I wish you would come to me to-night for an hour at ten: I don’t know if any one else will be here.
To T. Carlyle.
Alderman Browne’s, Bedford.
[20 Septr. 1847.]
Dear Carlyle,
I was very glad of your letter: especially as regards that part in it about the Derbyshire villages. In many other parts of England (not to mention my own Suffolk) you would find the same substantial goodness
among the people, resulting (as you say) from the funded virtues of many good humble men gone by. I hope you will continue to teach us all, as you have done, to make some use and profit of all this: at least, not to let what good remains to die away under penury and neglect. I also hope you will have some mercy now, and in future, on the ‘Hebrew rags’ which are grown offensive to you; considering that it was these rags that really did bind together those virtues which have transmitted down to us all the good you noticed in Derbyshire. If the old creed was so commendably effective in the Generals and Counsellors of two hundred years ago, I think we may be well content to let it work still among the ploughmen and weavers of to-day; and even to suffer some absurdities in the Form, if the Spirit does well upon the whole. Even poor Exeter Hall ought, I think, to be borne with; it is at least better than the wretched Oxford business. When I was in Dorsetshire some weeks ago, and saw chancels done up in sky-blue and gold, with niches, candles, an Altar, rails to keep off the profane laity, and the parson (like your Reverend Mr. Hitch [227]) intoning with his back to the people, I thought the Exeter Hall war-cry of ‘The Bible—the whole Bible—and nothing but the Bible’ a good cry: I wanted Oliver and his dragoons to march in and put an end to it all. Yet our Established Parsons (when quiet and in their senses) make good country gentlemen, and magistrates; and
I am glad to secure one man of means and education in each parish of England: the people can always resort to Wesley, Bunyan, and Baxter, if they want stronger food than the old Liturgy, and the orthodox Discourse. I think you will not read what I have written: or be very bored with it. But it is written now.
I am going to-day into the neighbourhood of Kimbolton: but shall be back here by the end of the week: and shall not leave Bedford till next Monday certainly. I may then go to Naseby for three days: but this depends. I would go and hunt up some of the Peterboro’ churchmen for you; but that my enquiries would either be useless, or precipitate the burning of other records. I hope your excursion will do you good. Thank you for your account of Spedding: I had written however to himself, and from himself ascertained that he was out of the worst. But Spedding’s life is a very ticklish one.
To E. B. Cowell.
[1847]