I am, thank God, better, but still very weak and wholly unfit for any kind of business and study. I have, however, considerably recovered the use of all the limbs that were affected, and, as my amendment has been slow and gradual, I hope in time it may be complete. But I am leading the life of an anchorite, obliged to abstain from flesh, wine, business, study, experiments, and all things that I love; but this discipline is salutary, and, for the sake of being able to do something more for science, and I hope for humanity, I submit to it, believing that the Great Source of intellectual being so wills it for good. One of the last thoughts in his note-book, written at Ravenna, shows his mind: ‘Our _real knowledge_ is but to be sure that we know nothing, and I can but doubt if this be a curse or blessing. Those who hope, trust, and believe are surely happier far than those who doubt; and the submissive child, who of his father’s goodness is secure, is far more blessed than the froward one, who sets himself against his powerful will, which, after all his struggles and vain efforts, he must at last obey, rebelling against the love which would have made him happy. Is not this the history of man?--of that bright and beauteous garden where in innocence and ignorance he lived and loved till the false taste of knowledge made him wretched and he knew that he must die. And is not this the glory and the consummation of the Christian faith, which gives him back his innocence, his hopes, his confidence in God, which through his life still gilds the future with a golden blessing of an expected immortality? Man fell in Adam; knowledge was his bane; man rose in Christ, recovering his ignorance or substituting hope for what was doubt.’ Four or five days before he left Ravenna he wrote, April 6, ‘Did not shoot, but returned thanks to the Great Cause of all being for all His mercies to me, an undeserving and often ungrateful creature, but now most grateful. May I become better and more grateful and more humble-minded every day!’ ‘Valde miserabilis’ is not an unfrequent expression at this time, commonly accompanied with mention of diminished power of limbs and general feebleness, with pain and numbness. Sometimes he was in despair of recovery and resigned to his fate, at other times indulging in hope, thankful for feeling better, and expressing thanks (and he does it very often) by the use of letters; as G. G. D. (Thanks and glory to God); O. O. O.; or more fully thus, G. O. O. O. D. On July 1 he wrote to his friend Mr. Davies Gilbert, who was on the council of the Royal Society. He says that the expectations of his complete and rapid recovery have not been realised.