in the home of her youth during the long years which had brought her to old age—­she was then seventy-two—­and to face “the blank of life after having lived within the radiance of genius;” of the comfort she derived from the members of her brother’s family whom she had left behind in “happy England;” of the honors which the chief scientific men in the kingdom bestowed upon her—­of all these matters we can do no more than to simply touch upon them as above, although, if we might refer to them at greater length, it would be but to increase our admiration and esteem for one of the strongest, most serviceable, and most faithful women that ever lived.

She died at eleven o’clock on the night of the 9th of January, 1848, at the age of ninety-eight; and the holy words were spoken in the same little chapel in the garrison in which, “nearly a century before, she had been christened and afterward confirmed.”  In the coffin with her was placed, at her request, “a lock of her beloved brother’s hair, and an old, almost obliterated almanac that had been used by her father;” and with these tokens of the unswerving love and fidelity she had always borne to parent and brother, she was laid away to rest, leaving the memory of a noble woman, great in wisdom, and greater in womanliness, without which, in woman, wisdom is unhallowed.—­S.A.  CHAPIN, JR., in the Christian Union.

* * * * *

XIX.

PESTIFEROUS LITERATURE.

THE PRINTING-PRESS THE MIGHTIEST AGENCY ON EARTH FOR GOOD AND FOR EVIL—­THE FLOOD OF IMPURE AND LOATHSOME LITERATURE—­WHAT CAN WE DO TO ABATE THIS PESTILENCE?—­WHAT BOOKS AND NEWSPAPERS SHALL WE READ?—­HOW PROTECT OUR CHILDREN.

He is a brave man, who, at the right time and in the right place and manner, lifts his voice against a great evil of the day.  Dr. Talmage has recently done this, with an earnestness like that of the old Hebrew prophets.  His timely words of warning >an not be unfruitful: 

“Of making books there is no end.”  True in the times so long B.C., how much more true in the times so long A.D.!  We see so many books we do not understand what a book is.  Stand it on end.  Measure it, the height of it, the depth of it, the length of it, the breadth of it.  You can not do it.  Examine the paper, and estimate the progress made from the time of the impressions on clay, and then on the bark of trees, and from the bark of trees to papyrus, and from papyrus to the hide of wild beasts, and from the hide of wild beasts on down until the miracles of our modern paper manufactories, and then see the paper, white and pure as an infant’s soul, waiting for God’s inscription.  A book!  Examine the type of it; examine the printing, and see the progress from the time when Solon’s laws were written on oak planks, and Hesiod’s poems were written on tables of lead, and the Sinaitic commands were written on tables of stone, on down