nt to prison_ because literally he had not where to lay
his head!... I wouldn't be a man for anything! They are so cruel,
without even knowing that they are so: the habit of seeing sin and
suffering is such a _heart-hardener_.

Well, the boy is safe in the workhouse now, and is, according to his own
wish and inclination, either to be sent to sea or put out apprentice to
some trade. I have pledged one of my readings for purposes of outfit or
entrance-fee, and Mr. Frost has promised me not to lose sight of the
child, so I hope he is rescued from sin and suffering for the present,
and perhaps for the future.

Do you remember what infinite difficulty I told you I had had in
rescuing that poor little wretch out of the streets of Glasgow? But then
she had the advantage of a _mother_, who drove her into them day after
day, to sing her starvation in the miserable mud and rain,--luckily this
poor Hull boy's mother had not this _interest_ in him.

I have come home, dear Hal, after my reading, and resume my letter to
you, though I am very tired, and shall go to bed before I have finished
it.

I do remember Robertson's sermon about Jacob wrestling with the angel,
and I remember the passage you refer to. I remember feeling that I did
not agree with it. The solemnity of night is very great; and the aspect
of the star-sown heavens suggests the idea of God, by the overpowering
wonder of those innumerable worlds by which one then _sees_ one's self
surrounded,--which affect one's imagination in a reverse way from the
daylight beauty of the earth, for that makes God seem as if He were
_here_, in this world, which then is all we see (except its great eye,
the sun) of these multitudinous worlds He has created, and that are
hanging in countless myriads round us. Night suggests the vastness of
creation, as day can never do; and darkness, silence, the absence of
human fellowship, and the suspension of human activity, interests, and
occupations, leave us a less disturbed opportunity of meditating on our
Creator's inconceivable power. The day and the day's beauty make me feel
as if God were very near me; the night and the night's beauty, as if I
were very far off from Him.

But, dear Harriet, do not, I entreat you, challenge me to put into words
those thoughts which, in us all, must be unutterable. If I can speak of
nothing that I feel deeply but with an indistinctness and inefficiency
that make me feel sick as with a bodily effort of strai