deliberate conviction is stronger and stronger, that all this system is wholly wrong for the greater number of boys. Those who have talents and natural taste, and fondness for poetry, find the poetry lessons very useful; the mass do not feel one tittle about the matter, and, I speak advisedly, do not, in my belief, benefit from them one grain. I am not sure that other things would answer better, though I have very little doubt of it; but at any rate, the present plan is so entire a failure, that nothing can be risked by changing it. . . . . More than half

my boys never saw the sea, and never were in London, and it is surprising how the first of these disadvantages interferes with their understanding much of the ancient poetry, while the other keeps the range of their ideas in an exceedingly narrow compass. Brought up myself in the Isle of Wight, amidst the bustle of soldiers and sailors, and familiar from a child with boats and ships, and the flags of half Europe, which gave me an instinctive acquaintance with geography, I quite marvel to find in what a state of ignorance boys are at seventeen or eighteen, who have lived all their days in inland country parishes, or small country towns. . . For your comfort, I think I am succeeding in making them write very fair Latin prose, and to observe and understand some of the differences between the Latin and English idioms. On the other hand, what our boys want in one way they get in another; from the very circumstance of their being the sons of quieter parents, they have far less ußeis and more Eunoia, than the boys of any other school I ever knew. Thus, to say the least, they have less of a most odious and unchristian quality, and are thus more open to instruction, and have less repugnance to be good, because their master wishes them to be so.

I have almost filled my paper, and can only add that Thucydides is getting on slowly, but I think that it will be a much less defective book than it was likely to have been had I remained at Laleham; for though I have still an enormous deal to learn, yet my scholarship has mended

considerably within the last year at Rugby. I suppose you will think at any rate that it will be better to publish Thucydides, however imperfectly, than to write another pamphlet. Poor dear pamphlet! I seem to feel the greater tenderness for it, because it has excited so much odium; and now I hear that it is reported at Oxford that I wish to suppress it; which is wholly untrue. I would not print a second edition, because the question was settled, and controversy about it was become absurd; but I never have repented of it in any degree, or wished it unwritten, “pace tua dixerim," and I only regret that I did not print a larger impression.

XI. TO REV. H. JENKYNS.

Rugby, November 11, 1829.

I thank you heartily for two very kind letters, and am very anxious to be favoured with some more of your friend's comments [on Thucydides].

I hope I

And

am not too old or too lazy or too obstinate to be taught better. I do thank you very much for your kindness in taking so much trouble in my behalf; and I earnestly beg of you to send me more. can you tell me-or, if not, will you ask Amicus Doct.,where is to be found a summary of the opinions of English Scholars about ows and ows un, and the moods which they require and further, do you or he hold their doctrine good for any thing? Dawes, and all men who endeavour to establish general rules, are of great use in directing one's attention to points, which one might otherwise. have neglected; and labour and acuteness often discover a rule, where indolence and carelessness fancied it was all hap-hazard. But larger induction and sounder judgment (which I think exist in Hermann in an infinite degree beyond any of our English scholars) teach us to distinguish again between a principle and an usage: the latter may be general, but if it be merely usage, grounded on no intel

VOL. I.

R

ligible principle, it seems to me foolish to insist on its being universal, and to alter texts right and left, to make them all conformable to the Canon. Equidem,-both in Greek and in other matters,-think liberty a far better thing than uniformity of form merely, where no principle is concerned. Voilà the cloven foot.

XII. TO J. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ.
(In allusion to a libel in the John Bull.)

Rugby, May 11, 1830.

I thank you for another very kind letter. In a matter of this sort, I willingly resign my own opinion to that of a man like yourself, at once my friend and legal adviser. I think, too, that I am almost bound to attend to the opinion of the Bishop of London; for his judgment of the inexpediency of prosecuting must rest on the scandal which he thinks it will bring upon religion and the Church, and of this he is a far better judge than I am; nor, to say the truth, should I much like to act in a doubtful matter in opposition to the decided advice of a Bishop in a case that concerned the Church. I say this in sober earnest, in spite of what you call my Whiggery and Radicalism. . . .

XIII. TO F. HARTWELL, ESQ.

Rugby, June 28, 1830.

I have just published one volume of Thucydides; when the others will follow, it is hard to say, for the work here is more and more engrossing continually; but I like it better and better; it has all the interest of a great game of chess, with living creatures for pawns and pieces, and your adversary, in plain English, the Devil: truly he plays a very tough game, and is very hard to beat, if I ever do beat him. It is quite surprising to see the wickedness of young boys; or would be surprising, if I had not had my own school experience and a good deal since to enlighten me

XIV. TO THE REV. GEORGE CORNISH.

Rugby, August 24, 1830.

Your letter was a most welcome sight to me the first morning of my arrival at home, amidst the host of strange handwritings and letters of business which now greet me every morning. It rejoices me to think that we are going to have a cousin of yours at Rugby, and I suppose we shall see him here on Saturday, when the great coach starts. You know that it is licensed to carry not exceeding 260 passengers, besides the foundationers. I agreed with the Pythagoreans that Tò άógioTOV was one of the number of xáxa, and so I applied to the Trustees, and got the limit set. We are not near it yet, being not quite 260, including foundationers, and perhaps may never reach it; but that I shall not at all regret, and all I wanted was never to go beyond it. We have got a Cambridge man, a Fellow of Trinity, who was most highly recommended to me, as a new master; and I hope we shall pull hard and all together during the next half year: there is plenty to be done, I can assure you; but, thank God, I continue to enjoy the work, and am now in excellent condition for setting to it. You may see M-'s name and mine amongst the subscribers for the sufferers at Paris. It seems to me a most blessed revolution, spotless beyond all example in history, and the most glorious instance of a royal rebellion against society, promptly and energetically repressed, that the world has yet seen. It magnificently vindicates the cause of knowledge and liberty, showing how humanizing to all classes of society are the spread of thought and information, and improved political institutions; and it lays the crimes of the last revolution just in the right place, the wicked aristocracy, that had so brutalized the people by its long iniquities that they were like slaves broken loose when they first bestirred themselves.

Before all these events took place, on my way out through France, I was reading Guizot's History of the Progress of Civilization in France from the earliest times.

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