many changes of place and companions as I ever remember, and have had a
right busy and exciting time of it. On Friday evening before last our
great examination closed, and I was not a little disappointed, thinking
that I ought to have done better. Then on Saturday one of my Oxford
friends came down (Lake), and this of course made a great change, and
raised my spirits as high as before they had been low. In the evening
the class-paper came out and I found I had got all I had hoped for, and
also that I was head of the form in composition marks, thus securing
two prizes; then I dined at Arnold’s, and had a very pleasant evening.
Then followed all the misery of the last night--noise, noise, noise
of preparing, and wishing good-bye, &c., till twelve o’clock and
after; followed at two o’clock by the still greater noise of going.
After my two hours’ sleep, I had a busy morning of breakfasting with
my tutor, of paying off window-bills, &c. &c., packing up, &c. &c.;
and so on till twelve o’clock, when I dined out, and returned to the
school at three o’clock calling-over, wished the fellows good-bye,
and waited for the coach till four in the school field. In a short
time your old friend the Oxford and Leicester Regulator--vulgarly
termed the Pig--transported me to Leicester, and here I found myself
in a completely new world, at a house I was strange to, with my old
schoolfellow Burbidge correcting the proofs of No. III. of the ‘Rugby
Magazine.’ Next day at 10 P.M. we were joined for an hour by two more
Cantabrigians (Vaughan and Gell), which was very delightful indeed.
Well, not to trouble you with a further account of what we did at
Leicester, on Friday night after walking for two and a half hours along
Leicester streets (for the coach should have started at half-past ten
and did not till one o’clock), I began a long journey to Liverpool.
After one of the coldest and bitterest nights I ever remember, and a
day not much less so, I found myself about 3 P.M. at the end of the
lane by the fifth milestone. I must go a little further and tell you
what we are going to do these holidays. George is now in Chester; he
is going to Mold on Thursday, the 24th inst., where I shall join him
the same day. Hence after a few days we shall proceed to Min-y-don[4]
for ten days, and thence again he will return here, and I shall
probably go to Chester.
I suppose we shall have a regular rambling time of it, which I dare say
will be pleasant enough in its way; but I cannot tell you how very,
very much I long for next summer, even on this ground only, that then
we shall have done with this way of living. I am quite well now, and
shall be, I hope. I have not been so hard at work this last half-year,
and that may have something to do with it. But I think it is a good
deal owing to my having to go about with other fellows more than I used
to do, and this will be the case for sometime now. I have, however, to
look forward to a very busy half-year; but as it will not be my last
half-year, I need not be very anxious about it or excited in it. I
shall have another Easter and another Exhibition time after this; but I
must do my best to be ready for next November, when I shall go up for
the Balliol scholarship. At any rate, my dear mother, it is no long
time now before July comes, and time passes very quickly, at least I
find it does to me now. It seems now that there is nothing wanting to
make my earthly happiness complete, so far as it can be complete, that
will not be given me next summer, though indeed even now I can see some
flaws in it. But there will be so many and such friends at Cambridge
and Oxford, and so happy a situation at school where I know that I am
loved by many, and where I am ever living under and gathering wisdom
from a great and good man. Such a prospect makes one tremble, for it
seems to be too fair for earth: at least it makes one resolve to do all
to fix one’s affections on things above, lest God should see that such
fortune was too great for one, and that one could not bear it.
_To his Sister._
Mold Vicarage: December 30, 1835.
I have some difficulty in prevailing on George to do what he does not
like (_i.e._ read) for an hour and a half in the day. But I hope and
believe he is much better at school than he is in the holidays: indeed
I think it is very natural he should be so. And it is wonderful what a
degree of kind and affectionate feeling he has; only fancy, for six or
seven years he has been treasuring up his money in the savings’ bank,
and now it is all spent to buy me a watch. On Christmas day I found a
little paper box on my plate at breakfast, and on opening it first came
a quantity of brown paper, then a note, then the ribbon, and at the
bottom a gold watch.
The examination went off very well for me last half-year. In regular
work four first-classes, in composition, divinity, classics and
history; I might have got two more in modern languages and mathematics.
In extras I got two first-classes, which was all I tried for, and which
will give me a prize. I shall also get a prize for being among the four
first in the composition of the half-year in the sixth; which means
the Latin, prose and verse; Greek, prose and verse; English, prose and
verse, which we have done in the half-year.
