LETTERS.FROM 1836 TO 1849.OXFORD.

To his Father.

Oxford: November 26, 1836.

I have just come out from Balliol, of which college I am now a scholar. The examination concluded this morning about twelve o’clock, and it has just been given out I have got the head one, which also includes an exhibition added to it to make it more valuable, as of themselves the scholarships are not worth much. We have had a long and laborious examination, but I am quite well, and not much tired, at least I do not feel so at present. I stay up here till next Wednesday, as the inauguration is on Tuesday evening.

To J. N. Simpkinson, Esq.

Rugby: December 9, 1836.

I am sitting in Arnold’s drawing-room, of all places in the world, for my nine days at Oxford have so tired me, that after vainly trying yesterday to return to regular work, to-day I have resolved to stay out and rest myself; and as there are to be, I believe, half a score fellows in the sick-room, Mrs. Arnold kindly took me in here. The examination was on the whole, I think, neither very favourable nor yet unfavourable to me, and it pleased God that I should be inhealth and strength and good spirits, and not much excited during the days of the work. I could not but feel, from what I heard and saw, that I had a very good chance among them, and that in one or two things I had the advantage.

To his Sister.

Balliol College: October 15, 1837.

Behold, I am in Oxford, safe and sound, capped and gowned: have attended chapel twice, once with and once without surplice; have been to Hall (signifying dinner in Hall); also twice to a wine party; also to call on the Master, and to the University Sermon this morning; so that by to-morrow evening, when, I hope, my books will be arrived and arranged on my shelves, and when also, I trust, I shall be furnished with a kettle and set of tea-things (for as yet I have been dependent on the bountiful hospitality of my friends), I shall be pretty completely settled. I came up with Stanley and with two other Rugbeians on Friday evening, and got established in my rooms that night. They consist of one small and one smaller room, both, however, considerably larger than my study at Rugby, in the attics of No. 4 Staircase, Outer Quadrangle.

To J. P. Gell, Esq.

Hope Street, Liverpool: January 15, 1838.

Did the intelligence arrive in your parts of Arnold’s wonderful victory in the Senate of London University?i.e.the introduction of an examination in the Gospels and Acts into the Degree Examination, which must seem a strange novelty in that godless place. It must have been a very grand thing to see him get up among all those people and declare that they must do something to show that theywere Christians and that it was a Christian University. I do not know what would become of the various shades of Whigs now existing in the University if Hawkins were to be made a Bishop. These people, however, have done a vast deal of good at Oxford, where anything so ‘ungentlemanly’ and ‘coarse’ and in such bad taste as Evangelicalism would never be able to make very much way. It seems just the sort of religious activity and zeal which one would expect to develop itself in an age of activity and shaking up in such a place as the University of Oxford.

I am great friends with Brodie, and still more so, I think, with Ward, whom I like very much. I have seen more of him and of Lake than of any one else.

To the same.

Oxford, Balliol College: April 8, 1838.

Do you not envy me my idleness? you, who, I suppose, are in the miseries of entering the Trinity College Examination. I have got through all my trouble, and am now fully at liberty to lie in bed, go to the newsroom, read reviews and novels, learn to skiff, and finally to insult you and Simpkinson.

It is supposed that but for this Hertford, which has turned out so ill for us, all knowledge of Latin in the University of Oxford would have been by this time quite extinct, except as surviving in College graces and University oaths; those also not understood.

I wish that you were at Oxford; it is, I am sure, so much better a place than Cambridge, and you would have the great advantage of a good chance of becoming a disciple of ὁ μἑγας Νἑανδροϛ, whom I like much better than I did, and admire in many points exceedingly.

To the same.

Balliol: May 8, 1838.

One thing, I suppose, is clear—that one must leave the discussion of Τἁ Νεανδρωπικἁ, κ.τ.λ., all snug and quiet for after one’s degree. And it is no harm, but rather good, to give oneself up a little to learning Oxford people, and admiring their good points, which lie, I suppose, principally in all they hold in opposition to the Evangelical portion of society—the benefit and beauty and necessity of forms—the ugliness of feelings put on unnaturally soon, and consequently kept up by artificial means, ever strained and never sober. I should think very likely, too, their anti-Calvinistic views of justification were, if not just, at least very useful to lead us to the truth. I should be very sorry ever to be brought to believe their further views of matter acting on morals as a charm of sacramentalism, and the succession-notion so closely connected with it. All this and their way of reading and considering Scripture—such a contrast to the German fashions—rests, I suppose, entirely on their belief in the infallibility of the Church down to a certain period, to which they are led by a strong sense of the necessity of some infallible authority united with a feeling of the insufficiency of the New Testament. Indeed, I think a good deal of what they say as to this latter point is stronger than anything I ever heard against it. Newman is now giving lectures on the Mystical Power of the Sacraments, and seems to have stated the objection to it Scripturally in a very fair and candid manner. If I had said a quarter of this to ——, he would have set me down at once for a thorough-going convert ad Newmanismum. But you will not be so rash; and you remember that you asked me to write about it.

It is very striking that there is a German divine among the large assortment living and thinking here, who has come to a mystical view which is no less difficult than Newman’s,though not in form the same. Olshausen is his name. His notion is of a mysterious union of our bodies with our Lord’s, though not by the bread and wine.

To the same.

Rugby: September 1838.

Arnold is coming with Bunsen to Cambridge next Christmas holidays; about the time, I suppose, of your going up for your degree. He is quite well again, being restored by Bunsen’s visit. I think, for myself, I would give two years of my life to come to have back the last one I spent at Rugby. Many of the big, unruly fellows who are troubling the school so much now, and were in my time only showing the beginnings of their badnesses, quite haunt me at times; but that cannot be helped, so one can only hope earnestly for Theodore, who seems indeed very brave and manly. One sees very little of Arnold here, and indeed to talk with him almost nothing.

Balliol: November 18, 1838.

You must know when you modestly requested me to answer your letter by return of post, that I was then in the midst of preparations for my little-go, which fiery ordeal I have passed through now nearly three weeks. Also that Congreve and I have come to the conclusion that time in fee simple does not exist in Oxford, but only on credit, and that with heavy interest.

Stanley was as much delighted as you were with Whately, and was greatly rejoiced too at finding you so unusually (for a Cambridge man) like an Oxford man. There is, I suppose, no doubt much more interest in such matters (theological, ecclesiastical, political, &c.) here, than with you; though the society —— sees is much the mostinquiring, atany rate, on them, than any in Oxford, and it is not a very large set. The Newmanistic undergraduates mostly shut their ears and call it blasphemy, but not quite universally, and of course they, though they will not listen to anything else, have a scheme of church government, &c., which they uphold, not to say anything about understanding or appreciating it.

If you were to come here (as I hope you will after your degree is done with), you would at once have Ward at you, asking you your opinions on every possible subject of this kind you can enumerate; beginning with Covent Garden and Macready, and certainly not ending till you got to the question of the moral sense and deontology. I don’t quite like hearing so much of these matters as I do, but I suppose if one can only keep steadily to one’s work (which I wish I did), and quite resolve to forget all the words one has heard, and to theorise only for amusement, there is no harm in it. Hawkins, Provost of Oriel, in a very good University Sermon last Sunday, on theDutyof Private Judgment as opposed to the Right, seemed to say that undergraduates were to mind their Latin and Greek and nothing else; or nearly so. And many people here speak of the Union as an institution of very doubtful usefulness.

