disappointed: to have written the _Life_ and prepared the _Psychological Remains_ of my revered friend and benefactor, T. W.: and to have been entrusted with the _Biography_, etc., of Dr. B. This latter work (Southey informs me) was first offered to you, and then to Mr. Giddy, and is finally devolved on Dr. Stock. As my heart bears me full witness with what unalloyed satisfaction I should have seen this last duty in your hands or in D. Giddy's, so I feel myself permitted to avow the pain, yea, the sense of shame, with which I contemplate Dr. Stock as the performant. I could not help assenting to Southey's remark, that the proper vignette for the work would be a funeral lamp beside an urn, and Dr. Stock in the act of placing an extinguisher on it. * * * I have just read a brief account of your first lecture of this season, and, though I did not see as clearly as I could wish, the pertinence of the religious declaration quoted from you, and am not quite at ease (especially when I think of Darwin), when I find theosophy mingled with science, and though I wished to have been with you to have expressed my doubts concerning the accuracy of your comparison between the great discoverers of science and the Miltons, Spinozas, and Rafaels; yet the intervening history (it is only that I am writing to you that I stopped and hesitate in using the word) overwhelmed me, and I dare avow, furnished to my understanding and conscience proofs more convincing than the dim analogies of natural organization to human mechanism, both of the Supreme Reason, as super-essential to the world of the senses; of an analogous mind in man not resulting from its perishable machine, nor even from the general spirit of life, its inclosed steam or perfluent water-force; and of the moral connection between the finite and the infinite Reason, and the awful majesty of the former, as both the revelation and the exponent voice of the latter, immortal timepiece, an eternal sun. Shame be with me in my death-hour if ever I withhold or fear to pay my first debt of due honour to the truly great man, because it has been my good lot to be his contemporary, or my happiness to have known, esteemed, and loved, as well as admired him.