Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay | Page 6

morning. Her remains are deposited near
those of one of her own sex, who was also distinguished for her literary
talents, Miss Jewsbury.
The death of Miss Roberts excited universal sorrow amongst all classes,
European and native, at Bombay, as well as at the other presidencies,
especially Calcutta, where the most cordial and flattering tributes to her
memory appeared in the public journals. She had nearly completed her
inquiries, and accomplished all the objects for which she had revisited
the treacherous clime of India, and one of her latest letters to the writer
of this Memoir expressed a cheerful anticipation of her speedy return to
England! "I positively leave India next October, and am now looking
joyfully to my return."

The person and manners of Miss Roberts were extremely prepossessing.
In early life, she was handsome; and although latterly her figure had
attained some degree of fulness, it had lost none of its ease and grace,
whilst her pleasing features, marked by no lines of painful thought,
were open and expressive, beaming with animation and good humour.
She had not the slightest tinge of pedantry in her manner and
deportment, which were natural and affable, so that a stranger never felt
otherwise than at ease in her society. It was not her ambition to make a
display of mental superiority, which inspires the other sex with any
feelings but those of admiration--which is, indeed, tacitly resented as a
species of tyranny, and frequently assigned as the ground of a certain
prejudice against literary ladies. "It may safely he said," observes a
friend of her's at Calcutta, "that, although devoted to literature as Miss
Roberts was, yet in her conversation and demeanour she evinced less of
what is known as '_blue_' than any of her contemporaries, excepting
Miss Landon." Another Calcutta acquaintance says: "Though her mind
was deeply interested in subjects connected with literature, her
attention was by no means absorbed by them, and she mixed cordially
and freely in society without the least disposition to despise persons of
less intellectual elevation. She had a true relish of all the little pleasures
that promiscuous society affords, and did not underrate those talents
which are better fitted for the drawing-room than the study." Her
warmth of heart and kindness of disposition, which co-operated with
her good sense in thus removing all disagreeable points from her
external character, made her the sincerest of friends, and ever ready to
engage in any work of charity or benevolence.
It would be affectation to attempt in this slight Memoir to elaborate a
picture of the intellectual character of Miss Roberts, cut off, as she has
been, before that character had been fully developed. The works, upon
which her reputation as a writer principally rests, are not, perhaps, of a
quality which calls for any commanding powers of mind. Her business
was with the surfaces of things; her skill consisted in a species of
photography, presenting perfect fac-similes of objects, animate and
inanimate, in their natural forms and hues. Deep investigations,
profound reflections, and laboured and learned disquisitions, would
have defeated the very object of her lively sketches, which was to make
them, not only faithful and exact, but popular. Of her success in this

design, the following testimony from a competent authority, the
_Calcutta Literary Gazette_, is distinct and decisive; and with this
extract we may fitly close our melancholy office: "Nothing can be more
minute and faithful than her pictures of external life and manners. She
does not, indeed, go much beneath the surface, nor does she take
profound or general views of human nature; but we can mention no
traveller, who has thrown upon the printed page such true and vivid
representations of all that strikes the eye of a stranger. Her book,
entitled _Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan_, is the best of its
kind. Other travellers have excelled her in depth and sagacity of remark,
in extent of information, and in mere force or elegance of style; but
there is a vivacity, a delicacy, and a truth in her light sketches of all that
lay immediately before her, that have never been surpassed in any book
of travels that is at this moment present to our memory. She had a
peculiar readiness in receiving, and a singular power of retaining, first
impressions of the most minute and evanescent nature. She walked
through a street or a bazaar, and every thing that passed over the mirror
of her mind left a clear and lasting trace. She was thus enabled, even
years after a visit to a place of interest, to describe every thing with the
same freshness and fidelity as if she had taken notes upon the spot.
They who have gone over the same ground are delighted to find in the
perusal of her pages