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mistake to suppose that either I or the school suffer by that... I quite think that a great deal will depend on the next three or four years, as to the permanent success of Rugby: we are still living on credit, but of course credit will not last for ever, unless there is something to warrant it. Our general style of composition is still bad, and where the fault is, I cannot say; some of our boys, however, do beautifully; and one copy of Greek verses (Iambics) on Clitumnus, which was sent in to me about a month ago, was one of the most beautiful school copies I ever saw. I should like to show it to you, or even to your brother Edward; for I do not think any of his pupils could write better-τοῦτο δὲ, ὡς ἐικὸς, σπάνιον. .

XXXIV. TO A MEMBER OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE PROMOTION OF CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE.

Rugby, June 10, 1832.

Your letter interested me exceedingly. I have had some correspondence with the Useful Knowledge people about their Penny Magazine, and have sent them some things which I am waiting to see whether they will publish. I want to give their Magazine a decidedly Christian character, and then I think it would suit my notions better than any other; but of course what I have been doing, or may do for them, does not hinder me from doing what I can for you. I only suspect I should wish to liberalize your Magazine, as I wish to Christianize theirs; and probably your Committee would recalcitrate against any such operation, as theirs may do. The Christian Knowledge Society has a bad name for the dulness of its publications; and their contributions to the cause of general knowledge, and enlightening the people in earnest, may seem a little tardy and reluctant. This, however, touches you, as an individual member of the Society, no more than it does myself; only the name of the Society is not in good odour. As for the thing itself, it is one on which I am half wild, and am not

sure, that I shall not start one at my own expense down here, and call it the Warwickshire Magazine; and I believe that it would answer in the long run, if there were funds to keep it up for a time; but "experto crede," it is an expensive work to push an infant journal up hill. The objection to a magazine is its desultoriness and vagueness— it is all scraps; whereas a newspaper has a regular subject, and follows it up continuously. I would try to do this as much as I could in a magazine. I would have in every number one portion of the paper for miscellanies, but I think that in another portion there should be some subjects followed up regularly: e. g. the history of our present state of society traced backwards; the history of agriculture, including that of inclosures; the statistics of different countries, &c., &c. I suppose the object is to instruct those who have few books and little education; but all instruction must be systematic, and it is this which the people want: they want to have agxà set before them, and comprehensive outlines of what follows from those àgxài; not a parcel of detached stories about natural history, or this place, or that man,-all entertaining enough, but not instructive to minds wholly destitute of any thing like a frame, in which to arrange miscellaneous information. And I believe, if done spiritedly, that systematic information would be even more attractive than the present hodgepodge of odds and ends. Above all, be afraid of teaching nothing: it is vain now to say that questions of religion and politics are above the understanding of the poorer classes: so they may be, but they are not above their misunderstanding, and they will think and talk about them, so that they had best be taught to think and talk rightly. It is worth while to look at Owen's paper, "The Crisis," or at the "Midland Representative," the great paper of the Birmingham operatives. The most abstract points are discussed in them, and the very foundations of all things are daily being probed, as much as by the sophists, whom it was the labour of Socrates' life to combat. Phrases

which did well enough formerly, now only excite a sneer; it does not do to talk to the operatives about our "pure and apostolical church," and "our glorious constitution," they have no respect for either; but one must take higher ground, and show that our object is not to preserve particular institutions, so much as to uphold eternal principles, which are in great danger of falling into disrepute, because of the vices of the institutions which profess to exemplify them. The Church, as it now stands, no human power can save; my fear is, that, if we do not mind, we shall come to the American fashion, and have no provision made for the teaching Christianity at all. But it is late, and I must go to bed; and I have prosed to you enough; but I am as bad about these things as Don Quixote with his knight-errantry, and when once I begin, I do not readily

stop.

