Death, which has been so busy this year, and striking so indiscriminately, took off a person of a very different description on Sunday last. On that day, after a protracted and painful illness, my uncle's widow, Lady William Bentinck, was released from her sufferings.[57] A more amiable and excellent woman never existed in the world. She was overflowing with affections, sympathies, and kindness, not only perfectly unselfish, but with a scrupulous fear, carried to exaggeration, of trespassing upon the ease or convenience of others. Though she had passed all her life in the world, been placed in great situations, and had mingled habitually and familiarly with eminent people, she never was the least elated or spoiled by her prosperity. Her mind was pure, simple, natural, and humble. She was not merely charitable, but was charity itself, not only in relieving and assisting the necessitous, but in always putting the most indulgent constructions on the motives and conduct of others, in a childlike simplicity, in believing the best of everybody, and an incredulity of evil report, which proceeded from a mind itself incapable of doing wrong. To parody part of a couplet of Dryden-- ...innocent within, She thought no evil, for she knew no sin. Hers was one of those rare dispositions which nature had made of its very best materials. She was gentle and cheerful, and without being clever, was one of those people whom everybody likes, and whose society was universally agreeable, from a certain undefinable charm of sympathy and benevolence which breathed in her, and which was more potent, attractive, and attaching than great talents or extensive information, to neither of which she had any pretension. With the death of her husband all her happiness was clouded, never to admit of sunshine again, and she passed two years of mild and moderated grief with alternations of partial ease and severe bodily pain, but nothing ever disturbed the serenity of her temper; her uncomplaining gentleness, her warm and considerate affections, and her unaffected piety, continued to the last, manifesting themselves in a thousand touching instances, and inspiring the deepest feelings of compassion, respect, and attachment among the small circle of friends and relations who had the grief of witnessing the last distressing weeks of her illness, and the severe pains from which, though courageously endured, she earnestly desired to be released. At length her prayers were heard, and on Sunday, the 30th of April, having been vouchsafed 'patience under her sufferings,' she obtained 'a happy issue out of all her afflictions.' [Footnote 57: [Lady William Bentinck, Mr. Greville's aunt by marriage, was the second daughter of Arthur, first Earl of Gosford. She married Lord William, 1803.]]