How different, yet how grand, is the gentle Heloise, more remarkable for her faithful affection, than for her learning and talents, choosing rather to be dishonored in the world's estimation, than to injure her craven husband by avowing their marriage.
What Roman or Spartan mother excelled in heroism that Lady Seton, who, while she saw from the beleagured tower the preparations of the brutal English king to put her two sons to death, urged her wavering husband rather to let them die for their country, than to save their lives by ignoble surrender of his great trust. Her sons were murdered, but her husband was not dishonored, and the town was saved.
Who has not heard of the heroic Maid of Saragossa? No matter that she was really the wife of one of the soldiers engaged in defending the city, that she had come upon the ramparts to carry some refreshments to her husband the story is not the less thrilling that it was from his hand that she snatched the burning fuse, and fired the cannon near which he had fallen. Calling on the shrinking soldiers to reload the gun, she avowed her resolution to stand by it, and fire on the French enemy till they were beaten, or she was dead. She turned the tide of battle, and will be remembered as long as the world lasts.
Charlotte Corday! The name alone is enough to conjure up a moving panorama before one's eyes. We see the beautiful, heroic girl, nursing in the depths of her heart the project which, she fondly hopes, will free her country from a hideous tyrant. It is not murder that she contemplates, for she will give her own pure life for that of the savage steeped in every crime. We see her on her journey to Paris, gentle and affable, rousing no suspicion of the terrible errand on which she is bound. We see her when the deed is done, sitting calmly in the outer room, and thoughtfully passing her hand across her brow. We see her before her judges, "Serene, and resolute, and still, and calm, and self-possessed." We see her on her way to the guillotine, unconsciously inspiring such a strange and sudden passion, as surely never man felt before, and yet a true love, as poor Adam Luz proved by writing her defence, and dying for it and her. We may all join with the royalist lady, who fell on her knees and called her saint, when she heard what she had done. Alas! that it was done in vain! The tyranny that crushed France was hydra-like, and for one head that was struck off, a hundred more appeared.
"The mother of the country." Is not that a name that any queen be proud to gain?
She lived in Saxony three hundred years ago, and is still remembered by the peasantry as Mother Anna. What had she done to deserve the title? She studied several sciences, and applied her knowledge to promote the good of her people. She multiplied schools, and encouraged education. She incited the people to redeem waste lands, taking a spade in her own honest, busy hands, to encourage the workers when the ground looked particularly unpromising. She fostered trade and manufactures, and when she and her husband travelled about, they took with them supplies of the best seeds for raising fruit, and distributed them among the people. The good soul was a careful housewife, and more than all, a self-sacrificing Christian, teaching more by example than precept.
Amid all this hard work, public and private, she became the mother of fifteen children. I have heard of ladies who complained being fearfully overburdened with two or three.
The end of this noble woman was worthy of her life. She died of the plague, caught while attending on the sick, like a true Christian and Mother.
You may never be called upon to perform such acts of heroism as distinguished many American women during the struggle for independence; but it will be good for you to imbibe, from their contemplation, a touch of the spirit which prompted them. Who would not wish to resemble Mrs. Motte, when her large new house was garrisoned by the English. The American generals, loth to destroy the widow's home, hesitated to expel them by fire. She presented to them the Indian bow with its apparatus for igniting the shingle roof, counting ruin as nothing in the scale against patriotism. Then, again, the gentlewoman succeeds the patriot as she receives the vanquished foes in her poor termporary home, entertains them hospitably, and, womanlike, endeavors to soothe the mortification of defeat.
Picture to yourselves a group of despairing wretches, clinging all night to a fragment of a wreck, and to the remorseless rock on which it had been dashed. All through the stormy Autumn night they had clung there, amid rain, and wind, and darkness, holding on still, yet without hope; they are miles from the shore, and they know that, as the tide rises, they must be swallowed up, one by one, or all swept off at once by the hungry waves.