396 ANNUAL REGISTER, 1810. 



were always adapted to the occa- 

 sion ; tliey were always free from 

 the slightest taint of affected phra- 

 seology and foreign idiom ; they 

 were always distinguished by a 

 peculiar felicity and originality of 

 conception and expression : and 

 the genius displayed in them would 

 most undoubtedly have placed the 

 writer in the very highest class of 

 her female contemporaries, if she 

 had employed her pen upon any 

 work with a deliberate view topub- 

 lication. Her reading in the most 

 approved authorsjboth French and 

 English, was diversified and ex- 

 tensive, her memory was prompt 



and correct, and her 



judgment 



upon all questions of taste and 

 literature, morality and religion, 

 evidently marked the powers with 

 which she had been gifted by na- 

 ture, and the advantages which 

 she had enjoyed for cultivating 

 those powers, under the direction 

 of her enlightened parents, and in 

 the society of learned and ingeni- 

 ous men, to which she had access 

 from her earliest infancy. With 

 becoming resignation to the will of 

 Heaven, she endured a long and 

 painful illness, which had been 

 brought upon her by the pressure 

 of domestic sorrows, on a consti- 

 tution naturally weak. Her vir- 

 tues, as a friend, a child, a wife, 

 and a mother, were most exem- 

 plary ; and her piety was sincere, 

 rational, and habitual. 

 _ At Ludwell, Mr. Robert Foot, 

 jun. aged nineteen. Four days be- 

 fore his death he was going out 

 with a loaded gun, but stopping to 

 converse with a friend, he incau- 

 tiously rested on the muzzle of the 

 gun, which went off at half-cock, 

 and nearly the whole charge of 

 shot passed through his left hand, 



grazed his side, and lodged in his 

 shoulder. He had just quitted an 

 affectionate mother, in the full 

 glow of health and youthful spirits; 

 he returned to her maimed and 

 streaming with blood ! From the 

 direction in which the shot had 

 passed and lodged, little hope was 

 from the first entertained of his 

 recovery. Heendured his sufferings 

 with great fortitude and patience, 

 took an affectionate leave of his 

 friends, and requested that this 

 statement might be made public, 

 in the hope that it would induce 

 others to be more careful, and 

 thereby prevent the recurrence of 

 a similar accident. 



AUGUST. 



Mr. Joseph Sparshall, atBeccles 

 in the cightj'-seventh year of his 

 age, one of the society of Friends ; 

 who, duringthe whole of so long a 

 life, devoted almost every moment 

 he couldspare from the avocations 

 of business and the affairs of his 

 family, to the acquirement of use- 

 ful knowledge, and was an instance 

 of what may be effected by tiie 

 powers and natural bent of the 

 mind, unassisted by theadvantages 

 of a liberal education. Of natural 

 history, in its various branches, he 

 was passionately fond; but botany, 

 chemistry,and electricity, were his 

 most favourite studies. He wrote 

 some essays on philosophical sub- 

 jects, one of which, giving an ac- 

 count of a remarkable Aurora Bo- 

 rccdis, appeared in a volume of 

 the Philosophical Transactions, 

 and procured him the offer of be- 

 coming a Member of the Royal 

 Society, an honour which he had 

 the modesty to decline. To sum 

 up his character in a few words, 



