es away all we hold
most dear; but her spirit was at length summoned, after a few days'
total insensibility, on the 24th of May.

We were haunted by the idea that the pretty cottage at Esher, where we
spent those happy hours, had been treated even as "Mrs. Porter's
Arcadia" at Thames Ditton--now altogether removed; and it was with a
melancholy pleasure we found it the other morning in nothing changed; it
was almost impossible to believe that so many years had passed since our
last visit. While Mr. Fairholt was sketching the cottage, we knocked at
the door, and were kindly permitted by two gentle sisters, who now
inhabit it, to enter the little drawing-room and walk round the garden;
except that the drawing-room has been re-papered and painted, and that
there were no drawings and no flowers, the room was not in the least
altered; yet to us it seemed like a sepulchre, and we rejoiced to
breathe the sweet air of the little garden, and listen to a nightingale,
whose melancholy cadence harmonized with our feelings.

"Whenever you are at Esher," said the devoted daughter, the last time we
conversed with her, "do visit my mother's tomb." We did so. A cypress
flourishes at the head of the grave; and the following touching
inscription is carved on the stone:

HERE SLEEPS IN JESUS A CHRISTIAN WIDOW

JANE PORTER
OBIIT JUNE 18TH, 1831, AETAT. 86;

THE BELOVED MOTHER OF
W. PORTER, M.D., OF SIR ROBERT KER PORTER,
AND OF JANE AND ANNA MARIA PORTER,
WHO MOURN IN HOPE, HUMBLY TRUSTING TO BE BORN
AGAIN WITH HER UNTO THE BLESSED KINGDOM
OF THEIR LORD AND SAVIOUR.
RESPECT HER GRAVE, FOR SHE MINISTERED TO THE POOR

[Illustration]

FOOTNOTES:

[A] In support of this opinion, which we know is opposed to the popular
feeling of many in the present day, we venture to quote what Miss Porter
herself repeats, as said to her by Madame de Stael: "She frequently
praised my revered mother for the retired manner in which she maintained
her little domestic establishment, _yielding her daughters to society,
but not to the world_." We pray those we love, to mark the delicate and
most true distinction, between "society" and the "world." "I was set on
a stage," continued De Stael, "I was set on a stage, at a child's age,
to be listened to as a wit and worshiped for my premature judgment. I
drank adulation as my soul's nourishment, _and I cannot now live without
its poison; it has been my bane_, never an aliment. My heart ever