I am reluctant to fill my sheet with reference to myself, and yet I ought not to withhold from you the yet further allusion to infirmities. Long have I been failing in my health, and long have my ministerial duties proved too great a call on my general strength, and especially my nervous system; but I still feel reluctant to retire from them. My wife and children were indeed repeatedly striving to bring me to the point, and represented to me the desirableness of withdrawing before such an attack should be experienced, as would render the residue of life burdensome to myself, distressing to my friends, and useless to all. Still, I shrunk,—it seemed almost an awful thing to retire from duties so solemnly undertaken; and from which none but God could release me. In this state of uncertainty I was seized with so violent a nervous affection, while engaged in some public but unimportant matter, that I lost, in the course of few minutes, all power to read, and could not for some days make out the very commonest words without spelling them just like a child; and though, as my nerves acquired a little more tone, I was enabled to recover somewhat of my suspended powers, it was not till several weeks after my seizure, that I was enabled to appear again in public duties; and then I could merely _preach_, not _read_. But this resumption of my duties gradually brought on such oppressive, not to say alarming, symptoms, that I, at length, felt fully convinced that my poor weakly frame was no longer able to bear such onerous duties; and having, through God’s mercy, obtained an assistant, who exactly suits both myself and people, I have turned over to him my yearly stipend with every public and oppressive duty, and am now rector indeed in name, but little further: I visit, indeed, parochially, and am endeavouring in various little ways, to counsel, regulate, and forward the movements of others, and to be a bond of union to the somewhat heterogeneous mass around us; and the silent intercessor for their diversified good, when it is not in my power in any other way to aid them. And I trust, that God is still among us as a people. As to other things, the kind interest which you have ever taken in my welfare, makes me wish that you would just introduce yourself, if only for a few minutes, into our midst. I could not have believed that so much comfort awaited me in my latter days. Pecuniary means quite adequate, not only for necessaries, but for extensive comforts; a commodious, elegant, and tasty abode, close and open carriage for summer, a cutter and sleigh for winter &c.; estimable society, and superior by far to most neighbourhoods in the province, within two hours’ easy drive of the capital (Toronto), and this well and even luxuriously supplied. No lack of literature. I see the best books, and have access to, or take in myself, the most approved periodicals and newspapers, almost to overpowering. And all this, when I derive no income from my