The life and letters of Benjamin Jowett, M. A., master of Balliol college, Oxford.

Letters, 1846-IS8o

I57

New Zealand, Australia, India, the Cape, &c. There should
be railroads, too, intersecting India, and 'British Capital'
should have cut through the Isthmus of Darien; mountains
being blown up by some unknown Warner' invention, and
locks made sufficient to support the weight of an ocean. Here
I am getting out of my latitude and shall therefore stop,
but I think you must allow that the plan for Europe is about
as good as the treaty of Vienna, if it were only possible. My
balance of power should be Protestant against Catholic Germany,
France and England against Pansclavismus and despotism;
Germany a debateable ground, and the Pope without reference
to nice distinctions of doctrine looking simply to the question
of how he might best keep his head above water.-I find
reading prosper here and therefore purpose staying about
three weeks longer, when I wend my way probably to the
Lakes, Durham, York, Lincoln, Peterborough, Cambridge;-a
Cathedral tour, you see....
To R. R. W. LINGEN.
BEAUMARIS, September, 1846.. Just now persons who are at all thoughtful about
things do seem strangely solitary, ' wandering about in sheepskins and goatskins': at first sight there might seem no limit
to scepticism in speculation, and that practical changes were
getting altogether unmanageable. I do not think this is so
really. Is not the sin of infidelity in a great measure despair
about the course of the world?... The Vestiges of Creation I have read. The way in
which it was attacked by Sedgwick disgusted me. I dare say
it is all wrong, but cannot see that there is any religious
interest against it any more than against science in general.
All science tends to demonstration, to lock up the world under
a series of causes and effects. It is no use to make religion
fill up the interstices of science which are merely accidental;
I mean, to seek the freedom of the will, for example, in the
denial of materialism. As to revelation, you are retreating
1 Warner's Explosive Force: July 20, I844. See Times for
first widely known through an July 22, 1844.
experiment in Shoreham Roads,