The twentieth edition!  I have looked
  Long for my second—­but it not appears;
  Yet not the less I joy that thou hast brooked
  Rich fruit of fair fame, and of mellow years,
  Thou wise old man, within whose saintly veins
  No drop of gall infects life’s genial tide,
  Whose many-chambered human heart contains
  No room for hatred and no home for pride. 
  Happy who give with stretch of equal love
  This hand to Heaven and that to lowly earth,
  Wise there to worship with great souls above
  As here to sport with children in their mirth;
  Who own one God with kindly-reverent eyes
In flowers that prink the earth, and stars that gem the skies.

JOHN STUART BLACKIE.

     CHARLES DICKENS to DEAN RAMSAY.

     Gad’s Hill Place, Higham, by Rochester, Kent,

     Tuesday, 29th May 1866.

     My dear Sir—­I am but now in the receipt of your kind letter,
     and its accompanying book.  If I had returned home sooner, I
     should sooner have thanked you for both.

I cannot adequately express to you the gratification I have derived from your assurance that I have given you pleasure.  In describing yourself as a stranger of whom I know nothing, you do me wrong however.  The book I am now proud to possess as a mark of your goodwill and remembrance has for some time been too well known to me to admit of the possibility of my regarding its writer in any other light than as a friend in the spirit; while the writer of the introductory page marked viii. in the edition of last year[12] had commanded my highest respect as a public benefactor and a brave soul.

     I thank you, my dear Sir, most cordially, and I shall always
     prize the words you have inscribed in this delightful volume,
     very, very highly.—­Yours faithfully and obliged,

     CHARLES DICKENS.

     Dr. GUTHRIE to DEAN RAMSAY.

     1 Salisbury Road,

     30th October 1872.

My dear Mr. Dean—­My honoured and beloved friend, I have received many sweet, tender, and Christian letters touching my late serious illness, but among them all none I value more, or almost so much, as your own.

May the Lord bless you for the solace and happiness it gave to me and mine!  How perfect the harmony in our views as to the petty distinctions around which—­sad and shame to think of it—­such fierce controversies have raged!  I thank God that I, like yourself, have never attached much importance to these externals, and have had the fortune to be regarded as rather loose on such matters.  We have just, by God’s grace, anticipated the views and aspects they present on a deathbed.

I must tell you how you helped us to pass many a weary, restless hour.  After the Bible had been read to me in a low monotone—­when I was seeking sleep and could not find it—­a