Reminiscences chiefly of Oriel College and the Oxford Movement

i

^jJSt OF PB«^
OCT 4 1920

BX 5098 .M62 1882 v.l
Mozley, T. 1806-1893.
Reminiscences chiefly of
Oriel College and the

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2015

https://archive.org/details/reminiscenceschi01mozl

ORIEL COLLEGE

AND

THE OXFORD MOVEMENT.

VOL. I.

REMINISCENCES

CHIEFLY OF

ORIEL COLLEGE AND THE OXFORD
MOVEMENT

BY THE

y

REV. T. MOZLEY, M. A.

FORMERLY FELLOW OF ORIEL
SUCCESSIVELY PERPETUAL CURATE OF MORETON PINCKNEY, NORTHANTSJ
RECTOR OF CHOLDERTON, WILTS ; RECTOR OF PLYMTREE, DEVON J
AND RURAL DEAN OF PLYMTREE AND OF OTTERY

IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I.

BOSTON

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street

<&le RtoersiDe press, ^Tamliriboe
1882

The Riverside Press, Cambridge:
Stereotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co.

PEEFAOE.

The story of the Oxford Movement has yet to be
told, and there is much reason to fear that it never
will be told as it should be. The greater part of
those at all concerned in it, whether as friends, or as
foes, or as spectators, and likely or competent to con-
tribute matter for the historian, have passed away, —
many of them, indeed, long ago. Of the survivors,
nearly all have disqualified themselves, more or less,
one way or another. They may make most praise-
worthy, most interesting, and most valuable contri-
butions, but those contributions will have to be care-
fully sifted and largely discounted, and a mean will
have to be struck between their conflicting utterances.
They that have gone over to Rome, as they must
hold in the legitimate line of the Movement, will see
everything, measure everything, accept or reject, re-
member or forget, from that point of view. Some of
the survivors are scattered far away in places where
all things are forgotten except parochial duties and
the incidents of rural life. Some have been long
absorbed in courses or enterprises of their own.
Some are bound by political or official obligations.
The rapid current of modern thought in the entirely

vi

PREFACE.

negative direction has intensified some opinions and
hardened some hearts from which candor or kindness
might once have been hoped for. They cannot tell
the story of faith who believe in nothing but matter
and themselves.

Now for a long time I have seen with more and
more sadness that a period, which in my memory is
as a golden age, has been vanishing from common
mortal ken like a dream. The characters themselves,
even to those of a less relation and a humbler de-
gree, have to me an unearthly radiance, and I grieve
to think that they should be forgotten : carent quia
vate sacro. To do them justice would require much
more history and much more biogi-aphy than will be
found in these volumes, which are but planks saved
from a great wreck of time. Even now I should re-
joice to hear that they had encouraged some one to
fill the void which I do but point out ; but I see none
to make the attempt. Scanty, imperfect, and trifling
as these Reminiscences may be, — reminiscences and
no more, — the generous reader will admit that I
should have been deaf to a Divine call had I allowed
them to sink with me into my not very distant grave.
I began to put them together in March last year,
and completed them, with the excejjtion of a few
pages and the Addenda, by November 30th. As I
wrote, death after death removed many whom I had
introduced, or who might be specially interested, —
twenty, at the least, in so short a time. Upon send-
ing the first ninety-nine chapters to the publishers, I

PREFACE.

vii

wrote to Cardinal Newman to acquaint him with the
fact, lest he should hear it first from any other quar-
ter. At the same time I enclosed the titles of the
ninety-nine chapters, but with no account of the
text. He acknowledged my letter with his invariable
kindness, only reminding me that even where the
persons named in my headings were no longer here,
there were survivors and friends whose feelings had
to be respected. He also observed on the fact that I
had no pei-sonal acquaintance with him till he be-
came my tutor in 1826. He added that he had a
dread of controversy. I can only hope that he will
find his warnings anticipated, though of course I
cannot be sure of that from his own point of view.

I may be excused saying that this is my first pub-
lication, and will most probably be the last. Into
the Addenda I have thrown some matter which I
have at times hoped to treat separately, but at the
pace of the world and of death it seemed to me pre-
sumptuous to reserve them for the bare chance of a
future opportunity. One thing more I will add, for
it is a matter on which people are very tender. With
all the care I can take, 1 find myself misspelling
names. The "readers " have saved me from a good
many mistakes, but they might easily not know how
Dr. Copleston spelt his name. Of course I ought to
have remembered, but I have a triple excuse. The
Devonshire hamlet near Crediton is spelt with a final
e, as I have inadvertently spelt the name. I always
understood that the Provost's derivation of the word

PREFACE.

referred to some remarkable stone, either the finial
of a building or a natural object. To these excuses
I must add what I have lamented in the text, that
this very remarkable scholar and conversationalist
has left no work of the sort to stand before your eyes
and keep his name in daily remembrance.

7 Lansdown Terrace, Cheltenham ;
Mai/, 1882.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

CHAPTER L

INTRODUCTION.

PAOB

These volumes reminiscences and nothing more — The tricks
of memory — Newman's letters returned to him — My col-
lege and private relations to him — The want of some record
of the period — To be done now or never .... 1

CHAPTER II.

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN.

Parentage and early education — Dr. Nicholas' school — His
early proficiency in music — At Trinity College, Oxford —
His examination for his degree — Frank Newman's " Double
First " — Henry Boden — Poem on St. Bartholomew's Eve
— Other Trinity friends 12

CHAPTER III.

THE OLD ORIEL SCHOOL.

Copleston,TVhately, Tyler, Hawkins, Keble, Arnold, Rickards,
etc. — The Noetics — Dr. Bosworth's lectures — My break-
down— W. J. Copleston's present — Whately's part and
place at Oxford — What he felt about the Evangelicals . 19

CHAPTER IV.

NEWMAN FELLOW OF ORIEL.

His mother and sisters at Nuneham Courtney and at Iffley —
S. Wilberforce's successful strike against a private tutor —
Oriel common room — Newman curate of St. Clement's and

X

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

Whately's vice-principal — Election of E. J. Wilberforce
and Froude — Lithographs from Munich and drawings of
Cologne Cathedral — Dr. Lloyd's lectures on the Book of
Common Prayer 27

CHAPTER V.

NEWMAN TUTOR — HIS PUPILS AND ORIEL FRIENDS.

Jelf tutor to Prince George of Cumberland — Jelf probably
saving my life — Dr. Bourne — Tyler Rector of St. Giles —
Pusey Regius Professor of Hebrew — Keble at Fairford —
His shyness — The "Christian Year" — Copleston Bishop
of Llandaff — Three names for the provostship — Election
of Hawkins 34

CHAPTER VI.

FRANK EDGE WORTH.

His half-sister Maria — His Charterhouse friend David Reid
— His beating me for the prize poems — Visit to Oxford —
Discussion on the Evidences, and on classical versus Christian
tradition — David Reid's illness and death — A walk with
Edgeworth in London — Carlyle's notice of him in his " Life
of John Sterling " 41

CHAPTER VII.

BLANCO WHITE.

Spanish friars — Seville Cathedral — A Lent preacher silenced
by an old woman — Holland House — The Bible in Spanish
— Don Quixote — His lecture on musical notes — Our meet-
ing at Mr. Joseph Parker's — The "London Review" — The
veto to his M. A. by Royal diploma — Little annoyances —
His great kindness — Going to Dublin and not returning to
Oxford 53

CHAPTER VIII.

EDWARD CHURTON.

What he did for me and for Thackeray at Charterhouse —
The latter's grateful recollection of hits .... 63

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

xi

CHAPTER IX.

JOSEPH PICKFORD.

PAGE

My first knowledge of him in 1815 — His early portrait — His
tenant and her daily visitor — His election to a Fellowship at
Oriel — The Leigh collection of books — The new library —
The tall steps — Dr. Beeke — The probationary exercise —
Its life-long effects on Pickford — His reluctant acceptance
of Cholderton — His account of college life at the beginning
of the century — A pew controversy at Derby — Cholderton
parsonage 65

CHAPTER X.

HENRY THOMAS ELLACOMBE.

His work on the Devonshire Bells — His church, parsonage,
and garden — A strange apparition — A great sorrow —
Provost Eveleigh 75

CHAPTER XI.

JAMES ENDELL TYLER.

His scholarship — His pets among the gentlemen commoners
— At Moreton Pinckney — The Dean of Oriel and the Dean
of Christ Church — Sermon on Naaman, the Syrian captain,
and Gehazi — Rector of St. Giles — Endell Street . . 82

CHAPTER XII.

HARTLEY COLERIDGE.

His weak constitution, irregular ways, and drollery — Tyler's

vision on the road 86

CHAPTER XIII.

THE VICARAGE Or TWERTON.

The college hidebound and struggling to break its shell —
Twerton, a pleasant suburb of Bath, in the market — Se-
cured for £4,000 — Two railways made through it — A new

xii

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

PAGE

parsonage to be built — A negotiation — The living vacant

in 1852, pressed upon Buckle, and since given to his curate . 89

CHAPTER XIV.

ttler's testimonial.

Meeting in hall — Philpott's protest — The gentlemen com-
moners— The "family" — Norman Hilton Macdonald —
Vainly assailed by Henry Wilberforce in the Union . . 94

CHAPTER XV.

THE WILBERFORCES.

No loDger "Evangelical" and not yet "High Church" —
Theodore Williams, of Hendon — Mr. Wilbeiforce's house-
hold devotions — A recalcitrant butler — A chapel built at
last — Experiences of "Evangelical" private tutors — A
fortune and a position lost by too lavish benevolence —
Robert and Henry unambitious — Culling Eardley Smith —
His Christ Church friends — His treatment at the hands of
his own college — Rapid decomposition of the " Evangel-
ical " party 99

CHAPTER XVI.

W. WILBERFORCE AND SIR JAMES STEPHEN.

The latter resenting the statement that the former could be
amused by the eccentricities of his religious acquaintances
— Lord Aberdeen's remarks on Sir J. Stephen — A mission-
ary's account of a grand African ceremony — Sir James
keeping his eye on his own office after leaving it — His first
visit to Rome ; at the Scala Santa — His bewilderment . 108

CHAPTER XVII.

SOME RESULTS OF A PRIVATE EDUCATION.

Truthfulness — On one occasion severely tried — Giving and
taking learnt at public schools — Personal antipathies — H.
Wilberforce's angular points in collision with Clough's —

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

xiii

An appeal to Newman — A laugh over it — S. Wilberforce's
knowledge of Pines and Taxodia — His trying his memory
against a squire's ; my impatience, and the snub I got in
consequence 113

CHAPTER XVIII.

SAMUEL AND HENRY WILBERFORCE POLITICIANS.

Debate on Charles I. — S. Wilberforce, Hook, and the "John
Bull " — Hook at St. Mary's — My first and last attempt at
the Oxford Union, on the seizure of the Danish fleet —
Hook's account of his meeting Mr. Wilberforce — The chief
topics of the " John Bull " 118

CHAPTER. XIX.

CONTRAST BETWEEN S. AND II . WILBERFORCE.

How they respectively managed and fared at the Archbishop
of Amiens' — H. Wilberforce's economy in fourpenny bits
— How to get on a platform and how not — S. Wilberforce
commanding the elements — His public discussion with the
minister of Grindelwald — Henry's visit to Jamaica, as a
last chance of health, and to see something of the eman-
cipated negroes ... 124

CHAPTER XX.

THE SARGENT FAMILY.

Henry Wilberforce's frequent visits — Meeting the four Miss
Sargents at R. Wilberforce's — An ill-chosen word — Henry
Sargent — Mosley Smith 130

CHAPTER XXI.

JOHN ROGERS.

Question of certain or conjectural outlines — A young cousin

— Henry Wilberforce and John Rogers Damon and Pythias

— Jealousy — No. 14 134

xiv

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

CHAPTER XXII.

A COLLEGE FOR STUDY AND ACTION.

Newman at St. Mary's and at Littlemore — More "Low
Church " than " High " till the completion of his " Arians "
— A document to be compared with the " Apologia " —
Binding the Apocrypha last in a family Bible — Roman
Catholic Relief Bill and the "700 Oxford firebrands" — A
college with resident Fellows disposed to work something
like terra firma 137

CHAPTER XXIII.

TWO CANDIDATES.

John F. Christie — His prize poem on Regulus — Myself — A
Darwinian dream imbibed from Mr. George Spencer — Suc-
cessive school failures — My " philosophy " always stopping
the way — H. Wilberforce finding out the weak point — Ap-
plications to Arnold to admit my brother James to Rugby . 146

CHAPTER XXIV.

COLLEGE ELECTION OF 1829.

Self tutor to Lord Doneraile's son at Cheltenham — Question
of one or two vacancies — Decision not to stand for one va-
cancy— Journey to near Liverpool — Henry Wilberforce
there before me to say there would be two vacancies —
Christie and self elected 154

CHAPTER XXV.

THOMAS BENJAMIN HOBHOUSE.

Our rough quarters at Charterhouse — His frantic manners —
Disputes about institutions, the criminal code, and the
"Gothic" of the day — A queer bet — Wantonness over-
punished — A questionable authority for a " quantity " —
Sortes Biblical — A serious misquotation in the Oxford Union 158

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

XV

CHAPTEE XXVI.

GEORGE ROBERT MARRIOTT.

PAGE

At Charterhouse — His ready wit and knowledge of men and
things — Ambitiou too early roused — His tormentor and the
tricks played upon him — An improviser to his cost —
Joseph Richardson and Charles B. Pearson . . . .166

CHAPTER XXVII.

WILLIAM DOBSON.

From Tafe's at Richmond — Under the Madras system at
Charterhouse — Having to teach him; that is, having to be
taught by him — Pleasant, idle, and unambitious — Success-
ful at Cambridge, and the making of Cheltenham College —
His testimonial and portrait — A contrast — Promotion by
purchase 171

CHAPTER XXVIII.

MEETINGS FOR THE STUDY OF SCRIPTURE.

The Revelation taken for the subject — Antichrist the spirit
of old Rome haunting the Church — A grammar of proph-
ecy— The British Association at Oxford — The formation
of a clientela — Newman's work with his pupils . . . 176

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE EVANGELICAL SCHOOL.

The character and ways of the "High Church " clergy, aud of
the "Low Church" — The simplicity of the Evangelical
message, and its scanty Scriptural stock — Personal assur-
ance— The effect on ordinary congregations . . . 183

CHAPTER XXX.

TWO CLERGYMEN OF THE PERIOD.

Charles S. Hope, Mayor of Derby — An insurrection — Lord
Lyndhurst — An execution for high treason — The death of

xvi

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

the Princess Charlotte — Funeral sermon — The Vicar of
St. Werburgh's — His list of chief parishioners — Gaius of
Derbe — Abandonment of pastoral duties — Simeon and
Robinson - . 189

CHAPTER XXXI.

COLLEGE COURTS.

The care of college property — Wadley House — Famous law-
suit— A manor court and a laborers' question — Littleworth
church — Charles P. Eden — Riding expeditions — New-
man's " Klepper." . . .199

CHAPTER XXXH.

SOME CHARACTERISTICS.

' O fieyas — Newman not imposing — Canon Bull — The long-
tailed coat of the Oriel school — A testimonial to Wellington

— Newman quick at figures — Copleston quicker — Do peo-
ple really change ? — Newman's interpretation of Providence

— Abstulit clarum cita mox Achillem ..... 205

CHAPTER XXXIII.

NEWMAN, KEBLE, AND FROUDE.

Newman's " Up and be doing " — Butler — Crabbe's poems —
Froude a reader of Law, the Nonjuror — Sense of sin, or rb
k<x\6v — Nature grave and gay — Newman's love of forest
trees, flowers, and the various aspects of the sky — Salisbury
Plain — "Neptune" — Froude's admiration of St. Peter's
— Keble's remarks on the west front of Lichfield Cathedral,
and the portico before the town-hall of Derby — Municipali-
ties 211

CHAPTER XXXIV.

JOHN KEBLE.

The " Christian Year " — His shyness — Sir W. Heathcote his
pupil and patron — Protest against a Lutheran godfather
for the Prince of Wales — Some small matters — Sursum
Corda . - . 219

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

XVII

CHAPTER XXXV.

FROUDE.

PAGE

From Eton to Oriel — William Froude, the engineer — Hur-
rell at war with shams — Siding with Anselm, Becket, and
Laud — Tory and ascetic — The " Oriel Teapot " — " Poor
Bulteel " of Exeter — His secession and marriage . . 225

CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE TUITION REVOLUTIONIZED,

What the tutors proposed — The Provost's fears and difficulties

— His own edition of " Paradise Lost " — L'€tat ; c'est mot

— Tutors left without pupils — Hampden — Arnold's system
at Rugby — Tuition in classes a daily examination — Self
charged with a counter programme — Carried — Too much
for me — Tutorship offered me and declined — Why was it
offered 1 — Why did I decline 1 230

CHAPTER XXXVH.

NEWMAN AT ST. MARY'S.

Undergraduates flocking from all quarters — Was Newman a
"good man"? — An unintended testimony to him and his
friends — His work with the Church Missionary Society . 239

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

ST. EDMUND HALL.

Buried among grander buildings — Mr. Hill — The principle
of selection at the Hall — The prevailing complexion there

— Suggestion for making the best of it — The inmates of the
Hall driven to invention — A singular instance — Golightly's
indignation and complaint — The Bishop justified by the
result . • 242

CHAPTER XXXIX.

"THE THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY."

Two colleagues — The principal Councils and the Inquisition

— Quartettes at Blanco White's lodgings — The " Arians,"-

XV111

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

and " Heresy and Orthodoxy " — A last evening — Checked
utterances — False enumerations — Numerical aids — Moth-
er Church — Isaac Williams borrowing as much as he
pleased from Boetius a Bolswert — The Provost's direc-
tions to writers 247

CHAPTER XL.

THE REFORM BILL.

Orleanist intrigues and the July Revolution — Reform; what
people at Oxford thought of it — Derby True Blue Club —
Petition to the Lords — Letter to the Marquis of Londonderry

— Rejection of the Bill — Riots at Derby and Nottingham —
Meeting in the town-hall, and resolution to open the jails —
Casualties — Charles S. Hope — County magistrates —
James Dean and the last words of the old House of Commons 253

CHAPTER XLI.

WHATELY ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN.

Believed to be for separating Church and State — Surprise at
the appointment — My expressions to that effect in Christie's
room before Pope, Whately's brother-in-law — Whately's dis-
gust with Oxford — Willis his man-at-arms — Sad accident

— Whatelyat the Viceroy's table — Hinds — How got rid of 267

CHAPTER XLII.

UNIVERSAL MOVEMENT OF 1831-1832.

Everybody, except the Church of England, competent to set
the world to rights — Popular writers — Christian fanatics

— Whately, Arnold, Bunsen . . . . . . 273

CHAPTER XLIII.

ST. NICHOLAS AND ST. RUNWALD.

In Deacon's orders — Whitaker Churton taking me to East
Ilsley — A pensioner — Ogilvie of Baliol — James Round,
late Proctor, laid up, and wanting a curate at Colchester —
Holly Place — Mr. Morant's library — First pastoral visit —

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

xix

Want of rest — Fasting — Old family servant — Contest for
the Boden Professorship — The Pharmacopoeia — Bishop
Blomfield — From Colchester to Teignmouth, Dartmoor,
Totnes, Dartmouth — Dies mirabilis ..... 276

CHAPTEE XLIV.

BUCKLAND.

The arrangements for the parish — How we furnished a cottage
— The ladies at the parsonage — Cecilia — Confirmation at
Ahingdon — Hyper-ritualism — A divided parish and di-
vided parsonage — Permissive legislation — The Throckmor-
tons — Olden times — Archdeacon Berens — The cholera —
The general election 283

CHAPTER XLV.

NEWMAN AND FROUDE ON THE MEDITERRANEAN.

" History of the Arians " completed — Continental tours —
"Memorials of the Past" — Palmer's "Antiquities of the
English Ritual" — The inn at Whitchurch — "Are these
the tracks of some unearthly Friend 1 " — Caelum non animum
mutant — Rome — Dr. Wiseman and M. Bunsen — " Who
can answer for Arnold %" — Palermo — Castro Giovanni —
Sicilian fever — " Lead, kindly light " — What was going on
at home — The return — Keble's sermon on "National
Apostasy " 292

CHAPTER XLVI.

FROUDE's COMMENTS ON THE PANTHEON.

Greek, Roman, and " Gothic " architecture — The spherical
dome — The catenary curve — Construction versus effect —
The vast dimensions of the Pantheon 299

CHAPTER XL VII.

AFTER THE MEDITERRANEAN VOYAGE.

A shower of meteors — Froude no better for his voyage —
"Wretched Tridentines everywhere" — Froude sent to the

XX

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

West Indies — Newman's letters to the " Record " — Publi-
cation of the " Arians " — "A humdrum marriage " . . 304

CHAPTER XLVIII.

MEETING AT HADLEIGH.

Hugh J. Rose — The suppression of Irish sees — Apostolic suc-
cession — Dr. Morris, Bishop of Troy — Rev. A. P. Perceval
— " Hadleigh Conference " 309

CHAPTER XLIX.

THE " TRACTS FOR THE TIMES."

Difficulties of publication and circulation — Inequality of form
and composition — Variety of adherents — Newman seeing
good in all, and hoping against hope — First volume of
" Parochial Sermons " — " University Sermons" — " Ser-
mons on Holy Days " — The " Lyra Apostolica " . . . 312

CHAPTER L.

ROTJTH, PRESIDENT OF MAGDALENE, AND PALMER OF
WORCESTER.

The authors most named in the Oriel circle — Newman slow to
enlist Routh — Tithonus — Giving in — Lectures on "Ro-
manism and Popular Protestantism " — William Palmer's
ecclesiastical studies — His " Origines Liturgies," and trea-
tise on the Church of Christ — The Ten Commandments in
our Communion Service — Observation by H. Wilberforce . 318

CHAPTER LI.

BISHOP MARSH.

Popular ignorance as to the clergy of the last century —
" Three-bottle orthodox " — " Going to public-houses " —
successor of Sydney Smith — A clergyman to be found in
the market place — Peterborough Palace and Cathedral —
Bishops visiting Northamptonshire on a pillion behind the
churchwarden, or via London — Confirmation at Brackley
in the black cherry season — A costly attempt to enforce
church law — " Give a knave," etc 324

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

xxi

CHAPTER LII.

DISTRIBUTION OF THE " TRACTS " AMONG THE OLD CLERGY.

PAGE

Mr. Crawley, of Stowe Nine Churches — Fighting through
three generations against turnpike roads, canals, and rail-
ways, but expecting to win his last fight — His son, Lloyd
Crawley — The terms on which he had his living — Mount-
ing me on his best horse to call on Sikes of Guilsborough
— Sikes on education and dissenters — His death — A dis-
senter's son taught Crossman's Catechism .... 330

CHAPTER Lin.

NORRIS OF HACKNEY.

A crisis in the management of the S. P. C. K. — Taken up by
Lloyd Crawley to a meeting at Bartlett's Buildings — More
people than the place would hold — Archbishop Howley
equal to the occasion — Country members invited to attend
in reasonable numbers — Last day of Norris' reign — Invited
to dine at Hackney — Herons — Confectus curis somnoque
gravatus — Norris' curates at Hackney ... . 336

CHAPTER LIV.

OUTCOMES OF THE MOVEMENT.

A multitude of writers — A school of theology wanted, and a
" Hall " set up for the purpose — Its results — Hampden
Principal of St. Mary Hall — Professor of moral philoso-
phy— His pamphlet on religious dissent and tests in the
University — H. Wilberforce's "Foundations of the Faith
Assailed " — Church to be built at Littlemore — Cossus ligni-
perda — Newman's idea of the church wanted — The chancel
of Moreton Piuckney, taken for a model, to be enlarged —
Froude's return from Codrington College — Anthony Fronde
— Hurrell on Babbage's calculating machine — S. Wilber-
force's evening in Oriel common room, and unpleasant re-
marks on it — Lord Dudley's remarks to the same effect . 341

xxii

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

CHAPTER LV.

HAMPDEN REGIUS PROFESSOR.

PAGE

Burton's premature death — Hampden's Bampton Lectures
now coming up — His observations on religious dissent —
Carries the day against Edward Deuison's claim to the Pro-
fessorship— Why the lectures not noticed earlier — Blanco
White's assistance — Utilized, duped, and aggrieved . . 351

CHAPTER LVL

BLANCO WHITE'S PART IN THE PREPARATION OF HAMPDEN'S
BAMPTON LECTURES.

Disputed by his biographer — Alleged "germs " in articles on
Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, and in the old Oriel stock

— Shuttleworth, Blanco White, Hampden, W. Bishop and
his brother, intimate friends in 1814 — Hampden and Blanco
White together at Oxford, 1829-1832 — Nor was it wrong
to use helps — The relation of Blanco White with the col-
lege in 1827 — Hampden's account of himself to Whately

— Deep in the subject in 1832 — Immediately dropping it,
except as to its practical consequences 355

CHAPTER LVII.

CONDEMNATION OF THE BAMPTON LECTURES.

Newman's " Elucidations " — Meeting at C. C. College —
Vaughan Thomas — Proposed measure of disqualification
— A trail of circulars — Measure vetoed, then carried —
Its legality, questionable — Its prudence also — The inaug-
ural lecture 363

CHAPTER LVIII.

UNREADABLENESS OF THE BAMPTON LECTURES.

General character of Bampton Lectures — Archdeacon God-
dard's — Davison's alleged approval — His indecisive char-
acter— His early works and his unpublished Commentary
on the Scriptures — The widow's testimony — The acknowl-
edgment of the Lectures produced by Hampden — Davison
appreciating the latter from the day he came to college, and
expecting much from him — Davison's oddities . , . 368

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

xxiii

CHAPTER LIX.

GLADSTONE AND S. WILBERFORCE.

PAGE

The latter drawn into a correspondence with Hampden,
friendly, but with menace — Hampden neither cajoled nor
frightened — S. Wilberforce knocking under, on the ground
that he had never read the Lectures, and now saw no harm
in them — Gladstone, thirty-four years after the delivery of
the Lectures, writing unexpectedly to say that he had never
been able to understand them, or any " works of an abstract
character," and had therefore been wrong to condemn them

— Letter put by till published by Hampden's biographer —
Was Oxford called on to protest ? — Was Hampden right or
wrong ? — Dependent on the view taken of the Platonists

and Aristotelians . 375

CHAPTER LX.

VOICE, LOOK, AND MANNER.

Unprepossessing — A dull talker — Embarrassments created
by his position — The planter and the emancipator — Pur-
ple and gold — Simplicity the fashion at Oriel — Incidents
of a state visit of the Duke of Wellington to the Provost —

— Johnnie Deans, Hampden's predecessor, at the Hall —
Hampden's correspondence with the Duke, and disappoint-
ment at finding him not a magnanimous man — The voices
of Copleston, Tyler, Hawkins, Whately, Newman, Froude,

the Wilberforces, and Pusey 381

CHAPTER LXI.

NEWMAN, 1836-1837.

Clergy flocking to Oxford — Hume Spry — Andrew Brandram

— Lectures in Adam de Broome's Chapel — The law of
change — Marriage of my brother John to Jemima New-
man— Mrs. Newman's death — Consecration of Littlemore
church — Infant baptism ; whether charitable under existing
circumstances — " What was Newman tending to? " — What
did we understand by the Primitive Church? — A welcome
offered to all sorts, but for a journey without an end — Vox
damans in deserto — " Oxford society " .... 389

xxiv

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

CHAPTER LXII.

SOME INCIDENTS.

PAGI

Newman's college rooms — Conversion of a Baptist family —
Braham, the singer — Newman finding himself the college
dog keeper — Sad accident with different results — A Latin
sentence a day — Nothing to pass without a record — New-
man's visit to Derby ; attending a committee meeting and
a public meeting, and entangled in a procession of men on
stride — Much to be said for dissenters — A curious ques-
tion of identity — The respective virtues of rich and poor . 398

CHAPTER LXIII.

SPREAD OF THE MOVEMENT.

Great bulk of the " Tracts for the Times," and the Catenas —
Rival series — "English Reformers" — None of them read
— The " Tracts for the Times " against the whole course
of the Church of England — Practical difficulties — Bishop
Blomficld's movement adopted by the Oxford movement, and
found the more unpopular and troublesome of the two —
Difference between life in a country village and in a uni-
versity, or in the metropolis — Fasting and fasting — Zeal
with and without discretion — The leaders of the movement
beset and carried off their legs by their followers — A crit-
ical question every day — Newman's successive arrangements
with the " British Critic " — The " Prophetical Office of the
Church" — The "Library of the Fathers" — The Oriel
Tutors, 1837-1840 — Newman's Tuesday evening recep-
tions 408

CHAPTER LXIV.

BISHOP BURGESS.

The "Apostolic Bishop" — The new Rector of Fugglestone
— George Herbert's church and parsonage — The Bishop
pressing on me the study of Hebrew — His nephew at Char-
terhouse, Oriel, and Streetley — His will, executors, nephews
and nieces . . . . . . . . . .419

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

XXV

CHAPTER LXV.

CONVOCATION.

FAGS

A frequent topic — Newman himself no enthusiast for it —
Others taking it up — Myself charged with the circulation
of an amendment to be proposed on the opening address —
Making an appearance at Salisbury at a select meeting for
the election of Proctors — Did I receive a pat or a blow 1 —
Sending a copy of the amendment to Manning — His posi-
tion at Oxford, and his discipline in his own church — His
early acquisition of respect and veneration — His reply to
me as to the amendment — "Provincial synods the right
thing " — But are they better than Convocation ? . . 423

CHAPTER LXVI.

RESERVE IN COMMUNICATING RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE.

Isaac Williams the simplest of men — Reserve there must be
in fact, but not in system ; and as little in name as pos-
sible— Can the Atonement be reserved? — Does the Cate-
chism reserve it ? — Is it possible with the Bible open and
read? — The terror caused by the word " reserve " — The
standing topic of exhausted preachers — Thomas Keble's
vindication of Williams — If Bishops don't like the title, are
they bound to read the book ? — Yet titles are misquoted,
that of Butler's " Analogy " for example .... 431

CHAPTER LXVII.

ATTACK ON THE MOVEMENT.

The " Christian Observer " — Its fate — Dr. Faussett's " Re-
vival of Popery" — Newman's reply — The weak point in
Dr. Faussett's case — Bishop Bagot's charge — S. Wilber-
force's contributions to the " British Critic " declined — Dr.
Shuttleworth's appearance in the field of controversy . . 440

CHAPTER LXVIII.

DEAN HOOK, DEAN CHURCH, AND CHARLES MARRIOTT.

Sermon in the Chapel Royal — "Hear the Church" — -De-
fended as an old sermon often preached before — The Queen

xxvi

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

pleased with it; not so Her Majesty's advisers — What is
the Church in the British Isles sense ? — Church, Fellow of
Oriel, nephew of General Church — Charles Marriott a
laborious student and inquirer, working without show or re-
ward, and appreciated only by students like himself — Stick-
ing to his purposes — Occasionally out of his element . . 445

REMINISCENCES.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

As all tlie world knows, Reminiscences are very
suspicious matter. They are a lower form of Recol-
lections, which, at the best, must share the common
infirmities of mortal memory. The mental picture
of events long passed by, and seen through an in-
creasing breadth of many-tinted haze, is liable to be
warped and colored by more recent remembrances,
and by impressions received from other quarters.
When the event itself is more striking or more im-
portant than any particular mode of knowing it can
possibly be, memory deals very unscrupulously, so to
speak, with the inferior matter.

For example, I have read scores of Reminiscences
and biographies — the latter, of course, affecting to
be made up from journals and letters — about the in-
cidents and the sensations attending the receipt of
the news of the Battle of Waterloo ; and I grieve to
say they have greatly lowered my estimate of the
historical value of such records. They have told me
little that I was not familiar with from my child-
hood ; and whatever I was not familiar with was evi-
dently fictitious. My father used to read his news-

VOT. I. 1

2

REMINISCENCES.

paper to us, dwelling with exultation on the passages
most likely to take our interest or our fancy. Going
in and out, he saw many people, and beard news,
which he told us. Now, in the Reminiscences I am
referring to, some by very distinguished persons, by
ladies of quality, perhaps, — supposed to have special
access to headquarters for information, — I really may
say I have never found anything that was not public
property by the end of June, 1815. Of course I am
not speaking of alleged particulars most improbable
and almost inconceivable. I am not speaking of the
story of the company at the dinner-table where the
despatches were delivered being unable to decipher
them, or too impatient to open them ; of the officer
sinking down in a chair, too exhausted to give a co-
herent answer, and of some shrewd old military gen-
tleman solving the difficulty by asking the number of
guns captured, and being answered " All," or some
very large number. Such statements are reminis-
cences in their lower depravation, — that is, blending
with fiction.

Nor is it a matter in which confidence is any assur-
ance ; for they who remember most confidently, or
most exactly, are often the most wrong. At least
they are not more likely to be right than others. I
once heard Lord Panmure exclaim at a Charter-house
Brooke Hall dinner, " Fancy a man forgetting a
thing! " Not long after, he had personal experience
that it was not only possible but quite easy. Some
years since there was a discussion in the Lords as to
the antecedents of a man who had failed of his duty
in a responsible and well-paid office. It was a Whig
appointment. Lord Granville said the man had ex-
cellent recommendations, including one by the late

INTRODUCTION.

