"I still write now and then to H., but there is such a restriction on the freedom of thought and expression in speaking to him, that I have but very little interest in the correspondence; indeed I think it hardly likely long to continue; but from you there is no need or wish on my part to conceal any thing. * * * * * I _long_ to leave St. Paul's. I do not say this to anyone here, for nothing is gained of talking; but to you I say that I am obliged constantly to fall back on the reflection that, until some other way is opened, my duty lies here. It is not on account of any disagreeables in my position; but there are peculiar dangers and difficulties attending it, and I cannot help fearing constantly that my life is too easy and too soft to please God. {80} Still I see not which way to move. I think I wish to submit myself entirely to the Divine Will. I hope it will not seem impertinent, dear Dwight, to express a hope that this coming Lent may be a season of strict discipline to us both. Oh, I need it! I cannot tell you how the sense of responsibility concerning the souls of others sometimes alarms me. I can say this to you, without hypocrisy, I trust. I need to be purged by penance very, very much, to be drawn away from pride and vain-glory, and slothfulness and self-will; these are my besetting sins; and to be stirred up to diligent study, to obedience, to humility, to labor, and to prayer. I pray that I may have the grace to fulfil the work which God has put in my heart to undertake this Lent, that He would draw me away from all things else, entirely to be united to Him. It would be a most pleasant thought that we were thus entering on this penitential season together." The following extract from a letter of June 23, 1848, shows the interest which the writer still felt in Mr. Newman:-- "Is it not encouraging to see the stir that has been raised in England about Dr. Hampden's nomination? The secular papers all call the opposition a 'Tractarian Movement.' If they mean by this that none but Tractarians are engaged in it, it is palpably false; but in another sense it is certainly true. I see clearly in the whole matter the fruits of that movement, the greater earnestness and zeal for orthodoxy, _as such_, so different from what would have been exhibited a quarter of a century ago. And whom are we to thank for fixing the brand of heterodoxy upon this man; so that he cannot pass off his sophisms upon an unwary Church, but the great master to worn we once looked up, to whom God gave so clear a vision of the truth and so great a zeal to uphold it? This is the fruit of a seed sown by a hand now raised up against us, one of the many gifts by which we keep him and his great faculties in remembrance, though, alas! 'we now see him no more.'" {81}