"SIR,--Although you did not succeed in one of my requests to Mr. Pitt, you were more successful in the other; and for that I return you my thanks. I did not very much flatter myself that Mr. Pitt would add a place to what Lord Waldegrave at present possesses, indeed a regiment is almost the only addition he is likely to gain; and as Mr. Pitt has expressed his satisfaction in the marks of favour already received from the King, may I hope, through your mediation, that Mr. Pitt will be so good as to remind His Majesty how very acceptable a regiment of dragoons will be to Lord Waldegrave. If Lord Waldegrave was distressed from his own extravagance I would not trouble Mr. Pitt, but my daughter's father left his brother a clear estate which is now encumbered as much as if the late Lord Waldegrave had come to the title and estate, at twenty-four, instead of forty-four. The Duke of Grafton's reconciliation with his son is now so old a story that I only mention it as a fact that I am sensible gives you pleasure? Mr. Pitt is so much attached to Lord Euston, that I must take part in an event that I know gives him so much pleasure. I hope Lord Lucan will suffer the match to take place, but till it is over I shall have my doubts. If Mrs. Wilberforce and your sister are in town will you give them my best compliments. Sophia and William are both as tall as yourself. "Sir, "I remain yours, &c., &c., "MARIA." The next letter is from the same lady, thanking Wilberforce for having written "so full an explanation of what so few people understand" in his work on "Practical Christianity." "GLOUCESTER HOUSE, "_April 14, 1797_. "I received your inimitable book the day before I got your letter, and had read a good way in it. I have continued to read in it with the greatest satisfaction, and beg of you to accept of my thanks for having written so full an explanation of what so few people understand. I hope and trust it will be universally read, and that with attention, as then the good it will do will be infinite. Mrs. H. More was with me last night; she is so exalted by your book that she almost forgets humility is one of the Christian requisites. "I remain, dear sir, "Your _very_ much obliged, &c., "MARIA." Let us turn to the more serious friendships of Wilberforce's middle age. So much of his correspondence with Hannah More has been published that it is only lightly touched on here. In 1809 Hannah More wrote to Mr. Wilberforce: "Oh, if I could have had the benefit of your assistance in Cœlebs![31] but I could not be such an unfeeling brute as to ask it. 'Tis not to _make a speech_ when I say that _you_ are the _only being_ whose counsels would _in all points_ have exactly fallen in with my own ideas from your uniting a critical knowledge of the world in its higher classes with such deep religious feelings--either of these I might have found in a very few, but not both in any."