stly
desired her company, to soften the severe affliction of the loss of so
excellent a mother, and once or twice more, the power which this lady
had over Mrs. Rowe, drew her, with an obliging kind of violence,
to spend a few months with her in the country. Yet, even on these
occasions she never quitted her retreat without sincere regret, and
always returned to it, as soon as she could with decency disengage
herself from the importunity of her noble friends. It was in this
recess that she composed the most celebrated of her works, in twenty
Letters from the Dead to the Living; the design of which is to impress
the notion of the soul's immortality, without which all virtue and
religion, with their temporal and eternal good conferences must fall
to the ground.

* * * * *

Some who pretend to have no scruples about the being of a God, have
yet doubts about their own eternal existence, though many authors have
established it, both by christian and moral proofs, beyond reasonable
contradiction. But since no means should be left untried, in a point
of such awful importance, a virtuous endeavour to make the mind
familiar with the thoughts of immortality, and contract as it were
unawares, an habitual persuasion of it, by writings built on that
foundation, and addressed to the affections, and imagination, cannot
be thought improper, either as a doctrine or amusement: Amusement, for
which the world makes so large a demand, and which generally speaking
is nothing but an art of forgetting that immortality, the form,
belief, and advantageous contemplation, of which this higher amusement
would recommend.

In the year 1736, the importunity of some of Mrs. Rowe's acquaintance
who had seen the History of Joseph in MS. prevailed on her to print
it. The publication of this piece did not long precede the time of her
death, to prepare for which had been the great business of her life;
and it stole upon her according to her earnest wishes, in her
beloved recess. She was favoured with a very uncommon strength of
constitution, and had pass'd a long series of years with scarce any
indisposition, severe enough to confine her to bed.----But about half
a year before her decease, she was attacked with a distemper, which
seemed to herself as well as others, attended with danger. Tho' this
disorder found her mind not quite so serene and prepared to meet death
as usual; yet when by devout contemplation, she had forti