joining Miss Hays or--if she were living--Mrs. Godwin.' Then she
suggests the names of Miss Baillie, Mrs. Opie, her own niece Miss Lucy
Aikin, and Mr. S. Rogers, who would not, she thinks, be averse to
joining the scheme.

VII.

How strangely unnatural it seems when Fate's heavy hand falls upon quiet
and common-place lives, changing the tranquil routine of every day into
the solemnities and excitements of terror and tragedy! It was after
their removal to Stoke Newington that the saddest of all blows fell
upon this true-hearted woman. Her husband's hypochondria deepened and
changed, and the attacks became so serious that her brother and his
family urged her anxiously to leave him to other care than her own. It
was no longer safe for poor Mr. Barbauld to remain alone with his wife,
and her life, says Mrs. Le Breton, was more than once in peril. But, at
first, she would not hear of leaving him; although on more than one
occasion she had to fly for protection to her brother close by.

There is something very touching in the patient fidelity with which Mrs.
Barbauld tried to soothe the later sad disastrous years of her husband's
life. She must have been a woman of singular nerve and courage to endure
as she did the excitement and cruel aberrations of her once gentle and
devoted companion. She only gave in after long resistance.

'An alienation from me has taken possession of his mind,' she says, in a
letter to Mrs. Kenrick; 'my presence seems to irritate him, and I must
resign myself to a separation from him who has been for thirty years the
partner of my heart, my faithful friend, my inseparable companion.' With
her habitual reticence, she dwells no more on that painful topic, but
goes on to make plans for them both, asks her old friend to come and
cheer her in her loneliness; and the faithful Betsy, now a widow with
grown-up step-children, ill herself, troubled by deafness and other
infirmities, responds with a warm heart, and promises to come, bringing
the comfort with her of old companionship and familiar sympathy. There
is something very affecting in the loyalty of the two aged women
stretching out their hands to each other across a whole lifetime. After
her visit Mrs. Barbauld writes again:--

'He is now at Norwich, and I hear very favourable accounts of his health
and spirits; he seems to enjoy himself very much amongst his old friends
there, and converses among them with his usual animation. There are no
symp