Untitled - Electric Scotland

1834-41] RESIDENCE AT BONN 69
This episode over, Archibald Tait set himself once
more to the hard work of his Balliol tutorship and his
Baldon curacy. He does not seem to have kept a diary
with any regularity, but there are spasmodic efforts now
and then which recall, in the minuteness of the entries,
the particular journal kept for his father in the Glasgow
days. From its pages it appears that, besides what was
necessary for his lectures, he was engaged at this time on
a wide course of general reading. The following is part of
a long list of books which he seems to have studied care
fully in the : years 1838-39 Locke on Toleration, Glad
stone on Church and State, Thirlwall s Greece, Adam
Smith s Wealth of Nations, Strype s Memorials, South s
Sermons, Whately s Lectures on Political Economy,
Palmer s Origines Liturgicae, Dugald Stewart s Philo
sophical Dissertations, Archbishop Seeker s Lectures.
Like every one else in those years, he seems to have
read Newman s sermons with avidity. They appear
again and again in his journal, and it is evident that
he was paying the utmost attention to the development
of his teaching. He was giving much thought, too,
to educational questions, and in the summer of 1839
he determined to spend some months, not, as hereto
fore, in foreign travel, but in systematic residence and
study at a German University. He selected Bonn, which
he had already visited once at least, arriving there
on June 22d, 1839.
Various Oxford friends spent a few
days with him in turn, among them W. C. Lake, Arthur
Stanley, and Edward Goulburn. True to his invariable
wish to combine a certain amount of pastoral work with
his studies, he volunteered to be responsible for the duties
of English Chaplain, and preached almost every Sunday
during his three months stay. But his object in going to
Bonn, and the success with which he attained it, are best