pon revived. There was the other day,
though not on this occasion, a severe proclamation issued out
against all who shall vent false news, or discourse ill concerning
affairs of state. So that in writing to you I run the risque of
making a breech in the commandment.--Yours," etc.

The following letter deals with another matter of human concern than
politics, for it seeks to condole with a father who has lost an only
son.

_To Sir John Trott_
(Undated.)

"HONOURED SIR,--I have not that vanity to believe, if you weigh your
late loss by the common ballance, that any thing I can write to you
should lighten your resentments: nor if you measure things by the
rules of christianity, do I think it needful to comfort you in your
duty and your son's happyness. Only having a great esteem and
affection for you, and the grateful memory of him that is departed
being still green and fresh upon my spirit, I cannot forbear to
inquire, how you have stood the second shock at your sad meeting of
friends in the country. I know that the very sight of those who have
been witnesses of our better fortune, doth but serve to reinforce a
calamity. I know the contagion of grief and infection of tears, and
especially when it runs in a blood. And I myself could sooner imitate
than blame those innocent relentings of nature, so that they spring
from tenderness only and humanity, not from an implacable sorrow. The
tears of a family may flow together like those little drops that
compact the rainbow, and if they be placed with the same advantage
towards Heaven as those are to the sun, they too have their
splendour; and like that bow, while they unbend into seasonable
showers, yet they promise, that there shall not be a second flood.
But the dissoluteness of grief, the prodigality of sorrow, is neither
to be indulged in a man's self, nor complyed with in others. If that
were allowable in these cases, Eli's was the readyest way and highest
compliment of mourning, who fell back from his seat and broke his
neck. But neither does that precedent hold. For though he had been
Chancellor, and in effect King of Israel, for so many years (and such
men value, as themselves, their losses at an higher rate than
others), yet, when he heard that Israel was overcome, that his two
sons Hophni and Phineas were sla