ARE n't you a pretty fellow,--worse than Procrustes,--to go about the world, measuring people's talent and [205] promise by their noses? . . . Why, man, Claude Lorraine and Boccaccio and Burke had "small noses;" and Kosciusko and George Buchanan had theirs turned up, and could n't help it. It reminds me of what a woman of our town said, who had married a very heinous-looking blacksmith. Some companions of our "smithess" saw him coming along in the street one day, and unwittingly exclaimed, "What dreadful-looking man is that?" "That's my husband," said the wife, "and God made him." To the Same. SHEFFIELD, Jan. 2, 1849. MY DEAR BELLOWS,--Your letter came on New Year's Day, and helped to some of those cachinnations usually thought to belong to such a time; though for my part I can never find set times particularly happy or even interesting,--partly, I believe, from a certain obstinacy of disposition that does not like to do what is set down for it. As to church matters, I said nothing to you when I was down last, because I knew nothing. That is, I had no hint of what the congregation was about to do,--no idea of anything in my connection with the church that needed to be spoken of. I was indeed thinking, for some weeks before I went down, of saying to the congregation, that unless they thought my services very important to them, I should rather they would dispense with them, and my mind was just in an even balance about the matter. But one is always influenced by the feeling around him,--at least I am,--and when I found that every one who spoke with me about my coming again seemed to depend upon it, and to be much [206] interested in it, I determined to say nothing about withdrawing. My reasons for wishing to retire were, that I was working hard--hard for me--to prepare sermons which, as my engagement in my view was temporary, might be of no further use to me; and that if I were to enter upon a new course of life, the sooner I did so the better.