;ET. 59.] TO R. W. CHURCH. 603 



of Manchester ; I had not heard of the death of the 

 former incumbent when the news of this offer came. 

 What a run Gladstone is having in the way of church 

 patronage ! Then the memorial from both universi- 

 ties themselves for the abolition of religious tests ! 

 How you are getting on ! And how are you to manage 

 to secure proper religious influence at the universities ? 

 By moral power and the strength of your cause alone ? 

 which may, after all, be more truly effective than 

 statutes. Yet there will be natural anxieties. 



Pray give me, now and then, an inside view of what 

 is going on, or better, what is thought. 



Why, here is my sheet filled and nothing said. 

 I have nothing to tell you from here - - nothing worth 

 sending you. I don't think much of Lowell's " Cath- 

 edral." The grotesque bits are not in half as good 

 keeping as the gargoyles and other queer pieces of 

 ornament on the old cathedrals. 



CAMBRIDGE, April 4, 1870. 



I have for a long while been wishing and endeav- 

 oring to write to you, but it is not so easy, so many 

 other letters have to be written, to answer letters from 

 persons that I don't particularly care for, as to leave 

 little time for those that I do. 



I owe you for two very interesting letters ; for it 

 was a hurried note of mine that we need not count, 

 which crossed yours of February 4, and then there is 

 your later one of March 1, along with Mrs. Church's 

 to my wife. I leave it for her to tell you about the 

 novelists. And I have not much to say of myself. I 

 have pottered all winter over the herbarium and upon 

 an article for our " American Academy's Proceed- 

 ings," of a wholly technical nature, which is just in 



