a matter of common sense, that, without entering into the religious question, a knowledge of the Christian Scriptures must form a part of the merely intellectual education of all persons in Christian countries. He says, I think most truly, that Christianity has so coloured all our institutions, and all our literature, and has in so many points modified or even dictated our laws, that no one can be considered as an educated man who is not acquainted with its authoritative documents. He considers that a liberal education without the Scriptures, must be, in any Christian country, a contradiction in

terms.

My conclusion is, that we are bound in some way or other to recognize this truth. We may, indeed, give Degrees in Law and Medicine, without acknowledging it; so we may also in physical science; so we may also in pure science and philology. None of these things, nor all of them together, constitute education. But if we profess to give Degrees in Arts, we are understood, I think, as giving our testimony that a man has received a liberal education. And the same result follows from our examining on any moral subject, such as History or Moral Philosophy; because it is precisely moral knowledge, and moral knowledge only, which properly constitutes educa

tion.

The University of Bonn,-the only one of the Prussian universities with the system of which I happen to be acquainted,-is open, as you know, to Catholics and Protestants equally. But both have their Professors and their regular courses of religious instruction. Now as we do not teach at present, but only examine, and as we confer no degrees in Theology, our difficulty will be of a far simpler kind. It may be met, I think, perfectly easily in two or three different manners. I suppose that, for any of the reasons stated above, our Bachelor of Arts' Degree must imply a knowledge of the Christian Scriptures. But then, as we are not to be sectarian, neither you and I on the one hand, nor any of our Dissenting colleagues on the other, have any right to put their own construction on this term, "knowledge of the Scriptures." I think that an Unitarian knows them very ill, and he would think the same of us. But we agree in attaching an equal value to a "knowledge of the Scriptures," each of us interpreting the phrase in his own way.

I would propose, then, two or three modes of ascertaining every candidate's knowledge of the Scriptures, in his own meaning of the term. First, in imitation of the University of Bonn, there might be members of the Senate of different denominations of Christians to examine the members of their own communions. Practically, this would involve no great multitude; I doubt if it would require more than three divisions, our own Church, Roman Catholics, and Unitarians. I doubt if the orthodox Dissenters, as they are called, would have any objection to be examined by you or me in such books of the New Testament as they themselves chose to bring up, when they were required to subscribe to no Articles or Liturgy, and were examined as persons whose opinions on their own peculiar points of difference were not tolerated merely, but solemnly recognized; so that there would be neither any suspicion of compromise on their part, nor of attempts at proselytism on ours.

Secondly, we might even do less than this, and merely require from every candidate for a Degree in Arts, a certificate, signed by two ministers of his own persuasion, that he was competently instructed in Christian knowledge as un derstood by the members of their communion. This is no more than every young person in our own Church now gets, previously to his Confirmation. I think this would be a very inferior plan to the former, inasmuch as the certificates might in some cases be worth very little; but still it completely saves the principle recognized in our Charter, and indispensable, I think, to every plan of education, or for the ascertaining of the sufficiency of any one's education, in a Christian country, that Christian knowledge is a necessary part of the formation and cultivation of the mind of every one.

Thirdly, we might, I am sure, do what were best of all, and which might produce benefits in the course of time, more than could be told. All Protestants acknowledge the Scriptures as their common authority, and all desire their children to study them. Let every candidate for a Degree bring up at his own choice some one Gospel, and some one Epistle in the Greek Testament. Let him declare, on coming before us, to what communion he belongs. We know what are the peculiar views entertained by him as such, and we would respect them most religiously. But on all common ground we might examine him thoroughly, and how infinite would be the good of thus proving, by actual experience, how much more our common ground is than our peculiar ground. I am perfectly ready to examine to-morrow in any Unitarian school in England, in presence of parents and masters. I will not put a question that should offend, and yet I will give such an examination as should bring out, or prove the absence of what you and I should agree in considering to be Christian knowledge of the highest value. I speak as one who has been used to examine young men in the Scriptures for twenty years nearly, and I pledge myself to the perfect easiness of doing this. Our examinations, in fact, will carry their own security with them, if our characters would not; they will be public, and we should not and could not venture to proselytize, even if we wished it. But the very circumstance of our having joined the London University at the risk of much odium from a large part of our profession, would be a warrant for our entering into the spirit of the Charter with perfect sincerity. I have no sufficient apology to offer for this long intrusion upon your patience, but my overwhelming sense of the importance of the subject. It depends wholly, as I think, on our decision on this point, whether our success will be a blessing or a curse to the country. A Christian, and yet not sectarian University, would be a blessing of no common magnitude. An University that conceived of education as not involving in it the principles of moral truth, would be an evil, I think, no less enormous.

CLXII. TO THE REV. H. HILL.

(In answer to questions about Thucydides.)

Rugby, May 25, 1837.

