’I find that I am getting to know the undergraduates here, which is what I wanted to do; it is my only chance of being of any use.  True, that I have to do it at the expense of two half-days’ cricketing, which I have quite ceased to care about, but I know that when I went up to Balliol, I was glad when a Fellow played with us.  It was a guarantee for orderly conduct, and as I say, it gives me an opportunity of knowing men.  I hope to leave London for Dresden on Monday week; Arthur is gone thither, as I find out from Jem, and I hope the scheme will answer.  If I find I can’t work, from my eyes, or anything else, preventing me, I shall come home, but I have no reason to expect any such thing.  My best love to Joan and all friends.

’Your loving Brother,

‘J.  C. Patteson.’

The ‘Arthur’ here mentioned was the youngest son of Mr. Frank Coleridge, and became Coley’s companion at Dresden, where he was studying German.  He writes:—­

’Patteson spoke German fluently, and wrote German correctly.  He had studied the language assiduously for about two years previously, and so successfully that whilst we were at Dresden, he was enabled to dispense with a teacher and make his assistance little more than nominal.  Occasionally he wrote a German exercise, but rather as an amusement than a discipline, and merely with the view of enlarging his German vocabulary.  I remember his writing an elaborate description of Feniton Court, and imagining the place to be surrounded with trees belonging to all sorts of climates.  The result was very amusing to ourselves, and added to the writer’s stock of words on particular subjects.  When our master Schier appeared, the conversation was led by a palpable ambuscade to the topic which had been made the subject of Patteson’s exercise, and conversation helped to strengthen memory.  After looking over a few of Patteson’s German exercises, Mr. Schier found so little to correct, in the way of grammatical errors, that these studies were almost relinquished, and gave way to Arabic and Hebrew.  Before we left Dresden, Patteson had read large portions of the Koran; and, with the aid of Hurwitz’s Grammar and Bernhard’s Guide to Hebrew Students, books familiar to Cambridge men, he was soon able to read the Psalms in the original.  I remember the admiration and despair I felt in witnessing Patteson’s progress, and the wonder expressed by his teacher in his pupil’s gift of rapid acquirement.  We had some excellent introductions; amongst others, to Dr. ——­, a famous theologian, with whom Patteson was fond of discussing the system and organisation of the Church in Saxony.  Up to the time of his leaving England he was constantly using Olshausen’s Commentary on the New Testament, a book he was as thoroughly versed in as Archbishop Trench himself.  I think that he consulted no other books in his study of the Gospels, but Olshausen and Bengel’s Gnomon.

’In our pleasures at Dresden there was a mixture of the utile with the dulce.  Our constant visits to the theatre were strong incentives to a preparatory study of the plays of Goethe, Schiller, and Lessing.  What noble acting we saw in that Dresden theatre!