Prose remains of Arthur Hugh Clough, with a selection from his letters and a memoir

by Arthur Hugh Clough

CONTENTS.

	PAGE
Memoir of Arthur Hugh Clough	[1]
Letters from 1829 to 1836. Rugby	[57]
Letters from 1836 to 1849. Oxford	[75]
Letters from 1849 to 1852. London	[141]
Letters from 1852 to 1853. America	[187]
Letters from 1853 to 1861. London	[216]
A Consideration of Objections Against the Retrenchment Association at Oxford during the Irish Famine in 1847	[283]
Lecture on the Poetry of Wordsworth	[305]
On the Formation of Classical English: An Extract from a Lecture on Dryden	[325]
Lecture on the Development of English Literature from Chaucer to Wordsworth	[333]
Review of some Poems by Alexander Smith and Matthew Arnold	[355]
Letters of Parepidemus	[381]
A Passage upon Oxford Studies: Extracted from a Review of the Oxford University Commissioners’ Report, 1852	[399]
Extracts from a Review of a Work entitled ‘Considerations on some Recent Social Theories’	[405]
Notes on the Religious Tradition	[415]

MEMOIR
OF
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH

Arthur Hugh Clough was born at Liverpool, January 1, 1819. He was the second son of James Butler Clough. His father belonged to an old Welsh family, who trace themselves back to Sir Richard Clough, known as agent at Antwerp to Sir Thomas Gresham. His mother’s name was Anne Perfect. She was the daughter of John Perfect, a banker at Pontefract in Yorkshire, of a respectable family long established in that place.

Sir Richard Clough, we are told, was related on his mother’s side to John Calvin. In his own county of Denbigh he was evidently a man of considerable position. He built two houses, Plâs Clough and Bachegraig, about the year 1527. He married first a Dutch lady, by whom he had a son, Richard, who carried on the name, and to whom he bequeathed Plâs Clough. He married, secondly, Katharine Tudor, heiress of Berain, and descendant of Marchweithian, lord of the Welsh tribe of Is-aled. She was a relation and ward of Queen Elizabeth, being great-granddaughter of Henry VII.; and the Queen’s consent is mentioned as having been required for her marriage. Sir Richard Clough was her second husband; and the story is told that he, as well as Morris Wynn of Gwydir, accompanied her to her first husband’s funeral, and that Morris Wynn when leading her out of church requested the favour of her hand in marriage, to which she answered that she had already promised it as she went in to Sir Richard Clough; but added that should there be any other occasion she would remember him. After the death of Sir Richard, accordingly, she did marry him, and afterwards married, fourthly, Edward Thelwall, of Plas-y-Ward. She is said however, to have preferred Sir R. Clough to her other husbands; and a curious picture of her exists, a companion to a somewhat remarkable one of Richard Clough, holding a locket containing his ashes in one hand, and resting the other on his scull.

By this lady, Sir R. Clough had only two daughters, one of whom married a Wynn, and was the ancestress of the family of Lord Newborough, which still possesses Maynau Abbey, given to her by Sir R. Clough. The second daughter, Katherine, married Roger Salusbury, and received from Sir Richard the house and property of Bachegraig, which afterwards came into the possession of Mrs. Thrale, her lineal descendant.

His son Richard inherited Plâs Clough, where his descendants continued to reside. In the beginning of the eighteenth century, the family was represented by a Hugh Clough, who had thirteen children, one of whom, called also Hugh, was Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, and is buried there: he was a friend of Cowper the poet, and is said to have been something of a poet himself. Hugh died unmarried; but three sons and one daughter of the first Hugh married, and left large families. One son, Roger, thirteenth child of Hugh Clough, married Ann Jemima Butler, a lady possessed of considerable estates in Sussex, to which she was co-heiress with her sister, who married Roger Clough’s elder brother Richard. He did not, however, leave much to his children, for he was of a liberal and profuse turn, and he had ten children, of whom James Butler Clough was the third. This son was the first of his family to leave the neighbourhood of their old house in Wales. He removed to Liverpool, where he settled and went into business as a cotton merchant, and where his four children were born. When Arthur was about four years old, his father migrated to Charleston, in the United States, where he passed several years, and this was the home of Arthur’s childhood till he went to school. We give here a few recollections furnished by his sister, the next to him in age in the family, which bring before us the scenes in which his childhood was passed, and the influences which even then began to tell strongly upon him.

‘The first distinct remembrance,’ she says, ‘that I have of my brother is of his going with me in a carriage to the vessel which was to take us to America. This must have been in the winter of 1822-23, when he was not quite four years old. My next recollection is of our home at Charleston, a large, ugly red brick house near the sea. The lower storey was my father’s office, and it was close by a wharf where from our windows we could see the vessels lying by and amuse ourselves with watching their movements.

‘In the summer of this year (1823) we went to the North, and stayed some time in a boarding-house at New York, and afterwards with some friends who lived on the banks of the Hudson, and had a large and pleasant garden. It was here, I have heard, that Arthur learned to read. In the autumn we returned to Charleston, having made the passage there and back by sea.

‘The two following summers (1824 and 1825) we again visited the North; both times we went to New York, and the first year on to Albany and Lebanon Springs, and the second time as far as Newport. After our return to Charleston in the autumn my father was obliged to go to England, and he took with him my eldest brother Charles, who was old enough to go to school. Arthur and I and my youngest brother George remained in the red brick house at Charleston with my mother and a faithful old nurse. My father was absent eleven months. Then Arthur became my mother’s constant companion. Though then only just seven, he was already considered as the genius of our family. He was a beautiful boy, with soft silky, almost black hair, and shining dark eyes, and a small delicate mouth, which our old nurse was so afraid of spoiling, when he was a baby, that she insisted on getting a tiny spoon for his special use.

‘As I said, Arthur was constantly with my mother, and she poured out the fulness of her heart on him. They read much together, histories, ancient and modern, stories of the Greek heroes, parts of Pope’s “Odyssey” and “Iliad,” and much out of Walter Scott’s novels. She talked to him about England, and he learnt to be fond of his own country, and delighted to flourish about a little English flag he had possessed himself of. He also made good progress in French. He was sometimes passionate as a child, though not easily roused; and he was said to be very determined and obstinate. One trait I distinctly remember, that he would always do things from his own choice, and not merely copy what others were doing.

‘In the summer we went down to Sullivan’s Island, and lived in a sort of cottage built upon piles. Here we could walk on the shore and gather shells, and we also had a garden. We amused ourselves by watching the steamers and sailing-vessels that came over from Charleston. Sometimes we had visits from friends of my father, often bringing over letters for my mother; but, on the whole, we lived very quietly, learning our lessons, and looking forward joyfully to the time of our father’s return from England. We went back to Charleston in the autumn. This was a weary time for our dear mother, who was continually expecting and longing for our father’s return. We, too, were always on the watch for the first sight of the ship on the bay. One November morning, while we were at our lessons with our mother, there came a hasty ring at the bell. We wanted to look out and see if visitors were coming. We were not fond of visitors, and generally used to run off to our nursery at sight of them, but our mother would not let us peep this time; we must attend to our lessons, she said; she was sure it was only a negro man with a message. And then the door opened and our father was in the room, catching up our mother in his arms, for she was nearly fainting, while we skipped about for joy, and shouted to our mother that she had called our father a negro man. Then came the unpacking of trunks, and all the presents sent to us by our relations in England, and the news of our brother Charles.

‘After my father’s return it was a very happy time for Arthur. He still went on reading history and poetry with our mother. About this time, I believe, he read with her some of Robertson’s “Charles V.,” and the struggle in the Netherlands in Watson’s “Philip II.”; also the lives of Columbus, Cortez, and Pizarro. He used also to say the Latin grammar to my father in the early morning, and do sums in the office, lying on the piled-up pieces of cotton bagging which were waiting there to be made into sacks for cotton. Here, too, we used to play and tumble about upon the cotton heaps. One of our games was playing at the Swiss Family Robinson, in which I remember Arthur was always Ernest, because Ernest liked reading and knew so much. In hot weather, Arthur used to lie on his bed in the afternoon, reading the “Universal Traveller” and “Captain Cook’s Travels,” in the purchase of which he had one day expended all his savings. They were both full of pictures, and he used to tell us that he dreamt of the places he had been reading about. He also used to go out with my father when he had business to do on the wharves and on board the ships, and sat with him and my mother in the evenings and saw the occasional visitors who came in, such as the captains of the merchantmen with whom he had dealings, and heard their stories.

‘In the summer of 1827, we again went to Sullivan’s Island. It was a pleasant time, especially as we now had our father with us. We lived in a large rambling house, with a pleasant verandah in which we had a swing, and a large garden fenced in with a hedge of yuccas, called there Spanish bayonets. The house had once been an inn, and was built in two parts. My father and mother slept in a room over a great billiard-room, only reached by an open staircase or by a little open path across a roof; and when great storms arose, as often happened, my father used to carry us in his arms, back over the open space into the more protected part of the house.

‘The walks on the sand were delightful to us children. It was the finest white soft sand without a vestige of shingle on which we used to play; and I remember that Arthur even then was too fastidious to take off his shoes and stockings and paddle about as we did. The whole island was like a great sandbank, with little growing naturally on it but a few palmettos and low woods of myrtle. Our walks along the sea often took us as far as Fort Moultrie, which in our time was a red brick fort with a dry ditch round it, without the earthworks which have since become famous. A high bank of sand lay between it and the sea; and, after crossing this, we came to a few desolate houses half buried in sand, which here lay in great heaps. Here and there grew a few palmettos, which the high tides or autumn storms too often carried away, and when we came to look for a favourite tree, to our great grief, we found it gone. These sands were the haunt of innumerable curlews whose wild screams seemed to make the shore more lonely still. A beautiful grove of myrtles rose farther along the shore.

‘The other end of the island was the inhabited part. There was the pier busy with its arrivals and departures of steamers, and sailing boats going to and fro between the island and the city, and covered with numerous carriages, old-fashioned gigs and waggons, mostly with hoods or some sort of protection from the sun, and a seat for the negro boy behind. The bay was gay, too, with many fishing-boats belonging to the gentlemen who had a fishing club, which met at a house among the myrtles; and many rowing-boats also, chiefly rowed by negroes. Arthur often went out with my father on the water.

‘Six miles off lay Charleston, on a peninsula, between its two rivers, the Cooper and the Ashley. The first sight of it showed a long line of wharves made of palmetto logs fastened together into a sort of wall, stretching perhaps half a mile along the bay, and lined with the ships and smaller craft that frequented the port. As you approached from the water you heard the songs of the negroes at work on the vessels. Beyond the wharves was a battery or public walk, supported against the sea by a substantial very white wall formed of oyster shells beaten fine and hard. This species of pier extended nearly a mile along the sea, and was a favourite resort both for walking and driving in the summer. It was all roughly done, as most things were in the South, but the sunshine and clear skies made it bright and cheerful. The city was not regularly built like the Northern towns. In the lower part indeed the houses were mostly built close together in rows; but in the upper part, where the wealthier people lived, it was full of villas mostly standing in gardens, all built with verandahs, and many with two, an upper and a lower one. In the gardens grew many flowering trees, such as the almond, occasionally the orange, the fringe tree, a gay shrub with a very abundant white flower, and the fig; and these hung over the garden walls into the streets. The streets, too, which were for the most part unpaved, were often planted with trees for the sake of shade. Here and there one came on a large old-fashioned mansion, that at once showed it belonged to the times before the Revolution.

‘From Charleston, Sullivan’s Island was to be seen in the distance, beyond the battery, and on the right James Island, marked by a long low line of wood. Between these two islands, commanding the entrance, Fort Sumter was afterwards built, not far from James Island. On the left was Fort Pinckney, built on a small island or sandbank near the city.

‘In 1828 we all returned to England. We sailed from Charleston early in June. We greatly enjoyed the voyage; being the only children on board, we were exceedingly petted, and the unusual sights impressed our imagination. I remember very well the sea-weed floating in quantities on the Gulf Stream; also we saw a waterspout, and grander still—but happily for us only in the distance—an iceberg. When at last we came in sight of the South of Ireland, we were met by the Irish fishermen coming out to sell us their fresh fish. Then came the slow creeping up the Channel against a head wind, and then a calm, till one night the wind sprang up, and in the morning we found ourselves in Liverpool.

‘We then went to stay with an uncle in the country, where we met my eldest brother, and found ourselves among nine or ten cousins of different ages. This was quite a new experience to us. Arthur could not enter into the boys’ rough games and amusements, and missed the constant companionship of his father. We travelled however for some months from one relation’s house to another, and by degrees Arthur became more sociable.

‘In October Arthur went to school at Chester, and my father, mother, George and I sailed again to Charleston. This was practically the end of Arthur’s childhood.

‘Our father was most affectionate, loving, and watchful over his children. It was from him that we received many of the smaller cares which usually come from a mother, especially on the long voyages, during which my mother suffered greatly, when he took the care of us almost entirely, and comforted us in rough storms. This watchful and tender care for the feelings of others Arthur inherited in the largest degree from his father. My father was very lively, and fond of society and amusement. He liked life and change, and did not care much for reading. He had a high sense of honour, but was venturesome and over sanguine, and when once his mind was set on anything, he was not to be turned from it, nor was he given to counting consequences. My mother was very different. She cared little for general society, but had a few fast friends to whom she was strongly attached. In her tastes and habits she was rigidly simple; this harmonised with the stern integrity which was the foundation of her character. She was very fond of reading, especially works on religious subjects, poetry and history; and she greatly enjoyed beautiful scenery, and visiting places which had any historical associations. She loved what was grand, noble, and enterprising, and was truly religious. She early taught us about God and duty, and having such a loving earthly father, it was not difficult to look up to a Heavenly one. She loved to dwell on all that was stern and noble. Leonidas at Thermopylæ, and Epaminondas accepting the lowliest offices and doing them as a duty to his country; the sufferings of the martyrs, and the struggles of the Protestants, were among her favourite subjects. There was an enthusiasm about her that took hold of us, and made us see vividly the things that she taught us. But with this love of the terrible and grand she was altogether a woman clinging to and leaning on our father. When he left us Arthur became her pet and her companion. I cannot but think that her love, her influence, and her teaching had much to do with forming his character.’

From Charleston, as appears from what precedes, Arthur Clough went, in November 1828, to school at Chester; and, in the summer of 1829, he was removed to Rugby. His eldest brother, Charles, was with him at both schools, but Charles left Rugby before him, as early as the year 1831.

During these first years he was a somewhat grave and studious boy, not without tastes for walking, shooting, and sight-seeing, but with little capacity for play and for mixing with others, and with more of varied intellectual interest than usual with boys. He seems to have had a fondness for drawing; and he was perpetually writing verses, not remarkable except for a certain ease of expression and for a power of running on, not common at that early age. The influence of Dr. Arnold on his character was powerful, and continued to increase. We find him mounting rapidly through the lower forms and beginning to get prizes. It is also clear that, besides this application to his actual work, he exerted himself with great energy in the endeavour to improve the school and to influence his companions for good. This remarkable interest in Rugby matters is partly to be explained by the fact that he had no near home interests to distract his attention; partly it must be referred to that strong sense of moral responsibility which Arnold, first among schoolmasters, seems to have impressed upon his pupils.

Too early a strain seems to have been put upon him, especially as he had not till 1836 any home to go to in his holidays. Of kind and affectionate relations, who received him hospitably, there were plenty. His uncles, the Rev. Charles Clough, then Vicar of Mold, and the Rev. Alfred Clough, then Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, always showed him the greatest kindness; and he had a large connection of friendly cousins, his visits among whom gave him many opportunities for journeys into Yorkshire and in different parts of Wales. How lively a recollection he retained of this period of his life, and of the incidents of his holiday excursions, may be gathered from the picture he has painted in ‘Primitiæ,’ the first tale of ‘Mari Magno.’ He did thus enjoy much variety, but he lacked rest; and his family instincts and affections were so strong, that he evidently suffered greatly through his separation from those nearest and dearest to him. That a great strain and sense of repression were upon him at this time is clear from a letter written after the interval of twenty years. The self-reliance and self-adaptation which most men acquire in mature life were, by the circumstances of his family, forced upon him in his early youth.

In July 1831, his father and mother, sister, and youngest brother, came over for a visit from Charleston, and he spent his holidays with them; after which he went back to school, this time without his eldest brother. His sister remembers how their stay was unexpectedly prolonged till the beginning of the following Christmas holidays, by a delay in finding a ship, and how Arthur, hearing this, rushed off to Liverpool to spend their last two or three days together, bringing his new prize, Johnson’s ‘Lives of the Poets,’ in his bag, to show his mother, to whom it was his greatest enjoyment to pour himself out. His mother suffered greatly from the voyages, and from the uprooting consequent on such great changes; and she resolved never again to come to England till it should be her home. His father paid one more visit to England, alone, in 1833, when he took his three sons to London and over to Paris.

At school Arthur continued to prosper. He gained a scholarship, open to the whole school under fourteen, the only one which then existed. He was at the head of the fifth form at fifteen; and as sixteen was the earliest age at which boys were then admitted into the sixth, he had to wait a whole year for this. It was probably a misfortune to him that this rule prevented his advance through the school, and his proceeding at once to Oxford, as he was much exhausted by the intense interest and labour he expended on his moral work among the boys, and also on the ‘Rugby Magazine.’ This was a periodical which absorbed much of the writing powers of the cleverer boys, and to which he contributed constantly, chiefly poetry. For a considerable time he was also its editor. Besides this he took an active part in some of the school games, and his name is handed down in William Arnold’s ‘Rules of Football’ as the best goal-keeper on record. He was also one of the first swimmers in the school, and was a very good runner, in spite of a weakness in his ankles, which prevented his attaining proficiency in many games. He made at this time several close and intimate friendships, and gained a very high character among his schoolfellows in general; a sign of which is given by the story told by some of them at the time, that, when he left school for college, almost every boy at Rugby contrived to shake hands with him at parting. ‘The grace of his character when he was a boy,’ says one of his friends, ‘can be estimated by nothing so well as by the force with which he attracted the attachment of some, and the jealousy or encroachment of others.’ Another says: ‘I always said that his face was quite another thing from any of those of our own generation; the mixture of width and sweetness was then quite as marked as it was later.’ Dr. Arnold also regarded him with increasing interest and satisfaction; and, as another friend describes, at the yearly speeches, in the last year of Clough’s residence, he broke the rule of silence to which he almost invariably adhered in the delivery of prizes, and congratulated him on having gained every honour which Rugby could bestow, and done the highest credit to his school at the University. This was in allusion to his having just gained the Balliol scholarship, then and now the highest honour which a schoolboy could obtain. Some months previous to this (in July 1836), his father, mother, and sister came over from America, to settle in Liverpool; and thenceforth Arthur was no longer without a home in England. His sister describes him as she then saw him, after an interval of five years, as a blooming youth of seventeen, with an abundance of dark soft hair, a fresh complexion, much colour, and shining eyes full of animation. Though kind and affectionate as ever in his family, they now found him changed in mind; eager and interested in many fresh subjects; full of growing force, and of the fervour of youthful conviction. With boyish vehemence he stood forth on all occasions as the devoted disciple of his beloved master, Dr. Arnold, and the exponent of his various theories of church government and politics.

In November 1836 he had gained the Balliol scholarship, and the October following he went into residence at Oxford. There he soon made friends with some of those with whom he became afterwards intimate—Mr. Ward, Sir B. Brodie, and Professor Jowett;—a little later, with Dr. Temple and Professor Shairp; and, later still, with Mr. T. Walrond and the two eldest sons of Dr. Arnold, whose names frequently occur in his correspondence.

Now came the time which we regard as essentially the turning-point of his life. He began his residence at Oxford when the University was stirred to its depths by the great Tractarian movement. Dr. Newman was in the fulness of his popularity, preaching at St. Mary’s, and in pamphlets, reviews, and verses continually pouring forth eloquent appeals to every kind of motive that could influence men’s minds. Mr. Ward one of Clough’s first friends at Oxford, was, as is well known, among the foremost of the party; and thus, at the very entrance into his new life, he was at once thrown into the very vortex of discussion. Something of the same fate which, as a young boy, forced on him a too early self-reliance and independence in matters of conduct, followed him here; and the accident of his passing from the Rugby of Arnold to the Oxford of Newman and Ward, drove him, while he ought to have been devoting himself to the ordinary work of an undergraduate reading for honours, and before he had attained his full intellectual development, to examine and in some degree draw conclusions concerning the deepest subjects that can occupy the human mind. This must be felt to have been a serious disadvantage. As his friend Mr. Ward himself says with much feeling, when looking back on that time after many years, ‘What was before all things to have been desired for him, was that during his undergraduate career he should have given himself up thoroughly to his classical and mathematical studies, and kept himself from plunging prematurely into the theological controversies then so rife at Oxford. Thus he would have been saved from all injury to the gradual and healthy growth of his mind and character. It is my own very strong impression that, had this been permitted, his future course of thought and speculation would have been essentially different from what it was in fact. Drawn as it were peremptorily, when a young man just coming up to college, into a decision upon questions the most important that can occupy the mind, the result was not surprising. After this premature forcing of Clough’s mind, there came a reaction. His intellectual perplexity preyed heavily on his spirits, and grievously interfered with his studies.’

Another cause, also, which rendered him less able to endure the various demands made upon him in his new life was, that the strain of his school-work and interests at Rugby had evidently considerably exhausted him.

Any reader of that marvellously vivid book, the ‘Apologia’ of Dr. Newman, will understand the trouble of spirit into which an impressionable nature must have been thrown by the storm that was raging round him, and by contact with such powerful leaders. The appeals made at once to the imagination, to all the tenderer parts of human nature, and to the reason, combined to render this struggle peculiarly intense. For a time Clough was carried away, how far it is impossible with any approach to certainty to say, in the direction of the new opinions. He himself said afterwards, that for two years he had been ‘like a straw drawn up the draught of a chimney.’ Yet in his mind the disturbance was but temporary. His own nature before long reasserted itself, proving, by the strength of its reaction, how wholly impossible it was for such a character to accept any merely external system of authority. Still, when the torrent had subsided, he found that not only had it swept away the new views which had been presented to him by the leaders of the Romanising movement, but also that it had shaken the whole foundations of his early faith, and had forced him to rely upon his own endeavours in the search after that truth which he still firmly believed in.

This spirit of doubt and struggle, yet of unshaken assurance in the final conquest of truth and good, comes out strongly in the poems written about this time, and contrasts markedly with the boyish effusions of the Rugby period. It is this which forms the very essence of the scepticism of which he is accused, the truth of which charge, in a certain sense, we do not attempt to deny—nay, we believe that in this quality of mind lay his chief power of helping his generation. But his scepticism was of no mere negative quality—not a mere rejection of tradition and denial of authority, but was the expression of a pure reverence for the inner light of the spirit, and of entire submission to its guidance. It was the loyalty to truth as the supreme good of the intellect, and as the only sure foundation of moral character.

He was absolutely truthful towards his own soul. The experiences he had gone through forced him to look religious questions full in the face, and he could no longer take any dogmatic teaching on trust. He ignored no difficulties, he accepted nothing because it was pleasant—he could retain faith in nothing but his own soul. But that he did retain this faith—faith in the intuitions which he regarded as revelations of God to him, in absolute faithfulness to duty, strict adherence to intellectual and moral truthfulness, single-minded practice of all social and domestic virtues—is not only true of his outward life, but is shown, as far as concerns his moral and intellectual convictions, even in the poems which most strongly testify to the struggle and the darkness in which he often found himself. In illustration of this point we may mention in particular the ‘Summum Pulchrum,’ ‘Qui laborat orat,’ and the ‘New Sinai.’ The often-quoted lines in ‘In Memoriam’ might almost be supposed to have been written for him:—

Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds,

At last he beat his music out.

Such scepticism—scepticism which consists in reverent waiting for light not yet given, in respect for the truth so absolute, that nothing doubtful can be accepted as truth because it is pleasant to the soul—was his from this time forth to the end of his life. Some truths he doubtless conceived himself to have learnt to know, in the course of his life, but his attitude was always chiefly that of a learner. The best key for those who care to know his later thought is to be found in the fragment on the ‘Religious Tradition’ contained in the present volume. But the scepticism which assumes a negative position from intellectual pleasure in destructive arguments, which does not feel the want of spiritual support, or realise the existence of spiritual truth, which mocks at the grief of others, and refuses to accept their honest experiences as real, was never his. He never denied the reality of much that he himself could not use as spiritual nutriment. He believed that God spoke differently to different ages and different minds. Not therefore could he lay aside his own duty of seeking and waiting. Through good report and through evil report, this he felt to be his own personal duty, and from it he never flinched.

To return to Clough’s early days. It would not, we think, be true to say that he abandoned all his early belief; he still, no doubt, preserved much of his old feeling, and was in no sense hostile to existing institutions; but certainty as to anything resting on personal or traditional authority was gone for him.

The result of this disturbance of mind was naturally to distract his attention from his immediate studies, and to make his labour less productive. Yet he did read hard, even more so, perhaps, than most men of his time; and one of his friends records that the only bet he ever remembers making in his life was seven to one that Clough would get a first. His habits are said to have been at this time of Spartan simplicity: he had very cold rooms in Balliol on the ground floor, in which he passed a whole winter without a fire; and he used to say that, now that he was working in good earnest, this was an excellent plan for keeping out visitors, as nobody else could stand it for more than a few minutes. He disclosed but little to any one of the mental struggle within him, but his family were aware that some great change was going on in him, and were anxious about his health, which evidently suffered; one sign of which was the falling off of his thick brown hair. He is described by his friends at this time as ‘a most noble-looking youth.’ One of them says, ‘I remember well the first time I saw him, just after he got the Balliol. I had no acquaintance with him for years afterwards, but I never lost the impression of the beautiful eyes which I saw opposite to me at dinner in Balliol Hall.’ He had, as we are told, a very high reputation as an undergraduate; and among his contemporaries and those immediately succeeding him, many were found to say that they owed more to him than to any other man. We quote, again, some passages from the affectionate remembrances of Mr. Ward: ‘Certainly I hardly met any one during my whole Oxford life to whom I was so strongly drawn. Among the many qualities which so greatly attracted me were his unusual conscientiousness and high-mindedness and public spirit. As regarded himself, his main desire (so far as I could see) was to do what he felt to be right; and as regarded others, to stand up for the cause of God and of right principle. This latter view—the duty of making a stand in society for good principles—was one especial characteristic of Dr. Arnold’s pupils. Many think that he impressed it on them too prominently, so as to expose them to a real danger of becoming priggish and self-sufficient; but certainly I never saw in Clough the faintest trace of such qualities as these. Closely connected with this were his unselfishness and unworldliness. The notion of preparing himself for success in a worldly career was so far from prominent in his mind, that he might with some plausibility have been accused of not thinking about it enough. But his one idea seemed always to be, that he should to-day do to-day’s duty, and for the rest leave himself in God’s hands. And as to unselfishness, his self-abnegating consideration for others may be called, in the best sense, feminine. Then his singular sweetness of disposition: I doubt if I have anywhere seen this exceeded. I have known him under circumstances which must have given him great vexation and annoyance, but I never saw in him the faintest approach to loss of temper.

‘Intellectually he struck me as possessing very unusual independence, and (if I may so express myself) straight-forwardness of thought. He was never taken in with shams, pretences, and traditions, but saw at once below the surface. On the other hand, he was perhaps less remarkable for logical consecutiveness. But at that time the Oriel fellowship was universally accounted, I think, the best test in Oxford of intellectual power; and he obtained that fellowship the first time he stood for it. I took part myself in examining him for the Balliol fellowship, and I do not remember to have seen so much power displayed in any examination within my experience.

‘As regards his ordinary habits at the time, since I was a fellow and he only an undergraduate, I cannot speak with perfect certainty; but my impression is that from the first he very much abstained from general society. This was undoubtedly the case at a later period, when his intellectual perplexity had hold of him; but I think it began earlier. I remember in particular that every day he used to return to his solitary room immediately after dinner; and when I asked him the reason for this, he told me that his pecuniary circumstances incapacitated him from giving wine parties, and that therefore he did not like to wine with others. I think also there was a certain fastidiousness of taste and judgment about him which prevented him from enjoying general society.

‘The opinion both of tutors and undergraduates undoubtedly was, that there was an unusual degree of reserve in his demeanour which prevented them from understanding him; but they all—certainly all the tutors, and I believe all the undergraduates—greatly appreciated his singularly high principle and his exemplary spotlessness of life.’

We give another sketch of him during his undergraduate period, furnished by Principal Shairp. ‘It was towards the end of 1840 that I first saw A. H. Clough. As a freshman I looked with respect approaching to awe on the senior scholar of whom I had heard so much, stepping out on Sunday mornings to read the first lesson in Balliol Chapel. How clearly I remember his massive figure, in scholar’s surplice, standing before the brass eagle, and his deep feeling tones as he read some chapter from the Hebrew prophets. At that time he was the eldest and every way the first of a remarkable band of scholars. The younger undergraduates felt towards him a distant reverence, as a lofty and profound nature quite above themselves whom they could not quite make out, but who was sure to be some day great. Profaner spirits, nearer his own standing, sometimes made a joke of his then exceeding silence and reserve, and of his unworldly ways. But as he was out of college rooms and reading hard for his degree, we freshmen only heard of his reputation from a distance, and seldom came in contact with him.

‘It must have been early in 1841 that he first asked me to breakfast with him. He was then living in a small cottage, or cottage-like house, standing by itself, a little apart from Holywell. There he used to bathe every morning all the winter through, in the cold Holywell baths, and read hard all day. There were one or two other freshmen there at breakfast. If I remember right, none of the party were very talkative.

‘I have heard that about that time he wrote one day in fun an oracle, in the style of Herodotus, to his brother scholar, who was reading like himself for the Schools. The Greek I forget; the translation he sent with it ran something like this:—

‘Whereas —— of Lancashire

Shall in the Schools preside,

And Wynter[1] to St. Mary’s go

With the pokers by his side;

Two scholars there of Balliol,

Who on double firsts had reckoned,

Between them two shall with much ado

Scarce get a double second.

‘This turned out only too true an oracle. Since the beginning of class-lists, the succession of firsts among Balliol scholars was unbroken. And few Balliol scholars had equalled, none ever surpassed, Clough’s reputation. I well remember going, towards the end of May or beginning of June, with one of the scholars of my own standing, to the School quadrangle to hear the class list read out, the first time I had heard it. What was our surprise when the list was read out, and neither of our scholars appeared in the first class. We rushed to Balliol and announced it to the younger Fellows who were standing at their open window. Many causes were assigned at the time for this failure—some in the examiners, some in Clough’s then state of spirits; but whatever the cause, I think the result for some years shook faith in firsts among Clough’s contemporaries. It made a great impression upon others; on himself I fancy it made but little. I never heard him afterwards allude to it as a thing of any consequence. He once told me he was sick of contentions for prizes and honours before he left Rugby.’

Thus he missed his first class, of which perhaps the worst result was that for the time it seriously distressed his parents and his friends, especially Dr. Arnold, who had looked forward to his achieving great distinction, and whose well-known dislike of the Tractarian movement made him doubly grieve at what he regarded as indirectly one of its consequences. Clough himself seems always to have felt a solid confidence in his own powers, and perhaps to have too little regarded the outward means of displaying them. Perhaps, too, he was somewhat conscious of that inaptitude to put himself forward to the best advantage, which many of his friends have noticed, and accepted it with his usual stoic philosophy. At any rate his failure did not long produce the effects he most feared, of want of pupils; for through Dr. Arnold’s kindness he was soon provided with profitable employment in teaching a number of Rugby boys who were kept at home at Liverpool by the breaking out of fever in the school. During this time he stayed at home with his family. In the autumn he returned to Oxford, and tried for a fellowship at Balliol. In this he was unsuccessful. He continued, however, to reside at Oxford, and supported himself on the exhibition and scholarship which he still held. In the spring of 1842 he was elected fellow of Oriel, which was in every way a great and cheering success to him. It healed the disappointment which his former failure and the judgment of others on it had caused, and seemed to give him a new life. It is clear by this determination of his to abide by Oxford and to seek his career and his living there, that he had as yet formed no definite views at variance with the principles of the Church. He had come, we believe, to see the unimportance of many things commonly insisted on; his intellect could no longer accept the ordinary formulas of religious opinion; but he was not provided with any other scheme to set up; his habits and his affections all clung to the old ways; then and many years afterwards he continued to feel that real liberality, width of view, and mental and moral cultivation were more commonly found among those nursed in the Anglican Church than in any exclusive sect, and probably the idea of any violent move, of quitting the home in which he had been reared, had never yet crossed his mind. His pleasure in his success in obtaining the fellowship was much enhanced by the satisfaction which it gave to Dr. Arnold, and in a practical way it was doubly valuable, because more troubles were now thickening round him and his family. Money difficulties pressed hard on his parents at this time; his help was much needed, and was unsparingly given. For some sketches of this period and a little later we will again quote Mr. Shairp’s words.

‘In the November of the same year he tried for a Balliol fellowship, but was not successful. Tait,[2] however, was strong in his favour, and, I believe, some other of the Fellows. I remember one of them telling me at the time that a character of Saul which Clough wrote in that examination was, I think he said, the best, most original thing he had ever seen written in any examination. But Oriel had at that time a way of finding out original genius better than either Balliol or the Schools. In the spring of 1842, Arthur Hugh Clough was elected fellow of Oriel, the last examination I believe in which Newman took part. The announcement of that success I remember well. It was on the Friday morning of the Easter week of that year. The examination was finished on the Thursday evening. I had asked Clough and another friend, who was a candidate at the same time, to breakfast with me on the Friday morning, as their work was just over. Most of the scholars of the College were staying up and came to breakfast too. The party consisted of about a dozen. We had little notion that anything about the examination would be known so soon, and were all sitting quietly, having just finished breakfast, but not yet risen from the table. The door opened wide; entered a fellow of another college, and, drawing himself up to his full height, he addressed the other candidate: “I am sorry to say you have not got it.” Then, “Clough, you have;” and stepping forward into the middle of the room, held out his hand, with “Allow me to congratulate you.” We were all so little thinking of the fellowship, and so taken aback by this formal announcement, that it was some little time before we knew what it was all about. The first thing that recalled my presence of mind was seeing the delight on the face of Clough’s younger brother, who was present.

‘In the summer of 1842, while I was reading in a retired part of Wales with two or three others, Clough, then wandering through the Welsh mountains, one morning looked in on us. I took a walk with him, and he at once led me up Moël Wyn, the highest mountain within reach. Two things I remember that day: one, that he spoke a good deal (for him) of Dr. Arnold, whose death had happened only a few weeks before: another, that a storm came down upon the mountain when we were half-way up. In the midst of it we lay for some time close above a small mountain tarn, and watched the storm-wind working on the face of the lake, tearing and torturing the water into most fantastic, almost ghostly shapes, the like of which I never saw before or since. These mountain sights, though he did not say much, he used to eye most observantly.

‘Early in the autumn of 1843, Clough came to Grasmere to read with a Balliol reading party, of which I was one. He was with us about six weeks, I think staying till towards the end of September. This was his earliest long vacation party, all things on a smaller scale than his later ones by Loch Ness, or on Dee-side, but still very pleasant. He lived in a small lodging immediately to the west of Grasmere church; we in a farm-house on the lake. During these weeks I read the Greek tragedians with him, and did Latin prose. His manner of translating, especially the Greek choruses, was quite peculiar; a quaint archaic style of language, keeping rigidly to the Greek order of the words, and so bringing out their expression better, more forcibly and poetically, than any other translations I had heard. When work was done we used to walk in the afternoon with him all over that delightful country. His “eye to country” was wonderful. He knew the whole lie of the different dales relatively to each other; every tarn, beck, and bend in them. He used, if I remember right, to draw pen-and-ink maps, showing us the whole lineaments of the district. Without any obtrusive enthusiasm, but in his own quiet manly way, he seemed as if he never could get too much of it—never walk too far or too often over it. Bathing too formed one of his daily occupations up in a retired pool of the stream that afterwards becomes the Rotha, as it comes out of Easedale. One walk, our longest, was on a Saturday, up Easedale, over the Raise by Greenup, Borrowdale, Honister Crag, under the starlight, to Buttermere. In the small inn there we stayed all Sunday. Early on Monday morning we walked, by two mountain passes, to a farm at the head of Wastwater to breakfast. On the way we crossed Ennerdale, and up the pass close under the nearly perpendicular precipices of the Pillar—a tall mountain, which is the scene of Wordsworth’s pastoral of “The Brothers.” From the head of Wastwater, up past the great gorge of the Mickledoor, to the top of Scawfell, then down past the east side of Bowfell towards Langdale Pikes, and so home to Grasmere. As we passed under Bowfell a beautiful autumn afternoon, we lay a long time by the side of the lovely Angle Tarn. The sun, just before he sunk beside Bowfell, was showering down his light, which dimpled the smooth face of the tarn like heavy drops of sun-rain. Every now and then a slight breeze would come and scatter the rays broadcast over the little loch, as if some unseen hand was sowing it with golden grain. It was as memorable an appearance as that different one we had seen a year ago on Moël Wyn. These things, though Clough observed closely, and took pleasure in, he did not speak often about, much less indulge in raptures.

‘Some of our party were very good hill-men. One day, five or six in all set out on a race from our door by Grasmere Lake to the top of Fairfield. He was the second to reach the summit. His action uphill was peculiar; he used to lay himself forward almost horizontally towards the slope, and take very long strides which carried him quickly over the ground. Few men, so stout as he then was, could have matched him up a mountain.

‘Shortly after this time at Oxford, somewhere that is between 1843 and 1845, I remember to have heard him speak at a small debating society called the Decade, in which were discussed often graver subjects, and in a less popular way, than in the Union. Having been an unfrequent attender, I heard him only twice. But both times, what he said and the way he said it, were so marked and weighty as to have stuck to memory when almost everything else then spoken has been forgotten. The first time was in Oriel Common-room; the subject proposed—“That Tennyson was a greater poet than Wordsworth.” This was one of the earliest expressions of that popularity—since become nearly universal—which I remember. Clough spoke against the proposition, and stood up for Wordsworth’s greatness with singular wisdom and moderation. He granted fully that Wordsworth was often prosy, that whole pages of the “Excursion” had better have been written in prose; but still, when he was at his best, he was much greater than any other modern English poet, saying his best things without knowing they were so good, and then drawling on into prosaic tediousness, without being aware where the inspiration failed and the prose began. In this kind of unconsciousness, I think he said, lay much of his power. One of the only other times I heard him speak was, about the same time, when a meeting of the Decade was held in Balliol Common-room. The subject of debate was—“That the character of a gentleman was in the present day made too much of.” To understand the drift of this would require one to know how highly pleasant manners and a good exterior are rated in Oxford at all times, and to understand something of the peculiar mental atmosphere of Oxford at that time. Clough spoke neither for nor against the proposition; but for an hour and a half—well on two hours—he went into the origin of the ideal, historically tracing from mediæval times how much was implied originally in the notion of a “gentle knight”—truthfulness, consideration for others (even self-sacrifice), courtesy, and the power of giving outward expression to these moral qualities. From this high standard he traced the deterioration into the modern Brummagem pattern which gets the name. These truly gentlemen of old time had invented for themselves a whole economy of manners, which gave true expression to what was really in them, to the ideal in which they lived. These manners, true in them, became false when adopted traditionally and copied from without by modern men placed in quite different circumstances, and living different lives. When the same qualities are in the hearts of men now, as truly as in the best of old time, they will fashion for themselves a new expression, a new economy of manners suitable to their place and time. But many men now, wholly devoid of the inward reality, yet catching at the reputation of it, adopt these old traditional ways of speaking and of bearing themselves, though they express nothing that is really in them.

‘One expression I remember he used, to illustrate the truth that where the true gentle spirit exists, it will express itself in its own rather than in the traditional way. “I have known peasant men and women in the humblest places in whom dwelt these qualities as truly as they ever did in the best of lords and ladies, and who had invented for themselves a whole economy of manners to express them, who were very ‘poets of courtesy.’”

‘His manner of speaking was very characteristic, slow and deliberate, never attempting rhetorical flow, stopping at times to think the right thing, or to feel for the exactly fitting word, but with a depth of suggestiveness, a hold of reality, a poetry of thought, not found combined in any other Oxonian of our time.

‘It must have been in the autumn of 1845 that Clough and I first met in Scotland. One visit there to Walrond’s family at Calder Park I especially remember. On a fine morning early in September, we started from Calder Park to drive to the Falls of Clyde. We were to spend the day at Milton Lockhart, and go on to Lanark in the evening. Besides Walrond and Clough, there were T. Arnold, E. Arnold, and myself. It was one of the loveliest September mornings that ever shone, and the drive lay through one of the most lovely regions in south Scotland, known as “the Trough of Clyde.” The sky was bright blue, fleeced with whitest clouds. From Hamilton to Milton Lockhart, about ten miles, the road keeps down in the hollow of the trough, near the water, the banks covered with orchards, full of heavy-laden apple and other fruit trees bending down till they touched the yellow corn that grew among them. There is a succession of fine country houses, with lawns that slope towards lime trees that bend over the river. It was the first time any of us but Walrond had been that way, and in such a drive, under such a sky, you may believe we were happy enough. We reached Milton Lockhart, a beautiful place, built on a high grassy headland, beneath and round which winds the Clyde. Sir Walter Scott, I believe, chose the site, and none could be more beautifully chosen. It looks both ways, up and down the lovely vale.

‘As we drove up, near ten o’clock, we found the late Mr. J. G. Lockhart (Scott’s biographer) walking on the green terrace that looks over the river. The laird himself being from home, his brother was our host. Soon after we arrived, his daughter, then very young, afterwards Mrs. Hope Scott, came out on the terrace to say that breakfast was ready. After breakfast she sang, with great spirit and sweetness, several of her grandfather’s songs, copied into her mother’s books by herself, when they were still newly composed. After listening to these for some time, her brother, Walter Scott Lockhart, then a youth of nineteen or so, and with a great likeness to the portraits of Sir Walter when a young man, was our guide to an old castle, situated on a bank of one of the small glens that come down to the Clyde from the west. It was the original of Scott’s Tillietudlem in “Old Mortality.” A beautiful walk thither; the castle large, roofless and green with herbage and leafage. We stayed some time roaming over the green deserted place, then returned to a lunch, which was our dinner; more songs, and then drove off late in the afternoon to the Falls of Clyde and Lanark for the night. It was a pleasant day. Clough enjoyed it much in his own quiet way—quietly, yet so humanly interested in all he met. Many a joke he used to make about that day afterwards. Not he only, but all our entertainers of that day, Mr. J. G. Lockhart, his son and daughter, are now gone.

