waters. It was fortunate for Olympia that at this time there came to the Court of Ferrara an Italian lady, Lavinia di Rovera, who, to the most noble qualities of the heart and a cultivated mind, added a deep attachment to the Reformed faith. With Olympia, who soon became her most intimate friend and companion, she sought a faith which might open to them, not the classic elysium of the Greek, or the predestinated glories of the elect, but a true spiritual heaven, which should be at once the freedom, the rest, and the progress of their souls. The cloud still brooding over the courtly life of Olympia passed away in time, and she learned to repose with a child's trust in the Universal love.

It was while burdened with the grief of her father's death, that Olympia was summoned to answer to many but vague criminal charges, accusations of which she had been made the object. Duke Hercules, anxious to find some one of the Reformed faith upon whom to vent his anger at the progress of liberal opinion, took part strongly against her; the duchess dared not lift her voice to plead for her; Anna D'Este was gone; and, deprived of all support, she returned to her desolate home. The burden imposed upon her by her father's death was no light one. An invalid mother, three sisters, and a young brother claimed her vigilant care and devoted affection. She comprehended her duties, and sought to perform them with pious faithfulness. It was a beautiful thing to see this young girl, brought up in a court, the poet, the orator, the very embodiment of grace and beauty, quietly giving up all that the world had still to offer, and devoting herself with unremitting care to domestic duties and the education of her sisters. She still found time for her own studies, especially that of the Scriptures, and for the culture of her poetic talent. The two fragments which have been preserved among the compositions of this epoch of her life are an adieu to the profane muse, and a revelation of the faith in which she found her support under trial.

At this period, a young German physician, named Andreas Gründler, who had come to Ferrara to study, became inspired with warm admiration for Olympia, which on acquaintance became a deep and tender attachment. Anxious to

remove her from her painful position, he urged an immediate marriage. They were united according to the simple rites of the Reformed Church. Olympia composed a Greek hymn for the occasion. "It is," says Sinapi, "antiquity chanting through the voice of a choir the most solemn act of human life; it is a song of Pindar repeating by an echo the Christian renaissance at Ferrara."

This marriage was the commencement of a life of wandering. Deprived unjustly of his doctorate, the aim of Gründler was to get a professorship in some German university. With his young wife he was welcomed wherever they went by all the literati of Germany, to whom the reputation of Olympia was well known. Soon after their establishment in Schweinfurt, his native place, he received a most flattering invitation to take the professor's chair of medicine in the academy of Lintz, capital of Upper Austria. The advantages were very great, but were offered under condition that they must not profess publicly the Reformed faith, as it was under the ban in Lintz. Nobly did they refuse the tempting offer, choosing rather to battle with poverty than be faithless to the principles they professed. Sorrow was added to sorrow. The country was rent by civil war. During the siege of Schweinfurt, Olympia was an angel of mercy, a sister of charity, testifying a courage and a faith that never faltered. Then came the fever, which always follows in the train of war and famine. Still Olympia and Gründler kept their post, he ministering as physician to the sick and dying; she binding up wounds, feeding the hungry, consoling the bereaved, and blending with all prayers to the Father of all. At last the city was fired in the dead of night. The flames spread so rapidly, there seemed but little chance of escape for any one; but an unknown soldier came to Gründler and Olympia, imploring them to fly, and promising to guide them safely through the horrors that surrounded them. With the glare of flames, the crash of falling houses, the shrieks of the dying which echoed from every side, the last agony seemed reached when the temple in which hundreds had taken refuge was found to be on fire. There was no choice for them but to follow their guide, who led them in

safety from the city. The brave physician had nearly fallen a victim to the very pestilence whose ravages his watchful care had stayed. Saved by his wife's devotion, they found a refuge at length in the beautiful city of Heidelberg. Here Gründler was invited to lecture; and a new life seemed opened to his wife, a life of rest from bodily fatigue, a life of the rich intellectual progress which was her highest enjoyment. But her failing health soon rendered any exertion impossible, and then she lived wholly in spiritual thoughts and aspirations. Standing upon the borders of the two worlds, she looked not back, but rested calmly in her serene and beautiful faith. The description of her death-bed pays a touching tribute to the elevation and loveliness of her character:

