ll, Sir Sun,
you look upon sorrow and suffering. Hogg was here yesterday in danger,
from having obtained an accommodation of L100 from Mr. Ballantyne, which
he is now obliged to repay. I am unable to help the poor fellow, being
obliged to borrow myself. But I long ago remonstrated against the
transaction at all, and gave him L50 out of my pocket to avoid granting
the accommodation, but it did no good.

_May_ 15.--Received the melancholy intelligence that all is over at
Abbotsford.

[_Abbotsford_,] _May_ 16.--She died at nine in the morning, after being
very ill for two days,--easy at last.

I arrived here late last night. Anne is worn out, and has had hysterics,
which returned on my arrival. Her broken accents were like those of a
child, the language, as well as the tones, broken, but in the most
gentle voice of submission. "Poor mamma--never return again--'gone for
ever--a better place." Then, when she came to herself, she spoke with
sense, freedom, and strength of mind, till her weakness returned. It
would have been inexpressibly moving to me as a stranger--what was it
then to the father and the husband? For myself, I scarce know how I
feel, sometimes as firm as the Bass Rock, sometimes as weak as the wave
that breaks on it.

I am as alert at thinking and deciding as I ever was in my life. Yet,
when I contrast what this place now is, with what it has been not long
since, I think my heart will break. Lonely, aged, deprived of my
family--all but poor Anne, an impoverished and embarrassed man, I am
deprived of the sharer of my thoughts and counsels, who could always
talk down my sense of the calamitous apprehensions which break the heart
that must bear them alone. Even her foibles were of service to me, by
giving me things to think of beyond my weary self-reflections.

I have seen her. The figure I beheld is, and is not, my Charlotte--my
thirty years' companion. There is the same symmetry of form, though
those limbs are rigid which were once so gracefully elastic--but that
yellow masque, with pinched features, which seems to mock life rather
than emulate it, can it be the face that was once so full of lively
expression? I will not look on it again. Anne thinks her little changed,
because the latest idea she had formed of her mother is as she appeared
under circumstances of sickness and pain. Mine go back to a period of
comparative health. If I write long in this way, I shall write down my
resolution, which I should