3

Lord Chelmsford. Thereupon Lord Chelmsford
sprang from his seat and declared he had never rec-
ommended the man ; he knew nothing about him ;
so it was quite impossible he could have recommended
him. Lord Granville took a note out of his pocket
and passed it to Lord Chelmsford, who recognized
his own handwriting, and surrendered at discretion.

It is true these are cases of bad memory, not of
memory too good to be true ; of forgetfulness, not
hallucination. But the truth is they go together, for
when a man forgets what is necessary to the truth of
events, he fancies something untrue ; and if he inserts
unconsciously some illusion of his own, it unfairly
occupies the ground to the exclusion of the truth.
Even exaggeration compels diminution, if not entire
suppression, in giving too much to some persons, and
that much less, or nothing, to others.

To confess oneself fallible is to claim no more than
mortal excellence, and I have learnt to think no
more of infallible people than of fallible. I will say
even more. Is not a very distinct and vivid memory
of persons and things in continual change itself a
disease of memory ? As persons and human affairs
are not the same always, and do not continue in ex-
actly the same bearings and relations, the best mem-
ory of them must be a certain abstract or mean
rather than a picture or a stereotype. Many years
ago, sitting by Page Wood at a dinner-table, I asked
him if he was not haunted by the long and anxious
causes in which he had been engaged. He replied,
" No. They pass away from my thoughts. It 's all
logic." The Irish have very exact and vivid memo-
ries, simply because their memory is subordinate to
imagination and passion. They remember too easily,

1

REMINISCENCES.

too quickly, and too much as they please. The
reader, I trust, will not think the worse of me and
my testimony because I have felt the truth to be a
matter requiring much care and vigilance. But he
may fairly ask what are my claims to publish remi-
niscences of such men as the chief personages in this
volume.

I came into residence at Oriel College after Easter,
1825. Coplestone was provost, and Tyler, Hawkins,
Dornford, and Jelf tutors. Newman was then much
in the college, holding the office of junior treasurer.
Early in 1826 he took Jelf's place in the tuition, and
his pupils, including myself. I took my B. A. de-
gree in the Michaelmas term, 1828. In those two
years and a half I saw very much more of Newman
than pupils usually saw of their tutors, even in those
days when tuition meant something. From Christ-
mas to Easter I was private tutor to the present Lord
Doneraile at Cheltenham, but was in correspondence
with Newman. At his encouragement and urgency
I stood for a Fellowship at the next Easter, and was
elected. From that date, that is, from Easter, 1829,
to Christmas, 1831, I resided, not only in term time,
but also a good deal in the vacations, on intimate
terms, with Newman's mother and sisters, and with
his circle of friends.

At Christmas, 1831, I was ordained deacon by
Bagot, Bishop of Oxford. Through Newman and
his friends I went to Colchester to take sole charge
of James Round's two pai'ishes. In less than three
months I found it too much for me, and after some
weeks in Devonshire, was back again at Oxford.
Then I took charge of Buckland, an easy ride from
Oxford, myself and Newman interchanging visits.

INTRODUCTION.

5

At Michaelmas I went to reside at Moreton Pinck-
ney, a small college living thirty miles from Oxford,
to the perpetual curacy of which I was afterwards
licensed by Marsh, Bishop of Peterborough. The
place was well known to Oriel men. Newman and
my other Oxford friends often came over to pay me
visits, and I often rode or walked in to Oxford. It
was at Moreton Pinckney that I had to put the
" Tracts for the Times " into circulation, and do
some other little affairs, such as getting up a petition
against the Marriage Bill. I frequently came across
Litchfield, of Merton College, then himself engaged
in worrying Arnold, but he did not take cheerfully
to the new movement at Oxford. Church and Land
was then the ruling idea.

At Easter, 1835, I came up to Oxford, took college
office, came into rooms, and asked to be relieved of
Moreton Pinckney. I do not think I could say that
Newman suggested to me this change of plan, but I
knew he wanted all the help he could get. Possibly
he did not think I was doing such a work in my par-
ish as should excuse me from taking a share in the
larger work he had then in hand. I found it not so
easy to be relieved of my parish. The Provost went
by rule, and offered the living to every unbeneficed
clergyman down to the bottom of the list on the
college books, where at last he found a worthy man,
who took the living, and had a hard fight to live
on it, which he did, I think, thirty-four years or more.
Till my place was supplied I had often to go up and
down. From Easter, 1835, to Michaelmas, 1836, was
a period of great excitement. There was much to be
done, and I had generally a hand in it ; always, so
to speak, at Newman's side.

6

REMINISCENCES.

By the end of September, 1836, 1 had become New-
man's brother-in-law, I had accepted the rectory of
Cholderton, in Salisbury Plain, and I was on my way
to that place. It was a long way from Oxford, but
still I went backwards and forwards. Newman came
to see me more than once. We also corresponded
much. Most of my clerical neighbors warmly sym-
pathized with Newman, even if they did not all of
them altogether agree with him. It was a great
thing to hear of anybody standing up for Truth and
for the Church.

It must have been about the time of my going to
Cholderton that Newman asked me to translate Vin-
cent of Lerins. I was slow about it, and I found my-
self anticipated by some quicker hand (C. Marriott,
I believe). But I have my translation half done.

In 1838 I published " A Dissection of the Queries"
on education circulated by Lord J. Russell, " by a
Clergyman of South Wilts." Newman told me it
was a great pity I had not sent it as an article to the
" British Critic," of which he had become editor. So
I began to write for him, and contributed to most of
the numbers for two years. He then proposed to me
to take the editorship, which, I need scarcely say,
would in such a case be better described by sub-edi-
torship, though I am sure this was not Newman's in-
tention. I consented, and did so act till October, 1843,
when I resigned, and the periodical ceased to exist.

At the same time there came to me, through my
brother James and another member of our Oriel cir-
cle, the offer of employment in a quarter then sup-
posed to be friendly, not only to Newman, but to the
movement of which he was now held to be the real
leader. After a good deal of conversation in Temple

INTRODUCTION.

7

Gai-dens, in which I declared myself very strongly,
for specified reasons, against the Corn Laws and Pro-
tection generally, I agreed. This act was necessarily a
departure, as far as cooperation was concerned, and
'from that time there could not be confidential corre-
spondence on the heart of affairs. But I had frequent
letters from Newman, and occasional reminders that
what I did must be for heaven as well as for earth,
and would have to be so judged.

Three years before this, early in 1840, Newman
consulted me about the conventual house to be con-
structed out of a l'ange of stabling at Littlemore, and
there ensued a correspondence. I sent some drawings
and suggestions, which would have somewhat re-
deemed the ugliness of the building. I went several
times to see Newman and the brothers, as I may call
them, at Littlemore. I should add that though I was,
I really believe, as much in Newman's secrets as any-
body else — at the time, I believe, as much in his
secrets as he himself was — I could not have said, till
he actually went over to Rome, whether he was even
likely to go over. I was repeatedly asked the ques-
tion ; I was even told that the Court of Rome had
certain grounds for being sure of his submission. Rut
the Ralian temperament is so entirely different from
the English ; it is so sanguine, so ill content with im-
perfect development, so resolved that a man shall be
either one thing or the other, and so habituated to
make events, that I did not credit the most positive
announcements from that quarter. Nevertheless the
end was no surprise to me.

The reader will notice that in this summary of two
lives I have said very little indeed of Newman's works.
My present purpose is to show what basis I have for

8

REMINISCENCES.

Reminiscences. If I have a memory at all, if I have
even a particle of truthfulness, I ought to be able to
tell something. Newman's publications are before
the world; they are before all time, as long as the
English language is spoken, and as long as this is a
people and an empire. If I said not a word about
them they would suffer no wrong from me. But my
personal recollections, whatever they are worth, would
be lost if I did not collect and publish them. New-
man appears here as the centre of a group. I may
honestly say that, with the exception of Keble, I do
not think one of them would be a living name a
century hence but for his share in the light of New-
man's genius and goodness. Yet even as the planets
of such a system they are worthy of a better record
than I am about to offer.

One thing more I must say. These are Reminis-
cences, and Reminiscences only. I possess a great
mass of letters, journals, and other documents that
might have helped me to make these volumes a little
more interesting and more authentic. But I have now
only a small remainder of my eyesight — one eye gone
and not much left of the other — while my prospects
of life and strength are also a small and doubtful re-
mainder. I should soon have lost myself had I at-
tempted to penetrate into all this buried material.

Some years ago various incidents brought before
me the possible fate of documents in that contingency
which is certain and which may be any day. Car-
dinal Newman's letters and manuscripts I knew to
be his property in the eye of the law, as far as pub-
lication is concerned. That question was brought
before the Oxford world when Whately went to the
publishers of Blanco White's Life and threatened

INTRODUCTION.

9

legal proceedings in case his own letters were in-
cluded in the publication. The result of that inter-
ference is that the most important part of Blanco
White's Life — viz., the later period of his residence
at Oxford — is left a blank. No reasonable person
could blame Whately for that step, or found any sur-
mise upon it, for the letters of intimate friends are
always supposed to be interchanged in an inner coun-
cil, quite apart from the open circle of the Church or
the world. To Newman's own letters I added what-
ever was worth sending in the correspondence relat-
ing to the "British Critic." Some time after a kind
and good Irish Roman Catholic gentleman, who,
though in a dying state, had given himself much
trouble for me, asked for Newman's autograph. The
only one I could then find with considerable search
was Newman's acknowledgment of the returned let-
ters, which I sent to poor Mr. Frank Harris, since
dead.

There cannot be much, then, in the nature of a
biography here. Nor could I have attempted any ac-
count of Newman's works, for I have always been a
bad reader, and have now less power than ever of
mastering any work requiring close attention and con-
tinued thought. Moreover, I very much distrust the
impartiality of the gentlemen who, past the middle
age, sit down, as they would fondly persuade them-
selves, to form a right judgment upon a work written
by some one whom they utterly disagree with. They
set to work (they know it well) with a foregone con-
clusion. As a member of the Anglican communion I
am bound to admit that my own foregone conclusion
must be to some extent against all Newman's later
works, not only those published since his submission

10

REMINISCENCES.

to Rome, but also those in which he has since main-
tained his final course to have been involved. But
that foregone conclusion would in my case be good
for nothing, and I see no possible good to the world,
or to myself, in sitting down now to the task of an-
alyzing a series of great works, which I have always
felt to be above both my working powers and my
mental qualifications.

Even as regards the grand subject, these Reminis-
cences are superficial, sketchy, and often trivial. As
regards some other subjects they are even more so.
Perhaps I shall even be found to come under the old
description of those that remember the evil more
easily than the good. Be it so. I feel myself bound
to give a testimony, and it must be in my own
kind.

But why have I not waited, anyhow, till the Car-
dinal is history, and fair prey to the biographer ? I
hope I should have to wait long enough for that —
nay, that I shall not then be found waiting. I am
not quite six yeai*s the Cardinal's junior. Since I put
pen to this work, death has visited the names con-
tained in it again and again ; yes, again and again
since I wrote these very words, " again and again."
Several times have I had to sit down to correct the
tenses. There has also been a whole crop of Remi-
niscences. I much wished the Dean of Westminster
to see what I had written ; but he has gone, after
giving another contribution to the history of that
period, a contribution which, in my humble opinion,
showed that even his unique powers could have a de-
cline.

The sura is, one cannot wait forever. I shall be
glad to reflect that the Cardinal will have the oppor-

INTRODUCTION.

11

tunity of correcting my errors, and will have some
mementoes of interest. But again I say, this is but
a superficial work, for I am not much of a logician,
or of a metaphysician, or of a philosopher. Least of
all am I a theologian.

CHAPTER II.

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN.

Cardinal Newman was born in the City of Lon-
don, and baptized a few yards from the Bank of Eng-
land, early in 1801. His father was of a family of
small landed proprietors in Cambridgeshire, and had
an hereditary taste for music, of which he had a prac-
tical and scientific knowledge, together with much
general culture. From being chief clerk to a bank
he became a partner in the firm, Ramsbottom, New-
man, Ramsbottom & Co., 72 Lombard Street, which
appears in the lists of London bankers from 1807 to
1816 inclusive. The firm would seem to have had
particular relations with another firm styled first Fry
& Sons, afterwards Frys & Chapman, established at
the same time. John Newman was an enthusiast in
his way, and he bestowed some labors of calculation
upon the various popular schemes of the day, such as
that for making England independent of foreign tim-
ber, by planting all our waste lands. He was a Free-
mason, and had a high standing in the craft, into
which, however, no one of his three sons was initiated.
He was also a member of the Beef Steak Club. In
1800 he married Jemima Fourdrinier, of a well-known
Huguenot family, long known in the city of London
as engravers and paper manufacturers. Two of Mrs.
Newman's brothers introduced from Italy the machine
for making endless coils of paper, which up to that

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN.

13

time had been only made in sheets, by the slow work
of the hand. The mother was from first to last thor-
oughly loyal to her family traditions, and all the early
teaching of her children was that modified Calvinism
which retained the Assembly's Catechism as a text,
but put into young hands Watts, Baxter, Scott, Ro-
maine, Newton, Milner, — indeed, any writer who
seemed to believe and feel what he wrote about.

Throughout the whole of what may be called his
youth, John Henry Newman happily had no suspicion
that theology would be to him more than the saving
of his soul, for his parents intended him for the law,
and he actually kept some terms at Lincoln's Inn.
He expected to be " converted ; " in due time he was
converted ; and the day and hour of his conversion
he has ever remembered, and no doubt observed.
Without a thought of converting the world — which,
indeed, he formerly held to be the impossible am-
bition of fanatics and worldings — and thinking of
nothing but the openings he saw here and there
through the drift into the glory beyond, he accepted
from early years every text, every expression, every
figure, every emblem, and every thought thereby sug-
gested, as a solemn and abiding reality which it was
good to live in. It would hardly be too much to say
that he knew the Bible by heart. In his later years
he has described in very touching language the im-
possibility of shaking off or even modifying this
sweetest of his early possessions. He might study
the Fathers, and many a weary volume of annals or
of controversy ; he has had to master the Vulgate,
but his first and last love has been the Authorised
Version. His recollections of his early spiritual life,
published in the " Apologia pro Vita Sua," contained

14

REMINISCENCES.

some novelties, not to say surprises, to his longest
friends, and it is quite possible that a new search into
first memories, under a strong suggestion, may have
varied their order and prominence.

In that most interesting record, however, he omits
some important particulars. Ac a very early age in-
deed he was sent to Dr. Nicholas's, at Ealing, said
to be the best preparatory school in the country.
There were 300 boys there, and many of them be-
came distinguished in various ways. John H. New-
man rose almost at a bound, to the head of the
school, where before long he was followed by his no
less remarkable and even more precocious brother,
Frank Newman. From boyhood the two brothers
had taken the opposite sides on every possible ques-
tion, and perhaps the fact that one of the born dis-
putants was more than four years younger than the
other accounts somewhat for their respective lines of
divergence. If they argued at all on an equalitj7, the
younger must be the cleverer, the elder more mature.
There was also another brother, still living, not with-
out his share in the heritage of natural gifts. John
H. Newman used to be sensible of having lost some-
thing by not being a public-school man. He re-
garded with admiration and a generous kind of envy
the facile and elegant construing which a man of very
ordinary talents would bring with him from the sixth
form of any public school. " You don't know how
much you owe to Russell," he would say to me,
though I was never one of those facile construers.

In the biography referred to, John H. Newman has
not done justice to his eaidy adventures and sallies
into the domains of thought, politics, fancy, and taste.
He very early mastered music as a science, and at-

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN.

15

tained such a proficiency on the violin that, had be
not become a Doctor of the Church, he would have
been a Paganini. At the age of twelve he composed
an opera. He wrote in albums, improvised masques
and idyls, and only they who see no poetry in "Lead,
kindly light," or in the " Dream of Gerontins," will
deny that this divine gift entered into his birthright.

From Dr. Nicholas's he went straight to Trinity
College, Oxford. Not long afterwards his brother
Frank, too old for Ealing, but too young for a, col-
lege even in those days, came to Oxford and pursued
his studies, as far as compatible with an amiable
but universal and persistent antagonism, under John
Henry Newman's direction, in lodgings. When the
latter had been at Trinity a term or two, a great
blow fell on him and changed his destiny. The bank
in Lombard Street was one of many London banks
which, with as many as a hundred country banks,
succumbed under the pressure caused by the contrac-
tion of the currency and the rapid fall of prices upon
the return of peace. Henceforth Newman could
have little or no aid from his friends. The father
took the Alton Brewery, which for two or three years
became the headquarters of the family, making the
place ever after very dear in their memories. The
three Eclogues forming the first three pieces in the
"Memorials of the Past" — printed 1832, and dated
Alton, July 1818; September, 1818; April, 1819 —
show how intensely the writer appreciated the well-
known features of Hampshire scenery. Gilbert
White's "Natural History of Selborne " (a few
miles from Alton) was a great book with Oriel men
of those days, and when Newman became a Fellow of
Oriel he was often proud to name him as one of the

16

REMINISCENCES.

college worthies, and to recommend a careful reading
of his book. The father could not make the brewery
answer, though he seems to have studied the business
thoroughly and to have applied himself to it with
much diligence. There finally remained nothing but
the mother's jointui'e, which was soon sadly dimin-
ished by the successive reduction of the interest from
five per cent, to four, and then to three. John
Henry Newman could now help others as well as
maintain himself. In the declining fortunes of his
family he read the call to a higher and more con-
genial profession than that for which he had been
actually preparing.

His academic sympathies and associations expanded
all the more because his prospects were closed in other
quarters. For his college and what could recall it to
his memory he acquired a passion which has never
died. But there was one unlucky consequence of
this change in his expectations. He passed his ex-
amination for his degree at the earliest possible time,
Michaelmas, 1820, when he had not quite completed
his nineteenth year. Various explanations are given
of what occurred. It is said that Newman was very
ill ; that he had had no sleep latterly, and had neg-
lected even to take food. It is also added that the
examiners were not the men to discover a genius
under this disguise. Newman always maintained
that he had been too discursive to make the proper
preparation ; that he had been properly examined ;
and that he alone was answerable for his failure. The
result in those days turned on the vivd voce examina-
tion, not on the paper work, as now. When the class
lists came out, Newman was found " under the line,"
as low as then he could be. The comparison with

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN.

17

those to whom higher honors were accorded, and with
the examiners themselves, is at least suggestive ; but
it really was a question of " results," as they are now
called, and the results were not forthcoming on this
occasion. Was it likely ? He was not yet nineteen,
the age when most men now enter a university. Five
years and a half afterwards his brother Frank gained
without any apparent effort one of the best double-
firsts ever known.

For three years after taking his B. A. degree New-
man resided at Oxford, enjoying the much-prized
position of a scholar of Trinity, and some friendships
that became ever stronger and stronger. In the year
1821, together with Henry Boden, he published first
one canto, then a second, of " St. Bartholomew's Eve,"
which might now be supposed the first fiery outbreak
of a spirit destined to wield the masses of Exeter
Hall. In a note to the second instalment he explains
that he had been much surprised to find by the re-
marks of his academic readers that the learned uni-
versity knew nothing about St. Bartholomew's Eve.
So he undertook to enlighten it with a brief narrative
beginning: "The year of our Lord, 1572, will ever
be branded with infamy and recollected with horror,
as the date of this most barbarous and cold-blooded
massacre. The Queen Mother, Catherine de' Medici,
actuated by zeal or ambition, conceived this design,
so pleasing to the Court of Rome," etc., etc.

Notwithstanding this bold adventure into the
realms of history, poetry, and polemics, it does not
appear that Newman attempted to retrieve his ex-
amination disaster by writing for either the English
or the Latin essay. He remained for years in the
very distinct circle of his Trinity acquaintances. As

VOL. L 2

18

REMINISCENCES.

that college was his home for the first six or seven
years of his academic life, he retained for it, to the
last, the tenderest affection. For Izaac Williams and
W. J. Copeland he had the love which passes that of
common relation. Many years afterwards he typified
his life's aspirations in the snap-dragon fringing the
wall opposite the rooms in which he spent his first
three solitary weeks at college.

CHAPTER III.

THE OLD ORIEL SCHOOL.

Thus in the most impressible period of his mental
growth, Newman was external to the college most
associated with his life, work, and name. Oriel Col-
lege at that time contained some of the most dis-
tinguished personages, the most vigorous minds, and
the most attractive characters in Oxford. From the
Provost, Dr. Coplestone, to the youngest undergrad-
uate they had been carefully selected, for to get a son
into Oriel was a great thing in those days. Keble,
Whately, Tyler, and Hawkins were tutors. Arnold,
though not then residing, for he did not reside beyond
his probationary year, was present in spirit. Much
the same might be said of the softer and milder in-
fluence of Samuel Richards. Richard Hurrell Froude,
and a younger brother, who lived but to die, Robert
Wilberforce and latterly Samuel, Sir George Prevost,
Dallas, Proby J. Ferrers, William Falconer, John
Colquhoun, Edward Denison, William Heathcote,
Charles Wood, and Charles Porcher, were among the
undergraduates. Though the distinction was rather
on the decline — for other colleges were joining the
race — Oriel had more than its share of University
honors.

What was more, its most prominent talkers, preach-
ers, and writers seemed to be always undermining, if
not actually demolishing, received traditions and in-

20

REMINISCENCES.

stitutions ; and whether they were preaching from the
University pulpit, or arguing in common room, or
issuing pamphlets on passing occasions, even faithful
and self-reliant men felt the ground shaking under
them. The new Oriel sect was declared to be Noetic,
whatever that may mean, and when a Fellow of the
college presented himself in the social gatherings of
another society, he was sure to be reminded of his
pretence to intellectual superiority. Perhaps the topic
was getting rather stale when I was elected Fellow
in 1829, but even then, being in University common
room, on Plumtree's invitation, I was most unmerci-
fully baited upon it by Booth, a Magdalene Fellow,
and one of the many victims of Routh's cruel lon-
gevity.

For Whately was claimed by his admirers a spirit-
ual as well as mental preeminence, but it would not
be possible to describe now the terror his presence
was sure to infuse among all who wished things to
remain much as they were in their own lifetime. In-
stead of being comforted and built up in the good old
fashion, they were told they were altogether wrong,
and must first retrace all their steps and undo all they
had been doing. What was worse, the efficacy of the
cure which had become necessary consisted in the
hearers thinking it out for themselves. Yet for many
years after this date, and long after Newman was a
member of the same college as Whately, it would not
have been easy to state the difference between their
respective views, unless it might be found in Newman's
immense and almost minutely reverential knowledge
of Scripture, and in a certain yearning to build as
fast as men cast down, and to plant again the waste
places. Something like a conspiracy there seemed to

THE OLD ORIEL SCHOOL.

21

be — all the University thought that — but Newman
had never liked a movement to destroy. He used to
talk of the men who lash the waters to frighten the
fish when they have made no preparation to catch
them.

As a matter of fact, there was something more
than a morbid intellectual restlessness in the so-called
Oriel School of that day. It was not behind the most
bigoted, or the most fanatical school of theologians in
i its readiness to impose certain opinions and expres-
sions when the opportunity offered itself and the per-
sons to be indoctrinated might not be on their guard.
In the last century one Dr. Bosworth left a sum for
a series of divinity lectui'es to be read every year in
chapel. Every old Oriel man will remember the
" Bossies," and his own sensations when, at the end
of Morning Prayers, instead of his being dismissed to
his breakfast, one of the Fellows rose and delivered a
very cut-and-dried lecture. It came to every clerical
Fellow in succession. As these were young men, it
had been, not improperly, the custom to read the
same lectures every year ; only the MS. was changed
from time to time. The manuscript then in use was
the production of the Old Oriel, that is, the Noetic
school, and was by no means that neutral composition
which would have been proper under the circum-
stances. Certainly it was an unfair use of authority
to surprise either the young lecturer, or the boys that
were supposed to listen to him, into new theological
terms and definitions.

I must have heard the " Bossies " frequently, with-
out being conscious of receiving either harm or good
from them, but upon my return to residence in 1835,
I was appointed the lecturer — I suppose, by the Pro-

22

REMINISCENCES.

vost — for the following year. This was after the
new arrangement of the tuition, and during the issue
of the " Tracts for the Times." Not having paid
much attention to the lectures, I now found myself in
a serious difficulty. The MS. explained the word
"Person," in the Athanasian Creed, in the Litany,
and in the Communion Service, by the word Office,
in the sense of representation. As far as I can re-
member, after so long an interval, what I really
could not understand at the time, the new explana-
tion— for it hardly disguised that it was new —
amounted to saying that the Second Person in the
Trinity was a representation of the Father's mercy,
and the Third of His sanctifying power, or some-
thing to that effect. It certainly suggested to my
mind a very misty, shadowy, and unreal idea of Him
we read of in the Gospels, as if He were but a phan-
tom form, or at best an archangel. I really should
be glad to be corrected by the production of the MS.

This ran through all the lectures in an ascending
scale of prominence and distinctness. I managed,
however lamely, to qualify, or omit, the passages in
the earlier lectures, the Provost making no sign.
When the last, or the last but one came, I found my
difficulties face to face, and insuperable. I worked
all night in the vain attempt to find expressions com-
patible with the Creeds, and with the general drift of
the MS. ; but an hour before chapel I found the task
still unaccomplished and seemingly impossible. I
therefore returned the MS. to the Provost, stating my
sad case, and also pleading that I was not then in a
fit state to read the remaining lectures. The note
must have reached the Provost just as he was begin-
ning to dress for chapel, for he was too hard worked

THE OLD ORIEL SCHOOL.

23

and too late worked, to be a particularly early riser.
However, he wrote the kindest possible reply ; and
also another note, which he sent with the MS. to
William J. Coplestone, requesting him to finish the
series. This he did, and of course received the remu-
neration, such as it was. Not very long after there
came to me from Coplestone a handsomely-bound
copy of Britton'a " Cathedral Antiquities," duly in-
scribed, a kind and welcome gift, which had the dis-
astrous effect of making me an architectural enthusi-
ast, and wrecking me on that rock.

But I have now to retrace my steps some twelve
or fifteen years, to the period when Newman was not
even yet a member of Oriel, and when Coplestone
and Whately ruled the college, and threatened to
dominate over the University. It is sixty years ago.
Many who have since passed away, leaving loved and
honored names, were proud to be numbered among
their friends, and justly proud. But, whatever the
personal merits of these two remarkable men and the
sincerity of their convictions, it is necessary to con-
sider these as elements in the condition of the college
and University when Newman came into public view.
Whately — for Coplestone was now content to. be
represented, not to say personated, by his disciple —
regarded High Church and Low Church as equal
bigotries.

in the Evangelical scheme he saw nothing but a
system of dogmas framed to create a groundless self-
confidence, and to foster spiritual pride. The man
inwardly sure of his own salvation and of his Chris-
tian sufficiency, and equally sure of the damnation of
most people around him, particularly of those he did
not like, Whately used to compare to the self-suffi-

24

REMINISCENCES.

cient Stoic of the Roman satirist. Such a man was
naturally indifferent to further knowledge and im-
provement, being, indeed, as good as he need be, and
only in danger of being so good as to rely on his own
merits. Even though the Evangelicals had their
favorable side in their affinities with the Noncon-
formist body, and, upon their own principles, had
little to say to formularies, and even to creeds, still
Whately had far less respect for them than for the
old High Church, for it was learned and cultivated,
and it could appeal to something more than those in-
communicable sensations which it is impossible to
reason upon. St. Edmund Hall was then the head-
quarters of the Evangelical system. It is difficult to
convey an idea of the very low position it had in the
University ; and it is even painful to recall it, for it
was religion in the form of a degradation utterly un-
deserved. There were in most of the other colleges
one or two men who inherited or imbibed sympathy
with the despised sect. But to Whately, in his lofty
eminence of free speculation, the Evangelical system
as presented at Oxford was below contempt. If
there were differences between him and Newman
whe/i they came to work together, it must have
arisen from Newman's deep convictions in favor of
the Evangelicals, while Whately could only feel the
obligation of a common Christianity.

Whately dealt more freely with the Ten Command-
ments than I had been accustomed to. He strongly
deprecated the prevalent idea of the Sunday taking
the exact place of the Jewish Sabbath, or being
properly called the Sabbath. But any one coining to
Oxford from the country at that time would have
received a little shock to his provincial strictness. It

THE OLD ORIEL SCHOOL.

25

often occurred that on Sunday there was an unusual
muster at the High Table and in the common room,
of strangers as well as men of the college. In order
to escape this, there were occasionally private dinners,
which some would think worse. Sunday was thus a
Feast Day. One of Whately's topics was that the
prohibition of idolatrous likenesses and emblems in
the second commandment pointed beforehand to the
true Image of God in his Son, the reception of which
would be impeded by such preoccupations.

Whately's personal habits are too well known, per-
haps, to be noticed. He used to take daily walks
round Christ Church meadow with a little company
of dogs, and provided with sticks and big round
missiles for their amusement. As soon as people
heard he was Archbishop of Dublin, the first question
they asked was how would he amuse his dogs. He
used to lecture his awkward squad of elderly under-
graduates at St. Alban Hall, lying on a sofa, with
one leg over the back or the end. Like Macaulay,
he had a healthy appetite, possibly because he had
not been playing with it during the day. To provide
against the danger incident to those who talk and eat
at the same time, when he was to dine at Oriel, a
large dish of currie, or calf sdiead hash, or other soft
and comminuted meat was provided. Repeatedly,
when I have been serving this dish at High Table,
a plate has been brought to me, and I have put on
it what seemed to me a liberal help. " It's for the
Principal, sir," the servant whispered, and then I
began entirely de novo. I believe Whately rather
astonished the Dublin waiters at the hotel where he
had to put up on his arrival there. There is no
point on which constitution and habits so much dif-

26

REMINISCENCES.

fer, but I suppose the brains will not do their best
work without ample and generous diet: Dr. Johnson,
to wit.

I am conscious that in these Reminiscences there
are things which some will think had better not have
been said, for one reason or another. But reminis-
cences cease to be reminiscences when they are much
weeded and pruned. I will also add this. While
I confess, as I do, to the large place a man like
Whately holds in my memory, in my regard, and in
the course of my early thoughts, by that very confes-
sion I assign to him a far higher place than I should
to some with whom I could find no fault, and of
whom, in fact, I have nothing to say. All this time
there were men at Oxford, able and learned men too,
as irreproachable in their opinions and manners as in
their lives ; but who to me were nothing and are
nothing, for they were concerned only for themselves,
and perhaps for some other people in some subordi-
nate degree.

CHAPTER IV.

NEWMAN, FELLOW OF OKIEL.

It was in 1823 that Newman was elected to a fel-
lowship at Oriel ; and it was always a comfort to him
that he had been able to give his father this good
news at a time of great sorrow and embarrassment.
The father died not long after, and the family may
be said then to have had no home. They resided for
short periods at Brighton, at Straud-on-the-Green,
and other places ; and some members of the family
paid long and frequent visits to Samuel Rickards,
a quaint, patriarchal, and truly saintly man, at Ul-
combe, near the Earl of Winchelsea's place. Lord
Maidstone — rather eccentric then, in due time the
very eccentric earl — was Rickards' pupil. He had
considerable powers of caricature, as Etonians all re-
member, and he was glad to contribute to any lady's
album. Though Rickards lived to be left far behind
in the race of development, he and his surroundings,
whether at Ulcombe, or at Stowlangloft, near Bury
St. Edmund's, were always very dear to the Newman
family. In October, 1827, Newman and his sisters
paid a most interesting visit to Highwood, where
Mr. Wilberforce then resided, and where the three
younger sons were then assembled.

In the summer of 1829 the family took a furnished
cottage in a very out-of-the-way spot at Horspath, of
which Dr. Ellerton, a well-known Fellow and tutor of

28

REMINISCENCES.

Magdalene College, had charge. This was pleasant
enough in the summer, but when Dornford, a Fellow
of Oriel, who was serving Nuneham Courtney, and
had the use of a cottage there, offered it to the New-
mans, they were glad to avail themselves of the op-
portunity, though the change did not bring them
nearer Oxford. The cottage formed part of the new
village built in uniform style by Simon Lord Har-
court, in place of the ancient village, cleared away be-
cause too near the magnificent new mansion, so con-
spicuous an object as seen from the river. It was
said to have been intended for the parsonage, but
was by no means a picturesque building. Indeed, in
the Midlands it would have been set down as the
habitation of a family of weavers or stockingers.

It was not, however, without associations. Jean
Jacques Rousseau occupied it for some time under
the patronage of the Harcourt family, and is said to
have sown seeds of many foreign wild flowers in spots
where they were likely to grow. The fact of such
plants being found about Nuneham has been adduced
to support the tradition that this is the true Auburn
of Goldsmith's "Deserted Village."

