To return, for a brief space, to the course of her life. It was in the autumn of 1820 that Miss Baillie paid her last visit to Scotland, and passed those delightful days with Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford, the second of which is so pleasantly given in Mr. Lockhart's life of the bard. Her friends again perceived a change in her manners. They had become blander, and much more cordial. She had probably been now too long admired and reverently looked up to, not to understand her own position, and the encouragement which, essentially unassuming as she was, would be necessary from her to reassure the timid and satisfy the proud. She had magnanimously forgiven and lived down the unjust severity of her Edinburgh critic, and now no longer refused to be made personally known to him. He was presented to her by their mutual friend, the amiable Dr. Morehead. They had much earnest and interesting talk together, and from that hour to the end of their lives entertained for each other a mutual and cordial esteem. After this Jeffrey seldom visited London without indulging himself in a friendly pilgrimage to the shrine of the secluded poetess; and it is pleasing to find him writing of her in the following cordial way in later years: "_London, April_ 28, 1840.--I forgot to tell you that we have been twice out to Hampstead to hunt out Joanna Baillie, and found her the other day as fresh, natural, and amiable as ever--and as little like a Tragic Muse. Since old Mrs. Brougham's death, I do not know so nice an old woman." And again, in January 7, 1842--"We went to Hampstead, and paid a very pleasant visit to Joanna Baillie, who is marvelous in health and spirits, and youthful freshness and simplicity of feeling, and not a bit deaf, blind, or torpid." About two years after her last visit to Scotland, Miss Baillie had the grief of losing her brother and beloved friend, Dr. Matthew Baillie, who, after a life of remarkable activity and usefulness, died full of honors in 1823. He left, besides a widow, who long survived him, a son and daughter, who with their families have been the source of much delightful and affectionate interest to the declining years of the retired sisters. In the composition and careful revisal of her numerous and varied works--in receiving at her modest home the friends she most loved and respected, a list of whom would include many of the best-known names of her time for talent and genius--in the active exercise of friendship, benevolence, and charity--ever contented with the lot assigned to her, and as grateful for the enjoyment of God's blessings as she was submissive to his painful trials--her unusually complete life glided calmly on, and was peacefully closed on the 23d of February last.