society which they have left, nor taking a place in that of the countries where they are travelling. What I saw also of the Pope's religion in his own territories excited my attention a good deal. Monkery seems flourishing there in great force, and the abominations of their systematic falsehoods seem as gross as ever. In France, on the contrary, the Catholics seemed to me to be Christians, and daily becoming more and more so. In Italy they seem to me to have no more title to the name than if the statues of Venus and Juno occupied the place of those of the Virgin. It is just the old Heathenism, and, as I should think, with a worse system of deceit.

XVII. TO REV. J. TUCKER.

It delighted me to hear

Laleham, 1826. speak decidedly of the great

need of reform in the Church, and from what I have heard in other quarters, I am in hopes that these sentiments are gaining ground. But the difficulty will always be practically, who is to reform it? For the clergy have a horror of the House of Commons, and Parliament and the country will never trust the matter to the clergy. If we had our General Assembly, there might be some chance, but as it is, I know no more hopeless prospect, and every year I live, this is to me more painful. If half the energy and resources which have been turned to Bible societies and missions, had steadily been applied to the reform of our own institutions, and the enforcing the principles of the Gospel among ourselves, I cannot but think that we should have been fulfilling a higher duty, and with the blessing of God might have produced more satisfactory fruit: raðra piv ἔδει ποιῆσαι, καὶ ἐκεῖνα μὴ ἀφίεναι. Of the German divines, if Mr. Rose is to be trusted, there can be but one opinion; they exemplify the evils of knowledge without a Christian watchfulness over the heart and practice; but I greatly fear that there are some here who would abuse this example to the discouragement of impartial investigation and independent thought; as if ignorance and blind following the opinions of others were the habits that best become Christians. ὁ πνευματικὸς ἀνακρίνει πάντα,— if cleared from fanaticism and presumption, and taken in connexion with ετι δε την καθ' ύπερβολὴν ὅδον ὑμῖν δείκνυμι,—is at once, I think, our privilege and our duty.

XVIII. TO REV. E. HAWKINS.

Laleham, October 22, 1826, You know, I believe, that I am at work upon Thucydides, and that it ought to be ready, if possible, by the beginning of Lent term. I wish much to get the judgments of several men of different qualifications as to what I have already completed. I should like to have the opinion of a professed scholar as to the critical part; of a man deeply versed in Greek history and law as to the historical and antiquarian part, and particularly to tell me whether there are any points connected with Thucydides which require a particular discussion, and which I may have omitted in pure ignorance; and thirdly, I want the judginent of a man of plain sense, to tell me what he thinks superfluous, and what deficient, in the notes which I have given. Do you think that you could do any thing for me on these

points, if I were to send you down the MS. of the first two books; and remember that I want to have full and free censures, reserving to myself, of course, the privilege of following them or not, as I shall see cause, but promising to give them the fullest attention. I think I might rely on the Provost's being kind enough to give me his criticisms, as he has already done it to some of the earlier chapters, and almost all his suggestions are such as I shall thankfully follow. I am a little anxious that our Oxford edition of Thucydides should be as good as any which they are publishing in Germany.

XIX. TO REV. JOHN TUCKER.

Laleham, March 4, 1827.

I meant to have written almost immediately upon my return home from Kent; for delightful as is the recollection of my short visit to you on every other ground, I was, and have been ever since, a good deal annoyed by some part of our conversation, i. e. by observing the impression produced on your mind by some of the opinions which I expressed. It is to me personally a very great pain that I should have excited feelings of disapprobation in the mind of a man whom I so entirely approve and love, and yet that I cannot feel the disapprobation to be deserved, and therefore cannot remove the cause of it. And on more general grounds it makes me fear, that those engaged in the same great cause will never heartily sink their little differences of opinion, when I find that you, who have known me so long, cannot hear them without thinking them not merely erroneous, but morally wrong, and such, therefore, as give you pain when uttered. I am not in the least going to renew the argument; it is very likely that I was wrong in it; and I am sure it would not annoy me that you should think me so, just as I may think you wrong in any point, or as I think J. Keble wrong in half an hundred, yet without being grieved that he should hold them, that is, grieved as at a fault. You may say that a great many erroneous opinions imply no moral fault at all, but that mine did, namely, the fault of an unsubmissive understanding. But it seems to me that, of all faults, this is the most difficult to define or to discern for who shall say where the understanding ought to submit itself, unless where it is inclined to advocate any thing immoral? We know that what in one age has been called the spirit of rebellious reason, has in another been allowed by all good men to have been nothing but a sound judgment exempt from superstition. We know that the Catholics look with as great horror on the consequences of denying the infallibility of the Church as you can do on those of denying the entire inspiration of the Scriptures; and that, to come nearer to the point, the inspiration of the Scriptures in points of physical science was once insisted on as stoutly as it is now maintained with regard to matter of history. Now it may be correct to deny their inspiration in one and not in the other; but I think it is hard to ascribe the one opinion to any thing morally faulty more than the other. I am far from thinking myself so good a man by many degrees as you are. I am not so advanced a Christian. But I am sure that my love for the Gospel is as sincere, and my desire to bring every thought into the obedience of Christ is one which I think I do not deceive myself in believing that I honestly feel. It is very painful, therefore, to be suspected of paying them only a divided homage, or to be deficient in reverence

