ay may be brought against us,
and make us groan, as they very lately did him--that is to say, while he
had strength to groan; for now his voice is not to be heard; all inward,
lost; not so much as speaking by his eyes; yet, strange! how can it be?
the bed rocking under him like a cradle.

FOUR O'CLOCK.

Alas: he's gone! that groan, that dreadful groan,
Was the last farewell of the parting mind!
The struggling soul has bid a long adieu
To its late mansion--Fled! Ah! whither fled?

Now is all indeed over!--Poor, poor Belton! by this time thou knowest if
thy crimes were above the size of God's mercies! Now are every one's
cares and attendance at an end! now do we, thy friends,--poor Belton!--
know the worst of thee, as to this life! Thou art released from
insufferable tortures both of body and mind! may those tortures, and thy
repentance, expiate for thy offences, and mayest thou be happy to all
eternity!

We are told, that God desires not the death, the spiritual death of a
sinner: And 'tis certain, that thou didst deeply repent! I hope,
therefore, as thou wert not cut off in the midst of thy sins by the sword
of injured friendship, which more than once thou hadst braved, [the
dreadfullest of all deaths, next to suicide, because it gives no
opportunity for repentance] that this is a merciful earnest that thy
penitence is accepted; and that thy long illness, and dreadful agonies in
the last stages of it, were thy only punishment.

I wish indeed, I heartily wish, we could have seen one ray of comfort
darting in upon his benighted mind, before he departed. But all, alas!
to the very last gasp, was horror and confusion. And my only fear arises
from this, that, till within the four last days of his life, he could not
be brought to think he should die, though in a visible decline for
months; and, in that presumption, was too little inclined to set about a
serious preparation for a journey, which he hoped he should not be
obliged to take; and when he began to apprehend that he could not put it
off, his impatience, and terror, and apprehension, showed too little of
that reliance and resignation, which afford the most comfortable
reflections to the friends of the dying, as well as to the dying
themselves.

But we must leave poor Belton to that mercy, of which we have all so much
need; and, for my own part (do you, Lovelace, and the rest of the
fraternity, as ye will) I am resolved, I will ende