28, 1889._--I have long been wishing to write to you. But as
a rule I never can write any letters that I wish to write. My
volition of that kind is from day to day exhausted by the worrying
demand of letters that I do not wish to write. Every year brings
me, as I reckon, from three to five thousand new correspondents,
of whom I could gladly dispense with 99 per cent. May you never be
in a like plight.

Mary showed me a letter of recent date from you, which referred to
the idea of my writing on the Old Testament. The matter stands
thus: An appeal was made to me to write something on the general
position and claims of the holy scriptures for the working men. I
gave no pledge but read (what was for me) a good deal on the laws
and history of the Jews with only two results: first, deepened
impressions of the vast interest and importance attaching to them,
and of their fitness to be made the subject of a telling popular
account; secondly, a discovery of the necessity of reading much
more. But I have never in this connection thought much about what
is called the criticism of the Old Testament, only seeking to
learn how far it impinged upon the matters that I really was
thinking of. It seems to me that it does not impinge much.... It
is the fact that among other things I wish to make some sort of
record of my life. You say truly it has been very full. I add
fearfully full. But it has been in a most remarkable degree the
reverse of self-guided and self-suggested, with reference I mean
to all its best known aims. Under this surface, and in its daily
habit no doubt it has been selfish enough. Whether anything of
this kind will ever come off is most doubtful. Until I am released
from politics by the solution of the Irish problem, I cannot even
survey the field.

I turn to the world of action. It has long been in my mind to
found something of which a library would be the nucleus. I incline
to begin with a temporary building here. Can you, who have built a
library, give me any advice? On account of fire I have half a mind
to corrugated iron, with felt sheets to regulate the temperature.

Have you read any of the works of Dr. Salmon? I have just finished
his volume on Infallibility, which fills me with admiration of its
easy movement, command of knowledge, singular faculty of
disentangl