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beliefs and passionate sympathies and deplorable hatreds, so that
when I come into contact with what I am bound to accept as the
typical English parson in the making I am really appalled.

I've been wondering why the Bishop of Silchester told me to come
here. Did he really think that the spectacle of moderation in the
moulding was good for me? Did he fancy that I was a young zealot
who required putting in his place? Or did he more subtly realize
from the account I gave him of Malford that I was in danger of
becoming moderate, even luke-warm, even tepid, perhaps even
stone-cold? Did he grasp that I must owe something to party as well
as mankind, if I was to give up anything worth giving to mankind?
But perhaps in my egoism I am attributing much more to his
lordship's paternal interest, a keener glance to his episcopal eye,
than I have any right to attribute. Perhaps, after all, he merely
saw in me a young man who had missed the advantages of Oxford,
etc., and wished out of regard for my future to provide me with the
best substitute.

Anyway, please don't think that I live in a constant state of
criticism with a correspondingly dangerous increase of self-esteem.
I really am working hard. I sometimes wonder if the preparation of
a "good" theological college is the best preparation for the
priesthood. But so long as bishops demand the knowledge they do, it
is obvious that this form of preparation will continue. There again
though, I daresay if I imagined myself an inspired pianist I should
grumble at the amount of scales I was set to practice. I'm not,
once I've written down or talked out some of my folly, so very
foolish at bottom.

Beyond a slight inclination to flirt with the opinions of most of
the great heresiarchs in turn, but only with each one until the
next comes along, I'm not having any intellectual adventures. One
of the excitements I had imagined beforehand was wrestling with
Doubt. But I have no wrestles. Shall I always be spared?

Your ever affectionate,

Mark.

Gradually, as the months went by, either because the students became
more mellow in such surroundings or because he himself was achieving a
wider tolerance, Mark lost much of his capacity for criticism and
learned to recognize in his fellows a simple goodness and sincerity o