by Protestantism. I desiderate something in the same key with
‘“Shall work a wonder there
Earth’s charmers never knew,”
and
‘“When the life-giving stream,” etc.[228]
So much for quarrelling. I have attacked N[ewman] for some of the Tract Protestantism…. However, the wiseacres are all agog about our being Papists. P. called us the Papal Protestant Church, in which he proved a double ignorance: as we are Catholics without the Popery, and Church-of-England men without the Protestantism…. It seems to me that even if the laity were as munificent as our Catholic ancestors, they could do nothing for the Church, as things are, except in their lifetime. Any Churches they might build, any endowment they might make, would be as likely as not to become in another generation propagandas of liberalism. Certainly we cannot trust the Bishops for patrons…. I don’t feel with you on the question of tithes. They cannot be a legal debt and a religious offering at the same time. When the payment began to be enforced by civil authority the desecration took place…. The Wesleyan system is voluntary … they are the strongest, and most independent of their congregations, of any existing society in the United States, and, I believe, in England….’
To the Rev. J. H. Newman, March 4, 1835.
‘… My dearest [Newman], I suppose by this time you will have learned to think as little of my inconsistent reports as I do when making them! I see [that] on one and the same day I must have sent my father a cheerful account, and you a dismal one. I am forced to say something, but have no data to judge by, and so talk at random. Certain indeed I am that my pulse is still progressively calming,
and that now it is scarcely more irritable than it ought to be; but in nothing else can I be sure that I change at all…. Favus distillans labia tua, as someone said to John of Salisbury.[229] What can have put it into your head that your style is dull? The letter you sent me in the box was among the most amusing I ever received. I have now made up my mind to come back [in] the packet after the next, so as to be in England the middle of May, and am not wholly without hope that the voyage may do something for me. The notion of going to Rome with Isaac is very gratifying. I must learn French for it, though; for I have no notion of trusting “Providence,” as I did last time. The sun has already got almost to his full strength, though the earth is of course [only] beginning to collect its stock of caloric, and the experience of last year assures me that the less I have of it the better…. I am most sincerely sorry to hear of Mr. K[eble’s] death.[230] I suppose if there ever was anyone to whom death was like going to bed, it would be Mr. K[eble]. I have written lots of stuff since I have been out here, some of which I must inflict on you on my return; but none of it will do to publish. When I look over anything long after I write it, I see such jumps and discontinuities as make me despair of ever being intelligible. How I wish to see you all again!’
Shortly after this letter was sent to post, Hurrell left Barbados for good. No personal records of him exist there, and all memories of him have faded away. His face was set at last towards another island where his few remaining days could be crammed full of intelligent toil, and played at their full value. From Bristol, on May 17, he was able to announce: ‘Fratres desideratissimi! here I am, benedictum sit nomen Dei, and as well as could be expected. I will not boast, and indeed, have nothing[231] to boast of, as my pulse is still far from satisfactory….