J. R. Hope-Scott, Esq., Q.G. to the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P.
Abbotsford: Nov. 3, 1858.
My dear Gladstone,—I was uneasy at not having written to you, and hoped you would write—which you have done, and I thank you much for it. An occasion like this passed by is a loss to friendship, but it was not, nor is, easy for me to write to you. You will remember that the root of our friendship, which I trust [was] the deepest, was fed by a common interest in religion, and I cannot write to you of her whom it has pleased God to take from me without reference to that Church whose doctrines and promises she had embraced with a faith which made them the objects of sense to her; whose teaching now moulded her mind and heart; whose spiritual blessings surrounded and still surround her, and which has shed upon her death a sweetness which makes me linger upon it more dearly than upon any part of our united and happy life.
These things I could not pass over without ignoring the foundation of our friendship; but still I feel that to mention them has something intrusive, something which it may be painful for you to read, as though it required an answer which you had rather not give. So I will say only one thing more, and it is this: If ever, in the strife of politics and religious controversy, you are tempted to think or speak hardly of that Church—if she should appear to you arrogant, or exclusive, or formal, for my dear Charlotte's sake and mine check that thought, if only for an instant, and remember with what exceeding care and love she tends her children….
And now good-bye, my dear Gladstone. Forgive me every word which you had rather I had not said. May God long preserve to you and your wife that happiness which you now have in each other! and when it pleases Him that either of you should have to mourn the other, may He be as merciful to you as He has been to me!
Yours affectionately,
JAMES E. HOPE-SCOTT.
And now Mr. Hope-Scott was left alone in Abbotsford, with his only surviving child, a very fragile and delicate flower too, such as to make a father tremble while he kissed it. We have already seen [Footnote: See pp. 44-46, and 55, 56, ch. ii, in vol. i.] that he could resort sometimes to poetry as that comfort for the over-burdened mind, in which Keble's theory would place even the principal source of the poetical spirit. [Footnote: Keble, Praelectiones Academicae, Oxon. 1844. Prael. i. t. i. p. 10. ] As every reader will sympathise with such expressions of feeling, I do not hesitate to transcribe some touching verses which he wrote at this season of sorrow, and which, with a few others, he had privately printed, and given in his lifetime to two or three of his very closest friends. These others will be found in the appendix. [Footnote: Appendix IV.]
Sancta Mater, istud agas,
Crucifixi fige plagas,
Cordi meo validè.