About two years after her last visit to Scotland, Miss Baillie had the grief of losing her brother and beloved friend, Dr. Matthew Baillie, who, after a life of remarkable activity and usefulness, died full of honors in 1823. He left, besides a widow, who long survived him, a son and daughter, who with their families have been the source of much delightful and affectionate interest to the declining years of the retired sisters. In the composition and careful revisal of her numerous and varied works—in receiving at her modest home the friends she most loved and respected, a list of whom would include many of the best-known names of her time for talent and genius—in the active exercise of friendship, benevolence, and charity—ever contented with the lot assigned to her, and as grateful for the enjoyment of God's blessings as she was submissive to his painful trials—her unusually complete life glided calmly on, and was peacefully closed on the 23d of February last.
It will be easily believed, that in spite of all the natural modesty and reserve of Miss Baillie's character, the impression made by the appearance of one so highly gifted on those who had the happiness of being admitted to her intimacy, was neither slight nor evanescent. "Dear, venerable Joanna!" writes one of those, "I wish I could, for my own or others' benefit, recall, and in any way fix, the features of your countenance and mind! The ever-thoughtful brow—the eye that in old age still dilated with expression, or was suffused with a tear. I never felt afraid of her. How could I, having experienced nothing but the most constant kindness and indulgence? I had heard of the 'awful stillness of the Hampstead drawing-room;' and when I first saw her in her own quiet home (she must have been then bordering on seventy, and I on twenty), I remember likening myself to the devil in Milton. I felt 'how awful goodness is—and virtue in her shape, how lovely!' One could not help feeling a constant reverence for her worth, even more than an admiration of her intellectual gifts. There was something, indeed, in her appearance that quite contrasted with one's ideas of authorship, which made one forget her works in her presence—nay, almost wonder if the neat, precise old maid before one could really be the same person who had painted the warm passion of a Basil, or soared to and sympathized with the ambition of a Mohammed or a Paleologus."
In a little tract, published about twenty years before her death, she indicates her religious creed. After studying the Scriptures carefully—examining the gospels and epistles, and comparing them with one another, which she thinks is all the unlearned can do—she faithfully sets down every passage relating to the divinity and mission of Christ; and, looking to the bearing of the whole, is able to rest her mind upon the Arian doctrine, which supposes Him to be "a most highly-gifted Being, who was with God before the creation of the world, and by whose agency it probably was created, by power derived from Almighty God." That she was no bigoted sectarian in religion, whatever she may once have been in poetry, is pleasingly shown by the following sentences. They occur in a letter to her ever esteemed and admired friend Mrs. Siddons, to whom she had sent a copy of this tract. They do honor to both the ladies:—"You have treated my little book very handsomely, and done all that I wish people to do in regard to it; for you have read the passages from Scripture, I am sure, with attention, and have considered them with candor. That after doing so, your opinions, on the main point, should be different from mine, is no presumption that either of us is in the wrong, or that our humble, sincere faith, though different, will not be equally accepted by the great father and master of us all. Indeed, this tract was less intended for Christians, whose faith is already fixed, than for those who, supposing certain doctrines to be taught in Scripture (which do not, when taken in one general view, appear to be taught there), and which they can not bring their minds to agree to, throw off revealed religion altogether. No part of your note, my dear madam, has pleased me more than that short parenthesis ('for I still hold fast my own faith without wavering'), and long may this be the case! The fruits of that faith, in the course of your much-tried and honorable life, are too good to allow any one to find fault with it."
A VISIT AT MR. WEBSTER'S.[11]
We have been much charmed with our visit to Green Harbor, Marshfield, the beautiful domain of Mr. Webster. It is a charming and particularly enjoyable place, almost close to the sea. The beach here is something marvelous, eight miles in breadth, and of splendid, hard, floor-like sand, and when this is covered by the rolling Atlantic, the waves all but come up to the neighboring green, grassy fields. Very high tides cover them.
This house is very prettily fitted up. It strikes me as being partly in the English and partly in the French style, exceedingly comfortable, and with a number of remarkably pretty drawing-rooms opening into one another, which always is a judicious arrangement I think; it makes a party agreeable and unformal. There are a variety of pictures and busts by American artists, and some of them are exceedingly good. There is a picture in the chief drawing-room of Mr. Webster's gallant son, who was killed in the Mexican war. The two greatest of America's statesmen each lost a son in that war, Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster. There is also a fine picture of Mr. Webster himself, which, however, though a masterly painting, does not do justice to the distinguished original. It was executed some years ago; but I really think it is not so handsome as the great statesman is now, with his Olympus-like brow, on which are throned such divinities of thought, and with that wonderful countenance of might and majesty.
The dining-room here is a charming apartment, with all its windows opening to the ground, looking on the garden; and it is deliciously cool, protected from the sun by the overshadowing masses of foliage of the most magnificent weeping (American) elms. These colossal trees stand just before the house, and are pre-eminently beautiful: they seem to unite in their own gigantic persons the exquisite and exceeding grace of the weeping willow, with the strength and grandeur of the towering elm. I was told a curious fact last night. Every where, through the length and breadth of the States, the sycamore trees this year are blighted and dying.
The walls of the dining-room are adorned chiefly with English engravings, among which there is one of my father. My bed-room is profusely decorated with prints of different English country houses and castles. The utmost good taste and refinement are perceptible in the arrangements of the house, and a most enchanting place of residence it is. All the domestics of the house are colored persons, which is very seldom indeed the case in this part of the United States. Mr. Webster tells me he considers them the best possible servants, much attached, contented, and grateful, and he added, he would "fearlessly trust them with untold gold." They certainly must be good ones, to judge by the exquisite neatness and order of every thing in the establishment.
Mr. Webster's farm here consists of one thousand five hundred acres: he has a hundred head of cattle.