The first quiet and pure light that has risen this many a day, was increasing through the tall stems of the trees of our garden, which is walled by the walls of old Oxford; and a bird,--(I am going to lecture on ornithology next term, but don't know what bird, and couldn't go to ask the gardener,) singing steady, sweet, momentary notes, in a way that would have been very pleasant to me, once. And as I was breathing out of the window, thrown up as high as I could, (for my servant had made me an enormous fire, as servants always do on hot mornings,) and looking at the bright sickle of a moon, fading as she rose, the verse came into my mind,--I don't in the least know why,--"Lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting;"--which chanced to express in the most precise terms, what I want you to feel, about Edward III.'s fighting, (though St. Paul is speaking of prayer, not of fighting, but it's all the same;) as opposed to this modern British fighting, which is the lifting up of unholy hands,--feet, at least,--in wrath, and doubting. Also, just the minute before, I had upset my lucifer-match box, a nasty brown tin thing, containing,--as the spiteful Third Fors would have it--just two hundred and sixty-six wax matches, half of which being in a heap on the floor, and the rest all at cross purposes, had to be picked up, put straight and repacked, and at my best time for other work. During this operation, necessarily deliberate, I was thinking of my correspondent's query, (see terminal notes,) respecting what I meant by doing anything "in a hurry." I mean essentially doing it in hurry of mind,--"doubting" whether we are doing it fast enough,--not knowing exactly how fast we can do it, or how slowly it must be done, to be done well. You cannot pack a lucifer-box, nor make a dish of stir-about, nor knead a brown loaf, but with patience; nor meet even the most pressing need, but with coolness. Once, when my father was coming home from Spain, in a merchant ship, and in mid-bay of Biscay, the captain and passengers being at dinner, the sea did something or other to the ship which showed that the steersman was not minding what he was about. The captain jumped straight over the table, went on deck, and took the helm. Now I do not mean that he ought to have gone round the table, but that, if a good captain, as he took the wheel, he would not miss his grasp of the spokes by snatching at them an instant too soon. And you will find that St. Paul's "without doubting"--for which, if you like, you may substitute, "by, or in, faith," covers nearly every definition of right action--and also that it is not possible to have this kind of faith unless one can add--as he does--"having faith and a good conscience." It does not at all follow that one must be doing a right thing; that will depend on one's sense and information; but one must be doing deliberately a thing we entirely suppose to be right, or we shall not do it becomingly.