LETTER TO PROFESSOR REED.

February 3. 1846.

MY DEAR MR. REED,

I was much shocked to find that my last had been despatched without acknowledgment for your kindness in sending me the admirable engraving of Bishop White, which I was delighted, on many accounts, to receive.  This omission was owing to the distressed state of mind in which I wrote, and which I throw myself on your goodness to excuse.  I ought to have written again by next post, but we really have been, and still are, in such trouble from various causes, that I could not take up the pen, and now must beg you to accept this statement as the only excuse which I can offer.  We have had such accounts from my daughter-in-law at Rome, that her mother and brother are just gone thither to support her, her mother being seventy years of age.

Do you know anything of a wretched set of religionists in your country, Superstitionists I ought to say, called Mormonites, or latter-day saints?  Would you believe it? a niece of Mrs. Wordsworth’s has just embarked, we believe at Liverpool, with a set of the deluded followers of that wretch, in an attempt to join their society.  Her name is ——­, a young woman of good abilities and well educated, but early in life she took from her mother and her connections a methodistical turn, and has gone on in a course of what she supposes to be piety till she has come to this miserable close.  If you should by chance hear anything about her, pray let us know.

The report of my brother’s decease, which we look for every day, has not yet reached us.  My nephew is still lingering on from day to day.

Ever faithfully and affectionately yours,
WM. WORDSWORTH.

The print of Bishop White is noble, everything, indeed, that could be wished.[215]

[215] Memoirs, ii. 424-5.

147. Governor Malartie:  Lord Hector of Glasgow University, &c.

LETTER TO SIR W. GOMM. &c. &c., PORT LOUIS, MAURITIUS.

Rydal Mount, Ambleside, Nov. 23. 1846.

DEAR SIR WILLIAM,

Your kind letter of the 4th of August I have just received; and I thank you sincerely for this mark of your attention, and for the gratification it afforded me.  It is pleasing to see fancy amusements giving birth to works of solid profit, as, under the auspices of Lady Gomm, they are doing in your island.

Your sonnet addressed to the unfinished monument of Governor Malartie is conceived with appropriate feeling and just discrimination.  Long may the finished monument last as a tribute to departed worth, and as a check and restraint upon intemperate desires for change, to which the inhabitants of the island may hereafter be liable!