A comparatively brief chapter will contain all which I desire further to offer of my Mother’s ‘Remains.’ Her health had for some years been giving way, but the four or five last years of her life were years of much suffering; nor did the physicians seem perfectly to understand her case. She now seldom woke without what in one place she calls her ‘penal visitation of headache;’ and I trace evidences of failing health, and of the painfulness of all mental exertion, in the rarer entries in her journal, and, so far as I can gather, the fewer letters which she wrote during these years.
TO THE REV. —— ——.
Elm Lodge, Feb. 27, 1822.
I thank you for your partial opinion of ——. I hope he has already judged for himself in the spirit of the text, ‘What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?’ but I should very much deprecate religion being pointed out to him chiefly by that feature you have mentioned—‘having principles and motives for action different from the world in general.’ I sincerely hope that he will have such principles and motives, and I see that he has; but I do not wish him too soon to be aware of it, nor ever to dwell on it. The former is dangerous as terrifying the young by apprehensions of singularity, and adding weights where we would wish to give wings; the latter is doubly hazardous, and is so at all ages. ‘Lord, I thank Thee I am not as other men,’ was, and ever will be, a pharisaical distinction.
March 6, 1822.—I have just begun to read The Spectator again, after a lapse of fifteen years; and am a little surprised at finding Sir Roger de Coverley only fifty-six, as when I first read them I did not understand how any one could feel any interest but that of compassion for so very old a man, except he was one’s grandfather, or among one’s own particular friends. I remember at nine years old somewhat of the same feeling for the delightful Sévigné, when her first letter mentioned her having a married daughter. I wished to shut the book; all became colourless and insipid as connected with a woman so far advanced in years.
TO MRS. LEADBEATER.
Elm Lodge, March 21, 1822.
I sincerely regret the breach which has been made in your domestic circle, and perfectly recollect the amiable simplicity of the worthy sisters, as well as your account of the strength of their understandings, and unbroken chain of their virtues. I can enter into the added regret felt by a tender mother, when she sees those venerable trees decay that would have sheltered her young plants with that affectionate mixture of esteem and instinctive fondness, only to be felt by those who have witnessed their growing infancy. But, above all, I recollect your sincere piety, and see in it the balm for all the ills of life. With only the difference of being a little sooner or a little later, it equally heals all your sorrows, and turns them into themes of sweet and hopeful resignation.