have been for the last eight years, I do not fear the labour, an really enjoy the prospect of it. I am so glad that we are likely t meet soon in Oxford.

XXV. TO REV. JOHN TUCKER.

Laleham, March 2.

a

With regard to reforms at Rugby, give me credit, I must beg you, for a most sincere desire to make it a place of Christian educa tion. At the same time my object will be, if possible, to form Christian men, for Christian boys I can scarcely hope to make; mean that, from the natural imperfect state of boyhood, they ar not susceptible of Christian principles in their full developmen upon their practice, and I suspect that a low standard of moral in many respects must be tolerated amongst them, as it was o a larger scale in what I consider the boyhood of the human race But I believe that a great deal may be done, and I should be most unwilling to undertake the business, if I did not trus that much might be done. Our impressions of the exterior of every thing that wo saw during our visit to Dr. Wooll in January were very favourable; at the same time that I anticipate a great many difficulties in the management of affairs, before they can be brought into good train. But both M. and myself, I think, are well inclined to commence our work, and if my health and strength be spared me, I certainly feel that in no situation could I have the prospect of employment so congenial to my taste and qualifications that is, supposing always that I find that I can manage the change from older pupils to a school. Your account of yourself was mos delightful: my life for some years has been one of great happiness but I fear not of happiness so safe and permitted. I am hurried o too fast in the round of duties and of domestic enjoyments, and greatly feel the need, and shall do so even more at Rugby, unless take heed in time, of stopping to consider my ways, and to recognis my own infinite weakness and unworthiness. I have read the "Let ters on the Church," and reviewed them in the Edinburgh Reviev for September, 1826, if you care to know what I think of them. think that any discussion on church matters must do good, if it i likely to lead to any reform; for any change, such as is within an

See Sermons, vol. ii., p. 440. His later sermons and letters seem to indicat that subsequently this opinion would not have been expressed quite so strongly.

human calculation, would be an improvement. What might not - do, if he would set himself to work in the House of Lords, not to patch up this hole or that, but to recast the whole corrupt system, which in many points stands just as it did in the worst times of popery, only reading "King" or "Aristocracy," in the place of "Pope."

XXVI. TO REV. F. C. BLACKSTONE.

Laleham, March 14, 1828.

We are resigning private pupils, I imagine, with very different feelings; you looking forward to a life of less distraction, and I to one of far greater, insomuch that all here seems quietness itself in comparison with what I shall meet with at Rugby. There will be a great deal to do, I suspect, in every way, when I first enter on my situation; but still, if my health continues, I do not at all dread it, but on the contrary look forward to it with much pleasure. I have long since looked upon education as my business in life; and just before I stood for Rugby, I had offered myself as a candidate for the historical professorship at the London University; and had indulged in various dreams of attaching myself to that institution, and trying as far as possible to influence it. In Rugby there is a fairer field, because I start with greater advantages. You know that I never ran down public schools in the lump, but grieved that their exceeding capabilities were not turned to better account; and if I find myself unable in time to mend what I consider faulty in them, it will at any rate be a practical lesson to teach me to judge charitably of others who do not reform public institutions as much as is desirable. I suppose that you have not regarded all the public events of the last few months without some interest. My views of things certainly become daily more reforming; and what I above all other things wish to see is, a close union between Christian reformers and those who are often, as I think, falsely charged with being enemies of Christianity. It is a part of the perfection of the Gospel that it is attractive to all those who love truth and goodness, as soon as it is known in its true nature, whilst it tends to clear away those erroneous views and evil passions with which philanthropy and philosophy, so long as they stand aloof from it, are ever in some degree corrupted. My feeling towards men whom I believe to be sincere lovers of truth and the happiness of their fellow creatures,

while they seek these ends otherwise than through the medium o the Gospel, is rather that they are not far from the kingdom of God and might be brought into it altogether, than that they are ene mies whose views are directly opposed to our own. That they are not brought into it is, I think, to a considerable degree, chargeable upon the professors of Christianity; the High Church party seeming to think that the establishment in Church and State is all in all and that the Gospel principles must be accommodated to our exist ing institutions, instead of offering a pattern by which those institu tions should be purified; and the Evangelicals by their ignorance and narrow-mindedness, and their seeming wish to keep the world and the Church ever distinct, instead of labouring to destroy the one by increasing the influence of the other, and making the kingdoms of the world indeed the kingdoms of Christ.

XXVII. TO AUGUSTUS HARE, ESQ.

Laleham, March 7, 1828.

