’Norfolk Island:  December 14, 1869.

’My dear Sophy,—­I should be specially thinking of you as Christmas draws nigh with its blessed thoughts, and hopes, and the St. Stephen’s memories in any case I should be thinking of you.  But now I have lately received your long loving letter of last Eastertide, partly written in bed.

Then your dear child’s illness makes me think greatly (and how lovingly!) of you three of the three generations.  Lastly, I hear of dear Aunt William’s death.  You know that I had a very great affection for her, and I feel that this is a great blow probably to you all, though dear Aunty (as I have noticed in all old persons, especially when good as well as old) takes this quietly, I dare say.  The feeling must be, “Well, I shall soon meet her again; a few short days only remain.”

’I suppose that you, with your quarter of a century’s widowhood, still feel as if the waiting time was all sanctified by the thought of the reunion.  Oh! what a thought it is:  too much almost to think that by His wonderful mercy, one may hope to be with them all, and for ever; to behold the faces of Apostles, and Apostolic men, and Prophets, and Saints, holy men and women; and, as if this were not enough, to see Him as He is, in His essential perfections, and to know Him.  One can’t sustain the effort of such a thought, which shows how great a change must pass on one before the great Consummation.  Well, the more one can think of dear Father and Mother, and dear dear Uncle James and Uncle Frank, and Cousin George, and Uncle and Aunt William, others too, uncles and aunts, and your dear Fanny, and your husband, though it would be untrue to say I knew him, taken so early—­the more one thinks of them all the better.  And I have, Sophy, so many very different ones to think of Edwin and Fisher, and so many Melanesians taken away in the very first earnestness and simplicity of a new convert’s faith.  How many have died in my arms—­God be thanked—­in good hope!

’If by His great mercy there be a place for me there, I feel persuaded that I shall there find many of those dear lads, whom indeed I think of with a full heart, full of affection and thankfulness.

’I have been reading the “Memoir of Mr. Keble,” of course with extreme interest.  It is all about events and chiefly about persons that one has heard about or even known.  I think we get a little autobiography of our dear Uncle John in it too, for which I don’t like it the less.

There are passages, as against going to Borne, which I am glad to see in print; they are wanted now again, I fear.  I am glad you like Moberly’s “Bampton Lectures.”  His book on “The Great Forty Days,” his best book (?) after all, has the germ of it all.  I am so thankful for his appointment to Salisbury.  I dare say you know that he is kind enough to write to me occasionally; and he sends me his books, one of the greatest of the indirect blessings of being known to Mr. Keble.  I do very little in the way of reading, save that I get a quiet hour for Hebrew, 5-6 A.M., and I do read some theology.  In one sense it is easier reading to me than other books, history, poetry, because, though I don’t know much about it, I know nothing about them.