Will you and Sir
Charles do me a kindness, though I am sensible that in spite of
the best feelings towards you, I have no great claims upon your favour? It is
to receive my young friend Mr. Macdonald, with the usual
attention which you are known to show to re-
| THE O’BRIENS AND O’FLAHERTIES—1827. | 261 |
I long to see you and Sir Charles once more in London. Of my dreadful domestic calamity, you must have heard some time ago. The decline of my Matilda’s health was very rapid, and the afflicting blow, as you may suppose, was agonisingly stunning. It is impossible to divest the dissolution of a beloved being of pain and horror to those who watch it; yet thank God, I had no conception that death could be apparently so little painful to a sufferer. At first her illness threatened to be exactly like that of four of her sisters, who died before her, after lingering for four or five years in pangs of body, not unmixed with mental alienation. But thanks to heaven, my poor Matilda had a shorter and gentler fate.
My son continues better, and is so companionable that I feel his society a great blessing to me in my lonely house. I have fitted up, since I saw you, a small and beautiful adjoining cottage into a library, which opens from my parlour. You must come over from Ireland for the purpose of seeing me in this retreat, reading your works, and enjoying the self-complacency of an old and comfortable author.
I have long intended to send you a copy of my last
| 262 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
