amiable of human creatures mortifyed all over, and became a spectacle the most hideous and unbearable.—This broke her father's heart in a month's time, and the paradice I had in view, sunk into everlasting night.

Miss Noel's character.
My heart, upon this sad accident, bled and mourned to an extreme degree. All the tender passions were up in my soul, and with great difficulty could I keep my ruffled spirits in tolerable decorum. I lost what I valued more than my life — more than repeated millions of worlds, if it had been possible to get them in exchange. This engaged, beloved partner, was an honour to her sex, and an ornament to human kind. She was one of the wisest and most agreeable of women;

and her life quite glorious for piety to God, compassion to the necessitous and miserable, benevolence and good will to all, with every other grace and virtue. These shined with a bright lustre in her whole deportment, and rendered her beloved, and the delight of all that knew her. Sense and genius were in her united, and by study, reflexion, and application, she improved the talents, in the happiest manner. She had acquired a superiority in thinking, speaking, writing, and acting, and in manners, her behaviour, her language, her design, her understanding, was inexpressibly charming. Miss Noel died in the 24th year of her age, the 29th of December, in the year 1724.


A reflexion on the death of Miss Noel.
This dismal occurrence sat powerfully on my spirits for some time, and for near two months, I scarcely spoke a word to any one. I was silent, but not sullen. As my tears and lamentations could not save her, so I knew they could not fetch her back again. Death and the grave have neither eyes nor ears. The thing to be done upon so melancholly an occasion, is to adore the Lord of infinite wisdom, as he has a right to strike our comforts dead, and so improve the awful event, by labouring to render our whole temper and deportment christian and divine, that we may able to live, while we do live, superior to the strokes of fortune, and the

calamities of human life; and when God bids us die, (in whatever manner, and at whatever time it may be) have nothing to do but to die, and so go enter into our master's joy. This is wisdom. This good we may extract from such doleful things. This was the effect my