thankful for the sympathy manifested on all hands, doubted the advisability of resuming her benevolent labours among prisons and hospitals. Mr. Wilberforce proved himself again a wise and far-seeing counsellor. He wrote:—
I cannot delay assuring you that I do not see how it is possible for any reasonable being to doubt the propriety . . . or, rather, let me say the absolute duty—of your renewing your prison visitations. A gracious Providence has blessed you with success in your endeavours to impress a set of miserables, whose character and circumstances might almost have extinguished hope; and you will return to them, if with diminished pecuniary powers, yet, we may trust, through the mercy and goodness of our Heavenly Father, with powers of a far higher order unimpaired, and with the augmented respect and regard of every sound judgment . . . for having borne with becoming disposition a far harder trial certainly than any stroke which proceeds immediately from the hand of God. May you continue, my dear Madam, to be the honoured instrument of great and rare benefits to almost the most pitiable of your fellow-creatures.
The Record newspaper had suggested that additional contributions should be sent to the chief of the societies which had been inaugurated by Mrs. Fry, and so largely supported by her. The Marquis of Cholmondeley wrote to Mrs. Opie, inquiring of that lady fuller particulars of the disaster, in so far as it affected or was likely to affect Mrs. Fry’s benevolent work. He had been a staunch friend of her labours, having seconded them many times when the life of a wretched felon was at stake; and now, continuing the interest which he had hitherto exhibited, he was fearful lest this business calamity would put a stop to many of those labours. Mrs. Opie, whose friendship dated from the old Norwich days, lost no time in writing as follows to her suffering friend:—
