long, often starts into anguish. I cannot divest myself of the persuasion that I belong to some popular and useful sphere. Will my much respected friend assist me? Will not you take me by the hand? will you not meet with a brother's cordiality a returning wanderer? Can the gracious spirit of the Christian cause move its advocate rather to repel associates than invite? Methinks a disciple of Jesus would say, "He that is not against us, is for us." Methinks while he would animadvert with faithfulness on every defect, he yet would zealously urge forward the general effect. Methinks he would wish a convalescent religionist placed amid the most salubrious air. But I am checked, I am chilled. Was not your letter meant to tell me that you would not incur any responsibility on the subject? This was one of my ideas in the first impression, and I am not now certain of the contrary. It is of pressing consequence that I should know. Of my engagement here, only one month remains. I cannot regret its termination;-it is a Cimmerian sojourn. Do not accuse me, my dear friend; do not require that I should work miracles. A most uncommon combination of circumstances renders it almost hopeless that any man can be of much service here. I have not written to any person but yourself on the subject of another situation. I ought to consider you as a favorable specimen of what I might expect in the evangelic connection; if you, therefore, refuse your countenance, it will be in vain to apply to any other. Then the sweet hopes of an useful happiness, which have revived with so much ardor, would have bloomed but again to die! Well; it would be but one more in the sable train of disappointments. My destiny is in the hands of a good, but mysterious Being. Let it be accomplished! Affectionately yours,

J. FOSTER.

XXX. TO AN UNKNOWN LADY.

*

About Midsummer, 1799.

I SHOULD not venture a momentary interruption of feelings which I know must choose the pensive retirement of the heart, if I did not hope to insinuate a sentiment or two, not discordant with the tone of grief.

I am willing to believe the interest I have taken in your happiness, will authorize me to convey to you, at such a serious hour, the expression of a friendly and solicitous sympathy. I am willing to believe, that the sincere respect with which I have addressed you in serener days,† will be a pledge to you, that, in assuming such a liberty, I cannot forget the delicacy of respect which peculiarly belongs to you, now you are in

* "The person to whom this was addressed was, the writer believes, in health at the time this was written, but died a few months afterwards. She received it a few weeks after the death of one very near relative, and when another was each day expected to die."—Note by Mr. Foster. † Letter XXVIII.

a scene of suffering; and that this little attention which I seem to myself to owe you, will not be deemed to violate the sacredness of sorrow.

I should be most happy, if it were possible for me to impart any influences that could alleviate the oppressions of the heart, or aid your fortitude in its severe probation. But I dare not indulge so pleasing a hope. I know too well that suffering clings to the sufferer's self; and that any other mind, though actuated by the kindest wishes, is still a foreign mind, and inhabits a separate sphere, from which it can but faintly breathe consoling sentiments.

Yet, doubtless, there are in existence truths of sweet and mighty inspiration, which, perfectly applied, would calm your feelings, and irradiate the gloom around you. How happy were the art to steal such fire from heaven! How much I wish it yours! Yes, and there are softenings of distress, glimpses of serenity, ideas of tender enthusiasm, firm principles, sublime aspirings, to mingle with the feelings of the good in every situation. I love to assure myself these are not wanting to you. I hope they will prolong the benignant charm of their visitation, and be at intervals closer to your heart than even the causes of sadness that environ you,

