I have, as you say, been at great expense with your
education. Nothing has been spared by me to give you the advantages,
which, as an English gentleman, I was anxious to afford my son, but
I am not prepared to see that expense thrown away and to have to begin
again from the beginning, merely because you have taken some foolish
scruples into your head, which you should resist as no less unjust
to yourself than to me.
"Don't give way to that restless desire for change which is the bane
of so many persons of both sexes at the present day.
"Of course you needn't be ordained: nobody will compel you; you
are perfectly free; you are twenty-three years of age, and should know
your own mind; but why not have known it sooner, instead of never so
much as breathing a hint of opposition until I have had all the
expense of sending you to the University, which I should never have
done unless I had believed you to have made up your mind about
taking orders? I have letters from you in which you express the most
perfect willingness to be ordained, and your brother and sisters
will bear me out in saying that no pressure of any sort has been put
upon you. You mistake your own mind, and are suffering from a nervous
timidity which may be very natural but may not the less be pregnant
with serious consequences to yourself.
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