it can only have any jurisdiction where there is nothing wrong to be participated in or encouraged. And therefore I am sure you will not deny that you ought not to make a part of any society in which you will be hearing what is indecent or profane. I hope that there are not many of the Oriel undergraduates from whom you would be likely to hear obscenity or profaneness, and I trust that you will not knowingly visit any such. As to the wine parties, if I have a correct idea of them they are the young men going after dinner to each other's rooms to drink their wine, eat their fruit, &c.; and with the qualification above specified, I see no reason for your absenting yourself from them, if your so doing would fairly subject you to the charge of moroseness or any other evil imputation. I understand there is no excess, and that you separate after a short time. Its being more _agreeable_ to you to stay away I should not deem a legitimate motive if alone. But in all these questions the _practical_ question often is, how the expenditure of any given amount of time and money (for the former I estimate full as highly as the latter) can be made productive of the best effect. There is one particular member of your college with whom I hope you will form no acquaintance. Would it make it more easy for you to avoid this, if you were able to allege that I had exacted from you a promise to that effect? It was not from Robert, but from another person, that I heard of him a particular instance of misconduct, which I believe even in the more relaxed discipline of Cambridge would have drawn on the offender exemplary punishment. Such a man must, I am sure, be a very dangerous companion. If it be necessary for you to know him, of course you will treat him like a gentleman; but further than this I hope you will not go. From what Robert said to me I have a notion that there is a very foolish practice, to call it by the softest name, of spending considerable sums in the fruit and wine of these wine drinkings, where I understood that there was no excess, every man also being allowed to please himself as to the wine he drinks. But for a young man, the son perhaps of a clergyman who is straining to the utmost to maintain him at college, stinting himself, his wife and daughters in comforts necessary to their health, for such a young man to be giving claret and buying expensive fruit for his young companions is absolutely criminal. And what is more, I will say that young men are much altered if any youth of spirit who should frankly declare, 'My father cannot afford such expensive indulgences, and I will not deprive him or my brothers and sisters for my own gratification,' would not be respected for his manliness and right feeling. Your situation is different, though, by the way, your father has left off giving claret except in some very special cases, and has entirely left off several other expensive articles, which are still exhibited by others of his rank.