Rugby, May 20, 1835. I have just been setting my boys a passage out of your edition of Blackstone, to translate into Latin prose, and while they are doing it, I will begin a letter to you. I have had unmixed satisfaction in all I have heard said of you since your elevation. So entirely do I rejoice in it, both publicly and privately, that I could almost forgive Sir R. Peel's ministry their five months of office for the sake of that one good deed. I do hope I shall see you ere long, for I yearn sadly after my old friends. . I live alone, so far as men friends are concerned, and am obliged more and more to act and think by myself and for myself. It was therefore very delightful to me to get your little bit of counsel touching the delay of my book, and I am gladly complying with it. But I have read more about it, and for a longer period than perhaps you are aware of; and in history, after having reached a certain point of knowledge, the after progress increases in a very rapid ratio, because the particular facts group under their general principle, and gain a clearness and instructiveness from the comparison with other analogous facts, which in their solitary state they could not have.

Your Uncle said, many years ago, that, "it could not be wondered at if good men were slow to join Mr. Pitt's party, seeing that it dealt in such atrocious personal calumnies." I think I have had within the last three or four months ample reason to repeat his observation. Had you not been on the Bench, I should have consulted you as to the expediency of noticing some of them legally; and now, as far as you can with propriety, I should much like to hear what you would say. The attacks go on weekly, charging me with corrupting the boys' religious principles, and intending, if they can, to injure me in my trade. I am assured that many copies of the paper in which most of these libels appear, are sent gratuitously to persons in Ireland, who have been supposed likely to send their sons here; and the same tone of abuse was followed for some weeks in the John Bull. I think that this spirit of libel is peculiar to the Tories, from L'Estrange and Swift downwards: just ask yourself, if you have known any Tory not more engaged in public life than I am, and having given as little ground for attack by personalities on my part, who was abused by the Liberal papers as I have been by the Tories. I often think of the rancorous abuse which the same

party heaped upon Burnett, and how that Exposition of the Articles, which Bishops and Divinity Professors and Tutors now recommend, was censured by the Lower House of Convocation as latitudinarian. δέχομαι τὸν οἴωνον.

. I hope you saw Wordsworth when he was in London, and that you enjoy his new volume. I have been reading a good deal of Pindar and of Aristophanes lately,-Pindar after twenty years' interval, and how much more interesting he is to the man than to the boy. As for Homer, it is my weekly feast to get better and better acquainted with him. In English I read scarcely anything, and I know not when I shall be able to do it. We go on here very comfortably, and the school is in a very satisfactory state. I had the pleasure of seeing some of the best of my Rugby pupils here at Easter, and one of the best of my Laleham ones was here a little before. It is the great happiness of my profession to have these relations so dear and so enduring. I had intended to go to Oxford to-day, to have voted in favour of the Declaration, instead of the Subscription to the Articles, but I could not well manage it, and it was of little consequence, as we were sure to be beaten. It makes me half daft to think of Oxford and the London University, as bad as one another in their opposite ways, and perpetuating their badness. by remaining distinct, instead of mixing.

CVI. TO REV. DR. HAWKINS.

Rugby, May 27, 1835.

.. I sincerely congratulate you on being honoured with the abuse of my friend the Northampton Herald, in company with Whately, Hampden, and myself; and perhaps I feel some malicious satisfaction that you should be thus in a manner forced into the boat with us, while you perhaps are thinking us not very desirable companions. It was found, I believe, at the Council of Trent, that the younger clergy were far more averse to reform than the older; just as the Juniores Patrum at Rome, were the hottest supporters of the abuses of the aristocracy; and so the Convocation has shown itself far more violent and obstinate against improvement than the Heads of Houses. It is a great evil-a national evil, I think, of very great magnitude; for the Charter must be, and ought to be, granted to the London University, if you will persist in keeping out Dissenters; and then there will be two party places, instead of

one, to perpetuate narrow views, and disunion to our children's children. For it is vain to deny, that the Church of England clergy have politically been a party in the country, from Elizabeth's time downwards, and a party opposed to the cause, which in the main has been the cause of improvement. There have been at all times noble individual exceptions, and, for very considerable periods; in the reign of George the Second, and in the early part of George the Third's reign, for instance, the spirit of the body has been temperate and conciliatory; but in Charles the First and Second's reigns, and in the period following the revolution, they deserved so ill of their country, that the Dissenters have at no time deserved worse; and, therefore, it will not do for the Church party to identify themselves with the nation, which they are not, nor with the constitution, which they did their best to hinder from ever coming into existence. I grant that the Dissenters are, politically speaking, nearly as bad, and as narrow-minded; but then they have more excuse, in belonging generally to a lower class in society, and not having been taught Aristotle and Thucydides. June 1st. I was interrupted, for which you will not be sorry, and I will not return to the subject. I was much obliged to you for your letter, and pamphlet; but though I approve of the proposed change, yet of course it does not touch the great question.

