YOUR letter has come this afternoon, astonishing us with its date, and leading us to wonder where your whereabouts are now. Such an 4,-nis fatuus you have proved for the month past! With plans of goings and comings, with engagements and disengagements, you have slipped by us entirely, so that the kind of assurance I have had that you would come and pass two or three weeks with us before going eastward has come utterly to nought. You should have come; our chances of seeing one another are narrowing every year. But we will not dwell gloomily upon it. We may live three or four years longer,--people do; and I think I am more afraid of a longer than of a shorter term. [339] The "pain at heart," of which you speak at putting a wider space between us, is what I, too, have felt; and your thoughts, taken literally, are pleasant, while spiritualized, they are our only resource. Yes, the heavenly spaces unite us, while the earthly separate. Oh! could we know that we shall meet again when the earthly scene closes! But what we do not know, we hope for, and I think the supports of that hope increase with me. Development for every living creature, up to the highest it can reach, is the law of its nature; and why, according to that law, should not the poorest human creatures--the very troglodytes, the cave-dwellers--rise, till all that is infolded in their being should be brought forth? Where and how, is in the counsels and resources of infinite power and goodness. Where and how creatures should begin to exist would be as much mysterious to us as where and how they should go on. To Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D. ST. DAVID'S, April 22, 1877. DEAR HOSPITALITY,--I minded much what you said about my coming down in May, but I have been so discouraged about myself for six weeks past, that I have not wanted to write to you;--besieged by rheumatism from top to toe; in my ankle, so that I could not walk, only limp about; in my left arm, so that I could not lift it to my head, and, of course, a pretty uncomfortable housekeeper all that time. Nevertheless, I expect May to bring me out again, and do think sometimes that I may take C. with me, and run down for two or three days. . . . I am reading the Martineau book, skippingly. . . . It seems that Miss M. was not an atheist, [340] after all. She believed in a First Cause, only denying that it is the God of theology,--which who does not deny?-denying, indeed, with Herbert Spencer, that it is knowable. But if they say that it is not knowable, how do they know but it is that which they deny? Miss Martineau's passing out of this world in utter indifference as to what would become of her, seems to me altogether unnatural, on her ground or any other. Any good or glad hold on existence implies the desire for its continuance. She had no hope nor wish for it, as well as no belief in it.