218 A WIDOWED HEROINE. 



debt of compensation do we owe to that gigantic Wasp,, met 

 with in our morning walk, and left, just now, exploring the 

 mouse-hole tunnel. We have been employing, it is true, the 

 last half-hour in recording with the utmost accuracy, those of 

 its proceedings which met the eye ; but then we have hinted at 

 its purposes, only in accordance with the common and preju- 

 diced notion that Wasps are always after mischief, while we 

 were all the while perfectly aware that our Wasp was bent 

 upon an enterprise, which, however fraught to us with inci- 

 pient evil, was in itself highly laudable, and worthy, not of an 

 idler or a freebooter, but of a perfect hero, or, more properly, 

 heroine : tliis great individual being, in fact, of the female sex. 

 Now suppose a certain princess, perhaps but recently a bride, 

 to have seen her husband and her servants fall successively 

 around her, the victims of some sweeping pestilence, followed 

 by an earthquake. From a violent paroxysm, she herself sinks 

 into a stupor of grief, from which she awakes to find herself 

 alone. Under such trying circumstances she feels, perhaps, 

 that she would rather sit and wring her handkerchief till she 

 had wept, like Niobe, a pool big enough to drown, at once, 

 her sorrows and herself; but, having a right royal spirit, she 

 combats her woman's weakness by thoughts magnanimous. 

 Though it would be easier to die, she must live and bestir 

 herself, not for her own sake, but to uphold the honour of her 

 princely house, which can only, indeed, be preserved from 

 utter extinction by the preservation of the posthumous heir, 



