There is a something which I dread,
It is a dark, a fearful thing;
It steals along with withering tread.
Or sweeps on wild destruction's wing.

That thought comes o'er me in the hour,
Of grief, of sickness, or of sadness;
'Tis not the dread of death,--'tis more,
It is the dread of madness.

Oh, may these throbbing pulses pause
Forgetful of their feverish course;
May this hot brain, which burning, glows,
With all a fiery whirlpool's force,

Be cold, and motionless, and still
A tenant of its lowly bed;
But let not dark delirium steal--

* * * * *

The stanzas with which Kirke White's fragment of the "Christiad"
concludes, are not so painful as these lines. Had this however been more
than a transient feeling, it would have produced the calamity which it
dreaded: it is likely, indeed, that her early death was a dispensation
of mercy, and saved her from the severest of all earthly inflictions;
and that same merciful Providence which removed her to a better state of
existence, made these apprehensions give way to a hope and expectation
of recovery, which, vain as it was, cheered some of her last hours. When
she was forbidden to read it was a pleasure to her to handle the books
which composed her little library, and which she loved so dearly. "She
frequently took them up and kissed them; and at length requested them to
be placed at the foot of her bed, where she might constantly see them,"
and anticipating a revival which was not to be, of the delight she
should feel in reperusing them, she said often to her mother, "what a
feast I shall have by-and-bye." How these words must have gone to that
poor mother's heart, they only can understand who have heard such like
anticipations of recovery from a dear child, and not been able, even
whilst hoping against hope, to partake them.

When sensible at length of her approaching dissolution, she looked
forward to it without alarm; not alone in that peaceful state of mind
which is the proper reward of innocence, but in reliance on the divine
promises, and in hope of salvation through the merits of our blessed
Lord and Saviour. The last name which she pronounced was that of the
gentleman whose bounty she had experienced, and towards whom she always
felt the utmost gratitude. Gradually sinking under her malady, she
passed away on the 27th of August, 1825, before she had completed her
seventeenth y