so long as this worship was encouraged, nor applied to it the language of "Come out of her my people," &c.

Of the moral state of the boys, for which of course I care infinitely the most, I can judge the least; our advantages in that respect are great, at least in the absence of many temptations to gross vice; but to cultivate a good spirit in the highest sense is a far different thing from shutting out one or two gross evils from want of opportunity.

IX. TO REV. J. TUCKER.

Rugby, October 26, 1829.

If we are alive fifteen years hence, I think I would go with you gladly to Swan River, if they will make me schoolmaster there, and lay my bones in the land of kangaroos and opossums. I laugh about it; yet if my wife were alive, and able to go, I should think it a very great benefit to the good cause to go out with all my family, and become a Swan River man; and I should try to get others of our friends to go out with us. My notion is, that no missionaryzing is half so beneficial, as to try to pour sound and healthy blood into a young civilized society; to make one colony, if possible, like the ancient colonies, or like New England—a living sucker from the mother country, bearing the same blossoms and the same fruits, not a reproduction of its vilest excrescences, its ignorance, and its wickedness, while all its good elements are left behind in the process. No words can tell the evil of such colonies as we have hitherto planted, where the best parts of the new society have been men too poor to carry with them or to gain much of the higher branches of knowledge; or else mere official functionaries from England, whose hearts and minds have been always half at home, and who have never identified themselves with the land in which they were working. But if you and your sisters were to go out, with half Southborough after you,-apothecary, lawyers, butchers, bakers, tailors, carpenters, and labourers, and if we were to join with a similar draught from Rugby and Laleham, I think we should deserve to be avayparroì svépyɛraι both here and in Swan River. Such are my notions about it; and I am not clear that I shall not devote my first £1000 that I make here to the purchase of land in Swan River, that I may have my estate and the school buildings got into due order, before I shut up shop at Rugby. Mean time, I hope you will not think I ought to shut up shop forthwith, and adjourn to the next asylum for daft people, because I am thus wildly dreaming about Swan River, instead of talking soberly about Rugby. But Rugby is a very nice place all the same, and I wish you would come and form your own judgment of it, or that some of your sisters would, if you cannot or will not.

X. TO J. T. COLERIDGE, Esq.

Rugby, November 4, 1829. What a time it is since I wrote to you! And how much has occurred and is continually occurring, on which I should like to write to you. You have heard perhaps of Mr. Penrose's death in September last, when, from the enjoyment of full health and vigour of mind and body, he was called away in three days with no intermediate pain or struggle, but

by a gentle lethargic sleep, which lasted uninterrupted to his very last moment. Coupled with his holy and Christian life, which made him require no long time to go and renew his exhausted oil, his end was a most complete ivbavacía, so rare a blessing, that one dares not hope or pray for a similar mercy in one's own case.

We are going on comfortably, and I trust thrivingly, with the school. We are above 200, and still looking upwards; but I neither expect, and much less desire any great addition to our numbers. The school cannot, I think, regularly expect more than 200 or 250; it may ascend higher with a strong flood, but there will be surely a corresponding ebb after it. You may imagine that I ponder over, often enough, the various discussions that I have had with you about education, and verse making, and reading the Poets. I find the natural leaning of a schoolmaster is so much to your view of the question, that my reason is more than ever led to think my own notions strongly required in the present state of classical education, if it were only on the principle of the bent stick. There is something so beautiful in good Latin verses, and in hearing fine poetry well construed, and something so attractive altogether in good scholarship, that I do not wonder at masters directing an undue portion of their attention to a crop so brilliant. I feel it growing in myself daily; and, if I feel it, with prejudices all on the other side, I do not wonder at its being felt generally. But my deliberate conviction is stronger and stronger, that all this system is wholly wrong for the greater number of boys. Those who have talents and natural taste, and fondness for poetry, find the poetry lessons very useful; the mass do not feel one tittle about the matter, and, I speak advisedly, do not, in my belief, benefit from them one grain. I am not sure that other things would answer better, though I have very little doubt of it; but at any rate, the present plan is so entire a failure, that nothing can be risked by changing it.

