AUSTRALIA. 275 



Fairy next week, and all the news I can pick up of your darling 

 I hope to write you from beside his grave. We (you and I) were 

 bound together already by many and bitter sorrows, and I did 

 not think it could be closer, but this new affliction makes me 

 feel still more with you and for you, the poor afflicted one. 

 What troubles for four-and-twenty years, and now this dreadful 

 blow. But thank God you are more able to bear it now than 

 you once were, and may yet realize the last line of G-. G.'s poem 



on R d : 



" 'Twas well that our dwelling looked sadly and lone." 



Who can tell what really is " well " but the One who knows the 

 end from the beginning, and who also hath taught us, by His 

 holy apostle St. Paul, not to be sorry as men without hope, 

 for them that sleep in Him ? That last beautiful collect of the 

 " burial service " may I trust be put up beside his grave. 



I found two or three parcels of letters and newspapers 



addressed to H at Mr. E.'s office. The letters I shall send home. 



Among the papers I opened was the Christmas number of the 

 " Illustrated News," with its " Merry Christmas and Happy New 

 Year wish," all the parts sewed together, and I fancied I could see 

 you making it up of an evening at B., and folding it with all its 

 fond wishes, and it never reached him. It is only occasionally 

 and rarely that opportunities are found for distant places. 



To Miss F 1. 



Melbourne, September 6, 1854. 

 May we all be granted " to stand in our lot at the end of the 

 days," and to look back at these trials and sore troubles as one 

 does on the incongruities of a sea voyage. After all, time is so 

 short a part of the life of an immortal soul, that in looking 

 backward (if we shall be able to do so) from " the rest that 

 remains? all our present frettings and troubles must then seem 

 utterly insignificant. Every day my thoughts grow more and 

 more thus, and yet you will say my conduct is opposed to such 

 thoughts ; for here I am, travelling far for the sake of amassing 

 objects which I must leave for others, laying up treasures for the 

 moth and the rust. True ; yet they occupy a very small portion 

 of my thoughts, and I can truly say that I could leave them all 

 at any moment without care, were I only meet for an entrance 



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