sincere thanks for the last letter which I have had the honor of receiving from you. It is a matter of sincere regret to me, that any part of my conduct should fail to meet your lordship's approbation. If I feel it the less on the present subject than on any other, it is because I have been long compelled to differ from many of my friends whom I esteem most highly; and I fear, considering the vehemence of party feeling at present, to incur their disapprobation also. In such cases, one is obliged to bear the pain without repining, - when a man is thoroughly convinced, as I am, that the opinions which he holds, and the manner in which he upholds them, are in the highest degree agreeable to truth, and in conformity with the highest principles of Christian duty.

CXXXIV.

TO HIS SISTER MRS. BUCKLAND. (After a visit to the Isle of Wight.)

Fox How, July 28, 1836.

I certainly was agreeably surprised rather than disappointed by all the scenery. I admired the interior of the island, which people affect to sneer at, but which I think is very superior to most of the scenery of common countries. As for the Sandrock Hotel, it was most beautiful, and Bonchurch is the most beautiful thing I ever saw on the sea-coast on this side of Genoa. Slatwoods was deeply interesting; I thought of what Fox How might be to my children forty years hence, and of the growth of the trees in that interval; but Fox How cannot be to them what Slatwoods is to me, the only home of my childhood, - while with them Laleham and Rugby will divide their affections. I had also a great interest in going over the College at Winchester, but I certainly did not desire to change houses with Moberly; no, nor situation, although I envy him the downs and the clear streams, and the southern instead of the midland country, and the associations of Alfred's capital with the tombs of Kings and Prelates, as compared with Rugby and its thirteen horse and cattle fairs. But when I look at the last number of

the Rugby Magazine, or at Vaughan or Simpkinson at Thornley How, I envy neither him nor any man, thinking that there is a good in Rugby which no place can surpass in its quality, be the quantity of it much or little.

CXXXV. TO REV. DR. HAWKINS.

Fox How, Ambleside, July 31, 1836.

It is nearly a month since you left Rugby, and yet I have not written to you nor given you any account of the result of the Trustees' meeting. The result, however, was nothing. Lord Howe brought forward some motion, and they divided on it, four and four; but as there is no casting vote, an equal division causes the failure of any proposal, and accordingly I should have known nothing about it, had it not been for private information. In all that passed publicly, they were all as civil as usual, and did all that I wanted about the school. So that the meeting went off peaceably, and the exhibitions also went to those whom I could most have wished to have them.

[After describing his journeys and plans in the holidays.] It gave me the greatest pleasure to hear you say, when you left Rugby, that you hoped to repeat your visit, and bring Mrs. Hawkins with you. It is indeed a long time since I have seen you in so much quiet, and life is not long enough to afford such long interruptions of intercourse. And I have also had great pleasure in thinking that the result of your visit confirmed what I had hoped, and has shown that, if we differ on some points, we agree in many more, and that the amount of difference was not so great as both, perhaps, during a long absence had been led to fancy. . I was amused to see

the names of Pusey and some other strong High Churchmen attached to a petition against one of the Bills drawn on the Church Commissioners' Report. It will be difficult to legislate where the most opposite extremes of parties seem united against the Government. There are few men with whom I differ more than the Bishop of Exeter; but I cordially approve of his Amendment on the Marriage Act so far as it goes; only I wish that he had added to the words "in the presence of God," the true sign and mark of a Christian act, "and in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." I do not believe that any Unitarian would have objected to it, nor any one else except those who seem to me to be utterly puzzled with the notions of a "civil act," and a "religious act."

CXXXVI.

TO SIR J. FRANKLIN, K. C. B.

(Then appointed Governor of Van Diemen's Land.)

Fox How, July 20, 1836.

I sometimes think that if the Government would make me a Bishop, or principal of a college or school,-or both together, in such a place as Van Diemen's Land, and during your government, I could be tempted to emigrate with all my family for good and all. There can be, I think, no more useful or more sacred task, than assisting in forming the moral and intellectual character of a new society; it is the surest and best kind of missionary labor. But our colonial society has been in general so Jacobinical in the truest sense of the word; every man has lived so much to and for himself, and the bonds of law and religion have been so little acknowledged as the great sanctions and securities of society

that one shrinks from bringing up one's children where they must in all human probability become lowered, not in rank or fortune, but in what is infinitely more important, in the intellectual and moral and religious standard by which their lives would be guided.

