full in point of numbers, and I have got thirty-six in my own form. I have read Mr. Turnbull's book on Austria, which I like much, and it well agrees with my tenderness for the Austrian government and people.

CCXLIV. TO THE REV. DR. HAWKINS.

Rugby, September 14, 1840.

I have received your Bampton Lectures, for which I thank you much; and I have read seven out of the eight Sermons carefully, and shall soon finish the volume. The volume interested me greatly for the subject's sake, as well as for your own. With much I entirely agree, indeed I quite agree as to your main positions; but I have always supposed it to be a mere enemy's caricature of our Protestant doctrine, when any are supposed to maintain that it is the duty of each individual to make out his faith de novo, from the Scriptures alone, without regard to any other authority living or dead. I read with particular interest what you say about Episcopacy, because I did not know exactly what you thought on the subject: there I am sorry to find that we differ most widely. I cannot understand from your book, and I never can make out from any body, except the strong Newmanites,— what the essence of Episcopacy is supposed to be. The Newmanites say that certain divine powers of administering the Sacraments effectually can only be communicated by a regular succession from those who, as they supposed, had them at first. W. Law holds this ground: there must be a succession in order to keep up the mysterious gift bestowed on the priesthood, which gift makes Baptism wash away sin, and converts the elements in the Lord's Supper into effectual means of grace. This is intelligible and consistent, though I believe it to be in the highest degree false and Antichristian. Is Government the essence of Episcopacy, which was meant to be perpetual in the Church? Is it the monarchical element of government?-and if so, is it the monarchical element pure, or limited? Conceive what a difference between an absolute monarchy, and one limited like ours; and still more like the French monarchy under the constitution of 1789. I cannot in the least tell, therefore, what you suppose to be the real thing intended to be kept in the Church, as I suppose that you do not like the Newmanite view. And all the moderate High Churchmen appear to me to labour under the same defect, that they do not seem to perceive clearly what is the essence of Episcopacy; or, if they do perceive it, they do not express themselves clearly.

Another point incidentally introduced, appeared to me also to be not stated quite plainly. You complain of those persons who judge of a Revelation, not by its evidence, but by its substance. It has always seemed to me that its substance is a most essential part of its evidence; and that miracles wrought in favour of what was foolish or wicked, would only prove Manicheism. We are so perfectly ignorant of the unseen world, that the character of any supernatural power can be only judged of by the moral character of the statements which it sanctions: thus only can we tell whether it be a revelation from God, or from the Devil. If his father tells a child something which seems to him monstrous, faith requires him to submit his own judgment, because he knows his father's person, and is sure, therefore, that his father tells it him. But we cannot

thus know God, and can only recognize His voice by the words spoken being in agreement with our idea of His moral nature. Enough, however, of this. I should hope that your book would do good in Oxford; but whether any thing can do good there or not is to me sometimes doubtful.

CCXLV. TO MR. JUSTICE COLERIDGE.

Rugby, September 21, 1840.

This sheet is not so large as yours, but it is my largest size next to foolscap; and I readily and thankfully acknowledge your claim upon me for as long and full a letter as I can write. I have more time than enough just now, for I have been confined to my room since Thursday with a slight attack of fever, which, though it would be nothing, I suppose, to any one else, yet always has such an effect upon my constitution as to unfit me for all exertion; and I lay either in bed or on the sofa in my room for three days, a most inutile lignum. Nor am I yet allowed to go down stairs, but I am on the mend, and my pulse has returned nearly to its natural tardiness, which in me is its state of health. So I can now thank you very heartily for your letter, and that delightful picture which it gave me of your home repose. No man feels more keenly than I do how much better it is παραλαβεῖν τὸν ἄγρον than κτήσασθαι,—if my father's place in the Isle of Wight had never passed out of his executors' hands, I doubt whether I ever could have built Fox How, although in all other respects there is no comparison to my mind between the Isle of Wight and Westmoreland. Therefore I "macarize" you the more, for having both an inherited home, and in a county and part of the county per se delightful. I never saw Ottery but once, and that in the winter; but the valley and the stream, and the old church, and your house, are still tolerably distinct in my memory; and I do trust that one day they will be freshened by a second actual view of them. Cornish and his wife, I hear, are actually in Yorkshire: if you can tell where a letter would find them, I would ask you to let me know by one line, for I want to catch them on their return, and to secure some portion of their time by a previous promise before George's home sickness comes on him like a lion, and drives him off to Cornwall, uno impetu, complaining that even railways are too slow.

