"The separation from my excellent wife, is a trial from which I should utterly shrink, were I not sustained by the Christian hope. When we married, we knew that we were not immortal. I have endeavored to familiarize to her and to myself the inevitable separation, by constantly keeping up in the minds of both the idea that one of us _must_ be the survivor. I have endeavored to make that idea supportable by the conviction that the survivorship will be short--the re-union certain--speedy--eternal. O _praeclarum diem_![5] etc., etc. How gloriously does Christianity exalt the rapture, by ennobling the objects of this sublime apostrophe!" [Footnote 5: See this whole beautiful passage in Cicero de Senectute] * * * * * "Friday the 20th. "As to the union of my son with Lucilla, you and I, my friend, have long learned from an authority higher than that classical one, of which we have frequently admired the expression, and lamented the application, that long views and remote hopes, and distant expectations become not so short-sighted, so short-lived a creature as man.[6] I trust, however; that our plans have been carried on with a complete conviction of this brevity; with an entire acquiescence in the will of the great arbiter of life and death. I have told Charles it is my wish that he should visit you soon after my death. I durst not command it--for this incomparable youth, who has sacrificed so much to his father, will find he has a mother worthy of still greater sacrifices. As soon as he can prevail on himself to leave her, you will see him. May he and your Lucilla behold each other with the eyes with which each of us views his own child! If they see each other with indifference, never let them know our wishes. It would perplex and hamper those to whom we wish perfect freedom of thought and action. If they conceive a mutual attachment, reveal our project. In such minds, it will strengthen that attachment. The approbation of a living and the desire of a deceased parent will sanctify their union. I must break off through weakness." [Footnote 6: Horace, in speaking of the brevity and uncertainty of life, seldom fails to produce it as an incentive to sensual indulgence. See particularly the fourth and eleventh Odes of the first book.] * * * * * "Monday, 23d.