etymological rather than in the popular sense, that is, turned aside from its habitual objects of interest to others which refresh from their very variety. Thus my History is a great diversion from the cares about the school, and then the school work in its turn is a diversion from the thoughts about the History. Otherwise either would be rather overpowering, for the History, though very interesting, is a considerable engrosser of one's thoughts; there is so much difficulty in the composition of it, as well as in the investigation of the facts. I have just finished Cannæ, and do not expect to do much more these holidays.

We hope to be at Laleham on Saturday, and to stay there till Wednesday; thence we go to Oxford, and finally return to Rugby on Friday, February 5. There are other subjects which will require a good deal of attention, just coming upon me. I am appointed, with Dr. Peacock, Dean of Ely, to draw up a Charter for the proposed College in Van Diemen's Land, which will again force me upon the question of religious instruction without exclusion, one of the hardest of all problems. In all British colonies, it is manifest that the Scotch Church has exactly equal rights with the English,equal rights even legally, and I think, considering Ireland, that the Roman Church has equal rights morally. Yet to instruct independently of any Church, is utterly monstrous, and to teach for all three Churches together, is, I think, impossible. I can only conceive the plan of three distinct branches of one college, each sovereign in many respects, but in others forming a common government. Then my friend Hull is again stirring the question of reform in our own Church, as to some of the Rubrics and parts of the Liturgy; and though I would not myself move this question now, yet agreeing with Hull in principle, I do not like to decline bearing my share of the odium; thinking that what many men call “caution” in such matters is too often merely a selfish fear of getting one's self into trouble or ill-will. I am quite sure that I would not gratuitously court odium or controversy, but I must beware also of too much dreading it; and the love of ease, when a man is past five-and-forty, is likely to be a more growing temptation than the love of notoriety, or the pleasure of argument.

Your useful and happy life is always an object on which my thoughts rest with unmixed pleasure; a green spot morally as well as naturally, yet not the green of the stagnant pool, which

no life freshens. I love to see the freedom and manliness, and fairness of your mind, existing in true combination with holy and spiritual affections. Why will so many good men, in their theological and ecclesiastical notions, so completely reverse St. Paul's rule, showing themselves children in understanding, and men only in the vehemence of their pas

I have been working at my History pretty steadily, and have just finished Cannæ. Some of our military geographers have offered me assistance; Colonel Napier amongst others; but there are points on which full satisfaction appears to me impossible. I think that both Flaminius and Varro have been maligned, and that the family papers of the Scipios and the "Laudatio M. Marcelli a filio habita,” have falsified

the history grievously. Gottling imagines the number of thirty-five tribes to have been an idea of Flaminius, and that it was meant to be final; but he strangely ascribes the addition of the last two tribes to the censorship of Flaminius, whereas it preceded it nearly twenty years. The text of Polybius appears to me in a very unsatisfactory state, and the reading of the names of places in Italy worth next to nothing. I am sorry to say that my sense of his merit as an historian becomes less and less continually; he is not only "einseitig," but in his very own way he seems to me to have been greatly overvalued, as a military historian most especially; I should like to know what Niebuhr thought of him. Livy's carelessness is most provoking; he gives different accounts of the same events in different places, as he happened to take up different writers, and his incapability of conceiving any distinct idea of the operations of a campaign is truly wonderful. I think that the Latin Colonies and Hannibal's want of artillery and engineers saved Rome. Samnium would not rise effectually, whilst its strongest fortresses, Beneventum, Æsernia, &c., were in the hands of the enemy. If the French artillery had been no better than Hannibal's and they had had no other arm to depend on than their cavalry, I believe that the Spaniards by themselves would have beaten them, for every town would then have been impregnable, and the Guerillas would have starved the army out. Some of Hannibal's

faults remind me strongly of Nelson; his cruelty to the Ro mans is but too like Nelson's hatred of the Jacobins, which led to the disgraceful tragedy at Naples. The "meretricula Salapiensis," was his Lady Hamilton. The interest of the History I find to be very great, but I cannot at all satisfy myself; the story should be so lively, and yet so rich in knowledge, and I can make it neither as I wish.

