The Abrahams were both amused and impressed by the quiet way in which the Bishop walked “through any mention of State interference and ecclesiastical law apart from Church authority.” They saw at once how determined he was to make the Church of New Zealand independent and self-governed, and to make it realize its responsibility for the education of the people. In his discussion on these subjects he went on to thoughts of the Church at home and of the work of Bishops there, and said that at home too the clergy must take education into their own hands by doing the work, and that there should be an “episcopate of £500 a year bishops, given to hospitality and not clothing flunkeys in purple.” Abraham wrote his first impressions of St. John’s College, to Dr. Hawtrey, the headmaster of Eton. “The Bishop and myself are the only persons in the colony almost who possess libraries; and the taste for such things has to be created, as at present a mere utilitarian idea of education prevails. Perhaps for the purposes of the settlers here and the clergy a practical education is the best suited, and I must confess that I quite quail before the attainments of some of my scholars, who will make most valuable missionaries among natives and round a sea girt isle. Only conceive what a thoroughly αὐταρκης man will be formed out of a boy who at the age of nineteen knows more divinity than most boys at Eton in the Sixth Form, who is thoroughly acquainted with French and Maori ... is a good musician and able to teach the natives singing—a good mathematician and able to sail the _Undine_ from hence to the New Hebrides and back, taking sights and managing rigging.... Of course none of them are scholars in our sense of the words; they devote too little time to scholarship, having to pay for their support by bodily work, so that two hours a day, four times a week is all a boy gets of school. He is either printing, or farming, or weaving, or digging, or making shoes, etc., the rest of his time. Altogether it is a strange life we lead here. I am sure I never realized it before I came, but I will try to put you in possession of our principle; and when I say our, I mean the Bishop’s—for only his vast head and noble heart could conceive and execute so complicated a plan.