Another pleasant characteristic of Maria was the cheery way in which she recognised and bore with the fact that she was the only plain member of her family. There is a nice old sister in Silas Marner who says to some ladies who had not at all recognised their own want of beauty, “I don’t mind being ugly a bit, do you?” Maria was like this, except that she thought she possessed a pre-eminence of ugliness over all other competitors. “Nobody is ugly now,” she wrote in 1831, “but myself!” Impartial observers, however, state that the plainness of her features was redeemed by the sweetness and vivacity of her expression, and by the exquisite neatness of her tiny figure.
Many examples could be given of her practical good sense and benevolence. On receiving a legacy of some diamond ornaments, she sold them, and with the proceeds built a market-house for the village in Ireland where she lived. In 1826, nine years after her father’s death, she again undertook, this time for her brother, the management of the estates. She exerted herself with characteristic energy to alleviate the sufferings of her country during the terrible year of the Irish famine. She died very suddenly and painlessly, two years later, in the arms of her step-mother, on 22d May 1849, aged eighty-two. Macaulay considered her the second woman in Europe of her time, giving the first place to Madame de Staël. She does not seem to us now so great as this; but a variety of interests centre round her, and she well deserves to be remembered.
XVII
QUEEN LOUISA OF PRUSSIA.
“Sir, if a state submit
At once, she may be blotted out at once
And swallow’d in the conqueror’s chronicle.
Whereas in wars of freedom and defence
The glory and grief of battle won or lost,
Solders a race together—yea—tho’ they fail,
The names of those who fought and fell are like