[8] 'I have been very near death; and, at the time he threatened me most, it was the most earnest wish of my heart to meet and embrace him. But, I bless God, I am restored not only to life, but to a sense of the great mercy indulged me in the grant of a longer tern of trial.'--'You are so obligingly solicitous about my circumstances, that I would willingly inform you of the state of them, if I had any certainty about them. But my dear Mr. Chapone's affairs were left in great confusion and perplexity by his sudden death; which happened just at the time of year in which he should have settled his accounts, and made out his bills. As these are very considerable, his estate must suffer a great loss from this circumstance. At present, things are in a very melancholy state, and my own prospects such as would probably have appeared very dreadful to me at any other time.' _Mrs. Chapone to Miss Carter, December 6, 1761._ [9] King George III. and Queen Charlotte; his present Majesty, then Prince of Wales, and sixteen years old; Prince Frederic, Duke of York, then fifteen years old; Prince William, Duke of Clarence, then thirteen years old; Princess Royal, now Queen of Wirtemberg, then about fourteen years old, and Princess Augusta, then about ten years old. [10] Addressed by Mrs. Chapone to her friend Mrs. Carter. [11] 'Letters on the Improvement of the Mind.' They had been published five years then. [12] This young lady, of whom the reader must wish to know more, was the eldest daughter of Mrs. Chapone's second brother, John, who was Prebendary of the cathedrals of Winchester and Salisbury. She became attached to this niece in 1766, while on a visit at her home; wrote the Letters, to her, in 1772; and, stimulated by her literary friends, published them in 1773.--'I had great satisfaction,' writes Mrs. Chapone to Miss Carter, November 1797, 'in seeing my darling niece established in the happiest manner, at Winchester, with husband (Rev. Benjamin Jeffreys) who seems in every respect calculated to make her happy.' Mrs. Chapone passed the autumns 1797 and 1798 at the Deanery at Winchester. Here she awaited the approaching accouchement of her dearest niece, which was destined to terminate one or her fondest hopes. This last joy of her life, this child of her heart, was now torn from her, after the birth of a dead infant, in March 1799.