But it did not follow that all women were good, or that all were happy. Life is but a tangled yarn at the best; there are blanks and prizes drawn by women still, and not unfrequently "great men" have proved the greatest of blanks to them. Henry the Eighth was not, perhaps, entitled to the appellation of a great man, though he was an author, for which the Pope conferred on him the title, still retained by our monarchs, of "Defender of the Faith." The history of his six wives is well known. Nor was the married life of Peter the Great, and his three wives, of a more creditable complexion. LUTHER married Catharine de Bora, an escaped nun--a remarkably handsome woman. In his letters to his friends, he spoke of her as "My rib Kitty, my loved Kitty, my Empress Kitty." A year after his marriage, when struggling with poverty, he said, in one of these letters, "Catharine, my dear rib, salutes you. She is quite well, thank God; gentle, obedient, and kind, in all things; quite beyond my hopes. I would not exchange my poverty with her, for all the riches of Croesus without her." A dozen years after, he said, "Catharine, thou hast a pious man, who loves thee; thou art a very empress!" Yet Luther had his little troubles in connection with his married life. Catharine was fond of small-talk, and, when Luther was busily engaged in solving the difficulties of the Bible, she would interrupt him with such questions as--whether the king of France was richer than his cousin the emperor of Germany? if the Italian women were more beautiful than the German? if Rome was as big as Wittenberg? and so on. To escape these little inquiries, Luther saw no other way than to lock himself up in his study, with a quantity of bread and cheese, and there hold to his work. But Catharine still pursued him. One day, when he was thus locked up, laboring at his translation of the twenty-second Psalm, the door was assailed by the wife. No answer was given. More knocking followed, accompanied by Catharine's voice, shouting--"if you don't open the door, I will go fetch the locksmith." The Doctor entreated his wife not to interrupt his labors. "Open! open!" repeated Catharine. The doctor obeyed. "I was afraid," said she, on entering, "that something had vexed you, locked up in this room alone." To which Luther replied, "the only thing that vexes me now is yourself." But Luther, doubtless, entertained a steady, though sober affection for his wife; and in his will, in which he left her sole executrix, bequeathing to her all his property, he speaks of her as "always a gentle, pious, and faithful wife to me, and that has loved me tenderly. Whatever," he adds, "may happen to her after my death, I have, I say, full confidence that she will ever conduct herself as a good mother towards her children, and will conscientiously share with them whatever she possesses."