142 MEMOIR OF BR. HARVEY. 



Directly on returning to Ireland Mr. Harvey sought the 

 bracing air and retirement of his favourite Miltown Malbay, 

 which gradually restored his strength, though his complete 

 recovery was slow, retarded as it was by the feelings naturally 

 arising from being without the prospect of a settled occupation. 

 These are touchingly dwelt on in a letter to his dear friend 

 and relative Dr. F., who had been much with him during his 

 illness. 



Cream Point, Miltown Malbay, 



July 7, 1842. 



My dear Thomas, 



I have several times since we parted commenced writing 

 to you, and then allowed the dulness of the hour to conquer, and 

 committed the paper to the grate ; but now that I have a note 

 from you, I must at least let you know I am abof e ground, and, 

 for all I see, likely to be so for some time longer. But for the 

 rest, I have been troubled with alternate fits of wretchedness 

 and apathy, with few glimpses of anything like a healthy re- 

 signation to the will of Gorl, so that the less I tell of my 

 spiritual state the better for those that hear me. 



I am obliged for the beautiful extracts from Wilberforce's 

 sermon, which I have read twice, and shall again refer to. 

 There is indeed a voice of awful warning in the first part which 

 comes close to the conscience. Would that I could apply to 

 myself the consolatory part with equal sense of its fitness ; but I 

 am conscious at present of so much deadness, and insensibility 

 to reproof, and to severe chastisement, that I cannot yet see in 

 my own case " All things working together for good." The 

 hour of cloud and doubt is on me. I endeavour (but not as un- 

 remittingly as I ought) to silence rebellious feeling, but I too 

 often turn to any trifle in my way to hide myself from the 

 bitterness of my own thoughts. Like the ostrich hiding its 

 head in the sand from its pursuers, this only gives temporary 

 relief. This is the cause of my not having written to you, and 

 of my being thus deprived of the consolation which your ex- 

 perience might afford me ; yet hoping for a change within, I wait 

 from day to day. If I can compare myself to any of the states 

 presented to us in Scripture, it would be to him who hid his 

 lord's money, and from whom the talent was taken away to be 

 given to a more profitable servant. There is still left me, how- 