‘In the summer of 1847, Clough had a reading party at Drumnadrochet, in Glen Urquhart, about two miles north from Loch Ness, where, about the beginning of August, I, along with T. Arnold and Walrond, paid him a visit. Some of the incidents and characters in “The Bothie” were taken from that reading party, though its main scenes and incidents lay in Braemar. One anecdote I specially remember connected with that visit. On our way to Drumnadrochet, T. Arnold and I had made a solitary walk together from the west end of Loch Rannoch, up by Loch Ericht, one of the wildest, most unfrequented lochs in the Highlands. All day we saw only one house, till, late at night, we reached another on the side of the loch, about six miles from Dalwhinnie. It was one of the loveliest, most primitive places I ever saw even in the most out-of-the-way parts of the Highlands. We told Clough of it, and when his reading party was over, later in the autumn, he went on our track. He spent a night at the inn at the west end of Loch Rannoch, called Tighnalyne, where he met with some of the incidents which appeared in “The Bothie.” He also visited the house by the side of Loch Ericht, a small heather-thatched hut, occupied by one of the foresters of the Ben Aulder forest. He found one of the children lying sick of a fever, the father I think from home, and the mother without any medicines or other aid for her child. He immediately set off and walked to Fort William, about two days’ journey from the place, but the nearest place where medicines and other supplies were to be had. These he got at Fort William, and returned on his two days’ journey, and left them with the mother. He had four days’ walk, over a rough country, to bring medicines to this little child, and the people did not even know his name. On these occasions in Scotland, he told me that he used to tell the people he was a “Teacher,” and they were at once at ease with him then. I doubt whether he ever mentioned this to any one but myself, and to me it only came out casually.

‘If I am not mistaken, it was from this place that he took the original name of what is now Tober-na-Vuolich. In this year he visited the West Highlands, and went through “Lochaber, anon in Locheil, in Knoydart, Moydart, Morrer, Ardgower, and Ardnamurchan.” In the first edition this line was—“Knoydart, Moydart, Croydart, Morrer, and Ardnamurchan.” But he discovered afterwards that Croydart was only the way that the Gael pronounce what is spelt Knoydart. During this wander he saw all the country about Ben Nevis, westward to the Atlantic—

‘Where the great peaks look abroad over Skye to the westermost Islands.

He walked “where pines are grand in Glen-Mally,” and saw all the country which in a few lines here and there he has pictured so powerfully in “The Bothie.” The expression about Ben Nevis, with the morning sprinkling of snow on his shoulders, is absolutely true to reality.

‘In this expedition he came to Glenfinnan, at the head of Loch Shiel, the place where Prince Charles met the Highland clans, and unfurled his standard. Here there used to stand a nice quiet little-frequented inn, where one could live for weeks undisturbed. But at the time when Clough reached it, a great gathering was being held there. The Queen had gone to Loch Laggan, and the ships that escorted her to Fort William were lying at the head of Loch Linnhe. McDonald of Glen Aladale had invited all the officers of these ships to have a day’s deer-stalking on his property of Glen Aladale, down the side of Loch Shiel, and to have a ball at the Glenfinnan Inn after their day’s sport. Clough came in for the ball. It was a strange gathering—the English sailors, officers, a few Highland lairds, Highland farmers and shepherds, with their wives and daughters, were all met altogether at the ball. Clough and one of his reading party were invited to join the dance, and they danced Highland reels, and went through all the festivities like natives. The uproar was immense, and the ludicrous scenes not few. He often used to speak of it afterwards, as one of the motliest, drollest gatherings he had ever fallen in with.

‘Often afterwards he used to speak of his Scotch adventures with great heartiness. There was much in the ways of life he saw there that suited the simplicity of his nature. Even when Englishmen would laugh at the baldness of our Presbyterian services, he would defend them as better than English ritualism and formality.’

To these reminiscences of Principal Shairp’s may be added some notes supplied by Professor Conington, of his recollections of the speeches made by Clough in the debates of a society at Oxford, called the Decade. Mr. Conington was himself the secretary of the society at the time of which he speaks. ‘The first occasion of my meeting Mr. Clough at the Decade,’ he says, ‘was on February 14, 1846, when I myself brought forward the subject for discussion. The subject was—“That means ought to be adopted by the Legislature for recognising formally the social and political importance of the manufacturing interest.” Sir Robert Peel’s change of policy about the corn laws had just been announced, and those of us who were on the movement side were naturally more or less enthusiastic in favour of the manufacturers, who appeared to us as the winners of a great social victory. My proposal, if I remember rightly, was to the effect that they ought to be made peers, just as great landowners were. In this the bulk of the members present at that meeting do not seem to have concurred with me; but I had Mr. Clough’s support. I do not recollect thoroughly a single sentence of his speech, but I can recall his commanding manner, and the stately serene tones in which he delivered a kind of prophecy of the new era which in a few days was to be inaugurated, and told us that “these men” (the manufacturers) “were the real rulers of England.” The next occasion was some months afterwards, on June 9, 1846, when the question for debate was—“That any system of moral science, distinct from a consideration of Christianity, is essentially imperfect.” Mr. Clough is reported as having spoken for this motion in part. He eventually moved a rider, which, with the motion, was unanimously accepted—“But the existence of moral science is recognised and presupposed by the idea of a revelation.” The only point which remains on my mind is an application by him of the text “comparing spiritual things with spiritual;” “that is,” said he, “comparing the spiritual things in a revelation with the spiritual things in one’s own mind.”

‘I see there were five other occasions, in 1847 and the early part of 1848, on which Mr. Clough appeared at the Decade during my membership. One dwells in my memory with tolerable distinctness—a speech made in a debate on March 6, 1847, the subject being—“That the study of philosophy is more important for the formation of opinion than that of history.” I see that he made five speeches on that evening. I have entered him as supporting the motion “with qualifications,” a common mode of registering opinion in our debates: but I remember that, as the debate grew warm, his qualifications seemed to disappear, and in the speech which I happen to recollect, few if any of them were visible. “What is it to me,” he said, “to know the fact of the battle of Marathon, or the fact of the existence of Cromwell? I have it all within me.” Correcting himself afterwards, he said, “I do not mean that it is of no importance to me that there should have been such a battle or such a person; it is of a great deal: but it is of no importance that I should know it.”

‘The only other occasion when I recollect anything of Mr. Clough which seems worth recording was a conversation which I had with him in the autumn of 1848. He had given up his fellowship, and was living for a few weeks in small cheap lodgings in Holywell Street, Oxford, where I remember finding him without a fire on a cold day. His “Bothie” was just about to be published, and he gave me some account of it, particularly of the metre. He repeated, in his melodious way, several lines, intended to show me how a verse might be read so that one syllable should take up the time of two, or, conversely, two of one. The line which he instanced (altered, I think, from “Evangeline”) was this:—

White | naked | feet on the | gleaming | floor of her | chamber.

This was new to me, as I had not risen beyond the common notion of spondees, dactyls, and the rest. So I asked for more explanation. He bade me scan the first line of the “Paradise Lost.” I began, “‘Of man’s:’ iambus.” “Yes.” “‘First dis-’”——There I was puzzled. It did not seem an iambus or a spondee: it was nearly a trochee, but not quite one. He then explained to me his conception of the rhythm. The two feet “first disobe-” took up the time of four syllables, two iambic feet: the voice rested awhile on the word “first,” then passed swiftly over “diso-,” then rested again on “be-,” so as to recover the previous hurry. I think he went on to explain that in the next foot, “dience and,” both syllables were short, but that the loss of time was made up for by the pause required by the sense after the former of the two, and that finally the voice rested on the full-sounded word “fruit.” Possibly this last impression may really be the result of my own subsequent use of the clue which he then gave me. But a clue it was in the fullest sense of the term: it gave me an insight into rhythm which I had not before, and which has constantly been my guide since both in reading and writing.’

In June 1842 occurred the death of Dr. Arnold, which was a severe shock as well as a great grief to Clough from its suddenness as well as from the intense reverence and affection he felt for him. ‘He was for a long time more than a father to me,’ were his own words, and no doubt the sensitive boy, exiled from his own family in his childhood, clung with even more of filial feeling than is common to the teacher to whom he owed so much. He heard the news at Oxford, and came home immediately, seeming, as his sister describes him, completely stunned by the blow, incapable of realising or speaking of what had happened, and unable to rest. He soon left home, and wandered away among the Welsh hills, where Mr. Shairp tells us of their meeting.

Later in the summer he had some pupils in Ireland, but left them to come over to bid farewell to his brother George, who sailed for America in October 1842. He was deeply attached to this his youngest brother, whose lively spirits combined with most affectionate devotion to him had done a great deal to cheer him even in his darkest moments. And this was, as it proved, their last meeting. The poor young fellow, only just twenty-two, was struck down by fever at Charleston, when away from all his own family, and died there, after a very few days’ illness. His father had sailed for America, intending to join him, before the news of his illness reached England, and arrived in Boston only to hear that all was over. The shock was a dreadful one to the unhappy father, and came with a double force, because he relied on his son’s help at this moment in a period of great anxiety concerning business. He never recovered the blow, and in the following summer, in 1843, he returned home much shaken by grief and very ill in health, and after lingering on for a few months, during which time he was most tenderly nursed by all his family, including Arthur, he also died.

During his father’s illness, and the years that immediately followed, Arthur spent much of his time with his own family; and when he was away from them, he always took an active part in all plans and arrangements for their comfort and happiness. He had never become estranged in any way from his home, as is often the case with sons and brothers whose calling separates them from their families. Essentially tender and domestic in his feelings, and full of consideration for others, it always seemed natural to him to enter into their interests, and to undertake trouble and responsibility for their sakes.

In 1843 he had been appointed tutor as well as fellow of Oriel, and he is spoken of as being remarkably effective in this capacity. ‘A most excellent tutor, and exceedingly beloved by the undergraduates,’ one of those who best knew has called him. But little need be said of this period. He led a quiet, hardworking, uneventful tutor’s life, diversified with the reading parties, which have been commemorated in the ‘Bothie.’ This was the time when most of the poems in the little volume called ‘Ambarvalia’ were written. He took a warm and increasing interest in all social questions, and in every way he seems to have been full of spirit and vigour. To his younger friends and pupils he especially endeared himself. Mr. Walrond says: ‘My Oxford days seem all coloured with the recollection of happy and most instructive walks and talks with him. We used to meet every day almost, though at different colleges; and it was my regular Sunday holiday to breakfast with him, and then take a long ramble over Cumnor Hurst or Bagley Wood. When I recall those days, the one thing that comes back upon me most, even more than the wisdom and loftiness and suggestiveness of his conversation, is his unselfishness and tender kindness. Many must have told you what a gift he had for making people personally fond of him; I can use no other word. For myself, I owe him more than I can ever tell, for the seed of just and noble thoughts sown, for the pure and lofty type of character set before me; but the feeling of personal attachment is the strongest of all.’ Another friend of this period says: ‘In him I felt I had an example of a nobleness and tenderness of nature most rare, and one, too, who, since I was an undergraduate, had always given me not only sincere love, but wise and sincere counsel in many difficulties. What he would think on any doubtful point was indeed often in the mind of many others with me. Often, too, I have remembered that, by his taste, I was first led to read and take pleasure in Wordsworth.’

Thus his life passed on with much of cheerful and active interest and work. Yet it would seem, from his letters, that he was living at Oxford under a sense of intellectual repression. He appears at one time to have doubted about undertaking the tutor’s work, but to have overcome the doubt. He evidently regarded teaching as his natural vocation, and he had great enjoyment in it; but the sense of being bound by his position to silence on many important subjects probably oppressed him. At intervals he expresses vague inclinations to leave Oxford, and seek work elsewhere; but the difficulty of finding this, and the undefined nature of his objections, appear to have hindered him. At this time, in order to secure the comfort of a near relative, he entered into a pecuniary arrangement, by which he bound himself to pay 100l. a year, on condition of receiving a considerable sum at the death of one of the parties to the negotiation. This was looked on as an event certain to occur very soon, but, in fact, it did not come to pass for fifteen years; and this liability, very easily borne while his circumstances were prosperous, became a drag upon him when he had no longer any assured income. Thus, though everything in his outward circumstances combined to make it desirable for him to remain in his present position, yet by degrees his dissatisfaction with it became too strong to be endured. His was a nature ‘which moveth all together, if it move at all;’ and, once entered upon the course of free inquiry, nothing could stop the expansion of his thought in that direction. His absolute conscientiousness and intense unworldliness prevented the usual influences which slacken men’s movements from telling upon his.

It is not very obvious what eventually decided him to quit Oxford at the precise moment when he did so. In the year 1847 he was powerfully stirred by the distress in Ireland at the time of the potato famine, as may be seen from the pamphlet on ‘Retrenchment’; and the general ferment of his nature, as well as the ripening of opinions in his own mind, probably tended to make him more open to change. Emerson also visited England in this year. Clough became intimate with him, and his influence must have tended to urge him on in the direction in which he was already moving. With another friend, also, whose general dissatisfaction with European life was strong, he was at this time very familiar. We are, therefore, disposed to think that it was some half accidental confirmation of his own doubts as to the honesty and usefulness of his own course, which brought him at last almost suddenly face to face with the question whether he ought to resign his tutorship. After a correspondence with the head of his college—in speaking of whom he always expressed a strong sense of the uniform kindness which he had received from him under these trying circumstances—he eventually gave up his tutorship in 1848; and this done, though his fellowship had not yet expired, he began to feel his whole position hollow; and six months later (in October 1848) he resigned this likewise, and thus left himself unprovided with any present means of making a livelihood, and with the burden of the annuity to which we have alluded still hanging on him. The sacrifice was greater to him than to many men, because he had no natural aptitude for making money. His power of literary production was always uncertain, and very little within his own control. His conscientious scruples interfered with his writing casually, as many would have done; for instance, we are told that he would not contribute to any paper or review with whose general principles he did not agree. He was, therefore, constrained to look out for some definite post in the line of education; and from the best chances in this department he had cut himself adrift by resigning his fellowship. He did, nevertheless, take this step, apparently with a certain lightness of heart and buoyancy, in singular contrast with what might be expected to be the feeling of a man taking a decision so important to his future life. It is clear that he ‘broke away with delight’ from what he felt to be the thraldom of his position in Oxford.

Immediately after laying down his tutorship, he made use of his leisure to go to Paris, in company with Emerson, where he spent a month in seeing the sights of the Revolution.

It was in September of this year (1848), when staying at home with his mother and sister in Liverpool, that he wrote his first long poem, the ‘Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich.’ This was his utterance to the world on quitting Oxford, and not the theological pamphlet which was expected from him. In later days he would often speak of the amusement it had been to him to think of the disappointment which the appearance of these lively verses would produce among those who looked for a serious vindication of his conduct. Some further explanation of his feeling will be furnished by an unpublished letter, which we subjoin:—

‘My objection in limine to subscription would be, that it is a painful restraint on speculation; but beyond this, to examine myself in detail on the Thirty-nine Articles, and say how far my thoughts upon them had passed the limit of speculation and begun to assume the form of concretion, would be not only difficult and distasteful to me, but absolutely impossible. I could not do it with any approximation to accuracy; and I have no wish to be hurried into precipitate declarations which, after all, might misrepresent my mind. It is fair to say that the points in question with me would not be subordinate matters; but at the same time I feel no call to the study of theology, and for the present certainly should leave these controversies to themselves, were they not in some measure forced upon my notice. Of joining any sect I have not the most distant intention.’

This year he spent chiefly at home; and, in the winter of 1848, he received an invitation to take the Headship of University Hall, London, an institution professing entirely unsectarian principles, founded for the purpose of receiving students attending the lectures at University College. His tenure of office was to date from October 1849, and he determined before this to take his first long holiday of travel, and to go to Rome. Thus his visit coincided accidentally with the siege of Rome by the French; and this, though it deprived him of many opportunities of travel and sight-seeing, was historically and politically of very great interest to him. This was the scene and the time during which he wrote his second long poem, the ‘Amours de Voyage.’

In October 1849 he returned to enter on his duties at University Hall. His new circumstances were, of course, very different from those of his Oxford life, and the change was in many respects painful to him. The step he had taken in resigning his fellowship isolated him greatly; many of his old friends looked coldly on him, and the new acquaintances among whom he was thrown were often uncongenial to him. The transition from the intimate and highly refined society of Oxford to the bustling miscellaneous external life of London, to one not well furnished with friends, and without a home of his own, could hardly fail to be depressing. He had hoped for liberty of thought and action; he had found solitude, but not perfect freedom. Though not bound by any verbal obligations, he found himself expected to express agreement with the opinions of the new set among whom he had fallen, and this was no more possible to him here than it had been at Oxford. His old prestige at Oxford availed him little in London; it has been remarked by his friends that he often failed to show himself to the best advantage, and this was doubly the case when he felt himself not understood. This was without doubt the dreariest, loneliest period of his life, and he became compressed and reserved to a degree quite unusual with him, both before and afterwards. He shut himself up, and went through his life in silence.

Yet here too he gradually formed some new and valuable friendships. Among these, his acquaintance with Mr. Carlyle was one of the most important; and to the end of his life he continued to entertain the warmest feeling for that great man. It was part of the sensitiveness of his character to shrink from going back on old impressions; and though he always retained his affection for his early friends, yet intercourse with fresh minds was often easier to him than with those to whom his former phases of life and thought were more familiar. In the autumn of 1850 he took advantage of his vacation to make a hasty journey to Venice, and during this interval he began his third long poem of ‘Dipsychus,’ which bears the mark of Venice in all its framework and its local colouring.

We have now mentioned, at the dates at which they were composed, all his longest works—the ‘Bothie,’ the ‘Amours de Voyage,’ and ‘Dipsychus.’ No other long work of his remains except the ‘Mari Magno,’ which is properly a collection of short poems, more or less united by one central idea, and bound together by their setting, as a series of tales related to each other by a party of companions on a sea voyage. The ‘Ambarvalia,’ poems written between 1840 and 1847, chiefly at Oxford, though without any setting at all, have something of the same inward coherence. They are all poems of the inner life, while the ‘Mari Magno’ poems deal with social problems, and the questions of love and marriage. His voyage to America, again, produced a cluster of little sea poems, closely linked together by one or two main thoughts.

It has often been a subject of surprise, that with such evident powers and even facility of production, Clough should have left so little behind him, even considering the shortness of his life, and that for such long periods he should have been entirely silent. We think the best explanation is to be found in his peculiar temper of mind, and we might say physical conformation of brain, which could not work unless under a combination of favourable circumstances. His brain, though powerful, was slow to concentrate itself, and could not carry on several occupations at once. Solitude and repose were necessary for production. This, combined with a certain inertia, a certain slowness of movement, constantly made it hard for him to get over the initial difficulties of self-expression, and would often, no doubt, cause him to delay too long and lose the passing inspiration or opportunity. But, once started, his very weight carried him on, as it did in the ‘Bothie,’ ‘Amours,’ and ‘Dipsychus,’ and ‘Mari Magno.’

Besides this, much in the very quality of his poetry will explain this scantiness of production. His absolute sincerity of thought, his intense feeling of reality, rendered it impossible for him to produce anything superficial, and therefore actually curtailed the amount of his creations. His excessive conscientiousness winnowed away so much as to leave often a sense of baldness. His peculiar habits of thought also, his sense of being constantly at variance with the ordinary sentiments of those who surrounded him, his incapability of treating the common themes of poetry in the usual manner, his want of interest in any poetry which did not touch some deep question, some vital feeling in human nature (always excepting his love for the simple beauty of nature), all combined to diminish his range of subjects. He had to enter on a new line, to create a new treatment of old subjects, to turn them over and bring them out in the new light of his critical but kindly philosophy. This, in ‘Mari Magno,’ he had begun to do, and the rapid production of these last poems makes us believe that this new vein would have continued had he lived, and that we should have received a further expression of his views about the daily problems of social life.

Looking now to the facts of his life, we see that there were in it very few intervals during which he enjoyed the combination of favourable circumstances necessary to enable him to write. He never was free, except during those short intervals, from the pressure of constant hard practical work. He was constantly under the necessity of using his power of work for the purpose of immediately making a living. His conscientious efforts, first to relieve his parents from the burden of his education, and then to assist them, have been related before. As fellow and tutor his earnings were freely contributed, and no doubt the desire of doing this was one great reason for undertaking the tutor’s work at Oriel. It is true that this was a time of comparative wealth, but it was earned by hard labour of a practical kind, and it has been already shown that during this period he made a pecuniary engagement which burdened him for many years after. Thus his duty to others never allowed him for any interval to cast himself on his fortune, and run risks for a while for the sake of freedom and opportunities. To many men this burden would have been lighter, but he was a heavy moving vessel; he could not turn and set his sails to catch light favouring winds. He could not use spare half-hours to write well-paid reviews or popular articles, or even poetry. The demand for his wares seemed to spoil the supply. That it should be profitable, seemed to make it impossible to him to write. Thus he was driven to harder, less congenial work, simply because it was positive and certain. Nothing, for instance, would have been more grateful to him than after leaving Oxford to be free for a few years to roam about the world before settling to a new vocation, but this was never to be thought of. No doubt there is another side to the picture; the real acquaintance with life and men, which this entire acceptance of various positions taught him, not only gave him valuable training, but furnished him with materials which in a mind of his calibre would, we doubt not, have come out in some literary form. But for the time they simply choked his power of production, and no doubt prevented the utterance of many thoughts on religious and other subjects.

After two years at University Hall, the founding of a new college at Sydney induced him to seek a change, and he presented himself as a candidate for its principalship, a post which Dr. Woolley eventually obtained. This would have brought him a safe income, and one on which he could afford to marry. He had great hopes of success, and this tempted him to engage himself to be married. But very soon after he had done this the appointment was decided against him, and he was at the same time obliged to give up University Hall. His prospects were thus less hopeful than ever. Yet the stimulus which he had received supported him in the struggle to obtain some kind of position in which he might gain a livelihood. His friends endeavoured to procure an appointment for him in the Education Office; but the downfall of the Liberal Ministry destroyed all his chances for the time. Then, after much deliberation and inward hesitation, he resolved to go out to America, and try what opening he might find there, as a teacher or a literary man. But to leave England, to make a new beginning in life, and to pull himself up again, as it were, by the roots, was not an easy matter to one of his tenacious temperament. Some expression of the feelings which possessed him comes out in the poems written on shipboard. Eventually he sailed, in October 1852, and settled at Cambridge, Massachusetts. There he was welcomed with remarkable cordiality, and formed many friendships which lasted to the end of his life. Still his position was too solitary to be cheerful, but he appreciated very highly the hopefulness and the moral healthiness of the new country, and he always retained warm feelings of admiration and affection for its citizens.

At Cambridge he remained some time without much employment, but by degrees he gathered a certain number of pupils. He also wrote several articles at this time in the ‘North American Review,’ and in ‘Putnam’s Magazine,’ and other magazines, and before long undertook a revision of the translation, known as Dryden’s, of Plutarch’s ‘Lives,’ for an American publisher. Thus he carried on a great deal of work, and was gradually making himself an assured position; and he would probably have felt no difficulty in settling down in America as his home, had not the offer of an examinership in the Education Office, which his friends obtained for him, come to draw him homewards again. The certainty of a permanent, though small income, the prospects of immediate marriage, and his natural affection for his own country, decided him to accept the place, and give up his chances in America, not without some regret, after he had gradually brought his mind to the idea of adopting a new country. His genuine democratic feeling rejoiced in the wider diffusion of prosperity and substantial comforts which he found in America; at the same time he would doubtless have suffered greatly from the expatriation, and would probably have always regretted his exclusion from what he calls ‘the deeper waters of ancient knowledge and experience’ to be found in the old country.

In July 1853 he returned to England, and at once entered on the duties of his office. Henceforth his career was decided for him. He was freed from perplexing questions as to choice of occupation. His business life was simple, straightforward, and hardworking; but it was made up of little beyond official drudgery, and the fact of his entering the public service so late diminished his prospect of reaching higher posts. His immediate objects, however, were answered; and in June 1854 he married. For the next seven years he lived quietly at home; and during this time three children were born to him, who formed his chief and unfailing delight. No events of any moment marked this period; but it was one of real rest and contentment. It is hard to speak of happiness which has vanished from the earth; yet what comfort remains lies chiefly in the thought that now at last his life did reach a sort of culmination, that a great-hearted man did for a short time find his natural repose in the pleasures of a home, and that he was able, for a short space at least, to devote his great faculties freely to the service of others. Up to this date we may almost say that he had been too free from active and absorbing employment for his own happiness. Circumstances had forced him to try different schemes and to engage in various undertakings with very moderate success, and the want of definite and continuous occupation left his mind free to deal restlessly with the great insoluble problems of the world, which had for him so true a vitality that he could not dismiss them from his thoughts. After his marriage there was none of this enforced and painful communing with self alone. He had plenty to do; and the close relations into which he was brought with various members of his wife’s family kept him actively employed, and tasked his sympathies to the full. All the new duties and interests of domestic life grew up and occupied his daily thoughts. The humour which in solitude had been inclined to take the hue of irony and sarcasm, now found its natural and healthy outlet. The practical wisdom and insight into life, for which he was distinguished, were constantly exercised in the service of his friends; and the new experience which he was daily gathering at home made many perplexed questions, both social and religious, clear and simple to his mind. In this way, though he did not cease to think about the problems which hitherto had occupied his leisure, he thought about them in a different way, and was able, so to speak, to test them by the facts of actual life, and by the intuitions and experience of those whose character he valued, instead of submitting them only to the crucible of his own reflection. The close and constant contact with another mind gave him a fresh insight into his own, and developed a new understanding of the wants of other people, so that the results of many years of meditation grew distinct and solid. Having thus passed from the speculative to the constructive phase of thought, it is quite certain, from little things which he was in the habit of saying, that, had he been permitted, he would have expressed his mature convictions in works of a more positive and substantial kind. But, unfortunately, he was too willing and too anxious to take work of every sort, and to spend himself for others. Therefore he soon became involved in labours too exciting for a constitution already somewhat overtasked, nor was he ever able to yield himself wholly to the healthful indolence of private life. To a period of wasting thought and solitude succeeded one of over-strenuous exertion; bracing indeed, but, for a man of his sympathetic temperament and laborious past life, too absorbing and engrossing. What, however, must always be remembered is, that Clough was happy in his work, and happy in his home life. It would be easy, were it necessary, to show from his poems how strong in him was the sense of family feeling, how tenderly and delicately he appreciated the family relations, how fond he was of children and young people, how naturally he enjoyed domestic life. Nor can any one doubt that in work itself he found full satisfaction, especially in such work as made him helpful to others, and brought him into vivid human contact with his fellow-workers. Both of these sources of satisfaction, home life and congenial work, had hitherto been denied him. Now they were largely given to him, and, had his strength been equal to the demands which were made upon it, a long life of happiness and usefulness was clearly open to him.

Besides the work of the office, the translation of Plutarch, begun in America, absorbed a great part of his scanty leisure during five years after his return from America. In the spring of 1856 he was appointed secretary to a commission for examining the scientific military schools on the Continent. He visited, in consequence, the great schools for artillery and engineers in France, Prussia, and Austria. The travelling lasted about three months, and besides being very interesting and agreeable, it afforded him much occupation during a considerable time afterwards. Another employment, which frequently fell to him, was the examining of candidates in his own special subject of English literature, sometimes for Woolwich, sometimes in his own office. But the work in which he took the deepest interest was that of his friend and relation, Miss Nightingale. He watched over every step in her various undertakings, affording her assistance not merely with advice, and little in his life gave him greater satisfaction than to be her active and trusted friend.

We see that his life, though uneventful, was full of work, and we can also understand why this period of his life produced no poetical result. The conditions under which he could create were at this time wholly wanting. He had not time or strength or leisure of mind to spend on his natural gift of writing; and to his friends it must ever be a source of sorrow that his natural vocation, what he himself felt as such, was unfulfilled. He himself always looked forward to some time when greater opportunity might be granted him, when the various experiences of later life, the results of his later thought, might ‘assort themselves upon the brain,’ and be given out in some definite form. In the meantime he waited, not impatiently or unwillingly, for he was slow to draw conclusions, as he was also patient in hearing the views of others, and ready in his appreciation of them. Yet his mind did not fail to exercise a powerful influence upon others. All who knew him well will bear witness to the strong impression left by his character, and by the force and originality of his intellect. He was not prompt to give out distinct opinions or answers to theoretical questions, but he seldom failed to find a practical solution to any immediate difficulty, whether mental or practical. His mind turned more and more to action as its natural relief; and in his family circle his gentle wisdom and patience and great tenderness of feeling caused him to be constantly appealed to in all difficulties. It was indeed only in the intimacy of daily life that the full charm and grace of his nature was felt, the intense lovableness of it, the tender unselfishness, and the manly courage with which he met the difficulties of life, and helped others through them. His was a character not easy to describe, whose charm was so personal that it seems to evaporate when translated into words. He was a singular combination of enthusiasm and calmness, of thoughtfulness and imagination, of speech and silence, of seriousness and humour. Ordinarily somewhat slow of utterance, he often seemed, as a friend said of him, ‘to be choked by his own fulness.’ His own words in the ‘Bothie’ not unaptly described him—

Author forgotten and silent of currentest phrases and fancies;

Mute and exuberant by turns, a fountain at intervals playing;

Mute and abstracted, or strong and abundant as rain in the tropics.

On special occasions he would pour out the accumulation of his mind, but most often the stream remained hid, and only came to the surface in his poetry, or in little incisive phrases, most apt to engrave themselves sharply on the minds of his hearers. He had a strong sense of humour, and was always ready to look on this side of the daily incidents of life; and his friends will long remember his genial smile, and his hearty, almost boyish, laugh. This brightness, and the sunny sweetness of his temper, gave cheerfulness to what might otherwise have been too serious a temperament, for though not specially anxious in personal things, yet the habit of his mind, his high-wrought conscientiousness and susceptibility of feeling, rendered him liable to be deeply impressed by the sad things of the world, the great difficulties especially of modern social life, which were in truth to him ‘a heavy and a weary weight.’

It has been remarked that in his later poems there is no distinct expression of the peace he had attained. It is true we find in them rather a freedom from disturbance than a positive expression of belief. But his peace was not the result of a crisis, of a sudden conversion, which often pours itself out in words; it was the fruit of years of patient thought and action, it was a temper of mind. He felt no impulse to speak of it. He turned his mind to the practical questions of the world, as appears in these later poems, which instantly began to flow forth as soon as his brain was relieved from the constant pressure of work.

With so much of inward peace, absolutely free from envy or jealousy, not depressed by the want of outward success, given in so much larger measure to many of his contemporaries, capable of looking at outward things from a truly philosophic height, gifted with genuine humour, and open in his soul to all kindly natural feelings, endowed with a rare power of inspiring unclouded affection, he could not but enjoy a high degree of happiness. It has been called a broken life. Broken indeed it was, by death, too soon for the work he might have done, too soon for any full comprehension of him by the public, or by any but his near friends, too soon for those who loved him and depended on him. But not too soon for the realisation of a great and manly character, for the achievement in himself of the highest and purest peace; not too soon to give to a few who really knew him the strongest sense of what he was in himself. It was easiest to describe him by negatives, yet perhaps no one ever made a more concrete positive impression on those who knew him. As one of his friends said, ‘I always felt his presence;’ and truly he was above all a power, a warm supporting presence. His poems tell us of his perplexities, his divided thoughts, his uncertainties; those who remember him will think rather of his simple directness of speech and action, the clearness of his judgment on any moot point; above all, it is remarkable how unanimous all those who knew him are in expressing their feeling of his entire nobleness, his utter purity of character. It seems impossible to speak of him without using these words.

But now this happy and peaceful though laborious life was approaching a too early close. There was never to be any complete opportunity given here for showing to the full what his best friends believed to be in him, and what his poems partly reveal. Probably ever since very early youth he had been subjected to a too severe moral and intellectual strain. His health, though good, had never been strong, and after 1859 it began to cause anxiety to his family, when a series of small illnesses and accidents combined to weaken his constitution. In the summer of 1860, he also suffered the loss of his mother. After a lingering illness of several years, she died of paralysis, a disease to which several of the family had succumbed, and which was so soon after to strike down her son.

His usual autumn holiday, this time spent chiefly in Scotland, failed of its usual good effect in reviving him, and finding himself seriously out of health, he obtained six months’ leave from the Council Office. He then underwent several weeks’ treatment at Malvern, which appeared to improve his health. Afterwards, in February 1861, he removed to Freshwater, in the Isle of Wight, and here, though at first in a suffering state, he soon improved and regained his spirits, and for the last time really enjoyed his family life with his wife and children. He was naturally fond of children, and to his own little ones he was a most tender and devoted father; he never tired of strolling about with them, carrying them on his back along the country lanes, and listening to their just beginning talk. The pleasures of the country had always had a strong hold upon him, and the opening spring in that sweet spot brought many pleasant sights; many walks among daffodil and snowdrop beds, and discoveries of ferns in sheltered nooks. He always rose early, and was often seen strolling over the downs before breakfast. At this time he returned to his old employment of translating Homer, the only form of versification which he had not laid aside altogether during his office work. This became now a great pleasure to him. At this time too he wrote two or three of the miscellaneous poems. Here also it was a source of great enjoyment to him to be near friends whom he especially valued, and whose society gave him just the intellectual stimulus he needed for enjoyment.

But this pleasant time came too soon to an end. Though himself unwilling to move from a place where he felt happy, and where he had experienced an improvement in his health, he was warned that the good would soon be exhausted, and that the climate was too relaxing for warmer weather. Further change of air, and still more change of scene, were ordered, and in the middle of April he went alone to Greece and Constantinople. Apparently he greatly enjoyed this journey, and no sooner was he again at leisure and in solitude than the old fountain of verse, so long dry within him, reopened afresh. During this journey he wrote the first and perhaps the second of the Mari Magno stories. In June he returned for a few weeks to England; he seemed unable to bear any protracted absence, and to long for his home; yet he consented to quit it again in July and go to Auvergne and the Pyrenees. There he was fortunate enough to join, though but for a short time, his friends Mr. and Mrs. Tennyson, whose companionship made his solitary wanderings pleasant, and to it he owed probably more than pleasure, some of the stimulus which produced the poems which were his last creations. While travelling in Auvergne and the Pyrenees he composed all the remaining Mari Magno tales, except the last, which was conceived and written entirely during his last illness. In the south of France he remained till the middle of September, when he went to Paris to join his wife. Their three little children had been left in England; he had very much wished to come home and see them before starting on a further journey, but in the present state of his nerves it was considered desirable to avoid any unnecessary emotion, and he unwillingly yielded this point. He felt the privation very keenly, though he shrank from any words, and he could hardly endure to hear about the children whom he had not been allowed to revisit. In this way it unfortunately came to pass that he never even saw his youngest child, a little girl who was born after he left England the second time. In Paris he spent a few days and then set out to travel through Switzerland to the Italian lakes, intending to stay some time at Florence, and reach Rome before the winter. He was then able to enjoy much, though he could bear but little fatigue. They stopped at Dijon to see the beautiful Puits de Moyse and the sculptures in the Museum by the same hand; and then crossed the Jura from Salines to Pontarlier and Neufchâtel. Between Salines and Pontarlier was then still a beautiful drive in the diligence over low grassy hills crowned with pine woods. At Pontarlier they rejoined the railway; a striking line, seen as they saw it by moonlight, a ‘chemin très accidenté,’ keeping half-way up the hill-side, equally steep whether looking up or down, and continually darting in and out through numerous tunnels. After this came three pleasant vetturino days over the Simplon, one spent in the long drive up the Valais, monotonous but pleasant, with occasional walks and halts to gather the deep blue gentians and mountain pinks on the wayside. The next day, on which they crossed the pass, a sudden deep snow came on, unusual so early in the year as September; many little avalanches fell, and it was with some difficulty they reached the crest. Then on descending the slope of the great alpine wall, into the country of the sun, everything changed suddenly, the snow disappeared, and all seemed bursting into rich vegetation. Arthur enjoyed this part of the journey excessively; first the beautiful Pass of Gondo, full of waterfalls and cascades, then the descent lower down on Domo d’Ossola, among walnut and chestnut trees. The sense of southern beauty and richness seemed to penetrate him with enjoyment. The third day’s drive to Stresa on Lago Maggiore was also full of pleasure. At Stresa they rested a few days and made expeditions to Isola Bella, Orta, and Magadino; but here he became slightly unwell, and hurried on to Milan, thinking it would be more bracing. He did apparently improve, and took pleasure in visiting the pictures and churches, but never recovered himself; and they continued their painful journey, during which he grew gradually worse, to Florence, where they expected to meet friends, and where they found good medical help. Some days were better than others, and at Parma he spent a few hours among the pictures of Correggio with great enjoyment. The last day before entering Florence they had a drive of several hours over the Apennines, coming down on Pistoia. It was a lovely sunny day; the hills were covered with young chestnuts and flowering arbutus; the air was fresh and soothing, and he seemed to revive on the heights, but looked with dread on the valley lying beneath, with its white towns shining hot in the sun.

They reached Florence early in the day of October 10. That afternoon Arthur went to the Boboli Gardens, and to look at the grand arches of Orcagna in the Piazza del Granduca. The next day too he attempted to walk as far as the Cathedral and the Baptistery, which were close to the hotel. But on the 12th, when a permanent lodging had been found, he went to bed, unable longer to resist the fever. He had suffered much rheumatic pain in the head, but it very soon gave way to treatment, and after this he did not suffer much. The fever, a sort of malaria, had its course, and appeared to give way. During the first three weeks he seemed perpetually occupied with a poem he was writing, the last in the volume of his poems; and when he began apparently to recover, and was able to sit up for several hours in the day, he insisted on trying to write it out, and when this proved too great an effort he begged to dictate it. But he broke down before it was finished, and returned to bed never to leave it again. A few days before his death he begged for a pencil and contrived to write down two verses, and quite to the end his thoughts kept hold of his poem. Fortunately it had all been completed and written out in pencil in the first stage of his illness, and was found after his death in his notebook. It seemed a comfort to him to have his mind preoccupied and relieved from the weight of illness and anxiety by this creative instinct.

The fever left him worn out, and then paralysis, with which he had been threatened, struck him down. On the 13th of November he died, in his forty-third year.

Three days before his death his sister reached him from England. He knew her, and was glad to see her near him, but he was too weak to realise the parting that was coming.

He lies buried in the little Protestant cemetery, just outside the walls of Florence, looking towards Fiesole and the hills which he loved and which he had gazed on as he entered Florence, little thinking he should leave it no more. ‘Tall cypresses wave over the graves, and the beautiful hills keep guard around;’ nowhere could there be a lovelier resting-place.

The memory of Arthur Clough will be safe in the hearts of his friends. Few beyond his friends have known him at all; his writings may not reach beyond a small circle; but those who have received his image into their hearts know that something has been given them which no time can take away, and to them we think no words will seem fitter than those of the poet, happily also his friend, which have cherished the memory of another beautiful soul:—

So, dearest, now thy brows are cold,

We see thee as thou art, and know

Thy likeness to the wise below,

Thy kindred with the great of old.

LETTERS.
FROM 1829 TO 1836.
RUGBY.

To his Sister.

Chester: May 15, 1829.

Dear Anne,—I received your kind letter by the barque ‘Melantho,’ after an extremely long voyage. Charles received one on the same day from uncle Charles, intimating that we were to spend our vacation at Easter with him at the vicarage. During the Easter holidays, which we spent very pleasantly at Mold, I had plenty of leisure for drawing. Two men were hung here lately for robbing an old clergyman. We have bought a book entitled ‘The Newtonian System of Philosophy,’ which treats chiefly of the power and weight of air; the cause of volcanoes, earthquakes, and other phenomena of nature, such as lightning, the aurora borealis; also a description of the sun, planets, their moons or satellites, constellations, comets, and other heavenly bodies; likewise of air-guns, balloons, air-pumps; also a very pleasing one of snow, hail, and vapours. It also describes electricity and magnetism, and gives a brief account of minerals, vegetables, and animals.

The summer vacation is now just approaching, after which time we shall be conducted either by uncle Alfred or uncle Charles to Rugby, which is not far from Leamington, at which place cousin Eliza is at school.

Were you not grieved to hear that magnificent building York Minster had been partly destroyed through the destructive means of fire?

To his Mother.

Rugby: May 15, 1830.

Dear Mamma,—I am glad to tell you that both Charles and myself have been removed out of the third form into the lower fourth; we enjoyed uncle Alfred’s company (he was steward to the Easter Meeting at Rugby) and also the speeches and holidays very much. There were four prizes. There was also a prize for boys in the fifth form, which was gained by Stanley for an English essay ‘On Sicily and its Revolutions.’ These were all recited by their different writers on Wednesday in Easter week. After the four first had repeated their poems and read their essays, Stanley came forth and read his essay. Unfortunately the prizes had not arrived, and therefore Dr. Arnold was obliged to postpone the delivery of them. One morning, however, at prayers, we saw a great many books in extremely handsome bindings; and after prayers, Dr. Arnold gave them to those for whom they were intended.

School House, Rugby: May 28, 1833.

... I have gained one place in the form by this examination, and I shall certainly be in the sixth form next half-year. I am now seventh, and ten at least of the Præposters leave either now or at Lawrence Sheriffe.[3]

To his Brother George.

School House, Rugby: October 13, 1834.

My dear Georgy,—You say you do not like your school even so well as you did last year. I believe that it is worse than many places, but even here at Rugby, the best of all public schools, which are the best kind of schools, even here there is a vast deal of bad. It was but a few nights ago that a little fellow, not more than thirteen at the very most, was quite drunk, and that for the second time in the last year. I do not know that there is here much of the low mean spirit (which I fear you have so much of), but it must be remembered that Rugby is far better off in this way than most schools.

To his Mother.

