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JCH's hexameters arrived just as he is to begin printing [Dialogues on English Hexameters, 1847]. 'I should like much to have some of Schiller's [Friedrich Schiller] Epigrams. I have myself translated 'Columbus' and 'Odysseus' which I shall insert, and I shall be much obliged for any which you can give me soon'. It was not WW who submitted the translation of Homer to the Blackwood [Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine]. He has tried to put it into English hexameters but has never been satisfied with the result. If JCH wants to give WW a specimen of his Homer: 'it will add to the interest of the collection and answer my purpose of showing how familiar to cultured men the English rhythm is'. Can JCH recommend a 'good discussion of the question of Church and State as it effects the continental nations, Germany and France'. WW must rewrite that part of his work in morality entirely [The Elements of Morality, Including Polity, 2 vols., 1845]: 'One improvement in the mode of treating the subject will be to avoid the word 'Church' altogether'. WW has of course 'Bunsen's [Christian C. J. Bunsen] 'Church of the future' but that is not a general view of the question'. [Frederick Apthorp] Paley has been told to give up his rooms at St. John's College [see WW to JCH, 26 Oct. 1846]. Thomas Worsley is printing his second volume of his Christian advocate's book [see WW to JCH, 3 Nov. 1845]: 'The style is much better and simpler than it was in the first; the matter still to my thinking very vague and dreamy'.

One of WW's small projects is to get a fair hearing for English hexameters: 'Will you help me?' WW wants to publish 'hexameter poems by several persons respected by the world'; JCH's translations of Goethe, John Herschel's of Schiller, WW's of Hermann and Dorothea and those of several other hexameterists. WW has 'just been reading with great delight Bunsen's [Christian C. J. Bunsen] Church of the Future. I hope it is to be translated. The appearance of such a work at present would, in my opinion, be a great blessing to us Englishmen'. JCH should try and persuade Bunsen to give WW an English edition of the work. Worsley [Thomas Worsley] is printing his Christian Advocates's book [The Province of the Intellect in Religion Deduced from our Lord's Sermon on the Mount, 3 vols., 1845]: 'If he avoids shocking his colder readers by strange imaginations which have grown up in his mind during the long time that he has brooded over his system, he may I hope, carry with him many who like systematized fancies on religious subjects'.

WW hopes JCH retains his plan of visiting Cambridge. WW will be there in May after the first week of the month. 'Worsley [Thomas Worsley] is preaching us sermons full of pretty and pious thoughts: but I think he fails in making his audience understand in what manner they are connected in his mind. I tell him that he must show us, not the pearls only, but the thread on which they are strung'.

WW is pleased JCH is 'so tender at being reproached with want of love of system; for I feared that you considered the making of systems to be a dangerous employment; - at least in any one since Coleridge'. For WW 'we want systems, true systems - made with all sobriety and impregnable to disbelief - and so, armed against your Greek line - I believe we want such systems more than anything else; because at the root of all improved national life must be a steady conviction of the reason, and the reason cannot acquiesce in what is not coherent, that is, systematic'. Both WW and Thomas Worsley reach close coincidences by approaching the subject of morality in different ways. TW enters on the 'a priori road, through the views of religious teaching, and I, advancing to it on the other side, from psychology through jurisprudence'.

Written from Downing College Lodge.

WW was grieved to hear of JCH's sorrow. He does not know if he can help find him a Master for his school. The report from the Syndicate for Classical Education has not yet been finalised: 'At present we are, I think, likely to recommend mainly an improvement in the examination for B.A. degree'. They would introduce amongst other things an epistle, history of the church and the history of the Reformation in England: 'I think this will be a great improvement in our general education, and nearly all that we can usefully do in clerical education'. WW is lecturing on morals and hopes to make his lectures into a system of morality. WW talks a great deal with Worsley [Thomas Worsley] about his plans for morality: 'we often agree that your one fault is that you do not care enough for systems. But this is all that it should be. We, cloistered theorists, are wedded to speculative truth, and you a faithful minister and zealous archdeacon look more to practical matters'. With regard to the principalship of King's College, WW would be happy to help Maurice [Frederick D. Maurice] get the position.

