Reviews of A Narrative of a Year's Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia, 1862-63 by William Gifford Palgrave, Published 1865 [‎2r] (3/42)

Miss Berry'5 Memoirs.
181
that they care for one another, so as to take an interest in one
another's daily life, that society is harmonised, and, beyond
Mohammed, christianised. Honour, then, to the good old ladies
who helped on this good work. They will soon be only per
sonally remembered by those to whom the streets of London have
become a range of inhabited tombs; yet the day may be distant
before social tradition forgets the modest house in Curzon-street,
where dwelt the Berrys.
In these pages we have spoken almost indifferently of these
sisters in the singular and the plural. And this is, in truth, a
fair representation of their relation to one another. It was said
that after Mary's unhappy engagement their friendship was less
ened ; but there is no sign of it in these volumes. They appear
on the scene sometimes single, sometimes double, owing to the
sororal condition perhaps more than the elder and the abler would
willingly have accepted. Agnes, it is clear, would have been
nothing above an amiable, cheery, pretty woman, but for Mary's
superiority; yet it is undeniable that her liveliness was a most
necessary complement to Miss Berry's graver disposition, and it is
hard to say which was the greater gainer by the faculties of the
other. During an illness, in which Mary was supposed to be
seriously attacked, Mr. Rogers came to see her, not having visited
the house for many years previous. She received him with great
kindness, but, after some strong expressions of sympathy and in
terest on his part, Agnes, bearing no longer what she, we think
wrongly, believed to be a false and barren exhibition of feeling,
burst out, 'You might have been, and you were not, anything
to us when we were living, and you now come and insult us with
your civilities when we are nigh dead.' This was a specimen of
the more passionate, and, it may be, one-sided nature, which
Agnes never concealed, and which time did not subdue.
Mary Berry went on for a short time bravely enduring life.
Within the year the sisters lay together in the pleasant grave-yard
of Petersham, close to the scenes which they had inspired with
so many happy associations. To few it is given, as to these, to
retain in extreme old age not only the clearness of the head but the
brightness of the heart—to leave in those about them no sense
of relief from the wayward second-childishness which so sadly
rounds the life of man, but a pure regret that these almost
patriarchal lives could not have lasted still longer.
Art .