When you have obtained by prayer fuch tranquillity as nature will admit, force your attention, as you can, upon your accustomed duties and accustomed entertainments. You can do no more for our dear boy, but you must not therefore think less on those whom your attention may make fitter for the place to which he is gone. I am,

Deareft, dearest Madam,

Your most affectionate humble fervant.

LETTER CXLII.

To Mrs. THRAL E.

DEAR MADAM,

March 30, 1776.

SINCE, as Mr. Baretti informs us, our dear Queeney is grown better, I hope you will by degrees recover your tranquillity. Only by degrees, and those perhaps fufficiently flow, can the pain of an affliction like yours be abated. But though effects are not wholly in our power, yet Providence always gives us fomething to do. Many of the operations of nature may by human diligence be accelerated

or retarded. Do not indulge your forrow; try to drive it away by either pleafure or pain; for, oppofed to what you are feeling, many pains will become pleafures. Remember the great precept, Be not folitary; be not idle.

But above all, refign yourself and your children to the Univerfal Father, the Author of Exilence, and Governor of the Univerfe, who only knows what is beft for all, and without whofe regard not a sparrow falls to the ground.

That I feel what friendship can feel, I hope I need not tell you. I loved him as I never expect to love any other little boy; but I could not love him as a parent. I know that fuch a lofs is a laceration of the mind, I know that a whole fyftem of hopes, and defigns, and expectations, is fwept away at once, and nothing left but bottomlefs vacuity. What you feel I have felt, and hope that your difquiet will be fhorter than mine.

Mr. Thrale fent me a letter from Mr. Bofwell, I fuppofe to be inclofed. I was this day with Mrs. Montague, who, with every body elfe, laments your misfortune. I am, dearest Madam,

Your, &c.

LETTER CXLIII.

Το Mrs. THRA L E.

DEAREST MADAM,

April 1, 1776.

WHEN

HEN you were gone, Mr. Thrale foon fent me away. I came next day, and was made to understand that when I was wanted I fhould be fent for; and therefore I have not gone yesterday or to-day, but I will foon go again whether invited or not.

You begin now I hope to be able to confider, that what has happened might have had great aggravations. Had you been followed in your intended travels by an account of this. afflictive deprivation, where could have been. the end of doubt, and furmife, and fufpicion, and felf-condemnation? You could not eafily have been reconciled to those whom you left behind, or those who had perfuaded you to go. You would have believed that he died by neglect, and that your prefence would have faved him. I was glad of your letter from Marlborough, and hope you will try to force

X 4

your

yourself to write. If grief either caused or aggravated poor Queeney's illness, you have taken the proper method for relieving it. Young minds eafily receive new impreffions.

Poor Peyton expired this morning. He probably during many years, for which he fat ftarving by the bed of a wife, not only ufelefs but almoft motionlefs, condemned by poverty to perfonal attendance, and by the neceffity of fuch attendance chained down to poverty-he probably thought often how lightly he should tread the path of life without his burthen. Of this thought the admission was unavoidable, and the indulgence might be forgiven to frailty and diftrefs. His wife died at laft, and before the was buried he was feized by a fever, and is now going to the grave.

Such miscarriages, when they happen to thofe on whom many eyes are fixed, fill hiftories and tragedies; and tears have been shed for the fufferings, and wonder excited by the fortitude of those who neither did nor fuffered more than Peyton.

I was on Saturday at Mrs. Montague's, who expreffed great fenfibility of your lofs;

and

and have this day received an invitation to a fupper and a ball; but I returned my acknowledgment to the ladies, and let them know that I thought I should like the ball better another week. I am, dear Madam,

Your, &c.

I

LETTER CXLIV.

Το Mrs. THRA L E.

DEAREST MADAM,

April 4, 1776.

AM glad to hear of pretty Queeney's recovery, and your returning tranquillity. What we have fuffered ought to make us remember what we have efcaped. You might at as short a warning have been taken from your children, or Mr. Thrale might have been taken from us all.

Mr. Thrale, when he difmiffed me, promifed to call on me; he has never called, and I have never feen him. He faid that he would go to the house, and I hope he has found fomething that laid hold on his attention.

I do not with you to return, while the novelty of the place does any good either to you

or