To the same.

Oxford: 1838.

We have been up here just a month and a day, enjoying for the last week of it most glorious weather, greatly to the increase of hunting and boating, and to the decrease of reading. Among other incidents I have had the pleasure of twice meeting the heresiarch αὐτότατος, namely, John Henry Newman, once at a dinner party, and once at a small and select breakfast. I was introduced, and had the honour of drinking wine with him; on the strength of allwhich of course, as is one’s bounden duty, I must turn Newmanist. As a first step in which process, I should rebuke you for the heresy of your last letter, dated (more shame to me) Nov. 22. I hoped very much you would come here after your degree was done, but if you continue to rest on Milton’s Christian Doctrines for one leg, and Calvin’s Institutes for the other, I recommend you to walk away on them as fast as you can from this seat and citadel of orthodoxy. It is difficult here even to obtain assent to Milton’s greatness as a poet; quite impossible, I should think, if you are unable to say that you ‘do not know anything about his prose writings.’ Also you must be ready to give up that ‘irreverent’ third book. Were it not for the happy notion that a man’s poetry is not at all affected by his opinions, or indeed character and mind altogether, I fear the ‘Paradise Lost’ would be utterly unsaleable, except for waste paper, in the University.

Concerning the Newmanitish phantasm, as some people term the Church, I do not know very much; but perhaps you may be enlightened a little, and even softened, by the knowledge that Newman (I believe, decidedly in words, and certainly his real notion is such) holds the supremacy of the αυτη καθ ἁυτην ειλικρινης διανοια, but says that submission to a divinely-appointed body of teachers and governors, to wit, bishops and presbyters and deacons, is the course that is pointed out to us by the aforesaid ειλικρινης διανοια: inasmuch as it is evident to the reason from the circumstances of the case, &c., that the preponderance of probabilities is for this view, viz. that Christian privileges and covenanted salvation have been attached to the use of certain forms and sacraments whose only qualified administrators are the Apostles’ successors, the clergy; and that these gifts and graces cannot be obtained except through the medium of these divinely-appointed priests. All persons, therefore, who wilfully refuse to receive God’s blessings through thischannel are guilty of very great sin, and put out of the covenanted privileges of Christians. ‘Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the rivers of Judah? may I not wash in them and be clean?’ Such is, I believe, the doctrine which, they say, is but a proper carrying out of the argument of Butler’s Analogy. I think its proper answer must be in the lives of good men out of the influence of any such ordinances, though when any one speaks of such they at once cry ‘name,’ which it is perhaps difficult to do. As for Milton, he is rejected altogether because of his divorce notions and his neglect of devotions, as stated in Johnson’s life of him. Doddridge is often mentioned, but I believe there is some charge against him also. This disquisition, counting the Greek, must, I think, make this letter a due member of the proportion proposed in your last—viz.:—

As your letter : a repartee :: this : something digestible.

To the same.

Oxford: April 18, 1839.

I found that at Rugby I had been quite set down among theological gossips as a Newmanist, but the impression was pretty well removed by the time I came away. P——, as usual, flowed with a continuous stream of German divinity and Biblical philology.

Whit-Sunday, May 30.

June 12th is Commemoration Day; I hope we shall have one Rugby prize between the five attempts made by Stanley, Lake, and myself; and indeed I believe Congreve and Arnold have also made one apiece; but the English poems are this year fifty in number, and better than usual in quality, according to Keble, and as mine was rather worse than usual I have but little hope of proving a prizegooseberry; indeed I am afraid I possess none of the necessary qualifications you enumerate.

I have been reading five books of Plato’s Republic, and wish to examine you in return as to whether you be a Platonist. 1st. Do you believe that πᾶσα μάθησις ἀνάμνησίς ἐστι? 2ndly. Do you agree to dividing human nature into τὸ φιλόσοφον, τὸ ἐπιθυμοειδές, and τὸ ἐπιθυμητικόν? 3rdly. Do you believe that all wickedness is ἀκούσιον and [Greek: δι’ ἀγνοίαν]? 4thly. Do you agree to this assertion, ‘That the world will never be happy till philosophers are kings, or kings philosophers’? 5thly. Do you think it would be advisable to turn H.M.’s colony of Van Diemen’s Land into a Platonic Republic? the φύλακες whereof should be educated at —— College ——? (the blanks you must fill up yourself; Queen’s College, Vandiemensville, is what I conjecture).

If you have not hitherto studied this wondrous book I recommend you to cast aside those heterodox and heretical authors, Calvin and Milton, and immediately commence upon it. Plato, not being a Christian, is quite orthodox; in fact, Sewell says that his Republic is realised in, and indeed is a sort of prophecy of, the Catholic Church; Coleridge meanwhile declaring it the most wonderful anticipation of Protestant Christianity. You must really come to Oxford, overcoming circumstances and cacoëthes and everything else; as otherwise I have no prospect whatever of seeing you. It is also advisable that you should see the Arch-Oxford-Tractator before you leave this part of the world, that you may not be ignorant on a topic doubtless interesting even to the remote barbarians in Van Diemen’s Land. It is said that Romanists are increasing, Newmanists increasing, Socinians also, and Rationalists increasing, but all other kinds of men rapidly decreasing; so that on your return to England perhaps you will find Newman Archbishop of Canterbury and Father Confessor to theQueen; Lord Melbourne (if not burnt) excommunicated, and philosophers in the persons of the Apostles’ apostolically ordained successors fairly and Platonically established as kings. The seeds of which contingent revolutions it is requisite that you should come and contemplate in Oxford. You will also have the opportunity of seeing Conybeare Pater issuing fulminatory condemnations of the Fathers at the heads of astonished Newmanists from St. Mary’s pulpit; himself in shape, conformation, and gestures most like one of his own ichthyosauri, and his voice evidently proceeding from lungs of a fossil character. Again, you will see Chevalier Bunsen, Poet Wordsworth, and Astronomer Herschel metamorphosed into doctors of civil law; a sight worthy, especially in the second case, of all contemplation. Furthermore, there will be boat-races, with much shouting and beer-drinking; a psychological study of great interest. Cum multis aliis, quæ nunc describere longum est. Nil mihi rescribas, attamen ipse veni.

May 2, 1839.

I hope you will carry out with you, or send home for, a good Germanised Cambridge scholar or historian, as that (next to Paley’s ‘Horæ Paulinæ’ and ‘Rationalistic Divinity’) is the great bulwark against Newmanism. And I have to tell you that Bishop Broughton, your diocesan to be, has lately been sending to Oxford to beg for contributions of spare books, μάλιστα μέν new, but if not, old, to set up a clerical library in Australia. Such opportunities of disseminating Patristical and Ecclesiastical views are never missed by the ardent Newmanistic spirits, old and young, specially the latter. Whereby, unless the convict Clerisy be slower than their convict parishioners in their intellectual development, Newmanism is not improbably already founded in the far East on the foundation of Kerr and Bramhall, St. Ignatius, St. Basil, and the Oxford tracts.

