FROM JONAH'S PRAYER
'I will call on Jehovah from my prison,
And He will hear me;
From the womb of the grave I cry.
Thou hearest my voice.
Thou hast cast me into wide waters in the depths of the sea;
And the floods surround me;
All Thy dashing and Thy rolling waves
Pass over me.'
FROM HABAKKUK'S 'SONG IN PARTS'
'Though the fig-tree did not blossom,
And there be no fruit on the vine;
Though the produce of the olive fail,
Though the parched field yield no food,
Though the flock be cut off from the fold,
And there be no cattle in the stalls;
Yet will I rejoice in Jehovah,
I will exult in God my Saviour.
Jehovah my Lord is my strength.
He will set my feet as the deer's,
He will make me walk in high places.'
Elizabeth Smith: Hebrew Translations.
XVIII
A LEARNED YOUNG LADY
ELIZABETH SMITH
'What the vast multitudes of women are doing in the world's activities, and what share their mothers and grandmothers, to the remotest generations backward, have had in originating culture, is a question which concerns the whole race.'—Professor Mason's Woman's Share in Primitive Culture.
NOT a very distinctive name, you will say! Who was she? 'The blooming Elizabeth Smith, whom to know was to revere,' writes the author of an ancient book called 'Cœlebs in Search of a Wife.' But this does not carry us a long way further. Well, then, she was a young lady, born so long ago as 1776, near the city of Durham, who lived for several years at Coniston with her parents and died there when but twenty-nine years of age. What made her remarkable was not so much her beauty or her goodness—and she possessed both these physical and spiritual qualities,—but also, and for our present purpose especially, her poetic talent and her great linguistic powers and attainments. 'With scarcely any assistance,' writes one who was intimate with her, 'she was well acquainted with French, Italian, Spanish, German, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages. She had no inconsiderable knowledge of Arabic and Persian. She made also considerable philological collections of Welsh, Chinese, African, and Icelandic words. She was well acquainted with geometry, algebra, and other branches of the mathematics. She was a very fine musician. She drew landscapes from nature extremely well, and was mistress of perspective.' She was more retiring, and even timid, than she was learned. Let it be remembered that she was born in the days previous to any thought of the 'emancipation' of woman, or her 'equality' with man, and when the only sphere it was considered proper for her to fill was that of wife and mother. She might—nay must—bake and sew, and undertake all the domestic duties of the household, with one or two 'accomplishments' allowed her, qualifying her to be agreeable to her husband or father in his leisure moments, and to his guests. It will be satisfactory to those, if any are left, who still hold the old theories about the highest feminine virtues, that this talented young lady, who could calculate the distances and periods of planets, write verses in rhyme, or in imitation of Ossian, and translate the Book of Job from the Hebrew, could also make a currant tart, or 'a gown, or a cap, or any other article of dress, with as much skill' as she displayed in the region of languages and mathematics.