You will not, Miss C., disdain the solicitude of a sincere friend, who is interested for you while you are suffering, and loves the sensibility of which he regrets he cannot beguile the pain. I think I would be willing to feel for a season all that you feel, in order to acquire an entire and poig nant sympathy. This alone can convey the exquisite significance, the magic of soul, into the suggestions that seek to revive the depressed energy of a tender heart. I would exert the whole efficacy of a mind thus painfully instructed to soothe or to animate; I would look around for every truth and every hope to which heaven has imparted sweetness, for the sake of minds in grief; I would invoke whatever friendly spirit has power to shed balm on anxious or desponding cares, and unobserved, steal a part of the bitterness away; I would also attempt a train of vigorous thinking; I would not despair of some advantage from the application of reasoning. Indeed it is known too well, there are moments when the heart refuses all control, and gives itself without reserve to grief. It feels, and even cherishes emotions which it cannot yield up to any power less than that of heaven or of time. Arguments may vainly, sometimes, forbid the tears that flow for the affecting events of remembrance or anticipation. Arguments will not obliterate scenes whose every circumstance pierced the heart. Arguments cannot recall the victims of death. Dear affections !-the sources of felicity, the charm of life,-what pangs too they can cause! You have loved sensibility, you have cultivated it, and you are destined yet, I hope, to obtain many of its sweetest pleasures; but you see how much it must sometimes cost you. Contemn, as it deserves, the pride of stoicism; but still there are the most cogent reasons why sorrow should somewhere be restrained. It should acknowledge the limits imposed by judgment and the will of

Heaven. Do not yield your mind to the gloomy extinction of utter despondency. It still retains the most dear and valuable interests, which require to be saved from the sacrifice. Before the present circumstances took place, the wish of friendship would have been, that you might be long happily exempted from them; now it is that you may gain from them as high an improvement and a triumph as ever an excellent mind won from trial. From you an example may be expected of the manner in which a virtuous and thoughtful person has learnt to bear the melancholy events of life. Even at such a season it is not a duty to abandon the study of happiness. Do not altogether turn away from sweet hope with her promises and smiles. Do not refuse to believe that this dark cloud will pass away, and the heavens shine again; that happier days will compensate these hours that move in sadness. Grief will have its share a painful share; but grief will not have your all, Caroline. There is good in existence still,-rich, various, endless,-the pursuit of which will elevate, and the attainment of which will crown you. Even your present emotions are the distresses of tender melancholy: how widely different from the anguish of guilt! Yours are such tears as innocence may shed, and intermingled smiles-pensive smiles, indeed, and transient, but expressive of a sentiment that rises toward heaven.

The most pathetic energies of consolation can be imparted by RELIGION alone, the never-dying principle of all that is happy in the creation. The firm persuasion that all things that concern us are completely every moment in the hands of our Father above, infinitely wise and merciful; that he disposes all these events in the best possible manner; and that we shall one day bless him amid the ardors of infinite gratitude for even his most distressing visitations ;—such a sublime persuasion will make the heart and the character sublime. It will enable you to assemble all your interests together; your wishes, your prospects, your sorrows, and the circumstances of the persons that are dear to you, and present them in one devout offering to the best Father, the greatest Friend; and it will assure you of being in every scene of life the object of his kind, perpetual care.

Permit me, madam, to add, that one of the most powerful means towards preserving a vigorous tone of mind in unhappy circumstances, is to explore with a resolute eye the serious lessons which they teach. Events like those which you have beheld, open the inmost temple of solemn truth, and throw around the very blaze of revelation. In such a school, such a mind may make incalculable improvements. I consider a scene of death as being to the interested parties who witness it, a kind of sacrament, inconceivably solemn, at which they are summoned by the voice of heaven, to pledge themselves in vows of irreversible decision. Here then, Caroline, as at the high altar of eternity, you have been called to pronounce, if I may express it so, the inviolable oath; to keep for ever in view the momentous value of life, and to aim at its worthiest use, its sublimest end; to spurn with a last disdain, those foolish trifles, those

frivolous vanities, which so generally within our sight consume life, as the locusts did Egypt; and to devote yourself with the ardor of passion to attain the most divine improvements of the human soul; and in short, to hold yourself in preparation to make that interesting transition to another life, whenever you shall be claimed by the Lord of the World.

XXXI. TO MRS. R. MANT.

Battersea, July 23, 1799.

