xi.J FAILURE OF HEALTH. 359 



The summer was spent in visiting relations and friends 

 in Scotland, until once more he returned with all his 

 family to the home he had quitted in so precarious a state 

 nearly three years before. ' On the 20th September we 

 reached our own comfortable house in Park Place, for 

 which/ says his journal, * I thank God humbly and 

 sincerely/ 



' God, who has visited us with many trials, and led 

 us like the Israelites of old from place to place without 

 aay certain abode, bless, we beseech Thee, our return 

 home, and mercifully grant that the afflictions and 

 anxieties of that long probation may bear fruit in a more 

 self-denying and godly life ; and that we may have our 

 In-arts fixed on a yet more abiding resting-place, eternal 

 in the heavens, for Jesus Christ's sake/ 



The two following short letters, written soon after his 

 return home to that friend with whom he shared so many 

 of his confidences, refer, the first to the impression made 

 by the perusal of the beautiful memoir of the late John 

 kintosh, written by the late Dr. Norman Macleod ; the 

 second to the friendship he had formed with his physician 

 at Clifton, one of the last and firmest he ever formed. 



To E. C. BATTEN, ESQ. 



'3, PAUK PLACE, October I2th, 1854. 

 * ... I am now reading Mackintosh's life very slowly, 



ug devoured it at first with a rapidity quite unusual 

 with me, and I am enjoying it afresh. His buoyancy in 

 his first tours awakens my own early recollections, when 

 I f'-lt the charms of nature and solitude with a rapture 



i whit inferior to his, though I never recorded them. 

 They were perhaps the most thrilling hours and days of 



life ; and to read his vivid pages makes me young 

 again. I can indeed thank God for having disclosed to 

 me the hidden charms of His beautiful world ; and I 

 could live content to any age in the joyful recollection of 

 them. 1 



