“Mrs. Pierce’s life, as far as she could make it so, was one of retirement. She rarely participated in gay amusements, and never enjoyed what is called fashionable society. Her natural endowments were of a high order. She inherited a judgment singularly clear, and a taste almost unerring. The cast of her beauty was so dream-like; her temper was so little mingled with the common characteristics of woman; it had so little of caprice, so little of vanity, so utter an absence of all jealousy and all anger; it was so made up of tenderness and devotion, and yet so imaginative and fairy-like in its fondness, that it was difficult to bear only the sentiments of earth for one who had so little of life’s clay.” It was but natural that such a being should be the life-long object of a husband’s adoring devotion. Nor is it strange that the husband of such a wife, reflecting in his outer life the urbanity, gentleness, and courtesy which marked his home intercourse, in addition to his own personal gifts, should have been, what Franklin Pierce was declared to be, the most popular man, personally, who ever was President of the United States. Notwithstanding her ill health, her shrinking temperament, and personal bereavement, Mrs. Pierce forced herself to meet the public demands of her exalted station, and punctually presided at receptions and state dinners, at any cost to herself. No woman, by inherent nature, could have been less adapted to the full blaze of official life than she, yet she met its demands with honor, and departed from the White House revered by all who had ever caught a glimpse of her exquisite nature. She died December, 1863, in Andover, Massachusetts, and now rests, with her husband and children, in the cemetery at Concord, New Hampshire. * * * * * During the administration of Mr. Buchanan, the White House seemed to revive the social magnificence of old days. Harriet Lane brought again into its drawing-rooms the splendor of courts, and more than repeated the elegance and brilliancy of fashion, which marked the administration of Mr. John Quincy Adams.