Believe me, with sincere affection and gratitude, yours ever,
DEAR BROTHER,--Happy am I, that the country air and exercise have operated with due effect on your health and spirits--and happy, too, that I can inform you, that my own corporealities are in a state of better health, than I ever recollect them to be. This indeed I owe in great measure to the care of Mrs. Evans,[18] with whom I spent a fortnight at Christmas: the relaxation from study coöperating with the cheerfulness and attention, which I met there, proved very potently medicinal. I have indeed experienced from her a tenderness scarcely inferior to the solicitude of maternal affection. I wish, my dear brother, that some time, when you walk into town, you would call at Villiers Street, and take a dinner or dish of tea there. Mrs. Evans has repeatedly expressed her wish, and I too have made a half promise that you would. I assure you, you will find them not only a very amiable, but a very sensible family.
I send a parcel to Le Grice on Friday morning, which (_you may depend on it as a certainty_) will contain your sermon. I hope you will like it.
I am sincerely concerned at the state of Mr. Sparrow's health. Are his complaints consumptive? Present my respects to him and Mrs. Sparrow.
_When_ the Scholarship falls, I do not know. It _must be_ in the course of two or three months. I do not relax in my exertions, neither do I find it any impediment to my mental acquirements that prudence has obliged me to relinquish the _mediæ pallescere nocti_. We are examined as Rustats,[19] on the Thursday in Easter Week. The examination for my year is "the last book of Homer and Horace's _De Arte Poetica_." The Master (_i. e._ Dr. Pearce) told me that he would do me a service by pushing my examination as deep as he possibly could. If ever hogs-lard is pleasing, it is when our superiors trowel it on. Mr. Frend's company[20] is by no means invidious. On the contrary, Pearce himself is very intimate with him. No! Though I am not an _Alderman_, I have yet _prudence_ enough to respect that _gluttony of faith_ waggishly yclept orthodoxy.
Philanthropy generally keeps pace with health--my acquaintance becomes more general. I am intimate with an undergraduate of our College, his name Caldwell,[21] who is pursuing the same line of study (nearly) as myself. Though a man of fortune, he is prudent; nor does he lay claim to that right, which wealth confers on its possessor, of being a fool. Middleton is fourth senior optimate--an honourable place, but by no means so high as the whole University expected, or (I believe) his merits deserved. He desires his love to Stevens:[22] to which you will add mine.