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Humorous speculations on what De la Rue [Warren De la Rue] was thinking of.

Norwich - AS is shocked to hear that their former Master - Christopher Wordsworth - has died: 'Could you give me any information on the subject?' AS hopes to be back at Cambridge the first week in April. Can WW help AS with some details concerning a testimonial he has to write.

Details concerning AS's nephew and his plans to stay during the vacation - if possible - in Cambridge: 'he is most anxious to remain in Cambridge the greater part of the vacation and read with a classical tutor'. Would WW object to him staying in AS's rooms to save money.

WW sends R. W. Evans's [Tutor of Trinity College] printed reply to Connop Thirlwall's critique ['A Letter to the Rev. Thomas Turton, on the Admission of Dissenters to Academical Degrees', 1834]: 'I hold that it has little bearing on the question of the admission of Dissenters'. Evans's lectures were not an imperative issue in the controversy but it will show JCH 'how it may happen that Evans feels very bitterly about what Thirlwall has said'. WW is pleased JCH agrees with most of his reply to Thirlwall ['Remarks on Some Parts of Mr Thirlwall's Letter on the Admission of Dissenters to Academical Degree', 1834]. As to WW 'making an analogy between religion and knowledge I should not have done it, if I had not known that a dislike of compulsory chapel and compulsory lectures go together in the minds of some of our lecturers here - and being firmly persuaded that such opinions are as destructive of church and college as they are of chapel and lecture room I took the opportunity to say so'. WW did not think Thirlwall's printed reply to him 'very judicious for who can be 'private, reserved, and full in answer to a printed circular from an intimate friend beginning 'gentlemen'?' The seniority met to discuss the issue: 5 persons were in favour of Thirlwall (Adam Sedgwick, Thomas Musgrave, Joseph Romilly, Richard Sheepshanks and George Peacock).

WW has 'spoken with Prickett [Marmaduke Prickett, Chaplain of Trinity College, 1836-38] about his intentions and find as I supposed that he does not hesitate being a candidate for a fellowship next term & so that there will be no obstacle on that head in the way of his belonging in your vineyard. It appears that the Master, who I think mentioned his name to you had not spoken to him of the possibility of such a proposal from you; but it is I think much to the credit of his judgement & principles, as well as a good enquiry for his being a useful & satisfactory assistant to you, that he is particularly delighted with the idea of entering the church under your auspices'. WW is sorry to hear of JHR's asthma. WW has 'only just begun Napier ['Peninsular War']. Sedgwick [Adam Sedgwick] is delighted with the military views which it contains...but he is not insensible to the faults you mention. He seems to think, & Peacock also that it may change people's opinion of Cintra & Moore. I think it was very bad reading for a man with a weak chest & so you seem to have found it'.

AS hopes to have finished his work by the end of this week, and be back in Cambridge in time for the Fellowship Examination.

Trinity College - WW is preparing the sermons he is to give at St. Mary's in February. He is shortly departing with Sedgwick [Adam Sedgwick] on an expedition to Paris. He is behind in writing the sermons: 'with time enough I should not fear the greater part of the work - all the argument about the activity and omnipresence of the Deity, but when I come to the indications of benevolent design in the moral frame of society I have not such an habitual familiarity with the view of the subject in its details as merits with the confidence and vehemence which would be becoming. I have no doubt I should get on better if I had you at my elbow'. Babbage is in Cambridge canvassing for the Lucasian Chair - John Herschel is here to support him - 'but all in vain'. George Airy has been elected. WW thinks this a good choice - he 'will reside and give lectures - practical and painstaking ones - who is par eminence a mathematician - and whose reputation will all go to the account of the university'.

Cambridge - AS has just returned from the funeral of the 'poor Marquis to which I went as a mourner'. He hopes to attend the meeting [BAAS] in Birmingham next month. A horrible murder was committed on Sunday on the outskirts of Cambridge 'by a set of bloody drunken ruffians as is supposed'. They are so far cholera free 'but the Doctors are fearing an outbreak of it'. If cholera does appear and the Commissioners come down they will find Trinity College in a good condition of drainage. AS would like to consult WW over his preface: 'A Preface of 300 pages to a sermon of but eighty will look some what out of proportion'.

RJ has heard that the next Quarterly Review has been advertised with a review of RJ's book in it ['Review of An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth and the Sources of Taxation by the Rev. Richard Jones', The Quarterly Review, 1832]: 'I shall hardly believe it till I see it...Murray and C. are greater noodles still - what the deuce could they all mean with their equivocation and mystery - truly the smallness of the wisdom that governs the literary world deserves to be embodied in a new proverb in which their names should figure. I shall rejoice much to see it. I was prepared to be magnanimous if it was left out - but I knew all along that the circulation of the book depended essentially and mainly on it'. Maria Edgeworth paid RJ a visit - 'tell Sedgwick [Adam Sedgwick] all this. I shall be disappointed if he is not very jealous'. RJ does not know when he will be sending up the manuscript to volume two and hopes WW will not be angry at the delay - it 'is assuming a dignified and attractive shape in my mind'. He has read John Briggs 'Land and Tax in India I wish I had seen it before - but it is clear that that Indian scholars are fighting about the use of language not about facts - I have invented a neutral phraseology which will simply express the facts and avoid disputed names and I regret not to have used it in Rents'.

WW sends JCH his second pamphlet on the Connop Thirlwall controversy ['Additional Remarks on...Mr Thirlwall', 1834. For the controversy see WW to JCH, 28 May 1834]: 'You will see that I have ventured a little further into politics than I did before'. WW would like to send him two Cambridge newspapers which contain another branch of the controversy between Sedgwick [Adam Sedgwick] and Selwyn [William Selwyn]: 'I fear you will think that Sedgwick has been rather overbearing'. In Thirwall's second letter ['A Second Letter to the Rev. T. Turton Containing a Vindication of Some Passages in a Former Letter on the Admission of Dissenters to Academical Degrees', 1834] he says of WW 'that I am a friend who has spoken in the tone and language of friendship'.

