My dear Sir,

I trust you will not think it an impertinent act on my part to write to you, & to precede my letter by a copy of certain addresses which I have lately delivered to the clergy at Coventry.¹

I have for so long read and profited by what you have written that on the publication of your last work—where the frequent mention of Abinger which was my dear father’s parish for so many years stirred so many memories within me—I resolved to make known my feelings of indebtedness to you and to venture to assure you of the deep respect and sympathy felt for you by myself among so many others.²

You have if a layman in these matters like myself may say it, removed the filmy veil of fancy which we were drawing over our own eyes & over the eyes of others, and have come forward as the champion of fact— And some of us, with shame I say it, have preferred our own mist begotten fancies to your eternal & irrefragable facts.

I have often thought, not perhaps with much relevancy, of Tennyson’s lines on the Duke of Wellington, where he says

Truth-lover was our English Duke—

Whatever record leap to light

He never shall be shamed—³ as applying to our awful fear of what the geologist or the naturalist may have next to say. As though any record which truth might bring to light could make GoD ‘shamed’!

I used, years ago, to know and value dear M^rs. Wedgwood of Leith Hill Place   ah! it all seems like a dream now since that wild March day in this passing year when I laid my father to rest under the storm swept pines of Abinger churchyard—⁴

Pray forgive me my dear Sir, you need no such assurance of sympathy from a stranger, you have long since reached those ‘table lands where God Himself is Light and Sun’—⁵

With all respectful regard, | I remain, | Yours most obediently, | F. G. Montagu Powell