CHAP, v.] Retrospection. 149 



life, living and toiling for him and him only. " If I 

 should leave off making memorandums oi such events 

 as affect, or are interesting to me, I should feel like 

 what I am, namely, a person that has nothing more 

 to do in this world." Mournful words : doubly mourn- 

 ful when we know that the writer had nearly half an 

 ordinary lifetime still between her and that grave which 

 she made haste to prepare, in the hope that her course 

 was nearly run. Who .can think of her, at the age of 

 seventy-two, heart-broken and desolate, going back to 

 the home of her youth in the fond expectation of find- 

 ing consolation, without a pang -of sympathetic pity ? 

 She found everything changed. In addition to those 

 changes, for which she might have been in some measure 

 prepared, there were others of a kind to admit of neither 

 cure nor alleviation. The life she had led for fifty 

 years had removed her, she little guessed how much, 

 from the old familiar paths : her thoughts, her habits, 

 all her ideas had been formed and moulded in a totally 

 different world : more bitter still, she found herself 

 alone in her great sorrow and quenchless love ; pride 

 in the distinction reflected on themselves from rela- 

 tionship to the illustrious astronomer was a miser- 

 able substitute for the reverential affection she had 

 looked to find for one of the kindest and most generous 

 of brothers. But the bitterest suffering of all was 

 from a source which was, and ever remained, beyond 

 the reach of help. " You don't know," wrote one of 



