IT afforded me great pleasure to see, on Tuesday last, your kind friend, Colonel Arthur [now Sir George Arthur, Bart. and Governor of Bombay], who arrived at Liverpool on the preceding Friday. He was accompanied by his lady, three children, and two servants, all of them in good health, though Mrs. Arthur and the children bore the usual paleness which Europeans so readily discover in the countenances of West Indian residents. I felt much gratified by the colonel’s urbanity of manners, and had great pleasure in showing him and his lady all the lions of the place. He seemed greatly to like our neat church and rural quiet churchyard, and the very ground appeared in his view to be more than ordinarily consecrated by the residence of the venerable Fletcher. He gave me much interesting detail respecting Honduras, its church, its schools, its people, and its minister; and of the last, he forgot not to mention his difficulties, his battles, and his eventual successes. He spoke also of his health, and described him (though perhaps he would not in this respect receive any great superabundance of thanks for his pains), as being peculiarly suited to bear all the labours of his arduous post, and that a change of place, however it might recreate the spirit, was by no means necessary for the continuance of his health. Now, I need scarcely tell you that all this was very refreshing to my spirit. I am not permitted to see you, and yet such have been the singular circumstances which have brought me in contact with those who have long lived in the Bay of Honduras, that I have been favoured with details almost as lively and circumstantial as an actual visit could have afforded me. And all the accounts strengthen in me the conviction that my endeared friend is in his own real, identical, proper post—the one by Heaven’s signature stamped with appointment and approbation too. May the Saviour who has appointed and approved, still bind him to it by his constraining love!
The colonel was very kind in his inquiries respecting William; I sent to Mr. Thurgar for him, and the counsels he gave him were very affectionate and appropriate. He left with him a sovereign when he parted from us. He seemed particularly anxious for his welfare, and was very desirous of gleaning everything encouraging that he might have the satisfaction of communicating it to you—a satisfaction evidently very strong.