used to sit in one corner of the drawing-room, not looking towards Fairfield lest I should be constantly tempted from my work, and there I worked on at the Roman History and the Twelve Tables, and Appius Claudius, and Cincinnatus, and all the rest of them.

My wife, thank God, has been wonderfully well and strong, and climbs the mountains with the rest of us. And little Fan, who was three years old in October, went over Loughrigg with us to Rydal the other day-though her little feet looked quite absurd upon the rough mountain side, and the fern-stalks annoyed her, as Gulliver was puzzled by the Brobdignag cornfield. .

We were, in the course of the summer, in the Isle of Man, and in Ireland. I admired Dublin and its bay, and the Wicklow Sugar Loaf, and the blue sea of Killiney Bay. But to my astonishment, the "Emerald Isle" was a very parched and dusty isle in comparison with Westmoreland, and the Three Rock Mountain, though beautiful with its granite rocks and heath, had none of the thousand springs of our Loughrigg. Of the people I saw little or nothing.

We expect to be in Oxford one day this week, before we settle at Rugby for our long half-year. I wonder whether I could find your tree in Bagley Wood, on which you once sat exalted. Do you ever see or hear of old Dyson, or of Ellison? or do you hear from Tucker? Coleridge, as you perhaps know, was a month at this house in the summer with all his family; then, on their way to town, they came to us at Rugby, and there met Professor Buckland; so that, after an interval of many years, I was again one of an old Corpus trio. It is eleven o'clock, and we are off at eight to-morrow, so good night.

CLII. TO THE REV. J. HEARN.

Yarrow Bridge, Chorley, Feb. 6, 1837.

I call all this Judaizing a direct idolatry; it is exalting the Church and the Sacraments into the place of Christ, as others have exalted His mother, and others in the same spirit exalted circumcision. There is something almost ludicrous, if the matter were not too serious, in the way in which speaks of Calvin, and the best and ablest of his followers, and some of the great living writers of Germany, whom he must know, as of men laboring under a judicial

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blindness. "This people who knoweth not the law," i. e. as interpreted by the tradition and doctors of the Church, “are accursed." It is vain to argue with such men, only when they ascribe a judicial blindness to Calvin and Zuingle, or to Tholuck, Nitzsch, and Bunsen, one cannot but be reminded of those who "with lies made the heart of the righteous sad, whom God had not made sad," or of those who denied St. Paul's apostleship and spirituality, because he was not one of the original twelve Apostles, and because he would not preach circumcision.

No man doubts that a strictly universal consent would be a very strong argument indeed; but then by the very fact of its being disputed, it ceases to be universal; and general consent is a very different thing from universal. It becomes then the consent of the majority; and we must examine the nature of the minority, and also the peculiar nature of the opinions or practices agreed in, before we can decide whether general consent be really an argument for or against the truth of an opinion. For it has been said, "Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you ;" and then it would be equally true of such a generation or generations, that it was, "Woe to that opinion in which all men agree.”

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Now I believe that the Apostles' Creed may be taken as a specimen of truths held by the general consent of Christians; for everything there (except the Descent into Hell, which was a later insertion) is in almost the very words of Scripture. It is just like St. Paul's short creed in 1 Corinthians, XV: I delivered unto you that which I received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and was buried," &c. But this Creed will no more suit 's turn than the Scriptures themselves will. It says not a word of priesthood or succession, it does not even say a word of either Sacrament. The points for which

needs the

consent of the Church, are points on which the principal ecclesiastical writers, from whom he gleans this consent, had all a manifest bias; partly from their own position as ministers, partly from the superstitious tendencies of their age. And after all how few are those writers! Who would think of making out the universal consent of the Christian world from the language of ten or a dozen bishops or clergy who happened to be writers? Who will bear witness to the opinions of the Bithynian Church, of whose practice Pliny has left so beautiful a picture? Or who would value for any

Church, or for any opinion, the testimony of such a man as Tertullian? But, after all, consent would go for nothing where it is so clearly against Scripture. All in Asia were turned away from Paul, even in his lifetime. [No wonder] then, if after his death they could not bear his doctrines, and undermined them while they were obliged outwardly to honor [them]. The operation of material agency to produce a spiritual effect [is not] more opposed to reason than it is directly denied by our Lord, on grounds which would call rationalistic, if I were to use them. I refer to what he says of the impossibility of meat defiling a man, or water purifying him; and the reason assigned to show that meat cannot morally defile is of course equally valid to show that it cannot morally strengthen or cleanse. I believe it might be shown that the efficacy of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper has been weakened directly by the superstitions about it; that in proportion as a value was attached to the elements, as they were called, so the real Christian Sacramentum, each man pledging himself to Christ and to his brethren, upon the symbols of his redemption and sanctification, — became less and less regarded; whilst superstitions made the Sacrament less frequent, and thus have inflicted a grievous injury on the spiritual state of every Church.

