’Is it possible that fifty years hence any similar event, should there be such, which should so “stir the heart of the country” (as you say about Mr. Keble’s death), might stimulate people to raise large sums for the endowment of a Church about to be, or already separated from the State?  I can’t avoid feeling as if God may be permitting the extension of the Colonial Churches, partly and in a secondary sense that so the ground may be travelled over on a small scale before the Church at home may be thrown in like manner upon its own resources.  The alliance is a very precarious one surely, and depends upon the solemn adherence to a fiction.  It is extraordinary that some Colonial Bishops should seek to reproduce the state of things which is of course peculiar to England, the produce of certain historical events, and which can have no resemblance whatever to the circumstances of our Colonies.

’The mail closes just after our arrival; and I am very busy at first coming on shore with such a party.  Goodbye for the present, my dear dear Uncle,

’Your loving and grateful Nephew,
‘J.  C. P.’

To me the condolence was:—­

’October 6, 1866.

’And so, my dear Cousin, the blow has fallen upon you, and dear Mr. and Mrs. Keble have passed away to their eternal rest.  I found letters at Norfolk Island on October 2, not my April letters, which will tell me most about him, but my May budget.

’How very touching the account is which my Uncle John sends me of dear Mrs. Keble, so thankful that he was taken first, so desirous to go, yet so content to stay!  And how merciful it has all been.  Such a calm holy close to the saintly life.  May God bless and support all you who feel the bereavement!  Even I feel that I would fain look for one more letter from him, but we have his “Christian Year,” and other books.  Is it not wonderful that all the wisdom and love and beauty of the “Christian Year,” to say nothing of the exquisite and matured poetry, should have been given to him so early in life?  Why, as I gather, the book was finished in the year 1825, though not published till 1827.  He wrote it when he was only 33 years old, and for 45 years he lived after he was capable of such a work.  Surely such a union of extreme learning, wisdom, and scholarship, with humility and purity of heart and life has very seldom been found.  Everyone wishes to say something to everyone else of one so dear to all, and no one can say what each and all feel.  We ought indeed to be thankful, who not only have in common with all men his books, but the memory of what he was personally to us.

’The change must needs be a great one to you.  I do feel much for you indeed.  But you will bear it bravely; and many duties and the will and power to discharge them occupy the mind, and the elasticity comes back again after a time.  I know nothing of the Keble family, not even how they were related to him, so that my interest in Hursley is connected with him only.  Yet it will always be a hallowed spot in the memory of English Churchmen.  You will hear the various rumours as to who is to write his life, &c.  Let me know what is worth knowing about it.