_To J. N. Simpkinson, Esq._
Stanley Street, Chester: January 18, 1836.
I am most utterly busy now at Niebuhr for November, which time is
very much in my thoughts. The bare idea of missing is horrible, and
I have not done a page for the magazine as yet, though I have great
hopes of writing a good deal. As to Q., you know he invited me to his
house this winter, so I suppose he has taken a great fancy to me.
He is disagreeable sometimes, and is rather narrow-minded, or rather
narrow-notioned; and having said so much ‘con,’ I might say a great
many ‘pros,’ but it is this very narrowness of ideas which prevents one
loving him. Such people have no idea that it is anything approaching
to a duty to make oneself agreeable; they have a great deal too much
of the itch to become martyrs and undergo persecution. Even two or
three years under Arnold have not wholly eradicated this notion in Q.
himself; but if he goes, as I believe he does, to Balliol, he will, I
trust, soon lose it, as I think he is sure to be admitted into the High
Arnold set that is just germinating at Balliol under the auspices of
Stanley and Lake.... You know how differently a boy regards home when
he has once been to school. The kind of passive and almost apathetic
feeling (to indulge in a bull) which he before had becomes high, steady
and active feeling and principle. I will not say that my feelings
towards him are so personal as they are to some others, because they
are so closely connected with Arnold, but I am very much attached
to him.... I verily believe my whole being is soaked through with
the wishing and hoping and striving to do the school good, or rather
to keep it up and hinder it from falling in this, I do think, very
critical time, so that all my cares and affections and conversations,
thoughts, words and deeds, look to that involuntarily. I am afraid you
will be inclined to think this ‘cant,’ and I am conscious that even
one’s truest feelings, if very frequently put out in the light, do
make a bad and disagreeable appearance; but this however is true, and
even if I am carrying it too far, I do not think it has made me really
forgetful of my personal friends, such as, in particular, Gell and
Burbidge and Walrond, and yourself, my dear Simpkinson.
_To the same._
School House, Rugby: February 13, 1836.
... I am sure this constant writing of letters is not really a waste
of time. Everyone of us has much he needs to receive, and there are
few who have nothing to give; and I, for one, cannot speak too highly
of the good I have got from others in this way; it is such a constant
correction of each other’s wild and foolish tendencies of mind,
opinion, &c. I wish I could have come to Cambridge very much; but I
do not agree at all in your second reason, viz. that it would make me
discontented with the Balliol prospect. If I do get the scholarship, I
shall not long one bit for Cambridge; no, nor do I think I shall do so
if I don’t get it. It is the very thing for which you uphold Cambridge
which makes me prefer Oxford. At Oxford we only form part of a large
set, and there is more hope there that a little leaven will leaven
the whole lump, which is, I think, more useful than your scheme. To
be sure, there will only be Stanley, Lake, Fox, Arnold, and myself;
but then there are a great number of very nice men, with whom, I hope,
we shall get more acquent, and this will be better. Do not think I
underrate the blessing of Rugby friends; I am only anxious to give
others that blessing. I have a great deal more to say, but I must go to
the _De Coronâ_, _i.e._ first lesson, so good-night.
Combe’s[5] shop is delicious. So is the new Irish Title Bill--_auctore_
Lord John Russell--at least I am told so. So also is the fact that,
_malgré_ scandal, libels and lies, ‘Morning Herald,’ ‘Times,’ and ‘John
Bull,’ the school is above 300. So also, I doubt not, will be the
reading of ‘Knight’s Quarterly,’ which I have just got. So also (this
is indeed a climax) will be Easter.
_To his Mother._
School House, Rugby: March 1836.
... At last the prizes are over, and the last half-sheet of the
Magazine, No. IV., is also sent off, I believe; and you can hardly
fancy the feeling of this freedom, most unusual indeed to me. As for
the prizes, I have this Easter got one, the Latin verse; and a second
for each of the others, viz. the Latin prose and the Greek verse, so
that I shall still have two to try for next year; so that, of course,
I am very well satisfied. I have been very well, too, on the whole;
indeed I may say exceedingly well, not withstanding all the hard work,
and happy too, though sometimes in rather low spirits, for I stand much
alone in the school now, and I am afraid it is anything but good for me
to be alone; but I hope I am conquering these fits, and I do not think
they come nearly so frequently or so strongly as they used to do; and
when you are come over and settled, I think they may cease altogether;
if they do not, it will not be my own fault.
