interested with each successive scene, but gains no general notion of the whole country, and the bearings of one place with another.

XVIII. TO THE SAME.

Rugby, September 12, 1830.

About the Pelasgian element in the Athenian people, I am not quite satisfied. There is a clever pamphlet by a Dr. Edwards, a friend of Thierry's, in which he maintains that the original inhabitants of all countries, such as the Celts in Britain, have been much less lost by subsequent conquests than is commonly supposed, and that their physical type shows itself unchanged after the lapse of centuries. If so, the predominant element at Athens would have been Pelasgian-and was it then the Pelasgian rather than the Hellenic people whose intellectual nature was so wonderful? Certainly there appears very little of the same superiority amongst the Dorians of Peloponnesus, who were pure Hellenes, or amongst the Æolic Boeotians. But this question of race requires still a much larger induction, I think, before we can argue solidly about it.

XIX. TO THE SAME.

Rugby, October 3, 1830.

I have kept the two volumes which were sent to me longer than I ought, but my time has been sadly occupied, and I find it impossible to do either of them justice. The Rome, I think, promises exceedingly well and I have ventured to add a sort of sketch of the scenery from my recollection of it, chiefly, I believe, because it is a delight to me to recall to my mind images of such beauty. But if the description be clear, of which I cannot judge, I think it will not be misplaced; at least I have a great fondness for such topographical details myself.

I cannot yet be quite so sceptical about the kings; nor

can I see so clearly the poetical character of the early Roman History. Perhaps, however, it would be better to say that I do not trace the fictitious character of it so strongly; for the traditions may well have come down in verse, but it makes all the difference whether they were merely real events described in the style and form most fitted to make them relished and remembered, or whether they were wild inventions, like Ariosto's tale of the siege of Paris by the Saracens. Is not one of the most correct accounts of William the Conqueror's Expedition to be found in an old poem, Le Roman du Rou?

What you say of the Achæans is I suppose quite just: Achaia was less Doricized than the rest of the Peloponnesus, but, from its obscurity during the brilliant times of Greece, very little seems to be known about it. The system of federation existed everywhere in the early state of society, and Achaia was ripe for its renewal at a later period, because no one town had so outgrown the others as to aspire to become the capital of the whole country.

[Some of these opinions, especially those on mythical history, were afterwards much modified. See the early chapters of his History of Rome, and the Preface to the 3rd Vol. of his Edition of Thucydides.]

XX. TO THE REV. GEORGE CORNISH.

Rugby, August 24, 1830. Your letter was a most welcome sight to me the first morning of my arrival at home, amidst the host of strange handwritings and letters of business which now greet me every morning. It rejoices me to think that we are going to have a cousin of yours at Rugby, and I suppose we shall see him here on Saturday, when the great coach starts. You know that it is licensed to carry not exceeding 260 passengers, besides the foundationers. I agreed with the Pythagoreans that rò àógiorov was one of the number

VOL. I..

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of nána, and so I applied to the Trustees, and got the limit set. We are not near it yet, being not quite 260, including foundationers, and perhaps may never reach it; but that I shall not at all regret, and all I wanted was never to go beyond it. We have got a Cambridge man, a Fellow of Trinity, who was most highly recommended to me, as a new master; and I hope we shall pull hard and all together during the next half year: there is plenty to be done, I can assure you; but thank God, I continue to enjoy the work, and am now in excellent condition for setting to it. You may see Mary's name and mine amongst the subscribers for the sufferers at Paris. It seems to me a most blessed revolution, spotless beyond all example in history, and the most glorious instance of a royal rebellion against society, promptly and energetically repressed, that the world has yet seen. It magnificently vindicates the cause of knowledge and liberty, showing how humanizing to all classes of society are the spread of thought and information, and improved political institutions; and it lays the crimes of the last revolution just in the right place, the wicked aristocracy, that had so brutalized the people by its long iniquities, that they were like slaves broken loose when they first bestirred themselves.

