inspired the strongest attachments; she was a finely sympathetic woman,
with a great accordant heart and a sterling noble nature. No claim can
be set up for her, thank God, to the possession of any of the
conventional poetical qualities. She never by any means held the opinion
that she was among the greatest of human beings; she never suspected the
existence of a conspiracy on the part of mankind against her; she never
recognised in her best friends, her worst enemies; she never cultivated
the luxury of being misunderstood and unappreciated; she would far rather
have died without seeing a line of her composition in print, than that I
should have maundered about her, here, as "the Poet", or "the Poetess".

With the recollection of Miss Procter as a mere child and as a woman,
fresh upon me, it is natural that I should linger on my way to the close
of this brief record, avoiding its end. But, even as the close came upon
her, so must it come here.

Always impelled by an intense conviction that her life must not be
dreamed away, and that her indulgence in her favourite pursuits must be
balanced by action in the real world around her, she was indefatigable in
her endeavours to do some good. Naturally enthusiastic, and
conscientiously impressed with a deep sense of her Christian duty to her
neighbour, she devoted herself to a variety of benevolent objects. Now,
it was the visitation of the sick, that had possession of her; now, it
was the sheltering of the houseless; now, it was the elementary teaching
of the densely ignorant; now, it was the raising up of those who had
wandered and got trodden under foot; now, it was the wider employment of
her own sex in the general business of life; now, it was all these things
at once. Perfectly unselfish, swift to sympathise and eager to relieve,
she wrought at such designs with a flushed earnestness that disregarded
season, weather, time of day or night, food, rest. Under such a hurry of