objects; and who can doubt that the improvement of those who suffer by it is the principal one? I have never felt this so deeply with regard to any event that ever happened to me in life. I have never had so loud, so imperious a call. O my God, give me grace to profit by this call, to be made better by the mental exercises to which it has given rise!" At the end of 1838 we find Mary very happy, in gratitude for the past and cheerful hopes of the future, with sober but not sad thoughts of the recent sorrow. "_Cambridge, December 31, 1838._ "MY DEAR N----: "... O that blessed thing, Faith,--faith in the truth of friendship! Among other changes, I have not yet grown old enough to lose my youthful faith in those I love; and between you and me, I begin to suspect that I never shall. I certainly do not find myself, at forty, one whit nearer misanthropy than I was at sixteen. Is this symptomatic of folly at the very core? Or is it only the effect of my superior good luck in life? Whatever it may be, I bless God for it, for I find in it too much happiness to be willing to regret it, even if it be a weakness. * * * * * "_January 9._ Just so far had I got, when I found my eyes so dim and my head so giddy that I was compelled to go to bed. And there have I been most of the time since, quite sick with one of my old attacks upon the lungs, which threatened to keep me there the rest of the winter, if it did not end in lung fever, so obstinate and violent was my cough.... I have been living in the past very much lately, from having many of Harriet's letters to read. Some of them, written in Exeter, have brought before my mind people of whom I had not thought for years; and circumstances having intimate connection with events in which I was immediately interested at the time, have unfolded a long and beautiful page of life before me, which I seldom have opportunity to recall. O that Past! what stores of wisdom and happiness are not laid up in it! Why should it be that the busy bustle of the Present hides it so much from our sight? Should we not, by an effort, give ourselves more to its retrospection, that we may profit more by its teaching?...