Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/208

196 came her face suddenly brightened, she tried to raise herself, and stretched out her arms, crying, "Patty! joy." It was the last time she spoke, though she lived some hours longer, and breathed her life away on the 7th of September 1833, when eighty-eight years of age.

On the 13th, the worn-out body was laid to rest beside those of her four sisters in the churchyard at Wrington. Her directions had been to avoid all pomp and display, only that suits of mourning were to be given to fifteen old men whom she had selected, but there were endless spontaneous tokens of respect. Every church in Bristol tolled its bell as the funeral passed through the streets. All the neighbouring gentlemen met the procession a mile from the church, and fell into the rear, and for half a mile the road was crowded with country people mostly in mourning, and two hundred school-children, with a large number of clergy, preceded the coffin into church.

Hannah More's property was worth about £30,000. Having no near relations, she left £10,000 between various charities in London and at Bristol, with bequests to her clubs at Cheddar and Shipham. But her truly valuable legacy was not only the example of what one woman could be, and could do, but a real influence on the tone of education in all classes of English women.