and spirits more and more. On August 27, 1837, she writes:--

"I am again at Dewsbury, engaged in the old business,--teach, teach,
teach . . . _When will you come home_? Make haste! You have been at
Bath long enough for all purposes; by this time you have acquired
polish enough, I am sure; if the varnish is laid on much thicker, I am
afraid the good wood underneath will be quite concealed, and your
Yorkshire friends won't stand that. Come, come. I am getting really
tired of your absence. Saturday after Saturday comes round, and I can
have no hope of hearing your knock at the door, and then being told
that 'Miss E. is come.' Oh, dear! in this monotonous life of mine,
that was a pleasant event. I wish it would recur again; but it will
take two or three interviews before the stiffness--the estrangement of
this long separation--will wear away."

About this time she forgot to return a work-bag she had borrowed, by a
messenger, and in repairing her error she says:--"These aberrations of
memory warn me pretty intelligibly that I am getting past my prime."
AEtat 21! And the same tone of despondency runs through the following
letter:--

"I wish exceedingly that I could come to you before Christmas, but it
is impossible; another three weeks must elapse before I shall again
have my comforter beside me, under the roof of my own dear quiet home.
If I could always live with you, and daily read the Bible with you--if
your lips and mine could at the same time drink the same draught, from
the same pure fountain of mercy--I hope, I trust, I might one day
become better, far better than my evil, wandering thoughts, my corrupt
heart, cold to the spirit and warm to the flesh, will now permit me to
be. I often plan the pleasant life which we might lead together,
strengthening each other in that power of self-denial, that hallowed
and glowing devotion, which the first saints of God often attained to.
My eyes fill with tears when I contrast the bliss of such a state,
brightened by hopes of the future, with the melancholy state I now
live in, uncertain that I ever felt true contrition, wandering in
thought and deed, longing for holiness, which I shall _never_, _never_
obtain, smitten at times to the heart with the conviction that ghastly
Calvinistic doctrines are true--darkened, in short, by the very
shadows of spiritual death. If Christian perf