Item 35 - Letter from Edward Hawkins

4 pp

Clevedon, Somerset - Unfortunately due to their children's health, EH and Mrs Hawkins cannot come to stay in Cambridge. EH stupidly left WW's present at Oxford [Butler's Three Sermons on Human Nature, 1848]: 'I was not ignorant of the faults you pointed out some years ago in Paley's writings; though I value them highly nonetheless - some of them very highly - which is not now the fashion in Oxford. But I do not recollect, or do not know, the faults you allude to in Butler. I have not read his sermons, however, for many years'. What WW alludes to in the papers is probably what the majority of the Oxford tutors wish for concerning a considerable alteration in the examinations: 'It was in fact the shape ultimately assumed by the attempts which I mentioned to you in 1845 to bring our Professorial Lectures more into play. But the scheme was rejected'. It would have introduced three examinations of which he gives details.