equalized it; and to permit to women, unless adjudged by the Courts depraved, access to and the guardianship of their young children. And Mrs. Norton went further than this. She begged for Her Majesty's countenance of the principle of Votes for Women.

It must not be supposed that her letter was intended to provoke a reply. As a letter-in the ordinary senseit was never sent at all. But the poet-soul of the woman, to whom political theory had been taught by cruel experience of political fact, was inebriate of the hope then proving intoxicant to minds less impressionable than hers, that the advent of a good woman to the English throne must bring about the raising of the status and the breaking down of the disabilities of Englishwomen in general. It was a hope not unjustifiable, and one that has not been belied. All the freedoms and privileges Mrs. Norton pleaded for have not been obtained, and though marriage and divorce laws have undergone great modifications since she wrote, there are some justices yet withheld from women that are given to men. On the other hand, much has been granted women that Christians among them should perhaps never have desired. Yet some concessions often deprecated are the right of women, on the basis of our Lord's pronouncement concerning the equality of marital obligation. It is easy to criticize the excesses of Mrs. Norton's demands, and to think of her with light pity as one whom the cruelty of circumstance made aggressive. She remains a woman who "saw visions" and "dreamt dreams" of "a new heaven and a new earth wherein the war of sects should cease and the lights of views, opinions, dogmas and creeds be extinguished, for "the Lamb shall be the light thereof." She remains also a pioneer of the Woman Movement, who did not, because of buffetings of the "unco' guid," and for the reason that she had suffered wrongs as a wife and a mother, incontinently leave her Church or irreverently accuse her Creator of dealing her blows which were, in truth, inflicted by her fellow-creatures, and, perhaps, in some sense, brought down by shortcomings in herself.

By the Queen-as Queen-no notice could of course be taken of Mrs. Norton's letter. She had not expected a response. But that the wife and mother on England's throne had compassion for her subject so peculiarly afflicted, we may infer from the fact that one high in Victoria's confidence-even that Churchwoman of enthusiasms, Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland, Mistress of the Robes bestowed on Caroline Norton all sisterly affection and protection. In her dedication to the Duchess of her poem, The Dream, Mrs. Norton acknowledged with some pathos and much appreciation the kindness of this great lady to her, and the extreme beauty of the character and person of the Duchess herself.

"DEDICATION TO HER GRACE THE DUCHESS OF SUTHERLAND

"And unto thee-the beautiful and pure-
Whose lot is cast amid that busy world
Where only sluggish Dulness dwells secure,
And Fancy's generous wing is faintly furl'd;
To thee-whose friendship kept its equal truth

Through the most dreary hour of my embitter'd youth.

For easy are the alms the rich man spares

To sons of genius, by misfortune bent;

But thou gav'st me, what woman seldom dares,
Belief in spite of many a cold dissent-

Thou gav'st me that the poor do give the poor,
Kind words, and holy wishes, and true tears;
The loved, the near of kin, could do no more,
Who changed not with the gloom of varying years,
But clung the closer when I stood forlorn,

And blunted Slander's dart with their indignant scorn."

Of the near of kin" to Caroline Norton, none more effectually blunted "Slander's dart with their indignant scorn " than her sisters, Georgiana, Duchess of Somerset (the "Queen of Beauty" at the great Eglinton tournament), and Helen, Lady Dufferin.

"You see, Georgie is the beauty and Carrie is the wit," said Miss Helen Sheridan to young Benjamin Disraeli at a party, "and I ought to be the good one, but then I am not." She looked prettily, spoke wittily, and was, in fact, the "good one" she protested she was not. Her verses, owing to their great simplicity, their lyrical quality and their truly Sheridanic wit, are better remembered and more justly popular than those of the sister who was reckoned, in her time, the more genuine poetess. But we are not now concerned to analyze Katy's Letter or The Irish Emigrant ("I'm sitting by the Stile, Mary "); it is the woman who wrote those true songs of the people we want to study. To know Helen, Lady Dufferin, was to love her. Besides the attractions, men of learning, feeling, talent and action found in her, she had the supreme attraction which bound to her by a mighty cord, her distinguished son. Baron Dufferin, who was in the Navy, died when the future first Marquis of Dufferin and Ava was yet a child. Not long afterwards Lady Dufferin was made aware of a special sentiment of affection for her in a young man towards whom she had borne herself with all the engaging motherliness that had waked to charming and constant expression the chivalry of her son. But Lady Dufferin replied to this suitor, as to others nearer to her in age and in attainments, that she had taken a determination, for her son's sake, never to marry again. This determination she kept for fourteen years. But when Lord Gifford, who, though twenty years her junior, had never ceased to desire her for his wife, lay on his death-bed, she granted the wish become too sacred to be disregarded. We have the testimony of the Marquis of Dufferin that Lord Gifford was a man most worthy to utter the request that was the last he made on earth. Lady Dufferin's own letter to Lord Gifford's father-the Marquis of Tweeddale-tells the rest of the story in a way that in all respects becomes a Churchwoman. The letter was written on October 13, 1862.