each other.  Ladies who have no profession to prepare for, in spite of a very large correspondence and numerous household duties, may (in addition to their parochial work as curates!) take up a real course of reading and go into it thoroughly; and this gives girls not only employment for the time, but gives the mind power to seize every other subject presented to it.  If you are quite alone, your reading is apt to become desultory.  I find it useful to take once or twice a week a walk with Riddell of Balliol, and go through a certain period of Old Testament history; it makes me get it up, and then between us we hammer out so many more explanations of difficult passages than, at all events, I should do by myself.  He is, moreover, about the best Greek scholar here, which is a great help to me.  You have no idea of the light that such accurate scholarship as his throws upon many disputed passages in the Bible, e.g., “Wisdom is justified of her children,” where the Greek preposition probably gives the key to the whole meaning, and many such.  So you see, dear old Fan, that the want of some one to pour out this to, for it sounds fearfully pedantic, I confess, has drawn upon you this grievous infliction.

’My kindest love to Father and dear Joan,

’Ever your loving

‘J.  C. P.’

Fanny Patteson answered with arguments on the other duties which hindered her from entering on the course of deep study which he had been recommending.  He replies:—­

’Feb. 25, 1853.

’My dearest Fan,—­I must answer your very sensible well-written letter at once, because on our system of mutual explanation, there are two or three things I wish to notice in it.  First, I never meant that anything should supersede duties which I am well aware you practise with real use to yourself and those about you, e.g., the kindness and sympathy shown to friends, and generally due observance of all social relations.  Second, I quite believe that the practical application of what is already known, teaching, going about among the poor, is of far more consequence than the acquisition of knowledge, which, of course, for its own sake is worth nothing.  Third, I think you perfectly right in keeping up music, singing, all the common amusements of a country life; of course I do, for indeed what I said did not apply to Joan or you, except so far as this, that we all know probably a great deal of which each one is separately ignorant, and the free communication of this to one another is desirable, I think.

’My own temptation consists perhaps chiefly in the love of reading for its own sake.  I do honestly think that for a considerable time past I have read, I believe, nothing which I do not expect to be of real use, for I have no taste naturally for novels, &c. (without, however,, wishing to deny that there may be novels which teach a real insight into character).  Barring “I Promessi Sposi” which I take up very seldom when tired, I have not