Her physical beauty was
marvelous, and when great men were subjected to its influence, to the
imperial functions of her intellect, and to the persuasions of an
organization exceedingly spiritual and magnetic, it is no wonder that
her influence, domestic woman, housewife, as she always was, became so
effectual over them.
Let me here warn my hearers not to forestall this woman in their
judgments. She was not a manlike female. No better wife ever guided her
husband anonymously by her intuitions, or assisted him by her learning.
In the farm house and in the palace she was as wifely and retiring as
any of the excellent women who have been the wives of American
statesmen. Every one knew her abilities and her stupendous acquirements,
and she felt them herself, but, notwithstanding, she never would consent
to write a line for publication and avow it as her own, and never did,
until that time when her husband was an outlaw, when her child was torn
from her, when she herself stood in the shadow of the guillotine, and
writhed under the foulest written and spoken calumnies that can torture
outraged womanhood into eloquence. She then wrote, in twenty-six days,
her immortal Appeal to Posterity, and those stirring letters and papers
incident to her defense, from which some extracts have been here
presented. She was mistress of a faultless style. Her command over the
resources of her language was despotic. She could give to French prose
an Italian rhythmus.
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