plentifully upon those women who, perhaps from strength of character, have refused to make such a connexion where it promised little of elevated happiness, _does_ make the state of singleness somewhat of a trial to the patience of many; and to many the vexation of this trial has proved a snare for beguiling them of their honourable resolutions. Meantime, as the opportunities are rare in which all the conditions concur for happy marriage connexions, how important it is that the dignity of high-minded women should be upheld by society in the honourable election they make of a self-dependent virgin seclusion, by preference to a heartless marriage! Such women, as Mrs. Trollope justly remarks, fill a place in society which in their default would _not_ be filled, and are available for duties requiring a tenderness and a punctuality that could not be looked for from women preoccupied with household or maternal claims. If there were no regular fund (so to speak) of women free from conjugal and maternal duties, upon what body could we draw for our "sisters of mercy," &c.? In another point Mrs. Trollope is probably right: few women live unmarried from necessity. Miss Wordsworth had several offers; amongst them, to my knowledge, one from Hazlitt; all of them she rejected decisively. And she did right. A happier life, by far, was hers in youth, coming as near as difference of scenery and difference of relations would permit to that which was promised to Ruth--the Ruth of her brother's creation[120]--by the youth who came from Georgia's shore; for, though not upon American savannah, or Canadian lakes, "With all their fairy crowds Of islands, that together lie As quietly as spots of sky Amongst the evening clouds," yet, amongst the loveliest scenes of sylvan England, and (at intervals) of sylvan Germany--amongst lakes, too, far better fitted to give the _sense_ of their own character than the vast inland _seas_ of America, and amongst mountains more romantic than many of the chief ranges in that country--her time fleeted away like some golden age, or like the life of primeval man; and she, like Ruth, was for years allowed "To run, though _not_ a bride, A sylvan huntress, by the side" of him to whom she, like Ruth, had dedicated her days, and to whose children, afterwards, she dedicated a love like that of mothers. Dear Miss Wordsworth! How noble a creature did she seem when I first knew her!--and when, on the very first night which I passed in her brother's company, he read to me, in illustration of something he was saying, a passage from Fairfax's "Tasso," ending pretty nearly with these words, "Amidst the broad fields and the endless wood, The lofty lady kept her maidenhood,"