Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn, as you
Have done to this.”
If it be objected that Lady Macbeth is only a fiction—the sternly magnificent creation of the poet; we reply, that in the whole compass of Shakespeare’s works, there is not one character untrue to nature. True it is, no women in these civilized times murder sleeping kings: but are there, therefore, no Lady Macbeths in the world? No women who mock at air-drawn daggers; in sarcastic mood let fall the word coward; and disdain the visionary terrors that haunt their vacillating husbands? There are, and many of them too—unlike Lady Macbeth—full of virtue and integrity.
“How many a noble enterprise,” to quote from Parson’s “Mental and Moral Dignity of Woman,” “would have been abandoned but for the firmness of woman! How often the faint-hearted have been inspirited, and the coward goaded to valour by the voice of woman. Indeed, it is a query whether fortitude would not long ere this have been exiled from our world but for the fostering care and influence of females. Often the martyr for liberty or religion would have failed and given way, had not the voice of a wife or mother interposed, and rekindled his dying ardour.” The most valuable of all possessions—either for man or woman—is a strenuous and steady mind, a self-deciding spirit, prepared to act, to suffer, or to die, as occasion requires. A great deal of talent is lost every day for want of a little courage. The fact is, to do anything in the world worth doing, you must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as you can. History records not a few heroines who suffered not the commotions of the world, nor even the changes of nature, to shake or disturb the more steadfast purpose of their souls. In all kinds of serene peril and quiet horror, woman seem to have infinitely more philosophical endurance than man.
On the 6th September, 1838, the Forfarshire steamer was wrecked on the Farne islands. Up to that time Grace Darling had never accompanied her father on any of his humane enterprises. She knew how to handle an oar, and that was all. But when she saw the mariners holding on by the frail planks, which every billow threatened to scatter; she uttered a cry of thrilling horror, which was echoed by her father and mother. It seemed as if their lives were in her hand, and so eloquently, wildly, and desperately did she urge her request, that her father aided by her mother launched the boat. Despite menacing and potent waves, the father and the daughter neared the object of their hopes. The nine survivors were placed in the boat, and conveyed to the Longstone lighthouse, where the kind hands and warm heart of Mrs. Darling changed their sad condition into one of comfort and joy. The whole country, and indeed all Europe, rang with the brave deed Grace had done. How applicable to such a noble girl are the lines of Cowper:—
“She holds no parley with unmanly fears:
Where duty bids, she confidently steers;
Faces a thousand dangers at its call,
And trusting in her God, surmounts them all.”