ii6 MORE POT-POURRI 



tues and talents have been prematurely snatched away 

 from it, for those only who have seen Edward Villiers 

 in the unrestraint and unreserve of domestic familiarity 

 can appreciate the charm of his disposition and the 

 vigour of his understanding. No stranger would have 

 divined that under that cold and grave exterior there lay 

 concealed an exquisite sensibility, the most ardent affec- 

 tions, and a mind fertile in every good and noble qual- 

 ity. To the relations and friends, who were devotedly 

 attached to him, the loss is irreparable, and will long be 

 deplored, and the only consolation which offers itself is 

 to be found in the circumstances of his end. He was 

 surrounded by kind and affectionate friends, and expired 

 in the arms of his wife, whose conduct he himself de- 

 scribed to have been that of a heroine as well as an 

 angel. He was in possession of all his faculties, and 

 was free from bodily pain. He died with the cheerful- 

 ness of a philosopher and the resignation of a Christian 

 — happy, devout and hopeful, and joyfully contemplat- 

 ing death in an assured faith of a resurrection from the 

 dead.' 



Only those who have been brought up by a widowed 

 mother whose whole life had been snapped asimder by 

 such a loss, can quite realise how very peculiar and un- 

 like other homes it is. 



How rare it is to be perfectly natural under a great 

 grief ! There is so often an element of self -conscious- 

 ness, an honest wondering , how our attitude will strike 

 others. If we use self-control and try to let life flow in 

 its usual currents, we fear to be thought indifferent, 

 cold, and hard. If once the smallest display of grief 

 becomes in any way a habit, it is difleult to resume 

 again that perfect sincerity of manner which, after all, 

 is the only outward expression of true feeling. A short 

 time ago in 'The Weekly Sun,' in one of Mr. T. P. 



