LITERARY WORK IN LONDON. 209 



" I saw at once how egregiously our love and confidence 

 " had been misplaced. I know not the nature of the 

 " purification of which you speak, but if this is the fruit 

 " of it, I desire not to know it. 



" Perhaps you may think I am severe ; I write not in 

 H bitterness, but in grief. To me the transaction seems 

 "a very shocking one; and it is not the least painful 

 " trait in it, that you can write of it so lightly, as if it were 

 "an everyday matter. I trust the Lord may trouble 

 " your conscience about it, which I had much rather see 

 " than your present complacency ; to Him I leave you. 

 " Remaining 



" Yours in much sorrow, 



"P. H. GOSSE." 



The conditions under which Philip Gosse had gone out 

 to Jamaica, and those under which he now returned, may 

 be gathered from the following letter addressed to the 

 well-known collector of natural objects, Mr. W. W. 

 Saunders : — 



" Dalston, August 8, 1846. 

 "My dear Sir, 



"Your favour of the 16th of April, acknow- 

 " ledging the receipt of the first consignment of woods, 

 " was received in due course. In May I shipped another 

 "lot of specimens, and that vessel, I understand, has 

 " been here some little time. That I did not write by 

 "her, giving you an account of the consignment, was 

 " owing to the fact that I believed myself on the point 

 " of sailing for England by the steamer ; and, fully ex- 

 pecting to be in England long before the specimens, 

 " I intended to write to you from London. I was, how- 

 " ever, strangely disappointed of two successive packets, 



P 



