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.