8._ _Thursday._--Up to this time the shells and balls of the
besiegers have done us no harm. Two shells have passed just over us.
The one fell on the roof of the house of an Arab family at a little
distance from us, who were all asleep, and on bursting killed three:
one cannon ball has just passed over us, besides musket balls
innumerable, only two of which, however, I have felt so near as to
endanger us. The one just passed by me and struck the wall, the other,
by bending my head, passed just over me: yet dangerous as it seems in
such circumstances to sleep on the roof, the suffocating heat of the
rooms is insupportable. I recollect Mr. Wolff, when here, mentions it
as so hot that he could not write his journal, and indeed such is the
heat, that one unaccustomed to it feels almost perfectly unfitted for
any laborious service either of mind or body, but particularly the
former, for at least my own experience is, that the body is much less
affected by it than the mind.

Famine is making its destructive way here among the poor. All the
necessaries of life are raised from four to six times their usual
price, and often are not to be obtained at all, and in addition there
is no labour going on in the city: every shop is closed, and every
one's concern is to take care of his life or property. They are
constantly killing persons in the streets, without the least inquiry
being made after the perpetrators; nay, they are publicly and
notoriously known, and no one regards it. Nothing can exceed the
misery and fear that pervades the city. Yet amidst all these
perplexities and troubles, the Lord reigns, and without him they can
do nothing.

_July 31._ _Lord's day._--A day that always dawns with sweet peace on
my soul: I seem more especially to bring before my mind those with
whom I think I took sweet counsel, and went to the house of God in
company; and though now deprived of all that the heart can desire from
holy fellowship on earth, there is something that brings me near those
I love, when I think on their places of assembly, and their times of
prayer. Though my dear Lord has broken my heart in pieces, and his
hand is still resting on me in the person of my dear little dying
baby, whose love and preference for the little care I know how to
show, renders it one of those exquisitely painful trials, that the
feelings know not how to obey the Lord in, when the spiritual judgment
is brought quite down. Yet I can never help feeling i