at Devon Lodge, East Moulsey. Her husband was leaning over her pillow when she breathed her last word—only audible to him—"darling," and so she passed away. They are buried together at Addlestone churchyard.
There have been many more powerful writers than Mrs. S. C. Hall, more eloquent, more witty, more learned, but none that breathed such a gentle, loving spirit of sympathy. Everything Irish was specially dear to her, in fact she did not write so well about anything else. Her thoughts were continually going back to the glades, the glens, the seashore of her beloved Wexford. When her foot was on her native heath—then, and then only, was she really at home Her heart was with her own people, with Burnt Aigle, with Jack the Shrimp, with the samphire gatherers, with the fisher-folk, listening to their racy talk, and sharing in their joys and sorrows.
Mrs. Hall has something in common with her successor, Miss Jane Barlow, as a delineator of Irish peasant life. As a poet, as a literary artist. Miss Barlow is immeasurably superior, but as a teacher of moral truths in fiction, Mrs. Hall takes a higher place. She knew how to "point a moral," as well as to "adorn a tale."
