_effunded_, that it was better to be contented with a prosaic statement: viz., that coming home from Little Hempston the other evening after sunset, and having with some difficulty discovered and scrambled into my boat, which was moored under an old stump at the bottom of the woods, as I proceeded on my course down the river, the sky gradually assumed a portentous appearance, and distant flashes of lightning, growing gradually more distinct, began at regular intervals. Things however are not so constituted as to allow the sublime to amalgamate with the comfortable: according to the decrees of Fate, the storm which had lingered in the upper regions till I had got so far on my way home as to be out of reach of shelter from Dartington House, now came down with such violence as to save me the trouble of running at any rate, by convincing me that whether I was out five minutes or fifteen I should be in an equally bad case. The thunder got very loud, and the lightning was so green and brilliant, that I could see the stiles and gates, and even their latches, like the spectres of the things from which “_nox abstulit atra colorem_.” Sometimes the flashes lasted for nearly a second, and dazzled me so that after they were passed I could make no use of the twilight at all. Having got thus far, I feel in the awkward situation of having told a story without a point, and feel inclined to resort to the usual remedy, and apply to my invention to help me out of the scrape with a marvellous conclusion. Perhaps however you may be contented with a moral: so here goes. As good never comes unalloyed with evil, so that very evil often serves to give it a relish which it might otherwise be destitute of. I could not have reckoned this as an adventure, if I had not been forced to change my clothes when I came home.’ To the same ‘holy friend’ for whom Hurrell privately says on his knees his heartfelt thanksgiving, he writes often, from the first, in a mood of bantering and almost irreverent freedom. To the Rev. JOHN KEBLE, 1824.