means improbable that in the legal line you might not improbably rise into the enjoyment of rank and affluence. It is but too true that my feelings would, at your time of life, have been powerfully active in another direction. Perhaps this very determination may have been in part produced by that connection to which you look forward. And may it please God, my dear Samuel, to grant you the desire of your heart in this particular and to render the union conducive to your spiritual benefit and that of your partner also, so that it may be looked back upon with gratitude even in a better world, as that which has tended not only to your mutual happiness during the journey of life, but has contributed to bring you both after its blessed termination to the enjoyment of the rest that remaineth for the people of God." This letter refers to Samuel Wilberforce's marriage with Emily Sargent, as to which his father remarks: "Viewed in a worldly light, the connection cannot be deemed favourable to either of you." "_March 20, 1828._ "The cheerfulness, which at an earlier period of my life might have been a copious spring supplying my letters with a stream of pleasant sentiments and feelings, has been chilled even to freezing by advancing years, and yet, to do myself justice, though this may have dulled the activity and liveliness of my epistles, I think it has not cooled the kindly warmth of heart with which I write to my friends and least of all to my children." "_July 22, 1828._ "I am glad that any opportunity for your coming forward as a public speaker has occurred, I mean an opportunity proper for you to embrace, in which you were rather a drawn (though not a pressed) man and not a volunteer. We have had the great pleasure of having dear Robert officiate twice, both in the reading-desk and the pulpit. The apparent, as well as real, simplicity of his whole performance must have impressed every observant and feeling hearer with a very favourable view of his character. His language remarkably simple, much every way in his sermon to esteem and love. It suggested one or two important topics for consideration, which I shall be glad to talk over with you hereafter, as well as with Robert himself. One is, whether he did not fall into what I have often thought an error in the sermons of sound divines, and in those perhaps of Oxonians more than Cantabs--that I mean of addressing their congregations as being all real Christians--children of God, &c.--who needed (to use our Saviour's figure in John xiii.) only to have their feet washed. Whatever may be the right doctrinal opinion as to baptismal regeneration, all really orthodox men will grant, I presume, that as people grow up they may lose that privilege of being children of God which we trust they who were baptised in their infancy did enjoy, and would have reaped the benefit of it had they died before, by the gradual development of their mental powers, they became moral agents capable of responsibility.