Before all these events took place, on my way out through France, I was reading Guizot's History of the Progress of Civilization in France from the earliest times. You know he is now Minister of the Interior, and one of the ablest writers in France. In his book he gives a history of the Pelagian controversy, a most marvellous contrast with the Liberals of a former day, or with our Westminster Reviewers now. Guizot sides with St. Augustine; but the whole chapter is most worthy of notice; the freedom of the will, so far as to leave a consciousness of guilt when we have not done our duty, the corruption of our nature, which never lets us in fact come up to what we know we ought to do, and the help derived from prayers to God,―are stated as incontrovertible philosophical facts,

of which every man's experience may convince him; and Guizot blames Pelagius for so exaggerating the notion of human freedom as to lose sight of our need of external assistance. And there is another chapter on the unity of the Church no less remarkable. Now Guizot is Professor of History in the University of Paris, and a most eminent Liberal; and it seems to me worthy of all notice to observe his language with regard to religion. And I saw Niebuhr at Bonn, on my way home, and talked with him for three hours; and I am satisfied from my own ears, if I had had any doubts before, of the grossness of the slander which called him an unbeliever. I was every way delighted with him, and liked very much what I saw of his wife and children. Trevenen and his wife enjoyed the journey exceedingly, and are all the better for it. Amongst other things, I visited the Grand Chartreuse, which is certainly enough to make a man romantic, and the Church of Madonna del Monte; from whence, or rather from a mountain above it, I counted twelve mountain outlines between me and the horizon, the last, the ridge of the highest Alps-upon a sky so glowing with the sunset, that instead of looking white from their snow, they were like the teeth of a saw upon a plate of red hot iron, all deep and black. I was delighted also with Venice; most of all delighted to see the secret prisons of the old aristocracy converted into lumber rooms, and to see German soldiers exercising authority in that place, which was once the very focus of the moral degradation of the Italian race, the seat of falsehood and ignorance and cruelty. They talk of building a bridge to Venice over the Lagune; if so, I am glad that I have seen it first. I liked Padua also, more than I thought I could have liked the birth-place of Titus Livius. The influence of the clergy must be great there, and most beneficially exercised; for a large institution for the poor of Padua, providing for those who are out of work, as well as for the old and infirm, derives its main support from legacies; the clergy never failing to urge every man who can at all

afford it to leave something at his death for this object. We came home through the Tyrol, and through Wurtemberg and Baden, countries apparently as peaceful and prosperous and simple-mannered as I ever saw; it is quite economical travelling there. And now, when shall I travel to Kenwyn ? I hope one of these days; but whether in the next winter or not, is hard to say; I only know that there are few things. which I should enjoy better. I was so sorry to miss old Tucker, who came here for one day when I was abroad; he was at Leamington with his sister, to consult our great oracle, Jephson. Charles, I suppose, is only coming home upon leave, and will go out again; I should be very glad to see him, and to show him his marks on my Hederic's Lexicon when he was at Wyatt's. I wish I may be able to do any thing for you as to a curate, but I am very much out of the world in those matters, and I have no regular correspondence with Oxford. I am afraid I am sadly in disgrace with all parties, between my Pamphlet and Sermons, and I am afraid that Thucydides will not mend the matter. As for the Pamphlet, that is all natural enough, but I really did not think there was any cloven foot in the Sermons, nor did I wish to show any; not, I hope, from time-serving, but because, what you said about the schism question, I wished to do with that and divers other points,— i. e., reserve them for a separate volume, which I hope I may be able to publish before I die. There are some points on which I feel almost as if I had a testimony to deliver, which I ought not to withhold. And Milman's History of the Jews made me more and more eager to deliver myself of my conceptions. But how to do it without interfering with other and even more pressing duties, I cannot tell. Last half year, I preached every Sunday in Lent, and for the last five Sundays of the half year also, besides other times; and I had to write new sermons for all these, for I cannot bear to preach to the boys any thing but what is quite fresh, and suggested by their particular condition. I never like preaching anywhere else