ascribes the addition of the two last tribes to the censorship of Flaminius, whereas it preceded it nearly twenty years. The text of Polybius appears to me in a very unsatisfactory state, and the reading of the names of places in Italy worth next to nothing. I am sorry to say that my sense of his merit as an historian, becomes less and less continually; he is not only "einseitig," but in his very own way he seems to me to have been greatly overvalued, as a military, historian most especially; I should like to know what Niebuhr thought of him. Livy's carelessness is most provoking; he gives different accounts of the same events in different places, as he happened to take up different writers, and his incapability of conceiving any distinct idea of the operations of a campaign is truly wonderful. I think that the Latin Colonies and Hannibal's want of artillery and engineers saved Rome. Samnium would not rise effectually, whilst its strongest fortresses, Beneventum, Æsernia, &c., were in the hands of the enemy. If the French artillery had been no better than Hannibal's, and they had had no other arm to depend on than their cavalry, I believe that the Spaniards by themselves would have beaten them, for every town would then have been impregnable, and the Guerillas would have starved the army out. Some of Hannibal's faults reminded me strongly of Nelson; his cruelty to the Romans is but too like Nelson's hatred of the Jacobins, which led to the disgraceful tragedy at Naples. The "meretricula Salapiensis," was his Lady Hamilton. The interest of the History I find to be very great, but I cannot at all satisfy myself; the story should be so lively, and yet so rich in knowledge, and I can make it neither as I wish.

The year seems opening upon us with more favourable prospects; there is a strong feeling of enthusiasm, I think, about our successes in Syria, and though I do not sympathize in the quarrel, and regret more than I can say the alienation of France, yet the efficiency of the navy is naturally gratifying to every Englishman, and the reduction of Acre so far is, I think, a very brilliant action. Trade seems also reviving, although I suspect that in many markets you have excluded us irrevocably. But these respites, of which we have had so many, these lullings of the storm, in which the ship might be righted, perhaps, and the point weathered, seem doomed to be for ever wasted; the great evil remains uncured, nay, unprobed, and all fear to touch it. Truly, the gathering of the nations to battle, is more and more in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, not in the sense in which our fanatics look at the war in Syria, as likely to lead to the fulfilment of prophecy in their view of it, but because political questions more and more show that the Church question lies at the root of them-Niebuhr's true doctrine, that 1517 must precede 1688, and so that for a better than 1688, there needs a better than even 1517. Some of the Oxford men now commonly revile Luther as a bold bad man; how surely would they have reviled Paul; how zealously would they have joined in stoning Stephen; true children of those who slew the prophets, not the less so because they with idolatrous reverence build their sepulchres. But I must stop, for the sun is shining on the valley, now quite cleared of snow, and I must go round and take a farewell look at the trees and the river, and the mountains; ere "feror exul in altum," into the wide and troubled sea of life's business, from which this is so sweet a haven. But "Rise, let us be going," is a solemn call, which should for ever reconcile us to break off our luxurious sleep. May God bless us both in all our ways outward and inward, through Jesus Christ.

*

CCLXVIII.

TO REV. A. P. STANLEY.

Rugby, March 8, 1841.

I was much struck by what you say of Constantinople being the point to which the hopes of Greeks are turning, rather than to

Athens or Sparta. I can well believe it, but it makes the tirades of many Philo-Hellenians very ridiculous, and it should moderate our zeal in trying to revive classical antiquity. It curiously confirms what I said in the sermons on Prophecy, that "Christian Athens was divided by one deep and impassable chasm from the Heathen Athens of old." And we do not enough allow for the long duration of the Byzantine empire,-more than eleven hundred years.—a period how far longer than the whole of English History! But, however, I must turn from Greece to Italy, and now that you are in genuine Italy, (which you were not before, except in the short distance between Rimini and Ancona, for Cisalpine Gaul has no pretensions to the name,) I hope that you feel its beauty to be more akin to that of Greece. I have always felt in the Apennines that same charm which you speak of in the mountains of Greece: the "rosea rura Velini," between Rieti and Terni, are surrounded by forms of almost unearthly beauty. I have no deeper impression of any scene than of that, and when I was in that very rich and beautiful country between Como and Lugano, I kept asking of myself, why I so infinitely preferred the Apennine to the Alpine valleys. Naples itself is the only very beautiful spot which a little disappointed me; but the clouds hung heavily and coldly over the Sorrento mountains, and Vesuvius gave forth no smoke, so that the peculiar character of the scene, both in its splendour and in its solemnity, was wanting. My wife was half wild with Mola di Gaeta, and indeed I know not what can surpass it. There, too, the remains of the villas, "jactis in altum molibus," spoke loudly of the Roman times; and from Mola to Capua, the delighfulness of every thing was to me perfect. My own plans for the summer are very uncertain; we have an additional week, which of course tempts me, and I did think of going to Corfu, and of trying to get to Durazzo, where Cæsar's Lines attract me greatly, but I am half afraid both of the climate and quarantine, and want to consult you about it, if, as I hope, we shall see you before the end of the half-year. Spain again, and the neighbourhood of Lerida, is, I fear, out of the question; so that, if I do go abroad, I should not be surprised if I again visited Italy.

