Wheresoever you may be, this letter will follow you, and with it our best and most earnest prayers for your increased welfare of earthly and heavenly hopes in this and many succeeding New Years. How solemn a thing it is to stand before the gate of another year, and ask the oracles what will this ensuing cluster of the months unfold! But, if we knew, perhaps it would make life what a Pagan Greek called it, “a shuddering thing.” We have had, through the approach to us of the Gulf Stream, with its atmospheric arch of warm and rarefied air, a sad succession of cyclones, or, as our homely phrase renders it, “shattering sou’westers,” reminding us of what was said to be the Cornish wreckers’ toast in bygone days:— “A billowy sea and a shattering wind, The cliffs before, and the gale behind,” but, thank God, no wrecks yet on our iron shore. The following letter was written to Mrs. Mills, daughter of Sir Thomas D. Acland, on the death of her father; a letter which will touch the hearts of many a “West Country man” who has loved his honoured name. MORWENSTOW, July 27, 1861. _My dear Mrs. Mills_,—The knowledge of your great anguish at Killerton has only just reached us. How deeply we feel it, I need not tell: although long looked for, it smote me like a sudden blow. Yet we must not mourn “for him, but for ourselves and our children.” “It shall come to pass, at eventide there shall be light.” The good and faithful servant had borne the burden and the heat of the day; and at set of sun he laid him down and slept. My heart and my eyes are too full to write. May his God and our God bless and sustain yours and you! My poor dear wife, who is ill, offers you her faithful love; and I shall pray this night for him who is gone before, and for those who tarry yet a little while. I am, dear Mrs. Mills, yours faithfully and affectionately, R. S. HAWKER. During his wife’s blindness and the gentle fading away of a well-spent, God-fearing life, nothing could be more unremitting than the attention of Mr. Hawker. He read to her a great part of the day, brought her all the news of the neighbourhood, strove in every way to make up to her for the deprivation of her sight. He had a ten-guinea subscription to Mudie’s Library, and whole boxes of novels arrived at the vicarage; these he diligently read to her as she sat, her arm-chair wheeled to the window out of which she could no more see, or by the fireside where the logs flickered.