tlement, than by missionary work amongst the heathen. Every good man going to New Zealand, or to Van Diemen's Land, not for the sake of making money, is an invaluable element in those societies; and remember that they, after all, must be, by-and-by, the great missionaries to the heathen world, either for God or for the Devil.

But still, do not lightly think that any claims can be greater upon you than those of this Church and people of England. It is not surely to the purpose to say that there are ten thousand clergymen here, and very few in India. Do these ten

thousand clergymen all, or even the greater part of them, appreciate what they have to do? Is not the mass of evil here, greater a thousand times in its injurious effects on the world at large, than all the idolatry of India? and is it less. dangerous to the souls of those concerned in it? Look at the state of your own county;* and does not that cry out as loud as India, notwithstanding its bishop and its golden stalls? And remember - that the Apostles did indeed, or rather some of them did, spread the Gospel over many provinces of the Roman Empire;- but it was necessary that it should have a wide diffusion once; not that this diffusion was to go on universally and always, although the old Churches might be grievously wanting the aid of those who are plunging into heathen and barbarian countries to make nominal converts.

But beyond this no man can advise you; you may do good by God's blessing anywhere, you will, I doubt not, serve him everywhere, but what you feel to be your particular call, you must alone determine. But do not decide hastily, for it is an important question, and if you go and then regret it, time and opportunities will be lost. You know that F. Newman went out as a missionary to Persia, and returned, finding that he had judged his calling wrongly. I shall, of course, be at all times glad to advise you to the best of my power, either by letter or personally.

CCXXV. TO THE SAME.

Rugby, March 30, 1840.

I would not willingly have left your last letter so long unanswered, but my time has been even more than usually engaged. I am sure that if your bent seems to be to the work of a Missionary in India, I would not be the man to dissuade

* Durham.

you from it. It is a Christian and a most important calling, and though to my own mind, certainly, there are others even more important, yet I fully believe that it is God's will that, by our different impulses, all the several parts of His vineyard should be supplied with laborers. Only, if you do go to India, still remember that the great work to be done is to organize and purify Christian Churches of whites and halfcastes. This, I believe, Tucker would tell you, and all other men whose judgments can be relied on. These must be the nucleus to which individuals from the natives will continually join more and more, as these become more numerous and more respectable. Otherwise the caste system is an insuperable difficulty; you call on a man to leave all his old connections, and to become infamous, in their eyes, and yet have no living Church to offer him where "he shall receive fathers and mothers, and brethren and sisters, &c., a hundred-fold.” Individual preaching amongst the Hindoos, without having a Church to which to invite them, seems to me the wildest of follies. Remember how in every place, Paul made the evσeßeis the foundation of his Church, and then the idolatrous heathens gathered round these in more or less numbers.

Again, if you go out to India, you must be clear as to questions of Church government and the so-called Apostolical Succession, which there become directly practical questions. Are you to look upon Lutheran ordinations, and Baptists' or Independent baptisms, as valid or invalid? Are the members of non-episcopal Churches your brethren or not? In matters of doctrine, an opinion, however unimportant, is either true or false; and if false, he who holds it is in error, although the error may be so practically indifferent as to be of no account in our estimate of the men. But in matters of government, I hold that there is actually no right, and no wrong. Viewed in the large, as they are seen in India, and when abstracted from the questions of particular countries, I hold that one form of Church government is exactly as much according to Christ's will as another; nay, I consider such questions as so indifferent, that, if I thought the government of my neighbor's Church better than my own, I yet would not, unless the case were very strong, leave my Church for his, because habits, associations, and all those minor ties which ought to burst asunder before a great call, are yet of more force, I think, than a difference between Episcopacy and Presbytery, unless one be very good of its kind, and the

other very bad. However, whether you think with me or not, the question at any rate is one of importance to a man going as Missionary to India. Let me hear from you again when you can.

CCXXVI.

TO CHEVALIER BUNSEN.

(Then Prussian Minister at Berne.)

Rugby, February 25, 1840.

It rejoices me indeed to resume my communication with you, and it is a comfort to me to think that you are at least on our side of the Alps, and on a river which runs into our own side, in the very face of Father Thames. May God's blessing be with you and yours in your new home, and prosper all your works, public and private, and give you health and strength to execute them, and to see their fruits beginning to show themselves. I am going on in my accustomed way in this twelfth year of my life at Rugby, with all about me, thank God, in good health.