Pray come; and write and let me know. I said in my last—Nil mihi rescribas, attamen ipse veni. But Latin is of course to be taken rhetorically and figuratively, and ‘nil mihi rescribas’ means only—Come, if you can, before your letter.

To J. N. Simpkinson, Esq.

Oxford: Die Celeberrimi Laurentii Sheriffii, 1839.

I wish you would recommend me some book to give Gell before he goes to Tasmania. I should not like to give him anything ephemeral, which is a fault attaching itself, I suppose, even to ‘Carlyle’s Essays,’ which are just published though I admire him extremely in general, and these essays even more than the ‘Revolution.’ Has he got a ‘Boswell’s Johnson’? I suppose so. Carlyle says Johnson is the last of the English Tories; all since him have been but Toryish men. He has got an article on Boswell which is extremely beautiful; likewise on Burns, which is so too. He is certainly, however, somewhat heathenish; but that, it seems to me, is the case with all literature, old and new, English and foreign, worth calling literature, which comes in one’s way.

I truly hope to escape the vortex of philosophism and discussion (whereof Ward is the centre), as it is the most exhausting exercise in the world; and I assure you I quite makarise you at Cambridge for your liberty from it.

To the same.

Tuesday, December 21, 1839.

Q——‘s Newmanistic tendencies are, I am afraid, as certain if not as strong as you represent. He is so determined on having a conscious system that these tendenciesare, I think, not unnatural. I hope you do not think me much perverted. The resistance, when there is occasion for it, against proselytisers is of the most vague unsystematic kind, resting in the most unstable way on intuitions, idealities, &c. &c., but I am not conscious of being in any wise leavened by them.

What do you think I have been bestowing the firstfruits of Christmas idleness upon? The first part of ‘Die Leiden des jungen Werthers,’ and really with more satisfaction and admiration than I expected; or rather, I have found all the power and little of the extravagance I looked for. I have read, too, with great pleasure, Schiller’s ‘Votiv-Tafeln’; at least, about half of them. Here is one—

Hastdu etwas? so theile mir’s mit, und ich zahle was recht ist.Bistdu etwas? o dann tauschen die Seelen wir aus.

Hastdu etwas? so theile mir’s mit, und ich zahle was recht ist.

Bistdu etwas? o dann tauschen die Seelen wir aus.

Again—

Allen gehört was du denkst, dein Eigen ist nur was du fühlest;Soll er dein Eigenthum seyn, fühle den Gott den du denkst.

Allen gehört was du denkst, dein Eigen ist nur was du fühlest;

Soll er dein Eigenthum seyn, fühle den Gott den du denkst.

I have but little appetite for work, mathematical or classical; and there is as little compulsion to it, and as much enticement from it, as is possible in our ways of life at Oxford.

November 24, 1839.

Whence comest thou, shady lane? and why and how?Thou, where with idle heart, ten years ago,I wandered, and with childhood’s paces slowSo long unthought of, and remembered now!Again in vision clear thy pathwayed sideI tread, and view thy orchard plots againWith yellow fruitage hung,—and glimmering grainStanding or shocked through the thick hedge espied.This hot still noon of August brings the sight;This quelling silence as of eve or night,Wherein Earth (feeling as a mother mayAfter her travail’s latest bitterest throes)Looks up, so seemeth it, one half repose,One half in effort, straining, suffering still.

Whence comest thou, shady lane? and why and how?

Thou, where with idle heart, ten years ago,

I wandered, and with childhood’s paces slow

So long unthought of, and remembered now!

Again in vision clear thy pathwayed side

I tread, and view thy orchard plots again

With yellow fruitage hung,—and glimmering grain

Standing or shocked through the thick hedge espied.

This hot still noon of August brings the sight;

This quelling silence as of eve or night,

Wherein Earth (feeling as a mother may

After her travail’s latest bitterest throes)

Looks up, so seemeth it, one half repose,

One half in effort, straining, suffering still.

This I wrote in some cornfields near Liverpool, on one of our few fine days.

To J. P. Gell, Esq.

New Year’s Day, 1840 (To Hobart Town, V. D. L.)Liverpool: January 16, 1840.

Of the three principal theological appearances spoken of for this past autumn, two have appeared—‘Arnold on Prophecy,’ as you know, I suppose, and two fresh volumes of ‘Froude’s Remains’; the third, ‘Julius Hare’s Sermons,’ are still only in preparation. Oxford is, as usual, replete with Newmanism and Newmanistic gossip, from which it is one blessing for you that you are preserved. I saw a letter from Arnold, dated Fox How, January, in which he said that not the schoolhouse only but the school would be, he believed, full next half-year.

To J. N. Simpkinson, Esq.

26 Castle Street, Liverpool: August 27, 1840.

The English verse disappointment, as you suppose, was no heavy burden to bear, and if Burbidge has sent you the specimen line he threatened to do, you will say that it should have been no disappointment at all. I have been since the vacation three weeks at Grasmere with Ward, not very far from Thorney How; the rest of the time here studying the ethics, &c., for November. I shall go for a day or two to Rugby at the beginning of October, and then to Oxford about a fortnight before term commences, to effect the removal I must undergo from College tolodgings; indeed, I should go earlier for the sake of better reading, but my two brothers are going out to America together (the younger for the first time), and will hardly be off sooner than October.

That I have been a good deal unsettled in mind at times at Oxford, and that I have done a number of foolish things, is true enough, and I dare say the change from Rugby life to its luxury and apparent irresponsibility has had a good deal of ill effect upon me.

To the same.

Oxford: Feb. 16, 1841.

I should like much to have heard Carlyle’s complaint against Coleridge. I keep wavering between admiration of his exceedingly great perceptive and analytical power, and other wonderful points, and inclination to turn away altogether from a man who has so great a lack of all reality and actuality. By the bye, there is a new and very striking portrait of him just published by Holloway, which I have seen in our Coleridge’s rooms, and which, he says, is said by those who knew him to be the best by far there exists.

We had a two days’ visit from Arnold just before the half-year began. I thought he was not inverygood spirits; but he was certainly not out of heart.

Oxford is now in full enjoyment of the Carnival. You have no idea how fast things are going here Romewards. The more need, therefore, for Hare’s defence of Luther, who is in terrible ill-odour here. Is it ever to appear? I have some idea of going to London at Easter, to get some lectures of Lowe, my tutor of Easter Term, who is now established there.

I heard the other day that Walrond was to come up to try for our scholarship. Burbidge has spoken a good deal of his coming here instead of to Cambridge. I told him thatI thought your discipline infinitely superior in the way of instruction; and so, I feel sure, it must be, though I am willing we should be thought superior in other points.

To his Sister.

[After failing to obtain a first-class in the schools.]

Oxford: Sunday, June 6, 1841.

