With a still higher pleasure, because to one of my own sex, whom I have honored almost above any, I went to pay my court to Joanna Baillie.

I found on her brow, not indeed a coronal of gold, but a serenity and strength undimmed and unbroken by the weight of more than fourscore years, or by the scanty appreciation which her thoughts have received.
I prize Joanna Baillie and Madame Roland as the best specimens which have been hitherto offered of women of a Roman strength and singleness of mind, adorned by the various culture and capable of the various action opened to them by the progress of the Christian Idea.

They are not sentimental; they do not sigh and write of withered flowers of fond affection, and woman's heart born to be misunderstood by the object or objects of her fond, inevitable choice.

Love (the passion), when spoken of at all by them, seems a thing noble, religious, worthy to be felt.

They do not write of it always; they did not think of it always; they saw other things in this great, rich, suffering world.