agreeably surprised.

Your affectionate son,

WILLIAM J. WILLS.

. . .

Flagstaff Observatory, Melbourne, August 15th, 1859.

MY DEAR MOTHER,

I am glad to be able to acknowledge the receipt by this mail of
the first letter that you have sent to me direct since I have been
in Melbourne. It is satisfactory to know that you are pleased with
the News Letters; I must endeavour to send them regularly. I had a
letter from my father to-day. He has received yours, which we
feared was lost, as he saw nothing of it for some days after the
mail was in; but he found it at Bath's Hotel. One must make some
little allowance for a mother's partiality in your account of B.
and H.; I hope your prejudice against novels does not prevent their
reading those of Thackeray and Dickens, every one of whose works,
especially the former, should be read by them, for they contain
some of the best things, both in a moral and literary point of
view, that we have in the English language. I shall be more careful
in future about the postage; and now, my dear mother, with love to
yourself and all,

I remain,