Another not less interesting association is an inci-
dent not to be found in Canon Ashwell's account of
the late Bishop of Winchester's early years. Among
the many hands through which Samuel Wilberforce
passed, was the Rev. E. G. Marsh, than occupying
this cottage, and finding room in it for a family and
some pupils. Samuel was then hardly twelve years
old, but he had decided tastes. He conceived a great
dislike of his tutor and the whole menage, and one
day, after a violent collision, demanded to be sent
home immediately. The tutor demurred. There-

NEWMAN, FELLOW OF ORIEL.

29

upon the lad ran into the road before the cottage,
then traversed by a score or two of London coaches
a day, threw himself flat on the ground, in the very
track of the coaches, and announced his intention of
remaining there till he was sent home. After he had
remained there several hours the tutor struck his
colors, and Samuel was sent home.

A special interest attaches to this cottage from its
being the scene of a remarkable family group, includ-
ing the whole surviving Newman family, in chalk,
by Miss Maria R. Giberne, an early and ardent ad-
mirer of Newman, and his follower to Rome.

Upon Dornford leaving college, the family had to
quit Nuneham, and then took a cottage in Iffley,
well known for its massive Norman church, over-
looking the Isis, a mile and a half out of Oxford.
Here they took in hand the school and the poor at
Littlemore. After a time they moved to " Rose
Bank " Cottage, then just completed, on the Oxford
side of Iffley.

To no period of Newman's life do his younger
friends turn with more curiosity than to his position
in the Oriel common room for the first two or three
years. The truth is, it was very easy for a man to
have no position at all there, especially just at that
time. Newman, a shy man, with heart and mind
in a continual ferment of emotion and speculation,
yearning for sympathy and truth, was not likely to
feel entirely at home with some, whom it would be
needless either to name or to describe. From the
first he loved and admired the man with whom event-
ually he lived most in collision, Edward Hawkins.

He would also have been ready to love and admire
Whately to the end, but for the inexorable condition

30

REMINISCENCES.

of friendship imposed by Whately, absolute and im-
plicit agreement in thought, word, and deed. This
agreement, from the first, Newman could not accord.
His divergence was in fact radical. He used to say
that Whately's Logic was a most interesting book,
but that there was one thing not to be found in it,
and that was logic. The truth is, every man in these
days is his own logician. However, they lived for
some time in close intimacy, and it is painful to
remember that a time came when they were in the
same city for seven years, passing one another in the
streets, without even recognition.

Newman was, however, unaffectedly deferential to
his seniors, some of whom could little have suspected
the future of their shy probationer. Dr. Coplestone,
seeing him less frequently, and on less familiar terms,
could never quite understand him, though he under-
stood,, and even too kindly appreciated, some men of
much less originality, power, and address. This was
all the more remarkable, as no man in Oxford ever so
studied and admired Coplestone's famous Preelections
as Newman did. He read them with his favorite pu-
pils, pointing out their originality, and their felicity
of expression. Coplestone had more " breadth of cul-
ture," as it is now called, than is commonly found
united with exact and elegant scholarship, and it is
to be regretted that the ephemeral form of his writ-
ings has thrown them much out of date. The Latin
of the Preelections, Newman used to say, was very
good, but Coplestonian, not Ciceronian. All that
Coplestone saw in him was, as the Greek poet ex-
pressed it, a lion without the spirit of a lion.

In 1824 Newman took orders and became curate
of St. Clement's. This was then a quaint little

NEWMAN, FELLOW OF ORIEL.

31

church, in a very small churchj^ard, adjoining the toll-
taker's shed at the east end of the picturesque bridge
over the Cherwell, at the London approach to Oxford.
At this time Newman was Secretary to the local
branch of the Church Missionary Society, an occa-
sional frequenter of the religious soirees held at the
Vice-Principal's of St. Edmund Hall, and on terms
of more or less familiarity with a considerable num-
ber of men destined soon to part in many directions.
His church was soon filled, and although his sermons,
from the first, rather puzzled Mr. Hill and his weekly
synod, they passed the censorship and were pro-
nounced, on the whole, spiritual.

The parish of St. Clement's was increasing, and
it devolved on Newman to undertake the building of
a new church, on a more open site. This he had to
leave very much to others, and the result was the
singular edifice compared by irreverent undergradu-
ates to a boiled rabbit, on some low ground on the
bank of the Cherwell, opposite Magdalene Walks.
There could hardly be imagined a building with less
indications of the architectural reformation which has
marked the last half-century. Part, if not the whole,
of the old parish church was allowed to stand for some
years, for use at the funerals still occasionally per-
formed there. The chief University solicitor persist-
ed that it would make no difference in the status of
the new church, notwithstanding a resolute protest
of Newman's that it would ; and the result was that
some years afterwards an Act of Parliament had to
be obtained to give validity to the marriage cere-
monies performed at the new church while the old
church was standing.

In 1825, Whateiy became Principal of St. Alban

32

REMINISCENCES.

Hall, and Newman bis Vice-Principal. Both took
their parts in such tuition as could be given to a
dozen young men, whose sole aim was to get a degree
with the least possible trouble.

At Easter, 1826, while Newman was still assisting
Whately, two Oriel men were elected to fellowships,
— Robert Wilberforce and Froude. The former of
these, second son of the great emancipationist, be-
sides being a laborious and conscientious student, and
a good writer, had recommendations which were then
rare in Oxford. Even under his father's declining
health and circumstances, he had seen a good deal of
the political and " religious " society of the metropo-
lis, and of the great world. He had also travelled.
At that time the Continent had not been opened
more than ten 3-ears to the English tourist, who could
scarcely be said to exist before 1815, for the few peo-
ple we sent to other parts of the world were not tour-
ists, but discoverers. Even in 1825 a Continental
tour had its difficulties, and consisted chiefly of troub-
lesome and costly incidents with vetturinos, guides,
and hotel-keepers ; road accidents, and brigands, real
or imaginary.

Robert Wilberforce had been much impressed with
Cologne Cathedral, and with the galleries of early
art at Munich. It is an illustration of the turning of
the tide, and of the many smaller causes contributing
to the " Movement," that in 1829, German agents,
one of them with a special introduction to Robert
"Wilberforce, filled Oxford with very beautiful and
interesting tinted lithographs of mediaeval paintings,
which have probably, long ere this, found their way
to a thousand parsonages, — a good many to B romp-
ton Oratory. Even one such picture was a pleasant

NEWMAN, FELLOW OF ORIEL.

33

and wholesome relief to the battle -scenes, the sport-
ing pictures, and pretty female faces, which had been
the chief subjects of English art now for a whole
generation.

About the same time — that is, in 1829 — there
came an agent from Cologne with very large and
beautiful reproductions of the original design for the
cathedral, which it was proposed to set to work on,
with a faint hope of completing it before the end of
the century. Fronde gave thirty guineas for a set of
the drawings, went wild over them, and infected not
a few of his friends with mediaeval architecture. As
an instance of the way in which religious sentiment
was now beginning to be dissociated from practical
bearings and necessities, Froude would frequently
mention the exquisitely finished details at York Min-
ster, and other churches, in situations where no eye
but the eye of Heaven could possibly reach them.

Newman had attended the regular lectures of Dr.
Lloyd, Regius Professor, and also his private lectures,
or rather conversations, in which the origin of the
" Book of Common Prayer" had a prominent place.
Dr. Lloyd had received this task from others before
him, and he hoped to accomplish it or to pass it on.
It was a year after this that Froude was invited by
Lloyd to attend a course of lectures on the same sub-
ject, namely, " an historical account of the Liturgy,
tracing all the prayers, through the Roman missals
and breviaries, up to their original source."

VOL. I. 3

CHAPTER V.

NEWMAN, TUToR ; HIS PUPILS AND ORIEL FRIENDS.

One morning, in 1826, Newman received a very
short note from Lloyd : " Dear Newman, step in,
please, for a moment." Newman thought it might
be a reference or a memorandum, something lent or
lost, a date or what not, and ran to Christ Church.
Upon his opening Lloyd's door the Professor asked,
" Newman, how old are you ? " " Five-and-twenty."
" Get away, you boy ; I don't want you," was all the
explanation given, and Newman had almost forgotten
it when he heard next day that Jelf had, through
Lloyd, been selected for the tutorship of Prince
George of Cumberland. The only restriction to
Lloyd's choice was the limitation of age, — twenty-
seven.

Boundless is the vista of consequences with which
this little difference of age may be credited in this
instance. Historians have sometimes amused them-
selves with following up the probable consequences
of events that impended, but did not come to pass.
What if Alexander had turned his course westward
instead of eastward ? What if Harold had been the
survivor at Hastings ? What if Newman had become
the adviser of the Court of Hanover, and of all the
smaller German States ? His politics occupy an ear-
lier place in the memory of his pupils than his theol-
ogy, for he had analyzed the Constitution and history

NEWMAN, TUTOR ; HIS PUPILS AND ORIEL FRIENDS. 35

of every state in the world, ancient or still existing.
A very good judge of men and things used to call
Newman a Lord Chancellor thrown away, and there
are plenty of examples to show that even though a
man does not find his place in legislative assemblies,
or in appeals to the people, he may still have the
highest capacity for government and diplomacy.

The first consequence of Jelf's leaving Oxford was
that Newman became tutor at Oriel in Jelf's place,
receiving his pupils ; for it was then the custom of
the college — indeed, the law of the university — that
every undergraduate should be entered under a tutor,
who should be, to a great extent, answerable for
him. As Newman was resolved to understand the of-
fice of tutor by the law and spirit of the university,
the change proved very important to the pupils trans-
ferred to his charge, and eventually to himself. As I
write this, however, I feel bound to add that Jelf was
a very good lecturer, and a kind and conscientious
tutor. It is needless to say that he was a good
scholar ; his explanations were simple and easy ; his
utterance was soft and even musical. Perhaps he too
readily assumed that his pupils were as well ground-
ed and industrious as himself, and as capable of read-
ing Herodotus without a frequent recurrence to the
lexicon.

Personally, I am under a great obligation to Jelf.
At Christmas, 1825, I was persuaded by a very hard-
working but eccentric acquaintance to stay up the va-
cation and read with him. I had been latterly en-
croaching far on the night to make up for lost time.
The result of that, and of strong coffee, was that the
very first night of the vacation, a few days before
Christmas, I was seized with violent pains. The scout

36

REMINISCENCES.

called in a medical practitioner often seen in the col-
lege. He gave me a large bowl of Epsom salts ; I
lay in agony all night, worse and worse every hour.
About seven the scout went to Jelf, who immediately
came over. He sent at once for Dr. Bourne, then
the leading physician in Oxford, of whom it used to
be said that once, finding himself despised for his
youth, his good looks, and gayety of manner, he had
disappeared for a month, and then reappeared with a
wig, a graver tone, and a more measured utterance.
He pronounced the illness peritonitis, told me I was
at death's door, that the salts had nearly killed me,
and I must be bled. This I was, the only time in my
life. At every visit, he told me of young men thus
attacked, who, from taking too much beef tea, or but-
tered toast, had died in twenty-four hours. Jelf had
me moved from my close and dismal garret to the
best rooms in college, those between the two Quads,
then Welby's. He wrote to my parents who came
up immediately, and were much relieved to find me
alive and mending ; and were also much impressed
with Jelf's kindness. He visited me every day while
he remained up. Hawkins also called on me, on his
return to college, and seemed to detect in me more
than usual wandering and incoherency.

This was at Christmas, 1825. In the course of the
next year, as stated above, Jelf was succeeded by
Newman, who took over his pupils. A few months
afterwards, Tyler, a most energetic and genial man,
then Dean and tutor, accepted the Rectory of St.
Giles's-in-the-Fields ; and early in 1828, Dr. Cople-
stone resigned the Provostship on becoming Bishop
of Llandaff and Dean of St. Paul's. About the same
time Pusey, who had now been Fellow of Oriel four

NEWMAN, TUTOR; HIS PUPILS AND ORIEL FRIENDS. 37

years, showing himself, however, very little latterly,
returned to Christ Church as Regius Professor of He-
brew. Upon the vacancy in the Provostship, three
names presented themselves for what was then deemed
one of the highest objects of academic ambition, so
illustrious had Coplestone made it.

Kehle w:is still Fellow, and had very recently given
up the tutorship and taken to parish work. His
" Christian Year " had now been published a twelve-
month, and had gone through several editions. But
he was always a shy man, and on the rare occasions
on which he revisited Oxford, he preferred some quiet
domestic hearth to Oriel common room. The world
associates Keble very intimately with Oxford, and
with Oriel College, and the world is right in doing
so ; but there is something in the mode of this as-
sociation which has to be explained. The usages of
Oxford are, in some respects, different from those of
Cambridge, and still more so from the ideas naturally
formed by strangers. In most of the colleges, espe-
cially those where the reputation of the tutors at-
tracted undergraduates, the Fellows were politely re-
quested to give up the rooms to which they had a
foundation right for the use of the undergraduates.
This reduced the resident Fellows to those engaged in
tuition, for though they might go into lodgings if they
were so minded, that was not the same thing as being
in college and having a gratuitous home, which they
could leave or return to when it suited them. When
John Keble gave up the tuition to assist his father at
Fairford, though he would probably have retained
his rooms in college had that been the usage, he did
not provide himself with lodgings in their place. In
1835-36 he was glad to have the use of my rooms

38

REMINISCENCES.

for a week or two. But the fact was that from his
giving up the tuition to his vacating his fellowship by
marriage many years after, he was very little indeed
in Oxford, and then only at a private house in the
city. Yet everybody who visited Oriel inquired after
Keble, and expected to see him. It must be added
that he was present in everybody's thoughts, as a
glory to the college, a comfort and a stay ; for the
slightest word he dropped was all the more remem-
bered from there being so little of it, and from it
seeming to come from a different and holier sphere.
His manner of talking favored this, for there was not
much continuity in it, only every word was a brilliant
or a pearl.

The Rector of St. Giles's-in-the-Fields was still in
his year of grace, and eligible.

Hawkins, who had long striven to keep an even
course between all sides, had really won the love and
esteem of all. ) In whatever he wrote or said, he la-
bored to concede to any one what he asked, without
sacrificing what was due to the truth, as he conceived
it. He spoke incisively, and what he said remained in
the memory and seemed to come from him. He. was
fond of business and wished to keep it in his own
hands. Keble humorously proposed that the Fellows
{should divide the prize, — give Tyler the red gown,
Hawkins the work, and himself the money. The
junior Fellows looked to Newman to see which way
he was going. To the great surprise of some old
members of the college who knew everybody there
and everything, he gave all his weight for Hawkins.
He liked the man and hoped much from him, but
he could hardly have expected much unless he also
thought that Hawkins was impressible and compliant,
which he decidedly was not.

NEWMAN, TUTOR; HIS PUPILS AND ORIEL FRIENDS. 39

But what reason could Newman have for not wel-
coming back to college the author of the " Christian
Year " ? Keble always understood that the reason
was Newman's distrust of his power to manage young
men, and said that it was a mistake, for he felt him-
self peculiarly fitted for it. It certainly was the fact
that he had private pupils as well as college pupils,
and that they respected him. A former Fellow of
the college, a friend of Whately as well as Newman,
a quaint, patriarchal man, with a century of wisdom
on his still young shoulders, wrote to Newman, '* You
don't know Hawkins as well as I do. He will be
siu-e to disappoint you." But then, it must be added,
the dear good man did not quite know Newman him-
self, and lived to be disappointed in him.

Whatever thoughts Newman might have had about
his own part in the election, he kept them to himself,
for his most intimate friends cannot remember a sin-
gle word of self-accusation. It was his wont to accept
his own acts as providentially overruled to purposes
beyond his own ken. He was, therefore, much sur-
prised and concerned when he read, in a sermon
preached by Pusey at the consecration of the chapel
at Keble College, that Newman had lived to regret
the part he had taken in Hawkins' election to the
Oriel Provostship.

Thus in 1828 Newman found himself in a college
at that time held to be in the very front of academic
progress, with some half-dozen very important, in-
tractable personages just cleared away ; with a Pro-
vost who owed his election to him ; himself tutor, and
with two other tutors, Robert Wilberforce and Rich-
ard Froude, entirely devoted to him. At what date
he began to move in the direction which seems now

40

REMINISCENCES.

plain enough, it would not be easy to say. It never
was possible to be even a quarter of an hour in his
company without a man feeling himself to be invited
to take an onward step sufficient to tax his energy or
his faith ; and Newman was sure to find out in due
time whether that onward step had been taken. But
though we may now construct a design, still we shall
have to admit that it is only by being wise after the
event, or with the event near in view.

Newman wrote about this time an elaborate arti-
cle on Apollonius Tyanaeus for an Encyclopajdia,
drawing the line strongly between true and fictitious
miracles. He had early faced fairly the question of
evidences, by the study of infidel writers. He was
one of the few people who could be called thoroughly
acquainted with Gibbon's great work. He could re-
cite many long passages of it, particularly the famous
one in which Gibbon describes the changelessness of
agriculture and the simple arts in the midst of chang-
ing governments, religions, and manners. He knew
well Hume's Essays. He had Tom Paine's works
under lock and key, and lent them with much cau-
tion to such as could bear the shock. Indeed, his
carefulness to master the other side of the great ques-
tion has suggested to some critics that his faith and
his scepticism contended for the ascendancy on such
equal conditions as to leave the issue sometimes
doubtful.

CHAPTER VI.

FRANK EDGEWORTH.

What has Frank Edge worth to do with this story ?
for he was a Cambridge man, and only a visitor at
Oxford. Well, he was part of my life, and part of
the circumstances of the da;;'. His name was public
from his childhood, for his very much older half-sis-
ter had made Frank the hero of several then very
popular but now forgotten tales. Her tales, indeed,
are not so wholly foi'gotten as her sensational nov-
els, hardly distinguishable from burlesque, written to
damage the character of the statesmen, the aristoc-
racy, and the Church of this country, — indeed, of
English society in general. Maria Edgeworth cared
for the actual Frank as much as he cared for her,
which was so little that it was better not to mention
her. He showed an early and strong revolt against
the hollowness, callousness, and deadness of utilitari-
anism. He affected, however, no saintliness, for his
humor ran the other way.

He was a little fair-haired, blue-eyed, pale-faced fel-
low, ready and smooth of utterance, always with some-
thing in his head and on his tongue, and very much
loved in a small circle at Charterhouse. With a fer-
tile imagination and with infinite good-nature, he
would fall in with any idea for the time and help you
on with it. He cast aside altogether his father, of
whom he knew nothing, and the above-mentioned half-

42

REMINISCENCES.

sister, with whom, when she was mentioned, he was
careful to say that he had little in common. Among
his friends at Charterhouse was David Reid, of the
family of brewers, a man of many hobbies rapidly suc-
ceeding one another. At school he was on Perpet-
ual Motion, so often the first round in the ladder that
leads nowhere. The result was the usual story. The
theory was sound, but the machine had a trick of
stopping, and when it stopped would not go on again.

Edgeworth was second for the English Poem on
Carthage in 1823, and I was third. As the Duke of
Wellington is related to have said about his de-
spatches, I may reasonably wonder how in the world
I came in third for even a school prize-poem. The cir-
cumstances of the incubation were exceptionally favor-
able. I spent the St. Bartholomew's vacation — that
is, August and half September — at Filey, going
thither straight by sea from London. At Filey there
was nothing to distract my attention, no society out
of our own family, no amusements, no books. There
were none there but fishermen, and not a house much
better than a hut. I think I was rather inclined to
shirk the poem altogether, pleading my total igno-
rance of the history of Carthage. But only three
miles off, at the village of Hunmanby, Archdeacon
Wrangham had one of the best libraries in the north
of England. My father sent me off with a note to
the Archdeacon, requesting that I might be allowed
to consult some of his books. I was received most
kindly into a house where the book-shelves began at
the front door, and, I should think, ran up into the
garret and down to the cellar. However, I was
taken into the library proper, which I had to myself
for a couple of hours. I made the most of this by

FRANK EDGEWORTH.

43

reading the article on Carthage in the "Encyclopae-
dia Britannica" a good deal more carefully than it
was my wont to read. I made notes. So I had
nothing more to do with books. The composition
was done on the spacious sands and stormy " Brigg "
or natural breakwater of that then very lonely and
primitive place.

It was some years after this that the Wilberforces
told me the Archdeacon had obtained an introduction
to their father. He was not of the same way of
thinking, or, indeed, of any particular way of think-
ing, but, as he explained at once, it was that he might
have a copy of the first edition of every book printed
at the presses, which were being sent to the South
Sea Islands and other like countries.

Tlie Carthage of history had no future, nor had
mine. The next year the subject was Saul, and
Edgeworth came in first. I have a sad story to tell.
I set to work diligently on the history of Saul and
David, and, by way of a solid foundation, attempted a
chronological order of events, with the proper devel-
opments of character to suit each stage ; and I made
a mess of it. I floundered in a sea of enigmas, which
I labored to solve, instead of leaving alone. When a
knight of romance does but flourish his sword, the
visionary obstructions vanish ; and it ought to be the
same with a flourish of the pen. It was not so here.
The result was a very labored, heavy, and, after all,
a very imperfect composition, not placed at all in the
award. When I came to Oriel I attempted to re-
trieve my disaster by availing myself of the liberty
to send in verses instead of essays, but I soon re-
ceived from Tyler a kind but impressive warning to
addict myself rather to prose.

44

REMINISCENCES.

About the time of this unhappy attempt on the
books of Samuel and Kings, I did the same with the
first book of Livy, then treated at Charterhouse
almost exclusively as an exercise of scholarship, even
in the First Form. I carefully wrote out some results,
illustrated by chronological diagrams, and showed
them to Russell, who glanced his eyes over the con-
tents, made a humorous grimace, and returned the
paper without a word.

Reid, named above as Edgeworth's friend, was in
the same house with him, and a constant companion.
Somehow — I never knew why — he had incurred very
early Russell's extreme dislike. He alwaj^s called him
" Veneer," which was hardly deserved, though a man
who takes up one thing after another is likely to be
superficial. At least he cannot have much ballast or
groundwork of knowledge and action, which is per-
haps what Russell meant. Reid came to University
College, took to books in extravagant bindings, then
to boating, then to philosophy, then to freemasonry
— in all an enthusiast.

Edgeworth soon came to him on a visit, full of Pla-
tonism, in which his old Carthusian friend, Eaton,
was taking a lead at Cambridge as member of a Pla-
tonist club. Among the friends he met at my rooms
one only did he much admire, and that was John
F. Christie, destined to a humble and brief, but not
the less noble, career in duty's straightest course.
Edgeworth pinned me to my chair about eight
o'clock one evening at University College, and de-
manded point-blank the grounds of my faith. It
was not a matter to which I had ever given a serious
consideration, for, as it was fatal to doubt, it was
superfluous, and indeed very foolish to inquire.

FRANK EDGEWORTH.

45

However, I had studied, or bad had to study,
Paley's " Evidences," and of these I had to repro-
duce a floating plank or two from a fatal shipwreck.
So I began as seriously and in as set form as I could.

Self. — This is a question of fact, and therefore a
matter of testimony. Is it possible to doubt the au-
thenticity or the truth of writings quoted substan-
tially and often literally by well-known and good men
living only two or three generations after !

Edgeworth. — It is possible to doubt, for I doubt
myself, and what I want is to have my doubts re-
moved. I wish to believe, but I do not, and cannot.
The statements themselves are incredible, unless sup-
ported by testimony, and we all acknowledge testi-
mony to be a thing that requires much sifting. Our
courts of law are sifting it continually, and often in
vain, for they cannot get at the truth. Were the
Fathers who quoted the gospels men to inquire, or
only anxious to believe ? What do we know about
them ?

Ah me ! This struck at the root of my defence,
for I knew nothing about the Fathers. Even had I
known more it would have been all book knowledge,
nay, worse than that, mere " cram." I had never
realized any of the persons cited as authorities for the
sacred canon, or their position, or their work, or their
lives, or anything about them. To me they were
names. So what I said must have been all milk and
water, or to speak more germane to the matter, pen,
ink, and paper. But then, after I had been standing
long on the defensive, came my turn for assault.

Self. — What have you to show instead ? Truth
there must be somewhere. Where is it ? What is
it? Can we suppose the world left without it ? Can

46

REMINISCENCES.

we suppose it undiscernible ? Is truth important or
not ? Is there or is there not such a thing ?

My attack was desperate and revengeful, for I had
been on the rack a couple of hours or so. It was met
with perfect self-possession, and much alacrity, for it
was the very thing desired.

Edgeworth. — Yes, undoubtedly, there is truth ; it
is most desirable — indeed, necessary ; it is quite dis-
coverable and ascertainable. But it is not confined
to certain narrow limits of space and time. It is in
all things and everywhere. The truth meets us in all
sayings and all doings. There is nothing from which
we may not extract truth. Granting all you say
about the traditions of one remote corner of the
world, and one race of no figure in history, only dis-
covered to be conquered, enslaved, absorbed, or scat-
tered— granting all that, why is not truth human
and divine to be found also in the traditions of Greece
and Rome in which we have been educated, and which
are part of our very being ?

Finding my antagonist well in position I pressed
onwards.

Self. — Is there truth, then, in Jupiter, in Venus,
and in Hercules ?

Edgeworth. — Yes. Truth mixed with error and
extravagance, as in all religions, in all opinions — in-
deed, in all human affairs. We must go back very
far ; into the very well of antiquity. All bow to an-
tiquity. We must strike off additions, interpolations,
variations, and all plainly foreign and inconsistent
matter. All truth is charged with judicial func-
tions.

Self. — But where are we to find the pure wisdom
of antiquity ; the tradition of a golden age ?

FRANK EDGEVVORTH.

47

Eclgeworth. — Greek philosophy may not give it,
but it shows the way. It leads back to a sacred
source, and it retains the fragrancy of Eden.

I saw now, or seemed to see, that the question lay
between the Bible and Lempriere, and I was, unhap-
pily, more familiar with the latter than with the
former. As I had not yet begun to write sermons, I
bad turned over the leaves of " Gradus ad Parnas-
sum " oftener than those of Cruden's " Concordance."
However, I had to fight on.

Self, — Does not Hei'odotus tell us that the Greek,
and by consequence the Roman, divinities, all came
from Egypt?

Edgeworth. — True. Egypt has a good deal to
say to all religions, and to all civilization ; both to the
matter and the form ; the truth and the error.

Fortunately for me, Sagas and Vedas and Rig
Vedaa were then only known to a few Oriental
scholars, and the only Arians then ever heard of were
the early heretics so named. In these days you have
only to quote an eminent Sanscrit writer who flour-
ished 5,000 years ago, and you are silenced, for even
if you know half a dozen stages of Sanscrit, there is
always an earlier one you know nothing of. The
discussion lasted without the chance of a conclusion
in which both could agree, till one of the disputants
at least was glad to find it was midnight.

Reid must have sat by and heard all this, for it was
in his rooms, but it was not the direction in which
his mind wrecked itself. His final quarrel was with
social and domestic traditions. Pie revolted against
all usages and forms. He. would not rise, take his
meals, or go to bed, when other people did. He would
not believe that night was night, day day, or that

48

REMINISCENCES.

summer and winter were different things. One day,
when snow lay on the ground, he ran full speed from
his friends, dashed through a river, and continued
his flight for miles into space. In a very hot June
day, he suddenly presented himself at my lodgings in
Oxford, a wild, haggard figure, announcing that he
had escaped from his keepers in St. John's Wood,
and had just been engaged in a long argument with
Plumtree and the other tutors of University. He
had proved to them till they had not a word to say,
first, that he was not mad and never had been mad ;
secondly, that man could live by water and the Spirit,
entirely without other food. He had been long baffling
all the tricks of his keepers ; he had drunk pitchers
full of water, and had buried himself in blankets to
perspire it off. Thus he raved for precious hours.
But he had promised the tutors at University to
return to them. He kept his appointment, and as
they were better prepared this time, he was laid hold
of, and conveyed back to his friends.

Some weeks after, Edgeworth wrote to me asking
for information about Reid. This I gave. Then
came a letter from him asking for a meeting. The
only appointment that could be made was a very
homely business house in the city. Edgeworth came
and said he had seen Reid ; he was quite under con-
trol, and his friends were agreeable to Edgeworth
taking him a tour abroad. I remonstrated against
the plan, on the ground of its dangers, the inevitable
excitement, the chance of paroxysms far from help,
the little good a maniac would derive from new scenes
and experiences. Edgeworth persisted. The plan
actually answered for months and even years, and it
was at a time of comparative rest, and after a not

FBAXK EDGEWORTH.

49

unsuitable marriage, that poor Reid threw himself
from a window at Venice into the canal below.

I had a long summer's day i*amble about London
with Edgeworth. It was before the days of cabs or
omnibuses, and we could stop often and look about.
The General Post Office was just finished. Edge-
worth strongly condemned the sacrifice to architect-
ural effect ; and to an effect not suited to our climate.
I could not but admire the portico. What was it
for ? It shut out the light, which is the want of this
country. He would have had centre and wings all
alike. Edgeworth was no utilitarian, but light and
sunshine are matters that come home to those who
read and write. We went to the National Gallery,
then in its embryo state, at a house in Pall Mall
West. He gave a very long look at the "Raising of
Lazarus." The picture, the conception, the grouping
he much admired ; the principal figure, he said, was
" Jewish." " But our Lord was a Jew," I observed,
not very wisely. "A Jew," Edgeworth replied, "but
not Jewish."

I met Edgeworth again. He was looking out for
" an Eve," and pleasant it was to know that he was
at least on the first step of Christian tradition. He
settled near London; had to work for himself and his
wife. He took pupils, and had appreciating friends.
But he wanted physical stamina, and he died young.

In Carlyle's " Life of John Sterling," is a very in-
teresting, and indeed tender, notice of Frank Edge-
worth, upon which, however, some comments have to
be made. " Frank," he says, " was a short neat man,
of sleek, square, colorless face (resembling the por-
traits of his father), with small blue eyes, in which
twinkled curiously a joyless smile ; his voice was

VOL. j. 4

50 REMINISCENCES.

croaky and shrill, with a tone of shrewish obstinacy
in it, and perhaps of sarcasm withal. A composed,
dogmatic, speculative, exact, and not melodious man.
He was learned in Plato, and likewise in Kant ; well
read in philosophies and literatures ; entertained not
creeds, but the Platonic or Kantean ghosts of creeds ;
coldly sneering away from him, in the joyless twinkle
of those eyes, in the inexorable jingle of that shrill
voice, all manner of Toryisms, superstitions ; for the
rest, a man of perfect veracity, great diligence, and
other worth ; notable to see alongside of Sterling."

Carlyle then gives a long passage about Edgeworth
from one of John Sterling's letters, more interesting
as indicative of the writer's state of mind, than as
illustrating Edgeworth's " moral scheme." This,
Sterling says, contained the fundamental unsoundness
of asserting the certainty of a heavenly futurity for
man, because the idea of duty involves that of merit
or reward, whereas duty, says Sterling, seems rather
to exclude merit. Edgeworth, in his opinion, had
advanced so far in speculation as to have the title
deeds to an estate from which the idea of futurity is
carefully excluded, but had not yet got possession.

" This good little Edgeworth," resumes Carlyle,
"had roved extensively about the Continent, had
married a young Spanish wife," I think a sister of
David Reid's widow, " whom by a romantic accident
he came upon in London ; having really good scholar-
ship, and consciousness of faculty and fidelity, he now
hoped to find support in preparing young men for the
University, in taking pupils to board ; and with this
view was endeavoring to form an establishment
somewhere in the environs; ignorant that it is mainly
the clergy whom simple persons trust with that trade

FRANK EDGEWOBTH.

51

at present ; that his want of a patent of orthodoxy,
not to say his inexorable secret heterodoxy of mind,
would far override all other qualifications in the es-
timate of simple persons, who are afraid of many
things, and are not afraid of hypocrisy, which is the
worst and one irremediably bad thing. Poor Edge-
worth tried this business for a while, but found no
success at all; went across, after a year or two, to
native Edgeworthstown, in Longford, to take the
management of his brother's estate ; in which func-
tion it was said he shone, and had quite given up
philosophies and speculations, and become a taciturn
grim land manager and county magistrate, likely to
do much good in that department ; when we learned
next that he was dead, that we should see him no
more. The good little Frank ! "

Early in the spring of 1836, at Sterling's invl-
tation, Carlyle walked with him to Eltham to see
Edgeworth and the big house he had taken for pupils.
The day proved very bad ; they came home wet,
weary, and bemudded. Sterling had been failing.
This fixed his disorder. He was confined to his
house a long time, and cannot be said to have ever
recovered.

Carlyle, it is evident more from casual words
than from full-blown sentences, felt a singular, and
even affectionate, interest in Edgeworth. Yet some
of his expressions are so harsh and so unmerited, as
must rouse the susceptibility of Frank Edgeworth's
early friends. They jar on my memories very much.
My ear still testifies that there was sweetness in Edge-
worth's voice, and gentleness in his manner and tone.
My eye still recalls his soft and steady gaze. I felt
sure then, and I feel sure now, that he wished to be a

52

REMINISCENCES.

