Christierna passed the rest of her life in a modest seclusion, where she exhibited all the virtues of private life. She died of paralysis, in the city of Tortona, in the year 1690.
SFORZA, IPOLITA,
Wife of Alphonso the Second, King of Naples. Born at Milan, 1446; died 1488. She understood the classical languages; and Lascari wrote a grammar for her in Greek. Argelatti declares that she wrote Latin with consummate elegance. In the Ambrosian Library, at Milan, are preserved two orations, in Latin, spoken by her in Mantua, to Pope Plus the Second. In the monastery of Santo Croce is to be seen an autograph manuscript of a codex to Cicero'S treatise Be Senectute, in which she has produced striking thoughts in a finished style of expression.
SHARPE, LOUISA,
Is an Englishwoman by birth, and celebrated for her talents as an artist. She can create as well as imitate, and in her original paintings there is a high tone of moral as well as poetical feeling. Her works are exquisitely graceful and feminine, and she evinces real genius. Her sister, Eliza Sharpe, shows an almost equal talent as an artist, and her paintings are much in the same style. There is also another sister who has given evidences of genius in the same art. One of the sisters has married a German gentleman—Mr. Seyfarth, of Dresden.
SHELLEY, MARY WOLSTONECRAFT,
Daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wolstonecraft, was born in London, August, 1797. Her mother dying at her birth, the daughter was tenderly and carefully brought up by her father and step-mother. The little girl soon evinced traits of the hereditary genius which was afterwards so fully developed.
In the introduction to one of her novels, she herself says of her youth:
"It is not singular that, as the daughter of two persons of distinguished literary celebrity, I should very early in life have thought of writing. As a child I scribbled; and my favourite pastime during the hours given me for recreation, was to 'write stories.' Still, I had a dearer pleasure than this, which was the formation of castles in the air; the indulging in waking dreams; the following up trains of thought, which had for their subject the formation of a succession of imaginary incidents. My dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable than my writings. In the latter I was a close imitator; rather doing as others had done, than putting down the suggestions of my own mind. What I wrote was intended at least for one other eye—my childhood's companion and friend; but my dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed, my dearest pleasure when free. I lived principally in the country as a girl, and passed a considerable time in Scotland. I made occasional visits to the more picturesque parts, but my habitual residence was on the blank and dreary northern shores of the Tay, near Dundee. Blank and dreary on retrospection I call them; they were not so to me then. They were the eyry of freedom, and the pleasant region where unheeded I
