeted, with solemn rapture, all great and holy women as
heroines, prophetesses, judges in Israel; and, if they made Eve listen
to the serpent, gave Mary as a bride to the Holy Spirit.
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