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- For where are the galleons of Spain? Let his Majesty hang to St. James The axe that he whetted to hack us: He must play at some lustier games. Or at sea he can hope to out-thwack us; To his mines of Peru he would pack us To tug at his bullet and chain; Alas! that his Greatness should lack us!-- But where are the galleons of Spain? ENVOY GLORIANA!--the Don may attack us Whenever his stomach be fain; He must reach us before he can rack us,... And where are the galleons of Spain? THE PRINCESS DE LAMBALLE From 'Four Frenchwomen' A tender wife, a loving daughter, and a loyal friend,--shall we not here lay down upon the grave of Marie de Lamballe our reverential tribute, our little chaplet of _immortelles_, in the name of all good women, wives, and daughters? "_Elle etait mieux femme que les autres._"[A] To us that apparently indefinite, exquisitely definite sentence most fitly marks the distinction between the subjects of the two preceding papers and the subject of the present. It is a transition from the stately figure of a marble Agrippina to the breathing, feeling woman at your side; it is the transition from the statuesque Rachelesque heroines of a David to the "small sweet idyl" of a Greuze. And, we confess it, we were not wholly at ease with those tragic, majestic figures. We shuddered at the dagger and the bowl which suited them so well. We marveled at their bloodless serenity, their superhuman self-sufficiency; inly we questioned if they breathed and felt. Or was their circulation a matter of machinery--a mere dead-beat escapement? We longed for the _sexe prononce_ of Rivarol--we longed for the showman's "female woman!" We respected and we studied, but we did not love them. With Madame de Lamballe the case is otherwise. Not grand like this one, not heroic like that one, "_elle est mieux femme que les autres_." She at least is woman--after a fairer fashion--after a truer type. Not intellectually strong like Manon Philipon, not Spartan-souled like Marie de Corday, she has still a rare intelligence, a courage of affection. She has that _clairvoyance_ of the heart which supersedes all the stimulants of mottoes from Reynel or maxims from Rousseau; she has that "angel instinct" which is a juster lawgiver than Justinian. It was thought praise to say of the Girondist lady that she was a greater man than her husband; it is praise to say of this queen's frie
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