Jesus College, Oxford: July 9, 1835.

The exhibitioners this year are Lake, Penrose, and Gell. We had an extremely pleasant time up at Rugby at the examination, as the Oxford vacation was just beginning, and we had six or seven old Rugbeians down, and in so busy and exciting a time their company was a great relief. I had not been very well after Easter all along, but I believe that time did more to make me well than all the physic, which has lengthened the doctor’s bill to a most boa-constrictor-like size. I have been in one continued state of excitement for at least the last three years, and now comes the time of exhaustion. When you all come over next year, and I get home at last, I do think this will end.

I must send you our ‘Rugby Magazine,’ which I beg you will patronise with all your might, though I suppose your canvassing materials in America are rather small.

To his Brother George.

School House, Rugby: September 13, 1835.

... Only remember—don’t be indolent, George; you recollect what I told you about that family failing. Idle, I do not think you will be; but take care you never say, ‘It is too much trouble,’ ‘I can’t be bothered,’ which are tolerably old favourites of yours, and, indeed, of all who have any Perfect blood in them.

... No doubt you will feel very much the loss of any one to talk to about religion, but let this, my dear George, only make you keep more close to God; and I still—for I know that our weakness does often want more direct and visible aid than this, and that our minds are too imperfectly brought to righteousness and goodness to be continually talking even with our kind Father God, just as you would wish to talk to those of your own age sometimes, and not always to those above you only, however much you might love them—if you do still want some one to talk to, you have only to write to me, and I shall be sure to answer you within a week or two. Remember, too, that if the school is bad, it is no reason, no excuse for you to do as they do. Remember, they are not many, and Jesus said that a little leaven leavens the whole lump: now, do not think that I am telling you to put yourself forward as a kind of apostle or missionary to them. Only go on without fearing or shrinking in any point from your duty; do not mind their knowing that you are trying to serve God.

The magazine prospers; it will probably be out on the 1st October. ‘Egmont’ will appear, and one or two other things of mine. I assure you I have enough to do. I sometimes think of giving up fagging hard here, and doing all my extra work in the holidays, so as to have my time here free for these two objects—1st. The improvement of the school; 2nd. The publication and telling abroad of the merits of the school by means of the magazine.

To the same.

School House, Rugby: October 11, 1835.

Simpkinson left me last Monday for Cambridge, and his absence has made me head of the school house, which is an office of considerable trust and great difficulty. Indeed, you could not do better than try to win the liking and esteem of your schoolfellows by being as kind to them as you can. I hope I am trying earnestly to do the same. But there is one danger in this occupation which assails me, at least, very often; and that is, the danger of carrying our wish too far. And remember always, that to be liked is not the thing we should wish for on its own account, but only because it will make it more easy for us to do good to those who like us. Try, my dear George, to be as active in this good work as you can be; only take care that you have a few moments to yourself with God every day, so that you do not forget Him in your more active employments; if you do these two things I do not think you will be likely to fall into any more stupors, as you call those states of mind, which I very well know and have often experienced. As soon as you feel anything of the kind coming on, go and do something, no matter what, which will employ you actively. Perhaps, if you do some kindness to a schoolfellow, or resist him in some evil practice, you will feel this go down very rapidly. You never told us how your school-work is getting on; do you do any Euclid now? I have not heard from America lately; the last letter I had was from my father, dated at Saratoga. Tell me when you write all about No. II. of the ‘Rugby Magazine.’ It is very much liked here, better than the first, and we have had intelligence of its being thought very well of in the literary circles in London. I only hope it will not decay under my hands; for I have got the management of it almost entirely by myself.

To his Sister.

School House, Rugby: October 10, 1835.

My oldest and only friend, Simpkinson, is just gone to Cambridge, and there are also two or three more gone whom I knew and loved better than the rest; so that I am now quite alone, and am doomed so to remain for two long years.

I see, however, quite plainly that this is far better for me, for now I shall not fag so much, as being of necessity thrown much more with other fellows, and wishing now most earnestly to know as many as possible; for there is a deal of evil springing up in the school, and it is to be feared that the tares will choke much of the wheat. There is a great deal of good in the top of the school, but then it is what may be called disagreeable good, having much evil mixed with it; especially in little matters. So that from these persons good is disliked. I am trying, if possible, to show them that good is not necessarily disagreeable, and that a Christian may be, and is likely to be, a gentleman.

Monday, October 12.

The nights (that is, after locking-up time) are getting very long, beginning as they do now from a quarter-past six; so that I have a great deal of time in my study, and am almost more by myself than I wish. Sometimes, when I am thus alone, I long very much indeed to have you all over here; for before Simpkinson left, Rugby was almost like a home to me, and now I feel the want of a home far more than I ever did before; so that I cannot tell you how welcome next summer will be to me. Even the holidays without you seem a thing to be looked forward to very much, which they never did before, except last half-year, when I was unable to work. I am very tolerably well now, and think I have recovered altogether, though I verily believe I shall not be able ever again to fag so much; indeed, I shall never wish to do so in the same way. You will understand a good deal of the way in which fagging hard is so frequently ruinous both to body and mind, from an article in the ‘Rugby Magazine,’ No. III., which I hope you will like as much as the people on this side the Atlantic (I mean the article entitled ‘A Schoolboy’s Story’); I think you will see a good deal in that to explain it.

By this time, I suppose, you are back in Charleston, and ere long I shall have heard the full account of your trip to Lake George. I had a great deal of pleasant travelling myself in the summer, particularly in that part of my journey which took me from Oxford through Cheltenham and Shrewsbury, to Beaumaris. I met a very curious animal in the coffee-room at the Shrewsbury inn, a German merchant’s son from Bremen. He was very ignorant and very intelligent, so that he was also very amusing. At one time he made me think him half an idiot, at another he seemed quite clever. Probably he had never been out of a counting-house in his life before; at any rate, his observation must have been very limited, for I went to show him Lord Hill’s column, and as we were walking up to it he said, ‘Well, that is very beautiful, very big,’ and a moment or two after, ‘and it gets bigger as we come nearer!’

To J. P. Gell, Esq.

School House, Rugby: October 24, 1835.

I do wish that I could be acquainted and intimate with a great many fellows, but I really have not time; and here is another advantage on the side of evil, that bad characters are also idle, whereas good characters are industrious, so that when a fellow wants a companion he is much more likely to pitch on a bad than on a good one. I am afraid that writing or thinking much about these things does me harm. I only wish you would write to me about it, for your letters always put me more on my legs. Do you remember what Arnold says (Sermons, vol. iii. Introduction) about the enduring value of the ancient philosophical and historical works? Well, I really think that letters from fellows who have left act much in the same way, keeping one’s mind ‘fresh and comprehensive.’ So spare not pen and paper when you can spare time.

To the same.

School House, Rugby: November 9, 1835.

... I have to take care lest the excitement should carry me away; for though assuredly there is no Simpkinson here, nor Vaughan, nor Burbidge, yet it is most easy to find excitement, on the one hand, fagging, and on the other, in associating with fellows for their good, which is a more dangerous employment than I looked for; there is such an excess of acquaintance and such a lack of friends here; nobody to look up to in one’s common school-dealings, and so much to look up to at times in Arnold, that it is no easy matter to ‘keep a level temper,’ as young —— used to say. Sometimes all seems so very bright, the little good one has done seems so great, and the good one hopes to do so certain, that one gets quite elevated; then there soon follows the exhaustion, and I think it is no use trying; and in the meantime copies, &c., have been accumulating and I am obliged to set to, though the true cure of such a state is forcing oneself to try even against hope. Besides, there are all the letters from Oxford and Cambridge, than which more exciting things were never created.

I don’t know which to think the greatest, the blessing of being under Arnold, or the curse of being without a home.

To his Mother.

Finch House, near Liverpool: December 1835.

To-day is Monday, and during the last eight or nine days I have had as many changes of place and companions as I ever remember, and have had a right busy and exciting time of it. On Friday evening before last our great examination closed, and I was not a little disappointed, thinking that I ought to have done better. Then on Saturday one of my Oxford friends came down (Lake), and this of course made a great change, and raised my spirits as high as before they had been low. In the evening the class-paper came out and I found I had got all I had hoped for, and also that I was head of the form in composition marks, thus securing two prizes; then I dined at Arnold’s, and had a very pleasant evening. Then followed all the misery of the last night—noise, noise, noise of preparing, and wishing good-bye, &c., till twelve o’clock and after; followed at two o’clock by the still greater noise of going. After my two hours’ sleep, I had a busy morning of breakfasting with my tutor, of paying off window-bills, &c. &c., packing up, &c. &c.; and so on till twelve o’clock, when I dined out, and returned to the school at three o’clock calling-over, wished the fellows good-bye, and waited for the coach till four in the school field. In a short time your old friend the Oxford and Leicester Regulator—vulgarly termed the Pig—transported me to Leicester, and here I found myself in a completely new world, at a house I was strange to, with my old schoolfellow Burbidge correcting the proofs of No. III. of the ‘Rugby Magazine.’ Next day at 10 P.M. we were joined for an hour by two more Cantabrigians (Vaughan and Gell), which was very delightful indeed. Well, not to trouble you with a further account of what we did at Leicester, on Friday night after walking for two and a half hours along Leicester streets (for the coach should have started at half-past ten and did not till one o’clock), I began a long journey to Liverpool. After one of the coldest and bitterest nights I ever remember, and a day not much less so, I found myself about 3 P.M. at the end of the lane by the fifth milestone. I must go a little further and tell you what we are going to do these holidays. George is now in Chester; he is going to Mold on Thursday, the 24th inst., where I shall join him the same day. Hence after a few days we shall proceed to Min-y-don[4] for ten days, and thence again he will return here, and I shall probably go to Chester.

I suppose we shall have a regular rambling time of it, which I dare say will be pleasant enough in its way; but I cannot tell you how very, very much I long for next summer, even on this ground only, that then we shall have done with this way of living. I am quite well now, and shall be, I hope. I have not been so hard at work this last half-year, and that may have something to do with it. But I think it is a good deal owing to my having to go about with other fellows more than I used to do, and this will be the case for sometime now. I have, however, to look forward to a very busy half-year; but as it will not be my last half-year, I need not be very anxious about it or excited in it. I shall have another Easter and another Exhibition time after this; but I must do my best to be ready for next November, when I shall go up for the Balliol scholarship. At any rate, my dear mother, it is no long time now before July comes, and time passes very quickly, at least I find it does to me now. It seems now that there is nothing wanting to make my earthly happiness complete, so far as it can be complete, that will not be given me next summer, though indeed even now I can see some flaws in it. But there will be so many and such friends at Cambridge and Oxford, and so happy a situation at school where I know that I am loved by many, and where I am ever living under and gathering wisdom from a great and good man. Such a prospect makes one tremble, for it seems to be too fair for earth: at least it makes one resolve to do all to fix one’s affections on things above, lest God should see that such fortune was too great for one, and that one could not bear it.

To his Sister.

Mold Vicarage: December 30, 1835.

I have some difficulty in prevailing on George to do what he does not like (i.e. read) for an hour and a half in the day. But I hope and believe he is much better at school than he is in the holidays: indeed I think it is very natural he should be so. And it is wonderful what a degree of kind and affectionate feeling he has; only fancy, for six or seven years he has been treasuring up his money in the savings’ bank, and now it is all spent to buy me a watch. On Christmas day I found a little paper box on my plate at breakfast, and on opening it first came a quantity of brown paper, then a note, then the ribbon, and at the bottom a gold watch.

The examination went off very well for me last half-year. In regular work four first-classes, in composition, divinity, classics and history; I might have got two more in modern languages and mathematics. In extras I got two first-classes, which was all I tried for, and which will give me a prize. I shall also get a prize for being among the four first in the composition of the half-year in the sixth; which means the Latin, prose and verse; Greek, prose and verse; English, prose and verse, which we have done in the half-year.

To J. N. Simpkinson, Esq.

Stanley Street, Chester: January 18, 1836.

I am most utterly busy now at Niebuhr for November, which time is very much in my thoughts. The bare idea of missing is horrible, and I have not done a page for the magazine as yet, though I have great hopes of writing a good deal. As to Q., you know he invited me to his house this winter, so I suppose he has taken a great fancy to me. He is disagreeable sometimes, and is rather narrow-minded, or rather narrow-notioned; and having said so much ‘con,’ I might say a great many ‘pros,’ but it is this very narrowness of ideas which prevents one loving him. Such people have no idea that it is anything approaching to a duty to make oneself agreeable; they have a great deal too much of the itch to become martyrs and undergo persecution. Even two or three years under Arnold have not wholly eradicated this notion in Q. himself; but if he goes, as I believe he does, to Balliol, he will, I trust, soon lose it, as I think he is sure to be admitted into the High Arnold set that is just germinating at Balliol under the auspices of Stanley and Lake.... You know how differently a boy regards home when he has once been to school. The kind of passive and almost apathetic feeling (to indulge in a bull) which he before had becomes high, steady and active feeling and principle. I will not say that my feelings towards him are so personal as they are to some others, because they are so closely connected with Arnold, but I am very much attached to him.... I verily believe my whole being is soaked through with the wishing and hoping and striving to do the school good, or rather to keep it up and hinder it from falling in this, I do think, very critical time, so that all my cares and affections and conversations, thoughts, words and deeds, look to that involuntarily. I am afraid you will be inclined to think this ‘cant,’ and I am conscious that even one’s truest feelings, if very frequently put out in the light, do make a bad and disagreeable appearance; but this however is true, and even if I am carrying it too far, I do not think it has made me really forgetful of my personal friends, such as, in particular, Gell and Burbidge and Walrond, and yourself, my dear Simpkinson.

To the same.

School House, Rugby: February 13, 1836.

... I am sure this constant writing of letters is not really a waste of time. Everyone of us has much he needs to receive, and there are few who have nothing to give; and I, for one, cannot speak too highly of the good I have got from others in this way; it is such a constant correction of each other’s wild and foolish tendencies of mind, opinion, &c. I wish I could have come to Cambridge very much; but I do not agree at all in your second reason, viz. that it would make me discontented with the Balliol prospect. If I do get the scholarship, I shall not long one bit for Cambridge; no, nor do I think I shall do so if I don’t get it. It is the very thing for which you uphold Cambridge which makes me prefer Oxford. At Oxford we only form part of a large set, and there is more hope there that a little leaven will leaven the whole lump, which is, I think, more useful than your scheme. To be sure, there will only be Stanley, Lake, Fox, Arnold, and myself; but then there are a great number of very nice men, with whom, I hope, we shall get more acquent, and this will be better. Do not think I underrate the blessing of Rugby friends; I am only anxious to give others that blessing. I have a great deal more to say, but I must go to the De Coronâ, i.e. first lesson, so good-night.

Combe’s[5] shop is delicious. So is the new Irish Title Bill—auctore Lord John Russell—at least I am told so. So also is the fact that, malgré scandal, libels and lies, ‘Morning Herald,’ ‘Times,’ and ‘John Bull,’ the school is above 300. So also, I doubt not, will be the reading of ‘Knight’s Quarterly,’ which I have just got. So also (this is indeed a climax) will be Easter.

To his Mother.

School House, Rugby: March 1836.

... At last the prizes are over, and the last half-sheet of the Magazine, No. IV., is also sent off, I believe; and you can hardly fancy the feeling of this freedom, most unusual indeed to me. As for the prizes, I have this Easter got one, the Latin verse; and a second for each of the others, viz. the Latin prose and the Greek verse, so that I shall still have two to try for next year; so that, of course, I am very well satisfied. I have been very well, too, on the whole; indeed I may say exceedingly well, not withstanding all the hard work, and happy too, though sometimes in rather low spirits, for I stand much alone in the school now, and I am afraid it is anything but good for me to be alone; but I hope I am conquering these fits, and I do not think they come nearly so frequently or so strongly as they used to do; and when you are come over and settled, I think they may cease altogether; if they do not, it will not be my own fault.

Dr. Arnold, I am afraid, you know too little about yet to give him and his concerns much interest for you. Only if any rumours of ill-conduct as head-master here have crossed the Atlantic (I believe they have got a great way through the ‘Times’ and ‘John Bull’ newspapers), I might as well tell you that the Trustees of the School met last week in London, all being present except three of the twelve, and wrote a letter to the Doctor, saying that they had the most complete confidence in him; that the school was going on as well as could be expected, and that the discipline was perfectly humane. Lord Aylesford, one of the absentees, wrote still more complimentarily to him. It is, indeed, a marvel how any one could think of circulating such utter falsehoods and absurdities as have been spread about by different papers for the last three months. The school is certainly at this moment not at its very highest state of excellence, such as it was in two or three years ago, but there is a very great deal of goodness and talent springing up, I hope and believe.

From some cause or other, immense numbers left last Midsummer, and will again this coming one; and the sudden elevation this causes of a large number into the place of trust and authority renders the spirit of the highest class more childish and less sensible and manly than it used to be. These are things which no one can calculate on, though of the most material consequence to the well-being of the school, and only show the extreme difficulty of education. Only fancy, out of the thirty-two first in the school I suppose just half (if not more) will go; and thus a full half of the sixth will be new and quite inexperienced, many of them quite young. Perhaps I let these things grow too much into everything else. Yet it is very fine and striking to see many of the best and cleverest Oxford and Cambridge men still watching with great interest all the little changes in the school, and still helping those that remain with their experience and wisdom.

I shall not be sorry to go to Oxford now, for I find Stanley and Lake like it very much; and I dare say Dr. Arnold will be a bishop before long. I only hope it may not be just yet. I must, however, do my best to go there as I wish, viz. with a Balliol scholarship; and that not only for the honour’s sake, though the honour is the greatest part of it, but for the 30l. per annum which, with an exhibition, will, I trust, all but pay my way at Oxford, as Balliol is 20l. or 30l. cheaper than any other college, I understand. What may come after this I know not; this is enough to look to as yet. And I mean, if possible, to have a quiet month for reading at Finch House before you come over.

Our Easter time is just beginning. Two of our University people are down already, Burbidge and Lake, and Gell and Simpkinson are to be here next Wednesday. From that day to its namesake of the first week after Easter, I suppose there will be little or nothing done but walking and talking.

To J. N. Simpkinson, Esq.

Rugby: 1836.

You must not be angry at my turning back from the turnpike. I don’t understand Arnold’s saying what he did to Vaughan, for surely, at that rate, C. or S. (I don’t mean to be invidious on either university) might, if they ever came here, take fellows over by wholesale, without asking leave, for of course they are in the same position, relatively to schoolboys, as you or Vaughan. And I was thinking of a good deal of mischief that D. and others had done at Easter among the fellows by taking advantage of their being ‘gentlemen at large,’ so that on the whole you may see that I had something more like reason, at any rate, than mere scrupulousness about the letter of the law; though, indeed, the letter of the law is a very good thing, as the spirit is apt to vary with the interpreters, but what is written is written. I assure you I should have liked nothing better than to have gone with you to Dunchurch, and I reproached myself very much for not having asked Arnold, as I had meant to do, at first lesson.

Do you know that to-morrow the most liberal, or rather radical, measure is to be brought forward, of throwing open the Island to the fags? I am not quite so liberal as to vote for that, but I am afraid it will succeed. The reason of the attempt to open it is the establishment of these new gymnastic affairs—swings, vaulting-poles, and all kinds of monkey-trick instruments, which excite a great desire in the fags for this privilege.

To the same.

Liverpool: July 16, 1836.

Do you know I believe I am become quite a convert to the Cambridge set’s superiority, though, after all, Cambridge can never be equal to Oxford in the grandness of the idea of it? One may fancy Cambridge a very excellent and useful big place of education, but Oxford is the place for the education of statesmen and great political men; and the influences of Oxford and its place in relation to the commonwealth is far higher for good or for evil. Suppose Oxford became truly good and truly wise, would it not be far more important, and a far greater blessing than Cambridge in the same condition? And in this consists the superiority I used to stick up for of the Balliol set, because I believed them truly wise, and withal full of the Oxford public and political and national feeling. But to live in, and among, and as mere society, you are doubtless better and more delightful.

August 8.

What a delightful thing it must be, being so near Fox How! I cannot, indeed, conceive any one calling ‘the Dr.’ Tom, even at Fox How.

Rugby: September 23, 1836.

We are all getting on very pleasantly this half-year, and the school looks remarkably harmless, and everybody inclined to do their best and behave well, which is very delicious. We are not, however, by any means full—not more than 286, which will probably be raised to the full complement next half. Of course, we have quite a new sixth, and certainly an improvement. The night-fagging is at last abolished totally, except half an hour at the beginning. We have our supper in the most gentlemanly fashion, in the room together, on a tray with plates and knives, and we buy very good cheeses ourselves, and make a very sociable meal of it. And at last the dream of former days is becoming a reality: the Sixth Form Room is to be furnished; Arnold gives us 5l., and the Trustees advance the rest, except a small sum raised by immediate subscription. Also, at last, the new window is put up, and looks, I think, very beautiful, I am very happy and comfortable, and working pretty well.

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 in health 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 they were 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 most inquiring, at any 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 the Duty of 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 all which 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 this channel 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 prize gooseberry; 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 the Queen; 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 tendencies are, 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—

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

Bist du 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.

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 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 to lodgings; 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 in very good 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 that I 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 I must therefore 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 men read 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 am quite 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 see the 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 scanty sermones repentes per humum as 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 working sedulously 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 had pro tempore (perhaps tempori 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—to dress 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 will not assert that one has no right to 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 the spirit 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. It remains 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 to Ben, by me to Glen-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 three miles 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, returned to 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—nothing new in 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 of Shairp, 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 pamphlets the 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 we had 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 literary department 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:[6] August 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 by any sort 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 a fine lady.

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 weeks I 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, and a 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 I must go 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 my mind. 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.

The thing which men must work at will not be critical questions about the Scriptures, but philosophical problems of Grace, and Free Will, and of Redemption as an idea, not as a historical event. What is the meaning of ‘Atonement by a crucified Saviour’? How many of the Evangelicals can answer that?

That there may be a meaning in it, which shall not only be consistent with God’s justice, that is, with the voice of our conscience, but shall be the very perfection of that justice, the one true expression of our relations to God, I don’t deny; but I do deny that Mr. M’Neile, or Mr. Close, or Dr. Hook, or Pusey, or Newman himself, quite know what to make of it. The Evangelicals gabble at it, as the Papists do their Ave Marys, and yet say they know; while Newman falls down and worships because he does not know, and knows he does not know.

I think others are more right who say boldly, we don’t understand it, and therefore we won’t fall down and worship it. Though there is no occasion for adding, ‘there is nothing in it,’ I should say, until I know, I will wait, and if I am not born with the power to discover, I will do what I can with what knowledge I have—trust to God’s justice, and neither pretend to know, nor, without knowing, pretend to embrace; nor yet oppose those who, by whatever means, are increasing or trying to increase knowledge. This is not very clear, perhaps, but one can’t correct in letter-writing.

To the same.

[On hearing of a case of stealing among school-children.]

Oriel: May 31, 1847.

Sad indeed it is to hear of the evil doings of the children; and what you are to do with them, I really can’t say. However I wouldn’t exaggerate either the sin or the evil. With the education (so to call it) that these children get at home, what is to be expected from them? And really in some children pilfering is a matter of mere fancy or habit—a sort of trick, like biting their nails or shaking their legs. Of course, it is necessary they should know that the thing is wrong, and also why it is wrong; the former is not much use without the latter. I am convinced it is very bad for children to be frightened into believing themselves to have done wrong and to be very wicked. But you might easily show them that people can never live with each other in the world without respecting the rules of property; that it would come otherwise to the strongest or the cunningest taking away what other people had earned by their own hard work, and that they would see to be really wicked, whereas they can’t exactly see at present that what they do is so very wrong; you can easily spare the things, and don’t much mind the loss; you are very rich (compared to them) and very kind and liberal; what can it matter?

You must know that a friend of mine (not naturally scrupulous) stole a book from a shop when he was at school, was never found out, has never paid for it in any way, has it on his bookshelf still, and makes no difficulty about his friends knowing how he came by it (not that he did it by way of bravado at all, which is another kind of thing). Well, I don’t think worse of him on the whole for this; I respect him for his present frankness; and though I think he ought to have gone afterwards and told the bookseller, and paid him, yet I don’t think it’s very much matter.

Well, you know better about the way the children and their parents would take it; but, for my own part, I should speak out to them all, tell them what has happened, say that the thing must not go on, you must give up the class if it continues, but that you don’t mean to disgrace any of them for it at present. Explain why stealing cannot be allowed, and why people are wrong in stealing. If you choose, tell them that Elizabeth —— has confessed, and let her say that she is sorry for it, and sees that it is wrong; and ask those who have done the same to confess, and promise to take care in like manner. Or, if you think this would be too public a disgrace, can’t it be done privately without publishing the names? or you may give the general exhortation without noticing either E—— or the other thefts.

You needn’t, I think, insist on restitution. Say that you don’t want the things back (you’ve got the locket, I suppose); that you will put up with the loss. I hope you will excuse all this lengthy advice, which I dare say, or rather I am sure, mother, and I dare say you, will not think quite high-principled; but it is quite my conviction. Frighten a child, and it cries, and is perhaps in an agony; but afterwards it says to itself, ‘Well, indeed I can’t see that it’s wrong,’ and does it again. You frighten it again, and again it is in an agony. And so it gets into a way of living by the fear of man (at best), instead of by its own sense of right and wrong, and that is not likely to keep it safe under temptation; indeed, one can hardly wish that it should.

I advise you to go on the 8th to Westmoreland. Wednesday fortnight will see me at home. Thursday will bring me with mother on my arm to Lake-land, where we will lie upon the grass and forget.

To ——

June 1847.

As for your making the marriage, I trust it was made elsewhere, where they say all true marriages are made. All you did was to hinder an unnatural divorce; i.e. you made the wedding, perhaps, in some degree. And if she loves him, why all the better, whatever comes of it—pain and grief, suicide and murder, all the tragics you can think of. After all, pain and grief (for suicide and murder we will dismiss as unnecessary) would be far better than that life-in-death with papa and mamma in —— Street, or elsewhere.

Meantime, I would not, I think, trouble them with any advice. Laissez-faire, laissez-aller.

To his Sister.

Drumnadrochet:[7] July 26, 1847.

I think I shall wait upon Providence till the end of my time at Oriel; though undoubtedly there are temptations in the Liverpool Mechanics.

My pupils are getting attached to this Glen Urquhart. I continue to think it anything but beautiful. But Loch Ness offers a good deal. Yesterday I went to Foyers. It is by far the highest of the Scotch waterfalls, and there is a pleasant, quiet, sabbatic country-inn,[8] overlooking the whole lake, with our highest hill, Mealfourvonie, just over the water, and with the Foyers river less than a mile off.

To J. C. Shairp, Esq.

Glenfinnan Inn, Fort William: September 1, 1847.

Excuse a blotted sheet. I am out of the realm of civility, being in your own well-beloved West, at Glenfinnan on Loch Shiel. The mountains are extremely fine, but not the weather; the waters glorious, specially the rain, which comes in upon my paper as I write, the window above me being exposed to a raving, raging south-wester.

I have been as far as Arisaig, a poor place, curious perhaps, but nothing more. On the way, I saw Loch Aylort and Loch na-Nuagh (salt), and Loch Aylt (fresh), all of them fine. At Glenaladale’s house of Borradale, Charles Edward landed. It stands off Loch na-Nuagh.

Glenaladale is the great man here: he marches with Lochiel close by, and the lake separates him from Sir James Riddell of Ardnamurchan, and Colonel Maclean of Ardgower. He is to have a deer-stalking party to-morrow, Lord Adolphus Fitzclarence, and other majestarian officers.

This place is certainly very beautiful; scarcely however sufficiently exalted out of the lake-country style to meet my expectations of the genuine West. But whether I shall explore, as you suggest, all the lochs up to Loch Broom, viz. Aylort, na-Nuagh, na-Gaul, Morrer, Nevish, Hourn, Alsh, Carron, Torridon, Gairloch, Ewe, and Maree (on referring to the map I find that I have missed two—the rest I may say I know by heart), whether I shall do more than learn the names by heart is more than doubtful.

Did you ever see a waterfall turned inside out, downside up? The south-wester is doing this to one opposite the window.

To the same.

Liverpool: October 3, 1847.

I wrote to you last from Glenfinnan. I enjoyed myself greatly in that Hesperian seclusion, though I did not go and see Skye, nor yet Loch Hourn, nor yet Loch Nevish, nor yet Loch Morrer, but only Loch Aylort and Loch na-Nuagh, and a strange solitary place called Loch Beoraik, where, verily, I think Saxon foot had never been before. Also, I have seen and rowed up Loch Ericht. Dallungart, where you and T. slept, I also have slept at. With mine host on Tynaline, in Saxon called Georgetown, I held discourse concerning Saxon swindlers, &c.

I came back here yesterday. If I could have forced myself sooner out of the Highlands, I would have quitted Liverpool, and come to Rugby sooner also; but I could not. Woe’s me, but one doesn’t like going back to Oxford, nor coming to Liverpool either; no, nor seeing the face of hat and coat-wearing man, nor even of elegantly attired woman.

To R. W. Emerson, Esq.

Oriel College, Oxford: November 26, 1847.

Dear Sir,—My sister, who has had the pleasure of meeting you in my friend Mr. Bolley’s house, emboldens me to take what otherwise I should consider an unwarrantable liberty.

But Oxford perhaps may have some interest for you. Our University has not perhaps a very large influence in the world of letters and learning, but it has even now, I think, a good deal to do with the thinkings and doings of our upper classes; and at any rate has a good deal of character of its own.

If you should think it worth while to visit the place it would give me very great pleasure to show it you. I have resided here ten years, and am a Fellow and tutor at Oriel College, so that I may account myself qualified as a cicerone.

Your name is not a thing unknown to us. I do not say it would be a passport in a society fenced about by Church-Articles. But amongst the juniors there are many that have read and studied your books, and not a few that have largely learnt from them and would gladly welcome their author. At any time before or after our vacation any notice, however brief, would find me prepared to show you all the hospitality in my power.

To J. C. Shairp, Esq.

51 Vine Street, Liverpool: January 1848.

Last night I saw you in my dreams, sternly interrogating, ‘What hast thou done with all those many commissions? and wherefore tarries in thy purse the postal penny?’

The scribbling puerities is not very strong on me at present. I’m not going to write history, nor poetry neither—not a blessed verse, I believe, have I manufactured since October. But it’s history, is it, that you and Walrond recommend?—εἶεν—but I don’t think it will do.

Meantime, did Macpherson really say ‘The Bothie’ had paid? I have been in distress about the worthy bibliopole, and hardly know whether I can trust your report.

I am reading the ‘Inferno’ with John Carlyle’s translation, which seems good, and is certainly useful to me. I recommend the ‘Inferno’ to you; it will burn out your rose water, old boy, for a time, but the spring is with you indestructible.

I think you people are making great donkeys of yourselves about ——’s freedom of speech. Go to the Bible, thou prude; consider its language, and be wise. Consult also Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, also ... and in fact ‘all great poets.’

To T. Arnold, Esq.

Oriel: January 31, 1848.

In England we go on in our usual humdrum way; the ecclesiastical world agitated by all manner of foolish Hampden-rows: of the confused babble about which all quiet people are infinitely tired. I have given our Provost notice of my intention to leave his service (as tutor) at Easter. I feel greatly rejoiced to think that this is my last term of bondage in Egypt, though I shall, I suppose, quit the fleshpots for a wilderness, with small hope of manna, quails, or water from the rock. The Fellowship, however, lasts for a year after next June.

I had not, I think, seen the Rajah Brooke when you departed. I liked him extremely; met him once at breakfast with Stanley, and once in the evening with our Provost; quite a kingly man, clear-sighted and simple-minded, full of will and purpose, but without a grain of self-will or ambition. Stanley says that he deprecated English, or indeed European, colonisation in Borneo as bad for the natives. He had had two thousand offers, but declined generally, saying the time was not yet come.

To a Friend.

[In answer to a remonstrance against his intention of resigning his Fellowship.]

February 20, 1848.

Be not afraid: I love my mother earth, and ‘in the air will never float’ ‘Until I get a little boat,’ and of a better build than the famous ‘Crescent Moon.’

No, but remember withal, that no man moves without having one leg always off, as well as one leg always on the ground. Your stationary gentleman undoubtedly has both for a basis, and much good may his double pedestal do him. —— and —— go shuffling along, lifting their feet as little as possible from the earth. There are also horses, are there not, called ‘daisy-cutters’? not, as I am told, the best breed.

The mere carnal understanding, I grant you, goes on its belly in the shape of the serpent. While this and other reptile faculties grovel on the ground, imagination and fancy, with the eagle and the butterfly, move in liquid air. But the vivipara, my friend, ‘in whom should meet the properties of all,’ must do neither, or both. Expect therefore from me, if not the stately march of the sublimest mammalian type, at any rate nothing worse than the per-saltum locomotion of the kangaroo.

However powerful my centrifugal force, I shall be certain to be recalled by the at least equally powerful gravitation of hunger and thirst, not to mention nakedness.

The spirit truly is centrifugal, but the flesh centripetal; wherefore man, being a compound, revolveth in a sphere. Under cover of which theory I retreat to my bed.

To T. Arnold, Esq.

Oriel: February 25, 1848.

Diis aliter visum—so my packet had to lie by a month. Meanwhile, Willie has gone to India, and the French have begun a new revolution. Possibly my letter may bring the news.

Switzerland has had its revolution, and Naples also; Tuscany and the Sardinian States have in consequence got new constitutions, and the Pope has turned off his cardinals and replaced them by lay ministers, and it is said is preparing a constitution. Surely the Frenchman mustn’t be behindhand! One can hardly talk of other things when one once gets on this topic.

Well, and when shall I see you again? ὁο Θεὸς οἶδεν. Will you hire yourself out as a common labourer? I hope not; but one may do worse, undoubtedly; ’tis at any rate honester than being a teacher of XXXIX Articles. I rejoice to see before me the end of my servitude, yea, even as the weary foot-traveller rejoices at the sight of his evening hostelry, though there still lies a length of dusty road between. But what will follow I can’t say. The chances of going abroad will very likely be cut off, for we may shortly see Europam flagrare bello: the Austrians driven out of Lombardy by French bayonets. Alter erit tum Lodi, and another Arcola shall crown delectos heroas with, we will hope, a better-used victory. But the French armies are not quite apostolic, nor do I put much faith in Michelet’s holy bayonets as preachers of any kind of Gospel.

To J. C. Shairp, Esq.

March 16, 1848.

Another three weeks will see me at the end of these tutorial—what shall I call them?—wearinesses, now at any rate. But whither the emancipated spirit will wing its flight can’t be guessed. Paradise, or purgatory, or ——? the limbo of meditation, the penal worms of ennui, or the paradise of ——? Vanitas vanitatum—omnia vanitas.

There is a story-book called ‘Loss and Gain,’ ascribed to Newman, truly or falsely as the case may be. You may read and see, if you please.

Edward has been here to breakfast—a phantom of the ancient glories. If it were not for all these blessed revolutions, I should sink into hopeless lethargy.

To his Sister.

Oriel: April 18, 1848.

I am glad you liked the Blumen-Frucht-und-Dorn-Stücke. If there is any fault in Richter, it is perhaps that he is too sentimental; but it is a great comfort to get a little taste of that sweetmeat now and then; and in him you have it always not in its merely luscious form, but tempered with agreeable acids and delicate laurel-leaf bitters.

Up here at Oxford I keep in general company very quiet; insomuch that I heard yesterday that people not unfrequently take me for some little time after introduction to be no less than a Puseyite; but at the same time, I could sometimes be provoked to send out a flood of lava boiling hot amidst their flowery ecclesiastical fields and parterres. Very likely living in this state of suppressed volcanic action makes one more exasperated than one should be when any sort of a crater presents itself. Natheless, there is wisdom in withholding.

Tell mother not to finish all her furnishings, and get ‘everything handsome about her’ before I come home, which will be about the 1st of May, for then I shall be able to stay if I please for three weeks or more, as my tutorship will be in the hands of another.

To the same.

Paris: Thursday, May 11, 1848.

The only events since I wrote on Tuesday have been my visit to the Théâtre de la République to see Rachel in ‘Phèdre,’ and the arrival of Emerson. With the former I was a little disappointed, but I am going again to study the thing. I have been to see the Jardin des Plantes, and the column erected to the honour of the revolution of July 1830, on the site of the Bastille. It was here that the Republic was solemnly inaugurated in February, and here I think it was they burnt the throne.

George Sand’s newspaper, the ‘Vraie République,’ disapproves of the new Provisional Government (Arago, Marie, Garnier-Pagès, Lamartine, and Ledru-Rollin) altogether, though privately she is friendly with and indeed attached to Lamartine.

People are coming up from the country to the great national fête of Sunday next, and of course they all want to go to hear the debates. The weather is splendid; the sun glorifies us by day, the moon by night.

Sunday, May 14.

I don’t expect much good will come of this present Assembly. It is extremely shopkeeperish and merchantish in its feelings, and won’t set to work at the organisation of labour at all: but will prefer going to war to keep the people amused, rather than open any disagreeable social questions. The Socialist people are all in the dumps.

Tuesday, May 16.

P.S.—Yesterday was a day of great peril and disorder: an émeute. The Chamber was invaded and turned out by a mob, and the hall occupied by them for two hours. At last the national guard turned them out. A new government had been named by the mob, and some of the chiefs went off to the Hôtel de Ville, a mile off, to set it going. However, the national guard followed and put it down. Lamartine came with Ledru-Rollin and rode along the quays to finish the work, with dragoons and cannon. I was at his side for a quarter of a mile, and saw him of course distinctly. There was no firing, and scarce any fighting. The whole thing is put down for the present; and I am glad it is, on the whole. The cry was ‘Vive la Pologne;’ but the object was to get rid of the Assembly, and set up a more democratic set of people. From 11 A.M. to 9 P.M., or even later, there was nothing to be seen but crowds and excitement; fifty or sixty are arrested.

To Rev. A. P. Stanley.

Paris: May 14, 1848.
Sunday, the fête as should have been.

I am still a stranger to the Assembly. The difficulty is extreme. Miss Jewsbury got a diplomatic ticket for two or three hours: she describes them as very good sensible-looking men. She has never been in the House of Commons.

Lamartine’s culmination is said to be over; his declared desire not to part with Ledru-Rollin is the commonly supposed cause of his sinking to the fourth place in the votes. But some say that the bourgeoisie, to shirk the organisation of labour question, are eager for war, and Lamartine, having proclaimed ‘Paix à tout prix,’ is therefore thought an obstacle. On all hands, there is every prospect, on dit, of war. To-day the rumour ran that the armies had entered Piedmont, and to-morrow comes the Polish question. The Socialists, i.e. the leaders, for the most lament this extremely. The people of course are excited about Poland, and either are indifferent to the Socialist ideas or are blind to the certainty of these questions being then indefinitely adjourned. The boys (17 and 18) of the garde mobile are infected with bourgeoisitic loyalty, also the new members of the national guard. The Socialists simply deplore the whole result; regard the whole thing as at present a failure—a bourgeoisitic triumph. ‘Mais attendons.’ ‘Voilà, mon cher,’ the socialistic statements as received by me into arrect ears last night from a distinguished St. Simonian.

The Champ de Mars was not by any means ready yesterday morning for the postponed fête: when I went I found there only the great statue ‘La République en plâtre,’ and a few boards, &c., and not many men at work. There’s been thunder and lightning, and ‘grandes eaux,’ not of Versailles, so perhaps it’s as well. Yesterday I had the pleasure of hearing the ‘rappel’; a foolish, unnecessary order, on account of a quiet Polish petition presentation, and now no one acknowledges to having signed it. However, it made row enough at the time. The Socialist party is too weak to attempt anything; in fact they profess that the bourgeoisie is eager to attack and slaughter them. However, I did see some St. Antoine-ish giants in bonnet-rouge and blouse, who had a very who’s afeard? appearance, arguing with and defying well-dressed multitudes in the Rue de Rivoli, about the rappel time yesterday. Citizen Blanqui had, I confess, a certain hang-dog conspirator aspect, which did him no credit.

Lamartine continues to live in his own house, and is not going to the Elysée Bourbon, nor the other men to the Petit Luxembourg. The Assembly will go on till the next revolution, probably.

‘Les journaux du soir!’ ‘Voilà “La Presse,” dernière édition du soir!’... ‘“La Séance,” demandez “La Séance,” “L’Assemblée.”’... ‘Colère du père Duchesne! ... le père en colère!—cinq centimes, un sou.’... ‘“La Patrie,” voilà “La Patrie!”’... ‘Les éditions du soir, dernières nouvelles de Pologne!’... ‘L’insurrection de Madrid, par le citoyen Cabet, “Le Populaire!”—cinq centimes, un sou.’ ‘Demandez “La Presse:” grande colère du père Duchesne, le père Duchesne est en véritable colère! le père’.... ‘“Le National,” demandez “Le National!” “L’Assemblée Constituante!”’

L——, attaché of the English press, is of opinion that if the money hold out till confidence in a new government gets itself fairly established, all will be well. The people mean to wait and see if their condition is to be mended; if so, well, whatever the form of government; if not, ‘we must go into the streets again.’

You know I am a bad hand at lionising. I do little else than potter about under the Tuileries chestnuts, and here and there about bridges and streets, pour savourer la république. I contemplate with infinite thankfulness the blue blouses garnished with red of the garde mobile; and emit a perpetual incense of devout rejoicing for the purified state of the Tuileries, into which I find it impossible, meantime, to gain admittance. I growl occasionally at the sight of aristocratic equipages which begin to peep out again, and trust that the National Assembly will in its wisdom forbid the use of livery servants. But there is not very much to complain of generally: one cannot better express the state of Paris in this respect, than by the statement that one finds it rather pointed to be seen in the streets with gloves on.

To the same.

Paris: May 19, 1848.

Ichabod, Ichabod, the glory is departed! Liberty—Equality and Fraternity, driven back by shopkeeping bayonets, hides her red cap in dingiest St. Antoine. Well-to-do-ism shakes her Egyptian scourge to the tune of ‘Ye are idle, ye are idle’; the tale of bricks will be doubled: and Moses and Aaron of Socialism can at the best only pray for plagues; which perhaps will come, paving stones for vivats, and émeutes in all their quarters.

