HARRIET MARTINEAU. 493 Her years of lingering illness proved a time of quiet enjoyment to her, being soothed by family and social love and care and sympathy. In the words of her biographer, Mrs. M. W. Chapman, a woman of kindred spirit: " If, instead of dying so slowly, she had died as she could have wished and thought to have done, without delay, what a treasure of wise counsels, what a radiance of noble deeds, what a spirit of love and of power, what brave vic- torious battle to the latest hour for all things good and true, had been lost to posterity ! What an example of more than resignation, of that ready, glad acceptance of a lingering and painful death which made the sight a bless- ing to every witness, had been lost to the surviving genera- tion." 30
