To the editor of the Letters and Correspondence to 1845 we owe, again, this enriching footnote:
‘In Vol. ii. of the Parochial Sermons (Ascension Day, p. 214) there is a passage which throws light on this ardent confident strain, prompted as it is evidently by the failure of hope in his friend’s recovery for service in this present scene. “Moreover,
this departure of Christ and coming of the Holy Ghost leads our minds with great comfort to the thought of many lower dispensations of Providence towards us…. This is a thought which is particularly soothing as regards the loss of friends, or of especially gifted men who seem, in their day, the earthly support of the Church…. Doubtless, ‘it is expedient’ they should be taken away; otherwise some great mercy will not come to us. They are taken away, perchance, to other duties in God’s service equally ministrative to the salvation of the elect as earthly service. Christ went to intercede with the Father: we do not know, we may not boldly speculate, yet it may be that Saints departed intercede, unknown to us, for the victory of the Truth upon earth … they are taken away for some purpose surely; their gifts are not lost to us; their soaring minds, the fire of their contemplations, the sanctity of their desires, the vigour of their faith, the sweetness and gentleness of their affections, were not given without an object.”’
Lastly, the long letter closes with a little budget of news welcome to the exile, and with its crowded mention of names unforgotten, familiar fifty years after as they were then.
‘The Tracts now form a thick volume. We have put a title-page and preface to them, and called them Tracts for 1833-4. I think you will like them, as a whole. You go too fast yourself. Williams has been so unwell, we were going to send him out to you; but he has lately mended. I have just engaged with Rivington to publish another volume of Sermons. The first volume was nearly sold off in the course of nine months: one thousand copies. I have not dared all along to indulge the hope that I should be favoured with having you here again; but now really the prospect seems clearing. I do not like to say so, lest I break a spell! Rogers’ eyes are little or not at all better. Gladstone is turning out a fine fellow. Harrison has made him confess that the doctrine of the Apostolical Succession is irresistible.’
A long letter to Newman, on Nov. 23, opens: ‘Do you know, I am hungry and thirsty to hear about you, and whether your health stands, in the midst of your occupations?
My father tells me your Sermons are talked of in all directions…. I have entirely left off meat; my dinner is toast, and a basin of very weak chicken broth. Breakfast is my chief meal, and consists of a vast joram[198] of milk and arrow-root. It is an odd thing, [as] milk never used to agree with me, but I find that by putting a good lot of cinnamon into it, I can digest any quantity. I find I must not take exercise so as to put me out of breath, as that increases my cough, yet the more I take the stronger I get; so that I am in a dilemma, which I shall cut by borrowing one of the Bishop’s horses instead of walking. I am perforce as idle as possible, my chief occupation being to keep thoughts out of my head. In this respect I find my friend Sanctus Thomas[199] of infinite use. Dawdling over translations, and picking facts out of allusions just keep one going for the time, without supplying any materials to brood over. If you see Keble, congratulate him on the Yank edition of The Christian Year,[200] which has gone on Oakeley’s[201] plan of putting the fine passages in italics. It is amusing to see the selection which he[202] has made…. As to sentiment, I am heartily tired of this place and climate. I am sure it has been too hot for me, particularly during August, September, and October, the hurricane months. I fancy, too, if there was something more to interest one, I should have been benefited by it. Niggerland is a poor substitute for the limen Apostolorum! However, I do verily believe that if I had stayed in England I should have had a
confirmed disease on my lungs by this time…. I have not written a verse since I have been out here, and could not, for the life of me…. If I had the necessary books here, I should like much to get together materials for the Lives of Bishops Andrewes, Cosin, and Overall. They might be made into a nice first volume for a series of Lives of Apostolical Divines of the Church of England: a genus which seems to me to have come into existence about the beginning of James I., and to have become extinct with the Nonjurors…. I wish I could say, as John of Salisbury of Saint Thomas: “Domino Cantuarensi, quoad literaturam et mores, plurimum profuit exilium illud.” But somehow I think I have become even more uncharitable and churlish than I was!’
Hurrell addressed both Christie and Newman on Saint Stephen’s Day. The letter to the former caused immense laughter at Oriel. ‘Even Froude is beginning to joke about matrimony!’ writes James Mozley to his sister. Never was a joke in less danger of becoming practical.