Feeling this, and holding our West Indian colonies to be one of the worst stains in the moral history of mankind, a convict colony seems to me to be even more shocking and more monstrous in its very conception. I do not know to what extent Van Diemen's Land is so; but I am sure that no such evil can be done to mankind as by thus sowing with rotten seed, and raising up a nation morally tainted in its very origin. Compared with this, the bloodiest exterminations ever effected by conquest were useful and good actions. If they will colonize with convicts, I am satisfied that the stain should last, not only for one whole life, but for more than one generation; that no convict or convict's child should ever be a free citizen; and that, even in the third generation, the offspring should be excluded from all offices of honor or authority in the colony. This would be complained of as unjust or invidious, but I am sure that distinctions of moral breed are as natural and as just as those of skin or of arbitrary caste are wrong and mischievous; it is a law of God's Providence which we cannot alter, that the sins of the father are really visited upon the child in the corruption of his breed, and in the rendering impossible many of the feelings which are the greatest security to a child against evil.

Forgive me for all this; but it really is a happiness to me to think of you in Van Diemen's Land, where you will be, I know, not in name nor in form, but in deed and in spirit, the best and chief missionary.

CXXXVII. TO THE REV. JAMES HEARN.

Rugby, September 14, 1836.

I know now not when I have been more delighted by any letter, than by that which I lately received from you. It contains a picture of your present state which is truly a cause for thankfulness, and, speaking after the manner of men, it is an intense gratification to my sense of justice, as well as to my personal regard for you, to see a life of hard and insufficiently paid labor well performed, now, before its decline, rewarded with comparative rest and with comfort. I rejoiced in the picture which you gave of your house and fields and neighborhood; there was a freshness and a quietness about it which always goes very much to my heart, and which at times, if I indulged the feeling, could half make me discontented with the perpetual turmoil of my own life. For Westmoreland itself has not to me the perfect peacefulness of the idea of a country parsonage; the house is too new, the trees too young and small, the neighborhood too numerous, and our stay is too short and too busily engaged, to allow of anything like entire repose at it. It is a most delightful tonic to brace me for the coming half-year; but it does not admit of a full abandonment to its enjoyments, and it is well that it does not. I sometimes look at the mountains which bound our valley, and think how content I could be never to wander beyond them any more, and to take rest in a place which I love so dearly. But whilst my health is so entire, and I feel my spirits still so youthful, I feel ashamed of the wish, and I trust that I can sincerely rejoice in being engaged in so active a life, and in having such constant intercourse with others. Still, I can heartily and lawfully rejoice that you are permitted to rest whilst your age and spirits are also yet unbroken, and that the hurry of your journey is somewhat abating, and allows you more steadily to contemplate its close.

Our own two boys are gone to Winchester, and have taken a very good place in the school, and seem very comfortable there; I am sure you will give them your prayers, that they may be defended amidst the manifold temptations of ⚫

their change of life. I feel as if I could draw the remaining children yet closer around me, and as if I could not enougli prize the short period which passes before they go out into life, never again to feel their father's house their abiding home. I turn from public affairs almost in despair, as I think that it will be a long time before what I most long for will be accomplished. Yet I still wish entirely well to the Government, and regard with unabated horror the Conservatives both in Church and State. They are, however, I believe, growing in influence, and so they will do, until there comes a check to our present commercial prosperity, for vulgar minds never can understand the duty of reform till it is impressed on them by the argumentum ad ventrem; and the mass of mankind, whether in good coats or in bad, will always be vulgar-minded.

CXXXVIII. TO MR. JUSTICE COLERIDGE.
(Then at Fox How with his family.)

Rugby, September 23, 1836.

If you have the same soft air that is now breathing around us, and the same bright sun playing on the trees, which are full charged with the freshness of last night's rain, you must, I think, be in a condition to judge well of the beauty of Fox How. It is a real delight to think of you as at last arrived there, and to feel that the place which we so love is enjoyed by such dear friends, who can enjoy it fully. I congratulate you on your deliverance from Lancaster Castle, and by what you said in your last letter, you are satisfied, I imagine with the propriety of the verdict. Now you can not only see the mountains afar off, but feel them in eyes, lungs, and mind; and a mighty influence I think it is. I often used to think of the solemn comparison in the Psalm, "the hills stand about Jerusalem; even so standeth the Lord round about his people." The girdling in of the mountains round the valley of our home is as apt an image as any earthly thing can be of the encircling of the everlasting arms, keeping off evil, and showering all good.

But my great delight in thinking of you at Fox How is mixed with no repining that cannot be there myself. We have had our holiday, and it was a long and most agreeable one; and Nemesis might well be angry, if I was not now ready and glad to be at work again. Besides, I think that the school is again in a very hopeful state; the set, which