Your letter would not have remained a single post unanswered – if it had been in my power to have replied to it. But I found it yesterday on returning from the first mornings exercise I have ventured to take, – when I had only twenty minutes for dressing to receive the Bishops of Limerick & New York

at dinner, – & was moreover in a state of great bodily uneasiness. – My first business this morning is thus to do – what I was in this manner compelled yesterday to leave undone.

Your excellent mother

appears to have been favoured with something like that ευθανασια

which in patriarchal xxx times

seems to have been the natural & ordinary termination of life, but with which not one in ten thousand, – even of those who attain to a good old age, is now blest. You have been fortunate in possessing her so long, – & fortunate even in seeing her depart before the infirmities of age became what they too frequently are, humiliating as well as painful to humanity. This affliction – deep as it is, – has occurred in the due course of nature it was neither unforeseen, nor untimely; – no human care, – no circumstances could have averted, or delayed it. It is a grief which the heart can endure to remember, – which has every thing to hallow it & which time will soon ripen so that it will shall lose all its bitterness.

The generation before us is rapidly passing away, & we are already among the elders of this age. – Neither of my parents compleated their fiftieth year.

I have been very much shaken at the completion of mine. This is the third year in which my annual catarrh has ended in a cough, & this year the cough came on early, lay deep, & keeps still a lingering hold, – as if laying claim to its inheritance tho not perhaps taking livery & seizin of it as yet. The relaxation which this summer visitation always brings on brought with it this year a most unpleasant symptom, – that of a hæmorrhage from the rectum upon walking even a mile, – & once indeed in merely walking the room. I was at one time apprehensive that this would entirely have confined me to the house, but a few cautious trials have given me hope. If I can bring myself into a condition that will allow me to leave home, it is my full purpose next spring to try whether I can avert the yearly attack by running away from it, xxx frequent change of air & much exercise – in a word travelling is the best chance – & I have almost promised the Bp of Limerick (who came here in the hope of taking me to Ireland with him) – that I will visit him next May.