The year seems opening upon us with more favorable prospects; there is a strong feeling of enthusiasm, I think, about our successes in Syria, and though I do not sympathize in the quarrel, and regret more than I can say the alienation of France, yet the efficiency of the navy is naturally gratifying to every Englishman, and the reduction of Acre so far is, I think, a very brilliant action. Trade seems also reviving, although I suspect that in many markets you have excluded us irrevocably. But these respites of which we have had so many, these lullings of the storm, in which the ship might be righted perhaps, and the point weathered, seem doomed to be forever wasted; the great evil remains uncured, nay, unprobed, and all fear to touch it. Truly, the gathering of the nations to battle, is more and more in the neighborhood of Jerusalem, not in the sense in which our fanatics look at the war in Syria, as likely to lead to the fulfilment of prophecy in their view of it, but because political questions more and more show that the Church question lies at the root of them Niebuhr's true doctrine, that 1517 must precede 1688, and so that for a better than 1688, there needs a better than even 1517. Some of the Oxford men now commonly revile Luther as a bold, bad man; how surely would they have reviled Paul; how zealously would they have joined in stoning Stephen; true children of those who slew the prophets, not the less so because they with idolatrous reverence build their sepulchres. But I must stop, for the sun is shining on the valley, now quite cleared of snow, and I must go round and take a farewell look at the trees and the river, and the mountains; ere “feror exul in altum," into the wide and troubled sea of life's business, from which this is so sweet a haven. But "Rise, let us be going," is a solemn call, which should forever reconcile us to break off our luxurious sleep. May God bless us both in all our ways outward and inward, through Jesus Christ.

*

CCLXV.

TO REV. A. P. STANLEY.

Rugby, March 8, 1841.

I was much struck by what you say of Constantinople being the point to which the hopes of Greeks are turning, rather than to Athens or Sparta. I can well believe it, but it makes the tirades of many Philo-Hellenians very ridiculous, and it should moderate our zeal in trying to revive classical antiquity. It curiously confirms what I said in the sermons on Prophecy, that "Christian Athens was divided by one deep and impassable chasm from the Heathen Athens of old." And we do not enough allow for the long duration of the Byzantine empire, - more than eleven hundred years,

a period how far longer than the whole of English History! But, however, I must turn from Greece to Italy, and now that you are in genuine Italy, (which you were not before, except in the short distance between Rimini and Ancona, for Cisalpine Gaul has no pretensions to the name,) I hope that you feel its beauty to be more akin to that of Greece. I have always felt in the Apennines that same charm that you speak of in the mountains of Greece; the "rosea rura Velini," between Rieti and Terni, are surrounded by forms of almost unearthly beauty. I have no deeper impression of any scene than of that, and when I was in that very rich and beautiful country between Como and Lugano, I kept asking of myself why I so infinitely preferred the Apennine to the Alpine valleys. Naples itself is the only very beautiful spot which a little disappointed me; but the clouds hung heavily and coldly over the Sorrento mountains, and Vesuvius gave forth no smoke, so that the peculiar character of the scene, both in its splendor and in its solemnity, was wanting. My wife was half wild with Mola di Gaeta, and indeed I know not what can surpass it. There, too, the remains of the villas, "jactis in altum molibus," spoke loudly of the Roman times; and from Mola to Capua, the delightfulness of everything was to me perfect. My own plans for the summer are very uncertain; we have an additional week, which of course tempts me, and I did think of going to Corfu, and of trying to get to Durazzo, where Cæsar's Lines attract me greatly, but I am half afraid both of the climate and quarantine, and want to consult you about it, if, as I hope, we shall see you before the end of the half-year. Spain again, and the neighborhood of Lerida, is, I fear, out of the question; so that, if I do go abroad, I should not be surprised if I again visited Italy.

I

I suppose that by this time your thoughts are again accommodating themselves to the position of English and of Oxford Life, after so many months of a sort of cosmopolitism. am afraid that war is becoming less and less an impossibility; and, if we get reconciled to the notion of it as a thing which may be, our passions, I am afraid, will soon make it a thing that will be. My own desire of going to Oxford was, as you know, long cherished and strong, but it is quenched now; I could not go to a place where I once lived so happily and so peaceably, and gained so much,- to feel either constant and active enmity to the prevailing party in it, or else, by use and personal humanities, to become first tolerant of such monstrous evil, and then perhaps learn to sympathize with it.

CCLXVI. *TO J. P. GELL, ESQ.

Rugby, March 3, 1841.

There is really something formidable in writing a letter to Van Diemen's Land. You must naturally delight in hearing from England, and I should wish to give you some evidence that you are not forgotten by your friends at Rugby; yet how to fill a sheet with facts I know not; for great events are happily as rare with us as they used to be, and the little events of our life here, the scene, and the actors, are all as well known to you as to ourselves; in this respect contrasting strangely with our entire ignorance of the scene and nature of your life in Van Diemen's Land, where every acre of ground would be to me full of a thousand novelties; perhaps the acres in the towns not the least so. Again, the gigantic scale of your travelling quite dwarfs our little summer excursions. were writing to a man buried in a country parsonage, I could expatiate on our delightful tour of last summer, when my wife, Mayor, and myself, went together to Rome, Naples, and the heart of the Abruzzi. But your journal of your voyage, and the consciousness that you are at our very antipodes, with declining summer instead of coming spring, at the beginning of your short half-year, while we are beginning our long one; this makes me unwilling to talk to you about a mere excursion to Italy.

If I

We have been reassembled here for nearly four months; locking up is at half-past six, callings over at three and five, first lesson at seven. I am writing in the library at Fourth