On coming to England from the Continent, among many things to admire, there were two things we were especially thankful for,--comfort and hospitality. We had not been in London half a day before I had rented a furnished house, and we were established in it. That is, the owner, occupying the basement, gave us the parlors above and ample sleeping-rooms, and the use of her servants,-we defraying the expense of our table,--for so much a month. We took possession of our apartments an hour after we had engaged them, and had nothing to do but order our dinner and walk out; and all this for less, I think, than it would have cost us to live at a good boarding-house in Broadway. We visited various parts of England,--Warwick, Kenilworth, Oxford, Birmingham, and Liverpool, and made acquaintance with persons whom to know was worth going far, and whom [102] to remember has been a constant pleasure ever since. Well, we came back in August, 1843, in the steamer "Hibernia." What a joy to return home! We landed in Boston. The railroad across Massachusetts had been completed during our absence, and brought us to Sheffield in six or seven hours; it had always been a weary journey before, of three days by coach, or a week with our own horse. A few days' rest, and then six or eight hours more took us to New York, where we found the water fountains opened; the Croton had been brought in that summer. Did it not seem all very fit and festal to us? For we had come home! My health, however, was only partially reestablished, and the recruiting which had got me for constant service in my church but three years more. The winter of 1846-47 I passed in Washington, serving the little church there. En the spring I returned to New York, struggled on with my duties in the church for another year; in the spring of 1848 sold my house, and retired to the Sheffield home, continuing to preach occasionally in New York for a number of months longer, when, early in 1849, my connection with the Church of the Messiah was finally dissolved. I would willingly have remained with it on condition of discharging a partial service, with a colleague to assist me: it was the only chance I saw [103] of continuing in my profession. The congregation, at my instance, had sought for a colleague, both during my absence in Europe and in the later years of my continuance with it, but had failed,--there appearing to be some singular reluctance in our young preachers to enter into that relation,--and there seemed nothing for the church to do but to inaugurate a new ministration.