solemn thing to think that one has so many days and months and years
to account for. Looking back, I see how fearfully I wasted
opportunities which I enjoyed, of which, I fancy, I should now avail
myself gladly; but I don't know that I fancy what is true, for my
work now, though there is plenty of it, is desultory, and I dare say
hard application, continuously kept up, would be as irksome to me as
ever.

'It seems very strange to me that I never found any pleasure in
classical studies formerly. Now, the study of the languages for its
own sake even is so attractive to rue that I should enjoy working out
the exact and delicate powers of Greek particles, &c.; but I never
cared for it till it was too late, and the whole thing was drudgery
tn me. I had no appreciation, again, of Historians, or historians;
only thought Thucydides difficult and Herodotus prosy(!!), and
Tacitus dull, and Livy apparently easy and really very hard. So,
again, with the poets; and most of all I found no interest (fancy!)
in Plato and Aristotle. They were presented to me as merely school
books; not as the great effort of the cultivated heathen mind to
solve the riddle of man's being; and I, in those days, never thought
of comparing the heathen and Christian ethics, and the great writers
had no charm for me.

'Then my French. If I had really taken any pains with old Tarver in
old days--and it was your special wish that I should do so--how
useful it would be to me now; whereas, though I get on after a sort,
I don't speak at all as I ought to do, and might have learnt to do.
It is sad to look back upon all the neglected opportunities; and it
is not only that I have not got nearly (so to speak) a quantity of
useful materials for one's work in the present time, but that I find