CHAPTER LIII.
"Closely shrouded in my cottage at Brighton, an object of wonder and conjecture to the idle and the imaginative, by slow degrees I gained the health I sought, and with it a certain portion of those spirits natural to my season of life, and which ought to be inseparable from the humble of heart, and the virtuous in conduct. Here I first obtained true light on subjects of religion, on which I read and meditated much: and here I experienced a partial relief to my solitude in the society of yourself and your sisters. Parted so far from my husband, the pleasures of correspondence were almost denied to me, and the more I found myself equal to enjoying society, the more acutely did I feel the deprivation of it. The languor which pervaded my faculties in India had rendered me content to wait, in passive quietude, the return of my husband from the scene of his exertions; and his account of what had occurred fully satisfied my curiosity, and sufficed for my amusement; but in busy, energetic England