to Him whom every year that I live my whole soul and spirit own with a more entire certainty and love. Let me again say, that I am neither defending the truth of the particular opinions which I expressed to you, nor yet disavowing them. I only think that it is a pity that they should shock you; as I think we ought to know one another's principles well enough by this time, not certainly to make us acquiesce in all each other's opinions, but to be satisfied that they may be entertained innocently, and that therefore, we may differ from each other without pain. But enough of this; only it has annoyed me a great deal, and has made me doubt where I can find a person to whom I may speak freely if I cannot do so even to you.

LETTERS RELATING TO THE ELECTION AT RUGBY. XX. TO REV. E. HAWKINS.

Laleham, October 21, 1827.

I feel most sincerely obliged to you and my other friends in Oxford for the kind interest which you show in my behalf, in wishing to procure for me the head-mastership at Rugby. Of its being a great deal more lucrative than my present employment I have no doubt; nor of its being in itself a situation of more extensive usefulness; but I do doubt whether it would be so in my hands, and how far I am fitted for the place of headmaster of a large school. I confess that I should very much object to undertake a charge in which I was not invested with pretty full discretion. According to my notions of what large schools are, founded on all I know and all I have ever heard of them, expulsion should be practised much oftener than it is. Now, I know that trustees, in general, are averse to this plan, because it has a tendency to lessen the numbers of the school, and they regard quantity more than quality. In fac., my opinions on this point might, perhaps, generally be considered as disqualifying me for the situation of master of a great school; yet I could not consent to tolerate much that I know is tolerated generally, and, therefore, I should not like to enter on an office which I could not discharge according to my own views of what is right. I do not believe myself, that my system would be, in fact, a cruel or a harsh one, and I believe that with much care on the part of the masters, it would be seldom necessary to proceed to the ratio ultima; only I would have it clearly understood, that I would most scrupulously resort to it, at whatever inconvenience, where there was a perseverance in any habit inconsistent with a boy's duties.

XXI. TO REV. GEORGE CORNISH.

Laleham, November 30, 1827.

You have often wanted me to be master at Winchester, so I think you will be glad to hear that I am actually a candidate for Rugby. I was strongly urged to stand, and money tempted me, but I cannot in my heart be sorry to stay where both M. and myself are so entirely happy. If I do get it, I feel as if I could set to work very heartily, and, with God's blessing, I should like to try whether my notions of Christian education are really impracticable, whether our system of public schools has not in it some noble elements which, under the blessing of the Spirit of all holiness and wisdom, might produce fruit even to life eternal. When I think about it thus, I really long to take rod in hand; but when I think of the

s

Téos, the perfect vileness which I must daily contemplate, the certainty that this can at best be only partially remedied, the irksomeness of "fortemque Gyan fortemque Cloanthum," and the greater form and publicity of the life which we should there lead, when I could no more bathe daily in the clear Thames, nor wear old coats and Russia duck trousers, nor hang on a gallows, nor climb a pole, I grieve to think of the possibility of a change; but as there are about thirty candidates, and I only applied very late, I think I need not disquiet myself. I send you this brief notice, because you ought to hear of my plans from myself rather than from others; but I have no time to write more. Thucydides prospers.

XXII. TO REV. J. TUCKER.

December 28, 1827.

