was damp and unhealthy.  Wrapt up in flannels, and wheeled up and down her room in a chair, she discovered that wealth can only mitigate the evils of humanity, and realized how wretched is any person with a soul filled with discontent and bitterness, when animal spirits are destroyed by the infirmities of old age.  All the views of this spoiled favorite of fortune were bounded by the scenes immediately before her.  While she was not sceptical, she was far from being religious; and hence she was deprived of the highest consolations given to people in disappointment and sorrow and neglect.  The older she grew, the more tenaciously did she cling to temporal possessions, and the more keenly did she feel occasional losses.  Her intellect remained unclouded, but her feelings became callous.  While she had no reverence for the dead, she felt increasing contempt for the living,—­forgetting that no one, however exalted, can live at peace in an atmosphere of disdain.

At last she died, in 1744, unlamented and unloved, in the eighty-fourth year of her age, and was interred by the side of her husband, in the tomb in the chapel of Blenheim.  She left L30,000 a year to her grandson, Lord John Spencer, provided he would never accept any civil or military office from the Government.  She left also L20,000 to Lord Chesterfield, together with her most valuable diamond; but only small sums to most of her relatives or to charities.  The residue of her property she left to that other grandson who inherited the title and estates of her husband.  L60,000 a year, her estimated income, besides a costly collection of jewels,—­one of the most valuable in Europe,—­were a great property, when few noblemen at that time had over L30,000 a year.

The life of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, is a sad one to contemplate, with all her riches and honors.  Let those who envy wealth or rank learn from her history how little worldly prosperity can secure happiness or esteem, without the solid virtues of the heart.  The richest and most prosperous woman of her times was the object of blended derision, contempt, and hatred throughout the land which she might have adorned.  Why, then, it may be asked, should I single out such a woman for a lecture,—­a woman who added neither to human happiness, national prosperity, nor the civilization of her age?  Why have I chosen her as one of the Beacon Lights of history?  Because I know of no woman who has filled so exalted a position in society, and is so prominent a figure in history, whose career is a more impressive warning of the dangers to be shunned by those who embark on the perilous and troubled seas of mere worldly ambition.  God gave her that to which she aspired, and which so many envy; but “He sent leanness into her soul.”

AUTHORITIES.