or Queeney, and longer I know you will not ftay; there is therefore no need of foliciting your return. What qualification can be extracted from fo fad an event, I derive from obferving that Mr. Thrale's behaviour has united you to him by additional endearments. Every evil will be more cafily borne while you fondly love one another; and every good will be enjoyed with encreafe of delight paft compute, to ufe the phrafe of Cumberland. May your care of each other always encrease! am, deareft Madam,

I

Your, &c.

LETTER CXLV.

To Mrs. THRA L E.

DEAR MADAM,

MR.

April 9, 1776.

R. THRALE's alteration of purpose is not weakness of refolution; it is a wife man's compliance with the change of things, and with the new duties which the change produces. Whoever expects me to be angry, will be difappointed. I do not even grieve at the effect, I grieve only at the cause.

Your

in

Your business for the prefent is to seek for ease, and to go where you think it most likely to be found. There cannot yet be any place mind for mere curiofity. your When . ever I can contribute to your tranquillity, I fhall readily attend, and hope never to add to the evils that may opprefs you. I will go with you to Bath, or ftay with you at home.

I am very little difappointed. I was glad to go to places of fo much celebrity, but had promised to myself no raptures, nor much improvement: nor is there any thing to be expected worth fuch a facrifice as you might make,

Keep yourself bufy, and you will in time grow cheerful. New profpects may open, and new enjoyments may come within your reach. I furely cannot but with all evil removed from a houfe which has afforded my miferies all the fuccour which attention and benevolence could give. I am forry not to owe fo much, but to fo little. What I can do, you may repay great reafon expect from, dearest Madam,

with

Your, &c.

LETTER CXLVI.

Mrs. THRALE to Dr. JOHNSON.

MY DEAR SIR,

TH

Bath, May 3, 1776.

HIS month, which finds or makes every body else inclined to be cheerful, finds me with hope depreffed, forrow renewed, and affliction budding out where pleasure only fhould vegetate. This little girl's ftate of health hinders me from recovering the loss I fuftained in her brother.-What can ail her? I would have perfuaded Mr. Thrale to perfift in his intentions of travelling, had I not thought it dangerous to her; it would perhaps have been better for us; I mean for our health, not for our improvement, because going abroad to fee objects with a pre-occupied mind is mere lofs of time;-one remembers nothing one either fees or hears when in a ftate of affliction. Poor people have always bad memories, you may obferve;-how should they have good ones? their hearts are full,

poor

poor dears, no room for obfervation and attention, the two parents of memory; and indeed the happiest people, as far as my acquaintance has gone, have had the retentive powers of mind in much the greatest perfection. Baretti faid, you would be very angry because this dreadful event made us put off our Italian journey, but I knew you better. Who knows even now that 'tis deferred for ever? Mr. Thrale fays, he fhall not die in peace without seeing Rome, and I am fure he will go no-where that he can help without you.

Let us try to heal our hearts first ;—mine is always cracking again though, as soon as it begins to fkin over; and Dr. Woodward gave me a very interesting and rational account of the effect grief has upon the heart this very morning. When your mind is firmly fixed to one subject, said he, you forbear to draw your breath for several moments, and then repair the fufpenfion by a long and deep figh; this long continued checks the blood's courfe through the pulmonary artery, and gives the variation of the pulfe which attends agitated and diftreffed minds; a cough fucceeds, in confequence of the lungs being affected, while

the heart gets concretions or collections of water in its pericardium-the bag which furrounds it, as I understand; so that our vulgar expreffion of forrow breaking one's heart is founded on fact and nature. He told me too, that numberless patients die ultimately of grief-their exit being attributed to the immediate caufe only, instead of the remote one. He has ordered my poor master and me to jump every morning into a cold bath; we have here a remarkably fine one. Meantime do not suspect me for being likely to provoke Heaven's judgments on my daughters, by fretting unneceffarily for the lofs of my fon. I feel ten times fonder of them than ever I felt before, and am defirous to live for their fake and their father's.

Pray bring or fend us your cluster of political writings, for I love them dearly—not as political writings, but as vehicles for truth and fentiment on twenty, ay fifty fubjects with which politicks have nothing to do.

Should you write about Streatham and Croydon, the book would be as good to me as a journey to Rome, exactly; for 'tis Johnson, not Falkland's iflands, that interefts us, and

your