My dearest Brother,--I am again disappointed in receiving no letter from you. The last intelligence from the West of England is Lydia's letter of July 8, 1808. Colonel Sandys has long since ceased to write to me, and I have no other correspondent. It is very affecting to me to be thus considered as dead by almost all my natural relations and early connections; and at this time, when I am led to think of you and the family to which you are united, and have been reading all your letters over, I feel that I could dip my pen deep in melancholy; for, strange as it may seem to you, I love so true, that though it is now the fifth year since I parted from the object of my affection, she is as dear to me as ever; yet, on the other hand, I find my present freedom such a privilege that I would not lose it for hardly any consideration. It is the impossibility of compassing every wish, that I suppose is the cause of any uneasiness that I feel. I know not how to express my thoughts respecting Lydia better than in Martial's words--_Nec tecum possum vivere nec sine te_. However, these are not my general sentiments; it pleases God to cause me to eat my meat with gladness, praising God. Almost always I am without carefulness, as indeed it would be to my shame if I were not. My kindest remembrances attend my dearest sisters, Emma and Lydia, as they well know. You two are such bad correspondents that on this ground I prefer another petition for the renewal of Lydia's correspondence,--she need not suspect anything now, nor her friends. I have no idea that I should trouble her upon the old subject, even if I were settled in England--for oh, this vain world! _quid habet commodi? quid non potius laboris?_ But I never expect to see England more, nor do I expect that though all obstacles should be removed, she would ever become mine unless I came for her, and I now do not wonder at it, though I did before. If any one of my sisters had had such a proposal made to them, I would never have consented to their going, so you may see the affair is ended between us. My wish is that she would be scribe for you all, and I promise on my part to send you through her an ample detail _of all my_ proceedings; also she need not imagine that I may form another attachment--in which case she might suppose a correspondence with an unmarried lady might be productive of difficulties,--for after one disappointment I am not likely to try my chance again, and if I do I will give her the earliest intelligence of it, with the same frankness with which I have always dealt (with her). Meanwhile, on the silent shores of South Cornwall, Lydia Grenfell was thus remembering him before God: