To Lady Hesketh

MY DEAR LADY HESKETH,

Since you were so kind as to pay me in the Temple (the only time I  ever saw you without pleasure), what have I not suffered! And since it  has pleased God to restore me to the use of my reason, what have I not  enjoyed! You know, by experience, how pleasant is it to feel the first  approaches of health after a fever; but, Oh, the fever of the brain! To  feel the quenching of that fire, is indeed a blessing which I think it  impossible to receive without the most consummate gratitude. Terrible as  this chastisement is, I acknowledge it in the hand of an infinite  justice; nor is it all more difficult for me to perceive it in the hand  of an infinite mercy likewise: when I consider the effect it has had  upon me, I am exceedingly thankful for it, and, without hypocrisy,  esteem it the greatest blessing next to life itself I ever received  from the divine bounty. I pray God that I may ever retain this sense of  it, and then I am sure, I shall continue to be as, I am at present,  really happy.
I write thus to you, that you may not think me a forlorn and  wretched creature; which you might be apt to do considering my very   distant removal from every friend I have in the world–a circumstance  which, before this event befell me, would have undoubtedly made me so;  but my affliction has taught me a road to happiness which without it, I  should never have found; and I know I have experience of it every day,  that the mercy of God, to him whom believes himself the object of it,  is more than sufficient to compensate for the loss of every other  blessing.
You may now inform all those whom you think really interested in  my welfare that they have no need to be apprehensive on the score of my  happiness at present. And you yourself will believe that my happiness  is no dream because I have told you the foundation on which it is  built. What I have written would appear like enthusiasm to many, for we  are apt to give that name to every affection of the mind in others  which we have not experience in ourselves; but to you, who have so much  to be thankful for, and a temper inclined to gratitude, it will not  appear so.
I beg you will give my love to Sir Thomas, and believe that I am obliged to you both for inquiring after me at St. Albans.

Yours ever,

W.C.