you, a stubborn irresistible concurrence of events? or lies the fault,
as I fear it does, in your own mind? You seem to be taking up splendid
schemes of fortune only to lay them down again, and your fortunes are an
ignis fatuus that has been conducting you, in thought, from Lancaster
Court, Strand, to somewhere near Matlock, then jumping across to Dr.
Somebody's whose son's tutor you were likely to be, and would to God the
dancing demon _may_ conduct you at last in peace and comfort to the
"life and labors of a cottager." You see from the above awkward
playfulness of fancy, that my spirits are not quite depressed; I should
ill deserve God's blessings, which since the late terrible event have
come down in mercy upon us, if I indulged regret or querulousness,--Mary
continues serene and chearful,--I have not by me a little letter she
wrote to me, for, tho' I see her almost every day yet we delight to
write to one another (for we can scarce see each other but in company
with some of the people of the house), I have not the letter by me but
will quote from memory what she wrote in it. "I have no bad terrifying
dreams. At midnight when I happen to awake, the nurse sleeping by the
side of me, with the noise of the poor mad people around me, I have no
fear. The spirit of my mother seems to descend, and smile upon me, and
bid me live to enjoy the life and reason which the Almighty has given
me--I shall see her again in heaven; she will then understand me better;
my Grandmother too will understand me better, and will then say no more,
as she used to do, 'Polly, what are those poor crazy moyther'd brains of
yours thinking of always?'"--Poor Mary, my Mother indeed _never
understood_ her right. She loved her, as she loved us all, with a
Mother's love; but in opinion, in feeling, and sentiment, and
disposition, bore so distant a resemblance to her daughter, that she
never understood her right. Never could believe how much _she_ loved
her--but met her caresses, her protestations of filial affection, too
frequently with coldness and repulse.--Still she was a good mother, God