the holidays. And all this pressure arose out of applications made previously to our great success at Oxford in the summer, which was otherwise likely to set us up a little. Yet it is very certain to me that we have little distinguished talent in the School, and not much of the spirit of reading. What gives me pleasure is, to observe a steady and a kindly feeling in the school, in general, towards the Masters and towards each other. This I say to-day, knowing, however, so well the unstable nature of this boy sea, that I am well aware how soon any "dux turbidus" may set our poor Adria all in a commotion.

Meanwhile, as long as we go on fairly, and my health stands, I am well convinced that for the present, and so long as my boys are in the school, I would rather be here than anywhere else.. Quod est in votis: if, after a life of so much happiness, I ought to form a single wish for the future, would be to have hereafter a Canonry of Christ Church, with one of the new Professorships of Scriptural Interpretation or Ecclesiastical History. But Oxford, both for its good and its beauty, which I love so tenderly, and for the evil now tainting it, which I would fain resist in its very birthplace, is the place where I would fain pass my latest years of unimpaired faculties.

It distresses me to think of your reading such a book as Kuinoel. That most absurd trash,-absurd no less than profane,-which prevailed for a time among the German theologians, I have happily very little acquaintance with, except from quotations; but I have always thought that it was utterly bad. Niebuhr's spirit of historical and literary criticism was as much needed by German theologians as by English ones, and Strauss to this day is wholly without it. But the best German divines, Lücke, Tholuck, Nitzch, Olshausen, &c., write only in German, which I fancy you do not read; neither, in fact, do I read much of them, because I have not time; but they are good men, devout and sensible, as well as learned, and what I have read of them is really valuable.

I should have liked any detailed criticism of yours upon vol. ii. of History of Rome. I have scarcely yet been able to get any judgments upon the two first volumes which will help me for those to come. This second volume will be, I hope, the least interesting of all; for it has no legends, and no contemporary history. I tried hard to make it lively, but that very trying is too like the heavy Baron, who leaped over the chairs in his room, pour apprendre d'être vif. What I can honestly recommend to you in the book is its sincerity; I think that it confesses its own many imperfections, without attempting to ride grand over its subject. In the war of Pyrrhus I was oppressed all the time by my sense of Niebuhr's infinite superiority; for that chapter in his third volume is one of the most masterly pieces of history that I know, so rich and vigorous, as well as so intelligent. I think that I breathe freer in the first Punic War, where Niebuhr's work is scarcely more than fragmentary. I hope, though, to breathe freer still in the second Punic War; but there floats before me an image of power and beauty in History, which I cannot in any way realize, and which often tempts me to throw all that I have written clean into the fire.

*

CCXLV.

TO W. SETON KARR, ESQ. (Then at Haileybury College.)

Rugby, October 5, 1840.

I thank you much for your letter, which I was very glad to receive, and which gave me as favourable an account of your new abode as I had expected. It must be always an anomalous sort of place, and I suppose that the best thing to do is to turn the necessity of passing a certain time there to as good account as possible, by working well at the Eastern languages. I should be much obliged to you if you would tell me what Sanskrit Grammar and Dictionary you use; and whether there is any thing like a Sanskrit Delectus, or an easy construing book for be

ginners. I am not so old as Cato was when he learned Greek, and I confess that I should like, if possible, to learn a little of the sister of Greek, which has almost a domestic claim upon us as the oldest of our great IndoGermanic family.

All things are going on here much as usual. The football matches are in great vigour. The sixth match is over, being settled in one day by the defeat of the Sixth. The School-house match is pending, and the School-house have kicked one goal. Pigou, Bradley, and Hodson, leave us, I am afraid, in the course of a week. I am writing this at Fourth Lesson, as usual, and the lower row are giving up their books, so that I must conclude.

CCXLVI. TO ARCHDEACON HARE.

Rugby, October 28, 1840.

I have read your Sermons with very great pleasure, and ought long since to have thanked you for them. The Notes, I hope, will not long be delayed. It is a great delight to me to read a book with which I can agree so generally and so heartily. Universally one never can expect to agree with any one, but one's highest reasonable hope is fulfilled, when one sympathizes cordially with the greatest part of a book, and feels sure, where there is a difference, that the writer would hear our opinions patiently, and if he did not agree with them, would at least not quarrel with us for holding them.

It was no small delight to me to tread the ground of the Forum once more, and to see the wonders of Campania, and to penetrate into the land of the Samnites and Sabines. I missed Bunsen sadly, but his friend Abeken was a most worthy substitute, and was hardly less kind than Bunsen himself would have been.

. . . . . . I signed the petition, because, agreeing with its prayer, I did not wish to avoid bearing my share of its odium; but I am not earnest about it myself, being far more anxious

about the government and discipline of the Church, than for any alterations in the Liturgy or Subscriptions; although these too, I think, should not be left undone. But I would do any thing in the world to destroy that disastrous fiction by which the minister has been made “ personam Ecclesiæ gerere," and which the Oxford doctrines are not only upholding, but aggravating. Even Maurice seems to me to be infected in some measure with the same error in what he says respecting the right of the Church,― meaning the clergy, to educate the people. A female reign is an unfavourable time, I know, for pressing strongly the doctrine of the Crown's Supremacy. Yet that doctrine has been vouchsafed to our Church by so rare and mere a blessing of God, and contains in itself so entirely the true idea of the Christian perfect Church,-the Kingdom of God, and is so mighty to the overthrowing of that which I regard as the essence of all that is evil in Popery,-the doctrine of the Priesthood,-that I do wish, even now, that people's eyes might be opened to see the peculiar blessings of our Church Constitution, and to work it out to its full development.

* CCXLVII.

TO REV. H. BALSTON.

Rugby, September 9, 1840.

I cannot let a day pass without thanking you for your very kind letter. Do not think of answering this letter till you feel quite able to do it without painful effort. It will be a pleasure to me to write to you when I can; and I should be very glad indeed if I could help to relieve what I fear must be the loneliness of Guernsey. But I dare say that other people have not always my shrinking from a residence in a small island, surrounded by a wide sea, it always seems to me like a prison in a howling wilderness..

Since our return I have done little or nothing besides the school work and my letters. I do not intend to do

much as yet upon the History, but I am getting on a little with Thucydides, a work, however, in which I take now but little interest.

My wife will add a few lines to go in the same cover with this. We always think of you with affection, and with no small gratitude for your constant kindness to our children.

CCXLVIII. TO THE SAME.

Rugby, October 29, 1840.

I cannot bear that a second letter should go to Guernsey, without conveying under my own hand the expression of my warmest thanks to Miss H- for her most kind and delightful letters. . . . . And now, my dear Balston, I have not much else to say, or rather, I have much more than I can or ought to say. I look round in the School, and feel how utterly beyond human power is the turning any single human heart to God. Some heed, and some heed not, with the same outward means, as it appears, offered to both, and the door opened to one no less wide than to another. But "the kingdom of God suffereth violence;" and to infuse the violence, which will enter at all cost, and will not be denied, belongs to Him alone whose counsels we cannot follow. You will pray for us all, that we may glorify God's name in this place, in teaching and in learning, in guiding and in following.

I have many delightful proofs that those, who have been here, have found at any rate no such evil as to prevent their serving God in after life; and some, I trust, have derived good from Rugby. But the evil is great and abounding, I well know; and it is very fearful to think that it may to some be irreparable ruin. I will write again when I can. May God bless you ever, and support you, as He did my dear sister, through all that He may see fit to lay on you. Be sure that there is a blessing and a safety in having scarcely any other dealings than