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idea that any evil, as you suppose, can have befallen those you loved, it means a very material abatement of your grief. For then there will only be left you that exclusive feeling of personal sorrow, in which they can have no share, but which begins and ends with yourself alone. But surely, in regard to that, it no longer becomes the moral dignity and wisdom you have exhibited from your boyhood, to be inordinately impatient of the troubles that have befallen yourself, when they have no connexion whatever with any misery or evil that may have befallen those to whom you were so devoted. The fact is that you have ever proved yourself, both in private and in public life, to be such that you are bound to maintain your high character, and obey the dictates of consistency. For whatever alleviation the lapse of time of itself is bound to bring us, obliterating in its course the most deep-seated of sorrows, that, I say, it is our duty by wisdom and foresight to forestall.

⁶ And again, if there never was a woman, when bereft of her children, so feeble in character as not, sooner or later, to make an end of her mourning, surely we men ought to anticipate by our wisdom what the passage of days is sure to bring us, and not to wait for time to apply the remedy which reason enables us to apply at this very moment.

If this letter of mine has done you any good, I feel that I have achieved something that I had at heart; but if by any chance it has not the desired effect, I still feel that I have played the part of a very sincere well-wisher and friend; and that is what I should like you to believe I have always been to you, and to rest assured that I shall continue to be.