The School is flourishing surprisingly, and I cannot keep our numbers within their proper limit; but yet the limit is so far useful, that it keeps us within bounds, and allows us to draw back again as soon as we can. We are now about 340, and I have admitted 63 boys since the holidays. And all this pressure arose out of applications made previously to our great success at Oxford in the summer, which was otherwise likely to set us up a little. Yet it is very certain to me that we have little distinguished talent in the School, and not much of the spirit of reading. What gives me pleasure is, to observe a steady and a kindly feeling in old e school, in general, towards the Masters and towards each other. This say to-day, knowing, however, so well the unstable nature of this boy that I am well aware how soon any "dux turbidus" may set our bette Adria all in a commotion.

C'

all

deed oi anwhile, as long as we go on fairly, and my health stands, I am and rese vinced that for the present, and so long as my boys are in the do much would rather be here than any where else.

Quod est in votis: if, after a life of so much happiness, I ought to form a single wish for the future, it would be to have a Canonry of Christ Church, with one of the new Professorships of Scriptural Interpretation or Ecclesiastical History. . But Oxford, both for its good and its beau

ty, which I love so tenderly, and for the evil now tainting it, which I would fain resist in its very birthplace, is the place where I would fain pass my latest years of unimpaired faculties.

It distresses me to think of your reading such a book as Kuinoel. That most absurd trash,-absurd no less than profane,-which prevailed for a time among the German theologians, I have happily very little acquaintance with, except from quotations; but I have always thought that it was utterly bad. Niebuhr's spirit of historical and literary criticism was as much needed by German theologians as by English ones, and Strauss to this day is wholly without it. But the best German divines, Lücke, Tholuck, Nitzch, Olshausen, &c., write only in German, which I fancy you do not read; neither, in fact, do I read much of them, because I have not time; but they are good men, devout and sensible, as well as learned, and what I have read of them is really valuable.

I should have liked any detailed criticism of yours upon vol. ii. of History of Rome. I have scarcely yet been able to get any judgments upon the two first volumes which will help me for those to come. This second volume will be, I hope, the least interesting of all; for it has no legends, and no contemporary history. I tried hard to make it lively, but that very trying is too like the heavy Baron, who leaped over the chairs in his room, pour apprendre d'être vif. What I can honestly recommend to you in the book is its sincerity; I think that it confesses its own many imperfections, without attempting to ride grand over its subject. In the war of Pyrrhus I was oppressed all the time by my sense of Niebuhr's infinite superiority; for that chapter in his third volume is one of the most masterly pieces of history that I know,so rich and vigorous, as well as so intelligent. I think that I breathe freer in the first Punic War, where Niebuhr's work is scarcely more than fragmentary. I hope, though, to breathe freer still in the second Punic War; but there floats before me an image of power and beauty in History, which I cannot in any way realize, and which often tempts me to throw all that I have written clean into the fire.

*

CCXLVI. TO W. SETON KARR, ESQ.

(Then at Haileybury College.)

Rugby, October 5, 1840.

I thank you much for your letter, which I was very glad to receive, and which gave me as favourable an account of your new abode as I had expected. It must be always an anomalous sort of place, and I suppose that the best thing to do is to turn the necessity of passing a certain time there to as good account as possible, by working well at the Eastern languages. I should be much obliged to you if you would tell me what Sanskrit Grammar and Dictionary you use; and whether there is any thing like a Sanskrit Delectus, or an easy construing book for beginners. I am not so old as Cato was when he learned Greek, and I confess that I should like, if possible, to learn a little of the sister of Greek, which has

almost a domestic claim upon us as the oldest of our great Indo-Germanic family.

All things are going on here much as usual. The football matches are in great vigour. The sixth match is over, being settled in one day by the defeat of the Sixth. The School-house match is pending, and the School-house have kicked one goal. Pigou, Bradley, and Hodson, leave us, I am afraid, in the course of a week. . . . . . . . . I am writing this at Fourth Lesson, as usual, and the lower row are giving up their books, so that I must conclude.

CCXLVII. TO ARCHDEACON HARE.

Rugby, October 28, 1840.

