I have only one sermon to send you, but to _me_ it is a deeply interesting one, as it was delivered more than once just over the spot where he told me so often to lay him; and I feel assured that whenever he preached it, his thoughts would wander onward to that coming day when he himself, as he contemplated, would form one of that last and vast assemblage which will be gathered in Morwenstow churchyard and church. Ever since I knew dear old Hawker, and for years before, he preached _extempore_. His habit was to take a prayer-book into the pulpit, and expound the Gospel for the day. He would read a verse or two, and then with a common lead pencil, which was ever suspended by a string from one of his coat-buttons, mark his resting-point. Having expounded the passage, he would read further, mark again, and expound. His clear, full voice was most mellifluous; and his language, whilst plain and homely, was highly poetical, and quite enchanting to listen to. He riveted one’s whole attention. His pulpit MSS. are very rare, because, just before taking to _extempore_ preaching, “basketsful” of his sermons were destroyed under the following circumstances, as he used to relate it to me: A celebrated firm of seedsmen advertised something remarkable in the way of carrots; and Mr. Hawker, who had long made this root his especial study, sent for some seed. He was recommended to sow it with some of the best ashes he could procure, and therefore brought out all his sermons one morning on to the vicarage lawn, set fire to the pile, and carefully collected the precious remains. The crop was an utter failure; but the cause thereof, on reflection was most palpable. He remembered that a few of old Dr. Hawker’s sermons were lying amongst his own; and the conclusion forced upon him was, that his grandfather’s heterodoxy had lost him his crop of carrots. He refers to this destruction in another letter to Mr. Carnsew:— DEC. 6, 1857. _My dear Sir_,—To-morrow I send for my last load of materials for building, the close of a long run of outlay extending through nearly thirty years. Bude, Whitstone, Trebarrow, Morwenstow, have been the scenes of my architecture. Anderson writes that he has bought a cottage of yours. I am glad of it for his wife’s sake. I wrote to him offering a young pig of mine, and twelve MS. sermons, for a young boar of the same age; and, do you know, he has taken me at my word. So I am to send him my MSS. and to fetch the boar. Did I ever tell you that I once dressed a drill of turnips for experiment with sermon ashes (I had been burning a large lot), and it was a complete failure? Barren, all barren, like most modern discourses; not even posthumous energy. The sermon that is spoken of by Mr. Valentine was on the general resurrection, and was preached at the “Revel,” Midsummer Day.