’I think that in two or three years I may, if I live, have some preparatory branch school at Curtis Island.  If it should clearly succeed, then I think in time the migration from New Zealand might take place.  I do not think two schools in two different countries would answer.  We want the old scholars to help us in working the school; we can’t do without them, and the old scholars can’t be trained without the younger ones, the material on whom their teaching, and training faculties must be exercised.

’You all know how deeply I feel about dear Mr. Keble!

’Thank God, we have as yet no dysentery.  I baptized last week a lad dying of consumption.  There are many blessings, as all clergymen know, in having death scenes so constantly about one; and the having to do everything for these dear fellows makes one love them so....

’Your affectionate and dutiful Nephew,

‘J.  C. P.’

The above sentence refers to the paralytic attack Mr. Keble had on November 30, 1864.  Nevertheless, almost at that very time, he was writing thus:—­

’Penzance:  March 7, 1865.

’My dear and more than dear Bishop,—­It would be vain for me to write to you, if I pretended to do more than just express my heart’s wish that I could say something of the doings and sufferings which now for years past we of course associate with your name, so as to encourage and support you in your present manifold distress.  But (especially for reasons known only to myself) I must leave that altogether to Him who helps His own to do and suffer.  One thing only I would say, that to us at our great distance it looks as if the sanguis martyrum were being to you as the semen Ecclesiae, and you know how such things were hailed in the time of St. Cyprian.  May it please God before long to give you some visible earnest of this sure blessing! but I suppose that if it tarry, it may be the greater when it comes.  Our troubles as a Church, though of a different kind, are not small.  The great point with me is, lest, if in our anxiety to keep things together, we should be sinfully conniving at what is done against the faith, and so bringing a judgment upon ourselves.  I do not for a moment think that by anything which has yet been done or permitted our being as a Church is compromised (though things look alarmingly as if it might be before long), but I fear that her well-being is more and more being damaged by our entire and conscious surrender of the disciplinary part of our trust, and that if we are apathetic in such things we may forfeit our charter.  There is no doubt, I fear, that personal unbelief is spreading; but I trust that a deeper faith is spreading also; it is (at Oxford, e.g.) Pusey and Moberly, &c., against the Rationalists and other tempters.  As to the question of the Bible being (not only containing) the Word, I had no scruples in signing that Declaration.  One thought which helped me was, the use made in