Society in the neighbourhood. Her improvements at Castle Bernard, conducted under her immediate direction, are sufficient evidences of the correctness of her judgement; and, in the formation of her valuable library, she has left a monument of her taste, and a declaration of the pure principles of her heart. By her sole bounty she supported for many years a school for twenty-four women, now united to the general school of Bandon, of which she was the patroness and foundress, and which is conducted on such an ample scale of liberality, as would do credit to any place in the United Kingdom. She “delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless and him that had none to help him; she caused the widow's heart to sing for joy, and the blessing of him that was ready to perish, came upon her.She died in her 48th year. Her death appears to have been accelerated by the susceptible feelings of maternal tenderness, in the anxiety for the fate of a much-loved son, who fell in Portugal in the 24th year of his age. She expired before that event was confirmed, and the following inscription to her memory was engraved on a monument erected in the church of Ballymodan, in the county of Cork.
"Near this place are deposited the mortal remains of Harriett Catherine, Countess of Bandon, daughter of Richard, Earl of Shannon, and wife of Francis, Earl of Bandon, by whom this monument is erected. In her the dignified graces of superior life were, by a rare felicity of combination, united with the unremitting exercise of virtues truly christian. May her unaffected piety, conjugal affection, parental tenderness, and charity alive to every call of distress, prove as beneficial in their example as they have been lamented in their loss! She died at Castle Bernard, on the 7th of July, 1815, in the 48th year of her age."
The same monument is also destined to record the memory of two of her sons, the Honourable Francis
