sonal scandal or gossip, the Magazine would be a serious disgrace to us all. And I think men owe it to the name of a school not to risk it lightly, as of course a Magazine called by the name of Rugby" would risk it. Again, I should most deprecate it, if it were political, for many reasons which you can easily conceive yourself, I do not wish to encourage the false notion of my making or trying to make the school political. This would be done, were the Magazine liberal; if otherwise, I should regret it on other grounds. If the editors are good, and the plan well laid down and steadily kept to, I shall think the Magazine a most excellent thing, both for the credit of the school, and for its real benefit. Only remember that the result of such an attempt cannot be neutral; it must either do us great good, or great harm.

XCI. TO REV. J. HEARN.

Fox How, December 31, 1834.

It delights me to find that so good a man as Mr. H. thinks very well of the New Poor Law, and anticipates very favourable results from it, but I cannot think that this or any other single measure can do much towards the cure of evils so complicated. I groan over the divisions of the Church, of all our evils I think the greatest,-of Christ's Church I mean, that men should call themselves Roman Catholics, Church of England men, Baptists, Quakers, all sorts of various appellations, forgetting that only glorious name of CHRISTIAN, which is common to all, and a true bond of union. I begin now to think that things must be worse before they are better, and that nothing but some great pressure from without will make Christians cast away their idols of Sectarianism; the worst and most mischievous by which Christ's Church has ever been plagued.

XCII. TO MR. JUSTICE COLERIDGE.

Fox How, January 24, 1835.

I do not know when I have been so much delighted as by a paragraph in the Globe of this morning, which announced your elevation to the Bench. Your late letters, while they in some measure prepared me for it, have made me still more rejoice in it, because they told me how acceptable it would be to yourself. I do heartily and entirely rojoice at it, on public grounds no less than on private; as an appointment honourable to the Government, beneficial to the public service, and honourable and desirable for yourself; and I have some selfish pleasure about it also, inasmuch as I hope that I shall have some better chance of seeing you now than I have had hitherto, either in Warwickshire or in Westmoreland. For myself, when I am here in this perfection of beauty, with the place just coming into shape, and the young plantations naturally leading one to anticipate the future, I am inclined to feel nothing but joy that the late change of Government has destroyed all chance of my being ever called away from Westmoreland. At least, I can say this, that I should only have valued a Bishopric as giving me some prospect of effecting that Church Reform which I so earnestly long for, the commencements of an union with all Christians, and of a true Church government as distinguished from a Clergy government, or from none at all. For this

I would sacrifice any thing; but as for a Bishopric on the actual system, and with no chance of mending it, it would only make me feel more strongly than I do at present the ἐχθίστην οδύνην, πόλλα φρονέοντα, μηδενὸς κρατέειν.

Wordsworth is very well; postponing his new volume of poems till the political ferment is somewhat abated. "At ille labitur et labetur," so far as I can foresee, notwithstanding what the Tories have gained at the late elections.

Have you seen your Uncle's " Letters on Inspiration," which I believe are to be published? They are well fitted to break ground in the approaches to that momentous question which involves in it so great a shock to existing notions; the greatest probably, that has ever been given since the discovery of the falsehood of the doctrine of the Pope's infallibility. Yet it must come, and will end, in spite of the fears and clamours of the weak and bigoted, in the higher exalting and more sure establishing of Christian truth.

XCIII. TO REV. JULIUS HARE.

Fox How, January 26, 1835.

I cordially enter into your views about a Theological Review, and I think the only difficulty would be to find an Editor; I do not think that Whately wonld have time to write, but I can ask him; and undoubtedly he would approve of the scheme. Hampden occurs to me as a more likely man to join such a thing than Pusey, and I think I know one or two of the younger masters who would be very useful. My notion of the main objects of the work would be this; 1st. To give really fair accounts and analyses of the works of the early Christian Writers, giving also, so far as possible, a correct view of the critical questions relating to them; as to their genuineness, and the more or less corrupted state of the text. 2d. To make some beginnings of Biblical Criticism, which, as far as relates to the Old Testament, is in England almost nonexistent. 3d. To illustrate in a really impartial spirit, with no object but the advancement of the Church of Christ, and the welfare of the Commonwealth of England, the rise and progress of Dissent; to show what Christ's Church and this nation have owed to the Establishment and to the Dissenters; and, on the other hand, what injury they have received from each; with a view of promoting a real union between them. These are matters particular, but all bearing upon the great philosophical and Christian truth, which seems to me the very truth of truths, that Christian unity and the perfection of Christ's Church are independent of theological Articles of opinion; consisting in a certain moral state and moral and religious affections, which have existed in good Christians of all ages and all communions, along with an infinitely varying proportion of truth and error; that thus Christ's Church has stood on a rock and never failed; yet has always been marred with much of intellectual error, and also of practical, resulting from the intellectual; that to talk of Popery, as the great Apostacy, and to look for Christ's Church only amongst the remnant of the Vaudois, is as absurd as to look to what is called the Primitive Church or the Fathers for pure models of faith in the sense of opinion or of government; that Ignatius and Innocent III. are to be held as men of the same stamp,-zealous and earnest Christians both of them, but

