The greater my fault, said she, when I knew that displeasure was carried too high, to acquiesce as I did!—­What a barbarous parent was I, to let two angry children make me forget that I was mother to a third—­to such a third!

Mrs. Norton used arguments and prayers to comfort her—­O, my dear Norton, answered the unhappy lady, you was the dear creature’s more natural mother!—­Would to Heaven I had no more to answer for than you have!

Thus the unhappy pair unavailingly recriminated, till my cousin Hervey entered, and, with Mrs. Norton, conducted up to her own chamber the inconsolable mother.  The two uncles, and Mr. Hervey, came in at the same time, and prevailed upon the afflicted father to retire with them to his —­both giving up all thoughts of ever seeing more the child whose death was so deservedly regretted by them.

Time only, Mr. Belford, can combat with advantage such a heavy deprivation as this.  Advice will not do, while the loss is recent.  Nature will have way given to it, (and so it ought,) till sorrow has in a manner exhausted itself; and then reason and religion will come in seasonably with their powerful aids, to raise the drooping heart.

I see here no face that is the same I saw at my first arrival.  Proud and haughty every countenance then, unyielding to entreaty; now, how greatly are they humbled!—­The utmost distress is apparent in every protracted feature, and in every bursting muscle, of each disconsolate mourner.  Their eyes, which so lately flashed anger and resentment, now are turned to every one that approaches them, as if imploring pity!—­Could ever wilful hard-heartedness be more severely punished?

The following lines of Juvenal are, upon the whole applicable to this house and family; and I have revolved them many times since Sunday evening: 

      Humani generis mores tibi nosse volenti
      Sufficit una domus:  paucos consumere dies, &
      Dicere te miserum, postquam illinc veneris, aude.

Let me add, that Mrs. Norton has communicated to the family the posthumous letter sent her.  This letter affords a foundation for future consolation to them; but at present it has new pointed their grief, by making them reflect on their cruelty to so excellent a daughter, niece, and sister.* I am, dear Sir,

Your faithful, humble servant,
Wm. Morden.

* This letter contains in substance—­her thanks to the good woman for her care of her in her infancy; for her good instructions, and the excellent example she had set her; with self-accusations of a vanity and presumption, which lay lurking in her heart unknown to herself, till her calamities (obliging her to look into herself) brought them to light.

She expatiates upon the benefit of afflictions to a mind modest, fearful, and diffident.

She comforts her on her early death; having finished, as she says, her probatory course, at so early a time of life, when many are not ripened by the sunshine of Divine Grace for a better, till they are fifty, sixty, or seventy years of age.