success of such a book, it is essential that it should be written in Italian; for only a few of my compatriots read the learned languages." The dialogue mentioned in the letter to Lavinia della Rovere, cited a few pages back, is one of the few compositions by Olympia which have been preserved.[107] It is a conversation between Philotima and Theophila, in which the former, who is meant to be Lavinia della Rovere, complains of the sorrows caused her by the continual absence of her husband; "for there is no greater happiness on earth than to live with him we love. But this felicity is refused me; and my sorrow is bitter in proportion to the eagerness with which I had looked forward to happiness." Thereupon Theophila, who is, of course, Olympia, lectures her friend at considerable length, referring her to "the holy women in the Bible, who sought not in marriage the realisation of their dreams of earthly happiness, but the glory of God;" with several pages more in the usual strain of those writers, whose ethical system is based on the assumption, that every natural affection of the heart is in its nature evil. It is curious to recognise in Olympia's nearly irreproachable sixteenth–century Latin, the common stock phrases, similitudes, and metaphors, still in vogue in the Zion meeting–houses and little Bethel chapels. The well–turned sentences read very hollow; and though it is impossible to doubt Olympia's perfect sincerity, or her desire to school her own feelings into the unnatural quietism which she recommends to her friend, yet we cannot forget the very different tone of real feeling and earnestness manifest in those letters written from Ferrara during her own husband's absence, when she talked of pining to death unless he returned within the month! How came the glory of God and the holy women of the Bible to be forgotten, when there was so much need of the consolation to be derived from the meditation of such themes?