three, and without your letters and loving remembrances in boxes, &c.?  I fancy that I should have broken down altogether, or else have hardened (more than I have become) to the soft and restful influences of the home life.  I see some people really alone in these countries, really expatriated.  Now I never feel that; partly because I have your letters, partly because I have the knowledge that, if ever I did have to go to England, I should find all the old family love, only intensified and deepened.  I can tell you that the consciousness of all this is a great help, and carries one along famously.  And then the hope of meeting by-and-by and for ever!’

‘True to the kindred points of heaven and home.’  Surely such loyalty of heart, making a living influence of parents so long in their graves, has been seldom, at least, put on record, though maybe it often and often has existed.

Again, on March 8:—­’Such a fit came over me yesterday of old memories.  I was reading a bit of Wordsworth (the poet).

I remembered dear dear Uncle Frank telling me how Wordsworth came over to Ottery, and called on him, and how he felt so honoured; and so I felt on thinking of him, and the old (pet) names, and most of all, of course, of Father and Mother, I seemed to see them all with unusual clearness.  Then I read one of the two little notes I had from Mr. Keble, which live in my “Christian Year,” and so I went on dreaming and thinking.

’Yes, if by His mercy I may indeed be brought to the home where they dwell!  But as the power of keen enjoyment of this world was never mine, as it is given to bright healthy creatures with eyes and teeth and limbs sound and firm, so I try to remember dear Father’s words, that “he did not mean that he was fit to go because there was little that he cared to stop here for.”  And I don’t feel morbid like, only with a diminished capacity for enjoying things here.  Of the mere animal pleasures, eating and drinking are a serious trouble.  My eyes don’t allow me to look about much, and I walk with “unshowing eye turned towards the earth.”  I don’t converse with ease; there is the feeling of difficulty in framing words.  I prefer to be alone and silent.  If I must talk, I like the English tongue least of all.  Melanesia doesn’t have such combinations of consonants and harsh sounds as our vernacular rejoices in.  If I speak loud, as in preaching, I am pretty clear still; but I can’t read at all properly now without real awkwardness.

’I am delighted with Shairp’s “Essays” that Pena sent me.  He has the very nature to make him capable of appreciating the best and most thoughtful writers, especially those who have a thoughtful spirit of piety in them.  He gives me many a very happy quiet hour.  I wish such a book had come in my way while I was young.  I more than ever regret that Mr. Keble’s “Praelectiones” was never translated into English.  I am sure that I have neglected poetry all my life for want of some guide to the appreciation and criticism of it, and that I am the worse for it.  If you don’t use Uncle Sam’s “Biographia Literaria,” and “Literary Remains,” I should much like to have them.