“I heard with sorrow of your ill health. Perhaps you are at this time a happier man than if you were in the enjoyment of vigorous health, and had never known sickness or sorrow. Any price is cheap for religious hope. The evidence for Christianity is as demonstrative as the subject admits: the more it is investigated, the stronger it appears. But the root

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of belief is in the heart, rather than in the understanding; and when it is rooted there, it derives from the understanding nutriment and support. Against Atheism, Materialism, and the mortality of the soul, there is the reductio ad absurdum in full force; and for revealed religion there is the historical evidence, strong beyond the conception of those who have not examined it; and there is that perfect adaptation to the nature and wants of man, which, if such a revelation had not already been made, would induce a wise and pious man to expect it, as fully as a Jew expects the Messiah. For many years my belief has not been clouded with the shadow of a doubt.

“I shall have a large share of abuse in the course of this year. In the first place, my Book of the Church, which I am writing con amore and with great diligence, will strike both the Catholics and the Puritans harder blows than they have been of late years accustomed to receive. The Emancipationists, therefore, and the Dissenters will not be pleased; and you know the temper of the latter. My History of the War smites the Whigs, and will draw upon me, sans doubt, as much hatred from the Buonapartists in France, as I have the satisfaction of enjoying from their friends in England. This volume is in great forwardness; more than five hundred pages are printed. As for Lord Byron and his coadjutors in the Times, Chronicle, &c. &c., I shall of course not

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notice the latter, and deal with his lordship as he may deserve and as I may feel inclined. I have the better cause and the stronger hand.

“. . . . . With regard to Lord Byron, I have suffered him to attack me with impunity for several years. My remarks upon the Satanic School were general remarks upon a set of public offenders; and it was only in reply to the foulest personalities that I attacked him personally in return. The sort of insane and rabid hatred which he has long entertained towards me, cannot be increased; and it is sometimes necessary to show that forbearance proceeds neither from weakness nor from fear.

“Your copy of Landor’s book was franked up through the Admiralty to Gifford. His Latin, I believe, is of the best kind; but it is, like his English, remarkably difficult: the prose, however, much less so than the verse. The cause of this obscurity it is very difficult to discover.

“My correspondence with Frere has been very brisk. Something, also, I have had from Whittingham, and am every day expecting answers to further

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questions which I have sent; but the most valuable papers which I have yet had, are from Sir Hew Dalrymple, relating to his first communications with the Spaniards, and the whole proceedings in the south of Spain, while the junta of Seville ruled the roast. They will cause me to cancel a few pages, and replace them with fuller details. Luckily the greater part comes in time to be introduced in its place, without any inconvenience of this kind. These papers have given me a clear insight into many points with which I was imperfectly acquainted before. They contain also proof of scandalous neglect on the part of Ministers, or something worse than neglect—a practice of leaving their agents without instructions for the sake of shifting the responsibility from themselves. At the commencement of the troubles in Spain, out of thirty-four despatches,—certainly the most important that any governor of Gibraltar ever had occasion to send home,—Lord Castlereagh never acknowledged more than two. I have heard our Government complained of for this sort of conduct, which, in fact, is practised in every department of state; but this is the most glaring proof of it that has ever fallen in my way.

“In looking over your volumes*, you will, I think, wherever you perceive that a passage has been struck out, perceive at the same time for what reason it was omitted. The reason for every omission was such that, I am persuaded, you would, without hesitation, have assented to it, had you been upon the spot. A most powerful and original book it is, in any one page of which—almost in any single sentence—I should have discovered the author, if it had come into my hands as an anonymous publication. Notice it must needs attract; but I suspect that it will be praised the most by those with whom you have the least sympathy, and that the English and Scottish Liberals may perhaps forgive you even for being my friend.

“I have not been from home since the summer of 1820. Even since that time, London has been so altered as to have almost the appearance of a new city. Nothing that I have seen elsewhere can bear comparison with the line of houses from Regent’s Park to Carleton House. A stranger might imagine that our shopkeepers were like the merchants of Tyre, and lived in palaces. I wish the buildings were as substantial as they are splendid; but every thing is done in the spirit of trade. Durability never enters into the builder’s speculations, and the unsub-

* The proof sheets of a work of Mr. Landor’s, on the Writings of Charles Fox, had passed through my father’s hands.

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stantial brick walls are covered with a composition which seems to have the bad property of attracting moisture in a remarkable degree. In Regent’s Park, before the houses are finished, the cornices are perfectly green with slimy vegetation. The most impressive sight to me was St. Paul’s by gas-light. I do not think anything could be more sublime than the effect of that strong light upon the marble statues; and the darkness of the dome, which the illumination from below served only to render visible. They have attempted to warm this enormous building by introducing heated air; but after expending 800l. in stoves and flues, the effect was to render the quire unendurably cold, for the whole body of cold air from the dome came rushing down, so that the attempt has been given up as hopeless.

