Page:A cyclopaedia of female biography.djvu/607

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was so great, that Cardinal Bessarien went to Verona to converse with her. In a dialogue on the question whether Adam or Eve were the greater sinner in eating the forbidden fruit, she ably defended the cause of the mother of mankind against Louis Foscaro, She died, universally respected, in 1468, aged thirty, eight. Five hundred and sixty-six of her letters were preserved in De Thou's library. She was the daughter of Leonardo and Bianca Borromeo. She passed her life in the bosom of her family, loved by all her friends, and honoured and esteemed by the most illustrious literati of her day. She has done much to render her name celebrated, but would probably have accomplished still more, had not a premature death removed her from earthly glories. Her works, are—"A Dialogue on Original Sin;" "An Elegy on a Beautiful Villa;" "Epistles preserved in the Ambrosian Library;" "Oration to the Bishop Ermolao, written in Latin;" "An Euology on Girolano, Doctor of Divinity;" and a "Latin Enistle to Ludovico Foscarni."

NORDEN-FLEICHT, CHEDERIG CHARLOTTE DE,

A native of Stockholm, celebrated among her countrymen for her poems. Besides an ingenious "Apology for Women," a poem, she wrote "The Passage of the Belts," two straits in the Baltic, over which, when frozen, King Charles Gustavus marched his army in 1658. She died June 29th., 1793, aged forty-four.

NORTON, CAROLINE ELIZABETH SARAH,

Grand-daughter of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, has well sustained the family honours. Her father was Thomas Sheridan, and her mother was the daughter of Colonel and Lady Elizabeth Callander. Mr. Sheridan died while his children were quite young, and their mother devoted herself entirely to their education. Mr. S. C. Hall, in his "Gems of the Modern Poets," describes the early genius of Miss Caroline Sheridan, and the care her mother bestowed; his notice is doubtless correct. "To her accomplished and excellent mother," he says, "may be attributed much of Mrs. Norton's literary fame;—it forms another link in that long chain of hereditary genius which has now been extended through a whole century. Her sister, the lady of the Hon. Captain Price Blackwood, is also a writer of considerable taste and power: her publications have been anonymous, and she is disinclined to seek that notoriety which the 'pursuits of literature' obtain; but those who are acquainted with the productions of her pen will readily acknowledge their surpassing merit. The sisters used, in their childish days, to write together; and, before either of them had attained the age of twelve years, they produced two little books of prints and verses, called 'The Dandies' Ball' and 'The Travelled Dandies;' both being imitations of a species of caricature then in vogue. But we believe that, at a much earlier period, Mrs. Norton had written poetry, which even now she would not be ashamed to see in print. Her disposition to 'scribble' was, however, checked rather than encouraged by her mother; for a long time, pen, ink, and paper were denied to the young poetess, and works of fiction carefully kept out of her way, with a view of compelling a resort to occupations of a more useful character. Her active and energetic mind, notwithstanding, soon accomplished