after a general pillage, set it on fire. The house, together with the whole property, of Gruntler and Olympia, fell a prey to the conflagration, and they themselves narrowly escaped with their lives. Whilst flying through the streets, amidst the burning houses, in search of an asylum, and intending to throw themselves for shelter into some church, a soldier, to whom they were unknown, recommended them instantly to quit the place. Fortunately they followed his advice: for many of those who had retired to the churches were suffocated by the smoke, which entered in volumes from the surrounding ruins. Scarcely, however, had they reached the gates, when they were seized by some soldiers who were in pursuit of plunder, who stripped them of their clothes, and left Olympia no other covering besides her under linen. Gruntler was taken prisoner, but soon obtained his liberation. In the forlorn and destitute condition to which they were now reduced, without money and without clothes, they felt it difficult to determine what course to pursue. They resolved at length to attempt to reach Hamelburg, a small town distant from Schweinfurt about three German miles. Olympia gives a very affecting description of herself when she arrived at this place. "I appeared," she says, "to be the queen of beggars. I entered the town with my feet naked, my hair loose and dishevelled, and my clothes in rags; and even these I should not have had, if a woman had not lent them to me." The fatigues of this journey, added to the distress and anxiety attending it, brought on a fever, from which she never afterwards wholly recovered.

As the inhabitants of Hamelburg had been forbidden to afford shelter to any of the fugitives from Schweinfurt, they were only allowed a short time to recruit themselves and procure necessaries : at the end of four days, notwithstanding Olympia's indisposition, they were compelled to depart. At the next small town they reached, which was in the territory of one of the bishops, they were made prisoners by the commanding officer, who informed them that his orders from his Christian and merciful master were, to put to death all persons

who might escape in that direction from the conflagration of Schweinfurt. Here they were detained captives in anxious suspense between hope and fear, until an answer arrived to a letter which they had addressed to the Bishop, when they were left to pursue their journey. They now proceeded, without further molestation, to Heidelberg, where they were very honourably received by some of the Protestant nobility, who for some time hospitably entertained them at their mansions, and liberally administered to their various wants. As soon as the necessary arrangements could be made, they fixed their residence at Heidelberg, Gruntler having obtained, through the Elector Palatine, Frederic the Second, the appointment of Professor of Medicine in the University of that city.

The severe bodily fatigues and the acute mental sufferings which Olympia had endured from the commencement of the troubles at Schweinfurt, gradually undermined her constitution, and wasted her strength. The fever which she had caught during her flight, when she was exposed without covering to the inclemency of the weather, retained its hold upon her frame, notwithstanding the medical skill of her husband, and the kind attentions of the friends whom she had found at Heidelberg; and, within a year, brought her to a premature grave. In her last very affecting letter to her friend Cœlius Secundus Curio, whom she seems always to have regarded with the feelings of a daughter, she thus expresses herself: "As for me, my Cœlius, be assured that all hope of longer life is vanished; for as to medicine, of which I have taken a great deal, there is none that brings me relief. Every day, nay, almost every hour, those about me expect nothing but my departure; and, indeed, I know not whether this may not be the last letter you will receive from me. Farewell, most excellent Coelius, and if my death be announced to you, do not grieve; for I know that I shall then be living: I desire to die and be with Christ." As she had anticipated, the account of her death immediately followed her own letter. The intelligence was communicated to Cœlius

by her husband, in a letter which is written with the feeling of a man overwhelmed by his affliction. "She departed," he states, "with great eagerness, and, so to speak, with a certain pleasure in dying; since she felt assured that she was called from continual sufferings and from a most unhappy existence, to perpetual felicity. She lived with me not quite five years, and never have I seen a mind more candid and sincere, or a demeanour more virtuous and exemplary. She died on the 26th day of October, (1555,) before she had completed the 29th year of her age." *

The high estimation in which Olympia was held by the learned among her contemporaries, may be seen from the letters of eminent persons, and the testimonies to her merits after her death, which are printed with her works, and from incidental notices in the publications of that period. The early age at which she was cut off, and the unsettled state in which she passed her last years, precluded the possibility of her composing much for the press, and the few things which she had written, perished in the conflagration of Schweinfurt. All that remained of the fruits of her study and erudition, were some small pieces which she recomposed from memory, or were preserved in the hands of her friends. These were, after her death, collected and published by Coelius Secundus Curio, whom she had requested to act as her Aristarchus, to prepare and revise them for the printer. The volume contains some of her early exercises, consisting of a Commentary on Cicero's Paradoxes; an Oration in Greek in praise of Q. Mutius Scavola, with a Latin translation; and a translation into Latin of some of Boccacio's Tales; also her Letters, of which some are in Greek, and some in Latin and Italian; some Devotional Poems in Greek and Latin; besides a few other pieces. Among the Poems, her Greek version, in Sapphic mea sure, of the Forty-sixth Psalm, may

Her husband and her brother died very shortly after her, and they were buried in the same grave in the Church of St. Peter's at Heidelberg. Melch. Adam in Vita Andr. Gruntleri (Vit. Germ. Medicor. p. 81).

be reckoned her master-piece. When it was first privately circulated by her friends, it excited universal admiration. Xystus Betuleius, after perusing it, could not believe it to be the production of a female, and wrote to Curio to satisfy himself upon the subject. He afterwards composed a Latin version of it in the same metre, which is published with the original. The first edition of her works was printed at Basle, in 1558. The second appeared in 1562. Prefixed to this edition, is a complimentary dedication by Curio to Queen Elizabeth of England. They were afterwards reprinted in 1570 and 1580. ↑

be gratified by the perusal of this Poem, I shall take an early opportunity to transcribe it for the Repository.

