would be that it were an office performed at midnight, in perfect silence and with no attendance but that of the parties immediately concerned. The vulgarizing curiosity, what will be said of the deceased-how the survivors comport themselves, whether they appeared distressed or stoical-which of them the most or least-and all the other circumstances of the occasion--are repugnant and irksome in the last degree. Therefore the utmost brevity and abstinence from personal references that can comport with what you can feel the propriety of the occasion, is what we shall feel very grateful to you to maintain. In any reference to the relatives, in the address or in the prayer, will you permit me to entreat it of your friendship not to individualize. Any distinct pointed reference to me individually-though I most sincerely believe that no man in the world would do it with more delicacy and kind appropriateness than yourself—would be extremely painful, so that I should earnestly wish each sentence and each word to be the last. If you should even think this a morbid excess, yet let me entreat your kind indulgence to the weakness: there is, at any rate, no affectation in it.

CLXXI. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL

Bourton, September 13, 1832

It has repeatedly occurred to my thoughts there is something remarkably parallel between your experience and mine. You lost a favorite son of just, I think, the same age as mine, within a short interval of the same time. The duration of my happy union was nearly twenty-five years; must not that have been very nearly the same term as in your case? Were not you the senior to your wife by a few years? So was I. Mine departed at just the age of fifty-six-how near was that to your wife's?-probably a few years less;-perhaps, indeed, hardly fifty. Even you are approaching old age,-though I suppose some years short of sixty-two. Both our dear wives left us at what might, in a certain comparative sense, be called an immature age;-from fifty to fifty-six may be so accounted. Both our wives suffered a protracted decline. Were not you absent at the exact moment when yours expired--or at least when she could speak to you no more? Each of us has two surviving children. I need not add, that we both deeply loved them, were beloved tenderly by them-have a perfect assurance they are now celestially happy-would not recall them if we could-hope to meet them again in eternal affection.

Do advert distinctly to each of these conjectures, when you shall favor me with a letter. I hope we shall return to Stapleton in less than a week. And a letter received from you there, as in a comparative solitude, will be of more value to me than received during the divers arrangements for moving, which will occupy the interval here, after the last sad transaction.

CLXXII. TO THE REV. JOHN FAWCETT.

October 19. 1832

MY DEAR FRIEND. . . . . If you had been personally acquainted with her whom the sovereign Disposer, in perfect wisdom and goodness I know, has taken from me, after a happy union of very nearly a quarter of a century, you would have had the most perfect evidence of the eminent value which you ascribe to her, chiefly on my own constant testimony.

She was in all respects eminently estimable. Her intellect was of superior order; clear, sagacious, and of extensive application. Her perception (that which belongs to taste and feeling rather than to bare understanding) was exquisitely just and discriminative. She was conscientious in all things; and a habitual piety pervaded her thoughts and her life. But that piety was of a nature involving much that was pensive and even painful. She constantly said that a hard discipline had been requisite to establish and maintain its predominance in her spirit. It was apt to be invaded by gloomy sentiments respecting the awful moral condition of our nature, and the tremendously mysterious economy of the divine government of this world. This tendency, existing in a considerable degree from even childhood, was no doubt augmented by her long ill health. The exercise of faith in the divine goodness was, therefore, often a painful struggle, requiring a resolute effort to repress the propensity to wide and gloomy speculation, and to preserve that submissive humility, which, however, she was enabled to preserve in an exemplary degree. She was rigorous of judging of herself, while (though of very fastidious taste) candid in judging of others—increasingly so, she would say, the longer she lived, and the more she reflected on the evils of her own mind. But she has passed out of this sphere of darkness, and now exults in a final deliverance from all that affects the body or the mind. . . . .

CLXXIII. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL.

October 29, 1832.

MY DEAR SIR,-. . . . Your letter, like the preceding ones, is greatly in sympathy with my own state and feelings. I earnestly hope there will be the same conformity in that most important point that you mention—namely, a spiritually beneficial result of the painful visitation; and I hope I may say that thus far it has been so; but am very solicitous it may be so in permanent continuance, to the very end of life; "solicitous," I have good reason to say, when I recollect, with deep regret, how many former admonitions (but none so impressive and affecting as this) have gradually lost their efficacy. A certain conscious tendency to religious inertness has sometimes brought to me the menacing suggestion, that I needed some more solemn and striking measure of discipline from

the Father of spirits to rouse and impel me. I had even sometimes, since my loved wife's decline in health became more sensible and threatening, had the pensive thought-"Suppose she should be soon taken from me-how should I feel that as an admonitory chastisement? may not that be inflicted upon me, to bring me nearer to God and heaven; to excite me to pass the residue of my time with a most constant carnest reference to eternity?" That reverting to the past-living more in the past—which you describe as your experience, is partly realized in mine, and probably will be more so. There is a strong tendency backward to the periods and scenes and incidents spread over the long space of the more than thirty years of our mutual attachment; a recollection vivified at times by a look into one and another of the five hundred and more letters of our correspondence. But as yet, this reverting tendency is often interfered with by amazement at the present; by a feeling--is it possible that the relation between us is so changed, is become so stupendously different? Can it be-how is it—what is it-that we are now not inhabitants of the same world--that each has to think of the other as in a perfectly different economy of existence? Whither is she gone—in what manner does she consciously realize to herself the astonishing change-how does she look at herself as no longer inhabiting a mortal tabernacle—in what manner does she recollect her state as only a few weeks since-in what manner does she think, and feel, and act, and communicate with other spiritual beings-what manner of vision has she of God and the Saviour of the world--how does she review and estimate the course of discipline through which she had been prepared for the happy state where she finds herself-in what manner does she look back on death, which she has so recently passed through,—and does she plainly understand the nature of a phenomenon so awfully mysterious to the view of mortals? How does she remember and feel respecting us, respecting me? Is she associated with the spirits of her departed son, and two children who died in infancy? Does she indulge with delight a confident anticipation that we shall, after a while, be added to her society? If she should think of it as, with respect to some of us, many years, possibly, before such an event, does that appear a long time in prospect, or has she begun to account of duration according to the great laws of eternity? Earnest imaginings and questionings like these arise without end, and still, still, there is no answer, no revelation. The mind comes again and again up close to the thick black veil; but there is no perforation, no glimpse. She that loved me, and I trust loves me still, will not, cannot, must not, answer me. I can only imagine her to say, "Come and see; serve our God so that you shall come and share, at no distant time." One of the most striking circumstances to my thought and feeling is, that, in devotional exercises, though she comes on my mind in a more affecting manner than perhaps ever, I have no longer to pray for her. By a momentary lapse of thought I have been, I think, several times on the point of falling into an expression for her as

