Longford, Lady

To Lady Olivia Sparrow, 23 April [1816]

It is high time that I should thank you for your very kind, interesting, nice, long letter. One sentence was more peculiarly welcome, the hope you gave of setting foot on English ground, and of gratifying me with the sight of you. How pleasant when that is realized. Your Right Revd. Anecdotes are most painful. You may depend on my discretion. Besides committing You, I do not love to repeat evil of dignities; especially not to biting painful truths to the ungodly. – I sympathize with you on the death of Lady Longford,^* but rejoyce with you, in that I hear she died the death of the righteous Her saviour I trust had been sanctified to her, and drawn her nearer to her God and Saviour. Oh! how soon will the time arrive when we shall, all (true Christians I mean) acknowledge that our trials were among our chief mercies. In the mean time it is consolitary to know that ‘in all our afflictions He is afflicted’. It is a dying world.