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.