at she must be
blistered, or she would die. She cried out, 'I won't be blistered, and I
won't die,'"

She did indeed last some time longer; but with increasing infirmities,
her amusements and pleasures became yearly more circumscribed. In former
years she had sometimes occupied her mind with the purchase of land; for
she was shrewd, and rarely made a bad bargain. Even at the age of eighty
she went to the city to bid in person for the estate of Lord Yarmouth.
But as her darkened day approached its melancholy close, she amused
herself by dictating in bed her "Vindication," After spending thus six
hours daily with her secretary, she had recourse to her chamber organ,
the eight tunes of which she thought much better to hear than going to
the Italian opera. Even society, in which she once shone,--for her
intellect was bright and her person beautiful,--at last wearied her and
gave her no pleasure. Like many lonely, discontented women, she became
attached to animals; she petted three dogs, in which she saw virtues
that neither men nor women possessed. In her disquiet she often changed
her residence. She went from Marlborough House to Windsor Lodge, and
from Windsor Lodge to Wimbledon, only to discover that each place was
damp and unhealthy. Wrapt up in flannels, and wheeled up and down her
room in a chair, she discovered that wealth can only mitigate the evils
of humanity, and realized how wretched is any person with a soul filled
with discontent and bitterness, when animal spirits are destroyed by the
infirmities of old age. All the views of this spoiled favorite of
fortune were bounded by the scenes immediately before her. While she was
not sceptical, she was far from being religious; and hence she was
deprived of the highest consolations given to people in disappointment
and sorrow and neglect. The older she grew, the more tenaciously did she
cling to temporal possessions, and the more keenly did she feel
occasional losses. Her intellect remained unclouded, but her feelings
became callous. While she had no reverence for the dead, she felt
increasing contempt for the living,--forgetting that no one, however
exalted, can live at peace in an atmosphere of disdain.

At last she died, in 1744, unlamented and unloved, in the eighty-fourth
year of her age, and was interred by the side of her husband, in the
tomb in the chapel of Blenheim. She left L30,000 a year to her
grandson, Lord John Spencer, provided he would never accept a