The following is an extract from his father’s letter of congratulation, on his being nominated for the Studentship:—­

My dearest Charles,—­The feelings of thankfulness and delight with which I have read your letter just received, I must leave to your conception; for they are, I assure you, beyond my expression; and your affectionate heart will derive no small addition of joy from thinking of the joy which you have occasioned to me, and to all the circle of your home.  I say “you have occasioned,” because, grateful as I am to my old friend Dr. Pusey for what he has done, I cannot desire stronger evidence than his own words of the fact that you have won, and well won, this honour for yourself, and that it is bestowed as a matter of justice to you, and not of kindness to me.  You will be interested in reading extracts from his two letters to me—­the first written three years ago in answer to one from me, in which I distinctly told him that I neither asked nor expected that he should serve me in this matter, unless my son should fairly reach the standard of merit by which these appointments were regulated.  In reply he says—­

“I thank you for the way in which you put the application to me.  I have now, for nearly twenty years, not given a Studentship to any friend of my own, unless there was no very eligible person in the College.  I have passed by or declined the sons of those to whom I was personally indebted for kindness.  I can only say that I shall have very great pleasure, if circumstances permit me to nominate your son.”

    In his letter received this morning he says—­

“I have great pleasure in telling you that I have been enabled to recommend your son for a Studentship this Christmas.  It must be so much more satisfactory to you that he should be nominated thus, in consequence of the recommendation of the College.  One of the Censors brought me to-day five names; but in their minds it was plain that they thought your son on the whole the most eligible for the College.  It has been very satisfactory to hear of your son’s uniform steady and good conduct.”

The last clause is a parallel to your own report, and I am glad that you should have had so soon an evidence so substantial of the truth of what I have so often inculcated, that it is the “steady, painstaking, likely-to-do-good” man, who in the long run wins the race against those who now and then give a brilliant flash and, as Shakespeare says, “straight are cold again.”

[Illustration:  Archdeacon Dodgson.]