"We were happy--poor, but content. Poverty was no evil to me, and Edwin supported every privation as if he had never been accustomed to luxury. The spirit that had caused him to shake off the shackles his bigoted family threw over him, animated him to exertions beyond his strength. He had chosen for himself--he wished to prove that his choice was good. I do not allude to our marriage, but to his desertion of the family religion, and determination to follow a career not permitted by the policy of his relations to any younger son. He was called to the bar--he toiled incessantly--he was ambitious, and his talents gave every promise of success. He is gone--gone for ever! I have lost the noblest, wisest friend that ever breathed, the most devoted lover, and truest husband that ever blessed woman! "I write incoherently. You know what our life in London was--obscure, but happy--the scanty pittance allowed him seemed to me amply to suffice for all our wants; I only then knew of the wants of youth and health, which were love and sympathy. I had all this, crowning to the brim my cup of life--the birth of our sweet child filled it to overflowing. Our dingy lodgings, near the courts of law, were a palace to me; I should have despised myself heartily could I have desired anything beyond what I possessed. I never did--nor did I fear its loss. I was grateful to Heaven, and thus I fancied that I paid the debt of my unmeasured prosperity. "Can I say what I felt when I marked Edwin's restless nights, flushed cheek, and the cough that would not go away? these things I dare not dwell upon--my tears overflow--my heart beats to bursting--the fatal truth was at last declared; the fatal word, consumption, spoken: change of air was all the hope held out--we came here; the churchyard near holds now all earthly that remains of him--would that my dust were mingling with his! "Yet I have a child, my Alithea; and you, who are incomparable as a mother, will feel that I ought not to grieve so bitterly while this dear angel remains to me. I know, indeed, that without her life would at once suspend all its functions; why, then, is it, that while she is with me I am not stronger, more heroic? for, to keep her with me, I must leave the indolence of my present life--I must earn the bread of both. I should not repine at this--I shall not when I am better; but I am very ill and weak; and though each day I rise, resolving to exert myself, before the morning has passed away I lie down exhausted, trembling, and faint.