A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Egerton, Lady Frances
EGERTON, LADY FRANCES,
Accompanied her husband on a journey, which gave occasion to his "Mediterranean Sketches," and from her pen, "Journal of a Tour in the Holy Laud." The Quarterly Review says of this work, "Lady F. Egerton's little volume, taken all in all, well justifies the respect with which we have always heard her name mentioned. Although she travelled with all the comfort and protection which station and wealth could secure to her, and the smooth ways of pilgrimage now permit, yet that one indispensable qualification which the Christian reader demands in all who presume to approach the altar-place of our faith, the absence of which no array of learning and no brilliancy of talent can supply—namely, the genuine pilgrim's heart—that, we find in Lady F. Egerton's unpretending journal, more than in any other modern expedition to the Holy Land that we know." The sweetest praise Lady Egerton could receive for her literary genius, would be poor to the compliment her husband has paid her at the close of his work; the offices he awards to her of "Guide, companion, monitress, and friend," are significant of the true womanly virtues of her heart, and of the entire sympathy of their intellectual pursuits. Fortunate is the woman thus wedded.