Hampstead Green Oct. 31 1838
My dear Grandpapa,
I hope you will excuse my not having written to you before, it was entirely owing to want of time, and not of will, that I did not sooner comply with your kind desire to hear from me. Our time has been much taken up since we have been at school. I am now in the Shell, where the books which we translate are chiefly Homer, Xenophon, Cicero, Horace and New Testament, in doing some of which we are forced to write out the principle parts of every verb, and also write a translation, of the lessons. For exercises we do Ellis and Xenophon's sentences, and for verses, Bland, we learn Horace, and sometimes cipher, and write copies. The playground is very large, covering about seven acres and there are extensive buildings attached to the Charterhouse some are very ancient looking, in the playground itself is part of an ancient cloister, but not very beautiful. The boys are very importunate for franks and seals, and coins, which we distribute accordingly, as many as we can, I think that about every third boy in the school has a collection, of which half are of franks. All hopes or desire of renewing anything like the Farthing Magazine are utterly destroyed, the Vida has suffered as great a check, but I hope to set about it in the holidays, in which, also, Papa wishes both Frank and me to try for the prize poem in Latin hexameters, the subject is 'Oxonia'. For a sort of trial how I could do it I turned the first dozen lines of Milton's Paradise Lost into Latin hexameters, for it was not very easy work. But to return to the Charterhouse. There is no great distinction made between the gown boys (those on the foundation) and the boarders and day boys, but the great difference is between the boys in the Upper school who are called Uppers and the boys in the Lower school, for an upper may fag and beat about a Lower as it suits him, nay if a Lower has the misfortune to greatly offend an Upper, the later may break a Hockey stick (a thick and short piece of wood) over his back & Mr Saunders will not interfere. Whipping is also practised plentifully in the school, but of that I hope to have the pleasure to inform you in another letter, for as Ovid says 'Scribere plura licet' but I have no room in the paper to write more. Pray give my love to Grandmamma & Aunts Hannah & Mary, & Aunt Harriet & Uncle John if they are there, and believe me
Ever your affectionate & respectful grandson
W. G. Palgrave
A RETURN FROM ROME.---A correspondent sends us the following account of a remarkable reconversion:--"Mr. William Gifford Palgrave, of the order of Jesuits, and a son of the late Sir Francis Palgrave, has lately seceded from the Roman Catholic Church. This gentleman was formerly a student at Oriel, and took a very excellent degree at the University. being what was thought in those days an ultra-Tractarian, he declined being ordained in the English Church, and went out to Bombay as a cadet in the Indian army, joning the 8th Native Infantry. He served for five or six years in the East, and then left the army, becoming at the same time a Roman Catholic, and entering the order of the Jesuits. He studied at Rome as well as in France, and after a long probation was ordained a priest of the Roman Catholic Church, and sent by his Order as a missionary to Syria, where he has laboured with great zeal in the cause of his creed for 10 or 12 years. Many Londoners may recollect a celebrated lecture which Mr. Palgrave delivered before the Geographical Society about 18 months ago, in which he gave an account of his travels in Arabia Petroea, a country he has traversed further than any living European. The lecture was from first to last one of the most admirable pieces of word-painting that has ever been delivered before that society. Mr. or "Father" Palgrave, as he was then called, is perhaps the best living Arabic scholar, speaking, reading, and writing that language like a native. At Beyrout and all over the Lebanon he was known as the energetic opponent of the Protestant missionaries, preaching as he did in the native churches in the Arabic language, and always getting the best of the argument. He made a public recantation of the Roman Catholic creed at Berlin a few days ago, and has accepted an appointment to proceed to Bagdad as Prussian Consul-General."---Express.