Page:A cyclopaedia of female biography.djvu/739

 and in various extravagances peculiarly her own. This mysticism was well adapted to the people among whom she dwelt, and may in a great measure have been assumed to impose upon and confirm her influence with them. Possessing in a high degree the spirit of intrigue, she exercised her powers in fomenting or allaying the disturbances among the neighbouring tribes. With the Emir Beshyr, prince of the Druses, whom she braved, she kept up an unceasing hostility; her enmity was also violently displayed towards the whole consular body, who she said "were intended to regulate merchants, and not to interfere with or control nobility." On the other hand, she was profuse in her bounty, and charitable to the poor and afflicted of every faith. Her residence was a place of refuge to all the persecuted and distressed who sought her protection. When news arrived of the battle of Navarino, all the Franks in Sayda fled for refuge to her dwelling; and, after the siege of Acre, she relieved and sheltered several hundred persons. Nor was her generosity confined to acts like these; she lent large sums to chiefs and individuals, who, in their extremity, applied to her; and, to save whole families from the miseries of the conscription, she furnished the requisite fines. This profuse expenditure, added to the charge of her household, which was seldom composed of less than forty persons, without counting the various hangers-on from without, soon crippled her means. She took up money at an enormous interest, and became involved in pecuniary difficulties. Upon application made by one of her creditors to the British government, in 1838, Lord Palmerston issued an order to the consuls, forbidding them to sign the necessary certificates of Lady Hester's still being alive; and this high-handed measure being carried out, she was hence-forward deprived of all use of her pension.

Tormented by her creditors, and enraged at the treatment she had received from her own government. Lady Hester renounced her allegiance, refusing ever again to receive her pension. She walled up her gateway, determining to have no communication with any one without; and dismissed her physician, though she was in an advanced stage of pulmonary disease. Dr. M. left her in August, 1838. Her last letter to him is dated May, 1839; and on the 23rd. of June, 1839, attended by a few slaves, and without a single European or Christian near her, she breathed her last, aged sixty-three years, Mr. Moore, the English consul at Beyrout, and Mr. Thompson, an American missionary, hearing of her death, proceeded to Djoun, and performed the last sad offices to her remains, burying her at midnight in her own garden.

ST. CECILIA, patroness of music, is said to have been a Roman lady, born about the year 235. Her story, as related by the Roman Catholics, is, that her parents married her to a young pagan nobleman, Valerianus. Cecilia told him, on her wedding-night, that she was visited nightly by an angel. Valerianus desired to see the angel; but his bride told him that it would be impossible, unless he would become a Christian. This he consented to, and was baptized by Pope Urban the First; after which, returning to his wife, he found her at prayer, and by her side a beautiful young man, clothed with brightness. Valerianus conversed with the angel, who foretold his martyrdom, and that of his brother, Tiburtius. In a few years,