ubject he
wished to have introduced, might have done them.

"The death of his only son, about six years ago, who had just entered
his eighth year, is the only interruption his family has had to a
felicity so unbroken, that I told Mr. Stanley some such calamity was
necessary to convince him that he was not to be put off with so poor a
portion as this world has to give. I added that I should have been
tempted to doubt his being in the favor of God, if he had totally
escaped chastisement. A circumstance which to many parents would have
greatly aggravated the blow, rather lightened it to him. The boy, had he
lived to be of age, was to have had a large independent fortune from a
distant relation, which will now go to a remote branch, unless there
should be another son. 'This wealth,' said he to me, 'might have proved
the boy's snare, and this independence his destruction. He who does all
things well has afflicted the parents, but he has saved the child.' The
loss of an only son, however, sat heavy on his heart, but it was the
means of enabling him to glorify God by his submission, I should rather
say, by his acquiescence. Submission is only yielding to what we can not
help. Acquiescence is a more sublime kind of resignation. It is a
conviction that the divine will is holy, just, and good. He once said to
me, 'We were too fond of the mercy, but not sufficiently grateful for
it. We loved him so passionately that we might have forgotten who
bestowed him. To preserve us from this temptation, God in great mercy
withdrew him. Let us turn our eyes from the one blessing we have lost,
to the countless mercies which are continued to us, and especially to
the hand which confers them; to the hand which, if we continue to
murmur, may strip us of our remaining blessings.'

"I can not," continued Dr. Barlow, "make a higher eulogium of Mrs.
Stanley than to say, that she is every way worthy of the husband whose
happiness she makes. They have a large family of lovely daughters of all
ages. Lucilla, the eldest, is near nineteen; you would think me too
poetical were I to say she adorns every virtue with every grace; and yet
I should only speak the simple truth. Ph[oe]be, who is just turned
fifteen, has not less vivacity and sweetness than her sister, but, from
her extreme naivete and warmheartedness, she has somewhat less
discretion; and her father says, that her education has afforded him,
not less pleasure, but more trouble, for the branches