P.S. I mean to send you my next packet on this day week. LETTER IV. MRS. DOUGLAS TO MRS. E. SANDFORD. My dearly loved Friend, And are you really once more in your own Derbyshire, enjoying the blessing of rest after all your wanderings? My heart flies to bid you welcome at Checkley, where your presence, I doubt not, was long desired and affectionately greeted, though not perhaps with such energy as is conveyed in our Irish "Cead Millagh farthagh." But how doubly blessed is your return, and how largely has a merciful Providence repaid your labours, and compensated for every privation that you have endured, by restoring the sweet Agnes to perfect health! You are a mother, in almost every sense of that comprehensive title, to three dear and doubly orphaned girls, who now employ your whole attention; and though you have been spared those anxieties, incident to the relation of parent, which belong exclusively to the tender years of infancy, you can sympathize in all the solicitude to which the unfoldings of youth give birth; and thus a new bond has arisen to link our souls together. Now that the peril is past, that which was toil while actually present, becomes pleasure when viewed in the distance; and thus it is that the great Dispenser of Good rewards the patient performance of duty. You longed to be at home, and you are safely lodged within its delightful retreat; while your girls like bees have been collecting honey from every flower to enrich their hive, and no longer indebted to "books and swains alone," for their knowledge of the world, can talk of Switzerland, and Italy, and France with all the many who have visited their shores. _My_ holidays are yet to come; but do not be frightened; I am not thinking of the Continent--I am only running forward with my mind's eye to the happy accomplishment of our mutual wishes in the meeting at this dear spot of which your promise holds out the exhilarating prospect. My children seem to feel that months are years, till August comes and brings the Sandfords to Glenalta. But dearest Elizabeth, I am not answering your question: "Will you help me with your experience in this weighty task which I have undertaken, and give me your advice upon the important subject of female education, as I proceed in an endeavour to fulfil the part which I have engaged to act?" Yes surely, my friend, I will gladly afford you every aid in my power to bestow, but you will not expect more than I can give. You must not look to me for that which I have never found myself, namely a plan or system by which I could work under the guidance of another mind without exercising at every moment whatever penetration the Almighty had conferred upon my own. This, whatever be its measure, has been employed night and day in scrutinizing the individual varieties that presented themselves in the several dispositions of my children.