, most demure and orthodox Shelley in the
Victorian literature--with visible genius, an intense personality,
unquenchable fire, an early and tragic death. And all this passion in
a little prim, shy, delicate, proud Puritan girl!

To this sympathy our great writer, whom she herself called "the first
social regenerator of the day," did full justice in that beautiful
little piece which he wrote in the _Cornhill Magazine_ upon her death
and which is the last of the _Roundabout Papers_ in the twenty-second
volume of Thackeray's collected works. It is called _The Last Sketch_:
it is so eloquent, so true, so sympathetic that it deserves to be
remembered, and yet after forty years it is too seldom read.

Of the multitude that have read her books, who has not known and
deplored the tragedy of her family, her own most sad and untimely fate?
Which of her readers has not become her friend? Who that has known her
books has not admired the artist's noble English, the burning love of
truth, the bravery, the simplicity, the indignation at wrong, the eager
sympathy, the pious love and reverence, the passionate honour, so to
speak, of the woman? What a story is that of that family of poets in
their solitude yonder on the gloomy northern moors!

He goes on to deplore that "the heart newly awakened to love and
happiness, and throbbing with maternal hope, had ceased to beat." He
speaks of her "trembling little frame, the little hand, the great
honest eyes." He speaks of his recollections of her in society, of
"the impetuous honesty" which seemed the character of the woman--

I fancied an austere little Joan of Arc marching in upon us, and
rebuking our easy lives, our easy morals. She gave me the impression
of being a very pure, and lofty, and high-minded person. A great and
holy reverence of right and truth seemed to be with her always. Such,
in our brief interview, she appeared to me. As one thinks of that life
so noble, so lonely,--of that passion for truth--of those nights and
nights of eager study, swarming fancies, invention, depression,
elation, prayer; as one reads the necessarily incomplete, though most
touching and admirable history of the heart that throbbed in this one
little frame--of this one amongst the myriads of souls that have lived
and died on this great earth--this great earth?--this little speck in
the infinite universe of God--with what wonder do we think of to-day,
with what awe await to-morrow, when