as in
a great measure founded. When the Duke of Wellington was told of the art
and industry she had displayed in deciphering King Joseph's portfolio,
and the immense mass of correspondence taken at Vittoria, he at first
would hardly believe it, adding--"I would have given 20,000L. to any
person who could have done this for me in the Peninsula." Sir William
Napier's handwriting being almost illegible, Lady Napier made out his
rough interlined manuscript, which he himself could scarcely read, and
wrote out a full fair copy for the printer; and all this vast labour she
undertook and accomplished, according to the testimony of her husband,
without having for a moment neglected the care and education of a large
family. When Sir William lay on his deathbed, Lady Napier was at the
same time dangerously ill; but she was wheeled into his room on a sofa,
and the two took their silent farewell of each other. The husband died
first; in a few weeks the wife followed him, and they sleep side by side
in the same grave.

Many other similar truehearted wives rise up in the memory, to recite
whose praises would more than fill up our remaining space--such as
Flaxman's wife, Ann Denham, who cheered and encouraged her husband
through life in the prosecution of his art, accompanying him to Rome,
sharing in his labours and anxieties, and finally in his triumphs, and
to whom Flaxman, in the fortieth year of their married life, dedicated
his beautiful designs illustrative of Faith, Hope, and Charity, in
token of his deep and undimmed affection;--such as Katherine Boutcher,
"dark-eyed Kate," the wife of William Blake, who believed her husband to
be the first genius on earth, worked off the impressions of his plates
and coloured them beautifully with her own hand, bore with him in all
his erratic ways, sympathised with him in his sorrows and joys for
forty-five years, and comforted him until his dying hour--his last
sketch, made in his seventy-first year, being a likeness of himself,
before making which, seeing his wife crying by his side, he said, "Stay,
Kate! just keep as you are; I will draw your portrait, for you have ever
been an angel to me;"--such again as Lady Franklin, the true and noble
woman, who never rested in her endeavours to penetrate the secret of the
Polar Sea and prosecute the search for her long-lost husband--undaunted
by failure, and persevering in her determination with a devotion and
singleness of purpose altogether unparal