Little by little the work Miss Gilbert had begun grew and prospered. A regular society was formed, of which the Queen became the patron, and of which Miss Gilbert was the most active and devoted member. This association received the name of the Society for Promoting the General Welfare of the Blind. Its present habitation is in Berners Street, London. Its founder, for several years before her death, was obliged, through ill-health, to withdraw from all active participation in its business; but so well and firmly had she laid the foundations, that others were able to carry on what she had begun. The Society is one of the most useful in London for the poor adult blind, because it provides them with industrial training, according to their individual capacities, and secures them, as far as possible, a constant and regular market for the goods they are able to produce. The wages earned are in some cases supplemented by small grants, and pensions are, in several instances, given to those blind men and women who have survived their power of work. The result of Miss Gilbert’s life has been to ameliorate very much the lot of the blind poor by substituting the means of self-supporting industry for the doles and alms which at one time were looked upon as the only means of showing kindness and pity to the blind. Miss Gilbert herself was keenly sensible of the value and life-giving power of work. Surrounded as she had been from childhood with every care and kindness which loving and generous parents could suggest, she yet found that when she began to work, the change was like a passing from death to life. The book from which all the facts and details in this sketch are taken[3] tells that soon after she began her work one of her friends “hoped she was not working herself to death.” She replied, with a happy laugh, “Work myself to death? I am working myself to life.” It is just this possibility of “working to life” that she has placed within the reach of so many blind men and women. Miss Gilbert’s health was always very fragile. After 1872 she became by degrees a confirmed invalid, and after much suffering, borne with exquisite patience and cheerfulness, she died early in the year 1885. Footnote 3: _Elizabeth Gilbert and Her Work for the Blind._ By Frances Martin. Macmillan and Co. XV JANE AUSTEN