I have read your Sermons with very great pleasure, and ought long since to have thanked you for them. The Notes, I hope, will not long be delayed. It is a great delight to me to read a book with which I can agree so generally and so heartily. Universally one never can expect to agree with any one, but one's highest reasonable hope is fulfilled, when one sympathizes cordially with the greatest part of a book, and feels sure, where there is a difference, that the writer would hear our opinions patiently, and if he did not agree with them, would at least not quarrel with us for holding them.

It was no small delight to me to tread the ground of the Forum once more, and to see the wonders of Campania, and to penetrate into the land of the Samnites and Sabines. I missed Bunsen sadly, but his friend Abeken was a most worthy substitute, and was hardly less kind than Bunsen himself would have been.

But

. . . . . . I signed the petition, because, agreeing with its prayer, I did not wish to avoid bearing my share of its odium; but I am not earnest about it myself, being far more anxious about the government and discipline of the Church, than for any alterations in the Liturgy or Subscriptions; although these too, I think, should not be left undone. I would do any thing in that world to destroy the disastrous fiction by which the minister has been made "personam Ecclesiæ gerere," and which the Oxford doctrines are not only upholding, but aggravating. Even Maurice seems to me to be infected in some measure with the same error in what he says respecting the right of the church,-meaning the clergy. -to educate the people. A female reign is an unfavourable time, I know, for pressing strongly the doctrine of the Crown's Supremacy. Yet that doctrine has been vouchsafed to our Church by so rare and mere a blessing of God, and contains in itself so entirely the true idea of the Christian perfect Church, the Kingdom of God,-and is so mighty to the overthrowing of that which I regard as the essence of all that is evil in Popery,the doctrine of the Priesthood,-that I do wish, even now, that people's eyes might be opened to see the peculiar blessings of our Church Constitution, and to work it out to its full development.

CCXLVIII.

TO REV. H. BALSTON.

Rugby, September 9, 1840.

I cannot let a day pass without thanking you for your very kind letter.

: . . Do not think of answering this letter till you feel quite able to do

it without painful effort. It will be a pleasure to me to write to you when I can; and I should be very glad indeed if I could help to relieve what I fear must be the loneliness of Guernsey. But I dare say that other people have not always my shrinking from a residence in a small island, surrounded by a wide sea, it always seems to me like a prison in a howling wilderness..

Since our return I have done little or nothing besides the school work and my letters. I do not intend to do much as yet upon the History, but I am getting on a little with Thucydides, a work, however, in which I take now but little interest.

My wife will add a few lines to go in the same cover with this. We always think of you with affection, and with no small gratitude for your constant kindness to our children.

I cannot bear that a second letter should go to Guernsey, without conveying under my own hand the expression of my warmest thanks to Miss H for her most kind and delightful letters. And now, my dear

Balston, I have not much else to say, or rather, I have much more than I can or ought to say. . . . . . I look round in the School, and I feel how utterly beyond human power is the turning any single human heart to God. Some heed and some heed not, with the same outward means, as it appears, offered to both, and the door opened to one no less wide than to another. But "the kingdom of God suffereth violence ;" and to infuse the violence, which will enter at all cost, and will not be denied, belongs to him alone whose counsels we cannot follow. You will pray for us all, that we may glorify God's name in this place, in teaching and in learning, in guiding and in following.

I have many delightful proofs that those, who have been here, have found at any rate no such evil as to prevent their serving God in after life; and some, I trust, have derived good from Rugby. But the evil is great and abounding, I well know; and it is very fearful to think that it may to some be irreparable ruin. I will write again when I can. May God bless you ever, and support you, as He did my dear sister, through all that He may see fit to lay on you. Be sure that there is a blessing and a safety in having scarcely any other dealings than with Christ alone,-in bearing His manifest will, and waiting for his pleasure,-intervening objects being of necessity removed away.

CCL. TO AN OLD PUPIL. (G.)

Rugby, November 4, 1840. Your letter gave me such deep and lively pleasure, that I could scarcely restrain my joy within decent bounds; for to see any man whom I thoroughly value, delivered from the snare of the law as a profession, is with me a matter of the most earnest rejoicing. It can scarcely be necessary for me to say, that as I grieved to see you decided, as I supposed, in favour of the law, so I should rejoice in your escaping while it is yet time, and following the right hand path to any pure and Christian calling, which to my mind, that of an advocate, according to the common practice of the Bar, cannot be ; and I think that scarcely any practice could make it such,