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familiar Meeting-house at Plaistow, where she spoke with much fervour and tenderness on the death of the righteous.

She next went to Walmer to get the benefit of the sea-air, and the afflicting news reached her there that two of her son William's daughters had been carried off by scarlet fever. This double bereavement affected her keenly, and it was soon followed by the death of a beloved niece, as well as of her friend, coadjutor, and brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton. Her sorrows seemed to tread upon each other like the patriarch Job's. Her last written communication was one of encouragement to the committee of the British Ladies' Society. The early months of 1845 were spent in valedictory visits to Earlham Hall, North Repps, and Runcton. Returning to Upton Lane, she was able to receive visits of sympathy and regard from the Duchess of Sutherland and her daughters, the Chevalier de Bunsen, and a few others. In May she was able to be present at two of the yearly meetings for Friends in London, and in June she attended the annual meeting of the British Ladies' Society, which was held at Plaistow instead of Westminster, in deference to her infirm health and visibly declining strength.

She was taken to Ramsgate in July, and though very feeble, her interest in the Friends, in the coast-guardsmen, etc., was unabated. Her last characteristic act was to obtain a grant of Bibles and Testaments from the Bible Society, which she distributed among the sailors in the harbour, with the help of her grandchildren. The end came

rather suddenly at the last, and after a few hours of spasmodic suffering, Elizabeth Fry passed away on October 13, 1845, in her sixty-sixth year. She was buried in the Friends' burial-ground at Barking, close to the little daughter whom she had lost many years before. No better epitaph could be desired for her than that she set in motion springs of benevolent and Christian action, which have continued to gather strength ever since her death. Men now look hopefully forward to the time when the vice and the crime which she so zealously combated will cease to inflict their innumerable evils upon the human race.

VIII.

FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS.

VIII.

FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS.

THIS sweet lyric-singer, who was as admirable for her graces of mind and heart as she was beautiful in person, was born in Liverpool, on September 25, 1793. Her father, George Browne, was a merchant of Irish extraction; and her mother, whose family name was Wagner, was of mingled Italian and German descent, and was the daughter of the Imperial and Tuscan Consul at Liverpool. Felicia Browne was the fifth of seven children, and almost from her cradle she was distinguished for her extreme beauty and precocious talents. Commercial reverses, which were only too common during the French revolutionary period, compelled Mr. Browne to break up his establishment in Liverpool, and to remove with his family into Wales. For nine years they resided at Gwyrch, near Abergele, in Denbighshire, a large old mansion close to the sea, and shut in by a picturesque range of mountains. The original house has long since given place to a fine baronial structure now known as Gwyrch Castle.

Endowed with a peculiarly sensitive and impressionable nature, there is little wonder that the

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