murther of the Zulus. I don't quite take your distinction. I don't value skill or bravery, any more than height, strength, or beauty, unless they are used to a good purpose. You can't help giving them a kind of admiration; but it is as you might admire a bull-dog or a peacock; it should be kept distinct from moral approval. I think myself very lucky that there is not a soul in the army for whom I care personally. I don't think the analogy of the counsel quite holds1. The trial is to be according to the evidence, such evidence as is brought forward in court. The counsel for the prisoner may fairly show that the evidence is not enough to convict, even though he is on some other grounds convinced of the prisoner's guilt. He does not pledge his personal belief; if he does, he goes beyond the rules of the game. The thing is that the rules which are meant to secure the innocent must sometimes secure the guilty as well. TO MISS EDITH THOMPSON. Somerleaze, March 26, 1880. I don't think Davidson's account of me is bad on the whole. And what he says about 'limitations' has truth in it. I have no mind for abstractions. I believe myself to be a pretty keen controversialist when I have any common ground of moral sentiment or of primitive fact to start from; but I can't go much behind that. If you look at any controversy in which I have been engaged, you will see that my line has been 'you admit A. If you admit A, you should admit B.' I should often be puzzled, if the adversary said, 'I don't admit A.' In fact, I argue rather like a lawyer than like an abstract philosopher. My dispute with the lawyers is that they start from altogether wrong facts; but I could only lead them back to right facts, while Darwin would want something more. But then he comes from Aberdeen, where they are so sharp as to outwit Jews. 1 By way of apology for the soldier who must sometimes take part in wars of which he disapproves, I had suggested the case of the lawyer who has sometimes to defend a cause which he believes to be unjust, or a person whom he knows to be guilty. 2 In Eminent Radicals out of Parliament. To M. BIKELAS. Somerleaze, March 28, 1880. No-nothing comes to me from Athens, not "Opa1 or anything else. So I shall be very thankful for the translation which you speak of. In the first lesson in the English Church service yesterday came the passage about the sons of Zion being raised up against the sons of Greece. (Zech. ix. 13, ἐξεγερῶ τὰ τέκνα σου Σιὼν ἐπὶ τὰ τέκνα τῶν Ἑλλήνων. There will be nothing done for the sons of Greece on the frontier or elsewhere till we have put down the sons of Zion, specially them of the tribe of Benjamin. Let us hope that this week may do it2; only I mourn that I have no share in the work, as neither Oxford University nor Mid Somerset stirs. TO MISS EDITH THOMPSON. Eastbourne, April 22, 1880. You see I am on my travels. I went to Woolbeding on Monday. On Tuesday Roundell came to see us; he did seem happy. On Wednesday I took up Stephens, or rather he took up me in the character of the 'unus bonus homo' who was to look after Bishop William, and carried me the first day to Brihthelmston (tun? or stan? which is it?), which Strangford said might have been a decent place in the time of Brihthelm. The second day he carried me to this Eastbourne; the third is to be to Tunbridge; there he leaves me, to go to Rochester by myself, but there I am to meet Eleanor and James Parker. (Is not this vile ink? The best is Stephens' writing fluid; not my guardian, but somebody that makes it.) Our chief objects as yet have been Arundel with one tump, and Lewes with two. I never before saw a castle with two horns. (N.B.-Lewes castle I had not seen before; most of the others I had.) At Arundel the Duke (or there rather, Earl) came out and thanked An Athenian newspaper. 2 In reference to the general election then going on, which resulted in a large majority on the Liberal side, and the resignation of Lord Beaconsfield. 3 Having been recently elected M.P. for Grantham. us for our help in his matter. He is building at a frightful rate; but I fancy not spoiling the old part. There are some parts in the house itself, as away from the keep and the gateway, which I take to be Earl Roger's making, but horribly messed. At Lewes we went up the hill, Blaauw's Barons' War in hand-we could not carry all the (Tunbridge, Friday evening) original writers with us, and Blaauw gives lots of extracts and made out the battle-field pretty well, with much likening of the deliverer then to his successor now. Thence to Eastbourne, only to sleep, and this morning to Pevensey, where, oddly enough, I was last just after the deliverance of 18682. I made out the mediaeval castle better than I had done before; that was my main point just now. Then to Frant station, and walked out to Bayham abbey, and on here, to do the castle, and (I at least) to get to Rochester to-morrow. TO THE REV. DR. ALLON. Somerleaze, April 29, 1880. What you say about my not being