CLIII. TO W. W. HULL, ESQ.

Rugby, March 3, 1837.

About the grammars, I am inclined to think that the common Eton grammars, purged of their manifest faults, would answer better than anything else. I am more and more in favor of a Latin rather than an English grammar, and I think that the simpler and more dogmatical the rules are, the better. That is best in a boy's grammar which can be easiest remembered, and understood enough to be applied practically; the explanation of the principles of grammar belongs to a more advanced age.

By "manifest faults," I mean such as calling "hic, hæc, hoc," an article; or teaching boys to believe that there is such a word as "τυπον, or such an Aorist to λέγω as ἔλεγον, and other monstrosities. And I think such corrections might be made easily. But let us save "Verba dandi et reddendi," &c., and, if I dared, I would put in a word for "As in præsenti," perhaps even for "Propria quæ maribus." Is not this a laudable

specimen of Toryism? Or is it that we are Reformers in our neighbors' trade and Conservatives in our own?

CLIV. TO GEORGE PRYME, ESQ., M. P.

Rugby, March 8, 1837.

I thank you much for your letter: I had regarded your intended motion respecting the Universities with the deepest interest, and feel therefore extremely obliged to you for allowing me to express some of my views on the matter to you. As to the great question of all, the admission of Dissenters, it is so mixed up with the still greater question of the Church, that I hardly know how to separate them: and besides, I imagine that nothing on this point could be carried now. But there are three points at Oxford, which, though of very different importance, might all, I think, be noticed with advantage.

1st. The system of fines; I do not mean as regards the tenant, but as regards those members of the College Foundations who do not belong to the governing body. It is the practice I believe to divide the Corn Rents either equally, or in certain fixed proportions fixed by the Founder, among all the members of the Foundation ; - but the fines, which form always a large proportion of the gross income of the College, are divided exclusively by the governing body amongst themselves; where this governing body includes all the Fellows, as at Oriel, Corpus, and New College, then those who do not share the fines are only the Scholars and Probationer Fellows; but where it consists of what is called a seniority, seven, or whatever number it be, of the senior Fellows, then all the Fellows not on the seniority are excluded; and this is the case at Brasenose.* Now the question is, whether this is according to the Founder's intentions, or whether it has been legalized by any subsequent statute of the realm, I mean, not of the University. The fines originally were a direct bribe paid by the tenant to the Bursar or Treasurer of the college, for letting him renew on favorable terms: - subsequently the bursars were not allowed to keep it all to themselves, but it was shared by all those with whom lay the power of either granting or refusing the renewal. But still, if the college property be notoriously underlet, because a great part

*This case is at present waiting the decision of the Visitor of the College

of the rent is paid in the shape of fines, those who are entitled to a certain share in the proceeds are manifestly defrauded if they are not allowed their proportion of the fines also. This question only affects the members of the several foundations as individuals;-still, it has always struck me as a great unfitness, that a system should go on with such a primâ facie look of direct fraud about it.

2d. All members of foundations are required to take an oath to maintain the rights of the college, &c., and amongst other things they swear that if expelled by the college they will not appeal to any court of law. This oath is imposed at Winchester College, or was in my time, on every boy as soon as he was fifteen. I object utterly, on principle, to any private society administering an oath to its members at all,still more so to boys:- - but even if it were a promise or engagement, the promise of not appealing to the King's Courts is monstrous, and savors completely of the spirit of secret societies, who regard the law as their worst enemy. The University has lately repealed some of its oaths—but it still retains far too many.

3d. The University should be restored, that is, the monopoly of the colleges should be taken away, - by allowing any Master of Arts, according to the old practice of Oxford, to open a hall for the reception of students. The present

practice dates, I think, from the age of Elizabeth, — when the old halls had fallen into decay; and then the gift of the headship of the existing halls was placed in the Chancellor's hands, and every member of the University was required to be a member of some college, or of one of these recognized halls. The evils of the present system, combined with a statute passed, I believe, within the present century, obliging every under-graduate under three years' standing to sleep in college, are very great. The number of members at a college is regulated therefore by the size of its buildings, and thus some of the very worst colleges have the greatest number of votes in Convocation, and consequently the greatest influence in the decisions of the University. I am obliged to be brief, - but this point is, I am sure, of the greatest importance, and might open the door to much good. I am not at all able to answer for all the details of the matters which I have mentioned, and you know how readily the enemy would exult if he can detect the slightest inaccuracy in detail, and how gladly he will avail himself of such a triumph to lead away men's