The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-07-18 00:00:00

DEATH OF MISS AGNES STRICKLAND.

The death is announced of Mien Agnes Strickland,
which took place on Monday morning at her residence,
Reydon Hall, near Southwold, Suffolk. Mis, Strick-
land, who was the third daughter of Mr. Thomas
Strickland, a member of the old:Westmoreland family
of that name, began her career as an authoress at an
early age by contributing anonymously to periodicals,
and by publishing, in conjunction with her sister
Susanna, a volume of " Prtriotic Songs." Her first
effort of importance was a poem in Pair cantos entitled
" Worcester Field; or, The Cavalier : with Histori-
cal Notes," which won for her the praise of Camp-
bell. It was followed by another poem in three
cantos, " Demetrius ; a Tale of Modern Greece,"
and both voluo:es have long since passed out of print.
After her father's death she laid the foundation of the
works to which she chiefly owed her fame by studying,
with her elder mister, the manuscripts ,if the British
Museum, which furnished her with many of the de-
tails for the life-like historical sketches afterwards
introduced into her works. In 1835 she issued "The
Pilgrims of Walsingham," fashioned on the model of
Canterbury Pilgrimage, which filled three volumes.
She then commenced, with her sister, the now famous
" Lives of the Queens of England from the Norman
Conquest," the first volume of which was published in
1840, and which continued to appear, volume after
volume, until in the last, published in 1849, she
brought the series down to the accession of the
Hanoverian family. It may be of interest
to add that at the sale of the copyrights of Mr.
Colburn, the publisher of the work, in 1857, the
copyright of the work was sold for £6,000. Miss
Elizabeth Strickland, whose aid has been so valuable
throughout the progress of the work, also helped her
sister in her subsequent volumes, "The Lives of the
Queens of Scotland and English Princesses connected
with the Regal Succession of Great Britain," published
between 1850 and 1859. Miss Strickland wrote, as a
companion volume to the above, '' The Bachelor
Kings of England," which was published in 185)2, and
contains the lives of William Rufus, Edward V., and
Edward In more recent years she published an
abridgement of her "Lives of the Queens" for sobool
use. Three years ago she received a pension of £lOO
on the Civil List.

THE HYDROPHOBIA PANIC.
The hydrophobia panic is not confined to England.
and in the United States seems to have caused much
suffering to man and beset (says the Pell Malt Gazeft4
The general nervousness on the subject has been
greatly promoted by the papers, which in every case
of hydrophobia or alleged hydrophobia find material
for the sensational writing in which American writers
and readers delight. The result has been that people
who have a long time ago been bitten by dogs imagine
that they are doomed to hydrophobia, and one man
the other day became a maniac owing to his fear of the
disease. The New York municipal authorities have
also bungled the destruction of stray doge iu such a
fashion as to call forth indignant remonstrance..
They entrusted this duty to an ignorant functionary
who experimented on the unhappy animals with

earleinie acid gat with the most unetua re.ulte.
Tne details of this dog slaughter are, sae the Nation,
a diserace to the civilization of New 1 ork, or would
be if the city government and its ordinances rei.reeented
American