if still on earth; and the instant "No! no more for her," has been an emotion of pain, and as it were disappointment; till the thought has come," She needs not; she is now safe, beyond the sphere of mortals and their dangers and wants, in the possession of all that prayer implored." Even after this consolatory thought there has been a pensive trace of feeling, something like pain, that sympathy, care for her welfare, should now be superfluous to her and finally extinguished.

You mentioned having, in your recollections, felt a degree of compunction for not having been as sedulous as you now feel you might have been, to promote the spiritual welfare of your dear departed companion. I believe I have more cause for such regret, and it invades me sometimes in a painful degree. Both my beloved associate and myself had the disadvantage of a naturally and habitually reserved disposition. Mine had been confirmed such by my having been during all the earlier part of my life very much a solitary being, and during many years a kind of wanderer in the earth, under circumstances which could have left no youthful promptitude to frank and as it were necessary ingenuousness (if I had ever had it) at the age of thirty-seven, when the domestic union took place. This caused a certain inaptitude on my part, to full habitual communicativeness on the subject of religion as personally applied, and, of consequence, a very great defect of habitual effort to render such religious aid as I often, even then, felt that I ought, to my dear companion. I have sometimes now, therefore, a self-reproachful reflection, which would go into something like a wish that she could be with me again for a while, in order that I might repair that great deficiency in such a manner as her loss makes me feel that I ought to have been of this value to her. That the fault is now irreparable, absolutely and finally so, is at times a very painful thought. The consolation is that she had a divine instructor, and that the great object is accomplished. This, however, does not suppress the regret that she does not, in that happy state, owe more to me. The thought sometimes arises in my mind, in what manner, divested of all mutual regret, may we revert to this in our communicated reminiscences in that happy world, if, as I earnestly hope, I shall meet her there again, to be separated no more? There is this thought again-" What joy it will be to her if I, and if the children, shall then have to tell her and prove to her, that the sad event of our losing her has been rendered, by the divine Spirit, a powerful mean toward our better progress in that piety which shall have prepared us for the happy re-union."

....

CLXXIV. TO SIR J. EASTHOPE, BART.

Stapleton, Feb. 8, 1833.

For myself, when I look at the dreadful array of affairs which our legislators have before them, and pressing on them close, and thick_

and immediate, I am the reverse of sanguine, whether I regard the question of power or of will. There is that most appalling state of Ireland. I have no degree of confidence that the ministry have even the will to adopt the bold, and radical, and comprehensive measures which alone could avail there. How obvious is the necessity for some imperious enactment, to compel that base, detestable landed interest, to take the burden of the poor, instead of driving them out to famish, beg, or rob, and murder, on the highway; or throwing them by tens of thousands on our coast, to devour the means of support to our own population. It would be a measure which would first astound, but speedily enrage, the whole selfishly base proprietary of Ireland. I have no hope that the ministry have the resolution for so mighty a stroke: and then the Irish church. The plain sense of the thing is, that about two-thirds, or rather four-fifths of it, ought to be cut down at once, and that proportion of the property applied to national uses. But the very notion of such a thing would be enough to consign -to one of the wards in St. Luke's. And what would say, if Lord Grey dared even to whisper such a thing to him? And yet, unless some such thing be done, it is as clear as noon-day, that Ireland will continue a horrid scene of distraction and misery; growing, month by month, more ferociously barbarous, and to be kept down by nothing but the terror and occasional exploits of an immense standing army, at the cost, too, of this our own tax-consuming country.

The church reform in this country, too, is to be a marvellous fine thing, it seems. As an economical thing, a trade and money concern, it may be plentifully mended if the axe and saw, and carpenter's rule, be resolutely applied (which I do not expect); but as an ecclesiastical institution, an institution for religion, it is not worth reforming; indeed, cannot be reformed. Think of making the clergy-such a clergy as the reformproject declares them to be;-think of making them pious, zealous, spiritual, apostolic, by act of parliament ! There is, for example, the scandalous amount of non-residence; this is to be corrected with a strong hand; the clergy shall be compelled to reside; WHAT clergy shall be so compelled? why, the very men whose non-residence proved they do not care about the spiritual welfare of the people; but only force these same men, by a law, sadly against their will, as the very terms imply, and then they will instantly become pious, faithful, affectionate pastors,—an unspeakable blessing to the people of every parish! They will apply themselves, with the utmost alacrity and assiduity, to their preaching, praying, visiting the sick, &c., at the very time that they are grumbling and cursing at not being any longer allowed to promenade about Brighton or Cheltenham. This most ridiculous absurdity comes of that one grand corruption of Christianity-the state pretending to make religious churches and Christian teachers. Of religion itself, in its own proper essence, as a personal thing, infinitely foreign to all that legislatures can enact or do, these people seem not to have the slightest idea. To think