From Thomas Bell   [5 December 1838]

My dear Darwin—

Let me begin by assuring you of my most hearty congratulations and best & kindest wishes— I am rejoiced at your approaching marriage, for I know how happy you must be as a married man, if your wife be as calculated to make you so as you are to confer happiness on her. Depend on it old Lord Bacon was right when he said that Friendship doubleth our joys and cutteth our griefs in halfs,”¹ and it is most especially true of that most exalted and refined and perfect friendship which marriage alone can produce & foster— But I am running on without the card— suffice it for me again to assure you of my most sincere good wishes—

The “poor reptiles” shall be thought about— I have received some of them back from Bibron² named according to his own nomenclature—and I doubt not we shall be able to get some subjects in readiness for figuring by the time you mention—³

Your note arrived in New Broad Street⁴ just after D^r. Buckland, Sir Philip Egerton & Stokes had left me—& I was chagrined that I could not come to the Society—

Yours most sincerely | Thomas Bell Hornsey

Wednesday eveng