Wilberforce writes to Mrs. Samuel Wilberforce the day after his daughter Elizabeth's marriage. _Mr. Wilberforce to Mrs. Samuel Wilberforce._ "HIGHWOOD HILL, "_January 12, 1831._ "MY DEAR EMILY,--We had a delightful day yesterday for our ceremony, and after the indissoluble knot had been tied in due form, the parties drove off about 12 o'clock to spend a few days at Mr. Stephen's favourite residence of Healthy Hill, as he terms it, Missenden. I really augur well of this connection, having strong reasons for believing Mr. James to be a truly amiable as well as pious man, and my dear Lizzy is really well fitted for the office of a parson's aider and comforter. It has given me no little pleasure to have been assured by Mr. Dupré, the curate of the parish, that she has been truly useful to the poor cottagers around us. His expression was, 'She has done more good than she knows of.' This event, combined with the close of another year and the anniversary of my own dear wife's birthday, has called forth in me a lively sense of the goodness of that gracious Being who has dealt so bountifully with me during a long succession of years. Dr. Warren, in 1788, as I was reminded when at Brighstone, declared that for want of stamina there would be an end of my feeble frame in two or three weeks, and then I was a bachelor. After this, near ten years after, I became a husband, and now I have assured me full grown descendants, and an offset in my Elizabeth. I have been receiving many congratulations from being perhaps the only living father of three first-class men, one of them a double first and the two others in the second also. Above all their literary acquirements I value their having, as I verily believe, passed through the fiery trial of an university, for such I honestly account it, without injury. And it gives me no little pleasure (as I think I have before assured you), to add that I ascribe this in part to the instrumentality of a certain young lady, who was a sort of guardian angel hovering around him in fancy and exerting a benign influence over the sensibility and tenderness of his lively spirit. Farewell, my dear Emily. "Believe me, begging a kiss to baby, "Ever affectionately yours, "W. WILBERFORCE." _Mr. Wilberforce to the Rev. Samuel Wilberforce._ "_February 8, 1831._