“In London I scarcely went out of the circle of my own immediate friends. But as I went east and west upon a round of flying visits to old friends and familiar acquaintances, some of whom I had not seen for more than twenty years, I had opportunity enough of perceiving a more general disposition to be satisfied with things as they are, than ever existed within my memory at any former time. There happened to be no question afloat with which any party feeling could be connected, and the people were sensible of their general prosperity. Few, indeed, are they who apprehend the momentous consequences of the changes which are taking place. One effect of general education (such as that education is) is beginning to manifest itself. The twopenny journals of sedition and blasphemy lost their

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attraction when they no longer found hunger and discontent to work upon. But they had produced an appetite for reading. Some journeymen printers who were out of work tried what a weekly twopenny-worth of miscellaneous extracts would do; it answered so well, that there were presently between twenty and thirty of these weekly publications, the sale of which is from 1000 to 15,000 each. How I should like to talk with you concerning the prospects of the old world and of the new. “God bless you!

“My old friend Lightfoot is with me, whom you remember at Oxford, and whom I had not seen since we parted upon leaving Oxford eight and twenty years ago. The communication between us had never been broken. I had a great regard for him, and talked of him often and oftener thought of him; and, as you may suppose, the more I became known and talked of in the world, the larger part I occupied in his thoughts. So at length he mustered up resolution to make a journey hither from Crediton during his Midsummer holidays, being master of the grammar school there.

“He declares me to be less altered in appearance and manners than any man whom he ever saw. I

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should not have known him; and yet he has worn better than I have; but he is thinner, and altogether less than when he was a young man, and his face has lengthened, partly because he has lost some of his hair. His life has been laborious, uniform, successful, and singularly happy.

“He trembled like an aspen leaf at meeting me.* A journey to Cumberland is to him as formidable a thing as it would be for me to set off for Jerusalem, so little has he been used to locomotion. And he has shocked Edith May by wishing that the mountains would descend to fill up the lakes and vales, because then I should return to the south and be within reach of him.

“The only thing short of this which would be likely to remove me from this country, would be, if upon Gifford’s giving up the management of the Quarterly Review, it were to be offered me and made worth my acceptance. In that case I should probably from prudential reasons think it proper to accept the offer, and fix myself within ten or twelve miles of town. But this is not likely, and I am not sure that it would be desirable.

“Dr. Channing, of Boston, in New England, is equally distinguished in his own country by the fervour and eloquence of his preaching, and the primitive virtues of his life. I take the liberty of introducing him to you, because you will feel yourself in accord with him upon many of the most important points, and because I am very desirous that he should see and converse with one who holds as high a rank in Old England as he does in America. I have learnt from him with some surprise that, under the name of Unitarianism, Arianism is the prevailing doctrine in the Massachusetts’ states, and that he himself is of that persuasion. But I have told him that he will find himself much more in sympathy with our clergy than with the Dissenters, and this he already apprehends. He is in opulent

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circumstances, and has devoted, and almost spent, himself in the ministerial duties.

“I need say no more of him; his conversation and the truly Christian temper of his mind, notwithstanding the doctrinal errors which he holds, will sufficiently recommend him. But I feel the necessity of apologising for the liberty which I am taking with you. You will, I trust, impute it to the true cause, and not be offended, if, in excuse for it, I say to you that having had the good fortune once to hear you in the pulpit, and having since perused with the greatest satisfaction the series of your discourses, I earnestly wish that this excellent American should receive the most favourable impressions of the English Church. When I spoke of you to him last night, and put your volume into his hands, I did not know whether you were in this or in a better world. To-day, by mere accident, I learn that you have happily resumed your labours, and yielding to the first impulse I offered this introduction to Dr. Channing with as much pleasure as he manifested at receiving it.

“The General has lately had a narrow, though ludicrous escape. He upset himself with an umbrella in a little skiff which Sir Frederick Moreshead had given him. It was within hearing of his own island. The skiff was corked so that it could not sink, but being half full of water after he had righted it, it was not possible for him to get in, and he being well buttoned up against a stormy day in a thick great coat was in no plight for swimming, so he held on

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and holload stoutly for assistance. His two men hastened off in his little boat, the large one happening to be on the opposite shore. The General had presence of mind enough to consider that if he attempted to get into the little boat he should in all likelihood pull her under water, and that neither of the men could swim; he therefore very coolly directed them to take the rope of the skiff and tow it to the island with him at the end; and in this way he came in like a Triton, waving his hat round his head, and huzzaing as he approached his own shores. I ought to have told you that there came an invitation from him for you to dinner the day after your departure.

“John May left me this day fortnight, and Dr. Bell departed some days after him. The exercise which I took with him completed the good work which was begun with you, and has left me in a better state than I had been in for the two last years. By way of keeping it up while the season permits (nothing being so salutary to me as vigorous exercise) I went up Skiddaw Dod this morning—one of the expeditions which is reserved for your next visit; on my return I found a letter from my brother Henry, saying he shall be here on Wednesday. This will give me ten days more of laking and mountaineering, if the weather permit.

