Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/178

164  and piety, she employed to his glory, and the good of her neighbours. Her domestic expences were managed with a decency and dignity suitable to her fortune, but with a frugality that made her income abound to all proper objects of charity, to the relief of the necessitous, the encouragement of the industrious, and the instruction of the ignorant. She distributed, not only with cheerfulness, but with joy, which, upon some occasions of raising and refreshing the spirit of the afflicted, she could not refrain from breaking forth into tears, flowing from a heart thoroughly affected with compassion and benevolence. Thus did many of her good works, while she lived, go up as a memorial before God, and some she left to follow her.

She died January 21, 1726, in the fifty-seventh year of her age, at Flaxley, her seat, in Gloucestershire; and was buried there."

Female Worthies.

this practice, the origin of which is lost in antiquity, has been the admiration and regret of so many ages, I have thought proper to bring forward one instance, respecting which an English gentleman, at that time of authority in the district, has kindly furnished me with authentic documents.

The ladies of Hindostan are allowed to marry once only; but, on the death of their husbands, they are legally entitled to a considerable share of his fortune, and may survive him, without incurring any reproach; the