exigent of critics. Moreover, she was
a woman of the most delicate sensibilities, the tenderest affections.
When her father was persecuted, as she at least deemed it, she clung to
him with a fidelity that was as touching as it was deserved; for,
whatever Burr may have been to others, to his daughters he was the most
loving and considerate of parents. When he fell into disgrace Theodosia
made strenuous efforts in his behalf; and her letter on the subject to
Mrs. Madison is a model of pathetic and yet dignified entreaty for
justice.

Her whole life was full of romance. The shadow of her father's ostracism
hung over her during her last years, and though she had before his fall
been married to Joseph Alston, of South Carolina, she was always the
daughter rather than the wife, perhaps even than the mother, though her
grief at the death of her only child was terrible. This sad event
occurred just after the return of Burr from his long exile, and the
daughter's joy was naturally forgotten in the sorrow of the mother, even
though she may have held the gain greater than the loss. Others have
been models of wives and mothers; but Theodosia, though in both those
characters admirable beyond cavil, stands rather as the representative
American daughter. Her father was her deity, her best self, her whole
good; "If the worst comes to the worst," she wrote to him when he was in
exile, "I will leave _everything_ to suffer with you." She was not
driven to such sacrifice; yet the return of that beloved father to his
country, if not to his rights, came too late for her. Broken down by the
death of her child, she resolved to go by sea from her Southern home to
New York to join her father, who alone, she thought, could give her
comfort in her grief; but, true to the sad romance that surrounded her
life, the little vessel on which she sailed was never heard from after
leaving port. How Theodosia met her fate is unknown; but we may be sure
that it was with fortitude and calmness, whatever guise that fate may
have worn.

Theodosia Burr, for thus, rather than as Theodosia Alston, will she
always be known, and Dorothy Madison stand out prominently as divergent
types of the highest development of the women of their day; and we can
hold them to have been fairly, if somewhat exaggeratedly representative
of American womanhood at that period. The close of the War of 1812, like
that of the Revolution, marked an era in the history of the women of
Amer