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Mr.

Richard Yates came to speak about a servant. Yates suggested a voyage to Jamaica, an idea which had occurred to me, and which I fondly encourage. Dr. Sutherland' came in the evening, and expressed surprise at my distressed countenance. Mr. Studley Martin came afterwards. At that time I was quite overcome with pain and misery, so that I could not suppress my tears. Dr. Sutherland opposed the Jamaica dream by stating the expensiveness of that Island.

3rd. Sunday.

Applied a blister to the swelling in the neck. It gave me great pain till about the middle of the night, when the inflammation began to abate. Saw nobody-what a holy town this is !

4th.

The night not very bad, considering my state.

5th.

Rather better upon the whole; but unable to do anything regularly.-Mitchell's Aristophanes,—a rather exaggerated work: the specimens printed for private distribution by Mr. Hookham Frere are far superior: the political prejudices which break out every where make the work unpleasant. Who would have mentioned Mr. Mitchell's scholarship, if he had taken the popular side? That he is a good first class

man, is true; but how many such men may be found at Oxford (much more at Cambridge), at any time. His admiration of Mitford is absurd. Is there any person of moderate taste who can read his Grecian History? I read it through in the blindness of Oxonian faith; but when I tried it a second time I could not get on.

6th.

A tolerable night, and not much tormented in the morning. At seven in the evening I was seized with great pain in the back.

At no period of my life have I made greater efforts to be patient than at present. The ordinary absence of all but mercenary persons is the most bitter part of my life.

8th.

Pains on the increase: the frost very violent. My mind is this morning full of the sufferings of the Poor are they less the children of God than myself? No. I must not repine.

:

Jan. 9th.

Sent my finally corrected Memoirs to Mr. Thom.

Thursday. Jan. 14th.

In very low spirits. I am reading Abdy's Journal

on the United States, a work that convinces me of the existence of national moral diseases. The antipathy to the Negroes and their most distant descendants is a kind of madness. Much as I love liberty, I would not live within the Union, just because I love liberty. The United States are under the tyranny of ignorance and prejudice. I had sooner live under a Sultan. A Mob is the worst of Tyrants, because a Mob has no individuality. A Mob is a sort of Monster, a tertium quid, resulting from passion and freedom, or rather from unchecked passion mistaken for freedom.

Jan. 19th.

Pretty well, but exceedingly low.—I feel very strongly that, in all circumstances of life, but especially in cases of distressing and hopeless illness, no evil is equal to that of losing self-command, and surrendering oneself to the power of the incumbent evil. The only check to the agony of despair which threatens me, is a deeply felt horror of such a state of mind.

.

22nd.

I am falling asleep with the pen in my hand, which draws involuntary lines.

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I have frequently observed that active kindnessthat attachment which sacrifices personal comfort to the relief of suffering persons, has long been on the decline in England. Refinement has destroyed it. People have, on the one hand, adopted the hospitality of dinner parties, and limited, on the other, that true hospitality which relieves the peculiar sufferings of the stranger. Few, in former times, were left to die in lodgings; and there are instances of persons who, though they had a wife, were allowed to go to die under the roof of a friend. See the death of Mr. Bewley, in Rutt's Life of Priestley, vol. i. p. 79. Finding himself dying, he made a journey from Norfolk to Birmingham, accompanied by Mrs. Bewley, in order to see Dr. Priestley, and after spending about a week with him, he went to his friend, Dr. Burney, and at his house he died. Were it not for Orthodoxy, I believe I might go to die at 's, who belongs to a former state of things; but the Trinity stands in my way.

My dear Sir,

To Dr. Channing.

Liverpool, January 28th, 1841.

The difficulty and pain with which I guide my pen have been so much upon the increase, that nothing but absolute necessity has forced me to undergo the fatigue of writing a letter. The last work of yours on Slavery, which I received from your kindness two or three days ago, has filled me with such spirits that I must write a few lines to congratulate you upon the great merit of that composition. It appears to me to rise above argument, and to derive its powers of conviction from an intuition of our own nature beheld in the intimate connection of God with our soul. I hope I am not employing vain words. I should think very lowly of any one who had never attached some deep sense to the notion of the Oracle within us-that ultimate ground and foundation of our moral being. No argument, indeed, can be sound which has not that internal perception for its basis. All the rest may be accommodated to circumstances and expediency.-Slavery has nothing to fear from mere logic; but it trembles at the plain voice of that moral indignation which makes mankind ashamed of weighing the value of some casks of sugar, against the pangs and the degradation of slavery. Be sure, my dear Sir, that "wheresoever this Gospel" of human emancipation shall be preached, your works on slavery will be a most honourable memorial I never read any moral production that so filled up

of you.

my soul.

You gave me in your last letter some observations on Music, which I intended to have acknowledged; but the internal Lyre, to borrow the language of Socrates, has been unstrung within me. Large sums of money have been (in my opinion) wasted on the Bridgewater Treatises; yet no one has thought of Music as a proof of the intelligence and goodness of the Deity, though the relations of the musical ear with the vibrating bodies, are as fixed and as regular as

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