To John Thornton, Esq. December 25, 1818. "God has been pleased to afflict us in the point where we were most sensible of affliction, and least prepared to expect it; in the death of our little daughter, which took place yesterday morning, after a severe illness of several days, and one night passed in strong convulsions. She had been not perfectly well for the last month, which was attributed to her teeth coming; but I now apprehend that water had been forming in her head during that time; this was the cause of her death. Emily bas borne her loss with as much tranquillity as I could expect; she has received the Sacrament from my hands this morning, and is, I believe, fully resigned, and sensible of God's abundant mercy, even when His afflictions fall heaviest. I am myself more cut down than I thought I should be, but I hope not impatient; though I cannot help thinking that whatever other children I may be blessed with, I shall never love any like this little one, given me after so many years' expectation, and who promised in personal advantages and intelligence to be even more than a parent ordinarily hopes for. But I do not forget that to have possessed her at all, and to have enjoyed the pleasure of looking at her and caressing her for six months, was God's free gift; and still less do I forget that He who has taken her will, at length, I hope restore her to us. God bless you in your wife and children, my dear Thornton, as well as with all other mercies, is the sincere prayer of "Your affectionate friend, CHAPTER XVI. Lines by Dr. Turner-Fragment of a poem on the same subject with Montgomery's "World before the Flood"-Bristed's "America"-" The outward-bound Ship"-" The Ground Swell"— Lines to C. H. Townshend " On Hope"-Ordination sermon— Letter to the editor of the Christian Remembrancer. 1818 1819. THE afflicting event mentioned in the last letter, happened at Catton, in Staffordshire, the seat of the late Eusebius Horton, Esq. The following prayer written after his return home, on the 9th of January, in the ensuing year, appears among Mr. Reginald Heber's memoranda. "Miserere nostrum, Deus! Lu gentis orbæque matris audi preces; tuique (quod omnium est optimum) da Spiritûs solatium per Jesum Christum, Dominum nostrum. Amen." The loss of their only child was long and severely felt by her parents; her father could never think of or name her without tears; and his private devotions generally concluded with an earnest prayer that he might, at his last hour, be found worthy to rejoin his sinless child. And who shall doubt that his prayer has been accepted! In the hymn commencing "Thou art gone to the grave," may be traced the feelings which this bereavement occasioned.* * Soon after the editor's return from India, the following stanzas were given her by a friend, who only knew that they were written by a clergyman in Cheshire. It is a satisfaction to her to have learnt, that these lines, so expressive of the feeling with which their author heard of the loss the Eastern Church had sustained, were written by Dr. Turner, who has himself been called to the same scene of Christian labour; with a similar spirit of self-devotion, and a similar readiness to labour in the service of his Lord. VOL. I.-60 About this time Mr. Reginald Heber dismissed one of his servants for drunkenness, after many trials and broken promises of amendment. In his diary on this occasion the following passage occurs: O qui me aliorum judicem peccatorum et vindicem fecisti Deus, miserere mei peccatoris, et libera me ab omni peccato per Jesum Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen. "DEAR MADAM, To the Lady Isabella King. Hodnet Rectory, March 17, 1819. "Owing to my absence from home I did not receive the honour of your Ladyship's former letter till some days after its arrival at Hodnet, and I felt so much vexed at the delay which had taken place in the fulfilment of my engagement, (though I can assure you that this delay has chiefly arisen from causes over which I had no controul,) that I determined not to answer it till I should have sent off to Mr. Gifford an article on the subject of the Bailbrook House establishment. At this I had, in fact, been working, as fast as my few leisure hours allowed me, when I received your last letter announcing that Mr. Southey had undertaken it. I will not dissemble the pleasure which this circumstance has given me, because I am quite convinced, without any mock modesty on my part, that he is precisely the writer in the world best qualified to do justice to the subject, and to recommend (both by his eloquence and his sense of the political importance of the subject) the institution to the world. I will also confess, that, though I can assure you I have often, very often attempted to embody my ideas into such a form as "Thou art gone to the grave! and while nations bemoan thee Yet grateful, they still in their heart shall enthrone thee, Thou art gone to the grave! but thy work shall not perish, LETTER TO THE REV. T. E. S. HORNBY. 475 might be fit for a review, I have felt so much difficulty in the task, that I am not sorry to be released from it. I believe this difficulty arose from the obvious utility of the establishment itself, which gave me no objections to combat, and from the good sense and propriety of the rules which your Ladyship has framed, which really left me no objections to make. I endeavoured to supply the want of these, the most usual materials for a critic's task, by entering into a history of the different establishments on the continent, destined in like manner to the support and comfort of females of the higher class; but here, unfortunately, I found much difficulty in obtaining information. In short, I have been twenty times over on the point of writing to your Ladyship, to give up my engagement, had not my real anxiety to promote so good a cause rendered me very unwilling to do so. I shall write by this day's post to Mr. Gifford, who, as he expects an article from me on the subject, would, possibly, have been otherwise surprised at receiving one from Mr. Southey.* For myself I have only to thank you most sincerely for the patience which you have shown to an ally so tardy and useless as I am, and beg you to believe me, "I can assure you that I have often regretted the long cessation of a correspondence which used to be most agreeable to me, and the more so because I have had reason to apprehend that I was myself the defaulter in it. The truth is, I have been for several years back pretty regularly and closely employed, and have found every year less and less time to bestow on any occupation, except those which habit or professional duty render necessary to me. And thus it has happened that the letters *The article here alluded to is on "British Monachism," in the Quarterly Review for 1819. which I have written to my friends have become shorter and fewer, till I grew ashamed to remind those who had reason to think I had neglected them, that there was such a person as Reginald Heber. "From Wilmot, with whom, of our old friends, I have been able to keep up most intercourse, and from your brother George, whom I have had frequently the pleasure of meeting at Oxford, I have heard, from time to time, of your cheerful and exemplary resignation under continued indisposition, and (which your letter confirms) that you occasionally amused your self with poetry, though they did not tell me that you had any thoughts of publication. To my criticism you have a very good right, since I shall always remember with pleasure your frankness and good-nature, as well as your good taste, when I used to bring the foul copy of Palestine to read to you in your dark cell at Brazen Nose, in those days when the meaning of the words head-ache and heart-ache was almost equally unknown to either of us. You may depend, therefore, on my reading any poem of yours with attention and interest, and on my giving you an honest opinion on it. I only wish my judgement may be as good as my will, and that it may not be even less to be de pended on, than it formerly was in questions of taste, since my habitual studies have now, for a long time, taken a very different direction from poetry. Since my Bampton lectures, I have been occupied in collecting materials for a huge dictionary of the Bible, on the plan of Calmet, and, besides this piece de resistance,' have had frequent sermons to prepare for Oxford, where I am one of the select preachers. Except a few hymns, I had projected at an I have for a long time written no verses. earlier period of my career as a student in divinity, a sort of epic poem on the subject of Arthur; and have, once since, meditated a something, I know not how to call it, on the same subject with Montgomery's world before the flood.' But I have had no time to take them up as any thing more than occasional amusement, and merely as such they cost me too much trouble and time to answer my purpose. My dictionary is, indeed, the pursuit in which I find the most amusement in the long run; the variety of reading which it opens to me, the shortness of the |