e same gentleman upon a mournful occasion.

'To MR. JAMES ELPHINSTON.

September 25, 1750.

'DEAR SIR, You have, as I find by every kind of evidence, lost an
excellent mother; and I hope you will not think me incapable of
partaking of your grief. I have a mother, now eighty-two years of age,
whom, therefore, I must soon lose, unless it please GOD that she
rather should mourn for me. I read the letters in which you relate your
mother's death to Mrs. Strahan, and think I do myself honour, when I
tell you that I read them with tears; but tears are neither to YOU nor
to ME of any further use, when once the tribute of nature has been paid.
The business of life summons us away from useless grief, and calls us to
the exercise of those virtues of which we are lamenting our deprivation.
The greatest benefit which one friend can confer upon another, is to
guard, and excite, and elevate his virtues. This your mother will still
perform, if you diligently preserve the memory of her life, and of her
death: a life, so far as I can learn, useful, wise, and innocent; and
a death resigned, peaceful, and holy. I cannot forbear to mention, that
neither reason nor revelation denies you to hope, that you may increase
her happiness by obeying her precepts; and that she may, in her
present state, look with pleasure upon every act of virtue to which her
instructions or example have contributed. Whether this be more than a
pleasing dream, or a just opinion of separate spirits, is, indeed, of no
great importance to us, when we consider ourselves as acting under the
eye of GOD: yet, surely, there is something pleasing in the belief, that
our separation from those whom we love is merely corporeal; and it
may be a great incitement to virtuous friendship, if it can be made
probable, that that union that has received the divine approbation shall
continue to eternity.

'There is one expedient by which you may, in some degree, continue her
presence. If you write down minutely what you remember of her from your
earliest years, you will read it with great pleasure, and receive from
it many hints of soothing recollection, when time shall remove her yet
farther from you, and your grief shall be matured to veneration. To
this, however painful for the present, I cannot but advise you, as to a
source of comfort and satisfaction in the time to come; for all comfort
and all satisfaction is sincerely wished you by, dear Sir, your most
obliged, most obedient