Dr. Arnold, I am afraid, you know too little about yet to give him and
his concerns much interest for you. Only if any rumours of ill-conduct
as head-master here have crossed the Atlantic (I believe they have
got a great way through the ‘Times’ and ‘John Bull’ newspapers), I
might as well tell you that the Trustees of the School met last week
in London, all being present except three of the twelve, and wrote a
letter to the Doctor, saying that they had the most complete confidence
in him; that the school was going on as well as could be expected, and
that the discipline was perfectly humane. Lord Aylesford, one of the
absentees, wrote still more complimentarily to him. It is, indeed, a
marvel how any one could think of circulating such utter falsehoods and
absurdities as have been spread about by different papers for the last
three months. The school is certainly at this moment not at its very
highest state of excellence, such as it was in two or three years ago,
but there is a very great deal of goodness and talent springing up, I
hope and believe.
From some cause or other, immense numbers left last Midsummer, and will
again this coming one; and the sudden elevation this causes of a large
number into the place of trust and authority renders the spirit of the
highest class more childish and less sensible and manly than it used to
be. These are things which no one can calculate on, though of the most
material consequence to the well-being of the school, and only show
the extreme difficulty of education. Only fancy, out of the thirty-two
first in the school I suppose just half (if not more) will go; and thus
a full half of the sixth will be new and quite inexperienced, many
of them quite young. Perhaps I let these things grow too much into
everything else. Yet it is very fine and striking to see many of the
best and cleverest Oxford and Cambridge men still watching with great
interest all the little changes in the school, and still helping those
that remain with their experience and wisdom.
I shall not be sorry to go to Oxford now, for I find Stanley and Lake
like it very much; and I dare say Dr. Arnold will be a bishop before
long. I only hope it may not be just yet. I must, however, do my best
to go there as I wish, viz. with a Balliol scholarship; and that not
only for the honour’s sake, though the honour is the greatest part of
it, but for the 30_l._ per annum which, with an exhibition, will, I
trust, all but pay my way at Oxford, as Balliol is 20_l._ or 30_l._
cheaper than any other college, I understand. What may come after this
I know not; this is enough to look to as yet. And I mean, if possible,
to have a quiet month for reading at Finch House before you come over.
Our Easter time is just beginning. Two of our University people are
down already, Burbidge and Lake, and Gell and Simpkinson are to be here
next Wednesday. From that day to its namesake of the first week after
Easter, I suppose there will be little or nothing done but walking and
talking.
_To J. N. Simpkinson, Esq._
Rugby: 1836.
You must not be angry at my turning back from the turnpike. I don’t
understand Arnold’s saying what he did to Vaughan, for surely, at that
rate, C. or S. (I don’t mean to be invidious on either university)
might, if they ever came here, take fellows over by wholesale, without
asking leave, for of course they are in the same position, relatively
to schoolboys, as you or Vaughan. And I was thinking of a good deal of
mischief that D. and others had done at Easter among the fellows by
taking advantage of their being ‘gentlemen at large,’ so that on the
whole you may see that I had something more like reason, at any rate,
than mere scrupulousness about the letter of the law; though, indeed,
the letter of the law is a very good thing, as the spirit is apt to
vary with the interpreters, but what is written is written. I assure
you I should have liked nothing better than to have gone with you to
Dunchurch, and I reproached myself very much for not having asked
Arnold, as I had meant to do, at first lesson.
Do you know that to-morrow the most liberal, or rather radical, measure
is to be brought forward, of throwing open the Island to the fags? I
am not quite so liberal as to vote for that, but I am afraid it will
succeed. The reason of the attempt to open it is the establishment of
these new gymnastic affairs--swings, vaulting-poles, and all kinds of
monkey-trick instruments, which excite a great desire in the fags for
this privilege.
_To the same._
Liverpool: July 16, 1836.
