trials during his travels in
South Africa was the death of his affectionate wife, who had shared
his dangers, and accompanied him in so many of his wanderings. In
communicating the intelligence of her decease at Shupanga, on the River
Zambesi, to his friend Sir Roderick Murchison, Dr. Livingstone said:
"I must confess that this heavy stroke quite takes the heart out of
me. Everything else that has happened only made me more determined to
overcome all difficulties; but after this sad stroke I feel crushed and
void of strength. Only three short months of her society, after four
years separation! I married her for love, and the longer I lived with
her I loved her the more. A good wife, and a good, brave, kindhearted
mother was she, deserving all the praises you bestowed upon her at our
parting dinner, for teaching her own and the native children, too, at
Kolobeng. I try to bow to the blow as from our Heavenly Father, who
orders all things for us.... I shall do my duty still, but it is with a
darkened horizon that I again set about it."

Sir Samuel Romilly left behind him, in his Autobiography, a touching
picture of his wife, to whom he attributed no small measure of the
success and happiness that accompanied him through life. "For the last
fifteen years," he said, "my happiness has been the constant study of
the most excellent of wives: a woman in whom a strong understanding, the
noblest and most elevated sentiments, and the most courageous virtue,
are united to the warmest affection, and to the utmost delicacy of mind
and heart; and all these intellectual perfections are graced by the most
splendid beauty that human eyes ever beheld." [2017] Romilly's affection
and admiration for this noble woman endured to the end; and when she
died, the shock proved greater than his sensitive nature could bear.
Sleep left his eyelids, his mind became unhinged, and three days after
her death the sad event occurred which brought his own valued life to a
close. [2018]

Sir Francis Burdett, to whom Romilly had been often politically opposed,
fell into such a state of profound melancholy on the death of his wife,
that he persistently refused nourishment of any kind, and died before
the removal of her remains from the house; and husband and wife were
laid side by side in the same grave.

It was grief for the loss of his wife that sent Sir Thomas Graham into
the army at the age of forty-three. Every one knows the picture of the
newly-wedde