“The temptation which the country holds out to that exercise which is peculiarly necessary for me must be weighed among the many reasons for remaining in it. For with my sedentary habits and inactive inclinations I require every inducement to draw me out. But whether I remain or remove

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I shall see you, my dear Lightfoot, often again (God willing) both in Devonshire and wherever I may be. I shall certainly come down to you when next I visit London, which will probably be in February or March.

“During the little time I had for business I have written about half a paper for the Quarterly, upon a history of the Religious Sects of the last century, by the ex-Bishop Gregoire. The book is curious for its strange mixture of revolutionary feelings with Catholic bigotry, and for the account which it gives of irreligion in France. It gives me matter for an interesting paper, to be wound-up with some seasonable observations upon the progress of infidelity at home. God bless you, my dear Lightfoot!

“The American books have arrived, and I am

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reading with much interest Dwight’s Travels in his own country—a posthumous work. The author (whose unhappy name is Timothy) wrote in his youth some forty years ago, an heroic poem upon the Conquest of Canaan, which was puffed and reprinted in London. Its stilted versification was admired in those days, but it had little or no real merit. Dwight, however, though a bad poet,—because of a bad school,—was a sensible man; and he kept a journal of his travels, and prepared it for publication, from a conviction that a faithful description of New England in all its parts, such as it then was, would in a few generations become exceedingly interesting, however unimportant it might appear if published as soon as it was written. A great deal of course is only interesting locally; but on the whole, the picture of what the country is, his fair views of the state of society then, with its advantages and disadvantages, and the number of curious facts which are brought together, make it very well worth reading. I would give a good deal to see as trustworthy and minute an account of the Southern States. This is just the sort of book which ought to be digested into a review.

“The Quarterly Review will not do itself any good by the mealy-mouthed manner in which it has dealt with Lord Byron. The excuse for its previous silence is wretched; and to preach a sermon in refutation of so silly a piece of sophistry as Cain is pitiful indeed. To crown all, while they are treating his Lordship with so much respect, and congratulating themselves on the improved morality of his

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productions—out comes ‘the Liberal.’ I have only seen some newspaper extracts from this journal, among them the description of myself. He may go on with such satire till his heart aches, before he can excite in me one uncomfortable emotion. In warring with him I have as much advantage in my temper as Orlando had in his invulnerable hide. But there is no necessity for striking a blow at one who has so completely condemned himself. I wish the Liberals joy of their journal.*

“By my brother Henry’s means, I have found how the impediment between me and your cyder may be removed. If you will direct it for me to the care of George Sealy, Esq., Liverpool, and ship it for that place, letting me know by what vessel it is sent, he will look after it there and forward it to Keswick, and then we will all drink your health in the juice of the apple. It will need a case to protect it from the gimlet.

“There is little chance of any circumstance

* “Lord Byron has rendered it quite unnecessary for me to resent his attacks any farther. This last publication is so thoroughly infamous that it needs no exposure. It may reach a second number if it escape prosecution, but hardly a third. He and Leigh Hunt, no doubt, will quarrel, and their separation break up the concern.”—To the Rev. Neville White, Nov. 16. 1822.

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drawing me from this country to reside in the vicinity of London,—at least I can foresee none. The question whether or not the Quarterly Review should do so has been fairly considered and decided, in consequence of Gifford’s dangerous illness. He had written to me soon after you left us, saying he could not long continue to conduct the Review, and he knew not where to look for a successor. He was not ill at the time, and therefore my consideration of the matter was not hastily, but deliberately made. If I had chosen to propose myself, the office must have been mine, of course. The objections to it were, that the increased expenditure which I must incur near London would fully consume any increase of income which I should have obtained, and therefore the time consumed in the mere management of the journal would have been a dead loss. This time would be unpleasantly, as well as unprofitably spent in corresponding upon the mere business of the Review, examining communications, and either correcting them myself where there was anything erroneous, imprudent, or inconsistent with those coherent opinions which the journal should have maintained under my care, or in persuading the respective writers to amend and alter according to that standard. Lastly, it seemed that there was nothing which could recompense me for the sacrifice which it needs would be to quit a country in which I take so much delight, and of which all my family are as fond as myself; and there was this weightier consideration,—that if I gave up the quantity of time which the management of such a journal re-

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quires, it would take away all reasonable hope of my completing the various great works for which I have been so long making preparations.

“I talked this matter over with John May, who entered entirely into my feelings. The next point, having fully made up my mind concerning myself, was to secure the succession (as far as my influence extended) for some person with whom I could freely and heartily co-operate. John Coleridge is just such a person; and having ascertained that he would like the situation, I mentioned him to Gifford and to Murray. Gifford’s illness has occurred since. He is better at present, and I have good reason to believe it is all but settled that John Coleridge is to become the Editor of the Quarterly Review. Without taking him from his profession, it will render him independent of it, and place him at once in a high and important situation.

