My father seems to bear his great misfortune with equanimity. He is as well as he was fifteen years ago, and as young, at the nominal age of seventy-six. My sister was a most amiable and enlightened woman; she had run through all the stamina of constitution nature had allotted her, and died of old-age, in youth. The loss of a person whom I would have cultivated as a friend, if nature had not given her to me as a relation, is a serious evil.
I thank you most sincerely for your very handsome and delightful present, of Madame de Sévigné, which will beguile many a Yorkshire hour.