Page:Mrs. Siddons (IA mrssiddons00kennrich).pdf/221

Rh So worn out was she with misery and overwork, that the doctors recommended the quiet and bracing air of Cheltenham. We get a glimpse of her frame of mind in a letter addressed thence to her friend Mrs. Fitzhugh in June 1803:—

"The serenity of the place, the sweet air and scenery of my cottage, and the medicinal effect of the waters, have done some good to my shattered constitution. I am unable at times to reconcile myself to my fate. The darling being for whom I mourn is assuredly released from a life of suffering, and numbered among the blessed spirits made perfect. But to be separated for ever, in spite of reason, and in spite of religion, is at times too much for me. Give my love to dear Charles Moore, if you chance to see him. Have you read his beautiful account of my sweet Sally? It is done with a truth and modesty which has given me the sincerest of all pleasures that I am now allowed to feel, and assures me still more than ever that he who could feel and taste such excellence was worthy of the particular regard she had for him."

The life out of doors at Birch Farm, reading "under the haystack in the farm-yard," rambling in the fields, and "musing in the orchard," gradually soothed the poignancy of her grief. "Rising at six and going to bed at ten, has brought me to my comfortable sleep once more," she writes. "The bitterness and anguish of selfish grief begins to subside, and the tender recollections of excellence and virtues gone to the blessed place of their eternal reward, are now the sad though sweet companions of my lonely walks."

In spite of all her stoicism and resolve, however, the