Christian. What invincible impediments he found in
the creed, in the world, or in himself, I know not.
While he seems to have puzzled Sterling by the frank
admission that his soul had not found rest in phi-
losophy, he hardly seems to have done justice to
himself with Carlyle, who could not help tyrannizing
over one so little his equal in physical or other energy.
But after Edge worth had probably sacrificed Tory-
ism, superstition, and a good deal more with a readi-
ness which even amused Carlyle, he seems to have
fallen back on a standpoint from which he would
not recede, and to which indeed he clung with an
obstinacy which offended Carlyle's egotism, making
himself the object of a compassionate rather than
respectful interest.

Frank Edgeworth was torn by conflicting sys-
tems, and I may add conflicting sensibilities, from
childhood. He was a most sympathetic, self-sacrific-
ing being. If any one thinks this too much to say
of him, I believe I may confidently refer him to
Canon Cook, the well-known editor of the " Speaker's
Commentary."

CHAPTER VII.

BLANCO WHITE.

Blanco White was now residing at Oxford, a
member of the University, and of Oriel College, and,
by courtesy, of the common room, where he brought
to the common stock of information, apt to be
limited at a university, no small contribution of
literary gossip, scholastic lore, and philosophy. He
was always ready to talk about Spain, and the
Church he had left, when asked about them, but
he was generally content with an allusion, or an inci-
dent. He had in truth said pretty nearly all he had
to say in his published works.

I asked him, one day, a question of simple curi-
osity about the smaller religious houses in Spain.
The answer was that in Spain you knew that there
were friars in a town, and you knew that there were
pigs, and that was all you cared to know about either
of them.

Seville Cathedral, with its numerous aisles, its
forest of pillars, and its awful gloom, had made a
deeper impression upon him than our English cathe-
drals could do. The latter were cold and dull, and
were too long for their other dimensions. Their great
length he ascribed to the severity of our climate,
which compelled the processions to be done indoors
instead of outside, and he stated that their length was
exactly adjusted to the length of the processional

54

REMINISCENCES.

hymns. One incident may or may not be found in
his books.

There was a great preacher at Seville, who was
engaged during Lent to preach as many as seventy
sermons of what is now called a sensational character.
Wherever he preached multitudes flocked to hear him,
and hung on every word. An old woman of remark-
ably grotesque face and manner one day got a place
opposite the pulpit, a few yards off. In her eagerness
to catch every word she unconsciously rose from her
seat, still keeping her eyes fixed on the preacher.
The light fell upon her, and the preacher's eye was
fascinated by the strange object before him. She
riveted his gaze. He looked on and on, and utterly
lost the thread of his discourse. He stood a minute
in helpless embarrassment, descended from the pulpit,
and never preached again.

Blanco White had a good deal to say about the
" Prince of the Peace," the Court of Spain, and the
French occupation, but no more than what books and
newspapers could say. Holland House was not a
favorite subject in my time at Oriel, not at least in
the common room. It was taken for granted that
people went there prepared to drop some of their
prejudices and superstitions. The circle assembling
there had the same relation to the universities as
that afterwards taken up by the Pall Mall clubs in a
larger and more dominant form. Blanco White's own
stories of Allen, Lord Holland's "tame Atheist,"
were amusing, but far from pleasant. That uncanny
personage, however, must have been a kind as well as
a very clever man.

Blanco White had had occasion to give some
thought to a new translation of the Bible into Span-

BLANCO WHITE.

55

ish, of course the revision of an existing translation.
On this subject he frequently made a remark which
is more or less true of all vernacular languages, pos-
sibly more of Spanish than of any other. The lan-
guage, he said, had been too vitiated by vulgarity,
licentiousness, and slang to be the vehicle of a sacred
matter. Every word had its double meanings and
coarse associations. Yet in this halo of many colors
and changing forms that surrounded every word con-
sisted the principal charm and the very life of the
language. No Englishman, Blanco White said, could
possibly enter into the drollery and the local allusions
of M Don Quixote."

He had a literary rather than political quarrel with
the " Times." How he had found himself in that
quarrel I know not ; but he gravely related one day
in the common room that a certain well-known author
had given the editor several hundred pounds not to
be noticed at all, dreading alike his censure and his
commendation. This sort of black-mail he described
as a considerable element in the revenue of that
journal.

Soon after he had become a member of the Univer-
sity, he preached once at St. Mary's, and occasionally
assisted in services, but it shortly became evident that
he was neither physically nor mentally in a state to
perform service in the Church of England. He still,
however, attended the services at St. Mary's, whether
those of the University or those of the parish, very
often. One inducement was the exquisite perform-
ance of the young organist, who to the extreme grief
of many friends and all lovers of music was killed,
with some others, by the upsetting of a coach, on
his way to one of the festivals of the Three Choirs.

56

REMINISCENCES.

Music was Blanco White's chief solace, for he could
almost forget himself when listening to Beethoven ;
but it was with a smile of depreciation that he de-
scribed the old ladies at a concert beginning to beat
time when they heard their own familiar Handel.

He repeatedly said that if he were a man of for-
tune he would employ somebody to keep all the street
barrel-organs in tune. He gave a lecture on musical
sounds at the Ashmolean, illustrated with a great va-
riety of instruments. It was very interesting. What,
however, I most distinctly remember, is Tom Chur-
ton, in his Proctor's velvet sleeves, advancing to the
table, taking up something like an organ pipe, put-
ting it to his mouth, and blowing a blast which shook
the building, and made him fall back quickly into the
rank.

From the time I became Fellow I resided a good
part of the Long Vacation at Oxford. Blanco White
did the same. I did not venture to intrude much on
an elderly gentleman engaged in study — indeed, in
writing, too, as we understood. It was generally pos-
sible to make up a party to dine in the common room,
and one of the servants, under-butler, or under-cook,
had to go round every morning, as in term time, and
ask the residents whether they intended to dine in
common room. Of course they did not, unless at
least a pair could be made up. So a little negotiation
became necessary ; and this was just the point at
which my courage failed. Whatever the reason, I
was seeing very little of Blanco White. Mr. Joseph
Parker asked me to dinner. Shortly after my arrival,
Blanco White arrived, and chanced not to catch a
sight of me in the room. Mr. Parker asked about
the college. Was it not dull in Long Vacation time ?

BLANCO WHITE.

57

Who was up ? The answer was that Newman was
np, very busy with his work and his parish, and one
other young Fellow. " But," he added, in my hear-
ing, " I see veiw little of him. I suppose he thinks
an old man dull company." Thereupon Mr. Parker
turned round to me, and, bringing me to the front,
said, " Here is Mr. Mozley to answer for himself."
Of course they were all amused. I said that I should
very much like to call on Blanco White when I should
not be in the way. The result was I did often call,
and saw a good deal of him, though I had often to
feel it was as much as his strength could well bear.

I think it probable that during the whole period
of Blanco White's Oxford residence he was the vic-
tim of an inward struggle. With frequent impulses
to religious acts, whether in public or in private, he
never gave way to them without the immediate sense
of a check that made it impossible to complete the
act. As he painfully relates, he could not bless a
child, or utter a short prayer, without the instant re-
currence of the question, " Is there a God, and does
this mean anything ? "

He had a good deal to say of authors, for he had
been among them now many years in the metropolis,
and he had got to regard them generally as mere
book-makers, writing for money. Southey he cor-
responded with, but he described him as a man with
many pigeon-holes, who spent his days in jotting
down ideas and particulars, on slips of paper, which
he filed for future use, each in its own pigeondiole.
This might have been suggested by the mosaic forma-
tion and frequent incongruity of Southey's writings.
Blanco White, however, was carried away, like the
rest of the world, by the Waverley novels, to which he
returned again and again.

58

REMINISCENCES.

About the year 1829, together with Whately, Ar-
nold, Senior, and others, he started the " London Re-
view." Newman wrote for it an article on Poetry,
evidently with an aim to make it the ladder of Faith ;
but the composition was an essay, not a review, like
some of the other contributions. The " London Re-
view " soon came to an end, followed to the grave
with lamentations on the stupidity of the British
public. Newman did not take its decease much to
heart.

Every Oriel man of that day may look back with
regret at the little use made of what was really the
very interesting episode of Blanco White's connection
and residence. It might have recalled many similar
incidents in the past ages, when marvellous person-
ages, specially endowed with a migratory instinct,
roamed about connecting the centres of knowledge.
Palmer's lodgings, opposite Merton, where he resided,
were those traditionally, but incorrectly, assigned to
Duns Scotus. For some time after Blanco White's
arrival at Oxford he much enjoyed its quiet, for he
hated noise, and the sound of a few voices, heard a
little way off, was to him the bellowing of " the great
beast " — his notion of the British populace. He was
really incapable of rest and composure, for his head
and heart alike were in a continual flutter and tur-
moil, and his memory was heavily charged with pain-
ful sores. He had probably never enjoyed a day's,
thorough rest, or a night's uninterrupted sleep, in his
life. A small bottle of cayenne pepper, of excep-
tional pungency, the gift of some city friend, was his
inseparable companion at dinners, and without it his
digestion was powerless even for the plainest food.
It made him shudder to see the young Fellows slicin

BLANCO WHITE.

59

up big pears and dispatching them. " The least bit
of that pear," he said, one day, " would keep me in
agonies the whole night."

He was the most sensitive of men, and, as is
often the case with such men, he seemed doomed to
small annoyances. He had one at the very outset of
his Oxford cai-eer, though, even as he told it, he could
have afforded to laugh at it. The royal diploma con-
ferring his degree had to pass through Convocation.
Hare, of New College, was much puzzled by the
affair, and suspicious of something behind it ; so he
thought the best way to meet it was a general protest.
But when the question was put to the vote, his voice,
which was a weak one, quite broke, and he could only
squeak out " Veto ?' in a tone that moved some mer-
riment as well as surprise. Some kind friend told
Blanco White this as a good story, but the poor man
was exceedingly exasperated, and often alluded to it,
mimicking the false tone of the single, heart-failing
dissentient.

He once dined at Magdalene College, and was in a
sad state of mind the day after. There were some
old Fellows there who had become fixed to the place.
They desired no addition to their knowledge and
ideas, for they were incapable of it, and they rudely
resented all attempts to foi-ce it on them. Blanco
White had been encouraged to talk a good deal, for
he was the lion of the occasion. One of these — Old
Grantham — in a very bluff way and very audibly
expressed his dissent from almost everything the
guest said, even to the simplest statement. Most
Oxford men would have thought no more about it
than about the barking of a lap-dog. Blanco White
never forgot it.

CO

REMINISCENCES.

Dining in Merton College Hall, he chanced to
praise their home-made bread, in comparison with
the white, insipid, and not very wholesome baker's
bread at his lodgings. A most eccentric Fellow of
Merton, proud of his college, told him he would send
a loaf the next morning. There was nothing to be
done but to thank him. The loaf came and was ap-
preciated. But it came the next day, and the day
after, and continually. Blanco White found himself
a dolesman, a poor scholar allowed his commons
from the buttery hatch, — nay, publicly, for the loaf
had to cross the street every day and be delivered at
the front door. He resisted, gently at first ; but it
was not easy to check the flow of his benefactor's
bounty. He became miserable, almost wild, and had
at last to use a violence very alien to his nature, to
the poor gentleman's consternation.

When his health at all permitted he attended the
University sermons, but got little comfort from them.
They never admitted a question, not at least in his
own direction, for he had been born and bred in a
controversy generally going one way. Edward Chur-
ton preached one Sunday a sermon designed to re-
call and settle the troubled spirits of Oxford, of all
schools, in what to him was the faith and practice of
his forefathers. " That man must have brains of cast
iron," was Blanco White's first ejaculation on meet-
ing his friends, and he was evidently more exas-
perated by the singular quietness and confidence of
the preacher than he would have been by the most
inflammatory tirade. It was pouring oil on the vol-
canic heat of his own nature.

Nothing could exceed Blanco White's kindness to
those who would receive favors from him, seek infor-

BLANCO WHITE.

61

mation, and show that they valued his opinion. He
might have been happy in a world of such cases as
long as the illusion lasted or the performances could
be kept up. But that is not the condition of human
existence, in our days at least.

As an instance of his excessive kindness : having
arranged to leave Oxford for some months, and find-
ing me unsettled in my lodgings, he offered the use
of his very comfortable apartments. I accepted the
offer gladly, but with an explanation that I must
take his place in the arrangements with Palmer, the
householder. Blanco White would not hear of it,
and was so indignant at the idea that I could not
press it again, and I actually enjoyed the use of his
lodgings for nothing for some time. It was a little
before this that Blanco White had done me two very
different acts of kindness. He had presented me
with Coleridge's " Aids to Reflection," urging me to
read it ; and had strongly impressed on me the im-
propriety of leaving money and other valuables lying
about, and so putting temptation into the servant's
way.

Blanco White found individualities at the Univer-
sity as strong as his own — in a moral sense, much
stronger. He had passed years of his life in continual
dissolution. At Holland House everything was ques-
tioned, though with one foregone conclusion. At Ox-
ford his best and most congenial friends found that
they must make a stand, and from that time there
was a widening chasm between them and Blanco
White. Oxford was no longer the same place to him
when Whately had gone. After a restless interval,
Blanco White followed him to Dublin, and soon
found that it was impossible, with the convictions he

62

REMINISCENCES.

bad come to, and was now freely expressing, that he
could be a member of an archbishop's private society.
He returned to England, but not to Oxford.

In 1838 his son Ferdinand, in the Indian military
service, came home on leave a Christian, and returned
to India an unbeliever. This I had from Newman
at the time, and he spoke of it with great sorrow.
Among Blanco White's familiar topics was one to
which he often returned with much bitterness. I do
not think I have mentioned it. This was the " fan-
tastic notion " of marriage being a type of the mys-
tical union between Christ and his Church.

CHAPTER VIII.

EDWARD CHURTON.

Above is mentioned the sad effect produced on
Blanco White by Edward Churton's quiet and grave
advocacy of the old Church of England. I cannot
pass him without a memorial. He was one of our
masters at Charterhouse. All I had to do with him
was that he assisted Russell in looking over the
themes, verses, and translations of the upper school.
Occasionally he did the whole work. We were sum-
moned one after another to an anteroom, where we
found Churton already prepared with neatly- written
criticisms and corrections. He did not say much,
but he said it gently and in a way to reach the under-
standing and remain there. It was the only teaching
addressed to oneself individually that I had at that
school, and I felt it invaluable.

Nor was I alone in this. Thackeray had the bene-
fit of this personal instruction, and he acknowledged
the debt. Meeting him one day in the Strand, I
told him I had just had a talk with Churton. He
exclaimed, " O tell me where he is, that I may fall
down and kiss his toe. I do love that man." I told
him I was afraid he would not be able to do that, for
it was at the exhibition of the Royal Academy I had
just met Churton.

Russell was rough with Thackeray, not more so
perhaps than with many others, but when he saw

REMINISCENCES.

Thackeray's spirit and humor rising with him, that
made matters woi*se. Hence a life-lon£ resentment
much to be lamented. One of the very few times
when I felt really angry with Russell was when he
was guilty of great rudeness to Churton. Yet there
was a coldness in Churton's manner and expression
sometimes almost chilling. Becoming an archdeacon,
living in Yorkshire, and having to deliver charges
studiously within the lines — a providential survivor,
too, as he felt, of Norris, Sykes, and Watson — he
early felt himself bound to give notes of warning,
and even of remonstrance, at the development of the
Oxford school.

On one occasion, some bad quarter of an hour on
the eve of publication, I penned for the " British
Critic " a very saucy reply to one of these attacks, for
so I counted it. Churton was indeed cold the next
time I met him. He was too serious to smile ; in-
deed, I cannot remember him ever smiling except
sadly. But when you have once thoroughly liked a
man, it is hardly in his power to make you like him
much less. In after years we went very different
ways, but my memory of him has never changed.

CHAPTER IX.

JOSEPH PICKFORD.

There are men who are interesting from their
associations, but whom no associations can redeem.
Such was Joseph Pickford. I fh'st became acquainted
with his figure and circumstances at Derby, in 1815.
His father had been architect and builder, and the
intimate friend of Wright, the painter, remarkable
for his illustrations of the varieties of light and their
effects ; and also of Whitehurst, a mechanician and
author of a " Theory of the Earth." It was a coterie
contemporaneous and on friendly terms with the
Philosophical Society founded by Erasmus Darwin,
but with a difference of caste, for philosophers are,
socially, as exclusive as other people. The father
had built in the Friargate a house of some architect-
ural pretensions, his chef d'ceuvre, people said. The
son had divided it. He occupied the smaller portion,
entered by a side door, much as it had come from
the builder's hands. The only pretty thing in his
sitting-room was a charming picture, by Wright, of
Pickford and his brother, playing with a spaniel, of
the date of 1785, I should think, and in the gay
costume of that period. It passed into the hands of
a branch of the Curzon family. When I called on
Pickford it was a "caution " to see what a beautiful
child might come to.

The larger part of the house and the front door he

VOL. I. 5

66

REMINISCENCES.

let. It adjoined the school to which I went for three
years. My young eyes used to watch for the sight of
a pretty little girl, who, with her lady in charge, paid
daily visits to Mrs. Knightly, Pickford's tenant. This
was the Baroness Grey de Ruthyn, then residing at
Castle Fields, adjacent to the site of the present Mid-
land station. She became Marchioness of Hastings,
and grandmother of the present Duchess of Norfolk.

Pickford, even then, was insidated and disagree-
able. The old ladies used to mention it as as an
extraordinary thing that he had once been very pleas-
ant company. He now visited the News Room every
morning and afternoon, wrangled politics, of course
on the Tory side, lost his own temper and several
other tempers too, and was voted a nuisance. He
had a living three miles out of Derby, and also a
rectory on Salisbury Plain. It was said that he was
a good Greek scholar. In those days it was generally
assumed that if a man was very disagreeable, and
good for nothing else, he must be a Greek scholar.
It was added that he had very nearly been Professor
of Greek. This is not easy to understand, for Jack-
son was Professor from 1783 to 1811. Was some
hope of this sort part of the system of cajolery of
which Pickford described himself the unfortunate
dupe ?

It was not till my name was down in 1822 for
future admission into Oriel College that I was aware
he had been a Fellow there ; but after my matricula-
tion, and still more after my election, I compared
notes with him about our college, and he really dis-
burdened himself of his grievances. He often reverted
to them, and they are much as follows.

About the year 1780 an ancestor of the Leighs of

JOSEPH PICKFORD.

67

Stoneleigh left a very large and valuable collection
of books to Oriel College. In my time the under-
graduates generally believed that once a year Lord
Leigh walked into the college Quad, and with a loud
voice demanded recovery of the library as a family
heirloom which could not be alienated. That per-
formance I never witnessed. The books had to be
stored in cases in a set of rooms between the Quads,
and, of course, were inaccessible. The college slowly
saved the money for building a new library. This
was done at last. Oriel library is handsome, but not
convenient, and it has some considerable faults : one
of them is that there is no light or ventilation on the
gallery level. Though lofty and spacious, it is apt to
be hot and close. What now remained was to ar-
range and place the whole collection, 30,000 volumes
at least, I should estimate from memory. Several
sets of steps were provided, one of them very tall, as,
indeed, was necessary.

All the Fellows shied the work, and particularly
these steps. They i-emembered the old saying about
the pitcher that often goes to the well. Then it was
not quite the pleasantest way of spending a Long
Vacation. Beeke, afterwards Dean of Bristol, had
undertaken the work, but he must have somebody to
render the manual aid. Here was head work, hand
work, and foot work, very monotonous, unrelieved, and
even dangerous. It was the tread-wheel, but without
its security, its easy rhythm, and its mental repose,
said by some unfortunate actors to be a grand oppor-
tunity for recollecting forgotten parts.

So the Provost and Fellows looked about them, and
fixed their eyes on the active, tidy, and clever little
builder's son, from Derby. He seemed to have no

68

REMINISCENCES.

special calling, and he had no friends. They elected
hint probationer, and immediately set him his proba-
tionary exercise, which was to help Beeke in the li-
brary. Much pleased with his election, he consented
at once. From that time he ceased to be his own
master, and found Beeke a very hard one. He had
to be in the library from sunrise to sunset. The
Leigh collection had now been twenty years in their
cases, while the oi'iginal Oriel collection, most of it
very antiquated, had been stowed away in close quar-
ters for a much longer period and very little handled.
When the books Avere spread out, and shaken, and
dusted, the atmosphere became charged with an acrid
dust, the result of long fermentation, germination,
secretion, humectation, and exsiccation, and all kinds
of natural processes. The summer proved very hot.
The dust penetrated everywhere. Pickford could not
mount the steps, or take up a book, without raising
a cloud. Brushes and dusters only diffused it more
thoroughly through the atmosphere. Pickford found
himself stifled and choked. He became really alarmed
for himself. Beeke sitting quietly below, in the cooler
stratum of the atmosphere, and taking the writing
part of the work, would allow no pause. He must
have been a Prospero to gain such a dominion over
his Caliban. Whether he coaxed, or cajoled, or bul-
lied him to do his bidding I know not, but he cer-
tainly impressed well on Pickford's mind that he was
on trial, and liable to dismissal.

As long as I remember Pickford had an angry eye,
and a carbunculous complexion, and I have often
thought of him toiling up and down those weary
steps, full of rage and dust, aching all over, and cher-
ishing an implacable grudge with all mankind. From

JOSEPH PICKFORD.

69

that time he hated books. I cannot remember to
have seen one in his only sitting-room. He found it
necessary to wash down the dust, at least to try to do
so, for the necessity increased ; nay, it never ended.
Long past fifty, he assured me that he had not washed
it quite down yet. It was his honest conviction that
it was there still, a disagreeable, pungent dust, that
had established itself in the tissues of his throat.

As his memory went back to the last century, and
he was contemporaiy, more or less, with Mant, Beeke,
Coplestone, and other remarkable men, I asked him
one day for some account of the Oriel life of those
days, — that is, before and after 1800. He began,
" We lived loosely — I may say, luxuriously." Of
course, by the former word he only meant a rather
free-and-easy life, without formality or strict rules.
Such were his habits at this time that an ordinary
High Table dinner would seem to him a wasteful
luxury. However, he went on. They dressed for
dinner at three o'clock. After dinner they went to
the common room, so he declared, and had pipes and
ale. Then they walked up and down High Street
till five, when they read and wrote in their rooms till
seven or eight. They then returned to the common
room to play at cards, and drink brandy and water to
a very late hour. There must have been supper in
this programme, but I forget it. He declared he had
seen some of them the worse for drink. If he could
be made worse by anything himself, no doubt he was
so too. He also declared there was no carpet in the
common room, and that it was furnished with Wind-
sor chairs. As the whole building was only just com-
pleted, it is possible the Fellows may have occupied
their new quarters in this simple fashion for a short

70 REMINISCENCES.

time. But most probably his recollections were a sad
jumble, and he had misplaced persons and scenes.

As soon as his task was finished and he was full
Fellow, he perceived that the college was watching
for the earliest opportunity to get rid of him. The
rectory of Cholderton, on Salisbury Plain, fell vacant
the first year of the century, and it was intimated to
him that he must take it and be off. He left me to
understand that he had been the victim of trickery,
insult, and something like violence, which of course
was most ungrateful. Happily there was no parson-
age at the living, so he was not bound to reside, and
he was equally fortunate in finding another living,
near Derby, without a parsonage, in which he need
not reside. So he betook himself to a corner of his
paternal mansion, as I have related.

I never remember his doing more than one act that
could possibly be interpreted into an act of virtue,
and that he immediately repented of. My father,
being churchwarden, had made the discovery that all
the galleries of the parish church, amounting to sev-
eral hundred sittings, and occupied mostly by the
genteel folks, had lapsed to the parish for failure of
the conditions expressed in the Faculties. So he re-
sumed them all and made a scheme for their re-
appropriation on proper principles. Summoning a
vestry, he laid it before them, with the intimation
that a day would be named for carrying the change
into effect. There was a large attendance of rate-
payers. Pickford came with the rest. They were
all rather taken aback, but did not know what else
could be done. The minutes of the meeting were
handed round, and all, including Pickford, subscribed
their names. In a few days an eminent Evangelical

JOSEPH PICKFORD.

71

minister, who chanced to be the reputed owner of
one of the pews, rallied the pew-owners, roused their
Vicar, and appealed to the Bishop. Immediately
Pickford sent to withdraw his signature, lest it should
seem to countenance a proposal which met with his
unqualified disapprobation. This was in 1830, and
he expressed to me his belief that this was part of
the great revolutionary movement.

As to the matter itself, after much controversy,
the Bishop appointed a Commission, which drew up
an award substantially and almost entirely confirming
my father's scheme and fully recognizing the re-
version of the seats to the churchwardens. He con-
firmed it. The Bishop of Exeter, to whom I recently
showed the award, after giving it careful perusal,
observed that it was probably the first general Epis-
copal act in the matter of pews in modern times.

When I became Fellow I soon heard enough of
Pickford. He had left a deep impression. More
than once at college meetings, Coplestone had
solemnly declared, " I say it deliberately, Mr. Pick-
ford is the most ungentlemanly person I ever met in
the whole of my life." I am not sure it was not
" the most disagreeable ;" perhaps "the least like a
gentleman." Possibly it was all three at different
times, and more, and stronger too.

The college had now to build a parsonage at
Pickford's living, and every step of this process he
regarded with horror, as leading to expense, and
possibly involving residence. The first question was
the site. Keble and Froude undertook this. They
found a small, very narrow slip of glebe land nearly
opposite the Manor House, and with a hovel upon it
near the road. Turning up this narrow slip they

72

REMINISCENCES.

came half-way on two handsome sycamine trees.
Here must be the parsonage, with the two trees just
opposite the front door. Three leaps from the win-
dows on either side would take you out of your
domain. Finding chalk cob the common material of
the country, they thought nothing better, though the
Manor House and the farm-houses were of brick.
The cob walls would have to be an immense thick-
ness, and the extra thickness would have to be taken
out of the rooms, unless you would have a much
larger roof. There was not only a total absence of
modern accommodations, but an utter impossibility of
making them anywhere, unless you pulled half the
house down.

I found that the Lord of the Manor and his
friends had been earnestly desirous to give the college
a much better site in exchange for this. It was a
larger and higher piece of ground, on which still stood
a great number of elms and other trees that had sur-
rounded a mansion of historic name and interest.
Mr. Foyle sent his carefully-written proposal to the
college, and never had an answer. I am afraid it
must be said that colleges used to suspect everybody,
whereas it is my own experience that when a gentle-
man makes an offer it is probably generally to his
own advantage, but he takes care to offer an ample
equivalent. The Long Vacation, too, is a terrible
gulf. A gentleman writes to a college very early
in June, and expects an answer in a week or two at
the latest. He is pretty sure to receive no answer
till the end of October, if even then ; but the odds
are his letter is forgotten, or not to be found.

But for the parsonage. It was settted at last that
Pickford must do the tenant's fixtures. He battled

JOSEPH PICKFORD.

73

every point. There was an interchange of letters on
the question of one or two bell ropes and wires for
each sitting-room. Two he thought preposterous.
Changing his tone he begged for mercy, and besought
the college not to press too hard on " the sear and
yellow leaf."

After this he paid a visit to his parish, — whether
from a wholesome interest in his new parsonage I
know not. He passed through Oxford and called on
me. I had either the kindness or the malice to press
him to dine in hall, and he came to the common room.
In his breeches and top boots — mahoganies, as they
were then called — he somewhat astonished the under-
graduates. He was not at ease in the common room,
nor did he contribute to its cheerfulness. Once of it
was more than enough. Some years after he had a
bad accident. He went up into his hayloft in the
dusk of the evening to see what stock of hay was
there, when somebody laid hold of him and threw
him down to the ground. So he said. He was very
much shaken and bruised.

Soon he began to fail. When he mounted his
pulpit at his small Derbyshire living, he took out his
account-book instead of his sermon, and was a Ions;
time fumbling at it without finding his mistake. He
was shortly laid up. Good people came and urged
him to make a will, but he could not be persuaded
to make that parting with the seven or eight thou-
sand he had scraped together. When I succeeded
him at Cliolderton I found that for many years he
had used phrases to leave the impression of a wife
and large family to be provided for. " How are Mrs.
Pickford and the children?" I was immediately
asked. If he could be supposed to care to save his

74

REMINISCENCES.

conscience, bis words might refer to two respectable
young women who came from Nottingham at inter-
vals to keep up their interest with him. They were
regarded as nieces, but not being blood relations they
took no benefit out of the property, which all went
to the keeper of an apple-stall at Warwick that Pick-
ford had never heard of. Such was a Fellow of Oriel,
a contemporary of Mant and Coplestone. Yet better
men have not done more work than was got out of
him, one way or another, in Oriel library.

CHAPTER X.

HENRY THOMAS ELLACOMBE.

Whoever has read the last chapter faithfully will
think himself entitled to some relief. The material
is at hand, however I may present it. Very early did
I hear of Henry Thomas Ellacombe. Happy were
they that knew him, or had talked with, or even seen
him. Yet I am ashamed to say I did meet him once
in Oriel common room, and failed to retain an image
which was not eclipsed by the name. Ellacombe
survives, and is of about the Provost's standing,
ninety-three, or thereabouts. He is of that fortu-
nate race — " sons of the gods " they may be truly
called — that care for everybody and everything.
There is no wealth like sympathy, for it is inex-
haustible. I had heard of Ellacombe's addiction to
church bells, to plants and flowers, to armorial bear-
ings and genealogies but when I went into Devon-
shire, I might say that not half had been reported to
me.

His magnificent quarto on the bells of Devon-
shire gives the size, tone, quality, date, and legend of
every church bell in the county, with full particulars
of their condition and surroundings. The first thing
that strikes the reader is the evidently strong attach-
ment of the people to their bells, and the lead bells
have taken in church restoration. Long before
Simeon was skeletonizing our sermons, churchwar-

76

REMINISCENCES.

dens were recasting our bells, and doing it very well
too. They made mistakes sometimes, and they dealt
rather recklessly with the church towers. When
they had not room for a larger peal, or even one
more bell, they thought nothing of scooping out a
wagon-load of solid masonry. What was worse,
when the " cage " would oscillate so much as to dis-
turb the ringing, they drove in big wedges between
it and the wall, thereby communicating the oscilla-
tion to the walls, and in many instances cracking
them from top to bottom.

Ellacombe went about suitably apparelled and with
proper tools and materials, running up every tower in
Devonshire. He did not think it always necessary to
ask the parson's leave, but when the parson heard his
bells tinkling, clanging, and jangling, he knew some-
body must be at them, and rushed out to see who or
what it was. He found an extraordinary figure, that
might have stepped out of a scene of German dia-
blerie, ascertaining the key-note of the bells, or tak-
ing a tracing of the legend, or a cast of the devices.
One clei"gyman exorcised Ellacombe at once, and his
church is conspicuous by its absence from the book.

After a very kind invitation, and some unsuccess-
ful attempts, at last an appointment was made, and
we drove to spend a day at Clyst St. George. There
had now for ten years been an interesting link be-
tween us. The Clyst, which gives its name to a
dozen villages or hamlets, rises in my parish and
reaches salt water in Ellacombe's. The tide there
works its way up the watercourses to within a few
hundred yards of the parsonage. There are ships
and shipbuilding at Topsham, a mile off. Within
a mile, in another direction, is a splendid mansion,

HENRY THOMAS ELLACOMBE.

77

surrounded by gardens, terraces, balustrades, statues
and vases, strange to the eyes of those who have
lived long among dairies and cow-sheds. This is the
residence of Joshua Dixon, brother of the late mem-
ber for Birmingham, a kind neighbor, and forward to
help the Church in material things.

Clyst St. George is the ancient birthplace of the
Gibbs family, so renowned for its munificent doings
at Keble College, and elsewhere. The church is
handsome, and has been as much restored and dec-
orated as it is possible for a church to be, by Ella-
combe's taste, and chiefly by his means. The painted
windows, the heraldic ornaments, the mosaics on the
font and on the walls, are beyond me altogether. I
will freely confess that, earth-worm as I am, I should
appreciate better the contents of the parsonage.
Every wall of room or passage, upstairs as well as
downstairs, we found covered with engravings, por-
traits, and caricatures of the great turning-point of
history at which Ellacombe was born. But you
might pass to and fro between church and parson-
age, for they were close together, hardly a fence be-
tween them ; and the church, I think, was very likely
open from sunrise to sunset. Heraldry, I may ob-
serve, is no trifle in Devonshire, where a single name
and coat may ramify into some dozen differences. At
least a dozen of my laborers could have shown good
coats of arms.

Ellacombe's garden was, or rather had been, one
of the wonders of the county. He was his own
gardener, employing only laborers. But his staff
was now low, and there had been a long drought.
He had a record of 5,000 different plants and flowers
grown with success. They had come from all parts

78

REMINISCENCES.

of the world, and here had been the first introduction
of many to English society. The old gentleman
talked to me more of people than of flowers, or church
ornaments, or church bells; for he was as full of men
as of anything.

