was by that disease which seems to delight to deck the victim for its triumph. "Her joy upon finding herself at home," says her mother, "operated for a time like magic." The sweet health-giving influence of domestic love, the home atmosphere, seemed to suspend the progress of her disease, and again her father, brothers, and friends were deluded; all but the mother and the sufferer. She looked, with prophetic eye, calmly to the end. There was nothing to disturb her. That kingdom that cometh "without observation" was within her; and she was only about to change its external circumstances, about to put off the harness of life in which she had been so patient and obedient. To the last she manifested her love of books. A trunk filled with them had not been unpacked. She requested her mother to open it at her bedside; and as each book was given to her, she turned over the leaves, kissed it, and desired to have it placed on a table at the foot of her bed. There they remained to the last, her eye often fondly resting on them.
She expressed a strong desire to see Mr. Kent once more, and a fear that though he had been summoned, he might not arrive in time. He came, however, to receive the last expressions of her gratitude, and to hear his own name the last pronounced by her lips.
The "Fear of Madness" was written by her while confined to her bed, and was the last piece she ever wrote. It constitutes a part of the history of her disease, and will, for this reason alone, if no other, be read with interest.
That the records of the last scenes of Lucretia Davidson's life are scanty, is not surprising. The materials
