'I believe it to be a good thing to break off any work once or twice a day in the middle of any reading, for meditating a little while and for prayer. This is more easily done at College than elsewhere; and is, I hope, a preventive against such thoughts. Then, as I jog on I see how very little I know, what an immense deal I have to learn to become ordinarily well acquainted with these things. I am in that state of mind, perhaps, when Ecclesiastes (which I am now reading) puts my own case exactly before me. I think, What's the good of it all? And the answer comes, it may be very good properly used, or very mischievous if abused. I do indeed look forward to active parochial work: I think I shall be very happy so employed, and I often try to anticipate the time in thought, and feel with perfect sincerity that nothing is so useful or so full of comfort as the consciousness of trying to fulfil the daily duties of my situation. Here of course I need do nothing; I mean there is nothing to prevent my sitting all day in an arm-chair and reading "Pickwick.".... One word about the way languages help me, that you may not think what I am doing harder than it really is. These three bear the same kind of relation to each other (or rather say these five, Arabic, Syriac, Hebrew, Chaldee, Ethiopia; but of the last I know nothing whatever, and of Chaldee only so much as that it is a dialect of Hebrew in the same character, and consequently anyone who knows Hebrew knows something about it), as German to English, e.g., Bahlom (Arab.), Beel (Syr.), Baal (Heb.), are the same word, as you can see, only written in different characters, and all mean "a lord," so Baal, Beelzebub, or Baalzebeb. Baal Peor, which means, literally, "the Lord of the ravine," viz., the idol worshipped at the Pass in the wilderness. Consequently, in reading any one of these languages, the same word keeps on occurring in all; and the chief use is of course that often a word which occurs only once or twice in Hebrew perhaps is in common use in the others, and so its meaning is fixed. Add to all this, that the Syriac version of the New Testament was made (as all agree) early in the second century, if not at the end of the first, and thus is the very best exponent of the New Testament where the Greek is doubtful; and the additional fact, that though a mixture of Chaldee and Syriac was the language of Palestine in our Lord's time, yet He certainly sometimes spoke what is now our Syriac (e.g., Talitha cumi, &c.), and the importance of it is apparent. Surely to read the language that our Blessed Lord himself used is no small profit as well as delight. 'So I think we may each go on in our several pursuits, each helping each, and each trying to do so without a foolish affectation of learning. 'My best love to dear Father and Joan, 'Ever your affectionate Brother, 'J. C. P.'