Henrietta’s kindest love and thanks for your letter.  She desires me to say that she and Bro are going to dine with Mrs. Robert Martin to-morrow.  I must tell you that Georgie and I went to hear Dr. Chalmers preach, three Sundays ago.  His sermon was on a text whose extreme beauty would diffuse itself into any sermon preached upon it—­God is love.  His eloquence was very great, and his views noble and grasping.  I expected much from his imagination, but not so much from his knowledge.  It was truer to Scripture than I was prepared for, although there seemed to me some want on the subject of the work of the Holy Spirit on the heart, which work we cannot dwell upon too emphatically.  ‘He worketh in us to will and to do,’ and yet we are apt to will and do without a transmission of the praise to Him.  May God bless you.

[Footnote 34:  Poetical Works, ii. 83.]

To Miss Commeline London:  August 19, 1837.

My dear Miss Commeline,—­I could not hear of your being in affliction without very frequent thoughts of you and a desire to express some of them in this way, and although so much time has passed I do hope that you will believe in the sympathy with which I, or rather we, have thought of you, and in the regard we shall not cease to feel for you even if we meet no more in this world.  It is blessed to know both for ourselves and for each other that while there is a darkness that must come to all, there is a light which may; and may He who is the light in the dark place be with you [now] and always, causing you to feel rather the glory that is in Him than the shadow which is in all beside—­that so the sweetness of the consolation may pass the bitterness of even grief.  Do give my love to Mrs. Commeline and to your sisters, and believe me, all of you, that the friends who have gone from your neighbourhood have not gone from my old remembrance, either of your kindness to them, or of their own feelings of interest in you.

Trusting to such old remembrances, I will believe that you care to know what we are doing and how we are settling—­that word which has now been on our lips for years, which it is marvellous to think how it got upon human lips at all.  We came from Sidmouth to try London and ourselves, and see whether or not we could live together; and after more than a year and a half close contact with smoke we find no very good excuse for not remaining in it; and papa is going on with his eternal hunt for houses—­the wild huntsman in the ballad is nothing to him, all except the sublimity—­intending very seriously to take the first he can.  He is now about one in particular, but I won’t tell where it is because we have considered so many houses in particular that our considerations have come to be a jest in general.  I shall be heartily glad, at least I think so, for it is possible that the reality of being bricked up for a lease time may not be very agreeable.