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“Dear Mr. Malcolm—I had been previously informed of the death of my dear old friend, the Bishop of Edinburgh, but I am very grateful to you for thinking so kindly of me, and for communicating particulars about which I was not acquainted previously. Accept my expressions of true-hearted sympathy, and pray impart them to the surviving members of dear Bishop Terrot’s family. He was an old, an honoured and beloved friend; God laid upon his old age an unusual load of the labours and sorrows of humanity, but they are over now, and he has reached his haven of shelter from external sorrow and his true and enduring home of joy and peace, in the presence of his Maker and Redeemer.

I am very infirm….but I have to thank my Maker for thousands of little comforts to mind and body, by which I am hourly surrounded, and for His long-suffering in extending my probation till I have entered on my 88th year…. [Here he catalogs his physical conditions.] When my friends call upon me, my deafness generally compels me to use an ear-trumpet, and I yesterday took it to our college walks, to try if I could catch the notes of the singing birds, which were piping all round me. But, alas! I could not hear the notes of the singing birds, though I did catch the harsher and louder notes of the rooks, which have their nests in some college grounds.

May the remaining years of your life be cheered and animated by good abiding Christian hope.—I remain very faithfully yours,

Adam Sedgwick.”