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Her charities were considerable, and all her family were more or less dependent upon her; two sons, the Fitzclarences, were in the army, and probably drew heavily upon her resources. That a large portion of her earnings during the twenty years they had been together had been given over to the duke was an acknowledged fact; but it was averred that on the separation all had been paid back and with interest, and that she herself signed a receipt for the same; and yet within a few years during which she earned thousands more, we find her flying from her creditors for debts amounting to £2,000. The probabilities are that her devotion induced her to sign an acquittance, for which she received no equivalent. If so, we have an explanation of the Regent's ambiguous phrase, which she quotes in her letter: "My forbearance is beyond what he could have imagined." The payment even of the allowance is incompatible with the poverty in which her last days were passed.

As the end draws nearer and nearer, the picture grows more and more gloomy. She who was once the very fountain of mirth and laughter can now only lie all day long sighing upon a sofa, waiting in terrible anxiety for letters which never come. Each time the messenger returned from his fruitless journey to the post-office, to answer "None" to the eager, questioning look that waited him, her despair and agony grew greater, to be succeeded by a torpor resembling death. From whom those letters were expected, or what was the nature of the news so ardently desired, none knew. We may guess, however, they should have been from the duke-the fulfillment of his promises the despair of finding herself so cruelly abandoned. Over the last scene of all there rests a strange mystery, which has never been satisfactorily cleared up.

Toward the latter end of June, 1816, Mrs. Jordan's companion wrote to one of that lady's daughters, informing her that her mother had died after a few days' illness at St.-Cloud. At the same time her death was announced in the morning journals. Three days afterward a second letter was received from the same writer, saying that she had been deceived by Mrs. Jordan's appearance, and that she was still alive but very ill. While the daughter was preparing to go to her, there came a third letter, announcing that Mrs. Jordan was really dead. General Hawker himself then went to Paris to ascertain the fact, and arrived there three days after her interment. When Sir Jonah Barrington went to St.-Cloud to gather the particulars of his poor friend's death, the landlord of the house in which she died gave him a most minute description of the sad event: how upon his returning from the post-office with the old report of "no letters" she had fallen back and almost instantly expired. Yet he made no mention of the resuscitation. This total forgetfulness of so remarkable an event, if it ever took place, is, to say the least, remarkable. In consequence of these discrepancies a report got abroad that she was not really dead. Boaden himself was strongly impressed with this belief, from a circumstance which I will relate in his own words:

"The dear lady was not an every-day sort of woman. She was near-sighted, and wore a glass attached to a gold chain about her neck; her manner of using this to assist her sight was extremely peculiar. I was taking a very usual walk before dinner, and I stopped at a bookseller's window on the left side of Piccadilly, to look at some new publication that struck my eye. On a sudden a lady stood by my side who had stopped with a similar impulse; to my conviction it was Mrs. Jordan. As she did not speak, but dropped a long, white veil immedi

ately over her face, I concluded that she did not wish to be recognized; and, therefore, however I should have wished an explanation of what surprised me, I yielded to her pleasure upon the occasion."

About the same time, and without any knowledge of the above circumstance, her daughter Mrs. Alsop believed she saw her mother in the Strand; so terrible was the shock to her that she fell down in a fit, and could never be convinced to her dying day that she had been deceived.

The duke ever cherished her memory with the most profound respect. "She was one of the best of women!" he exclaimed one day to Mathews the elder, whom he discovered gazing upon the portrait which still adorned the walls of Bushey long after the original had passed away; and he uttered the words in a tone that drew tears from the hearer. There is little doubt that he had good reason for such words. When he became king he elevated her eldest son to the peerage as Earl of Muns

ter, and gave precedence to her remaining sons and daughters.

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Mary Robinson's Unfortunate Surroundings.-She becomes an Idol of the London Public.-The Prince of Wales falls in Love with her.-His Cruel Desertion of her.-" Perdita" falls from her High Estate and dies in Misery and Destitution.

In all stage annals, and it is saying a great deal, there is no sadder romance than the one we are about to narrate. The whole story, as told by Mrs. Robinson herself, is so like a novel of the last century, that we can

scarcely believe but that it is the adventures of some persecuted but fictitious heroine we are perusing. There is little doubt, however, but that the record is, in the main, true-that she was far more sinned against than sinning. Even so rigid a moralist as Hannah More could not condemn her. Cynical Horace Walpole, who scarcely ever uttered a word of pity for human frailty, could say, "I make the greatest allowance for inexperience and novel passions; " and straitlaced Sarah Siddons exclaimed, "Poor Perdita! I pity her from my very heart!"

The opening of the story is as weird and mysterious as anything Mrs. Radcliffe could have invented, and fills the reader at once with dread anticipations.

Imagine an ancient house adjoining a cathedral, almost a part of it, with chambers supported by the mouldering arches of the cloisters, opening on the minster sanctuary; approached by a narrow, winding staircase, dimly lit even at noonday; at the end an iron-spiked door which "led to the long gloomy path of cloistered solitude." "In this awe-inspiring habitation," she writes, "during a tempestuous night, on the 27th of November, 1758, I first opened my eyes to this world of duplicity and sorrow. I have often heard my mother say that a more stormy hour she never remembered. The wind whistled round the dark pinnacles of the minster towers, and the rain beat in torrents against the casements of the chamber. Through life the tempest has followed my footsteps, and I have in vain looked for a short interval of repose from the perseverance of sorrow." She describes herself when a child as being swarthy, with very large eyes, and melancholy features, and that the early propensities of her life were romantic and singular; she

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loved to creep into the cathedral aisle, or to sit beneath the great brass-eagle reading-desk, and listen to the pealing of the organ and the chanting of the choir. At a very early age she began to write poems in accordance with such habits. The school to which she was sent was kept by the Misses More, sisters of Hannah More, and there she had for schoolmates Priscilla Hopkins, afterward Mrs. John Kemble, and a daughter of Mrs. Pritchard, the great actress.

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Her father, whose name was Darby, was half-Irish, half-American-a combination not so common in those days as these, and a merchant of some wealth and position in the city of Bristol, and his home was replete with every comfort, and in some of the elegancies of life. Mary tells us, with some pride, that the bed she slept in was of the richest crimson damask." Being an only daughter, she seems to have been petted and spoiled. "My clothes," she says, were sent for from London; my fancy was indulged to the extent of its caprices; I was flattered and praised into a belief that I was a being of superior order. To sing, to play a lesson on the harpsichord, to recite an elegy, and to make doggerel verses, made the extent of my occupations."

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By-and-by a disagreeable change came over the family circumstances. Mr. Darby was a speculative man, and conceived the design of founding a great fishing settlement in Labrador. He laid his plans before the Earl of Chatham and other members of the ministry, received their approval, and started to America to carry it into effect. Within three years the Indians had destroyed the settlement, and its founder's fortune with it. He had desired that his wife should accompany him, but, as we shall see more fully presently, she was a poor, weak

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