Page:A cyclopaedia of female biography.djvu/584

This page has been validated.
562
MOR.

an equal support to the monarchy." The duchess also contributed to the preservation of the life of the Prince de Condé.

MORATA, OLYMPIA FULVIA,

Was born at Ferrara, in 1526. Her father, preceptor to the young Princes of Ferrara, sons of Alphonsus the First, observing her genius, took great pains in cultivating it. Olympia was called to court for the purpose of studying belles-lettres with the Princess of Ferrara, where she astonished the Italians by declaiming in Latin and Greek, explaining the paradoxes of Cicero, and answering any question that was put to her. Her father's death, and the ill health of her mother, withdrew her from court, and she devoted herself to household affairs, and the education of her three sisters and a brother. A young German, named Andrew Grunthler, who had studied medicine, and taken his doctor's degree at Ferrara, married her, and took her, with her little brother, to Germany.

They went to Schweinfurt, in Franconia, which was soon after besieged and burnt, and they barely escaped with their lives. The hardships they suffered in consequence, caused Morata's death in the course of a few months. She died in 1555, in the Protestant faith, which she had embraced on her coming to Germany. Several of her works were burnt at Schweinfurt, but the remainder were collected and published at Basil, 1558, by Coeluis Secundus Curio. They consist of orations, dialogues, letters, and translations.

MORELLA, JULIANA,

A native of Barcelona, was born in 1595. Her father being obliged to leave Spain for a homicide, fled to Lyons, where he taught his daughter so well, that at the age of twelve, she publicly maintained theses in philosophy. In her tenth year, she is said to have held a public disputation in the Jesuit's College at Lyons. She was profoundly skilled in philosophy, divinity, music, jurisprudence, and philology. She entered into the convent of St Praxedia, at Avignon.

MORE, HANNAH,

Distinguished for her talents, and the noble manner in which she exerted them, was the fourth daughter of Mr. Jacob More; she was born February 2nd., 1745, at Stapleton, Gloucestershire. Mr. More was a schoolmaster, and gave his daughters the rudiments of a classical education; but he was a narrow-minded man, and so fearful they would become learned women, that he tried by precepts to counteract the effect of his lessons. The elder daughters opened, at Bristol, a boarding-school for girls, which was for a long time very flourishing, and at this school Hannah obtained the best advantages of education she ever enjoyed. How small these were compared with the opportunities of young men I And yet what man of her nation and lime was so influential for good, or has left such a rich legacy of moral lessons for the improvement of the world as Hannah More has done? Her influence has been wonderful in the new world, as well as in her own country.

In 1761, Hannah More wrote a pastoral drama, "The Search after Happiness." She was then sixteen; and though this produc-