I pray I may have but a tenth part of his honesty and freedom from prejudice and party spirit.  It may come, under God’s blessing, if a man’s mind is earnestly set on the truth; but the danger is of setting up your own exclusive standard of truth, moral and intellectual.  Father certainly is more free from it than any man we ever knew.  He tells me in his letter that the Bishop of Sydney is coming home to consult people in England about Synodical Action, &c., and that he is going to meet him and explain to him certain difficulties and mistakes into which he has fallen with regard to administering the Oath of Abjuration and the like matters.  How few people, comparatively, know the influence Father exercises in this way behind the scenes, as it were.  His intimacy with so many of the Bishops, too, makes his position really of very great importance.  I don’t want to magnify, but the more I think of him, and know how very few men they are that command such general respect, and bear such a character with all men for uprightness and singleness of purpose, it is very difficult to know how his place could be supplied when we throw his legal knowledge over and above into the scale.  I hope he will write:  I am quite certain that his opinion will exercise a great influence on very many people.  Such a speech as this at Mary Church embodies exactly the sense of a considerable number of the most prudent and most able men of the country, and his position and character give it extra weight, and that would be so equally with his book as with his speech.  How delightful it will be to have him at Oxford.  He means to come in time for dinner on the 14th, and go away on the 16th; but if he likes it, he will, I daresay, stop now and then on his way to town and back.  Jem will not be back in town when he goes up for the Judicial Committee work, so he will be rather solitary there, won’t he.  I am not, however, sure about the number of weeks Jem must reside to keep his term....’

The enjoyment of the last few days at Dresden ’was much marred by a heavy cold, caught by going to see an admirable representation of ‘Egmont,’ the last of these theatrical treats so highly appreciated.  The journey to Berlin, before the cold was shaken off, resulted in an attack of illness; and he was so heavy and uncomfortable as to be unable to avail himself of his opportunities of interesting introductions.

He returned to his rooms at Merton direct from Germany.  Like many men who have come back to Oxford at a riper age than that of undergraduate life, he now entered into the higher privileges and enjoyments of the University, the studies, friendships, and influences, as early youth sometimes fails to do.  He was felt by his Oxford friends to have greatly developed since his Balliol terms had been over and the Eton boy left behind.  Study was no longer a toil and conscientious effort.  It had become a prime pleasure; and men wondered to find the plodding, accurate, but unenthusiastic