“I cannot expect any young man, of course,” continued the worthy parson, “to make such efforts for conscience’ sake as in my young days were made cheerfully. But this indolence and dislike of the pen _furcâ expellendum est_--must be expelled with a knife and fork. Perhaps you will scarcely care to hear that your aunt and cousins are doing well. After your exploits your memory seems to have grown very short of poor folk in old England. Your birthday falling on a Sunday this year, I took occasion to allude in the course of my sermon to a mural crown, of which I remember to have heard at school. Nobody knew what I meant; but many were more affected than if they did. But, after all, it requires, to my mind, quite as much courage, and more skill, to take a dry wall properly, when nobody has been over it, than to scramble into Badajos. Alice will write to you by this post, and tell you all the gossip of the sad old house, if there is any. There seems to be nobody now with life enough to make much gossip. And all that we hear is about Captain Chapman (who means to have Alice), and about yourself. “About you it is said, though I cannot believe it, and must be ashamed of you when I do so, that you are making a fool of yourself with a Spanish lady of birth and position, but a rank, idolatrous, bigoted Papist! The Lorraines have been always sadly heterodox in religious matters, from age to age receiving every whim they came across of. They have taken to astrology, Mahomet, destiny, and the gods of Greece, and they never seem to know when to stop. The only true Church, the Church of England, never has any hold of them; and if you should marry a Papist, Hilary, it would be a judgment.