My experience about Thucydides has told me that the knowledge required to illustrate him may be taken at any thing you please, from Mitford up to omne scibile. I suppose that the most direct illustrations are to be found in Aristophanes, the Acharnians, the Peace, the Birds, and the Clouds; as also in the speech of Andocides de Mysteriis. For the Greek, Bekker's text, in his smaller edition of 1832, and a good Index Verborum, though bad is the best, are, I think, the staple. You may add, instead of a Lexicon, Reiske's Index Verborum to Demosthenes, and Mitchell's to Plato and Isocrates, with Schweighäuser's Lexicon Herodoteum. Buttman's larger Greek Grammar is the best thing for the forms of the Verbs; as for Syntax, Thucydides, in many places, is his own law.

We talk about going to Rome, which will be a virtuous effort if I do go, for my heart is at Fox How. Yet I should love to talk once again with Bunsen on the Capitol, and to expatiate with him on the green upland plain of Algidus.

I congratulate you-and I do not mean it as a mere façon de parler-on your Ordination.

CLXIII. TO C. J. VAUGHAN, ESQ.

Rugby, September 13, 1837.

The first sheet of the History is actually printed, and I hope it will be out before the winter. But I am sure that it will disappoint no one so much as it will myself; for I see a standard of excellence before me in my mind, which I cannot realize; and I mourn over the deficient knowledge of my book, seeing how much requires to be known in order to write History well, and how soon in so many places the soil of my own knowledge is bored through, and there is the barren rock or gravel which yields nothing.

I could write on much, but my time presses. I am anxious to know your final decision as to profession; but I do not like to attempt to influence you. Whatever be your choice, it does not much matter, if you follow steadily our great common profession, Christ's service. Alas! when will the Church ever exist in more than in name, so that this profession might have that zeal infused into it which is communicated by an (6 Esprit de Corps ;" and, if the "Body" were the real Church, instead of our abominable sects, with their half priestcraft, half profaneness, its "Spirit" would be one that we might desire to receive into all our hearts and all our minds.

CLXIV. TO THE REV. J. HEARN.

Rugby, September 25, 1837.

was

I have to thank you for two very kind letters, as also for a volume of C-'s Sermons. Do you know that Can old Oxford pupil of mine in 1815? and a man for whom I have a great regard, though I am afraid he thinks me a heretic, and though he has joined that party which, as a party, I think certainly to be a very bad one. But, if you ever see C, I should be much obliged to you if you would give him my kind remembrances. It grieves me to be so parted as I am from so many men with whom I was once intimate. I feel and speak very strongly against their party, but I always consider the party as a mere abstraction of its peculiar character as a party, and as such I think it detestable; but take any individual member of it, and his character is made up of many other elements than the mere peculiarities of his party. He may be kind-hearted, sensible on many subjects, sincere, and a good Christian, and therefore I may love and respect him, though his party as such, that is, the peculiar views which constitute the bond of union amongst its members,—I think to be most utterly at variance with Christianity. But I dare say many people, hearing and reading my strong condemnations of Tories and Newmanites, think that I feel very bitterly against all who belong to these parties; whereas unless they are merely Tories and Newmanites-I feel no dislike to them, and in many instances love and value them exceedingly. Hampden's business seemed to me different, as there was in that something more than theoretical opinions; there was downright evil acting, and the more I consider it, the more does my sense of its evil rise. Certainly my opinion of the principal actors in that affair has been altered by it towards them personally; I do not say that it should make me forget all their good qualities, but I consider it as a very serious blot in their moral character. But I did not mean to fill my letter with this, only the thought of Cmade me remember how much I was alienated from many old friends, and then I wish to explain how I really did feel about them, for I believe that many people think me to be very hard and very bitter; thinking so, I hope and believe, unjustly.

*

CLXV.

TO DR. GREENHILL.

Rugby, September 18, 1837.

I shall be anxious to hear what you think of Homœopathy, which my wife has tried twice with wonderful success, and I once with quite success enough to try it again. Also I shall like to hear any thing fresh about Animal Magnetism, which has always excited my curiosity. But more than all, I would fain learn something of malaria, and about the causes of pestilential disease, particularly the Cholera. It is remarkable, that while all ordinary disease seems to yield more and more to our increased knowledge, pestilences seem still to be reserved by God for his own purposes, and to baffle as completely our knowledge of their causes, and our power to meet them, as in the earliest ages of the world. Indeed, the Cholera kills more quickly than any of the recorded plagues of antiquity; and yet a poison so malignant can be introduced into the air, and neither its causes nor its existence understood; we see only its effects. Influenza and Cholera, I observe, just attack the opposite parts of the system; the former fastening especially on the chest and censorium, which are perfectly unaffected, I believe, in Cholera. As to connecting the causes of either with any of the obvious phenomena of weather or locality, it seems to me a pure folly to attempt it; as great as the folly of ascribing malaria to the miasmata of aquatic plants. I shall be very much interested in hearing your reports of the latest discoveries in these branches of science; Medicine, like Law, having always attracted me as much in its study as it has repelled me in practice; not that I feel alike towards the practice of both; on the contrary, I honour the one as much as I abhor the other; the physician meddles with physical evil in order to relieve and abate it; the lawyer meddles with moral evil rather to aggravate it than to mend. Yet the study of Law is, I think, glorious, transcending that of any earthly thing.