Our united warmest thanks to you and to your sisters for the joy you have felt about Rugby. For the labour I care nothing, if God gives me health and strength as he has for the last eight years. But whether I shall be able to make the school what I wish to make it,—I do not mean wholly or perfectly, but in some degree, that is, an instrument of God's glory, and of the everlasting good of those who come to it,-that indeed is an awful anxiety.

XXIII. TO REV. E. HAWKINS.

Laleham, December 28, 1827.

Your kind little note ought not to have remained thus long unanswered, especially as you have a most particular claim on my thanks for your active kindness in the whole business, and for your character of me to Sir H. Halford, that I was likely to improve generally the system of public education, a statement which Sir H. Halford told me had weighed most strongly in my favour. You would not, I am sure have recommended me, if you had supposed that I should alter things violently or for the pleasure of altering; but, as I have at different times expressed in conversation my disapprobation of much of the existing system, I find that some people expect that I am going to sweep away root and branch, quod absit! I need not tell you how wholly unexpected this result has been to us, and I hope I need not say also what a solema and almost overwhelming responsibility I feel is imposed on me. I would hope to have the prayers of my friends, together with my own, for a supply of that true wisdom which is required for such a business. To be sure, how small in comparison is the importance of my teaching the boys to read Greek, and how light would be a schoolmaster's duty if that were all of it. Yet, if my health and strength continue as they have been for the last eight years, I do not fear the labour, and really enjoy the prospect of it. I am so glad that we are likely to meet soon in Oxford.

XXIV. TO REV. JOHN TUCKER.

Laleham, March 2.

At

With regard to reforms at Rugby, give me credit, I must beg of you, for a most sincere desire to make it a place of Christian education. the same time, my object will be, if possible, to form Christian men, for Christian boys I can scarcely hope to make; I mean that, from the natural 1) His gymnastic exercises.

imperfect state of boyhood, they are not susceptible of Christian principles in their full development upon their practice, and I suspect that a low standard of morals in many respects must be tolerated amongst them, as it was on a larger scale in what I consider the boyhood of the human race. But I believe that a great deal may be done, and I should be most unwilling to undertake the business, if I did not trust that much might be done. Our impressions of the exterior of every thing that we saw during our visit to Dr. Wooll in January, were very favourable; at the same time that I anticipate a great many difficulties in the management of affairs, before they can be brought into good train. But both M. and myself, I think, are well inclined to commence our work, and if my health and strength be spared me, I certainly feel that in no situation could I have the prospect of employment so congenial to my taste and qualifications; that is, supposing always that I find that I can manage the change from older pupils to a school. Your account of yourself was most delightful: my life for some years has been one of great happiness, but I fear not of happiness so safe and permitted. I am hurried on too fast in the round of duties and of domestic enjoyments, and I greatly feel the need, and shall do so even more at Rugby, unless I take heed in time, of stopping to consider my ways, and to recognize my own infinite weakness and unworthiness. I have read the "Letters on the Church," and reviewed them in the Edinburgh Review for September, 1826, if you care to know what I think of them. I think that any discussion on church matters must do good, if it is likely to lead to any reform; for any change, such as is within any human calculation, would be an improvement. What might not do, if he would set himself to work in the House of Lords, not to patch up this hole or that, but to recast the whole corrupt system, which in many points stands just as it did in the worst times of popery, only reading "King" or "Aristocracy," in the place of "Pope."

XXV. TO REV. F. C. BLACKSTONE.

Laleham, March 14, 1828.

We are resigning private pupils, I imagine, with very different feelings; you looking forward to a life of less distraction, and I to one of far greater, insomuch that all here seems quietness itself in comparison with what I shall meet with at Rugby. There will be a great deal to do, I suspect, in every way, when I first enter on my situation; but still, if my health continues, I do not at all dread it, but on the contrary look forward to it with much pleasure. I have long since looked upon education as my business in life; and just before I stood for Rugby, I had offered myself as a candidate for the historical professorship at the London University; and had indulged in various dreams of attaching myself to that institution, and trying as far as possible to influence it. In Rugby there is a fairer field, because I start with greater advantages. You know that I never ran down public schools in the lump, but grieved that their exceeding capabilities were not turned to better account; and if I find myself unable in time to mend what I consider faulty in them, it will at any rate be a practical lesson to teach me to judge charitably of others, who do not reform public institutions as much as is desirable. I suppose that you have not regarded all the public events of the last few months without some interest. My views of things certainly become daily more reform