mean more kindly than I deserve; and when Isabel is well again, we shall rub on.  This little one promises more resemblance to her than the others.  We propose to call her Frances, after my poor mother and sister.  Do you remember the thrill of meeting their names in Cheveleigh church?  That memorial was well done of my uncle.  If these children were to be left as we were, you would, I know, be their best friend; but I have a certain desire to see your own assurance to that effect.  Don’t fancy this any foreboding, but four daughters bind a man to life, and I sometimes feel as if I hardly deserved to see good days.  If I am spared to bring up these children, I hope to make them understand the difference between independence and pride.

’I have been looking back on my life; I have had plenty of time during these months of inaction, which I begin to see were fit discipline.  Till Holdsworth left his parish under my charge the other day for six weeks, I have exercised no office of my ministry, as you know that Mr. Purvis’s tone with me cut me off from anything that could seem like meddling with him.  I never felt more grateful to any man than I did when Holdsworth made the proposal.  It was as if my penance were accepted for the spirit against which you too justly warned me before my Ordination.  Sunday was something between a very sorrowful and a very happy day.

’I did not see the whole truth at first.  I was only aware of my unhappy temper, which had provoked the immediate punishment; but the effort (generally a failure) to prevent my irritability from adding to the distresses I had brought on my poor wife, opened my eyes to much that I had never understood.  Yet I had presumed to become an instructor—­I deemed myself irreproachable!

’I believe the origin of the whole was, that I never distinguished a fierce spirit of self-exaltation from my grandmother’s noble resolution to be independent.  It was a demon which took the semblance of good, and left no room for demons of a baser sort.  Even as a boy at the Grammar-school, I kept out of evil from the pride of proving myself gentlemanly under any circumstances; the motive was not a bit better than that which made me bully you.  I can never remember being without an angry and injured feeling that my uncle’s neglect left my grandmother burdened, and obliged me to receive an inferior education; and with this, a certain hope that he would never put himself in the right, nor lay me under obligations.  You saw how this motive actuated me, when I never discerned it.  I trust that I was not insincere, though presumptuous and self-deceiving I was to an extent which I can only remember with horror.  If it approached to sacrilege, may the wilful blindness be forgiven!  At least, I knew it not; and with all my heart I meant to fulfil the vows I had taken on me.  Thus, when my uncle actually returned, there was a species of revengeful satisfaction in making my profession interfere with his views, when