It  is  probable  none  will  doubt,  that  the  afflictions  which  have  been
related,  and  others,  and  perhaps  greater,  that  may  be  imagined,  made
VOL.  xxv.  19


144  Dirge  for  an   Infant.  [February,

Mrs.  Stewart  a  wiser  and  a  better  woman.  But  that  she  would  have
been  less  happy  had  she  continued  in  the  bosom  of  prosperity,  few  may
be  inclined  to  believe.  The  atmosphere  of  fashion,  wealth  and  splen-
dor is  so  luminous  and  dazzling,  that  to  the  unpractised  eye  the  evils
which  they  involve  are  imperceptible ;  yet  those  evils  are  numerous
and  great,  and  more  keenly  felt  because  selfishness  and  a  morbid  sensi-
tiveness to  suffering  are  the  legitimate  effects  of  flattery  and  corporeal
indulgence.  Although  Mrs.  Stewart's  adversity  was  greatly  aggrava-
ted by  her  former  experience  and  habits,  yet  many  of  the  temptations,
and  trials,  and  follies,  to  which  she  was  then  obnoxious,  and  less  quali-
fied to  resist,  disappeared  with  her  social  station.  Her  adversity  was
moreover  the  means  of  Christian  faith.  She  previously  knew  nothing
but  the  poetry  of  religion^  which  is  but  a  gossamer  defence  in  the  present
as  well  as  final  conflict,  that  requires  the  whole  gospel  panoply.  And,
though  altogether  different,  the  enjoyments  of  true  piety  are  deeper,  as
they  are  more  durable,  than  worldly  pleasures.  Mrs.  Stewart's  sorrows
secured  to  her  also  another  essential  to  genuine  hctppiness,  which  she
found  in  her  ability  and  disposition  to  be  serviceable  to  others  in  various
ways  beside  being  the  respected  teacher  and  beloved  friend  of  many
youthful  females.  Could  continued  prosperity  have  secured  to  her  im-
munity from  the  calamities  that  throng  every  condition  of  mortal  exis-
tence,  she  might  probably  have  supposed  that  usefulness  to  her  fellow
beings,  her  own  mental  and  moral  improvement,  and  a  well-founded
hope  offuture  felicity,  were  even  far  more  than  equivalent  to  the  priva-
tion of  uniform  temporal  happiness,  and  the  uninterrupted  experience
of  numerous  and  heavy  afiBictions.
