priest's orders. From this time Madame d'Arblay was engaged in writing, in three volumes, the Memoirs of her father, which must indeed have been a labour of love. When they were completed, she was entering her eightieth year. Then came her next greatest possible earthly sorrow-the death of her son. At her advanced life she might have anticipated passing from time into eternity in the presence and with the endearments of her dear son; but this was not to be. His prospects, which were so bright and joyous, were all closed in relation to this life three weeks after his nomination to Ely Chapel. His ministration commenced in the winter; the building, which had been long closed, was very damp, the result of which, to him, was a severe influenza, which in three short weeks terminated in his death. What was there now for poor Madame d'Arblay but to wait patiently for the time of her departure, which came at last on the 6th of January, 1840, in her eighty-eighth year.

Thus closed this long life of duty. In her loves, in her attachments, in her friendships, in her servitude, in her service to literature, in her political relations, as a daughter, wife, and mother, Madame d'Arblay's life was pre-eminently one of duty. It was a brave life of work and endurance. Flattery and the friendships of the great did not dim or spoil it; but, through all that long, anxious life, the genial, gentle spirit of girlhood was ever in the ascendant,

tempering the asperities of adverse circumstances, and rendering her presence a joy and a solace to all with whom she was related, and to whom she came in contact. Truly her memory is blessed!

55

LAURA BRIDGMAN:

THE GIRL THAT COULD NEITHER SEE, HEAR,

W

SPEAK, NOR SMELL.

ANDERING through pleasant fields, by the side of gently flowing rivers, where thousands of flowers rear their tiny heads, wafting to the passerby their cheery greeting of grateful perfume, myriads of feathered choristers meanwhile converting the fields and lanes, by their almost celestial harmony, into vast concert halls,-did we ever think, as we then looked out upon the "glad, bright world," what it must be to have no physical perception of its beauty-to have the glad faces of children smiling upon us, but no eyes to mark their divine radiance; to have their merry laughter ringing around us, but our ears to be silent as the quiet grave; to have our hearts full of happy thoughts, but no power to translate them into joyous words-our tongues being stricken with the palsy of dumbness? If we were thus denied the faculty of seeing, hearing, and speaking, there would still remain a joy in the grateful odour of flowers; but, if that happiness were also taken from us, and the sweetest exhalation be as the most noxious and pestilential vapour, there being nothing left to us to communicate with the outer