“I have no written form of admission to the office of Laureate, and very well remember being surprised at the thoroughly unceremonious manner of my induction. At the day and hour appointed (a very memorable one, the Prince Regent going to Parliament just after the news of the battle of Leipsic had been made public), I went to a little low, dark room in the purlieus of St. James’s, where a fat old gentleman-usher, in full buckle, administered an oath to me, in presence of a solitary clerk; and that was all, payment of fees excepted, which was not made at the time. Walter Scott, I recollect, was amused at the description which I sent him of this ceremony, and said it was a judgment upon me for inserting among the Notes to the Cid a reflection of Sir John Finett’s upon the ‘superstition of a gentleman-usher.’ Whether any entry was made, and whether I signed my name, I cannot call to mind, it being nine years ago. Gazetted, however, I was, and P. L. I have been from that time. But how can this concern you?

“You know the proverb, that he who is not handsome at twenty, wise at forty, and rich at fifty, will never be rich, wise, or handsome. Quoad my handsomeness—handsome is as handsome does, and whatever I may have been, they have made a pretty figure of me in magazines. There is a portrait in a German edition of my smaller poems, which it will

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be a treat for you to see. You will never again complain of your ugly likeness below stairs. Concerning the second part of the adage, certain it is that about the age of forty, my views upon all important subjects were matured and settled, so that I am not conscious of their having undergone any change since, except in slight modifications upon inferior points. But for the last part of the story,—rich at fifty,—I certainly shall not be, nor in the way to be so.

“When I deliberated, if deliberating it can be called, about the Quarterly Review, the single motive on one side was the desire of having an adequate and sure income, which I have never had since I discontinued the Edinburgh Annual Register, because it ceased to pay me for my work. My establishment requires 600l. a-year, exclusive of other calls. The average produce of my account with Longman is about 200l.; what I derive from the Exchequer you know; the rest must come from the grey goose quill; and the proceeds of a new book have hitherto pretty generally been anticipated. They may float me for a second year perhaps. Roderick did for three years, with the help of the Pilgrimage—then the tide ebbs, and so I go on. At present it is neap tide in the Row. My tale of Paraguay, when I can finish it, will about make it high water.

“This is all very well, while I am well; but if any of the countless ills which flesh is heir to should affect my health, eyesight, or faculties, I should instantly be thrown into a state in which my income would only amount to about half my expenditure.

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Concerning death I have no anxieties. . . . . On that score I am easy, and not uneasy upon any other. But I have said all this to explain why it was that I could even ask myself the question whether it would become me to take the Quarterly Review into my own hands. I am quite satisfied that it would not; but that it behoves me to go on, as I have always hitherto done, hopefully, contentedly, and thankfully, taking no farther care for the morrow than that of endeavouring always to be able to say, sufficient for the day hath been the work thereof.

“I have made a valiant resolution that the produce of this History shall not be touched for current expenses, looking to it always as the work wherewith I was to begin to make myself independent. The Book of the Church I must eat, but I will not eat these Peninsular quartos. The Whigs may nibble at them if they please.

“I have just received an official communication from Sir William Knighton, which, though it be marked private, there can be no unfitness in my communicating to you. It is in these words, ‘I am commanded by the King to convey to you the estimation in which His Majesty holds your distinguished talents, and the usefulness and importance of your literary labours. I am further commanded to add, that His Majesty receives with great satisfaction the first volume of your valuable work on the late Peninsular War.’ This is the letter, and at the head of it is written—‘entirely approved. G. R.’ Is not this very gracious? and how many persons there are whom such a Communication would make quite

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happy. For myself I am sorry there are so few persons connected with me who can be gratified by it, and wish my good Aunt Mary had been here to have enjoyed it. I may deposit it with my letters affilifatory from the Cymmrodorion, &c., and I might write upon the packet that contains them, vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas. Not that I would be understood as affecting, in the slightest degree, to undervalue what I am continually labouring to deserve.

“I am very glad to see Herries’s appointment. By all that I have heard for many years past, a more unfit person than —— could not possibly have been in that situation; to get him out, and to have so efficient a man in his stead, is indeed a great point. It is the very place in which I have wished to see Herries. I hope and trust, now, that such means as the existing laws afford will be steadily employed for checking the license of the press. The radical country papers continually lay themselves open to prosecution; and I am certain that repeated prosecutions would go far towards stopping the mischief which they are doing at present, and have so long been doing with impunity. A strict watch over these, and over Cobbett, would soon suppress them.

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“I know nothing of the sale of my book; Murray has not written to me since it appeared. Only two opinions of it have reached me, except those of my friends,—one in a complimentary letter from Mr. Littleton, the member for Staffordshire; the other in a letter of the ci-devant Grand Parleur, which Rickman sent me; and certainly nothing could be more flattering than what he said of it,—that it was ‘a Thucydidean history, which would last as long as our country and our language.’ I must confess, however, that I am not aware of any other resemblance than what the title suggests; though I have always flattered myself that my other historical work might, in more points than one, be compared with Herodotus, and will hereafter stand in the same relation to the history of that large portion of the new world, as his work does to that of the old.