I have determined, after much consideration, to follow the common chronology, for convenience. To alter it now seems as hopeless as Hare's attempt to amend our English spelling; and besides I cannot satisfy myself that any sure system of chronology is attainable, so that it does not seem worth while to put all one's recollections into confusion for the sake of a result which after all is itself uncertain. I have written the naval part of the First Punic War with something of an Englishman's feeling, which I think will make you find that part interesting. I have tried also to make out a sort of Domesday Book of Italy after the Roman Conquest, to show as far as possible the various tenures by which the land was held.

I am seriously thinking of going southwards. 1 hesitate between two plans, Marseilles and Naples, or Trieste and Corfu. Corfu Corfu Corcyra-would be genuine Greece

* A passage has here been omitted relating to the question between the Judges and the House of Commons, on Breach of Privilege, in consequence of the statement of his opinion being mixed up with a statement of facts which he had intended eventually to reconsider. But it was a subject on which, at the time, he felt very strongly in favor of the House of Commons, in the belief that "the leading statesmen of all parties took one side, and the lawyers and the ultra Tories the other side," and that " Peel's conduct on this occasion does him more credit than any part of his political life."

in point of climate and scenery, and if one could get a sight of the country about Durazzo, it would greatly help the campaign of Dyrrhachium. Then, in going to Trieste, we should see Ulm, Augsburg, Munich, and Salzburg, and might take Regensburg and Nurnburg on our return. Naples in itself would be to me less interesting than Corfu, but if we could penetrate into the interior nothing would delight me more. Do you think that we could penetrate into the Abruzzi, — that is, my wife and I,— and can you give us letters to anybody in the Neapolitan dominions if we did go? Any advice of yours on this subject would be very acceptable. We went to Cambridge at the end of our winter holidays, where I saw Donaldson, the author of the New Cratylus, and almost the only Englishman who promises, I think, to be a really good philologer. How I wish that your Egyptian work were published, and that we had a near prospect of the Evangelica and the liturgical work.

Niebuhr's third volume is indeed delightful; but it grieved me to find those frequent expressions, in his later letters, of his declining regard for England. I grieve at it, but I do not wonder. Most gladly do I join in your proposal that we should write monthly. . Will you send me your proper address in German, for I do not like directions to you in French.

CCXXVII. TO W. W. HULL, ESQ.

Rugby, March 13, 1840.

I do not often venture to talk to you about public affairs, but surely you will agree with me in deprecating this war with China, which really seems to me so wicked as to be a national sin of the greatest possible magnitude, and it distresses me very deeply. Cannot anything be done by petition or otherwise to awaken men's minds to the dreadful guilt we are incurring? I really do not remember, in any history, of a war undertaken with such combined injustice and baseness. Ordinary wars of conquest are to me far less wicked, than to go to war in order to maintain smuggling, and that smuggling consisting in the introduction of a demoralizing drug, which the government of China wishes to keep out, and which we, for the lucre of gain, want to introduce by force; and in this quarrel are going to burn and slay in the pride of our sup posed superiority.

CCXXVIII. TO W. LEAPER NEWTON, ESQ.

Rugby, February 19, 1840.

It is with the most sincere regret that I feel myself unable to give an unqualified support to the resolution which you propose to bring forward at the next general meeting of the proprietors of the North Midland Railway Company.

Of course, if I held the Jewish law of the Sabbath to be binding upon us, the question would not be one of degree, but I should wish to stop all travelling on Sundays as in itself unlawful. But holding that the Christian Lord's Day is a very different thing from the Sabbath, and to be observed in a different manner, the question of Sunday travelling is, in my mind, quite one of degree; and whilst I entirely think that the trains which travel on that day should be very much fewer on every account, yet I could not consent to suspend all travelling on a great line of communication for twenty-four hours, especially as the creation of railways necessarily puts an end to other conveyances in the same direction; and if the trains do not travel, a poor man, who could not post, might find it impossible to get on at all. But I would cheerfully support you in voting that only a single train each way should travel on the Sunday, which would surely enable the clerks, porters, &c., at every station, to have the greatest part of every Sunday at their own disposal. Nay, I would gladly subscribe individually to a fund for obtaining additional help on the Sunday, so that the work might fall still lighter on each individual employed.

CCXXIX. TO THE SAME.

Rugby, February 22, 1840.

It would be absolutely wrong, I think, if I were not to answer your question to the best of my power; yet it is so very painful to seem to be arguing in any way against the observance of the Sunday, that I would far rather agree with you than differ from you. I believe that it is generally agreed amongst Christians that the Jewish Law, so far as it was Jewish and not moral, is at an end; and it is assuming the whole point at issue to assume that the Ten Commandments are all moral. If that were so, it seems to me quite certain that the Sabbath would have been kept on its own proper day; for, if the Commandments were still binding, I do not