178 GEOEGB JOHN EOMANES issi- 



iHOst dearly loved and loving, was the first to die. 

 Her death was a terrible sorrow not only to her own 

 immediate circle of relations, but to the friends to 

 whom she had been as a very dear sister. On Mr. 

 Eomanes this death, so sudden and so startling, 

 made a deep and lasting impression. From this 

 time more and more he turned in the direction of 

 faith, and his feelings found an outlet in poetry more 

 frequently and more effectually than before. 



To Miss G. E. Romanes. 



Edinburgh : Christmas Day, 1886. 



My dearest Charlotte, — The time has come when 

 it is some rehef to write, but how shall I begin to tell 

 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.^ 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 



^ One of Mr. Romanes' numerous pet names. 



