Now you see, Mr. Belford, that my dearest cousin could be allowed all her merit!—­What a dreadful thing is after-reflection upon a conduct so perverse and unnatural?

O this cursed friend of your’s, Mr. Belford!  This detested Lovelace!—­To him, to him is owing—­

Pardon me, Sir.  I will lay down my pen till I have recovered my temper.

ONE IN THE MORNING.

In vain, Sir, have I endeavoured to compose myself to rest.  You wished me to be very particular, and I cannot help it.  This melancholy subject fills my whole mind.  I will proceed, though it be midnight.

About six o’clock the hearse came to the outward gate—­the parish church is at some distance; but the wind setting fair, the afflicted family were struck, just before it came, into a fresh fit of grief, on hearing the funeral bell tolled in a very solemn manner.  A respect, as it proved, and as they all guessed, paid to the memory of the dear deceased, out of officious love, as the hearse passed near the church.

Judge, when their grief was so great in expectation of it, what it must be when it arrived.

A servant came in to acquaint us with what its lumbering heavy noise up the paved inner court-yard apprized us of before.  He spoke not.  He could not speak.  He looked, bowed, and withdrew.

I stept out.  No one else could then stir.  Her brother, however, soon followed me.  When I came to the door, I beheld a sight very affecting.

You have heard, Sir, how universally my dear cousin was beloved.  By the poor and middling sort especially, no young lady was ever so much beloved.  And with reason:  she was the common patroness of all the honest poor in her neighbourhood.

It is natural for us, in every deep and sincere grief, to interest all we know in what is so concerning to ourselves.  The servants of the family, it seems, had told their friends, and those their’s, that though, living, their dear young lady could not be received nor looked upon, her body was permitted to be brought home.  The space of time was so confined, that those who knew when she died, must easily guess near the time the hearse was to come.  A hearse, passing through country villages, and from London, however slenderly attended, (for the chariot, as I have said, waited upon poor Mrs. Norton,) takes every one’s attention.  Nor was it hard to guess whose this must be, though not adorned by escutcheons, when the cross-roads to Harlowe-place were taken, as soon as it came within six miles of it; so that the hearse, and the solemn tolling of the bell, had drawn together at least fifty, or the neighbouring men, women, and children, and some of good appearance.  Not a soul of them, it seems, with a dry eye, and each lamenting the death of this admired lady, who, as I am told, never stirred out, but somebody was the better for her.

These, when the coffin was taken out of the hearse, crowding about it, hindered, for a few moments, its being carried in; the young people struggling who should bear it; and yet, with respectful whisperings, rather than clamorous contention.  A mark of veneration I had never before seen paid, upon any occasion in all my travels, from the under-bred many, from whom noise is generally inseparable in all their emulations.