FAMOUS GIRLS.

Α

MARGARET ROPER:

DAUGHTER OF SIR THOMAS MORE.

N author reports of his hero that he was in danger

of dying of love for one that had been dead two hundred years before his birth. No doubt it was a singular exhibition of weakness; but we are free to confess that, if it is possible to have an affectionate remembrance of persons we have never seen, to have our thoughts go out after them, the warmest and kindliest feelings of our nature to beat responsive to their memory, then do we so treasure and reverence the name of Margaret Roper. Not that she was the daughter of one of the most excellent men that ever trod the earth-for so we conceive Sir Thomas More to have been; or that she was concerned with events that were the forerunners of England's civil and religious liberty. Not for these, or any merely outward circumstances, do we so regard her; but because she was a true woman, true to the high behests of a noble, child-like nature-true to her opportunities of culture

B

and intellectual development, which she embraced with the industrious devotedness of a high-willed and selfresolved woman. Not for these reasons, however, admirable as they must ever be considered, but because she was as loving as she was courageous, and as courageous as she was loving. Solacing her father under his great wrongs, which only ended in his death, —a death cheerfully met by the brave old man rather than tamper with his conscience, we must ever chiefly remember her as a ministering spirit, as a genial, sympathizing earthly angel. When, then, we remember Margaret as a student, we respect her; as a sister and wife, we admire her; but, as the companion of her father, his cherished counsellor and confidant in his dire season of temptation and trial, we love her with a deep and tender love. No wonder, then, that our imagination should conjure up pictures of the best and dearest of womankind, and that we should undersign them with the reverenced name of Margaret Roper.

Sir Thomas More, Lord High Chancellor of England during the reign of Henry VIII., had three daughters, the eldest of whom was Margaret, who was deservedly her father's favourite. She was born in London about the year 1508, and had, as she grew up, considerable opportunities for intellectual culture, which she embraced with much earnestness. But that which was her chief incentive was the encouragement of her father, as he was her principal in

structor. Indeed, the communion which existed between them seems more like that of a loving brother and sister than that of a father and daughter. In his walks, his conversation, though never pedantic, was rife with instruction. Margaret, on one occasion, reported the substance of a profitable discourse during an equally pleasant ramble through the meadows at Fulham. "For me," says father, "there is manie a plant I entertayn in my garden and paddock which the fastidious would cast forthe. I like to teache my children the uses of common things-to know, for instance, the uses of the flowers and weeds that grow in our fields and hedges. Manie a poor knave's pottage woulde be improved, if he were skilled in the properties of the burdock and purple orchis, lady's smock, brook-lime, and old man's pepper. The roots of wild succory and water arrow-head mighte agreeablie change his Lenten diet, and glasswort afford him a pickle for his mouthful of salt meat. Then, there are cresses and wood-sorrel to his breakfast, and salep for his hot evening mess. For his medicine, there is herb-twopence, that will cure a hundred ills; camomile, to lull a raging tooth; and the juice of buttercup, to cleare his head by sneezing. Vervain cureth ague; and crowfoot affords the leaste painfulle of blisters. St. Anthony's turnip is an emetic; goosegrass sweetens the blood; wood-ruffe is good for the liver; and bindweed hath nigh as much vertue as the forayn scammony. Pimpernel promoteth laugh

ter, and poppy sleep; thyme giveth pleasant dreams, and an ashen branch drives evil spirits from the pillow. As for rosemarie, I lett it run alle over my garden walls, not onlie because my bees love it, but because 'tis the herb sacred to rememberance, and, therefore, to friendship, whence a sprig of it hath a dumb language that maketh it the chosen emblem at our funeral wakes, and in our buriall grounds. Howbeit, I am a schoolboy prating in presence of his master, for here is John Clement at my elbow, who is the best botanist and herbalist of us all."

We could afford to have the spirit of this quaint language brought three hundred years forward; and, although the botany would have to be amended, the ascribed names and virtues of the plants changed, the discourse itself might well serve as a model for genial conversation and instruction-cheerful in the giving and pleasant in the receiving. Shakespeare, surely, must have had a knowledge of this lecture of Sir Thomas More on the virtues of herbs, when he put into the mouth of Ophelia the words: "There's rosemary, that's for remembrance: pray love, remember: and there is pansies, that's for thoughts; there's fennel for you, and columbines; there's rue for you, and here's some for me: we may call it herbgrace o' Sundays; oh, you must wear your rue with a difference. There's a daisy; I would give you some violets, but they wither'd all when my father died.”