‘My dear Friend,—I owe a debt of gratitude to you; and I know that you will not grudge me the pleasure of acknowledging it, though it must be by troubling you with a letter.
‘If you knew how great is my love to that son of my misfortunes, to whom you have shown so much kindness and friendship, you would also know how to value the sincerity of my gratitude to you. Never was, I believe, a more surprising combination of adversity and success than appears in our mutual relations. Heaven has rewarded me for whatever I may have done or suffered in performing my duties. That Ferdinand White has been found not unworthy of your attention is indeed a very delightful part of that reward.
‘I must tell you that during the most afflicting period of the miserable disease which makes me linger so long on the brink of the grave, I have found a constant source of relief to my mind and feelings in your inimitable “Italy.” I have read it twice over, when my tortured mind rejected every other reading except Shakspeare. Happy the man who, by transfusing his soul into that work, has imparted to it a spirit of refined, benevolent humanity, which must secure it admirers as long as Nature and true taste shall exist among those who speak the English language.
Take this, my friend, as the language of the heart.
| THOMAS MILLER | 185 |
