h which no medicine could eradicate, were spasmodic and
violent; and required stronger measures to render them supportable while
they lasted than my constitution could sustain without injury. The
periods of exemption from those pains were frequently of several days'
duration, and in my intermissions I felt no indications of malady. Pain
taught me the value of ease, and I enjoyed it with a glow of spirit,
seldom, perhaps, felt by the habitually healthy. While Dr. Darwin
combated and assuaged my disease from time to time, his indulgence to
all my wishes, his active desire to see me amused and happy, proved
incessant. His house, as you know, has ever been the resort of people of
science and merit. If, from my husband's great and extensive practice, I
had much less of his society than I wished, yet the conversation of his
friends, and of my own, was ever ready to enliven the hours of his
absence. As occasional malady made me doubly enjoy health, so did those
frequent absences give a zest even to delight, when I could be indulged
with his company. My three boys have ever been docile and affectionate.
Children as they are, I could trust them with important secrets, so
sacred do they hold every promise they make. They scorn deceit and
falsehood of every kind, and have less selfishness than generally
belongs to childhood. Married to any other man, I do not suppose I could
have lived a third part of the years which I have passed with Dr.
Darwin; he has prolonged my days, and he has blessed them.'

"Thus died this superior woman, in the bloom of life, sincerely
regretted by all who knew how to value her excellence, and
_passionately_ regretted by the selected few whom she honoured with her
personal and confidential friendship."[143]

I find Miss Seward's pages so fascinating, that I am in danger of
following her even in those parts of her work which have no bearing on
Dr. Darwin. I must, however, pass over her account of Mr. Edgeworth and
of his friend Mr. Day, the author of 'Sandford and Merton,' "which, by
wise parents, is put into every youthful hand," but the description of
Mr. Day's portrait cannot be omitted.

"In the course of the year 1770, Mr. Day stood for a full-length picture
to Mr. Wright, of Derby. A strong likeness and a dignified portrait were
the result. Drawn in the open air, the surrounding sky is tempestuous,
lurid, dark. He stands leaning his left arm against a column inscribed
to Hambden (_sic_). Mr. Day l