“I hope I do not break your heart, my dearest Fanny, by these particulars, I mean to afford you gratification while I am relieving my own feelings. I could not write so to anybody else.... On Thursday, when the clock struck six, she was talking quietly to me. I cannot say how soon afterwards she was seized again with faintness, which was followed by the sufferings which she could not describe, but Mr. Lyford who had been sent for, had applied something to give her ease, and she was in a state of quiet insensibility by seven o’clock at the latest. From that time till half past four when she ceased to breathe, she scarcely moved a limb, so that we have every reason to think with gratitude to the Almighty, that her sufferings were over. A slight motion of the head with every breath remained till almost the last. I sat close to her with a pillow in my lap to assist in supporting her head which was almost off the bed, for six hours; fatigue made me then resign my place to Mrs. J. A. for two hours and a half, when I took it again, and in about an hour more she breathed her last. “... There was nothing convulsed which gave the idea of pain in her look; on the contrary, but for the continual motion of the head, she gave one the idea of a beautiful statue, and even now in her coffin, there is such a sweet serene air over her countenance as is quite pleasant to contemplate.” And later on after the funeral she wrote again, “Thursday was not so dreadful a day to me as you imagined.... Everything was conducted with the greatest tranquillity, and but that I was determined that I would see the last, and therefore was upon the listen, I should not have known when they left the house. I watched the little mournful procession the length of the street, and when it turned from my sight, and I had lost her for ever, even then I was not over-powered, nor so much agitated as I am now in writing of it. Never was a human being more sincerely mourned by those who attended her remains than was this dear creature. May the sorrow with which she is parted with on earth be a prognostic of the joy with which she is hailed in heaven!... Oh, if I may one day be reunited to her there!” Cassandra herself survived for twenty-eight years, and spent her last days in the cottage at Chawton endeared to her by recollections of her mother and beloved sister. Jane’s resting-place in the Cathedral is almost opposite the tomb of the founder, William of Wykeham. A large black slab of marble let into the pavement marks the spot, it bears an inscription including the following words: “The benevolence of her heart, the sweetness of her temper, and the extraordinary endowments of her mind obtained the regard of all who knew her, and the warmest love of her immediate connexions.”