My dear Hooker

Your letter so full of feeling has interested me greatly. I cannot say that I felt his death much for I fully expected it, & have looked for some little time at his career as finished.² I dreaded nothing so much as his surviving with impaired mental powers. He was indeed a noble man in very many ways,—perhaps in none more than in his warm sympathy with the work of others. How vividly I can recall my first conversation with him, & how he astonished me by his interest in what I told him.³ How grand, also, was his candour & pure love of truth. Well he is gone, & I feel as if we were all soon to go. But I believe your grief is largely owing to all that you have lately suffered; & in part to the mental fatigue & annoyance which you have undergone.—⁴ I do most truly rejoice that you will soon leave England for a short time, & do not, I beg you, work your body too hard. I am certain that you are mind & body worn out, & one of the two can not rest if the other is still worked.⁵ I am deeply rejoiced about Westminster Abbey,—the possibility of which had not occurred to me when I wrote before.⁶ I did think that his works were the most enduring of all Testimonials (as you say) to him; but then I did not like the idea, of his passing away with no outward sign of what scientific men thought of his merits. Now all this is changed, & nothing can be better than Westminster Abbey. M^rs Lyell has asked me to be one of the pall-bearers; but I have written to say that I dared not, as I sh^d so likely fail in the midst of the ceremony & have my head whirling off my shoulders.—⁷ All this affair must have cost you much fatigue & worry, & how I do wish you were out of England.— I never could have believed in such conduct as that of Lord. H. about the Kew deputation.⁸ I fear from what you say that Harriet is much ailing, & I sh^d. think the Doctors were quite right.

And now my head is rocking, so farewell my dear old friend | Yours affect^y | Ch. Darwin