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He'd tell them that their brother dead,
When years have passed o'er their head,
Will be remembered with such holy,
True, and perfect melancholy,
That ever this lost brother John
Will be their heart's companion.

His voice they'll always hear,
His face they'll always see;
There's nought in life so sweet

As such a memory.

The excellence of Mary Lamb's nature was happily developed in her portion of those books for children—“ wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best,"-which she wrote in conjunction with her brother, the "Poetry for Children," the "Tales from Shakspeare," and "Mrs. Leicester's School.". How different from the stony nutriment provided for those delicate, apprehensive, affectionate creatures, in the utilitarian books, which starve their little hearts, and stuff their little heads with shallow science, and impertinent facts, and selfish morals! One verse, which she did not print-the conclusion of a little poem supposed to be expressed in a letter by the son of a family who, when expecting the return of its father from sea, received news of his death,—recited by her to Mr. Martin Burney, and retained in his fond recollection, may afford a concluding example of the healthful wisdom of her lessons:

"I can no longer feign to be

A thoughtless child in infancy;
I tried to write like young Marie,
But I am James, her brother;
And I can feel-but she's too young-
Yet blessings on her prattling tongue,
She sweetly soothes my mother."

Contrary to Lamb's expectation, who feared (as also his friends feared with him) the desolation of his own survivorship, which the difference of age. rendered probable, Miss

Lamb survived him for nearly eleven years. When he died, she was mercifully in a state of partial estrangement, which, while it did not wholly obscure her mind, deadened her feelings, so that as she gradually regained her perfect senses, she felt as gradually the full force of the blow, and was the better able calmly to bear it. For awhile she declined the importunities of her friends that she would leave Edmonton for a residence nearer London, where they might more frequently visit her. He was there, asleep in the old churchyard, beneath the turf near which they had stood together, and had selected for a resting-place; to this spot she used, when well, to stroll out mournfully in the evening, and to this spot she would contrive to lead any friend who came in the summer evenings to drink tea and went out with her afterwards for a walk.* At length, as her illness became more frequent, and her frame much weaker, she was induced

*The following Sonnet, by Mr. Moxon, written at this period of tranquil sadness in Miss Lamb's life, so beautifully embodies the reverential love with which the sleeping and the mourning were regarded by one of their nearest friends, that I gratify myself by extracting it from the charming little volume of his Sonnets, which it adorns:

Here sleeps, beneath this bank, where daisies grow,

The kindliest sprite earth holds within her breast;
In such a spot I would this frame should rest,
When I to join my friend far hence shall go.
His only mate is now the minstrel lark,

Who chants her morning music o'er his bed,
Save she who comes each evening, ere the bark
Of watch-dog gathers drowsy folds, to shed
A sister's tears. Kind Heaven, upon her head,
Do thou in dove-like guise thy spirit pour,
And in her aged path some flowrets spread

Of earthly joy, should Time for her in store
Have weary days and nights, ere she shall greet
Him whom she longs in Paradise to meet.

to take up her abode under genial care, at a pleasant house in St. John's Wood, where she was surrounded by the old books and prints, and was frequently visited by her reduced number of surviving friends. Repeated attacks of her malady weakened her mind, but she retained to the last her sweetness of disposition unimpaired, and gently sunk into death on the 20th May, 1847.

A few survivors of the old circle, now sadly thinned, attended her remains to the spot in Edmonton church-yard, where they were laid above those of her brother. With them was one friend of latter days-but who had become to Lamb as one of his oldest companions, and for whom Miss Lamb cherished a strong regard-Mr. John Forster, the author of "The Life of Goldsmith," in which Lamb would have rejoiced, as written in a spirit congenial with his own. In accordance with Lamb's own feeling, so far as it could be gathered from his expressions on a subject to which he did not often, or willingly, refer, he had been interred in a deep grave, simply dug, and wattled round, but without any affectation of stone or brickwork to keep the human dust from its kindred earth. So dry, however, is the soil of the quiet church-yard that the excavated earth left perfect walls of stiff clay, and permitted us just to catch a glimpse of the still untarnished edges of the coffin in which all the mortal part of one of the most delightful persons who ever lived was contained, and on which the remains of her he had loved, with love "passing the love of woman,' were henceforth to rest; -the last glances we shall ever have even of that covering; -concealed from us as we parted, by the coffin of the sister. We felt, I believe after a moment's strange shuddering, that the re-union was well accomplished; and although the true-hearted son of Admiral Burney, who had known and loved the pair we quitted, from a child, and who had been

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among the dearest objects of existence to him, refused to be comforted, even he will now join the scanty remnant of their friends in the softened remembrance that "they were lovely in their lives,” and own with them the consolation of adding, at last, "that in death they are not divided!”

THE END.

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