JOHN FEDDES. 335 



as certainly as of religion ; a faith that is the evidence 

 of the good things hoped for, a charity that believeth 

 no evil ; and where shall I look for these if not in you ? 



' I have, I believe, told you that I keep copies of the 

 letters I write to all my better and more valued corre- 

 spondents, partly because loving often to peruse the 

 letters I receive from them, I have found that when the 

 topics of the passing moment had escaped my memory, 

 my own were necessary to me to render theirs in- 

 telligible ; partly, too, because my letters furnish me 

 with a history of my thoughts, my sentiments, my feel- 

 ings, in short, enable me to prosecute the study of 

 that most important of all the branches of philosophy, 

 the philosophy of one's own life. The loss of my un- 

 fortunate epistle is therefore virtually nothing but the 

 loss of a little paper ; you shall have every thought and 

 every word of it in this long ungainly sheet. Not that 

 I deem it at all worth copying, but because what I said 

 and felt when writing it is exactly what I have to say 

 and what I feel now. 



1 Your truly welcome letter of the 2nd of July found 

 me buried up to my eyes amid books and manuscripts, 

 in a little old-fashioned room within which my great- 

 grandfather, John Feddes, passed his honeymoon with 

 Jean Gallic, in the good year 1698. I dare say you 

 remember the story. He was a sincere, but not a 

 favoured lover, for he was poor and red-haired, and as 

 ugly and awkward as his great-grandson, who is said 

 very much to resemble him; whereas, Jean was the 

 prettiest girl in the parish, and nearly the richest, and 

 she had, besides, the handsomest fellow in the whole of 

 it for her lover. Well, John saw her married to his 

 rival, and then went out in a terrible passion a buc- 

 caneering to South America, where he wreaked his 



