[from Memoirs of Bishop Hildesley]

LETTER LVII,

To the Rev. PHILIP MOORE,

Bishop’s-Court, Feb. 5,1768.

Dear Sir,

Yours, With the liquor accompanying, came safe to my hands this day at noon. The style of your letter confirms more and more my prognostication, that the sensibility of your loss would for a while rather increase than otherwise. It cannot as yet be expected to decrease. It must have its time, and its course ; and it is in vain to attempt to subdue nature. And yet, remember I tell you, we cannot always grieve, any more than we can always rejoice. The symptoms of each will, indeed, sometimes have occasional returns. Your poor wife’s case will evince this : For, though the sorrow for the loss of her children went very near her, yeryou must not deny, but in the main The recovered her spirits, and she became as cheerful as ever. If you say it often came across her, yet no one can say but that she was, to the last of her healthy life, as cheery a companion as any one would wish to convene with. And so I trust, will you be, in due time, unless you are a singular increase of unrecoverable spirits ; which I would not suppose.

I here send you Mr. Birket’s letter. It is just such a one as I should have expected. As tc that part of it relative to your going to Carlisle, how far it could be helpful to your spirits, to be with a family as afflicted almost as yourself, you must be the best judge. I shall neither persuade nor dissuade ; and can only say, if you choose, to go, you that have as much of my leave as is in my power to grant. But this, I think, will best be considered together, when you are here at Bishop's-Court In the mean time, with or without Doddridge, let me prevail on you to acquiesce in the fiat without endeavoring to find, what may help to depress you , and to gratify the passion, which is of itself predominant enough

Yours, as usual,

MARK SODOR and MANN