“We had an adventure this morning, which if poor Snivel* had been living would have set up her bristles in great style. A foumart was caught in the back-kitchen: you may, perhaps, know it better by the name of pole-cat. It is the first I ever saw or smelt; and certainly it was in high odour. Poor Snivel! I still have the hairs which we cut from her tail thirty years ago; and if it were the fashion for men to wear lockets, in a locket they should be worn, for I never had a greater respect for any creature upon four legs than for poor Sni. See how naturally men fall into relic-worship; when I have pre-

* A dog belonging to Mr. Bedford in early days.

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served the memorials of that momentary whim so many years, and through so many removals!

“To give you some notion of my heterogeneous reading, I am at this time regularly going through Shakspeare, Mosheim’s Ecc. Hist., Rabelais, Barrow, and Aitzema, a Dutch historian of the seventeenth century, in eleven huge full folios. The Dutchman I take after supper, with my punch. You are not to suppose that I read his work verbatim: I look at every page, and peruse those parts which relate to my own subjects, or which excite curiosity; and a great deal I have found there.

“I am sorry to say that the prospect before me is not such as to allow much hope of my seeing Holland* this year. Time, the printers, and the constable are leagued together to oppose my wishes:

* My father had for some time wished to visit the Low Countries, and had planned a tour there with Mr. Senhouse, who had been his companion in a former journey. This was not accomplished until 1825, when Mr. S. was not able to accompany him.

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I shall overcome the alliance, but not till the season will be too far advanced. Perhaps I could be ready by the vintage, which would be no unpleasant sight; but then the days are shortening, and day-light is the thing which travellers can least spare.

“This volume, when it appears, will provoke a great branch of the Satanic confederacy—the Bonapartists. It is the most damning record of their wickedness that has yet appeared in this country, and in a form to command both attention and belief. Only yesterday I learnt from General Whittingham, who was in the battle of Medellin, that the French had orders to give no quarter. A wounded Spanish officer was brought into the room where Victor was at supper, and Victor said to him, ‘If

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my orders had been obeyed, Sir, you would not have been here.’ Those orders were obeyed so well, that the French dragoons that night rubbed their right arms with soap and spirits, to recover the muscles from the fatigue they had undergone in cutting the fugitives down. God bless you!

“Your letter comes in aid of a purpose which I had entertained, of putting together what I have said upon the Catholic question in the Edinburgh Annual Register, recasting it, and publishing it, with some needful additions, in the form of a pamphlet. About a week ago, I put down in my note-book the first sketch of an arrangement, and actually began to compose what I have to say, as a letter to some M.P.; not that it was meant to be addressed to any individual one; but having argued with Wilberforce and Sir Thomas Acland, upon the subject, I knew in what light they considered it. The course which affairs have taken in Ireland will, probably, have the good effect of quashing the question for this year; and in that hope I am willing to postpone my own purpose till a season which may be more convenient to myself, and when aid of this kind may be more needed.

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“The other question arises at home, and brings with it worse consequences than anything which can happen among the potatoes. The repeal of the Test Act will be demanded, and must be granted. Immediately the Dissenters will get into the corporations everywhere. Their members will be returned; men as hostile to the Church and to the monarchy as ever were the Puritans of Charles’s age. The church property will be attacked in Parliament, as it is now at mob-meetings, and in radical newspapers; reform in Parliament will be carried; and then farewell, a long farewell, to all our greatness.

“Our constitution consists of Church and State, and it is an absurdity in politics to give those persons power in the State, whose duty it is to subvert the Church. This argument is unanswerable. I am in

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good hopes that my Book of the Church will do yeoman’s service upon the question. God bless you!

“Westall has sent me four of the six prints for Roderick; the others are not yet finished. I am very much pleased with these. If I were persuaded, according to the custom of these times, that it is absolutely necessary to find some fault with every thing, I might perhaps say that the engraver has aimed at throwing too much expression into the eyes in some of the plates. Those which are come are Roderick at the Foot of the Cross, Adosinda showing him the Dead Bodies, Florinda at her Confession, and the Death of Count Julian. The first strikes me as the best, and for this reason, that the subject is altogether picturesque,—it explains itself sufficiently; whereas, to know what the others mean, the poetical situation must be understood. I am much more desirous that this speculation should succeed on Westall’s account than on my own. He had set his heart upon it, in the belief that it would be of service to me to have my poems thus illustrated (as the phrase is), and in the feeling that the publishers were acting unhandsomely in having such things done for every writer of any note except myself. The success would have been certain, had

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it been done some years ago. At present it is very doubtful.

“How is Chantrey? Something like a message from him has been brought me by Mr. Gee, expressing a wish that I would sit to him when I come to London. When will that be you ask? And many, I daresay, ask the same question, who know not what pains, as well as thought, I must take for the morrow before I can afford two months of travelling and expenditure. To-night I shall finish with Queen Mary’s reign; Elizabeth’s will require not a long chapter; James’s a short one. The next is one of the most important in the book, but easily and soon written, because the materials are ready. Another chapter comes down to the Revolution, and one more will conclude. Then I shall set out for town, and eat ice there instead of oysters. . . . .

