ainly felt at the end that I had lost my week.

One thing I find in my preaching, more and more, and hat is that the
simplest things become more and more weighty to me, so that a sermon
does not require to be my thing remarkable to interest me deeply.
Everything hat I say in the pulpit, I think, is taking stronger and
stronger hold upon me, and that which might have been lull in my
utterance ten years ago, is not so now. I say his to you, because it has
some bearing on one of the natters discussed in our last letters; that
is, whether I should leave the pulpit. If I leave it, it will be with a
fresher life in it, I think, than has stirred in me at any previous part
of my course. And certainly I have long believed that it was my vocation
to preach, above all things,--more than to visit parishioners, though I
always [201] visit every one of them once a year,--more than to write,
though you say I have written to some purpose (and your opinion is
a great comfort to me). Certainly, then, I shall not retire from the
pulpit, but upon the maturest reflection and for what shall seem to be
the weightiest reasons. And I did not mean that the things I referred to
should be prima facie reasons for retirement; but the question with me
was whether my unprofessional way of thinking and acting were not so
misconstrued as to lessen my power to do good; whether the good I do is
in any proportion to the strength I lay out.

But enough of myself, when I am much more concerned about you. I see
plainly enough how intense is your desire to go to Rome. I see how all
your culture and taste and feeling urge you to go, and yet more what a
reason in many ways your health supplies. And I declare the author of
Zenobia and Probus and Julian ought to go to Rome! There is a fitness in
it, and I trust it will come to pass. But you should not go alone.
Every one wants company in such a tour,--that I know full well; but
your health demands it. You must not be subject to sudden seizures in a
strange city,--a stranger, alone. Your family never will consent to it,
and I think never ought to. Do give up that idea entirely,--of going
alone. Have patience. There will be somebody to go with next spring, or
next summer. I would that I could go with you where you go, and lodge
with you where you lodge. But somebody will go. Something better will
turn up, at any rate, than to go alone. There are young men every year
who want to go abroad in quest of art and beauty a