Meantime, the glory and the freshness of the dream is departed. The very garde mobile has dropped its dear blouse and red trimmings for a bourgeoisie-prætorian uniform, with distinctive green hired-soldier epaulettes. The voice of clubs is silenced: inquisitors only and stone walls of Vincennes list the words of Barbès. Anti-rappel Courtais no longer hushes the drum which, as he said, vexes the people (‘cela fâche le peuple’); conciliatory active Caussidière gives place to a high-shop successor. Wherefore, bring forth, ye millionaires, the three-months-hidden carriages; rub clean, ye new nobles, the dusty emblazonries; ride forth, ye cavalier-escorted amazons, in unfearing flirtations, to your Bois de Boulogne. The world begins once more to move on its axis, and draw on its kid-gloves. The golden age of the Republic displays itself now, you see, as a very vulgar parcel-gilt era; nevertheless, in all streets and gardens, proclaims itself ‘L’Ère Nouvelle!’ ‘La Liberté!’ ‘La Réforme!’... ‘Vraie République!’... ‘Grande Séance de l’Assemblée Nationale: dix centimes, deux sous; seulement deux sous.’ ‘Arrestation!’ ‘Demandez “La Presse”; la lettre du citoyen Blanqui!’... ‘Derniers soupirs du père Duchesne!’

Saturday, May 20.

To judge from ‘Galignani’s’ extracts, the English papers are as usual exaggerating. I don’t believe the affair of the 15th was anything like the conspiracy described in the ‘Times’ and ‘Chronicle.’

Monday, May 22.

The weather performed a most dramatic change; and Sunday morning, the day of the fête, dawned all glorious. There was a noise of drums as early as four o’clock. I got up about six, and found myself on the Place de la Concorde at a quarter to seven, with a considerable crowd.

The deputies did not leave the Chamber till half-past eight. They sat on the steps mostly, with their scarfs, &c. About half-past eight they came down and headed the procession. There were parties from the departments, in and out of uniform, with each its flag. Poland, Italy, and Germany mustered a considerable show. There were not above six or seven ‘noirs affranchis,’ and under a green flag, proclaiming in front ‘L’Irlande,’ and behind ‘Club des Irlandais,’ walked about three of our fellow-subjects of the sister island. ‘Les blessés’ were noticeable, and ‘les vieux de la vieille.’ There was a great deal of confusion, marching and counter-marching, and there was a full half-hour’s interval in the procession before ‘le char’ came up; and it was an ugly affair when it did come. The ‘jeunes filles’ looked pretty in their white dresses, with the tricolor streaming from the left shoulder, and artificial oak-wreaths in their hair; pretty en masse, but individually not by any means remarkable either for face or figure. Moreover, they were declassicised by their use of parasols. I don’t think they and the char got fairly to their work’s end till one o’clock. I passed and proceeded to the Champ de Mars, where, a little after twelve, went up the tricolor balloon, but in a rather disorganised condition. My modesty prevented my getting through the exterior circle of national guards; so that I did not come into the presence of the Government and Assembly, which I believe I might have done. But the perpetual gun-firing gave me a head-ache, and I retired early. The illumination in the Champs Élysées was extremely pretty; the whole avenue was like a great ball-room, with double rows of pendant chandeliers and continuous festoons of ‘lampions’ on each side. The crowd was enormous. It was funny in the afternoon to see the classical virgins walking about with their papas and mammas, people of the under-shoemaking and back-street shopkeeping class. A good many of them got into the enclosure round the Bourse, and were, about 6 P.M., dancing (without music) with gardes mobiles, and other indiscriminates.

To his Sister.

Paris: May 22.

There is no prospect whatever of any immediate recurrence of disturbances. The old leaders and conspirators are either arrested or in concealment. Within three months’ time, I have little doubt there will be another émeute. But for the next month I think the Assembly is quite secure, and if only it contrives to find out its wise men, it may survive all troubles, and gradually regenerate the nation. But in this if a great deal of difficulty is involved. There are very few English here, but a good many Americans.

To Rev. A. P. Stanley.

4 Rue Mont Thabor: May 26, 1848.

It is quite certain that the Government are hampered extremely by the old Gauche-Dynastique, Odillon-Barrot et C^ie, who are adroit debaters, and frighten down the new men. Lamartine thinks it impossible to do the thing without Ledru-Rollin, and the democracy who trust in him; and in many ways he would wish to conciliate and even confide in the bonnet-rouge. But the old Gauche, with the garde boutiquière to back them, think they may carry things with a high hand; and in the Chamber are not unsuccessful. Yet it is wholly impossible that a Gauche-Dynastique Republic should succeed; Lamartine would be a fool as well as knave to support such a chimera. It is very possible that he may have to go out for a while, of course with Ledru-Rollin; but unless Thiers comes in to the Chamber and aggravates the mischief by lending his real oratorical power to the Gauche, and indeed I hope even in that contingency, it is very probable Lamartine will gradually discipline the inexperienced new members into a good working majority. I don’t hear any one say Lamartine has been paying his debts; I suppose Ledru-Rollin has. George Sand has gone into the country. She says that the air of Paris seemed ‘lourde’ to her, after hearing the ‘à-bas’ of the national guard, and after the arrests of so many generous-minded men. Pierre Leroux was arrested, but is released.

Saturday, May 27.

So you see, I rely on the wisdom of Lamartine’s tactics, however untriumphant at present; not that I imagine he has got the solution of the labour problem, or that mere well-meaningness and generous aspiration will suffice. But at present no man can absolutely affirm that by any definite plan more is attainable.

The new elections, you know, are on the 5th; I shall stay till that night at any rate. The cry, ‘To your Clubs, O Israel!’ is commencing. Thiers and Girardin will probably get in, but not for Paris. I have just heard them crying, ‘Lettre d’Henri Cinq au Président de l’Assemblée: cinq centimes, un sou.’ For the last time but one I return from Rachel’s ‘Marseillaise.’ To-night there is some ‘rappel’-ing going on somewhere.

Have you seen in any of the papers revelations of the purposes of the Constituent Committee? An Assembly of 750; and a President by universal suffrage; gratuitous education, and right of work. So I read in the ‘Démocratie pacifique,’ with corroboration.

The coalition of the more democratic Clubs amongst the representatives will be, I presume, a great assistance to the Government. You know that two, one in the Rue des Pyramides, the other in the Palais National, amounting to 200 représentants together, and one containing Carnot and another minister, the other presided over by Dupont de l’Eure, have united, and a third is expected to send in its adhesion.

I have just been to the Club de la Révolution, ci-devant Barbès. They had a lively and almost fierce debate about ‘fusion.’ Were they to ‘fusionner’ with the National? Advances having been made and ill received, should they be renewed? News of Barbès’ condition and behaviour in prison were given, and received with clamorous Vive Barbès!! Said Barbès, I hear, is a man of wealth, enjoying, usually in prison, 4,000l. a year.

I am grieved to hear of the mutilation of our statue. But I should myself accept the most deformed renovation. The list of Chartist petitioners (so to call them) was forwarded to me here, costing about three francs. We, I presume, might easily make up a list of five points: Abolition of Subscription; Reconstitution of Fellowship; New Hebdomadal Board; Extra-Collegial Matriculation; and Permanent Commission.

Monday, May 29.

They are going to remodel, perhaps destroy, the ateliers. I hope not destroy, for I conceive the system to be good, if it were only well managed. At present, undoubtedly, there are great irregularities. Alexandre Dumas has written a Protest against the Decree of Banishment (of the Royal Family), which his friend ‘La Liberté’ declines to insert (so declareth A. D. in the ‘Assemblée Nationale’) for fear of pecuniary loss. The ‘Assemblée Nationale’ is a vile Guizotin journal, conducted, I hear, by the man who perjured himself about the pistols in the famous duel case. De Tocqueville voted for the Decree. Odillon-Barrot shirked; Louis Blanc, apparently, against it.

Paris: May 30, 1848.

Paris is tranquil and dull. The bourgeoisie, which had at first awkwardly shuffled on the blouse, is gradually taking heart to slip on its fine clothes again; and perhaps ere long will unbutton the breeches-pocket.

To-morrow there is to be an ‘interpellation’ in the Assembly about the Neapolitan business. One great subject under discussion in the Bureaux (where most of the work is done) is the ‘projet de divorce,’ simply restoring, I believe, the provisions of the Code Napoléon, which in 1816, on the return of the Bourbons, were in like manner simply erased.

Divorce is allowed for ‘sévice,’ and for incompatibility of temper under restrictions; e.g. the husband must be above twenty-five, and the wife above twenty-one and under forty-five: and consent of parents must be obtained. Nor can divorce for this cause be allowed except after two (or three) years of marriage. I see it stated that the Bureaux are not favourable. But the great subject of subjects is of course the question of the ateliers nationaux. The statistics published in the ‘Constitutionnel’ are of course utterly repudiated by the other party, and indeed they are partly withdrawn by the ‘Constitutionnel’ itself. But there must be a great deal of irregularity and unfair dealing. For the real ouvriers out of work, a franc a day throughout, plus two francs extra for two or three days’ work, is not, if a man has a family, very extravagant. But lots of porters, e.g., are on the list.

Wednesday, May 31.

Last night I visited the Club des Femmes, presided over by a Mme. Niboyer. Alas, poor woman! she has a terrific task; not to speak of having to keep women silent, she has to keep men, or say beasts, in order. The place is filled with them, and a more grievous spectacle of the unpolitesse of Frenchmen I never saw; but I believe it has been a good deal worse. However, Mme. Niboyer is a woman of considerable power and patience, and she works through it, though to what effect I don’t know. Perhaps it may be useful for Frenchmen to see a woman face them, and present herself before them not for purposes of flirtation. I got disgusted with my male neighbours, and came away before it ended. The subject was divorce. The feeling, I think, was against the present project, the cries certainly so.

Édition du soir.

To-day has produced three remarkable documents:—

1st. The Government exposition of the events of May 15, with which may be read Lamartine’s speech of Tuesday night. The blame is left on De Courtais and —— the 1st Legion of the National Guard! Notice towards the end the phrase ‘Y a-t-il eu de complot? Qui sont les coupables?’—questions left at present unsettled.

2nd. The candidature of our friend A. Dumas. It is due to the Marquis Alexandre to give his own words: ‘Ce qu’il faut à la Chambre, c’est des hommes qui parlent hautement leur pensée. Des hommes qui la soutiennent avec la plume, avec le bras, si besoin est. Je crois avoir prouvé par la guerre que je fais depuis deux mois à la réaction et à la terreur que je suis de ces hommes. Voulez-vous de moi pour représentant? ‘Al. Dumas.’

3rd. The candidature of A. Dumas’s friend Joinville, who is proposed by a shopkeeper, who gave his name, dating from the Rue Bergère. ‘The Assembly has expatriated him; true; but the people made the Assembly; ergo, if the people choose Joinville ...’ q. e. d.

The elections (eleven for the Seine, i.e. Paris) are considered very uncertain; there is all kind of division. Caussidière, perhaps? D’Alton Shee, not unlikely; Changarnier. Not Émile de Girardin, nor Thiers; nor, I presume, any socialist, such as Pierre Leroux, Thorès, Proudhon Cabet.

Here is a ‘mot’ on the situation: ‘Les seuls hommes possibles sont incapables; et les seuls capables sont impossibles.’ Another clever suggestion is that there should always be a Provisional Government, as the only security for permanence.

Remembrances to all my concitoyens at Oriel; how many tricolor nœuds shall I bring?

To the same.

June 6, 1848.

I am safe again under the umbrageous blessing of constitutional monarchy, at Long’s Hotel, Bond Street. I left Paris yesterday. The République was ‘as well as can be expected.’ Of the city of Paris my report must be ‘left voting’—voting, and reading in huge attroupements the new edict against attroupements. To-day was to tell the fate of the candidates, and to-morrow commences the reorganisation of the ateliers nationaux.

To T. Arnold, Esq.

Liverpool: July 16, 1848.

When I last wrote to you, the three days of February were still echoing, and now the four days of June have scarcely ceased to reverberate; between which times a good deal has happened both to myself and to the world in general.

For myself, I went to Paris on the 1st of May, and stayed there five weeks; saw the opening of the Assembly, the émeute or échauffourée (as they prefer calling it) of the 15th, and the fête of the following Sunday. After the 15th the sky was certainly overcast, but in my first fortnight, and in a degree through the whole time, I was in extreme enjoyment, walked about Jerusalem and told the towers thereof with wonderful delight; the great impression being that one was rid of all vain pretences, and saw visibly the real nation. The sentry posts were all occupied by men in blouse, of the national or mobile or republican guard, and the Tuileries gardens full of the same blue blouse; while the Palace itself showed occasionally on its balcony some convalescent ‘blessé de février,’ helped along, as he took the air, by wife and child. All things quite ‘decently and in order,’ without any visible repressive external force; indeed for two days between the resignation of the Provisional and its reappointment as the Executive Committee, there was no Government whatever, barring of course the Assembly.

Lamartine (I saw him and Ledru-Rollin ride to the Hôtel de Villeon the 15th) seems certainly to have been deficient in definite purpose and practicality; but I fancy he and his colleagues hardly had a fair chance; they had no time to get the Assembly into working condition, hampered in it as they were by Odillon-Barrot and Co., who are very skilful debaters, before the people began to get angry and suspicious. The four days of June I dare say you have heard spoken of in a somewhat shrieky accent. But the cruelties are unquestionably exaggerated, and are attributable to the forçats, who naturally mixed with the ouvriers, and there are many opposite traits recounted. The story of the cantinières selling poisoned brandy was not verified by the examination before magistrates, or by the analysis of the chemists. I confess I regard it in the same light as a great battle, with, on the whole, less horror, and certainly more meaning, than most great battles that one reads of.

However, there is no doubt that France’s prospects are dubious and dismal enough, and one is almost inclined to think that the outbreak was premature; with their ideas so far from ripe, the French had better, if possible, have endured a little longer the immorality of Louis-Philippe’s government; but yet, on the whole, one accepts the thing with gratitude. It will, I think, probably accelerate change in England: and perhaps you may yet live to see some kind of palingenesy effected for your repudiated country. [Greek: θαῡμ’ ἂν πόρρωθεν ὶδοιμην.]

The next topic is Emerson, whom I left yesterday on the deck of the Halifax steamer, and saw pass rapidly down the Mersey on his way home.

He came to Oxford just at the end of Lent term, and stayed three days. Everybody liked him, and as the orthodox mostly had never heard of him, they did not suspect him. He is the quietest, plainest, unobtrusivest man possible; will talk, but will rarely discourse to more than a single person, and wholly declines ‘roaring.’ He is very Yankee to look at, lank and sallow, and not quite without the twang; but his looks and voice are pleasing nevertheless, and give you the impression of perfect intellectual cultivation, as completely as would any great scientific man in England—Faraday or Owen, for instance, more in their way perhaps than in that of Wordsworth or Carlyle. I have been with him a great deal; for he came over to Paris and was there a month, during which time we dined together daily: and since that I have seen him often in London, and finally here. One thing that struck everybody is that he is much less Emersonian than his Essays. There is no dogmatism or arbitrariness or positiveness about him.

Next to myself, —— is, I suppose, accounted the wildest and most écervelé republican going. I myself, à propos of a letter of Matt’s, which he directed to Citizen Clough, Oriel Lyceum, Oxford, bear that title par excellence.

Waterhead: September 4.

I have been visiting Fisher in Patterdale, where he has his first reading party. He got a first-class duly and honourably at Easter, πατρὸς ἀμείνων, outdoing his coach.

I believe I shall probably, in about six weeks’ time, publish, conjointly with Burbidge, a volume of poems.[9] Some of them I hope you will like, but I don’t think much will come of it. I don’t intend writing any more verse, but have a notion for essays. I gave my Tutorship up at Easter, and I seriously think of doing the same with the Fellowship in October at latest.

To ——

Oxford: October 23, 1848.

My relations wrote kindly and temperately (on hearing of the resignation of the Fellowship), on the whole; made the most of conscientiousness, but were alarmed with ideas of extreme and extravagant views.

My little book, I hope, will be out in ten days.

To T. Arnold, Esq.

99 Holywell, Oxford: November 6, 1848.

I have given up the Fellowship, though the Provost still forbears to go through the formal step of officially announcing my resignation; so that I am loose on the world, and, being just out of my old place, I am ready to look at every new place, and likely enough to go to none. Even if literature does look likely, I confess I should like to knock about the world a little bit more before I do much in that way; yea, though I am all but thirty already. I am extremely jolly meantime, rejoicing in my emancipation. I stay up here; it is now three weeks within twenty-four hours since I resigned; and people don’t cut me at all. I dine at some high tables, and generally (retaining my gown, for I don’t wish to volunteer to cast that off) I am treated as a citizen.

I have an invitation to stand for the Headship of the new University Hall (on the Oxford and Cambridge College system) to be attached to University College, London. My poem, ‘The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich,’ in about two thousand hexameters, ‘A Long-Vacation Pastoral,’ has appeared, and has tolerable success in Oxford; but that its local allusions might readily give it.

To his Sister.

December 1848.

It is far nobler to teach people to do what is good because it is good simply, than for the sake of any future reward. It is, I dare say, difficult to keep up an equal religious feeling at present, but it is not impossible, and is necessary. Besides, if we die and come to nothing it does not therefore follow that life and goodness will cease to be in earth and heaven. If we give over dancing, it doesn’t therefore follow that the dance ceases itself, or the music. Be satisfied, that whatever is good in us will be immortal; and as the parent is content to die in the consciousness of the child’s survival, even so, why not we? There’s a creed which will suffice for the present.

A—— belongs, I see, to the new High Churchites, who want to turn all the quiet people adrift; it is the New Plot; but so long as one isn’t obliged to sign articles, or go to daily service, or prayer-meeting, or the like, I don’t see why one should excommunicate oneself. As for the Unitarians, they’re better than the other Dissenters, and that’s all; but to go to their chapels—no!

To R. W. Emerson, Esq.

February 10, 1849.

My dear Sir,—How could I tell you of my Pastoral-to-be when it had not been thought of? It was only begun in September, and when I left you in July on the deck of your steamer, I had no thought of that or any other new poem. I hope ere this a little volume, half belonging to me, half to an old school-friend, will have reached you: this does contain old things, the casualties of at least ten years.

You may fancy how truly welcome all your kind praise of the first of them has been to me; so far as praise goes I hardly venture to accept it, but as recognition I heartily feed on it. Meantime, in England I shall not be troubled with a very onerous weight of celebrity. Mr. Kingsley, a chief writer in ‘Fraser,’ devoted the whole of a cordial eulogistic article to the ‘Pastoral,’ and has made it tolerably known; but the ‘Spectator’ was contemptuous; and in Oxford, though there has been a fair sale and much talk of it, the verdict is, that it is ‘indecent and profane, immoral and (!) communistic.’

Will you convey to Mr. Longfellow the fact that it was a reading of his ‘Evangeline’ aloud to my mother and sister, which, coming after a reperusal of the ‘Iliad,’ occasioned this outbreak of hexameters?

LETTERS.
FROM 1849 TO 1852.
LONDON.

To the Rev. ——[10]

January 4, 1849.

My Dear Sir,—After a good deal of thinking and some advising, I find that I have only to repeat what I stated at your house.

I do not feel myself competent to undertake the conduct or superintendence of any prayers, nor can I in any way pledge myself to be present. Any attendance I might give would simply be that of a private person—no way official; it would be as that of a junior member of a family at domestic worship; it would be a matter of conformity, not of individual choice; my own feeling, meantime, being to leave it, as I understand the Quakers do, to spontaneous emotion; and so I confess I should prefer any arrangement which would make my absence not unnatural, as might for instance be the case if prayers were combined with a Greek Testament lesson not given by me.

Meantime, I am sure I should have every disposition to facilitate devotional arrangements. In fact, I should not unwillingly concede that it might be better that your Principal should be one who could officially join in them, as indeed it might be best could all your students be expected to attend. But, whether better or worse, I had conceived your institution was to be one on which this maturer form would not be fixed, one which would offer a locus standi and a home for Theology and other subjects excluded from the College, and would aspire to encourage moral and religious sympathy, but would nevertheless leave all this to free, quiet and spontaneous development.

I confess I see great advantages in this system, but whether greater or less than those of the other, it is the only one in which I myself can co-operate. Not that I entertain any reluctance to attend the worship of others than those with whom I have hitherto been connected. Far from it. In Scotland I have always gone by preference to the Presbyterian churches; I have continually been to Mr. Martineau’s chapel at Liverpool; I have joined in the prayers of Unitarian families. If obliged to do one or other, I should probably go to Westminster Abbey rather than to any either Scotch or English Presbyterian chapel. But I have expressly testified my dislike to the Thirty-nine Articles, and you yourselves are quite as likely to attach to me such names as heretic, as I to apply that word to you.

I need not of course say that I suppose I have on these subjects, if not convictions, sentiments; not assuredly a definite theological creed, but what would be called religious views—views which may prove very different from those commonly entertained by Unitarians. But of course, too, I can entirely disclaim everything approaching to a disposition to proselytise; so far from it, I hardly expect to make up my own mind as yet, and am not likely to meddle with those of others. At the same time, what a man feels for himself can hardly fail to affect his communications with his neighbour, nor should I in any way feel bound to suppress, because of the opinions of a young man’s parents and friends, anything which other reasons would not induce me to withhold. Hasty talking would be grievous misdoing, evasive dealing would vitiate everything; but I should hope to find other matters to occupy me with the students.

I believe I have only to add my thanks to yourself and your friends for your kindness and courtesy during our communications, and to subscribe myself,

Yours faithfully,
A. H. Clough.

To T. Arnold, Esq.

Liverpool: February 15, 1849.

Alea jacta est; I stay for the present here. I have accepted the position at University Hall; and commence there in October, with a good deal of misgiving it must be confessed; but, on the whole, I believe myself right. I am not so clear as you are of the rottenness of this poor old ship here. Something, I think, we rash young men may learn from the failure and discomfiture of our friends in the new republic. The millennium, as Matt says, won’t come this bout. I am myself much more inclined to be patient and make allowance for existing necessities than I was. The very fighting of the time taught one that there were worse things than pain, and makes me more tolerant of the less acute though more chronic miseries of society; these also are stages towards good, or conditions of good. Whether London will take my hopefulness out of me remains to be seen. Peut-être.

I like the Manchester people, of whom I have been seeing a little, better than the Liverpuddlians. They are more provincial perhaps, but have more character; are less men of the world, but more men of themselves. Your sanguine friend still puts his trust in master manufacturers, as in those olden foolish days, when the face of Fortescue shone triumph in the Decade. Yet why be troubled about politics and social matters?

Here also, as on the Poirirua road, sweet odours of human nature ascend to the heavens. To quit the country for altogether is not, so far as I can tell, my vocation. This may be Ur of the Chaldees, or even Egypt, but no angel hath as yet spoken to me, either in dreams by night or in any burning bush of the desert.

February 24.

To-day, my dear brother republican, is the glorious anniversary of the great revolution of ’48, whereof what shall we now say? Put not your trust in republics, nor in any institution of man. God be praised for the downfall of Louis-Philippe. This, with a faint feeble echo of that loud last year’s scream of à bas Guizot, seems to be the sum total; or are we to salute the rising sun with Vive l’Empereur and the green liveries? Meantime, the great Powers are to restore the Pope, and crush the renascent (alite lugubri) Roman republic, of which Joseph Mazzini has just been declared a citizen.

To his Mother.

Rome, Hôtel d’Angleterre:[11] April 18, 1849.

I am at Rome; I stayed two days at Paris, where I called on your American friends the Murats, and saw Madame and her sister. She is now Mme. la Princesse, and her daughter Mdlle. la Princesse.

There is no immediate expectation of any change in the Government here; the only difficulty is to get money. They are going to divide the lands of the Church in small farms among the peasants; but payment will not be made for some time for these allotments.

St. Peter’s disappoints me; the stone of which it is made is a poor plastery material; and, indeed, Rome in general might be called a rubbishy place; the Roman antiquities in general seem to me only interesting as antiquities, and not for any beauty. The Arch of Titus is, I could almost say, the only one really beautiful relic I have yet seen. I have seen two beautiful views since I came, one from San Pietro in Montorio, the other from the Lateran Church, over the Campagna. The weather has not been very brilliant.

April 21.

I have seen the Vatican gallery and Sistine Chapel. To-day being the natal day of Rome, was to have been a great feast, with illumination of the Colosseum, &c., but it is impossible for the weather.

I see the ‘Times’ tells very odd stories of Rome. People here tell you that it has been bought by Austria. At any rate the story of the proposed sale of the Belvidere Apollo to the Americans is as simply a joke, I am told, as another story, that the Pantheon was sold to the English for a Protestant chapel.

To F. T. Palgrave, Esq.

Rome: April 23, 1849.

In my way here I saw Genoa again, and visited the Doria Palace, which had just been quitted by the victorious Piedmontese soldiery, who had not, I am glad to say, damaged the frescoes on the ceilings, as far as I saw (the battle of the Titans, which I suppose is the finest, was quite uninjured), but in other respects had played all sorts of furious and beastly pranks. The balcony with the fresco figures of Andrea Doria and his family is a good deal damaged, one or two cannon-balls have passed through, and the soldiers have scratched it with their bayonets. The furniture is all destroyed; it belonged, they say, to the Prince of Carignano, the King’s uncle or cousin, who had latterly taken the palace: gilded cupboards and tables, japanned cabinets and chess-boards, porcelain vases and French clocks, mingled their precious fragments on the floors with relics of bread and other deposits, among which empty bottles should be mentioned; the Prince appears to have had a fine assortment of Madeira. No other damage is done in Genoa.

About 150 refugees came off with us in the French steamer; the government paid for them as far as Leghorn, but at Leghorn they wouldn’t have them, so they came on to Civita Vecchia, and I see several of them about in the streets; they are incorporated with the other forces.

Yesterday was the most lively day I have had here. In the morning a review in the Piazza before St. Peter’s, where Avezzana, the Genoese commander, who is also an American citizen, and is now Minister of War, reviewed about 10,000 men and twenty pieces of artillery. In the evening a grand illumination of the Campidoglio, Forum, &c., all the way to the Colosseum, which was the great scene. When I entered, it was mostly dark, and a great crowd filling it, a band somewhere above the entrance playing national hymns. At the end of the great hymn, of which I don’t know the name, while the people were clapping, viva-ing and encoring, light began to spread, and all at once the whole amphitheatre was lit up with—the trois couleurs! the basement red fire, the two next stories green, and the plain white of the common light at the top. Very queer, you will say; but it was really fine, and I should think the Colosseum never looked better than it did, if not then at least afterwards, when the plain light was left, and the area got cleared. The same thing was done again for the outside.

In the afternoon, I had paid my visit to Mazzini; a French envoy or agent was with him, and I had to acknowledge the triumviral dignity by waiting almost an hour in the ante-chamber. However, on the envoy’s retiring, he discoursed with me for half an hour. He is a less fanatical fixed-idea sort of man than I had expected; he appeared shifty, and practical enough. He seemed in excellent spirits, and generally confident and at ease. He asked me if I had seen anything of the pillaging, which the English papers were acquainted with; he said that any of the English residents would bear witness to the perfect tranquillity, even greater than before, which prevailed in the city (and certainly I see nothing to the contrary).

The ‘Times,’ he said, must be dishonest, for the things it spoke of as facts were simply not facts! émeutes where émeutes had never been thought of; the only outbreak had been at Ascoli, near the Neapolitan frontier, where a sort of brigandage had been headed by two or three priests, but easily suppressed. In Rome there were plots going on amongst some of the nobles and priests, but they were well known to the government. The temper of the people and the Assembly alike was clearly against the restoration of the temporal power; on that point he believed the Right would go heartily with the Left in the Assembly, and the people be unanimous. The object at present was rather to repress violence against the priest-party, or Neri, to which some sections of the populace were inclined; but this the government was careful to do. The feeling everywhere is, he says, simply political or national. Communism and Socialism are things undreamt of. Social changes are not needed; there are no manufacturing masses, and in the lands there is a métayer system. You have heard perhaps that they are going to divide church lands amongst peasants; this is true, but only of a portion, a surplus he called it, after provision is made for the carrying on of the services of each establishment. They have got about 22,000 troops, and mean to have 50,000, so as to be able to take the field, at any rate not in mere desperation. But he expects foreign intervention in the end, and of course thinks it likely enough that the Romana Reppublica will fall. Still he is convinced that the separation of the temporal and spiritual power is a thing to be, and that to restore the Pope as before will merely breed perpetual disquiet, conspiracies, assassinations, &c.; and he thinks it possible the Great Powers may perceive this in time. The French envoy had asked him if he would apply to France for protection; he said, No, but that if France or any other power offered protection, they would welcome it.

So much for Mazzini. Meantime, Rome is very peaceable to all appearance, rather cold, however, and very rainy: the illumination, which you should be told was in honour of the Palilia, was put off one day in consequence. I do not observe much enthusiasm for the Romana Reppublica: but neither do I hear as much complaint as might be expected from the shop folk and foreigners’ jackals. The religious customs seem to thrive still; they kissed away yesterday at St. Peter’s toe as fast as they could have done in its best days. Money, however, is scarce; one pays 30 per cent. for silver, and Mazzini acknowledged that the financial crisis was a great difficulty; but, as he said, it was unavoidable in revolutions. I get on but poorly in lionising, but have at last to-day seen the Sibyls. How much of this is restoration? how much is really Raphael? Michael Angelo’s Moses has ‘met my views’ as much as anything I have seen. Are the two figures beside it also by M. Angelo? And tell me what is M. Angelo’s design for St. Peter’s exactly? do the huge inside pilasters belong to him? I think it utterly lamentable and destructive that his plan was not carried out.

Tell Blackett he really must defend S. P. Q. R. in the ‘Globe.’ It is a most respectable republic; it really (ipse dixit) thought of getting a monarch, but couldn’t find one to suit.

To his Sister.

Rome: April 30, 1849.

Perhaps it will amuse you hereafter to have a letter commenced while guns are firing, and I suppose men falling dead and wounded. Such is the case on the other side the Tiber, while I peacefully write in my distant chamber with only the sound in my ears. I went up to the Pincian Hill and saw the smoke and heard the occasional big cannon, and the sharp succession of skirmishers’ volleys—bang, bang, bang—away beyond St. Peter’s. They say the French have settled down in three positions, and do not mean to enter till the Neapolitans arrive. And the affair of to-day is probably only with their advanced guard: the Romans profess to have carried off four cannon and fifty prisoners, but who knows?

May 2.

600 prisoners and 500 killed and wounded, they say. The French have certainly retired. But the Neapolitans are at hand.

To his Mother.

Rome: May 11, 1849.

The war would seem to you very small if you saw it; and except for the nuisance of all galleries being shut, I should be very well content. We are all safe and comfortable, with British flags hanging out of our windows; and Lord Napier, an attaché of the British Embassy at Naples, has been here, and is at present, I believe, at Palo, a port between this and Civita Vecchia, where H.M.S. ‘Bulldog’ is lying, and has arranged with Marshal Oudinot that his troops are to behave politely to us. Which troops came again yesterday within three miles, but have done nothing, and are said to be retiring. The Neapolitans, i.e. a detachment of 7,000 men near Palestrina, are stated to have got a severe licking from the corps of Garibaldi, about 5,000, the day before yesterday.

The only awkward thing that has happened in the city has been the killing of four or perhaps five priests by the mob, soon after the news of the advance of the Neapolitan army. Some say that one of them had fired out of a window and killed a soldier; others, that they were found making off to the Neapolitans. However, some, I don’t know the exact number, were killed in the street. Next day the government sent out a proclamation, and I have heard of no more outrages of this kind. Some plundering by the troops has given trouble, but they seem to be suppressing it.

Meantime the gates are all shut, and the streets strongly barricaded. The Pincian gardens, the great resort for walking, are closed and fortified, and between the Trinità dei Monti and Sta. Maria Maggiore, in one line of streets, you can count, I think, six barricades, besides smaller ones in the side streets.

My great affliction is that the Vatican is shut up. I got into the Sistine Chapel, however, and St. Peter’s of course is open. These and the Pantheon are my resources. Many of the churches are occupied as hospitals (the Frenchmen who were taken up wounded are very kindly and lovingly treated there, I am told; and they have sent back their prisoners without stipulation), and the Palaces are mostly shut up.

May 16.

Two French commissioners arrived here yesterday, and it is understood that France has more peaceful intentions than appeared before.

May 17.

Hostilities are suspended between us and the French. I shall be as greatly surprised as pleased if the two republics come to a good understanding. The people here will not like to have the Pope except as Head of the Church, and the French will insist on something more.

To the same.

May 28, 1849.

At last I have got my permit for the Vatican. Once having seen a couple of lines from Mazzini, how the officials skipped about for me! I was ashamed really to take all they offered me, good creatures. If I could have got this paper before, it would have been much better; but I had great reluctance to obtrude myself on the Dictator, as the ‘Times’ calls him, and some difficulty to get at him at last, he being, of course, ‘moltissimo occupato.’

Bulbs from the fountain of Egeria I have no chance of getting, nor shall I see Tivoli, Albano, or Nemi, for it requires a permit from the Minister of War, and I cannot for shame bother the Dictator any further with my trivial English-tourist importunities.

The Romans are content the French should remain at Civita Vecchia, or even Viterbo (for the sake of health). They sent them the other day an immense quantity of cigars and snuff for a present.

To T. Arnold, Esq.

Rome: May 24, 1849.

You will have heard of our driving back the French (April 30), and amongst many lies would probably detect the fact that the French never entered the town. Whether the Roman Republic will stand I don’t know, but it has under Mazzini’s inspiration shown a wonderful courage and a glorious generosity, and at any rate has shaken to its foundations the Odillon-Barrot Ministry, which I trust may yet go to its own place. ‘Peace be with all such!’

I live here, studying chiefly Michael Angelo, specially in the Sistine Chapel. I believe the engraving of his ‘Creation of Eve’ there, more than anything else, led me to Rome. I conceive myself to understand his superiority and Leonardo da Vinci’s to Raphael, who is only natural, while they are intellectual: he produces with, and they out of nature. The idea of St. Peter’s has been wholly killed out of it, partly by the horrid internal ornaments, but still more completely by the change of the form from a Greek to a Latin cross; the latter belonging to Gothic, which Michael Angelo rejects, because he asserts TOTALITY. There!

To Rev. A. P. Stanley.

Rome: May 24, 1849.

Your historic soul shall be gratified—better late than never—with an account of the fight of the 30th of April; fatto d’armi gloriosissimo. ‘Yes, we are fighting at last.’[12] ... ‘Meantime, the Æquians and Volscians, quitting Algidus and concentrating their scattered forces on Velitræ, ventured under the walls of this stronghold to give battle to the detachment of Garibaldians which the bold temper of their leader had brought up somewhat in advance of the main body of the Romans. The enemy, driven after a severe conflict into the town, acknowledged his discomfiture by a retreat during the following night in the direction of Terracina.’

There—— to be translated into the style of Livy! However, I forbear to proceed, for it is a fatiguing exercise, and ere this goes, our history will have something newer to record than the fuga del Re Bomba of Sunday, 3 A.M., 30th inst.

May 31.

If you are interested in our politics you should study the letters to Lesseps by Mazzini. Only a vagrant artist or two represent with me our country. Freeborn, British Consul, abides with his flag; but Lowe, the British grocer, is at Florence. Piale, successor to Monaldini, is a huge republican, and stands at corners in full civica uniform, shutting up the reading-room. The Miss Pfyffers also love their country and hate the priests; but their betrothed lovers being of the old Guardia Nobile, take the other line. Papa Pfyffer (my landlord) follows these, but protests against cardinalism loudly. Priests, by the way, walk about in great comfort—arm-in-arm with a soldier, perhaps; in cafés and legnos and all profane places they are seen circulating as freely at least as government paper. Confession is still administered openly with long sticks in St. Peter’s, and the Apostle’s toe multitudinously kissed. The Bambino also drives about to see the sick in infinite state, and is knelt to and capped universally.

Wandering about alone and with the map I have been twice hailed by the civicas as a ‘spione,’ but after some prattle affectionately dismissed. The barricades are very strong. A perfect agger Servianus and fossa Quiritium crosses the road between the Palatine and Aventine; and before the Porta del Popolo there is an immense work. In the line from the Trinità del Monte to Sta. Maria Maggiore there are five or six, besides laterals. The soldiers, so far as one sees, are well behaved; but the government has been scolding a good deal. It is pleasant to my pastoral soul to see them sitting by market-women and shelling peas. I have only seen Mazzini once, but have been up to his rooms three or four times. Anyone can go; he is sadly ἀδορύφορος for a τύραννος, and I wonder no spirited Jesuit has yet looked in with a pistol.

June 1.

At this moment comes a rumour to say that the French are combinati with us. But no; it proves that after getting certain conditions accepted by the Romans, Lesseps had them refused by Oudinot, so he is off to Paris to see about it there. Meantime, I take it, Oudinot will only sulk without fighting.

June 3.

On the contrary, just the reverse. They are at it, at-at-at it, with small arms frequent and occasional cannons, at the Porta San Pancrazio. We began at four this morning. Oudinot had said distinctly he would not attack before Monday, but his Parisiaca fides brings him here this present blessed Sunday.

11

After something like seventeen hours’ fighting, entirely outside in the Villa Pamfili grounds, here we are in statu quo, barring a good many morti e feriti.

To T. Arnold, Esq.

Sunday, 10 A.M., June 3.

This is being written while guns are going off, there—, there—, there! For the French are attacking us again. May the Lord scatter and confound them! For a fortnight or more they have been negotiating and talking, and inducing the government to send off men against the Austrians at Ancona, and now here they are with their cannon. It is a curious affair, truly; the French Envoy Plenipotentiary makes an accommodamento; the General repudiates it, and, without waiting even for advice from Paris, attacks.

To J. C. Shairp, Esq.

Rome: June 2, 1849.

Concerning Roman politics, hath not God made great newspapers, and appointed the ‘Times’ for certain seasons? Which even though it lie.... But briefly, for P——’s sake. Lesseps, the envoy, agreed yesterday to four conditions with the Roman government: the French army to go into cantonments in the healthy districts hereabouts, but not in the city: guaranteeing these districts against foreign invasion, but exercising no political power, till things should be settled. But Oudinot repudiates. There—but for the awful lies which all the newspapers, specially the ‘Débats,’ ‘Constitutionnel,’ and ‘Times,’ indulge in, I would not have said a word thereupon. But they do lie, indeed!

June 3.

No; your letter won’t go to-day: for the French are attacking us—there! there! ‘But do Thou unto them as unto the Midianites. O my God, make them like unto a wheel.’

10 P.M.

Seventeen blessed hours have they battled—3.30 A.M. to 8.30 P.M., and the French, I am told, have been unable to plant their cannon against the wall. The Villa Pamfili has been taken and retaken two or three times. But to us only smoke and occasional flashes are visible.

June 4, Tuesday.

They can’t get in; they banged away by moonlight most of last night; but, as I see a French officer at Toulon says, Oudinot is not the man.

June 5.

This is the third day, and they are still outside. The Pancrazio untaken, and the Villa Pamfili in our hands still.

June 18, Monday.

Going, going, and to-morrow I shall be gone. We have had a fortnight of gunnery, and what now, heaven knows: perhaps more gunnery; but to-day I hear hardly anything. Yes—there is one. But we have been bombarded, think of that! It is funny to see how like any other city a besieged city looks. Unto this has come our grand Liberty-Equality-and-Fraternity Revolution!

To F. T. Palgrave, Esq.

Rome: June 21, 1849.

Shall I date one more letter from Rome? I hope to get off to-day, but Frenchmen break down bridges. Here we are in the nineteenth day of our siege, expecting immediate assault, of which, however, I hear as yet no notice. In the way of cannonade or fusillade, all at this moment is silent. But the breach is fully big enough, and the last breach was being made, they say, two or even three days ago. Meantime all is tranquil within. The soldiers, I think, will fight to the last, and then retire upon the castle or into the mountains. And though I suspect some plotting is at work, yet the whole basso popolo will fight, and the middle classes mostly, and the ‘youth’ almost universally will at least offer a passive resistance. It is curious how much like any other city a city under bombardment looks. One goes to the Ara Celi or the Palatine to look at the firing; one hears places named where shells have fallen; one sees perhaps a man carrying a bit of one.

The ‘Monitore’ this morning says that the Temple of Fortune has been damaged, and that a ball has entered the roof exactly above the Aurora of Guido.

The Romans have suffered heavy losses in their sorties; but they seem to have obstructed the works a good deal. The French papers spoke of ten days as the utmost space required for preparation; and on the 12th Oudinot announced himself ready to enter.

Assure yourself that there is nothing to deserve the name of ‘the Terror.’ There may be timidity in the passiveness of the Moderates, and I will not say that if they tried resistance against the Government, they would not be suppressed, force by force. But one sees no intimidation. Since May 4 the worst thing I have witnessed has been a paper in MS. put up in two places in the Corso, pointing out seven or eight men for popular resentment. This had been done at night: before the next evening a proclamation was posted in all the streets, from (I am sure) Mazzini’s pen, severely and scornfully castigating such proceedings. A young Frenchman in a café, hearing his country abused, struck an Italian; he was of course surrounded, but escaped by the interference of the national guard and of the British Consul. The soldiers, so far as I see, are extremely well behaved, far more seemly than our regulars; they are about of course in the streets and cafés, but make no disorder. Ladies walk in the Corso till after 10 P.M. Farewell; I must go and see about my place.

Alas! it is hopeless. I am doomed to see the burning of Rome, I suppose. The world, perhaps in the same day, will lose the Vatican and me! However, they won’t get in yet, I guess.

June 22.

It may have been merry in Dunfermline grey when all the bells were ringing; but here at Rome it is by no means so. They are sounding the storm-alarm. Venit summa dies. During the night the French made a general attack from the Portese south to the Popolo north, and managed to throw a body of 500 (?) men into a solitary house within the walls, at the south-west corner.

To the same.

Rome: June 28, 1849.

