Mrs. Oakes arrived at Bury last Sunday fortnight; and on Sunday se’nnight she broke a blood-vessel and brought up two spoonfuls, and on Saturday evening last had another smaller attack. My own fear and opinion is that it will end fatally. Her fatigue coming from Bath and Bristol, and at London, contrary to advice, has caused it. I have prayed most earnestly for her. Oh! may the Lord of all mercy hear and grant my petitions. My thoughts are all employed on the state of her soul. The long intimacy and friendship I have had for her, and the kindness and attention I have ever received from her, now lacerate the heart with wounds that sink deep; and my conscience reproaches me that I have not done all that I might have done to turn her heart more to God. _May 18._—I am very, very unhappy, and cannot think of her without wretchedness. In every worldly respect what a loss will she be to me! A placid, sweet temper, with a good understanding; that ever rec^d. [received] me with kindness, and attention, and preference, with whom I was at my ease, and where I could be at any time; a resource in blindness fast coming on that would have been great. The hope has fled and a sad and dreary vacancy, which freezes me, is in its place. _May 19._—Good news though not of better health. Hastead has been with her, to be sure, by desire, which shows an attention to her soul. Poor thing! she has been bled twice more, and the blood as highly inflamed as ever; bleeding gives relief to her lungs. The Duke of Bedford and Mr. Coke [have written] desiring me to go to Woburn and Holkham; but all great meetings, and anything like festivity, have for some years become so insipid and disagreeable that I shall have done with them wholly. They, like so many other things, are links of that worldly harness which it is high time for me to throw down for ever. _June 1._—Read the ‘Edinburgh Review’ on ‘Cœlebs in Search of a Wife,’ by Sydney Smith. Wretched stuff; false and frivolous, reasoning on cards, assemblies, plays,[239] &c. _June 3._—Yesterday, as the ‘Edinburgh Review’ was read to me, I was much struck with a reference to Necker on the finances, saying that 7,000 pedigrees of the nobility in the archives of the old Government were destroyed in the Revolution. It occurred at once to me that this was the exact number of _names_ of _men_ slain in Revelations. It is in the eleventh chapter: ‘The tenth part of the city fell in a great earthquake, and 7,000, &c.’ The commentators all seem to have reckoned France as the tenth part of the city; but of the names of men they knew not what to make, but 7,000 pedigrees answer to a wonderful degree, and the coincidence of numbers is truly amazing.