Page:William Howitt.pdf/14

Rh would not believe it, but a grate would be the first of luxuries. Keys, scissors, everything rusts. * * * I find the servants civil, and not wanting in intelligence, but industry. Each has servants to wait on him, whom they call sense boys, i. e. they wait on them to be taught. Scouring is done by the prisoners. Fancy three men employed to clean a room, which, in England, an old woman could do in an hour, while a soldier stands over them with a drawn bayonet."

Such was the last, strange, solitary home of L. E. L.; such the strange life of one who had been before employed only in diffusing her beautiful fancies amid her countrymen. Here she was rising at seven, giving out flour, sugar, &c, from the stores, seeing what room she would have cleaned, and then sitting down to write. In the midst of this new species of existence, she is suddenly plunged into the grave, leaving the wherefore a wonder. The land which was the attraction of her childhood, singularly enough, thus became her sepulchre. A marble slab, with a Latin inscription, is said to be erected there by her husband.

We may now add that Captain Maclean himself died at Cape Coast on the 22d of May, 1846.