statements which it sanctions: thus only can we tell whether it be s revelation from God, or from the Devil. If his father tells a child something which seems to him monstrous, faith requires him to submit his own juigment, because he knows his father's person, and is sure, therefore, that his father tells it him. But we cannot thus know God, and can only recognise His voice by the words spoken being in agreement with our idea of His moral nature. Enough, however, of this. I should hope that your book would do good in Oxford: but whether anything can do good there or not is to me sometimes doubtful.

CCLL TO MR. JUSTICE COLERIDGE.

Rugby, September 21, 1840. This sheet is not so large as yours, but it is my largest size next to foolscap; and I readily and thankfully acknowledge your claim upen me for as long and full a letter as I can write. I have more time than enough just now, for I have been confined to my room since Thursday with a slight attack of fever, which, though it would be nothing. I suppose, to any one else, yet always has such an effect upon my constitution as to unfit me for all exertion; and I lay either in bed or on the sofa in my room for three days, a most inutile lignum. Nor am I yet allowed to go down stairs, but I am on the mend, and my pulse has returned nearly to its natural tardiness, which in me is its state of health. So I can now thank you very heartily for your letter, and that delightful picture which it gave me of your home repose. No man feels more keenly than I do how much better it is ta;alafil to ἄγρον than κτήσασθαι, if my father's place in the Isle of Wight had never passed out of his executors' hands, I doubt whether I ever could have built Fox How, although in all other respects there is no comparison to my mind between the Isle of Wight and Westmoreland. Therefore I ** macarize” you the more, for having both an inherited home, and in a county and part of the county per se delightful. I never saw Ottery but once, and that in the winter; but the valley and the stream, and the old church, and your house, are still tolerably distinet in my memory; and I do trust that one day they will be freshened by a second actual view of them. Cornish and his wife, I hear, are actually in Yorkshire: if you can tell where a letter would find them, I would ask you to let me know by one line, for I

want to catch them on their return, and to secure some portion of their time by a previous promise before George's home sickness comes on him like a lion, and drives him off to Cornwall, uno impetu, complaining that even railways are too slow.. . . The School is flourishing surprisingly, and I cannot keep our numbers within their proper limit; but yet the limit is so far useful, that it keeps us within bounds, and allows us to draw back again as soon as we can. We are now about 340, and I have admitted 63 boys since 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.

66

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, it 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 his torical 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, Nitzsch, 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;

LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD.

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 judg ments upon the two first volumes which will help me for those to come. The 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.

Rugby, October 5, 1840.

your

new

I thank you much for your letter, which I was very glad to receive, and which gave me as favourable an account of 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 anything like a Sanskrit Delectus, or an easy construing book for beginners. 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 foot ball 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.

CCLIII. 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 anything 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 edu

I cannot let a day pass without thanking pic for your very kni De not think of answering this letter to you feel

quite able to do is without perfil edin. It will be a pleasure me to write to pro when I can: and I should be very glad indeed f I could help to relieve what I fear must be the loneliness of Guersser. En I dare say that ther people have not always my shrinking from a resulence in a soul island sumended by a wide sea; it always seems to me like a prison in a bowling willemess... Stone our return I have free hole or nothing besides the school I do not intend to do math as yet upon the History, but I am getting on a little with Thoryddes, 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.

COLT. TO THE SAME.

Rugby, October 29, 1840.

I cannot bear that a second letter should go to Guernsey, without onveying under my own hand the expression of my warmest thanks to Miss Hawtrey for her most kind 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