10 



memory of this true brother in their science ; as 

 great a friend and encourager of science, and him- 

 self as near perfection in every line of life and cha- 

 racter as human nature ever admitted of. 



You will excuse this sally of zeal upon my ob-^ 

 serving that the 24lh of May happened to be your 

 anniversary, and will not treat it with any attention 

 that may be inconvenient. It was an impulse of the 

 heart that I could not restrain. 



My dear Sir, I have many thanks to offer (too 

 long postponed) for your kind present of excellent 

 dried fruit and biscuits ; the latter are, I perceive, 

 recovering their peculiar taste and good quality — 

 which I will now venture to say were quite gone. 

 Those cruel times of real or pretended scarcity 

 ruined every sort of eatables where flour was con- 

 cerned ; neither do I think that bread or any other 

 flour compositions have yet been in, nor perhaps 

 ever will return to, the same perfection as before. 



The sermon you were so good as to send me is 

 excellent ; it must (as it were) have compelled a 

 large collection; — in its address to the congrega- 

 tion # , I think it puts me in mind of something in 

 Saurin. I venture to pay in your own coin, by 

 sending you a sermon preached before many digni- 

 taries of the Church at a visitation, by a great friend 

 of mine, whom you have seen at Hillingdon, upon 



* A Sermon preached at the Octagon Chapel, Norwich, August 

 30, 1801, for the Benefit of the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, 

 by the Rev. Pendlebury Houghton, — from the text : " I was sick, 

 and ye visited me." Matth. ch. xxv. ver. oft. 



