"When I can spare a little eyesight or time, I feel myself warranted to indulge the pleasure I always have in the exercise of the domestic affections, and in gratifying you (as I hope it is not vanity to think I do) in writing to you at a time when you are in circumstances of more quiet than usual, though I am aware that a man of your age, who is spending his first year of married life with a partner, between whom and himself there was great mutual attachment, grounded on esteem, and a mutual acquaintance with each other's characters and dispositions, can never be so happy as when he is enjoying a _tête-à-tête_ with his bride. By the way, do you keep anything in the nature of a journal? A commonplace book I take it for granted you keep; and speaking of books, let me strongly urge you to keep your accounts regularly, and somewhat at least in the mode in which we keep ours--under different heads. If you have not the plan, tell me and I will send it to you. Its excellence is that it enables you with ease to see how your money goes; and remember we live in days in which a single sovereign given by an individual is often productive of great effects. Where is it that a single drop (stalactite) from a roof, falling into the ocean, is made to bemoan itself on being lost in the abyss of waters, when afterwards it became the seminal principle of the great pearl that constituted the glory of the Great Mogul? And now also, remember the Church Missionary Society is so poor, that it will be compelled to quit some fields whitening to the harvest, unless it can have its funds considerably augmented." [Illustration: SAMUEL WILBERFORCE, Aged 29.] The next letter refers to the offer of the vicarage of Ribchester, near Preston, in Lancashire, made by the Bishop of Chester to Samuel Wilberforce. "_March 3, 1829._