Thus vanish our hopes!-thus cold is the bridal bed of my dear sister! No sun-beam shall pierce its dark "till the last morn appear."

recess,

A few days after this sad scene was closed, we came hither, to the village retirement of my excellent uncle and aunt, Martin. Pious tranquillity broods over the kind and hospitable mansion; and the balms of sympathy, and the cordials of devotion, are here poured into our torn hearts.

At times, I can scarcely persuade myself that I shall see her no more!-Upon that tender, instinctive affection, which grew with our growth, were engrafted esteem the most established, and confidence the most entire. One bed!-one heart!-one soul!-Even the difference of our dispositions became a cement to our friendship; her gentleness tempered my impetuosity; her natural composure caught animation from her sister's sprightliness; our studies, our amusements, our taste the same. O heavy, heavy loss! Yet bow thy stubborn grief, O my spirit! and remember the reason thou hadst to fear for her happiness in that union, from which she was so awfully snatched away.

66

Cut off, as she was, in the bloom of life, nobody could be more resigned. Sickness, pain, and extreme bodily weakness, had not power to extinguish, or even to abate, the pure flame of her devotion; yet all was calm and rational, for she had no delirium through the course of her illness. When her eyes were closed to open no more, when she seemed insensible to outward objects, she continued fervent in prayer, nay, in thanksgiving, to her God. She often repeated the Lord's prayer, and several verses out of the Scriptures which were applicable to her expiring situation. In these repetitions, her

voice, though low, and interrupted by the pausings of weakness, was distinct.

She expressed unwillingness to take the musk medicines: but when my father and mother solicited her, she opened her mouth and swallowed them, without showing any more reluctance.

Her partial affection for me was almost the latest yearning of her gentle spirit. As I sat by her weeping, on the morning of the final day, and saw her lie pale and stretched out, her sweet eyes unable to open, she said, in a low voice, when we had all thought her insensible to every earthly recollection: "Speak, my Nancy; let me once more hear that dear voice, ever welcome to me!"

O! how those words yet vibrate on my ear! I repeat them to myself many times in every day and night, endeavouring to imitate the sweet, mournful accent in which they fell upon my soul with indelible impression.

My father was agonized by the loss of the darling of his heart; but it is amazing how soon the native cheerfulness of his temper has arisen from beneath the blow. My mother, at first, bore it better.

She directed the created seemed to

funeral; and the business which it have rendered her spirits collected, and to have dried the source of her tears: but, when that was over, a deep, severe dejection succeeded, which nothing seems of power to comfort or to cheer.

My cousin, miss Martin, is of my sister's age; and was deservedly beloved by her above all her other companions, next to myself and Honora. She grieves for our loss and her own with passionate tenderness.

Honora, young as she is, has shared all my sorrow. If she is but spared me, I shall not be quite bereaved

it will not be wholly in vain that I shall say,

blest days!"

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Adieu!

Anna Seward.

LETTER III.

To miss Emma

Lichfield, March 27, 1765.

With a sorrowing heart, and a trembling hand, I take up the pen to thank you, dearest Emma, for your kind though mournful letter of yesterday. It arrived a few hours after the fatal period of our beloved friend's indisposition; which, notwithstanding some foreboding fears rising at intervals in my mind, was apparently nothing more than a common cold and cough. Transient only were my apprehensions; and it is certain, that neither her father, nor any of her friends at Shrewsbury, had an idea of her being in danger, till within a few days of her setting out.-General Severn thought worse of her complaints than those who hourly beheld her, and persuaded the family she was in, to suffer him to take her with him to Bath, that her father, who was there, might carry her directly to Bristol. Alas! she lived not to reach its balmy springs! On alighting from the general's chaise at Bath, she fainted away in her father's arms; and, growing instantly too ill to be removed, died at three the ensuing morning.Alas! that father! my heart bleeds for him. O! that he had taken her to Bristol when he went to Bath, a week or two after we all left London! But who could foresee the sad necessity? she made so light of her com plaints! I had a letter from him yesterday. It is full upon the sad circumstances. Blotted with his tears, the writing is almost effaced by mine.

own.

Alas! dear Emma, is it so soon come to this?-Little did I imagine that she, who so lately wept over my sister's bier, would, ere the year came round, press her But one year since, we beheld them both in the bloom of sprightly youth, gay and smiling, the delight of all who beheld them. "But now the spoiler is fallen upon their summer fruits, and upon their vintage." No sighs, however, can recall them; no lamentation awake them from their deep, everlasting slumber. No! let us not say everlasting; for it ill becomes us, the heirs of immortal hope, to use that word, fit only for the lips of the cold, despairing materialist.

Emma! if it is indeed (as surely it is) given us, in the world of light and life, to know and love the companions of our mortal state, let us think of her whom we have recently lost, emerging at once from the dimness of a mortal decline, and from the bitterness of death,-a merciful God speaking pardon to all her frailties, and confirming her unalloyed and ever-during felicity! Let us imagine, amidst the bright angelic host, one gentle, beatified spirit hailing the new inhabitant of Heaven: imagine that she shall discover, amidst the encircling splendours of immortal beauty, the friend of her youth, the sweet companion of her innocent pleasures in this world; a world which had been to them, the few hours of preparatory sickness excepted, the pleasing, though faint dawn of being, now brightened into that day which shall bring no sorrow, and which shall know no night.

How selfish then our murmurs!-Yet who can stifle the sighs of nature? or, at once, disperse the gloom arising from the consciousness, that, through a perhaps long course of years, we shall not behold the beloved of our hearts?Yet let us endeavour, by the solemn aids

of reason and religion, to submit cheerfully to the doom which we cannot reverse; and, by the soft assistance of hope and tender imagination, to gild and irradiate even the dark mansions of the grave.

Another consolation remains to us from the early, and, apparently, premature death of those we love. Observation has already taught me, that youth, amidst all its rash hopes and giddy indiscretions, is, in general, more amiable than middle or advanced life.

"The world's infectious; few bring back, at eve, Immaculate, the manners of the morn."

Quitting this mournful subject, let me observe, that scarcely any thing, except our mutual loss pressing forward to my pen, could thus long have prevented my expressing how welcome is the assurance you give me, that, as soon as these March winds are over, you will come to Lichfield, be our guest some weeks, and remain with your aunt in this city during the ensuing summer.

How delightful had this intelligence been, if ill health had not suggested the scheme, and if such tidings had arrived in cheerfuller hours! Dearly are they consoling even in these. Whatever our sorrows, whatever our consolations, it is, at least, sweet to reflect, that we shall share them together, as the vernal day rolls on.

Adieu! May I soon receive you in amended health and spirits; for joy, or even cheerfulness, must, till that moment, be unknown to the heart of your friend

Anna Seward.