as strongly as he did, to be taxed continually with indifference to truth;" and at times even his vigorous health and spirits seemed to fail under the sense of the estrangement of friends, or yet more, under his aversion to the approbation of some who were induced by the clamour against him to claim him as their own ally. But the public attacks upon himself he treated with indifference. Those which related to the school he was in one or two instances at their outset induced to notice; but he early formed a determination, which he maintained till they died away altogether, never to offer any reply, or even explanation, except to his own personal friends. "My resolution is fixed," he said, "to let them alone, and on no account to condescend to answer them in the newspapers. All that is wanted is to inspire firmness into the minds of those engaged in the conduct of the school, lest their own confidence should be impaired by a succession of attacks, which I suppose is unparalleled in the experience of schools." Nor was he turned in the slightest degree from his principles. Knowing, from the example of other schools, that, had he been on the opposite side of the questions at issue, he might have taken a far more active part in public matters without provoking any censure, and conscious that his exertions in the school were as efficient as ever, he felt it due alike to himself, his principles, and his position, never to concede that he had acted inconsistently with the duties of his situation; and therefore in the critical election of the winter of 1834, when the outcry against him was at its height, he did not shrink from coming up from Westmoreland to Warwickshire to vote for the Liberal candidate, foreseeing, as he must have done, the burst of indignation which followed.

And, whilst the clamour against his pamphlet may have increased his original diffidence in the practicability of its details, it only drove him to a more determinate examination and development of its principles, which from this time forward assumed that coherent form which was the basis of all his future writings. What he now conceived and expressed in a systematic shape, had indeed always floated before him in a ruder and more practical form, and in his later life it received various enlargements and modifications. But in substance, his opinions, which up to this time had been forming, were, after it, formed; he had now reached that period of life after which any change of view is proverbially difficult; he had now arrived at that stage in the progress of his mind, to which all his previous inquiries had contributed, and from which all his subsequent inquiries naturally resulted. His views of national education became fixed in the principles, which he expressed in his favourite watchwords at this time," Christianity without Sectarianism," and "Comprehension without Compromise;" and which he developed at some length in an (unpublished) "Letter on the Admission of Dissent

ers to the Universities," written in 1834. His long cherished views of the identity of Church and State, he now first unfolded in his Postscript to the pamphlet on "Church Reform,” and in the first of his fragments on that subject, written in 183435. Against what he conceived to be the profane and secular view of the State, he protested in the Preface to his Third Volume of Thucydides, and against the practical measure of admitting Jews to a share in the supreme legislature, he was at this time more than once on the point of petitioning, in his own sole name. Against what he conceived to be the ceremonial view of the Church, and the technical and formal view of Christian Theology, he protested in the Preface and First Appendix to his Third Volume of Sermons; while against the then incipient school of Oxford Divinity, he was anxious to circulate tracts vindicating the King's Supremacy, and tracing in its opinions the Judaizing principles which prevailed in the apostolical age. And he still dreamt of something like a Magazine for the poor; feeling sure from the abuse lavished upon him, that a man of no party, as he has no chance of being listened to by the half-informed, is the very person who is wanted to speak to the honest uninformed."

From the fermentation against him, of which the Midland counties were the focus, he turned with a new and increasing delight to his place in Westmoreland, now doubly endeared to him as his natural home, by its contrast with the atmosphere of excitement, with which he was surrounded in the neighbourhood of Rugby. His more strictly professional pursuits also went on undisturbed; the last and best volume of his edition of Thucydides appeared in 1835, and in 1833 he resumed his Roman History, which he had long laid aside. It might seem strange that he should undertake a work of such magnitude, at a time when his chief interest was more than ever fixed on the great questions of political and theological philosophy. His love for ancient history was doubtless in itself a great inducement to continue his connection with it after his completion of the edition of Thucydides. But besides, and perhaps even more than this, was the strong impression that on those subjects which he himself had most at heart, it was impossible for him to bear up against the tide of misunderstanding and prejudice with which he was met, and that all hope, for the present, of direct influence over his countrymen, was cut off. His only choice, therefore, lay in devoting himself to some work, which, whilst it was more or less connected with his professional pursuits, would afford him in the past a refuge from the excitement and confusion of the present. What Fox How was to Rugby, that the Roman History was to the painful and conflicting though.s roused by his writings on political and theological subjects.

