s unhappy story. Surely a sense so rigorous of his errors, and so many years devoted to penitence and remorse, must not only have entirely obliterated his faults in the

eyes of infinite justice and mercy, but ought to render every candid mind compassionate and indulgent to transgressions which conveyed so severely their own punishment.
What a number of circumstances, unheeded at the time, do Fanny and I now recall, that prove how bitterly he suffered. The gravity and seeming austerity of his manners, which you used to say made him appear so awful that you never could feel at ease in his presence, we concluded merely constitutional: alas! we suspected not that his melancholy had a source so deep, nor that a weight of painful recollections gave a heaviness to his heart, which deprived every enjoyment of its true relish, and could not fail to throw a gloom over his whole appearance; especially in the eyes of my gay, animated Sophia, blessed with a mind at ease, and in possesion of

all the vivacity which youth, health, and lively spirits can produce.
Yet, my dear, religion and resignation had effected in him a mild thoughtfulness, which, while it repressed gaiety, was far from wholly precluding contentment. His temper was indeed so serene, so amiable, so free from all caprice or ill humour, and his conversation so instructively amusing, so complaisantly indulgent to all the little whims and wishes of his children, that our affection for him, warm and unbounded, was untinctured with dread or awe; and we ever regarded him in the light of an agreeable and entertaining companion, while we revered him as that of a condescending and respectable parent.
Has not the woeful tale drawn tears from you, my dear? As for Fanny and myself, I thought the perusal would have actually killed us. Oh! what a number of dreadful events, unsuspected and unknown,

what a source of never ceasing regret, has it opened to our knowledge; and what a period of misery have the days of our dear father proved! ought we then to weep his release from a world where sorrow, under various shapes, has been his constant pursuer, and where, under the baneful form of remorse, it has conducted him to the grave.
I hope my Sophia has not been uneasy at the unusual interval of silence, after the last dismal part of my journal, which I think I sent off about six weeks ago. The truth is, I have had a severe relapse since that period. Nervous fevers are, you know, extremely liable to return when one concludes the alarm over
