ank you for your more
than kind proposal.

We have been in great anxiety respecting Miss Hogarth, the sudden
decline of whose health and spirits has greatly distressed us. Although
she is better than she was, and the doctors are, on the whole, cheerful,
she requires great care, and fills us with apprehension. The necessity
of providing change for her will probably take us across the water very
early in the autumn; and this again unsettles home schemes here, and
withers many kinds of fern. If they knew (by "they" I mean my daughter
and Miss Hogarth) that I was writing to you, they would charge me with
many messages of regard. But as I am shut up in my room in a ferocious
and unapproachable condition, owing to the great accumulation of letters
I have to answer, I will tell them at lunch that I have anticipated
their wish. As I know they have bills for me to pay, and are at present
shy of producing them, I wish to preserve a gloomy and repellent
reputation.

My dear Mr. Baylis, faithfully yours always.

[Sidenote: Mrs. Henry Austin.]

GAD'S HILL, _Tuesday, Oct. 7th, 1862._

* * * * *

I do not preach consolation because I am unwilling to preach at any
time, and know my own weakness too well. But in this world there is no
stay but the hope of a better, and no reliance but on the mercy and
goodness of God. Through those two harbours of a shipwrecked heart, I
fully believe that you will, in time, find a peaceful resting-place even
on this careworn earth. Heaven speed the time, and do you try hard to
help it on! It is impossible to say but that our prolonged grief for the
beloved dead may grieve them in their unknown abiding-place, and give
them trouble. The one influencing consideration in all you do as to
your disposition of yourself (coupled, of course, with a real earnest
strenuous endeavour to recover the lost tone of spirit) is, that you
think and feel you _can_ do. I do not in the least regard your change of
course in going to Havre as any evidence of instability. But I rather
hope it is likely that through such restlessness you will come to a far
quieter frame of mind. The disturbed mind and affections, like the
tossed sea, seldom calm without an intervening time of confusion and
trouble.

But nothing is to be attained without striving. In a determined effort
to settle the thoughts, to parcel out the day, to find occupati