 the endeavours of his father-in-law, whose mind was able to preserve more composure▪ prevail upon him, for some days, to remember the common offices of life, or leave the room in which his Harriet had expired. Wilkins's grief, however, though of a more silent sort, was not less deep in its effects; and when the turbulence of the other's sorrow had yielded to the soothings of time, the old man retained all that render regret, so due to the death of a child, an only child, whose filial duty had led him down the slope of life without suffering him to perceive the descent.
The infant she had left behind her was now doubly endeared to its father and him▪ from being considered as the last memorial of its dying mother; but of this melancholy kind of comfort they were also deprived in a few months by the small-pox. Wilkins seemed by this second blow to be loosened from the little hold he had struggled to keep of the world, and his resignation was now built upon the hopes, not of overcoming his affliction, but of escaping from its pressure.

The serenity which such an idea confers, possesses of all others the greatest dignity, because it possesses of all others the best-assured confidence, leaning on a basis that is fixed above the rotation of sublunary things. An old man, who has lived in the exercise of virtue, looking back, without a blush, on the tenor of his past days, and pointing to that better state, where alone he can be perfectly rewarded, is a figure the most venerable that can well be imagined: such did Wilkins now exhibit.
"My son, said he to Annesly, I feel that I shall not be with you long; yet I leave not the world with that peevish disgust, which is sometimes mistaken for the courage that overcomes the dread of death: I lay down my being, with gratitude, for having so long possessed it, without having disgraced it, by any great violation of the laws of him, by whom it was bestowed. There is something we cannot help feeling, on the fall of those hopes we had been vainly diligent to rear; I had looked forward to some happy days, amidst a race of my Harriet's and yours; but to the good, there can be no reasonable regret from the disappointment of such expectations, because the futurity, they trust in after death, must far exceed any enjoyment which a longer life here could have afforded. It is otherwise with the prospect of duty to be done
