pe. That hope and every other were frustrated by the
most unexpected and bitter calamity of her death, at Avignon, on our
way to Montpellier, from a sudden attack of pulmonary congestion.

Since then I have sought for such alleviation as my state admitted
of, by the mode of life which most enabled me to feel her still near
me. I bought a cottage as close as possible to the place where she
is buried, and there her daughter (my fellow-sufferer and now my
chief comfort) and I live constantly during a great portion of the
year. My objects in life are solely those which were hers; my
pursuits and occupations those in which she shared or
sympathized--which are indissolubly associated with her. Her memory
is to me a religion, and her approbation the standard by which,
summing up as it does all worthiness, I endeavor to regulate my
life.

After my irreparable loss, one of my earliest cares was to print and
publish the treatise, so much of which was the work of her whom I
had lost, and consecrate it to her memory. I have made no
alterations or additions to it, nor shall I ever. Though it wants
the last touch of her hand, no substitute for that touch shall ever
be attempted by mine.

The "Liberty" was more directly and literally our joint production
than anything else which bears my name, for there was not a sentence
of it which was not several times gone through by us together,
turned over in many ways, and carefully weeded of any faults, either
in thought or expression, that we detected in it. It is in
consequence of this that, although it never underwent her final
revision, it far surpasses, as a mere specimen of composition,
anything which has proceeded from me either before or since. With
regard to the thoughts, it is difficult to identify any particular
part or element as being more hers than all the rest. The whole mood
of thinking, of which the book was the expression, was emphatically
hers.

But I also was so thoroughly imbued with it that the same thoughts
naturally occurred to us both. That I was thus penetrated with it,
however, I owe in a great degree to her. There was a moment in my
mental progress when I might easily have fallen into a tendency
towards over-government, both social and political; as there was
also a moment when, by reaction from a contrary excess, I