What A Wife Can Do

The Napier family have won a most honorable fame in Fnglish history, aud it is pleasant to know that on the female side it is quite as illustrioua as on the male. Here is a record of some performanccs'bf the lady of Sir "William Napier: When Joseph Bonaparte fled from Vittoria, ho left behind him a very large collection of letters, whieh, howevcr, were without order, in three languages, many almost iilegible, and the most important in cypher, to wMch there was no key. It was the correspondenee of Josoph Bonaparte while nominally king of Spain. Sir William Napier was in a state of perplexity, and almost despaircd of being ablo to make any use of these valuable matcrials, when his wife undertook to arrange the letters according to dates and subjecta, to make a table of reference, and also U) translate and epitomizo the contente of each. Mauy of the most important tlocuments were entirely in cypher ; of some letters about one-half was' in cypher, and others had a few words so written interspersed. All these documenta and letters Lady Napier arranged, and with a rare sagacity and patience, she deciphered the secret writings. The entire correspondencc was thus made available for the historian's purpose, She also made out all of Sir William's rough interlinea manuscripts, which were almost iilegible to himself, and wrote out the whole work fair for the printers - it may be said three times, so frequent wero the changes made. Sir William Napier mentions these facts in tho preface to the edition of 1851 ; aud in paying this tribute to Lady Napier, observes that this amount of labor was aceomplished without her having for a moment neglected the oare and education of a large family.