eir servitude, were her great delights; as
was the giving good books to others; and, when she had opportunity, the
instructing the poorer sort of her honest neighbours, and father's
tenants, in the use of them. 'That charity,' she used to say, 'which
provides for the morals, as well as for the bodily wants of the poor,
gives a double benefit to the public, as it adds to the number of the
hopeful what it takes from that of the profligate. And can there be, in
the eyes of that God, she was wont to say, who requires nothing so much
from us as acts of beneficence to one another, a charity more worthy?'

Her uncle Antony, when he came to settle in England with his vast fortune
obtained in the Indies, used to say, 'This girl by her charities will
bring down a blessing upon us all.' And it must be owned they trusted
pretty much to this presumption.

But I need not say more on this head: nor perhaps was it necessary to say
so much; since the charitable bequests in her will sufficiently set forth
her excellence in this branch of duty.

She was extremely moderate in her diet. 'Quantity in food,' she used to
say, 'was more to be regarded than quality; that a full meal was the
great enemy both to study and industry: that a well-built house required
but little repairs.'

But this moderation in her diet, she enjoyed, with a delicate frame of
body, a fine state of health; was always serene, lively; cheerful, of
course. And I never knew but of one illness she had; and that was by a
violent cold caught in an open chaise, by a sudden storm of hail and
rain, in a place where was no shelter; and which threw her into a fever,
attended with dangerous symptoms, that no doubt were lightened by her
temperance; but which gave her friends, who then knew her value, infinite
apprehensions for her.*

* In her common-place book she has the following note upon the
recollection of this illness in the time of her distress:

'In a dangerous illness, with which I was visited a few years before I
had the unhappiness to know this ungrateful man! [would to Heaven I had
died in it!] my bed was surrounded by my dear relations--father, mother,
brother, sister, my two uncles, weeping, kneeling, round me, then put up
their vows to Heaven for my recovery; and I, fearing that I should drag
down with me to my grave one or other of my sorrowing friends, wished and
prayed to recover for their sakes.--Alas! how shall parents in such cases
know what to wish