I wrote on the 22nd, just after the misfortune of the night of the 21st. I was not then certain of the fact, that the passage of the breach was effected without a shot being fired; the 600 men of the Roman line who were there were seized with a panic, and their commanding officer is said to have told them to save themselves—anyhow, save themselves they did, and only lost a barricade, which these poor brutes had been working at for a month. A very fatal go, indeed; but not so immediately fatal as was expected when I wrote, and when all the bells were ringing. The batteries of the new Roman line commanded the breach, and the French have had to dig a trench to secure their advance.

In the following night (of Friday, 22nd) an immense number of bombs were thrown; they fell chiefly in the Piazza di Venezia, Piazza Sant’ Apostoli, and Via del Gesù. I do not think much harm was done, and the people took it coolly enough. I found a crowd assembled about 9 P.M. in the north-east corner of the Piazza Colonna, watching these pretty fireworks, ‘ecco un altro!’ One first saw the ‘lightning’ over the Post-office; then came the missive itself, describing its tranquil parabola; then the distant report of the mortar; and finally the near explosion, which occasionally took place in the air. This went on all night. But it has not been repeated in the same degree. The Consuls have remonstrated with Oudinot, but he, I believe, pleads ‘orders.’ The operations meantime, till yesterday, were unimportant, e.g. four cannon were got up on the breach, but the Roman batteries say that they upset them. On Sunday night, however, the 26th, there was another general attack, and under cover of this the French got their guns planted on the breach, and were playing with these all yesterday upon our batteries of S. Pietro in Montorio, which I fear will not be long tenable.

This morning I hear nothing I can rely on, and considering the bombs, I forbore to visit my look out of the Ara Celi. As for the feelings of the people, I can of course say little. I fancy the middle-class Romans think it rather useless work, but they don’t feel strongly enough on the matter to make them take steps against a government which I believe has won their respect alike by its moderation and its energy; perhaps, too, they are afraid of the troops, under which term however do not understand foreigners, unless you choose to give that name to the levies of the Papal States in general. Visiting the Monte Cavallo hospital the other day, where there are I think 200 men, three Poles and one Frenchman were especially pointed out to me, that I might say some words of French to them. All the others I saw were Italians, from Bologna, Ferrara, Ravenna, Perugia, and so forth. There was one Swiss. Most of them had received their wounds on the 3rd. Nice fellows they seemed, young, and mostly cheerful, spite of their hurts. One had lost an arm and a leg; another had a ball in his hip, yet to be extracted; ‘and the like.’ On the whole I incline to think they will fight it out to the last, but chi lo sa?

We have a General Archioni, a Milanese noble, a fine brave fellow, in the lodgings here, with his secretary and capo del stato maggiore, and a soldier or two. He was posted at the Villa Ludovisi, and thither two days ago we all went—fourteen, ‘Mama’ and four daughters, and niece, and their escort, a gay party of pleasure.

Festa di San Pietro: Friday, 29.

I have been this morning to the Colosseum, whence you see the position very well and securely. The French batteries are too strong for the Romans, I think; they respond but feebly. The Secretary of the General here detected two nights ago some people making signals; he took some ‘civicas’ and went and arrested them; there were three monks and two ‘civicas’ in open communication with the French, while it was still daylight. A good deal of this telegraphing goes on, they tell me.

The ‘panic’ of the 21st seems to have been a good deal felt as a disgrace; these last few days they have been fighting very bravely, I take it. The ‘Moniteur’ this morning states the number of foreigners in the Roman service to be 1,650; 800 Lombards, 300 Tuscans, 250 Poles and French, and 300 miscellaneous in Garibaldi’s corps. The national guard is 14,000 strong; the army, I suppose, 20,000. A bomb, I am thankful to say, has left its mark on the façade of the Gesù. I wish it had stirred up old Ignatius. Farewell.

A. H. C.
Le Citoyen malgré lui.

To M. Arnold, Esq.

Rome: June 23, 1849.

I advertise you that I hope to be in the Geneva country in August, reposing in the bosom of nature from the fatigues of art and the turmoil of war!!! Quid Romæ faciam? What’s politics to he, or he to politics? But it is impossible to get out, and if one did, Freeborn, Vice-consul, who however is a Caccone, says the French avan-posti shoot at one.

July 3.

Well, we are taken; the battery immediately to the left (as you go out) of St. Pancrazio was carried by assault, on the night of the 29th or morning of the 30th, while we in this corner got bombarded by way of feint. The Roman line in several cases has behaved ill, and certainly gave way here rather early; afterwards, however, under Garibaldi’s command, it seems to have fought well, at least two regiments, who are now off with him and his free corps to the Abruzzi.

On Saturday morning (30th June) the Assembly resolved to give in; Mazzini & Co. resigned; and a deputation went off to Oudinot. Sunday was perfectly tranquil; yesterday evening Garibaldi withdrew his troops from the Trastevere, and went off by the S. Giovanni. To-day they say the French will enter. Altogether, I incline to think the Roman population has shown a good deal of ‘apathy’; they did not care about the bombs much, but they did not care to fight very hard either. The Lombards are fine fellows, and the Bolognese too; the only pity there were not more of them. If you put the whole lot of them together, Poles, Lombards, Tuscans, French, they would not exceed 3,000. On the whole, the French were not very barbarous, but if we had not yielded, I believe they meant to bombard us really; and as it was, their shells might have done irreparable harm.

At noon to-day the Assembly proclaims the Constitution! which it had just completed.

To F. T. Palgrave, Esq.

Rome: July 4, 1849.

If you should happen to read in the ‘Constitutionnel’ that ‘on Tuesday, July 3, our army entered Rome amidst the acclamations of the people,’ perhaps you will not be the worse for a commentary on the text.

On Monday evening Garibaldi, with all the free corps except some Lombards under Medici, and with a good many Roman troops in addition, set off for the Abruzzi. On Tuesday at noon the Assembly proclaimed the Constitution on the Campidoglio. I went there and heard it. There were present perhaps 800 or 900 people. This done, I presume the deputies dispersed, the labours of the Constituent being clearly completed. The French had already begun their entry, and occupied the Ponte Sisto, and, I believe, the Trinità dei Monti. About half-past four I went out, and presently saw a detachment coming up from the Palazzo Borghese to the Condotti. I stood in the Corso with some thirty of the people, and saw them pass. Fine working soldiers indeed, dogged and business-like; but they looked a little awkward, while the people screamed and hooted, and cried, ‘Viva la Reppublica Romana!’ When they had got past some young simpleton sent a tin pail after them; four or five faced round with bayonets presented, while my young friend cut away up the Corso double quick. They went on. At this moment some Roman bourgeois, as I fancy, but perhaps a foreigner, said something either to express his sense of the folly of it, or his sympathy with the invaders. He was surrounded, and I saw him buffeted a good deal, and there was a sword lifted up, but I think not bare; I was told he got off. But a priest who walked and talked publicly in the Piazza Colonna with a Frenchman was undoubtedly killed I know his friends, and saw one of them last night. Poor man! he was quite a liberal ecclesiastic, they tell me, but certainly not a prudent one.

To return to my own experience. After this the column passed back by another street into the Corso, and dispersed the crowd with the bayonet point; they then went on and occupied, I take it, the Post-office, which I afterwards found full of them. About six o’clock I walked out again, and found the Monte Cavallo, the Palazzo Barberini, and other places occupied. I thus missed the entry of Oudinot and his staff. I got back only just to see the final dragoons; but an English acquaintance informed me that in passing by the Café Nuovo, where an Italian tricolor hung from the window, Oudinot plucked at it, and bid it be removed. The French proceeded to do this, but the Romans intervened; Cernuschi, the barricade commissioner, took it down, kissed it, and, as I myself saw, carried it in triumph amidst cheers to the Piazza Colonna. I did not follow, but on my bolder friend’s authority I can state that here the French moved up with their bayonets and took it from Cernuschi, stripping him moreover of his tricolor scarf. One hears reports of as many as eight Romans being killed for fraternising with the Gaul, and of some of the French themselves having been assassinated. My friend told me two shots were fired from a café in the Corso when the troops passed that way at half-past four. This morning I have been to the field of battle and looked at the trenches. I condescended to speak with two Frenchmen, consoling myself by an occasional attempt at sarcasm. They said the Romans did nothing at all when the batteries were assaulted; but the artillery had been well directed. You see lots of villas, six or seven at least, in ruins. S. Pietro in Montorio is in a sad state; balls have come in and knocked great holes, and the east end is nearly in ruins, but the paintings are most, if not all, quite safe—those of Sebastian del Piombo certainly; and Bramante’s chapel is wholly untouched. My French officer said the troops were about 25,000. Almost all are in the city. The Roman forces are to withdraw immediately into cantonments assigned by Oudinot, and guaranteed against the Austrians. The national guard will be disarmed, and then all will be considered safe. On the whole, the French soldiers seemed to me to show excellent temper. At the same time, some faces I have seen are far more brutal than the worst Garibaldian; and we have hitherto seen nothing so unpleasing in the female kind as the vivandière. The Gaul is certainly the stronger animal, but assuredly the greater beast.

The American banker tells me he was told that in the morning the French were cheered. I rather doubt it; but I believe the bourgeoisie in part are very glad it is over. Naturally, for there was to have been a regular bombardment; so said my French friend. They had got a large supply ready, just come from France. The priest is not dead, and perhaps will survive; but another, I hear, was hewed in pieces for shouting ‘Viva Pio Nono,’ ‘Abasso la Reppublica,’ &c. Oudinot’s proclamation is expected every moment. They say it will declare a stage of siege; name a military governor and commander of the garrison; dissolve the national guard and the Assembly, and so forth.

To the same.

Rome: July 6, 1849.

Medium of all desirable communication with my brethren at home! you shall receive one more despatch. I think of going off to Albano, or some of these places, which now one supposes will be attainable. Tivoli, they say, is dubious. Garibaldi went off that way, and the French have sent a detachment after him, with orders, one is told, to give no quarter.

It is a sight to make one gnash one’s very wisdom teeth to go about the fallen Jerusalem and behold the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not; not that the French misbehave, so far as I see, individually. They appear to me to display considerable temper. Still one is told that they carried off a lot of lemons, &c., the first night without paying for them. One soldier, they say, was stabbed by a Trasteverine woman at the Ponte Sisto for insulting her. Any way, one sees how ‘riling’ it is to be conquered.

I am greatly rejoiced meantime that they have been obliged to proclaim the state of siege. They make much of the adhesion of the army. I don’t exactly know how far it has been given. Two regiments went off with Garibaldi and one heard divers stories. However, with the alternative of dissolution and beggary, it is no marvel that the Roman line, not a popular body, should consent to give its service to any de-facto government.

Last night, for the first time, ‘by order,’ we were all driven in at half-past nine. I found a bayonet point within a few inches of me as I came along the Corso, while the battalion was clearing it.

Has the ‘Times’ correspondent told the funny way in which they have shown their spite, by daubing out all the French sign-boards?

The natives do not universally quit the cafés when the French come in; at the Bon Goût in the Piazza di Spagna they appear to be treated with polite indifference; in the Café Nuovo, such unmistakable disgust was evinced that, considering also its size and importance, for you know it is a whole palace, and the great place of resort, they have seen fit to shut it up and fill it with soldiers. Elsewhere the enemies feed together, but with a pale very distinctly marked between them.

Mazzini was still here yesterday. Galetti, president of the Assembly, and commander of the Carbineers, was taken under American protection (as I hear); otherwise he would have been arrested; but the political arrests have been limited to some half-dozen agitators. Ciceruacchio got off with an American passport. You know the Assembly sat on the day after the French entrée; Mazzini was present. They passed some three or four decrees, and put them up in the streets. Oudinot’s proclamation dissolving the old government came out an hour or two after.

I told you that Garibaldi lost his negro on the 3rd. ‘Il Moro,’ as they called him, was the son of a rich negro merchant at Monte Video, who, though married and father of a family, yet, for the love of the Italian captain, came over to fight by his side, which they say he never quitted. I have seen each separately, but not together. There is a Mrs. Garibaldi; she went out with him to the Abruzzi. I hope the French won’t cut them to pieces, but vice versâ.

July 7.

Last night I had the pleasure of abandoning a café on the entrance of the French. The Italians expect you to do so. It was quite composedly done; no bravado or hurry.

Mazzini, on the 30th, after the capture of the bastion, proposed to the Assembly that it, with the army, should quit Rome, carry off the artillery, and occupy some stronghold. But the Assembly at first would not; and after, when it would, could not. The course actually taken was repugnant to Mazzini’s views, who was anxious to save Rome from destruction, but at the same time to hold out somewhere and somehow to the last.

The Chigi chapel, in Sta. Maria del Popolo, is a remarkable case. Raphael’s Jonah is untouched, but the statue next it has been chipped in two places by a ball. Nothing else is hurt.

To the same.

Rome: July 13, 1849.

We are all in admiration here of M. de Corcelles’ statement, that during the twenty-six days that elapsed of the siege, not one bomb had been thrown into the city. I dare say a large proportion of what were thrown were grenades, but that there were bombs, in the strictest sense, is undoubted. A military friend whom I can trust has seen one, and I think I myself have. Moreover, the grenades were large. And I presume M. de Corcelles will prefer saying plainly that he was misinformed, to the alternative of professing not to have meant to deny grenades. On the night of the 22nd, 150 missives of the bomb or the grenade species are said to have been thrown into the town; 130 were counted by an acquaintance of mine, a Roman; at the rate they were being plied while I was looking on myself, I cannot doubt some figure like this must be correct.

On the night of the 29th, a French officer told an English gentleman the detachment in the Borghese grounds was ordered to fire 120 shots into the Piazza di Spagna quarter, as a feint; they had no particular aim, but seeing a light in a high window, they took it for their mark, and—hinc illæ lachrymæ—hence those balls and bombs, or, I beg pardon, grenades perhaps, which frightened us out of our propriety into the primo piano.

Mazzini, through the negotiation of Mr. Cass, the American Chargé d’affaires, received a passport in his own name from the French, and went off viâ Civita Vecchia, with a bearer of despatches from the same Mr. Cass, I think, on Tuesday last, the 10th. He would go into Switzerland. This is quite positive.

On Monday I was at Albano. The French, seventy horse, came in that afternoon at four. The Spaniards meantime had just the previous night occupied Genzano, three miles off. One hears that the French have turned them out of it.

Two newspapers appear in Rome besides the official gazette, called the ‘Giornale di Roma’; one of these, the ‘Costituzionale,’ belongs to the prete interest; the other, ‘La Speranza dell’ Epoca,’ to Mamiani and coterie. They are under a military censure, but liberally exercised; a new appointment was freely commented on in malam partem yesterday by this latter print.

The Principessa di Belgiojoso is still here, looking after her feriti at the Monte Cavallo, who, as I think by Mr. Cass’s intercession, are allowed to remain there; at first, orders were given that they should be removed within a week. Garibaldi is said to have effected a junction at Terni with Forbes, an Englishman holding rank here of colonel, I think, and commanding a small detachment.

Add to the list of fortunate escapes, that a ball struck the façade of the Palazzo Sciarra on the terzo piano. On the secondo in front is the gallery, whose ample windows give light to the famous Modestia e Vanità of Leonardo da Vinci, the Violin Player of Raphael, Titian’s Bella Donna, and others, most of which, however, have been put into the passage for safety.

Freeborn, the Consul, has got one bomb in his bank. Do you know the difference between the two things, bomb and grenade? bomb has two handles, and grenade is a hollow ball with a hole in it; that is all I know. Grenades, they say, burst in the air; otherwise they are as big as bombs, and by no means innocent things.

July 14.

Giving the French and the ‘Times’ credit for some degree of truth-telling, the simple truth would appear to be, that we have been grenaded, not bombarded. It is possible that the cannon and mortars were pointed merely to the breach, and that the bombs and balls that came in were merely bad shots. But the obus (singular or plural) must certainly have been pointed against the very heart of the city, the Pantheon and Capitol; and a discharge of 150 or more grenades in a single night is, if not a bombardment, still—— My authority about Mazzini’s movements is[13] Miss Fuller, an American, who was in immediate communication with Mazzini and Mr. Cass, and who was a party to the negotiation. She is now gone to Rieti.

To the same.

Geneva: August 7.

I shall go and see Mont Blanc, among other duties (for I am finishing my education before coming to town), and move homeward by the Rhine. I saw the French enter Rome, and then went to Naples, which I greatly enjoyed. Thence direct by Genoa and Turin to this place, and from here by Interlaken home. I am full of admiration of Mazzini. But, on the whole, ‘Farewell, politics, utterly! What can I do?’ Study is much more to the purpose.

This is a dull sky-and-water atmosphere, after the blue sweaters of the south; and the English locust of course prevails in it.

To T. Arnold, Esq.

University Hall, London: October 29, 1849.

Well, here I am, and with Palgrave, who is breakfasting with me in my hall, where we all—i.e. myself and my eleven undergraduates (that should be thirty, and I hope will be some day)—breakfast and dine daily. Here, I take it, I shall remain for some little time; though even as you talk of coming over here, so I, believing that I shall be kicked out for mine heresies’ sake, and doubtful of success in literary doings, have sometimes looked at my feet and considered the antipodes, reflecting however much on the natural conservatising character of our years after thirty. As I say, I have no confidence in my tenure. For intolerance, O Tom, is not confined to the cloisters of Oxford, or the pews of the Establishment, but comes up, like the tender herb, partout, and is indeed in a manner indigenous in the heart of the family man of the middle classes.

Do we not work best by digging deepest? by avoiding polemics, and searching to display the real thing? If only one could do the latter!—Emerson is an example, and also Carlyle, and in his kind M.A. Yet [Greek: ἕκαστος ἔχει τὸ ἑαυτου χάρισμα] and οὐ πάντες χωροῦσι τοῦτον τὸν λὸγον. Let B——s delight to bark and bite, if indeed God has made them so.

Interrupted by my one pupil—for you observe that undergraduates all attend the University College professors, and I only keep a hall, as an M. A. of old times did in the days of professors at Oxford—and out of the eleven only have one pupil—I now resume to say farewell.

To J. C. Shairp, Esq.

University Hall: October 31, 1849.

You and Walrond may read this,[14] but don’t show it to others; nor, therefore, name it, as if you do, they’ll importune. You are nice discreet creatures, I know.

I wish you would come and see me on your way to Oxford. London, generally speaking, is lonely—for evil at any rate and partly for good. A loneliness relieved by evening parties is not delightful, but I get on well enough in general, looking forward always to the Long. If I do not get a pupil for the Continent, I shall come up to Scotland.

You do not perhaps enjoy at Rugby a fine yellow fog this morning. We do.

To F. T. Palgrave, Esq.

[On receiving a present of Goethe’s works.]

University Hall, London: November 18, 1849.

Thanks many, specially perhaps for the note. I had a great mind to say to you, ‘As soon as you give me the Goethe, we will cut.’ Let us suppose that done, and look forward tout-de-suite to a recommencement—‘Cut and come again’ being the true motto for all proper intercourse. I think the best way of looking at a present is as a thing to be much more valuable some time hereafter than just now; it is more properly a future than a present. Cast thy Goethe upon the waters; give with thy left hand, and let not thy right hand of fellowship ask what thy left doeth.

And so on, whereof enough.

To ——

It is a good deal forgotten that we came into this world to do, not kindness to others, but our own duty, to live soberly, righteously, and godly, not benevolently, philanthropically, and tenderheartedly. To earn his own bread honestly—in the strictest sense of the word honestly—to do plain straightforward work or business well and thoroughly, not with mere eye-service for the market, is really quite a sufficient task for the ordinary mortal.

To T. Arnold, Esq.

University Hall, London: January 3, 1850.

Here I am, just about to recommence the crambe repetita of pædagogy after a brief fortnight’s holiday. Of what use is pædagogy? Some, I suppose; and as much probably as any other occupation one is in the way of getting harnessed to. Cast, therefore, thy syntax on the waters. But in the meantime εἴσελθε εὶς τὸ ταμιεῖόν σου, καὶ κλείοας την θύραν σου, κ.τ.λ.

There is a great blessing, I sometimes think, in being set down amongst uncongenial people, for me at least who am over-provocable. Consider the coal upon the fireplace, how it came to blaze thus: was it not concealed and compressed for long world-ages, never expecting to see the light again, far less that in its own self there was light, heat, and joyfulness, having no sort of imagination that it should be transmuted into, or shall we say, wooed, wedded and incorporated with the subtle atmosphere itself? Consider, I say, the long preparation of this strange marriage of coal and oxygen air, and say, if you can, moreover, when was there most real worthiness of existence, in the grimy or the blazy period, in the imprisonment or deliverance of the gases, the incarnation or apotheosis, the suppression or expression, &c. &c. &c.?

Sunday, January 27.

As in old times at breakfast in Oriel, so here for an afternoon walk and dinner I am waiting for M. and, I believe, E. They tell me you like the ‘Bothie’; it was a pleasant anticipation to me that you would, while it was yet in swaddling-clothes. They have reprinted me at Cambridge, Massachusetts!

To a Friend.

[In answer to some criticisms on ‘Amours de Voyage.’]

Good heavens! don’t be afraid. You are a very gentle beast, and of a good conscience, and roar me like any sucking-dove. Parturiunt montes—you are not half trenchant enough. Yet your criticism is not exactly what I wanted. What I want assurance of is in the way of execution rather than conception. If I were only half as sure of the bearableness of the former as I am of the propriety of the latter, I would publish at once. Gott und Teufel! my friend, you don’t suppose all that comes from myself! I assure you it is extremely not so.

You’re a funny creature, my dear old fellow: if one don’t sing you a ballant, or read you a philosophic sermonette, if one don’t talk about the gowans or faith, you’re not pleased. However, I believe that the execution of this is so poor, that it makes the conception a fair subject of disgust. You cannot possibly be too severe and truculent about the execution, and I agree quite as to the correctness (which is the only question) of what you say; except that I am not sure that scenes and scenery would exactly improve the matter.

But do you not, in the conception, find any final strength of mind in the unfortunate fool of a hero? I have no intention of sticking up for him, but certainly I did not mean him to go off into mere prostration and defeat. Does the last part seem utterly sceptical to your sweet faithful soul?

Your censure of the conception almost provoked me into publishing, because it showed how washy the world is in its confidences. There is a Roland for your Oliver, my boy. But I probably shan’t publish, for fear of a row with my committee.

To the same.

June 19, 1850.

It continues to strike me how ignorant you, and I, and other young men of our set are. Actual life is unknown to an Oxford student, even though he is not a mere Puseyite, and goes on jolly reading parties.

Enter the arena of your brethren, and go not to your grave without knowing what common merchants and solicitors, much more sailors and coalheavers, are acquainted with. Ignorance is a poor kind of innocence. The world is wiser than the wise, and as innocent as the innocent; and it has long been found out what is the best way of taking things. ‘The earth,’ said the great traveller, ‘is much the same wherever we go’; and the changes of position which women and students tremble and shilly-shally before, leave things much as they found them. Cœlum non animum mutant. The winter comes and destroys all, but in the spring the old grasses come up all the greener.

Let us not sit in a corner and mope, and think ourselves clever, for our comfort, while the room is full of dancing and cheerfulness. The sum of the whole matter is this. Whatsoever your hand findeth to do, do it without fiddle-faddling; for there is no experience, nor pleasure, nor pain, nor instruction, nor anything else in the grave whither thou goest. When you get to the end of this life, you won’t find another ready-made, in which you can do without effort what you were meant to do with effort here.

To R. W. Emerson, Esq.

University Hall, Gordon Square: July 22, 1850.

Why I have let six months pass away without acknowledging the copy of your ‘Representative Men,’ which I received and read so thankfully, I do not know; unless it be that I was not willing to put an end at once to the relation of debtor which resulted. To have a distinct claim on one for a letter constitutes a sort of connection, even with the Atlantic between us.

I am here at the end of my first session in London, not much the worse, nor much the wiser. I am not sorry myself to be where I am: in very many ways, it is a greater seclusion than the academic shades you took pleasure in looking at, at Oxford.

To T. Arnold, Esq.

University Hall: July 23, 1850.

I am rejoiced to find you busy and in mediis rebus so soon. Your population of course won’t be very beautiful and attractive, but all the truer to fact in general for having plenty of alloy, and that is a comfort to a certain extent; earthly paradises being mostly milk-and-watery, and not long to last. Van Diemen’s Land with its convict basis has got at any fate something of the tantum radice ad Tartara, to begin with, and quantum vertice may come. In new colonies, I suppose, no amount of bishops and archdeacons can resist the general indifferentist tendencies of the commercial English middle-class, to whom the world is committed for the present.

I find, meantime, even the small amount of business which I have to do in this place beneficial to me, even the bank-books and cash-accounts.

To J. C. Shairp, Esq.

University Hall: March 9, 1851.

Ex nihilo nihil. He who does not come at all, does not come with goose quills, and à fortiori not with swan quills. Thus the logicians.

You must, therefore, correct your exercises with your own goose feathers. But, tell me. Have you got such big boys this half-year that the ordinary-sized instrument will not apply to their Latin prose? Why don’t you come up here and buy them for yourself?

We are still, I believe, travelling about the sun, round and round, and round and round, in the old foolish fashion. It is certainly a very funny way for the anima mundi to amuse itself. But chacun à son goût. In the midst of life we are in death, for suppose the anima mundi were to take a fancy to do something else, to go backwards and forwards, or even round the other way!

Cudwith, I am told, has an admirable disquisition on ‘A Plastic Nature,’ in a parliamentary sense, I suppose; for otherwise, would it not be pantheism? But indeed that is a mistake, for I hold it to be perfectly constitutional language, entirely in the spirit of our institutions in (Church and State, that is to say) Natural and Revealed Religion. Consider these things; watch and pray, that is the right way, for self and friends, among whom, believe me,

A. H. C.

To T. Arnold, Esq.

University Hall, Gordon Square: March 16, 1851.

I sent you five or six copies of the poem you were so friendly as to like so well. By the time they reached you, you would probably have been properly disenchanted, with a view to which contingency I fortified them by two Idylls of a truer pastoral poet or poetess. These you may accept, for the lack of better, as my wedding-present. The following you may accept or not, as you please:—

On grass, on gravel, in the sun,

And now beneath the shade,

They went in pleasant Kensington.

Let it remind you of the ancient Kensington Gardens, Fresh from the oven, it is, I assure you, tibi primo confisum. I am still resident in Gordon Square, and very little certain whether I shall or not continue so. The work does, however, well enough.

May 16, 1851.

This has lingered, I believe, chiefly because I desired to add some self-introducing phrase to your wife, the precise form of which was difficult; so pray give what you think becoming an ancient ally of her husband’s—best wishes—submission? For to a certain extent, even at this distance, old friends have to make their graceful withdrawal. It seems to me, at any rate on this side the water, that a wife is a sort of natural enemy to a man’s friends.

I, like you, have jumped over a ditch for the fun of the experiment, and would not be disinclined to be once again in a highway with my brethren and companions. But Spartam nactus es, hanc orna. And you, I should think, though amongst the poor sinful blackguards of yearly multiplying convicts and convictidæ, may make some pretty thing out of your Sparta.

Nothing is very good anywhere, I am afraid. I could have gone cracked last year with one thing or another, I think, but the wheel comes round.

To ——

January 1852.

I certainly am free to tell you that while I do fully think that the Christian religion is the best, or perhaps the only really good religion that has appeared, on the other hand, as to how it appeared, I see all possible doubt. Whether Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote the gospels, is profoundly dubious. St. Paul wrote his epistles, I should think, pretty certainly, but he had seen next to nothing. The religion of those epistles is very different from that of the gospels, or of St. James’s epistle. The whole origin of Christianity is lost in obscurity; if the facts are to be believed, it is simply on trust, because the religion of which they profess to be the origin is a good one. But its goodness is not proved by them; we find it out for ourselves by the help of good people, good books, &c. &c. Such is my present feeling, and the feeling of many. But I don’t urge it on any one, or mention it, except when I am specially asked, and seldom then. You remember you complained of my silence.

I mean to wait, but at present that’s what I think. A great many intelligent and moral people think Christianity a bad religion. I don’t, but I am not sure, as at present preached, it is quite the truth. Meantime, ‘the kingdom of heaven cometh not of observation,’ but ‘is in ourselves.’

To ——

London: January 1852.

The single life, according to the doctrine of compensation, has some superiorities, as, for example, that of being more painful, which, in a state of things that offers but little opportunity for elevated action, may be considered a temptation to the aspiring temper. To live in domestic comfort, toiling in some business not in itself of any great use, merely for the sake of bread for the household, does look at times a little ignoble, or at any rate unchivalrous. The Sydney project had some little relish of chivalry in it. What I looked forward to originally, in case of not going to Sydney, was unmarried poverty and literary work.

To ——

London: January 1852.

People who have got at all accustomed to write as authors are so incapable of writing, or even speaking, except ‘in character,’ and will run through a whole list of dramatis personæ as occasion occurs, without giving you a chance of seeing what they really are off the stage; if they try to be sincere, it often makes bad worse. There! that is one of the mischiefs and miseries of authorship which deters me. Ten years hence, perhaps! which would not be at all too late; but if never, no matter. I have myself been rather spoilt by somewhat over-quicksighted men, and thus have got into a perverse habit of hiding. Have you looked at my sometime pamphlet?[15] I should not write it now, you must know, I am wiser; but it meant something at the time.

Pictorial-ness, yes; that, when it becomes a wonderful vision of all things, is the ‘Spirit of the Universe.’ The pictorial attitude is not a good one for one’s continuous life, but for a season it transports one out of reality.

February 21, 1852.

I may perhaps be idle now; but when I was a boy, between fourteen and twenty-two throughout, I may say, you don’t know how much regular drudgery I went through. Holidays after holidays, when I was at school, after a week or so of recreation, which very rarely came in an enjoyable form to me, the whole remaining five or six weeks I used to give to regular work at fixed hours. That wasn’t so very easy for a schoolboy, spending holidays, not at home, but with uncles, aunts, and cousins. All this, and whatever work, less rigorous through pretty regular, that has followed since during the last ten years, has been, so far as external results go, perhaps a mere blank and waste; nothing very tangible has come of it; but still it is some justification to me for being less strict with myself now. Certainly, as a boy, I had less of boyish enjoyment of any kind whatever, either at home or at school, than nine-tenths of boys, at any rate of boys who go to school, college, and the like; certainly, even as a man I think I have earned myself some title to live for some little interval, I do not say in enjoyment, but without immediate devotion to particular objects; on matters as it were of business.

A bad style is as bad as bad manners, and manners you admit do mean something. Things really ill-written it does one a little harm to read. Would you forgive bad music because it was well meant? discord because concordantly intended?

Sunday Morning, London: March 1852.

Shall I begin by recommending patience about all questions, moral, mystical, &c.? It is not perhaps simply one’s business in life to ‘envisager’ the most remarkable problems of humanity and the universe simply for the sole benefit of having so done; still we may be well assured that only time can work out any sort of answer to them for us. ‘Solvitur ambulando.’ Meantime, in defence of silence, I have always an impression that what is taken to talk with is lost to act with; you cannot speak your wisdom and have it.

It is rain, rain, rain, and universal umbrellas travelling churchward. I meant to get another walk to Chelsea to see Mrs. Carlyle: but the waters are covering the face of the New Road, and the omnibuses, doubtless, would be full.

All things become clear to me by work more than by anything else. Any kind of drudgery will help one out of the most uncommon either sentimental or speculative perplexity; the attitude of work is the only one in which one can see things properly. One may be afraid sometimes of destroying the beauty of one’s dreams by doing anything, losing sight of what perhaps one will not be able to recover; it need not be so.

As to mysticism, to go along with it even counter to fact and to reason may sometimes be tempting, though to do so would take me right away off the terra firma of practicable duty and business into the limbo of unrevealed things, the forbidden terra incognita of vague hopes and hypothetical aspirations. But when I lose my legs, I lose my head; I am seized with spiritual vertigo and meagrims unutterable.

It seems His newer will

We should not think at all of Him, but turn,

And of the world that He has given us make

What best we may.

What we are we know (says the beloved Apostle, does he not?), or at any rate, can make some sort of guess, which is much more than we can about what we shall be: howbeit we know, or rather hope, that if we have done something here, it will count for something there; nor will those be nothing to each other there that have consorted faithfully here.

Lay not your hand upon the veil of the inner sanctuary, to try and lift it up; go, thou proselyte of the gate, and do thy service where it is permitted thee. Is it for nothing, but for the foolish souls of men to be discontented and repine and whimper at, that He made this very tolerably beautiful earth, with its logic and its arithmetic, and its exact and punctual multifarious arrangements, &c. &c.? Is it the end and object of all finite creation that sentimental human simpletons may whine about their infinite longings? Was it ordered that twice two should make four, simply for the intent that boys and girls should be cut to the heart that they do not make five? Be content, when the veil is raised, perhaps they will make five! who knows?

April 3.

As for the objects of life, heaven knows! they differ with one’s opportunities. (a) Work for others—political, mechanical, or as it may be. (b) Personal relations. (c) Making books, pictures, music, &c. (d) Living in one’s shell. ‘They also serve who only stand and wait.’ I speak as a philosopher, otherwise fool; but you may look at things under some such heads.

It is odd that I was myself in a most Romanizing frame of mind yesterday, which I very rarely am. I was attracted by the spirituality of it. But what has hitherto always come before me as the truth is rather that—

It seems His newer will

We should not think at all of Him, but turn,

And of the world that He has given us make

What best we can.

To ——

Rugby: April 11.

I am enjoying myself here. Jowett, the great Balliol tutor, is here. This morning I walked out into broad and breezy pasture-fields, eastwards, looking towards Naseby, where perhaps we shall ride to-morrow. Rugby, you know, lies not far from Naseby field, near the source of the Shakespearian Avon; a branch railway to Peterborough runs up through the wide pasture-slopes, pretty well past the very sources. We are on the blue lias formation, from which, westward, you pass at Coventry into the red sand-stone, which stretches away to Liverpool; while eastward, within four miles, the Northamptonshire villages are all built of their native yellow-brown oolite. The Northamptonshire peasantry, also, in their knee-breeches and fustian gaiters, have a yellow-brown oolitish appearance.

In the Warwickshire physiognomy I can frequently detect the dross of Shakespeare. You have another bright, light-haired, sanguine, less bilious type, which perhaps comes of the Northmen—for our villages all hereabouts, Barby, Kilsby, Buckby, Naseby, including Rugby itself, have the characteristic Danish by termination.

April 13.

Well, we went our long ride: not quite to Naseby, but to the Hemplow Hills, a little short of it, starting at 2.30 and returning at seven. All through fields with chains of gates, broad grassy swells, where the Northamptonshire beef is fed, or used to be, for London markets; Shairp on his hunter, the pride of his heart, leading the way, and opening the gates, and commanding in chief. A party of six we were—two ladies, Mrs. Arnold and Miss Shairp; Conington was one. At 7.30 we reassembled, to dine with Shairp. Our course was eastward towards the sources of Avon; the wells of Avon are just below Naseby village, I believe. The whole country is a sheet of pasture (rather brown at present), over which you may well imagine King Charles and his Cavaliers riding south-westward from Leicester, to run their heads against the wall of Cromwell’s army.

The country is singularly destitute of gentlemen’s houses, and has a solitary unoccupied appearance, with its wide fields and its field-roads. A railway, however, with a single line of rails, and, I believe, three trains a day, looking quite afraid of what it is doing, runs up through them from Rugby to Stamford.

To ——

London: May 24.

The flowers are a great deal too beautiful for me, and I a great deal too unbeautiful for them. However, here they are now standing in my unartificial arrangement, glorifying this unfortunate apartment. I have not failed to find out the scarlet azalea. I have put it in a wine-glass with the lily, which, after all, is my chief friend.

How beautiful the falling leaves of flowers are! not decayed, not even as yet decaying, but ripe, full to their fullest of growth and adolescence. I cannot prevail upon myself to empty the wine-glass, the surface of whose water is covered with fallen geranium petals, though there are still buds enough opening and opened to make a fair show. The kalmias still survive; they will perhaps last till Thursday—sufficiently, at least, to satisfy the eyes of a lover of falling petals.

People should not be very sceptical about things in general. ‘Wen Gott betrügt, ist wohl betrogen.’ There are plenty of good things in the world, and good persons. Fitness is a great deal, but truth is a great deal more. If things are good, we ought to accept them as such; looking at them, and not thinking of our own fitness.

To R. W. Emerson, Esq.

London: June 17, 1852.

My dear Emerson,—I hope a letter from me will not be a disagreeable visitor, though it is to be all about business, and that entirely my own business. The business is, that I entertain thoughts of emigrating to your side of the water. University Hall has not flourished; I have left it some months. I am at present merely Professor of English Language and Literature at University College, here, the stipend for which honourable position amounts to some 30l. a year. Meantime, like the rest of mankind, I wish to be married and am as good or bad as engaged. Is there any chance, do you think, of earning bread and water, if not bread and flesh, anywhere between the Atlantic and the Mississippi, by teaching Latin, Greek, or English?

I am half loath now, after nearly three years’ apprenticeship, to quit this great town. It is almost like beginning to go down from a high mountain top which it has taken long hours to get to. But I dare say it would be for the best.

To ——

Weybridge: July 30, 1852.

Last night I came down here with Farrer, and walked straight away from the station to Chertsey. We went to St. Anne’s Hill, where there is a fine view; from it you can see Richmond and Betchworth beeches: thence across the ferry to Laleham, where Arnold lived before he went to Rugby, and where I had never been. We found our way to the house he used to occupy—a solidish red brick place, with a narrow turn for a carriage in front, and a tolerable garden alongside: it is unoccupied. We also looked in at the church window, and made out the pulpit whence he used to fulminate, and saw four gravestones in the churchyard over his mother, two sisters, and another, to me unknown, relation. We got back through the meadows only about 9 P.M.

And this morning I have been to Chobham. I took the Ordnance Map, and walked, I should say, about eight miles, by road and by common, through sun and shade, specially the former, and about half-past twelve found myself seated under a beech avenue, looking out over wide heathy banks to the westward, and to the southward into a sort of wide, tolerably rich, and treey upper valley; the avenue leading to iron gates at the south-east end; some clumps of Scotch firs on the heath to the north, visible through the opposite rows of beeches. Really a very pretty place indeed. I walked down under the house, and on into the village, and refreshed myself at a tavern called the Sun, and walked on three miles to the railway, and so home. Certainly Chobham is a remarkably nice place—so green and rich, close to the very edge of the wide waste heath, and looking abroad far over all the expanse from Bagshot to Epsom, and I know not what more. The distance was dull in the heat of noon.

There is a letter from Emerson, with general encouragement towards America, and urging a preliminary visit by ‘first ship.’

To R. W. Emerson, Esq.

London: August 6, 1852.

Your letter came, a welcome surprise to me, on Saturday last. My best way of thanking you is, I believe, simply to accept your kind proposal. You will, I dare say, not refuse to recognise thanks in that shape. My ‘first ship,’ however, cannot, I fear, be earlier than the very middle of October. Come, however, I shall, and avail myself of your proffered hospitalities.

To ——

Min-y-don, Colwyn: August 1852.

I have been making farewell visits[16] to my relations. I have ridden seven miles and back to Conway, and walked two miles and back to make a call; all of which, however, scarcely keeps me properly awake in this dreamy seaside place, and dreamy late summer weather. I am continually stopping to look out at the view through the window before my table. I look out on the Little Orme’s Head, with its rounded weather-beaten limestone rocks. We are here half-way between Abergele and Conway, the sea a hundred yards off, with a bit of a lawn between, ending in a gorse hedge on the top of a steep bank going down direct upon the shore, in which bank now runs the line of railway; the Little Orme’s Head, four miles off, closing the view of the coast.

LETTERS.
FROM 1852 TO 1853.
AMERICA.

To ——

On board the ‘Canada’: Friday, November 5, 1852.

Here you see my first written words on board H.M.S. ‘Canada,’ which is tossing like fury against a dead-ahead wind.

Saturday night we passed Holyhead, Sunday coasted Ireland, and passed the ‘Asia’ steamer with all her sails set. This day week we are to be in port, spite of head wind.

Sunday, November 7.

A very Sunday-like Sunday indeed: fair wind and bright weather; church service in the chief cabin, read by the surgeon, with sermon by the Rev. Dr. Cook, of the Presbyterian Established Church in Quebec: the lieutenant in his uniform, and some ten or twelve broad-chested sailors, in their blue woollen shirts, occupying the end of the cabin, aft—fine fellows as need be seen. Since then, a deal of promenading on the quarter-deck. I got sick of the publicities, however, about two o’clock, and come down to my cabin to scribble. Lowell, who is on board, is very friendly indeed. Thackeray and I also get on.

We have on board a Dragoon officer and a young Engineer officer, bound for Bermuda; two American medical students; a young half-English New York candidate for orders; a Manchester youth, on his first trip to New Orleans; a Cambridge travelling bachelor, with his brother, an Oxford man, knocked up with work in the University crew, going to Montreal; a Comptroller of the Customs in Halifax, and perhaps a well-to-do Halifax merchant, both well-bred Englishmen; a south country merchant, also English, with an American wife; a Boston chronometer maker; a Virginian with wife, son, and little niece. Sundry American brokers, &c. &c., make up our party.

November 8.

No sun to-day, and no observation; but we are running thirteen knots; and the sea is a very gentle beast, and hardly rocks at all, and we are all good-humoured and hungry.

November 9.

The ship is plunging like a porpoise. Last night came on a sort of gale, with cloud and fog, and we moreover just off Cape Race, and, I believe, really running straight upon it, which, you know, is a great mass of cliff 300 or 400 feet high. However, we stopped and sounded, and stopped and sounded again, and changed our course southward, and were safe past before bedtime, but have been going slowly, with a strong head wind.

November 11.

Off the coast of Nova Scotia. Last night at one o’clock we got to Halifax. We had a very noisy night of it—boxes going out and boxes coming in, and passengers ditto.

I have walked one lady about the deck for an hour, and talked half an hour to another, and another half-hour with Thackeray, who was laid up in his berth. I was called on deck to see the ‘Niagara’ steaming away eastward from Halifax, some eight miles to the south of us. I am perhaps a little sick of the amount of intimacy which enforces itself upon one under the circumstances of fellow-passengership. It is to be ended, however, to-morrow.

