in retirement, changing her abode frequently,
partly for the benefit of her child's education and the promotion of her
benevolent schemes, and partly from a restlessness which was one of the
few signs of injury received from the spoiling of associations with
_home._ She felt a satisfaction which her friends rejoiced in, when her
daughter married Lord King, at present the Earl of Lovelace, in 1835;
and when grief upon grief followed in the appearance of mortal disease
in her only child, her quiet patience stood her in good stead, as
before. She even found strength to appropriate the blessings of the
occasion, and took comfort, as did her dying daughter, in the intimate
friendship which grew closer as the time of parting drew nigh. Lady
Lovelace died in 1852; and for her few remaining years, Lady Byron
was devoted to her grandchildren. But nearer calls never lessened her
interest in remoter objects. Her mind was of the large and clear quality
which could comprehend remote interests in their true proportions, and
achieve each aim as perfectly as if it were the only one. Her agents
used to say that it was impossible to mistake her directions; and thus
her business was usually well done. There was no room, in her case, for
the ordinary doubts, censures, and sneers about the misapplication of
bounty. Her taste did not lie in the "Charity Ball" direction; her funds
were not lavished in encouraging hypocrisy and improvidence among the
idle and worthless; and the quality of her charity was, in fact,
as admirable as its quantity. Her chief aim was the extension and
improvement of popular education; but there was no kind of misery that
she heard of that she did not palliate to the utmost, and no kind of
solace that her quick imagination and sympathy could devise that she did
not administer. In her methods, she united consideration and frankness
with singular success. For one instance among a thousand:--A lady with
whom she had had friendly relations some time before, and who became
impoverished in a quiet way by hopeless sickness, preferred poverty,
with an easy conscience, to a competency attended by some uncertainty
about the perfect rectitude of the resource. Lady Byron wrote to an
intermediate person exactly what she thought of the case. Whether the
judgment of the sufferer was right or mistaken was nobody's business but
her own: this was the first point. Next, a voluntary poverty could never
be pitied by anybody: that was the s