After we bad done our duty to the church and the
grounds, he proposed to take me to a grand point
of view. So we passed out of the churchyard by
a wicket into a pathway, four or five feet above the
carriage road. I immediately saw what I at least
had never seen before, or expected to see, in England.
Six men in clerical vestments were marching at a
rapid pace in the middle of the road, three before
and three behind. The middle one of the three first
was somewhat older than the rest, and held before
him a book, from which he was reading aloud. Ella-
combe, standing at his own church gate, said, with
great promptitude and in a very distinct voice, "Gen-
tlemen, you are strange to me." The reader, with-
out the least abatement of his pace, answered, " We
are strange, indeed," and resumed his reading as he
passed by. These six men had at that moment an
object before them to move the curiosity and rever-
ence of every common mortal. Ellacombe is a very
short man, very much bowed by age, with a white
beard reaching half way to the ground, a beaming
countenance, a pair of bright eyes, and a good, clear,
ringing voice. He was in his own sacred ground.
Of course he was surprised, as I was, at their repell-
ing so rudely an aged man's courtesy, but we had no
occasion to be hurt, for if they had met a company
of angels, they would have done just the same. I
cannot even guess whether they were Roman Cath-
olics or Anglican imitators.

HENRY THOMAS ELLACOMBE.

79

Ellacombe had had a great sorrow, for which his
own generous aspirations and high standard of duty
might be held accountable. He had had to learn that
counsels of perfection and the sense of a Divine call
may clash with common routine, and even with en-
gagements, and may do that with sad results. Yet,
after the lapse of many years, he still regarded with
unabated affection and respect the preacher to whose
exaggerated tone, as he felt, he owed what had be-
fallen him.

One could not be in Ellacombe's company five
minutes without learning something worth knowing,
and in a distinct and positive form. What a loss it
is that there are not the men to rescue these accumu-
lations of knowlege before they sink into the grave
where all things are forgotten ! But the aged only
speak as one memory raises another, and you may not
catch the fish you have baited your hook for.

Ellacombe was undergraduate for some time, if
not all his time, under Provost Eveleigh. A certain
vague college tradition ascribed to the joint efforts of
Eveleigh and Coplestone the elevation of the college
from a state of mediocrity, in which it lay till the end
of last century. A long time ago there chanced to be
a majority of Welshmen in the college, and the clan
feeling was so strong as to make Oriel the Welsh
college, as Jesus College has since been, without even
as good results. Yet there was something to account
for in the combination of two such men as Eveleigh
and Coplestone. I never heard of anything that the
former said or did out of the way ; whereas the latter
was the most substantial and majestic, and, if I may
so say, richly-colored character within my knowledge
of Oxford. How could they work together on any-

80

REMINISCENCES,

thing like parity of condition ? But what had most
moved my curiosity was that in my village and neigh-
borhood were many Eveleighs, and that they showed
a very strong family likeness to the portrait of the
Provost. The Eveleighs have all fair complexions
and light hair ; they are mild, inoffensive, and unam-
bitious. There are yeomen and tradesmen bearing
the name, but all have the family features. They
are all strangely fond of light blue. The school chil-
dren of the name — boys and girls — were sure to
have blue about them, and I could not pass their cot-
tages without seeing a blue rag on the road. Meet-
ing a carpenter of the name in a neighboring village,
a jolly fellow of near seventy, I asked him about his
relatives, and observed how fond they all were of
light blue. He replied he had never heard that said
before, and had never noticed it. I replied, " Why,
you 've got a light blue neckcloth on yourself." At
which, with a laugh, he succumbed. I took the op-
portunity to ask Ellacombe what he remembered of
his first Provost. It was immediately clear that Eve-
leigh had left no strong or distinct impression on his
memory. This is what I should have expected. All
he could mention was a line in some humorous verses
by an undergraduate, describing the Heads of Houses,
"Here comes fair Eveleigh with his blue hose." This
at once established his relationship. Within mem-
ory, a Miss Eveleigh, a lady, resided in Plymtree.
From another quarter I have heard that the Provost
was shy of naming his birthplace. He used to say
his family came from the North of Devon. No doubt
they did, for the hamlet so named is there. Mr.
Walkey, the Rector of Clyst St. Laurence, near Plym-
tree, had a servant of the name. He said to him,

HENRY THOMAS ELLACOMBE.

81

" Don't you know, John, you 've got a coat of arms ? "
John asked what it was, and whether it was worth
anything, for he should be ready at once to turn it to
account.

VOL. L 6

CHAPTER XI.

JAMES ENDELL TYLER.

James Exdell Tyler was so striking and so es-
sential a picture of the college that he cannot be
omitted, though at Oriel he was only a vivid memory
when the movement began. His florid figure, florid
address, and florid style made him the centre of obser-
vation. As an undergraduate he had been TVhately's
contemporary and friend, and there were stories of
their rustic appearance at a time when provincial
fashion was more marked than it is now, and showed
itself in color as much as in cut. By the time Newman
had taken Jelf's place in the tuition, Tyler was Cople-
stone's right-hand man. He was not a reformer of
churches or of creeds, but he was an able and effect-
ive lecturer. He was no genius, it used to be said,
but he could construe Thucydides " through a deal
board." He was on very good terms with most of
the undergraduates. His special fondness, however,
was reserved for the Gentlemen Commoners, above
all for one " dear boy," who in after life became the
pet of the world, and who was probably indebted to
Tyler for no small part of his spoiling. This was
Charles A. Murray. Possibly a life-long devotion to
the memory of Henry V., native of his own town of
Monmouth, and member of his own college of Oriel,
may have implanted in his mind a deep veneration
for the noble and the gentle.

JAMES ENDELL TYLER.

83

For eight or nine years Tyler held what was then
the perpetual curacy of Moreton Pinckney, in an out-
of-the-way part of Northamptonshire, near Canons'
Ashby, the seat of the Drj'den family. He used to
run down there for a few weeks at a time, roughing
it as to accommodation, and making his presence felt
and appreciated by the primitive and half-gypsy peo-
ple. He would take down with him occasionally some
of his young Oriel friends, whose respective statures,
distinguished by their initials, remained many years
on the inside of a closet door. Some of these men
rose high in Church and State, and must often have
found recollections of a state of things rapidly giving
way to the ubiquitous and monotonous l'ailway in-
truding upon them in the busiest seasons and the
most critical occasions.

Tyler left behind many marks of the interest he
took in the people and the place. I frequently came
on lists of classes he had had for instruction. He
had surmounted every gable in the church with a
stone cross, and had also put one on the stone ledge
behind the altar, darkening the wall behind to give
it prominence. A wretched old Quaker, surviving
like a raven in the village, told me that had he been
a younger man he would have pelted the out-door
ones till he brought them down. Tyler had also
added considerably to the old parsonage, no better
than a laborer's cottage when he found it ; but for
this his successors had to pay their share.

He had once had a singular mishap. He rode down
upon an Oxford hack that had a trick of twisting its
head about in such a way as to strangulate itself
unless the halter was tied in one particular fashion.
Arriving at Moreton Pinckney, and finding an invi-

84

REMINISCENCES.

tation to Canons' Ashby, he availed himself of the
poor beast to ride to dinner. He took good care to
go into the stable and tie the halter with his own
hands, as he had been directed. At ten the bell was
rung for his horse, and was answered, " If you please,
sir, your horse is dead." A groom had come into the
stables, and seeing a halter tied in what he thought a
bungling fashion, had set it right, and thereby ena-
bled the animal to destroy itself. The unlucky hirer
had to present himself at the livery stables on Mon-
day morning with an empty saddle and bridle.

Tyler had a somewhat higher estimate of his posi-
tion as Dean than was warranted by usage, or by the
actual powers of the office. Perhaps he thought that
with so great a man as Coplestone in the Provostship,
even a second was as good as other firsts. He had to
write a note to Gaisford, who, receiving it in com-
pany, read aloud, " The Dean of Oriel presents his
compliments to the Dean of Christ Church," adding,
" Alexander the coppersmith sendeth greeting to
Alexander the Great." This soon reached Tyler.

On the rare occasions on which he occupied the
University pulpit, all the college went to hear him,
even those who usually held loose to that obligation.
He preached a now famous sermon on Naaman, the
Syrian captain. Tyler was accused of conniving too
openly at a pack of beagles kept chiefly by the Oriel
noblemen and gentlemen commoners, and this pack,
it is hard to say why, had acquired the nickname of
Gehazi. It was kept at Garsington, and as many
mistakes were made in the spelling and pronunciation
of the word, undergraduates hit at last on the com-
mon term of Gehazi, which was more easy to remem-
ber. Tyler must have known of the nickname. It

JAMES ENDELL TYLER.

85

may even have suggested his text. When the thread
of the discourse passed from the prophet to his knav-
ish servant, there ensued a great deal of tittering in
the gallery at every occurrence of the familiar name.

Tyler preached the sermon in town. Lord Liver-
pool heard it, and was so pleased with the preacher,
whose vigorous and energetic appearance went for as
much as the sermon itself, that he presented him to
the rectory of St. Giles-in-the-Fields. It was thought
great promotion. Tyler accepted it at once, and
thereby, to his long sorrow, lost his chance of the
Provostship, which became vacant within a twelve-
month.

His work in his new sphere was so appreciated that
his parishioners did whatever he asked for. They
had to name a broad new street running from High
Holborn to the Covent Garden district, now a very
important and handsome thoroughfare. It passed
through the part where Tyler might be seen any day
or hour on his way from one parochial institution to
another ; and they wished to call it Tyler Street.
It was his modesty or some personal affection that
prompted the substitution of Endell Street. It is to
be hoped that the prebendal stall at St. Paul's, to
which he was at last pi'esented, consoled him for the
loss of the Provostship, for which he would gladly
have given, so he is said to have declared, all he pos-
sessed in the world.

CHAPTER XII.

HARTLEY COLERIDGE.

A REMARKABLE episode of Oriel history naturally
connects itself with Tyler. Entering heartily into
the new idea of collecting at Oriel the most interest-
ing and most promising elements of English society,
he was much pleased at the election of Hartley Cole-
ridge. This very singular being was son of Sam-
uel Taylor Coleridge, and cousin and contemporary
of the late Sir John Coleridge. He took his degree
with high honors in 1811, and it was possibly a mu-
tual resilience between him and people of more or-
derly ways that prevented him from standing at
Oriel till some years after. Tyler knew that the
poor man, besides constitutional weakness, was very
eccentric, and he was prepared to bear something.

Hartley Coleridge was of course fully aware that
he was on his trial for the first year, and that he had
to prove himself companionable and sufficiently regu-
lar in his habits "and ways. For six months, the
amount of residence required, this could be no great
strain. However, it proved too much for Hartley
Coleridge. He would not dress for dinner ; he smelt
sadly of tobacco, and, indeed, was known to be smok-
ing all day. It was evident that he cared little for
the society of the Fellows, and it was known that he
was on freer terms than etiquette allows with the
people at his lodgings. He preferred natural life to

HARTLEY COLERIDGE.

87

artificial. There was a certain drollery about him
which prevented these peculiarities from being re-
garded as mere weaknesses. Being told one day in
the common room that he could not have shaved for
a whole week, he presented himself unmistakably
shaven and shorn the next day. He was then absent
from the common room for a week, in spite of re-
peated summons. He then reappeared with such a
growth on his face as clearly proved the former
charge of a week's neglect to have been a gross exag-
geration. The worst was that a glass too much —
nothing with a stronger man, or with a man of less
mercurial temj)erament — upset him altogether.

Sad stories reached Tyler, but he resolutely closed
his ears. If Coleridge could only hold out decently,
so at least as to elude absolute detection, Tyler's gen-
erous nature would have been satisfied, for he then
would have handed him over to his friends, and al-
lowed him to choose his own associates, remaining
Fellow of Oriel. But Coleridge was not the man to
calculate consequences. He lived just for the day,
and no more. He got worse and worse.

Tyler found at last the case was hopeless, and he
either bad a most wonderful vision, or he invented
one, to cover his retreat from an untenable position.
Perhaps the truth lies midway, and he had only
caught a whiff of poor Hartley's own dreamy tem-
perament.

Midway on his ride home from a Sunday visit to
his Northamptonshire parish, at a point of the road
well known to Oriel men, suddenly road, hedgerow,
trees, and cottages disappeared, and he found himself
in Oriel Lane. A man lay in the gutter. It was
. Tyler had steadily refused to believe idle gos-
sip, but there could now be no doubt of the sad fact.

88

REMINISCENCES.

When Easter came, the college and the proba-
tioner had arrived at the only possible conclusion —
that they were not likely to get on well together;
and they parted good friends. It is a melancholy
story, and it is impossible not to ask whether the
poor youth might not have been saved by some
friendly and wise intervention. Perhaps the attempt
was made ; indeed, Tyler himself was the man to
speak at once kindly and strongly to any one plainly
in need of guidance ; but it must be said that the
wayward and eccentric must and will take their own
course, and a university is sure to have a good many
such men.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE VICARAGE OF TWERTON.

Tyler represented the ordinary fair and generous
ambition which is a first step to the improvement of
men and of institutions, whatever special form that
ambition may finally assume. In his time the college
was like some uncanny thing, — say a cockatrice, —
the still undeveloped product of a long and restless
incubation, unable to break its shell. Energy was
flowing into it from various quarters, for besides its
communication with Holland House, both the system
of open fellowships and the careful selection of under-
graduates attracted force.

But the college itself — the buildings as well as
the men — was hidebound and shut in. It looked
out on its principal approach, Oriel Lane, one of the
narrowest and dai'kest in Oxford, on the slovenly
and unfinished back buildings of Peckwater ; on the
Provost's stables and offices, which could not be re-
moved, for they were all that he had ; over a very
narrow lane, on Corpus ; and on Magpie Lane, occu-
pied by the college servants. But the north was the
hopeful and debatable frontier. As common lay Eng-
lishmen understand law and equity, there could not
be a doubt that St. Mary Hall was an appendage of
Oriel ; indeed, some said the college was the append-
age, for that St. Mary Hall was the origin and nu-
cleus of the college. It was once proposed in the

90

REMINISCENCES.

common room to take the fire-irons and batter a hole
through the Avail into St. Mary Hall, when they
might enter in a body and take possession. " John-
nie Dean," the Principal of the Hall, was often
threatened with forcible entry. That, however, he
took very easily, for the maxim of his life, as appears
by the result, was " After me the deluge." The col-
lege had thus no garden ; not space to add a single
room, and not much to be seen from the windows.
Merton College Chapel was a grand but a very noisy
neighbor. Its big bells at certain times called a par-
ish which no longer existed to a service which was no
longer performed. In fact they did nothing but dis-
turb Tyler's very useful lectures and very good tem-
per. Its four weather-cocks were creaking all night,
as bad as those which disturbed the sleep of poor
Catherine of Arragon as she lay in the Deanery at
Exeter, -and which the Mayor of Exeter received
orders next morning to oil.

But in a still more important respect was Oriel
sadly handicapped for the race it had to run. Col-
lecting and training the minds that were to control
the course of human affairs, it had no posts or outlets
for them except a dozen livings which were not only
divisible into poor, poorer, and poorest, but lay in
the most out-of-the-way places, far from the haunts of
fashion and the centres of thought. While fanatics
of any newly-invented dogma were busily securing
the seats of trade, the resorts of pleasure, and the
springs of health, the men of real thought were to be
banished to Salisbury Plain, to unknown villages bur-
ied in dairies, orchards, and grazing-grounds, or sur-
rounded by fens ; purely agricultural, or barely re-
lieved with some mechanic industry.

THE VICARAGE OF TWERTON.

91

Could Oriel but tap the greater and higher world !
An opportunity offered. There must have been some
very good years, for about 1824 the college found it-
self in possession of £4,000, to do what it liked with.
The living of Twerton was in the market. Mr.
Spencer Madan, the incumbent, though a young man,
was dying, and neither the Provost nor Tyler, well
informed as they were generally, seems to have been
aware that the incumbent of a living on sale always
is dying and remains in a dying condition till the liv-
ing is sold, when he takes a new lease of his life, gen-
erally a long one. Twerton was described as an ag-
ricultural suburb of Bath, pleasantly situated on the
banks of the Avon, twenty minutes' walk from the
Pump Room and the Abbey, combining town and
country, and offering the choice of a social and a lit-
erary career. Should the incumbent be a preacher as
well as a pastor, his light would not be hid under a
bushel.

Bath was a more fashionable place sixty years ago
than it is now, when the railway has opened so many
other resorts more attractive to the young and enter-
prising. The Duncans of New College, great men in
Oxford of those days, were of Bath. Hampden had
Bath connections. Devonshire and Wales were then
well represented at Oriel, and both those regions to
this day look with much respect on Bath, as being up
the country and quite in England. The genius loci
was in favor of movements, at least supposed to be,
for it was at Bath that all last century His Majesty's
Opposition passed the winter to prepare for the next
Parliamentary campaign. Alas ! Fuit Bath ; but it
was still living in those days.

The bargain was concluded, and Oriel became the

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REMINISCENCES.

fortunate possessor of the living of Twerton. Soon
did the illusion fade, and facts present themselves.
Spencer Madan was reported in robust health, with
every sign of longevity. In three or four years the
college had notice of a railway that was to run right
through the parsonage. This involved a new parson-
age and a new glebe. The company offered <£4,000,
which would be handsome under ordinary circum-
stances, but there was a just apprehension that it
might be insufficient in this case. Twerton occupies
a rather narrow slip between the river and the hill-
side, and of this slip the railway would consume no
inconsiderable part, thereby enhancing the value of
the remainder.

In much trepidation it was resolved to send one of
the Fellows to look about him and report. Charles
P. Eden volunteered, and went down with a budget
of cautions and instructions. Making immediate in-
quiries for some one who could acquaint him with all
the circumstances, he had the good fortune to obtain
an introduction to a very competent person, to whom
he disclosed the whole case of the college. It was not
till after several days that he discovered it was the
local agent of the company he had taken into his con-
fidence. The offer was accepted, and a moderate
parsonage built at what was then the extremity of
the " village." By and by there came another rail-
way through the glebe, involving a claim for compen-
sation.

For years Twerton was a matter for consultation
and negotiation. The Great Western — for that was
the first railway — came between the parsonage and
the river. It brought factories and a population ;
Twerton rapidly improved in everything except the

THE VICARAGE OF TWERTON.

93

value of the living, which was fixed by the Commuta-
tion Act. The incumbent, if he did his duty at all,
would have no time for walks into Bath, or for pul-
pit and platform demonstrations there. The living
did not become vacant till the year 1852. At a mod-
erate calculation of interest it had cost the college by
that time not less than £12,000.

Not a Fellow would take the living, with all its
local charms and splendid opportunities. In the
course of a generation Bath had somewhat receded in
fashion, and Twerton had become a small manufac-
turing town, swarming with poverty and dissent.
The Provost, clinging perhaps to the last plank of
the old crazy speculation, but anyhow guided by a
right instinct, and with a very happy result, per-
suaded his brother-in-law to reconsider his objections
and take the living.

Buckle labored there a quarter of a century, mak-
ing excellent work, and earning a name for Twerton.
But when, three or four years ago, he took a some-
what less laborious charge at Weston-super-Mare, the
college, on public grounds, filled the vacancy with
his meritorious curate.

Such was the commercial result of the investment,
by a oollege which at present has not a pound to
spare on its dilapidated buildings. Providence, that
ordains all things for the best, has taken Twerton out
of the hands of Simon Magus and his crew, and placed
it in the care of conscientious and honorable patrons ;
but it has not become, as was hoped for, the happy
means of introducing Oriel's choicest spirits and spe-
cial influences to the great world.

CHAPTER XIV.

tyker's testimonial.

As soon as it was known that Tyler was going to
St. Giles', it was taken for granted there must be a tes-
timonial, which no man deserved better. The circle of
noblemen and gentlemen commoners at once took the
initiative. They had for their leader a man who, from
first to last, was always great in small affairs, — Nor-
man Hilton Macdonald. They appointed a commit-
tee of themselves, drew up a suitable statement, and
resolved on a service of dinner plate, which no one was
so competent to select as Macdonald.

Having done all this, they invited the college to a
meeting in the hall, and laid the matter before them.
Phillpotts, a son of Henry of Exeter, and afterwards
Archdeacon of Cornwall, came forward and spoke
with characteristic plainness of the unwarrantably
exclusive form and manner of the action taken by one
small section of the college, who had no more hiterest
in Tyler than the others, and who could not more like
him and respect him than they did. It was, he
said, the very worst compliment they could pay him,
for it suggested the thought that Tyler had cared for
gold tufts and silk gowns more than for the college
generally. He waxed warm as he spoke, and rather
startled the freshmen, who had thought it was so
much a thing of course that the big men they saw
dining with the Fellows at High Table should take
the lead, since a lead must be taken.

tyler's testimonial.

95

The gentlemen commoners assumed an apologetic
tone ; pleaded something like a necessity ; and hoped
that the honorable jealousy now displayed would
show itself in the subscription. It did ; but a sore
remained, and something more than a sore, for to this
day old Oriel men will remember Tyler and his high-
born or wealthy young friends. It is only justice to
the gentlemen commoners on this occasion to state the
simple fact that they were in a difficulty. The com-
moners had no circle of a representative character.
There were nobodies, and there were somebodies ;
there were good men and reading men ; there were
some strong individualities, and there were a few who,
for one reason or another, naturally attached them-
selves to the silk gowns — Samuel Wilberforce, for
example.

But among the commoners there was only one
circle of any numbers or prominence, and it was of
an exceptional, and therefore not representative char-
acter. This was the " Family." It met every night
at the " Bar," which was said to be well supplied
with Scotch ale on tap, and whisky. The habit-
ual members were about a dozen, including two sons
of Church dignitaries, several other sons of clergy-
men, a son of Sir Walter Scott, and a distant relation
of the Provost, so I believe he was. Among these
were good talkers and good listeners ; men of wit not
always under just control, and men with some experi-
ence of public or high social life. Perhaps the literary
and the philosophical elements were deficient. The
meetings fell naturally into the class of Nodes Am-
brosiance, which I suppose implies a certain genial
abandonment. There was an incessant flow of con-
versation in a good-natured tone, and the voices mul-

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REMINISCENCES.

tiplied as the evening went on ; indeed sometimes it
was a Babel of sounds. There must have been more
talkers than listeners.

For more than a year I was a Peri at the gate of
this Paradise, for my rooms were on the same floor,
and our doors opposite, about two yards apart. Most
nights I was waked up out of my first sleep by the
breaking up of this assembly. Yet I feel I had no
reason to complain of my cheerful and lively neigh-
bors. No doubt it was a great resource to some of
the men, who might have found it hard to do anything
better in the evening. Some of them have passed
away, after lives of incessant struggling with scanty
means in remote situations, with no society or sup-
port, spending the little money they had in church
restorations, and getting into trouble with their
parishioners on trifles of the hour. Such a club, for
a club it really was, forfeited power and influence by
its exclusiveness. It lived for itself, and could do
nothing. The gentlemen commoners, on the con-
trary, had an open formation, and could not be called
a close circle. So they naturally took the lead now,
and did everything.

I should have let the " Family " pass as one of
the arcana of college life, did I not now look on it
much more leniently and sympathetically than I then
did, and attach to it an important bearing. If the
college system is to be abolished, the Heads deprived
of all power, the Tutors hustled out of work and out
of the scene, and the University reduced to a mob of
undergraduates and a crowd of professors, the vacant
ground will possibly be occupied by private coaches
and private tutors, and by combinations really de-
serving the name of families. Some organization

tyler's testimonial.

97

there frill be, spontaneous if not authorized, and a
time will certainly come when they that urge the
present changes will witness the operation of the
universal law, that a system once established does not
follow the will of its authors, but takes a course of
its own, and is, indeed, bound to adapt itself to the
incessant change of circumstances.

In the matter of the testimonial the gentlemen
commoners acted as they did in default of any other
possible lead. They might have done better, which
is much the same as may be said of all human
action ; but upon the whole the event amply justified
them.

Macdonald was necessarily a personage and a
leader, everywhere and in every stage. He was a
very big, imposing, solemn fellow at Charterhouse.
When in the first form, or sixtli form as it is else-
where called, not a dozen places from the top, Russell
one day asked him his age. He drew himself up to
his full height, which must have been six feet, and
said "fifteen." Russell's expression was that of incre-
dulity rather than surprise, yet at any time of his life
Macdonald could easily have been supposed a good
deal younger than he looked. His father rode habitu-
ally in the Park a white charger that was said to
have brought a dozen bullets from Waterloo, and
when the animal died at last, there was a story that
the belief was found to be not quite without a foun-
dation.

Macdonald was an imposing and constant figure in
the Union, making speeches so absurdly pompous
that they could not have been tolerable but for his
prestige, and a certain consciousness that he kept the
ball going. Henry Wilberforce, early in his day,

you j. 7

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used to rise in reply, too full of humor, for he could
do nothing but laugh at his own jokes before he bad
developed them to his hearers. His gusty mirth and
his broken phrases dashed like spray on the huge
rock before him and fell harmless, for Macdonald
was the last to see the point of them.

Macdonald became, almost as a matter of course,
a Fellow of All Souls, whence, at a University elec-
tion or a Convocation, he would step over in his
dressing-gown and slippers, throw a Master's gown
over his shoulders, and give his vote, a perfect study
of indolence and indifference. He held something
in the Foreign Office ; he accumulated a vast quan-
tity of curiosities and bric-a-brac ; he had a very large
fashionable acquaintance, became enormously stouf,
and was nicknamed " Chaos," as being without form
and void. Void he was not, for he had an immense
knowledge of men and things, and without a good
deal of that knowledge the world cannot get on.

CHAPTER XV.

THE WILBERFORCES.

The Wilberforces were the largest and the most
interesting family group in this history. They brought
a great name, and also the name of a great party, for
William Wilberforce was the brightest star in the
Evangelical firmament. As the title of Evangelical
is one of the highest honor, except when monopo-
lized by a party or otherwise misapplied, it can only
be used with a continual protest in these pages. Such
a party, however, there was, and greatly did it stand
in need of the adventitious yet useful lustre of the
accomplishments which education and society can
give or improve. This was especially the case at
Oxford, indeed to an extent which amounts to a posi-
tive mystery. The Evangelical party there could not
show a single man who combined scholarship, intel-
lect, and address in a considerable degree. The
public school men might not be anything else, but
they were not " Evangelical." Good men, and men
of good families, came from Scotland, and were of
course a little that way of thinking. If they had
brains, and a strong physique, they made their way ;
if not they dwindled or. retired. Oriel men of that
date must remember William Colquhonn, a fair and
promising lad, who tried one term, then another, but
proved incurably home-sick and went home. My
recollection of him is that he was always sitting at

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his open window looking at the sky, which in his case
was eastward.

All watched with interest the course of the three
already famous brothers. The result at this day is
that Robert and Henry are both numbered by the
Evangelical world among Newman's victims, while
Samuel is partly admired, partly pitied, as a brand
plucked from the burning, but with the smell of the
burning strong upon him. No party in the Church
claims him very decidedly, or would quote his author-
ity upon any crucial question.

The real fact is that all three were already in a
state of gradually increasing estrangement from the
Evangelical party when they came to Oxford. True
they were not of the High Church of that day, or of
any other party, if there were any, for they knew
little of the High Church, and that little could not
be attractive. A long and bitter controversy with
Theodore Williams, of Hendon, and weekly jests in
the "John Bull" newspaper, constituted nearly all
their experience in the High Church direction.

It may seem absurd to name Theodore Williams,
who was not only a very cantankerous but also a
very ridiculous person, in any religious reckoning.
Theodore was, however, a remarkably handsome man,
with a most dignified manner, and he could be very
gracious even to a stranger coming to him, cap in
hand, to look into his church, or to ask a question his
library could answer, for he was a fine scholar. He
had all the metropolitan clergy on his side, for he
contended against the right of anybody professing
to be a churchman to assemble more than twenty
worshippers over and above his own family, not be-
ing duly ordained, instituted, or licensed, or placed
under a bishop or an incumbent.

THE WILBERFORCES.

101

The controversy with this champion of the Church
was twofold, or rather in two stages. It began in
the very great and natural desire of some of Mr.
Wilberforce's neighbors, rich or poor, to join his
family worship. This would generally mean his Sun-
day worship. His morning and even evening week-
day worship, that is when the latter was possible,
was quite as long as that provided by the Prayer
Book, consisting of Psalms, a hymn, a portion of
Scripture, and a most eloquent extempore exposition.
Such a service, so conducted, must be supposed to
have had a great share in the education of his
children.

That it was possible to become weary of it is no
more than may be said of many good things. The
old butler took to absenting himself, first frequently,
then entirely. His master had that opinion of him
that he feared there was some serious spiritual im-
pediment, and asked very tenderly why he could not
join family worship. The butler put himself into an
attitude, and said he looked into his Bible and found
written, " To your tents, O Israel." The master for
once was taken aback, or possibly thought it best not
to repeat what followed. Henry Wilberforce was of
opinion that it had something to do with tent beds.

The Sunday sei-vices would be longer and probably
more formal. It became known that outsiders, to
more than twenty head, or souls, as they are usually
called in this matter, were attending. Then began a
long, angry, and even scandalous attack, which ended
in some one having to count heads, and intimate to
the twenty-first that he was one too many. It was
succeeded by the project of a new chapel, and this
was warmly debated at boards, in newspapei-s, and at

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all the religious houses of whatever side in London,
and the country also. A chapel was built at last,
but it could hardly have been before Mr. Wilberforce
was leaving Highwood and becoming a wanderer. It
must be borne in mind that the Church of England,
particularly as represented by the High Church and
by ecclesiastical dignitaries, was in those days one
of the "interests" of the country. All those "in-
terests " clung together, and made a common cause.
The West Indian interest, the East Indian, and every
other interest with the least monopoly or protection ;
land-owners, borough-mongers, sinecurists, all were
as one, and old Mr. Wilberforce, besides other liberal
tendencies, had put himself in the front of the
attack supon two of these interests, slavery and the
monopoly of souls.

On the other hand, the Wilberforces had had a
large experience of the Low Church, as it was called.
First, they had had experience of many private tu-
tors, and it was a very mixed experience. Some of
these men, whatever their other qualifications, were
not scholars, or men of common sense, or even quite
gentlemen, or even honest in the sense necessary for
the fulfilment of a positive and very important con-
tract. Of the best of them the Wilberforces said that,
after spending the whole day in his parish, and re-
turning to a late dinner, he would take them just
from nine to ten, when both he and they were good
for nothing but bed. A scrambling lesson at any
odd hour was the common rule. Robert's industry
enabled him to surmount any difficulties, and he was
his own teacher ; but Samuel and Henry both found
themselves very ill prepared in scholarship when they
came to Oxford. Samuel was not the man to own

THE WILBERFORCES.

103

this, or even to admit to himself that he was inferior
to others in any respect ; but it was plain to others,
and in effect he never became a good scholar. He
may now be placed by the side of Cobden, Bright,
and many others as a proof that a man may be a great
orator and a respectable administrator without being
a scholar. But these clergymen had been engaged to
make the young Wilberforces scholars as well as good
Christians, and the pupils felt themselves and their
father ill-used. Upon the whole, though perhaps
an Etonian would say that he detected more than
a want of high scholarship in the Wilberforces, it is
difficult to deny that they stand to the account in
favor of private education ; even though they suffered
their full share of its proverbial risks and mishaps.

Again, by the time the three sons were emerging
from boyhood, the father was a man of broken health
and strength, diminished means, almost out of the
political world, a noble wreck and no more. He was
no longer good for anything in the world's scale, and
though he happily lived in heaven himself, his sons
had not yet been educated to absolute resignation.
Pitt had offered Wilberforce a peerage. It would
have involved a good pecuniary provision of some
sort, with the corresponding duty of a general sup-
port, which Wilberforce was too conscientious to
promise. Had he promised it, Pitt's death would
have set him free while still young, and in possession
of extraordinary powers, unequalled social charm, and
the most conciliatory manners. He would have been
an important member in a Ministry, perhaps Premier.
There were several instances of less men, within less
time, becoming marquises, in which case it would
have been "Lord Samuel" and "Lord Henry."

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These were but poor imaginings, but when these
young men came to Oxford they found a great deal
to impress upon them that they had dropped far be-
low the level at which their father had gone to Cam-
bridge and entered public life. At this they repined
not, for they had the heritage of a name and of a
nature better than land or money ; but it also brought
before them the usage their father had received from
his religious friends. These people had always been
at him for some end of their own, and he could
hardly see any one requesting an interview, or answer
a letter, without finding himself the worse off by a
round sum of money. At the sale of his effects,
when the family expected that the apparently large
library would be an appreciable item in the proceeds,
it was found that its bulk was very much owing to
tens and twenties, and even fifties of books of ser-
mons, poems, and devotional works that he had been
pressed to subscribe for and had never opened. He
had now been used, used up, and thrown away.

This may seem to ascribe to the Wilberforces some-
thing of bitterness approaching to disappointment.
It is not intended. The three Oriel brothers had
unquenchable spirits. They were always ready, both
from principle and feeling, to demand fair play for
any one professing a religious character. At Henry's
rooms I frequently met the sons of clergymen and
others well known in the religious world, and now
recurring in religious biographies. One of them,
who, as an undergraduate, was remarkable for pre-
tension, foppery, and utter emptiness, died not long
ago, and was described in a religious paper as one of
the last survivors of the old school of truly pious
clergy. He would have to undergo a great change
before he deserved that character.

THE WILBERFORCES.

