I cannot bear to be silent longer, though I know full well--no one
better I think--how your love for him, and your trust in God, and your
love for your children will have come to the help of such a nature as
yours, and whispered better things than any friendship can, however
faithful and affectionate.
We held him so close in our hearts--all of us here--and have been so
happy with him, and so used to say how good he was, and what a gentle,
generous, noble spirit he had, and how he shone out among commoner men
as something so real and genuine, and full of every kind of worthiness,
that it has often brought the tears into my eyes to talk of him; we have
been so accustomed to do this when we looked forward to years of
unchanged intercourse, that now, when everything but truth goes down
into the dust, those recollections which make the sword so sharp pour
balm into the wound. And if it be a consolation to us to know the
virtues of his character, and the reasons that we had for loving him, O
how much greater is your comfort who were so devoted to him, and were
the happiness of his life!
We have thought of you every day and every hour; we think of you now in
the dear old house, and know how right it is, for his dear children's
sake, that you should have bravely set up your rest in the place
consecrated by their father's memory, and within the same summer shadows
that fall upon his grave. We try to look on, through a few years, and to
see the children brightening it, and George a comfort and a pride and an
honour to you; and although it _is_ hard to think of what we have lost,
we know how something of it will be restored by your example and
endeavours, and the blessing that will descend upon them. We know how
the time will come when some reflection of that cordial, unaffected,
most affectionate presence, which we can never forget, and never would
forget if we could--such is God's great mercy--will shine out of your
boy's eyes upon you, his best friend and his last consoler, and fill the
void there is now.
May God, who has received into His rest through this affliction as good
a man as ever I can know and love and mourn for on this earth, be good
to you, dear friends, through these coming years! May all those
compassionate and hopeful lessons of the great Teacher who shed divine
tears for the dead bring their full comfort to you! I have no fear of
that, my confidence is certainty.
I cannot write what I wish; I had so many things to say, I seem to have
said none. It is so with the remembrances we send. I cannot put them
into words.
If you should ever set up a record in the little church, I would try to
word it myself, and God knows out of the fulness of my heart, if you
should think it well.
My dear Friend,
Yours, with the truest affection and sympathy.
[Sidenote: Mr. W. C. Macready.]
HOTEL DES BAINS, BOULOGNE,
_Tuesday Night, Oct. 5th, 1852._