The shivering fits had ceased entirely for the two last days.  Mr. Carlisle observed that her continuance was almost miraculous, and he was on the watch for favourable appearances, believing it highly improper to give up all hope, and remarking, that perhaps one in a million, of persons in her state might possibly recover.  I conceive that not one in a million, unites so good a constitution of body and of mind.

These were the amusements of persons in the very gulph of despair.  At six o’clock on Sunday morning, September the tenth, Mr. Carlisle called me from my bed to which I had retired at one, in conformity to my request, that I might not be left to receive all at once the intelligence that she was no more.  She expired at twenty minutes before eight.

* * * * *

Her remains were deposited, on the fifteenth of September, at ten o’clock in the morning, in the church-yard of the parish church of St. Pancras, Middlesex.  A few of the persons she most esteemed, attended the ceremony; and a plain monument is now erecting on the spot, by some of her friends, with the following inscription: 

+------------------------------+
| Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin,  |
|          author of           |
|        A vindication         |
|   of the rights of woman.    |
|  Born, XXVII April MDCCLIX.  |
| Died, X September MDCCXCVII. |
+------------------------------+

* * * * *

The loss of the world in this admirable woman, I leave to other men to collect; my own I well know, nor can it be improper to describe it.  I do not here allude to the personal pleasures I enjoyed in her conversation:  these increased every day, in proportion as we knew each other better, and as our mutual confidence increased.  They can be measured only by the treasures of her mind, and the virtues of her heart.  But this is a subject for meditation, not for words.  What I purposed alluding to, was the improvement that I have for ever lost.

We had cultivated our powers (if I may venture to use this sort of language) in different directions; I chiefly an attempt at logical and metaphysical distinction, she a taste for the picturesque.  One of the leading passions of my mind has been an anxious desire not to be deceived.  This has led me to view the topics of my reflection on all sides; and to examine and re-examine without end, the questions that interest me.

But it was not merely (to judge at least from all the reports of my memory in this respect) the difference of propensities, that made the difference in our intellectual habits.  I have been stimulated, as long as I can remember, by an ambition for intellectual distinction; but, as long as I can remember, I have been discouraged, when I have endeavoured to cast the sum of my intellectual value, by finding that I did not possess, in the degree of some other men, an intuitive perception of intellectual beauty.  I have perhaps a strong and lively sense of the pleasures of the imagination; but I have seldom been right in aligning to them their proportionate value, but by dint of persevering examination, and the change and correction of my first opinions.