THOUGH circumstances certainly appear against me, and give you just reason to suspect that no very overwhelming tide of affection flows towards my expatriated brother and fellow-labourer; though I seem to have lost all the ardent, or the softer feelings of the friend, in the cold and apathetical conclusions of the mere calculator; though like the callous brethren of the afflicted Joseph, I seem unconscious of your grief, and can, like them, selfishly sit down to eat and to drink, or rise up to consult with others, to decide your fate, and fix you in sorrow;—though, I say, all these things appear against me, and though my friend is constrained to number me among the annoying trio, yet still I feel within me a pleasing conviction of real genuine affection, which enables me to rise above appearances, and which persuades me that I am not quite a stranger to that love which many waters cannot quench, and which the floods cannot drown. The fact is, my dear friend, that the decision to which you allude in your last was my painful and not my pleasant duty. I felt, I hope, something like the surgeon who has been called to perform some operation on the most beloved of his friends; were he to hesitate, or were he to decline, how justly would he be answerable for all the painful consequences which might result: but while he proceeds, though steady to his point, though the fixedness of his eye seems to proclaim him devoid of pity, though his unshaking hand seems to indicate no shrinking from his work of torture; yet still the tenderest emotions may exist within, and to the discriminating eye may be seen in a thousand varying turns. I do not, indeed, wish you to give me credit for a perfect similarity to all this, and yet I do hope that when time has a little more sobered down the strength, and perhaps intensity, of feeling, you will feel more disposed to thank me for the thankless duty which my friendship for you enabled me to perform.