in Parliament might very likely be good advice, if the question was whether I should refuse an offered seat. If I can have influence out of Parliament, well and good. But it seems to me rather a sign that, after all my work, since 1875, I have none, and that no man can 1 The lawsuit instituted by the Vicar of Arundel to try whether the eastern limb of the church belonged to the Duke of Norfolk or to the parish. The case was decided in favour of the Duke by the Lord Chief Justice, Coleridge, and on appeal his judgement was upheld. The eastern limb had never been the chancel of the parish church; it had been originally the property of a monastic house, which was afterwards converted into a college of secular priests, and on the dissolution of this college, in the time of Henry VIII, it was granted by him to the Earl of Arundel and his successors. Mr. Freeman had written a paper, now printed in English Towns and Districts, in favour of the Duke's claim, arguing from the analogy of other churches. I had been engaged in transcribing some of the old documents upon which, as it happened, the case mainly turned, though I had no intention of helping one side more than another. 2 Viz. the fall of Mr. Disraeli's ministry. have any out of Parliament. Lord Hartington spoke what he really thought-doubtless not what Gladstone thinks-that it did not matter what I said, being not in Parliament, while it did matter what Briggs said, who was in Parliament. I know it would be a horrid sacrifice to me to be in the house; but I was prepared for it. I did want to be one of those chosen now, and it was rather grievous to be forgotten, never once to be seriously spoken of, in the whole election. Now it is past, I care much less about going in again. But what a relief it is, and the joy that there is whenever oppressed nations see a gleam of hope. This is true of the Ogre-ridden as well as of the Turk-ridden. TO PROFESSOR DAWKINS. Somerleaze, May 1, 1880. I see that I have wronged you in one thing. You do define your hard names, only not in the place where you promise to define them, but much earlier in the book1. And I now know that the mysterious cene is neither mud, nor supper, nor a commune ; not τὸ κοινόν 2 but τὸ καινόν in other words, νεώτερα πρήγματα. Pleistocene was then a time, I presume, of novelties and Toryism, Austrian and Indian Empires, and all that, in which it must have been very unpleasant to live-I should think 1874-1880 was a Pleistocene period. Now we mean to go back to the old ways. Whether you can do without those ugly names I can't judge, though surely Beastly (Deerly), Birdly, Fishly, Fishlizardly, would be much prettier and plainer to be understood. But, O professor of earth and bones, don't beguile yourself into thinking that arbitrary names of your own making answer to the names of early English things, or to any words which were understanded of the people in any time or place. I have touched on this in my Liverpool talk". History has no technical terms-I half wish it had, just to frighten away fools. 5 How the Study of History is let and hindered, pp. 21, 22. What is found in Gibraltar is found in Spain, whether Romans, Goths, Saracens, or English rule in Gibraltar. Your phrase would suggest that Gibraltar had been from all eternity something distinct from Spain. So do the other phrases about France and the like. Iberia is ambiguous, there being another; Spain is much clearer. I know practically the confusion which comes of it, and it is most easy to avoid. It helps the very thing that I have to fight against, the superstitious worship of the modern map. You will find me, in Historical Geography, [by] Spain, Gaul, Britain to mean certain parts of the earth's surface, which alter not, save by a little nibbling and silting, as I saw the other day at Ebbsfleet. Castile, England, France, are mere political divisions which get greater and smaller at different times. . . . I have just been making a pleasant and profitable round in Kent and Sussex. I have begun to doubt whether the landing of the three keels at Ebbsfleet was a gain or not, seeing the Brets have voted so much better than the Jutes. Surely Godwine has come back, and Simon has smitten the foes at Lewes. I was up on the place the other day. To M. BIKELAS. Somerleaze, May 8, 1880. It is indeed a deliverance, for England, Greece, and the world. The 'ascendency of England' is again showing itself, and showing itself for right; we have a chance of peace with honour, instead of war with shame. And anyhow the Turk will be driven to set free so much as he has promised of Epeiros and Thessaly. The next time I go into southern Europe, I trust to see free Ioannina. To W. R. MORFILL, ESQ.1 Somerleaze, May 18, 1880. I really believe that I have been such a brute that I have not yet thanked you for your suggestions on the Baltic Lands chapter2. I have gone through them very carefully with those 1 Reader in Russian in Oxford University. 2 In Historical Geography. |