LIFE IN BRISTOL. 29 



elasticity of nature which enabled him easily to throw off 

 its effects. He was conscious that he had often failed, as 

 he said, to make his outward conduct conform to his real 

 sentiments in family intercourse ; he knew that his manners 

 had " a rough and sometimes prickly exterior." The death 

 of Dr. Lant Carpenter, who was drowned in the Mediter- 

 ranean in the spring of 1840, while on a voyage for his 

 health, brought these sentiments of self-reproach into 

 strong prominence in his mind. He occupied himself 

 during the summer with the preparation of a volume of his 

 father's sermons ; and recorded in a letter to his old and 

 much-valued friend, Mrs. Wright, of Dalston, the thoughts 

 which they awakened in his mind. 



Kingsdown, Bristol, September 6, 1840, 

 There has been to me a melancholy pleasure in thus renew- 

 ing, as it were, my intercourse with my father's mind by retracing 

 his writings with more care than as an ordinary reader I should 

 have bestowed upon them. . . . How much I wish that in my 

 moral character I had more of his spirit. I often think of him 

 as one who has shown us how nearly it is possible for frail 

 human nature to approach the great Pattern by steadfastly 

 keeping before his eyes the object of his imitation, and it is 

 encouraging at times when a deeply humbling sense of one's 

 own shortcomings might otherwise lead to despondency and 

 doubt of the possibility of acting up sufficiently near to the 

 Gospel standard. 



I can dwell now without pain on the events of the past few 

 months, for my mind, though generally violently affected by 

 the first shock, more easily reconciles itself than that of many 

 persons to what is certain ; and the nature of my pursuits, too, 

 causes the thought that all is the ordination of a wise and 

 loving Parent, to become interwoven with it — so far, at least, as 

 to check the murmur, if it cannot repress the sigh. I trust that 

 this source of consolation may not fail me in any trials to which 

 it may be the will of Providence that I should hereafter be 

 subjected. 