“You tell me it is not politic to work entirely for posthumous fame. Alas, Grosvenor, had you forgotten when you wrote that sentence that by far

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the greater portion of my life has been consumed in providing for my household expenses? As for reputation, of that, God knows, I have as much as either I deserve or desire. If I have not profited by it, as some of my contemporaries have by theirs, the fault is not owing to my living out of sight. What advantage could it possibly be to me to meet great men at dinner twice or thrice in the season, and present myself as often at court? There is, I dare say, good will enough among some of the men in power to serve me, if they knew how; but if they asked me how, I should not be able to point out a way. . . . .

“If, as I trust, you have received my first volume of the Peninsular War, and the lithographic views which my friend, William Westall, has engraved to accompany it, you will perceive that negligent as I have been in delaying so long to thank you for the

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books, and to reply to your welcome letter, I had not been wholly unmindful of you. Without attempting to excuse a delay for which I have long reproached myself, I may say that it has been chiefly, if not wholly occasioned by an expectation that I might have communicated to you Gifford’s retirement from the management of the Quarterly Review, and the assumption of that management by a friend of mine, who would have given it a consistent tone upon all subjects. Poor Gifford was for several months in such a state that his death was continually looked for. His illness has thrown the journal two numbers in arrear; he feels and acknowledges his inability to conduct it, and yet his unwillingness to part with a power which he cannot exercise, has hitherto stood in the way of any other arrangement.

“I have more than once remonstrated both with him and Murray upon the folly and mischief of their articles respecting America; and should the journal pass into the hands of any person whom I can influence, its temper will most assuredly be changed. Such papers, the silence of the journal upon certain topics on which it ought manfully to have spoken out, and the abominable style of its criticism upon some notorious subjects, have made me more than once think seriously of withdrawing from it; and I have only been withheld by the hope of its amendment, and the certainty that through this channel I could act with more immediate effect than through any other. Inclosed you have a list of all my papers in it. I mean shortly to see whether Murray is willing to reprint such of them as are worth preserving,

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restoring where I can the passages which Gifford (to the sore mutilation of the part always, and sometimes to the destruction of the sense and argument) chose to omit,—and beginning with the Moral and Political Essays.

“Your friends and countrymen who come to Keswick make a far shorter tarriance than I could wish. They ‘come like shadows, so depart.’ Dr. Channing could give me only part of a short evening. Randolph of Roanoak no more: he left me with a promise that if he returned from Scotland by the western side of the island, he would become my guest: if he could have been persuaded to this, it would have done him good, for he stood in need of society, and of those comforts which are not to be obtained at an inn. Mr. Eliot passed through about five weeks ago, and on Monday last we had a younger traveller here,—Mr. Gardner. No country can send out better specimens of its sons.

“Coleridge talks of bringing out his work upon Logic, of collecting his poems, and of adapting his translation of Wallenstein for the stage,—Kean having taken a fancy to exhibit himself in it. Wordsworth is just returned from a trip to the Netherlands: he loves rambling, and has no pursuits which require him to be stationary. I shall probably see him in a few days. Every year shows more and more how strongly his poetry has leavened the rising generation. Your mocking bird is said to improve the strain which he imitates; this is not the case with ours.

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“Nov. 2. 1823.

“I conclude this too long delayed letter on the eve of my departure for London. From thence, in the course of the next month, I shall send you the Book of the Church. Gifford is so far recovered that he hopes to conduct the Review to the 60th number. I have sent him the commencement of a paper upon Dwight’s book, which I shall finish in town. The first part is a review of its miscellaneous information; the second will examine the points of difference between an old country and a new one, the advantages and disadvantages which each has to hope and to fear, and the folly of supposing that the institutions which suit the one must necessarily be equally suitable to the other.

“Farewell, my dear Sir. Remember me to Alston and my other New England friends; and be assured that to them and to their country I shall always do justice in thought, word, and deed.

“The summer, or what might have been the summer, has slipt away, and the autumn, or what ought to be he autumn, is passing after it, and I have not

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yet been further from my fireside than a morning’s walk could carry me.

“I can tell you, however, now, that I shall start from home with my daughter Edith as early as possible in November, or, if possible, before the beginning of that month; and that after halting a week or ten days in London, I shall pursue my course to Crediton.

