ore the authorities of the college. You
do not mention their names, and I respect the feeling which has
led you not to mention them. I shall know them quite soon enough
through my solicitor, who will forward me a copy of the note of
hand and signatures in due course.

"Your letter makes general allusion to other matters; and I
gather from it that you are dissatisfied with the manner in which
you have spent your first year at Oxford. I do not ask for
specific confessions, which you seem inclined to offer me; in
fact, I would sooner not have them, unless there is any other
matter in which you want assistance or advice from me. I know
from experience that Oxford is a place full of temptation of all
kinds, offered to young men at the most critical time of their
lives. Knowing this, I have deliberately accepted the
responsibility of sending you there, and I do not repent it. I am
glad that you are dissatisfied with your first year. If you had
not been I should have felt much more anxious about your second.
Let bygones be bygones between you and me. You know where to go
for strength, and to make confessions which no human ear should
hear, for no human judgment can weigh the cause. The secret
places of a man's heart are for himself and God. Your mother
sends her love.

"I am, ever your affectionate father,--JOHN BROWN."

June 26th, 184-.

"MY DEAR BOY,--I am not sorry that you have taken my last letter
as you have done. It is quite right to be sensitive on these
points, and it will have done you no harm to have fancied for
forty-eight hours that you had in my judgment lost caste as a
gentleman. But now I am very glad to be able to ease your mind on
this point. You have done a very foolish thing; but it is only
the habit, and the getting others to bind themselves, and not the
doing it oneself for others, which is disgraceful. You are going
to pay honourably for your folly, and will owe me neither thanks
nor money in the transaction. I have chosen my own terms for
repayment, which you have accepted, and so the financial question
is disposed of.

"I have considered what you say as to your companions--friends I
will not call them--and will promise you not to take any further
steps, or to mention the subject to anyone. But I must insist on
my second condition, that you avoid all further intimacy with
them. I do not mean that you are to cut them, or do anything that
will attract attention. But, no more intimacy.

"And n