But besides the refreshment of Westmoreland scenery and of

ancient greatness, he must have derived a yet deeper comfort from his increasing influence on the school. Greater as it probably was at a later period over the school generally, yet over individual boys it never was so great as at the period when the clamour, to which he was exposed from without, had reached its highest pitch. Then, when the institution seemed most likely to suffer from the unexampled vehemence with which it was assailed through him, began a series of the greatest successes at both Universities which it had ever known; then, when he was most accused of misgovernment of the place, he laid that firm hold on the esteem and affection of the elder boys, which he never afterwards lost. Then, more than at any other time, when his old friends and acquaintance were falling back from him in alarm, he saw those growing up under his charge of whom it may be truly said, that they would have been willing to die for his sake.

Here, again, the course of his sermons in the third volume gives us a faithful transcript of his feelings; whilst his increased confidence in the school appears throughout in the increased affection of their tone, the general subjects which he then chose for publication, indicate no less the points forced upon him by the controversy of the last two years, the evils of sectarianism,— the necessity of asserting the authority of "Law, which Jacobinism and Fanaticism are alike combining to destroy"-Christianity, as being the sovereign science of life in all its branches, and especially in its aspect of presenting emphatically the Revelation of God in Christ. And in other parts, it is impossible to mistake the deep personal experience, with which he spoke of the pain of severance from sympathy and of the evil of party spirit; of "the reproach and suspicion, and cold friendship and zealous enmity," which is the portion of those who strive to follow no party but Christ's-of the prospect that if "we oppose any prevailing opinion or habit of the day, the fruits of a life's labour, as far as earth is concerned, are presently sacrificed," and " we are reviled instead of respected," and "every word and action of our lives misrepresented and condemned," of the manner in which "the blessed Apostle St. Paul, whose name is now loved and reverenced from one end of the Church of Christ to the other, was treated by his fellow Christians at Rome, as no better than a latitudinarian and a heretic."

LIII. TO THE REV. J. HEARN.

Rydal, January 1, 1833.

New Year's day is in this part of the country regarded as a great festival, and we have had prayers this morning, even in our village chapel at Rydal. May God bless us in all our doings in the year that is now begun, and make us increase more and more in the knowledge and

1) Sermons, vol. iii. pp. 263. 363. 350

love of Himself and His Son; that it may be blessed to us, whether we live to see the end of it on earth or no.

I owe you very much for the great kindness of your letters, and thank you earnestly for your prayers. Mine is a busy life, so busy that I have great need of not losing my intervals of sacred rest; so taken up in teaching others, that I have need of especial prayer and labour, lest I live with my own spirit untaught in the wisdom of God. . It grieves me more than I can say, to find so much intolerance; by which I mean overestimating our points of difference, and under-estimating our points of agreement. I am by no means indifferent to truth and error, and hold my own opinions as decidedly as any man; which of course implies a conviction that the opposite opinions are erroneous. In many cases, I think them not only erroneous but mischievous; still they exist in men whom I know to be thoroughly in earnest, fearing God and loving Christ, and it seems to me to be a waste of time which we can ill afford, and a sort of quarrel" by the way," which our Christian vow of enmity against moral evil makes utterly unseasonable, when Christians suspend their great business and loosen the bond of their union with each other by venting fruitless regrets and complaints against one another's errors, instead of labouring to lessen one another's sins. For coldness of spirit, and negligence of our duty, and growing worldliness, are things which we should thank our friends for warning us against; but when they quarrel with our opinions, which we conscientiously hold, it merely provokes us to justify ourselves, and to insist that we are right and they wrong.

We arrived here on Saturday, and on Sunday night there fell a deep snow, which is now however melting; otherwise it would do more than any thing else to spoil this unspoilable country. We are living in a little nook under one of the mountains, as snug and sheltered as can be, and I have got plenty of work to do within doors, let the snow last as long as it will.

