"We have been here reading aloud Mrs. Beecher Stowe's new tale, _The Minister's Wooing_ with very great pleasure. I regard her as a real 'prophetess,' and am delighted at the enormous circulation of her works. I have been stimulated to try my hand at translating into Latin five of the most eloquent passages in the book, as a trial of the possibility of putting such things into that language. I am pleased with the result, although it is clear to me that without a development of the Latin vocabulary far beyond Cicero, Livy, Tacitus, and Seneca no one could ever be _fluent_ and free to speak on modern subjects. One has to paraphrase and go round instead of speaking outright. I am thinking I ought to know something more about Arnobius and Lactantius, and see what sort of _development_ they effected; and the resolution rises in my mind that I will look to this, being hitherto quite ignorant of them.... I suppose the 'Volunteer Rifles' are talked of at Penrith as elsewhere. I regard it as a breach of faith to transform these Volunteers into Light Infantry, which seems to be the darling idea of military men." Later on, in February, there is another letter relating to Newman's Latin _Robinson Crusoe_ and his own difficulties as to how to find out when are the times of spring and autumn in an equinoctial climate. "I have been (as many others) a sufferer by the weather from slight bronchitis, exasperated by the coughs and noseblowings of the students, and by an ill-arrangement of the class-rooms. I had nothing serious, but enough to force me to spend my evenings in bed, from seven o'clock almost, and keep me three entire days away from college. I have been ... busy ... with a Latin _Robinson Crusoe_, rewritten quite freely (not a translation), that I have not been able to get back just now to Arabic; and have buried your letter in papers so deep that I lost much time the other day in a vain search for it.... In writing on Robinson's island I found my botany sadly at a loss, and have hunted the _Penny Cyclopaedia_ diligently and uselessly to learn the simplest things, such as: To an equinoctial climate, when is the spring and when the autumn? Do the leaves fall twice, or not at all? When is the chief cold? Is it when the sun is lowest, or when the clouds are thickest? Or does it depend on hail and electric phenomena, or on local relation to great mountains?"