105

Facts, it is often said, are stubborn things, and, as
a matter of fact, the Wilberforces found themselves
moving adrift from the world they had belonged to.
They had lived in large houses, abundant hospitali-
ties, political and religious gatherings, and now they
really were nowhere. Nobody knows what it is to
lose such things but they that have lost them. " The
great use of a country house," Henry would some-
times say, " is to stow away things you cannot carry
about with you, and do not want to destroy." But
what are these things ? They are the material mak-
ing of a family, — collections of letters, relics, heir-
looms, portraits, ornaments, mementoes of persons
and events,

The truth is, both Robert and Henry Wilberforce
were so without ambition in any practical form, that
their friends out of Oxford used to urge upon them
the duty of aspiring to higher society than chance or
routine brought them at Oriel. Robert's very quiet
and studious ways would be naturally proof against
any such stimulus. Henry's nature was so little in
harmony with it that, on his return to college after a
vacation, he divulged at once with much simplicity
the exhortation he had received to go out of his col-
lege in quest of better company than he found in it.
He said enough to give a little offence, but did no
more. At the end of that term he asked me to pay
his father a visit, and I declined, suggesting that I
might be better able another day. The next invita-
tion came in a more serious form in a letter from
Bath, where Henry was attending on his father. I
was then tied to my Northamptonshire parish and
could not leave it. It was a real concern to me that
I could not comply with the summons, because I had

106

REMINISCENCES.

seen the father at Oxford in a very helpless state a
year or two before, and I knew Henry wanted some
one with him. It was only two or three weeks after
that Henry brought bis father up to town, to die in a
few days, with no one else about him.

Culling Eardley Smith "was then at Oriel, very
much the same ridiculous personage he always was,
and a flagrant tuft-hunter. He availed himself of
his high connections to cultivate Christ Church so-
ciety, and thereby got into a scrape. It is, or at least
was, usual for undergraduates to draw upon one
another's " battles " to meet the extra demands of a
breakfast or a lunch. But this could only be done
when there was a perfect understanding, and when a
man was quite sure that his friend would not want
his " battles." An undergraduate entering his room
at breakfast or lunch time, and finding that his
" battles " had gone elsewhere to an entertainment to
which he was not himself invited, natimilly resented
what was an injury as well as a slight. There might
be occasional mistakes and oversights, and, upon the
whole, undergraduates area forgiving race, squabbling
like brothers and sisters, and shaking hands again.
Culling Eardley Smith made this a regular practice,
and, while showing his contempt for the country
gentlemen's sons of his own college, was entertaining
his grander out-college acquaintances at their expense.
So one evening, when he had gone to a supper at
Christ Church, the outraged gentlemen commoners of
his own college entered his handsomely furnished
rooms, destroyed every article of furniture in them,
heaped the fragments in the Quad, and, it was posi-
tively stated at the time, waylaid the owner, and left
him for some hours tied up in a sack on the wreck of
his own property. Somehow or other, S. Wilberforce's

THE WILBERFORCES.

107

name was prominently associated with this act of pub-
lic justice ; whether as instigating, aiding, or abetting,
or simply conniving, was not very clear. If he did
not enjoy the joke, he was the only man in college
besides the sufferer who did not.

It may seem strange that so great and powerful a
party, containing at least the most popular preachers
and religious writers of the day, had none to lead
them in their day of visitation. Newman was most
loyal to his own early associations. I remember his
speaking to me with pain of Pusey not being able to
swallow a college lecturer of that school, a good man
and an able man, and showing an unwillingness to be
thrown into his company. My own wonder was, not
that Pusey could not feel at home writh him, but that
Newman could.

It must be added that the Evangelical party was
undergoing a rapid decomposition. Robert and
Samuel Wilberforce had been seeing a good deal of
Macaulay, who even then talked incessantly as no-
body else could talk, and who had written off his ar-
ticle on Milton as fast as his pen could carry him.
Macaulay had described to them his father Zachary's
extreme disappointment when he declined the impor-
tant service for which he had been destined and edu-
cated, the long desired Index of the " Missionary
Register," or whatever the name of the father's period-
ical. Macaulay had also told them that there were
not two hundred men in London who believed in the
Bible. The Wilberforces were also acquainted with
Gisborne, who, out of the same school, had emerged
into the same freedom. Whatever speculative faith
the " Evangelicals " of that period had in their theory
of salvation, their highest success generally was to
make their sons clever men of the world.

CHAPTER XVI.

MR. WILBERFORCE AND SIR JAMES STEPHEN.

But there was something more. It will be contra-
dicted, for it has been contradicted, but it must be
said in the face of contradiction. Mr. Wilberforce,
the father, was not so entirely without a sense of
humor as some of his friends would have him. In
his various religious and philanthropic operations,
particularly as his basis was rather a broad one, he
came in contact with a good many queer people, and
with many queer things. In his own family circle he
would frequently raise a smile by the seeming na-
ivete with which he described them. The smile and
the cause of it stuck to the young memories about
him closer than the matter and the men. All the
four Wilberforces had abundance of humor, and they
certainly did not get it from their mother, good
woman as she was, in her way.

I said something to this effect, now many years
ago, to a friend of the late Sir James Stephen, and,
upon it being repeated to him, he took it up with ex-
ceeding wrath. It was utterly impossible, he said,
that Wilberforce could smile at any of his friends.
It was not likely he would smile at Sir James
Stephen. But Sir James could hardly have main-
tained that all the hundreds and thousands of per-
sons who got access to Wilberforce, generally for
some little wants of their own, were as awful per-

MR. WILBERFORCE AND SIR JAMES STEPHEN. 109

sonages as himself. Again, there are smiles and
smiles, and there are people who do not recognize a
smile. Indeed, there are many smiles that address
themselves to one order of intelligence and not to
another.

Thus, in the late Bishop of Winchester's diary of
October 16, 1858, are notes of a conversation at
Haddo, in which the following is ascribed to Lord
Aberdeen : " I think most highly of James Stephen.
He is a very first-rate man, and the most unpopular
in Europe. I do not quite know why. Perhaps
something in his treatment of inferiors was the cause.
I was never in that relation to him. I stood in the
relation of an admiring master. His papers on
the Laws of the Colonies were admirable digests."
Now, is there, or is there not, a smile in such com-
mendation, at once so high and so qualified in the
very direction in which Sir James Stephen himself
would have wished it unqualified ?

Certainly the Wilberforces had a good many amus-
ing stories of the persons their father had to deal
with, and of the meetings he attended and took a
part in.

These stories I cannot now recall. Perhaps I did
not pay much attention to them. I do remember
hearing several times of a plump, greasy little Dis-
senting minister, who was always invading the poor
old gentleman at the most inconvenient days and
hours, making long solemn speeches, and expecting
the whole stream of Mr. Wilberforce's time, interest,
influence, and resources to flow through his own par-
ticular channel. One story has clung to my memory
because I have always suspected the incident de-
scribed to have been the outcome of some mischievous

no

REMINISCENCES.

practice upon native credulity. At a great meeting
a very solemn missionary related his entrance into an
African city. It seemed almost deserted, but he was
directed to the market-place. There he found the
whole population assembled, the army drawn out, the
king, the court, and the priests in the midst. There
was a hideous noise ; then silence. At a signal all
fell prostrate. The missionary was just able to dis-
tinguish the object of this awful act of adoration. It
was a cannon ball and three decanter-stoppers. The
whole meeting burst into a roar of laughter. They
had prepared their minds for a massacre, or at least
some hideous idol, and the rebound was too much for
them.

But it is impossible to look at the face in the fa-
miliar portrait, or at its reproduction in Westminster
Abbey, without seeing that there is humor there, and
that it must have found a vent somewhere.

The Wilberforces started with the immense and
very rare advantage of perfect confidence and open-
ness with their father. He was the joy of their life
and the light of their eyes. Visitors have described,
as the most beautiful sight they ever witnessed, the
four young Wilberforces stretching out their necks
one in advance of the other, to catch every word of
the father's conversation, and note every change in
his most expressive countenance. On such terms was
he with them that a stranger might have thought
their love and respect admitted of some improvement
by a slight admixture of fear.

Sir James Stephen, who so warmly defended Mr.
Wilberforce from the imputation of too much play-
fulness, I met several times, and I only wish I had
met him earlier and oftener. With the care of near

MR. WILBERFORCE AND SIR JAMES STEPHEN. Ill

fifty Colonies always upon him, he could not have had
much spare time for personal recollections ; but he
might have told me something about old Wilberforce.
When I did meet him he was expressing himself very
strongly against all religious endowments. That this
stern condemnation did not extend to other endow-
ments he proved not long after by obtaining from
Government the Professorship of Modern History, to
the great disappointment of several resident Cam-
bridge candidates.

Sir James was well known to have a temper, and
to show it. I think I put it rightly when I say that
Gladstone made Sir Frederick Rogers a second Un-
der-Secretary in the Colonial Office, on the ground
that a lawyer was wanted in the department. Sir
James resented the imputation on his own career, and
watched for his opportunity. An Indian judge sent
home word that he desired to be relieved of his office,
but would wait for the arrival of his successor. A
successor was appointed and sent out, Sir F. Rogers,
I know not why, being responsible for the regularity
of the proceeding. It seemed to be quite safe because
he was following the precedents. Sir James Stephen
immediately made the discovery that the appointment
was invalid, inasmuch as the Act prescribed that the
successor could not be appointed till the place was
actually vacant, a discovery he had never made be-
fore.

Upon the cessation of his long and laborious career,
Sir James visited Rome for the first time in his life.
Whoever wishes to see Rome should go there at once,
for every year diminishes the power of mastering it.
I came on Sir James as he was gazing most intently
on the pilgrims crawling up the Scala Santa on their

112

REMINISCENCES.

knees. He certainly looked as if he muck wished to
do the right thing if he could, and in the full belief
that up these very steps our Lord ascended to the
Pnetorium. At least he was realizing the fact that
these steps had been so credited and so used for many
centuries.

That evening a friend took me to his apartment.
It was soon apparent that he was jumbling up sadly
the many objects of ancient and modern interest he
had been visiting. The fifty Colonies were far clearer
in his head than Rome. There came in a bright vi-
vacious youth, who had everything at his finger's end,
and his tongue's end too. He talked about every-
thing with piercing clearness. As I listened with en-
forced admiration, I had my inner revenge. What
is the use of knowing so many things if each is to
occupy the mind two seconds, and then give way to
another and then another equally transient object ?
As for Sir James, it was simply pelting him with
Carnival missiles. The clever youth was, I believe,
the present Head Master of Harrow.

CHAPTER XVII.

SOME RESULTS OF A PRIVATE EDUCATION.

One result of a private education on the Wilber-
forces was their truthfulness. A public school, and
indeed any school so large as to create a social dis-
tance between the masters and the boys, is liable to
suffer the growth of conventional forms of truth and
conventional dispensations from absolute truth. Loy-
alty to the schoolfellows warps the loyalty due to the
master. The world has had many a fling at Bishop
Wilberforce's ingenuity and dexterity, but his veracity
and faithfulness cannot be impugned. He said what
he believed or felt, and was as good as his word, a fact
that must be admitted by many that owe him little
or nothing. But in those days, probably even more
than now, very few came out of a public school with-
out learning the art of lying. There was no confi-
dence with the masters, and lads who would have
shuddered at the bare idea of lying to a school-fellow
thought nothing of inventing any false excuse, or
even fabricating a story, to a master, whom they re-
garded as their natural enemy. Newman, who had
many public school men among his pupils, lamented
that they would not invariably tell the truth, — for
he knew they did not, — although the only result of
telling it would have been a gentle reproof, and a
step higher in his confidence. He warned men not
to acquire too much facility and cleverness in excuses.

VOL. I. 8

1U

REMINISCENCES.

On one occasion Henry Wilberforce bad bis truth-
fulness very severely tried. A man wbose acquaint-
ance be did not desire, and wbom be bad once, by
mere accident, found himself in the same room with,
sent him a card for a " wine party." He would not
accept the invitation, — in fact, did not go, but had
no reason to offer except one that would have been
offensive. The very morning after the wine party,
upon entering the covered passage leading from the
square of the Radcliffe to the School quad, he en-
countered the disappointed host entering the passage
from the quad. They were vis d vis, and there was
no escape. They came to a dead stand with their
eyes fixed on one another. The other man waited
for an explanation, and Henry had none to offer.
Something, however, was expected, and there was
nothing but the bare fact. He delivered it in naked
form. " , I did not go to your wine party yester-
day." The man waited for the reason why, and said
nothing. Henry, after a pause, could only repeat,
" I did not go to your wine party yesterday." After
another pause of helplessness on one side and vain
expectation on the other, he repeated a third time,
" I did not go to your wine party yesterday ; " which
said, both pursued their respective courses, and, it is
needless to say, never recognized one another again.

It may be said that a public school boy, even if he
cuts a knot with a good bold lie every now and then,
on what custom holds to be the necessity of occasion,
yet learns to manage the whole matter of truth better
than he could at home or at a private tutor's. He
learns better to distinguish between truthful and
false characters, true and false appearances, the gen-
uine and the spurious in the coinage of morality, the

SOME RESULTS OF A PRIVATE EDUCATION. 115

words that mean and the words that don't mean, the
modes of action likely to bear good fruit, and tho
modes which only promise or pretend. Every public
school boy can say how it was S. Wilberforce made
some considerable mistakes, and how it was he ac-
quired a reputation for sinuous ways and slippery
expressions.

All three brothers would have learnt at a public
school how to give and take, when all must offend
more or less, and how to accept differences and even
disagreeables with comparative indifference. A pub-
lic school boy — indeed, a boy at any school of at all
a public character — spends years in the society of
boys from different families, places, conditions, and
even classes. The varieties of character there pre-
sented are so marked as to have suggestive nick-

DO

names, and to furnish many an allusion more or less
flattering. But it is all taken for granted and borne
easily, and it is often combined with warm affection.
All this is capital training for the world, where a
man will often find he has to live his school life
over again.

Robert Wilberforce was so diligent in his duties
and in his search for knowledge and truth, he was
so humble in his self-estimate, so modest in his ex-
pectations, and so kind, affectionate, and constant
where he had a liking, that one is pained to write that
he had some personal antipathies, which might have
had excuse, but which could do neither him nor any-
one else any good whatever. Now, a public school
boy has his antipathies like anybody else, but he re-
duces them to a very small and very manageable
compass, and he does not allow them to disturb his
happiness or to clog his action.

116

REMINISCENCES.

Henry Wilberforce could defend himself promptly
with resources adapted to the purpose, and he would
carry on a little quarrel briskly, but it would soon
pass away. He went with Newman to some public
affair at the Theatre (a musical performance, I think
it was), and they had to sit in the undergraduates'
gallery, which is built in steps, each projecting about
twenty-seven inches, if so much, from the higher one.
Wilberforce soon found that he had directly behind
him the tallest, longest-legged man in Oxford, Clough,
a tutor of Jesus. His situation was most uncomfort-
able, for he had but a ledge of three inches to sit on.
After a while he backed a bit to obtain more sitting-
room, and found Clough's knee-caps sticking into his
ribs. As this was intolerable, he drove back his el-
bows to save his ribs, and found them in contact with
the aggressive knee-caps. This held out a hope of
relief. He ground at the knee-caps with his very
sharp elbows. Clough, who was a remarkably mild-
looking man, turned to Newman and said piteously,
"Newman, is this a friend of yours?" Newman
smiled in a way to express some sympathy with his
tribulation, and I trust another solution of the diffi-
culty was soon found. Wilberforce and Clough had
a laugh over it afterwards.

One result of a private education in this case must
strike all who can recall that period. The Wilber-
forces had a great love of natural history and of
science, as far as they had been able to study it.
Robert was much given to geology, and, upon joining
the Church of Rome and consequently renouncing his
Anglican Orders, he intended to devote himself to
the study, but was not allowed to do so by his new
masters at Rome. Samuel was always fond of trees

SOME RESULTS OF A PEIVATE EDUCATION. 117

and flowers. I once heard him and a friend alter-
nately name Pines and Taxodia till they had got over
fifty. I became rather impatient, and at a pause
thought my turn was come. So I threw in, "Yet the
meanest grub that preys on one of these trees is
higher in the order of creation than all of them."
Wretched man that I was ! Instantly the Bishop
looked me in the face. " So you think a bucket of
Thames water a nobler object of contemplation than
Windsor Forest." I collapsed, for I never executed
or even attempted a repartee in my life. I might
have said that I would rather spend a day in Wind-
sor Forest than in the House of Commons, or in Con-
vocation, but that it did not follow I thought Windsor
Forest higher than both of them in the order of crea-
tion. Henry Wilberforce had a great knowledge of
insect life. His amusingly annotated copy of Pin-
nock's Entomological Catechism I cherished for many
years. At classical schools of that period there was
no such thing as natural history or science. From
the age of ten or under till twenty-two it was Greek
and Latin, Greek and Latin ; parsing, criticism, an-
tiquities, composition, history, — all Greek and Latin.
Latterly the history itself vanished into criticism.
True there were mathematics and a Mathematical
Class List. Yet I once had a discussion with a
mathematical second class who did not know the dif-
ference between the planets and the fixed stars, and
who could not believe it possible that the planets
revolved round the sun.

CHAPTER XVIII.

SAMUEL AND HENRY WILBERFORCE, POLITICIANS.

SAMUEL and Henry Wilberforce were both poli-
ticians, which, it is needless to say, is far from be-
ing the case with all churchmen, or even with all
scholars, or all country gentlemen. It required a
politician to preside over the Union, which Henry
did for some time without reproach. He frequently
made a gentle protest against the very strong lan-
guage in which the exasperated Church people and
Tories of the day spoke of the revolutionary action of
the Parliamentary Reformers. " It 's either Parlia-
ments or pitchforks, gentlemen. Take which you
please." In the very infancy of the Union Samuel
Wilberforce had had to stand some persecution for
his constitutional principles. Neither in his Life nor
in that of Hook do I find an incident that at the
time caused some amusement and some indignation
at Oxford. Hook and a friend chanced to be on a
visit to Oxford one night that the Union met, and
went in unobserved. The question happened to be
substantially the case between Charles I. and his
antagonists. S. Wilberforce made a speech which I
did not hear, — indeed, I think I was not yet a mem-
ber, — but which I have been told was a very fair
statement of the points at issue, not wholly condemn-
ing either side. Hook at that time was full of the
High Church antipathy to the very name of Wilber-

S. AND H. WILBERFORCE, POLITICIANS. 119

force, and sent off an account of the speech to his
uncle, the Editor, of the "John Bull." It was pub-
lished with suitable comments to the effect that the
young Wilberforces might be expected to take part
in any revolution or treason. Hook and S. Wilber-
force became in due time the most affectionate of
friends, and if the latter would ever have prescribed
limits to the royal prerogative, the former had his
eyes on episcopal usurpation. On the other hand the
apologist of Parliament became a courtier and a
bishop, while the champion of the Presbytery be-
came the historian of the Archbishops of Canterbury,
and died spending all he could earn, and with it prob-
ably some years of a strong vitality, in the restora-
tion of a cathedral and the rebuilding of its tower.

Hook preached a great sermon in St. Mary's. All
Oxford was there. Of course it was on the Church,
and treating the State as an aggressive and dangerous
rival. In the afternoon St. Mary's was again crowded
to hear James Anderson, a well-known Evangelical
preacher from Brighton. I had to give careful atten-
tion to both sermons, for I had then the correction of
the sermon notes. The Provost commented on the
morning sermon to some members of the college with
much energy and some warmth. He concluded,
" After all, there was something in the morning
sermon ; in the afternoon sermon there was nothing,
— nothing at all."

I have to thank S. Wilberforce for the kindest
intentions to myself, though continually thwarted in
one way or another ; such being my folly or my fate.
In 1826 he pressed upon me to become a member of
the Oxford Union, and offered to propose me him-
self. I consented, and was elected ; almost a matter

120

REMINISCENCES.

of course in those days. But there was also a half
engagement that I was to speak, and in order to bind
me to this S. Wilberforce proposed that I should
undertake a subject. He suggested several. I chose
the Seizure of the Danish Fleet, an event then only
twenty years old. As S. Wilberforce suggested the
subject I asked his own opinion on it. He had none
except that it was anyhow a very strong act, and
required defence. I took the patriotic side. England
can do no wrong. Moreover necessity knows no law.
This was a case of self-preservation. I was not of
much service to my country on this occasion. I read
about the matter, wrote a speech, and committed it
to memory, not quite, but sufficiently as I thought.
But in my anxiety I had been sleeping little and
eating little. On the day itself I had hardly been
able to swallow a mouthful. I went to Pearson's
rooms, in Baliol, where the Union met that evening.
My name was called. I rose and delivered two or
three sentences, which my friends told me afterwards
promised well. Then all vanished from me ; the
Danish Fleet, patriotism, necessity, and everything.
I tried to lecall it, but in vain. I did not quite faint,
but I had to be taken out of the room, and the de-
bate proceeded, whether in the lines of patriotism or
of eternal justice I cannot remember. It was one of
many like failures. I have had to leave public speak-
ing and debate to others, and fortunately there is
never any want of men both quite ready, and fairly
competent, to undertake these duties. Among the
subjects suggested by the Wilberforces was one which
involved a question frequently recurring in those clays,
almost antiquated now. " Do you hold the doctrine
of Divine Right?" I had to answer that I did.

S. AND H. WILBERFORCE, POLITICIANS. 121

" Then that settles the question." I could not take
that subject. What was said implied that the royal
prerogative had a large place in the mind of all three
brothers, but that they could not go all lengths with
Charles I. and his advisers.

In the subjects of debate at the Oxford Union
enumerated by S. Wilberforce's biographer, I see
that with only one exception he took the Liberal
side. A few words about this. The Wilberforces
were intensely filial. They worshipped their father.
He had been now for many years the principal
object of Tory aversion. Toryism, in those days,
included all the " interests : " the West Indian, then
very powerful; the borough-mongering ; the Church
monopoly down to its grossest forms and most fla-
grant abuses ; and generally speaking, the right of
any authority or power to do just what it pleased.
The Wilberforces were fighting for their father, still
not so as utterly to preclude reconciliation with
what was then the opposite side. They were fighting
for him all the more valiantly in that he was himself
now retired from the war, and yet was the object of
much ungenerous attack.

In Dr. Hook's Life, by his son-in-law, there is a
letter so remarkable and so interesting; that the bios:-
rapher had no choice but to publish it, for it is
Hook's own account of a meeting and a discussion
with old Wilberforce. Though it was bound to see
the light, yet there are comments to be made upon it
such perhaps as would not have become the biogra-
pher. The date is June 4, 1827. In October of that
very year Newman, and my impression is, one or both
of his sisters, paid a visit to old Mr. Wilberforce at
Highwood, and I have always understood that he had

122

REMINISCENCES.

then to be treated very tenderly, and was not in a
condition to argue with. My own brief experience is
a year or two later. I sat by old Mr. Wilberforce at
St. Mary's, when he was as helpless as a child, though
paying fixed attention to the sermon. The day after,
when I was in Oriel Library, Robert brought his
father in, and introduced me, asking me to get out
some books. I spread out some of the show books ;
Smith's " Mezzotintos," Stewart's " Athens," and
Gell's " Pompeii." The old gentleman turned over
the leaves as if looking for something worth his inter-
est, but said hardly a word and asked no questions.
He could scarcely creep along the floor.

But if such was old Mr. Wilberforce about that
time, what was Dr. Hook? He was twenty-nine.
At that age he was assuming the familiarity of men-
tioning Mr. Wilberforce by a shortened form of his
name. 1 do not remember to have heard it, but I do
remember that almost all surnames were abbreviated
or travestied in those days. Time had done it worst
with " Hook," which I suppose was once Hugo, but
but even monosyllables did not escape, either at
school or at college, in my time. Only two or three
years before this Hook had been foraging, and most
probably writing, for the " John Bull," the Editor of
which was his uncle Theodore, young enough to be
his brother. The style of the letter is redolent of
" John Bull." The argument was about the new
"London University," as it was then called, in Gower
Street. Since it would not be of the Church of
England, was it better it should have some religious
instruction — say the " Evidences " — or none at all ?
Hook credited himself with taking the Evangelical
side of the question, and proving old Mr. Wilberforce

S. AND H. WILBERFORCE, POLITICIANS. 123

a pseudo-Evangelical, because Mr. Wilberforce wished
for some religious instruction, in the hope that it
would lead to more, whereas Hook himself wished
there should be none, lest it should tend to worse.

Such a discussion was a joke and nothing more.
Was it pious, was it decent, was it humane, to attempt
to drive old Mr. Wilberforce out of his life's path,
when he had been so consistent to it, and it could not
be said without the warrant of a great success ?

In my own recollections of the " John Bull " about
that period, there survive three topics repeated till
they were stale enough. The first was " The Cow-
keeper," that is Mr. Wilberforce's eldest son, who had
been persuaded by the religious secretary of a Milk
Company to take its stock, and who had been ruined
by an unexampled drought. The next was " Silly
Billy," that is the Duke of Gloucester, who was a
dabbler in science. The third was " Stinkomalee," -
that is the University, which Hook at this time was
so anxious to secure from heresy that he would prefer
it should have no religion, or approach to religion, at
all, than mere elements or evidences. Was Hook in
a position to enter on such an argument ? The
difference between the two disputants is plain. Wil-
berforce had, as he always had had, a simple and
unaffected love of souls, whom he would feed anyhow.
Hook contended for orthodoxy, to be maintained at
any cost, leaving the souls to take care of themselves.

CHAPTER XIX.

CONTRAST BETWEEN S. AND H. WILBERFORCE.

Many years after that period, when Henry had gone
over to Rome, the two brothers, Samuel and Henry,
gave a singular illustration of their respective shares
in the wisdom of the world. They made a trip to
Paris. Immediately after they had left their hotel to
return home, there came an invitation to the Tuileries.
It was telegraphed down the line, and brought them
back to Paris, when they spent an evening at the
Tuileries, and had a long talk with the Emperor.
The Archbishop of Amiens was there, and engaged
them to a reception at his palace, offering them beds.
It was a very grand affair ; a splendid suite of rooms,
brilliantly lighted, and all the good people of Amiens.
The bedchambers and the beds were magnificent.
Putting things together, and possibly remembering
Timeo Danaos, the Anglican bishop came to the con-
clusion that his bed had probably not been slept in
for some time or aired either. So he stretched him-
self down upon the coverlid in full canonicals, had a
good night, and was all the better for it. Henry
could not think it possible a Roman archbishop
would do him a mischief, and fearlessly, or at least
hopefully, entered between the sheets. He caught a
very bad cold, and was ill for some time after.

Henry had many a good story of the consequences
sure to arise when a simple man attempts to act the

CONTRAST BETWEEN S. AND H. WILBERFORCE. 125

part of a perfectly sensible man. At his curacy in
the New Forest he soon found it necessary to consult
economy, and about that time he received a great en-
couragement and assistance in the new coinage of
" fourpenny bits," so pretty, so lustrous, and so cheap.
It occurred to him, for it had been in fact one of the
motives of the coinage, that there were occasions in
which it would be thought handsome in a squire or a
rich incumbent to give sixpence, in which therefore
it would be at least sufficient for a curate to give a
fourpenny.

Chancing to meet his banker, a natural association
of ideas led to his mentioning this unexpected boon.
But how was he to get a stock of fourpennies ?
" Nothing more easy," the good-natured banker said.
" Have you a sovereign about you ? Give it me. Go
to the bank, and tell them to give you that in four-
pennies." Henry was much pleased, and took the
first opportunity of walking into the bank and giving
them his order from their chief. The clerk said he
had nothing to do with that. His duty was to hand
nothing over the counter except for an equivalent.
Mr. Wilberforce had better take a sovereign's worth
of fourpennies in the usual way and state it to the
banker, who would of course repay the sovereign
which had been paid him irregularly. Henry fell in
with this suggestion, and thereby parted wfth the
sovereign he had reckoned on for settling some small
accounts. A few days after he paid a bill for twelve
or thirteen shillings in fourpenies, having no other
money about him. Meanwhile, though he was giv-
ing away his fourpennies more freely because they
were only fourpennies, ostlers looked hard at them.
In this country, though kings no longer levy poll-tax,

126

REMINISCENCES.

that is the rule of ostlers, and of beggars of all kinds,
including societies and institutions. With them, a
gentleman is a gentleman, and they expect as much
from £200 a year as from £20,000. Henry never re-
newed his stock of fourpennies, and, what was worse,
he never had the courage to tell the kind banker that
he had been obliged to pay for them over again at the
counter. He thought it not unlikely the banker had
forgotten all about it.

Henry Wilberforce occasionally went to public
meetings for which he had received the usual circular
invitation, and was frequently late. He was sure
that, had he been in time, he would have been asked
to take part in the proceedings, and as he was never
without something to say, he was sorry to find him-
self in a crowd of listeners, perhaps disappointed list-
eners. He noticed, however, that his brother Sam-
uel, though quite as liable to be behind time as
himself, nevertheless was always on the platform, and
always a speaker. How could this be ? Samuel ex-
plained it straight. He was perfectly sure that he
had something to say, that the people would be glad
to hear it, and that it would be good for them. He
was also quite certain of having some acquaintance
on the platform. So immediately on entering the
room he scanned the platform, caught somebody's
eye, kept his own eye steadily fixed upon his ac-
quaintance, and began a slow movement in advance,
never remitted an instant till he found himself on the
platform. The people, finding their toes in danger,
looked round, and seeing somebody looking hard and
pressing onwards, always made way for him. By and
by there would be a voice from the platform, " Please
allow Mr. Wilberforce to come this way," or " Please

CONTRAST BETWEEN S. AND H. WILBERFORCE. 127

make way for Mr. Wilberforce." Such a movement
of course requires great confidence, not to say self-
appreciation, but anybody who is honestly and seri-
ously resolved to do good must sometimes put a little
force on circumstances. I should doubt whether
Henry ever tried to follow his brother's example.

1 can give another testimony to the Bishop's com-
mand over his eyes. Crossing the Channel together
in a wretched French screw-steamer, we had to wait
the tide off Calais. The vessel rolled incessantly like
a log, and we were told we must expect two hours of
it. The Bishop secured his hat with a string, and
then leant against the bulwark, fixing his eyes on the
horizon, his recipe for sea-sickness. The sailors did
not like to see a Bishop commanding the waves, so
they watched him with intense interest, hoping to
see him succumb with the majority of his fellow-pas-
sengers. He kept his own to the last, and landed as
if nothing was the matter. He had with him then
his daughter and his future son-in-law. To the former
he was very affectionate, but I could not help noticing
that he always addressed her as " Miss Wilberforce."
There might be some special reason.

At Grindelwald the future son-in-law was gone, and
Archdeacon Wilberforce was in his place. On Sun-
day we had service at the hotel ; the Archdeacon
reading the prayers, the Bishop preaching on the
duty of English people showing themselves Chris-
tians in a strange country. In the afternoon I and
those with me were sitting at the windows command-
ing the half mile of road leading up to the parish
church. The congregation came out and came down
the road in a dense black mass, but obliged to tail a
little. Before long, and long before the mass neared

128

REMINISCENCES.

the hotel, we heard a deep sonorous utterance. Then
we perceived two figures leading the column, and oc-
casionally turning round to one another. These two
were the Bishop and the pastor. The former had
attended the service, and, upon its close, had intro-
duced himself to the latter, and entered into conver-
sation with him. It probably took the form of a dis-
cussion. The congregation gathered round them, and,
upon their leaving the church, had accompanied them
right up to the hotel. One could not but be struck
with the courage of an Englishman entering into a
controversy with a German, in German, for such I
suppose was the language, in the midst of his own
people. The Bishop gave us an account of the con-
versation as if it had been all in English.

Two or three years before his death, when his
health and strength were sadly failing, Henry Wil-
berforce was advised to try a winter in the West In-
dies. It must have chimed in with his heart's wishes,
for he was the one who most identified himself with
his father and his father's work. He and his friends
had fixed on Jamaica, he told me shortly before his
voyage, and he expected to see a good deal that would
be interesting in Negro life, after so many years of
perfect freedom and almost unexpected prosperity.
He thought he might have some experience worth
publishing. Going there with the best introductions,
he saw the island, at least what he did see of it, under
favorable auspices. Immediately on landing he was
taken up to a house in the mountains, where he had
everything he could desire, and felt himself getting
better and stronger every day amongst the kindest of
friends. But the Blacks he found inaccessible. They
did not like to see anybody looking at them, or at

CONTRAST BETWEEN S. AND H. WILBERFORCE. 129

their cottages, or at their ways. It was partly that
they did not want to be advised or criticised, and
partly that they were always expecting some new tax
or fiscal regulation. They had generally squatted on
the ground most convenient for them, without caring
to ask whose property it was ; indeed so much prop-
erty had been abandoned that it was excusable to
think property no property at all. Henry Wilber-
force thought if he had stayed longer he could have
got at the people ; but he had to come home, and so
far, it was one of his many disappointments. But his
daughter Agnes, who accompanied him, will be able
to say more about it.

VOL. I. 9

CHAPTER XX.

THE SARGENT FAMILY.