You must not trouble yourself about my class. I do not care a straw for it myself, and was much more glad to get it over than I was disappointed at hearing of its result. I suppose a good many, whom I ought to wish to gratify, are disappointed a good deal, and it will perhaps leave me without an adequate supply of pupils this summer; but I have already an offer of one for a month, and do not despair of two or three more before term ends. Otherwise it does not matter, I think, at all; and I can assure you it has not lessened my own opinion of my ability, for I did my papers not a quarter as well as my reading would naturally have enabled me to do; and if I got a second with my little finger, it would not have taken two hands to get a double first (there’s for you!) Neither must you think that it is about my class that I have been bothered during the last year, and that Imusttherefore be disappointed. I can assure you that it was principally about other things altogether, though you need not read or say this to my father or mother, unless you think it will do any good, which I suppose it won’t.

I did not like going up last October, though I dare say I should have done better then, because I had not read what I ought; but after having so read, I had so much less care about it than I ought to have had, that I mismanaged everything in every way I could.

Besides, you know the object of honours is to make menread and not to make them distinguished; and if I have read, it is all the same whether I am distinguished or not, and, so far as I am concerned, perhaps better. The disappointment has been general; two or three certain firsts, besides myself, are in the second, and two or three hopeful ones in the third. Balliol has, however, got two of the four prizes. So we are getting up again in the world.

I only wish I might go home, but if I don’t stay here every day to eat bread and butter out of the College buttery till Wednesday fortnight I shall lose 60l.Wherefore you and I must both be patient.

Commemoration is to be a week earlier, as Prince Albert and the Duke are to be here at that time.

I had a delightful walk to Braunston and Rugby, and still more so back here—about fifty miles, and mostly through fields and green lanes—quite a new way, and far pleasanter than the old one.

Oxford: June 1841.

I am glad my explanations have relieved your disappointment, though I hope you will not blab my bravado any further. However, it is not perhaps so great as you may think, for I do not doubt there are many in every examination who are capable of as much and fail much in the same way as I, only nobody knows. I am not sorry to lose reputation, for it is often a troublesome companion. Did I tell you that my friend Ward has been turned out of his tutorship for Ultra-Newmanism?

To J. N. Simpkinson, Esq.

Oxford: July 11, 1841.

... And now to thank you for the kindness of your letter. You will have seen that I am inclined rather to care too little than too much about it. My papers, I amquite sure, deserved no more than a second, and so I was, too, at the time; there can be no question as to the fairness of the decision. At the same time, knowing as I do how far my papers were from representing my acquirement and my usual ability of writing upon that acquirement, I can measure more than any one else how much was in my average grasp. As for the causes of this mismanagement, I do not feel very guilty about them, though it does not therefore follow that I ought not so to feel. The only real loss that I care about is that of pupils whom I should have been glad to have had this summer for the money’s sake, and now I hardly expect to get any.

To Rev. J. P. Gell.

Liverpool: October 8, 1843.

I do not think I am particularly inclined to become a Puseyite, though it is very likely my Puseyite position may prevent my becoming anything else; and I am ruminating, in the hope of escaping these terrible alternatives, a precipitate flight from Oxford, that is, as soon as my exhibition expires, for I cannot think of sacrificing 60l.on any consideration. Also, I have a very large amount of objection, or rather repugnance, to sign ‘ex animo’ the thirty-nine Articles, which it would be singular and unnatural not to do if I stayed in Oxford, as without one’s M.A. degree one of course stands quite still, and has no resource for employment except private pupils and private reading. It is not so much from any definite objection to this or that point, as general dislike to subscription, and strong feeling of its being a bondage and a very heavy one, and one that may cramp and cripple one for life.

What to do, if I don’t stay at Oxford, is a very different question. I do not dislike the tutor’s work at Oriel, but without taking an M.A. I cannot go on with it; and if,as I supposed, I give up both this and residence, where to go and what to do will be a perplexity. However, I shall do nothing ὥστε ἀνηκεστόον τι παθεῑν before this time year; though, as to the tutorship, I shall probably have to decide before this reaches you.

I have employed this Midsummer vacation half in going abroad, and half with pupils at Grasmere. I left England, July 1, with Walrond; went to Havre, Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, Genoa, Leghorn, where Burbidge joined us; with him we went to Pisa and Florence, and from Florence made excursions to the monasteries of Vallombrosa, Camaldoli, and Laverna. I was then ill for about a week at Florence; left Walrond and Burbidge, and started for England. I went by Bologna, Parma, and Piacenza, to Milan; saw the Cathedral, the most beautiful building I ever beheld, as also the Leonardo da Vinci, which is, I think, the most beautiful painting. Then I crossed the Simplon, went up the Rhone, over the Grimsel Pass, and one or two others in the Bernese Oberland, and so to Thun and Berne, and thence by Basle and the Rhine home. I liked Switzerland much better than Italy myself, principally, perhaps, because it was so exceedingly hot, and so impossible to enjoy exercise, in the latter; perhaps, also, in some degree, from being continually lionised about galleries and the like, which is far less agreeable than walking through the beauty of a country.

I went off directly after my return to Grasmere, where I had a party of pupils waiting for me, and there passed six weeks of a very pleasant mixture of work and walking about. Stanley was at Fox How for the last three weeks, working at the memoir.

We have all been reading a grand new philosophy-book, ‘Mill on Logic’; very well written at any rate, and ‘stringent if not sound.’

To Rev. T. Burbidge.

Oxford: June, 1844.

I have just received your letter with a rejoinder to my anti-non-interference philippic. Of course I do not mean that if a labourer has at present his proper proportion for twelve hours’ work, he should have the same sum for ten. But I do believe that he has not his proper proportion, that capital tyrannises over labour, and that Government is bound to interfere to prevent such bullying; and I do believe, too, that in some way or other the problem now solved by universal competition or the devil-take-the-hindmost may receive a more satisfactory solution. It is manifestly absurd that, to allow me to get my stockings a halfpenny a pair cheaper, the operative stocking-weaver should be forced to go barefoot. It is, surely, not wholly Utopian to look for some system which will apportion the due reward to the various sets of workmen, and evade this perpetual struggle for securing (each man to the exclusion of his neighbour) the whole market.

I have got two beautiful white water-lilies floating in a green dessert dish beside me. Enviest thou not, O Sicilian Shepherd? or hast thou thyself also such treasures?

To Rev. J. P. Gell.

Liverpool: July 13, 1844.

I believe my last letter was written at the end of last long vacation. I remember I was at that time in doubt about signing the Articles; I did, however, sign them, though reluctantly enough, and I am not quite sure whether or not in a justifiable sense. However, I have for the present laid by that perplexity, though it may perhaps recur some time or other, and in general I do not feel perfectly satisfied about staying in my tutor capacity at Oxford.

I suppose Stanley’s memoir will somehow or other have reached you. I found the letters more interesting even than I had expected, and the biographical part as good, though I think in some parts it is wanting. It is very judicious in keeping the right mean between reserve and exposure.

I have in the last ten days also seen the monument, which is placed at a considerable height, so as to rise above any one’s head in the pew, in the north division of the east wall, looking down the chapel. I think I should have preferred it on one side; the figure, also, though from the recumbent position it is of less matter, is sadly devoid of likeness; the design in other respects is good, and I liked Bunsen’s epitaph better than I thought I should have done.

