thing could be settled on for them. Elizabeth, amid all these interruptions, kept up her own studies and gave constant help to her mother with the younger branches of the family.
Mr. Smith obtained a commission and entered the army. This, in Elizabeth^s seventeenth year, necessitated their removal to Ireland. Her father joined his regiment at Sligo, and his family went to him. Mrs. Smith, in a letter to Dr. Randolph, says:—
"Books are not light of carriage, and the blow which deprived us of Piercefield deprived us of a library also. But though this period of her (Eliza's) life (while with the regiment in Ireland) afforded little opportunity for improvement in science, the qualities of her heart never appeared in a more amiable light. Through all the inconveniences which attended our situation while living in barracks, the firmness and cheerful resignation of her mind made me blush for the tear which too frequently trembled in my eye at the recollection of the comforts we had lost."
On their first arrival in Ireland, in the summer of 1796, they passed some time as guests at the Earl of Kingston's residence, and went from thence to join Captain Smith at Sligo. Although it was summer, the weather was very wet, and the family seem to have had a wretched journey, and found that no comforts awaited them at their quarters in the Sligo barracks. In a letter to a friend, Eliza-
