Life of Count Riunford. 515 



1828, while living at her father's house in Brompton, 

 she had taken under her care an English child two 

 years of age, named Emma Gammell, who ever after- 

 wards lived with her in the closest and most affection- 

 ate relations, addressing the Countess as "aunt," be- 

 ing at home with her, and sharing her confidence in all 

 things. A short time before the Countess's death, her 

 "niece" was married to Mr. John Burgom, of Concord, 

 New Hampshire, also of English birth, and continued, 

 with her husband, to live in the Countess's house. In 

 the infirmities of advanced age, some of the peculiar- 

 ities and eccentricities with which nature and the circum- 

 stances of her life had marked Miss Sarah were much 

 intensified. She had divided the hundred and four let- 

 ters from her father, which she often pored over, into 

 two parcels. One of these, about twenty in number, 

 concerned the Count's efforts and experiences in con- 

 nection with the Royal Institution. The other parcel, 

 which she was wont to speak of as " the scolding let- 

 ters," contained either advice and reprimand for herself, 

 or references to his own domestic unhappiness and 

 grievous disappointment in his second marriage. Of 

 this parcel the Countess had made abstracts, sometimes 

 selecting sentences and mixing her own comments with 

 them, sometimes copying the whole of the letter in her 

 father's words. She was, however, very careless about 

 dates, being as likely to attach wrong as right ones, and 

 thus causing some perplexity for a reader who uses these 

 materials in connection with other correctly dated papers. 

 Indeed, the Countess was so habitually negligent in this 

 matter of dates, that Sir Charles Blagden, who, as we 

 shall soon have occasion to note, was one of her warm- 

 est friends and most faithful correspondents, among 



