CXVII. TO CHEVALIER BUNSEN.

Fox How, February 1, 1836.

Let me thank you again and again for your dedication of the Article on the Sabine cities, for it roused me to go to work in good earnest, and I can now tell you that, having begun with Æneas, I have fairly brought down the history to the institution of the Tribuneship. I believe I have never written without thinking of you, and wishing to be able to ask you questions; you must expect, therefore, presently to have a string of interrogatories, after I have first told you the plan and contents of what I have hitherto done. . . I need not tell you how entirely I have fed upon Niebuhr; in fact, I have done little more than put his first volume into a shape more fit for general, or at least for English readers, assuming his conclusions as proved, where he was obliged to give the proof in detail. I suppose that he must have shared so much of human infirmity as to have fallen sometimes into error; but I confess that I do not yet know a single point on which I have ventured to differ from him; and my respect for him so increases the more I study him, that I am likely to grow even superstitious in my veneration, and to be afraid of expressing my dissent even if I believe him to be wrong. Though I deeply feel my own want of knowledge, yet I know of no one in England who can help me; so little are we on a level with you in Germany in our attention to such points. What would I give to recover the History of Sisenna, or any contemporary account of the war of Marius and Sylla! Once more, is anything doing about deciphering the Etruscan or Oscan languages, and what authority is there for making the Oscan and Sabellian tribes distinct? whereas I cannot but think they all belong to one stock, distinct from the Latins on one hand, and from the Etruscans on the other.

I will now release you from the Roman History. I am also engaged upon the three Pastoral Epistles, as I believe I told you. Do not all the three Epistles appear to belong to a period in Paul's life later than that recorded in the Acts; and must they not have been written nearly at the same time? In the 1st Timothy iii. 15, do you approve of Griesbach's stopping of the passage when he joins the words στύλος καὶ ἐδραίωμα Ts aλnocías with the following verse? I cannot well make up my mind, whether to agree with it or no; but it is certain, that if the words are to be applied to the Church, they do not

"Take

describe what it is de facto, but what it ought to be. care that no error through thy fault creep into that Church which was designed by God to be nothing but a pillar and basis of truth." Then μvorηpiov Tŷs evσeßeías may fitly be translated, I suppose, the "Revelation of Christianity, the secret which Christianity has to impart to its own initiated." The μυστήριον τῆς εὐσεβείας is Christ, as the μυστήριον τῆς ἀνομίας is Antichrist. Here again I must stop, though I have much more to say. I look forward with great pleasure to your son's joining us in June, and seeing this delicious country with us in July. But five long months of work intervene between this present time and our summer holidays. May Christ's Spirit enable me to turn them to profit, if I am permitted to live through them.

CXVIII. TO J. C. PLATT, ESQ.

Fox How, February 5, 1836.

I was very much pleased with the pamphlet of Dr. Lieber about Education, and thought him the more worthy of having had so much intercourse with Niebuhr. I entirely agree with what Dr. Lieber says, and wish that people were more aware of the truth of it in England. We are going, however, to have a very important experiment begun here, in the new London University; of which, as you may have perhaps heard, I am likely, if the present Government stands, to become one of the members. There will then probably be brought to issue this great question, whether the people of England have any value whatever for Christianity without sectarianism; for, as it seems to me, most of those who are above sectarianism are quite as indifferent to Christianity; while almost all who profess to value Christianity seem, when they are brought to the test, to care only for their own sect. Now it is manifest to me that all our education must be Christian, and not be sectarian; I would ask no questions as to what denomination of Christians any student belonged; or, if I did, I should only do it for the express purpose of avoiding in my examination all those particular points, in which I might happen to differ from him. But I should as certainly

*Henry, the eldest son of the Chevalier Bunsen, was for two years an inmate of Dr. Arnold's house at Rugby, preparatory to his entering on the studies of Oxford, and taking orders in the Church of England.

assume him to be a Christian, and both in examining him in the Scriptures, as well as in the philosophy and history of other writers, I should proceed on the supposition that his views of life were Christian, and should think it quite right to inquire what was his knowledge of the evidences and nature of the Christian scheme. I see that a Jew has just been elected a governor of Christ's Hospital; the very name shows the monstrousness of this; but what shall we say of the wisdom of those who say that a Roman Catholic or an Unitarian is as bad as a Jew, and who thus drive other men to say that, as some pretended religious distinctions are no real moral distinctions, so all religious distinctions are unimportant; and Jew, Mahometan, Hindoo, or Benthamite, may all be educated together? No doubt they may be taught physical science together; but physical science is not education; and how they can be instructed in moral science together, when their views of life are so different, is a thing that I cannot understand. . . . I am satisfied that the real good must be done through something in the form of a Newspaper or Historical Magazine. You must begin with teaching people to understand, if you can, what they will feel an interest in and talk about; it is of no use to attempt to create an interest for indifferent things, natural history, or general literature, which every sensible man feels to be the play of life and not its business. I hold with Algernon Sidney, that there are but two things of vital importance, those which he calls Religion and Politics, but which I would rather call our duties and affections towards God, and our duties and feelings towards men; science and literature are but a poor make up for the want of these.

