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upon this subject than I have either written or spoken upon it before to any one; for indeed I have very little time, and no inclination for disputes on such matters. But, if I am questioned about my opinions, and required to conceal them, as if I were ashamed of them, I think it right then to avow them plainly, and to explain my reasons for them. There is not a man in England who is less a party man than I am, for in fact no party would own me; and, when I was at -'s in the summer, he looked upon me to be quite illiberal. But those who hold their own opinions in a string, will suppose that their neighbours do the same.

CHAPTER VI.

LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE, SEPTEMBER 1830 TO DECEMBER 1832.

PERHAPS no more striking instance of his deep interest in the state of the country could be found, than in the gloom with which his correspondence is suddenly overcast in the autumn of 1830. The alarming aspect of English society brought to view in the rural disturbances of 1830, and additionally darkened in 1831-32, by the visitation of the Cholera, and the political agitations of the Reform Bill, little as it came within his own experience, gave a colour to his whole mind. Of his state of feeling at this time, no better example can be given, than the five sermons appended to the opening course of his practical school sermons, in his second volume, especially the last of them, which was preached in the chapel on the Sunday when the news of the arrival of the Cholera in England first reached Rugby. There are those amongst his pupils who can never forget the moment when, on that dark November afternoon, after the simple preface stating in what sense worldly thoughts were or were not to be brought into that place, he at once began with that solemnity which marked his voice and manner, when speaking of what deeply moved him :-"I need not tell you that this is a marked time-a time such as neither we, nor our fathers for many generations before us, have experienced; and to those who know what the past has been, it is no doubt awful to think of the change which we are now about to encounter." (Serm. vol. ii. p. 413.) But in him the sight of evil, and the endeavour to remove it, were hardly ever disjoined; and whilst every thing which he felt partook of the despondency with which that sermon opens, every thing which he did partakes of that cheerful activity with which the same sermon closes, in urging the example of the Apostle's "wise and manly conduct amidst the dangers of storm and shipwreck."

The alarm which he felt was shared by many of the most oppo

site opinions to his own; but there could have been few whom it touched at once on so many points. The disturbances of the time were to him the very evils which he had anticipated even as far back as 1819; they struck on some of the most sensitive of his natural feelings, his sense of justice, and his impatience of the sight of suffering: they seemed to him symptoms of a deepseated disease in all the relations of English society-the results of a long series of evils from the neglect of the eighteenth century, (Church Ref. p. 24)— of the lawlessness of the feudal system, (Hist. Rome, vol. i. p. 266)—of the oppressions of the Norman conquest, (Sheff. Letters)-of the dissoluteness of the Roman empire, (ìb.)—of the growth of those social and national sins which the Hebrew Prophets had denounced; and which Christianity in its full practical development was designed to check.

Hence arose his anxiety to see the clergy take it up, as he had himself endeavoured to do, in the sermons already noticed. "I almost despair," he said, " of any thing that any private or local efforts can do. I think that the clergy as a body might do much, if they were steadily to observe the evils of the times, and preach fearlessly against them. I cannot understand what is the good of a national Church if it be not to Christianize the nation, and introduce the principles of Christianity into men's social and civil relations, and expose the wickedness of that spirit which maintains the game laws, and in agriculture and trade seems to think that there is no such sin as covetousness, and that if a man is not dishonest, he has nothing to do but to make all the profit of his capital that he can."

Hence, again, his anxiety to impart or to see imparted to the publications of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, then in the first burst of their reputation, and promising to exercise a really extensive influence on the country at large, something of the religious spirit, in which they seemed to him to be deficient.

"I am not wishing to see the Society's tracts turned into sermons,far less to see them intermeddle in what are strictly theological controversies;-but I am sure that, with the exception of the Unitarians, all Christians have a common ground in all that is essential in Christianity, and beyond that I never wish to go;-and it does seem to me as forced and unnatural in us now to dismiss the principles of the Gospel and its great motives from our consideration,-as is done habitually, for example, in Miss Edgeworth's books, as it is to fill our pages with Hebraisms, and to write and speak in the words and style of the Bible. The slightest touches of Christian principle and Christian hope in the Society's biographical and historical articles would be a sort of living salt to the whole ;and would exhibit that union which I never will consent to think unattainable, between goodness and wisdem ;--between every thing that is manly, sensible, and free, and every thing that is pure, and self-denying, and humble, and heavenly."

His communications with the Society, made, however, from the nature of the case, rather through individuals than officially, were at one time frequent; and though, from the different view which it took of its proper province, he was finally induced to discontinue them, he felt great reluctance in abandoning his hope of being able to co-coperate with a body which he "believed might, with God's blessing, do more good of all kinds, political, intellectual, and spiritual, than any other society in existence."

"There was a show of reason," he said, " in excluding Christianity from the plan of the Society's works, so long as they avowedly confined themselves to science or to intellectual instruction; but in a paper intended to improve its readers morally, to make men better and happier, as well as better informed, surely neutrality with regard to Christianity is, virtually, hostility." "For myself," he adds, " I am well aware of my own insignificance, but if there were no other objection to the Penny Magazine assuming a decidedly Christian tone, than mere difficulties of execution, I would most readily offer my best services, such as they are, to the Society, and would endeavour to furnish them regularly with articles of the kind that I desire. My occupations here are so engrossing, that it would be personally very inconvenient to me to do so; and I am not so absurd as to think my offer of any value, except in the single case of a practical difficulty existing as to finding a writer, should the principle itself be approved of. I am fully convinced that if the Penny Magazine were decidedly and avowedly Christian, many of the clergy throughout the kingdom would be most delighted to assist its circulation by every means in their power. For myself, I should think that I could not do too much to contribute to the support of what would then be so great a national blessing: and I should beg to be allowed to offer £50 annually towards it, so long as my remaining in my present situation enabled me to gratify my inclinations to that extent."

