good enough to ask me. I should like to come not in vacation, when my time is already taken up, but about the beginning of Term, after October 15, for a week-day or two, as I cannot get away on Sunday. And I shall expect you to pay me a visit also later on.

I am glad to hear that the opus magnum is getting on. Now that people are in a troubled state of mind about the currency is the time for it to appear. They seem to have given up the old theory of Ricardo and Lord Overstone-that the value of currency depended on the value of the precious metals as a commodity-and not to know where to look for a new one.

Bimetallism seems rather too hard for the vulgar understanding to comprehend. It seems nothing to the ordinary mind but a new name for high prices and easy borrowing of money. The stolid minds of the City have nothing to say to it-but also they have nothing to put in its place. So I want to hear what Alfred says about it in the second volume. I hope that he is not getting into the quagmire of bimetallism. Your account of the Dolomites seems enchanting: I should like to be there with you, but my days of walking seem to be past-instead of twenty miles a day,' I can only walk one mile. But still though older I am very well and do a good deal of work, and the College is, I believe, very prosperous.

I went to stay at Bournemouth two or three months ago. By the munificence of Lady Shelley, the poet Shelley, who was expelled from University College about eighty years ago with the approval of every one, has been reinstated in a sort of Pantheon of his own with the approval of every one. 'So the whirligig of time brings about its revenges.' 'I was one Sir Topas, in this interlude.'

I saw your father and mother at Bournemouth. They were both looking a little older and feebler, but very well.

TO PROFESSOR LEWIS CAMPBELL.

BALLIOL COLLEGE,

August 25, 1893.

I am glad to hear that you are enjoying yourself in Switzerland, and are making progress with the Gifford Lectures. That

is an opportunity which you may well be envied. I hope that you will be re-elected at the end of two years, and if you add on another two years to that, making six years in all, you will have time and opportunity to write a great work on a most interesting subject. For indeed Greek religion runs up into the Christian religion, with which it has quite as much to do as the Jewish, and probably more.

To trace it in its whole extent and ritual and mythology, from Homer to the Stoics and Neo-platonists, with its outlying parts of oracles and mysteries, is indeed an enormous work. The Germans have provided the materials, and you have to work them up with a better judgement than theirs.

I have just finished going over the Notes of the Republic "for the second time, and shall have got a third revision before they are written out for the press. If books are to be edited afresh, no pains seems to me excessive for such a work as the Republic. I hope to go to press about Christmas.

I am reading over your studies of the text and language. When we meet we must talk over the misprints of the text : some sacrifice of money will have to be made, but in a book of this sort it is worth while. I hope to finish looking through your papers in about ten days' time, when I go for a holiday. When do you go to Egypt? I hope that you and Mrs. Campbell will pay me a visit before that time; and then we can talk of this and many other things.

I have been reading C. H. Pearson's book on National Character with great interest. When are you coming home? On leaving here I think I shall return in six weeks.

TO PROFESSOR JOHN NICHOL1.

BALLIOL COLLEGE,

August 31, 1893.

Will you write a line and tell me how you are, and how Mrs. Nichol is, and what you are doing? It is now nearly three years since we parted at the Crieff railway station, and I have had no authentic tidings of you since. For more than

1 Cf. Knight's Life of John Nichol, p. 284.

REES

a year I had a set of Plato waiting for you, but having received no answer to a letter which I wrote asking you to come here, I did not send it (shall I send it now?). But I cannot forget your old affection and attachment, and if I never saw you and Mrs. Nichol again, should always have it lying at the bottom of my heart.

You may have heard of a dangerous illness I had about two years ago. I got over it (though I have a tendency to suffer from relapses of it). However, I mean to brush it off, and, please God, to live for a few years longer.

I hope you have not given up literary projects. The last one which I have seen, Bacon, appeared to me very successful, and I hear the Carlyle well spoken of. What a turmoil of passion that life was; yet he gave expression to some element of our age which was needed. I am told that Pobiedonostsev, the Russian Emperor's ecclesiastical adviser, is a great reader and admirer of him.

It seems a long time, and things and people have changedhow many of our friends ?-since I first came to see you at the Observatory at Glasgow, and afterwards at Moffat, and very many times since in Montgomery Place.

I cannot myself complain of old age. It has left me still many friends, and the recollections of many others who are gone, which have a great comfort and pleasure in them. I no longer go so far as Scotland, but you and Mrs. Nichol will, I hope, come and see me again at Balliol and talk over old times.

I have read lately a book which has greatly delighted me: Captain Mahan's Influence of Sea Power in History, and on the Napoleonic power especially. The book is American, and yet quite faultless in point of taste; it is also perfectly impartial, and shows immense knowledge of the subject. It touches the 'whereabouts' of the future in war, not altogether a pleasant contemplation for England. Do get it and read it. You will pass a fortnight very pleasantly in doing so.

The only other book I have been reading is Grant Duff's account of Renan. Renan must have been a much greater and better man than we are accustomed to think him in England. But then he has fallen under an ecclesiastical ban. I don't

like these ecclesiastical bans. They make me think as I get older that the power of the Church has increased and (in England) is increasing and ought to be diminished.

I said that this was the only other book,' but I now remember another very well worth reading, C. H. Pearson on National Character-very instructive, I think, though crotchety, like the author of it. It is one of the metaphysical books about politics, an aspect of the science which, though I have not much fancy for it, seems to be coming over the world.

APPENDIX

I. COPY OF PROFESSOR JOWETT'S WILL.

BENJAMIN JOWETT Master of Balliol College and Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford revoke all former Wills and Codicils and declare this to be my last Will and Testament.

To my Cousin Sidney Thomas Irwin at present a Master in Clifton College I leave the sum of one thousand five hundred pounds, to Miss Harriett Irwin his sister I leave a like sum of one thousand five hundred pounds, to Miss Martha Knight my Housekeeper in grateful recognition of her faithful services I leave two thousand pounds. To Mr. Matthew Knight her brother and my former secretary in grateful recognition of his valuable services to me and the many happy hours we have passed together I leave a like sum of two thousand pounds. If he is not living at the time of my decease but his wife is living I leave a sum of one thousand pounds to his wife. To Frank Fletcher if he is living with me at the time of my decease I leave a legacy of five hundred pounds; but if he is not living with me a hundred a year for every year in which he has fulfilled the duties of Secretary to me to be reckoned from June 1890. To William Parker Butler of Balliol College in grateful recognition of his services to myself and to the College two hundred pounds. To my Butler Perroud if he is living with me at the time of my death I leave two hundred pounds and I forgive