sense of the is (Tò èσTì) in the perfect tense partakes of the τὸ νῦν αἰώνιον. Horace told no lie when he said that Jupiter -non tamen irritum Quodcunque retro est efficiet ; neque Diffinget, infectumque reddet, Quod fugiens semel hora vexit.' Perhaps the language of one of Milton's devils will occur to you to the same effect. I cannot call up the words, though I remember the thought. It is more than possible that evil deeds never die as to their effect on the agent or the passive. A man who has committed a sinful act (and who, alas! has not?) may perhaps in no instance feel as he would have done if he had not done it. He may have to carry the burden of his sin to his grave. But he is not in the eyes of God as he is in his own eyes. God's forgiveness is never imperfect. Does the man at any given moment repent in his heart of hearts, his present self is at that moment all that God looks at; and God asks for real, not perfect or sufficient, repentance, else would His invitations to sinners be mockery. His work is always perfect, and therefore His forgiveness, whether of our first pollution at the font, or of our subsequent sins in the absolution of our daily service. Our repentance may always be shallow and sceptical, but there is no necessary or God-imposed limit to its depth or efficacy. And if there is no such limit placed by God, but only by our own wilful obduracy, surely it is not so much the place of the minister of grace to remind us of what we do not, as of what we might do. To say (as I have heard both Pusey and Newman) that we LIFE AT OXFORD. 135 can never stand so justified in the sight of God after sin as we did at our baptism, is to me an appalling error, and opposed to all sound spiritual philosophy. Newman sometimes brings in some most perverse criticism to support his view, e. g., the repentance sought by Esau spoken of in the Epistle to the Hebrews. When I hear him so criticise, so philosophise, and so Jesuitise in cataloguing deadly and venial sins, I cannot but marvel greatly at his being so firmly and transparently right upon other points. I wish you could hear him, for he (and Jacobson) belong to the few who are worth hearing. The men who do best here are hard-headed, hard-hearted, hard-fisted persons, who have a firm faith that Oxford training is altogether the result of consummate wisdom, and that Aristotle and Aldrich are two princes. There is one illustrious example of this faith belonging to our Hall—a man who came up with 'little Latin and less Greek' about my own age, and is likely to take first-class honours. Then men should moreover not direct their labours with respect to their own minds, but with respect to their examinations. A little brain and a good deal of industry will do well thus directed. It is true that Plato has not been unfrequently introduced in the examining schools of late, and Maurice, Coleridge and Carlyle are becoming known and recognised. But at present, judging from my associates, their writings are merely talked about or notionalised, and Plato is read rather to see what he says than to learn how he felt and thought. Sewell is the great patron of Plato, and he delivers lectures in his professorial capacity on Plato and Butler. He is a fine fellow, but crotchety. At Cambridge they examine the men on Paley's 'Moral Philosophy' and Butler's 'Sermons.' There is nothing quite so foolish or contradictory done here. The necessary books in that line are Aristotle's 'Ethics' and Butler's Analogy and Sermons.' For a preliminary you may either choose logic (chiefly according to Aldrich) or three books of Euclid. I think I shall take the latter as being the honester. You may be sure of no humbug in Euclid. There is, however, plenty of time for me to make up my mind, as I cannot pass my responsions before July, perhaps not till October. At present my staple reading consists of Aristotle and Thucydides. The latter is wonderfully instructive, and Jacobson's lectures on it are most interesting. I like his lectures on Aristotle very much, but they are not in general favour on account of his not saying much about what is called here the Science.'-Believe me, my dear Strachey, yours very sincerely, 6 S. CLARK. MAGDALEN HALL, Sunday evening. MY DEAREST B. B.,-I have felt very unwilling to be silent so long, but during the past week I have had all my leisure taken up by Parley's Atlas* and other matters of the like kind. It will not be very long (if all be well) before I see you and the dear duckling, which will be a very * He was the author of 'Peter Parley's Wonders of Earth, Sea, and Sky,' and 'Peter Parley's Ancient and Modern Atlas.' See page 93. The original 'Peter Parley,' an American, said that there was only one book among the English' Parleys' that he should care to have written, and that was 'Wonders.' He asked to be introduced to the writer.-ED. WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 137 great treat to me, though I like Oxford so much that I should fain call it my home. Till I felt myself to be a godfather, I never knew how instructive a child is, though it was not then that I began to love children. I can now enter into that part of Wordsworth's grand ode, where he addresses an infant: and 'Thou best philosopher who still dost keep Thou little child, still glorious in the might I am rejoiced to see that your advancing experience in human feelings and human circumstances serves to interpret and endear the poetry of Wordsworth to you, as I find my own experience does to me. The numerous allusions to childhood scattered over his works are quarries of rich and right thinking, such as it does one good to dwell upon. He is the great teacher of our age, and I am disposed to think that no writer living so deserves our gratitude. It is edifying and consoling to see how the popular poets of our youth (whose works attained their power by a false, bustling effervescence of earthly feeling and confused thinking, which, having gone off, has left them to the minds of their former admirers as flat or · as distasteful as a glass of exposed soda-water) have given way before him. I see it especially amongst the thoughtful, poetry-loving young men here. He has some profound admirers amongst us, and many more who are opening their eyes to his truth and beauties. I consider it my bounden duty to take every opportunity to give the latter class a nudge in the right direction, considering that no thorough . admirer of Wordsworth can be a bad man. I have just been vindicating (or attempting so to do) the passage which Byron and a host of others have so much ridiculed, the mention of which reminded me of little b. b., and of the probable consequences of the mode in which those duties towards her will be performed, which I have taken upon me to see rightly discharged. 'My heart leaps up when I behold A Rainbow in the sky; So was it when my life began; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The child is father of the man, And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural Piety.' I do not wonder at these lines startling any one who reads them for the first time, and who has not previously led a thoughtful and family life; and I should have anticipated that unfledged young men would not understand them without a good deal of trustful docility. They do, however, express a most solemn truth, and one that it behoves us to dwell upon and be thankful that we have it so lovingly and well expressed. Each prior state of mind produces, or is the parent of the succeeding state; and it is proper that we should look back to the pure movement of the Spirit within us in early infancy with veneration and awe, which may rightly be termed filial. A prior state or condition of mind may be as a good father, or a bad father, to our present state; but no particular connected with our |