Chapter 409

Berkeley Square, Feb. 13, 1795. (page 566)

I received your letter and packet of lays and virelays, and heartily wish they may fall in bad ground, and produce a hundred thousand fold, as I doubt is necessary. How I admire the activity of your zeal and perseverance! Should a new church ever be built, I hope in a side chapel there will be an altar dedicated to St. Hannah, Virgin and Martyr; and that Your pen, worn to the bone, will be enclosed in a golden reliquaire, and preserved on the shrine.

These few words I have been forced to dictate, having had the gout ill my right hand above this fortnight; but I trust it is going off The Duchess was much pleased with your writing to her, and ordered me to thank you. Your friend Lady Waldegrave is in town, and looks very well. Adieu, best of women! Yours most cordially.(895)

(895) In a letter to her sister, dated from Fulham Palace, Miss More says,--"Lord Orford has presented me with Bishop Wilson's edition of the Bible, in three volumes quarto, superbly bound in morocco (Oh! that he would himself study that blessed book), to which, in the following most flattering inscription, he attributes my having done far more good than is true--

"To his excellent friend, MISS HANNAH MORE, THE BOOK, which he knows to be the dearest object of her study, and by which, to the great comfort and relief of numberless afflicted and distressed individuals, she has profited beyond any person with whom he is acquainted, is offered, as a mark of his esteem and gratitude, by her sincere and obliged humble servant, Horace, Earl of Orford, 1795."