I cannot tell you how often since your long illness I have missed the friendly intercourse which we had so frequently before, and on which I built more than ever after your marriage.

It will not happen easily that twice in one's life, even in the large world of London, a congenial soul so occupied with precisely the same pursuits and with an independence enabling him to pursue them will fall so nearly in my way, and to have had it snatched from me with the prospect of your residence somewhat far off is a privation I feel as a very great one.

I hope you will not, like Herschell, get far off from a railway.
LETTER 12.

TO CATHERINE DARWIN.
(12/1.

The following letter was written to his sister Catherine about two months before Charles Darwin settled at Down:--) Sunday [July 1842].
You must have been surprised at not having heard sooner about the house.
Emma and I only returned yesterday afternoon from sleeping there.