I have been at work on the Roman History with very great delight, and also with a part of the New Testament. I have begun the Roman History from the beginning, and I could not have any work which I should more enjoy; if I live, I hope to carry on the History till the sixth century, and end it with the foundation of the modern kingdoms out of the wreck of the Western Empire. Pray let me hear of you when you can, and believe me that I shall always feel a very lively interest in your proceedings.

CXIX. TO MR. JUSTICE COLERIDGE.

Rugby, March 2, 1836.

I erred in sending you my manuscript; not that I do not heartily thank you for your comments, which as to the good of the work itself were more useful than if you had more agreed with me; but I would not for the sake of an hypothetical publication have caused you to dwell on page after page of matter in which you could not sympathize, and which I fear grated harshly upon your notions and tastes. I did it in ignorance; for I really fancied, without any authority, I believe but still I fancied that you agreed with me as to the desirableness of opening the Universities, and would sympathize, therefore, in the general drift of what I had written. Otherwise I should not have thought it fair to trouble you with it.

But the whole thing makes me most earnest that we should soon meet, not to argue, but rather to feel the many points of true sympathy between us, and to get our notions of each other refreshed, so to speak, in all their totality. You get from me two or three letters a year; in these I cannot represent what is really my life's business and state of mind, for school affairs would not interest you, nor will the quiet scenes of mere family life bear description. I therefore write naturally of public matters, of questions of general interest; and I write upon them as I feel, that is, decidedly and deeply. But this produces a false impression upon your mind, as if these feelings occupied me predominantly, and you express a wish that I would concentrate my energies upon the school, my own business. Why you cannot surely think that Hawtrey or your brother Edward or any man in England does so more than I do? I should feel it the greatest possible reproach, if I were conscious of doing otherwise. But although a school, like a parish or any other occupation in which our business is to act morally upon our neighbors, affords in fact infinite employment, and no man can ever say that he has done all that he might do, - still, in the common sense of the term, I can truly say, that I live for the school; very pamphlet which I sent you was written almost entirely at Fox How, and my own employment here has been all of a kind to bear directly upon the school work; first Thucydides, and now the Roman History, and subjects more or less connected with the Scriptures, or else my Sermons. Undoubtedly,

с

that

I do not wish my mind to feel less or to think less upon public matters; ere it does so, its powers must be paralyzed; and I am sure that the more active my own mind is, and the more it works upon great moral and political points, the better for the school; not, of course, for the folly of proselytizing the boys, but because education is a dynamical, not a mechanical process, and the more powerful and vigorous the mind of the teacher, the more clearly and readily he can grasp things, the better fitted he is to cultivate the mind of another. And to this I find myself coming more and more: I care less and less for information, more and more for the pure exercise of the mind; for answering a question concisely and comprehensively, for showing a command of language, a delicacy of taste, and a comprehensiveness of thought and power of combination.

We had a most delightful winter at Fox How. . . . I went over to Keswick for one day, and called on Southey and saw him and his daughters Kate and Bertha. Southey is much altered from his heavy domestic trial, and perhaps from his constant occupations. He reads as he walks, which I told him I would not venture to do, though so much younger than he was; it is so constant a strain, that I do not wonder that his hair is gray. What a great man your uncle was, that is, intellectually! for something I suppose must have been wanting to hinder us from calling him a great man anλôs. But where has he left his equal?

CXX.

TO C. J. VAUGHAN, ESQ. (On his success at Cambridge.)

Rugby, March 7, 1836.

I gave myself the pleasure of writing to Mrs. Vaughan a few lines on Friday evening, which I thought you would prefer to my writing to yourself. But you know how heartily I should rejoice at your success, and I thank you very much for your kind letter to inform me of it.

I am truly glad indeed and thankful that you have done so well, and I thank you for the credit which you have conferred upon Rugby. I am very glad that you are coming to us in June, a time when I hope to enjoy your company far more than in the Babel at Easter. It will be a great pleasure to me to have some conversation with you again after the lapse of a year, a period which brings such changes in all our minds,