pathetic
story culminates in that apostrophe--so wild, so regretful, so full of
mournful retrospection. The lines run thus:

"Alas!--alas!--a--alas!
----Alas!--------alas!"
--and so on. I do not remember the rest; but, taken together, it seems
to me that poem is the noblest tribute to woman that human genius has
ever brought forth--and I feel that if I were to talk hours I could not
do my great theme completer or more graceful justice than I have now
done in simply quoting that poet's matchless words. The phases of the
womanly nature are infinite in their variety. Take any type of woman,
and you shall find in it something to respect, something to admire,
something to love. And you shall find the whole joining you heart and
hand. Who was more patriotic than Joan of Arc? Who was braver? Who
has given us a grander instance of self-sacrificing devotion? Ah! you
remember, you remember well, what a throb of pain, what a great tidal
wave of grief swept over us all when Joan of Arc fell at Waterloo. Who
does not sorrow for the loss of Sappho, the sweet singer of Israel?
Who among us does not miss the gentle ministrations, the softening
influences, the humble piety of Lucretia Borgia? Who can join in the
heartless libel that says woman is extravagant in dress when he can look
back and call to mind our simple and lowly mother Eve arrayed in her
modification of the Highland costume? Sir, women have been soldiers,
women have been painters, women have been poets. As long as language
lives the name of Cleopatra will live. And not because she conquered
George III.--but because she wrote those divine lines:

"Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
For God hath made them so."

The story of the world is adorned with the names of illustrious ones of
our own sex--some of, them sons of St. Andrew, too--Scott, Bruce, Burns,
the warrior Wallace, Ben Nevis--the gifted Ben Lomond, and the great
new Scotchman, Ben Disraeli.--[Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, at that time
Prime Minister of England, had just been elected Lord Rector of
Glasgow University, and had made a speech which gave rise to a world
of discussion]--Out of the great plains of history tower whole mountain
ranges of sublime women: the Queen of Sheba, Josephine, Semiramis,
Sairey Gamp; the list is endless--but I will not call the mighty roll,
the names rise up in your own memories at the mere suggestion,