This is no very agreeable theme; but in so great a dearth of subjects to write upon, and especially impressed as I am at this moment with a sense of my own condition, I could choose no other.  The weather is an exact emblem of my mind in its present state.  A thick fog envelopes everything, and at the same time it freezes intensely.  You will tell me that this cold gloom will be succeeded by a cheerful spring, and endeavour to encourage me to hope for a spiritual change resembling it;—­but it will be lost labour.  Nature revives again; but a soul once slain lives no more.  The hedge that has been apparently dead, is not so; it will burst into leaf and blossom at the appointed time; but no such time is appointed for the stake that stands in it.  It is as dead as it seems, and will prove itself no dissembler.  The latter end of next month will complete a period of eleven years in which I have spoken no other language.  It is a long time for a man whose eyes were once opened, to spend in darkness; long enough to make despair an inveterate habit; and such it is in me.  My friends, I know, expect that I shall see yet again.  They think it necessary to the existence of divine truth, that he who once had possession of it should never finally lose it.  I admit the solidity of this reasoning in every case but my own.  And why not in my own?  For causes which to them it appears madness to allege, but which rest upon my mind with a weight of immovable conviction.  If I am recoverable, why am I thus?—­why crippled and made useless in the Church, just at that time of life when, my judgment and experience being matured, I might be most useful?—­why cashiered and turned out of service, till, according to the course of nature, there is not life enough left in me to make amends for the years I have lost,—­till there is no reasonable hope left that the fruit can ever pay the expense of the fallow?  I forestall the answer:—­God’s ways are mysterious, and He giveth no account of His matters—­an answer that would serve my purpose as well as theirs to use it.  There is a mystery in my destruction, and in time it shall be explained.

“I am glad you have found so much hidden treasure; and Mrs. Unwin desires me to tell you that you did her no more than justice in believing that she would rejoice in it.  It is not easy to surmise the reason why the reverend doctor, your predecessor, concealed it.  Being a subject of a free government, and I suppose fall of the divinity most in fashion, he could not fear lest his riches should expose him to persecution.  Nor can I suppose that he held it any disgrace for a dignitary of the church to be wealthy, at a time when churchmen in general spare no pains to become so.  But the wisdom of some men has a droll sort of knavishness in it, much like that of a magpie, who hides what he finds with a deal of contrivance, merely for the pleasure of doing it.

“Mrs. Unwin is tolerably well.  She wishes me to add that she shall be obliged to Mrs. Newton, if, when an opportunity offers, she will give the worsted-merchant a jog.  We congratulate you that Eliza does not grow worse, which I know you expected would be the case in the course of the winter.  Present our love to her.  Remember us to Sally Johnson, and assure yourself that we remain as warmly as ever,