I am writing to you in a triple sandwich, along with old Hook, dear old boy, as so often before, who writes to ask what he should do in a question between him and the bishop about the appointment of a canon; also to Galiffe, of Geneva, to whom I am writing to learn something about the Swiss military system, which I conceive must be the best. It is as well to get up something about it, though I believe this present army panic, like so many before it, is just got up by captains who want to be colonels, and colonels who want to be generals, and newspaper editors who want to sell their papers, and that it will just blow over like all the others, and that will be a good job, as then you won't bury your face in 'Jupiter,' and draw it out talking of Snider rifles. But you may utilize your military studies so far as to tell me what is meant by Prim's widow being made a captain-general. (That is the same as field-marshall here, is it not?) Is that the last thing that you and Lydia and Lady Amberley have developed in the way of women's rights? Is she actually to command armies, or only to draw pay as if she did? . . .

To G. FINLAY, ESQ.

Somerleaze, January 12, 1871.

I am utterly ashamed when I look at the date of your last letter. But you are no worse off than a great many other people, especially those in foreign parts, to whom one must write letters, and cannot put them off with halfpenny postcards. But it is really amazing to look at a letter seven months old, τὸ πρὶν ἐπ ̓ εἰρήνης, when the tyrant was still boasting himself that he could do mischief, and when the Bishop of Rome was still a temporal prince. I am Dutch to the backbone, as, notwithstanding the apostasy of the multitude and of the newspapers, nearly every one whose opinion I care a rap for abides still. I was in your native land when I heard the sound of the great crash, which, by the way, was heard at Edinburgh sooner than it was at Paris. I was staying with J. H. Burton, and had been taking a long walk round what I took to be the parts of Dumbiedikes', and came down into a back street by the Canongate, where the walls were placarded with 'The Emperor Napoleon a prisoner,' and that kind of thing. The 1 See Sir W. Scott's Heart of Midlothian.

feeling was a very peculiar one; joy did not come till a little later; it was simple wonder and taking away of breath. I had a very pleasant run in Northumberland and Scotland. Long before the war began, I had settled not to go out of this island in the year 1870, but to trace out all William's campaigns in the north, which I hope I have done pretty fairly. This took me to Abernethy, William's farthest point north, and being there and seeing the round tower, I could not fail to go on and see the other round tower at Brechin, where I was nearer to the North Pole than I ever was before, as in 1855 I got no further than Dunblane and St. Andrews. This year I dream of getting nearer the Equator than I ever was before by going to other round towers at Ravenna. When shall I ever get into Greece and see you? You had better join me midway at Ravenna, and we can contemplate Justinian and Theodora together in the church of St. Vital.

Have you any indications as to the time when the English who left England in William's days came to Constantinople? Orderic places it quite early in William's reign, about 1067, but he directly after talks of Alexios Komnênos as emperor, which won't do for the date. You will remember that the false Ingulf found Alexios reigning at a still earlier time. Did they put the name of Alexios at a shot for any Byzantine emperor?

All that you sent me about Harold Hardrada at Athens has been put into the shape of a note in the appendix to the second edition of my second volume. Vol. iv. is just beginning to be printed.

What a state of things you do describe-and since then there has been all this about the murders'. I stuck to the Greeks as long as I could, but they really have got beyond me. But I can't turn Turk― never, nowhere, nohow, not at all. I must be φιλορωμαῖος only instead of φιλέλλην, and look forward to something coming of Strangford's Bulgarians. What is all this talk about an Oecumenical Council in the East, held, according to the Anglican article, by the commandment and will of the Grand

1

1 Of Mr. Herbert Lloyd Vyner and Count de Bögl. The letters of Mr. Finlay about this time are full of terrible stories of brigandage and murder, and of the feebleness or apathy of the Government in dealing with disorder.

Turk? It struck me, because I had been lately helping in a diocesan synod in our parts, where the rights of the secular power were ably argued from the fact that Constantine presided at Nikaia while still unbaptized, and therefore not so much as a layman. This seems a precedent for a Mahometan advocatus ecclesiae.

The last news is the Germans at Le Mans. I hope they won't hurt it, but they may ding down Paris as much as they please. To MRS. P. A. TAYLOR.

MADAM,

February, 1871.

The question of women's suffrage is one on which I see much to be said on both sides, and on which I should beg to be excused committing myself either way. Not being in Parliament, nor, as far as I can see, likely to be, I do not see that I am bound to commit myself.

