Mr. Wordsworth, Mrs. Wordsworth and Miss Fenwick have been quite charmed, affected, and instructed by the invalid's volume.... Mrs. Wordsworth, after a few pages were read, at once pronounced it to be Miss Martineau's production, and concluded that you knew all about it and caused it to be sent hither. In some of the most eloquent parts it stops short of their wishes and expectations: but they all agree that it is _a rare book_, doing honor to the head and heart of your able and interesting friend. Mr. Wordsworth praised it with more unreserve--I may say, with more _earnestness_--than is usual with him. The serene and heavenly-minded Miss Fenwick was prodigal of her admiration. But Mrs. Wordsworth's was the crowning praise. She said--and you know how she would say it--"I wish I had read exactly such a book as that years ago!"... It is a _genuine_ and touching series of meditations by an invalid not sick in mind or heart.[10] [10] _Diary and Letters of H. C. Robinson_, vol. iii., p. 235. From one of the letters with which Mr. Henry G. Atkinson has favored me and my readers, I find that she wrote a chapter for that book, which undoubtedly must have been of the deepest interest, but which was not published. LETTER TO MR. ATKINSON. [Extract.] November 19, 1872. DEAR FRIEND: ... You will feel at once how earnestly I must be longing for death--I who never loved life, and who would any day of my life have rather departed than stayed. Well! it can hardly go on very much longer now. But I do wish it was permitted to us to judge for ourselves a little how long we ought to carry on the task which we never desired and could not refuse, and how soon we may fairly relieve our comrades from the burden of taking care of us. I wonder whether the chapter I wrote about this for the "Sick-Room" book will ever see the light. I rather wish it may, because I believe it utters what many people think and feel. I let it be omitted from that book because it might perhaps injure the impression of the rest of the volume; but, so far as I remember it, it is worth considering, and therefore publishing.