Page:A cyclopaedia of female biography.djvu/499

 through the greater part of the country, where she was very kindly received. She terminated her journey by a visit to General Washington, with whom she corresponded for the remainder of her life. She resided after her return principally at Binfield, in Berkshire.

In 1788, or according to another account, in 1785, Mrs. Macaulay, having lost her first husband, married a Mr. Graham, of whom all that is told is that he was so many years her junior as to expose the lady to much irreverent remark. She also wrote several pamphlets, both during the progress of her great work, and after its completion. Of these the catalogue-makers have preserved the following titles:—"Remarks on Hobbe's Rudiments of Government and Society," 1767; enlarged and republished in 1769, with the more striking title of "Loose Remarks on some of Mr. Hobbe's Positions;" "Observations on a pamphlet (Burke's) entitled Thoughts on the Causes of the present Discontents," 1770; "An Address to the People of England, Scotland, and Ireland, on the present Important Crisis of Affairs, 1776;" "A Treatise on the Immutability of Moral Truth," called in a second much enlarged edition, "Letters on Education," 1790; and "Observations on the Reflections of the Right Hon. E. Burke on the Revolution in France, in a Letter to the Right Hon. the Earl of Stanhope," 1791.

This excellent woman died June 23rd., 1791. Her friend, Mrs. Arnold, in her account of the private character of Mrs. Macaulay, toys, "As a wife, a mother, a friend, neighbour, and the mistress of a family, she was irreproachable and exemplary. My sentiments of this amiable woman are derived from a long and intimate acquaintance with her various excellencies; and I have observed her in different points of view. I have seen her exalted on the dangerous pinnacle of wordly prosperity, surrounded by flattering friends, and an admiring world; I have seen her marked out by party prejudice as an object of dislike and ridicule; I have seen her bowed down by bodily pain and weakness; but never did I see her forget the urbanity of a gentlewoman, her conscious dignity as a rational creature, or a fervent aspiration after the highest degree of attainable perfection. I have seen her humble herself in the presence of her Almighty Father; and, with a contrite heart, acknowledging her sins and imploring His forgiveness; I have seen her languishing in the bed of sickness, enduring pain with the patience of a Christian, and with the firm belief, that the light afflictions of this life are but for a moment, and that the fashion of the world will pass away, and give place to a system of durable happiness."

Dr. Wilson, Prebendary of Westminster, was an enthusiastic admirer of hers, and erected a statue to her, as a patroness of liberty, in the church at Walbrook; but on the death of Dr. Wilson, this mark of homage was removed by his successor.

MACDONALD, FLORA, the daughter of Mr. Macdonald, of Milton, in South Uist, one of the Hebrides. She was born in 1720, and, after her father's death, resided in the Isle of Skye with her mother and stepfather, Hugh Macdonel, of Amadale. After the disastrous defeat of Culloden, when Prince Charles Edward, a hunted fugitive, was seeking concealment in the Western Isles, Flora was on a visit to her brother, in South Uist, where, as it happened, the prince lay hid. The circumstances which induced this young and beautiful girl to