“We have all been greatly interested by your report of the ordination. {190} It seems to me that everything was ordered for us exactly as we could have wished, and if I had sat down to plan it for myself I do not think I could have planned anything more completely to my mind. So blessed be God for the abundance and carefulness of His mercy! How I have thought of our young clergyman to-day! I wonder whether he has been preaching. He has not written much to me, but I cannot be surprised at that when I consider the absorption of his mind. What a delightful birthday for him! “I am sorry to say I cannot give a very good report of myself. Rome has thoroughly disagreed with me, and the disagreement has brought on so much pain in my back that between the two I have had very little power of enjoyment. Still there has been so much to enjoy that, notwithstanding everything, I have enjoyed a great deal very much indeed. But the thing I should enjoy more than anything in the world would be to get home, and I am very much disposed to turn my steps homeward instead of going on to Naples. But nothing is fixed at present, or even discussed. It is only a floating idea in my mind, and may come to nothing. “It has been strange to spend a second Sunday in retirement. I was engaged to preach both days, but could not venture on either, and now I should not be surprised if I left Rome without opening my lips in public. How different God’s plans are from ours! My plan was that I should be so very useful, and carry on here the same blessed work the Lord granted at home. But God’s plan was to keep me still and to let me learn quietly by myself. And I really hope He has been teaching me, and that these two Sundays especially have not been without their blessing. I am quite sure that those who teach most have the greatest need of learning the deep things of God and the secret windings of their own hearts. “I have not told you about Rome, for you know a great deal about it better than I do. The great, grand old ruins stand out as magnificent as ever, speaking witnesses to the failure of the world’s greatness. ‘Broken greatness’ seems written on them all. And modern Popery goes on its way, I should really think, more idolatrous than ever—the most vulgar, tawdry travesty of the simple Christianity of the Catacombs. But I am not going to write a book, so hoping that God has been teaching you at church as I believe He has been teaching me at home, and wishing you every one every possible blessing, “I remain, etc., “E. HOARE.”