Henry Wilberforce's want of a public school
touched him in another way. A public school is a
male commonwealth. As regards the older boys it is
a monastery, and the results are about as mixed as in
the monastery of old times. But one result is that
the young men learn to exist, for a time at least,
without female society. At that period there was no
female societjr in Oxford, except that of the ladies of
the Heads of Houses, and their families, if any there
were. A public school boy, indeed any school boy,
coming to Oxford for a two months' stay, did not feel
utterly banished and desolate because there was not
a pretty face to be seen or a sweet voice to be heard.
It was part of his education. When Henry Wilber-
force returned to college, especially after the Long
Vacation, he was heart-sick, insomuch as to give the
college generally to understand that their society was
utterly distasteful to him. He had been amongst the
four still unmarried Miss Sargents, or other young
ladies as pretty and agreeable. He was a very
charming fellow ; they could not but make much of
him, and he could not but return their attentions.
Forced back to Oxford he was shut out of Paradise,
and in another place altogether. It was but loyalty
to those he had left behind to tell us so. Golightly,
I remember, did not see all this. He felt he had

THE SARGENT FAMILY.

131

legitimate and solid claims to love and respect that
no amount of pretty girls could justly interfere with.
This fit of nostalgia generally lasted about a fort-
night, for then Henry Wilberforce could begin to
look forward to the end of term.

In 1829 I met all the four celebrated sisters to-
gether at breakfast at Robert Wilberforce's, and looked
at them with a strong mixture of curiosity and admi-
ration. Mrs. S. Wilberforce was a bride in her fh-st
year. The brighter constellation must have eclipsed
the brothers from my memory, for all I remember of
Samuel was his springing up to remind the party
they had a great deal to do and must set about it.
They were to divide, and I was to assist.

First we lionized our own college, lingering a long
time in the common room. I have always found the
common room the thing ladies are most interested
about. That is quite natural. A common room is a
male drawing-room. It should exhibit the Fellows
at their elegant ease or their dignified state. What
can they do there ? How do they arrange them-
selves ? In a circle, or all about in separate parties?
Do they leave their work or their books about ?
What are the ornaments ? What sort of carpets and
curtains have they? This was before Denison beau-
tified the common room, and it was looking rather
dingy. However, the ladies on this occasion were
charmed ; they looked out of the windows into the
quad they had just left, and all agreed it must be a
very happy place.

The next day I talked over them with Henry, and
chanced to say that I admired Mary's " cool " expres-
sion and manner. I meant calm and self-collected,
but I never heard the last of that unfortunate word,

132

REMINISCENCES.

remembered half a century after. The youngest
seemed a mere child, indeed she hardly looked more
when I saw her at Hanbury, in Staffordshire, seven
years after, as Mrs. George Ryder, a very sylph in
form and in feature. Mrs. S. Wilberforce I met
again, not two years before her death, at Canon
James', at Winchester. She was still beautiful, but
her strength was evidently declining.

I met Henry Sargent, the surviving brother, at a
common room breakfast at Oriel the day of his ma-
triculation. His life was watched by many who had
heard of the old saying that no heir to the Lavington
estate had ever succeeded his own father. He seemed
to me in health and strength, and he talked cheer-
fully about Oxford. I did indeed note the peach
bloom of his cheeks, but saw no harm in it. A fort-
night after that he was gone.

This delicacy of complexion I think must have
come from the mother's side. A first cousin of hers,
Mosley Smith, one of my younger friends at Charter-
house, was remarkable for it. So also was an elder
brother of his, in the bank of Derby, a very good-
looking man, but a little too pretty to be handsome.
He was a good deal quizzed for the pinks and lilies
on his round cheeks, and was known everywhere as
Sweet Pea Smith. To bum off the bloom he would
often walk in the hot sun to Burton and back, but in
vain, for it would persist in returning.

Mosley Smith, my young Charterhouse friend, was,
by the Birds, second cousin to the Wilberforces, as
well as first cousin to Mrs. Sargent. My chief recol-
lection of him is that once on our return from the
holidays, we had neither of us done a translation into
Greek Iambics which had to be sent in next day. I

THE SARGENT FAMILY.

133

offered to do his for him, and, setting to work at
once, very shortly completed a copy which I thought
good enough for him. My own copy I had to send
in unfinished, and of course it was nowhere. The
finished copy had a respectable place.

CHAPTER XXT.

JOHX ROGERS.

We had all of us one sad business with Henry
Wilberforee. We were much in fault, myself I fear
first and most, but he resented it too warmly and
quite needlessly. He had a very dear friend and
former fellow-pupil, for whom I also had a great re-
gard, though the rest of our set did not care much for
him. They pronounced him solemn and drawling.
This was John Rogers, of Baliol, a fine but rather
dreamy figure, with a rich-toned voice, a set utter-
ance, and a large store of knowledge. He had deep
religious feelings, but upon the whole his training
had been more secular than traditional.

I had long walks and long talks with him. One
argument, or rather friendly comparison of ideas,
must have lasted two hours, and seven miles, or more.
" Which is best, — a thoroughly well-defined sphere
of knowledge, everything known exactly and in its
place ; or one less compact and certain, with a large
fringe losing itself in the indefinite, with glimpses or
guesses of the far beyond ? " If I have not put the
question in a way creditable to John Rogers, it is my
fault. He chose the former ; indeed, it always had
been his choice. I the latter. As I had a hazy sub-
ject, no doubt I did it hazily ; all chiaroscuro and
nothing more, like Turner's pictures in his tenth or
twentieth style. May I give here an instance of the

JOHN ROGERS.

135

separableness of an essence from its surroundings, and
the possible transformation of an individuality, or
what is next akin to it, hereditary character ? As I
was staying at a Lincolnshire parsonage some callers,
the Sollys, came with a little girl two years old. I
instantly said that must be a relative of John Rogers.
She was his cousin.

Some of our people at Oriel were a little jealous
of John Rogers' place in Henry Wilberforce's affec-
tion. They were Damon and Pythias. I and an-
other— I forgot who — went into Henry's rooms one
day, and not finding him in, looked about for a slip
of paper to leave a note. We were not quite so un-
lucky its a parent who had sbortly before come to see
his son, and not finding him at home had written a
note. On folding it he saw it was a " bill delivered
for cigars, <£80." The young gentleman had been
making his rooms a divan for the use of his friends.
Our eyes were caught by a row of cards, with lists of
names, stuck up on the mantelpiece. These were
evidently arrangements for a series of wine parties,
some of the names recurring in various combinations.
One of the friends was represented by the figures 14 ;
and it had the singular honor of appearing in every
combination. We were amused, and we had the
folly to ask some of the rest to share our amusement.
Of course they called John Rogers No. 14, and spoke
of him to Wilberforce by that denomination ; and it
always elicited some strong remarks on the treach-
erous and ungentlemanly habit of prying into a man's
private memoranda. As well pick his pocket, etc.
Wilberforce kindly looked over the heads of the chief
delincpients, at those who were adding insult to in-
jury-

136

REMINISCENCES.

There was not the least reason in the world why-
he should be offended, for he had only been doing
what every one does, and is bound to do, though it is
not usual or advisable to publish one's plans. But
Henry Wilberforce never put anything away. I
doubt whether he ever possessed a key for a longer
time than was sufficient to lose it in. Some people
leave everj^thing about ; their cheek-books wide open ;
their tradesmen's urgent reminders. They would
leave their Will on the table, if they had ever made
one. Recalling the whole of our Oriel circle, not a
large one, I can understand their want of sympathy
with Wilberforce's inseparable friend. It was the
Darwinian element in my own education that gave
me access to his mind, and made us mutually inter-
ested. But No. 14 was a perfect gentleman, and a
very nice fellow; and, as I believe, a very good
Christian.

CHAPTER XXII.

A COLLEGE FOR STUDY AND ACTION.

In the year 1828 Newman's hands were beginning
to be full. Besides such a devoted body of pupils as
Oxford had never seen since the chiefs of the north-
ern or southern faction or the heads of rival scho-
lastic systems moved about with little armies, he had
succeeded Hawkins in the vicarage of St. Mary's, the
University church. Even to fill that pulpit and read-
ing-desk as well as the new Provost had done would
have been no slight honor, and no mean engine of
usefulness. The services, however, were necessarily
parochial, and for a small parish, and they had not
much chance of competing for a congregation with
the University.

But in point of fact there was soon a large regular
attendance at St. Mary's, and the sermons occasion-
ally flew over the heads of the High Street shop-
keepers and their housemaids to a surrounding circle
of undergraduates, who now went to hear the Univer-
sity Preachers sometimes, the Vicar of St. Mary's
always. Newman was thus what might be called a
popular preacher, little as he coveted that distinction,
for several years before he ever published a sermon.
Indeed, he repeatedly maintained that for a parish
priest to publish his addresses to his flock was as
shocking as it would be for a man to publish his con-
versations with his wife and children, or with his in-
timate friends.

138

REMINISCENCES.

To St. Mary's was attached the hamlet of Little-
more, three miles from Oxford, on the lower London
road. There was no church there, or within two miles
of it, and the want had to^be supplied, as far as one
thing could supply the place of another, with house to
house visiting. Newman walked or rode there most
days ; almost always with some young friend, who
greatly valued the privilege.

Immediately on his acquiring a parochial position,
his mother and two surviving sisters came to reside
near Oxford, first at Horspiith, as I have stated above,
then in the village of Iffley, afterwards at Rose Bank,
on the slope between that village and Oxford. They
attended to the schools, the charities, and the sick
people of Littlemore, which though without a church,
and at that time with scarcely a genteel residence,
had more care bestowed on it than many a village
furnished with all the outward symbols of parochial
completeness.

Up to this date, and for some time after, it could
not be said that there was any open breach between
Newman and the Low Church party. In the familiar
conversation and correspondence of the circle, the
difficulty of describing and naming the parties in the
Church was got over by a simple expedient. The
Evangelicals were always designated by the letter x,
High Churchman, or High and Dry as they came to
be called, by the letter z. No doubt this practice arose
out of the unwillingness to use a good word in the ill
sense of denoting a part}7 division. Newman was
from the first very anxious to ascertain the position
of the party claiming this title, and how he stood in
regard to them. If they neglected, and indeed depre-
ciated, large parts of Revelation, they were to be re-
spected for that they still held.

A COLLEGE FOR STUDY AND ACTION.

139

It was not, however, till after the completion of the
" Arians " that Newman felt so strongly he was part-
ing company with his old friends that he set seriously
to work on the character and tenets of the " Evangel-
ical " school, as compared with the Church of England
and the great Anglican divines. For this purpose he
wrote an elaborate comparison of it, particularly as
to its subjective character, with the more objective
system of the Primitive Church and the Church of
England. It was put in the form of heads for inquiry.
This he circulated in manuscript among his friends,
including some who had been his pupils, and it was
done so fairly, in so neutral a frame, that such Evan-
gelicals as chanced to see it accepted the account of
themselves and were thereby the better pleased to
remain as they were. I showed it to some acquaint-
ances brought up in the teaching and under the per-
sonal influence of Dr. Chalmers, and they entirely
aco1u'ie?jced in the description of the two sides, without
seeing in it any reason to reconsider their position.

The copy I made at the time lies before me, and I
have lately gone over it again. I have also read in
the " Apof -*ria" Newman's account of the succes-
sive dev^Jwhents of feeling which led him to Rome.
A comparison naturally suggests itself between an
apology for leaving the Evangelical party and an
apology for leaving the Church of England. That
comparison, however, is rendered difficult by the
former being an act contracted by circumstances into
brief limits of time, and the latter the religious history
of a life. I speak therefore diffidently and under
correction. In the former of these documents New-
man was describing Evangelicals as a school of mere
feeling, with an evident tendency to lapse into ration-

140

REMINISCENCES.

alism. It was not necessary to his immediate purpose
to describe the tendencies of the Church of England.
In the " Apologia " it does seem to me that Newman
returns a long way towards his earliest religious im-
pressions, and shows himself more at home with the
Evangelical party. He relates the spiritual history
of his soul, and records an impression, continually
increasing till it becomes irresistible, that the Church
of England is an external affair, out of the sphere of
the soul, and incapable of being taken into it, but con-
demned to be always outside. I can onty say I should
like to see the comparison put better, for it is above
my metier.

It is a significant landmark in the development of*
Newman's opinions that in a large Bible for family
use presented to his mother, with a most affectionate
inscription, on March 28, 1828, he had the Apocrypha
placed last of all, after the New Testament, in order
to indicate how low he then rated these books in the
scale of inspiration. This was rather an unpractical
way of caiTying out his purpose, for everybody knows
it is the first and the last parts of a volume that are
most read — the middle the least. Nri"T, there are
readers who read a book backwards, aiftititren some
who read the index and nothing more. ^

This was not long after the time that Newman gave
his influence in favor of Hawkins over Keble, and it
may contribute to explain what some have thought
unaccountable. Did not Newman at that time agree
with Hawkins more than witli Keble, with whose
strong political feelings, the result of his country
education and associations, Newman never had much
sympathy ?

At the beginning of 1829 Sir R. Peel suddenly

A COLLEGE FOR STUDY AND ACTION. 141

produced his Roman Catholic Relief Bill, and, by
resigning his seat, appealed to the University to give
him its deliberate support. The Test and Corporation
Act of the previous year had looked the same way,
but had been stoutly defended on the ground that it
could not lead to anything else. However that might
be, the present appeal was met. Forty came, reduced
by a single defection to thirty-nine, assembled in a
common room, opened the Oxford Calendar, turned
to the list of Christ Church gentlemen commoners,
stopped at the first unexceptionable or indeed possible
name, that of Sir R. H. Inglis, and took their stand
there. The name was one to unite all Church parties,
and so it did on this occasion. Lord Ellenborough,
writing either after the date, or with singular pre-
science at the time, speaks of the " 700 Oxford fire-
brands " that turned out Peel ; but the greater part
were in no aggressive mood.

Newman's feeling was that, since the world was
going one way he would go another, and that the
world had no right to complain if it compelled
counter-action. The universities and the Church of
England were rendered ridiculous in the eyes of the
British public by a sudden order from headquarters
to wheel to the right about. To men with the least
independence of spirit it was equivalent to leaving
them for the future to consult their own honor and
their own best and highest interests. Peel had out-
raged and lacerated the feelings of the Church and
the universities. His statecraft was commercial and
military ; not properly political, religious, or social.
Whoever bound themselves to him might any day be
called on to unsay all they had been saying and undo
all they had been doing.

142

REMINISCENCES.

Tet in 1830 there were no other leaders or parties
in the kingdom that Oxford men could look to, for
the volcano of Reform was already heaving and roar-
ing on the eve of a grand eruption. With clouds and
dai-kness about him, and the ground itself treacher-
ous, not even knowing whither to direct his steps,
Xewman felt that he had those about him that heard
his voice, that were sensible of his guidance and
grateful for it.

This was Oriel College, many a University friend,
and the congregation that flocked to St. Mary's.
What if he then conceived the idea of forming the
college, of reviving the college of Adam de Broome,
or of Laud, or of making it such as they would have
made it in the present altered circumstances ? What
if he dreamt of a large body of resident Fellows
taking various parts in education, some not very
much part, pursuing their own studies and exchang-
ing daily assistance in brotherly love and confidence.
The statutes still implied residence and bound the
Fellows to it, as also to theological studies. In theory
no Fellow could leave the college or return to it with-
out the Provost's leave. Xor was the idea simply
mediaeval or ecclesiastical. Lord Bacon zealously ad-
vocated colleges for study alone, and in these days the
endowment of research holds a prominent place in
the programme of the advanced party. Newman had
now been Fellow six years, — a long time at Oxford.
He had seen considerable changes, and had Froude
and Pi. Wilberforce at his right hand, both ready to
go through fire and water with him, the former only
likely to quarrel if the pace was too slow.

So far as I can remember, from my election at
Easter, 1829, to Xewman's return from the Mediter-

A COLLEGE FOR STUDY AND ACTION.

143

ranean at Midsummer, 1833, his main idea, still rather
a dream than a purpose, was the reconstitntion of
the college in the old statutory lines. Religious lines,
I should add, but no Fellow of Oriel can ever forget
that he is bound by the statutes not to become religi-
osus, that is a member of any Order. At the time
of which lam writing — that is on the eve of the
Reform Bill — it was held almost necessary to a high
type of character that a man should have his life's
dream. Books were written to urge it. At Oxford
it was currently stated, truly or not, that the Sunday
after Hawkins came from Merchant Taylors to St.
John's, he made a tour of the University and walked
into Oriel. He could not be struck by the beauty,
the amplitude, or the picturesque features of the col-
lege, for it is one of the homeliest and closest ; and
already at that time it was falling out of repair. Yet
something about it took his fancy, and when he heard
that its fellowships were open to the University, he
instantly resolved that he would be Fellow of Oriel,
and Provost in due time.

If true, this was thought most honorable, and was
adduced to show the power of a denned and proper
ambition. Surely then it was not less honorable to
resolve, upon the persuasion of extraordinary circum-
stances, to make a college what it was founded to be
and to put it thereby in the form best qualified to
counteract the vicious tendencies of the age. It
might not be possible, but that could only be ascer-
tained by trial, and meanwhile, even with the possi-
bility of failure, there would be a certain benefit in
setting minds upon the pursuit of a good object,
which is indeed the usual plan of moral education.

For several years the notion of a large body of resi-

1-44

REMINISCENCES.

dent Fellows, occupying their own college rooms, and
engaged in religious studies, was steadily maintained
as the beau ideal and the true purpose of a college.
When a Fellow gave up residence at the end of his
year of probation, he was looked on as a deserter,
and rallied accordingly.

But a college formed on such an ideal would re-
quire something like homogeneousness in the Fellows.
Within reason they must be of one mind. Even that
idea was so far from being new at Oxford at that
time, that it was really the rule. With very few ex-
ceptions, including notably Baliol, elections to the
foundation had become appointments, made almost
invariably for personal or domestic reasons. Each
college had become a domestic and asocial circle, of
course working in harmony, always pleasantly, some-
times even usefully. Nay, in Oriel itself, cosmopoli-
tan as it was, there was occasionally a most desperate
resistance made to the choice of a meritorious and dis-
tinguished candidate, on no other ground than that he
would not be found a uniformly pleasant companion.

Mere social compatibility, however, was not the
kind of thing Newman had in his eye in his dream
of a regenerated college and University. Yet a fair
prospect of assimilation was certainly likely to affect
the choice of the future Fellows. How far it affected
the vote of Newman and his friends could only be
found by a special and minute inquiry conducted un-
der the not trifling difficulty that the virtual election
is secret. Much, however, may be easily guessed.
Perhaps it would be found that during the next ten
years after the Roman Catholic Relief Act the college
made some very indifferent or useless elections in
an excessive anxiety to resist Newman's lead, while

A COLLEGE FOR STUDY AND ACTION.

145

every single election made in accordance with that
lead justified itself by its results. This of course is
a personal question, in which it is not to be expected
that all will agree. A man may think an election a
very good one, when the Fellow never does anything
that the world knows of except make a competency,
marry, have children, and die. He may think it a
very bad and improper election when the candidate
elected spends a long life in continual services to the
Church and to the State, attended with some success
and large appreciation. But Newman at that date
certainly had an eye to the formation of the college.

VOL. I. 10

CHAPTER XXIII.

TWO CANDIDATES.

Among the undergraduates who had become New-
man's pupils and friends were two who might be
expected to stand at the Oriel election in Easter,
1829. They had taken their degrees in the previous
year. Of these one was John Frederick Christie,
a sound and elegant scholar. He was one of a very
good batch of sixth-form men, including Claughton,
sent to Oxford by Dr. Wooll, before Rugby gave itself
up to historical and philosophical speculations, lie
was a man of extensive reading, for he read all the
novels and all the poetry of the day, and he took to
Tennyson, it may be said, at first sight. He was a
poet himself. His prize poem on " Regains" might
have a place in any collection. There was a reason-
able prospect of his election.

The other was myself. Besides being not well
grounded, I had been self-willed and perverse. I
had indulged from my boyhood in a Darwinian dream
of moral philosophy, derived in the first instance from
one of my early instructors. This was Mr. George
Spencer, Secretary of the Derby Philosophical Asso-
ciation, founded by Dr. Darwin, and father of Mr.
Herbert Spencer. My dream had a certain family
resemblance to the " System of Philosophy " bearing
that writer's name. There was an important and
saving difference between the two systems, between

TWO CANDIDATES.

147

that which never saw the light, and perished before it
was bom, without even coining to wither like grass on
the housetops, and that other imposing system which
occupies several yards of shelf in most public libra-
ries. The latter makes the world of life, as we see
and take part in it, the present outcome of a continual
eutcoming from atoms, lichens, and vegetables, bound
by the necessities of existence to mutual relations, up
to or down to brutes, savages, ladies and gentlemen,
inheriting various customs, opinions, maxims, and
superstitions. The brother and elder philosophy, for
such it was, that is mine, saved itself from birth by
its palpable inconsistency, for it retained a Divine
original and some other incongruous elements. In
particular, instead of rating the patriarchal stage
hardly above the brute, it assigned to that state of
society a heavenly source, and described it as rather
a model for English country gentlemen, that is upon
the whole, and with certain reservations.

I had, however, more or less consciously, some
points in common with the younger philosophy, for I
had derived straight from the elder Spencer a con-
stant repugnance to all living authority and a sus-
picion of all ordinary means of acquiring knowledge.
From him I had learnt to believe that what you were
simply taught you did not really learn ; and that
every man who wished to know things really must
rummage them out for himself in all sorts of ways,
the odder, the more out of the way, the more diffi-
cult, all the better. As well as I can now state in a
few words, such was my dream from the Ivory Gate,
and many years was I dreaming it.

I used to read Bacon, and giving nobody the
opportunity to correct me, I took for granted that my

148

REMINISCENCES.

system was Baconian induction. The proposed mode
of induction was such a steady contemplation and
careful comparison of all sayings, laws, rules, maxims,
or what not, as should gradually and completely
gather and harmonize all into a system, wherein each
would have its proper place and proportion, and
thereby a fixed mathematical character. Mr. George
Spencer looked forward hopefully to the time when
all words, ideas, and sentiments would be stripped of
their drossy and fallacious accretions, coined into a
universal currency, and made amenable to mathe-
matical calculation. He used to insist on the pro-
priety, indeed the honesty, of always employing the
same word for the same thing, and not attempting to
please the ear of the hearer or the reader by the use
of words not really synonymous as meaning the
same. In this he anticipated the Revisers of the
Authorized Version, though not with the same in-
tent. They desired to follow the original ; he to
reduce morality to mathematics. I recognize in the
young Spencer a continual attempt to persuade him-
self that he has established new ethical principles as
incontrovertible as that two and two make four, and
that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two
right angles. It is needless to say that my dream was
moonshine. It amounted to nothing less than a very
serious mental disorder, for though it is said every
man ought to be mad upon something, at least now
and then, this was a madness with almost sole and
continual occupancy. It was exclusive and tyrannic,
for it always asserted the right of possession against
every fact, every opinion, and every sentiment that
books could offer. It was much favoi-ed by my per-
sonal defects. From infancy I had been slow and

TWO CANDIDATES.

149

inarticulate, and as I took much time to say what I
had to say, this was a bar to instruction by the or-
dinary method of lessons. The quicker ones were
always before me. Thus my " system " was a con-
solation for continual defeat, but being a consolation,
it made me on all vivd voce matters a beaten man.
Such I was under my successive masters till I came
to Oriel, when I was not so much beaten as self-con-
fident and rebellious. I would not give up my
dream, which I confidently believed to be the secret
of all knowledge and wisdom. For everything that
offered itself I had one reply, " I know a better way
than that." Of course I had only to open my eyes
to see what nonsense it all was. It had nothing to
do with actual life or with daily events. Its comple-
tion and operation, if any, was in the far future. It
admitted of no argument or comparison of ideas ; it
was hardly of earth, and I could not honestly have
said that it was of heaven ; it had no more to do
with the Christian revelation than with anything else
in the universe ; it was not a rule of life or a moral
guide in any sense directly applicable to the present
difficulties. By repudiating authority and resting on
experiment, it left everything really unsettled. Being
thus without sanctity or awfulness of any kind, it
became a refuge and a harbor for all sorts of follies
and weaknesses. In a world of my own I could do
what I pleased.

Early in my acquaintance with Henry Wilberforce,
I had let out something about Mr. George Spencer
and his views. I must have spoken of him as a very
interesting man and original thinker ; indeed, as a
strong character, and as inculcating high principles
and proper independence, besides a vast amount of

150

REMINISCENCES.

ingenuity. As to the last point I may as well men-
tion that be was an early teacher of Sir Charles Fox,
besides other since prominent characters ; and that
he was great in such ideas as the Crystal Palace, long
before they came to be realized. I had, as I sup-
posed, saved myself to Henry Wilberforce, by protests
on moral and religious grounds. Spencer never rec-
ognized any religious authority. He held that social
worship ended inevitably in degradation, and was
fundamentally untruthful and unreal. He was known
uniformly to disappear on the Sunday. As a boy I
credited him with field preaching, and felt a sort of
reverence for him on that account, though holding it
a mistake. That he went into the fields on Sunday
I think likely enough, but. in the matter of religion,
I should now be surprised to hear that he had ever
advanced beyond the contemplation of things in gen-
eral, with a careful avoidance of the revealed solu-
tion.

Henry Wilberforce had detected that Spencer had
a deeper hold on my mind than I chose to acknowl-
edge, and that there was an inward conflict, and con-
sequent^ a sore point. So, when he had nothing
better to do, he would make some apparently casual
remark implying that I had the profoundest rever-
ence for Spencer, and might be regarded as his dis-
ciple, and consequently incapacitated from sharing
higher feelings and convictions. He was sure of
drawing out an indefinite, perhaps a peevish, protest,
and an explanation which he could object to as not
quite satisfactory. I said what I felt, but the mental
disorder I knew to be still within.

For many years I thought it impossible I should
ever give up this insanity. It was part of my nature,

TWO CANDIDATES.

151

and my one chance of emerging, or even having a
solid existence. It gave me a self-esteem which nat-
urally imposed on some of my friends. The strangest
thing is that I now find it impossible to say when,
and how, and by what means the dream departed
from me, for it is gone, and its place in my mind is
not to be found. I suppose that every time I did an
act of duty or plain necessity ; every time I engaged
myself in such a healthy pursuit as an inquiry into
facts, or testing opinions by consequences, or learning
a lesson thoroughly, I was unwittingly encroaching
on the ground of my system, undermining it, and
sucking away such strength as it had. It died at last
easily and without a struggle, so that I knew not that
it was dead. I was under the spell all the time I was
at Oxford. For the " Rhetoric " and the " Ethics "
I could find no resting place in my system ; so, as
they could not rest, they flew away. All my deep
and serious convictions were from my dream. To
everything included in the Oxford course I could only
give superficial regard.

Of course I gave up all thought of honors, for I
was too proud to try, except for the highest. In my
last term Newman told me I must get a "Third" at
all events, or I could not otherwise stand for Oriel.
This was a bit of encouragement ; I added some extra
books to my list, and I was duly gibbeted, like some
other illustrious offenders, in the third class.

A few days after taking my degree I was pressed
to do something for my brother James. lie had been
sent very early to Grantham School, on the recom-
mendation of Archdeacon Bailey. Andrews, the mas-
ter, was a good scholar and a diligent teacher, but of
violent temper and brutal manners. Like most peo-

152

REMINISCENCES.

pie of that sort, he made a special set at any lad who
showed spirit, as some lads cannot help doing. At
the age of thirteen matters came to such a pass, that
upon James's repeated entreaties my father took him
away. Could my brother have borne it a year longer
he would have come in for a gentler master, as An-
drews had to be removed. From that time he had
daily lessons from James Dean, a clergyman, a Hulme
exhibitioner and a good classical scholar. He was
also having many a long argument, on the pretence
of mathematical instruction, from Geoi'ge Spencer.
But it was not like being at school, and my father
had a conviction which grew every day, and gave
him much pain, that James was wasting his time and
doing no good. So, at the request of the family, 1
wrote to Arnold, lately come to Rugby, stating the
whole case, and asking admission for my brother.
The answer was kind, but decisive. My brother was
then three months past fifteen, beyond which the
governors had decided there should be no admission.
Arnold closed his reply with the words, "From what
you say of him, I am very sorry that we are unable
to receive him." My friends at Derby were not satis-
fied, and wrote again next February, only to elicit a
much longer and stronger denial. Both letters are
before me, and show in their composition and pen-
manship a remarkable contrast to the slip-slop notes
which some distinguished personages are said to have
tossed off at the rate of thirty an hour, from vestries
and railway carriages.

This was one of many disappointments, for my
brother had before this been very nearly elected at
Corpus, and had passed a good examination for Wad-
ham. I am now quite satisfied that he was not ad-

TWO CANDIDATES.

153

mitted to Rugby. Two years before this he had
translated large portions of the Iliad into very good
English verse, and he would not have been content
to be in any lower form than the highest, that is
Arnold's own "Twenty." But his hesitative manner
of speaking, which showed itself most in construing,
would have made him very much in the way there.
It is a question of time, and a very serious one.
Twenty are a small class, compared with the classes
of fifty or sixty common in those days. Russell had
always a hundred and twenty before him, that is, the
first, the second, and the upper third. Even in the
very moderate case of twenty, each boy has only
three minutes out of an hour, and if he unfortunately
requires ten minutes to do what boys with far less
brains but quicker tongues do in three, he reduces
the time available for the others to little more than
two minutes and a half a head.

Moreover, there were some points of fatal resem-
blance between Arnold and my brother. Both were
independent in their opinions and quick in their tem-
pers. It was only sixteen years after this that my
brother published, in the " Christian Remembrancer,"
an exceedingly able and interesting review of Arnold's
"Life and Correspondence," by Stanley.

CHAPTER XXIV.

COLLEGE ELECTION OF 1829.

At Christmas I became the tutor of a nice little
fellow, now Lord Doneraile, a representative Peer of
Ireland, and a master of hounds. I was to have
gone straight to the family seat in county Cork, but
her ladyship had spent the last winter in Ireland
with all the lower windows boarded up, and she had
now had to read at breakfast every day the reports
of spies, to the effect that immediate and sudden
death awaited both her and her husband on their
return home. So she would take Cheltenham in her
way. There she at once filled her drawing-room
with bulbs timed to flower at various dates, and an-
nounced her intention of staying till she had seen the
last of them out. The very best of them, a rare and
beautiful specimen, was not to be in its perfection till
near Easter. The devoted husband had to bear as
well as he could the sickening perfume in the long
spring evenings, for it gave him a continual head-
ache, which he tried in vain to walk off on the
Cotswold Hills. This he confided to me, enjoining
me not to give the least hint to her ladyship. From
the first he had been longing to be back to his dear
native country. He would have to dodge blunder-
busses, but that was better than having nothing to
do at all, the usual fate of a country gentleman
weather-bound at an English watering-place.

COLLEGE ELECTION OF 1829.

155

Meanwhile I was in daily communication with the
other expected candidate, living at Cheltenham, a
hundred yards off, and 1 discussed with him the
chances of myself standing so frequently and so
coolly that he became very nervous, and his father
seriously ill. The pupil's parents also were rather
worried about it. At last the question depended on
one vacancy or two. The one undoubted vacancy
had arisen from the death of William Churton, who
had passed away in the prime and sweetness of youth,
after taking the highest honors, after making many
friends, and becoming private chaplain to Archbishop
Howley. The other vacancy was doubtful. Edward
Pusey had become Professor of Hebrew and Canon
of Christ Church, and he had just married or was
about to marry. Ten days before Passion week I
learned from Oxford that there would not be a
second vacancy. I at once told my friend and my
pupil's parents that, this being the case, 1 should not
offer myself. All were set at ease, and the pupil's
mother shook hands, as much as to say that it was a
postive engagement to stay. However that might be,
the shake of the hand was never forgotten.

At last all started in the family coach, with four
posters, northward, stopping everywhere, and always
allowing daylight enough to explore towns, churches,
castles, and city walls. I and my pupil raced round
Chester, and up and down its arcades, and up
Wrexham Church tower, and into the crowd of round
hats and red cloaks in its market-place, and round
Shrewsbury.

At the last place an evil suspicion entered my
mind. We were all staying with Colonel Leighton,
a relative of my pupil's parents, and Lord Doneraile

156

REMIXISCEXCES.

had a good deal of talk, confidential it sometimes
seemed, with the colonel's son, -who had taken his
degree in the same term as myself, the late Warden
of All Souls. I thought I perceived an increased
security and cheerfulness of tone in the parents, as
if they had been told that it was quite out of the
question I could be Fellow of Oriel. This touched
my pride. I had been making too much of myself,
perhaps enhancing my services by talking idly of
other prospects. But it did not change my intention
not to stand.

About an hour before dinner time we arrived at
Norton Priory near the Mersey, and just within
sight of the shipping of Liverpool, whence we were
to cross the Channel. Sir Richard Brooke had a
very large company and a grand banquet, including a
musical performance, ready for our party. But in
the course of the morning Henry TVilberforce had
arrived from Oxford with a message from Newman
to say that Pusey's Fellowship had been declared
vacant, so that now there would be two vacancies,
and I must stand. Immediately after dinner I
parted from my pupil and friends most sorrowfully,
and, travelling all night, arrived at Oxford the next
morning. I was too late for some formalities and
for the first part of the examination, but under the
circumstances this was excused. I and my friend
Christie were both elected, out of thirteen candidates,
though there were some who were very indignant,
as there always will be.

