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Only, whenever you can come to us, let me beg that you will not let slip the opportunity.

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There seems to me to be a sort of atmosphere of unrest and paradox hanging around many of our ablest young men of the present day, which makes me very uneasy. I do not speak of religious doubts, but rather of questions as to great points in moral and intellectual matters; where things which have been settled for centuries seem to be again brought into discussion. This restless love of paradox, is, I believe, one of the main causes of the growth of Newmanism; first, directly, as it leads men to dispute and oppose all the points which have been agreed upon in their own country for the last two hundred years; and to pick holes in existing reputations; and then, when a man gets startled at the excess of his scepticism, and finds that he is cutting away all the ground under his feet, he takes a desperate leap into a blind fanaticism. I cannot find what I most crave to see, and what still seems to me no impossible dream, inquiry and belief going together, and the adherence to truth growing with increased affection, as follies are more and more cast away.

But I have seen lately such a specimen of this and of all other things that are good and wise and holy, as I suppose can scarcely be matched again in the world. Bunsen has been with us for six days with his wife and Henry. It was delightful to find that my impression of his extraordinary excellence had not deceived me; that the reality even surpassed my recollection of what he was eleven years ago.

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CLXXXV. TO THE EARL OF BURLINGTON,
(Chancellor of the University of London.)

Rugby, November 7, 1838. It is with the greatest regret that, after the fullest and fairest deliberation which I have been able to give to the subject, I feel myself obliged to resign my Fellowship in the University of London.

The Constitution of the University seems now to be fixed, and it has either begun to work, or will soon do so. After the full discussion given to the question, on which I had the misfortune to differ from the majority of the Senate, I felt that it would be unbecoming to agitate the matter again, and it only remained for me to consider whether the institution of a voluntary Examination in Theology would satisfy, either practically or in theory, those principles which appeared to me to be indispensable.

I did not wish to decide this point hastily, but after the fullest consideration and inquiry, I am led to the conclusion that the voluntary Examination will not be satisfactory. Practically I fear it will not, because the members of King's College will not be encouraged by their own authorities, so far as I can learn, to subject themselves to it; and the members of University College may be supposed, according to the principles of their own society, to be averse to it altogether. But, even if it were to answer practically better than I fear it will do, still it does not satisfy the great principle that Christianity should be the base of all public education in this country. Whereas with us it would be no essential part of one system, but merely a branch of knowledge which any man might pursue if he liked, but which he might also, if he liked, wholly neglect, without forfeiting his claim, according to our estimate, to the title of a completely educated man.

And further, as it appeared, I think, to the majority of the Senate, that the terms of our Charter positively forbade that which in my judgment is indispensable; and as there is a painfulness in even appearing to dispute the very law under which our University exists; there seems to me an additional reason why, disapproving as I do very strongly of that which is held to be the main principle of our Charter, I should withdraw myself from the University altogether.

I trust I need not assure your Lordship or the Senate, that I am resigning my Fellowship from no factious or dis

VOL. II.

K

appointed feeling, or from any personal motives whatever. Most sincerely shall I rejoice if the University does in practice promote the great interests to which the principle appears to me to be injurious. Most glad shall I be if those whose affection to those interests is, I well know, quite as sincere and lively as mine, shall be found to have judged of their danger more truly as well as more favourably.

CHAPTER IX.

LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE-NOVEMBER 1838-SEPTEMBER 1841.

It is impossible to mistake the change which once more passed over his state of mind during these last years of his life-the return, though in a more chastened form, of the youthful energy and serenity of the earlier part of his career at Rugby—the martinmas summer succeeding to the dreary storms with which he had been so long encompassed; and recalling the more genial season, which had preceded them, yet mellowed and refined by the experience of the intervening period.

His whole constitution seemed to have received a new spring; "The interest of life," to use his own description of middle age", "which had begun to fade for himself, revived with vigour in behalf of his children." The education of his own sons in the school, his firmer hold of the reins of government, his greater familiarity with the whole machinery of the place, the increasing circle of pupils at the Universities, who looked upon him as their second father;-even the additional bodily health which he gained by resuming in 1838 his summer tours on the continent, -removed that sense of weariness by which he had been at times Sermons, vol. iv. p. 115.

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oppressed amidst his heavy occupations, and bound him to his work at Rugby with a closer tie than

ever.

But it was not only in his ordinary work that a new influence seemed to act upon him in the determination which he formed to dwell on those positive truths on which he agreed with others, rather than to be always acting on the defensive or offensive.

To this various causes had contributed,—the weariness of the contests of the last four years,—the isolation in which he found himself placed after his failure in the London University,—the personal intercourse, now, after an interval of eleven years, renewed with his friend the Chevalier Bunsen,—the recoil, which he felt from the sceptical tone of mind which struck him as being at once the cause and effect of the new school of Oxford Theology. It was in this spirit that he struck out all the political allusions of his notes on Thucydides, which were now passing through a second edition, "not as abhorring the evils against which they were directed, less now than I did formerly, but because we have been all of us taught by the lessons of the last nine years, that, in political matters more especially, moderation and comprehensiveness of views are the greatest wisdom." So, again, in the hope of giving a safer and more sober direction to the excitement then prevailing in the country on the subject of National Education, he

a The whole passage in which this occurs (noticing a severe attack upon him, introduced into an article in the Quarterly Review by "a writer for whom he entertained a very sincere respect ") well illustrates his feeling at this time. (Note on Thucyd. ii. 40, 2nd ed.)

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