Letter from Dora Greenwell, England, to William Angus Knight, 1865 January 25 : autograph manuscript signed.

Sharing her thoughts with him; saying "Sometimes when I get hold of a few extra good thoughts I have a wish to send them off, even if they be apropos of nothing that we have been writing of, to you; both because I know you will take care of them & nurse them too, - so that they may sometime, perhaps bear fruit when in my mind I know they c'd not but die. I have so little vigour, & that little I wish more & more to devote now to life rather than to thought - where there is a slender amount of vitality, thought soon sucks life dry, & then dries up itself! Is not this true?;" discussing prayer, the will of God, and God's Providence; saying "Surely there is a sense of Gods overruling Providence far deeper than this, which looks behind events to principles - which trains the mind not to abject submission to a power which cannot be resisted, but to the free loving resignation which a spiritual being renders to a spirit, with whom love & obedience, & an imparted affinity have surely though not yet perfectly united Him;" commenting on Madame Swetchine's thoughts on free will; quoting Robert Browning, referring to David Constable and to natural disasters in the world as they relate to God's will; saying "It seems to me very important now to take clear views of the human will, & of its relation to both the Divine will at once in its freedom & its limitation;" commenting on "...the distinction between fatalism & predestination;" adding "Apropos of Madame Swetchine I have decided not to undertake Lacordaire - the reasons I will tell you in my next letter - I am so glad to find from your last that you are at last settled & that you are likely to be married this year. God appoints to every one as He wills, but the longer I live the more do I rejoice for my friends in a life that has a deep firm sure root in the earth, & springs heaven-ward from that;"