here but have little scent, and lilies of the valley!  Still more, fancy seeing a Devonshire bank in spring, with primroses and daisies, or meadows with cowslip and clover and buttercups, and hearing thrushes and blackbirds and larks and cuckoos, and seeing trout rise to the flies on the water!  There is much exaggeration in second-rate books about tropical vegetation.  You are really much better off than we are.  No trees equal English oaks, beeches, and elms, and chestnuts; and with very little expense and some care, you have any flowers you like, growing out of doors or in a greenhouse.  You can make a warmer climate, and we can’t a colder one.  But we have plenty to look at for all that.  There, what a nice hour I have spent in chatting with you!’

This same dreamy kind of ‘chat,’ full of the past, and of quiet meditation over the present, reminding one of Bunyan’s Pilgrims in the Land of Beulah, continues at intervals through the sheets written while waiting for the ‘Southern Cross.’  Here is a note (March 14) of the teaching:—­

’I am working at the Miracles with the second set, and I am able to venture upon serious questions, viz. the connection between sin and physical infirmity or sickness, the Demoniacs, the power of working miracles as essential to the Second Adam, in whom the prerogative of the Man (the ideal man according to the idea of his original condition) was restored.  Then we go pretty closely into detail on each miracle, and try to work away till we reach a general principle or law.

’With another class I am making a kind of Commentary on St. Luke.  With a third, trying to draw out in full the meaning of the Lord’s Prayer.  With a fourth, Old Testament history.  It is often very interesting; but, apart from all sham, I am a very poor teacher.  I can discourse, or talk with equals, but I can’t teach.  So I don’t do justice to these or any other pupils I may chance to have.  But they learn something among us all.’

He speaks of himself as being remarkably well and free from the discomforts of illness during the months of March and April:  and these letters show perfect peace and serenity of spirit; but his silence and inadequacy for ‘small talk’ were felt like depression or melancholy by some of his white companions, and he always seemed to feel it difficult to rouse himself.  To sit and study his Hebrew Isaiah with Delitzsch’s comment was his chief pleasure; and on his birthday, April 1, Easter Eve, and the ensuing holy days, he read over all his Father’s letters to him, and dwelt, in the remarks to his sisters, upon their wisdom and tenderness.

Mr. Codrington says:  ’Before starting on the voyage he had confirmed some candidates in the Church in town:  on which occasion he seemed to rouse himself with difficulty for the walk, and would go by himself; but he was roused again by the service, and gave a spirited and eloquent address, and came back, after a hearty meal and lively conversation, much refreshed in mind and body.  This was on Palm Sunday.  On Easter Day he held his last confirmation of three girls and two Solomon Island boys.