se you are so continually, as you well know. I could
not come to see you; I am not worthy of friends. With my opinions,
to the full of which I dare not confess, I feel like a guilty person
with others, though I trust I am not so. People kindly think that I
have much to bear externally, disappointment, slander, etc. No, I
have nothing to bear, but the anxiety which I feel for my friends'
anxiety for me, and their perplexity. This [letter] is a better
Ash-Wednesday than birthday present;" [his birthday was the same day
as mine; it was Ash-Wednesday that year]; "but I cannot help writing
about what is uppermost. And now all kindest and best wishes to you,
my oldest friend, whom I must not speak more about, and with
reference to myself, lest you should be angry." It was not in his
nature to have doubts: he used to look at me with anxiety, and wonder
what had come over me.

On Easter Monday: "All that is good and gracious descend upon you and
yours from the influences of this Blessed Season; and it will be so
(so be it!), for what is the life of you all, as day passes after
day, but a simple endeavour to serve Him, from whom all blessing
comes? Though we are separated in place, yet this we have in common,
that you are living a calm and cheerful time, and I am enjoying the
thought of you. It is your blessing to have a clear heaven, and peace
around, according to the blessing pronounced on Benjamin. So it is,
and so may it ever be."

He was in simple good faith. He died in September that year. I had
expected that his last illness would have brought light to my mind,
as to what I ought to do. It brought none. I made a note, which runs
thus: "I sobbed bitterly over his coffin, to think that he left me
still dark as to what the way of truth was, and what I ought to do in
order to please God and fulfil His will." I think I wrote to Charles
Marriott to say, that at that moment, with the thought of my friend
before me, my strong view in favour of Rome remained just what it
was. On the other hand, my firm belief that grace was to be found in
the Anglican Church remained too.[5] I wrote to a friend upon his
death:--

"Sept. 16, 1844. I am full of wrong and miserable feelings, which it
is useless to detail, so grudging and sullen, when I should be
thankful. Of course, when one sees so blessed an end, and that, the
termination of so blameless a life, of one who really fed on our
ordinances and got strength from them, and see the sam