PREFACE. < THE due appreciation of feminine influence in forming the character, is never denied to be a prominent feature of true statesmanship, nor that the decay of that influence, and the depreciation of woman, are unfailing signs of national fall or individual worthlessness. The time has past when, in the darkness of barbarism, female sensibility or excellence was held in light estimation, and it is left only to meager or perverted intellects to satirize with Voltaire the sex which he held to possess neither of the masculine attributes, ideas nor beards. Happily education now seconds the endowments of mind; the world concedes a tacit acquiescence to the claims of woman for preëminence in many other powers besides that of simple endurance, and we leave to the Hottentots the singular custom of first proving their arrival at manhood, by beating their mothers. Indeed, the high standard to which, history shows, womanly excellence may attain, and we may add in candor, the fearful power our sex can exercise, render the duty of its biogra pher doubly difficult, in keeping the mean between the two extremes of passion and principle, so as to "Nothing extenuate Nor set down aught in malice." Admitting therefore the generally-allowed influence of woman, but restricting our observations to the one particular object of this work, Heroism, we remark that the latter, partaking largely of Fortitude, has ever been considered peculiarly a feminine quality, and that though biography, like a vast picture made up of a myriad varied faces, pleases one taste by some features, and another by those wholly opposite, yet the element of encouragement or reproof is in each; indeed, even where no sympathy appears, discrimination may discover beauties which, by the affections, convince the reason. Hence, too, it is the most profitable kind of history, because it presents the individual as influenced by and controlling circumstances, rather than exhibits these last in their dry detail; and the knowledge derived from it is therefore of the greatest importance to the young, who copy character readily, and are often blinded to imperfection by the false luster of ambition and glory. Moreover, though the qualifications requisite for the historian who writes for youth, implying identity with its feelings of enthusiasm, even while moderating their effects, enhance the difficulties of the present work, arising from materials at once too much and |