 glow of radience those charms which dejection, disappointment, and indisposition, for fifteen years more, have scarce been able to impair. Her days, bounded by distress, the dreary prospect admitted no ray of reviving consolation except what resulted from the socety of one dear and maternal friend, who having been lately deprived of the husband of her heart, and never having been blessed with offspring, flew to indulge with her favorite young friend the unbounded luxury of sorrow.
Madame de St. Hillaire, for some time combated not the intended seclusion

of her amiable friend. But the violence of her own distress yielding to resignation and composure, she became conscious that tho' grief is seldom abated by reasoning the most convincing and judicious, time will infallibly lessen, and variety in some measure divert, it's bitterness. Her feelings, tho' poignant, were soothing and enthusiastic: tears unceasingly fell from her eyes; but they were tears of relief. Some pleasing recollection, some scene, interesting and endearing, often made them flow, and the luxuriant reveries of past delight in a great measure soothed the present sad reverse.
Far otherwise was the source of the bitter anguish of her friend. The remembrance of past affection carried a sting which made her in horror fly from the thought; and the idea that the man she had loved and had lost was torn from her arms by the common stroke of death, supported not her feeling mind in the

height of languor and depression: all was misery unmitigated: the past was horror, and the future presented only undeserved mortification and perpetual regret.
In solitude and obscurity were centered the only ideas of dejected tranquillity that could find entrance into the bosom of the fair mourner: a bosom of acute sensibility, chilled by the cold hand of disappointment: but her anxious friend, reflecting on her youth and amiable disposition, hoped that after time had been given for meliorating her sorrows into peaceful resignation, a temper so calculated for the active duties of benevolence would not remain unsubdued by the heartfelt gratifications which that noble principle affords, and foresaw that it would not prove impossible to prevail with her to relax in her present system.
Time justified the predictions of this valuable friend. By degrees, at her earnest entreaties, a select acquaintance

was admitted; and altho' through the whole of Lady Aubrey's residence abroad, till the present moment, a weight of melancholy impaired her health and clouded her spirits, religion and principle co-operating with the continual efforts of Madame de St. Hillaire, greatly softened the first anguish of her sufferings; and while she remained incapable of participating in
