’The constant sense of his preservation from that great danger really prevents my feeling so acutely perhaps as I ought to do the distress of others.  I really think I ought to be less cheerful and happy than I feel myself to be.  I had a pleasant little talk with Dr. Pusey on Monday:  he was recommending me two or three books for Hebrew reading, but they would be of no use to me yet; the language is difficult to advance far into, and you know my shallow way of catching a thing at first rather quickly perhaps, but only superficially.  I find my interest increasing greatly in philological studies.  One language helps another very much; and the beautiful way in which the words, ideas, and the whole structure indeed, of language pervades whole families, and even the different families, (e.g., the Indo-Germanic and Semitic races,) is not only interesting, but very useful.  I wish I had made myself a better Greek and Latin scholar, but unfortunately I used to hate classics.  What desperate uphill work it was to read them, a regular exercise of self-denial every morning!  Now I like it beyond any study, except Divinity proper, and I try to make up for lost time.  There are admirable books in my possession which facilitate the acquisition of critical scholarship very much, and I work at these, principally applying it to New Test.  Greek, LXX, &c.  But my real education began, I think, with my first foreign trip.  It seems as if there was not time for all this, for I have Hebrew, Arabic, &c., to go on with (though this is a slow process), Pearson, Hooker, Blunt on the Reformation (a mere sketch which I read in a day or two at odd times), Commentaries, Trench’s Books on Parables and Miracles, which are in my room at home, and would in parts interest you; he is a writer of good common sense, and a well-read man).  But I of course want to be reading history as well, and that involves a good deal; physical geography, geology, &c., yet one things helps another very much.  I don’t work quite as methodically as I ought; and I much want some one to discuss matters with relating to what I read.  I don’t say all this, I am sure you know, as if I wanted to make out that I am working at grand subjects.  I know exceeding little of any one of them, so little history, e.g., that a school girl could expose my ignorance directly, but I like to know what we are doing among ourselves, and we all get to know each other better thereby.  I felt so much of late with regard to Jem, that a natural reserve prevents so often members even of the same family from communicating freely to each other their opinions, business, habits of life, experiences of sympathy, approval, disapproval, and the like; and when one member is gone, then it is felt how much more closely such a habit of dealing with each other would have taught us to know him....  Nothing tests one’s knowledge so well as questions and answers upon what we have read, stating difficulties, arguments which we can’t understand, &c., to