* * * * *

The correspondence which I am now about to insert, though long since published by the gentleman with whom it originated[70], will, I have no doubt, even by those already acquainted with all the circumstances, be reperused with pleasure; as, among the many strange and affecting incidents with which these pages abound, there is not one, perhaps, so touching and singular as that to which the following letters refer.

TO LORD BYRON.

     “Frome, Somerset, November 21. 1821.

     “My Lord,

“More than two years since, a lovely and beloved wife was taken from me, by lingering disease, after a very short union.  She possessed unvarying gentleness and fortitude, and a piety so retiring as rarely to disclose itself in words, but so influential as to produce uniform benevolence of conduct.  In the last hour of life, after a farewell look on a lately born and only infant, for whom she had evinced inexpressible affection, her last whispers were ‘God’s happiness!  God’s happiness!’ Since the second anniversary of her decease, I have read some papers which no one had seen during her life, and which contain her most secret thoughts.  I am induced to communicate to your Lordship a passage from these papers, which, there is no doubt, refers to yourself; as I have more than once heard the writer mention your agility on the rocks at Hastings.

“’Oh, my God, I take encouragement from the assurance of thy word, to pray to Thee in behalf of one for whom I have lately been much interested.  May the person to whom I allude (and who is now, we fear, as much distinguished for his neglect of Thee as for the transcendant talents thou hast bestowed on him) be awakened to a sense of his own danger, and led to seek that peace of mind in a proper sense of religion, which he has found this world’s enjoyments unable to procure!  Do Thou grant that his future example may be productive of far more extensive benefit than his past conduct and writings have been of evil; and may the Sun of righteousness, which, we trust, will, at some future period, arise on him, be bright in proportion to the darkness of those clouds which guilt has raised around him, and the balm which it bestows, healing and soothing in proportion to the keenness of that agony which the punishment of his vices has inflicted on him!  May the hope that the sincerity of my own efforts for the attainment of holiness, and the approval of my own love to the great Author of religion, will render this prayer, and every other for the welfare of mankind, more efficacious!—­Cheer me in the path of duty;—­but, let me not forget, that, while we are permitted to animate ourselves to exertion by every innocent motive, these are but the lesser streams which may serve to increase the current, but which, deprived of the grand fountain of good, (a deep conviction of inborn sin, and firm belief in the efficacy of Christ’s death for the salvation of those who trust in him, and really wish to serve him,) would soon dry up, and leave us barren of every virtue as before.

     “‘July 31. 1814—­Hastings.’