Untitled - Electric Scotland

1841] LETTER OF A. P. STANLEY 93
Articles ; and the Cardinals have just sate in conclave on him,
and determined that he is against the usages of the Vatican.
But to speak : seriously What has happened ? First comes a
letter from London to Pearson, intimating that a Tract on such
a subject has appeared, and that you are in a state of frenzy.
Next an intelligence from papers, that a Protest of five Tutors,
Belvedere being one, has appeared in the Times. Next, the great
manifesto from the Heads themselves, accompanied by a private
letter from Twiss to me announcing that a convulsive movement
will not improbably take place, only equal to a moral Niagara
ceasing to flow - -Pearson and I are in a state of ferment beyond
bounds. Seriously, my dear Greis, 1 do not draw these Articles
too tight, or they will strangle more parties than one. I assure you,
when I read the monition of the Heads I felt the halter at my
own throat. Of course I speak on the hypothesis that J. H. N.
has maintained the patience, not the ambition, of the Articles.
If he maintains the latter, then certainly it does become time to
throw away the scabbard ; but if the former ah ! my dear Greis,
consider the great train of consequences which a resistance to
such a theory involves. One consolation dawns upon me, and
that is that this convulsion will directly or indirectly lead to the
subversion of the Heads and establishment of the Professors on
their ruins in what way I have not now time to explain, but I see
it clearly in the distance. But my chief object in writing to you was
not to give bad advice on imperfect data, but to implore a letter
by return of post to Poste Restante, Genoa, where I trust to be
by the end of April, to point out what is going on, and whether
I am to post straight from Dover to Oxford, to give my first
vote in Convocation, or whether I had better absent myself from
the scene altogether. A letter from Ward, or from some defendant
of No. 90, would also be in the highest degree acceptable. Pray
remember me to him, and to all my suffering friends, whether in
the defeated or victorious party. Take this in the light of a rush
into your room before breakfast. Will you remember me most
kindly to Johnson, and say that I have often reproached myself
for not writing to him, and that I am often reminded of him in
1 Another familiar name by which Tait was known. One day
when he
and Arthur Stanley were together at Bonn in 1839, the servant of a Professor
on whom they called was said to have reported to her master that
"
und ein Kind had been to see him. The names adhered to them among
their friends for years.
"
ein Greis