Page:Records of the Life of the Rev. John Murray.djvu/119

Rh the object of my soul's devout and sincere affection, her lovely offspring swelling the rapture of the scene, a male and female domestic attached to our persons, and faithful to our interest; and the pleasing hope, that I should enjoy a long succession of these delights. Now I was alone in the world; no wife, no child, no domestics, no home; nothing but the ghosts of my departed joys. In religion, and religion only, the last resort of the wretched, I found the semblance of repose; religion taught me to contemplate the state, to which I was hastening; my dreams presented my departed Eliza; I saw her in a variety of views, but in every view celestial: sometimes she was still living, but in haste to be gone; sometimes she descended upon my imagination, an heavenly visitant, commissioned to conduct me home; and so much of felicity did I derive from those dreams, that I longed for the hour of repose, that I might reiterate the visionary bliss.

But new embarrassments awaited me; doctors, apothecaries, grocers, &c. &c. advanced with their bills; yet I was not much affected, I was overwhelmed by far greater afflictions. My health had greatly suffered. My sight, by excess of sorrow,—so said my physician,—was almost gone. Often have I traversed George's-Fields, where many have met death on the point of the foot-pad's dagger, in the mournful hope of meeting a similar fate; forgetting, in the state to which I was reduced, that, in thus devoting myself to destruction, I indubitably ranked with the self-murderer. The eldest brother of my departed friend continued, from the period of his sister's demise, uniformly kind; through his instrumentality, many of my most pressing debts were discharged. My mind seemed subdued; it became a fit residence for sorrow, when I received a letter from Ireland, written by my brother James. Many of our family were numbered with the dead; of all her children, my mother had now only three surviving sons, and two daughters. My eldest sister was married; and my mother, leaving our common property in her care, was about to repair with her youngest daughter, and two sons, to England. She was not apprized of the death of my Eliza. I had written her, that I was blest with a most lovely, and exemplary companion; but from the death of my son, and the farther, and entire prostration of my terrestrial happiness, I had suspended my communications. I was now again necessitated to take a house; my mother and my brothers resided with me; and my sister with a lady, to whom she had been introduced in Ireland. She soon after married, and, as I believed imprudently, and I saw her no more. I now lived a mournful life; the world appeared to me in a very different