government of oppression and fraud; but she ends by recognizing and
demanding the marriage of heart, the God of enlightened faith, the
government of order and progress. Responding to the dominant chord
of the nineteenth century, she strove to exalt individuality above
sociality, and passion above decorum and usage. Nor would she allow any
World's Congress of morals to settle the delicate limits between these
opposing vital forces, between what we owe to ourselves and what we owe
to others. If there be a divine of passion for which it is noble to
suffer and sacrifice, there is also a deeper divine of duty, far
transcending the other both in sacrifice and in reward. To this divine,
too often obscured to all of us, her later life increasingly renders
homage; and to its gentle redemption, our loving, pitying hearts--the
more loving, the more pitying for her story--are glad to leave her.

Ave, thou long laborious! Ave, thou worker of wonders, thou embalmer of
things most fleeting, most precious, so sealed in thy amber,

"That Nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!"

Thou hast wrought many a picture of wild and guilty passion,--yet
methinks thou didst always paint the mean as mean, the generous as
generous. Nobler stories, too, thou hast told, and thy Consuelo is as
pure as holy charity and lofty art could make her. They complain, that,
in the world of thy creations, women are sublime and men weak; may not
these things, then, be seen and judged for once through woman's eyes?
Much harm hast thou done? Nay, that can only God know. They misquote
thee, who veil a life of low intrigue with high-flown _dicta_ borrowed
from thy works. Thou art not of their sort,--or, if it be indeed _thee_
they seek to imitate,