’Do you, Fan, care to have any of my German books?  I have, indeed, scarce any but theological ones.  But no one else reads German here, and I read none but the divinity; and, indeed, I almost wish I had them in translations, for the sake of the English type and paper.  My eyes don’t like the German type at all.

’Moreover, now (it was not so years ago), all that is worth reading in their language is in a good serviceable English dress, and passed, moreover, through the minds of clear English thinkers—­and the Germans are such wordy, clumsy, involved writers.  A man need not be a German scholar to be well acquainted with all useful German theology.  Döllinger is almost the only clear, plain writer I know among them.  Dorner, the great Lutheran divine, gives you about two pages and a half of close print for a single sentence—­awful work, worse than my English!...  But I know that if I read less, and thought more, it would be better.  Only it is such hard work thinking, and I am so lazy!  I was amused at hearing, through another lad, of Edward Wogale’s remark, “This helping in translation” (a revisal of the “Acts” in Mota) “is such hard work!” “Yes, my boy, brain work takes it out of you.”  I wish I had Jem’s power of writing reports, condensing evidence into clear reliable statements.  Lawyers get that power; while we Clergymen are careless and inaccurate, because, as old Lord Campbell said, “there is no reply to our sermons.”

’What would I give to have been well drilled in grammar, and made an accurate scholar in old days!  Ottery School and Eton didn’t do much for me in that way, though of course the fault was chiefly in myself.

’But most of all, I think that I regret the real loss to us Eton boys of the weekly help that Winchester, Rugby, and Harrow boys had from Moberly, Arnold, and Vaughan in their sermons!  I really think that might have helped to keep us out of harm!

’It is now 4.30 P.M., calm and hot.  Such a tiger-lily on my table, and the pretty delicate achimenes, and the stephanotis climbing up the verandah, and a bignonia by its side, with honeysuckle all over the steps, and jessamine all over the two water-tanks at the angle of the verandah.  The Melanesians have, I think, twenty-nine flower gardens, and they bring the flowers, &c.—­lots of flowers, and the oleanders are a sight!  Some azaleas are doing well, verbenas, hibiscus of all kinds.  Roses and, alas! clove carnations, and stocks, and many of the dear old cottage things won’t grow well.  Scarlet passion flowers and splendid Japanese lilies of perfect white or pink or spotted.  The golden one I have not yet dared to buy.  They are most beautiful.  I like both the red and the yellow tritoma; we have both.  But I don’t think we have the perfume of the English flowers, and I miss the clover and buttercup.  And what would I give for an old-fashioned cabbage rose, as big as a saucer, and for fresh violets, which grow