The chapel looks very well with its five painted windows; the St. Thomas is, though modern, as good, I think, as the old ones. They are making alterations in the quadrangle. Tait wants the schoolhouse fellows to have single studies throughout, and is in consequence building fresh studies over the cloister opposite the writing-school.

I am considerably inclined just now to set to work at Political Economy, for the benefit of the rising generation, and to see if I cannot prove the Apostle of anti-laissez-faire.

To his Sister.

Patterdale: July 26, 1844.

I cannot say that I believe that the walk to the Orme’s Head, however beautiful, was equal to what we have here; but then I am very fond of lakes, and not very partial to the sea. There is no part of Wales equal to this, except the immediate districts of Snowdon and Cader Idris, and I am not sure that they are.

Yesterday we went to Helvellyn, meeting a party from Fox How, Ambleside, and Grasmere at the top. I have been up three times before, so that I had no objection to seethe hills as they were yesterday, namely, in a good deal of haze, and by no means distinct.

To Rev. J. P. Gell.

Patterdale: July 31, 1844.

I came to Fox How about three weeks ago to meet Matt, and stayed one day. Walrond joined us here after the first week; at the end of the 5th I depart, go home to see my father, who has just got home from America, after a visit by the way, superinduced by south-easters, to the vicinity of the Hebrides, and then I go to coach two pupils in Yorkshire for a month or five weeks. The vacation then will be ‘welly’ (as they say here for ‘well-nigh’) run out, and I shall then presently return to my tutorialities at Oxford.

Your request for a sermon cannot be acceded to. I am not, nor am likely as yet, to be aught but a laic, and lay sermons I leave for Johnson and Coleridge. You must, therefore, be content with such poor and scantysermones repentes per humumas you get in my rare epistles. You shall have one when I go into orders—oh, questionable when!

What, according to your experience, is the best division of the day in this country? The question centres in that other momentous question, ‘What is the properest hour to eat?’ We began with—breakfast, 8; work, 9.30 to 2.30; bathe, dinner, walk, and tea, 2.30 to 9.30; work, 9.30 to 11. We now have revolutionised to the following constitution, as yet hardly advanced beyond paper:—Breakfast, 8; work, 9.30 to 1.30; bathe, dinner, 1.30 to 3; work, 3 to 6; walk,ad infinitum; tea, ditto.

M. has gone out fishing, when he ought properly to be working, it being nearly four o’clock, and to-day proceeding in theory according to Constitution No. 2: it has, however, come on to rain furiously; so Walrond, who is workingsedulously at Herodotus, and I, who am writing to you, rejoice to think that he will get a good wetting.

To the same.

Oriel: Nov. 25, 1844.

Your letter reached me just at the time of my father’s death. In August, when I wrote, he was improving, and our alarm had ceased; but he had a relapse not long after, and for a month before the end we were in full expectation of such a result. He died on October 19, a few hours after the arrival of my eldest brother from America.

Your letter was in answer to mine written exactly twelve months before, when I was in doubt about subscription to the thirty-nine Articles. It certainly was very curious getting an answer to feelings which were of a year’s standing, especially as I hadpro tempore(perhapstempori serviens) laid them by almost completely; and indeed you know already that I signed without demur, and have been working away in the thoroughly terrestrial element of College tutorism, not to speak of Mendicity Societies and the like. Nevertheless, I still consider the old scruple to be a sort of St. Paul who ought not to be put off by any, in however high place, to a more convenient season, or at any rate ought to have a convenient season found him before long. And I can’t profess myself one whit appeased by your burst of wonder and opposition. So the sooner you come home the better, otherwise you will perhaps hear of some very desperate step, though of becoming an Independent minister I certainly have no present thought or desire.

My own justification to myself for doing as I am doing is, I fear, one which would be as little approved of by you as my objections on the other hand. However, it is simply that I can feel faith in what is being carried on by my generation, and that I am content to be an operative—todress intellectual leather, cut it out to pattern, and stitch it and cobble it into boots and shoes for the benefit of the work which is being guided by wiser heads. But this almost cuts me out of having any religion whatever; if I begin to think about God, there arise a thousand questions, and whether the thirty-nine Articles answer them at all, or whether I should not answer them in the most diametrically opposite purport, is a matter of great doubt. If I am to study the question, I have no right to put my name to the answers beforehand, or to join in the acts of a body and be to practical purpose one of a body who accept these answers of which I propose to examine the validity.

I willnotassert that one has norightto do this, but it seems to me to destroy one’s sense of perfect freedom of inquiry in a great degree; and I further incline to hold that inquiries are best carried on by turning speculation into practice, and my speculations no doubt in their earlier stages would result in practice considerably at variance with thirty-nine-Article subscription. Much as I like, fond as I am of Oxford, and much as I should hate the other element undisguised, I verily believe that, as a preliminary stage, it would be far better to be at Stinkomalee (the London University acknowledges that agnomen, I believe). Amongst the irreligious, I should have Abdielitish tendencies; here, what religion I have I cannot distinguish from the amalgamations it is liable to, and I am, right or wrong, as matter of fact, exceedingly averse to act on anything but what I have got from myself, or have so distinctly appropriated as to allow my original tenants as it were time and space to state and vindicate their claim against the new comers.

Without in the least denying Christianity, I feel little that I can call its power. Believing myself to be in my unconscious creed in some shape or other an adherent to its doctrines, I keep within its pale; still, whether thespirit of the age, whose lacquey and flunkey I submit to be, will prove to be this kind or that kind, I can’t the least say. Sometimes I have doubts whether it won’t turn out to be no Christianity at all. Also, it is a more frequent question with me whether the master whom I work under, and am content to work under, is not carrying out his operations himself elsewhere, while I am, as it were, obeying the directions of a bungling journeyman no better than myself.

As the great Goethe published in his youth the ‘Sorrows of the Young Werther,’ so may I, you see, the great poet that am to be, publish my ‘Lamentations of a Flunkey out of place.’ You, perhaps, will say the lamentations are more out of place than the flunkey. And certainly Flunkey hath no intention of giving notice to quit just at present, nor of publishing lamentations at all. Thou, however, in thy wisdom, consider the sad examples and perplexities that encounter said flunkey amidst all the most flunkeyish occupations of his flunkeydom, and in the hope that at this time next year he will still be engaged in these same occupations, transmit to him advice and good counsel as to those same scruples and perplexities. In the meantime he must dress and put on his livery for dinner.

[Exit Flunkey.

To the same.

Liverpool: April 2, 1845.

Easter vacation should furnish forth a letter, more especially as I anticipate a singularly busy Easter Term, since one of our three tutors is to be examiner in the schools. First of all; you will be glad to hear that Matt Arnold is elected Fellow of Oriel. This was done on Friday last, March 28, just thirty years after his father’s election. Mrs. Arnold is of course well pleased, as also the venerable poet at Rydal, who had taken M. under his special protection.Mrs. Arnold I saw at Fox How; she was looking remarkably well, though the party seemed strangely small, all the boys being away.

