My dear Sir--I am but now in the receipt of your kind letter, and its accompanying book. If I had returned home sooner, I should sooner have thanked you for both.
I cannot adequately express to you the gratification I have derived from your assurance that I have given you pleasure. In describing yourself as a stranger of whom I know nothing, you do me wrong however. The book I am now proud to possess as a mark of your goodwill and remembrance has for some time been too well known to me to admit of the possibility of my regarding its writer in any other light than as a friend in the spirit; while the writer of the introductory page marked viii. in the edition of last year[12] had commanded my highest respect as a public benefactor and a brave soul.
I thank you, my dear Sir, most cordially, and I shall always prize the words you have inscribed in this delightful volume, very, very highly.--Yours faithfully and obliged,

CHARLES DICKENS.

Dr. GUTHRIE to DEAN RAMSAY.

1 Salisbury Road,
30th October 1872.

My dear Mr. Dean--My honoured and beloved friend, I have received many sweet, tender, and Christian letters touching my late serious illness, but among them all none I value more, or almost so much, as your own.
May the Lord bless you for the solace and happiness it gave to me and mine! How perfect the harmony in our views as to the petty distinctions around which--sad and shame to think of it--such fierce controversies have raged! I thank God that I, like yourself, have never attached much importance to these externals, and have had the fortune to be regarded as rather loose on such matters. We have just, by God's grace, anticipated the views and aspects they present on a deathbed.
I must tell you how you helped us to pass many a weary, restless hour. After the Bible had been read to me in a low monotone--when I was seeking sleep and could not find it--a volume of my published sermons was tried, and sometimes very successfully, as a soporific. I was familiar with them, and yet they presented as much novelty as to divert my mind from my troubles. And what if this failed? then came the Reminiscences to entertain me, and while away the long hours when all hope of getting sleep's sweet oblivion was given up!
So your book was one of my many mercies. But oh, how great in such a time the unspeakable mercy of a full, free, present salvation! In Wesley's words

"I the chief of sinners am,
But Jesus died for me."

I have had a bit of a back-throw, but if you could come between three and four on Friday, I would rejoice to see you.--Ever yours, with the greatest esteem,

"I the chief of sinners am,
But Jesus died for me."

THOMAS GUTHRIE.

Miss STIRLING GRAHAM to DEAN RAMSAY.

Duntrune, 8th January 1872.

My dear Mr. Dean--I thank you very much for the gift of your new edition of "Scottish Reminiscences," and most especially for the last few pages on Christian union and liberality, which I have read with delight.
I beg also to thank you for the flattering and acceptable testimonial you have bestowed on myself.--Your most respectful and grateful friend,