As some of your learned readers might

+ Xystus Betuleius was a native of Germany. After receiving the elements of his education, he removed to the University of Basle, in Switzerland, where he soon distinguished himself by his acquirements, especially in the languages and polite literature. The magistrates of the city first appointed him master of the public school, and afterwards one of the professors at the University. After holdturned to his native country, and there ing this situation for some years, he reconducted an academical institution with high reputation. The learned Wolfgangus Musculus was one of his scholars. He was esteemed a good Latin poet, and composed several religious dramas in that language on the stories of Susannah, Judith, Joseph, &c., which were represented in public. He wrote also, among other works, Symphonia in Novum Testamentum Græcum; and Annotationes et Collectiones in Carmina Sibyllina. — Mel. Adam, in Vit. Germ. Philos., p. 160.

The materials of the preceding memoir are taken from the edition of Olympia's works, printed at Basle in 1580. Melchior Adam has inserted a short account of her, extracted from the same documents, among his Lives of German Philosophers, p. 162. There is also a brief notice of her history and character written by Thuanus (Historia S. T. Tom. I. 562, Lond. 1733), who concludes his account in these words: Hujus (Olympiæ) miscellanea coegit et publicavit Cœlius Secundus Curio, ob religionem et ipse Italia profugus, quæ fæminæ omni laude dignissimæ mores et raram eruditionem exprimunt, et quid a tam excellenti ingenio expectari potuisset, nisi

light of appendages unwarrantably added to a most simple, intelligible and heavenly system. Her attention to the duties of public worship and religious improvement was regular and almost undeviating. She was to be seen in her place whenever the service of the sanctuary invited her presence, and indisposition or inclement weather did not prevent-not deeming it an act of supererogation, as but too many now do, to repair to the seat of devotion twice on the Lord's-Day. Nor did she on the first Sunday of the month, when the celebration of the Lord's Supper succeeded the usual service, desert her post, as is too frequently done, but staid, and with reverential, cheerful gratitude joined in the observance of it with her consistent fellow-christians. Her behaviour in the chapel was serious, devout and attentive. She aimed not so much to be thought pious as to be so. She was more solicitous to deserve the reputation of excellence than to acquire it. For years she attended with more or less constancy the school that was kept twice a week in the vestry to teach girls the arts of sewing and knitting, and these, together with a numher of boys, reading, writing and arithmetic. To this school, as well as to the Sunday-school and other charitable institutions, she was a generous, without being an ostentatious contributor. The whole tenor of her life demonstrated that the governing, presiding object of her wishes was to be and to do all that she believed to be consistent with the true genuine Christian character.

Mrs. SWANWICK, of Chester, for many years the surviving parent of a numerous and very worthy family, was distinguished by a peculiar combination of a most engaging suavity of manners, with a highly cultivated understanding and a truly benevolent heart. None could approach her without being charmed with the polite and graceful reception she gave them. If time admitted, she entered into conversation in the most unaffected and affable manner; and was never at a loss to make such kind and appropriate inquiries, as evinced at once an extensive knowledge of society, and the lively interest she took in the happiness of others. Great part of her

life was spent in the most useful and honourable employment of superintending the education of young ladies, and fitting them to appear with advantage in the world, and to fill, with credit to themselves and advantage to others, the various situations of life to which they might be called. Many ladies who survive their honoured and beloved governess, can bear testimony to the anxious as well as attractive and judicious mode in which she instructed them in such branches of knowledge, whether substantial or ornamental, as were requisite to qualify them to shine in whatever department they might be destined to act. On religious subjects she was accustomed to think without allowing herself to be under the influence of such restraints and obstacles as custom, fear or interest in too many cases impose, with a single eye to the attainment of the truth as it is in Christ Jesus our Lord. She acted upon the principle, in this instance, of calling no one but him her Master, and none Father but God. Firm was her conviction that she was amenable to no human tribunal for the sentiments she entertained of the gospel, and she exerted her best powers, unembarrassed and unbiassed, to discover its real nature and design. She was not, however, more distinguished for her upright and impartial investigation of the truth of religious doctrines, than for the candour and charity which she manifested to those who differed from her in sentiment. Though she might be denominated a Sectarian, as every thinking person must be in the proper but innocent sense of the word, by adopting opinions entertained by one or other class of Christians; yet she possessed not the slightest tincture of what has been styled, in a bad sense, a sectarian spirit. She believed in the personal as well as essential unity of the Creator, but she cherished no other feeling towards those who maintained a plurality of divine persons, than what resolved itself into a conviction of their being in error. She worshiped only Him who is one, and whose name is One, but interfered not with those, even in the way of complaint, who addicted themselves to a triune adoration. She cherished the firmest conviction of the Divine placability, uninfluenced by any thing but