the next? For many months my poor sister's first floor was a desert,
until occupied by your noble little boy, my nephew and pupil. Clive is
everything that a father's, an uncle's (who loves him as a father), a
pastor's, a teacher's affections could desire. He is not one of those
premature geniuses whose much-vaunted infantine talents disappear along
with adolescence; he is not, I frankly own, more advanced in his
classical and mathematical studies than some children even younger than
himself; but he has acquired the rudiments of health; he has laid in a
store of honesty and good-humour, which are not less likely to advance
him in life than mere science and language, than the as in praesenti, or
the pons asinorum.

"But I forget, in thinking of my dear little friend and pupil, the
subject of this letter--namely, the acquisition of the proprietary chapel
to which I have alluded, and the hopes, nay, certainty of a fortune, if
aught below is certain, which that acquisition holds out. What is a
curacy, but a synonym for starvation? If we accuse the Eremites of old of
wasting their lives in unprofitable wildernesses, what shall we say to
many a hermit of Protestant, and so-called civilised times, who hides his
head in a solitude in Yorkshire, and buries his probably fine talents in
a Lincolnshire fen? Have I genius? Am I blessed with gifts of eloquence
to thrill and soothe, to arouse the sluggish, to terrify the sinful, to
cheer and convince the timid, to lead the blind groping in darkness, and
to trample the audacious sceptic in the dust? My own conscience, besides
a hundred testimonials from places of popular, most popular worship, from
reverend prelates, from distinguished clergy, tells me I have these
gifts. A voice within me cries, 'Go forth, Charles Honeyman, fight the
good fight; wipe the tears of the repentant sinner; sing of hope to the
agonised criminal; whisper courage, brother, courage, at the ghastly
deathbed, and strike down the infidel with the lance of evidence and the