In the same number of _The Student_ there appeared a letter from Bishop Atterbury to his son Obadiah, who was up at the House. How the editor procured it is not recorded, nor is it easy to see why he included it in his columns. It cannot have been vastly entertaining to a list of subscribers who devoted most of their time to ale and coffee-houses, or in dallying with Amaryllis in the shade of Merton Wall. It is greatly interesting to-day, however, as an example of what an eighteenth-century parent indicted to his son. The contrast between this letter and the replies one receives in 1911 in answer to one’s brief epistles written, mostly, solely in order to “touch the dad down for a bit” is not unstriking. “DEAR OBBY,--I thank you for your letter, because there are manifest signs in it of your endeavouring to excel yourself, and in consequence to please me. You have succeeded in both respects, and will always succeed, if you think it worth your while to consider what you write and to whom, and let nothing, tho’ of a trifling nature, pass through your pen negligently. Get but the way of writing correctly and justly, time and use will teach you to write readily afterwards. Not but that too much care may give a stiffness to your style, which ought in all letters by all means to be avoided. The turn of them should always be natural and easy, for they are an image of private and familiar conversation. I mention this with respect to the four or five first lines of yours, which have an air of poetry, and do therefore naturally resolve themselves into blank verses. I send you your letter again, that you may make the same observation. But you took the hint of that thought from a poem, and it is no wonder therefore, that you heightened the phrase a little when you were expressing it. The rest is as it should be; and particularly there is an air of duty and sincerity, that if it comes from your heart, is the most acceptable present you can make me. With these qualities an incorrect letter would please me, and without them the finest thoughts and language would make no lasting impression upon me. The great Being says, you know--my son, give me thy heart--implying that without it all other gifts signify nothing. Let me conjure you therefore never to say anything, either in a letter or common conversation, that you do not think, but always to let your mind and your words go together on the most slight and trivial occasions. Shelter not the least degree of insincerity under the notion of a compliment, which, as far as it deserves to be practis’d by a man of probity, is only the most civil and obliging way of saying what you really mean; and whoever employs it otherwise, throws away truth for breeding; I need not tell you how little his character gets by such an exchange. I say not this as if I