heavier hand upon my mind than any I have sustained. I drive out to recover my voice and my spirits, and am better while abroad; but I come home and lose them both in an hour. I cannot read or do anything else but puddle with my clay. I have begun a full-length figure of Cecilia; and this is a resource which fortunately never fails me. Mr. Fitzhugh approves of it, and that is good encouragement. I have little to complain of, except a low voice and lower spirits."
All these letters do not look like the proud, hard, self-sufficient woman so often described. We see her sorrowing sincerely, but not giving way to unreasoning, despairing grief; recognising that all the brightness and elasticity of life had gone, but doing, nobly and practically, what she could to help those that were left.
Before the end of the year she had arranged with Mr. James Ballantyne to act ten nights for the benefit of her son's family:—
"A thousand thousand thanks to you my kind and good friend for your most delightful and gratifying letter. You do me justice in believing that whatever conduces to your happiness, or that operates against it, must ever be interesting to me; and as the happiness and health of your excellent and most respectable mother is, I know, the first object of Satisfaction which this world contains for your duteous mind, I am, indeed, most truly happy, for both your sakes, to receive so comfortable an account of her. I can conceive no blessing comparable to that of having such a Son, and such a one was my own dear and lamented Henry. This last blow lay, indeed, for some time most heavily upon me; but when I recollect that his pure Spirit has exchang'd a Sphere of painful and
