could not yet return home.

This brief sight of his sister has sunk deep into him. But I now
approach what seems to me the great difficulty of the whole. He is
fully anxious to redeem his name, to regain his home. So far so
well. But he cannot yet see ambition, except with hard, worldly
eyes. He still fancies that all he has to do is to get money and
power and some of those empty prizes in the Great Lottery which we
often win more easily by our sins than our virtues. [Here follows
a long passage from Seneca, omitted as superfluous.] He does not
yet even understand me--or if he does, he fancies me a mere book-
worm indeed--when I imply that he might be poor and obscure, at the
bottom of fortune's wheel, and yet be one we should be proud of.
He supposes that to redeem his name he has only got to lacker it.
Don't think me merely the fond father when I add my hope that I
shall use you to advantage here. I mean to talk to him to-morrow,
as we return to London, of you and of your ambition; you shall hear
the result.

At this moment (it is past midnight) I hear his step in the room
above me. The window-sash aloft opens, for the third time. Would
to Heaven he could read the true astrology of the stars! There
they are,--bright, luminous, benignant. And I seeking to chain
this wandering comet into the harmonies of heaven! Better task
than that of astrologers, and astronomers to boot! Who among them
can "loosen the band of Orion"? But who amongst us may not be
permitted by God to have sway over the action and orbit of the
human soul?
Your ever-affectionate father,