every point. I have told you what struck me most, and I have tried to keep away all remembrance of what he was when I knew him better. I have confined myself to the impression Laleham left upon me."

The studies which most occupied his spare time at Laleham were philology and history, and he employed himself chiefly on a Lexicon of Thucydides, and also on an edition of that author with Latin notes, subsequently exchanged for English ones, a short History of Greece, never finished or published, and on articles on Roman History from the times of the Gracchi to that of Trajan, written for the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, between 1821 and 1827.

It was in 1825 that, through the recommendation of Archdeacon Hare, he first became acquainted with Niebuhr's History of Rome. In the study of this work, which was the first German book he ever read, and for the sake of reading which he had learned that language, a new intellectual world dawned upon him, not only in the subject to which it related, but in the disclosure to him of the depth and research of German literature, which from that moment he learned more and more to appreciate, and, as far as his own occupations would allow him, to emulate.

On his view of Roman History its effect was immediate: "It is a work (he writes on first perusing it) of such extraordinary ability and learning, that it opened wide before my eyes the extent of my own ignorance;" and he at once resolved to delay any independent work of his own till he had more completely

studied the new field of inquiry suggested to him, in addition to the doubts he had himself already expressed as to the authenticity of much of the early Roman history in one of his first articles in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana. In an article in the Quarterly Review of 1825, he was (to use Niebuhr's own words of thanks to him in the second edition of his first volume, Note 1053. i. p. 451. Eng. Transl.) "the scholar who introduced the first edition of this history to the English public;" and the feeling which had dictated this friendly notice of it grew with years. The reluctance which he had at first entertained to admit the whole of Niebuhr's conclusions, and which remained even to 1832, when in regard to his views of ancient history he was inclined to “ charge him with a tendency to excessive scepticism," (Pref. to 1st ed. of 2nd vol. of Thucyd. p. xiv.) settled by degrees into a determination "never to differ from him without a full consciousness of the probability that further inquiry might prove him to be right;" (Pref. to Hist. of Rome, vol. i. p. x.;) and his admiration for him rose at last into a sentiment of personal veneration, which made him, as he used to say, at once emulous and hopeless, rendering him jealous for Niebuhr's reputation, as if for his own, and anxious, amidst the pressure of his other occupations, to undertake, or at least superintend, the translation of the third volume when it was given up by Hare and Thirlwall, from a desire to have his name connected with the translation of that great work, which no one had studied more or admired more entirely." But yet more than by his mere reading, all these feelings towards Niebuhr, towards Germany, and towards Roman history, were strengthened by his visit to Rome in 1827, and

by the friendship which he there formed with Chevalier Bunsen, successor to Niebuhr as minister at the Papal court. He was at Rome only thirteen days, but the sight of the city and of the neighbourhood, to which he devoted himself to the almost entire exclusion of the works of art, gave him a living interest in Rome which he had before wanted, and which he never lost. The Chevalier Bunsen he saw no more till 1838; but the conversation which he had there enjoyed with him formed the ground of an unbroken intercourse by letters between them: by his encouragement he was principally induced in later years to resume the History of Rome, which he eventually dedicated to him; whilst from the resemblance in many points of their peculiar pursuits and general views, he used to turn with enthusiastic delight to seek for his sympathy from the isolation in which he often seemed to be placed in his own country.

But now, as afterwards, he found himself most attracted towards the Interpretation of Scripture and the more practical aspect of Theology; and he was only restrained from entering upon the study of them more directly, partly by diffidence in his own powers, partly by a sense that more time was needed for their investigation than he had at his command. His early intimacy with the leading men of the then Oriel school, remarkable as it was for exhibiting a union of religious earnestness with intellectual activity, and distinct from any existing party amongst the English clergy, contributed to foster the independence which characterized his theological and ecclesiastical views from the first time that he took any real interest in serious matters. And he used to look back to a visit to Dr. Whately, then residing on his cure in Suffolk, as

a marked era in the formation of his views, especially as opening to his mind, or impressing upon it more strongly, some of the opinions on which he afterwards laid so much stress with regard to the Christian Priesthood.

But although in the way of modification or confirmation his thoughts owed much to the influence of others, there was always, even at this less stirring period of his mind, an original spring within. The distinctness and force with which the words and acts recorded in the Gospel History came before him, seem to have impressed him early with a conviction that there was something in them very different from what was implied in the common mode of talking and acting on religious subjects. The recollections of his conversations which have been preserved from this period, abound with expressions of his strong sense of " the want of Christian principle in the literature of the day," and an anxious foreboding of the possible results which might thence ensue in the case of any change in existing notions and circumstances. "I fear," he said, "the approach of a greater struggle between good and evil than the world has yet seen, in which there may well happen the greatest trial to the faith of good men that can be imagined, if the greatest talent and ability are decidedly on the side of their adversaries, and they will have nothing but faith and holiness to oppose to it." "Something of this kind," he said, "may have been the meaning or part of the meaning of the words, that by signs and wonders they should deceive even the elect.' What I should be afraid of would be, that good men, taking

alarm at the prevailing spirit, would fear to yield even points they could not maintain, instead of wisely giving them up and holding on where they could." Hence one object of his early attempts at his Roman History was the hope, as he said, that its tone might be such "that the strictest of what is called the Evangelical party would not object to putting it into the hands of their children." Hence again, he earnestly desired to see some leading periodical taking a decidedly religious tone, unconnected with any party feeling :

"It would be a most happy event," he writes in 1822, "if a work which has so great a sale, and contains so much curious information, and has so much the tone of men of the world, [as the Quarterly Review,] could be disciplined to a uniformly Christian spirit, and appear to uphold good principles for their own sake, and not merely as tending to the maintenance of things as they are. It would be delightful to see a work sincerely Christian, which should be neither High Church, nor what is called Evangelical."

Out of this general sense of the extreme contrast between the high standard of the Christian religion and the evils of the existing state of Christendom, especially in his own age and country, arose one by one those views which, when afterwards formed into a collected whole, became the animating principle of his public life, but which it is not necessary to anticipate here, except by indicating how rapidly they were in the process of formation in his own mind.

It was now that his political views began to free themselves alike from the mere childish Jacobinism of his boyhood, and from the hardly less stable Toryism which he had imbibed from the in