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<h3>LUCY HUTCHINSON.</h3> [BORN 1620. DIED 1659.] JEFFREY. <ANTIMG src="images/it.jpg" alt="T" width-obs="78" height-obs="72" class="floatl" />HE daughter of Sir Allan Apsley, Lieutenant of the Tower of London, and wife of Colonel Hutchinson, so well known in the Civil War, was in all respects a remarkable woman. If it were allowable to take the portrait she has given of herself as a just representation of her fair contemporaries, we should form a most exalted notion of the Republican matrons of England. Making a slight deduction for a few traits of austerity borrowed from the bigotry of the age, we do not know where to look for a more noble and engaging character than that under which this lady presents herself to her readers; nor do we believe that any age of the world has produced so worthy a counterpart to the Valerias and Portias of antiquity. With a highminded feeling of patriotism and public honour, she seems to have been possessed by the most beautiful and devoted attachment to her husband, and to have combined a taste for learning and the arts with the most active kindness and munificent hospitality to all who came within the sphere of her bounty. To a quick perception of character, she appears to have united a masculine force of understanding and a singular capacity for affairs, and to have possessed and exercised all those talents without affecting any superiority over the rest of her sex, or abandoning for a single instant the delicacy and reserve which were then its most indispensable ornaments. Education is certainly far more diffused in our days, and accomplishments infinitely more common; but the perusal of this lady's Memoirs has taught us to doubt whether the better sort of women were not fashioned of old by a better and more exalted standard, and whether the most eminent female of the present day would not appear to disadvantage by the side of Mrs Hutchinson. There is for the most part something intriguing, and profligate, and theatrical in the clever women of this generation; and if men are dazzled by their brilliancy and delighted with their talent, we can scarcely even guard against some distrust of their judgment, or some suspicion of their purity. There is something, in short, in the domestic virtue, and the calm and commanding mind of our English matron, that makes the Corinnas and Heloises appear small and insignificant. The admirers of modern talent will not accuse us of choosing an ignoble competitor if we desire them to weigh the merits of Mrs Hutchinson against those of Madame Roland. The English revolutionist did not, indeed, compose weekly pamphlets and addresses to the municipalities, because it was not the fashion of her day to print every thing that entered into the heads of politicians. But she shut herself up with her husband in the garrison with which he was entrusted, and shared his counsels as well as his hazards. She encouraged the troops by her cheerfulness and heroism, ministered to the sick, and dressed with her own hands the wounds of the captives as well as of the victors. When her husband was imprisoned on groundless suspicions, she laboured without ceasing for his deliverance, confounded his oppressors by her eloquence and arguments, tended him with unshaken fortitude in sickness and in solitude, and after his decease dedicated herself to form his children to the example of his virtues, and drew up the memorial, which is now before us, of his worth and her own genius and affection. All this, too, she did without stepping beyond the province of a private woman, without hunting after compliments to her own genius or beauty, without sneering at the dulness or murmuring at the coldness of her husband, without hazarding the fate of her country on the dictates of her own enthusiasm, or fancying for a moment that she was born with talents to enchant and regenerate the world. With equal power of discriminating character, with equal candour, and eloquence, and zeal for the general good, she is elevated beyond her French competitor by superior prudence and modesty, and by a certain simplicity and purity of character, of which it appears to us that the other was unable to form a conception. England, we should think, should be proud of having given birth to Mrs Hutchinson and her husband; and chiefly because their characters are truly and peculiarly English, according to the standard of their times, in which national characters were most distinguishable. Not exempt, certainly, from errors and defects, they yet seem to us to hold out a lofty example of substantial dignity and virtue, and to possess most of those talents and principles by which public life is made honourable, and privacy delightful. Bigotry must at all times debase, and civil dissension embitter our existence; but, in the ordinary course of events, we may safely venture to assert, that a nation which produces many such wives and mothers as Mrs Lucy Hutchinson, must be both great and happy. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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