There was speechifying and toasting at dinner yesterday in the usual approved style. All our healths were drunk at the lunch-dinner. Thackeray, of course, was drunk; then Mr. Degen proposed Lowell, the American poet; and Lowell, in returning thanks, proposed the English poet—me!—and all the people stared at this extraordinary piece of information, and I made my very modest speech, &c. &c.

I have been interrupted by a discourse on the Fugitive Slave Law by a citizen of Hartford, Connecticut, who takes, not the anti-slavery view, and affirms that the North is quite satisfied. The Lowells meantime are fervent Abolitionists.

Tremont House, Boston: Monday, November 15, 1852.

Here I am an established Bostonian. Friday arrived at sunset; found Thackeray already at this hotel, and that I had been inquired for. Supped with Thackeray & Co., and went to bed.

Saturday.—Lady Lyell takes me to the Ticknors; go to Dr. Howe’s office, close by here, and see him; presently in comes young Mr. Norton, and afterwards Mrs. Howe. Leave letters on the Appletons and Abbott Lawrences. In returning meet Norton, with whom I swear eternal friendship; he takes me and introduces me at the Athenæum, and at a Club, and we walk and talk till 2.30.

Then I dine at the hotel, at the ‘Ladies’ Ordinary,’ with Thackeray and the Lyells; then lionise with Thackeray and his friend Crowe through the streets, till it is time to go off to the railway, which at 6.45 carries me off to Concord, to Emerson. Mrs. Emerson is out, with her eldest girl. Old Mrs. Emerson, called ‘Madam,’ is sitting in the room—a small, benevolent-looking, large-eyed old lady, the original of Ralph Waldo.

Sunday.—Loads of talk with Emerson all morning. Breakfast at eight displays two girls and a boy, the family. Dinner at 2.30. Walk with Emerson to a wood with a prettyish pool. Concord is very bare (so is the country in general); it is a small sort of village, almost entirely of wood houses, painted white, with Venetian blinds, green outside, with two white wooden churches—one with a stone façade of Doric columns, however. Emerson’s ancestor brought his congregation here from Gloucestershire (I think) in the year 1635.

There are some American elms, of a weeping kind, and sycamores, i.e. planes; but the wood is mostly pine—white pine and yellow pine—somewhat scrubby, occupying the tops of the low banks, and marshy hay land between, very brown now. A little brook runs through to the Concord river.

At 6.30, tea and Mr. Thoreau; and presently Mrs. Ellery Channing, Miss Channing, and others.

This morning I came away at a quarter to nine: a hard frost. To-day I have seen Norton, and called on Charles Sumner. To-morrow I am to dine with Norton, to meet Felton, the Greek Professor, at the Club; and the next day at his father’s, and to call on Longfellow, who called on me.

I like Boston. There is a sort of park, ‘the Common,’ with iron railings, and houses something like the Piccadilly row above the Green Park, only all residences without shops—one built by Governor Hancock, whose name is first in the Declaration of Independence, quite an old-fashioned George II. house; the others later, of red brick, with balustrading and carving, many of them. It is really very tolerably English in the town. The harbour is very pretty. It is like a very good sort of English country town in some respects.

People dine here at 2.30 regularly, and ask you to dine then. Fashionable dinners at five. At evening parties you are supposed to have had tea, and to want supper.

Alas! I have not seen a garden yet in Massachusetts. Emerson’s little girl, however, brought in some small ‘pensées,’ which she called ‘lady’s delights,’ and some other little things that did for flowers. Edith is a very nice child, and will be eleven next Monday. ‘When I was going to be nine years old I didn’t know how I should feel.’ ‘Well, and how did you feel?’ ‘Oh, I didn’t feel anyhow.’

I had Abolition pretty well out with Emerson, with whom one can talk with pleasure on the subject. His view is in the direction of purchasing emancipation. I send a bit of bark from a birch in Emerson’s wood lot, the white or papyra birch, from which the Indians make canoes. I remember long years ago seeing these birches on a hill near Lebanon Springs, up which we children were taken to look out over a tract of country which we were told was Massachusetts.

November 19.

I am to settle at Cambridge next Tuesday. I suppose I shall by degrees find out the defects of the Yankee at home, but certainly they are very kind.

Here, in Boston, I am ‘the celebrated author of “The Bothie,”’ a whole edition of which was printed and sold, they say, here.

Houses are sadly dear, one is told, both in Cambridge and Boston; and things in general are said to be expensive, meat and drink excepted. Drink, however, in the shape of wine and spirits, is actually forbidden. Temperance is established by law. Only those who have stocks on hand of their own can drink; a few sellers, whose licenses have not expired, can sell. But after that there will be no selling at all. This is called Maine Law, and is said to be of great benefit in the country places, crime being greatly reduced. Dr. Howe gives no wine; at Mr. Dwight’s there was sherry and Madeira, but hardly any was drunk: three very small glasses apiece by the gentlemen—by the ladies none. Wine and spirits are certainly not required where there is so much stimulant in the air; even tea and coffee may be well dispensed with. The best drink for the climate, I think, is cocoa.

November 21.

Yesterday Emerson gave a grand dinner, in honour of my poor self apparently, at the Tremont House, where were Longfellow, Hawthorne, Greenough the sculptor, Charles Sumner, Theodore Parker, Ellery Channing, Lowell, and five others—a very swell dinner, I assure you.

November 22.

I have been up and have called on Mr. Prescott and Mr. Winthrop. Cambridge is three miles from Boston, with omnibuses every quarter of an hour, and also a railway. The cold increases; snow is announced, but has not come yet here, though it has in most parts.

Cambridge: November 24.

Here I am settled at Cambridge in my own apartments, with all but my books about me: indoors and out-of-doors, north-west wind and hard frost.

To-morrow, which is Thanksgiving Day, the old Puritan substitute for Christmas Day, I have promised to go to church with the Nortons. The Congregationalists, Baptists, and Unitarians all unite for the day, in the Unitarian building.

A young lady, the other night, after I was introduced, told me she had had the pleasure of looking at me (the celebrated author!) at a party a few nights before. The force of compliment could no further go. I very much doubt, however, whether the fact of my authorship has reached the serene nostrils of the Boston magnates, though Longfellow fully recognises the high merit of the Pastoral.

November 26.

In some respects this is a barren and shallow soil; but it is an immense thing to feel that you really are in all likelihood wanted, whereas in London one was wasted in occupying a place which some one else wished for. I shall send you an American edition of the poor old ‘Bothie.’ People here put it on their drawing-room tables, and think it innocent enough, which indeed, believe me, it really is: a little boyish, of course, but really childishly innocent. I read it nearly through the other morning, which I had not done since the time of its first appearance; but I had heard it alluded to so much, I thought it my duty to see what it was like.

Longfellow is a very good fellow; he gave us quite an English dinner yesterday. He had just received a present of grouse, pheasants, and milk-punch from some one he had been civil to, and issued immediately his invitations: Norton, Felton, Lowell, and me.

November 28.

Here I am with my first Anglo-American pupil, aged seventeen, at his first day’s work. He is a descendant of the old Governor Winthrop, of Cromwell’s times. He is to come three hours a day till July. But I should not wonder if before that he were across the Rocky Mountains, or filibustering in Cuba, or sowing other wild oats à la jeune Américaine. Here, however, in bodily form, to the extent of six foot one, he is, turning Greek into English, neither better nor worse, before me at the present moment. It is agreeable after a fashion to be at work again; and teaching Greek is a very innocent trade at any rate—as innocent, I should think, as most.

Last night I went to tea at Mrs. ——’s. I like herself very much; not equally so some of her friends; they do the satirical and the sarcastic, and the ill-natured and the fastidious, and the intellectual and all that, for which one had better go back to London.

December 5.

This winter is extraordinarily mild: to-day a little hoar frost, but bright sunshine all the same. The difference here in general is, that there is bright daylight from 6½ A.M. to near 6 P.M., even now just before the shortest day. You know we are in the latitude of Rome.

Yesterday I walked, from three to six, towards the river Mystic; to-day across the river Charles (which is close here, running under the low bank of Cambridge), towards Brookline and Roxbury, which was rather pretty; but everything is sadly bare—no hedges, and not many trees. The only green trees now, of course, are the firs, which are much like the spruce firs in England. There is a sort of juniper, which grows high like a cypress, or even higher, and is pretty.

Yesterday I had a walk with James Lowell to a very pretty spot, Beaver Brook. Then I dined with him, his wife, and his father, a fine old minister, who is stone deaf, but talks to you. He began by saying that he was born an Englishman, i.e. before the end of the Revolution. Then he went on to say, ‘I have stood as near to George III. as to you now;’ ‘I saw Napoleon crowned Emperor;’ then, ‘Old men are apt to be garrulous, especially about themselves;’ ‘I saw the present Sultan ride through Constantinople on assuming the throne;’ and so on—all in a strong clear voice, and in perfect sentences, which you saw him making beforehand. And all one could do was to bow and look expressive, for he could only just hear when his son got up and shouted in his ear.

December 14.

I am to read a lecture here on English literature, gratis; but if I should read it two or three times after that, I may make it pay something worth speaking of. One lecture may be read as much as a hundred times. It is rather a distinction, though a barren one, to read it, as I shall, the first time here in Cambridge; at least the other lecturers in the same course are Professors, and it was thought it would make me known in College.

Look here at this little incident in illustration of manners and customs. I find, in the middle of my small breakfast, that there is no sugar, so I ring; no one comes, and I do without. About a quarter of an hour after comes the Irishwoman, and says, ‘Did ye want anything when ye rang? I was sorry I couldn’t come just then. I thought it was to take away, and I wasn’t through my breakfast. ‘I wasn’t through’ is the universal Yankee for ‘I hadn’t done.’ ‘Are you through?’ for ‘Have you done?’ continually occurs.

A school for boys or girls is what all the good advisers give as their best advice—Felton, Longfellow, G. Emerson. I am content to do this till I am forty, at any rate. I think often of the plan of joining somebody who is in the trade already. But this seems not after Yankee fashion; everybody is for himself. Mr. George Emerson’s school for girls is conducted entirely by himself, with lady-teachers under him.

Last night I met Miss Sedgwick, a vigorous-looking lady of fifty, perhaps. James Lowell, who has written the poems, is cousin to John Lowell, whose father founded the Lowell Institution for lectures. One of the family was the first setter up of manufactures here, and, as it were, founded the town of Lowell. There is a town Lawrence, called after Abbott Lawrence, in like manner.

I felt to-day as if I could be content to settle down here in America for good and all, very fairly indeed; there is less that is wrong here, on the whole, though less that is great. I was just reflecting that it is better to be out here, and be away from London; and yet sometimes when I was there, I thought it was dreadful to be torn away from what I was learning and feeling and seeing. Now it seems as if all my time there had been wrongly employed, and that it is an excellent thing to have got away. However, it is more perhaps what one escapes than what one gets.

Shall I tell you what an Old Hunker is?—a high-and-dry Tory; and Democrats are the Radicals, the party now victorious over the Whigs, who are the same as our Tories. Ticknor, Prescott, and Co. are Old Hunkers; Hawthorne is a Democrat; Emerson is a Free Soiler. If I were to be anything (on the Slavery question) I should be a Free Soiler, which only means that you won’t have any new Slave States. I wouldn’t interfere with existing Slave States, except to intimate that the central Government is ready to assist in any measure any Slave State will propose for getting rid of slavery; i.e. to give compensation. I believe the Fugitive Slave Law was a piece of truckling to the South—quite an unnecessary concession.

January 3, 1853.

There is no stiffness here, I think. The ——s do the grand a little; and the ——s are exclusive, but not grand; and the Nortons are neither grand nor exclusive—very kind-hearted and good. Charles Norton is the kindest creature in the shape of a young man of twenty-five that ever befriended an emigrant stranger anywhere.

I am not at all a distinguished literary man in some eyes here, remember; and as for poets, ‘there are four poets in Cambridge,’ said some one to me the other day—‘Mr. Longfellow, and you, and Mr. Batcheldor, and Mr. something else.’ I had, however, to send an autograph to Cincinnati; two hexameter verses, observe.

Written by A. H. Clough, for a reader at Cincinnati.
Witness his hand and seal this 26th of December.

Ladies here usually carve and bring you things, even at great suppers; no man seems expected to carve for a lady, and they don’t get up when the ladies leave the dining-room, nor open the door, except casually. Only in omnibuses, and the cars—as they call railway trains—they expect you to give your place up; some, I believe, will even ask. The worst thing is the service. Servants are very indifferent—dirty, uninstructed Irish, who are very slow in learning to be clean, and very quick in learning to be independent, and ‘I’m as good as you’ in their manners.

Some people here do manage very nicely, but mostly there is the feeling that there is nobody to do things for you. A meal is rather a matter of business than of enjoyment. It is transacted. They don’t sit over it like rational beings; they do it like washing their hands, or as people dress who have got an engagement to be down to.

Last night I read my lecture, and it seems to have done very well. Afterwards I went to supper to James Lowell, and stayed there from 8.30 to 1 A.M. Thackeray came at ten; Longfellow, Dana, Quincy, Estes Howe, Felton, Fields, and another. Puns chiefly, but Dana is really amusing. Thackeray doesn’t sneer; he is really very sentimental; but he sees the silliness sentiment runs into, and so always tempers it by a little banter or ridicule. He is much farther into actual life than I am; I always feel that, but one can’t be two things at once, you know.

Here’s a story—Mr. Dana of himself. Mr. Dana lectures in a country town; walks home to sleep, after it, with the ‘President of the —— Lyceum,’ a country farmer. Dead silence. Farmer: ‘Mr. Dana, I b’lieve you wrote a book once?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Waal, I never read it myself; my foaks have, though.’ Dead silence again: arrival home. The wife, an invalid (accented thus in America), as farmers’ wives mostly are, hasn’t been at lecture, and states her sorrow, &c. Farmer: ‘My dear! b’lieve you’ve read Mr. Dana’s book.’ Wife looks deadly blank, says at last, ‘She b’lieves she’s heard speak of it.’ They sit down, and the apples are brought in. A little black-eyed, sharp-looking, school-frequenting daughter comes in. Farmer: ‘Susan ’Liza! you’ve read Mr. Dana’s “Two Years before the Mast.”’ Susan ’Liza (quickly): ‘No, sir.’ Dead silence till bedtime.

Here are some stories which Webster told of his youth. His father was a small farmer in New Hampshire, and had helped one of his neighbours, who afterwards removed and went into the woods. Daniel was going in that direction to College, and his father told him to inquire after these people. He went, found them in a log hut, and said he would stop Sunday with them, to which they were agreeable. At supper-time the father of the family said to him that for the present they were living upon grass. And grass fried with lard did actually constitute supper, breakfast, dinner, and every meal; and, said Webster, ‘It wasn’t so bad either.’ At parting, the man said to him, ‘Well, Daniel, what are you going to be? A minister? they’re all hypocrites. A doctor? they’re all impostors; and lawyers, all cheats. No honest young man would be any of these trades. But there is a trade I can tell you of, by which you can make your fortune. There used to be one or two in it, but I don’t know of any in these parts now: you’d have it all to yourself. I don’t know how it’s done, but it’s by larning, someways. You’d best be a conjuror. When a man loses his cow, the conjuror tells him where it is; don’t know how; by larning tho’.’ ‘Which advice,’ said Webster, ‘might have materially changed my after life.’

Another story. Webster’s father had a neighbour who was an honest, well-behaved man, only given to drink. Once when drunk he took his rifle and shot two friendly Indians. The Indians demanded to have him given up, and the people put him in jail. But his friends thought it hard he should be hung for killing Indians, and they broke open the prison and sent him off to Canada. The Indians vowed they would be revenged on him all the same. He lived in Canada with his wife and children some time; but whether it was terror or conscience, at last he made up his mind and left them, and went to the Indians and said, ‘It was I killed your two chiefs; here am I, do what you please with me.’ So the Indians were astonished, and considered the matter, and said, ‘No, you shall be our chief.’ And there he remained with them the rest of his days.

January 8.

Snow and sleighing in full force. The omnibuses are all on runners in sleigh fashion; wheels are everywhere discarded.

January 10.

Thermometer down at 5° at sunset yesterday; so must, I think, have got down to -5° during the night.

For me, I was taken yesterday to the College chapel, where an eminent Unitarian preached on the parable of the prodigal son, or rather, against the said parable. To be sure there was joy, because it was so very uncommon and surprising a thing when a sinner repented. It was a thing that very rarely indeed came to pass.

I sometimes think that my course is one that must be walked alone, and that it is altogether too unpleasant and poverty stricken for married happiness. I sometimes, when I have heard people here talk, for example, of Theodore Parker, as if he were the scum of the earth, think that it will not do to keep silence. I have no particular love for Theodore Parker; but he is so manifestly more right than the people who despise him, I cannot, I think, in right altogether remain silent and acquiesce. It looked to me as if orthodoxy (of the Unitarian kind) was as bad for me as any realler orthodoxy elsewhere.

Anecdotes of the old clergy here are very rife: they were quite an aristocracy, and could do as they pleased more than anyone else, which now nobody can at all. They were appointed for life, with fixed incomes; this is not the case so generally now. Religious opinions contrary to the orthodox Unitarianism are represented as much disliked here.

Mrs. —— says Boston ladies suffer in their health through the endless trouble of keeping servants doing things properly and nicely; that the only way to live is to live rudely and simply. I think she is right. Ornament in America is a failure. As England stands to France, so America to England for ornamental things.

January 20.

I have just had a new pupil; he is a very good fellow and eager to learn, and a ‘senior,’ i.e. a fourth year student in the College. I am also going to write an article on the Oxford Commission in the ‘North American Review.’ Another book matter is, that Little & Brown, the head booksellers here, want me to help towards republishing Langhorne’s Plutarch. I am to have discretion to do it as I like, and $350 for the work.

My fancy at present is, if possible, to live here in a humble way, take a few pupils, and do booksellers’ work or lecture, and so make up an income. I think it will be less fatiguing and less hazardous than setting up a school, which any rumour of heterodoxy might upset. And I do think that I can teach Greek better than most Yankee Grecians.

January 29.

Yesterday evening out in a sleigh and four horses, with seven ladies and one youth, making nine in all, to Jamaica Plain, four miles off. I was put into a buffalo skin, which indeed was desirable, though it was not very cold. Sleighs, you know, are all open; some are like great barges, carrying thirty people inside, sitting all round, drawn by perhaps eight horses.

There is living here in Cambridge a Greek named Evangelinus Sophocles, who was bred up in a monastery, I think, on Mount Athos, and afterwards in a branch of it at Alexandria. What strange recollections he must have!

February 4.

Sleep as much as you can, eat plentifully, but don’t drink wine or spirits much. Such is the rule they give for New England living.

I don’t think I shall ever do much work alone, not from laziness, but really from having no proper rest to go to after it. I feel as if I had a good deal of work in me, but it takes time to bring it out; and the mere drudgery of the Plutarch, though not disagreeable, takes a deal of time.

I am, I know, sometimes carried away into a world of abstraction when I write or study, or so forth. I believe my ambition also, such as I have (it is only lately that I have begun to believe that it exists in my composition at all), tends in that direction. Yet I am always so glad to come away from it. It is odd how much better I like this Plutarch than I do anything which requires distinct statement of opinion. Yet it bothers me a good deal, for mending up an old translation seems often like putting new wine into old bottles. They would hardly allow time, or else I could almost believe it would be best even for my own sake to spend time in translating it myself.

I, I am sure, have always been inclined to believe in the good of the world, and have always acted on that belief, except for a brief interval (just when I was in London), and even then it was partly that I was afraid lest I should be trusting my own vague hopefulness too unreasonably. Turn the thing over as we will, we can’t make sure; but doubt as we will about things in particular, we can, for the whole, feel sure.

Fires of wood are the pleasantest one sees here: there is anthracite coal and another coal, which I burn mixed. In many houses the rooms are heated only by the furnace, which is found in almost all houses—a great stove down below in the cellar, with pipes sent through the various rooms, and what are called registers. What impairs the beauty and youthfulness of the American women is, I believe, their hot fires and furnaces, and the dryness of the heat given by the anthracite coal. But Mrs. Longfellow looks as youthful as possible.

February 9.

Look in the ‘Fraser’ of this month for some verses about Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington; Napoleon’s dying words ‘Tête d’armée.’ The Duke didn’t say anything, did he? I went on that supposition. It has been beautifully bright and sunny here to-day: there is always that advantage here. The thermometer is down to 6° or 7° to-night, I dare say.

I think I must have been getting into a little mysticism lately. It won’t do: twice two are four, all the world over, and there’s no harm in its being so; ’tisn’t the devil’s doing that it is; il faut s’y soumettre, and all right. Some of my companions are too much in the religiose vein to be always quite wholesome company. This climate also is, I think, mystical.

February 10.

Only ten pages of Plutarch done to-day. But at twelve Emerson appeared, and after sitting awhile with me took me off to dine in town with him. He is just come back from the West. I go to stay Sunday with him, week after next. I dined at his hotel, and sat in his room with him talking till a quarter to five, and then came home to Plutarch.

Drive deep the furrow in the sluggish soil,

E’en to the rock force in the labouring share;

Earth, that with starveling ears mocks niggard toil,

To pain and strife will golden harvests bear.

This Plutarch is not a religious subject, fortunately. I have rather the feeling that one day or other it will have to be done, whatever I do now, and however undesirous I may be. The only thing to keep one quiet is the perfect readiness to be unquiet at any moment that may call for it or occasion it.

February 18.

Two hours and a bit at an evening party. C’en est trop. However, there were some few reasonable beings there. I don’t much like going to parties, or rather do not approve of their profuse expenditure of one’s finest spirits: however, one must harden oneself. People are cleverer, and know more over there, though perhaps they are more unworldly and amiable here.

Will you think it wrong if I do what I think best in itself, even if it don’t seem the quickest way to get on? Apropos of this Plutarch, I feel sometimes as if I must not trifle away time in anything which is not really a work to some purpose, and that any attempt to be happy except in doing that would be mere failure, even if apparently successful. It sometimes seems to be said to me that I must do this, or else ‘from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have.’ There is nothing very terrible in this, but I cannot get myself to look at things as mere means to money-making; and yet, if I do not, I seem in some sense guilty. It may be the sanguine atmosphere of a new country has filled me with a vain confidence of there being really something in me to be done beyond mere subsistence. In London I felt myself pretty well helpless to effect anything.

‘Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.’ Is there any application for that, I wonder, nowadays?

February 21.

Just back at Cambridge after my visit to Emerson. I was rather sleepless there, but it is very good to go to him. He appears to take things very coolly, and not to meddle with religious matters of any kind. Since visiting him, I feel a good deal more reconciled to mere ‘subsistence’; if one can only have a little reasonable satisfactory intercourse now and then, subsistence may be to some purpose. But to live in a vain show of society would not do long. The Boston people have been too well off, and don’t know the realities. Emerson is really substantive.

Cambridge is a town or a city, or both, if you like. It is a huge district, a parish (which here they call a town) of several square miles, with roads stretching away here and there and everywhere, and houses all along them and off them. It is called a city because it has a Mayor and Corporation; but it is more like a big suburban district, a sort of Clapham or Highgate. There is scarcely anything that is a street, properly speaking; but there are acres of roads with houses along them, and cross lanes with houses too.

The College at Cambridge consists of a collection of old red brick buildings, with a library of modern granite. There are students’ rooms, much in our style, only humbler. The boys at College live partly in lodgings, partly in halls, under some little superintendence, much like College rooms; only they don’t dine together, but all about, in families, &c. They learn French, and history, and German, and a great many more things than in England, but only imperfectly.

February 23.

Just returned from dinner with the Longfellows, where I met Mrs. Stowe and her husband; only I to meet them. She is small, and quiet, and unobtrusive, but quick and ready-witted enough. Her husband is a very pleasant, good-humoured country minister, with keen black eyes. He has been in England before; she never.

I have done my article for the ‘North American’; not very well; but that can’t be helped; it is not in a wrong style of speaking, which is the main thing I care for. I have put a pretty good tail to a poor body, like a squirrel. It is very cold to-night, and the wind bloweth where it listeth in this room of mine.

Are you aware that life is very like a railway? One gets into deep cuttings and long dark tunnels, where one sees nothing and hears twice as much noise as usual, and one can’t read, and one shuts up the window, and waits, and then it all comes clear again. Only in life it sometimes feels as if one had to dig the tunnel as one goes along, all new for oneself. Go straight on, however, and one’s sure to come out into a new country, on the other side the hills, sunny and bright. There’s an apologue for you!

Here is a little story about Napoleon told to me by S. C., and told to him by some old soldier in Switzerland or France, probably a courier. This man was one of the cuirassiers, and was in the Russian campaign, and at his first battle was riding on to the charge, when suddenly he found his kettle (they all carry their kettles behind them) had dropped. So he jumped off, and was picking it up, when somebody called out, ‘Hé; cuirassier, que fais-tu là?’ He looked up and saw the Emperor. Touching his hat (which he did also in repeating it), ‘Ah, votre Majesté, j’avais perdu ma chaudière.’ ‘En avant,’ replied the Emperor, ‘les Russes en ont.’

March 9.

Just returned from a little party, to which I went in a very bad humour, but have returned in much better. A pleasant tiny old house, the oldest in Cambridge, perhaps, that is really a pleasure to one’s eyes; beams across the ceilings, and solid wood-work, and so forth. I went at nine, and back at half-past ten; that also is the right thing. Tea, coffee, and chocolate; that also is sensible.

I am almost persuaded to be an Abolitionist, which, how ever, is not true; but I am a decided Free Soiler for the present, and entirely give up the cause of the Fugitive Slave Law.

Emerson is the only profound man in this country. There are some other nice people at Concord; but for society generally the advantage is greatly on the side of Cambridge. Concord would be but dull, but the walks are far prettier than here. It is nearly an hour’s journey from Boston. People don’t the least despise one for being poor in Cambridge, and indeed I recommend them not! There are two Miss —— and their mother living here; their father, now dead, was American minister for many years at —— and ——; and now one Miss —— teaches French, and the other music. My opinion is that the true position in this country is that of comparative poverty. No sort of real superiority of breeding or anything attaches as it does in England to the rich. The poor man can get his children educated at the public schools, to which the rich children go also, for nothing, prepared for College even. And very few people indeed are so rich by patrimony as not to be in business.

What I mean by mysticism, is letting feelings run on without thinking of the reality of their object, letting them out merely like water. The plain rule in all matters is, not to think what you are thinking about the question, but to look straight out at the things and let them affect you; otherwise how can you judge at all? look at them at any rate, and judge while looking. I was just now looking into a book of verse which I brought with me, at what is called there ὔμνος ἀύμνος; it wants a good deal of mending as it stands, but it is on the whole in sense very satisfactory to me still. However, we shall learn more together, I do not doubt. The only way to become really religious is to enter into those relations and those actualities of life which demand and create religion.

In the years 1844 and 1845 I was in very great force, and used to be taken for an undergraduate just come up to College. I am wiser perhaps now, but I have lost a good deal to become so.

March 16.

Here comes a letter from Carlyle, about my coming home and about the Council Office. I tell him I shall be very glad to come home, and very grateful to be brought; but I don’t dwell on what must be an uncertainty. I should like you, even if it were but for a little while, to see this worthy Yankee-land. From the specimens I occasionally meet with, I infer it to be a good deal the best part of the American Republic. But I should like to see the West.

March 30.

This morning I went for a walk of an hour and a half to Fresh Pond, the pond where they cut the ice to go to England, India, or wherever it may be. There are odd birds here. The rooks fly to the South, and have just reappeared; that is, I have seen one. There is a bird about as big as a starling, with a black head, and a slight tinge of red on the breast; this they call the robin. There are little things they call sparrows, more like sedge-birds, I think; and black-birds with long tails, that hold Sunday meetings in the pines, bigger than ours. But the prettiest bird I have seen is the blue-bird, rather less than the robin, with blue back and wings, and a red-tinted breast, something like a bullfinch, only larger.

The extremely-respectables of Boston attend ‘the Stone Chapel,’ an Episcopalian church of old time, whose minister, some thirty years ago perhaps, told his congregation that he had become a Unitarian, and therewith resigned. So they considered and consulted, and said, Well, they liked him very much, and they thought they would turn Unitarians too; what was good enough for him was likely to be as much as would do very well for them. So they took the English liturgy (for moreover certain endowments depended on the use of the Church liturgy) and cut off the tails of the prayers, and pruned things here and there, and lo! they have a very handsome Common Prayer Book, quite as good as any genuine one. And to this Stone Chapel go all the fashionable Unitarian people of Boston, in their best dresses, just as if they were Church of England people, and are deeply attached to their liturgy just as if it was the real thing. Is not that curious?

Did I tell you of the aged Calvinist woman, who being asked about the Universalists, said, ‘Yes, they expect that everybody will be saved, but we “look for better things”?’

April 1.

I went last night to Dana’s, where was pretty nearly all Cambridge; and where I had some port wine, I believe the first I have seen since I came to America. He showed us a copy of Hallam’s works handsomely bound, received by him in gratitude for his services in their behalf from the negroes of Boston. He defended their cause in some of the trials about the Fugitive Law.

Before the end of this month the Nortons depart, which will reduce my stock of sociabilities materially. They go in summer to Newport.

I have already established two decent walks, not to mention a sort of half-hour stroll, at the end of which there is a little spot where one can pause and be solaced. On southern slopes there is positively a slight tinge of green. The common, however, which is level, seems to me as brown as ever it was. Mind you tell me as soon as ever the little ferns begin to curl up out of the ground over with you.

April 4.

I have just had my little Ethics class, who seem to enjoy themselves very well, and certainly relieve my inactive life of Plutarchising very pleasantly. This sort of thing, the class of six or seven, is what I have always got on best with. I might get on as far as twelve or fifteen, but after that it gets disagreeable comparatively. I got on famously with some five of the youths at University College with these same Ethics, in the year 1851.

April 6.

To-day is the annual Fast-day, so my little class in Ethics goes to church instead and comes to me to-morrow. People all go to church to-day, and it is a sort of Sunday. Thanksgiving day in November and Fast-day in March or April are the two State religious observances in Massachusetts.

I am going to send a bit of the Mayflower which grows chiefly about Plymouth, where the Pilgrim Fathers landed, and it is called after their ship, ‘The Mayflower.’ They are rare. The spring is beautiful here also, though so slow. The American weeping elms are extremely graceful, with their long pendent branches hung thick with buds. There are sharpish frosts, however, at times, so that there is no appearance of leaf as yet, except upon these Mayflowers, which I think must have been specially sheltered or forced. I saw, by-the-by, a great bittern at Concord; it rose from a pond, and makes an odd noise, on account of which they call it the stake-driver. There were some Andromedas, just budding, covering all the banks of the pond.

General Pierce’s speech is not really at all aggressive; I believe he was forced to say something for his party, but he kept within the lines pretty well. They say that when he read the passage about territories that must become theirs, there was a general cheer; and when he went on to say that under his government no movement not perfectly fair and just should be made, there was a dead silence. Everett’s speech is made a good deal of; but I don’t think he’s up to the mark, and I believe the old Whigs are quite stranded. Circumstances may split the Democrats (Pierce’s people), and they may form into parties, one aggressive and the other conservative. Free soil, perhaps. For they say Mexico must be dropping in soon, and then there’ll be all the old question of Extension of Slave Area over again.

I am going to write an article in the ‘North American Review,’ on recent English poetry. I have been interrupted in my regular quiet Plutarch work, which suits me much better than reviewing Alexander Smith & Co. M. Arnold’s ‘Tristram’ has been giving me pleasure.

I have been reading Mrs. Gaskell’s ‘Ruth’; it is really very good, but it is a little too timid, I think. Ruth did well, but there is also another way, and a more hopeful way. Such at least is my feeling. I do not think she has got the whole truth. I do not think that such overpowering humiliation should be the result in the soul of the not really guilty, though misguided girl, any more than it should be, justly, in the judgment of the world.

I really am very comfortably settled, on very easy terms with the American world in general, and have nothing to complain of, except perhaps the fact which appears to be true everywhere, that to get a livelihood one must do work according to other people’s fancies, instead of one’s own, which of course are the best, but under the circumstances must give way.

Do you know the Nortons have been so good as to offer me house-room during their absence at Newport? so in three weeks’ time you must conceive of me as embowered among the pines of Shady Hill, about two-thirds of a mile from this present Mrs. Howe’s. It will be cooler too. July, August, and the beginning of September are the hot months.

April 28.

I have had a sort of rheumatic cold. The east winds come in, in the midst of the warmth, with damp icy chills from the icebergs. I have had similar sensations in Italy. This day four years I was in Rome, witnessing the battle in which the French got beaten.

May 12.

Last night I went to a ‘reception,’ that is the next thing after a wedding. At seven o’clock Miss ——, daughter of a German, once Professor, was united to a German merchant, in the presence of about seventy friends, in their drawing-room. I went, and found the groomsman at the door; he took me up, led me to the end of the room, where stood the newly-married lady, holding white flowers in her hand. I made my bow, turned to the right, and presented my congratulations to the lady’s mother, and retired. And so the thing went on for a couple of hours nearly. It is quite the old custom, older a great deal than ours, which only dates from the time when the law was passed enacting that all marriages should be performed before twelve at noon, some time in the middle of 1700-1800.

The most agreeable part of the proceeding was the leave-taking of the young people, who were her friends, which began towards the end of the evening.

On the whole, I do think that pupilising and writing is my proper vocation, and that if I could afford to stick to it, and do whatever work is offered me really well, I should in time be well paid for it. People talk in their sanguine way, but they don’t know how hard it is for the unfortunate solitary schoolmaster to get through his work from day to day: they don’t know how, with no real affection to recur to when he is overworked, he is obliged to run no chances of overworking himself; how he must, as it were, use only his left hand to work with, because he has to hold on with his right for fear of falling altogether. This is not indolence, and so forth.

Eile mit Weile: das war selbst Kaiser Augustus’ Devise.

I send some lily of the valley, which does not grow wild, however and is not native to America.

May 21.

A man who doesn’t go much into the kind of society where people have the chance of going backwards and forwards, and experimenting, and learning their own minds and other people’s minds, and correcting their views by finding out the feelings of others, runs into mistakes more flagrant and irretrievable than hundreds quite as bad really which occur continually. Because he has lived quietly and done his daily duties, and not gone into dancing and flirtation, he has known less about feminine feelings than worse men do, less perhaps also about his own. The mere man’s idea of a wife as a helpmate in duty is not in my judgment an insult to womankind, though it may require modification and correction. But if that were the worst sin committed against womankind the world would be better than it is; and many women, it appears to me, have been misled by their natural aversion to this into accepting worse things. It is a sad thing for a man to feel that by his very steadiness and self-sacrificing in doing his plain duty, he has cut himself off from the happiness which women, alas! are often ready to accord to the indolent and self-indulgent. Indeed, but I fear it is so, very often.

East winds and rain; such is our present not at all pleasant dispensation. September, October, November are said to be the most agreeable months here, and April and May the worst. People fly from Boston in the spring, if they are at all consumptive.

Shady Hill, Cambridge: June 4.

I woke this morning in a sort of paradise. My room here is a most delightful change from my late narrow crib, consequently I awoke in a sort of ecstasy; I have not been in anything like it since I left Combe. It looks south-eastward, right away to Boston, which is full in sight, not much above a mile and a half off; and the masts of some shipping are visible, near where, I think, the steamers lie for England. It is a great relief to get into a nice house, with everything pleasant about one.

On Sunday I walked across a bit of wood and got into a bog, which was all covered with the blue Iris. I picked also some Andromeda and Kalmia.

This climate certainly is to my somewhat rheumatic constitution extremely trying. Think of passing without notice from 85° in the shade to a cold icy-damp east wind of 50°. At three o’clock the thermometer was 89° or 90° in the shade.

June 15.

This is a blazing hot day, which makes me truly wish myself in England. But it will pass, and indeed there is a cool breeze; but that gives one a chill at the same time that one is melting with heat. The autumn is said to be very pleasant, and I myself cared little for the winter. But from the middle of March onward, God help one!

I went to Longfellow’s and had a very pleasant dinner; Emerson, Hawthorne, and C. E. Norton. Hawthorne goes July 7. I am going to Emerson’s next Saturday. I more and more recognise his superiority to everybody I have seen.

Energy is a very ordinary thing; reasonableness is much less common, and does ten times the good. Spurring and lashing is not good; one loses quite as much in sense and sober discernment as one gains in anything else.

June 21.

It rained heavily in the night. To-day is pretty cool and pleasant, and the rain-drops lie on the broad tulip-tree leaves among the flowers which are now coming out, just through my open window. I came back yesterday from Emerson’s, after a pleasant Sunday. I saw Hawthorne again, and his children too, Julian and Una, and a little thing about two years old. Concord is pretty in summer, and a good deal cooler than Cambridge. I saw also Margaret Fuller’s mother at Emerson’s, and liked her. There were visitors from New York, a young Englishman, and a young German that has married a daughter of Concord, both in the artist line, and living in New York; and there was quite a little crowd of people in the evening.

June 22.

The hottest day of the year, 94° or more out of doors and 86° in. But nothing is any real harm but the east wind.

June 23.

Quite cold again, and I have a sore throat with the change.

June 28.

The letter advising me to come home arrived this morning. I have telegraphed for my berth, and sail with this letter from New York.

LETTERS.
FROM 1853 TO 1861.
LONDON.

To Charles Eliot Norton, Esq., Cambridge, Massachusetts.

On board the ‘Asia’: July 7, 1853.

Here we are, pretty well on our way across, about 2,200 miles from New York.

Mr. Slidell, of Louisiana, and a young man apparently his companion, are perhaps the most unexceptionable human beings that one sees. Some Spaniards from Mexico and Cuba are also pleasant to look at, specially two little boys. A maiden aunt and nephew from Burlington, New Jersey, sit near me, and are not so bad. A horrid woman from New York whines, or rather wheines, or whaines, or even whoines just beyond, whom it is misery even to think of. I feel convinced there is a purgatory for vulgar people.

Combe Hurst, Surrey: July 15.

Now I am here I find the case is altered a good deal. Still I like America best; and, but for the greater security which one has in a fixed salary, would give up all thought of staying here at once. At least I might take the place for a time. It is a temptation, if I am to live the rest of my life chez vous, to secure another year’s schooling on this side first; πολλὰ δὲ διδασκόμενος, in short.

I like America all the better for the comparison with England on my return. Certainly I think you are more right than I was willing to admit about the position of the lower classes here. I hope you will be able to get along without anything like it, and in any case you have a great blessing in the mere chance of that. Such is my first reimpression. However, it will wear off soon enough, I dare say; so you must make the most of my admission. Thackeray, they tell me, is full of the kind-heartedness and generousness of the Americans, and is faithful to his purpose of writing no book.

July 20, 1853.

The thing is done; and I am to try my hand in this place. I go to the Education Office on Monday next. With the prospect of being able to marry within the year, I could hardly do otherwise. Yet I could not venture with any comfort without the prospect of America beyond.

To the same.

Council Office: August 29, 1853.

Really, I may say I am only just beginning to recover my spirits after returning from the young, and hopeful, and humane republic, to this cruel, unbelieving, inveterate old monarchy. There are deeper waters of ancient knowledge and experience about one here, and one is saved from the temptation of flying off into space, but I think you have beyond all question the happiest and best country going. Still the political talk of America, such as one hears it here, is not always true to the best intentions of the country is it?

Everybody is away from town, except a few stray lawyers and newspaper contributors. I took a long walk yesterday, calling at Highgate, on the Horners, with a young Morning Chronicler, son of the Vicar of Conway, a first-class man at Oxford, and Fellow of University. We went on beyond Highgate to a place called Muswell Hill, and thence near Colney Hatch, near the Great Northern Railway, and across the course of the New River to Southwell, where we got some luncheon, and then came back to Hornsey, where we got an omnibus, after walking from 12.30 to 5.

I met the other day, at the Horners’, Murray, the ci-devant American, just come from Egypt, and starting for Berne, where he is to have office: he is really very American. The Pulskys came in in the evening. I have met Mr. Pulsky three times in the last twelve months perhaps—once in England before I came away; then at Mrs. Howe’s, Boston, with you; and again yesterday, chez Mrs. Horner. We meet with the utmost unconcern under the oddest changes of circumstances; it is really very cosmopolitan.

Well, I go on in the office—operose nihil agendo—very operose, and very nihil too. London is dead empty, or nearly so. The Lords are scampering through the last bills, heaven knows how many per night. The Commons are off grouse-wards, and scarcely any one remains to ask one to dinner or anything else.

I am very glad to be enrolled among the φ. β. κ’s. What can I do to express my sense of the honour done me? I assure you I am very glad of any tie with my sometime fellow-citizens, if I may so call them. England, we who know America agree, is more endurable because of one’s knowledge of America as a refuge. However, my employment in England is in one respect, namely, in its entire freedom from all spiritual despotism or surveillance, more agreeable than what I used to have.

To the same.

Council Office: September 21, 1853.

I sometimes get overpowered by the burden and weight of European metropolitan life, and am driven in spirit to the solution of Transatlantic new life, but as to the letter of such palingenesy I can’t say. I like the quill-driving very well. I did not know how tired I had become of pedagogy or boy-driving till I learnt something of it by the change. Beyond that mere fact, however, I do not know that there is much interest in composing sheets of agenda.

I am very glad to hear something reasonable about American politics. As for naturalisation, it seems to me a little cloud that must cover a good space of the political heavens before long. I think the old countries must abandon their present doctrine of inalienable right. It seems fair, however, to allow some interval of time; and in case of ‘rebels,’ I should say no fully naturalised citizen, far less a man going to be a citizen, can claim with any justice to return to his old country and be protected by his new country. After full five years Kossuth could not without insult go to Vienna. It would be quite enough that he should go to Turkey or the Canton Tessin, which I would claim for him.

The old classical system by which closer ties of relationship between this country and that, than between this and some third, seems no bad one. Between America and England, between the British American Colonies in particular and the United States, one would be glad if there could exist some isopolity: that a man might be a citizen in which he pleased, and change about as he chose. Treaties with different countries might establish different degrees of privilege very naturally. Had I remained with you, I would gladly have become an American citizen; but I should not like to pledge myself to fight against England, except in defence of my new country. It seems to me it would be well if that degree of transfer were open to one.

To R. W. Emerson, Esq.

