RELIGIOUS PERTURBATIONS. 13 



the difficulty of getting rooms in Trinity College, he was 'J.824. 

 in lodgings. After this his rooms were over the gateway. 

 At this time his mother wrote to him : ( I hope I am mis- His 

 taken in supposing from your letter that you go entirely idety. 



to " the chapel," and not with Mr. and Mrs. , to 



hear the Gospel on Sundays. . . . You are very young, my 

 love, and will be likely to go wrong from being left to 

 yourself so soon if you do not take advantage of the 

 experience of those who have gone before you. I have 

 less fear for you than I should have for many youths of 

 your age, because you are studious and steady, because 

 you love your mother tenderly, but above all, because you 

 are the child of many prayers ; but I shall be most 

 anxious if you do not hear dear Mr. Simeon.' 



In another letter she says, speaking of the same 

 friends who had assisted him in small money arrangements 



at Cambridge : ' Mrs. tells me you are like a man of 



fifty in settling your accounts with her for things she has 

 bought. Dear own son of your father and mother, go on 

 through life with the same scrupulous punctuality ; it will 

 be a means of keeping you from spending extravagantly ; 

 it will make you respected and beloved, and preserve you 

 from that sort of carelessness which brings many young 

 men to ruin.' 



I would not put on record expressions showing the 

 intense anxiety of a most energetic and loving mother for 

 a beloved child, except to afford an instance of how the 

 very best intentions may be acted on in such a way as to . 

 frustrate their own fulfilment. Mrs. De Morgan had put 

 some books, of what would now be called a ' Low Church' 

 tendency, into a box with other things for her son, 

 accompanying them with a letter, from which I extract 

 the following : 



( I am so anxious that you should read occasionally the Religious 

 books I send (unknown to you), and was so fearful you r 

 might endeavour to persuade yourself and me that you 

 had no time for such studies, that I thought the best way 



