――‘Read my mother’s journal till half-past twelve: here and there I think I remember allusions. Everything I see in it sends me back to her in my childhood: it gets such hold of me that I can hardly think of anything else. It is a bad way to give a general account of oneself at the end of a day: people at that time are not competent judges of their actions; besides, everyone ought to be dissatisfied with himself always: it is better to give a detailed account like my mother’s by means of which I may hereafter have some idea of what was my standard of virtue, rather than my opinion of myself.’ ――‘O Lord, consider it not as a mockery in me, that day after day I present myself before Thee, professing penitence for sins which I still continue to commit, and asking Thy grace to assist me in subduing them, while my negligence renders it ineffectual. O Lord, if I must judge of the future from the past, and if the prayers which I am now about to offer up to Thee will prove equally ineffectual with those which have preceded them, then indeed it is a fearful thing to come before Thee with professions whose fruitlessness seems a proof of their insincerity! But Thine eye trieth my inward parts, and knoweth my thoughts, independently of the actions which proceed from them. “O that my ways were made so direct that I might keep Thy statutes! I will walk in Thy commandments when Thou hast set my heart at liberty.”’ ――‘Read my mother’s journal. I hope it is beginning to do me some serious good, without exciting such wild feelings as it did at first.’ ――‘I must fight against myself with all my might, and watch my mind at every turning. It will be a good thing for me to keep an exact account of my receipts and spendings: it will be a check on silly prodigality. I mean to save what I can by denying myself indulgences, in order to have wherewith I may honour God and relieve the poor.’ (To KEBLE, but never sent.) ――‘Perhaps you may think it very odd, but this summer[15] has been the first time I have had resolution to ask for the papers which they found of my mother’s after her death. The most interesting to me are some prayers, and two fragments of [a] journal, one for the year 1809, I think, and the other in 1815. The prayers seem to have been a good deal later.’ (Not sent either.) ――‘All this summer I have been trying a sort of experiment with myself, which, as I have had no one to talk to about it, has brought on great fits of enthusiasm and despondency, and being conscious at the time of most contemptible inconsistencies, both in my high and dejected feelings, I set to work to keep a journal of them, to answer the purpose of a sort of conversation between my present and my future self: an idea which I got from reading an old journal of my mother’s, which they found after her death, and which I never could make up my mind to look at till this summer.’