360 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. IX. 



with keen interest. The two were so inseparable, that friends 

 often compared them to Charles Lamb and his sister Mary, 

 between whom a similar union existed. Her gentle, patient 

 endurance of sufferings made their gradual increase, for some 

 months previous to her death, less marked in the family, and 

 only one night of great distress intervened between the ordi- 

 nary routine, and the blank occasioned by such a loss. The 

 following letter to Dr. Cairns conveys the first expression of 

 George's desolation : 



" April 21, 1847. 



" DEAREST FRIEND, I have the mournful news to communi- 

 cate to you, that Mary is gone to the world of spirits. How 

 deeply I loved her I need not tell you, nor how deeply she de- 

 served the inadequate affection I felt for her. I count upon 

 your full appreciation of the greatness of my loss, in the sun- 

 dering of the earthly bond between Mary and me. 



" She died this morning about eleven o'clock, so gently that 

 the spirit had fled before Jessie, who was watching -her, observed 

 its flight. . . . We apprehended no serious danger ; . . . yester- 

 day we thought her better than she had been some days before, 

 and I was out in the evening at the School of Arts, where I 

 was detained from seven till after ten o'clock. . . . Though her 

 agony was great, she expressed calmly and distinctly her faith 

 in Christ, . . . comforted herself with passages of her own re- 

 membering, and prayed audibly and earnestly, referring at 

 intervals to what an awful thing it would have been, had she 

 then required to think for the first time of going to judgment. . . . 



" How the unkindnesses I have shown her come back on me 

 now ! To think that yesterday was the last day that I was to 

 spend with her on this earth, and I did not know it. A round 

 of necessary, but trifling duties, kept me from her ; yet I loved 

 Mary better than I loved anything else in this world. For the 

 last six years we had been greatly together. We knew each 

 other so well, and she was so fond, so kind, so self- denying, so 

 generous, so noble in all respects, so devoted, that now that she 

 has followed James, I feel alone. Nobody can ever be to me 

 what she was. I cannot estimate my obligations to her. I 

 have leant so long on her that, now that her support is gone, 



