right fresh from the heart; (very different
from the grand Latinised, Johnsonian style
of the printed Sermon, preached before some
Judge at Assize time.) His letters were a
curious contrast to those of his girl-bride.
She was evidently rather annoyed at his
demands upon her for expressions of love,
and could not quite understand what he
meant by repeating the same thing over in
so many different ways; but what she was
quite clear about was her longing for a white
"Paduasay,"—whatever that might be; and
six or seven letters were principally occupied in
asking her lover to use his influence with her
parents (who evidently kept her in good
order) to obtain this or that article of dress,
more especially the white "Paduasay." He
cared nothing how she was dressed; she was
always lovely enough for him, as he took
pains to assure her, when she begged him to
express in his answers a predilection for
particular pieces of finery, in order that she
might show what he said to her parents.
But at length he seemed to find out that
she would not be married till she had a
"trousseau" to her mind; and then he sent
her a letter, which had evidently accompanied
a whole box full of finery, and in which he
requested that she might be dressed in
everything her heart desired. This was the first
letter, ticketed in a frail, delicate hand,
"From my dearest John." Shortly afterwards
they were married,—I suppose, from
the intermission in their correspondence.

"We must burn them, I think," said Miss
Matey, looking doubtfully at me. "No one
will care for them when I am gone." And
one by one she dropped them into the middle
of the fire; watching each blaze up, die
out, and rise away, in faint, white, ghostly
semblance, up the chimney, before she gave
up another to the same fate. The room was
light enough now; but I, like her, was fascinated
into watching the destruction of those
letters, into which the honest warmth of a
manly heart had been poured forth.

The next letter, likewise docketed by Miss
Jenkyns, was endorsed, "Letter of pious
congratulation and exhortation from my
venerable grandfather to my mother, on occasion
of my own birth. Also some practical
remarks on the desirability of keeping warm
the extremities of infants, from my excellent
grandmother."

The first part was, indeed, a severe and
forcible picture of the responsibilities of
mothers, and a warning against the evils that
were in the world, and lying in ghastly wait
for the little baby of two days old. His wife
did not write, said the old gentleman,
because he had forbidden it, she being indisposed
with a sprained ankle, which (he said) quite
incapacitated her from holding a pen.
However, at the foot of the page was a small "T.O.,"
and on turning it over, sure enough there
was a letter to "my dear, dearest Molly,"
begging her, when she left her room, whatever
she did, to go up stairs before going
down; and telling her to wrap her baby's
feet up in flannel, and keep it warm by the
fire, although it was summer, for babies were
so tender.

It was pretty to see from the letters, which
were evidently exchanged with some
frequency between the young mother and the
grandmother, how the girlish vanity was
being weeded out of her heart by love for
her baby. The white "Paduasay" figured
again in the letters, with almost as. much
vigour as before. In one, it was being made
into a christening cloak for the baby. It
decked it when it went with its parents to
spend a day or two at Arley Hall. It added
to its charms when it was "the prettiest
little baby that ever was seen. Dear mother,
I wish you could see her! Without any
parshality, I do think she will grow .up a
regular bewty! "I thought of Miss
Jenkyns, grey, withered, and wrinkled; and I
wondered if her mother had known her in
the courts of heaven; and then I knew that
she had, and that they stood there in angelic
guise.

There was a great gap before any of the
rector's letters appeared. And then his
wife had changed her mode of endorsement.
It was no longer from "My dearest John;" it
was from "My honoured Husband." The
letters were written on occasion of the
publication of the same Sermon which was
represented in the picture. The preaching before
"My Lord Judge," and the "publishing by
request," was evidently the culminating
point—the event, of his life. It had been
necessary for him to go up to London to
superintend it through the press. Many
friends had to be called upon, and consulted,
before he could decide on any printer fit for
so onerous a task; and at length it was
arranged that J. and J. Rivingtons were to
have the honourable responsibility. The
worthy rector seemed to be strung up by
the occasion to a high literary pitch, for he
could hardly write a letter to his wife without
cropping out into Latin. I remember the
end of one of his letters ran thus:—" I shall
ever hold the virtuous qualities of my Molly
in remembrance, dum memor ipse mei, dum
spiritus regit artus" which, considering that
the English of his correspondent was
sometimes at fault in grammar, and often in
spelling, might be taken as a proof of how
much he "idealised " his Molly; and, as
Miss Jenkyns used to say, "People talk a
great deal about idealising nowadays, whatever
that may mean." But this was nothing
to a fit of writing classical poetry, which soon
seized him; in which his Molly figured away
as "Maria;" the letter containing the carmen
was endorsed by her, "Hebrew verses sent
me by my honoured husband. I thowt to
have had a letter about killing the pig,
but must wait. Mem., to send the poetry to
Sir Peter Arley, as my husband desires."