‘I give two Lectures a day, which is an amusement, and helps me to avoid thinking, which is ruination, I am sure. Some of the youngsters are very stupid, some passable, and one rather clever; so that the work is not monotonous. I have commons from the College kitchen very comfortably, and since I have had the ordering of my own dinner, I have entirely left off animal food. My dinner is a sort of slimy vegetable, the name of which I forget, but which tastes something like an oyster; and custard pudding, and a tumbler of water. At breakfast I eat two eggs, and put lots of butter
to my bread; it is only lately that I have got over my dislike to Barbados butter. The first hour after daylight, I work myself with dumb-bells, which is very dull, but they say a good thing; and washing afterwards is a great treat. Also I sometimes undress in the middle of the day, and have a bout at the same dull occupation to get an appetite for dinner; and about half-past five in the evening I get an hour’s walk: so I am doing all I can for myself if nature will but help me, and if my patience will hold out. The disheartening thing is, that if I ate a beefsteak and drank a bottle of porter and six glasses of wine a day, I don’t believe my pulse would rise or my cough increase an atom. However, I hope to give this abstemious plan a fair trial; for unless it weakens me, which I have not yet found, it can do no harm.
‘I wish you did not set your face so pertinaciously against any alteration in the mode of appointing Bishops; that is the real seat of the disorder of the Church: the more I think of it, the more sure I am that unless something is done about it, there must be a separation in the Church before long, and that I shall be one of the separatists. It will not do to say that you see great evils in any proposed new plan: that is a very good argument when the present state of things is good; but when a man is dying, it is poor wisdom in him to object that the plans the surgeons propose for his relief are painful and dangerous. There is another reform, which I have been thinking of lately more than I did before, though I have long thought something should be done about it; and it is one which every clergyman can make for himself without difficulty. I believe it to be the most indispensable of all the duties of external religion, that every one should receive the Communion as often as he has opportunity; and that if he has such opportunity every day of the week, it is his duty to take advantage of it every day of the week. And further, as an immediate corollary from this, I think it the duty of every clergyman to give the serious members of his congregation this opportunity as often as he can without neglecting other parts of his duty. Now at [Dartington] if you had the Communion every Sunday you might make sure of a sufficient number of communicants: and I don’t know of any other duty that you
would have to neglect in consequence. Or, at any rate, you might have it every month without the slightest difficulty, and need assign no reason for the change; indeed, people would not find out at first that there was any change. I wish you would turn this over in your mind. I dare say you will think my view overstrained, and very likely it may be a little. Yet the more I think of it, the less doubtful it seems to me. I know that neither N[ewman][186] nor K[eble], when I left England, saw the thing in the light in which it now strikes me; they thought that it was desirable to have the Communion as often as possible, but still that the customs of particular places ought not to be changed without particular reason. But it really does seem to me that the Church of England has gone so very wrong in this matter, that it is not right to keep things smooth any longer. The administration of the Communion is one of the very few religious duties now performed by the clergy for which Ordination has ever been considered necessary. Preaching, and reading the Scriptures, is what a layman can do as well as a clergyman. And it is no wonder the people should forget the difference between ordained and unordained persons, when those who are ordained do nothing for them but what they could have done just as well without Ordination! If you are determined to have a pulpit in your Church, which I would much rather be without, do put it at the west end of the Church, or leave it where it is: every one can hear you perfectly; and what can they want more? But whatever you do, pray don’t let it stand in the light of the Altar, which, if there is any truth in my notions of Ordination, is more sacred than the Holy of Holies was in the Jewish Temple.
‘I have just heard that the postman is going, and so must write for my life. The College is about fourteen miles from Bridge Town, and about in the same latitude on the east side of the island. It is a long handsome stone building, which has been very ill-repaired since the hurricane. It consists of a
Hall and Chapel, each about fifty feet long, with a handsome porch between them, and two wings in which the rooms are. I will give you a sketch in my next. The Principal’s house, which is a separate building at the west end, is a very good specimen of a Queen Anne house, only without chimneys. The carving of the staircase and doors is very costly, in cedar. It is so well built that the hurricane hardly hurt it at all. I generally drink tea there; but breakfast and dine in my rooms. I get out of bed as soon as it is light, if they bring me my coffee so soon; else I wait for it. You can’t think how odd one feels at getting up without a cup of it. I did not feel this at first, and perhaps it is only habit now. I breakfast at half-past eight, dine at three: give Lectures from twelve to two; and the rest of the day give my body as much exercise, and my mind as little, as I can. There are about fourteen students here: very little for so expensive an establishment. If I was the Bishop, I should not make it a place for the exclusive education of gentlemen, but should let the respectable coloured people, who had time and inclination to study divinity, come here and prepare for Orders, without insisting on Latin and Greek. These colonies are not ripe for supporting a learned clergy; the wealthy are too irreligious to pay towards the maintenance of anything like a sufficient number to look after the population. The Bishop should take people of the caste in life that the Wesleyan ministers come from, and taking care to keep a tight hand over them, should ordain all who have sufficient zeal and knowledge to undertake the burden. I will not even insist on their giving up their trades; for if a parish priest can keep a school, I am sure he may make shoes without giving up more of his time: and if St. Paul could maintain himself by tent-making while he discharged the duties of an Apostle, I don’t see why other people should not be able to maintain themselves as well, while they do the duties of a parish priest. The notion that a priest must be a gentleman is a stupid exclusive Protestant fancy, and ought to be exploded. If they would educate a lower caste here, they would fill the College directly.’
It was not long after the date of this letter that a restoration,
not ‘an addition,’ as Mr. Thomas Mozley says,[187] was made, from Hurrell’s designs and under his superintendence, of Codrington College. The hurricane which had wrought the original havoc spent itself in August, 1831. The great porch between Chapel and Hall, an open passage locally known as the Belfry, was rebuilt, retaining the triple arch below, but not the cupola or small dome which formerly lifted itself over the palm-trees and the bridged waters. The whole remains as our amateur architect left it. Busy as he was, he thirsted for fuller news from home.
To Frederic Rogers, Esq.,[188] Sept. 25, 1834.
‘… By the time you get this, it will be near a year since I have heard a word about you…. Of N[ewman] I heard as late as December 15, 1833: I have just referred to the rascal’s letter. But as to K[eble] and C[hristie] and you and the M[ozleys], I am in utter ignorance on which side the Styx you are all residing…. I have entirely left off animal food, which has cooled me without weakening me; and I have left off writing radicalism, which did myself harm, and no one else any good: for I see neither N[ewman] nor [Rose] will take any of it. Also, above all, I have left off thinking, which, on matured reflection, I am convinced is the great evil of human life…. If the sun was not so intensely hot as to make sitting in the open air intolerable (N.B., there is no shade here), I should take to drawing; but, somehow, there is not much to tempt one in that department. The lights and shades are here a third proportional to the lights and shades of an English summer day, and those on a moonlight night. Everything is one mass of brightness, except for the first and last half-hours of the day. The skies, too, are entirely deficient in that glow which one’s English imagination associates with heat; pale transparency, which one can hardly look at for its brilliance, stares at one on every side, and every part of the sky reflects