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you have five hundred pounds for your immediate expences, and two thousand pounds a year, with both the houses, and all the goods?

Let us pray for one another, that the time, whether long or short, that shall yet be granted us, may be well spent ; and that when this life, which at the longest is very short, shall come to an end, a better may begin, which shall never end.

I am, dearest Madam,

Your's, &c.

From the same to the same.
DEAREST MADAM,

THAT you are gradually recovering your tranquillity, is the effect to be humbly expected from trust in God. Do not represent life as darker than it is. Your loss has been very great, but you retain more than almost any other can hope to possess. You are high in the opinion of mankind; you have children from whom much pleasure may be expected; and that you will find many friends, you have no reason to doubt. Of my friendship, be it worth more or less, I hope you think yourself certain, without much art or care. It will not be easy for me to repay the benefits that I have received; but I hope to be always ready at your call, Our sorrow has different effects; you are withdrawn into solitude, and I am driven into company. I am afraid of thinking what I have lost. I neverhad such a friend before. Let me have your pray-ers and those of my dear Queeney,

The prudence and resolution of your design. to return so soon to your business and your duty, deserves great praise; I shall communicate it on Wednesday

Wednesday to the other executors. Bo pleased to let me know whether you would have me come to Streatham to receive you, or stay here till the next day.

I aim, &c.

Lord Chesterfield to Dr. Chenevix, on the Death of his Wife.

MY DEAR LORD,

I KNOW the gentleness, the humanity, and the tenderness of your nature too well to doubt of your grief, and I know the object of it too well to blame it; no, in such cases it is a commendable not a blameable passion, and is always inseparable from a heart that is capable of friendship or love. I therefore offer you no trite and always unavailing arguments of consolation; but as any strong and prevailing passion is apt to make us neglect or forget, for the time, our most important duties, I must remind you of two in particular, the neglect of which would render your grief, instead of pious, criminal; I mean your duty to your children as a father, and to your diocese as a bishop. Your care of your children must be doubled, in order to repair, as fast as possible, their loss; and the public trust of your flock must not suffer from a personal and private concern. These incumbent and necessary duties will sometimes suspend, and at last mitigate, that grief, which I confess mere reason would not they are equally moral and christian duties, which I am sure no consideration upon earth will ever make you neglect. May your assiduous discharge of them insensibly lessen that affliction, which, if indulged, would prove as fatal

to

to you and your family, as it must be vain and unavailing to her, whose loss you justly lament!! lain, with the greatest truth and affection, My dear Lord,

Your most faithful Friend and Servant.

ર્યું.

Dr. Johnson to Dr. Lawrence, on the Death of his Wife.

DEAR SIR,

AT a time when all your friends ought to shew their kindness, and with a character, which ought to make all that know you your friends, you may wonder that you have yet heard nothing from me.

I have been hindered by a vexations and incessant cough, for which, within these ten days, I have been bled once, fasted four or five times, taken physic five times, and opiates, I think, six. This day it seems to remit.

him

The loss, dear Sir, which you have lately suf fered, I felt many years ago, and know, therefore, how much has been taken from you, and how little help can be had from consolation. He that outlives a wife whom he has long loved, sees self disjoined from the only mind that has the same hopes, and fears, and interest; from the only companion with whom he has shared much good or evil; and with whom he could set his mind at liberty, to retrace the past or anticipate the future, The continuity of being is lacerated, the settled course of sentiment and action is stopped; and life stands suspended and motionless, till it is driven by external causes into a new channel. But the time of suspence is dreadful.

Our

Our first recourse in this distressed solitude is, perhaps, for want of habitual piety, to a gloomy acquiescence in necessity. Of two mortal beings one must lose the other; but surely there is a higher and better comfort to be drawn from the consideration of that Providence which watches over all, and a belief that the living and the dead are equally in the hands of God, who will re-unite those whom he has separated, or who sees that is is best not to re-unite.

I am, dear Sir,

Your most affectionate,

And most humble Servant.

Dr. Johnson to Mrs. Strahan, on the Death of her Son.

DEAR MADAM,

THE grief which I feel for the loss of a very kind friend, is sufficient to make me know how much you suffer by the death of an amiable son; a man, of whom I think it may be truly said, that no one knew him who does not lament him. I look upon myself as having a friend, another friend taken from me.

Comfort, dear Madam, I would give you if I could, but I know how little the forms of consolation can avail. Let me, however, counsel you not to waste your health in unprofitable sorrow, but go your own life; we can, one friend

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to Bath, and endeavour to prolongs

but when we have done all that must in time lose the other.

I am, dear Madam,

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Your most humble Servant.

Dr.

Dr. Johnson to Mr. Elphinstone, on the Death of his Mother.

DEAR SIR,

YOU have, as I find by every kind of evidence, lost an excellent mother; and I hope you will not think me incapable of partaking of your grief. I have a mother now eighty-two years of age, whom, therefore, I must soon lose, unless it please God that she rather should mourn for me. I read the letters in which you relate your mother's death to Mrs. Strahan, and think I do myself honour when I tell you I read them with tears; but tears are nei ther to you nor to me of any further use, when once the tribute of nature has been paid. The business of life summons us away from useless grief, and calls us to the exercise of those virtues of which we are lamenting our deprivation. The greatest benefit which one friend can confer upon another, is to guard, and excite and elevate his virtues. This your mother will still perform, if you diligently preserve the memory of her life, and of her death: a life, so far as I can learn, useful, wise, and innocent, and a death resigned, peaceful, and holy. I cannot forbear to mention, that neither reason nor revelation denies you to hope, that you may increase her happiness by obeying her precepts; and that she may, in her present state, look with pleasure upon every act of virtue to which her instructions or example may have contributed. Whether this be more than a pleasing dream, or a just opinion of separate spirits, is, indeed, of no great importance to us, when we consider ourselves as acting under the eye of God. Yet," surely, there is something pleasing in the belief, that our separation from those whom we love is merely corporeal';' and it may be a great incitement

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