If I were to continue my history to Henry VIII, I might possibly find arguments your way, on the one hand, in the succession of three female sovereigns; and, on the other, in the clear need in those days of some protection for the necks of queens consort. But in my benighted eleventh century we had not yet thought either of setting women to reign or of cutting off their heads. The question, therefore, does not come so closely home to me as it might perhaps to Mr. Froude. Would it not be better to press him on the subject?

Somerleaze, Wells, March 5, 1871.

Margaret has been writing to you so much lately that I have rather kept back, having such worlds of other letters to write. But we were all much troubled to hear both about Mrs. Hook and about your own accident. You were able to speak sportively about the latter, but I am afraid it was rather serious for you, and about Mrs. Hook, it is indeed a trial and grief to you. I do trust she may get over it all1.

(March 12.) There, you see, another week has slipped by. Letters which must be answered the same day have a sad 1 She died two months after the date of this letter.

trick of eating up my one letter-writing hour on common days, and drive the others on to the next Sunday, when they make a relaxation, according to the Book of Sports put forth by the late King James of ever-blessed memory.

. What a funny custom about your residentiaries '. There is a queer custom here with the vicars, which I did not know till the other day. The chapter nominate, but the vicars themselves elect or 'perpetuate,' after a year, like a probationary fellow. Our vicars' college has both clerical and lay members, and it seems that just now the lay vicars (shoemakers, &c., &c.), having to perpetuate a new priest-vicar, took the opportunity of the momentary superiority mightily to insult him. He makes his moan to me, and tells me that my doctrine of vicars is all wrong, and that he had rather be a minor canon on a new foundation. He won't listen to what I say of the dignity of being a member of a corporation with its own estates, &c. The remedy, I suppose, is to make the college wholly clerical, or rather, I want to absorb the so-called theological college into the vicars' college, making the vicars' places into clerical fellowships, holy orders to be taken after a time or by a certain number, but not to be held by permanent shoemakers and such like.

The Dean of Chester has asked me to write something about Old Foundations for a collection of essays on cathedral matters which he is making, and I think I shall, if I can find time2.

1 Extract from Dean Hook's letter, to which the above is a reply. 'Our custom used to be to agree among ourselves as to the prebendary we intended to call into residence. When the chapter met he appeared. The dean, with a stern voice, said, "Mr. Prebendary, I protest against this intrusion upon the close chapter." The prebendary, in a weak voice, replied, "I have only come to seek the good will of the dean and residentiary canons to come into residence." The dean, sternly, “Sir, you will quit the chapter, and your request shall be taken into consideration." He cooled his heels outside while the chapter transacted some other business. Then the prebendary was admitted, and the dean said, blandly, "Brother So-and-So, we call you into residence; please to listen while our regulations are read, and say whether you will adhere to them."'

* The volume was published in 1872. Mr. Freeman's essay is entitled 'The Cathedral Churches of the Old Foundation'

I have given a longish chapter of vol. iv. to Lanfranc and ecclesiastical matters generally. I am not quite clear how far Lanfranc was honest, but he was amazingly able. You don't love Anselm as you ought. I never read a word of his theology or metaphysics, and I do not mean to. He figures with me as 'The man who saved the hunted hare and stood up for the holiness of Elfheah.'

The saints then, like the philosophers now, are strong with me on the field-sports question. I don't count Cranmer for either saint or philosopher.

I must see you somehow this year.

Yours affectionately.

To W. B. DAWKINS, ESQ.

March 19, 1871.

Thanks for the reference to Rymer, which is all right. Is not the wolf, like his dinner the sheep, a Celtic beast, not to be found far from the Welsh border? I have seen somewhere that Holinshed speaks of wolves in the time of Elizabeth, but I have no Holinshed. In Ireland, of course, they went on much later, and there is the tradition of Sir Ewen Cameron killing the last, just like the tradition of some man whom I want to find killing the last bear in the eleventh century. Only I have a notion that what he killed was not Ursus anything, but a Biorn or Osbiorn, or somebody of that kind. I have not the Orkneyinga Saga in full-(somebody has bagged my Torfaei Orcades) and I cannot find the place in Johnstone's extracts, and Dasent has gone writing novels instead of publishing the Saga, which he has promised so long.

TO MISS EDITH THOMPSON.

Somerleaze, April 16, 1871.

Congratulate me on having killed and buried Willelmus Magnus-the latter, as you know, being no easy matter1. I am mighty busy with this and that.

.. Well, I will crow over you one while. You said you had not changed during the war. I appeal to contemporary