ness. Farewell! Sky, and
fields and woods; the lovely flowers that grow on thee; thy mountains
& thy rivers; to the balmy air and the strong wind of the north, to
all, a last farewell. I shall shed no more tears for my task is almost
fulfilled, and I am about to be rewarded for long and most burthensome
suffering. Bless thy child even even [_sic_] in death, as I bless
thee; and let me sleep at peace in my quiet grave."

I feel death to be near at hand and I am calm. I no longer despair,
but look on all around me with placid affection. I find it sweet to
watch the progressive decay of my strength, and to repeat to myself,
another day and yet another, but again I shall not see the red leaves
of autumn; before that time I shall be with my father. I am glad
Woodville is not with me for perhaps he would grieve, and I desire to
see smiles alone during the last scene of my life; when I last wrote
to him I told him of my ill health but not of its mortal tendency,
lest he should conceive it to be his duty to come to me for I fear
lest the tears of friendship should destroy the blessed calm of my
mind. I take pleasure in arranging all the little details which will
occur when I shall no longer be. In truth I am in love with death; no
maiden ever took more pleasure in the contemplation of her bridal
attire than I in fancying my limbs already enwrapt in their shroud:
is it not my marriage dress? Alone it will unite me to my father when
in an eternal mental union we shall never part.

I will not dwell on the last changes that I feel in the final decay of
nature. It is rapid but without pain: I feel a strange pleasure in it.
For long years these are the first days of peace that have visited me.
I no longer exhaust my miserable heart by bitter tears and frantic
complaints; I no longer the [_sic_] reproach the sun, the earth, the
air, for pain and wretchedness. I wait in quiet expectation for the
closing hours of a life which has been to me most sweet & bitter. I do
not die not having enjoyed life; for sixteen years I was happy: during
the first months of my father's return I had enjoyed ages of pleasure:
now indeed I am grown old in grief; my steps are feeble like those of
age; I have become peevish and unfit for life; so having passed little
more than twenty years upon the earth I am more fit for my narrow
grave than many are when they reach the natural term of their lives.

Again and again I have passed over in my remembrance the d