d over the breast, which set off to
advantage the charming little plump figure with its rounded
lines--could fail to recognise the same characteristics which
sparkled about the wearer of the pink calico domino in which she
frolicked incognito 'till she was tired' at a ball given by the
Duke of Wellington in 1814, or of the eight blue feathers which
crowned the waving tresses of her flaxen hair as a bride.

Doctor Alderson died in October 1825, and Mrs. Opie was left alone. She
was very forlorn when her father died. She had no close ties to carry
her on peacefully from middle age to the end of life. The great break
had come; she was miserable, and, as mourners do, she falls upon herself
and beats her breast. All through these sad years her friends at Northrepps
and at Earlham were her chief help and consolation. As time passed her
deep sorrow was calmed, when peaceful memories had succeeded to the keen
anguish of her good old father's loss. She must have suffered deeply;
she tried hard to be brave, but her courage failed her at times: she
tried hard to do her duty; and her kindness and charity were unfailing,
for she was herself still, although so unhappy. Her journals are
pathetic in their humility and self-reproaches for imaginary omissions.
She is lonely; out of heart, out of hope. 'I am so dissatisfied with
myself that I hardly dare ask or expect a blessing upon my labours,' she
says; and long lists of kind and fatiguing offices, of visits to sick
people and poor people, to workhouses and prisons, are interspersed with
expressions of self-blame.

* * * * *

The writer can remember as a child speculating as she watched the
straight-cut figure of a Quaker lady standing in the deep window of an
old mansion that overlooked the Luxembourg Gardens at Paris, with all
their perfume and blooming scent of lilac and sweet echoes of children,
while the quiet figure stood looking down upon it all from--to a
child--such an immeasurable distance. As one grows older one becomes
more used to garbs of different fashions and cut, and one can believe in
present sunlight and the scent of flowering trees and the happy sound of
children's voices going straight to living hearts beneath their several
disguises, and Mrs. Opie, notwithstanding her Quaker dress, loved bright
colours and gay sunlight. She was one of those who gladly made life
happy for others, who naturally turned to brigh