"Sir,
"I remain yours, &c., &c.,
"Maria."
The next letter is from the same lady, thanking Wilberforce for having written "so full an explanation of what so few people understand" in his work on "Practical Christianity."
"Gloucester House,
"April 14, 1797.
"I received your inimitable book the day before I got your letter, and had read a good way in it. I have continued to read in it with the greatest satisfaction, and beg of you to accept of my thanks for having written so full an explanation of what so few people understand. I hope and trust it will be universally read, and that with attention, as then the good it will do will be infinite. Mrs. H. More was with me last night; she is so exalted by your book that she almost forgets humility is one of the Christian requisites.
"I remain, dear sir,
"Your very much obliged, &c.,
"Maria."
Let us turn to the more serious friendships of Wilberforce's middle age. So much of his correspondence with Hannah More has been published that it is only lightly touched on here.
In 1809 Hannah More wrote to Mr. Wilberforce: "Oh, if I could have had the benefit of your assistance in Cœlebs![31] but I could not be such an unfeeling brute as to ask it. 'Tis not to make a speech when I say that you are the only being whose counsels would in all points have exactly fallen in with my own ideas from your uniting a critical knowledge of the world in its higher classes with such deep religious feelings—either of these I might have found in a very few, but not both in any."
Hannah More and her friends had apparently unfortunate experiences with regard to the spiritual help to be obtained from the higher ranks of the clergy at that time, as she writes: "I have had many interviews with Ladies Waldegrave and Euston. They told me that, though acquainted with several bishops, they never could get a word of seriousness or profit from any of them." Whether it was the "critical knowledge of the world in its higher classes" joined to "deep religious feeling" mentioned by Hannah More, or the "indulgent benevolent temper, with no pretension to superior sanctity or strictness," of which Maria Edgeworth writes,[32] certain it is that Wilberforce became a guide of the religious life of many of his friends. For instance, Mr. Eliot, the brother-in-law of Pitt, writes from Burton Pynsent a letter, marked "very pleasing and serious" by Wilberforce, in which he says in answer to Wilberforce, who "hoped he had been going on in a regular, steady way," that he had been "endeavouring to work a good will into a good habit, that so the habit may come in turn to the assistance of the will, which, as you very truly say, I am sure (except under the special favour of God's grace), will flag and waver in its best pursuits and firmest intention. My chief reading for the month has been Warburton."
Mrs. Elizabeth Fry writes to Wilberforce to say:—
"When thou hast leisure, advise with me as with a child if thou hast any hint to give me in my new circumstances. I look before long once more to entering the prisons. The cause is near my heart, and I do not see that my husband, having lost his property, should, when he and my family do not want me, prevent my yet attending to these duties; in this I should like to have thy advice."