After his return from India, my father remained at his mother's house in Bath till 1809, when he married my dear mother, then living with her guardians close by, at 29, Royal Crescent; and brought her to Newbridge, where they both lived, as I have described, with few and short interruptions till she died in October, 1847, and he in November, 1857. For all that half century he acted nobly the part to which he was called, of landlord, magistrate and head of a family. There was nothing in him of the ideal Irish, fox-hunting, happy-go-lucky, much indebted Squire. There never was a year in his life in which every one of his bills was not settled. His books, piled on his study table, showed the regular payment, week by week, of all his labourers for fifty years. No quarter day passed without every servant in the house receiving his, or her wages. So far was Newbridge from a Castle Rackrent that though much in it of the furniture and decorations belonged to the previous century, everything was kept in perfect order and repair in the house and in the stables, coachhouses and beautiful old garden. Punctuality reigned under the old soldier's régime; clocks and bells and gongs sounded regularly for prayers and meals; and dinner was served sharply to the moment. I should indeed be at a loss to say in what respect my father betrayed his Anglo-Irish race, if it were not his high spirit.

At last, and very soon after the photograph which I am inserting in this book was taken, the long, good life drew to its end in peace. I have found a letter which I wrote to Harriet St. Leger a day or two after his death, and I will here transcribe part of it, rather than narrate the event afresh.

"Dearest Harriet,

"Nov. 14th, 1857.

"My poor father's sufferings are over. He died on Wednesday evening, without the least pain or struggle,

having sunk gradually into an unconscious state since Sunday morning. At all events it proved a most merciful close to his long sufferings, for he never seemed even aware of the terrible state into which the poor limbs fell, but became weaker and weaker, and as the mortification advanced, died away as if in the gentlest sleep he had known for many a day. It is all very merciful, I can feel nothing else, though it is very sad to have had no parting words of blessing, such as I am sure he would have given me. All those he loved best were near him. He had Dotie till the last day of his consciousness, and the little thing continually asked afterwards to go to his study, and enquired, 'Grandpa 'seep?' When he had ceased to speak at all comprehensibly, the morning before he died he pointed to her picture, and half smiled when I brought it to him. Poor old father! He is free now from all his miseries-gone home to God after his long, long life of good and honour! Fifty years he has lived as master here. Who but God knows all the kind and generous actions he has done in that half century! To the very last he completed everything, paying his labourers and settling his books on Saturday; and we find all his arrangements made in the most perfect and thoughtful way for everybody. There was a letter left for me. It only contained a £100 note and the words, "The last token of the love and affection of a father to his daughter.' . . . 'He is now looking so noble and happy, I might say, so handsome; his features seem so glorified by death, that it does one good to go and sit beside him. I never saw Death look so little terrible. Would that the poor form could lie there, ever! The grief will be far worse after to-day, when we shall see it for the last time. Jessie has made an outline of the face as it is now, very like. How wonderful and blessed is this glorifying power of death; taking away the lines of age and weak distension of muscles, and leaving only, as it would seem, the true face of the man as he was beneath all surface weaknesses; the 'garment by the soul laid by' smoothed out and folded! My cousins and Jessie and I all feel very much how blessedly

this face speaks to us; how it is not him, but a token of what he is now. I grieve that I was not more to him, that I did not better win his love and do more to deserve

it; but even this sorrow has its comfort. Perhaps he knows now that with all my heart I did feel the deepest tenderness for his sufferings and respect for his great virtues. At all events the wall of creed has fallen down from between our souls for ever, and I believe that was the one great obstacle which I could never overthrow entirely. Forbearing as he proved himself, it was never forgotten. Now all that divided us is over. It seems all very dream-like just now, long as we have thought of it, and I know the waking will be a terrible pang when all is over and I have left everything round which my heart roots have twined in five and thirty years. But I don't fear-how can I, when my utmost hopes could not have pointed to an end so happy as God has given to my poor old father? Everything is merciful about it-even to the time when we were all together here, and when I am neither young enough to need protection, or old enough to feel diminished energies.

I carried out my long formed resolution, of course, and started on my pilgrimage just three weeks after my father's death. Leaving Newbridge was the worst wrench of my life. The home of my childhood and youth, of which I had been mistress for nineteen years, for every corner of which I had cared, and wherein there was not a room without its tender associations, it seemed almost impossible to drag myself away. To strip my pretty bedroom of its pictures and books and ornaments, many of them my mother's gifts, and my mother's work; to send off my harp to be sold; and make over to my brother my private possessions of ponies and carriage,-(luckily my dear dog was dead,)— and take leave of all the dear old servants and village people, formed a whole series of pangs. I remember feeling a

distinct regret and smiling at myself for doing so, when I locked for the last time the big, old-fashioned tea-chest out of which I had made the family breakfast for twenty years. Then came the last morning and as I drove out of the gates of Newbridge I felt I was leaving behind me all and everything in the world which I had loved and cherished.

I was going also, it must be said, not only from a family circle to entire solitude, but also from comparative wealth to poverty. Considering the interests of my eldest brother as paramount, and the seriousness of his charge of keeping up the house and estate, my father left me but a very small patrimony; amounting, at the rate of interest then obtainable, to a trifle over £200 a year. For a woman who had always had every possible service rendered to her by a regiment of well-trained servants, and had had £130 a year pocket-money since she left school, it must be confessed that this was a narrow provision. My father intended me to continue to live at Newbridge with my brother and sister-in-law; but such a plan was entirely contrary to my view of what my life should thenceforth become, and I accepted my poverty cheerfully enough, with the help of a little ready money wherewith to start on my travels. I cut off half my hair, being totally unable to grapple with the whole without a maid, and faced the future with the advantage of the great calm which follows any immediate concern with Death. While that Shadow hangs over our heads we perceive but dimly the thorns and pebbles on our road.

A week after leaving Ireland I spent one night with Harriet St. Leger in lodgings which she and her friend, Miss Dorothy Wilson, occupied on the Marina at St. Leonard's.

When I had gone to my room rather late that evening, I opened my window and looked out for the last time before my exile, on an English scene. There was the line of friendly lamps close by, but beyond it the sea, dark as pitch on that