But we have had some--and still have some--"celebrated" women, of whom we have said "we may be justly proud". We have done pilgrimage to the shrine of Lady Rachel Russell, who was so thoroughly "domestic", that the Corinthian beauty of her character would never have been matter of history, but for the wickedness of a bad king. We have recorded the hours spent with Hannah More; the happy days passed with, and the years invigorated by, the advice and influence of Maria Edgworth. We might recall the stern and faithful puritanism of Maria Jane Jewsbury, and the Old World devotion of the true and high-souled daughter of Israel--Grace Aguilar. The mellow tones of Felicia Hemans' poetry lingers still among all who appreciate the holy sympathies of religion and virtue. We could dwell long and profitably on the enduring patience and lifelong labor of Barbara Hofland, and steep a diamond in tears to record the memories of L.E.L. We could,--alas! alas! barely five and twenty years' acquaintance with literature and its ornaments, and the brilliant catalogue is but a _Memento Mori_. Perhaps of all this list, Maria Edgworth's life was the happiest: simply because she was the most retired, the least exposed to the gaze and observation of the world, the most occupied by loving duties toward the most united circle of old and young we ever saw assembled in one happy home. The very young have never, perhaps, read one of the tales of a lady whose reputation as a novelist was in its zenith when Walter Scott published his first novel. We desire to place a chaplet upon the grave of a woman once "celebrated" all over the known world, yet who drew all her happiness from the lovingness of home and friends, while her life was as pure as her renown was extensive. In our own childhood romance-reading was prohibited, but earnest entreaty procured an exception in favor of the "Scottish Chiefs". It was the bright summer, and we read it by moonlight, only disturbed by the murmur of the distant ocean. We read it, crouched in the deep recess of the nursery-window; we read it until moonlight and morning met, and the breakfast-bell ringing out into the soft air from the old gable, found us at the end of the fourth volume. Dear old times! when it would have been deemed little less than sacrilege to crush a respectable romance into a shilling volume, and our mammas considered _only_ a five-volume story curtailed of its just proportions. Sir William Wallace has never lost his heroic ascendancy over us, and we have steadily resisted every temptation to open the "popular edition" of the long-loved romance, lest what people will call "the improved state of the human mind", might displace the sweet memory of the mingled admiration and indignation that chased each other, while we read and wept, without ever questioning the truth of the absorbing narrative.