“The serenity of the place, the sweet air and scenery of my cottage, and the medicinal effect of the waters, have done some good to my shattered constitution. I am unable at times to reconcile myself to my fate. The darling being for whom I mourn is assuredly released from a life of suffering, and numbered among the blessed spirits made perfect. But to be separated for ever, in spite of reason, and in spite of religion, is at times too much for me. Give my love to dear Charles Moore, if you chance to see him. Have you read his beautiful account of my sweet Sally? It is done with a truth and modesty which has given me the sincerest of all pleasures that I am now allowed to feel, and assures me still more than ever that he who could feel and taste such excellence was worthy of the particular regard she had for him.” The life out of doors at Birch Farm, reading “under the haystack in the farm-yard,” rambling in the fields, and “musing in the orchard,” gradually soothed the poignancy of her grief. “Rising at six and going to bed at ten, has brought me to my comfortable sleep once more,” she writes. “The bitterness and anguish of selfish grief begins to subside, and the tender recollections of excellence and virtues gone to the blessed place of their eternal reward, are now the sad though sweet companions of my lonely walks.” In spite of all her stoicism and resolve, however, the sense of her loss would come back, carrying away all artificial barriers of restraint. “If he thinks himself unfortunate,” she wrote of a friend, “let him look on _me_ and be silent—‘the inscrutable ways of Providence.’ Two lovely creatures gone, and another is just arrived from school with all the dazzling frightful sort of beauty that irradiated the countenance of Maria, and makes me shudder when I look at her. I feel myself like poor Niobe grasping to her bosom the last and youngest of her children; and, like her, look every moment for the vengeful arrow of destruction. Alas! my dear Friend, can it be wondered at that I long for the land where they are gone to prepare their mother’s place? What have I here? Yet here, even here, I could be content to linger still in peace and calmness—content is all I wish. But I must again enter into the bustle of the world; for though fame and fortune have given me all I wish, yet while my presence and my exertions here may be useful to others, I do not think myself at liberty to give myself up to my own selfish gratification. The second great commandment is ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself,’ and in this way I shall most probably best make my way to Heaven.”