Further to WW's circular respecting the Professors subjects of examination: 'I mean to publish a syllabus and make it the guide of my examination'. His residence in Norwich 'has been a dull one so far'. AS's gout is playing up.

AS has had a house full of sick people but most of them are now getting better. He hears that WW and Cordelia Whewell are going to Germany, and hopes they will stay a few days with him first.

AS hopes all has been done in due order: 'the Minor Fellows were admitted to Full Fellowship'. The temperature is boiling: 'On the wall of my room which looks into the Great Court it [the thermometer] stood at 98 [degrees] tho' shaded from the direct sunbeams'. AS has been studying the Oxford report and thinking of the Cambridge equivalent [AS was one of the Cambridge Commissioners on the Syndicate to revise the Statutes of the University].

Concerning Woolner's bust of Tennyson.

Letter to William Henry Smyth dated 16 Feb. 1834 asks for barometrical observations on behalf of Professor [Miller?] of Cambridge, is looking for the mean height of the barometer in different latitudes; Mr and Mrs Airy have fever and [Adam] Sedgwick has dislocated his arm; is building lecture rooms with a ventilator which would enable Mrs Smyth and her friends to listen to lectures. This letter accompanied by two notes in an unidentified hand.
A letter to R. C. Trench is dated 2 Mar. 1852 and asks questions arising upon reading his Study of Words.
There are two letters to William Hodge Mill, dated 1842 and 1844. In the earlier letter he asks Mill to serve as examiner for the Tyrwhitt Hebrew Scholarship, and asks his opinion of the effect of the Corn law on the value of tithe rent charges. The later letter sends a passage he has read in the Life of Hegel which he thinks will amuse him.
The letter to Benjamin Webb is dated 18 Dec. 1857 and refers to Webb's offer of a collection of MSS related to William Hodge Mill, and states that the seniority has approved the sum of £50 for the MSS.
The letter to Lady Lubbock is dated 8 Mar. 1864 and accepts an invitation to visit High Elms; is expecting a visit from Amelia and Maria Herschel with their brother Willie.
Accompanied by a modern transcript of a letter from Whewell to B. H. Smart dated 8 May 1969 [1849?] thanking him for a copy of his Manual of Logic.

AS is leaving for Bolton where on Tuesday next he is to marry his nephew. AS thanks WW for his 'answer to the author of the Prolegomena Logica ['Letter to the Author of Prolegomena Logica', 1852].

AS has just received WW's pamphlet ['Notes on the Oxford University Bill in Reference to the Colleges at Cambridge', 1854]. Colonel Grey told AS at Buckingham Palace that the Prince [Prince Albert] 'had been astounded at the news of wholesale rejection, by the Senate, of the graces proposed by the study syndicate'. AS thinks this very unfortunate: 'If Cambridge refuse to move by her own internal organs, what are the powers external to us likely to say and do?' AS has just finished WW's pamphlet and agrees with most of it.

WW sends HJR a document of some customary payments owed to him from Trinity College - 'its being the last of such literary essays which you will receive from me'. All WW's duties keeping accounts have been passed on to somebody else. WW is pleased 'to hear a good account of your university [HJR was Professor of Divinity at Durham University]... I wish most heartily among other novelties you would some of you discover or write a system of morals which might take the place of Paley & Locke. Sedgwick [Adam Sedgwick] tells me he has sent you his sermon; when you read it you will see that he has declared war against both Paley & Locke. This puts them in a different footing in Cambridge from that on which they have hitherto been; for though opinions to the same effect were in very general circulation in the place, they were never I think clothed with anything like an authoritative expression before. The task of writing a system of ethics is certainly not easy, for it must not only be erected on sound principles, but so framed as to bear an advantageous comparison in its logic and execution with the best of other systems, for instance, with Paley's book - which is no easy condition. I am afraid, from what your Brit. Mag. says of Wardlaw's Christian Ethics, he has not solved this problem'.

WW's question has puzzled AS: 'I have been half a dozen minds about my answer - on the whole I retire to the affirmative side of the question'. There is also another question: 'Is it likely that Government would sanction the indulgence?' AS's gout has been playing up.

Trinity College - AS has been ill since he last saw her. He hopes to go to Dent to see his brother [John Sedgwick]: 'the Doctors hold out no hopes of his restoration'. AS hopes EEA enjoys her rest at Cliff Cottage with WW.

Statement of the wording change signed on separate sheets by A. A. Ellis, John Rigby, and Adam Sedgwick.

It has been some months since AS received a letter from Professor Selwyn informing him 'that there would be a great meeting at Cambridge in the Michaelmas, I am for the purpose of promoting a Church Mission to Southern Africa. The Bishop of Oxford, Mr Gladstone and other distinguished persons were expected to attend; and it was hoped that Prince Albert might take the chair as Chancellor of the University'. He subsequently heard that 'Gladstone's attendance was by no means certain; and without a more official communication from the Committee I did not think myself justified in troubling our Chancellor'. However, AS received another communication yesterday from the acting Secretary of the Cambridge Committee: 'I immediately forwarded his letter 'to General Grey at Balmoral; that they might be laid before the Prince'. AS indicated to the Prince that he did not know whether the plan of the Mission had arrived at a mature state, and whether it could be regarded as a general academical movement. Could WW give him any more information on the subject?

AS had a scare over the health of his niece [Isabella Sedgwick], but she has had an operation and is now on her way to a perfect recovery. AS plans to take her to the seaside as soon as she is well enough.