unconscious instrument of the Almighty's judgments to our house, is
restored to her senses; to a dreadful sense and recollection of what has
past, awful to her mind, and impressive (as it must be to the end of
life) but temper'd with religious resignation, and the reasonings of a
sound judgment, which in this early stage knows how to distinguish
between a deed committed in a transient fit of frenzy, and the terrible
guilt of a Mother's murther. I have seen her. I found her this morning
calm and serene, far very very far from an indecent forgetful serenity;
she has a most affectionate and tender concern for what has happend.
Indeed from the beginning, frightful and hopeless as her disorder
seemed, I had confidence enough in her strength of mind, and religious
principle, to look forward to a time when _even she_ might recover
tranquillity. God be praised, Coleridge, wonderful as it is to tell, I
have never once been otherwise than collected, and calm; even on the
dreadful day and in the midst of the terrible scene I preserved a
tranquillity, which bystanders may have construed into indifference, a
tranquillity not of despair; is it folly or sin in me to say that it was
a religious principle that _most_ supported me? I allow much to other
favorable circumstances. I felt that I had something else to do than to
regret; on that first evening my Aunt was lying insensible, to all
appearance like one dying,--my father, with his poor forehead plastered
over from a wound he had received from a daughter dearly loved by him,
and who loved him no less dearly,--my mother a dead and murder'd corpse
in the next room--yet was I wonderfully supported. I closed not my eyes
in sleep that night, but lay without terrors and without despair. I have
lost no sleep since. I had been long used not to rest in things of
sense, had endeavord after a comprehension of mind, unsatisfied with the
"ignorant present time," and this kept me up. I had the whole weight of
the family thrown on me, for my brother, little disposed (I speak not
without tenderness for him) at any time to take care of old age and