of the Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic. I feel, I confess, sometimes that it
is nice, &c., to know several languages, but I try to drive away any
such thoughts, and it is quite astonishing how, after a few weeks, a
study which would suggest ideas of an unusual course of reading
becomes so familiar that I never think of myself when pursuing it,
e.g., I don't think that after two hours' grind at Arabic the stupid
wrong feeling of its being an out-of-the-way study comes upon me now,
it is getting quite natural. It comes out though when I talk or
write perhaps with another, but I must try and get over it.

'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,