by reforming them; but still I cannot pretend to say that they would do this on the highest principles, or that they keep their eye on the true polar star, how skilfully soever they may observe their charts, and work their vessel. But even in this I think them far better than the Tories.

We talk, as much as we dare talk of any thing two months distant, of going to the Lakes in the winter, that I may get on in peace with Thucydides, and enjoy the mountains besides.

XXXVIII. TO W. W. HULL, ESQ.

Rugby, October 26, 1831.

I spear daily, as the Lydians used to play in the famine, that I may at least steal some portion of the day from thought. My family, the school, and, thank God, the town also, are all full of restful and delightful thoughts and images. All there is but the scene of wholesome and happy labour, and has much to refresh the inward man, with as little to disturb him as this earth, since Paradise, could, I believe, ever present to any one individual. But my sense of the evils of the times, and to what prospects I am bringing up my children, is overwhelmingly bitter. All in the moral and physical world appears so exactly to announce the coming of the " great day of the Lord,” i. e. a period of fearful visitation to terminate the existing state of things, whether to terminate the whole existence of the human race, neither man nor angel knows,—that no entireness of private happiness can possibly close my mind against the sense of it. Mean time it makes me very anxious to do what work I can, more especially as I think the prospect of the cholera makes life even more than ordinarily uncertain; and I am inclined to think, from my own peculiar constitution, that I should be very likely to be attacked by it.

I believe I told you that I am preparing for the press a new volume of sermons, and I wish a small book on the

Evidences to accompany them; not a book to get up like Paley, but taking the real way in which the difficulties present themselves, half moral, half intellectual, to the mind of an intelligent and well educated young man; a book which, by God's blessing, may be a real stay in that state of mind when neither an address to the intellect alone, nor one to the moral feelings, is alone most likely to answer. And I wish to make the main point not the truth of Christianity per se, as a theorem to be proved, but the wisdom of our abiding by it, and whether there is any thing else for it but the life of beast or of devil. I should like to do this if I could before I die; for I think that times are coming when the Devil will fight his best in good earnest. I must not write any more, for work rises on every side open mouthed upon me.

XXXIX. TO REV. JULIUS HARE.

Nov. 9, 1831.

(After thanking him for the first number of the Philological Museum, and wishing him. success.) For myself, I am afraid Thucydides will have shewn you that I am a very poor philologist, and my knowledge is too superficial on almost every point to enable me to produce any thing worth your having; and to say the truth, every moment of spare time I wish to devote to writing on Religion or TOMITI. I use the Greek word, because" politics" is commonly taken in a much baser sense. I know I can do but little, perhaps nothing, but the "Liberavi animam meam" is a consolation; and I would fain not see every thing good and beautiful sink in ruin, without making a single effort to lessen the mischief. Since the death of the Register, I am writing constantly in one of

a This he partially accomplished in the 17th Sermon in the second volume, and the 18th and 19th in the third. The work itself was begun, but never finished.

the Sheffield papers, the proprietor of which I earnestly believe sincerely wishes to do good.

I heartily sympathize with the feeling of your concluding paragraph-in your note I mean-but who dare look forward now to any thing.

XL. TO THE ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN.

Rugby, November 8, 1831.

You must not go to Ireland without a few lines from me. I cannot yet be reconciled to your being on the other side of St. George's Channel, or to thinking of Oxford as being without you. I do not know where to look for the Mezentius who should "succedat pugnæ," when Turnus is gone away. My great ignorance about Ireland is also very inconvenient to me in thinking about your future operations, as I do not know what most wants mending there, or what is likely to be the disposition to mend it in those with whom you will be surrounded. But you must not go out with words of evil omen; and, indeed, I do anticipate much happiness for you, seeing that happiness consists, according to our dear old friend, ¿v Evegyɛia, and of that you are likely to have enough.

I am a coward about schools, and yet I have not the satisfaction of being a coward naтà ngoaigeσiv; for I am inclined to think that the trials of a school are useful to a boy's after character, and thus I dread not to expose my boys to it; while, on the other hand, the immediate effect of it is so ugly, that, like washing one's hands with earth, one shrinks from dirting them so grievously in the first stage of the process. I cannot get over my sense of the fearful state of public affairs:—is it clean hopeless that the Church will come forward and crave to be allowed to reform itself? . . . I can have no confidence in what would be in men like

but a deathbed

repentance. It can only be done effectually by those who have not, through many a year of fair weather, turned a

deaf ear to the voice of reform, and will now be thought only to obey it, because they cannot help it. If I were indeed a Radical, and hated the Church, and longed for a democracy, I should be jolly enough, and think that all was plain sailing; but as it is, I verily think that neither my spirits nor my occupation, nor even spearing itself, will enable me to be cheerful under such an awful prospect of public evils.

XLI. TO W. W. HULL, ESQ.

Knutsford, December 16, 1831.

I want to write an Essay on the true use of Scripture; i. e. that it is a direct guide so far forth as we are circumstanced exactly like the persons to whom it was originally addressed; that where the differences are great, there it is a guide by analogy; i. e. if so and so was the duty of men so circumstanced, ergo, so and so is the duty of men circumstanced thus otherwise; and that thus we shall keep the spirit of God's revelation even whilst utterly disregarding the letter, when the circumstances are totally different. E. g. the second commandment is in the letter utterly done away with by the fact of the Incarnation. To refuse, then, the benefit which we might derive from the frequent use of the crucifix under pretence of the Second Commandment is a folly, because God has sanctioned one conceivable similitude of himself, when He declared Himself in the person of Christ. The spirit of the commandment not to think unworthily of the Divine nature, nor to lower it after our own devices, is violated by all unscriptural notions of God's attributes and dealings with men, such as we see and hear broached daily, and, though in a less important degree, by those representations of God the Father which one sees in Catholic pictures, and by what Whately calls peristerolatry, the foolish way in which people allow themselves to talk about God the Holy Ghost, as of a dove. The applications of this principle.

are very numerous, and embrace, I think, all the principal errors both of the High Church and of the Evangelical party.

XLII. TO REV. G. CORNISH.

RYDAL!!! December 23, 1831.

We are actually here, and going up Nabb's Scar presently, if the morning holds clear: the said Nabb's Scar being the mountain at whose foot our house stands; but you must not suppose that we are at Rydal Hall; it is only a house by the road-side, just at the corner of the lane that leads up to Wordsworth's house, with the road on one side of the garden, and the Rotha on the other, which goes brawling away under our windows with its perpetual music. The higher mountains that bound our view are all snow-capped, but it is all snug, and warm and green in the valley,—nowhere on earth have I ever seen a spot of more perfect and enjoyable beauty, with not a single object out of tune with it, look which way I will. In another cottage, about twenty yards from us, Capt. Hamilton, the author of Cyril Thornton, has taken up his abode for the winter; close above us are the Wordsworths; and we are in our own house a party of fifteen souls, so that we are in no danger of being dull. And I think it would be hard to say which of us all enjoys our quarters the most. We arrived here on Monday, and hope to stay here about a month from the present time.

It is indeed a long time since I have written to you, and these are times to furnish ample matter to write or to talk about. How earnestly do I wish that I could see you; it is the only ungratified wish as to earthly happiness of my most happy life, that I am so parted from so many of my dearest friends. [After speaking of objections which he had heard made to the appointment of Dr. Whately to the Archbishopric of Dublin.] Now I am sure that in point of real essential holiness, so far as man