Do you know I believe I am become quite a convert to the Cambridge
set’s superiority, though, after all, Cambridge can never be equal to
Oxford in the grandness of the idea of it? One may fancy Cambridge a
very excellent and useful big place of education, but Oxford is the
place for the education of statesmen and great political men; and the
influences of Oxford and its place in relation to the commonwealth
is far higher for good or for evil. Suppose Oxford became truly good
and truly wise, would it not be far more important, and a far greater
blessing than Cambridge in the same condition? And in this consists
the superiority I used to stick up for of the Balliol set, because I
believed them truly wise, and withal full of the Oxford public and
political and national feeling. But to live in, and among, and as mere
society, you are doubtless better and more delightful.
August 8.
What a delightful thing it must be, being so near Fox How! I cannot,
indeed, conceive any one calling ‘the Dr.’ Tom, even at Fox How.
Rugby: September 23, 1836.
We are all getting on very pleasantly this half-year, and the school
looks remarkably harmless, and everybody inclined to do their best
and behave well, which is very delicious. We are not, however, by any
means full--not more than 286, which will probably be raised to the
full complement next half. Of course, we have quite a new sixth,
and certainly an improvement. The night-fagging is at last abolished
totally, except half an hour at the beginning. We have our supper in
the most gentlemanly fashion, in the room together, on a tray with
plates and knives, and we buy very good cheeses ourselves, and make
a very sociable meal of it. And at last the dream of former days is
becoming a reality: the Sixth Form Room is to be furnished; Arnold
gives us 5_l._, and the Trustees advance the rest, except a small
sum raised by immediate subscription. Also, at last, the new window
is put up, and looks, I think, very beautiful, I am very happy and
comfortable, and working pretty well.
LETTERS.
FROM 1836 TO 1849.
OXFORD.
_To his Father._
Oxford: November 26, 1836.
I have just come out from Balliol, of which college I am now a scholar.
The examination concluded this morning about twelve o’clock, and it
has just been given out I have got the head one, which also includes
an exhibition added to it to make it more valuable, as of themselves
the scholarships are not worth much. We have had a long and laborious
examination, but I am quite well, and not much tired, at least I do
not feel so at present. I stay up here till next Wednesday, as the
inauguration is on Tuesday evening.
_To J. N. Simpkinson, Esq._
Rugby: December 9, 1836.
I am sitting in Arnold’s drawing-room, of all places in the world,
for my nine days at Oxford have so tired me, that after vainly trying
yesterday to return to regular work, to-day I have resolved to stay
out and rest myself; and as there are to be, I believe, half a score
fellows in the sick-room, Mrs. Arnold kindly took me in here. The
examination was on the whole, I think, neither very favourable nor yet
unfavourable to me, and it pleased God that I should be in health and
strength and good spirits, and not much excited during the days of the
work. I could not but feel, from what I heard and saw, that I had a
very good chance among them, and that in one or two things I had the
advantage.
_To his Sister._
Balliol College: October 15, 1837.
Behold, I am in Oxford, safe and sound, capped and gowned: have
attended chapel twice, once with and once without surplice; have been
to Hall (signifying dinner in Hall); also twice to a wine party; also
to call on the Master, and to the University Sermon this morning; so
that by to-morrow evening, when, I hope, my books will be arrived and
arranged on my shelves, and when also, I trust, I shall be furnished
with a kettle and set of tea-things (for as yet I have been dependent
on the bountiful hospitality of my friends), I shall be pretty
completely settled. I came up with Stanley and with two other Rugbeians
on Friday evening, and got established in my rooms that night. They
consist of one small and one smaller room, both, however, considerably
larger than my study at Rugby, in the attics of No. 4 Staircase, Outer
Quadrangle.
_To J. P. Gell, Esq._
Hope Street, Liverpool: January 15, 1838.
Did the intelligence arrive in your parts of Arnold’s wonderful victory
in the Senate of London University? _i.e._ the introduction of an
examination in the Gospels and Acts into the Degree Examination, which
must seem a strange novelty in that godless place. It must have been a
very grand thing to see him get up among all those people and declare
that they must do something to show that they were Christians and that
it was a Christian University. I do not know what would become of the
various shades of Whigs now existing in the University if Hawkins were
to be made a Bishop. These people, however, have done a vast deal of
good at Oxford, where anything so ‘ungentlemanly’ and ‘coarse’ and in
such bad taste as Evangelicalism would never be able to make very much
way. It seems just the sort of religious activity and zeal which one
would expect to develop itself in an age of activity and shaking up in
such a place as the University of Oxford.
