From Thomas Archer Hirst   Augst 15th 1854

Queenwood College | Aug^st 15^th 1854

My dear John.

Your candour has lost you no nights lodging, if you were to become less candid towards me you would deprive me of one of the most valuable privileges of your friendship I sent you the lecture in order to receive from you the excellent letter you have sent me.¹ I anticipated most of it and there are but few of your remarks against which I am inclined to kick.² The verbal objections are all just in this respect your criticisms are always invaluable they have already been of great service to me. What you say about systems of education is perfectly correct to another audience I should have used no such strong expression, but I spoke to people who under system understand the treatment of boys and have but one blind method of treatment, they could not understand a system which should reserve free scope for all idiosyncrasies and I chose to make my sentence paradoxical by using the term ‘system’ as they virtually understand it. The paragraph about Natural & Scholastic Laws is parenthetical and perhaps misplaced. I hesitated whether to strike it out or expand it which I think I could then have done I never yet wrote a lecture without being conscious that there were sentences which were mere echoes of others I had written or thought of before. In which my own life blood may once have pulsed but did not then do so. Good writing consists in sticking close to the feelings which are uppermost in you when writing. But unfortunately there come periods when having dwelt upon these feelings sufficiently long you feel urged to pass to others before you have properly matured them. Perhaps we might say the heart possesses more inertia than the intellect and thus the transition from one subject to another is made easily by the latter then the former. Nevertheless I can justly say that a great part of this lecture was as sincerely felt when written as any other I ever attempted.

Magnus is translated³ and will be sent to Francis by this post. I shall commence Beetz⁴ immediately. I underlined D^r Atkinson merely as an easy manner of telling you he had made his examination I do not think you will offend him by calling him M^r. But when new there is a certain allowable satisfaction to a student in the title (particularly when properly earned) of which I would not care to deprive him. If he is worth anything he will some day hold it as cheaply as you do.

Goodbye dear John Thine as ever | T. A. H.

RI MS JT/1/H/203

RI MS JT/1/HTYP/356