Shut out as we are from the gay world, and living for weeks together without any interruption to our pursuits, even _you_ may perhaps wonder that time is not a burthen on our hands. Yet this is not the case; but on the contrary, the day appears scarcely set in before it has arrived at its close. Is this always the effect of full employment, or is it peculiar to the little circle at Glenalta to wish that the sun would stand still, and give more of his company?--I am too little acquainted with people and places beyond my own home to answer the question; and you are not here to do it for me; so now I will proceed with the causes of my long silence. Our dear friend, and invaluable neighbour, Mr. Otway, has been ill: thank heaven, he is quite recovered now.--This dear friend and your aunt are, I think, the only people on earth who for the last twelve years could have poured the balm of comfort into the desolate spirit of my beloved mother--the latter in becoming a tender parent to you and your sisters has had too much care connected with her immediate duties to admit of her being often with us; but what she, under different circumstances, _might_ have been, Mr. Otway has been; and what can we ever do sufficiently to prove our gratitude, as well as our affection? During his illness, which continued for three months, we shared, not only the task of nursing him with unremitting assiduity, but endeavoured to supply his place by undertaking the labours which, for a series of years, he has imposed upon himself. We took care of his schools, we visited his sick poor, we distributed his benefactions, became his deputies on the roads and in the fields; and resolved that, on his return to his gardens and plantations, he should find all things meeting him with that pleasant welcome which even the inanimate world is enabled to testify, when the hand of diligent affection has taught every shrub and flower to glow with its own emotions!--I know nothing more touching than such a reception, which needs no words to convince the object of our solicitude, how constantly the heart has been occupied in an endeavour to please by the cultivation of whatever might confer enjoyment; and the suppression of all that would be productive of pain.