"We quite enjoyed your pleasure in Robert's visit. In truth the gratification we parents derive from our children's innocent, much more their commendable, enjoyments is one of the greatest of our pleasures." "BATH, _November 18, 1820_. "MY DEAR SAMUEL.--I am sorry to hear that your examination is, or part of it at least, disadvantageous to you. Does not this arise in part from your having stayed with us when your school-fellows were at Maisemore? If so, the lesson is one which, if my dear boy duly digests it and bottles it up for future use, may be a most valuable one for the rest of his life. It illustrates a remark which I well remember in Bishop Butler's 'Analogy,' that our faults often bring on some bad consequence long after they have been committed, and when they perhaps have been entirely banished from our memory. Some self-indulgence perhaps may have lost us an advantage, the benefit of which might have extended through life. But it is due to my dear Samuel to remark that, though his stay was protracted a very little out of self-indulgence (as much ours as his), yet it was chiefly occasioned by the necessity of his going up to London on account of his ancle. (By the way, tell me in two words--ancle better or worse or _idem._) But my Samuel must not vex himself with the idea of falling below the boy who has commonly been his competitor, owing to his stay having prevented his reading what is to be in part the subject of the examination. It would really be quite wrong to feel much on this account, and that for several reasons. First, everybody about you will know the disadvantages under which you start, and will make allowances accordingly. Next, if you do as well or better in the parts you _have_ read, you will show the probability of your having done well in the other also, if you had possessed with it the same advantage. And what I wish my dearest boy seriously to consider is, that any uneasiness he might feel on account of this circumstance would deserve no better a name than emulation, which the apostle enumerates as one of the lusts of the flesh. You should do your business and try to excel in it, to please your Saviour, as a small return for all He has done for you, but a return which He will by no means despise. It is this which constitutes the character of a real Christian: that, considering himself as bought with a price--viz., that of the blood of Jesus Christ--he regards it as his duty to try and please his Saviour in everything. And to be honest with you, my very dear boy, let me tell you that it appears to me very probable that the Heavenly Shepherd, whose tender care of His people is, you must remember, described to us as like that of a shepherd towards the tender lambs of his flock, may have designed by this very incident to discover to you that you were too much under the influence of emulation, and to impress you with a sense of the duty of rooting it out. Emulation has a great tendency to lessen love.