I suppose that by this time your thoughts are again accommodating themselves to the position of English and of Oxford life, after so many months of a sort of cosmopolitism. I am afraid that war is becoming less and less an impossibility, and, if we get reconciled to the notion of it as a thing which may be, our passions, I am afraid, will soon make it a thing that will be. My own desire of going to Oxford was, as you know, long cherished and strong, but it is quenched now; I could not go to a place where I once lived so happily and peaceably, and gained so much,-to feel either constant and active enmity to the prevailing party in it, or else, by use and personal humanities, to become first tolerant of such monstrous evil, and then perhaps learn to sympathize with it.

CCLXIX. TO J. P. GELL, ESQ.

Rugby, March 3, 1841.

There is really something formidable in writing a letter to Van Diemen's Land. You must naturally delight in hearing from England, and I should wish to give you some evidence that you are not forgotten by your friends at Rugby; yet how to fill a sheet with facts I know not; for great events are happily as rare with us as they used to be, and the little events of our life here, the scene, and the actors, are all as well known to you as to ourselves; in this respect contrasting strangely with our entire ignorance of the scene and nature of your life in Van Diemen's Land, where every acre of ground would be to me full of a thousand novelties; perhaps the acres in the towns not the least so. Again, the gigantic scale of your travelling quite dwarfs

our little summer excursions. If I were writing to a man buried in a country parsonage, I could expatiate on our delightful tour of last summer, when my wife, Mayor, and myself, went together to Rome, Naples, and the heart of the Abruzzi. But your journal of your voyage, and the consciousness that you are at our very antipodes, with declining summer instead of coming spring, at the beginning of your short half-year, while we are beginning our long one; this makes me unwilling to talk to you about a mere excursion to Italy.

We have been re-assembled here for nearly four months; locking up is at half past six, callings over at three and five, first lesson at seven. I am writing in the library at Fourth lesson, on a Wednesday, sitting in that undignified kitchen chair, which you so well remember, at that little table, a just proportional to the tables of the Sixth themselves, at which you have so often seen me writing in years past. And, as the light is scarcely bright enough to show the increased number of my gray hairs, you might, if you looked in upon us, fancy that time had ceased to run, and that we are the identical thirty-one or more persons who sat in the same place, at the same hour, and engaged in the very same work when you were one of them. The School is very full, about 330 boys in all, quiet and well disposed, I believe; but enough, as there will always be, to excite anxiety, and quite enough to temper vanity. My wife, thank God, is very well, and goes out on the pony regularly, as usual. We went to-day as far as the turnpike on the Dunchurch Road, then round by Deadman's Corner, to Bilton, and so home. Hoskyns, who is Sandford's curate, at Dunchurch, walked with us as far as the turnpike. The day was bright and beautiful, with gleams of sun, but no frost. You can conceive the buds swelling on the wild roses and hawthorns, and the pussy catkins of the willows are very soft and mouse-like; their yellow anthers have not yet shown themselves. The felling of trees goes on largely, as usual, and many an old wild and tangled hedge, with its mossy banks, presents at this moment a scraped black bank below, and a cut and stiff fence of stakes above; one of the minor griefs which have beset my Rugby walks for the last twelve years at this season of the year.

Of things in general I know not what to say. The country is in a state of much political apathy, and therefore Toryism flourishes as a matter of course, and commercial speculation goes on vigorously. Reform of all sorts, down to Talfourd's Copyright Bill, seems adjourned sine die; wherefore evil of all sorts keeps running up its account, and Chartism, I suppose, rejoices. The clergy are becoming more and more Newmanite,-Evangelicalism being swallowed up more and more by the stronger spell, as all the minor diseases merged in the plague in the pestilential time of the second year of the Peloponnesian war. Yet one very good bill has been brought into parliament by the Government, for the better drainage and freer room of the dwellings of the poor in large towns, and some of the master_manufacturers are considering that their workmen have something else besides hands belonging to them, and are beginning to attend to the welfare of that something. If reform of this sort spreads amongst a class of men so important, I can forgive much political apathy. Whether that unlucky eastern question will prove in the end the occasion of another general war, no man can tell; but I fear the full confidence of peace is gone, and men no longer look upon war as impossible, as they did twelve months since. God bless you, my dear Gell, and prosper all your work. Remember me very kindly to Sir John and Lady Franklin.

CCLXX.

TO SIR JOHN FRANKLIN, K.C.B.'

Rugby, March 16, 1841.

I ought not to have left your kind letter so long unanswered; but I have not, I trust, neglected its main business, although I cannot report any satisfactory progress, for I know not in what state the question now is, and I have been this very day writing to Mr. Stephen, to ask what they are about, and whether I can be of any further service.

