MORTIMER STREET, October, 1845.

Since beginning this letter, my beloved Hal, I have been reading
Channing's sermon upon Dr. Follen's death. It is, in fact, a sermon upon
human suffering, in a paroxysm of which I was when I began to write to
you; and for a remedy took up this sermon, which has comforted me much.

Chorley was expressing to me, two days ago, his unbounded veneration for
the character of Dr. Follen, as it is faintly and imperfectly
represented in the memoir which his wife published of him. I knew that I
had with me Channing's sketch of him in that sermon on human suffering,
and told Chorley that I would look for it for him. I found it yesterday,
and merely read that part of it towards the end which referred to Dr.
Follen's character; and it is to that circumstance that I attribute a
dream I had last night, in which I sat devoutly at _Arnold's_ feet,
expressing to him how earnestly I had desired the privilege of knowing
him: he was surrounded by Channing, Follen, and others whom I could not
remember. In reading to-day the whole of that fine discourse of
Channing's, I was led to compare the great similarity of the expressions
he uses, in speaking of sceptics and scepticism, to those Arnold makes
use of on the same subjects in his letters to Lady Francis Egerton. For
instance, "Scepticism is a moral disease, the growth of some open or
latent depravity; deliberate, habitual questionings of God's benevolence
argue great moral deficiency." Another thing that struck me was the
resemblance between Dr. Arnold and Dr. Follen in the matter of
independent self-reliance. Channing says of the latter, "He was
singularly independent in his judgments. He was not only uninfluenced by
authority, and numbers, and interest, and popularity; but by friendship,
and the opinions of those he most loved and honored. He seemed almost
too tenacious of his convictions."

Do you remember what Sydney Smith says of Francis Horner? This great
firmness of opinion in Arnold and Follen reminds me of it by contrast:
"Francis Horner was a very modest person, which men of great
understanding seldom are. It was his habit to confirm his opinion by the
opinions of others, and often to form them from the same source."

MORTIMER STREET, November, 1845.
DEAR EMILY,

During that hour that we spent at Netley, the last few moments of which
were made full of hopeful thoughts by the passing awa