And now, before concluding this chapter, I take two much later letters written by Newman to Martineau; one is dated 1888 and the other 1892. The first one is written quite clearly--which is wonderful when one remembers that he was then eighty-three--and the other, four years later, is cramped and not so easy to decipher. Still, in the first of these letters he himself says, "I have to write as slow as any little schoolboy... and cannot help some blunders." He had been to Birmingham on the 20th June to see Cardinal Newman, and mentions how travelling by rail tried his head. The latter part of the letter relates to a big dinner composed chiefly of Anglo-Indians and their _attachés_. There is one lighted sentence near the end which brings before one's mental eye his often-expressed "Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin," with regard to the Indian Empire, our past misgovernments, and our present failure to recognize old promises: "The glorification of our Indian policy only made me melancholy." The "degree" which Martineau was to receive was no doubt his "Doctor of Divinity" degree which he took in 1884 (Edinburgh). Dr. Jowett, it will be remembered, was, throughout his whole life, closely identified with Balliol College. He was Fellow in 1838, tutor of his college from 1840 till 1870, when he was chosen as Master. Ruskin (to whom reference is made in the second letter) gave the larger part of his originally large fortune to the founding of St. George's Guild. This was intended to be a sort of agricultural community of "old-world virtues" for young and old, "and ancient and homely methods." One of his great aims was the promoting of home industries. As regards Newman's reference to politics at the end of letter No. 2 in 1888, Gladstone's Government was but just _breathing_ after the sharp tussle they had been through with the Home Rule party, with Parnell at their head. In 1886 Gladstone had brought in the measure which was to give Ireland a "statutory parliament." This was practically the signal for a disastrous rent which tore his party in two, and was the precursor of their defeat at the next General Election. _Dr. Martineau from Newman._ "_6th July_, 1888. "My dear Martineau, "I did not know that the day of Oxford Convocation was June 20th. I was engaged to the Worcester College Gaudy for the 21st. Had I known that on the 20th you were to receive the degree, I should have been tempted to come and 'assist,' though I have always had an instinctive hatred of such mobs.