an excellence, and in poor Belton, how
all inhuman libertinism, and am near seeing in this abandoned woman, how
all diabolical profligacy, end. And glad should I be for your own sake,
for your splendid family's sake, and for the sake of all your intimates
and acquaintance, that you were labouring under the same impressions,
that so we who have been companions in (and promoters of one another's)
wickedness, might join in a general atonement to the utmost of our power.

I came home reflecting upon all these things, more edifying to me than
any sermon I could have heard preached: and I shall conclude this long
letter with observing, that although I left the wretched howler in a high
phrensy-fit, which was excessively shocking to the by-standers; yet her
phrensy must be the happiest part of her dreadful condition: for when she
is herself, as it is called, what must be her reflections upon her past
profligate life, throughout which it has been her constant delight and
business, devil-like, to make others as wicked as herself! What must her
terrors be (a hell already begun in her mind!) on looking forward to the
dreadful state she is now upon the verge of!--But I drop my trembling
pen.

To have done with so shocking a subject at once, we shall take notice,
that Mr. Belford, in a future letter, writes, that the miserable
woman, to the surprise of the operators themselves, (through hourly
increasing tortures of body and mind,) held out so long as till
Thursday, Sept. 21; and then died in such agonies as terrified into
a transitory penitence all the wretches about her.

LETTER XXVI

COLONEL MORDEN, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.
SUNDAY NIGHT, SEPT. 10.

DEAR SIR,

According to my promise, I send you an account of matters here. Poor
Mrs. Norton was so very ill upon the road, that, slowly as the hearse
moved, and the chariot followed, I was afraid we should not have got her
to St. Albans. We put up there as I had intended. I was in hopes that
she would have been better for the stop: but I was forced to leave her
behind me. I ordered the maid-servant you were so considerately kind as
to send down with her, to be very careful of her; and left the chariot to
attend her. She deserves all the regard that can be paid her; not only
upon my cousin's account, but on her own--she is an excellent woman.

When we were within five miles of Harlowe-place, I put on a hand-gallop.
I ordered the hearse t