Page:Forget Me Not (1824).djvu/250

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THE

HEROINE OF PADUA.

Fame is not less capricious than her blind sister, dame Fortune. The female most illustrious for extraordinary achievements—for the most dazzling beauty—for high mental endowments—for birth and opulence—the heroine celebrated by Petrarch, the poet of love, who spread the name of Laura, distinguished only by his passion—the heroine whom her countrymen commemorated by annual games at Padua—she is hardly known out of the precincts of her own country. Blanca Rubea was daughter to a nobleman of Padua; she was born A. D. 1235, and from infancy displayed a superiority to fear, seldom possessed by the masculine sex at a very early age. The charms of her face and person, superadded to hereditary grandeur and wealth, and above all her exalted character, drew many suitors to her feet; but she rejected all, saying, it was ungenerous in a woman to marry only to be the mother of slaves; and that while her country remained in bondage, she

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