Lectures with the History. The influence of the Roman Empire upon Modern Europe would naturally often be touched upon; but the more minute inquiry as to the particular effects of the Roman law on ours, would be beyond my compass; and the transition state from ancient to modern history is not to me inviting as a period, and it has besides been so often treated of.

is going up to Trinity College, Oxford, after the long vacation. We do not know him personally, but are interested about him for his friends' sake. If your son Henry could show him any countenance, I should be very much obliged to him, and you know the value of kindness shown to a freshman.

We unite in love and kind regards to you and yours. I could rave about the beauty of Fox How, but I will forbear. I work very hard at mowing the grass amongst the young trees, which gives me constant employment. Wordsworth is remarkably well. I direct to Ottery, hoping that you may be there at peace, escaped from the Old Bailey..

CCLVI. TO REV. J. TUCKER.

Fox How, September 22, 1841.

I must write a few lines to you before we leave Fox How, because my first arrival at Rugby is likely to be beset with business, and I fear that your time of sailing is drawing near. Most heartily do I thank you for your last letter, and you may be sure that I will not trouble you on the subject any farther. Nor do I feel it necessary, for although it may be that there is something which I could wish otherwise still, yet I feel now that it need not and will not disturb our intercourse, and therefore I can write to you with perfect content.

You are going again to your work, which I feel sure is and will be blessed both to others and yourself. I should be well pleased if one of my sons went out hereafter to

VOL. II.

T

labour in the same field, but what line they will take seems very hard to determine. They do not seem inclined to follow Medicine, and I have the deepest abhorrence of the Law, so that two professions seem set aside, and for trade, I have neither capital nor connexion. Meanwhile, I wish them to do well at the University, which will be an arming them in a manner for whatever may open to them. [After speaking of the Professorship.] We shall leave this place, I think, on Friday. This long stay has doubly endeared it to us all, and though I am thankful to be able to get back to Rugby, yet there will be a sad wrench in leaving Fox How. It is not the mere outward beauty, but the friendliness and agreeableness of the neighbourhood in which we mix, simply as inhabitants of the country, and not as at Rugby, in an official relation.

The School is summoned for the 9th of October, but many of the boys will return, I think, on Saturday, so that the work will begin probably on Monday, but as I have some of the Sixth Form down here, I have not the leisure for my History I could have desired. I trust that you will go on with your Journal, and that you will hereafter allow large portions of it to be printed. I am persuaded that it will do more towards enabling us to realize India to ourselves, than any thing which has yet appeared.

CCLVII. TO SIR T. S. PASLEY, BART.

Fox How, September 23, 1841.

The first Protestant Bishop of Jerusalem is to be consecrated at Lambeth next Wednesday. He is to be the legal protector of all Protestants of every denomination towards the Turkish government, and he is to ordain Prussian clergymen on their signing the Augsburg Confession and adopting the Prussian Liturgy, and Englishmen on their subscribing to our Articles and Liturgy. Thus the idea of my Church Reform pamphlet, which was

so ridiculed and so condemned, is now carried into practice by the Archbishop of Canterbury himself. For the Protestant Church of Jerusalem will comprehend persons using different Liturgies, and subscribing different Articles of Faith; and it will sanction these differences, and hold

both parties to be equally its members. Yet it was thought ridiculous in me to conceive that a national Church might include persons using a different ritual and subscribing different articles. Of course it is a grave question what degrees of difference are compatible with the bond of Church union; but the Archbishop of Canterbury has declared in the plainest language, that some differences are compatible with it, and this is the great principle which I contended for.

In your letter of the 2nd of August, you ask whether I think that a Christian ministry is of divine appointment. Now I cannot conceive any Church existing without public prayer, preaching, and communion, and some must minister in these offices. But that these " some " should be always the same persons, that they should form a distinct profession, and, following no other calling, should be maintained by the Church, I do not think to be of divine appointment, but I think it highly expedient that it should In the same way, government for the Church is of divine appointment, and is of absolute necessity: but that the governors should be for life, or possess such and such powers, or should be appointed in such or such a way, all this appears to me to be left entirely open. I shall be very anxious to hear what reports Malcolm gives of himself, when he gets a little used to his new life.

be so.

* CCLVIII.

TO REV. A. P. STANLEY.

Rugby, September 29, 1841.

I have not written to you since I accepted

the Professorship, though it has made me think of you very often. I should like very much to have your opinion

as to the best line to choose in my lectures; the best practicable, that is, for the best anλs is beyond my means to compass. I had thought of trying to do for England what Guizot began so well for France; to start with the year 1400, and make the first year's course comprise the 15th century. My most detailed historical researches happen to have related to that very century, and it gives you the middle ages still undecayed, yet with the prospect of daybreak near. I could not bear to plunge myself into the very depths of that noisome cavern, and to have to toil through centuries of dirt and darkness. But one century will show fully its nature and details, the ripened corruption of the Church, and in England the ripened evils of the feudal aristocracy, and those curious wars of the Roses, which I suppose were as purely personal and party wars without reference to higher principles, as ever existed. I think I shall write to Sir F. Palgrave, and put some questions to him which he can answer, I suppose, better than any one. Do you know whether there exists in rerum naturâ any thing like a Domesday Book for the 15th century? It would be very curious to trace, if one could, the changes of property produced by the wars of the Roses, and the growth of the English aristocracy upon the gradual extinction of that purely Normana.

I think of coming up in Michaelmas term to give my Inaugural Lecture. The interest which I shall feel in lecturing in Oxford, you can understand, I think, better than most men. As to the spirit in which I should lecture with respect to the peculiar feelings of the place, the best rule seems to me to lecture exactly as I should write for the world at large; to lecture, that is, neither hostilely nor cautiously, not seeking occasions of shocking men's favourite opinions, yet neither in any way humouring them, or declining to speak the truth, however opposed it may be to them. Oxford caution would in me be little

a This plan, as will be seen, he altered.

better than weakness or ratting, especially now that the Tories are in the ascendant.

CCLIX. TO W. EMPSON, ESQ.

Rugby, October 15, 1841.

As each successive year passes, I turn to Fox How with more homelike feelings, and our long stay there this summer has encouraged this greatly. It is one of the great recommendations of the Professorship to me, that it will be consistent with our living at Fox How, and will only call us away for a part of the year to Oxford, the place to which I still have the strongest local affection of any in the world, next to our valley of the Rotha.

The Spanish journey was a sad failure on the whole; yet I saw much that I wanted to see in France, and which will make it quite needless to travel south-west again; and the two or three hours of fine weather, which we had between St. Jean de Luz and Irun, gave me a view of the maritime Pyrenees, and of the union of mountain and sea about the mouth of the Bidassoa, which I shall not soon forget. The Landes also delighted me from their resemblance to the New Forest; the glades of heath, surrounded by wood, and the dark iron-coloured streams fringed with alders, were quite like the south of Hampshire, and delighted me greatly.

Our eldest son is gone up to Oxford this day, to commence his residence at Balliol. It is the first separation of our family, for, from our peculiar circumstances, all our nine children have hitherto lived at home together, with very short exceptions, but now it will be so no more.

I have read Stephen's article on Port Royal, with great admiration; it seems to be at once eloquent, wise, and good. Is it not strange that the Guelf and Ghibelin contest should be again reviving, as in fact it is, and the greatest questions of our days are those which touch the nature and powers of the Church? I have been reading