1842-43. A SPItAINED KNEE. 311 



fatigued with my laboratory work, that when I left it I had no 



spirit to write you even a few lines I have great reason 



to be thankful for the health I have enjoyed since you left, 

 though it has not been uninterrupted. I had got so far on in 

 the way of limping about on a stick, that I was promising 

 myself a visit to church, and the pleasure of hearing a sermon, 

 when my hopes were disappointed by a fall down stairs, which 

 sprained my knee, and doomed me to bed and sofa for a fort- 

 night, and to another leaf out of the book of physical affliction 

 in which I have lately had to read so many lessons. I have 

 read somewhere, that in the lives of men, if wisely watched, 

 may be discerned the finger of Providence, teaching each by a 

 kind of lesson peculiar to himself ; so that on one bodily afflic- 

 tion, on another mental sorrow, on another pecuniary distress 

 falls, the same kind of trial returning again and again, while 

 the sufferer is exempt from other forms of woe. I have some- 

 times thought there was a little truth in it, and you can suppose 

 in what way I apply it to myself. But in reality every sorrow 

 bears others in its bosom, and trial in one shape must always 

 be more or less trial in all. This is a foolish speculation, and 

 one I do not seek to indulge in. So long as I feel every lesson 

 less than sufficient to teach me the patience and faith I so much 

 require, I feel every disposition to look with a cold eye of 

 curiosity on God's dealings with me, at once silenced. I know 

 now enough of the ' peace that passeth all understanding/ to 

 welcome the attainment of more of it at any price its great Giver 

 may afford it to me. Is there not something presumptuous in 

 that expression ? There is only humble hope at least in my 

 heart. 



" A week has elapsed since I wrote the preceding part of 

 this. . . . Yesterday I received your second letter, on which I 

 would expend much praise, if it would not waste paper. Suffice 

 it therefore to say, that we all read it with pleasure, and that I 

 have no wish you should displace Schelling or Neander in your 

 descriptions, by any of the great physiker. I get enough of 

 them, and need accounts of the others to keep my soul from 

 growing altogether one-sided. Judge of this by the life I lead 

 at present. At ten A.M. I descend to the laboratory, where I 



