I hope, my dear Miranda, this will be the last letter you will receive from me at Charleston. Poor Mr. Bowne arrived here on Thursday. Not a word had he heard, and owing to his having left New York he had not received a single very alarming letter. He was entirely unprepared for the shock which awaited him; never did I pity any one so. He is indeed borne down with the weight of his grief. But the violence I dreaded I see nothing of. There is no judging from the effect little troubles have upon people, how they will bear great ones. I know it by myself—I see it in him. He is more composed to-day, and we are making arrangements to get away. He is much gratified that we waited here for him, which we had some doubt about on account of the great expense in these houses. The Minerva, a very fine Packet, arrived from New York yesterday. We shall return in her. She will go in the course of a week or ten days. What a melancholy voyage! But yet I will not think so. I am going to my dear father and mother, my kind sisters,—indeed, ’tis a delightful thought. Your sister, O. BROWNE. Among the letters which were so carefully preserved by her daughter, Mrs. Lawrence, was found the following extract from a daily paper:— Died at Charleston, S. C., on the 19th ult., Mrs. Walter Bowne, consort of Walter Bowne, Esq., of New York, and daughter of the Hon. Robert Southgate, of Scarborough, Maine, aged 25 years. The Bereaved Husband and infant children, the afflicted parents, Brethren and sisters, and the numerous respectable friends and acquaintances by whom she was so justly respected and beloved for her talents and virtues, will deeply mourn this early signal triumph of the King of Terrors. But they will not “sorrow as those without hope.” Her immortal spirit, liberated from the body, is, we trust, already admitted to a clear and perfect, an immediate and positive, a soul-transforming and eternal vision of God and the Redeemer. Why the most endearing ties of nature should be dissolved almost as soon as formed, why the dreadful law of mortality should be executed on the most worthy and dearest objects of conjugal, parental, and social love, in the moment of sanguine expectation of reciprocal enjoyment, is among the dark and mysterious questions in the book of Providence. The ways of God are inscrutable to man, “clouds and darkness are round about him, yet righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne.” All afflictive events are readily resolved into the wisdom of God. To his sovereign will, reason and religion, duty and interest require us to bow with reverence. What a dark and gloomy veil is spread by the early death of our friends over our earthly enjoyments! How tenderly are we hereby admonished