d
her to the elegant, who were swift to distinguish her as they
found her simple manners faultless. With her singular simplicity
and purity, such as society could not spoil, nor much affect,
she was only entertained by it, and really went into it as
children into a theatre,--to be diverted,--while her ready
sympathy enjoyed whatever beauty of person, manners, or ornament
it had to show. If there was conversation, if there were
thought or learning, her interest was commanded, and she gave
herself up to the happiness of the hour.

"As she advanced in life, her personal beauty, not remarked
in her youth, drew the notice of all, and age brought no fault
but the brief decay and eclipse of her intellectual powers."

In 1833, three years before Emerson wrote "Nature," Mrs. Ripley
said of him: "We regard him still, more than ever, as the
apostle of the Eternal Reason. We do not like to hear the
crows, as Pindar says, caw at the bird of Jove."*

[Footnote]
* On the stone which marks Mrs. Ripley's grave in the beautiful
cemetery at Concord, her children placed an inscription containing
a part of the passage with which Tacitus ends his Life of Agricola.
"It was a passage which was specially dear to her," says her
biographer; "many of her friends will recall the fine glow of
feeling with which she read or quoted it; and to these it will
always be associated with her memory. I cannot better close this
imperfect sketch of her life than by giving the whole of it: of
no one was it ever more worthily spoken than of her. The words
enclosed in brackets are those which are on her gravestone."

"Si quis piorum manibus locus; si, ut sapientibus placet, non
cum corpore exstinguunter magnae animae; (placide quescas, nosque,
domum tuam, ab tuarum voces, quas neque lugeri neque plangi fas
est: admiratione te potius, temporalibus laudibus, et, si natura
suppedit, similitudine decoremus.) Is verus honos, ea conjunctissimi
cujusque pietas. Id filiae quoque uxorique praeceperim, sic
patris, sic mariti memoriam venerari, ut omnia facta dictaque
ejus secum revlvant; famamque ac figuram animi magis quam
corporis complectantur: non quia intercedendum putem imaginibus,
quae marmore aut aere finguntur, sed ut vultus hominum, ita simulacra
vultus imbecilla ne mortalia sunt, forma mentis aeterna, quam
tenere et exprimere non per alienam materiam et artem, sed tuis
ipse moribus posis. Quidquid ex Agricola amavimus, quidquid mirati
sumus,