Belton turning his head
from him, Ah, Dick! (said he,) these are not the reflections of a dying
man!--What thou wilt one day feel, if it be what I now feel, will
convince thee that the evils before thee, and with thee, are more than
the effects of imagination.

I was called twice on Sunday night to him; for the poor fellow, when his
reflections on his past life annoy him most, is afraid of being left with
the women; and his eyes, they tell me, hunt and roll about for me.
Where's Mr. Belford?--But I shall tire him out, cries he--yet beg of him
to step to me--yet don't--yet do; were once the doubting and changeful
orders he gave: and they called me accordingly.

But, alas! What could Belford do for him? Belford, who had been but too
often the companion of his guilty hours; who wants mercy as much as he
does; and is unable to promise it to himself, though 'tis all he can bid
his poor friend rely upon!

What miscreants are we! What figures shall we make in these terrible
hours!

If Miss HARLOWE'S glorious example, on one hand, and the terrors of this
poor man's last scene on the other, affect me not, I must be abandoned to
perdition; as I fear thou wilt be, if thou benefittest not thyself from
both.

Among the consolatory things I urged, when I was called up the last time
on Sunday night, I told him, that he must not absolutely give himself up
to despair: that many of the apprehensions he was under, were such as the
best men must have, on the dreadful uncertainty of what was to succeed to
this life. 'Tis well observed, said I, by a poetical divine, who was an
excellent christian,* That

Death could not a more sad retinue find,
Sickness and pain before, and darkness all behind.

* The Rev Mr. Norris, of Bremerton.

About eight o'clock yesterday (Monday) morning, I found him a little
calmer. He asked me who was the author of the two lines I had repeated
to him; and made me speak them over again. A sad retinue, indeed! said
the poor man. And then expressing his hopelessness of life, and his
terrors at the thoughts of dying; and drawing from thence terrible
conclusions with regard to his future state; There is, said I, such a
natural aversion to death in human nature, that you are not to imagine,
that you, my dear Belton, are singular in the fear of it, and in the
apprehensions that fill the thoughtful mind upon its approach; but you
ought, as much as possible, to separate those natural fears