It is, I think, about a month since I wrote to you, and so little has occurred since that I find scarcely anything in my _Journal_, and nothing worth transcribing. This state of inactivity is becoming very irksome to me. I cannot get these Persians to work, and while they are idle I am sitting here to no purpose. Sabat's laziness used to provoke me excessively, but Persians I find are as torpid as Arabs when their salary does not depend on their exertions, and both very inferior to the feeble Indian, whom they affect to despise. My translator comes about sunrise, corrects a little, and is off, and I see no more of him for the day. Meanwhile I sit fretting, or should do so, as I did at first, were it not for a blessed employment which so beguiles the tediousness of the day that I hardly perceive it passing. It is the study of the Psalms in the Hebrew. I have long had it in contemplation, in the assurance, from the number of flat and obscure passages that occur in the translations, that the original has not been hitherto perfectly understood. I am delighted to find that many of the most unmeaning verses in the version turn out, on close examination, to contain a direct reference to the Lord our Saviour. The testimony of Jesus is indeed the spirit of prophecy. He is never lost sight of. Let them touch what subject they will, they must always let fall something about Him. Such should we be, looking always to Him. I have often attempted the 84th Psalm, endeared to me on many accounts as you know, but have not yet succeeded. The glorious 16th Psalm I hope I have mastered. I write with the ardour of a student communicating his discoveries and describing his difficulties to a fellow student.