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feature in her character, and which no doubt helped to sustain her under her numerous trials and difficulties.

I

"You will blame me very much for being so long in writing you, and indeed I am without excuse, therefore I shall not attempt to make one, but try to answer your kind letter the best way can, and I must thank you for your present, which was indeed a seasonable one, for my difficulties seem to multiply with my days. Edward, too, returns you many thanks for his psalm-book, with which he was much delighted; but you would have felt for poor James had you seen how disappointed he was; but he bade me thank you for your promise of sending him something, the choice of which he leaves to yourself, only he thinks psalm-books are very dear things, and perhaps a pistol would be cheaper; but you will see the impropriety of indulging this wish.

"You bid me write of all my ills, real or imaginary; but I have felt and daily feel so many of the real ills of life that I have no imaginary ones to complain of. But though my cup of life has been very bitter for these some years past,

still there has been mixed in it a drop of sweet now and then, and I dare not nor will not complain."

There also occurs in this letter the following pungent allusion to a dispute which had arisen between her eldest son as schoolmaster of Ormiston and his clerical supervisor :

"I am sorry to say that your brother has got embroiled with this overbearing priest of ours, who is positively the greatest fool that ever wore a black coat, and I expect nothing but a living plague of him as long as we are within his power. Had your brother nothing but himself to care for, it would give me no concern; but while he has so broad a mark for misfortune in his father's family hanging such a burden upon him, it distresses me very much.

"Your grandmother [the poet's mother, then resident with her son Gilbert at Grantsbraes near Haddington] is still confined to her bed, and I am afraid she will never be able to sit out

of it again; but she seems to have no ailment but the decay of nature. I had a letter

last week from your aunt Galt [her sister Agnes]. She is well, but does not feel comfortable in the land of the shamrock.

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In another letter, dated 21st November 1819, her maternal despondency, intensified by weakness arising from recent illness, again finds graphic and pathetic expression

"I am thankful to God that I am again able to write you, though I doubt much if you will be able to read what I write, my hand is so unsteady from my extreme weakness; but I am now quite well in health, and I hope I shall soon be able to work at my needle as usual. The rest are all well. We had a visit of Gilbert [her son] last night, which we have not had since that unwelcome one when he left his master. He is well, and I never saw him looking better, and what is still more agreeable, I have had repeated intelligence from your uncle [her brother Gilbert], who, you know, never

draws a flattering picture, that he is doing well and Mr. Lamb is much pleased with him. I wish to heaven it may continue; and I hope still, for all his vagaries, he may be an honour to his friends and a comfort to his mother. I am much afraid all is not well with John [another son] from his silence to you, for I have not wrote him since I had his last letter, which I received the week before I took the fever; and I had a letter from Betty Thomson [an illegitimate daughter of the poet] last week, and she says she had not seen him for a long time, and last time she saw him he had got warning to leave his master. This intelligence has distressed me very much.

What in the name of goodness will become of him if he does not get work? Betty, too, draws a picture of horror. Her husband was for some time idle, and he is now working as a labourer for nine shillings per week, and with broken weather he often did not earn half of it. God help them! Poor creatures! I have not filled my mouth once but I have thought of them."

The opening days of the succeeding year (1820) witnessed the gradual and

peaceful fulfilment of the foreboding in regard to her mother's illness to which Mrs. Begg had given expression in her letter of the previous summer. On 14th January the venerable mother of the poet, after a prolonged life of nearly ninety years, peacefully sank to her final rest within her son Gilbert's house at Grantsbraes. Mrs. Begg's letter to her son announcing this event is disappointingly brief, but the reasons for its brevity are sufficiently disclosed by the letter itself.

"Monday Evening.

"MY DEAR ROBERT,-Your brother has informed you of the death of your grandmother, and though it is an event we have long looked for, yet I cannot contemplate it without feelings of much distress, and it is heightened by the

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