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 XXXIII. LADY FRANKLIN. THREE women have a claim to be associated with the name of Sir John Franklin. The lady whom he first married, Miss Eleanor Porden, is one of them. It way she who, knowing how fatal a brief delay may be to an arctic expedition, bade her husband set sail for the northern seas at the appointed time, although she was then in the last stages of consumption. He sailed, and it proved to be her last wish that he obeyed, for she died the day after his departure. His second wife was the Lady Franklin of whom all the world has heard. It was to her untiring efforts (in all of which she was devotedly aided by Sir John's niece, the late Miss Sophia Cracroft), that the solution to the mystery which so long shrouded the fate of the explorer and his ill-starred vessels, was due. Lady Franklin, whose maiden name was Jane Griffin, was born in 1794, and was married to Sir John Franklin in 1828, when she was thirty-four years of age. Ten years later she accompanied him to Van Dieman's Land, (now Tasmania,) of which he had been appointed gov- ernor. She early gained the good will of the inhabitants, and was noted among them both for her many deeds of private beneficence, and for the active, efficient aid which she rendered her husband in his public duties. She showed especial interest in the welfare of poor emigrants, and of the convicts who, after transportation to New South Wales was abolished, were sent to Tasmania from all (406)