More than half my boys never saw the sea, and never were in London, and it is surprising how the first of these disadvantages interferes with their understanding much of the ancient poetry, while the other keeps the range of their ideas in an exceedingly narrow compass. Brought up myself in the Isle of Wight, amidst the bustle of soldiers and sailors, and familiar from a child with boats and ships, and the flags of half Europe, which gave me an instinctive acquaintance with geography, I quite marvel to find in what a state of ignorance boys are at seventeen or eighteen, who have lived all their days in inland country parishes, or small country towns., For your comfort, I think I am succeeding in making them write very fair Latin prose, and to observe and understand some of the differences between the Latin and English idioms. On the other hand, what our boys want in one way they get in another; from the very circumstance of their being the sons of quieter parents, they have far less Bois and more cúncia, than the boys of any other school I ever knew. Thus, to say the least, they have less of a most odious and unchristian quality, and are thus more open to instruction, and have less repugnance to be good, because their master wishes them to be so.

I have almost filled my paper, and can only add that Thucydides is getting on slowly, but I think that it will be a much less defective book than it was likely to have been had I remained at Laleham; for though I have still an enormous deal to learn, yet my scholarship has mended

considerably within the last year at Rugby. I suppose you will think at any rate that it will be better to publish Thucydides, however imperfectly, than to write another pamphlet. Poor dear pamphlet! I seem to feel the greater tenderness for it, because it has excited so much odium; and now I hear that it is reported at Oxford that I wish to suppress it; which is wholly untrue. I would not print a second edition, because the question was settled, and controversy about it was become absurd; but I never have repented of it in any degree, or wished it unwritten, "pace tua dixerim," and I only regret that I did not print a larger impression.

XI. TO REV. H. JENKYNS.

Rugby, November 11, 1826.

I thank you heartily for two very kind letters, and am very anxious to be favoured with some more of your friend's comments [on Thucydides]... I hope I am not too old or too lazy or too obstinate to be taught better. I do thank you very much for your kindness in taking so much trouble in my behalf; and I earnestly beg of you to send me more. . . . And can you tell me-or, if not, will you ask Amicus Doct.,-where is to be found a summary of the opinions of English. Scholars about orws and ōrws un, and the moods which they require; and further, do you or he hold their doctrine good for any thing? Dawes, and all men who endeavour to establish general rules, are of great use in directing one's attention to points, which one might otherwise have neglected; and labour and acuteness often discover a rule, where indolence and carelessness fancied it was all hap-hazard. But larger induction and sounder judgment (which I think exist in Hermann in an infinite degree beyond any of our English scholars) teach us to distinguish again between a principle and an usage; the latter may be general, but if it be merely usage, grounded on no intelligible principle, it seems to me foolish to insist on its being universal, and to alter texts right and left, to make them all conformable to the Canon. Equidem,-both in Greek and in other matters,-think liberty a far better thing than uniformity of form merely, where no principle is concerned. Voila the cloven foot.

XII. TO J. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ.

(In allusion to a libel in the John Bull.)

Rugby, May 11, 1830.

I thank you for another very kind letter. In a matter of this sort, I willingly resign my own opinion to that of a man like yourself, at once my friend and legal adviser. I think, too, that I am almost bound to attend to the opinion of the Bishop of London; for his judgment of the inexpediency of prosecuting must rest on the scandal which he thinks it will bring upon religion and the Church, and of this he is a far better judge than I am; nor, to say the truth, should I much like to act in a doubtful matter in opposition to the decided advice of a Bishop in a case that concerned the Church. I say this in sober earnest, in spite of what you call my Whiggery and Radicalism.

XIII. TO REV. DR. HAWKINS.

Rugby, May 12, 1830.

The authorities which are arrayed against proceeding are quite decisive, and I heartily agree with you that clergymen must not go to law, when lawyers say they should not. Still, as I had no thought of gain or of vengeance, but simply of procuring a public justification of my character-not my opinions-I feel that it would have been no lack of charity to proceed, though I am heartily glad to be spared the necessity of doing so by so many and such powerful representations. But I trust that you and all my friends will give me credit for being perfectly tolerant of all attacks upon my writings or general abuse of my opinions. Believe me, I am heartily glad of the final result of this discussion, for I had no wish to go to law; but I thought that my known, or rather my misrepresented opinions on politics, ought to make me particularly anxious to deny any charge respecting religious matters. But I am perfectly willing to take the judgment of my friends and of impartial persons in what rests wholly on opinion, and besides, if the attack or loss to my own character were ever so great, I should quite agree with you that it was better to bear it, than to bring sacred things into discussion in places, and through disputants wholly unfitted for them. But this I at first did not contemplate as the likely result.

