“When your letter arrived I was absent from home on a
melancholy business, obeying indeed a call from my poor old friend Dr. Bell, who told me that
| 152 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 57. |
“He had deposited 120,000l. 3 per cents, in the hands of certain trustees belonging to the university of St Andrew’s; and when I arrived, this sum had been divided into twelve parts, six of which went to the university and town, and four for founding Madras schools at Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Inverness. I was consulted about the disposal of the remaining two, and my advice was that he should dispose of one for the augmentation of small livings (which might have been so managed by vesting it in trustees, as to call forth an equal sum from Queen Anne’s bounty, and thus augment forty livings), and apply the other to founding his own schools in the parishes so augmented: to which suggestion I trusted for making the other acceptable. He was delighted at first with the thought, and readily agreed to it. But the next day he returned to the one thought which has always possessed him, and education was to have it all. I urged in vain that the Church of England had some claim for a part of the large sum which had almost wholly been derived from it
“There will be a residue of his property, and I
suspect of considerable amount, by his anxiety as to the
| Ætat. 57. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 153 |
“He wished me to be one of his executors; but this was impossible, without neglecting my own business for an indefinite time. As his will then stood, he had bequeathed a thousand pounds each to me and Wordsworth, with the charge of editing his works. The will was to be re-made, and I think it not unlikely that this bequest may be omitted at last. For though I believe there is no person for whom he has a higher regard, and though I am sure that the advice which I gave him cannot have lowered me in his esteem, whatever it may in his liking; yet if he weighs me in the balance against a Madras school to be established in any part of Scotland, my scale will kick the beam.
“He has been a most devoted friend to children: he has loved them with all his heart, so indeed as to have left little room in it for any other affections. I passed four mournful days with him, and was absent twelve days from home, which is to me a serious loss of time. . . . .
“About the Liturgy I have left myself little room to
write. It wants few alterations, and those very easy and unobjectionable. I
would divide the Morning from the Communion Service; the two together, with the
addition of a sermon, being far too long,
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“God preserve us from the cholera morbus, from which nothing but his mercy can preserve us! It is a fearful thought that perhaps in his mercy he may bring it upon us as the least of the evils which we deserve! Yet I have that comfortable reliance upon Providence, that even in these times I am not cast down.
“God bless you, my dear Neville! And believe me always