both of them overbearing and fond of power; the one advancing the power of Bishops, the other that of the Pope, with equal honesty,—it may be, for their respective times, with equal benefit,-but with as little claim the one as the other to be an authority for Christians, and with equally little impartial perception of universal truth. But then for the Editor; if he must live in London or in the Universities, I cannot think of the man.

XCIV. TO REV. DR. LONGLEY.

Fox How, Kendal, January 28, 1835.

In

I suppose, as you have an Easter vacation, that you have by this time returned or are returning to Harrow. Next week we shall be also beginning work at Rugby, with the prospect of one-and-twenty weeks before us; too long a period, I think, either for boys or masters. the mean time we have been here for nearly six weeks, enjoying ourselves as much as possible, though we have had much more snow, I imagine, than you have had in the south. But we have had a large and cheerful party within doors, and sufficient variety of weather to allow of a great deal of enjoyment of scenery; besides the perpetual beauty and interest of this particular place and the delight of watching the progress of all our improvements. We have done, however, at last, with workmen, and have now only to wait for Nature's work in bringing on our shrubs and trees to their maturity; though many people tell me that every additional tree will rather injure the beauty of this place than improve it.

I have tried the experiment which I mentioned to you about the Fifth Form, with some modifications. I have not given the Fifth the power of fagging, but by reducing their number to about three or four and twenty, we have made them much more respectable both in conduct and scholarship, and more like boys at the head of the school. I do not think that we have at present a large proportion of clever boys at Rugby, and there are many great evils which I have to contend with, more than are generally known. I think, also, that we are now beginning to outlive that desire of novelty which made so many people send their sons to Rugby when I first went there. I knew that that feeling would ebb, and therefore got the school limited; or else as the flood would have risen higher, so its ebb would have been more marked; but, as it was, the limit was set too high, and I do not think that we shall keep up to it, especially as other foundation schools are every day becoming reformed, and therefore entering into competition with us. But I say this without the least uneasiness, for the school is really mending in itself; and its credit at the Universities increasing rather than falling off; and, so long as this is the case, I shall be perfectly satisfied; if we were really to go down in efficiency, either from my fault, or from faults which I could not remedy, I should soon establish myself at Fox How.

I wrote to Hawtrey to congratulate him on his appointment, and I took that opportunity to ask him what he thought of the expediency of getting up good grammars, both Latin and Greek, which, being used in all or most of the great public schools, would so become, in fact, the national grammars. I should propose to adopt something of the plan followed by our Translators of the Bible; i. e. that a certain portion of each grammar should be assigned to the master or masters of each of the

great schools; e. g. the accidence to one, syntax to another, prosody to a third; or probably with greater subdivisions; that then the parts so drawn up should be submitted to the revision of the other schools, and the whole thus brought into shape. Hawtrey exclaims strongly against the faults of the Eton grammars, and I am not satisfied with Matthiæ, which seems to me too difficult, and almost impossible to be learnt by heart. Hawtrey said he would write to me again, when he found himself more settled, and I have not heard from him since. I should like to know what your sentiments are about it ; it would be μάλιστα κατ' ευχὴν to have a common grammar jointly concocted; but if I cannot get other men to join me, I think we must try our hands on one for our own use at Rugby; I shall not, however, think of this till all hope of something better is out of the question.

