‘Many thanks, my dear Leila, for your affectionate note.... There was another nice cheerful note from my Letitia to-day. She wrote it when on the Red Sea, which she evidently found very warm, for she described the ship as a “hothouse,” and said that she and her fellow-passengers would be “fine exotics” before they arrived. There had been two Services on board on Sunday, and Letitia had heard two excellent sermons. Mary Egerton had her harmonium on board, which had been brought up from the hold, so there was nice hymn-singing too. How sweet the music must have sounded on the water! I think that, steaming over the Red Sea, one would have liked to have raised the song of the Israelites--