London: Sunday, October 9, 1853.

People are beginning to return now to their beloved metropolis. Here is a specimen of the sort of thing I used to try and represent to you. I went out this morning to do civilities, this being the only day of the week free for that object. I went first to Mr. Frank Newman, with whom was a certain Dr. Stamm, abroad on a mission to or from a new Religious Union or League—he delivering himself of a sort of Anima Mundi Religion; Humanism, I think they call it; F. N. fraternising from a Theistic distance. Thence I got to old Mr. Crabbe Robinson with Liberalism and Abolitionism, &c. Then I went across country and made a call in Belgravia, where presently in came two ladies, one of whom (called by Mrs. B.’s little girl Miss Lord ——, being sister to Lord ——) is a very fair specimen of aristocratic tradition. Then I fell in in my walk with Carlyle; and then two or three other casualties, which I omit. However, these changes of atmosphere do not affect me as they used to do. On the whole, I do not think there is much here you have to envy; and there is a hopefulness and a belief-fulness, so to say, on your side, which is a great compensation.

Your woods are in full beauty, I suppose, about this time. There is something visible of autumnal richness even here in the Regent’s Park.

Thackeray is off to Paris. He seems restless and uneasy after his Transatlantic travel. Europe feels small to him.

To Charles E. Norton, Esq.

[On hearing of his father’s death.]

London: October 13, 1853.

The news your letter brought was no surprise. The change in your father between the day when you first brought me to Shady Hill, and that when he bade me good-bye before going to Newport, was too great not to give some warning. And, quite recently, the accounts which I had had made me expect that your next letter would be to this purpose.

My own feeling is really, rather than anything else, that of your happiness in having so long and so much enjoyed the blessing of your father’s society. This is all the more striking to me, as I was parted from my father at nine years old, and hardly had begun to know him properly again before his death, soon after I had taken my degree at Oxford. I am truly glad that my visit to America was early enough to let me know your father.

To the same.

London: November 29, 1853.

It grieved me to the heart to think of my hostages being returned; and my books, &c. (much as I want them), being already embarked. But thank you very much for discharging that painful duty. I send you M. Arnold’s poems. I myself think that the Gipsy Scholar is the best. It is so true to the Oxford country.

December 9, 1853.

All news from your side is very acceptable; political, personal, and first-personal. I do a little Plutarch continually; only a very little, I fear; but it always brings up some vision of the Common, or Shady Hill, or the Appian Way, or the road across from your gate towards Allen and Farnham’s. Things go on slowly and rather dismally here in the December fog.

Tell Child not to be too learned about his Chaucer, for my sake; and, above all, to make the verses scan. I hesitate about recommending any indications of the metre in the typography. But a set of simple directions, emphatically and prominently given at the outset (e.g. for the sounding or silencing of the final e), will, I think, be essential. People won’t read Chaucer against their ears.

There is a curious notion afloat among the German extreme Radicals, that Russia is more hopeful than feudal Western Europe; that the life of the Russian commune is pure democracy; and except that every member is bound to the soil, and cannot quit it except by placing himself under the quasi-ownership of a seigneur, I believe there is some truth in the statement. However, I don’t think we can afford to try.

Carlyle has, like Emerson, just lost his mother; like her, I should think, rather a remarkable woman. He left the Ashburtons’ house in Hampshire just after I got there, to go and see her at Ecclefechan, in Annandale.

Will you tell me, please, what is the amount of rate for schools in Boston and Cambridge? I am right, am I not, in telling people that children of colour attend the schools at Cambridge, but not at Boston?

For a scrap of news—

Over-worked, over-hurried,

Over-Crokered, over-Murrayed.

Such was the monody uttered over himself by the invalided ex-editor of the ‘Quarterly,’ on retiring for an Italian seclusion.

To the same.

London: February 1854.

Here we are enjoying cool weather, with about as much light per diem as you get in mid-winter, looking, therefore, very cheerful and sunny. Meantime the Parliament is going to begin its parliamenteering of the new year; and the Queen, who it was said was afraid her loyal subjects might pelt her husband, is, it appears, not afraid, and is going to open session in person. Many people, do you know, really believed Prince Albert was actually sent to the Tower; and some repairs being in operation in one of the turrets, a large number of people collected to look on, in the belief that apartments were to be fitted up for H.R.H.

I read your article on Indian Canals with much pleasure and interest. I think it is very well done, and I hope it is all true. I fancy the Company have rather gained in public estimation by their late ordeal of trial.

Bright, you see, has for the first time come out for the secular system. It is a great accession to that cause, which, however, I think myself cannot prevail for our country in general. For the clergy in the country parishes are almost always the only persons who really exert themselves, the population in general being at present too apathetic to think of managing these matters. But in the municipal towns something perhaps could be done. And certainly all through the land the secular schools should receive government subsidies, from which at present they are excluded.

Convocation, you will perhaps observe, is allowed to sit, and there really is to be an effort to set the old church a-going again; much to its own and other people’s alarm. The census, by which it appears that the church people, so far as attending on Census Sunday went, are quite a minority, has taken the world by surprise.

To the same.

February 20, 1854.

Many thanks for the ‘Boston Daily Express.’ I do truly hope that you will get the North ere long thoroughly united against any further encroachments. I don’t by any means feel that the slave system is an intolerable crime, nor do I think that our system here is so much better; but it is clear to me that the only safe ground to go upon is that of your Northern States. I suppose the rich and poor difficulties will be creeping in at New York, but one would fain hope that European analogies will not be accepted even there.

Well, here we are going to war; and really people after their long and dreary commercial period seem quite glad: the feeling of the war being just is of course a great thing. The enlightened or official opinion of the Turkish troops meantime is extremely low.

As for the poems, I really do think seriously of accepting your benevolent offer, but I don’t think I can set to work to unravel my weaved-up follies at the present moment. There are very few, indeed, that I can at all find pleasure in seeing again.

Is it true, as is said, that Longfellow has resigned? If so, he will come over here and run the gauntlet of idolising young ladies, will he not? However, I think he is adroit enough to steer through the Belgravian multitude without much damage.

People talk a good deal about Whewell’s book on the ‘Plurality of Worlds.’ I recommend Fields to pirate it. It is to show that Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, &c., are all pretty certainly uninhabitable, being strange, washy limbos of places, where at the best only mollusks (or in the case of Venus, salamanders) could exist. Hence we conclude that we are the only rational creatures, which is highly satisfactory, and what is more, quite scriptural. Other scientific people, on the other hand, declare it a most presumptuous essay, conclusions audacious, and reasoning fallacious, though the facts are allowed; and in that opinion I, on the ground that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the inductive philosophy, incline to concur. Meantime, it is thought possible that Whewell may rise to the Episcopate on the wings of the orthodox inductive philosophy.

To the same.

Downing Street: May 9, 1854.

You will think I am perfide Albion itself. The fact is I have been overwhelmed with work and imaginary responsibility. Plutarch goes on, though with huge interruptions. And I was very glad to see Felton. And I obeyed your vermilion edict, and sent some verse by him; if you do think it worth while to be at the trouble, I will not be ashamed. I have some few Elegiacs and Hexameters, written at Rome during my visit there in the time of the siege.

Politics here are rather colourless. Scotch education is thrown overboard by a coalition between the landowners, establishmentarians, and voluntaries, who have defeated Government by eight votes. The Oxford Bill will pass with a few scratches in committee rather damaging to it, but not very momentous. Gladstone, I think, has done himself great honour by refusing to borrow for the war, but the bankers and great capitalists have been abusing him furiously. By this time you are all scattering to the seas and the hills, and Boston will be getting hot and empty, and the shadow of the pines an object of exceeding desire, but for the mosquitoes.

To R. W. Emerson, Esq.

Downing Street: June 10, 1854.

It is now nearly a twelvemonth since I fled in that precipitate, half-voluntary manner from Massachusetts. Another fortnight will complete the year: and another two days from this will, in all probability, see me married.

You in the meantime, are in all the turmoil of a renewed slavery contest. From this distance it almost looks as if the aggression would be of more use in breaking down the idea of compromise than of harm in its actual results.

I am going on here, working in the office in the ordinary routine, which, however, after years of Greek tuition, is really a very great relief. All education is in England, and I think in America, so mixed up with religious matters, that it is a great difficulty.

To C. E. Norton, Esq.

Lea Hurst, Matlock: June 28, 1854.

Your letter of congratulation arrived, curiously enough, on the very morning of our marriage, and was a very pleasant incident of the day. Felton’s letter, announcing a variety of kind remembrances, came three or four days after, and was, I assure you, a very pleasant surprise indeed. This place strangely reminds me of Shady Hill last summer; though it is not really very like it, being a house on a broad open bank, a considerable height above the river Derwent, the valley of which it looks down as it flows from Matlock to Derby. Nor have we any of those scorching heats which had begun before I left you, now twelve months ago exactly. I am doing Plutarch, and living in an in-and-out-of-doors sort of way.

To the same.

Combe Hurst: August 19, 1854.

I have almost chosen a house, and in six weeks expect to be a householder, with goods and chattels, and the post householder sedens atra cura.

Cholera is amongst us, as you see, and laying low lords even; Lord Beaumont (but not by cholera) in the last three weeks, besides Lord Jocelyn.

Did you see the ‘Examiner’ on Mrs. Stowe’s ‘Sunny Memories’? quite a severe article, and quite unnecessarily so, I should say. The use of quite is a peculiarity which I quite remarked myself, but I think you have quite a right to use it as a substitute, if you please, for our less exact ‘very,’ and in colloquial writing no one ought to object. I don’t see that the old-country English are to have the exclusive right of introducing new expressions.

To R. W. Emerson, Esq.

Council Office, Whitehall: August 22, 1854.

My dear Emerson,—Your letter about a week ago was very welcome, and the silver candlestick which came in Felton’s box of treasures was very much appreciated, and I am to send the kindest possible thanks for it. I only hope fortune may indeed some day waft us over, at least for a visit, to your Northern Vinland.

Carlyle is, I believe, ruralising at Addiscombe, a few miles out of London, which always does him a great deal of good. I dare say we shall not meet till London begins to consider itself alive again in October.

This country has, as you say, its concentrated civilization to hold one to it—it seems waste of opportunity to leave such a mass of old knowledge. But I think you are better and more happily off in America, where the vastness of the machinery does not destroy the sense of individual purpose. The ship here is really so big that one cannot see that it moves, or that any one of the little petty services which people are for the dear bread’s sake set to do, can have any effect one way or another on its motion. If one has a place or business here, one is only standing in some other person’s shoes, who really could very likely do the thing as well.

You are so infinitely more plastic, again, as to opinions than, except in talk, the English are. As for your politics, certainly they do not look well at present, and one is afraid that New York may after all acquiesce in the fait accompli, and go back to its farm and its country-house without concerning itself further. I am afraid the English theory is, when one has done a wrong thing, to forget it as soon as possible. Farewell!

To F. J. Child, Esq., of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Downing Street: September 2, 1854.

I hope the Chaucer is going on prosperously. I think you should adopt means to make the metre quite obvious, at any sacrifice of typographical prettiness. Yet I don’t like the grave accent, ‘When Zephyrus eke with his sotè breth,’ and should almost prefer the ˘, sotĕ, but that it seems unmeaning to use a mark of quantity. Yet it is not a case of accent, either. I think I should in one way or another mark every syllable that would not now be pronounced, grevĕs and levès and Emperourè’s daughter—the most correct mark would be ë: Emperourë’s; sotë. And I should prefix to the whole a very plain and short statement of the usage in these points.

I suppose there is not much doubt about a few general rules, though Chaucer did not regularly observe them, as, for example, the use of the ĕ in adjectives after definite articles, which it seems to me he omits occasionally, with French adjectives, as if it was a matter of ear rather than rule. So also with such Saxon dissyllables as tymĕ, which is not invariably a dissyllable, I think. And yet it would be worth while giving a list of such words as are liable to be dissyllables. However, ere this, I dare say you have settled all these preliminaries. I don’t quite see what you should do about the Miller’s and the Reve’s tales. I think explanation might be a little retrenched there, so as to leave them in the ‘decent obscurity of a learned language.’ They are thoroughly English stories, but I don’t know whether they are New English. They are just what would be relished to this day in public-houses in farming districts, but I can’t say that I could wish them urged upon any palate that does not already fancy them, and I don’t much admire the element in the English character that does relish them. It is a great thing, no doubt, to do dirty work, and the English are pretty good at it; but when it ceases to be work, it is a different thing, and I don’t see much good in it.

I think the Americans have the advantage of being less ‘farceurs’ than the British subject is apt to be. There is a sort of servants’-hall facetiousness which predominates in the cockney world, and finds its way into literature, which I think deserves no sort of imitation or admiration.

I have just been taking a house in the extreme skirts of the Regent’s Park, not far from the Zoological Gardens, with a canal underneath it, and some very un-Venetian gondolas, called here coal-barges, passing to and fro upon it in the foreground, while in the distance rise the suburban Alps of ’Ampstead and ’Ighgate—‘Oh breathe on them softly’—and a little to one side swells the pastural eminence of Primrose Hill.

To C. E. Norton, Esq.

London: September 1854.

I have never acknowledged yet, except per Professor Child, Ph.D., your letter from Newport. Your description was somewhat amusing, as, in point of fact, I have been in Newport, and have not been in the Isle of Wight. I was at Newport at the age of six or seven, and passed by it, moreover—scarcely, however, realising the scenes of my infancy—in that swift transit commenced under your auspices, from Boston viâ Fall River to New York and the ‘Asia’ steamer.

London is empty, of course, and only excited by the terror of cholera, which is however, I believe, subsiding. Positively, for two or three days last week, in the district between Leicester Square and Oxford Street, north and south, and Soho Square and Regent Street, east and west, there were scenes not unlike those of the old Plague. It has often been asserted that this was one of the great burying-places of the old 1665 Plague, and this outbreak is by some ascribed to this. However, virulent as it was, it was as brief; and fortunately, perhaps, it came just at the beginning of a new Health Report week, so that it did not get into the papers till it was pretty well over.

Tell me a little about politics, as the weather gets cooler. I am at the mercy of the ‘Times,’ and don’t believe that it knows much about anything. Are there really any ‘Know-nothings,’ and is it really a matter of importance? That the Whigs will not, as a body, join as yet in political alliance with the Free Soil party, I suppose, is true.

I send a little volume, ‘Scaliger’s Poetics,’ with Johnson’s autograph (pretty certain, I believe), for your own antiquarian appropriation, if you will have it.

To the same.

Downing Street: October 24, 1854.

I went over to Calais last Saturday night, to see Florence Nightingale so far on her way to Scutari. She has ten Sisters of Mercy proper, eight of Miss Sellon’s, six of a sort of Via Media institution, and ten other nurses under her charge.

According to Lord Burghersh, the aide-de-camp, who is just come home with despatches, Lord Raglan is everything out there; neither St. Arnaud nor Canrobert at all compare with him. His advice carried it for landing where they did, both the Frenchmen being for other places, which experience afterwards showed would have been impossible. His character has risen greatly in reputation. In the middle of the fighting, when he rode up into very dangerous places, looking after things, his aides-de-camp remonstrated, and were answered by ‘Be quiet, I’m busy.’ Fortunately he is so wise as to wear nothing but a plain foraging cap, and so is scarcely observed.

You, meantime, must be thinking more of the Arctic than of the Crimea. When I came over from New York last summer, I remember the probability of some such calamity happening being discussed on board the ‘Asia,’ when we met the ‘Andes’ right upon our track, fortunately on a clear day.

To the same.

Downing Street: November 1854.

About this time two years we were very likely walking about the streets of Boston together; at present, I may call myself just re-established in London. We took possession of our abode in the Regent’s Park two nights ago.

There is an immense interest, or rather anxiety, about our little army in the Crimea. I passed some recruits the other day, and a man looking on said, ‘They’ll all be killed; every man Jack of them; I’m sorry for it.’ Generally the feeling is of apprehension, or even worse, on the arrival of untoward news.

To ——

Downing Street: January 18, 1855.

Of wars and rumours of wars we have of course enough. The ‘Times’ is blamed and believed; the Ministry is blamed and continued. I saw a Queen’s messenger who had just come from Constantinople with one set of despatches and was just returning with another. The journey as performed by Queen’s messenger is, it appears, at the quickest, from Constantinople to Marseilles, six and a half days; from Marseilles to London, forty-seven hours.

This new Indian Civil Service scheme may, I dare say, interest you. I rather regret that so little is made of Eastern languages. I think Persian might be allowed as a study almost co-ordinate with Latin and Greek, and quite with French, German, and Italian, as at present valued in the scheme.

To Professor F. J. Child.

London: January 31, 1855.

Here we are with, I am just told, the Tories in once again. When they last came in, they drove me from England into New England. I don’t know how it will be now.

Our literature, at present, is the war column in the newspaper. The best military reports are those of the ‘Morning Herald,’ I am told; but Macdonald, the hospital correspondent at Constantinople, has been more successful practically than ever newspaper correspondent yet had the glory of being.

February 2.

This steamer, it appears, will not quite certainly tell you ‘under which’ Prime Minister we are to ‘do our duty,’ but Palmerston must manage somehow we suppose. Yesterday we believed that Lord Derby would be our king, and Disraeli our foreign minister, Palmerston holding the war department; but that seems over altogether.

To the same.

London: May 3, 1855.

Last week we had Emperor and Empress passing by here under our windows, with Queen and Prince, in the midst of applauding multitudes, and certainly there is no denying Louis Napoleon’s courage.

Unless Sebastopol gets taken before long, it will, I think, upset the present ministry, and perhaps the present aristocracy along with them; and Laing, Layard, and Lowe, if they can provide themselves with a sufficient Co., may come in as the new parliamentary firm. The war, which the great people, lords and statesmen, thought would be unpopular in a few months, is more likely, I think, to become a popular question versus lords and statesmen. There is no murmuring at the new taxes, but a great deal at the old politicians.

Here is an authentic anecdote from Vienna. The French and English Plenipotentaries urged how natural the arrangement would be that the Euxine should, like the American lakes, be common to both nations; to which Prince Gortschakoff answered that he should not object to that, were there only a Niagara at the Dardanelles.

To C. E. Norton, Esq.

London: September 14, 1855.

So we have at last taken the besieged city. We here took it very unconcernedly, when the great news gradually oozed out and then spread abroad, on Monday evening last. It is, however, an immense relief, privately as well as publicly, and I do not doubt is felt as such. I confess to my own feeling that Russia should be let off easily. What other power can bring North Asia into discipline? I could be thankful to see her hold some port or have some means of exit to the Atlantic, now that she has learnt that the maritime powers are strong enough to check her encroachments when they please.

To Professor F. J. Child.

London: October 29, 1855.

I have been astonished and delighted at once to see Shady Hill reposing itself in St. James’s Street. I had hardly faith, I confess, to expect the removal of that mountain to this side of our common sea.

I congratulate you on having achieved Spenser. I hope I shall see the work. Let me confess to having never yet read one quarter of the ‘Faery Queen.’ But you are a much more literary nation that we. Few people, I fear, will return in England to the study of Plutarch’s Lives, and in working to the end of that attempt I can only look forward to the readers of America. I hope it will be pretty tolerably readable and correct when it does at last present itself. Certainly, if I had tried to translate it myself, it would have had a more Greek tone; but I don’t think we any of us write so idiomatically now as my friends of Charles II.’s time.

You see that we, that is our newspapers, after considerable bluster, mean decidedly to back out of any quarrelling with you. The ‘Times,’ I think, decidedly feels that it took a wrong step, and is walking out of its front position with all possible celerity.

I hear you have undertaken the kind labour of putting my ‘Reliquiæ’ through the press. If you like to add epigraphs on fly-leaves, you might put before ‘The Bothie’:

Pauperis et tuguri congestum cespite culmen;

or,

Ite, meæ, felix quondam pecus, ite camenæ:

and before the Roman verses—

Navibus atque

Quadrigis petimus bene vivere.

To C. E. Norton, Esq.

London: July 11, 1856.

There is a severe review of Macaulay in to-day’s ‘Times.’ I myself like this better than the first pair of volumes, chiefly, perhaps, because it has a more European subject to deal with. I have only detected one error myself, but it is a very Macaulayesque one. He speaks of ‘the oaks of Magdalen’: they are elms. There was no occasion to say anything but trees, but the temptation to say something particular was too strong. It makes one distrust all his descriptions, and that of Glencoe certainly is thoroughly exaggerated without being at all characteristic.

To Professor F. J. Child.

London: January 16, 1856.

I hope I shall get your Spenser ballads. I am not enthusiastic, but the Chaucer I really think you may bring to better shape than anyone has hitherto done. I like ‘Hiawatha’; and I think it is liked here generally, and none the worse for being Indian. Are you really, any of you, going to fight with your ancestors, about Costa Rica, and the Clayton-Bulwer treaty? I hope not; not even the ambitious Franklin Pierce himself. But Palmerston is a sad haggler, and may, I dare say, go on insisting about his Mosquito Protectorate, till he gets a warning.

I am examining among others for appointments in the Engineers and Artillery, which are open to general competition, and the candidates examined inter alia in English composition, literature, and history. Hence, I can more than pay my income tax, and, like the farmers, rejoice in the war. But at present we all more than half expect peace. Louis Napoleon is said to be pacific. For many good reasons I also am pacific; for if the war went on even two years longer, we should kill Turkey with our kindness, and have to encounter all the difficulties and disgrace of a partition of her. The sick man is really very sick after all, and doesn’t get at all better, but rather worse.

To R. W. Emerson, Esq.

Council Office, Downing Street: September 12, 1856.

My dear Emerson,—Your copy of the ‘English Traits’ has just reached me. I am very glad to have it, for it is a far prettier book than Mr. Routledge’s, not to mention any other circumstances. I think you praise us too highly. I was anxious for more rebuke and profitable reprimand.

I don’t think your friend who said that no ill-dressed person ever came to church spoke within proper bounds. The labouring country population do to a certain extent come to church, and you may see old beggar-looking people in the cathedrals on week-days. The rural population in agricultural parts belongs to the Church and attends ‘at times.’ It is the town church that is so entirely abandoned to the upper and middle people.

Charles Norton showed me ‘Leaves of Grass,’ which certainly seems remarkable, but is it not rather a waste of power and observation? The tree is tapped, and not left to bear flower and fruit in perfect form as it should. This standing aside and looking on does not seem to me to be the thing that really produces.

To Professor F. J. Child.

London: November 13, 1856.

I must send a few lines to thank you for the Spenser, which I am very much pleased to have. I am only sorry that the notes are so very unobtrusive.

How is Cambridge? which Lowell reports so changed that he should not have known it. I still retain a dollar note, with the portraiture of the college buildings, flanked by the faces of Judge Story and some other eminence; but all this I suppose, eminences included, will have become obsolete by this time.

Here there is nothing very new, nor anything particularly true, to tell. Until the next French revolution all things will continue. Meantime, omnes omnia mala dicere, we anticipate no good. Charles Norton dines with us this evening, valedictorily.

I have been reading pretty nearly through Crabbe lately. Have you republished Crabbe? If not, you ought to do so. There is no one more purely English (in the Dutch manner), no one who better represents the general result through the country of the last century. His descriptions remind even me of things I used to see and hear of in my boyhood. And sometimes, though rarely, he has really the highest merit, e.g. Ruth, in the ‘Tales of the Hall.’

To Charles Norton, Esq.

London: January 22, 1857.

We are here going on much as usual, occupied with nothing else but commerce and the money market. I do not think anyone is thinking audibly of anything else. Some disaster, perhaps, in the realm of Dost Mahomed may startle us out of our mercantile composure, but at present the only danger we care to think about is that of being garotted, and the main business of the new Parliament will be to see about transportation of possible garotters.

I have read with more pleasure than anything I have seen lately Kane’s ‘Arctic Explorations,’ which is certainly a wonderful story, and the book, moreover, very well got up at Philadelphia. I think I did see Kane at Boston in the spring before he started; I have a distinct image of his figure. The whole narrative is, I think, very characteristic of the difference between the English and the American-English habits of command and obedience.

The first volume of Plutarch is to appear next month. I think the later volumes are much better, or at least less open to criticism. The life of Pericles was wretchedly done in the Dryden, and ought to have been rewritten. Plutarch’s best life is Antony, I think.

To the same.

London: August 1857.

I hope you really did arrive in Boston safe and sound. Our parliament is at last going away. Indian news appears to create no sort of alarm, scarcely so much as anxiety; for one reason, people must take their holiday even from their anxieties. The atrocities are of course felt pretty strongly.

This town is hot, dusty, and of ill-odour, and very different from Westmoreland, where we were together last.

September 3.

News from India, I think, is getting to be felt more seriously.

October 31.

Well, Delhi is taken, which is a happy thing, though one dreads to hear of the details. Captures of cities are horrible at the best, and this cannot have been at the best, with wild Sikhs, and no quarter, and a wealthy and luxurious metropolis.

If you have read the letters in the ‘Times,’ you will have noticed Indophilus, i.e. Sir Charles Trevelyan (who ought, in proper Greek, to call himself Philindus; Indophilus would be more properly ‘beloved of the Hindoos’). Leadenhall Street is full of the humane feeling, and would back up Lord Canning’s proclamation, and Mr. Grant’s Allahabad releases, with all its influence. It may be right, but it is not discreet; it is not possible yet to enforce clemency. They should have waited till Delhi had fallen, and Lucknow been relieved. So, at least, we think here. The Company, however, is sadly at a discount, and will have hard work to maintain any of its power. The War Department, I believe, is very hard upon it. Sir Robert Vivian, who commanded the Turkish Contingent, and who is one of the directors appointed by the Crown, spoke the other day of the outbreak at Meerut and Delhi as a thing that ought to have been put down at once. He believes there was no sort of general conspiracy on foot, and urges the irregular and utterly indiscreet way in which the regiments have mutinied, here and there, and at the worst chosen times and places. Neill commanded a brigade under him in the Crimea. He quite disapproved of Neill’s outrages on the caste feeling at Cawnpore. I confess I don’t. I think we may break down caste one way or other, and ally ourselves with the Sikhs and the Buddhists of Nepaul, &c., whose religions are reasonable and comparatively unceremonial.

I don’t believe Christianity can spread far in Asia unless it will allow men more than one wife, which isn’t likely yet, out of Utah. But I believe the old Brahmin touch-not-and-taste-not, and I-am-holier-than-thou-because-I-don’t-touch-and-taste, may be got rid of. As for Mahometanism, it is a crystallised theism, out of which no vegetation can come. I doubt its being good even for the central negro.

To J. R. Lowell, Esq., Cambridge.

Downing Street: January 5, 1858.

You have just got half the ‘Amours de Voyage’ (for the ‘Atlantic Monthly’); there will be two more reports, and then all will end in smoke. The poem has been suppressed to the orthodox maturity of the ninth year, but, like poor wine, it is, I fear, only the worse for not having been drunk and forgotten long ago.

The ‘Atlantic Monthly,’ I hope, makes its way. I am glad to see it so national, so little characterised by any mercantile importations from our side. I have a great distaste to the prevalent professional literature of the metropolis, a fungoid vegetation springing up on the rotting remains of the giants of the old literary forest, whose honours are no more.

To C. E. Norton, Esq.

London: March 26, 1858.

Many thanks for your kind inquiries after my wife and family: they are very well, especially the ‘family.’

Things have been tolerably eventful over here of late, have they not? I confess myself a sort of admirer of Orsini, though I do not consider assassination good policy, and therefore consider it wrong.

A Tory government, meantime, is a strange dispensation to live under; happily it is only on sufferance. Lord Palmerston, we consider, fell chiefly through his appointment of Lord Clanricarde.

The days of the Company you will, of course, have felt to be numbered, on seeing Lord Ellenborough gazetted as President of the Board of Control.

To Professor F. J. Child.

April 10, 1858.

I am very glad there is a prospect of your coming over here; but doubtless you will transform yourself into a worm, and be during your whole visit lost to sight in the MSS. of the British Museum. Nevertheless, even so, pray do not fail to come over. Charles Norton, I hope, is well through the winter. By this time the snows are beginning, I suppose, to disappear in your parts: in a month or so the Common will begin to exchange its brown for its green suit; there will be buds in the Washington elm; frogs will again be vocal, and double-robins visible.

Do you see that the Frenchman who translated the ‘Canterbury Tales’ has found at Paris the original of the ‘Squire’s Tale,’ 30,000 lines? I wonder if it is like Spenser’s, in any respect.

The great literary success of the last twelve months has been Buckle’s ‘History of Civilisation.’ Really, it is wonderful what numbers of people have read this thick volume, and what a reputation its author has gained by it. High and low—and high quite as much as low—write in its praise. Are you Buckle-bewitched in Boston, or do you retain a sane mind?

I do not suppose that anybody finds much natural pleasure in my five-act epistolary tragi-comedy, or comi-tragedy. I like Part III. rather better than its predecessors myself; but other people, I dare say, will not. I think it will have some merit in its conclusion; but to that also, I dare say, there will be no affirmation but my own. However, so it was, and no otherwise could be. So much for keeping poems nine years, instead of burning them at once.

Tennyson’s two unpublished Arthur poems gave me pleasure, and I am sorry they do not appear. Otherwise England seems as unpoetical as between Chaucer and Spenser.

To C. E. Norton, Esq.

London: April 17, 1858.

Perhaps the beginning of May will find you once more at Shady Hill, for the brief North American interval between the two penal fierce extremes of heat and cold.

Between the two Indian Bills, the Directors, it is thought, will escape for the present, and survive a little longer. I myself was not so absolutely unfavourable to the Ellenborough Bill as the English world in general. I desire much to see a franchise given to those who have served. That offered to the five towns is perhaps impracticable. My notion is to make a great Council of all who have served in certain offices, and give them the appointment of half the Executive Council. But our people hate all refinements of this sort.

Politics are almost at a dead lock with us. Palmerston cannot come back with his own party alone to back him. Lord John Russell has joined Milner Gibson, and has formed a sufficient body of opponents in the Liberal part of the House to make it impossible for Palmerston to get sufficient support there. So that for the present the Derby people stay, and are almost ashamed and indignant to stay, by the help of Lord John and his Manchester allies.

To the same.

London: May 17, 1858.

Things here are in sad confusion. Lord Ellenborough, who is really competent, has thrown himself overboard, and cannot be by his best friends acquitted of a great indiscretion. In India the enemy all abroad again, and a hot weather campaign before us. Not, however, it seems by Sir Colin’s fault; for he was bid to clear all the other districts first, and not till then to attack Lucknow, but was overruled by Lord Canning. John Mill, it is said, does not consider Lord Canning’s proclamation wrong; but is very sorry, on general grounds, to lose Lord Ellenborough.

Pray read Hogg’s ‘Life of Shelley.’ It is a great pleasure to see Shelley really alive, and treading the vulgar earth—Hogg’s transparent absurdity being the only intervening impediment.

I am reading, too, Gladstone’s ‘Homer’: it is very direct and plain-sailing, and in that respect is an agreeable contrast to German annotation. The working out of his theory about Danaans, Achæans, Argives, and Hellenes was to me satisfactory; but at the end he goes off all at once out of his depth into general ethnology. Gladstone’s uncompromising belief in Homer and the heroes, as real people, gives the book a solidity and substance which is acceptable. Carlyle said he read carefully Homer and the controversy some years ago, and was quite convinced that ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey’ were written at different ages—the ‘Odyssey’ by one man, the ‘Iliad’ not; and he likes the ‘Odyssey’ best. He thinks anyone mad who holds the ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey’ to be written by one man.

While I wrote came a rumour, not from a private secretary, that news had come from India that the proclamation had been stopped at the last moment, at the entreaty of Sir C. Campbell, Sir John Lawrence, Outram, and Mansfield, who went on their knees to Lord Canning, and besought him, in the name of England’s honour, no less than for the sake of present security. So that, if this be true, Lord Ellenborough is right after all.

To the same.

Cowley House, Oxford: May 21, 1858.

Hither we came on the 19th on a visit. Yesterday we went about walking, and seeing things and people—new things and old people; heard a lecture from Max Müller on the origin of the French language; thence to the new Museum in the Venetian style, by Woodward. I think Venetian windows, whose beauty is their deep setting, might do for you who have some sun to keep out; for us, not. We want light, and must place the glass too near the outer plane of the walls to allow the proper effect to the tracery.

The M.P.s meet to-night for their great decision. Already, perhaps, the new evidence of the government despatches is in their hands. A proclamation, it is clear, has been issued, and an altered proclamation. A private letter tells us that the Ministry may possibly have a majority of five or six—a different story from that which prevailed when I began this letter. Wednesday, the day of our coming here, intervened, with the absorbing interests of the Derby. To be winner of the Derby while in office as Prime Minister was, it is said, Lord Derby’s ambition, but would be, it was thought, too high a felicity for any simply human Earl. Toxophilite’s defeat may, it is presumed, be the inevitable sacrifice that may avert the parliamentary catastrophe.

To the same.

Downing Street: June 23, 1858.

I have had, mirabile dictu, a letter from Emerson, who reprimanded me strongly for the termination of the ‘Amours de Voyage,’ in which he may be right, and I may be wrong; and all my defence can only be, that I always meant it to be so, and began it with the full intention of its ending so; but very likely I was wrong all the same.

I cannot help wishing to preserve some Corporate Body or Privy Council for India, to elect half the Ministers’ Council, though I have no liking for the constituency of 7,000 or 8,000 to whom Lord Stanley did propose to give this power.

Last night I heard Tennyson read a third Arthur poem: the detection of Guenevere and the last interview with Arthur. These poems all appear to me to be maturer and better than any he has written hitherto.

As for wars and rumours of wars, I trust we need not alarm ourselves at present. I hope the French are at heart pacific; they cannot well afford the money for a war, and though I believe they might inflict, if the chances favoured them, immense damage upon us, in the end they would find themselves the weaker vessels. Their population, it is said by the statistical authorities, is decreasing, and they ought to nurse their vitality carefully. It has not yet recovered the losses of the wars of 1812-15.

To the same.

Downing Street: July 30, 1858.

We are cooler and less odorous than we were, and I begin to hope that we may get to the end of August without any terrible outbreak of cholera. Time has often been compared to a river; if the Thames at London represent the stream of traditional wisdom, the comparison will indeed be of an ill savour. The accumulated wisdom of the past will be proved upon analogy to be, as it were, the collected sewage of the centuries, and the great problem, how to get rid of it.

In a commercial point of view, the publication of the ‘Amours’ has been a great event to me. This is the first money I ever received for verse-making, and it is really a very handsome sum.

October 1.

I have just read the ‘Courtship of Miles Standish’ with much pleasure. I think in one or two points the story should have been differently managed; but it is a very pleasant poem.

A perversion, as the Anglican people call it, seems to me a very sad thing; it is, according to all experience, so irrevocable a change. I have known one or two instances of a return out of the Babylonish Captivity, but they seem rarely to happen.

The only remarkable phenomenon of the time is a continuous one, viz. the comet, which is a really wonderful, portentous-looking, historical sort of comet, with a tail sweeping a considerable space in the northern skies. It sets at 9 P.M., but leaves its streamer behind it for some time.

Another continuous study with me is Barth’s ‘Africa,’ which is really worth reading, laborious though it be, and needlessly filled up with daily records. Barth is, I believe, gone back to Hamburg, his native place; a little disappointed, perhaps, with finding so little come of his long toil. Livingstone published just after him, and took the wind out of his sails. Yet there is more permanently valuable and curious information in Barth, though Livingstone will do more himself in a practical way, we will hope.

There is as yet but a very slight ripple on the face of our political waters. The interest taken in these matters by the nation seems to grow less and less. People will not mind if the other party come in, but they don’t want Lord Palmerston again; and if these men don’t play the fool in some way, they may stay in. Your matters are more serious.

India, I suppose, will keep us at the military boiling point for some time to come (more’s the pity, perhaps, if only France were safely pacific!), and improvements in organisation will slowly creep in: they are certainly much wanted. In the medical department a good deal has been effected this year.

I am greatly ashamed of our English proceedings in this France-bullying-Portugal case. So far as I can see, it has been sheer timidity; terror of being taken undefended while India is still unsettled, and ought to disgrace us in the eyes of all European nations. But there may be diplomatic explanations proving France in the technical right.

Bright and his speech at Birmingham deserve notice. But I doubt whether he can rouse the towns; and people in general, i.e. the people who are more or less represented, care little about it. I believe that a Reform would give us a better and more rational House of Commons; but many things press. Reform takes up so much time, and gives so much trouble; how is the Government to be carried on meantime, the government of India included?

To the same.

London: January 26, 1859.

Child brought me your present of Emerson’s picture, which is really, I think, without any question, the best portrait of any living and known-to-me man that I have ever seen. It is a great pleasure to possess it.

Bright’s agitation will bear fruits. The Ministerial Bill would have been very different without this. Bright is scoffed at in the metropolitan papers, and at all clubs. But his hold on the country is such as no M.P. whatever, except himself, possesses; and in the main, the course he has taken is right, I think. Lord Stanley seems to be a present guarantee for the tolerable government of India; but he, of course, may go any day. I wish the Council were on a surer basis: the self-electing plan can hardly be permanent.

February 9.

They say it is to be peace. France is utterly indisposed to fight; so much so as to praise ‘la sagesse Anglaise’ for discrediting the sentimental Imperial oratory, and holding fast to treaties as they are, and peace, with or without good-will, upon earth. Moreover, the sinews of war are wanting. Rothschild will not lend money to Austria, and only acts as commission agent for the loan.

People are a little agog about the Bible-in-India question. Old Indians seem to be pretty tolerably unanimous against having it read in the schools.

To the same.

London: April 1, 1859.

I am getting on with ‘The Bothie,’ acting on a criticism which appeared to me correct, that the letters and sermonising parts were too long and least to the point. I believe I may have cut out something which for old acquaintance you may regret, but the general effect to a new reader will, I think, be improved; and a reduction in the amount of disquisition was certainly required.

Excuse this letter all about my own concerns. I am pretty busy, and have time for little else; such is our fate after forty. My figure forty stands nearly three months behind me on the roadway, unwept, unhonoured, and unsung; an octavum lustrum bound up and laid on the shelf. ‘So-and-so is dead,’ said a friend to Lord Melbourne, of some author. ‘Dear me, how glad I am! Now I can bind him up.’

Here is a jest of Lord Derby’s to a friend who told him he was in a great mess. ‘Yes,’ replied he, ‘but Benjamin’s mess is five times greater than those of his brethren.’

We have been having deaths lately for our news, as for example that of William Arnold, who, after lying ill for some time at Cairo, started and sailed from Alexandria just as one of his brothers was coming in to see him; just set his foot on Europe, and died, at St. Roque, a few miles from Gibraltar; a great loss, I think, public and private.

To the same.

May 27, 1859.

As for the war, alas! to whom can we desire success? Garibaldi is the only person I sympathise with. I hope he will do something. But how can it end otherwise than ill?

Here is the dictum of the Duc de Malakhoff: ‘Nous les battrons, nous leur offrirons des conditions bien douces. Ils les refuseront. Puis, nous les battrons encore, et nous leur offrirons des conditions bien dures. Ils les accepteront.’ Meantime, the French feeling has become, it appears, universally warlike; and the wise people think that the dynasty, which must have fallen otherwise, will, unless the Austrians drive all before them, be secured.

I have never thanked you for your article on Sleeman’s ‘Oude,’ which came safely to hand, and which I fear is only too favourable to British rule. Let us, however, hope for the best, though the climate is so sadly against any fair development of English qualities, and the war has left behind it a fierce and insulting spirit.

Disraeli, in answer to some friendly regrets at his fall, said it could only be a check for a time. But I think Palmerston may regain the general confidence of the country, as he has in a great measure of the Liberal members, or at any rate the Liberal statesmen, and may perhaps maintain himself, even if Lord John secede. The new Ministry will be strongly Italian in composition; Lord John and Gladstone in addition to Palmerston. It is almost to be feared that they will outrun the national feeling, and go too much in the track of Louis Napoleon. We who live nearer to Louis Napoleon, with only the Channel, and not the whole Atlantic to divide and protect us from him, do not feel quite the same liberty to indulge the natural feelings of enthusiasm in witnessing his aggrandisement in Europe, though it be merely as a liberator that he affects it at present. One thing I devoutly hope; that, with French influence predominating in Italy, the Pope will go to the dogs, with all his canaille accompanying. Evidently the conclave fear this, and there is no doubt at all that instructions came from Rome to the Roman Catholic leaders that they should support Lord Derby, who would support Austria. It has not been uniformly obeyed, but that the order was issued is, I believe, certain.

To the same.

London: July 22, 1859.

I shall be very glad indeed of your notice of Plutarch in the ‘North American.’ I hope the Lives will be readable to the young public of your most reading country. Meantime Plutarch has arrived here, and certainly looks very well; but they have not put in all the errata I sent. I hope the young America will read it. Young England, I fear, is too critical, and thinks Plutarch an old fool.

Here we are reading the last bulletin of that wonderful melodramatic genius Napoleon III., of which what can be said? ‘L’Empire, c’est la paix?’ Certainly one did not desire the enfranchisement of Italy to be effected by his means; and one may hope, also, that the general result will be to damage him and his dynasty.

Mill’s ‘Dissertations’ and Tennyson’s ‘Idylls of the King’ are also before an admiring public. I certainly think these Idylls are the best thing that Tennyson has done.

We are having a burning July, and the length of our day makes it in some respects worse than it would be in a more southern latitude. But, after all, 90° in the shade was not, I think, what we endured when I lived with you at Shady Hill, six years ago. You should come here again soon, and we will try and sweeten the Thames for you ‘during the current year.’

I think Louis Napoleon less formidable since the Italian war, unless the army prove to have tasted blood and to be greedy for more, in which case of course he must let them have it. But I don’t much believe in the love of the French soldier for war; he wants to go to his pays again.

Dana has sent his book on Cuba, which is very pleasant reading. And is he really gone off again to circumnavigate the orbis veteribus notus? I have always felt an instinctive desire to go round, and have coveted the sensation of having ascertained the fact by one’s own bodily locomotion.

To the same.

September 9.

I begin a sheet just to say that we are leaving the house in which you saw us, near the Regent’s Park, and have taken one on Campden Hill, Kensington, far to the west. It is just under Macaulay’s.

