[From Letters of Bishop Hildesley]

Letter LXXII

Bishopscourt, February 5, 1768.

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 tiian otherwise. It cannot as yet be expected to decrease. It must have its time, and its course. 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, yet you must not deny, but, in the main, she 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 converse with. And so, I trust, will you be in due time, unless you are a singular instance of unrecoverable spirits, which I would not suppose.

I here send you Mr Birket's letter. It is just such as one as I should have expected. As to 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 shall 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 Bishopscourt. In the meantime, with or without Doddridge (132), let me prevail on you to acquiesce in the fiat, without endeavouring to find, what may help to depress you : and to gratify the passion, which is of itself predominant enough. Yours, as usual,

MARK SODOR & MANN.