“It would not be easy to tell you all I have suffered
since Tuesday night, when Herbert was
seized with the croup. God be praised! the disease seems to be subdued; but he
is still in a state to make us very anxious: pale with loss of blood, his neck
blistered, and fevered by the fretfulness the blister occasions. The poor child
has been so used to have me for his play-fellow, that he will have me for his
nurse, and you may imagine with what feelings I
| 232 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 35. |
“Almost the only wish I ever give utterance to is, that the next hundred years were over. It is not that the uses of this world seem to me weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable,—God knows far otherwise! No man can be better contented with his lot. My paths are paths of pleasantness. I am living happily, and to the best of my belief fulfilling, as far as I am able, the purposes for which I was created. Still the instability of human happiness is ever before my eyes; I long for the certain and the permanent; and, perhaps, my happiest moments are those when I am looking on to another state of being, in which there shall be no other change than that of progressing in knowledge, and thereby in power and enjoyment.
“I have suffered some sorrow in my time, and expect to suffer much more; but looking into my own heart, I do not believe that a single pang could have been spared. My Herbert says to me, ‘O you are very naughty,’ when I hold his hands while his neck is dressed. I have as deep a conviction that whatever affliction I have ever endured, or yet have to endure, is dispensed to me in mercy and in love, as he will have for my motives for inflicting pain upon him now—if it should please God that he should ever live to understand them.
“It is three months before the third Quarterly will appear, and by that
time present topics will have become stale; but I wish you would let Gifford know, that if the subject is not out
of time, and it be thought fit to notice it, I will right zealously and
| Ætat. 35. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 233 |
