ss. And
yet to part with the companion of twenty-nine years when so very
ill--that I did not, could not foresee. It withers my heart to think
of it, and to recollect that I can hardly hope again to seek
confidence and counsel from that ear to which all might be safely
confided. But in her present lethargic state, what would my attentions
have availed? and Anne has promised close and constant intelligence. I
must dine with James Ballantyne to-day _en famille_. I can not help
it; but would rather be at home and alone. However, I can go out too.
I will not yield to the barren sense of hopelessness which struggles
to invade me. I past a pleasant day with J. B.,[14] which was a great
relief from the black dog which would have worried me at home. We were
quite alone.

_May 15._--Received the melancholy intelligence that all is over at
Abbotsford.

_Abbotsford, May 16._--She died at nine in the morning, after being
very ill for two days--easy at last.

I arrived here late last night. Anne is worn out, and has had
hysterics, which returned on my arrival. Her broken accents were like
those of a child, the language, as well as the tones, broken, but in
the most gentle voice of submission. "Poor mama--never return
again--gone forever--a better place." Then, when she came to herself,
she spoke with sense, freedom, and strength of mind, till her weakness
returned. It would have been inexpressibly moving to me as a
stranger--what was it then to the father and the husband? For myself,
I scarce know how I feel, sometimes as firm as the Bass Rock,
sometimes as weak as the wave that breaks on it.

I am as alert at thinking and deciding as I ever was in my life. Yet,
when I contrast what this place now is, with what it has been not long
since, I think my heart will break. Lonely, aged, deprived of my
family--all but poor Anne, an impoverished and embarrassed man, I am
deprived of the sharer of my thoughts and counsels, who could always
talk down my sense of the calamitous apprehensions which break the
heart that must bear them alone. Even her foibles were of service to
me, by giving me things to think of beyond my weary self-reflections.

I have seen her. The figure I beheld is, and is not, my Charlotte--my
thirty years' companion. There is the same symmetry of form, tho those
limbs are rigid which were once so gracefully elastic--but that yellow
mask, with pinched features, which seem to mock life rather than
emulate it, can it be