CLXVI. TO W. EMPSON, ESQ.

Rugby, November 18, 1837.

I trust that I need not assure you that I feel as deeply interested as any man can do in the welfare of our University, and most deeply should I grieve if any act of mine were to impair it. But then I am interested in the University, so far as it may be a means towards effecting certain great ends; if it does not promote these, it is valueless; if it obstruct them, it is actually pernicious. So far I know we are agreed; but then to my mind the whole good that a University can do towards the cause of general education depends on its holding manifestly a Christian character; if it does not hold this, it seems to me to be at once so mischievous, from giving its sanction to a most mischievous principle, that its evil will far outweigh its good. Now the education system in Ireland, which has yet been violently condemned by many good men, is Christian, though it is not Protestant or Catholic; their Scripture lessons give it the Christian character clearly and decisively. Now are we really for the sake of a few Jews, who may like to have a Degree in Arts,-or for the sake of one or two Mahomedans, who may possibly have the same wish, or for the sake of English unbelievers, who dare not openly avow themselves,-are we to destroy our only chance of our being either useful or respected as an institution of national education? There is no difficulty with Dissenters of any denomination; what we have proposed has been so carefully considered, that it is impossible to pretend that it bears a sectarian character; it is objected to merely as being Christian, as excluding Jews, Turks, and misbelievers.

Now, considering the small numbers of the two first of these divisions,

and that the last have as yet no ostensible and recognized existence, and that our Charter declares in the very opening that the end of our institution is the promotion of religion and morality,-I hold myself abundantly justified in interpreting the subsequent expressions as relating only to all denominations of Her Majesty's Christian subjects, and in that sense I cordially accede to them. Beyond that I cannot go, as I have not the smallest doubt that it is better to go on with our present system, with all its narrowness and deficiencies, than to begin a pretended system of national education on any other than a Christian basis. As to myself, therefore, my course is perfectly clear. If our report be rejected on Wednesday,-I mean as to its Christian clauses, I certainly will not allow my name to be affixed to it without them; nor can I assist any farther in preparing a scheme of Examination which I should regard as a mere evil. It would be the first time that education in England was avowedly unchristianized for the sake of accommodating Jews or unbelievers; and as, on the one hand, I do not believe that either of these are so numerous as to be entitled to consideration even on points far less vital, so, if they were ever so numerous, it might be a very good reason why the national property should be given to their establishments and taken away from ours, but nothing could ever justify a compromise between us and them in such a matter as education.

I am quite sure that no earnest Christian would wish the Gospels and Acts, and the Scripture History, to be excluded, because they were in some instances understood differently. It was a sure mark of the false mother when she said, "let the child be neither mine nor thine, but divide it;" the real mother valued the child very differently. I can see, therefore, in this question, no persons opposed to us whom I should wish to conciliate,-no benefits in the University, if it bears no mark of Christianity which I should think worth preserving. It will grieve me very much if we in the last result take a different view of this matter.

CLXVII. TO THE REV. TREVENEN PENROSE.

(His brother-in-law.)

Rugby, November 20, 1837.

I have long since purposed to write to you, and at last I hope I shall be able to do it. I always read your additions to the Journal with great interest, and they never fail to awaken in me many thoughts of various kinds, but principally, I think, a strong sense of the blessing which seems to follow your father's house, and of the true peace, which, for seventeen years, I can testify, and I believe for many more, has continually abided with it. And this peace I am inclined to value above every other blessing in the world; for it is very far from the "Otium" of the Epicurean, and might indeed be enjoyed any where; but in your case outward circumstances seem happily to have combined with inward, and other people have rarely, I believe, so large a portion of the one or of the other. I am not disposed to quarrel with my own lot, nevertheless, it is not altogether peaceful, and this great concern oppresses me more as I grow older, and as I feel more deeply the evils I am powerless to quell. You see much hardness, perhaps, and much ignorance, but then you see also much softness, if nowhere else, yet amongst the sick; and you see much affection and self-denial amongst the poor, which are things to refresh the heart; but I have always to deal with health and youth, and lively spirits, which are rarely soft or self-denying. And where there is little intellectual power, as generally there is very little, it is very hard to find any points of sympathy. And the effect of this prevalent mediocrity of character is very grievous. Good does not grow, and the fallowground lies ready for all evil.