Page:Heroines of freethought (IA cu31924031228699).pdf/203

Rh ent with her expressed opinions. By her own urgent request, her funeral was entirely private, and free from any religious ceremonial. Her autobiography was finished and in press before her death, and will soon be given to the public. A singular instance of her firmness of mind is shown in the fact of her having, just previous to her decease, deposited with the London Daily News a short biographical and critical sketch of her life and works, written by herself, to be published immediately after that event, of which a writer in the Spectator says that it is “so coldly judicial, so severely passionless, so harsh, indeed, in some respects, that had it not been her own work, the editor of the Daily News would have been charged with a mocking hardness for giving it publicity so soon after her death."