“The summer has brought with it its usual flock of strangers, some of them sufficiently amusing. My civilities to them are regulated something by the recommendations with which they present themselves, and a little more perhaps by their likeability, which depends something upon the cut of their jib. You know how impossible it is not to read faces, and be in some degree influenced by what we see in them. We have had two travellers from New England—young men both, and well qualified to keep up the good impression which their countrymen have left here. Last week we had an Englishman, who having travelled in the Levant, and been made prisoner by the Bedouins, near Mount Sinai, chooses to relate his adventures instead of publishing them, and tells Arabian stories after the manner of the professed story-tellers in the East. I wish you had seen him the other evening gravely delivering a tale of a magic ring (it was a full hour long) to a circle of some sixteen persons in this room, the vicar being one of the number. But the most interesting stranger who has found his way here is a Somersetshire man—Morrison by name, who, at the age of two or three and thirty, and beginning with little or nothing, has re-

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alised some 150,000l. in trade, and was then bound to New Lanark, with the intention of vesting 5,000l. in Owen’s experiment, if he should find his expectations confirmed by what he sees there. This person is well acquainted with the principal men among the free-thinking Christians; he likes the men, but sees reason to doubt their doctrine. He seems to be searching for truth in such a temper of mind that there is good reason for thinking he will find it.

“My household are in tolerable order. It has been increased this year by the acquisition of a most worthy Tom cat, who when the tenants of the next house departed was invited to this, where he received the name of Rumpelstilzchen, and has become a great favourite. I cannot say of him as Bedford does of a similar animal, that he is the best for nothing cat in the world, because he has done good service upon the rats, and been successively promoted to the rank of baron, viscount, and earl. In most other things we are as you left us, except that just now the waters are not in their place, having overflowed their banks.

“God bless you, my dear Lightfoot!

I ought to have thanked you for your Visitation Sermon and for your Charge, both worthy of the

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hand from which they come. I have thought, also, more than once, of expressing to yourself, as I have done to others, the sincere pleasure which your promotion gave me, from a public not less than a personal feeling, in these times, when it is of such especial importance that such stations should be so filled. . . . .

“My anticipations would be of the darkest kind, if it were not for a calm, unhesitating reliance upon Providence. Our institutions had need be strong when they are so feebly defended, and so formidably and incessantly assailed. Uncompromising courage was almost the only quality of a statesman which Mr. Pitt possessed; and that quality has not been inherited by his successors. At present they seem to think that all is well, because the manufacturers are in employ, and there is no seditious movement going on. And they would hardly look upon that writer as their friend who should tell them that this quiet is only upon the surface, that the leaven is at work, and that there is less danger from the negroes in Demerara or Jamaica than from a manufacturing population such as ours, with such a party of determined radicals and besotted reformers in Parliament to excite them. Would that I could perceive the remedy as clearly as I do the evil! I have, however, for some time been deliberately putting together my thoughts upon this subject in a series of Colloquies upon the Progress and Prospects of Society, taking for my motto three pregnant words from St. Bernard, Respice, aspice, prospice. I am neither so vain or

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so inexperienced as to imagine that anything which I may offer will change any man’s opinions; but I may fix them when they are unconfirmed, make the scale turn when it is wavering, and give a right bias to those who are beginning their career.

“There is hope for us at home, because our institutions are so good that it is quite certain, if they were subverted, the miserable people would soon desire nothing so much as their re-establishment; and moreover, with the commonest prudence, they are strong enough to resist a revolutionary attack. But if we look abroad, the contending parties are both in such extremes of evil, that I know not from which the worst consequences are to be apprehended,—the establishment of old governments or the triumph of new ones. You would be pleased, I am sure, with the paper concerning Spain in the last Quarterly. It is by my friend Blanco White (Leucadio Doblado). A Spanish priest, who came over to this country in 1810, a thorough Jacobin and a thorough unbeliever, and is at this time as sincere a Protestant and as devout a minister as any whom the Church of England has in her service. There are few men whom I respect so highly.

“Before this letter reaches your Lordship, I shall be on the way to London, and as I shall not finally leave it before the beginning of February, it is possible that I may have the pleasure of meeting you there. It will indeed gratify me to accept of your obliging invitation if I can one day find opportunity and leisure: there is much in your country which I should like to see, and many points upon

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which I should gladly seek for information. My Annual Ode two years ago was upon the king’s visit to Ireland, and the condition of that country. It would naturally have concluded with some complimentary and hopeful mention of Marquis Wellesley, but my spirit failed. I felt that the difficulties of his situation were more than he could overcome; and the poem remained in this respect imperfect.

“That poem of Langhorn’s has certainly a Hebrew cast; but it must be rather a proof that this form of composition is the natural figure of passion, than of imitation. The principle, as a principle, he could not have understood, nor was he, being a lawyer, likely to have had any learning of that kind; nor indeed, being a Catholic, even to have been conversant with the scriptural style. The part given in the Quarterly Review is about a third of the poem, but the whole is in the same high and sustained strain of feeling.

“I am putting the last hand to my long promised Book of the Church. It will give great offence to the Catholics, and to all those Dissenters who inherit the opinions of the Puritans. But I hope and trust that it will confirm in many, and excite in more, a deep, well founded reverence for the Establishment.

“The kindness of your note has melted away the mist that was upon me. I have been fighting against a shadow. That accursed Quarterly Review had vexed me by a gratuitous speaking of its own knowledge*, that the Confessions of a Drunkard was a genuine description of the state of the writer. Little things that are not ill meant may produce much ill. That might have injured me alive and dead. I am in a public office and my life is insured. I was prepared for anger, and I thought I saw, in a few obnoxious words, a hard case of repetition directed against me.

