oke, she faltered, endeavoured to go on, but
could not proceed; then, in a voice of tremor, screamed, 'O God! O
God!' and tottered to the stage door speechless, where she was caught.
The audience, of course, applauded until she was out of sight, and
then sunk into awful looks of astonishment--both young and old, before
and behind the curtain--to see one of the most handsome women of the
age, a favourite principal actress, and who had for several seasons
given high entertainment, struck so suddenly by the hand of death in
such a situation of time and place, and in her prime of life, being
about forty-four."

Such were the circumstances attending the last appearance of Margaret
Woffington, who, notwithstanding she died in the prime of life at the
age of forty-seven, had been for twenty-seven years the delight of the
play-going public. The three years she lingered as a mere skeleton of
her former self were spent in trying to awaken the consciences of her
late theatrical associates. Some of these scouted her new spirit as
hypocrisy, and insinuated that religion was her recourse only when
beauty and spirits had been lost. But the One who judgeth the
secrets of men's hearts is not so uncharitable in His judgment of His
creatures. It may be believed that the influence which she received
from the chapel meetings of John Wesley was the beginning of a genuine
religious life and character, and that it brought from her Maker that
commendation which was ungenerously denied her by her associates.

These brief sketches of the lives of some of the daughters of Scotland
and of Ireland illustrate the principal characteristics of the women
of the Scotch-Irish race. Among all the nations of the world no
women hold as high a place for pure morals and high courage. The
spiritualizing effect of the profound religious feeling of these
people--although in the form of their religious faith the Scotch and
the Irish are for the most part so diametrically different--accounts
in a large measure for their conservation of the facts and forces of
the religious life. The soil of both Ireland and Scotland was bedewed
for centuries with the tears of affliction and of persecution; the
blood of martyrs who cheerfully laid down their lives at the dictates
of religion and that highest social expression of the religious
instinct, the noblest piety of the human race--patriotism. Out of
all the oppression, rapacity, confiscation, which the two peoples
experien