I trust that you have recovered your accident at Perugia, and that you are enabled to enjoy your stay at that glorious Rome. I think that I have never written to you since my return from it last spring, when I was so completely overpowered with admirstion and delight at the matchless beauty and solemnity of Rome and its neighbourhood. But I think my greatest delight after all was in the society of Bunsen, the Prussian minister at Rome... . . He reminded me continually of you more than of any other man whom I know, and chiefly by his entire and en thusiastic admiration of everything great and excellent and beautiful not stopping to see or care for minute faults; and though I canno rid myself of that critical propensity, yet I can heartily admire and almost envy those who are without it. . . . . . . I have derived great benefit from sources of information, that your brother has a different times recommended to me, and the perusal of some of hi articles in the "Guesses at Truth" has made me exceedingly de sirous of becoming better acquainted with him, as I am sure tha his conversation would be really profitable to me in the highes sense of the word, as well as delightful. And I have a double pleasure in saying this, because I did not do him justice formerly in my estimate of him, and am anxious to do myself justice now by saying that I have learnt to judge more truly. You wil

have heard of my changed prospects in consequence of my election
at Rugby. It will be a severe pang to me to leave Laleham ;
but otherwise I rejoice in my appointment, and hope to be use-
ful if life and health are spared me.
... I think of going

to Leipsic, Dresden, and Prague, to worship the Elbe and the
country of John Huss and Ziska. All here unite in kindest remem-
brances to you, and I wish you could convey to the very stones and
air of Rome the expression of my fond recollection for them.

XXVIII. TO REV. JOHN TUCKER.

Laleham, May 25, 1828.

(After speaking of Mr. Tucker's proposed intention of going as a missionary to India.) If you should go to India before we have an opportunity of meeting again, I would earnestly beg of you not to go away with the notion, which I sometimes fear that my oldest friends are getting of me, that I am become a hard man, given up to literary and scholastic pursuits, and full of worldly and political views of things. It has given me very great pain to think that some of those whom I most love, and with whom I would most fain be one in spirit, regard my views of things as jarring with their own, and are losing towards me that feeling of Christian brotherhood which I think they once entertained. I am not in the slightest degree speaking of any offence given or received, or any personal decay of regard, but I fancy they look upon me as not quite one with themselves, and as having my affections fixed upon lower objects. Assuredly I have no right to regret that I should be thought deficient in points in which I know I am deficient; but I would most earnestly protest against being thought wilfully and contentedly deficient in them, and not caring to be otherwise. And I cannot help fearing that my conversation with you last winter twelvemonth led you to something, at least, of a similar impression.

XXIX. TO J. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ.

Laleham, April 24, 1828.

It seems an age since I have seen you or written to you; and I hear that you are now again returned to London, and that your eldest boy, I am grieved to find, is not so well and strong as you

friends when there are more than enough of enemies in the world for every Christian to strive against. I met five Englishmen at the public table at our inn at Milan, who gave me great matter for cogitation. One was a clergyman, and just returned from Egypt; the rest were young men, i. e. between twenty-five and thirty, and apparently of no profession. I may safely say, that since I was an under-graduate, I never heard any conversation so profligate as that which they all indulged in, the clergyman particularly; indeed, it was not merely gross, but avowed principles of wickedness, such as I do not remember ever to have heard in Oxford. But what struck me most was, that with this sensuality there was united some intellectual activity, they were not ignorant, but seemed bent on gaining a great variety of solid information from their travels. Now this union of vice and intellectual power and knowledge seems to me rather a sign of the age; and if it goes on, it threatens to produce one of the most fearful forms of Antichrist which has yet appeared. I am sure that the great prevalence of travelling fosters this spirit, not that men learn mischief from the French or Italians, but because they are removed from the check of public opinion, and are, in fact, self-constituted outlaws, neither belonging to the society which they have left, nor taking a place in that of the countries where they are travelling. What I saw also of the Pope's religion in his own territories excited my attention a good deal. Monkery seems flourishing there in great force, and the abominations of their systematic falsehoods seem as gross as ever. In France, on the contrary, the Catholics seemed to me to be Christians, and daily becoming more and more so. In Italy they seem to me to have no more title to the name than if the statues of Venus and Juno occupied the place of those of the Virgin. It is just the old Heathenism, and, as I should think, with a worse system of deceit.

XVIII. TO REV. J. TUCKER.

Laleham, 1826.

......

It delighted me to hear speak decidedly of the great need of reform in the Church, and from what I have heard in other quarters, I am in hopes that these sentiments are gaining ground. But the difficulty will always be practically, who is to reform it? For the clergy have a horror of the House of Commons, and Parliament and the country will never trust the matter to the clergy.