May 19.—Good news though not of better health. Hastead has been with her, to be sure, by desire, which shows an attention to her soul.
Poor thing! she has been bled twice more, and the blood as highly inflamed as ever; bleeding gives relief to her lungs.
The Duke of Bedford and Mr. Coke [have written] desiring me to go to Woburn and Holkham; but all great meetings, and anything like festivity, have for some years become so insipid and disagreeable that I shall have done with them wholly. They, like so many other things, are links of that worldly harness which it is high time for me to throw down for ever.
June 1.—Read the ‘Edinburgh Review’ on ‘Cœlebs in Search of a Wife,’ by Sydney Smith. Wretched stuff; false and frivolous, reasoning on cards, assemblies, plays,[[239]] &c.
June 3.—Yesterday, as the ‘Edinburgh Review’ was read to me, I was much struck with a reference to Necker on the finances, saying that 7,000 pedigrees of the nobility in the archives of the old Government were destroyed in the Revolution. It occurred at once to me that this was the exact number of names of men slain in Revelations. It is in the eleventh chapter: ‘The tenth part of the city fell in a great earthquake, and 7,000, &c.’ The commentators all seem to have reckoned France as the tenth part of the city; but of the names of men they knew not what to make, but 7,000 pedigrees answer to a wonderful degree, and the coincidence of numbers is truly amazing.
June 6.—Yesterday’s letter bad. Poor thing, she has been bled eight ounces, and much inflamed; had been out twice, and I suppose took cold. She wrote herself, and there are some comfortable expressions relative to the state of her mind with regard to religion. I have little hope of her recovery.
July 4.—Betsy continues just the same, whether better or worse, the cough does not go, and therefore I conclude the case bad. But, thanks to God, her mind, I hope, goes on; she has the Testament read to her by all the four children.
July 6.—I work at the ‘Elements’ every day, and find every time they are read to me something to cancel, something to add, and much to reconsider and correct.
July 8.—The gradual declension of my sight in viewing the scenery of this place, but especially in knowing faces, makes me surprised that I can manage to write; I cannot read in the least degree, or know anything of the views in Lord Valentia’s Travels.[[240]] It is a very great deprivation, but much better than feeling the torture of very painful distempers, so that I am very thankful to God for the less affliction. It was, I doubt not, very necessary for me to have some heavy one, and what I am likely to suffer is comparatively a mercy to what might have been the dispensation of the Almighty.
Mrs. O. the same, and the weather as unfavourable to her; I drank tea there on Thursday.