But scarce had he time to receive the felicitations of his friends on this score, before an accident happened to him, which demanded a much more than equal share of condolance from them.—­His son, his only son, the darling of his heart, was seized with a distemper in his head, which in a very few days baffled the art of medicine, and snatched him from the world.—­What now availed his honours, his wealth, his every requisite for grandeur, or for pleasure?—­He, for whose sake chiefly he had laboured to acquire them, was no more!—­no second self remained to enjoy what he must one day leave behind him.—­All of him was now collected in his own being, and with that being must end.—­Melancholly reflection!—­yet not the worst that this unhappy incident inflicted:—­his estate, all at least that had descended to him by inheritance, with the vast improvements he had made on it, must now devolve on a brother he had so much cause to hate, and whose very name but mentioned struck horror to his heart.

The motives for his grief were great, it must be allowed, and such as demanded the utmost fortitude to sustain;—­he certainly exerted all he was master of on this occasion; but, in spite of his efforts, nature got the upper hand, and rendered him inconsolable:—­he burst not into any violent exclamations, but the silent sorrow preyed on his vitals, and reduced him, in a short time, almost to the shadow of what he had been.

One of the most dangerous effects of melancholy is, the gloomy pleasure it gives to every thing that serves to indulge it:—­darkness and solitude are its delight and nourishment, and the person possessed of it, naturally shuns and hates whatever might alleviate it;—­the sight of his best friends now became irksome to him;—­he not only loathed, but grew incapable of all business;—­he shut himself in his closet, shunned conversation, was scarce prevailed on to take the necessary supports of nature, and seemed as if his soul was buried in the tomb of his son, and only a kind of vegetative life remained within him.

His sister, who loved him very affectionately, and for whom he had always preserved the tenderest amity, being informed of his disconsolate condition, came to town, flattering herself with being able to dissipate, at least some part of his chagrin.  To this end she brought with her all her children, some of whom he had never seen, and had frequently expressed by letter, the desire he had of embracing them, and the regret he had that the great affairs he was always constantly engaged in, would not permit him time to take a journey into the country where she lived.

But how greatly did she deceive herself;—­he was too far sunk in the lethargy of grief, to be roused out of it by all her kind endeavours;—­on the contrary, the sight of those near and dear relatives she presented to him only added to his affliction, by reminding him in a more lively manner of his own loss; and the sad effect she found their presence had on him, obliged her to remove them immediately from his eyes.