As the year passed, it was thought that the air of the south coast might be useful, and the house at Ramsgate, Arklow House, which proved her last abode, was prepared for her.  Her bed-chamber adjoined the drawing-room, with pleasant views of the sea, in which she delighted.  While driving in the country, or being wheeled to the pier in a Bath-chair, she still strove to be useful, distributing Bibles and tracts, accompanied with a few words of kindly exhortation.  Thus she was employed till the close of her days in work for the Master.  She lingered, with gradual decay; and passed away, after a few days’ illness which confined her to bed, on the morning of the 13th of October, 1845, in her 66th year.  The last words she was heard to articulate, were “O dear Lord, help and keep Thy servant.”

There was much sorrow when she had ended her useful life; and when she was taken to Barking for interment, a great number of people assembled, and a solemn meeting was held.  But far beyond any local gathering, her example will continue to speak, through all the ages, and in many a land.  There are many workers in our time in every branch of Christian usefulness, but the name and the work of Elizabeth Fry will be for ever remembered.

James Macaulay, M.D.

SELINA, COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON

Lady Selina Shirley, afterwards Countess of Huntingdon, was born August 24, 1707.  She died June 17, 1791.  Hence her long and useful life extended over almost the whole of the eighteenth century.  She witnessed the rise of the great evangelical revival, which, beginning with the Holy Club at Oxford, gradually spread over the United Kingdom and the English colonies in America.  For half a century she was a central figure in that great religious movement which affected so deeply all classes of the community, consecrating her position, her means, her influence to the glory and the extension of His kingdom.

I.

Early years.

Lady Selina Shirley was the second of the three daughters of Washington Shirley, who in 1717 succeeded to the Earldom of Ferrars, being the second to bear that title.  She was born at Stanton Harold, a country seat near Ashby de la Zouch, in Leicestershire.  At a very early age she gave evidence of intelligence above the average, of a retentive memory, and of a clear and strong understanding.  She manifested when but on the threshold of womanhood that sound common sense and keen insight into character and the true bearing of affairs which distinguished her so pre-eminently in mature and late life.  She was serious by temperament, and when at the age of nine years she happened to meet the funeral cortege of a child the same age as herself, she was attracted to the burial, and used afterwards to trace her first abiding sense of the eternal world to the profound