Thank you heartily for your liberal shipment,

& may all the winds be favourable to the Zephyr

that conveys it. We shall drink your health with great satisfaction when it arrives tho peradventure, considering the delays between this place & Liverpool, I may visit your roof before it is tasted.

Concerning my own movements, they depend upon the progress of the grey goose quill, – which has not the velocity that it possessed in younger years. I have six chapters of the Book of the Church

to write, upon the following subjects, – the Reformation, – the persecution under Q Mary, – the settlement of the Church, – its overthrow by the Puritans, – the preservation of our liberties by its means at the Revolution, – & a view of its history & condition from that time to the present.

Wordsworth is about to enter his eldest son at Exeter, – next week I believe, but John Wordsworth

will not reside till after the long vacation, when I shall provide him with credentials to your son. His name had been entered on the boards at Cambridge,

but it was his own desire to be removed, & I think a wise one, as he had no liking for mathematics, & had a natural unwillingness to be measured by the same standard as his cousins D^r Wordsworths children, who have all been at public schools.

He is himself thoroughly steady, & right minded, of slow but sure capacity. I did not give this introduction to young May,

because he is volatile & light-minded, in great danger of being led into scrapes, & therefore I thought his acquaintance was not one of which John Lightfoot would be desirous.

When John begins to look about him, & consider the ways of life, he will probably perceive that there is no course by which he could so soon establish himself, with the prospect of acquiring a good independence before he reaches the middle of life, as by putting on the harness in your stead, – & you would wear it the more chearfully two or three <years> longer, having this transfer in view. – I noted the other day a passage in Michaelis

– to be mentioned to you. He strongly advises that the Septuagint

should be introduced in schools for the use of those who are intended for orders: – as an indispensable means for obtaining a critical understanding of the Greek of the New Testament. – There is another hint of his which I may as well mention: – that it would be a useful exercise in Greek to have passages written (or printed) as they are in ancient monuments & inscriptions, (that is, – wholly in capital letters & without any division between the words,) & let the boys make them out.

You ask me about the Spaniards. Between two things so bad as the old despotism, & the present Cortes,

if a wish of mine could turn the beam, I should not know in which scale to throw it. The interference of the French is a question not of right, but of expediency. If the family of my next door neighbor are quarrelling to such a degree that there is danger not only of their murder, but of their setting the house on fire, I should certainly reduce them to peace & order, if I could, tho it were necessary to begin by knocking them down. The ruling party in Spain are a minority, ready to go all lengths in revolution. Arguelles,

one of the most celebrated of them, said last year to the M^r Mackenzie

(who is mentioned in my history) that he did not like Englishmen, such as Englishmen were now, he wanted them as they were in Oliver Cromwells

days. Mackenzie told me this.

It is no matter what becomes of Ferdinand,

– a mere wretch, for in whom poverty of intellect is the only excuse that can be pleaded for the want of every generous & every noble quality. But it is most desirable than an end should be put to spoliation, & murder, & mob, law. That France can effect this is by no means certain. If she can, will xx she be content with doing it? I would not trust her, – but that we have the means of restraining her, & the other continental powers are sureties for her good behavior.

At present, thank God, we are all well, – & all unite in the kindest remembrances to you. Make my best wishes to M^rs Lightfoot, my godfather god-daughter & the rest of your family,

– & believe me my dear friend