Your health, I hope,[148] is by this time reestablished.  Your son, Charles, looks uncommonly well, and we have had the pleasure of seeing him and his friends several times; but as you are aware, we are much engaged with visitors at this season of the year, so as not always to be able to follow our inclinations as to whom we would wish to see.  I cannot conclude without thanking you for your Sonnet upon a place so dear to me as Grasmere:  it is worthy of the subject.  With kindest remembrances, in which unite Mrs. W., my sister, and Dora, I remain, dear Mrs. Hemans,

Your much obliged friend,
WM. WORDSWORTH.

I have written very hastily to spare my eyes; a liberty which you will excuse.[149]

[148] This hope, alas! was not realised.  Mrs. Hemans died in the following year, May 16, 1835.

[149] Memoirs, ii. 291-2.

95. Of the Church of England, &c.

LETTER TO THE VENERABLE ARCHDEACON WRANGHAM.

Rydal Mount, Feb. 2. 1835.

MY DEAR WRANGHAM,

Sincere thanks are due from me for the attention you paid to Mrs. W.’s letter, written during my absence.  You know the favourable opinion I entertain of Mr. Graves; and I was under a promise to let him know, if any vacancy occurred in the neighbourhood, and to do all I could, without infringing upon prior or stronger claims, to promote the attainment of his wishes.

* * * * *

The mind of every thinking man who is attached to the Church of England must at this time be especially turned to reflections upon all points of ecclesiastical polity, government, and management, which may tend to strengthen the Establishment in the affections of the people, and enlarge the sphere of its efficiency.  It cannot, then, I feel, be impertinent in me, though a layman, to express upon this occasion my satisfaction, qualified as it is by what has been said above, in finding from this instance that our diocesan is unwilling to station clergymen in cures with which they are locally connected.  Some years ago, when the present Bishop of London, then of Chester, was residing in this neighbourhood, I took the liberty of strenuously recommending to him not to ordain young men to curacies where they had been brought up, or in the midst of their own relatives.  I had seen too much of the mischief of this, especially as affecting the functions and characters of ministers born and bred up in the lower classes of society.  It has been painful to me to observe the false position, as the French would call it, in which men so placed are.  Their habits, their manners, and their talk, their acquaintanceships, their friendships, and, let me say, their domestic affections, naturally and properly draw them one way, while their professional obligations point out another; and, accordingly, if they are sensible of both, they live in a perpetual conflict, and are liable to be