When Sir William lay on his deathbed, Lady Napier was at the same time dangerously ill; but she was wheeled into his room on a sofa, and the two took their silent farewell of each other.

The husband died first; in a few weeks the wife followed him, and they sleep side by side in the same grave.
Many other similar truehearted wives rise up in the memory, to recite whose praises would more than fill up our remaining space--such as Flaxman's wife, Ann Denham, who cheered and encouraged her husband through life in the prosecution of his art, accompanying him to Rome, sharing in his labours and anxieties, and finally in his triumphs, and to whom Flaxman, in the fortieth year of their married life, dedicated his beautiful designs illustrative of Faith, Hope, and Charity, in token of his deep and undimmed affection;--such as Katherine Boutcher, "dark-eyed Kate," the wife of William Blake, who believed her husband to be the first genius on earth, worked off the impressions of his plates and coloured them beautifully with her own hand, bore with him in all his erratic ways, sympathised with him in his sorrows and joys for forty-five years, and comforted him until his dying hour--his last sketch, made in his seventy-first year, being a likeness of himself, before making which, seeing his wife crying by his side, he said, "Stay, Kate! just keep as you are; I will draw your portrait, for you have ever been an angel to me;"-- such again as Lady Franklin, the true and noble woman, who never rested in her endeavours to penetrate the secret of the Polar Sea and prosecute the search for her long-lost husband--undaunted by failure, and persevering in her determination with a devotion and singleness of purpose altogether unparalleled;--or such again as the wife of Zimmermann, whose intense melancholy she strove in vain to assuage, sympathizing with him, listening to him, and endeavouring to understand him--and to whom, when on her deathbed, about to leave him for ever, she addressed the touching words, "My poor Zimmermann! who will now understand thee ?" Wives have actively helped their husbands in other ways.

Before Weinsberg surrendered to its besiegers, the women of the place asked permission of the captors to remove their valuables.

The permission was granted, and shortly after, the women were seen issuing from the gates carrying their husbands on their shoulders.

Lord Nithsdale owed his escape from prison to the address of his wife, who changed garments with him, sending him forth in her stead, and herself remaining prisoner,--an example which was successfully repeated by Madame de Lavalette.
But the most remarkable instance of the release of a husband through the devotion of a wife, was that of the celebrated Grotius.