WOMAN
IN
SACRED HISTORY:
A SERIES OF SKETCHES
DRAWN FROM SCRIPTURAL, HISTORICAL, AND LEGENDARY SOURCES.

BY

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.

Illustrated with Sixteen Chromo-Lithographs,

AFTER PAINTINGS BY RAPHAEL, BATONI, HORACE VERNET, GOODALL, LANDELLE, KOEHLER,
PORTAËLS, VERNET-LECOMTE, BAADER, MERLE, AND BOULANGER: PRINTED BY
MONROCQ, FROM STONES EXECUTED BY JEHENNE, PARIS.

NEW YORK:
J. B. FORD AND COMPANY.
1874.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873,
BY J. B. FORD AND COMPANY,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

I. WOMEN OF THE PATRIARCHAL AGES.

1. Sarah the Princess.

2. Hagar the Slave.

3. Rebekah the Bride.

4. Leah and Rachel.

II. WOMEN OF THE NATIONAL PERIOD.

5. Miriam, Sister of Moses.

6. Deborah the Prophetess.

7. Delilah the Destroyer.

8. Jephtha's Daughter.

9. Hannah the Praying Mother.

10. Ruth the Moabitess.

11. The Witch of Endor.

12. Queen Esther.

13. Judith the Deliverer.

III. WOMEN OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA.

14. The Mythical Madonna.

15. Mary the Mother of Jesus.

16. The Daughter of Herodias.

17. The Woman of Samaria.

18. Mary Magdalene.

19. Martha and Mary.

THE ILLUSTRATIONS OF THIS VOLUME.

The notable characters among the women of Bible history present so attractive and variable a theme for pictorial representation, that they have been several times grouped in book form, both in Europe and America, within the past twenty years. The freshness of the present publication, therefore, consists not in the subject but in its mode of treatment.

In seeking material to illustrate Mrs. Stowe's interesting sketches, two purposes have been kept in view: first, the securing of a series of pictures which, by a judicious selection among different schools and epochs of art, might give a more original and less conventional presentation of the characters than could be had were all the illustrations conceived by the same mind, or executed by the same hand; and, secondly, the choice of such pictorial subjects as were well adapted to reproduction in colors, so as to represent as perfectly as possible, by the rapidly maturing art of chromo-lithography, the real ideas of the painters. The guiding principles of selection have