You know he is now Minister of the Interior, and one of the ablest writers in France. In his book he gives a history of the Pelagian controversy, a most marvellous contrast with the Liberals of a former day, or with our Westminster Reviewers now. Guizot sides with St. Augustine; but the whole chapter is most worthy of notice: the freedom of the will, so far as to leave a consciousness of guilt when we have not done our duty, the corruption of our nature, which never lets us in fact come up to what we know we ought to do, and the help derived from prayers to God,―are stated as incontrovertible philosophical facts, of which every man's experience may convince him; and Guizot blames Pelagius for so exaggerating the notion of human freedom as to lose sight of our need of external assistance. And there is another chapter on the unity of the Church no less remarkable. Now Guizot is Professor of History in the University of Paris, and a most eminent Liberal; and it seems to me worthy of all notice to observe his language with regard to religion. And I saw Niebuhr at Bonn, on my way home, and talked with him for three hours; and I am satisfied from my own ears, if I had had any doubts before, of the grossness of the slander which called him an unbeliever. I was every way delighted with him, and liked very much what I saw of his wife and children. Trevenen and his wife enjoyed the journey exceedingly, and are all the better for it. Amongst other things, I visited the Grand Chartreuse, which is certainly enough to make a man romantic, and the Church of Madonna del Monte; from whence, or rather from a mountain above it, I counted twelve mountain outlines between me and the horizon, the last, the ridge of the highest Alps-upon a sky so glowing with the sunset, that instead of looking white from their snow, they were like the teeth of a saw upon a plate of red hot iron, all deep and black. I was delighted also with Venice; most of all delighted to see the secret prisons of the old aristocracy converted into lumber rooms, and to see German soldiers exercising authority in

that place, which was once the very focus of the moral degradation of the Italian race, the seat of falsehood and ignorance and cruelty. They talk of building a bridge to Venice over the Lagune; if so, I am glad that I have seen it first. I liked Padua also, more than I thought I could have liked the birth-place of Titus Livius. The influence of the clergy must be great there, and most beneficially exercised; for a large institution for the poor of Padua, providing for those who are out of work, as well as for the old and infirm, derives its main support from legacies; the clergy never failing to urge every man, who can at all afford it, to leave something at his death for this object. We came home through the Tyrol, and through Wurtemberg and Baden, countries apparently as peaceful and prosperous and simple-mannered as I ever saw; it is quite economical travelling there. And now, when shall I travel to Kenwyn? I hope one of these days; but whether in the next winter or not, is hard to say; I only know that there are few things which I should enjoy better. I was so sorry to miss old Tucker, who came here for one day when I was abroad; he was at Leamington with his sister, to consult our great oracle, Jephson. Charles, I suppose, is only coming home upon leave, and will go out again; I should be very glad to see him, and to show him his marks on my Hederic's Lexicon when he was at Wyatt's. I wish I may be able to do any thing for you as to a curate, but I am very much out of the world in those matters, and I have no regular correspondence with Oxford. I am afraid I am sadly in disgrace with all parties, between my Pamphlet and Sermons, and I am afraid that Thucydides will not mend the matter. As for the Pamphlet, that is all natural enough, but I really did not think there was any cloven foot in the Sermons, nor did I wish to show any; not, I hope, from time-serving, but because, what you said about the schism question, I wished to do with that and divers other points,i. e., reserve them for a separate volume, which I hope I may be able to publish before I die. There are some