The beauties of Parson’s Pleasure, where we were wont to bathe in the early morning, have been diminished by the unsightly erection, by filthy lucre-loving speculators, of a bathing-house, and I have therefore deserted it. But a substitute is to be found.

If you do not come soon, I shall perhaps have fled from my tutorial bower and committed something ἀνήκεστον.

To ——

August 17, 1845.

About the National Debt, I believe the ‘Prospective’ reviewer is wrong. Arnold, according to the best authorities on such matters, is quite right in regarding it as a grievous burden. I can’t see that it can be otherwise, but people have fancied it rather a blessing than the reverse. The article on Blanco White seems to be temperate enough; with the Inquisition hanging over him, he could not be otherwise than he was—he could not but fancy throughout his life that he was being bullied into a sham belief. At the same time I believe there is a vicious habit of poking into intellectual questions merely for the fun of it, or the vanity of it, only not quite so common as people make out. At any rate, taking it easy and acquiescing in anything is much more common. Perhaps every clergyman is not called upon to fit himself for cases like Blanco White’s. How could it be?

To Rev. T. Burbidge.

Calder Park, Glasgow: August 31, 1845.

It is too hot to go out (72° in the shade), and in Scotland we are too sabbatic to read anything but sermons. Itremains therefore that I retire to my room and do as I am doing. We returned yesterday from our Highland expedition. We went by steamer up Loch Fyne, across the Mull of Cantire in a canal boat, and again in a steamer among the multitudinous isles, the skirts of the Hebrides, up the great fiord of Loch Linnhe, which narrows gradually, and at the headland of Ardgower is transmuted into the inland lake, a salt Winandermere, of Loch Eil, at the head of which stands Fort William, where begins the Caledonian Canal. This, our most northerly point, we attained on Monday. Tuesday was devoted by the rest toBen, by me toGlen-Nevis. The former hid his head in a cloud—the latter arrayed his woody sides for me in glorious light and shade (!!)

It is really the most beautiful glen I ever saw. I went seven miles up, and was still far from the end. You first go up what appears a sort of glorification of Grisedale; then a sudden turn at right angles leads you into a sort of magnified Hartsop—the birch-wood and ashes being here accompanied with the native Scotch fir. And at the bottom all along rolls a stream of the clear water over rocks and stones of porphyry, which give it a most glorious yellow-red colour.

In the evening we moved southward by land to Ballahulish, on Loch Leven; thence the next morning by Glencoe, a magnificent pass into a moorland country, wherein are the sources of some feeders of the Tay, running eastward. We descended into the glen of Loch Tulla and the Orchay, which leads off to Loch Awe; Loch Awe is very fine but rather cold. Ben Cruachan, which rises above it, is a very fine peaked mountain. We crossed over and reached Inverary for bed. On Thursday, we passed through Glencroe, descended on the fine salt Loch Long, crossed the four miles intervening, and found ourselves on Loch Lomond, six or seven miles from its head. We went up it about threemiles in a steamer, to ‘the rough falls of Inversneyd,’ crossed a high moor of five miles, and found ourselves at the head of Loch Katrine, rowed twelve miles down, and were landed in the Trosachs. On Friday T. A. and T. W. crossed the hills to Loch Ard, and I went up the lake, and there took a pony and joined them in a roundabout way, passing a very beautiful water called Loch Chon. I came back and slept at Inversneyd; they remained and attended a highland-reel party in a shoemaker’s hut at Loch Ard, and after staying up dancing and drinking milk and whisky till half-past two, rose at half-past four, walked eleven miles to a hasty breakfast with me, and then took steam down to the foot of Loch Lomond, and so by Dumbarton we came home, dirty, and dusty, and bankrupt. Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond are both like Ullswater; the former less beautiful the latter, I think, more so. Both are less cultivated; Loch Katrine quite wild, and the little landlocked lakelet at its foot, cut off by the Lady’s Island and one or two promontories, is exceedingly beautiful. The heather also is a great accession to the Highlands. So endeth my story.

At present there are staying here young Walter Scott Lockhart, who is just leaving Cambridge to join the army in his uncle Sir Walter’s regiment; also his sister. Young Walter is thought a good deal like his grandfather, but, though far from dull, he is anything but literary, and is going out to join his uncle’s regiment in India, rather against his father’s wish, as he is heir to Abbotsford and to Milton Lockhart, where his father’s elder brother lives, and where they are now staying.

September 5.

On Wednesday morning we started for the Falls of Clyde. We breakfasted at Milton Lockhart, lionised Craignethan Castle, the original of Tillietudlem, returnedto luncheon, and to songs from Miss Lockhart, and after this went on to see Stonebyres, Cora Linn, and Bonnyton, the three falls, which are all very fine—nothingnewin feature, but remarkable for size. We slept at Lanark, and came back to breakfast here.

The ‘Quarterly’ was at Milton Lockhart, and I had some conversation with him; he spoke of the prevalence of infidelity, even among the country folk of Scotland, saying that all the small farmers in that neighbourhood were avowed unbelievers. He ascribed it greatly to Burns. Chalmers, he said, was once in a factory at Glasgow, and began to talk to some of the work-people in his way, when he was interrupted by an old woman, who told him that he ‘needna go on; there are nae Christians in this ward, Doctor.’

In Monday’s ‘Times’ appeared a letter written by Ward to the ‘Oxford Herald,’ announcing his intention of leaving the English Church at last; and implying the like on Newman’s part, that indeed being his own ground for changing his opinion. His defence of his position in the English Church had rested, he said, on the facts—1st. That the said Church allowed Romanist teaching.—2nd. That Romanisers (like Newman) found themselves feel continually better satisfied with the resolution of remaining in the English communion. The late decision of the Ecclesiastical Courts had, he said, destroyed the former ground, and Newman’s change the latter.

To the same.

Calder Park: September 11, 1845.

We went to Edinburgh on Tuesday; saw the Castle and Holyrood, including Queen Mary’s apartments and Rizzio’s blood, the Calton Hill, and Flaxman’s statue of Burns, which I admired much.

We went to dine and sleep at Houston, the house ofShairp, and lionised the grounds of Hopetoun next day, which lie on the Forth, over against Dunfermline gray, &c. &c. I liked the place very much; it is a tall, perpendicular house, four storeys and attics; such peep-hole windows in thick stone walls; all manner of useless little rooms on all manner of unequally disposed levels; a stone staircase from bottom to top. Wainscotted partition walls, and old folks by the dozen looking down on you therefrom; among the rest, Archbishop Sharpe, who seems to have been of the family, but is hardly acknowledged, as they are now Presbyterians. And the second flower of Yarrow, really a beautiful face, though in the picture rather faded, who lived at Houston with her sister, who had married its owner. The garden, moreover, of flowers and kitchenry without distinction, with high hedges of beech and yew, &c., running hither and thither about it, was very pleasant.

To Rev. J. P. Gell.

Liverpool: September 21, 1845.

