“My dear Carlisle,—I am here, sitting alone in Mr Marshal’s lodgings during my wife’s funeral. My mind is extremely sunk and languid. But I husband my thoughts, and shall do very well. I have been but once since you saw me, in a train of thought that gave me alarm. One of my wife’s books now lies near me, but I avoid opening it. I took up a book on the education of children, but that impressed me too forcibly with my forlorn and disabled state with respect to the two poor animals left under my protection, and I threw it aside.
“Nothing could be more soothing to my mind than to dwell in a long letter upon her virtues and accomplishments, and our mutual happiness, past and in prospect. But the attractions of this subject are delusive, and I dare not trust myself with it
“I may dwell however with perfect safety upon your merits and kindness, and the indelible impression they have left on my mind. Your generous and unintermitted attendance upon the dear deceased constituted the greatest consolation it was possible for me to receive in that dreadful period when I most needed consolation. I may say to you on paper, what I observed to you in our last interview, that I never, in the whole course of my life, met with the union of so clear and capacious an understanding, with so much goodness of heart and sweetness of manners.
“It is pleasing to be loved by those we feel
ourselves impelled to love. It is inexpressibly gratifying, when we find those
qualities that most call forth our affections, to be regarded by that person
with some degree of a correspondent feeling. If you have any of that kind of
consolation in store for me, be at the pains to bestow it. But, above all, be
severely sincere. I ought to be acquainted
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