"Seeing that I have adverted in the former part of this book to the feelings experienced on our return from poor Cook, which induced me to look up to the Lord, enquiring what next HE would have me to do, receiving this precious reply, 'Greater things than these, that they may marvel;' and considering such words must have had a reference to his condescending dealings a few months afterwards in influencing me to write to the Duke upon the necessity of a new _birth_ unto righteousness,--I am solicitous to devote a portion of this book to his letters, remarking thereon as the list thereof proceeds: May the Lord be with me, inclining my heart and pen to perform all his good will and pleasure, be that whatever it may, for his holy name' sake. Amen." The Duke of Wellington was at this time (1834) a man sixty-five years old. He was in the prime of strength and health, with a capacity for work which the roughing and the hard service he had undergone in earlier life had not in the least impaired. In spite of the passing unpopularity due to his opposition to the Reform Bill, that led to his being publicly hooted in 1832, he had had many high offices bestowed upon him. He had now been a widower for three years. CHAPTER II. FIRST INTERVIEWS. Miss J.'s first letter to the duke was written on the 15th of January, 1834, from Devonshire, where she was spending several months. She was greatly encouraged by receiving an answer from the duke by return post. This letter is unfortunately missing, nor does Miss J. give extracts from it, as from many others, but she indulges in a few comments upon it. "It was," she says, "dated from Hartford Bridge, Jan. 18, 1833, instead of 1834,--a remarkable circumstance for one so accurate in such particulars. It had also a mistake in one place and a blot in two,--betraying consequently, I should imagine, feelings which overwhelmed him on the receipt of my Epistle; and since it is not at all unlikely that the same Lord who worked in me to write may ('His eyes being in every place') have allowed him to participate in the same in some way known only to Himself, in order to effect His purposes." Stimulated by this reception of her first venture, Miss J. proceeded further, and on the 24th of April carried a Bible to the town-house of the Duke, and with her own hand gave it into the charge of the servant. She writes a minute account of this occurrence:--