devotion.'


Her wedding ring, when she became his wife, was, after her death,
preserved by him, as long as he lived, with an affectionate care, in
a little round wooden box, in the inside of which he pasted a slip of
paper, thus inscribed by him in fair characters, as follows:

'Eheu!
Eliz. Johnson
Nupta Jul. 9 1736,
Mortua, eheu!
Mart. 17 1752.'

After his death, Mr. Francis Barber, his faithful servant and residuary
legatee, offered this memorial of tenderness to Mrs. Lucy Porter, Mrs.
Johnson's daughter; but she having declined to accept of it, he had it
enamelled as a mourning ring for his old master, and presented it to his
wife, Mrs. Barber, who now has it.

I have, indeed, been told by Mrs. Desmoulins, who, before her marriage,
lived for some time with Mrs. Johnson at Hampstead, that she indulged
herself in country air and nice living, at an unsuitable expense, while
her husband was drudging in the smoke of London, and that she by no
means treated him with that complacency which is the most engaging
quality in a wife. But all this is perfectly compatible with his
fondness for her, especially when it is remembered that he had a high
opinion of her understanding, and that the impressions which her beauty,
real or imaginary, had originally made upon his fancy, being continued
by habit, had not been effaced, though she herself was doubtless much