"You are now a man possessed of as much leisure as you are ever likely to possess. What think you of laying in materials for a Doctrinal and practical History of Religion in England, in different classes of society, and of males and females, from the time of the Reformation to the present time or perhaps to 1760. It was once my wish to write such a work, but the state of my eyes long ago rendered it impracticable. The sources from whence the particulars for the work must be derived are chiefly Lives and Memoirs. Numbers of these have been published of late years, and the object is one which would give opportunities for exercising sagacity, as well as candour. There is this also of good in it that, nullus dies sine lineâ, you might be continually finding some fresh fact or hint, which would afterwards be capable of being turned to good account. The Annual Registers and the different magazines and reviews would be rich mines of raw material. Do meditate on these suggestions. How very strong has dear Henry become both in his opinions and his language! Really if he were to go into the law, which Robert seems to think not improbable, there would be considerable danger of his getting into quarrels which might draw on him challenges, the more probably because people might suppose from his parentage, &c., that he most likely would not answer a call to the field. I must say that the becoming exempt, even in the world's estimate, from the obligation to challenge or being challenged may be no unfair principle of preference of an ecclesiastical profession to any other. The subject of duelling is one which I never saw well treated; a very worthy and sensible man, a Scotchman who was shipwrecked in Madagascar, I forget his name (was it Duncan?) sent me one, his own writing, but I thought it naught. And now my very dear boy farewell."
Wilberforce writes to Mrs. Samuel Wilberforce the day after his daughter Elizabeth's marriage.
Mr. Wilberforce to Mrs. Samuel Wilberforce.
"Highwood Hill,
"January 12, 1831.
"My dear Emily,—We had a delightful day yesterday for our ceremony, and after the indissoluble knot had been tied in due form, the parties drove off about 12 o'clock to spend a few days at Mr. Stephen's favourite residence of Healthy Hill, as he terms it, Missenden. I really augur well of this connection, having strong reasons for believing Mr. James to be a truly amiable as well as pious man, and my dear Lizzy is really well fitted for the office of a parson's aider and comforter. It has given me no little pleasure to have been assured by Mr. Dupré, the curate of the parish, that she has been truly useful to the poor cottagers around us. His expression was, 'She has done more good than she knows of.' This event, combined with the close of another year and the anniversary of my own dear wife's birthday, has called forth in me a lively sense of the goodness of that gracious Being who has dealt so bountifully with me during a long succession of years. Dr. Warren, in 1788, as I was reminded when at Brighstone, declared that for want of stamina there would be an end of my feeble frame in two or three weeks, and then I was a bachelor. After this, near ten years after, I became a husband, and now I have assured me full grown descendants, and an offset in my Elizabeth. I have been receiving many congratulations from being perhaps the only living father of three first-class men, one of them a double first and the two others in the second also. Above all their literary acquirements I value their having, as I verily believe, passed through the fiery trial of an university, for such I honestly account it, without injury. And it gives me no little pleasure (as I think I have before assured you), to add that I ascribe this in part to the instrumentality of a certain young lady, who was a sort of guardian angel hovering around him in fancy and exerting a benign influence over the sensibility and tenderness of his lively spirit. Farewell, my dear Emily.
"Believe me, begging a kiss to baby,
"Ever affectionately yours,
"W. Wilberforce."
Mr. Wilberforce to the Rev. Samuel Wilberforce.
"February 8, 1831.
"My dear Samuel,—Pray both for your mother and for poor William that they may be delivered from μἑριμνα. The former, alas! lies awake for hours in the morning, and cannot banish from her mind the carking cares that haunt and worry her. We profess to believe in the efficacy of prayer. Let us prove the truth of our profession by at least not acquiescing, without resistance, in such assailments. It is more from natural temperament than from any higher attainment that I am not the prey of these corrosions. Something may be ascribed to the habit of controlling my thoughts which I acquired when in public life.... You might, I believe, have shone in political life; but you have chosen the better part. And if you can think so now when in your younger blood, much more will you become sensible of it by and by when you look back, if God should so permit, on a long retrospect, studded with records of the Divine blessing on your ministerial exertions. Kindest remembrances to dear Emily, and a kiss to little Emily, and the blessing of your affectionate father,