The most practical attempt at the realization of these views, was his own endeavour to set up a weekly newspaper, the Englishman's Register, which he undertook in 1831, "more to relieve his own conscience than with any sanguine hope of doing good," but "earnestly desiring to speak to the people the words of truth and soberness-to tell them plainly the evils that exist, and lead them, if I can, to their causes and their remedies." He was the proprietor, though not the sole editor, and he contributed the chief articles in it, (signed A.,) consisting chiefly of explanations of Scripture, and of comments on the political events of the day. It died a natural death in a few weeks, partly from the want of leisure to control it properly, and from the great expenses which it entailed upon him-partly from the want of cordial sympathy in any of the existing parties of the country. Finding, however, that some of his articles had been copied into the Sheffield Courant by its editor, Mr. Platt, he opened a communication with him in July, 1831, which he maintained ever afterwards, and commenced writing a series of Let

ters in that paper, which, to the number of thirteen, were afterwards published separately, and constitute the best exposition of his views, on the main causes of social distress in England.

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It was now that, with “the thirst for a lodge in some vast wilderness, which in these times of excitement," he writes to a friend, "is almost irresistible," he began to turn his thoughts to what ultimately became his home. in Westmoreland. It was now, also, that as he came more into contact with public affairs, he began to feel the want of sympathy and the opposition which he subsequently experienced on a larger scale. "I have no man like-minded with me," he writes to Archbishop Whately,none with whom I can cordially sympathize; there are many good men to be found, and many clever men, some too, who are both good and clever; but yet there is a want of some greatness of mind, or singleness of purpose, or delicacy of feeling, which makes them grate against the edge of one's inner man." This was the period when he felt most keenly his differences with the so-called Evangelical party, to which, on the one hand, he naturally looked for co-operation, as the body which at that time was placed at the head of the religious convictions of the country, but from which, on the other hand, he was constantly repelled by his strong sense of the obstacles which (as he thought) their narrow views and technical phraseology, were for ever opposing to the real and practical application of the Old and New Testament, as the remedy of the great wants of the age, social, moral, and intellectual.

It was his own conviction of these wants which now more than ever awakened his desire for a commentary on the Scriptures, which should explain their true reference to the present state of England and of the world, as well as remove some of the intellectual difficulties, especially in the Old Testament, to which men's minds seemed to be growing more and more awake. And this, for the time, he endeavoured to accomplish by the statement of some of his general principles of interpretation in the Essay on that subject, which he affixed to his second volume of sermons, published in December, 1831. The otjections which this Essay excited at the time in various quarters were very great, and according to his own belief it exposed him to more misunderstanding than any other of his writings. But he never wavered in the conviction that its publication had been an imperative duty-it was written, as he said, "professionally, from his having had so much to do with young men, and from knowing what they wanted:" even in the last year of his life, he said that he looked upon it as the most important thing he had ever written; and at the time he thought it "likely, with God's blessing, to be so beneficial, that I published it at the end of this volume, rather than wait for another opportunity, because, under that sense of the great uncertainty

of human life which the present state of things brings especially home to my mind, I should be sorry to die without having circulated what I believe will be to many most useful and most satisfactory;" and the objections which it had roused only made him more and more anxious to go on with the subject, feeling "that the more it was considered, men would find they had been afraid of a groundless danger," and that "the further I follow up my own views, the more they appear to me to harmonize with the whole system of God's revelations, and not only absolutely to do away with all the difficulties of the Scriptures, but to turn many of them into valuable instruction."

XXI. TO J. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ.

Rugby, November 1, 1830.

It is quite high time that I should write to you, for weeks and months go by, and it is quite startling to think how little communication 1 hold with many of those whom I love most dearly. And yet these are times, when I am least of all disposed to loosen the links which bind me to my oldest and dearest friends, for I imagine we shall all want the union of all the good men we can get together, and the want of sympathy which I cannot but feel towards so many of those whom I meet with, makes me think how delightful it would be to have daily intercourse with those with whom I ever feel it thoroughly. What men do in middle life, without a wife and children to turn to, I cannot imagine; for I think the affections must be sadly checked and chilled, even in the best men, by their intercourse with people, such as one usually finds them in the world. I do not mean that one does not meet with good and sensible people; but then their minds are set, and our minds are set, and they will not, in mature age, grow into each other. But with a home filled with those whom we entirely love and sympathize with, and with some old friends, to whom one can open one's heart fully from time to time, the world's society has rather a bracing influence to make one shake off mere dreams of delight. You must not think me bilious or low spirited;-I never felt better or more inclined to work;-but one gets pathetic with thinking of the present and the past, and of the days and the people you and I have seen together, and of the progress which we have all made towards eternity; for I, who am nearly the youngest of our old set, have completed half my three score and ten years. Besides, the aspect of the times is really to my mind awful:-on one side a party profaning the holiest names by the lowest principles, and the grossest selfishness and ignorance,—on the other, a party who seem likely kakov kakậ iãobαι, who disclaim and renounce even the very name of that, whose spirit their adversaries have long renounced equally. If I had two necks, I should think that I had a very good chance of being hanged by both sides, as I think I shall now by whichever gets the better, if it really does come to a fight. I read now, with the deepest sympathy, those magnificent lines of your Uncle's, on the departed year, and am myself, in fact, experiencing some portion of the abuse which he met with from the same party; while, like him, I feel utterly unable to shelter myself in the opposite party, whose hopes and principles are such as I shrink from with abhorrence. So what Thu

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