and the Princess of Wales. [Loud cheers.] I have in mind a poem
just now which is familiar to you all, familiar to everybody. And what
an inspiration that was (and how instantly the present toast recalls the
verses to all our minds) when the most noble, the most gracious, the
purest, and sweetest of all poets says:

"Woman! O woman!--er--
Wom--"

[Laughter.] However, you remember the lines; and you remember how
feelingly, how daintily, how almost imperceptibly the verses raise up
before you, feature by feature, the ideal of a true and perfect woman;
and how, as you contemplate the finished marvel, your homage grows into
worship of the intellect that could create so fair a thing out of mere
breath, mere words. And you call to mind now, as I speak, how the poet,
with stern fidelity to the history of all humanity, delivers this
beautiful child of his heart and his brain over to the trials and sorrows
that must come to all, sooner or later, that abide in the earth, and how
the pathetic story culminates in that apostrophe--so wild, so regretful,
so full of mournful retrospection. The lines run thus:

"Alas!--alas!--a--alas!
----Alas!--------alas!"

--and so on. [Laughter.] I do not remember the rest; but, taken
together, it seems to me that poem is the noblest tribute to woman that
human genius has ever brought forth--[laughter]--and I feel that if I
were to talk hours I could not do my great theme completer or more
graceful justice than I have now done in simply quoting that poet's
matchless words. [Renewed laughter.] The phases of the womanly nature
are infinite in their variety. Take any type of woman, and you shall
find in it something to respect, something to admire, something to love.
And you shall find the whole joining you heart and hand. Who was more
patriotic than Joan of Arc? Who was braver? Who has given us a grander
instance of self-sacrificing devotion? Ah! you remember, you remember
well, what a throb of pain, what a great tidal wave of grief swept over
us all when Joan of Arc fell at Waterloo. [Much laughter.] Who does not
sorrow for the loss of Sappho, the sweet singer of Israel? [Laughter.]
Who among us does not miss the gentle ministrations, the softening
influences, the humble piety of Lucretia Borgia? [Laughter.] Who can
join in the heartless libel that says woman is extravagant in dress when