1890 A GEEAT SOEKOW 187 



the sadness of the saddest tragedy that has ever been 

 put together ? First the hours of fluctuating hope, 

 and then the growing darkness of despair. She had 

 previously asked whether Ethel and G. J. 1 had come 

 down from London, and on being told that we were 

 in the house was so glad. We were admitted at night, 

 and only had to watch for three hours the peaceful 

 breathing, slower, slower, slower, until the last. Oh, 

 the unearthly beauty of that face ! Nothing I have ever 

 seen in flesh or in marble nothing I could have ever 

 conceived could approach it. But try to picture it 

 as you knew it in life changed into something so yet 

 more beautiful that it seemed no longer human, but 

 the face of the angel that she was. Then in one room 

 her little child, in another her mother, utterly broken 

 by illness. For my own part I have never had a 

 grief so great as this. Even in our sister's case there 

 were elements of mitigation ; but here absolutely none. 

 Oh, it is bitter, bitter ; so much of life's happiness 

 emptied out and Edith, our own Edith, no longer 

 here ! 



In memory of this friend Mr. Eomanes wrote a 

 little poem called ' To a Bust,' and from this a few 

 lines are given. 



There is one point to which the writer of this 

 memoir would like to call attention. 



Mr. Romanes was incapable of exaggeration, of 

 writing for effect, of insincerity. What he wrote he 

 felt, and his very simplicity and sweetness of character, 

 his childlike trust in the sympathy of others, made 



1 One of Mr, Eomanes' numerous pet names, 



