‘(2) “A Dog in Office” is to me a different being from one who has not been appointed to the charge. He feels it, and I feel it. He respects himself more, and by his “investiture,” though it be only by a costermonger, he becomes capable of acts of which he would otherwise have been incapable, and his bearing, in combination with his legitimate title derived from the owner of the barrow, obtains recognition from all the street curs.
‘I may, of course, be superstitious, but I do regard a consecrated king, a President elected deliberately by a great nation, a man solemnly set apart to serve a church, as in some sense different from others. It seems to me that this is a matter of some importance in these days, when the sacredness of human relationships is called in question. I think we teachers cannot feel too strongly the duty of doing for thought what the feudal lords did for material forces in erecting bulwarks or breakwaters against the floods of undisciplined opinions in question, passion clothed in rags of thought. We want, like the old alchemists, to make the indeterminate clouds of smoke like actual forms.
‘I do not think you and I really differ, but I suppose the fact of my having a little kingdom has aggravated my sense of responsibility, and I can’t help always regarding teaching as purposeful. I hold in abhorrence the maxim “Art for Art’s sake.” I always want it to have a purifying influence on the character. I believe you do the same, only you are afraid of “preaching.”
‘You will be saying, “I wish some one else shared my aversion,” so I will spare you No. 3. I hope you will not misunderstand me.’
To Mrs. Rix:—
‘January 1891.
‘It is always an anxious thing when people of different nations marry....
‘I hope your good husband will not desert his post. I feel sure these scientific things were given us to prevent our feeling crushed by the weight of the “unintelligible world” of philosophy, and the atonement of science and philosophy is the work of our age—through nature we have to go to find the spiritual Christ. Poor Mr. Lant Carpenter. I wonder if it was the Sphinx who killed him.’
To Sir Joshua Fitch, after the death of Miss Buss:—
‘July (?) 1897.