’What can one think of long without the mind running off to France?  What a wonderful story it is!  Only Old Testament language can describe it, only a Prophet can moralise upon it.  It is too dreadful in its suddenness and extent.  One fears that vice and luxury and ungodliness have destroyed whatever of chivalry and patriotism there once was in the French character.  To think that this is the country of St. Louis and Bayard!  The Empire seems almost systematically to have completed the demoralisation of the people.  There is nothing left to appeal to, nothing on which to rally.  It is an awful thing to see such judgments passing before our very eyes.  So fearful a humiliation may do something yet for the French people, but I dread even worse news.  It nearly came the other day to a repetition of the old Danton and Robespierre days.

’Here we are going on happily....  I would give something to spend a quiet Sunday with you in your old Church.  How pleasant to have an old Church.

’Always yours affectionately,

‘J.  C. Patteson.’

My own last letter came at the same time:—­

’Norfolk Island:  February 16th, 1871.

’My dear Cousin,—­I must not leave your letter of last October without an instalment of an answer, though this is only a chance opportunity of sending letters by a whaler, and I have only ten minutes.

’Your account of the Southampton Congress is a regular picture.  I thinly I can see the Bishops of Winton, Sarum, and Oxon; and all that you say by way of comment on what is going off in the Church at home interests me exceedingly.  You can’t think what a treat your letters are.

’You see Mr. Codrington is the only one of my age, and (so to say) education here, and so to commune with one who thinks much on these matters, which of course have the deepest interest for me, is very pleasant and useful.  On this account I do so value the Bishop of Salisbury’s letters, and it is so very kind of him to write to me in the midst of the overwhelming occupations of an English diocese.

’I don’t think you have mentioned Dr. Vaughan.  I read his books with much interest.  He doesn’t belong to the Keble theology; but he seems to me to be a thoughtful, useful, and eminently practical writer.  He seems to know what men are thinking of, and to grapple with their difficulties.  I am pleased with a little book, by Canon Norris, “Key to the New Testament”:  the work of a man who has read a good deal, and thought much.

’He condenses into a 2s. 6d. book the work of years.

’You are all alive now, trying to work up your parochial schools to “efficiency” mark—­rather you were doing so, for I think there was only time allowed up to December 31, 1870.  I hope that the efforts were successful.  At such times one wishes to see great noble gifts, men of great riches giving their £10,000 to a common fund.  Then I remember that the claims and calls are so numerous in England, that very wealthy men can hardly give in that way.