is a _most beautiful_ character....

TO MRS. MEDLEY.

_Ecclesfield, Sheffield._
November 17, 1822.

MY VERY DEAR MRS. MEDLEY,

There has been long word silence between us! I made a break in it the
other day by sending you my new "Picture Poem"--"A Week Spent in a
Glass Pond."

It was a sort of repayment of a tender chromolithographic (!) debt.

Do you remember, when Fredericton was our home, and when everything
pretty from Old England did look so very pretty--how on one of those
home visits from which he brought back bits of civilization--the
Bishop brought _me_ a "chromo" of dogs and a fox which has hung in
every station we've had since?

Now--as a friend's privilege is--I will talk without fear or favour of
myself! The last real contact with you was the Bishop's too brief peep
at us in Bowdon--a shadowy time out of which his Amethyst ring flashes
on my mind's eye. No! Not Amethyst--what IS the name? Sapphire!--(I have
a little mental confusion on the subject. I have a weak--a very weak
corner--in my heart for another Bishop, an old friend of your
Bishop's--Bishop Harold Browne; and have had the honour now and again of
wearing his rings on my thumb--a momentary relaxation of discipline and
due respect, which I doubt if your Bishop would admit!!! though I hope
he has a little love for me, frightened as I now and then am of him!!!!
The last time but one I was at Farnham, I was asked to stay on another
two days to catch the Brownes' fortieth wedding-day. Just as we were
going down to dinner I reproached the Bishop for not having on his
"best" ring! Very luckily--for he said he always made a point of it on
his wedding-day--left me like a hot potato in the middle of the stairs
and flew off to his room, and returned with _the_ grand sapphire!)

Well, dear--that's a parenthesis--to go back to Bowdon. I was not to
boast of there, and after the move to York, and I had fitted up my
house and made up for lost time in writing work, I was a very much
broken creature, keeping going to Jenner and getting orders to
rest!--and then came the order to Malta, not six months after we were
sent to York, and I stayed to pack up and sent out all our worldly
goods and chattels, and then started myself, and was taken ill in
Paris and had to come back, and have been "of no account" for three
years.

Well. My news is now far better than once I hoped it ever could be.
I'm not strong, but I can work in moderation, though I can't "ra