――‘I will be cautious about talking of myself and my feelings: what I like; whom I admire; what are my notions of a high character; how few people I find to sympathise with me on any subject; and many other egotistical, mawkish, useless matters, about which I have suffered myself to prate. Also, I will avoid obtruding my advice, and taking high grounds to which I have no pretensions.’ ――‘Just now, at breakfast,[19] I felt the inconvenience of not omitting an oath in a story I told of Sheridan. I felt directly that I lost ground, and should be unable to make a stand, if conversation were to take a turn I disliked. I must be watchful and strict with myself in this respect: for, if I comply with my father’s wishes, and enter freely into society, I shall have much harder work to fight off my old shuffling vanity, and shall be drawn, from not feeling my own ground, into foolishness and flash, and everything that is disgusting.’ ――‘I used to speculate on the delight of keeping fasts upon the river in fine weather, among beautiful scenery, rather than in my dull rooms at Oxford; but last Friday was a real fine day, yet I did not at all turn it to this account. Though I ate little, it was something very different from my Oxford fasts, and still more so from what I then used to picture to myself, when I should get home. I waste time in preparing boats, and thoughts in speculating on schemes for expeditions, and for improving our appointments. Also, I observe other bad effects resulting from my misconduct, which I cannot but regard as signs that good spirits are deserting me. The other evening I had an argument with my father, almost in a sort of tone which I used to feel ashamed of last summer, and which, in the Christmas vacation, I think I was not even tempted to; and when I caught myself getting untuned, it cost me a [severe[20]] effort to check myself; nor was it till the next morning that all the effects of it subsided, and I felt quite good-natured and humble again. In this fight I was greatly helped by the experience of former conflicts, and recollecting the ways I had caught myself in self-deceit, so that it gives me some hope as well as humiliation. I pray God that He will not suffer all my feeble efforts to be wasted, and prove quite ineffectual, and that He will enable me to lie down to-night with a better conscience.’ ――‘Just now, in riding home from Denbury,[21] I got arguing with my father about the little chance anyone has of doing good, in a way rather inconsistent with our relative condition; yet, when I thought I was going rather too far, could hardly convince myself that, at any particular moment, it was incumbent on me to stop. It is this self-deceiving disposition that I am afraid of.’