How welcome to me, my dear Eliza, are the tidings of your return! My
widowed heart has mourned your absence, and languished for the company
of its now dearest connection. When stripped of one dependence, the mind
naturally collects and rests itself in another. Your father's death
deprived me, for a while, of every enjoyment. But a reviving sense of
the duties which I owed to a rising family roused me from the lethargy
of grief. In my cares I found an alleviation of my sorrows. The
expanding virtues of my children soothed and exhilarated my drooping
spirits, and my attention to their education and interest was amply
rewarded by their proficiency and duty. In them every hope, every
pleasure, now centres. They are the axis on which revolves the temporal
felicity of their mother. Judge, then, my dear, how anxiously I must
watch, how solicitously I must regard, every circumstance which relates
to their welfare and prosperity! Exquisitely alive to these sensations,
your letter awakens my hopes and my fears. As you are young and
charming, a thousand dangers lurk unseen around you. I wish you to find
a friend and protector worthy of being rewarded by your love and your
society. Such a one I think Mr. Boyer will prove. I am, therefore,
sorry, since there can be no other, that his profession should be an
objection in your mind. You say that I have experienced the scenes of
trial connected with that station. I have, indeed; and I will tell you
the result of this experience. It is, that I have found it replete with
happiness. No class of society has domestic enjoyment more at command
than clergymen. Their circumstances are generally a decent competency.
They are removed alike from the perplexing cares of want and from the
distracting parade of wealth. They are respected by all ranks, and
partakers of the best company. With regard to its being a dependent
situation, what one is not so? Are we not all links in the great chain
of society, some more, some less important, but each upheld by others,
throughout the confederated whole? In whatever situation we are placed,