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.