Weston, June 8, 1788.
My dear Friend,—Your letter brought me the very first intelligence of the event it mentions. My last letter from Lady Hesketh gave me reason enough to expect it, but the certainty of it was unknown to me till I learned it by your information. If gradual decline, the consequence of great age, be a sufficient preparation of the mind to encounter such a loss, our minds were certainly prepared to meet it: yet to you I need not say, that no preparation can supersede the feelings of the heart on such occasions. While our friends yet live inhabitants of the same world with ourselves, they seem still to live to us; we are sure that they sometimes think of us; and, however improbable it may seem, it is never impossible that we may see each other once again. But the grave, like a great gulf, swallows all such expectations, and, in the moment when a beloved friend sinks into it, a thousand tender recollections awaken a regret that will be felt in spite of all reasonings, and let our warnings have been what they may. Thus it is I take my last leave of poor Ashley, whose heart towards me was ever truly parental, and to whose memory I owe a tenderness and respect that will never leave me.
W. C.
TO LADY HESKETH.
The Lodge, June 10, 1788.
My dear Coz,—Your kind letter of precaution to Mr. Gregson, sent him hither as soon as chapel service was ended in the evening. But he found me already apprized of the event that occasioned it, by a line from 'Sephus, received a few hours before. My dear uncle's death awakened in me many reflections, which for a time sunk my spirits. A man like him would have been mourned had he doubled the age he reached. At any age his death would have been felt as a loss, that no survivor could repair. And though it was not probable that, for my own part, I should ever see him more, yet the consciousness that he still lived was a comfort to me. Let it comfort us now, that we have lost him only at a time when nature could afford him to us no longer; that, as his life was blameless, so was his death without anguish, and that he is gone to heaven. I know not that human life, in its most prosperous state, can present any thing to our wishes half so desirable as such a close of it.
Not to mingle this subject with others that would ill suit with it, I will add no more at present than a warm hope, that you and your sister[442] will be able effectually to avail yourselves of all the consolatory matter with which it abounds. You gave yourselves, while he lived, to a father, whose life was doubtless prolonged by your attentions, and whose tenderness of disposition made him always deeply sensible of your kindness in this respect, as well as in many others. His old age was the happiest that I have ever known, and I give you both joy of having had so fair an opportunity, and of having so well used it, to approve yourselves equal to the calls of such a duty in the sight of God and man.
W. C.
TO LADY HESKETH.
The Lodge, June 15, 1788.