“I was truly glad to hear of your daughter’s
recovery. I have been in a storm at sea, in a Spanish vessel, and the feeling,
when the weather had so sensibly abated that the danger was over, is the only
one I can compare with that which is felt in a case like yours upon the first
assurance that the disease is giving way. Those writers who speak of childhood
or even youth as the happiest season of life, seem to me to speak with little
reason. There is, indeed, an exemption from the cares of the world, and from
those anxieties which shake us to the very centre. But as far as my own
experience goes, when we are exempt from trials of this nature, our happiness,
as we grow older, is more in quantity, and higher in degree as well as in kind.
What hopes we have are no longer accompanied with uneasiness or restless
desires. The way before us is no longer uncertain; we see to the end of our
journey; the acquisition of knowledge becomes more and more delightful, and the
appetite for it may truly be said to grow with what it feeds on; and as we set
our thoughts and hearts in order for another world, the prospect of that world
becomes a source of deeper delight than anything which this
| 324 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 44. |
“However, I hope that both you and I may be permitted
to do something more before we are removed. And I cannot but hope that you will
take upon yourself a conspicuous part in that reformation of the criminal laws,
which cannot much longer be delayed. Nor do I know any one (setting all
personal feelings aside) by whom it could so fitly be taken up. That speech of
Frankland’s was perfectly
conclusive to my mind: but that alterations are necessary is certain, and the
late trials for forgery show that they must be made, even now, with a bad
grace, but with a worse the longer they are delayed. To me it has long appeared
a safe proposition that the punishment of death is misapplied whenever the
| Ætat. 44. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 325 |
“God bless you, my dear Wynn!