Is it news to you that Ward has at last gone over to Rome, wife and all; is at this present moment at St. Mary’s College, Oscott, having just received confirmation? Newman, it is said, will not go over finally till Christmas, but his intention to do so is definitely announced. It is thought that his immediate followers will not be many; ten or twelve subordinates and Oakeley is large allowance. But a great many will be rendered uneasy by his departure, and one may look out for changes in one way or other: it will be ‘dropping weather’ in the Romanising line for some time to come, I dare say. Newman’s Apologia, entitled ‘Notes of the Church,’ is expected to appear soon. So also the volumes of the reprint of Arnold’s Lives, in the ‘Encyclopædia Metropolitana.’ The miscellaneous volume, including the Church Reform and Catholic Emancipation pamphletsthe Sheffield and Hertford letters and other minora, has been out for a month. The Catholic Emancipation I had never read till to-day; to-day I did so with great delight. My last reading before that was (strong meat) the ‘Life of Blanco White’: almost wholly from his own papers; a very striking production, which has called out a review from Gladstone in the ‘Quarterly,’ and a more powerful one by Mozley in the ‘Christian Remembrancer’ (Puseyitic extreme). For me, almost it persuaded me to turn Unitarian, that is, for the moment; and even now I feel no common attraction towards the book and the party who have brought it out, viz. the high Unitarians, such as Miss Martineau’s brother, a preacher here; Mr. Thom, his colleague, the editor of book, &c., and others. They have a review, the ‘Prospective,’ ‘Aspice, Respice,Prospice’ (sic) being the motto, in each of the eight numbers of which Arnold’s volume, the Life, the Fragment on the Church, and the last miscellaneous volume have received an article; and in their particular section of the people they are, I should think, doing a great deal of good.

I renewed my acquaintance at the Lakes this year with Hartley Coleridge. The only thing worth recording from his lips is a saying which he repeated as his father’s, that etymology is in danger of death from a plethora of probabilities.

To Rev. T. Burbidge.

Liverpool: September 23, 1845.

I have been reading ‘The Improvisatore,’ a Danish novel translated by Mary Howitt. You know I hate Corinne. This is in the Corinne high beauty-beatification style, Italy, art, and love à l’æsthétique; but the thing is rendered truthful and sober in Dano-Gothic colouring. But this kind of book makes me long for genuine live-and-act story, such as the ‘Rose of Tistelön,’ which I recommend you.

Item.—I have bought a Cowley, rather a scrubby 18mo, but the first edition after his death. I think Cowley has been Wordsworth’s model in many of his rhythms, and some of his curious felicities.

I told you, perhaps, that I had some thoughts of laying down my toga tutoria and going abroad for a year with a pupil; nor has the plan evaporated wholly as yet.

Oxford: September 28.

I went to Rugby on my way. The school is in number 490. They have built a new schoolroom at the back of the fives court, between the chapel and the stables.

Jowett comes hither, having been Stanley’s companion in Germany. They saw Schelling, who spoke to them of Coleridge with high praise, saying that it was an utter shame to talk of his having plagiarised from him, Schelling.

To his Sister.

Oriel: October 1845.

What shall be done in the summer? Shall we go to Switzerland together, see the Italian lakes and Milan, taking the Seine and Paris one way, and the Rhine and Belgium the other? Alas! I fear there will be no money to spare. Potatoes and all ‘bread-stuffs’ are like to be terribly dear; and we shall have to live on butcher’s meat for lack of cheaper food. Or have you laid in a stock of rice? Government, it seems, will not open the ports for foreign corn: the free-traders are outvoted in Privy Council, and for the present, at any rate, we must let our neighbours buy for themselves without any interference of ours.

Moreover, I think it very likely I may give up this tutorship (quod tamen tu tacere debes), and as private tutor I could not, without more work than I should like,make the same sum per annum which I now receive from the College.

To Rev. T. Burbidge.

Oxford: October 19, 1845.

There is a good article (a portent) in the ‘Quarterly,’ pronounced to be Milman’s, on the ‘Relation of Clergy to People,’ against priestcraft and authority, and extolling marriage; it is really very well done.

There is also (a portentous portent) another article not at all to be despised, on the ‘Moral Discipline of the Army,’ specially in regard of Chaplains; in a postscript to which announcement is made that certain improvements have just been ordered by Government, as for instance the building of chapels for barracks.

The poet Faber, men say, will go, but the ultra-Puseyites in general seem inclined not to take headers à la Ward, but to sneak in and duck their heads till they are out of their depth.

Liddell, it appears, is standing for the Moral Philosophy chair. I hope he will get it; he is a man who will work, and who will be listened to.

October 28.

I have, however, in the last three days found time to read ‘Jeanne, par George Sand,’ the most cleanly French novel I ever read, and not cleanly only, but pure. If I knew French well enough, and was not a college tutor, I would translate it, and I believe it would take; for one thing, the hero is an Englishman, and by no means a common, but a very veritable hero.

31st.

Liddell, thank Heaven, is elected Professor of Moral Philosophy. The election brought Vaughan up, and wehad the pleasure of seeing him. He is very agreeable, converses very well, and I wish sincerely he was up here always.

November 1.

Potato-disease, and abolition of corn-laws—at any rate, immediate opening of ports for foreign corn, which ports it may be found somewhat hard to close again; panic in the railway market gradually dispelled again, not unlikely howbeit to reappear; such is the news of the week. Cobden sounds a note of triumph at Manchester, and dubs Hudson with the title of ‘King of Spades,’ in joint allusion to his innumerable army of navigators and his gifts at shuffling and card-tricks. O’Connell, called upon by the Saxon press to do something more for his starving countrymen than vapouring at the Conciliation Hall, comes out with a 10 per cent. tax on all landowners, and 50 per cent. on absentees. London, meantime, fearless of lack of funds, proposes to adorn itself with a grand verandah system—at least for all shopping streets. A very desirable plan, I think. I have often wondered that the hint of Chester rows had not been taken long ago.

To his Sister.

Oriel: November 23, 1845.

Another convert is gone over to Rome—Faber, the poet, who used to excite admiration when preaching some seven years ago at Ambleside; and at Cambridge a flitting from the Camden is expected.

The Irish Colleges are to be, I believe, at Belfast, and certainly at Cork and Galway. This last would be wholly Roman Catholic, I suppose, otherwise I should like it, for the country near it is very beautiful. There is a great lake, some forty miles long, Lough Corrib, the upper part of which they say is like Wastwater.

Belfast would be chiefly Presbyterian; at any rate, Protestant. Cork is to be under a Dr. Kane, a chemist and I fancy a very able and sensible man. I think it possible I may some day find myself at one of these places. I don’t much mind which. But they won’t be ready for two years, I should think.

To the same.

Rugby: December 23, 1845.

I hope you will forgive me. I am not coming home before Monday. It appears that F. Newman (Newman’s brother) is coming here on Friday; and I am very desirous to see him, and my hosts urge me to stay.

F. Newman, by-the-by, is the author of the paper in the ‘Prospective Review,’ on Arnold’s Miscellaneous Works. I really think I ought not to miss this opportunity of seeing him; so I trust you and mother will forgive my truancy for once, though I fear that you will have but a meagre Christmas party.

To Rev. T. Burbidge.

