s just been rusticated from Christ Church for
riding one of Simmon's hacks through a china-shop window; especially
as the youth is reported to be given to piquette and strong liquors,
and, like many noblemen's eldest sons, is considered 'not to have
the talent of his father.' As for the old lord himself, I have no
wish to change or develop him in any way--except to cut slips off
him, as you do off a willow, and plant two or three in every county
in England. Let him alone to work out his own plot . . . we have
not seen the end of it yet; but whatever it will be, England has
need of him as a transition-stage between feudalism and * * * * ;
for many a day to come. If he be not the ideal landlord, he is
nearer it than any we are like yet to see. . . .

Except one; and that, after all, is Lord Vieuxbois. Let him go on,
like a gallant gentleman as he is, and prosper. And he will
prosper, for he fears God, and God is with him. He has much to
learn; and a little to unlearn. He has to learn that God is a
living God now, as well as in the middle ages; to learn to trust not
in antique precedents, but in eternal laws: to learn that his
tenants, just because they are children of God, are not to be kept
children, but developed and educated into sons; to learn that God's
grace, like His love, is free, and that His spirit bloweth where it
listeth, and vindicates its own free-will against our narrow
systems, by revealing, at times, even to nominal Heretics and
Infidels, truths which the Catholic Church must humbly receive, as
the message of Him who is wider, deeper, more tolerant, than even
she can be. . . And he is in the way to learn all this. Let him go
on. At what conclusions he will attain, he knows not, nor do I.
But this I know, that he is on the path to great and true
conclusions. . . . And he is just about to be married, too. That
surely should teach him something. The papers inform me that his
bride elect is Lord Minchampstead's youngest daughter. That should
be a noble mixture; there should be stalwart offspring, spiritual as
well as physical, born of that intermarriage of the old and the new.
We will hope it: perhaps some of my readers, who enter into my
inner meaning, may also pray for it.

Whom have I to account for besides? Crawy--though some of my
readers may consider the mention of him superfluous. But to those
who do not, I may impart the news, that last month, in