CVII. TO A PERSON DISTRESSED BY SCEPTICAL DOUBTS.

Rugby, June 21, 1835.

I have been very far from forgetting you, or my promise to write down something on the subject of our conversation, though I have some fears of doing more harm than good, by not meeting your case satisfactorily. However, I shall venture, hoping that God may bless the attempt to your comfort and benefit.

The more I think of the matter the more I am satisfied that all speculations of the kind in question are to be repressed by the will, and if they haunt us, notwithstanding the efforts of our will, that then they are to be prayed against, and silently endured as a trial. I mean speculations turning upon things wholly beyond our reach, and where the utmost conceivable result cannot be truth, but additional perplexity. Such must be the question as to the origin and continued existence of moral evil; which is a question utterly

out of our reach, as we know and can know nothing of the system of the universe, and which can never bring us to truth, because if we adopt one hypothesis as certain, and come to a conclusion upon one theory, we shall be met by difficulties quite as insuperable on the other side, which would oblige us in fairness to go over the process again, and to reject our new conclusion, as we had done our old one; because in our total ignorance of the matter, there will always be difficulties in the way of any hypothesis which we cannot answer, and which will effectually preclude our ever arriving at a state of intellectual satisfaction, such as consists in having a clear view of a whole question from first to last, and seeing that the premises are true, the conclusion fairly drawn, and that all objections to either may be satisfactorily answered. This state, which alone I suppose deserves to be called knowledge, is one which, if we can ever attain it, is attainable only in matters merely human, and only within the range of our understanding and experience. It is manifest that the sole difficulty in the subject of your perplexity is merely the origin of moral evil, and it is manifest also that this difficulty equally affects things actually existing around us. Yet if the sight of wickedness in ourselves or others were to lead us to perplex ourselves as to its origin, instead of struggling against it and attempting to put an end to it, we know that we should be wrong, and that evil would thrive and multiply on such a system of conduct.

This would have been the language of a heathen Stoic or Academician, when an Epicurean beset him with the difficulty of accounting for evil without impugning the power or the goodness of the gods. And I think that this language was sound and practically convincing, quite enough so to show that the Epicurean objection sets one upon an error, because it leads to practical absurdity and wickedness. But I think that with us the authority of Christ puts things on a different footing. I know nothing about the origin of evil, but I believe that Christ did know; and as our common sense tells us, that we can strive against evil and sympathize in punishment here, although we cannot tell how there comes to be evil, so Christ tells us that we may continue these same feelings to the state beyond this life, although the origin of evil is still a secret to us. And I know Christ to have been so wise and so loving to men, that I am sure I may trust His word, and that what was entirely agreeable to His sense of justice and goodness, cannot, unless through my own defect, be otherwise than agreeable to mine.

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Further, when I find Him repelling all questions of curiosity, and reproving in particular such as had a tendency to lead men away from their great business,-the doing good to themselves and others, -I am sure that if I stood before Him, and said to Him, Lord, what can I do? for I cannot understand how God can allow any to be wicked, or why He should not destroy them, rather than let them exist to suffer;" that His mildest answer would be, "What is that to thee-follow thou me." But if He, who can read the heart, knew that there was in the doubt so expressed anything of an evil heart of unbelief-of unbelief that had grown out of carelessness and from my not having walked watchfully after Him, loving Him, and doing His will,-then I should expect that He would tell me, that this thought had come to me, because I neither knew Him nor His Father, but had neglected and been indifferent to both; and then I should be sure that He would give me no explanation or light at all, but would rather make the darkness thicker upon me, till I came before Him not with a speculative doubt, but with an earnest prayer for His mercy and His help, and with a desire to walk humbly before Him, and to do His will, and promote His kingdom. This, I believe, is the only way to deal with those disturbances of mind which cannot lead to truth, but only to perplexity. Many persons, I am inclined to think, endure some of these to their dying day, well aware of their nature, and not sanctioning them by their will, but unable to shake them off, and enduring them as a real thorn in the flesh, as they would endure the far lighter trials of sickness or outward affliction. But they should be kept, I think, to ourselves, and not talked of even to our nearest friends, when we once understand their true nature. Talking about them gives them a sort of reality which otherwise they would not have; just like talking about our dreams. We should act and speak, and try to feel as if they had no existence, and then in most cases they do cease to exist after a time; when they do not, they are harmless to our spiritual nature, although I fully believe that they are the most grievous affliction with which human nature is visited.

Of course, what I have here said relates only to such questions as cannot possibly be so answered as to produce even entire intellectual satisfaction, much less moral advantage. I hold that Atheism and pure Scepticism are both systems of absurdity; which involves the condemnation of hypotheses leading to either of them as conclusions. For Atheism separates truth from goodness, and Scep

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