former counsels that I have frequently given you. Begin and end the day with private prayer; read the scriptures often and seriously; be attentive to the public worship of God. Keep yourselves in some useful employment: for idleness is the nursery of vain and sinful thoughts, which corrupt the mind and disorder the life. Be kind and loving to one another. Honour your minister. Be not bitter nor harsh to my servants. Be respectful to all. Bear my absence patiently and cheerfully. Behave as if I were present among you and saw you. Remember you have a greater Father than I am, who always, and in all places, beholds you, and knows your hearts and thoughts. Study to requite my love and care for you with dutifulness, observance, and obedience; and account it an honour that you have an opportunity, by your attention, faithfulness, and industry, to pay some part of that debt, which, by the laws of nature and of gratitude, you owe to me. Be frugal in my family: but let there be no want; and provide conveniently for the poor.

I pray God to fill your hearts with his grace, fear, and love, and to let you see the comfort and advantage of serving him; and that his blessing, and presence, and direction, may be with you, and over you all.

I am your ever loving father.

Written in the Year 1662 or 1663.

LETTER II.

SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE TO THE COUNTESS OF ESSEX,

On the Excess of her Grief, occasioned by the Loss
of her only Daughter.

Sheen, Jan. 29, 1674.

THE honour which I received by a letter from your ladyship was too great not to be acknowledged; yet I doubted whether that occasion could bear me out in the confidence of giving your ladyship any further trouble. But I can no longer forbear, on account of the sensible wounds that have so often of late been given your friends here, by the desperate expressions in several of your letters, respecting your temper of mind, your health, and your life; in all which you must allow them to be extremely concerned. Perhaps none can be, at heart, more partial than I am to whatever regards your ladyship, nor more inclined to defend you on this very occasion, how unjust and unkind soever you are to yourself. But when you throw away your health, or your life, so great a remainder of your own family, and so great hopes of that into which you are entered, and all by a desperate melancholy, upon an event past remedy, and to which all the mortal race is perpetually subject; give me leave to tell you, madam, that what you do is not at all consistent either with so good a Christian, or so reasonable and great a person, as your ladyship appears to the world in all other lights.

I know no duty in religion more generally agreed on, nor more justly required by God Almighty, than

a perfect submission to his will in all things; nor do I think any disposition of mind can either please him more, or become us better, than that of being satisfied with all he gives, and contented with all he takes away. None, I am sure, can be of more honour to God, nor of more ease to ourselves. For if we consider him as our Maker, we cannot contend with him; if as our Father, we ought not to distrust him: so that we may be confident, whatever he does is intended for good; and whatever happens that we interpret otherwise, yet we can get nothing by repining, nor save any thing by resisting.

But if it were fit for us to reason with God Almighty, and your ladyship's loss were acknowledged as great as it could have been to any one; yet, I doubt, you would have but ill grace to complain at the rate you have done, or rather as you do; for the first emotions or passions may be pardoned; it is only the continuance of them which makes them inexcusable. In this world, madam, there is nothing perfectly good; and whatever is called so, is but either comparatively with other things of its kind, or else with the evil that is mingled in its composition: so he is a good man who is better than men commonly are, or in whom the good qualities are more than the bad; so, in the course of life, his condition is esteemed good, which is better than that of most other men, or in which the good circumstances are more than the evil. By this measure, I doubt, madam, your complaints ought to be turned into acknowledgments, and your friends would have cause to rejoice rather than to condole with you. When your ladyship

has fairly considered how God Almighty has dealt with you in what he has given, you may be left to judge yourself how you have dealt with him in your complaints for what he has taken away. If you look about you, and consider other lives as well as your own, and what your lot is, in comparison with those that have been drawn in the circle of your knowledge; if you think how few are born with honour, how many die without name or children, how little beauty we see, how few friends we hear of, how much poverty, and how many diseases there are in the world; you will fall down upon your knees, and, instead of repining at one affliction, will admire so many blessings as you have received at the hand of God.

To put your ladyship in mind of what you are, and of the advantages which you have, would look like a design to flatter you. But this I may say, that we will pity you as much as you please, if you will tell us who they are whom you think, upon all circumstances, you have reason to envy. Now if I had a master who gave me all I could ask, but thought fit to take one thing from me again, either because I used it ill, or gave myself so much over to it as to neglect what I owed to him, or to the world; or perhaps because he would show his power, and put me in mind from whom I held all the rest: would you think I had much reason to complain of hard usage, and never to remember any more what was left me, never to forget what was taken away?

It is true, you have lost a child, and all that could be lost in a child of that age: but you have kept one child, and you are likely to do so long;

you have the assurance of another, and the hopes of many more. You have kept a husband, great in employment, in fortune, and in the esteem of good men. You have kept your beauty and your health, unless you have destroyed them yourself, or discouraged them to stay with you by using them ill. You have friends who are as kind to you as you can wish, or as you can give them leave to be. You have honour and esteem from all who know you; or if ever it fails in any degree, it is only upon that point of your seeming to be fallen out with God and the whole world, and neither to care for yourself, nor any thing else, after what you have lost.

You will say, perhaps, that one thing was all to you, and your fondness of it made you indifferent to every thing else. But this, I doubt, will be so far from justifying you, that it will prove to be your fault as well as your misfortune. God Almighty gave you all the blessings of life, and you set your heart wholly upon one, and despise or undervalue all the rest is this his fault or yours? nay, is it not to be very unthankful to Heaven, as well as very scornful to the rest of the world? is it not to say, because you have lost one thing God has given, you thank him for nothing he has left, and care not what he takes away? is it not to say, since that one thing is gone out of the world, there is nothing left in it which you think can deserve your kindness or esteem? A friend makes me a feast, and places before me all that his care or kindness could provide: but I set my heart upon one dish alone, and, if that happens to be thrown down, I scorn all the rest; and though he sends