Your very kind and affectionate letter, and the many kind things you have said in it, called upon me for an immediate answer.  But it found my wife and myself so ill, and my wife so very ill, that till now I have not been able to do this duty.  The ague and rheumatism have been almost her constant enemies, which she has combated in vain almost ever since we have been here, and her sickness is always my sorrow, of course.  But what you tell me about your sight afflicted me not a little, and that about your health, in another part of your letter, makes me entreat you to take due care of both.  It is a part of our duty to God and man to take due care of His gifts; and though we ought not to think more highly of ourselves, yet we ought to think as highly of ourselves as immortals ought to think.

When I came down here, I was more sanguine than I am at present; but it was because I was ignorant of many things which have since occurred, and chiefly the unhealthiness of the place.  Yet I do not repent of coming on a thousand accounts; and Mr. Hayley, I doubt not, will do ultimately all that both he and I wish—­that is, to lift me out of difficulty.  But this is no easy matter to a man who, having spiritual enemies of such formidable magnitude, cannot expect to want natural hidden ones.

Your approbation of my pictures is a multitude to me, and I doubt not that all your kind wishes in my behalf shall in due time be fulfilled.  Your kind offer of pecuniary assistance I can only thank you for at present, because I have enough to serve my present purpose here.  Our expenses are small, and our income, from our incessant labour, fully adequate to these at present.  I am now engaged in engraving six small plates for a new edition of Mr. Hayley’s Triumphs of Temper, from drawings by Maria Flaxman, sister to my friend the sculptor.  And it seems that other things will follow in course, if I do but copy these well.  But patience!  If great things do not turn out, it is because such things depend on the spiritual and not on the natural world; and if it was fit for me, I doubt not that I should be employed in greater things; and when it is proper, my talents shall be properly exercised in public, as I hope they are now in private.  For till then I leave no stone unturned, and no path unexplored that leads to improvement in my beloved arts.  One thing of real consequence I have accomplished by coming into the country, which is to me consolation enough:  namely, I have re-collected all my scattered thoughts on art, and resumed my primitive and original ways of execution in both painting and engraving, which in the confusion of London I had very much lost and obliterated from my mind.  But whatever becomes of my labours, I would rather that they should be preserved in your greenhouse (not, as you mistakenly call it, dunghill) than in the cold gallery of fashion.  The sun may yet shine, and then they will be brought into open air.