It must have been about the year 1754, when he was twenty-eight years of age, that an uncle, who was a farmer at Blackwell, the parish next to South Normanton, died; he left his stock on the farm to Jedediah, with the idea, we suppose, that he would succeed him as tenant. This legacy seems to have been sufficient to induce Jedediah to give up his employment, whatever it was, near Leicester, and return to the land or to husbandry. It served also as a reason for thinking he was in a position to marry. We find him, therefore, almost at once, after settling at Blackwell, writing to Elizabeth Woollatt, with whom he had been ever since his residence at Findern, now more than eight years before, on terms of intimacy if not of affection. Miss Woollatt had during that time been very little at home, but had been out in service, and at the time of Jedediah’s proposal was acting as servant or housekeeper to a Dr. Benson, an eminent Presbyterian divine in the east of London, who had written several works on divinity, and who has in more recent days been deemed worthy of a place in the _Dictionary of National Biography_. The characteristic letter containing Jedediah’s proposal to Elizabeth Woollatt, which we are about to give, is a long one, but it is rather typical of the writer, and is also worth inserting as a proof of how well he, who was little above a working man in position, had managed to educate himself. “J. Strutt to Elizabeth Woollatt. “Blackwell “Feby 3^{rd} 1755 “Dear Betty, “Since our first acquaintance, which is now many years ago, I have often wrote to you but never in a strain like this; nor did I think I ever should for though we were then more intimately acquainted than since and though then I thought you had some degree of kindness for me, yet as my conduct and behaviour to you has been such as could neither raise nor continnue your regard, together with the years that have passed since then, (for time often puts a period to love as well as all other events) I did not think you could remember me with the least pleasure or satisfaction but rather the contrary; but when I was at London and had the opportunity of seeing you something or other told me (though perhaps nothing more than the last glance of your eye when I bade you farewell) that you looked on me with an eye of tenderness nay, one is so apt to speak as they wish I had liked to have said love; and if so that one generous instance of truth and constancey has made a greater and more lasting impression on my mind than all the united claims of beauty wit and fortune of your sex so far as I have had opportunity of conversing, were ever able to make; therefore it is upon this foundation I promise to tell you that from a wandering inconstant and roving swain I am become entirely yours!