"A short time before her death, on waking from a tranquil slumber, I observed her," writes her husband, "smiling very sweetly, and I asked her whence that heavenly smile proceeded. 'I beheld just now,' was her reply, a place filled with the clearest, brightest light.' Weakness prevented her saying more. 'Come,' said I, 'be of good cheer, my dearest wife: you are about to dwell in that beautiful light. She again smiled, and said, 'I am all gladness; nor did she again speak, till, her eyes becoming dim, she said, 'I can scarcely see you; but all places appear to me full of the fairest flowers.' Not long after, she fell into a sweet slumber, and expired. I never knew so true and pure a soul; never did so much candor, grace, purity, dwell upon this earth before."

the

Not only did her husband give her this tribute of words, but borne down by grief, struck by the pestilence then raging at Heidelberg, in less than two months he was placed by her side; and immediately after, as if struck by the same blow, young Emilio, the brother of Olympia, whose education she had guided, whom she had watched over as the choicest legacy bequeathed her by her beloved father, was stricken down and died. This threefold death was mourned as a public calamity. A French gentleman, professor in the University, honored himself by defraying the funeral expenses. They were buried in the chapel of Saint Peter at Heidelberg; and the inscription, which has been recently restored, reads thus :

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"In the name of the Eternal God. To the memory of Olympia Fulvia Morata, daughter of Peregrino Morato of Mantua, and illustrious professor at Ferrara. She was the beloved wife of Doctor Andreas Gründler. Her mind, and singular knowledge of languages, with the incomparable purity of her manners and her piety, raised her above her sex. The witness of her life was surpassed by that of her death, Peaceful, Happy, Holy. She died in the year of our Lord 1555, aged 29 years, upon a foreign ground. Here also repose her husband, and her brother Emilio."

The inhabitants of Schweinfurt, where she had lived only three years, moved by the deepest love and veneration, offered a still more remarkable testimonial. They ordered, by a solemn decree, that the house where she had dwelt should be rebuilt at the public expense, and engraved upon it was this inscription:

"Humble and poor house, but not without glory; for it was inhabited by Olympia Morata."

None of the prestige of rank and wealth, which lent their charm to Vittoria Colonna, gave any added brilliancy to Olympia Morata. The position she held she won by the intellectual and spiritual grace which pervaded her whole being, and the goodness of heart and the rectitude of principle which could remain firm in the midst of suffering and temptation such as few could have resisted. She was one of the first moulded and cast by the hand of the youthful Reformation; and her example of heroic sacrifice, which left its impress upon her own generation, may well rise up in this nineteenth century to inspire the womanhood her life so adorned, to rise up, in the strength of purity and godliness, to stay the enervating tide of self-indulgence, which is gradually undermining the foundations of virtue, and blighting homes that should be temples of the living God.

ART. III.-BUNSEN'S "GOD IN HISTORY."

God in History; or, The Progress of Man's Faith in the Moral Order of the World. By C. C. J. BUNSEN, D.Ph., D.C.L., and D.D. Translated from the German by SUSANNA WINKWORTH, with a Preface by the DEAN OF WESTMINSTER. In 3 vols. London : Longmans, Green & Co., 1868.

THAT the Dean of Westminster should not feel himself competent to enter" on philosophical and abstract questions, will surprise no one familiar with his glowing histories; but, turning back from the posthumous work of Bunsen to the graceful and brilliant Preface which inaugurates it, it is impossible to help asking one's self, "Is this a question of competency, or a question of courage?" Be that as it may, Dean Stanley's warm-hearted tribute to the personal graces, social powers, and recondite learning of the author, fitly ushers forth this noble and most welcome book.

The three volumes open with sixty pages of introduction,a "preliminary explanation" between author and readers; the least interesting part of the work, for Bunsen is always heavy when he becomes metaphysical, and sorely must the translator labor to glean the sense of his long-strung paragraphs. We indicate a few of its leading points.

The Universe is the unfolding of God's eternal Thought. If the laws of nature, uninformed by mind, have been discovered, the laws of the development of mind itself must be much more discoverable. If the observation of a portion of a planet's course enables the astronomer to draw the whole curve of its orbit, ought not so many thousands of years of human development to enable us to recognize the laws of the orbit of humanity, to understand the present, dimly at least to forecast the future?

Our fullest knowledge of God, that which must be at once the most operative and the most practical, rests on our recognition of the Infinite in the Finite, of the Ideal in the Actual; and moreover in its conscious, not merely its unconscious,