venting fruitless regret and complaints against one another's errors, instead of labouring to lessen one another's sins. For coldness of spirit, and negligence of our duty, and growing worldliness, are things which we should thank our friends for warning us against; but when they quarrel with our opinions, which we conscientiously hold, it merely provokes us to justify ourselves, and to insist that we are right and they wrong.

We arrived here on Saturday, and on Sunday night there fell a deep snow, which is now however melting; otherwise it would do more than any thing else to spoil this unspoilable country. We are living in a little nook under one of the mountains, as snug and sheltered as can be, and I have got plenty of work to do within doors, let the snow last as long as it will.

XXXIX. TO W. K. HAMILTON, ESQ.

Rydal, January 15, 1833.

[After speaking of his going to Rome.] It stirs up many thoughts to fancy you at Rome. I never saw any place which so interested me, and next to it, but, longissimo intervallo, Venice-then of the towns of Italy, Genoa-and then Pisa and Verona. I cannot care for Florence or for Milan or for Turin. . . . . . . For me this country contains all that I wish or want, and no travelling, even in Italy, could give me the delight of thus living amidst the mountains, and seeing and loving them in all their moods and in all mine. [After speaking of Church Reform.] But God knows what will come to pass, and none besides, for we all seem groping about in the dark together. I trust, however, that we shall be spared the worst evil of all, war.

XL. TO THE ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN.

Rydal, January 17, 1833.

As my Pamphlet will probably reach you next

week, I wished you to hear something from me on the subject

beforehand. My reasons for writing it were chiefly because the reform proposed by Lord Henley and others seemed to me not only insufficient, but of a wrong kind; and because I have heard the American doctrine of every man paying his minister as he would his lawyer, advanced and supported in high quarters, where it sounded alarming. I was also struck by the great vehemence displayed by the Dissenters at the late elections, and by the refusal to pay Church-rates at Birmingham. Nothing, as it seems to me, can save the Church, but an union with the Dissenters; now they are leagued with the antichristian party, and no merely internal reforms in the administration of the actual system will, I think, or can satisfy them. Further, Lord Henley's notion about a convocation, and Bishops not sitting in Parliament, and laymen not meddling with Church doctrine, seemed to me so dangerous a compound of the worst errors of Popery and Evangelicalism combined, and one so suited to the interest of the Devil and his numerous party, that I was very desirous of protesting against it. However, the pamphlet will tell its own story, and I think it can do no harm, even if it does no good.

XLI. TO THE SAME.

February 1, 1833.

As for my coming down into Westmoreland, I may almost say that it is to satisfy a physical want in my nature which craves after the enjoyment of nature, and for nine months in the year can find nothing to satisfy it. I agree with old Keble, that one does not need mountains and lakes for this; the Thames at Laleham-Bagley Wood, and Shotover at Oxford were quite enough for it. I only know of five counties in England, which cannot supply it; and I am unluckily perched down in one of them. These five are Warwick, Northampton, Huntingdon, Cambridge and

VOL. I.

Christian Year, First Sunday after Epiphany.

Χ

Bedford. I should add, perhaps, Rutland, and you cannot name a seventh; for Suffolk, which is otherwise just as bad, has its bit of sea coast. But Halesworth, so far as I remember it, would be just as bad as Rugby. We have no hills-no plains-not a single wood, and but one single copse: no heath-no down-no rock-no river-no clear stream-scarcely any flowers, for the lias is particularly poor in them-nothing but one endless monotony of inclosed fields and hedge-row trees. This is to me a daily privation; it robs me of what is naturally my anti-attrition; and, as I grow older, I begin to feel it. My constitution is sound, but not strong; and I feel any little pressure or annoyance more than I used to do; and the positive dulness of the country about Rugby makes it to me a mere working place; I cannot expatiate there even in my walks. So, in the holidays, I have an absolute craving for the enjoyment of nature, and this country suits me better than any thing else, because we can be all together, because we can enjoy the society, and because I can do something in the way of work besides. ...

Two things press upon me unabatedly-my wish for a Bible, such as I have spoken of before; and my wish for something systematic for the instruction of the poor. In my particular case, undoubtedly, the Stamp duties are an evil; for I still think, that a newspaper alone can help to cure the evil which newspapers have done and are doing; the events of the day are a definite subject, to which instruction can be attached in the best possible manner; the Penny and Saturday Magazines are all ramble-scramble. I think often of a Warwickshire Magazine, to appear monthly, and so escape the Stamp Duties, whilst events at a month's end are still fresh enough to interest. We ought to have, in Birmingham and Coventry, good and able men enough, and with sufficient variety of knowledge for such a work. But between the want of will and the want of power, the ten who were vainly sought to save Sodom, will be as vainly sought for now.

XLII. TO REV. F. TUCKER.

[On his leaving England for India, as a Missionary.j

February, 1833.

[After speaking of the differences of tastes and habits which had interfered with their having common subjects of interest.] . . . . . . It is my joy to think that there will be a day when these things will all vanish in the intense consciousness of what we both have in common. I owe you much more than I can well pay, indeed, for your influence on my mind and character in early life. The freshness of our Oxford life is continually present with me, and especially of the latter part of it. How well I recollect when you and Cornish did duty for your first time at Begbrooke and Yarnton, and when we had one of our last skirmishes together in a walk to Garsington in March, 1819. All that period was working for me constant good, and how delightful is it to have our University recollections so free from the fever of intellectual competition or parties or jealousies of any kind whatever. I love also to think of our happy meeting in later life, when Cornish and I, with our wives and children, were with you at Malling, in 1823.

..... Mean time, even in a temporal point of view, you are going from what bids fair, I fear, to deserve the name of a City of Destruction. The state of Europe is indeed fearful; and that of England, I verily think, worst of all. What is coming, none can foresee, but every symptom is alarming; above all, the extraordinary dearth of men professing to act in the fear of God, and not being fanatics; as parties, the High Churchmen, the Evangelicals, and the Dissenters seem to me almost equally bad, and how many good men can be found who do not belong to one of them?

Your godson is now turned of ten years old, and I think of keeping him at home some time to familiarize him with home feelings. I am sure that we shall have your

prayers for his bringing forth fruit unto life eternal. And now farewell, my dear friend; may God be with you always through Jesus Christ, and may He bless all your works to His glory and your own salvation. You will carry with you, as long as you live, my most affectionate and grateful remembrances, and my earnest wishes for all good to you, temporal and spiritual.

XLIII. TO AN OLD PUPIL AT OXFORD. (4.)

February 25, 1833.

It always grieves me to hear that a man does not like Oxford. I was so happy there myself, and above all so happy in my friends, that its associations to my mind are purely delightful. But, of course, in this respect, every thing depends upon the society you fall into. If this be uncongenial, the place can have no other attractions than those of a town full of good libraries. . . .

The more we are destitute of opportunities for indulging our feelings, as is the case when we live in uncongenial society, the more we are apt to crisp and harden our outward manner to save our real feelings from exposure. Thus I believe that some of the most delicate-minded men get to appear actually coarse from their unsuccessful efforts to mask their real nature. And I have known men disagreeably forward from their shyness. But I doubt whether a man does not suffer from a habit of self-constraint, and whether his feelings do not become really, as well as apparently, chilled. It is an immense blessing to be perfectly callous to ridicule; or, which comes to the same thing, to be conscious thoroughly that what we have in us of noble and delicate is not ridiculous to any but fools, and that, if fools will laugh, wise men will do well to let them.

I shall really be very glad to hear from you at any time, and I will write to the best of my power on any subject on which you want to know my opinion. As for any thing more, I believe that the one great lesson for us all is, that