You, I doubt not, will be enabled to feel, as well as to know, that even this event will be one of those which, in your instance, are working for good.  You have been enabled to exhibit a bright specimen of Christian excellence in doing the will of God, and, I doubt not, you will manifest a similar specimen in the harder and more difficult exercise of suffering it.  I have often thought that we are sometimes apt to forget that key, for unlocking what we deem to be very mysterious dispensations of Providence, in the misfortunes and afflictions of eminent servants of God, that is afforded by a passage in St. Paul’s Epistle to his beloved Phillipians:  “Unto you it is given, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for His sake.”  It is the strong only that will be selected for exhibiting these graces which require peculiar strength.  May you, my dear friend (indeed, I doubt not you will), be enabled to bear the whole will of God with cheerful confidence in His unerring wisdom and unfailing goodness.  May every loss of this world’s wealth be more than compensated by a larger measure of the unsearchable riches of Christ....  Meanwhile you are richly provided with relatives and friends whom you love so well as to relish receiving kindnesses from them, as well as the far easier office of doing them....

In reply to this, it would seem that Mrs. Fry, while thankful for the sympathy manifested on all hands, doubted the advisability of resuming her benevolent labors among prisons and hospitals.  Mr. Wilberforce proved himself again a wise and far-seeing counsellor.  He wrote:—­

I cannot delay assuring you that I do not see how it is possible for any reasonable being to doubt the propriety ... or, rather, let me say the absolute duty—­of your renewing your prison visitations.  A gracious Providence has blessed you with success in your endeavors to impress a set of miserables, whose character and circumstances might almost have extinguished hope, and you will return to them, if with diminished pecuniary powers, yet, we may trust, through the mercy and goodness of our Heavenly Father, with powers of a far higher order unimpaired, and with the augmented respect and regard of every sound judgment ... for having borne with becoming disposition a far harder trial certainly than any stroke which proceeds immediately from the hand of God.  May you continue, my dear Madam, to be the honored instrument of great and rare benefits to almost the most pitiable of your fellow-creatures.

The Record newspaper had suggested that additional contributions should be sent to the chief of the societies which had been inaugurated by Mrs. Fry, and so largely supported by her.  The Marquis of Cholmondeley wrote to Mrs. Opie, inquiring of that lady fuller particulars of the disaster, in so far as it affected or was likely to affect Mrs. Fry’s benevolent work.  He had been a staunch friend of her labors, having seconded them many times when the life of a wretched felon was at stake; and now, continuing the interest which he had hitherto exhibited, he was fearful lest this business calamity would put a stop to many of those labors.  Mrs. Opie, whose friendship dated from the old Norwich days, lost no time in writing as follows to her suffering friend:—­