The Camden weekly journal. [volume] (Camden, South-Carolina) 1853-1861, 1854-11-07
Mary sidney, Countess of Pembroke.

Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke.
This lady, who possessed in herself qualif
catns bright enough to have rendered her
name famous, and to have added dignity and
ornanSnt to the most illustrous blood, enjoyed
also lie pr ,ud distinction Of being sister to Sir
Philip Sydne,, who loved her to idolatry, and
delighted to dwell on her merits. She, was
daug ghter to Sir Henry Sidney, +he wise and
worthy Deputy of Ireland, and President OF
Wales, and Mary, eldest daughter of John
Bndley, Duke of Northumberland, and was
horn in the year 1850. 20 -.
| In l476 >he became the wife of Henry Her
bert, Earl of Pembroke, who had been twice
before married She seems to have regarded
with equal Indifference the maghificence OF
Elizabeth's, and the intrigues of James courts
and to have devoted herself entirely to the
exercise of private virtues, and the retired en-
ioyment Of literary leisure. With regard to
such characters the absence$Of detracLlnn is
sufficient evidence of moral merit, for. in her
time the practice of domestic virtues by her
sex was too universal to challenge particular
praise, and it is the conduct Of the worthless,
therefore, that has been chiefly recorded. She
had received the learned education which was
then bestowed on women of her rank, but at
tanned to a proficiency which had before been
seldom reached by any. She had left the re
,putation of having been mistress even of the
Hebrew tongue. and a translaton,by her, from
the original text, of several of the Psalms is
said to remain, in manuscript, the library at
Wilton. Possessing, with a powerful mind,
much richness and variety Of fancy, she fell
almost naturally into the practice of.poetical
composition of Which she became patsionately
fond; but her prose, of which few specimens
remain, is better than her verse, more orna.
mental and graceful--metaphorical, and yet
more simple and ineligible. The following
passage, in which fine moral sentiment is;
clothed in such diversity of thought, and de-
liyered with so much force and elegancy of
expression, is scarcely to be equalled among
the works of the best prose writer's of her time.
1t seems to me strange, aud thing much.
Ito be marveled, that the labofer, to- repose
himself, hasteneth as it were the course of the
sun that the mariner rows with all force to at.
tain the port, and with a Joyful erie salutes the
deserted land that the traveller is never quiet
nor content Till he is at the end of his voyage;
and That we; in the mean while, tied in this
world to perpetual taske; tossed with con-
tinual tempest; tryed with "a rough and cum
bersome way; yet cannot see the end of our
labor but with griefe, nor behold our port but
with horror and trembling. This life is but
Peneope's web, wherein we are always doing
and undong sea opened to all winds, which,
sometimes within sometimes. without, never
arose to torment US; q wearie Journey through
extreme heat and colds over high mountains,
steepe rocks and theevish deserts; and so We
term it, weaving this web, in rowing at this
.uare. in passing this miserable way yes loe,
death stretches out her arms and pulls US into
the port; when, after so many dangerous pas:
sages, and lothsome lodgings she would con
duct US to our true home and resting. place; i'll
stead of rejoycing at the end of our labor; Of
taking comfort at the sight of our land Of
singing at The approach Of our happy mansion;
we would fane who would believe it retake
our worke in hande; we would again hoist
safe tc the winds, and willingly undertake our
Journey anew. No more then remember we
our paines: our shipwrccks are forgotten; we
feare no more the travaiIes or the thieves;
contrariwise, we apprehend death as an ex.
treme paine we doubt it as rookie; we file it
as thicfe; we do as little children, who all
the day cpmplainc, and when the medicine is
brought them are no longer sicke; as they
who all the weeke long runne up and downe
the streetes with paine of the teeth, and seeing
the barber comeing to pull them out, feel no
more paine. We feare more the cure than the
disease; the surgeon than the paine. We have
more sense of the medicines bitterness, soon
gone, than of a bitter languishing, long con-
lnued more feeling of death, the end of our
mseres, than the endless. miserie of our life.
We feare that we ought to hope for, aud wish
for that We ought to fear"
She died at her house in Aldersgate street
ON the twenty fifth of Sept. 1921. Ben John
son has immortaized her name and his own by
this epitaph:-
"Underneath the marble hearse --,