XIV. TO F. HARTWELL, ESQ.

Rugby, June 28, 1830.

I have just published one volume of Thucydides; when the others will follow, it is hard to say, for the work here is more and more engrossing continually; but I like it better and better; it has all the interest of a great game of chess, with living creatures for pawns and pieces, and your adversary, in plain English, the Devil; truly he plays a very tough game, and is very hard to beat, if I ever do beat him. It is quite surprising to see the wickedness of young boys; or would be surprising, if I had not had my own school experience and a good deal since to enlighten me.

[The following letters, which have been inserted as exhibiting the earlier stages of his views of ancient history, were occasioned by his revision of the " Outlines of General History," and the first numbers of "The History of Rome," for the Useful Knowledge Society.]

XV TO T. F. ELLIS, ESQ.

June 26, 1830.

In the Roman History, I have been inclined to doubt Niebuhr's notion of the Alpine origin of the Tuscans. Do not all existing accounts concur in stating that the Metropolis of the race in Italy was south, not north, of the Apennines? and does not the Tuscan notion of the Gods dwelling to the north, on the Alps, and from thence looking down on the world, rather imply that the Alps were to the Tuscans in Italy the barrier of their world, the limit of their knowledge, rather than the earliest home of their nation? But this is happily not of any great consequence. Further, I believe that the great falsehood of the Roman history

begins with the Commonwealth; the reigns of the kings I cannot but think contain more truth than Niebuhr allows. The story of the elder Tarquin in particular seems to me thoroughly probable, and to be confirmed by the authority of the Emperor Claudius, in his speech preserved on the brass plate at Lyons; and Claudius was well acquainted with the Tuscan historians.

Again, the great crisis in the foreign powers of Rome seems to me to have been her war with the Samnites, Gauls, Tuscans, and Umbrians, in the fifth century of Rome. Why did the Romans triumph over this coalition? And was it by the superior population of Latium, which we know was exceedingly dense? I have always wanted this period to be brought out into stronger light, though I do not know whether it is practicable. I am delighted that you have given Vico his due. I have mentioned him also in the Appendix to the first Volume of my Thucydides, which is just published. In the account of the origin of the Roman tribes, I do not see clearly whom you suppose the Rhamnes to have been-were they the mixed Casco-Pelasgian people, and the Luceres the pure Pelasgian? But then how came the traditions of the inferior tribe to prevail so entirely? I am still inclined to think that the Luceres were connected with Tuscany.

XVI. TO THE SAME.

Rugby, July 2, 1830.

I ought to have written to you sooner about chapter xiv., but I have had very much to do immediately before the holidays. The following remarks have occurred to me, which I will put down in order.

Sect. 1.-Is not some brief explanation required of the causes of the Roman successes by sea, immediately after the first creation of their navy? And is not the principle of general usefulness, that any superiority acquired only by one nation getting the start of another, and so having studied the subject longer, is always liable to be overthrown, when the rival nation fairly enters into the race?

[After some remarks on the Jus Italicum.] The Jus Cæritum appears to have been a mere communication of the private rights of citizenship, made at a time when the citizenship of Cære was as valuable to a Roman as that of Rome to a Cæritan. I have long had a suspicion that the term "socii navales," habitually applied to the Roman seamen, was derived from a time when all the navy of Rome was furnished by her allies, probably by this very Care or Agylla.

Sect. 5.-The little St. Bernard is not at the source of the Isere, but some miles below it. If Cramer's statement fail any where, I have always imagined that it was here, and that the army might possibly have followed the Isere higher up than he imagines, and descended into a valley which would take them more directly down upon Turin. The passes between the little St. Bernard and Mount Cenis are almost the only points which I believe have not been examined.

Might not the wisdom and firmness of the Romans in maintaining the struggle in Spain, and thus depriving Hannibal of his great nursery of soldiers, be noticed as contributing mainly to the success of the war? Had Hasdrubal followed him immediately, instead of nine years afterwards, the fate of Rome was inevitable.