46 LIFE OF 



influence to restore his mind to a healthy tone, there had been 

 impressions made under the first overwhelming influence of this 

 blow., which no effort of reason, nor the persuasions of those 

 around him,, could ever entirely eradicate. The following 

 letter from Sir Humphry Davy shows how warmly he sympa- 

 thised in Mr. Knight's affliction. 



" Park Street, January J7, 1828. 



" MY DEAR SIR, 



" I have three or four times within the last six weeks taken 

 up the pen and begun to write to you ; but I have always laid 

 it down again, fearing to trust myself with a subject on which 

 I could not write without feeling deeply, and great mental 

 agitation. 



" I have grieved with you, but in such the most awful visi- 

 tation of evil belonging to human nature, it is almost vain to 

 attempt to offer consolation : yet, considering life as a great 

 system in which all is for good, and believing that the intellec- 

 tual and moral part of our nature is as indestructible, as the 

 atoms that compose our frame, I feel the conviction that where 

 a mind so highly gifted, and so little selfish, is removed from 

 this scene of being, apparently so prematurely, it is to act in a 

 better and nobler state of existence. 



" The noblest spirits often return the soonest to the source 

 of intellectual life, from which they sprung: and they are 

 surely the happiest ; whilst we are to wait the trials of sorrow, 

 sickness, and age. 



" I offer my most ardent wishes for your recovery, and that 

 of Mrs. Knight. I know the agony ofspesfracta, but even in this 

 case, time, the great soother, creates a new source of hope. 



" I wish I could give you a more satisfactory answer to your 

 kind inquiries respecting my health. Dr. Philip has been very 

 kind to me, but ' my body does me sorely wrong.' I some- 

 times hope, and sometimes despair, of ultimate recovery. My 

 paralytic symptoms are much diminished : but still I cannot 

 get rid of stiffness in my right arm and leg. I am now amus- 



