ntury that had just passed written as the best
examples of American womanhood for our first century. Mrs.
Schuyler was selected from New York, Mrs. Livermore from
New Hampshire, and Mrs. Randolph from Virginia. Mrs. Ripley
was chosen as the representative of Massachusetts. If anybody
doubt the capacity of the intellect of woman to rival that
of man in any calling requiring the highest intellectual capacity,
without in the least forfeiting any quality of a delicate
womanhood, let him read the "Life of Sarah Ripley."

After her death Mr. Emerson wrote the following notice of
her. It is not found in his collected works.

"Died in Concord, Massachusetts, on the 26th of July, 1867,
Mrs. Sarah Alden Ripley, aged seventy-four years. The death
of this lady, widely known and beloved, will be sincerely
deplored by many persons scattered in distant parts of the
country, who have known her rare accomplishments and the singular
loveliness of her character. A lineal descendant of the first
governor of Plymouth Colony, she was happily born and bred.
Her father, Gamaliel Bradford, was a sea-captain of marked
ability, with heroic traits which old men will still remember,
and though a man of action yet adding a taste for letters.
Her brothers, younger than herself, were scholars, but her
own taste for study was even more decided. At a time when
perhaps no other young woman read Greek, she acquired the
language with ease and read Plato,--adding soon the advantage
of German commentators.

"After her marriage, when her husband, the well-known clergyman
of Waltham, received boys in his house to be fitted for college,
she assumed the advanced instruction in Greek and Latin, and
did not fail to turn it to account by extending her studies
in both languages. It soon happened that students from Cambridge
were put under her private instruction and oversight. If
the young men shared her delight in the book, she was interested
at once to lead them to higher steps and more difficult but
not less engaging authors, and they soon learned to prize
the new world of thought and history thus opened. Her best
pupils became her lasting friends. She became one of the
best Greek scholars in the country, and continued, in her
latest years, the habit of reading Homer, the tragedians,
and Plato. But her studies took a wide range in mathematics,
in natural philosophy, in psychology, in theology, as well
as in ancient and modern literature. She h