XXXV. TO HIS NEPHEW, J. WARD, ESQ., ON HIS MARRIAGE. Brathay Hall, July 7, 1832.

. . . . . A man's life in London, while he is single, may be very stirring, and very intellectual, but I imagine that it must have a hardening effect, and that this effect will be more felt every year as the counter tendencies of youth become less powerful. The most certain softeners of a man's moral skin, and sweeteners of his blood, are, I am sure, domestic intercourse in a happy marriage, and intercourse with the poor. It is very hard, I imagine, in our present state of society, to keep up intercourse with God without one or both of these aids to foster it. Romantic and fantastic indolence was the fault of other times and other countries; here I crave more and more every day to find men unfevered by the constant excitement of the world, whether literary, political, commercial, or fashionable; men who, while they are alive to all that is around them, feel also who is above them. I would give more than I can say, if your Useful Knowledge Society Committee had this

last feeling, as strongly as they have the other purely and beneficently. . . . . . I care not for one party or the other, but I do care for the country, and for interests even more precious than that of the country, which the present disordered state of the human mind seems threatening. But this mixes strangely with your present prospects, and I hope we may both manage to live in peace with our families in the land of our fathers, without crossing the Atlantic.

XXXVI. TO THE ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN.

Brathay Hall, July 8, 1832.

As to

This place is complete rest, such as I wish you could enjoy after your far more anxious occupations. the state of the country, I find my great concern about it comes by accesses, sometimes weighing upon me heavily, and then again laid aside as if it were nothing.

I

wish that your old notion of editing a family Bible could be revived. I do not know any thing which more needs to be done, and it would be a very delightful thing if it could be accompanied with really good maps and engravings, which might be done if a large sale could be reckoned upon. It might be published in penny numbers, not beginning with Genesis, but with some of the most important parts of the New Testament, e. g. St. John's Gospel or the Epistle to the Romans. Some of the historical books of the Old Testament, I should be inclined to publish last of all, as being the least important, whilst the Psalms and some of the Prophets should appear very early. I am even grand enough to aspire after a new, or rather a corrected translation, for I would only alter manifest faults or obscurities, and even then preserving as closely as possible the style of the old translation. Many could do this for the New Testament, but where is the man, in England at least, who could do it for the Old? . . . . . But alas! for your being at Dublin, instead of at Canterbury.

XXXVII. TO THE SAME.

Rugby, September 6, 1832.

Have you heard that the Useful Knowledge So

you

to be

ciety have resolved to publish a Bible, and asked editor? Hâc tamen lege, that, where doctrine is introduced, the opinions of the different sects of Christians should be fairly stated. Now Evans's Dictionary of all Religions is a useful book, but I do not want exactly to see it made a rider upon the Scriptures. We want something better than this plan. . . . I told that I must write to before I gave him any promise of assistance. O! for your Bible plan, or, at least, for the sanction of your name: I think I see the possibility of a true comprehensive Christian Commentary, keeping back none of the counsel of God, lowering no truth, chilling no lofty or spiritual sentiment, yet neither silly, fanatical, nor sectarian. Your book on Romanism shows how this may be done, and it applies to all sects alike. They are not all error, nor we all truth; e. g. the Quakers reject the communion of the Lord's Supper, thereby losing a great means of grace; but are they not tempted to do so by the superstitions, which other Christians have heaped upon the institution, and is there not some taint of these in the Exhortation even in our own Communion Service? And, with regard to the greatest truths of all, you know how Pelagianism and Calvinism have encouraged each other, and how the Athanasian Creed, at this day, confirms and aggravates the evils of Unitarianism. I heard some time since, as a matter of fact, that, in the United States, where the Episcopal Church has expelled this creed, the character of Unitarianism is very different from what it is in England, and is returning towards high Arianism, just as here it has gone a downward course to the very I know how much verge of utter unbelief. your hands and on your mind; I, too, have my hobbies, but I know of nothing more urgent than to circulate such an edition of the Scriptures, as might labour, with God's

VOL. I.

you

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have on