MY DEAR FRIEND,-Allow me to tell you that the varieties, the pleasures, or the mortifications of a sojourn in the busy world will never obliterate the remembrance of the most meritorious individual I met with in Chichester. In the short space that has elapsed, I have often thought of you. I have fancied to myself your mode of life, your walks in the fields, and your visits to your cousins. But however, when one experiences any change in respect to one's self, one is ready to imagine some change in every thing and person one knows, so that, if I were to revisit Chichester, one of the first inquiries of my eyes and my voice would be after changes. Though I have been absent but three or four weeks, I should ask, “What! are you quite the same kind of person?" "Is the circle of acquaintance the same ?" Is Watery Lane the same?" “The meeting just as it was ?" "The General Baptists quite the same ?" "The room I slept in, and all the pictures the same?" I know at least that I am too much the same. Oh! I pant for a grand revolution in all my soul and character. I wish for a sacred zeal, for devotional habits, and an useful life. How defective in all these while at Chichester! Conscience often told me, that though the situation was indeed unfavorable, yet no small part of the fault was in myself. I still feel, and shall ever feel, the regret of not having made those vigorous exertions which I might have made, and which, if made, might perhaps have had some considerable effect. I have almost wished sometimes, that I could have been there a season longer to make some kind of atonement to myself and the people. But the past is irrevocable. I hope the disapprobation with which I review it, will be an incentive, a strong incentive to a noble course hereafter. I have nothing particular to tell you. . . . . You will wonder that I have not yet been in London, though I am within four miles of it, and see St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey in the distance every day. . . . . It will be a great gratification if you will write to me soon, and copiously and carelessly as you would talk. I entreat you do not write it twice over, as you sometimes do; 'tis unnecessary, and it makes writing a serious labor. . . . . Cultivate religion-confide in the unalterable goodness of a heavenly Father-rejoice in Jesus Christ, and remember me in your prayers-you are not forgotten in mine. Yours, with most friendly regard, J. FOSTER.*

May 1, 1797, Mr. Foster came to my house to live.-June 28, 1799.

XXXII. TO MRS. R. MANT.

Battersea, Dec. 31, 1799.

I have been occupied a great part of my time, and lazy the rest; but never forgetful of the kindness I experienced, and the numberless pleasant hours which I spent in your house, and which claim a perpetual remembrance. I have very often wished to know and intended writing immediately to ask, how you are as to health, prospects, engagements, and society. How many thousand things we should have said, wished, debated; how many books we should have glanced into; how many living characters we should have examined, and admired or condemned; how many adventures we should have had, or recalled, or dreamed, if we had passed the last six months, like the former ones, in the same abode. However, though at a distance, and knowing nothing of each other's course, I trust the time has not been passed by either without some improvement. My sojourn here has been rich in lessons of various kinds; and this last day of the year calls me with a solemn, with, as it were, an expiring voice, to take an account of what has been accomplished in my heart and in my life, during the year that is gone, and through all the time that has passed by me never to be recalled. I feel it must be a mortifying and penitential account; how neglected have been the talents, how waste the precious hours, how little the good imparted to others! how cold the devotion ascending-scarce ascending, to heaven! My soul looks with most painful regret on various scenes of the past, and particularly on the negligent, spiritless, and unevangelical strain of my public ministrations at Chichester. I do not know whether it was possible to have done great good; but it certainly was possible to have zealously attempted it, and in this I greatly failed. I hope such recollections will have the effect to stimulate all my future efforts, and thus derive to me a valuable advantage, even from the guilty remissness of the past. Let us both preach to ourselves with all our might; let us say with a distinguished and devout hero, on the eve of a battle, “Perhaps I cannot inspire a generous ardor into those around me, but at least I will make sure of one." Let us pray fervently; let us read the book of God; let us embrace the salvation of Christ; let us exhort our friends to go to heaven; let us lead and show the way. There is a God of love; our sins can be pardoned through the sacrifice of the Redeemer; there is a Holy Spirit to guide us, a Providence to watch over us, and palms at last for the hands of conquerors of this sinful world to wear. What a glorious prospect then before us! Adieu to vanity; adieu to sloth; adieu to all unchristian fears, distrustful of the care and the strength of our blessed Father above. "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.”

Mr. Foster went away to Battersea; he lived with me two years.--December 20, 1800, Mr. Foster paid us a friendly visit for a week."-Mrs. Mant MSS.