On the day the letters came there was great peace, and a kind of awful joy on all the household.  For many weeks past, Sir John had not attempted to read family prayers, but on this evening he desired his daughters to let him do so.  Where in the prayer for missionaries he had always mentioned, ‘the absent member of this family,’ he added in a clear tone, ’especially for John Coleridge Patteson, Missionary Bishop.’  That was the father’s one note of triumph, the last time he ever led the household prayers.  In a day or two Mrs. Selwyn came to him, and he wrote the following to the Bishop of New Zealand:—­

’Feniton Court:  May 24, 1861.

’My very dear Friend,—­Here I am, and I have with me your dear and good wife, who arrived yesterday.  She looks well, and I trust is so.  She has arranged her visits so as to come to me as soon as possible.  “I will go and see him before he die,” and I feel sensibly the kindness of it.  What a mercy is it that my life should have been preserved to receive from my dear son Coley and from you by letter the account of his having been consecrated by you as Bishop of the true Catholic Church.  There were [accounts?] of that most impressive service, which, had I been present, would have, I fear, sent me to the floor; and you and Coley must have had difficulty in holding up at those feeling statements of your having received him at my old hands.  When you so received him, it was known I was satisfied that his heart was really fixed on this missionary work—­that he felt a call to it.  I believe, you know, and I am sure God knows, that I had not the most distant notion in my mind that it would lead to his becoming a Bishop, nor do I now rejoice in the result, simply on account of the honour of the office; but because my confidence in the honesty and sincerity of his then feelings has been justified, and that it has pleased God to endow him with such abundant graces.  May it please God that you should continue together in your respective governments in His Church many years, and that we may all meet together in his kingdom above!

’When I parted with him I did not expect to see his face on earth, yet perhaps I hardly expected that our separation would be so soon, though I am in my seventy-second year.  But in February I discovered these swellings in my throat; which, humanly speaking, could only be cured by iodine.  Iodine has failed, and other attempts at a cure fail also; and it is only a question of time when the soul will be delivered from the burthen of the flesh.  So indeed it is with all human beings; but it is one thing to know this as a general proposition, and another to know that the particular minister of death has hold of you, and that you are really only living from day to day.

’For all your many kindnesses to all of us and to my son, I thank you from the very bottom of my soul, and pray that we may meet hereafter, through the merits, and for the sake of our blessed Mediator and Redeemer Jesus Christ our Lord, that as we have striven on earth to be followers of Him and His glory, so we may be partakers of it in Heaven.