Brazil by Maria Graham, who thus wrote:"To-day I received a visit from DONA MARIA DE JESUS, the young woman who has lately distinguished herself in the war of the Reconcave. Her dress is that of a soldier of one of the Emperor's battalions, with the addition of a tartan kilt, which she told me she had adopted from a picture representing a Highlander, as the most feminine military dress. What would the Gordons and Macdonalds say to this? The 'garb of old Gaul' chosen as a womanish attire! Her father was a Portuguese, named Gonsaloez de Almeida, and possessed a farm on the Rio de Pez, in the parish of San José, in the Certao, about forty leagues inland from Cachoeira. Her mother was also a Portuguese, yet the young woman's features, especially her eyes and forehead, have the strongest characteristics of the Indians. Her father married a second time: the new wife and the young children, however, made home not very comfortable for Dona Maria de Jesus.

From her narrative it appears that, early in the late war of the Reconcave, emissaries had travelled the country in all directions to raise patriot recruits; that one of these had arrived at her father's house on a certain day about dinner-time; that her father had invited him in, and that after their meal he began to talk on the subject of his visit. He represented the greatness and riches of Brazil, and the happiness to which it might attain if independent. He set forth the long and oppressive tyranny of Portugal, and the meanness of submitting to be ruled by so poor and degraded a country. He talked long and eloquently of the services which Don Pedro had rendered to Brazil; of his virtues and those of the Empress; so that at the last

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said the girl, I felt my heart burning in my breast.' Her father, however, had none of her enthusiasm of character. He was old, and said he neither could join the army himself, nor had he a son to send thither; and as to giving a slave for the ranks, what interest had a slave to fight for the independence of Brazil? He should wait in patience the result of the war, and be a peaceable subject to the winner. Dona Maria stole from home to the house of her own sister, who was married, and lived at a little distance. She recapitulated the whole of the stranger's discourse, and said she wished she was a man, that she might join the patriots. 'Nay,' said the sister, if I had not a husband and children, for one half of what you say I would join the ranks of the Emperor.' This was enough. Maria received some clothes belonging to her sister's husband to equip her; and as her father was then about to go to Cachoeira to dispose of some cottons, she resolved to take the opportunity of riding after him, near enough for protection in case of accident on the road, and far enough away to escape detection. At length being in sight of Cachoeira, she stopped, and, going of the road, equipped herself in male attire, and entered the town. This was on Friday; by Sunday she had managed matters so well that she had entered the regiment of artillery, and had mounted guard. She was too slight, however, for that service, and exchanged into the infantry, where she remained. She was sent to Rio de Janeiro with despatches, to be presented to the Emperor, who give her an ensign's commission and the Order of the Cross, the decoration of which he himself fixed on her jacket. She was illiterate, but quick and apprehensive; her understanding and her per

ceptions active and keen, with education she would have been a remarkable person. She was not particularly masculine in her appearance, and her manners were gentle and cheerful. She did not contract anything coarse or vulgar in her camp life, and no imputation has ever been substantiated or charged against her modesty. One thing is certain, that her sex was never known until her father applied to her commanding officer to seek her.

"You love our Heroes! and you might have been

In battle-need our Boadicea Queen!
And stood up to the full majestic height
In your war-chariot, beckoning on the fight:
A famous victory you would have wrought,
Or with your heroes fallen as you fought."

Joan of Arc,

THE BRAVE MAID OF ORLEANS.

THE story of this brave girl has been so often told, and told so well, that it seems scarcely needful to repeat it here; only that any book professing to be a history of female heroism would be imperfect without a notice of Joan of Arc-who, as Southey has said:

"Appeared,

Of eighteen years; there was no bloom of youth
Upon her cheek, yet had the loveliest hues
Of health with lesser fascination fixed

The gazer's eye; for wan the maiden was,
Of saintly paleness, and there seemed to dwell
In the strong beauties of her countenance
Something that was not earthly."

"What was it," asks the Rev. James Martineau, "that armed the Maid of Orleans for field and siege, and enabled her to erect the prostrate courage of a nation? It was this; that with her the exercise of command was itself the practice of obedience- obedience to a high faith within the heart, to a venerated idea of duty and of God; and authority, thus deprived of its imperiousness and its caprice, thus moderated to an inflexible justice, and worn with a divine simplicity, strikes into human observers an awe, a delight, a trust, which are themselves the highest fruits of power." This is certainly the only solution of the problem of Joan of Arc's life. It is useless to hazard any specula

tions relative to the visions which this girl professed to have seen, or the philosophy, or otherwise, of any such visions. We simply accept the facts of her life that were seen, patent to tens of thousands, that affected the wellbeing of a nation, and that unquestionably tended to the conclusion of a war in her own monarch's favour. And, further, that these acts were done with but one object, in obedience to duty; that earthly honours or rewards were never in her calculation; that, on the contrary, she believed that the end of her labours for the freedom of her country from foreign invaders would be rewarded by death; that her objects, motives, and life would be misinterpreted and maligned; and yet she stayed not in her course, but bounded forward, as though the martyrdom in store was an earthly crown placed upon her head, with the benison and applause of all good men! She believed in the duty of obedience to the high thoughts within her; and although those thoughts led to the adoption of a life so strangely at variance with every feeling of her maidenly nature, yet, because she believed that her thoughts were the indications of God's finger pointing to her duty in the fulfilment of His purpose, she neither paused nor hesitated, but accepted the conditions and adopted the strange life.

Joan of Arc was the daughter of James and Isabel d'Arc, who brought up their five children upon the proceeds of a little farm; the education of their children consisted in tending cattle, running races, contending with the lads of the village, and tilting against the truss; an education which the girls shared with the boys. Joan's mother, however, imparted to her the current legends relating