* This was one of the passages before referred to, as wrongfully ascribed to my father.

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I wish both magazine and review were at the bottom of the sea. I shall be ashamed to see you, and my sister (though innocent) will be still more so, for this folly was done without her knowledge, and has made her uneasy ever since. My guardian angel was absent at that time.

“I will make up courage to see you, however, any day next week (Wednesday excepted). We shall hope that you will bring Edith with you. That will be a second mortification; she will hate to see us; but come and heap embers; we deserve it, I for what I have done, and she for being my sister.

“Do come early in the day, by sunlight, that you may see my Milton. I am at Colebrook Cottage, Colebrook Row, Islington. A detached whitish house, close to the New River, end of Colebrook Terrace, left hand from Sadler’s Wells.

“We have been this morning to hear Rowland Hill. Mrs. Hughes called at his house last week to know when he would preach, and was answered by a demure-looking woman, that (the Lord willing) her master would preach on Sunday morning at half-past ten, and in the evening at six. So this morning I set off with E. May, Mrs. and Anne Rickman. We were in good time and got into the free seats, where there were a few poor people, one of whom told us to go round to another door and we should be admitted. Another door we found, with orders that the doorkeepers should take no money for admittance, and a request that no person would enter in pattens. Doorkeeper there was none, and we therefore ventured in and took our seats upon a bench beside some decent old women. One of these, with the help of another and busier old piece of feminity, desired us to remove to a bench behind us, close to the wall; the seats we had taken, they said, belonged to particular persons, but if we would sit where she directed till the service was over, we should then be invited into the pews if there was room. I did not immediately understand this, nor what we were to do in the pews when the service was at an end, till I recollected that in most schism shops the sermon is looked upon as the main thing for which the congregation assemble. This was so much the case

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here, that people were continually coming in during all the previous part of the service, to which very little attention was paid; the people sitting or standing as they pleased, and coughing almost incessantly.

“I suppose what is properly called the morning service had been performed at an early hour, for we had only the communion service. Rowland Hill’s pulpit is raised very high, and before it at about half the height is the reader’s desk on his right, and the clerk’s on his left, the clerk being a very grand personage with a sonorous voice. The singing was so general and so good that I joined in it, and, doubtless, made it better by the addition of my voice. During the singing, after Rowland had made his prayer before the sermon, we, as respectable strangers, were beckoned from our humble places by a gentleman in one of the pews. Mrs. R—— and her daughter were stationed in one pew between two gentlemen of Rowland’s flock, and E. May and I in another, between a lady and a person corresponding very much in countenance to the character of a tight boy in the old Methodistical magazines. He was very civil, and by finding out the hymns for me, and presenting me with the book, enabled me to sing, which I did to admiration.

“Rowland, a fine tall old man, with strong features, very like his portrait, began by reading three verses for his text, stooping to the book in a very peculiar manner. Having done this, he stood up erect and said, ‘Why the text is a sermon, and a very weighty one too.’ I could not always follow his delivery, the loss of his teeth rendering his words

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sometimes indistinct, and the more so because his pronunciation is peculiar, generally giving e the sound of ai, like the French. His manner was animated and striking, sometimes impressive and dignified, always remarkable; and so powerful a voice I have rarely or never heard. Sometimes he took off his spectacles, frequently stooped down to read a text, and on these occasions he seemed to double his body, so high did he stand. He told one or two familiar stories, and used some odd expressions, such as ‘A murrain on those who preach that when we are sanctified we do not grow in grace!’ and again, ‘I had almost said I had rather see the Devil in the pulpit than an Antinomian!’ The purport of his sermon was good; nothing fanatical, nothing enthusiastic; and the Calvinism which it expressed was so qualified as to be harmless. The manner that of a performer, as great in his line as Kean or Kemble, and the manner it is which has attracted so large a congregation about him, all of the better order of persons in business. E. May was very much amused, and I am very glad I have heard him at last. It is very well that there should be such preachers for those who have no appetite for better drest food. But when the whole service of such a place is compared with the genuine devotion and sober dignity of the Church service, properly performed, I almost wonder at the taste which prevails for garbage.

“One remark I must not omit. I never before understood the unfitness of our language for music. Whenever there was an s in the word, the sound

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produced by so many voices made as loud a hissing as could have been produced by a drove of geese in concert, or by some hundred snakes in full chorus. . . . .

“Lane is making a picture which promises to be as good as Phillips’s print is bad, base, vile, vulgar, odious, hateful, detestable, abominable, execrable, and infamous. The rascally mezzotinto scraper has made my face fat, fleshy, silly, and sensual, and given the eyes an expression which I conceive to be more like two oysters in love than anything else. But Lane goes on to the satisfaction of every body, and will neither make me look like an assassin, a Methodist preacher, a sensualist, nor a prig.