master must be a member of some Church or other, if he is not a minister of it; if he is a sincere member of it, and fitted to give religious instruction at all, he must be anxious to inculcate its tenets; but, if he be a man of judgment and honesty, and of a truly Catholic spirit, he will find it a still more sacred duty not to abuse the confidence of those parents of different persuasions who may have entrusted their children to his care, and he will think besides that the true spirit of a Christian teacher is not exactly the spirit of proselytism. I must beg to apologize for having trespassed on your time thus long.

*

CXCIV.

TO E. WISE, ESQ.

Rugby, March 20, 1839.

Your letter gave me very great pleasure, and I was really obliged to you for writing at such length, and giving me a full account of all the circumstances of your present situation. Every thing in a position like yours depends on the disposition and character of the family; and where these are good and kind, the life of a tutor may be as pleasant, I think, as it is useful and respectable.

I trust that your health is completely restored, and that you will be able to read gently, without feeling it a matter of necessity; a sensation which I suppose must aggravate the pressure greatly when a man is reading, and feels himself not strong. But, on the other hand, you need not think that your own reading will now have no object, because you are engaged with young boys. Every improvement of your own powers and knowledge, tells immediately upon them; and indeed I hold that a man is only fit to teach so long as he is himself learning daily. If the. mind once becomes stagnant, it can give no fresh draught to another mind; it is drinking out of a pond, instead of from a spring. And whatever you read tends generally to your own increase of power, and will be felt by you in a hundred ways hereafter.

CXCV.

*TO J. P. GELL, ESQ.

(On the death of his brother, Charles Gell.)

Rugby, April 5, 1839. Your letter ought not to grieve me, but it was a shock for which I was not prepared, as I had not dreamed that your brother's departure was so near. The thoughts of him will be amongst the most delightful of all my thoughts of Rugby pupils: so amiable and so promising here, and so early called to his rest and glory. I do feel more and more for my pupils, and for my children also, that I can readily and thankfully see them called away, when they are to all human appearance assuredly called home. This is a lesson which advancing years impress very strongly. We can then better tell how little are those earthly things of which early death deprives us, and how fearful is the risk of this world's struggle. May God bless us through His Son, and make us to come at last, be it sooner or later, out of this struggle conquerors.

CXCVI. TO THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE.

July 1, 1839.

Nothing can be more proper than that the Head Master or Principal of the proposed School should be subject to the control of the Governor, or of the Bishop, should there be one in the colony. I am only anxious to understand clearly whether he is to be in any degree under the control of any local Board, whether lay or clerical; because, if he were, I could not conscientiously recommend him to undertake an office which I am sure he would shortly find himself obliged to abandon. Uniform experience shows, I think, so clearly the mischief of subjecting schools to the ignorance and party feelings of persons wholly unacquainted with the theory and practice of education, that I feel it absolutely necessary to understand fully the intentions of the Government on this question.

CXCVII. TO MR. JUSTICE COLERIDGE.

Rugby, May 8, 1839.

[After speaking of a decision respecting the Foundationers in Rugby School.] The world will not know that it makes no earthly difference to me in a pecuniary point of view, whether a boy is in the lower school or the upper; and that if I had discouraged the lower school, and especially the Foundationers, who do not interfere with the number of boarders, I should have been quarrelling with my own bread and butter. Lord Langdale did not understand the difference which I had always made between Non-foundationers and Foundationers, as I have indeed always advised people not to send their sons as boarders under twelve, but have never applied the same advice to Foundationers living under their parents' roof. But it is so old a charge against masters of Foundation Schools, that they discourage the Foundationers, in order to have boarders who pay them better, that I dare say Lord Langdale and half the world will believe that I have been acting on this principle; and my old friends of the Tory newspapers are quite likely to gibe at me as liking a little jobbing in my own particular case, as well as other pretended Reformers. Even you, perhaps, do not know that I receive precisely as much money for every Foundationer, if he be only a little boy in the first form, as I do for any Non-foundationer at the head of the school; so that I have a direct interest-since all men are supposed to act from interest-in increasing the number of Foundationers, and no earthly interest or object in diminishing them. I think you will not wonder at my being a little sensitive on the present occasion, for a judge's decision is a very different thing from an article in a common newspaper; and, as I believe that nothing of the latter sort has ever disturbed my equanimity, so I should not wish to regard the former lightly. So I should very much like to hear from you what you think is to be done,-if any thing. After all, I could laugh heartily at the notion of my being

suspected of a little snug corruption, after having preached Reform all my life.

CXCVIII. TO SIR T. PASLEY, BART.

Your absence will be a

Rugby, May 10, 1839. sad blank in our

Westmoreland visits, if we are still allowed to continue them. But seven years is a long term for human life, and so long have we been permitted to go down summer and winter, and return with all our family entire and in good health; so that I cannot but fancy that something or other may happen to break this happy uniformity of our lives.

The state of public affairs is not inviting, and I rejoice that we take in no daily paper. It is more painful than enough to read of evils which one can neither cure nor palliate. The real evil which lies at the bottom of the Chartist agitation, is, I believe, too deep for any human remedy, unless the nation were possessed with a spirit of wisdom and of goodness, such as I fear will never be granted to us after we have for so many centuries neglected the means which we have had. So far from finding it hard to believe that repentance can be ever too late, my only wonder is that it should ever be otherwise than too late, so instantaneous and so lasting are the consequences of any evil once committed. I find it very hard to hinder my sense of this from quite oppressing me and making me forget the many blessings of my own domestic condition. But perhaps it comes from my fondness for History, that political things have as great a reality to my mind, as things of private life, and the life of a nation becomes distinct as that of an individual. We are going to have a confirmation here, by the Bishop of Worcester, next month in the chapel, as I wished to have one every two years at least, for otherwise many of the boys go abroad and are never confirmed at all. And I think that we shall

have a third painted window up in the chapel, before the holidays..

CXCIX. TO ARCHDEACON HARE.

Fox How, June 21, 1839.

I am sure that you will have sympathized with me in the delight which I have felt in reading Niebuhr's Letters; that letter in particular to a Young Student in Philology, appears to me invaluable. I think that you and Thirlwall have much to answer for in not having yet completed your translation of the third volume of the History. It is only when that volume shall have become generally known, that English readers will learn to appreciate Niebuhr's excellence as a narrator. At present I am continually provoked by hearing people say, that he indeed prepared excellent materials for an historian, but that he did not himself write History.

I am obliged to superintend a new edition of my Thucydides, which interferes rather with the progress of my History. And the first volume of Thucydides is so full of errors, both of omission and commission, that to revise it is a work of no little labour.

You would rejoice in the good that Lee is doing at Birmingham; I do not think that there is, in all England, a man more exactly in his place than he is now.

CC. TO AN OLD PUPIL.

(E.)

Fox How, June 22, 1839.

I was much obliged to you for your last kind letter, and I would have answered it immediately had it not arrived just at our most busy time, at the close of the summer half-year. I do not wonder at your interest about the friend whom you speak of, and should be very glad to be of any assistance to you in the matter. Priestley's statements, as you