u, and as one of the
thoughts in which he was greatly comforted in looking forward upon
your future life.

Many other writers dwelt upon the unsparing labour and self-denying zeal
of her father, and all recognised that she, the daughter so near his
heart and always the object of his most tender love and watchful care,
must be the one most deeply stricken by the pain of separation.

"To you, I imagine, the blow will come heaviest," wrote Mrs. Powell; and
this sentiment is repeated in almost every letter.

A letter from the Secretary of her own Association, informing her of a
vote of condolence passed by the Committee, begins, oddly enough, with

"I have the _pleasure_ to inform you,"

The blind workmen and workwomen did their best to express their regret
at the death of "his lordship the Bishop," and a note is enclosed to her
by the Rev. B. Hayley, written by a poor fellow in the Chichester Union,
"just to show what the poor, the very poorest in the diocese, think of
your dear father."

The Rev. Dr. Swainson, Canon of Chichester, now Master of Christ's
College, Cambridge, heard that Bessie's grief was heightened by the fact
that she had spent the last fortnight before her father's death in
London, engrossed by the work of the Deputation to Lord de Grey. His
letter of sympathy and consolation may be as helpful to others as it was
to her, and it is therefore inserted unabridged.

SPRINGFIELD, NEWNHAM, CAMBRIDGE,
_30th March 1870_.

MY DEAR MISS GILBERT--I hope you will permit me to write you a few
lines on the subject which I hear from many quarters has caused you
much additional sorrow in regard to the death of our dear father in
God. I mean your absence from Chichester during the last fortnight
of his life. I really do not know that you should regret it:
because it was really of God's appointment: you were engaged over
your work for Him: your sisters over their work for Him: your dear
father over his work for Him: each and all to the best of your
powers, and why should you repine if it pleased God to remove him
so quietly, so gently, so lovingly, without telling you beforehand
that He was going thus to take him? May you not rejoice rather that
his last days of consciousness were filled with thoughts that you
were able to go on with that work i