I am great friends with Brodie, and still more so, I think, with Ward,
whom I like very much. I have seen more of him and of Lake than of any
one else.
_To the same._
Oxford, Balliol College: April 8, 1838.
Do you not envy me my idleness? you, who, I suppose, are in the
miseries of entering the Trinity College Examination. I have got
through all my trouble, and am now fully at liberty to lie in bed, go
to the newsroom, read reviews and novels, learn to skiff, and finally
to insult you and Simpkinson.
It is supposed that but for this Hertford, which has turned out so ill
for us, all knowledge of Latin in the University of Oxford would have
been by this time quite extinct, except as surviving in College graces
and University oaths; those also not understood.
I wish that you were at Oxford; it is, I am sure, so much better a
place than Cambridge, and you would have the great advantage of a good
chance of becoming a disciple of ὁ μἑγας Νἑανδροϛ, whom I like much
better than I did, and admire in many points exceedingly.
_To the same._
Balliol: May 8, 1838.
One thing, I suppose, is clear--that one must leave the discussion of
Τἁ Νεανδρωπικἁ, κ.τ.λ., all snug and quiet for after one’s degree.
And it is no harm, but rather good, to give oneself up a little to
learning Oxford people, and admiring their good points, which lie, I
suppose, principally in all they hold in opposition to the Evangelical
portion of society--the benefit and beauty and necessity of forms--the
ugliness of feelings put on unnaturally soon, and consequently kept
up by artificial means, ever strained and never sober. I should think
very likely, too, their anti-Calvinistic views of justification were,
if not just, at least very useful to lead us to the truth. I should
be very sorry ever to be brought to believe their further views
of matter acting on morals as a charm of sacramentalism, and the
succession-notion so closely connected with it. All this and their
way of reading and considering Scripture--such a contrast to the
German fashions--rests, I suppose, entirely on their belief in the
infallibility of the Church down to a certain period, to which they are
led by a strong sense of the necessity of some infallible authority
united with a feeling of the insufficiency of the New Testament.
Indeed, I think a good deal of what they say as to this latter point is
stronger than anything I ever heard against it. Newman is now giving
lectures on the Mystical Power of the Sacraments, and seems to have
stated the objection to it Scripturally in a very fair and candid
manner. If I had said a quarter of this to ----, he would have set me
down at once for a thorough-going convert ad Newmanismum. But you will
not be so rash; and you remember that you asked me to write about it.
It is very striking that there is a German divine among the large
assortment living and thinking here, who has come to a mystical view
which is no less difficult than Newman’s, though not in form the same.
Olshausen is his name. His notion is of a mysterious union of our
bodies with our Lord’s, though not by the bread and wine.
_To the same._
Rugby: September 1838.
Arnold is coming with Bunsen to Cambridge next Christmas holidays;
about the time, I suppose, of your going up for your degree. He is
quite well again, being restored by Bunsen’s visit. I think, for
myself, I would give two years of my life to come to have back the last
one I spent at Rugby. Many of the big, unruly fellows who are troubling
the school so much now, and were in my time only showing the beginnings
of their badnesses, quite haunt me at times; but that cannot be helped,
so one can only hope earnestly for Theodore, who seems indeed very
brave and manly. One sees very little of Arnold here, and indeed to
talk with him almost nothing.
Balliol: November 18, 1838.
You must know when you modestly requested me to answer your letter by
return of post, that I was then in the midst of preparations for my
little-go, which fiery ordeal I have passed through now nearly three
weeks. Also that Congreve and I have come to the conclusion that time
in fee simple does not exist in Oxford, but only on credit, and that
with heavy interest.
Stanley was as much delighted as you were with Whately, and was greatly
rejoiced too at finding you so unusually (for a Cambridge man) like
an Oxford man. There is, I suppose, no doubt much more interest in
such matters (theological, ecclesiastical, political, &c.) here, than
with you; though the society ---- sees is much the most _inquiring_,
at any rate, on them, than any in Oxford, and it is not a very large
set. The Newmanistic undergraduates mostly shut their ears and call it
blasphemy, but not quite universally, and of course they, though they
will not listen to anything else, have a scheme of church government,
&c., which they uphold, not to say anything about understanding or
appreciating it.