Liverpool: January 19, 1846.

Price has been writing a letter or two in the ‘Balance,’ a newspaper set up on principles which may be described as Arnoldite out of Evangelical, a somewhat mongrel progeny, perhaps, with more of profession than fervour; and the paper is certainly weak, though certainly at the same time well meaning. It wishes to become a sort of Sunday newspaper for all sorts of people, gentle and simple, nobleman, and serving man, and working man. Gurney, I believe, is editor; Lord Robert Grosvenor and some others have promised to pay the piper for a while. Gurney puts poems into it. I wrote a letter myself which is to appear in its columns next week. Another newspaper, ‘The Daily News,’ is placarding itself for issue on the 21st, the literarydepartment under the direction of Charles Dickens. Is ‘Boz’ proposing to reform the press? to combat, a printer’s ink St. Michael, the Dragon immorality of the ‘Times’? It is open to conjecture. But perhaps it is only a quiet little job in the money-making way. Half a dozen new newspapers are commencing their career; it is almost like a railway mania.

An evening or two after I wrote I met Martineau accidentally. I liked him greatly. He talked simply, courteously, and ably, and has a forehead with a good deal of that rough-hewn mountainous strength which one used to look at when at lesson in the library at Rugby not without trembling.

To his Sister.

Oxford: February 1846.

I have only just time to sign my name. My lectures go on from ten till two these days. Just at this time, too, there are numerous parties—breakfasts, namely, and dinners—which cut me out of the usual odds and ends that do for letter-writing. I have been very gay this week; there is always a sort of carnival at Oxford, and this year it happens to coincide with the end of the Rugby holidays. We had several Rugby masters up—Tait, Arnold, Congreve, and Bradley, &c.; and on Tuesday there was a Rugby dinner, which was very successful and pleasant.

Concerning marriage, what you say is true enough, but to fall in love without knowledge is foolery; to obtain knowledge without time and opportunity and something like intimate acquaintance is, for the most part, impossible; and to obtain time and opportunity is just the thing. Then, again, there comes the question of reconciling marriage with one’s work, which for me is a problem of considerable difficulty. It is not every one who would like to be a helpmate in the business I am likely to have.

To the same.

Castleton Braemar:6August 9, 1846.

Our house is very comfortable, and affords us two sitting-rooms, one of which is conceded to my special use. The other has a nice look out up the Glen of Clunie, a little stream which dashes through the granite just beside us, and gives us a pool to bathe in. But the country in general is not what I require for full delight. The hills are round, and somewhat tame, though beautifully clad with heather. The Dee, which is the great river of the district, into which the Clunie runs, is very pretty, and indeed beautiful, three miles higher up. And the mountain excursions still farther off, in the region of Benmacdhui and Cairngorm, will I dare say prove satisfactory. The kirk to which we went this morning is fairly administered, but not very much attended. I fancy more go to the Free Kirk; and there is also a Roman Catholic Chapel in the village, and a good many of the poorer folks are Papists. I have given up the idea of the school at Birmingham, having settled to stay out my time at Oxford.

You must remember what a great advantage for intercourse with the poor is given byanysort of cultivation, music, drawing, dancing, German, French, &c. &c. They feel this distinction very sensibly, and carry their liking of a lady almost to the vice of liking afinelady.

To the same.

Castleton Braemar: September 10, 1846.

Our neighbours continue to send us grouse and venison, which reduces our butcher’s bills. To-morrow three weeksI expect to have done. I mean, however, to get a little rambling to make up for the somewhat poor scenery of this Valley of Dee, and I fear shall only pay you but a brief visit before I go up to Oxford, about the 15th of October. We are enjoying fine weather, sunshine and moonshine both, but perhaps a little cold, though bathing continues as usual. To-night we all go to a party at General Duff’s to see Highland dancing.

September 26.

On Wednesday we had a regular flood, and it has been raining more or less ever since, with intervals, however, yesterday, of very respectable sunshine. Our two sportsmen (did I tell you two pupils were gone up the hills?) have returned, bringing a few grouse and a haunch of venison (not their own killing this last) from our neighbour the Duke of Leeds.

The spring of 1847, as will be remembered, was the time of the Irish famine. The distress caused by it, not only in Ireland, moved Clough greatly, and stirred him to write an appeal to the undergraduates at Oxford, of which the substance is given in the next chapter.

To ——

March 28, 1847.

Perhaps what you say is true about the Unitarians in general, but in this particular case I think they were not very far wrong in declining to have any service. I think it presumptuous to set down the famine to Divine displeasure, and not particularly wise to have a holiday (for such it was in general) at the very time when people ought to be working hardest to produce all they can to make up for the loss. Let people save and curtail their enjoyments as much as they please; that’s a very different thing, anda thing which I hope the good self-humiliating fast-observers will not forget, now the fast is over.

The object of the new education measures is merely to assist schools, by pensioning masters and mistresses in their old age, and assisting clever boys in getting instructed for the business of teaching, and all that the Government require in return is the right of inspection; and any school which declines to receive assistance may refuse to be inspected. The Dissenters are bigoted fools, in my judgment. It is the very least which Government could do.

My Scotch plans are still somewhat uncertain, as the accommodation at Drumnadrochet is dearer and also less comfortable than we had expected.

To J. C. Shairp, Esq.

March 1847.

Thanks for your letter. I can only say that I have made up my mind against leaving this till my sixth year ends and turns me out.

To his Sister.

Oriel: May 1847.

You will see that the adorable Swede, Jenny Lind, has enchanted all the world. I greatly rejoice at it, and think Imustgo and see her. I have promised to go and see Tom at Whitsuntide, and so I dare say I shall do the thing then. Have you seen the lady’s picture? Look and see if you can find a not very beautiful but very pleasant and true-looking face, lithographed.

I have not read ‘Emilia Wyndham,’ but I did read a long time ago ‘Two Old Men’s Tales,’ by the same author, and they certainly were, as I am told ‘Emilia Wyndham’ is, too pathetic a great deal. I don’t want to cry except for some good reason; it is ‘pleasant, but wrong,’ in mymind. A novel ought to make you think, and if it does that, the more vivid it is the better, and of course it follows that now and then it will make you cry; but I am not aware that Mrs. Marsh does make you think.

Schiller made the same impression on me, when I used to read him in St. James’s Terrace, which he does now on you. Coleridge has been to me the antidotive power; he was a philosopher and a firm believer (so far as one can make out) in Christianity, not only as a doctrine, but as a narrative of events. My own feeling certainly does not go along with Coleridge in attributing any special virtue to the facts of the Gospel History. They have happened, and have produced what we know, have transformed the civilisation of Greece and Rome and the barbarism of Gaul and Germany into Christendom. But I cannot feel sure that a man may not have all that is important in Christianity even if he does not so much as know that Jesus of Nazareth existed. And I do not think that doubts respecting the facts related in the Gospels need give us much trouble. Believing that in one way or other the thing is of God, we shall in the end know, perhaps, in what way and how far it was so. Trust in God’s justice and love, and belief in His commands as written in our conscience, stand unshaken, though Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, or even St. Paul, were to fall.

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