last letter I will show it you." Then looking over the
packet--"here it is," said he, putting it into my hands with visible
emotion. Neither of us had strength of voice to be able to read it
aloud. It was written at several times.

"PRIORY, Wednesday, _March 18, 1807_.

"Stanley--I feel that I am dying. Death is awful, my dear friend,
but it is neither surprising nor terrible. I have been too long
accustomed steadily to contemplate it at a distance, to start from
it now it is near.

"As a man, I have feared death. As a Christian, I trust I have
overcome this fear. Why should I dread that, which mere reason
taught me is not an extinction of my being, and which revelation
has convinced me will be an improvement of it? An improvement, oh
how inconceivable!

"For several years I have habituated myself every day to reflect
for some moments on the vanity of life, the certainty of death, the
awfulness of judgment, and the duration of eternity.

"The separation from my excellent wife, is a trial from which I
should utterly shrink, were I not sustained by the Christian hope.
When we married, we knew that we were not immortal. I have
endeavored to familiarize to her and to myself the inevitable
separation, by constantly keeping up in the minds of both the idea
that one of us _must_ be the survivor. I have endeavored to make
that idea supportable by the conviction that the survivorship will
be short--the re-union certain--speedy--eternal. O _praeclarum
diem_![5] etc., etc. How gloriously does Christianity exalt the
rapture, by ennobling the objects of this sublime apostrophe!"

[Footnote 5: See this whole beautiful passage in Cicero de
Senectute]

* * * * *

"Friday the 20th.

"As to the union of my son with Lucilla, you and I, my friend, have
long learned from an authority higher than that classical one, of
which we have frequently admired the expression, and lamented the
application, that long views and remote hopes, and distant
expectations become not so short-sighted, so short-lived a creature
as man.[6] I trust, however; that our plans have been carried on
with a complete conviction of this brevity; with an entire
acquiescence in the will of the great arbiter of life and death. I
have told Charles it is my wish