What would I give to know that sister of yours that is so good at discovering; sure she is excellent company; she has reason to laugh at you when you would have persuaded her the “moss was sweet.”  I remember Jane brought some of it to me, to ask me if I thought it had no ill smell, and whether she might venture to put it in the box or not.  I told her as I thought, she could not put a more innocent thing there, for I did not find it had any smell at all; besides, I was willing it should do me some service in requital for the pains I had taken for it.  My niece and I wandered through some eight hundred acres of wood in search of it, to make rocks and strange things that her head is full of, and she admires it more than you did.  If she had known I had consented it should have been used to fill up a box, she would have condemned me extremely.  I told Jane that you liked her present, and she, I find, is resolved to spoil your compliment, and make you confess at last that they are not worth the eating; she threatens to send you more, but you would forgive her if you saw how she baits me every day to go to London; all that I can say will not satisfy her.  When I urge (as ’tis true) that there is a necessity of my stay here, she grows furious, cries you will die with melancholy, and confounds me so with stories of your ill-humour, that I’ll swear I think I should go merely to be at quiet, if it were possible, though there were no other reason for it.  But I hope ’tis not so ill as she would have me believe it, though I know your humour is strangely altered from what it was, and am sorry to see it.  Melancholy must needs do you more hurt than to another to whom it may be natural, as I think it is to me; therefore if you loved me you would take heed on’t.  Can you believe that you are dearer to me than the whole world beside, and yet neglect yourself?  If you do not, you wrong a perfect friendship; and if you do, you must consider my interest in you, and preserve yourself to make me happy.  Promise me this, or I shall haunt you worse than she does me.  Scribble how you please, so you make your letter long enough; you see I give you good example; besides, I can assure you we do perfectly agree if you receive not satisfaction but from my letters, I have none but what yours give me.

Letter 39.—­Dorothy has been in London since her last letter, but unfortunately she has either not met with Temple, or he has left town suddenly whilst she was there, on some unexplained errand.  This would therefore seem a natural place to begin a new chapter; but as we have very shortly to come to a series of unhappy letters, quite distinct in their character from these, I have thought fit to place in this long chapter yet a few more letters after Dorothy’s autumn visit to London.

Stephen Marshall was, like Hugh Peters, one of those preachers who was able to exchange the obscurity of a country parish for the public fame of a London pulpit, by reason of a certain gift of rhetorical power, the value of which it is impossible to estimate to-day.  Such of his sermons as are still extant are prosy, long-winded, dogmatic absurdities, overloaded with periphrastic illustrations in scriptural language.  They are meaningless to a degree, which would make one wonder at the docility and patience of a seventeenth century congregation, if one had not witnessed a similar spirit in congregations of to-day.