Since we have been calm enough to review the various stages of her last sickness in relation to her religious exercises, it has been a subject of deep regret, and of no little self-reproach, that we had not made the attempt at recording, as they were uttered, some of the deeply affecting expressions of her Christian principles and feelings. But the tumultuous hour of hope and fear, and hurried, anxious watching at the bed of death, is not the time for cool calculation. Some of the most affecting parts of such scenes are incapable of being written down, even by one not interested in the sufferer. Nay, more--like the voices which John heard from heaven in Patmos, the Spirit seems to say of them, "_write them not_." These are "joys with which the stranger intermeddleth not." (Prov. xiv. 10.) It is a sanctuary which no creature can enter. And then our beloved Friend, who was often afraid to whisper her religious joys to her Saviour, lest she should be found offering "strange fire" on his altar, seldom talked of her hopes, (though often of her sins,) to her nearest friends; and never, by _writing them_ down, put it in the power of posthumous publications to expose them to the view of others. We can only, therefore, illustrate her religious character, at the stage which we now approach, by broken fragments of thoughts and feelings, caught from her lips amidst the awful mercies of a dying hour. She began at length, visibly to sink, when Dr. Freeman, of Balston, whose skilful and kind attentions she enjoyed, (Dr. Steel, of Saratoga, having himself been recently removed by death,) strongly advised a discontinuance of the use of the waters, and an attempt to reach the Red Sulphur Springs. For now the prevailing type of the disease had become distinctly pulmonary; and the skill of physicians, and the healing waters, and all the help of man were vain. Now, for the first time, we began to discern the dread reality of her approaching dissolution; and had some foretaste of the _first_ anguish of such a loss.[6] [6] The following touching stanzas do more real honour to their illustrious author, (Lord Palmerston) than all the distinctions of his high rank and public life.