The following passage was added to the Journal in the succeeding September:—
On the night of the 10th of February I reached Edinburgh. I entered no capital of Europe with a lighter heart and more confident expectations of enjoyment. .. . . . And yet it was there I was destined to meet the severest suffering my life had yet known. On the 11th I received letters announcing the death of my mother on the 31st of December. . . . The first anguish of the reflection that I was not with her was almost more than I could bear. It seemed to me that I had done wrong in going to Europe at all; and even now, that I write this, many months after the bitterness of the first suffering has gone by, it is a thought I cannot entirely drive from my mind. . . . . But all is in the hands of Him who has thus taken what was dearest to me in life, and who seems peculiarly to have reserved to Himself the consolation of sorrows which He alone can inflict; so that we may sometimes, at least, feel with persuading sensibility how entirely we are dependent upon Him.