There was something mournful in the lingering of this aged lady--blind,
deaf, and bereaved in her latter years; but _she_ was not mournful, any
more than she was insensible. Age did not blunt her feelings, nor deaden
her interest in the events of the day. It seems not so very long ago
that she said that the worst of living in such a place (as the Lake
District), was its making one unwilling to go. It is too beautiful to
let one be ready to leave it. Within a few years the beloved daughter
was gone, and then the aged husband, and then the son-in-law, and then
the devoted friend, Mr. Wordsworth's publisher, Mr. Moxon, who paid his
duty occasionally by the side of her chair; then she became blind and
deaf. Still her cheerfulness was indomitable. No doubt, she would in
reality have been "willing to go," whenever called upon, throughout her
long life; but she liked life to the end. By her disinterestedness of
nature, by her fortitude of spirit, and her constitutional elasticity
and activity, she was qualified for the honor of surviving her
household--nursing and burying them, and bearing the bereavement which
they were vicariously spared. She did it wisely, tenderly, bravely, and
cheerfully; and then she will be remembered accordingly by all who
witnessed the spectacle.
It was by the accident, so to speak, of her early friendship with
Wordsworth's sister, that her life became involved with the poetic
element which her mind would hardly have sought for itself in another
position.
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