Dr. Alderson became seriously ill in December, 1820, and his daughter accompanied him to London, for medical advice, on the 23rd January, 1821. On the 26th, they went to stay at the house of Mr. Hudson Gurney, by whom the following particulars were communicated to the writer;—“Davies Gilbert and a few friends dined with us; and Dr. Alderson was, apparently cheerful and pretty comfortable; but, in a day or two, he was seized with extreme depression of spirits, and went back to Norwich on the 2nd of February. He never, I believe, or hardly ever, left his house afterwards, till the time of his death. During the whole time of his illness, Mrs. Opie most assiduously attended him; she had latterly joined the Quakers; and read to him much in the Bible and other religious books, and his views, on religious subjects, appear to have undergone an entire change. Mr. J. J. Gurney was very frequently with them both.”

On their journey home from town, after this visit, an alarming accident occurred. The horses took fright, the coachman and passengers were thrown off the coach, and the leaders broke the traces; by some means the vehicle was stopped, but their lives had been endangered; and when Dr. Alderson, who was not at first aware of the peril they had incurred, was told, by his daughter, the particulars of the accident, he exclaimed, as he thanked God that they had reached Norwich in safety, “I have been mercifully spared, my dear child, and I wonder why?” His daughter, speaking of the event, said—“afterwards, when his serious impressions daily deepened, he said, ‘Oh! my dear child! I know now why I was spared.’”

From this time the continued and increasing illness of her father occupied her time, and engaged her constant thought, while numerous friends gathered around them, desirous to cheer and soothe the invalid, and to aid his daughter in her task of love. “I suffered much!” she wrote, when the first symptoms of this “sickness unto death” appeared; how much we learn, in some degree, to estimate, by the grief of after years, when the blow, she was then dreading, had fallen. But, if it be true (and every Christian will set his seal to it) that “since the day Jesus redeemed us on the cross, all that is great, powerful, and salutary, partakes of a serious nature, and that all the seeds of life and regeneration, are sown in sorrow and in death,” then we may recognise, in this afflictive visitation, the “blessing in disguise,” which was sent by her heavenly Father to wean her from the world and call her to himself.

Two prayers, written at this time, were preserved among her papers, and remain affecting testimonials of the “thoughts of her heart” within her.

A PRAYER.—25TH OF APRIL, 1821.

O gracious and long suffering God! now that those trials and infirmities are come upon me, from which I have hitherto been mercifully exempted, let me not, I beseech Thee, forget Thy past mercies, in Thy present chastisements; but rather let me consider those chastisements as greater mercies still, and as designed to draw me, in humble supplication and heartfelt thankfulness, to the foot of Thy throne, there to confess my sins and my long forgetfulness of Thee; and to acknowledge, that I have no hope of salvation, but through the merits of Jesus Christ, my Lord and my Redeemer, who died the death of a sinner, that I, and sinners like myself, might be forgiven and live.

A PRAYER.—26TH OF APRIL, 1821.

O Thou! “the God that hearest prayer,” and even amidst innumerable choirs of angels for ever glorifying Thee and hymning Thy praise, canst hearken to the softest breathings of a supplicating and contrited heart, deign Lord to let the prayers of a child, for a beloved parent, come up before Thee. In grateful return for that life which he gave me here, and which, under Thy good providence, he has tenderly watched over, and tried to render happy, enable me, O Lord! to be the humble means of leading him to Thee. O let us “thirst,” and come together “to the waters, and buy the wine and milk without money and without price;” and grant, O Lord! that before we go hence, and are no more seen of men, our united voices may ascend to Thee in praises and in blessings! grant that we may together call upon the name of Him who has redeemed us by His most precious blood, that in that blood our manifold sins may be washed away.

This year died her lovely friend, Priscilla Gurney. In the Memoirs of Mrs. Fry (vol. 1, pp. 391, 399,) a most touching account is given, of the closing scenes of her life. She must have been singularly pleasing, for, notwithstanding her early death, her memory still remains sweet to many, and she is yet spoken of with affectionate regret. Some lines (not among her “Lays”) were written by Mrs. Opie in remembrance of this dear friend; they are headed

“PRISCILLA’S GRAVE.”