LIV. TO W. K. HAMILTON, ESQ.

Rydal, January 15, 1833.

[After speaking of his going to Rome.] It stirs up many thoughts to fancy you at Rome. I never saw any place which so interested me, and next to it, but, longissimo intervallo, Venice-then of the towns of Italy, Genoa-and then Pisa and Verona. I cannot care for Florence or for Milan or for Turin. . . For me this country contains all that I wish or want, and no travelling, even in Italy, could give me the delight of thus living amidst the mountains, and seeing and loving them in all their moods and in all mine. I have been writing on Church Reform, and urging an union with the Dissenters as the only thing that can procure to us the blessing of an established Christianity; for the Dissenters are strong enough to turn the scale either for an Establishment or against one; and at present they are leagued with the antichristian party against one, and will destroy it utterly, if they are not taken into the camp in the defence of it. And if we sacrifice that phantom Uniformity, which has been onr curse ever since the Reformation, I am fully persuaded that an union might be effected without difficulty. But God knows what will come to pass, and none besides, for we all seem groping about in the dark together. I trust, however, that we shall be spared the worst evil of all, war.

LV. TO THE ARCHBISHOP OF Dublin.

Rydal, January 17, 1833.

As my Pamphlet will probably reach you next week, I wished you to hear something from me on the subject beforehand. My reasons for writing it were chiefly because the reform proposed by Lord Henley and others seemed to me not only insufficient, but of a wrong kind; and because I have heard the American doctrine of every man paying his minister as he would his lawyer, advanced and supported in high quarters, where it sounded alarming. I was also struck by the great vehemence displayed by the Dissenters at the late elections, and by the refusal to pay Church-rates at Birmingham. Nothing, as it seems to me, can save the Church, but an union with the Dissenters; now they are leagued with the antichristian party, and no merely internal reforms in the administration of the actual system will, I think, or can satisfy them. Further, Lord Henley's notion about a convocation, and Bishops not sitting in Parliament, and laymen not meddling with Church doctrine, seemed to me so dangerous a compound of the worst errors of Popery and Evangelicalism combined, and one so suited to the interest of the Devil and his numerous party, that I was very desirous of protesting against it. However, the pamphlet will tell its own story, and I think it can do no harm, even if it does no good.

LVI. TO THE SAME.

February 1, 1833.

As for my coming down into Westmoreland, I may almost say that it is to satisfy a physical want in my nature which craves after the enjoyment of nature, and for nine months in the year can find nothing to satisfy it. I agree with old Keble,' that one does not need mountains and lakes for this; the Thames at Laleham-Bagley Wood and Shotover at Oxford were quite enough for it. I only know of five counties in England which cannot supply it; and I am unluckily perched down in one of them. These five are Warwick, Northampton, Huntingdon, Cambridge and Bedford. I should add, perhaps, Rutland, and you cannot name a seventh; for Suffolk, which is otherwise just as bad, has its bit of sea coast. But Halesworth, so far as I remember it, would be just as bad as Rugby. We have no hills-no plains-not a single wood, and but one single copse; no heath-no down—no rock-no river-no clear streamscarcely any flowers, for the lias is particularly poor in them—nothing but one endless monotony of inclosed fields and hedge-row trees. This is to me a daily privation; it robs me of what is naturally my anti-attrition; and, as I grow older, I begin to feel it. My constitution is sound, but not strong; and I feel any little pressure or annoyance more than I used to do; and the positive dulness of the country about Rugby makes it to me a mere working-place; I cannot expatiate there even in my walks. So, in the holidays, I have an absolute craving for the enjoyment of nature, and this country suits me better than any thing else, because we can be all together, because we can enjoy the society, and because I can do something in the way of work besides.

Two things press upon me unabatedly-my wish for a Bible, such as I have spoken of before; and my wish for something systematic for the instruction of the poor. In my particular case, undoubtedly, the Stamp 1) Christian Year, First Sunday after Epiphany,