points on which I feel almost as if I had a testimony to deliver, which I ought not to withhold. And Milman's History of the Jews made me more and more eager to deliver myself of my conceptions. But how to do it without interfering with other and even more pressing duties, 1 cannot tell. Last half year, I preached every Sunday in Lent, and for the last five Sundays of the half year also, besides other times; and I had to write new sermons for all these, for I cannot bear to preach to the boys any thing but what is quite fresh, and suggested by their particular condition. I never like preaching anywhere else so well; for one's boys are even more than a parish, inasmuch as one knows more of them all individually, than can easily be the case in a parish, and has a double authority over them, temporal as well as spiritual. . . Though, to speak seriously, it is quite awful to watch the strength of evil in such young minds, and how powerless is every effort against it. It would give the vainest man alive a very fair notion of his own insufficiency, to see how little he can do, and how his most earnest addresses are as a cannon ball on a bolster: thorough careless unimpressibleness beats one all to pieces. And so it is, and so it will be; and as far as I am concerned, I can quite say that it is much better that it should be so; for it would be too kindling, could one perceive these young minds really led from evil by one's own efforts; one would be sorely tempted to bow down to one's own net. As it is, the net is so palpably ragged, that one sees perforce how sorry an idol it would make. But I must go to bed, and spare your eyes and your patience.

XV. TO REV. DR. HAWKINS.

Rugby, November, 1830.

I am always glad to write to you, but I have now two especial causes for doing so; one to thank you for your Visitation sermon, and another to explain to you why I do

not think it right to comply with your wishes touching the tricolor work-bag. For your sermon, I thank you for it: I believe I agree with it almost entirely, waiving some expressions, which I hold one never should cavil about, where one agrees in substance. But have you ever clearly defined to yourself what you mean by "one society," as applied to the whole Christian Church upon earth? It seems to me that most of what I consider the errors about "the Church," turn upon an imperfect understanding of this point. In one sense, and that a very important one, all Christians belong to one society; but then it is more like Cicero's sense of "societas," than what we mean by a society. There is a "societas generis humani," and a "societas hominum Christianorum;" but there is not one "respublica" or "civitas" of either, but a great many. The Roman Catholics say there is but one "respublica," and therefore, with perfect consistency, they say that there must be one central government: our Article, if I mistake not its sense, says, and with great truth, that the Christian Respublica depends on the political Respublica; that is, that there may be at least as many Christian societies as there are political societies, and that there may be, and in our own kingdom are, even more. If there be one Christian society, in the common sense of the word, there must be one government; whereas, in point of fact, the Scotch Church, the English Church, and the French Church, have all separate and perfectly independent governments; and consequently can only be in an unusual and peculiar sense "one society:" that is, spiritually one, as having the same objects and the same principles, and the same supports, and the same enemies. You therefore seem to me right, in saying that a Roman Catholic should be addressed in England as a Dissenter; but all this appears to me to lead necessarily to this conclusion, that the constitution and government of every Church is a political institution, and that conformity and nonconformity are so far matters of civil law, that, where nonconformity, as in England, is strictly legal,

there it is no offence, except in so far as it may be accompanied with heretical opinions, which is merely xaтà σuμβεβηκός. BEBnxòs. For the State says that there may be any given number of religious societies within its jurisdiction—societies, that is, in the common sense of the term, as bodies governing themselves; and it is clear that the State may lawfully say this, for, if the Church were one society, in this sense, by Christ's institution, then the Romanist doctrine would be true, and, I do not say the Pope, but, certainly a General Council would possess an authority paramount, in ecclesiastical matters, payment of tithes, &c., to any local and human authority of Kings or Parliaments of this or that political division of the human race. I have thought not a little upon all this matter in my time, and I fancy that I see my own way straight; whether other people will think so, is a different question.

(After explaining a false report about a tricolored cockade and work-bag.) It is worse than obnoxious to apply this to English politics, and if any man seriously considers me to wish for a revolution here, with my seven children and good house to lose, to put it on no other ground, why he must even continue to think So. But I do admire the Revolution in France-admire it as heartily and entirely, as any event recorded in history; and I think that it becomes every individual, still more every clergyman, and most of all, every clergyman in a public situation, to express this opinion publicly and decidedly. I have not forgotten the twenty years' war, into which the English aristocracy and clergy drove Mr. Pitt in 1793, and which the Quarterly Review and other such writers are now seeking to repeat. I hold it to be of incalculable importance, that, while the conduct of France has been beyond all example pure and heroic, there should be so manifest a display of sympathy on the part of England, as to lead to a real mutual confidence and friendship between the two countries. Our government, I believe, is heartily disposed to do this, and I will not, for one, shrink