WW gives his opinion of possible tutors. He is having trouble settling into his new abode - JCH's old rooms. The fact 'there is no longer a Hyde Hall [the old home of the Malcolms] within reach is enough of itself to make it very doubtful whether the future can be as happy as the past'. WW is concerned that as more and more of his old friends - especially 'you and Worsley [Thomas Worsley] and Rose [Hugh Rose]' - leave the college he is becoming faster fixed. WW must see John Herschel before he departs to the Cape of Good Hope: 'I cannot look at so long an absence of a man whom I admire and love so much, without dear regret'.

Could RJ send him an account of how Mrs Jones is. Worsley [Thomas Worsley] has asked WW to be the minister at his wedding, just as RJ had been at his.

Xerox copy of a MS copy possibly made by Hare's sister-in-law Lucilla Powell. The original is a semi-epistolary travel diary recounting a trip to Italy in 1832-1833 in the company of his friends Walter Savage Landor and Thomas Worsley.

Herstmonceux, Hailsham - Thanks WW for his invitation. JCH has been socialising too much which has prevented him writing his sermons. He would like Sheepshanks [Richard Sheepshanks] rooms. After he has delivered his sermons he shall begin writing a second volume of the Guesses [Guesses at Truth by Two Brothers, 1827].

Information concerning two prospective Trinity students. JCH is pleased Thomas Worsley has been made master of Downing College: 'He will at least make Downing a place of some meaning, in spite of its architecture'.

Herstmonceux - JCH and Esther Hare hope they will be able to come to Cambridge in May for two or three days. Although it is likely it will coincide with WW's trip to London for the Westminster scholarships. JCH hopes John F. D. Maurice 'will get the Readership at Lincoln's Inn, as it will combine so much better than Guy's with his work at King's: but it is by no means a clear matter'. JCH has begged Maurice to write to WW to ask for a reference - is WW sufficiently intimate with Lord Brougham to canvass him? JCH has 'been engaged in a conflict with an old opponent of yrs, Sir W. Hamilton of Edinburgh, & have been dealing out divers hardish blows'. Hamilton's attacks upon Luther are particularly disgraceful and unfounded. JCH acknowledges that Hamilton also hits hard blows, 'But he will have to defend himself; & he will find that as difficult a matter as the sikhs do, after their predatory erruptions'. If WW has any thought in publishing his volume on hexameters, JCH would be happy to contribute. JCH is sorry to hear of Thomas Worsley's riding accident.

Herstmonceux - When WW and Cordelia Whewell came to visit, they had not expected them to have been so close to renting the house at Carter's corner: 'This encourages me to hope that you may be tempted by another house, and an incomparably better one, in the parish, which is gasping with all its empty rooms for a tenant'. If the owner can find a good tenant, that is, as he explained to me, one who is not a sportsman, he will let it at a very low rent, £100 a year for the house & garden in their present state'. Although it is larger than what WW and Cordelia may have wished for - 'this wd just enable the Worsleys to come & keep house here with you, Thus the trio, who were so many years constantly together at Cambridge, wd be reunited here'.

Herstmonceux - Thanks WW for his invitation to Cambridge but will not be able to come due to illness and various people visiting. The wife of John D.F. Maurice is extremely ill and may die. JCH presumes WW is lecturing this term on moral philosophy. 'Worsley [Thomas Worsley] & Trench [Richard C. Trench] are admirable additions to the theological strength of the university, & I hope will be good watchdogs against the Oxford hysteroproterites. I am very glad you concur so entirely with my church-views'.

Accompanied by a sheet found with the letters with a note in Italian concerning a protest against a theory of colours signed by "Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino", "Antonio Allegri da Correggio", and "Petrus Paulus Rebens".

George Airy wants an additional 20 copies of a paper of his being printed at the University Press: 'This number of 20 copies he wishes to have sent to France for which purpose I want you to send them to Herschel [John Herschel] who is going thither'. WW has been to view the Thames Tunnel with George Peacock and Thomas Worsley.

Written from Downing College Lodge.