October 13.

Plutarch is too dear for the English; however, a favourable article, and really I think a good article, in the ‘Athenæum,’ has put a little wind in its sails. Plutarch is not sought for here as a library book; indeed, he is quite put out of fashion by Thirlwall, Grote, and Co., and some effort is needed to recall attention to him.

The French Emperor’s ‘allocution’ to the Cardinal at Bordeaux is a slight improvement on his doings lately; perhaps a feeler to the country, for if he were not afraid of the popular adherence to the Pope and clergy in France, I suppose he would certainly take the holy father by the temporal beard in Bologna.

Council Office: December 5.

We are here in a state of rifle fever, which I do not think will be allayed by the imperial smooth words. Palmerston is not to go to the Congress, and France, I fear, will do as she pleases.

I was glad to have your account of Brown. His behaviour before his death struck me quite in the way in which you regard it: nothing could be plainer, and more composed and upright.

To the same.

Hastings: December 29, 1859.

I have been sent here for ventilation, after an attack of scarlatina, which made me an inconvenient neighbour to a little boy just born to us, who arrived on the 16th of this month. This is dull enough, the old town with the old churches in the hollow between the East Hill and the West Hill, the latter crowned by remnants of the castle, the new town stretching along the shore for nearly a couple of miles, one row deep, with a handsome sea terrace all along.

Here my chief discovery has been a cottage improvement society, so successful as to pay yearly dividends of 6 per cent. The working man is my doctor—Dr. Greenhill—who is secretary. Most of these societies have been quite failures as regards finance. The principles here are (1) Repairing, not building; (2) Rigorous collection of rents. There is a benevolent society attached to the cottage society, but it acts quite separately. Rent is rent, and charity, charity.

To the same.

January 26, 1860.

Your artist friend, Stillman, has presented his credentials; he called at Campden Hill, and of course I was out; but we hope to see him on Sunday, to dinner, in the ‘native American’ manner, at 2 P.M.

March 3.

Stillman has commenced operations on my face, and returns to the charge on Monday. He is making many friends. We dined with him at Robert Mackintosh’s a week ago, which much reminded me of Longfellow’s dinner-table. I have read your critique on Plutarch in the ‘Atlantic Monthly’ carefully since I wrote, and find it very satisfactory. The early lives are certainly faulty. I did not feel as if it was done rightly till I was doing Otho and Galba. The life which is most mine is that of Demetrius, which is really almost mine. Dion, however, is just about an average specimen.

When is Rowse coming over? Will you give him a letter to me? I continue to think his picture of Emerson the best portrait I know of anyone I know.

How unsatisfactory the world in general is just now! The French having made a ‘belle guerre’ for an idea, are now bent on realising their ideas. The Pope, after all, won’t be sent a begging. Austria will yet bully Hungary with the help of her big brother further east, and the big brother, with the help of the smaller one, will have his own bad way in Turkey, probably.

To the same.

21 Campden Hill Road: July 13, 1860.

I had your letter, heaping coals of fire on my head, last Monday. I enclose a fragment of the past, in token of my having contributed somewhat to the pavement below in respect of you.

To break one’s toe is no fair reason against using one’s fingers, but it prevents one’s walking, and impairs one’s energies in general. Rowse has done me very nearly. You will, I hope, have a photograph, and I hope he won’t spoil it before he finishes. He has done Owen, and seems well pleased with his work, but is sadly afflicted with Heimweh.

To the same.

July 20, 1860.

To-day I was at a breakfast party of statisticians, attending the International Statistical Congress, and met Dr. Jervis from your parts. Quetelet, the divine statistician, I have also seen. He is getting rather feeble with age, and complains of forgetting names. A certain Swede, un nommé Berg, is said to be the aureus alter who will succeed to the primacy.

Shall you see that Oxford traveller, the Prince of Wales? He is my grand-pupil. His Oxford tutor was my pupil. We are lingering on here sadly, waiting for the end of Parliament, and having no summer. People talk of a grand fusion of the Conservative and Liberal-Conservative parties, modern Tories and modern Whigs making one solid national defence against Bright and the Radicals. Things tend a good deal that way, but unless Bright and the Radicals become formidable indeed, personal jealousies will keep the aristocratic parties in a state of separation. They have, however, acted together this session, and have succeeded in staving off Parliamentary Reform, and in some other things. The future is quite obscure. I don’t think, however, that any Ministry will venture on an unliberal foreign policy, though there may be some quiet rapprochement to the Germans, Austrians even included. The nation generally holds, I think, to alliance with the French in general, and to support of Italy with or without the French.

Rowse went off yesterday for Southampton. His picture of Owen is very good; that of me is less successful. He was interrupted in the midst of it, was delayed by sore eyes, and then had to go to Owen; but still it is a very good likeness.

To the same.

Granton House, Edinburgh: October 11, 1860.

Your letter of the 24th came to me two days ago at Glasgow, and was a very pleasant surprise. We were passing through, and I had not thought of receiving anything. We have been spending a more than usual length of time in holidays. We had a visit to Fryston in Yorkshire, and after passing through the Highlands to Oban, made a three weeks’ stay in Morven (the Morven of Ossian or Macpherson), a very out-of-the-way district, whence we had some difficulty in effecting a return; the equinoctial gales having delayed the steamer and broken up the roads.

We are staying here with Sir John MacNeill, the Crimean Commissioner and sometime Envoy in Persia; he has the charge of the administration of the Poor Laws in Scotland. The Highland population is passing through the stage of decrease. Emigration has been going on pretty actively since the famine of 1846 and 1847, and Iona, for example, which had 500, has now 250 inhabitants. The emigrants send back money to bring out their friends, and this will continue. Sir John MacNeill, however, who has had a great deal to do with it, expects that the population will recover when the new methods of cultivation (or using) the soil are established. Such has been the case in many formerly Highland and now really Lowland places.

I am glad to hear of Rowse’s restoration to life and happiness in his native land.

To the same.

Council Office: October 25, 1860.

I have just sent off the corrected ‘Bothie’ and two copies of all the little poems. We have been here in town for about ten days, but I think very likely we shall go to Malvern for a week to complete our holiday, and for a little gentle water-cure for me, who am a little out of order, and not quite in vigour for the ten months’ campaign shortly to commence.

Louis Napoleon is said to be very cross, having offered his company at Warsaw, and had it declined; however, if he is cross that way, all the better. But why does he keep his paw on the patrimony of St. Peter, and exclude the lawful heir, Victor Emmanuel? The popular feeling in France is said to be very strong for Garibaldi, but there is some considerable jealousy in the army, where Lamoricière’s disgrace touches professional vanity, and where Garibaldi is, I suppose, not acceptable in himself.

Was not the Duke of Newcastle quite wrong to take our young Prince to Richmond, where it is well known there is a blackguard population? They say here it is his fault. However, it is no great harm, specially as it happened in a proud slave state. Just now you will be thinking about Presidents, not Princes; eight years ago, I think, you were busy electing Pierce, and I was just starting per ‘Canada’ to visit you.

To the same.

Freshwater, Isle of Wight: March 10, 1861.

I hope your being at home may be understood to prove that you are a good deal stronger. I am a good deal better myself, and have no very good excuse for not writing beyond the advice which is given me to indulge in laziness. Had I had six months’ leave proclaimed to me from beforehand, I should have naturally thought of going over to see you in America; but what with water-cure and other things I don’t think I shall even go abroad to the Continent for more than a month.

I am glad to hear you speak so hopefully of your future; much, however, will I suppose in any case depend on the good sense and character of your new President and his advisers. I for my part should suppose that an attempt to retake the federal forts would be unwise. You are strong enough not to need it.

Emerson’s new essays were to me quite as good as, if not better than, any former volume. The reviews are no great index of public interest unless you collect a good number. There are now so many local reviews, and people with us depend so very little on Athenæums and Literary Gazettes, or even Saturday Reviews. An article in the ‘Times’ is the really important thing for a book to get with a view to sale, but even that proves little as to people’s interest. There is a vast deal of anti-mysticism, and of a dense, supercilious, narrow-minded common sense, which of course speaks pretty loudly.

To his Wife.

Athens: April 24, 1861.

This morning about six I got up, and found we had just passed Cerigo, and had turned upnorth-eastward along the Peloponnesian coast. By half-past nine we had passed Hydra and seen Calaurea, and were in sight of Ægina right before us, and of Sunium on the right in the distance. Coming up from breakfast (half-past nine) we presently came in sight of a low set of petty hills rising from a little plain, and on one of the lowest saw the Parthenon. Passing Ægina and advancing towards Salamis we have this right before us, Hymettus on the right, Pentelicus more distant, Parnes beyond the plain, the bay stretching towards Corinth on the left, Salamis hiding all the coast left of Athens, and all very bright and sunny. We landed in Piræus about twelve, and came on shore in a boat and up here in a vettura. I’m two pairs up, looking towards the Acropolis.

April 28.

On Friday we went to Eleusis, through the pass of Daphne; there is scarcely anything left; the little village just about occupies the site of the great temple. There is a little quay like a sickle running out into the water, and in one spot some lesser ruins have been opened out. The bay, which is completely shut in by Salamis, is beautiful, and so is the plain, now green with young corn, and the mountains of Parnes behind it. Dark poppies and small camomile flowers abound everywhere instead of grass, and a good many flowers quite strange to me.

April 29.

Last night I dined at the Wyses’, and met General Church, Mr. Finlay, Mr. Elliot, Secretary of Legation, Captain Lambert, R.N. (of the ‘Scylla,’ which lies in the Piræus), who was at Marsala when Garibaldi landed, and seems a fine hearty gallant sort of officer. An Austrian Secretary of Legation and an Attaché made up the party. Captain Lambert spoke of the harbour. Phalerum they say is the right harbour, it is so hard to tack into Piræus. General Church spoke of seventeen tacks. But there is no trade at the back. Patras, said Sir T. Wyse, is the only place with a back to it; i.e. currants.

The weather has become perfectly fine, the sun hot, but a fresh breeze blowing. In a fortnight, they say, all will be brown. Just now the land is green with barley, into which they turn the horses, partly cutting it, partly leaving them to feed on as it stands, only shackling them.

This place is very pleasant to stay at, in the lounging way. I walked to Colonus and the Academy, about a mile and a half away, going north-east towards the Cephissus and the ‘Olive Grove.’ You are let into a farm-house garden, with all sorts of fruits and vegetables, quince-trees, pomegranate-trees, orange-trees, &c.; and here also are a few remains. I suppose the trees have never grown well up again since Sylla cut them down.[17] There are a few old olives, and about the farm newer trees, planes chiefly. Then you cross a bare field to the bare hill or mound of Colonus, where are two marble monuments to Ottfried Müller and to Lenormant. The view of the Acropolis is very good.

In the evening I rambled about, along the Ilissus, picked some maiden-hair from the rocks over the springs of Calirrhoë, where we found women washing and donkeys drinking, and so through some beer and wine gardens along the water-side to the Stadium, a great hollow in the hill-side where the foot-races were.

Tuesday, April 30.

Yesterday I went to Phyle, up on the hills of Parnes; took four hours on horseback to get there, and nearly four hours back. This is Greek Passion Week, and horses are not easy to get; my guide had a very poor one. Phyle is romantic enough; a very steep, rough horse-way leads to it, and on one side of it, to Thebes. It is a fort with three sides remaining, and two towers, and from the plateau you see Hymettus and the plain with the Acropolis far below. The road up rounds a shoulder of Ægialus, and then gets wilder. You see goats about, nearly all black. The whole of the mountains are pine-wooded—a light-green with a stone-pine head; they spring from the bare rock. There is a thin herbage in places, with bare shrubs; the biggest is the πρῑνος, with little prickly holly-leaves, quite red when young as now, and very close; numerous flowers at Phyle, cistus, thyme in blossom. The young pines look soft of foliage: I mistook them for deciduous trees.

To-day Mr. Finlay called, and took me to the University Library, and to the βουλευτήριον, where the βουλή were sitting, and apparently at work. There are fifty βουλευταί. Also we saw the Chamber, who seemed wholly idle. Thence to the new Cathedral, not yet finished, and very gorgeous (for so small a place) inside; thence to his house, where the visit ended by some Scotch marmalade, of which one takes a spoonful and a glass of water.

At the library I saw a new Greek translation of Plutarch, and of Homer, in verse. I also saw Mr. Finlay’s Attic coins, from the στατήρ to the lowest.

May 1.

This morning I was called at ten minutes to four; got some café-au-lait and went down to Piræus, and embarked on a Greek steamer, which at six started for Kalamaki, a little landing-place on the Isthmus, whence the road runs over, four miles long, to New Corinth. As I started, on the road to Piræus, the light of sunrise (about 5.20) came over Lycabettus, the sun actually rising over Hymettus with the Parthenon between. People were then in the fields. Acrocorinthus was visible pretty nearly all the way, and latterly the mountains of Phocis, clouded, over the low Isthmus; Megara just beyond, and Salamis very noticeable. Old Corinth, or New Corinth the elder, nearly on the site of the antique, was wholly destroyed by earthquake in 1857. To New Corinth, which is on the sea-side of the Gulf of Corinth, the passengers are taken by omnibus and cart, and embark for Patras. At Kalamaki I mounted a horse with a Greek saddle, the most dreadful invention in the world, which made it hopeless to reach Corinth and return before the steamer returned to Athens; however, we went on as well as the saddle allowed, some way up towards Acrocorinthus, a wild country, with a great deal of low pine about, and with old quarries, and saw from the higher part[18] the Gulf of Corinth stretching away to the mountains of Phocis, heavily clouded, to the northern side of it. When we got back it was just beginning to rain, and it has rained hard ever since. I was fain to go into the cabin, where I found however a resource in a Greek army doctor (in full uniform, I only found out that he was a doctor afterwards). He spoke French well enough. This rain is said to be very unusual. The morning from five o’clock was delightful. Kalamaki is just at the north-east extremity of the low level of the Isthmus, out of which Acrocorinthus rises, almost by itself, and which is filled up, north and south, as the space widens, by high mountains.

May 2.

The town is full of people buying and selling for πάσχα, e.g. lambs; there are flocks all about, on the Areopagus, and also the outskirts. Wax candles also, beside the usual marketings.

May 4.

Yesterday was Friday, in Greek παρασκυή, and yesterday in particular, Good Friday, ἡ μεγάλη παρασκευή, a great fast, and everybody buying his lamb for the Pascha of Sunday.

On Thursday I went up Pentelicus; left this at eight, got up by twelve. The view was clouded to the west and north-west, but Eubœa and the Euripus and Marathon lay like a map below, also South Attica, with Andros, Tenos, Ceos, and over Eubœa, less distinct, Scyros. The upper slopes of the mountain are clad with arbutus chiefly, just going out of flower. There are marble quarries for a great part of the way up, and one with a great grotto or cave richly adorned with the common English maiden-hair, and with a little of the true Capillus veneris.

Coming down I stopped to lunch beside the monastery of the Pan-agia; bread and cheese and oranges, by a beautiful gushing water in a sort of cup out of a wall, tall white poplars overhead, olives, and also large dwarf oaks (fifteen feet high or more), the first I have seen. I looked into the monastery court, in the middle of which is a huge bay-tree. Mr. Psyllis, a Greek gentleman, a senator, whom Mr. Finlay had introduced me to, happened to be there; he was spending his holiday there with some of his family, so he talked to me, and presently gave me coffee, which Miss Victoria, his daughter, presented on a tray to us, retiring after so doing. Then he took me up a little outside staircase to a little set of rooms, and presented me to his relation, the abbot or ἡγούμενος, Cyrillus Δελγέριος, a fine-looking elderly man, who lives there in two small rooms; one a sort of reception-room, where sometimes the king and queen come, and therefore adorned with their pictures (two common engravings); the other his bedroom and sitting-room, where he had a little wood fire. He also asked me to take coffee, so presently his domestic made it at this fire, and presented it, with that well-known Turkish sweetmeat, but made at Syra, and much nicer, and with a glass of water. You take first sweetmeat; secondly, coffee; thirdly, water. The monastery is very rich.

Last night (May 3) was a great night. The people at eight crowd to the churches. In every church a bier is laid out with a great cloth over it, and a figure or representation (sometimes a little embroidered map) of the Crucifixion. The people all come in (in the chief church between files of soldiers) and kiss the figure, and then perhaps go out. About half-past nine the priests take up the bier and carry it out, and the people follow after with lighted candles (stéariques), and go all about the streets. The chief procession had a band of military music at the head, and lots of soldiers, then some banners and crosses, and then, a little way behind, the priests and the bier. All the streets are filled with the people carrying lighted stéariques, and blue and red lights were let off.

To-day is pretty quiet, only they are still buying lambs, which are all to be killed, poor things, this evening.

Sunday, May 5.

The paschal lambs were very generally sacrificed in the course of yesterday afternoon. About 4 P.M. I met their skins walking about on the backs of sundry collectors of lambskins here, as of hareskins with you, and on the doors of the houses one might see here and there in the byeways a skin ready for delivery.

In the afternoon I went up to the Parthenon; the effect of interval and depth in the columniation is far greater than in any picture or imitation; then out on a road towards Phalerum with very good views of the Parthenon. Coming back I met the lambskins on the backs of skin-collectors, and hanging at doors, in the byeways by the Lantern of Demosthenes.

I was tired and a little out of sorts at night, and so did not sit up to see the hullabaloo at 12 P.M., when the king and queen, after attending divine service, come out upon a platform and show themselves, in honour of the great event, and in token that ὁ Χριστὸς ἀνέστη. This morning I was disturbed by worse than heathen Greeks howling away under my window in a yard, and looking forth beheld four paschal lambs over the embers, stuck through with poles, and the heathen turning them, and singing strange words, among which I thought I could occasionally detect ‘Yesous.’

Wednesday, May 8.

The weather continues uncertain. Yesterday I went in a boat from Piræus out into Salamis Bay, past Psyttalea, and then back and round the whole headland of Piræus, to see the little harbour on the other side, and the walls, of which very nearly all the circuit can be traced by blocks still remaining. The two harbours, Munychia and Zea, are pretty little coves, both very small, Munychia extremely so, with jetties of stone closing its mouth; it is shallow and deserted. The rain came on, so I came up by omnibus to the ἄστι, where the dances that should have been, round the Temple of Theseus, were much interrupted.

Thursday, May 9.

In the afternoon, yesterday, I went to the Acropolis from three to six, and looked at the sculptures on the left hand as you go in. Note the minute comparative size of the Erechtheum, which is also a good deal lower in site than the Parthenon. I suppose the figures are perhaps seven feet high. This small size shows very well from the terrace under Lycabettus, where you see both.

I and two other gentlemen have agreed to go to Nauplia by steamer on the 12th, and to ride thence to Corinth, returning by steamer from the Isthmus on the 15th. The weather is now beautiful, and seems to promise favourably. New snow seems to have fallen on some of the hills near the Isthmus. We are to go with Spiro Adamopulos, a well-known trustworthy guide.

Pray can you guess what a φεσοπωλεῖον is, or a καπνοπωλεῖον or finally, a πνενματοπωλεῖον? there are a great many in Athens, but there are even more καφφενεῖα. You know of course a ὑποδηματάποιος, but what is a ῥαπτής? and should you know an omnibus as a λεωφορεῖον?

Saturday, May 11.

I dined yesterday at the Hills’, at three, meeting Miss Bremer, who has been living here three years. She is a little shrunk old lady, very quiet. In the evening I went to a mixed soirée, consisting chiefly of Greeks, from nine to near twelve; music, with two professionals, Italians. I talked a little to Miss Bremer, and to a Mr. and Mrs. and Miss Dragoumi. Mrs. and Miss Dragoumi had come with us in the boat: he conducts a Greek review. The music was good, I think; they get pianos from Vienna, and have some good masters. They say the Greek girls marry at seventeen; they learn French and music very well. Everybody learns French; a good many, English, to read; everybody, old Greek, to read a little.

Thursday, May 16.

I have got back, a little tired, but no worse. We had a beautiful sail by steamer to Nauplia on Sunday; it is a filthy place, and we left it gladly at six on Monday, on horseback; saw the ruins of Tiryns, Τίρυνθά τε τειχιόεσσαν, and stopped half an hour at Argos, after a ride of seven miles. It was by this time nine o’clock, and very hot; and we didn’t go up the Acropolis, but rode off, and in about an hour and a half reached our halting-place below Mycenæ, remains of walls on some bare rocky ground a mile above being visible as we rode up. We lunched under a tree, almost the only tree visible, and then went up, riding. The Tomb,[19] or Treasury, is extremely remarkable, so also are the other ruins, the Gate and the Wall. Thence back by another course to the road, and shortly into a pass, the τρητός, which became wooded, with shrubs, and had a pleasant stream. So into a fine upland among hills, then down into an open valley, or plain among hills, where we saw the three columns of Nemea; then down to them, and back over the hill-side, lower down to our former line, and so down a water-course to another little plain, to four houses among some willows—one a small barrack for some ten soldiers; one a little cook and coffee shop; one, I suppose, a little farm, and a sort of granary place behind the shop, with a room fitted up over one part of the granary for strangers. Here we lodged, and next day went on to Corinth; but here rain came on, and we saw no view. We slept at Kalamaki on the east side of the Isthmus, and came on yesterday. I go to-day to Constantinople, and shall return on the 31st.

To the same.

Constantinople: Sunday, May 19, 10 A.M.

We arrived here this morning at half-past four, and landed between six and seven; it was raining all the time, so that the far-famed first view was nil for us. But our voyage otherwise was prosperous, fair and fine all the way; the moon and stars bright over the isles of Marmora when we went to bed last night.

The steamer only left Piræus at 3 P.M. on Friday. We passed under Cape Colonna, and saw the temple very well about 5.30 P.M.; passed then through the strait between the southern point of Eubœa and the northern point of Andros: the former is known as Capo d’Oro, i.e. Caphareus, where Minerva drowned Ajax the Lesser. Night fell as we left Eubœa; and when I came on deck at 6.30 A.M. yesterday, we had Lesbos, a long range of mountains, on the immediate right; and the coast of Asia, south of the Troad, on the right bow. An aged modern Greek pointed out to me a small thing on the horizon, almost straight ahead, a little to the left of our course, which he said was Tenetho, ‘bello paese, buon vino, buon’ e forte.’ Some little after we passed it, and several French savans began to quote, ‘Est in conspectu,’ rather reminding one of ‘As in præsenti.’ We went in between Tenedos or Tenetho (a desert-looking island still, but with one little corner occupied by a little town, with a fort and three minarets) and the Troad, and at this crisis were summoned to breakfast, but recovered (most of us) the deck in time to see the actual plain of Troy, and the entrance of the Dardanelles. There should have appeared three tumuli at the turn, but I could not well make them out. The embouchure of the Simois, just above the town, lets you look up into the plain, backed, many miles off, by Mount Ida.

And so up the Dardanelles, which were crowded with vessels taking advantage of the south wind, and so to Dardanelles (the Turkish town so called), where we stop, to obtain permission to go on. Here are the castles and the consuls, and H.M.S. ‘Melpomene,’ having just, as I now learn, brought Lord Dufferin from Beyrout; and one hears that the Sultan is very ill and likely to die, which on arriving here one learns is all a lie. Then past Sestos and Abydos, and the strait gradually widens till at Gallipoli, where the French and English armies encamped, it opens into the Sea of Marmora. Lampsacus is on the right, a little before Gallipoli on the left. Ægospotami I couldn’t quite make out. The Sea of Marmora, also, was full of shipping, most in full sail for Constantinople, some also beating down, outward bound.

May 20.

Another wet day! Was there ever such a disaster? We are to have the firman to see St. Sophia on Wednesday; to-morrow we are to do the walls; Thursday, Scutari; Friday, Sweet-Waters; Saturday, the Bosphorus. But the place is one requiring blue sky and bright sun, and there is no promise of either. The hotel is costly, but comfortable in its way, if one only had not to stay in it altogether.

May 21, 6.30 P.M.

We waited because of heavy clouds this morning for more than an hour, and then mounted our horses, and set out just in time for a heavy shower, but before getting quite wet we were across the bridge of boats, and under shelter in the bazaar, through whose covered arcades we paced on horseback, between silks and shawls, &c., with great imperturbability. When we got to the end, the shower was over, and passing the Mosque of Sultan Bajazet, and under the Seraskierat tower, we went right ahead through strange Turkish lanes with pavements worse than execrable, and in about two hours from starting reached the ancient citadel of the Seven Towers, still all entire. There, under some trees, we dismounted, and with some trouble got admittance into the court, full of trees and shrubs of natural growth. The trees are here more northern than in Greece—ashes, a sort of lime, planes not abundant, wild figs, and the cypresses, which I suppose are almost all planted; the cemeteries, of course, are perfect forests of them. So up to the parapet, and up a tower for the view; the Sea of Marmora here, the city there—a very fine view; then out and along the outside of the ancient walls, for a long way, to a café at the Adrianople gate; then inside to Belisarius’s castle, and on foot through a house full of Jews (seven or eight girls pulling at us for baksheesh) to a parapet, for another view of the Golden Horn. Thence through a horrible Jews’ quarter, and a not much better Greek quarter, across to the Patriarchal Church, and so along the Golden Horn shore, but separated from it by houses, to our former bridge, and so across to Pera and home, 11 A.M. to 6 P.M.

May 23.

Yesterday, with some rain and some fatigue, we did the Seraglio (French engravings and French goût), Kiosk of Amurath II. (better), St. Irene, St. Sophia, the Mosque of Ahmed (all white, except some blue China tiles, beautiful courtyard and fountains), the Hippodrome, and a Tomb of Sultan Mahmoud—all this under the protection of the firman, and in a party of nearly twenty strangers. Sultan Mahmoud’s is a sort of conservatory tomb—large windows all round, with white curtains, light and airy, and high-domed roof. The Sultan is buried there, with his wife, sister, and four daughters.

The Seraglio was a good deal below one’s expectations; St. Sophia certainly beyond mine. The amplitude of the dome is very impressive; it is a sort of Pantheon exalted into a Monotheon. Michael Angelo ought to have seen it.

How many times in the course of the day’s work we had to pull off boots and shoes and put on slippers, I can’t dare to say. The weather is still unsettled. The Bithynian Olympus is one long range of snow-covered Alp. Till yesterday we had a fire in the sitting-room, and yesterday we missed it. I have found great solace from a terrace on the roof, which gives a tolerable view of the Strait, and the Seraglio point, and Scutari, and the hills across the end of the Sea of Marmora, and the snowy Olympus overtopping them.

May 24, 10 A.M.

This, you know, is the Mahometan Sunday, and the Sultan goes to mosque, and we are to go and stare at him on his way. Mosque is at twelve o’clock, and we start at eleven.

I dined yesterday with Dr. Beretta, who is a most amiable kind man, but first I went with him to see Elizabeth Kondaxaky, the Cretan sibyl, who prophesies, fortunately in English, as well as Greek, and other tongues, whereof she has the gift. I have not exactly summed up the result of her prophecies, but she seems to be for England and Turkey—the latter as ‘a necessary evil,’ and the former as the natural protector of necessary evils.

May 26.

On Friday we went to see the Sultan go to mosque, which he did in his caïque of twenty oars or more. We were received into the house of Halil Bey, a profane Frank-mannered Turk, with windows looking, some upon the Bosphorus, where the caïque passed by, and some upon the court of the mosque, where the Sultan disembarked, so we saw the poor creature admirably; he looks quite ‘the sick man.’ When he got on shore, a sort of chant was set up, interpreted to us, as ‘O Sultan! trust not in yourself; there is God above, who is greater than you,’ which was not saying very much.

Then I left my companions and went back to the hotel, and then over to Scutari with Dr. Pincoff, and saw all Scutari, Barrack and General Hospitals, and F. N.’s own tower, and rooms, and everything, of which you shall hear when I return.

We went by steamer up the Bosphorus, to Buyukdere, and up a hill to see the Black Sea.

Sunday, 5 P.M.

We have been to see the dancing dervishes, really not an unedifying spectacle in the way of a divine service. ‘O God, what a wonderful Creator Thou art! Thou hast made so many thousand human beings, black and white; and whom Thou pleasest, black or white, Thou canst raise to be distinguished.’ To such words and other such, chanted with musical instruments accompanying, twenty men, in presence of their chief, in solemn silence, go twirling about with extended arms and spinning long petticoats. ‘O God, what a wonderful Creator Thou art!’ &c., &c. Adieu.

To C. E. Norton, Esq.

London: July 4, 1861.

On coming back from abroad ten days ago I received two letters from you, one of which I had received by copy from my wife at Athens. Many thanks for them; they were very interesting, and I hope you will not be discouraged by my brief acknowledgments from writing further. I am still invalided, and am to go abroad again the day after to-morrow. I have achieved a good deal already, having seen Athens and Constantinople. I was half tempted to come over to pay you the visit you so kindly proposed, but I should have had to return early in September, and I hope some year to spend a September on your side. I have just made a call on a former acquaintance in America, Miss E. H., of Concord, who brought me a letter from Emerson moreover. She tells me that in New England, she believes, people do not expect that the Southern States will ever be brought back into the Union, and that it is not the object simply to make them return; it being indeed hardly possible that the States, North and South, should ever again live together in union, but that the war is rather in vindication of the North and its rights, which have been trampled upon by the South. Is this true, in your judgment? Certainly it does seem hardly conceivable that South Carolina should ever return. On what terms then would the North be willing to make peace, and what conditions would it require in limine before entering upon the question of separation?

As for the feeling here, you must always expect statesmen to be cold in their language, and the newspapers impertinent and often brutal. Beyond this, I think people here had been led to suppose at the outset that the Northern feeling was strong against civil war (and so it was, I suppose), and that the principle of separation was conceded; the indignation being merely at the mode adopted for obtaining it. And the attack on Fort Sumter, which caused so sudden a revulsion of feeling with you, was naturally attended with no such change here. But coexisting with all this, I believe there is a great amount of strong feeling in favour of the North.

Technically we are wrong, I suppose, and as a matter of feeling, we are guilty of an outrage in recognising the South as a belligerent power, but as a matter of convenience between your Government and ours, I suppose the thing is best as it is.

Miss H. will take to Emerson four photographs of Rowse’s picture of me; one for you: it may be better than nothing.

My nervous energy is pretty well spent for to-day, so I must come to a stop. I have leave till November, and by that time I hope I shall be strong again for another good spell of work.

Lord Campbell’s death is rather the characteristic death of the English political man. In the cabinet, on the bench, and at a dinner party, busy, animated, and full of effort to-day, and in the early morning a vessel has burst. It is a wonder they last so long. I shall resign if it proves much of a strain to me to go on at this official work. Farewell.

To his Wife

Mont Dore-les-Bains, Auvergne: July 16, 1861.

This is a queer place, a French watering-place, a village, scarcely even a village, metamorphosed by having a square of hotels on three sides and a bath establishment on one side, with a sort of terrace or esplanade stuck down into it. The place is some 3,000 feet above the sea, a green Swiss-like valley, right in the mountains, with fir-trees standing out from the green mountain sides, just as in Switzerland. There is a hot spring, or rather a quantity of hot springs, issuing from the volcanic rock, known and used by the Romans, and re-discovered or re-established for use under the first Napoleon, to whose time the buildings seem to belong. They are about sufficient for the 500 or 600 people who come. We were fifty, I think, at dinner yesterday, in one of the hotels.

The journey here in the diligence was agreeable, right over the chain of hills, of which Puy de Dôme is the highest, from the valley of the Allier (flowing to the Loire) to the valley here flowing to the Gironde. We mounted to about 3,300 or 3,400 feet above the sea, and descended 300 or 400 to this place; the high land was a green pastoral district with rounded hills mostly; no very distinct craters on the route; a lake a little way off was one, I suppose.

This is really an odd enough place to be in; déjeuner at ten, dinner at half-past five; two tables of about twenty-five people, all French; we also have a drawing-room where we meet before meals, and sit generally (only I don’t); gentlemen unbeknown to ladies give their arms to ladies aforesaid, to conduct them into dinner, and occasionally out from dinner. I sit near some pleasant people at dinner, a Parisian of the Parisians on one hand, and a Marseilles opulent-seeming seeming-merchant with a wife, a sister and some children, on the other. Last night, from eight to half-past nine, was a soirée magicale, things coming out of hats, &c., followed by a divertissement of a poet and improvisatore, who did boutrimé. The company supplied him for his last épreuve with about fourteen or sixteen words, rhymes masculine and feminine, mitraille, canaille, volcan, encan, ending with baigneur and bonheur, which gave him the opportunity (the subject by the way being also given him after the rhymes, viz. vin de champagne) to wish in conclusion to chaque aimable baigneur I don’t know how much bonheur, which of course drew the house. The poet’s face was a great round simple-looking piece of countenance, and he was fat but alert, and knew more tricks than one, I dare say.

July 19.

Went to Lac Guéry and the Plateau with Jean. Wages three francs a day, and for harvest three francs and victuals: the same as at Marseilles. The schoolmaster has 600 francs.

July 20.

Talked with M. Chabuy. He is percepteur of all taxes. They are impérial, départemental, communal. (There are three classes of percepteurs, the third, viz. of communes de canton, is named by the préfet.) He is bound within a certain time to pay all to the trésor. His accounts are verified by the préfecture, and inspectors come every now and then—one every year into each department—who have the right of looking into the accounts, examining the caisse communale. It would not do to leave it to the conseil and maire. There is very little malversation. The church payments for chaires, burials, &c., are regulated by the bishop. Government pays all the ministers—Catholic, Protestant, and Jews. If a place of worship of any kind is to be built, the commune pays, and everybody is contribuable, of whatever religion.

To the same.

Mont Dore-les-Bains: July 21.

My plans are changed. This morning about 8.30, going across the place to the café, whom should I see but Tennyson. They are all here. They go to the Pyrenees, and I am to follow them. I want to come home in September, and see no sufficient reason yet for not returning to work in November. I don’t at all want to spend a winter abroad away from the children, and were I to be brought to do so, I should want to come home first. Coming home did me good. I now propose to go to some place in the Pyrenees and ride about. Bagnères de Luchon will be the first trial, as the Tennysons will be there.

To the same.

Bagnères de Luchon, Pyrénées: July 30.

I came on here yesterday; a ten hours’ drive in the banquette of a diligence, but it was a fine day and not excessively hot. The place is exceedingly crowded, a sort of mountain Brighton. This Franco-Gallo-cockney-Chamouni is, however, not unbearable, if taken in the right way. It is in a rich valley, an almost perfect level here of corn, maize especially, and vegetables, running in like an estuary among the mountains. At the head of it, between sides of wooded mountains, you see the rocky peaks with snow in their clefts, filling up the gap. But there are no Alpine eternal-snowy peaks visible here.

August 4.

On Friday I went in a sort of public conveyance some six or eight miles up the valley to the Hospice, and thence walked with my fellow-passengers up the Port de Venasque into Spain. You see the whole Maladetta, and it’s the principal thing to do here. Yesterday I went up into the Vallée de Lys, full of waterfalls; and to-day I have been a longish ride, starting at 6 A.M., to the Lac d’Oo, really a very beautiful mountain lake, the lowest of four or five; the others are a good way higher up.

August 6.

I have been my ride, five hours over hills, looking out upon the glaciers of the main chain; these hills are called the Super Bagnères, and rise right above here. Then down about eleven o’clock to the châlet of the Vallée de Lys, where I stayed about three hours, breakfasting, going up to some waterfalls, and sheltering from a brief storm, and so home.

August 8.

Providence overruled my mind not to go out riding to-day as I had intended, so I got the letter telling of the new little daughter in good time. I think you must call the little girl Blanche Athena.

The Tennysons are at Bigorre. I am very glad to have the prospect of joining them, for it is rather too solitary work going about Pyreneeing with a horse and a guide, or even say two horses and a guide. However, the two men I have had here have been good company in their way—two cousins, both having served as soldiers, one six years, the other eight or nine. One was in the Crimea, and all through the campaign in Italy, and means to be a soldier again. He had just finished his time when his brother was drawn in the conscription. His brother had just married, so he said he would serve two years for him, and when the two years were ended and he came home, somehow or other the brother was let off. Eighteen went from Luchon to the Crimea, ten or twelve of them cousins; thirteen came back, and they are, I think, all here as baigneurs, guides, &c. This fine young fellow was a hussar, and went out straight to Algiers, where he set to work and ate so many figs and oranges that he had a fever at once, and was in the hospital for three months. He was wounded just at the end of the Crimean war, a fortnight before the peace, and was in hospital at Constantinople for three months. He made great friends with the English, apparently. So much for Pierre Redonnet, with whom I rode on Tuesday over Super Bagnères to the Vallée de Lys. The day before I had his cousin Jean, who is a family man, and unambitious of military service.

I have seen here a certain Comte de ——, an Italian, a Tuscan, who knew some friends of yours at Rome. He is a Confederation man, and declaims against this premature attempt at a united Italy. I met him at the Lac d’Oo. He has just been here, and all but embraced me in his obscurantist arms, and has bidden me adieu, ‘God bless you.’ He talks English, which he mixes a little with German, and I mix my English with a little Italian. Who can he be? and why has he so nearly embraced me?

Luchon is a very Parisian place; people flaunt about, and wear strange Parisian mountain-costumes, ‘tours-de-tête’ of all kinds. The French upper classes seem to me to be strongly possessed with the feeling that the Italian kingdom is very much against French interests; and partly also with the feeling that the Emperor is driven into it by England, who knows it to be bad for France. Sardinia would pacify them, no doubt. But after Ricasoli’s declaration, can he, and after Lord John’s speech, can he, assent? All things perhaps are possible.

August 9.

To-day comes a note to say that the Tennysons are all coming here this evening, and I have already taken my place for Luz, viâ Bigorre! Go I must, and start early to-morrow morning.

To the same.

Luz, St. Sauveur: August 13.

This (Luz) is the place where all the Barèges things are made. The old women are all busy with distaff and spindle. The things are made not at Barèges, but here and at Bigorre. The old women go about in scarlet hoods; the men all wear light-blue caps: the younger women handkerchiefs, brown, with yellow stripes. I have nothing to relate, so I send you some verses made this morning, called ‘Currente Calamo.’[20]

August 17.

I have been laid up for some days, but am well again, and this morning walked up to Barèges, four miles up a high valley east of this. It is a regular pool of Bethesda, only the diseased and impotent people seem to have learnt to play at cards; a desolate place with a staring établissement and a soldiers’ hospital, and everybody on crutches, and the only apparent enjoyment playing at cards in shabby cafés. A high road with electric telegraph leads up to it and ends with it.

August 18.

To-day, as soon as I got the letters, I set off for Gavarnie; the horses were waiting at the door for the postman. We got away at 7.20 A.M., and riding up the Gave, or riverside, reached Gavarnie village in two hours; here there is a hotel of a quiet kind. Soon after passing through this, you come in fair sight of the Cirque. The ground is mostly level, except a rise at the end, which brings you to the platform of the Cirque itself, and to the cottage which is the end of the riding. A little beyond it there is snow, forming a bridge over the stream, and you have the vast cascade in full sight, but far off. One waits till noon for the sun to get on the cascade and turn it into a white cloud. It is the finest thing, certainly, that I have seen in the Pyrenees.

August 19.

Yesterday was very hot, cloudless, though not without air. To-day there is a ‘brouillard sec’ all over the hill-tops, a north wind blowing, and no sunshine.

August 20.

To-day again is the blessed brouillard, keeping all the world cool, but preventing the ascent of hills.

August 23.

I have been to Cauterets by diligence two days ago. Yesterday at 6 A.M. went to Lac de Gaube, which is very good, returned to Cauterets and lounged about the rest of the day, and this morning at 6.30 came back on horseback over the hills and got here at eleven. Cauterets is certainly beautiful, more beautiful than this, only it is a busyish water-place, which this is not; the water-place here, St. Sauveur, being a mile off, and very little frequented. Cauterets is right in the real granite, and the stream is absolutely clear, which no other large stream yet seen by me in these parts is.

August 31.

I have been over to Luchon to see the Tennysons, whom I found very comfortably established in pleasant lodgings out of the town, in maize fields, not far from the river. These places are beginning to lose their beau monde. It was a two days’ journey. I rode on Saturday through Barèges, up to the Tourmalet Pass, and down to Grip, up again to Col d’Aspin, and so down to Arreau. Next day left Arreau at 6.30 A.M., and came up a long valley to the top of another col, and so down to Luchon before half-past eleven. It was agreeable enough to be worth doing twice, so I came back on horseback the same way, leaving Luchon on Tuesday. I rode to Arreau in the afternoon, then reascended the Col d’Aspin, when the view this time was complete and much finer; from Maladetta east to the Pic du Midi de Bigorre west; saw, with a slight haze in the air, Maladetta and Port de Venasque perfectly, the glaciers about the Vallée de Lys, the Lac d’Oo, the Pic du Midi, and the Barèges mountains, all quite clear. I reached Luz about six on Wednesday.

I did one new thing yesterday, and went up the Pic des Bergons, whence there is really a fine view of Pic du Midi on the one hand, and Mont Perdu and Brèche de Roland on the other. I send you another Pyrenean fragment:—

She fed her cows, the mountain-peaks between.[21]

September 1.

The Tennysons arrived at 6.30 yesterday. Tennyson was here, with Arthur Hallam, thirty-one years ago, and really finds great pleasure in the place; they stayed here and at Cauterets. ‘Ænone,’ he said, was written on the inspiration of the Pyrenees, which stood for Ida.

September 6.

Yesterday we went up the Pic du Midi, which proved fully equal to all expectations, though there was haze over the plain and over the remoter ends of the chain. It is a very complete view of the chain as we saw it, only from the Maladetta to the Pic du Midi d’Ossau; our Pic du Midi lying detached, or only tacked-to by the thin Col de Tourmalet, some way to the north.

Tennyson and —— have walked on to Cauterets, and I and the family follow in a calèche at two.

Cauterets: September 7.

To-day is heavy brouillard down to the feet, or at any rate ankles, of the hills, and little to be done. I have been out for a walk with A. T. to a sort of island between two waterfalls, with pines on it, of which he retained a recollection from his visit of thirty-one years ago, and which, moreover, furnished a simile to ‘The Princess.’ He is very fond of this place, evidently, and it is more in the mountains than any other, and so far superior.