It seems to me that we have not enough of co-operation in our system of public education, including both the great schools and Universities. I do not like the centralizing plan of compulsory uniformity under the government; but I do not see why we should all be acting without the least reference to one another. Something of this kind is wanted, particularly I think with regard to expulsion. Under actual circumstances it is often no penalty at all in reality, while it is considered ignorantly to be the excess of severity, and the ruin of a boy's prospects. And until the Universities have an examination upon admission as a University, not a college regulation, the standard of the college lecture rooms will be so low, that a young man going from the top of a public school will be nearly losing his time, and tempted to go back in his scholarship by attending them. This is an old grievance at Oxford, as I can bear witness, when I myself was an under-graduate just come from Winchester.

XCV. TO REV. F. C. BLACKSTONE.

Fox How, January 29, 1835.

We have now been here nearly six weeks, enjoying this country to the full, in spite of the snow, of which we have had more than our usual portion. Now, however, it is all gone, and the spring lights and gentle airs of the last few days have made the beauty of the scenery at its very highest. We have so large a party in the house, that we are very independent of any other society; my wife's two sisters and one of my nieces, besides one of our Sixth Form at Rugby, in addition to our own children. I was much annoyed at being called away into Warwickshire to vote at the election, a long and hurried and expensive journey, with no very great interest in the contest, only as having a vote, I thought it right to go, and deliver my testimony. We were at one time likely to have a contest in Westmoreland, but that blew over. I wish that in thinking of you with a pupil, I could think of you as enjoying the employment, whereas I am afraid you will feel it to be a burden. It is, perhaps, too exclusively my business at Rugby; at least I fancy that I should be glad to have a little more time for other things; but I have not yet learnt to alter my feelings of intense interest in the occupation. I feel, perhaps,

1) The necessity for such a plan was eventually obviated by his adoption of the Rev. C. Wordsworth's Greek Grammar.

the more interest in it, because I seem to find it more and more hopeless to get men to think and inquire freely and fairly, after they have once taken their side in life. The only hope is with the young, if by any means they can be led to think for themselves without following a party, and to love what is good and true, let them find it where they will...

The Church question remains more uncertain than ever; we have got a respite, I trust, from the Jew Bill for some time; but in other matters, I fear, Reform, according to my views, is as far off as ever; I care not in the least about the pluralities and equalizing revenues; let us have a real Church Government and not a pretended one; and this government vested in the church, and not in the clergy, and we may have hopes yet. But I dread above all things the notion either of the convocation or of any convocation, in which the Laity had not at least an equal voice. As for the Irish Church, that I think will baffle any man's wits to settle as it should be settled.

XCVI. TO CHEVALIER BUNSEN.

Rugby, February 10, 1835.

I know not how adequately to answer your last delightful and most kind letter, so interesting to me in all its parts, so full of matter for the expression of so many thoughts and so many feelings. I think you can hardly tell, how I prize such true sympathy of heart and mind as I am sure to find in your letters; because I hope and believe that it is not so rare to you as it is to me. I find in you that exact combination

of tastes, which I have in myself, for philological, historical, and philosophical pursuits, centering in moral and spiritual truths; the exact Greek πολιτική, if we understand, with St. Paul, where the ἄστυ of our πολιτεία is to be sought for. Your Hymn Book reached me before the holidays, and I fed upon it with unceasing delight in Westmoreland. It is, indeed, a treasure; and how I delighted in recognizing the principles of the Letter to Dr. Nott in the first Appendix to the volume. As to the Hymns, I have not yet read a single one, which I have not thought good. I should like to know some of your favourites; for myself, I am especially fond of the Hymn 24, "Seele, du musst munter werden," &c.; of 697, "Der mond ist aufgegangen;" of 824, "O liebe Seele, konntst du werden;" of 622, "Erhebt euch frohe Jubellieder;" of 839, "O Ewigkeit! O Ewigkeit;" and 933 and 934. I have tried to translate some of them, but have been sadly disappointed with my own attempts. But I must give you one or two stanzas of the Morning Hymn, as a token of my love to it, and to show you also, for your satisfaction, how much our language is inferior to yours in flexibility and power, by having lost so much of its native character, and become such a jumble of French and Latin exotics with the original Saxon I shall send you, almost immediately, the third volume of Thucydides, and the third volume of Sermons. The Appendix to the latter is directed against an error, which is deeply mischievous in our Church, by presenting so great an obstacle to Christian union, as well as to Christian Church Reform. Still, as in Catholic countries, "the Church," with us, means, in many persons' mouths, and constantly in Parliament, only " the clergy;" and this feeling operates, of course, both to produce superstition and profaneness, in both respects exactly opposed to Christianity. Church Reform, in any high