536 REVIEWS—HISTORICAL PICTURES RETOUCHED. 
coldly on the marble which glowed with all her genius and her passion ; 
and what to her is the world’s empty mockery of fame ? 
The world will see 
Little of this, my parting work, in thee, 
Thou shalt have fame! Oh mockery! give the reed 
From storms a shelter,—give the drooping vine 
Something round which its tendrils may entwine,— 
Give the parch’d flower a rain-drop, and the meed i 
Of love’s kind words to woman! Worthless fame ! 
That in his bosom wins not for my name " 
Th’ abiding-place it asked! Yet how my heart, 
Tn its own fairy world of song and art, 
Once beat for praise !—Are those high longings o’er? 
That which I have been ean I be no more ?— 4 
Neyer oh! never more; tho’ still thy sky 4 
Be blue as then, my glorious Italy ! 
And tho’ the music, whose rich breathings fill 
Thine air with soul, be wandering past me still, 
And tho’ the mantle of thy sunlight streams, 
Unchanged on forms, instinct with poet-dreams ; 
Never, oh! never more! Where’er I move, 
The shadow of this broken-hearted love 
Is on me and around! Too well they know, 
Whose life is all within, too soon and well, 
When there the blight hath settled ;—but I go 
Under the silent wings of peace to dwell ; 
From the slow wasting, from the lonely pain, 
The inward burning of these words—“ zn vain.” 
£4 
But such is not the phase of womanly character that the authoress 
had in view in retouching her historical pictures; and in justice to 
her, we must let her speak for herself. In closing her selections of 
female portraiture from the Galleries of Bologna, she remarks : 
Whoever writes in the present day can hardly remain neutral with regard to 
the responsibleness of women toward women. Upon this subject let us say, in 
closing, a few words. Let every conscientious woman beware, lest an unlucky 
witticism, a smart saying, ora careless slur, injure for ever a reputation of which 
she knows nothinz with certainty. Public opinion is a mingled stream, flowing 
from a thousand nameless sources. . 
An example will show how really liberal and right-thinking women may swell 
the current of popular prejudice. 
Lady Morgan, whose merits no one can appreciate more highly than ourselves, 
since she has always preserved, through the remarkable houors and distinctions 
to which genius has raised her, her unaffected, sprightly, democratic air; Lady 
