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mountain torrents would have been aggravated into horror. The voice of your tenantry, breaking in as it did with unprecedented importunity on the performance of divine service at the opening of your church, had it not been heard with favour, would have sounded like the knell of all that was worth living for. Yet their necessities, their sorrow, their loss, would at length have roused you from your stupor, and taught you to find your own relief, in the habitual employment of administering to their wants.
Besides this comparison of my own, with the probable or actual circumstances of others, I bore my disappointment the better for the recollection, that personal regards are selfish. If my thoughts were disposed to dwell on the mortifying idea, that society might have lost an ornament derived to it through me, they were soon checked, and ashamed of their presumption. Topics of private bewailing or condolence, of whatever magnitude they may appear to the in-
