If, before we condemned others, we looked into our own hearts, we are likely to become more charitable and more humble at the same moment, and our own conduct necessarily becomes more guarded. But with your mother, my Emmeline, and your open heart--unsophisticated as it may be--you will never go far wrong. Mamma is looking anxiously at me, as if she feared I am exerting myself too much. I feel my cheeks are painfully flushed, and therefore I will obey her gentle hint. Farewell, my Emmeline; may you long be spared the sorrows that have lately wrung the heart of your attached and constant friend, MARY GREVILLE. _From Mrs. Hamilton to Miss Greville_. London, March 20th. Your letter to Emmeline, my dear young friend, I have read with feelings both of pain and pleasure, and willingly, most willingly, do I comply with your request, that I would write to you, however briefly. Your despondency is natural, and yet it is with delight I perceive through its gloom those feelings of faith and duty, which your sense of religion has made so peculiarly your own. I sympathise, believe me, from my heart, in those trials which your very delicate health renders you so little able to bear. I will not endeavour by words of consolation to alleviate their severity, for I know it would be in vain. In your earliest youth I endeavoured to impress upon your mind that we are not commanded to check every natural feeling. We are but told to pour before God our trouble, to lean on His mercy, to trust in His providence, to restrain our lips from murmuring, and if we do so, though our tears may fall, and our heart feel breaking, yet our prayers will be heard and accepted on high. It is not with you, my poor girl, the weak indulgence of sorrow that ever prostrates you on a couch of suffering, it is the struggle of resignation and concealment that is too fierce for the delicacy of your constitution; and do you not think that strife is marked by Him, who, as a father, pitieth His children? Painful as it is to you, my dear Mary, your sufferings may be in a degree a source of mercy to your mother. Agonizing as it is to the heart of a parent, to watch the fevered couch of a beloved child, yet had she not that anxiety, the conduct of your father and brother might present still deeper wretchedness. For your sake, she dismisses the harrowing thoughts that would otherwise be her own; for your sake, she rallies her own energies, which else might desert her; and when you are restored to her, when, in those intervals of peace which are sometimes your own, she sees you in health, and feels your constant devotion, believe me, there is a well of comfort, of blessed comfort in her fond heart, of which nothing can deprive her. For her sake, then, my dearest Mary, try to conquer this reluctance to leave England. I do not reproach your grief, for I know that it is natural. But endeavour to think that this residence for a few years on the Continent, may restore your mother to a degree of