‘My dearest Newman,’ opens the awaited missive of Sept. 3, ‘I am afraid you will have been grumbling in your heart at me…. But really, I am not to blame, as I have not put pen to paper for a fortnight, except yesterday, when I began a letter to you upside down. I cannot explain what has been the matter with me; but I am sure that the apothecary into whose hands I fell made a fool of himself…. As to our controversies, you are now taking fresh ground, without owning, as you ought, that on our first basis I dished you! Of course, if the Fathers maintain that “nothing not deducible from Scripture ought to be insisted on as terms of communion,” I have nothing more to say. But again, if you allow Tradition an interpretative authority, I cannot see what is gained. For surely the doctrines of the Priesthood and the Eucharist may be proved from Scripture interpreted by Tradition; and if so, what is to hinder our insisting on them as terms of communion? I don’t mean, of course, that this will bear out the Romanists (which is perhaps your only point?), but it certainly would bear out our party in excommunicating Protestants…. You lug in the Apostles’ Creed, and talk about expansions. What is the end of expansions? Will not the Romanists say that their whole system is an expansion of the Holy Catholic Church and the Communion of Saints?’ Finally, on the 10th, arrives Newman’s definite word: ‘I propose coming to you next week,’ coupled with anxious inquiries about his health. Hurrell replies at once: ‘We shall be ready for you whenever you come. Dr. [Yonge] and a young doctor called Hinkson, who has paid much attention to the stethoscope, examined my chest all over; and they both told my father they never examined a chest in which there was more complete freedom from bad symptoms. Yet they say the disorder in my throat is dangerous unless stopped. Dr. Yonge is decided that I am not to go abroad this winter.’ Newman reached Dartington on the 15th, and was most happy there, among scenes and faces ‘loved long since,’ for nearly a month. Every one who has ever come across it remembers the phrase in which he briefly sums up the end of the visit: ‘I left, and took my last farewell of R. H. F. on Sunday, October 11, in the evening, sleeping at Exeter. When I took leave of him his face lighted up, and almost shone in the darkness, as if to say that in this world we were parting for ever.’ The angel, the ‘beautiful young man girded,’ who knew well ‘the way to the country of the Medes,’ had turned homewards, his mission over, and was to walk with Tobit no more. Travel was an unconscionably slow business then, especially in the south-west. On the following Thursday Newman wrote from Southampton to Mr. Rogers at Oriel: