Nov. 19.—An amendment in health disposes us to look on all around us with a favourable eye. I am not surprised that the gradual recovery of spirits incident to humanity, when it begins to ‘wear down’ a great sorrow, has sometimes induced men hastily to marry, without much apparent temptation, when the first affliction for a beloved wife was fading into calm regret. This action has been a theme for obloquy to all professors of sentiment, somewhat more than it deserves. It is rather a symptom of that easiness of being pleased which attends recovery of mind or body, than one of fickleness. Last winter I found this house disagreeable, dark, confined, small. I was going down the hill, as to health. This year, in the gloomy month of November, I think it comfortable, compact, convenient; I am ascending in the scale, and see a better prospect around me.
TO CHARLES MANNERS ST. GEORGE, ESQ.
London, Dec., 1819.
I fear Lord Carysfort will not long be one of this world. When I saw him yesterday his Bible was before him. He seemed like a traveller consulting the map of his approaching journey. There is no end to the feelings and reflections awakened by the sight of a friend in a precarious state of health, reading his Bible. I love the emphatic cottage expression, his Bible, her Bible—that claim of property in this Book, which is peculiar, I believe, to the English language in common life.
We are all reading Lord John Russell’s Life of the Lord Russell—an interesting work, written in a tone of temper, candour, and moderation worthy of the subject. Burnet’s History, and Lady Russell’s Letters, have furnished the gems, but they are well set, and the book is honourable to its author. Miss Bury, Lord Orford’s niece, has edited a few of Lady Russell’s letters, omitted in the first collection of hers, published half a century before our time. These letters have all a certain degree of interest from the lustre of her name, and of his to whom they were addressed; for most of them are to her husband, and they are preceded by a pleasing and well written Life of Lady Russell, by the editor. The whole is scarcely worth offering to the public as a volume, though the memoir and a few of the letters might have graced a miscellaneous collection.
Dec. 24, 1819.—Dear Mrs. C—— closed her long and virtuous life on the 15th, with a calmness and resignation often granted to the evening of such a day. She suffered no pain or uneasiness, and was favoured with a renovation of those mental faculties which so long lay dormant. She was an only child, and educated with the most unbounded indulgence; married very young to one whom she immediately accompanied to the bosom of his family, in another kingdom. Transplanted, when little more than a child and eminently beautiful, to a distance from all her friends and advisers, her conduct was irreproachable as a young wife, a young mother, and a young widow. In her second marriage to one who in years might have been her father, she showed the same discretion and affectionate propriety of conduct that distinguished the earlier part of her life. Her character was of that tranquil, unassuming order which dazzles not at first, but shines more brightly the longer it is examined. She was esteemed, respected, and beloved. Her beauty was not the majestic, nor the brilliant; it neither awed nor dazzled; but it was feminine loveliness of the most attractive, winning description. Her delicate and finely formed features, of delightful expression, were set off by a thousand graces of voice, language, manners, and deportment. She was anxious to be loved, and pleased at being admired. She was religious, kind-hearted, hospitable, social, gentle, prudent; and neither severity nor envy ever approached her heart. In my connexion with her I never remember aught but kindness, partial kindness, approving, applauding, nay, even admiring, from the first hour in which she adopted me to the last of our intercourse.