My fault again, but I can’t help thinking that it was partly because the reason of a rule was never explained.  Who ever taught in school the difference between an aorist and a perfect, e.g.?  And at college I was never taught it, because it was assumed that I knew it.  I know that at ten, fifteen, or twenty, I should not in any case have gone into languages as I do now.  But I might have learnt a good deal, I think.  A thoroughly good preparatory school is, I dare say, very difficult to find.  I would make a great point, I think, to send a boy to a good one; not to cram him or make a prig of him, but simply to give him the advantage which will make his whole career in life different from what it will be if his opening days pass by unimproved.  Cool of me, Jem, to write all this; but I think of this boy, and my boyish days, and what I might have been, and am not.

’I was always shallow, learned things imperfectly, thought I knew a thing when I knew scarce any part of it, scrawling off common-place verses at Eton, and, unfortunately, getting sent up for them.  I had a character which passed at school and at home for that of a fair scholar.  Thence came my disgrace at being turned out of the select, my bad examination for the Balliol scholarship, my taking only a second, &c.  Nothing was really known!  Pretty quick in seizing upon a superficial view of a matter, I had little patience or deter-mination to thoroughly master it.  The fault follows me through life.  I shall never, I fear, be really accurate and able to think out a matter fully.  The same fault I see in my inner life.  But it is not right to talk perhaps too much of that, only I know that I get credit for much that I don’t do, and for qualities which I don’t possess.  This is simple truth, not false humility.  Some gifts I have, which, I thank God, I have been now taught to employ with more or less of poverty in the service.’

The vessel that took away the above despatches brought the tidings of New Zealand’s beloved Primate being appointed to the See of Lichfield.  It was another great wrench to the affectionate heart, as will be seen in this filial reply to the intelligence:—­

’2nd Sunday in Lent, 10 P.M.

’My dear, dear Bishop,—­I don’t think I ever quite felt till now what you have been to me for many a long year.  Indeed, I do thank God that I have been taught to know and dearly love you; and much I reproach myself (not now for the first time) that I have been wilful, and pained you much sometimes by choosing for myself when I ought to have followed your choice.  I could say much, but I can’t say it now, and you don’t desire it.  You know what I think and feel.  Your letter of the 3rd reached me last night.  I don’t yet realise what it is to me, but I think much more still of those dear people at Taurarua.  It is perfectly clear to my mind that you could not have acted otherwise.  I don’t grudge you to the Mother Church one atom!