My whole feelings go along with Gell's wishes, but I do not think that they ought to be indulged. It is a great happiness to live in a country where there is only one Church to be considered either in law or in equity; then all institutions can take a simple and definite character; the schools and the Church can be identified, and the teaching in the school-room and in the Church may breathe the same spirit, and differ only so far as the one is addressed to adults, the other to children. All this no one can love more than I do. I have the Bishop's license: we have our School Chapel, where the Church service is duly performed; I preach in it as a Minister of the Church, and the Bishop comes over every two years to confirm our boys in it. I quite allow that my position is that which suits my taste, my feelings, and my reason, most entirely.

But if I were in Gell's place, as in many other respects I could not expect all the advantages of England, so neither could I in this identification of my school with my Church. In a British colony there are other elements than those purely English; they are involved, I think, in the very word "British," which is used in speaking of our colonies. Here, in England, we Englishmen are sole masters, in our colonies we are only joint masters; and I cannot, without direct injustice, make the half right as extensive as the whole right.

But whilst I quite acknowledge the equal rights of the Church of Scotland, I acknowledge no right in any third system,-for a Church it cannot be called, to be dominant both over the Church of Scotland and over us. I would allow no third power or principle to say to both Churches, "Neither of you shall train your people in your own way, but in a certain third way, which, as it is that of neither, may perhaps suit both." I would have the two Churches stand side by side,-each free and each sovereign over its own people; but I do not approve of such a fusion of the one into the other, as would produce a third substance, unlike either of them.

Now, I confess that what I should like best of all, would be to see two colleges founded, one an English college, and the other a Scotch college, each giving its own Degrees in Divinity, but those Degrees following the Degrees in Arts, which should be given by both as a University. Each college possessing full independence within itself, the education of the members of each would in all respects be according to their respective Churches, while the University authorities, chosen equally from each, would only settle such points as could harmoniously be settled by persons belonging to different Churches.

This, I think, would be my beau ideal for Van Diemen's Land; and that the English college would quickly outgrow the Scotch college,—that it would receive richer endowments from private munificence,—that it would have more pupils, and abler tutors or professors, I do not doubt. But that would be in the natural course of things, and justice would have been done to the rights of Scotland as a member of the United Kingdom.

The decisive objection to this, I suppose, would be the expense. You can have only one college, and I suppose may be thankful even for that. What is next best, then, as it appears to me, is still to provide for the equal, but at the same time the free and sovereign and fully developed action of both Churches within the same college, by the appointment of two clergy

' With regard to the College in Van Diemen's Land. See Letter CCLXVI.

men, the one of the English, the other of the Scotch Church, as necessary members of the college always, with the title of Dean, or such other as may be thought expedient, such Deans having the direct charge of the religious instruction generally of their own people; the Dean of that Church to which the Principal for the time being does not belong, being to his own people in all religious matters both Principal and Dean, but the Dean of whose Church the Principal is a member, acting under the superintendence of the Principal, and the Principal himself taking a direct part in the religious teaching of the students of his own communion.

It might be possible and desirable to put the office of Principal altogether in commission, and vest it in a board of which the two Deans should be ex officio members, and three other persons, or one, as it might be thought fit. Local knowledge is required to decide the details,—but in this way, if Gell were English Dean, his power and importance might be equal to what they would be as Principal; and his position might be at once less invidious, and yet more entirely free and influential.

This solution of the difficulty had not suggested itself to me before, but I give it for what it may be worth. I believe that I see clearly, and hold fast the principles on which your college should be founded; but different ways of working these principles out may suggest themselves at different times, and none of them perhaps will suit your circumstances; for it is in the application of general principles to any given place or condition of things, that practical knowledge of that particular state of things is needful, which I cannot have in the present case. Still the conclusions of our local observation must not drive us to overset general principles, or to neglect them, for that is no less an error.

CCLXXI. TO THE SAME.

Rugby, April 4, 1842.

Your letter of the 18th of August quite coincides with my wishes, and satisfies me also that I may, without injustice, act according to them. And I am happy to say that seems quite disposed to agree with your view of the subject, and to make it a standing rule of the College, that the Principal of it shall always be a member of the Church of England, if not a clergyman. My own belief is, that our Colleges of Oxford and Cambridge are, with all their faults, the best institutions of the kind in the world, at least for Englishmen; and therefore I should wish to copy them exactly, if it were possible, for Van Diemen's Land. I only doubted whether it were just to Scotland to give a predominantly English character to the institutions of a British colony; but your argument from the establishment of the English law is, I think, a good one, and mixed institutions are to my mind so undesirable, that I would rather have the College Scotch altogether, so far as my own taste is concerned, than that it should represent no Church at all. I have always wished, and I wish it still, that the bases of our own, as of other Churches, should be made wider than they are; but the enlargement, to my mind, should be there, and not in the schools: for it seems a solecism to me, that the place of education for the members of a Church should not teach according to that Church, without suppressions of any sort for the sake of accommodating others.

As to the other point, of there being always an English and Scotch clergyman amongst the Fellows of the College, took your view of the case, and I yielded to him. But, though I do not like to urge any thing against your judgment, yet I should like to explain to you my view of the case. I wish to secure to members of the Scotch Church the education of their own Church,-I mean an education such as their own Church would wish them to have,-just as I wish to secure for our people