not been united a week when they were both carried off by the
cholera, which was then raging in Genoa: the same paper which
announced their marriage brought the tidings of their untimely death
to me. During this visit of mine to Carolside M. de Revel came there
for a few days; I was well acquainted with him, and liked him very
much.]

CAROLSIDE, EARLSTON, Sunday, 29th.

I am no more in London, my dear Hal, but in one of the sweetest places I
ever was in, which, as you know, is a great delight to me.

I am only just beginning to recover from the effects of the journey
hither, which, though divided into two days, made me very unwell....
Surely, you never meant, in spite of my invariable habit of replying to
all your questions, that I should ever attempt an answer to that
suggestion of your love and sorrow which, in speaking of your brother
[Barry S----, dead many years before], makes you exclaim, "What now is
his nature?" ...

I have been sorrier to think of the death of Dr. Combe than I was to
hear of it, when, as is always the case with me, my first feeling was
one almost of joy and congratulation. I never have any other emotion on
first hearing of a good man's death. I have an instantaneous sense of
relief, as it were, for such a one, of freer breathing, of expanded
powers; of infirmity, pain, sorrow, trouble, fleshly hinderance, and
earthly suffering for ever laid in the grave and left behind; and that
glorious creature, a noble human soul, soaring into a purer atmosphere
proper to it, and promoted to such higher duties as may well be deemed
rewards for duties well fulfilled on earth.

After a little while I began to cry, thinking of that sweet, beaming,
intelligent, benevolent countenance, that I am never to see here again;
but this was crying for myself, not him. I am truly grieved for his
brother, and all who knew, and loved, and have lost so excellent a
friend.

I have a paper in my possession still, which he laughingly drew up and
gave me when I was a girl in Edinburgh, a sort of legal document,
binding him to appear to me after he was dead; and one or two evenings,
as I lay on my sofa alone in Orchard Street, I thought of this, and
could not help fancying that if indeed it had been possible he could
have appeared to me, the familiar trust and affection with which I
always regarded him would have been paramount to all fears and wonders
in the first