The election cannot be alleged to prove that
Newman and his friends were packing the college
with their favorites, or with men just of their own
wews. Nor were these views determined at that

COLLEGE ELECTION OF 1829.

157

date. This was Easter, 1829, and Newman was only
twenty-eight. He frequently said that a man ought
to decide his course and his opinions at thirty, as if it
might be better he should not decide till then. He
was still more of an Evangelical than of a High
Churchman, while Froude was a Tory and a bit of a
Jacobite and Nonjuror. Newman looked forward to
spending many years in the college, and, unreasonable
as the hope was, he looked to have the society of men
with the same plan of life and the community of
feeling requisite for it.

Seven years after this I was glad of the oppor-
tunity to make a very small return to Henry Wilber-
force for his long journey in my behalf. He had
been reading for the Denier's Theological Prize, the
subject of which that year was " Faith in the Holy
Trinity." It was a Friday evening. The Essays
were to be sent in on Monday, and Henry had not
put pen to paper. It was vain now to think of
attempting it, as he was due for his Sunday duty at
Bransgore, at the other end of the New Forest. So
I offered to take the duty for him. On my return to
Oxford late on Monday, I found, to my delight and
surprise, that Henry had actually completed and sent
in the Essay. The prize was awarded to it.

CHAPTER XXV.

THOMAS BENJAMIN HOBHOUSE.

Of the eleven unsuccessful candidates, some were
good and likely men. Isaac Williams must have been
elected, but that it was known to make little differ-
ence to him, as he was sure to be elected Fellow of
his own college in due time. Vaughan of Baliol was
a first-class man. He has been for many years a use-
ful clergyman and acceptable preacher at Brighton.
Several of the candidates might have saved them-
selves the trouble of standing. Walter Mant might,
but probably his father had put it on him.

Two of the candidates had been with me in the
same house, living in the same room with me, several
years at Charterhouse. It was a rough system there,
no separation either by day or by night. In our
house, which was a small one, thirty of all ages lived
in the same room, down which ran two deal tables,
from breakfast to bed-time, doing all our work there,
however elbowed, jostled, dinned, and distracted.
These two candidates were old competitors. They
had always beaten me in vivd voce, and I had had
generally the advantage on paper.

Thomas Benjamin Hobhouse was half-brother of
Sir John Cam Hobhouse, tall, with a good figure and
fine features, but with a singular want of repose and
self-possession. He and I Avere Monitors, that is,
bound to keep the boys in order. Charles Childers,

THOMAS BENJAMIN HOBHOUSE.

159

for half a century the well-known chaplain at Nice,
was Monitor Propositus, nominally over us. Hob-
house and I had for several years interminable
wrangles, almost one long wrangle, for there was al-
ways a tail left for the next day. Towards eight
o'clock, if we were not more than usually busy, he
took his station with his back to the fire, and threw
out some challenge, when I took my station by his
side. He very shortly became angry, insulting, and
abusive. He foamed at the mouth, and had a strange
trick of striking the grate with his heels, even if there
were ever such a fire in it. Doing this continually
he burnt off the calves of his trousers, reduced his
shoes to slippers, and wore away the heels of his
stockings. He would walk slipshod for months in
consequence.

We disagreed about everything, but politics were
the staple. He held everything to be vicious and cor-
rupt,— court, aristocracy, institutions, laws ; no good
to be done without rooting out and turning upside
down. I held that all these things had a right to
stand till found hopelessly bad, and that in all ques-
tions where they were concerned the turn should be
in their favor. One point we had in common, though
perhaps I did not see it so plainly then as now. It
was that all these institutions, comprising nearly all
the old state of society7, were in favor of the weak and
dependent elements; that is, for the help of those
who could not sufficiently help themselves. So far
we agreed, but no further. With all forms of this
class I had an excessive and foolish sympathy. Hob-
house had none. He despised and hated weakness in
every form. I must add that though he swore freely,
he was not otherwise profane or irreverent, and he

1G0

REMINISCENCES.

was entirely free, both in language and in mind, from
the worst of the moral plagues that wretched school-
boys are addicted to.

Childers struck in sometimes into our discussions,
not to arbitrate, but on some side issue. He must
have thought us all bad, for he had out his Bible
every night and read a chapter to himself, which no-
body else did. I do not think he talked to anybody
for his soul's good, and he was the only one at all
likely to do it.

However, to return to my nightly antagonist. The
Criminal Code was being ameliorated, and it gave us
plenty to disagree upon, for at that time I was likely
enough to defend capital punishment for forger)'. In
the year 1823 we had a bitter discussion in chapel,
during one of Archdeacon Hale's sermons most prob-
ably. The question was, could a man now be hung
for picking pockets. We all sat, almost in the dark,
in a remote corner of the chapel, with an immense
pier before us, and we all did just what we pleased.
Hobhouse got very exasperated. I said there was no
occasion to be angry, as we could soon find out how
the law stood. Yes, but I was so shifty, he said, that
I was likely to deny having maintained what I did,
if I found I was wrong. So he took my Prayer Book
and wrote on a fly-leaf, distinct and large, " Hobhouse
says that a man who picks another man's pocket of
a handkerchief is liable by laiv to be hung. Mozley
denies it." It is only the other day that I lost the
Prayer Book with this interesting record. It will be
found, if ever, in some cottage in Devonshire.

To secure better behavior during service the gov-
ernors of Charterhouse added an aisle to the chapel,
projecting into the " Green." It was done in stucco,

THOMAS BENJAMIN HOBHOUSE.

161

with Gothic windows of the period. Here was a new
point. Hobhouse declared the building detestable,
such as the commonest mason ought to be ashamed
of. I said that it was homely, but fit for the purpose,
and that if there had been any ornament it ran a
chance of being destroyed. He said I could not pos-
sibly have an atom of taste. The building was not
homely but vulgar, which was a different thing. This
was a rather early protest against Churchwardens'
Gothic, for at that time there was no other Gothic in
the country. For the matter of having a taste I felt
inwardly fortified by the fact of my having recently
copied on a very large-scale, for the performance of
Pyramus and Thisbe, a colored print of the Acropolis
in Hobhouse's " Tour in Turkey and Greece."

We played at chess. When Hobhouse won there
was no end of cock-crowing. We all had colds ; with
the usual result of cracked lips and sore noses. A
kind friend sent Hobhouse some lip-salve. The rest
of us resorted to the tallow-candles. This gave him
a great advantage. " There was no accounting for
tastes. Some liked smearing their faces with tallow,
some did not." The balance of propriety, however,
was not always in his favor. He betted me one day
that he would drink ten mugs of water in ten minutes.
Each mug held half a pint, so this was five pints, a
good day's allowance for a laboring man. I thought
it impossible. He pressed me to accept the bet, which
I did. After the first mug he left the room and re-
turned. When he had done this several times it
dawned upon me how the feat was done. By tick-
ling his throat he got rid of the water as fast as he
drank it. I became frightened for the consequences
of such a disturbance of the regular course of nature,

TOT. I. 11

162

REMINISCENCES.

but be must and would proceed. He won tbe bet,
and covered with bis exultation any sense of shame
he might have felt. Whether it was impecunious-
ness, to which all schoolboys are liable, or the desire
to get a triumph out of me at any cost, I never knew.

Though a Whig, Hobhouse was most arbitrary
and tyrannical to the little boys, insomuch as to
drive me to the other extreme, for I was far too easy-
going. He was not cruel, but wanton, and even vio-
lent. Dicken, the master of our house, was having
some friends to dinner, and this made the servants
rather slack in their attendance to us. The candles
had been called for, and they did not come. Hob-
house called out, " Go all you unders, and call for
candles till they come." Instantly there started
twenty boys, little and big, only too charmed to have
the opportunity of making a row without being re-
sponsible for it. Crowding into the passage, a few
feet from the dining-room door, they set up a tre-
mendous and continuous shouting, to the dismay of
the little dinner-party. Dickon's pride must have
been touched at this exhibition, for on his finding
that Hobhouse had caused it he complained to Rus-
sell, and Hobhouse was flogged.

This was done so speedily that I did not hear of it
till after morning school, when I was shocked and
grieved. Hobhouse was not a fellow to flog, and
bully as be was in a certain harmless way, every boy
in the house would have protested against it had he
been consulted. It has occurred to me that Russell
had been watching for an opportunity. He had called
one day for an authority for the quantity of the sec-
ond syllable of victoria. Of course he wanted the
passage in the Satires, but no one had it. He passed

THOMAS BENJAMIN HOBHOUSE.

163

rapidly a score or so. When it came to Hobbouse,
be rapt out, " Jamque manu viridem tendit victoria
palmam." Russell looked queer, and asked where it
was. Hobbouse answered, " Lucan." It was impos-
sible to stop tbe scbool and make a search, so Hob-
bouse took twenty places, and was in great delight,
boasting, however, not his memory but bis ready wit.
Russell no doubt felt himself grossly imposed upon,
but he bad to let it pass.

The Toryism of those days relied much on the
army. Besides an old and natural alliance, it had
then the bond of a great necessity, for there was
hardly an institution of the country that could have
stood as it was without the aid of physical force.
Military glory was then all the glory possible ; at
least all that was recognized. Even Hobbouse shared
this enthusiasm. With much solemnity he and I
one day tried the Sortes Biblicce. It was, I fear, the
only time I opened my Bible that term. The seventh
verse, in the first column, in the first, that is the left-
hand page, was to be decisive. My verse made me
unmistakably a man of war, with multitudes of men
and horses at my command. Hobbouse's as clearly
made him a man of peace. He was thoroughly dis-
gusted, and did not try it again.

Hobhouse left Charterhouse before me, and went
to a private tutor, I think Arnold. Then he came to
Baliol, and soon made bis appearance in the Union.
I was told to my surprise and concern that he was
drinking too much, and that he primed himself for
speaking, in which, however, be had not much suc-
cess. His mind was still running on the Criminal
Code, and he had resolved to make a stand some-
where, for he put up, " The Necessity of retaining

164

REMINISCENCES.

Capital Punishment for Murder." I went, and there
was a large muster.

Hobhouse rose with a slip of paper in his hand,
which he kept flourishing in his usual nervous man-
ner. He felt quite easy and confident in supporting
the proposition before the meeting, because it rested
on a natural and immutable foundation. If people
chose to divide land and to build houses ; to make
goods and chattels and to coin money, then we had
to see that they did not encroach too much on com-
mon right, and exceed the bounds of humanity in
protecting from man the rights which man had made.
But your life was a natural and inalienable property,
and in this case the danger was not lest you should
guard it too much, but lest you should not guard it
enough. The most precious of possessions had to be
protected by the greatest of penalties. That was
equal and fair. But he would go to the oldest of
all law books, the foundation of all jurisprudence.
There was a good deal in that book which was lim-
ited to place, time, and circumstance, but there was
no place, time, or circumstance to limit the charac-
ter of murder, or the justness of the penalty. He
wished with all his heart England had followed the
law of the Bible in its mercy, and he therefore had
the less hesitation in appealing to its justice. The
ancient and eternal law of the Bible in the case of
murder had been expressly delivered to save mankind
from reverting to its former stage of violence.

He had taken care to write it. Nothing could be
more express, and it took no lawyer to explain it.
" Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by him shall man's
blood be shed." The roar of laughter that followed
this enunciation only stirred Hobhouse to greater

THOMAS BENJAMIN HOBHOUSE. 165

earnestness. He did not expect to have the Bible
laughed at in a company of gentlemen, least of all at
Oxford. He had always respected it, even if he had
not read it as much as he might. "Well, but the
text ? " they called out. " Call it a text if you like.
It is a law binding on all the world. Here it is, and
I wish all laws were as plain : " Whoso sheddeth
man's blood, by him shall man's blood be shed."
"Read, read, read," they cried out. So he took the
paper, stretching it out with both hands, and read it
again, with a pause before every word, and a tremen-
dous emphasis on the words "by him." "Whoso,
sheddeth, man's, blood, by him, shall, man's blood,
be shed." But he was again drowned with laughter,
when a friend took the paper away from him and
pointed out his mistake. " You all knew what I
meant," he exclaimed. " Then why did n't you say
it ? " " What signifies the mistake of a word ? "
" But it does signify who is to have the right to kill
us all." When the storm had subsided, Hobhouse
went on with his speech, and made a good finish.

In due time he went into Parliament, was member
for Chatham for some years, afterwards for Lincoln ;
spoke occasionally and well, but not to much pur-
pose ; was very unpopular in the House, and, in ef-
fect, did nothing.

CHAPTER XXVI.

GEORGE ROBERT MARRIOTT.

George Robert Marriott, the other candidate
from Charterhouse, and from my own house there,
was the son of a Chairman of the Middlesex Sessions
well known in society. He was a cousin of Charles
"Marriott, not yet come to Oxford. He must always
have had a hard battle for life, for he was very small
and slight, and he had a strangely malformed head.
So little breadth was there across the temples, and
such a mass of fluffy hair that would not lie down,
that he was, not very appropriately, nicknamed
" Cocoanut."

Of the genius that takes the form of ready wit he
had more than all of us, and he was never at a loss.
Boy's wit is nothing if it be not sarcastic. Seeing
me making a map, he glanced over my work with the
words, Mai/', drap ov Kara Koafiov. I would have given
five shillings to have said it myself. Besides his wit
and his scholarship, he brought to our house a vast
knowledge of the London world, at least of a very
important part of it. At thirteen or fourteen he
knew all about all the courts of law, an utter mystery
to most country lads even up to man's estate. He
knew by name and character all the judges and lead-
ing lawyers. He talked familiarly of Lord Kenyon,
Judge Richardson, Sir John Bayley, " Fred Pollock,"
and many others I had never heard of.

GEORGE ROBERT MARRIOTT.

167

He was himself intended for the law. The father
had been compelled by failure of health, or physical
weakness, to limit his own ambition to a moderate
career ; he no doubt looked to the next generation to
retrieve his own shortcomings. He must have looked
with much hope on his precocious, spirited, nimble-
witted boy. Yet he could not have looked on his
long, narrow face without misgiving. Parents who
urge their children to rise in the world sometimes
succeed only in making them proud and discontented.
The child acquired a contempt for small and even for
struggling people ; for ladies who were their own
housekeepers, and who had been seen giving out sugar
to the servants ; for "pigging," as he expressed it, in
a cottage, and for humble associates. From mere
pride he was saucy in his food, and would not touch
rice-pudding with currants, because the boys at his
" totherum," that is his last school, had nicknamed it
fly-pudding. All knowledge he measured by its
power to raise a man in life, and to make him a figure
in the world.

His ambition, or his love of great people, made him
the slave and the toy of a very big fellow, the son of
a Cabinet Minister, in our house, who could do any-
thing with him, and be forgiven the minute after.
I once saw this fellow take up Marriott, and by main
strength lay him on a shelf, seven feet above the floor,
so narrow that had Marriott moved an inch he must
have rolled to the floor, most probably headforemost.
There the poor child lay for near half an hour,
entreating in vain to be tiiken down. At another
time his tormentor took him out of bed and hung
him by the heels out of a four-story window. The
people of the mews behind hearing cries and seeing

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REMINISCENCES.

something very extraordinary, carne round and rang
the bell. There was an inquiry next day, and Mar-
riott gave Dicken a very mild version of the affair
dictated by his tyrant.

At another time the latter had some oysters sent
him. They must have a supper. Marriott was
pressed to go out and buy a couple of pounds of
butter. Of course he would have to be flowed if he
were seen, but he only escaped that for a worse fate.
He brought the butter enveloped in cabbage leaves.
His friend put it to his nose. " Capital," he said,
" it seems cpaite fresh." " Only in this morning, they
assured me," said Marriott. " We'll have a jolly tuck
in," said the other. Whereupon he seized Marriott
as in a vise between his knees, and slapping the butter
hard down on his bushy poll, worked it into his hair,
till it became a foaming stream, blinding his eyes,
filling his nose, and saturating his clothing down to
the ground. After enduring this and a great deal
more, I should doubt whether Marriott ever got a
word or a line, or even a thought from his tormentor,
from the time that one went into the Foreign Office
and the other to Oriel.

Marriott could be obliging even when there was
nothing to be gained, and all in that house owe him a
debt of gratitude for his helping much to enliven its
dull hours. Will these debts ever be paid? Nay,
rather, how can they ever fail to be?

It was very soon found that Marriott could im-
provise stories. Accordingly, when the candles were
out and all were in bed, there arose the cry, " Now
Marriott, tell us a story." He started immediately
and well, but by the time he had got the travellers,
after a long journey, into a deep lane, with the moon

GEORGE ROBERT MARRIOTT.

1G9

sometimes showing itself, sometimes hidden, and the
sound of hoofs in the distance, he would fall asleep.
After a pause there was a cry, "Go on, go on! " with
vituperative comments, and a shower of missiles would
descend on him. He had utterly forgotten his story.
" Where was I ? " " In a dark lane, with the sound
of hoofs in the distance. Go on." Marriott would
take up the thread of his tale, till the most importu-
nate of his listeners had fallen asleep and he might
do the same.

When Marriott came to Oriel he became one of
a trio of constant friends, equally sharp-witted and
men of the world. The two others were Joseph
Richardson, son of the Judge, and Charles B. Pearson,
son of the Dean of Salisbury. I saw much of all
three. Richardson, taking pity on my shyness and
awkwardness, coached me through the first wine
party I had the courage to give. Some years after I
entertained him at Moreton Pinckney, gave him some
direction and information when he was going the
round of the county as Commissioner of Inquiry, into
the administration of the Poor Laws. I often think
of a saying of his at college, " Cut me in two, and
you'll find me a rotten apple." I believe I might
have said the same, but I was n't used to express
myself in that slapdash fashion. He died young,
attended by Tyler on his deathbed, and well reported
of by him.

Marriott was sadly disappointed at the result of the
Oriel election. Relying on our old familiarity he said
to me that it was a case of favoritism. " Why didn't
they let it be known they intended to elect you ? " I
was too sorry for him to say a word, for I knew it
was his only chance at Oxford. It was, however,

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partly his own fault. He could easily have taken a
first class, and in that case the college would have
found it difficult to pass him over. So, at least, I
think. He had a short and sad life, for in a few
years he went out of his mind, and in that state he
died.

CHAPTER XXVII.

WILLIAM DOBSON.

In the wake or these two Carthusians I take leave
to bring in a third as different as can be imagined, —
a being all smoothness, ease, and grace, without mal-
ice or guile, entirely destitute of ambition. William
Dobson had nothing to do with Oriel College, or
with any movement or cause, but he became Princi-
pal of Cheltenham College, the maker of that college
as some say ; and some even go further, the maker of
the town as it now is. Dobson came to Charterhouse
in 1822, from Richmond, then enjoying a high repu-
tation from being Canning's first school. Tate was
said to be a first-rate scholar. In that same year I
was appointed to teach a form.

Tliis will puzzle some readers. Russell had adopt-
ed the plan of mutual instruction, the Madras sys-
tem as it was called, imported into England by Dr.
Bell. It was supposed to be economical, by enabling
fewer masters to do the work, and accordingly we
had only eight masters for nearly five hundred boys ;
that is one to sixty boys. Some of the masters, too,
were little better than boys themselves. A boy had
to teach a form satisfactorily for at least six weeks if
he would rise from the fourth form to the third, and
the same condition was required for a rise from the
third to the second, and again from the second to the
first. If, as sometimes happened, as it did happen in

172

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my case, he did not teach very efficiently, he had to
teach a form another six weeks. I spent a whole
year in teaching and nothing else ; except paperwork.
Russell did not seem to think it a matter of serious
consideration that when an indifferent teacher was
remitted for a second trial, the unfortunate and guilt-
less form put under him had the largest share of the
punishment.

I found Dobson in my form, a very nice fellow of
thirteen, with black hair, dark eyes, well moulded,
mildly expressive features, and a soft pleasant voice.
Not two years before this, that is on returning from
the Long Vacation in 1820, I had just learnt the
Greek alphabet for the first time, and now I was to
take a form in the Iliad, and teach it critically too.
I very soon found that Dobson knew a great deal
more about it than I did ; or to speak more correctly,
that he knew a great deal, while I knew nothing. I
really felt it a providence. I kept him steadily at my
right hand. He coached me every word, every aorist,
every elision, every dialectic difference, matters on
which a scholar may make a volume out of the first
ten lines of the Iliad. All this he did quietly, con-
cisely, and clearly. After a consultation with Dob-
son every other line, I faced my form manfully, and
sustained the credit of my position. This went on
for two months, and they are an oasis in my life.

Some will ask how this could go on, and why did
I not report Dobson as fit for a higher form. No
teacher that I am aware of ever did that ; nor do I
think it was expected of him. The masters of the
lower school, dropping in now and then, and hearing
a lesson, were expected to manipulate the classes. It
was they who looked over the " exercises," and a good

WILLIAM DOBSON.

173

scholar might be idle out of school. This indeed was
the fashion. " Exercises " interfered with games and
conversation. There was a certain selfish, designing
look in extra care given to them, as if a boy was try-
ing in that way to steal a march on his school-fellows.
But here was Dobson, I am quite sure, fit for the first
form in 1822. By Easter, 1823, I was in the first
form, and Dobson down among the dolts and dum-
mies of all sorts in the lower school. At Easter, 1824,
he was still only in the third form, where I find his
name close to that of R. A. Reynolds, who had such
a row with Lord Cardigan. What could he be doing
all that time, and what could his masters be about ?
He and I became friends, not that we had very much
to say to one another, for he was just a schoolboy and
not much more.

It is plain he ought to have been taken by the
hand and seated in tlie higher room. His example
brings out the fault of the system as concerned the
lower school, while the upper school had quite as se-
rious faults of its own. At Cambridge Dobson was
First Class, and became Fellow of Trinity.

When the present Bishop of Truro had been some
time Head Master of Wellington College, he was de-
sired by the governors to make inquiries on certain
points at other large schools. He came to Chelten-
ham, and was pleased with the Principal. lie was
particularly anxious to know the spiritual and moral
relations of the Principal to the scholars. " That,"
said Dobson, " is the great advantage of my position.
I 've nothing to do with the boys out of school time.
The lessons over, I am a man at large." Benson
failed to appreciate this limited responsibility. Per-
haps he did not consider what it would be for the

174

REMINISCENCES.

Principal to have a hand in the theological imbroglio
of the place.

Dobson however could enjoy ease, and no doubt his
nature required it. When Cheltenham, upon his re-
tirement, offered him the choice of a testimonial, he
did not ask for a service of plate, but for a hand-
some and comfortable brougham and pair. The town,
however, must have his portrait, and it would have
been a pity if so handsome a face had not been duly
perpetuated. I saw the full-length portrait at the
Royal Academy. It was a very good picture, and it
also showed that Dobson had at sixty or so the same
features, the same expression, the same complexion,
as at thirteen. But what would Russell have said ?
At Charterhouse every boy was bound to stand al-
ways in the "first position." To cross one's legs was
a high crime and misdemeanor. And here was
Dobson handed down to posterity crossing his legs
and leaning against a table.

I was myself the very opposite of Dobson, — no
scholar, but very ambitious and very desirous to grat-
ify my friends at home. It would have suited my case
to pay less attention to my exercises and more to the
preparation of my lessons. Had I done that I should
have remained longer in the lower school, and in the
lower forms of it. It would have been a trial to me
to be amongst boys of inferior intelligence, but that
one might have borne. Being "Monitor," too, in
my house would have made the lower classes less
tolerable.

One act I cannot remember without shame and
something like remorse. It must have been in the
hot summer time of 1821, when Russell unexpectedly
presented himself one afternoon in the lower school.

WILLIAM DOBSON.

175

It was fearfully hot and close. There were between
a dozen and twenty forms going on, and if, as was
likely, they were not being kept well in hand, they
were all talking. Russell proceeded to examine form
after form angrily, bestowing savage looks on the as-
sistant and under masters. The latter had been com-
plaining of the size of the forms, which were beyond
the control of the teachers.

Suddenly Russell strode to the desk, took a slate,
and by striking it against the desk several times gave
the usual summons to attention. He ordered the
whole school to form one long line, or rather queue,
round the room, about 350 boys. Beginning at the
top, be was rapidly dividing them into twenties.
Slow as I usually was, I was quicker than he on this
occasion, and found that I was the first of a twenty.
This would be no good to me, for I might be the last
of that twenty before the end of the day. To be the
first of a twenty was a step gained. A few days
before this I had bought in the streets a knife with a
dozen blades of one sort or another. I immediately
offered it to the next above me, if he would change
places. The poor fellow caught at the bait, and in
half a minute more I had gained a promotion. I
am quite sure it would have been better for myself at
least not to have interfered with Russell's process,
rough as it was.

If Sir William Fitzherbert, Bart., of Tissington
Hall, still lives and reads these words, he may re-
member the Jacob that got this much of his birthright
out of him.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

MEETINGS FOB THE STUDY OF SCRIPTURE.

In Michaelmas term, 1829, Newman and the other
Fellows and Probationers named or alluded to above
began to meet twice a week for the study of the
Scriptures. There had been various gatherings of
this sort at Oxford for some time, not very unlike
those which the Wesleys and their friends had held
exactly a century before, seemingly with little fore-
cast of the outcome. These meetings were bearing
their fruits in Oxford. About this time not less than
a dozen men of good University position and respect-
able abilities went out of the Church of England in
different directions, agreeing only in a hasty and
presumptuous opinion, as we may certainly call it,
that the Church of England was incurably wrong and
finally doomed. These seceders were so good in their
way ; so amiable ; so well-intentioned and single-
minded, as far as one could see without a close analy-
sis of character, and in some cases so distinguished,
that the loss was much felt, all the more because it
augured greater losses to come.

The choice of the subject for our meetings be-
longed rather to the time than to the men that made
it. Prophecy was much preached and written upon
in those days. For years before it had been debated
all over the land whether Napoleon or the Pope were
Antichrist, for one of them it must be, and the down-

MEETINGS FOR THE STUDY OF SCRIPTURE. 177

fall of the former had decided the question for, that
is against, the latter. It was everywhere held to be
of vital importance to have a right understanding on
this question, and Newman was doubtful. It was
decided, apparently without much forethought, to
read the Revelation of St. John with the best com-
mentators. I had Joseph Mede, but I did not make
much progress with his book, which is in Latin, nor
was I much called on. It served to impress on me
that there is a grammar of prophecy, a matter gen-
erally little known, or much overlooked.

The only conclusion come to, as far as I can re-
member, was that Antichrist was not the Church of
Rome, but Pagan Rome, the spirit of which survived
Paganism and the Empire, and, as it were, haunted
and partially possessed the Church, especially the
Roman Communion. It was the spirit of old Rome.
This was a comfort to me, because while I had never
been able quite to reject the great article of faith
held in those days as all but necessary to salvation,
that the Church of Rome is Antichrist, still I had an
insuperable repugnance to the notion for more rea-
sons than I could number here. My good friend Go-
lightly had often quoted the saying of some witty
Anglican divine, that " if the Church of Rome be not
Antichrist, she hath ill-luck to be so like him." For
the matter of that I reflected that Antichrist must be
expected to be not only like the Church of Rome, but
like Christ Himself, — nay, that Christ Himself had
been condemned for being so far like the Roman
Emperor as to pretend to take his place. The truth
is, likenesses have to be interpreted.

There was then hardly such a thing as Biblical
scholarship in the university. Of course it could

vol.. i. 12

178

REMINISCENCES.

have no place in the much crowded, much circum-
scribed preparation for the schools. Our Oriel tutors
gave exceptional attention to our New Testament
lectures, but these consisted almost entirely in our
construing the original and having occasionally to be
corrected on some point of mere scholarship. I re-
member being told, as an incident of that very morn-
ing, that the very learaed tutor of a neighboring
college had not opened his mouth once during the
whole '•' lecture," except to observe on the words
M Draw out now," in the miracle of Cana, " Whence
we may infer that the Jews used ' spigots.' " I leave
it to better scholars than myself to say whether the
inference be just, for I doubt it.

For the degree of M.A. and for all the degrees in
theology and in law there was then no more exami-
nation than there is for a bogus degree at Philadel-
phia. In point of fact they were bogus degrees and
nothing more. The Ilegius Professors of Divinity did
their best to revive theological studies, but when
Lloyd collected a private class it was to study the
history and original sources of our Prayer Book, and
when Burton took his place in that practice it was to
study Eusebius and the Primitive Church. When
any preacher went out of the text of Scripture it was
generally for some paradox or some oddity to strike
and fix the attention, or a sort of five minutes won-
der. Tyler had a decided turn for the picturesque
and quaint. To illustrate the absolute sanctity with
which the Jews regarded the Temple, he quoted a
strange Rabbinical story. Along all the lines of the
cornice and roof there were wires in such complete
communication that not a sparrow could light on any
part without setting 6,000 small bells tinkling. As

MEETINGS FOR THE STUDY OF SCRIPTURE. 179

may be supposed, a responsive titter rose through St.
Mary's.

Newman might be supposed to have really believed
the English translators inspired, for any critical com-
ment he ever made on the Authorized Version : as if
he would rather have every defect in it implicitly
swallowed than that it should be made the sport of
scholarship such as scholarship was in those days. It
is true the Authorized Version was being frequently
questioned, as it had been all last century, by well-
known divines. Even village preachers, after reading
some disquisition on a corrected text, would air their
newly-acquired scholarship to the poor rustics before
them. But the practice was discountenanced by seri-
ous people of all schools.

In one respect there was a great difference between
Newman and Keble, Froude occupying a point be-
tween them. All three had the same strong antipa-
thy to the moral tone ostentatiously displayed by
many men of science, flattering themselves that they
had beaten "Revelation" out of the field. Froude
was too ardent for all real science not to stand up for
its right to its own just conclusions. Keble, on the
contrary, once had an argument with Buckland on a
coach-top all the way from Oxford to Winchester, in
which he finally took his stand on the conceivability
and indeed certainty of the Almighty having created
all the fossils and other apparent outcomes of former
existences in the six days of Creation.

Newman at that time had nothing to say to any
such physical questions. Yet he could not but be
stirred by the vulgarity of the triumphant savans.
The British Association brought a number of Cam-
bridge men to Oxford. Buckland, always coarse, was

180

REMINISCENCES.

emboldened to unwonted profaneness. A very dis-
tinguished Cambridge professor having to deliver a
lecture to the ladies in the Radeliffe Library, con-
gratulated them on the thirst for knowledge they had
inherited from their great-grandmother Eve. Oxford
men in those days were rather jealous of Cambridge
men. It is not so now, when any Cambridge man is
as welcome at Oxford as a sea-lion or a chimpanzee
in the metropolis. This jealousy, of course very
unreasonable in itself, led to a general suspicion of
Cambridge men. Froude, writing from abroad, says,
" How these Cambridge men quote one another ;
such a one's lectures, such a one's articles, etc." The
result on the occasion just mentioned was a deep
disgust at the Cambridge invasion. Let each Uni-
versity have its own and take its own course New-
man felt.

At that time the course of Oxford was plain.
Newman so often spoke of Laud as seeing and hear-
ing all that was going on, and actually walking about
Oxford, that he seemed to realize it as a fact. At all
events, Why not? Who could possibly say that
Laud was not there, as well as all the good men who
had fought the good fight of faith at Oxford since its
foundation. It is impossible to disprove such beliefs,
and hardly wise to question them.

Yet the argument must have its reasonable limits.
At my own table once, an unhappy gentleman, not
in his right mind, handed to the servant the plate of
mutton he had just been helped to with the words,
" Take that to the poor old man at the back door."
His brother in charge of him exclaimed, " Now you
know there is no old man at the back door." " How
can you possibly tell there is not an old man at the

MEETINGS FOR THE STUDY OF SCRIPTURE. 181

back door?" the poor lunatic rejoined; and there
was no reply, none at least that he could have appre-
hended.

Up to this time, that is to the end of 1829, all was
going on smoothly between the four tutors, that is,
Dornford, Newman, Wilberforce, and Fronde, and
Hawkins the newly-elected Provost. Newman, be-
sides being a tutor, was parish priest and preacher;
a great reader, and a writer on rare occasions. If I
may say it, the relation of tutor led the way. New-
man was first tutor, then preacher and pastor, then
writer. Charity begins at home, and the home in
this case was the room in which then, and for many
years, Newman had quiet talks with his younger
friends.

The reader must excuse an illustration from
natural history. I once put out a mare to grass in
Blenheim Park for the Long Vacation, and had some
talk with the people there. The horses, some hun-
dreds of them, divided themselves into herds of about
forty head. In every instance the nucleus was a
mare and foal. A new horse would be sure to attach
himself to them, and so the ball would grow.

The interest felt by Newman for his pupils and by
his pupils for him was contagious, for young men are
certain to find out quickly who really cares for them
and has interests in common with them. There were
plenty of college tutors in those days whose relation
to the undergraduates about them was simply official
and nominal. Newman stood in the place of a father,
or an elder and affectionate brother. There were
indeed intractable subjects at Oriel, as there are every-
where, but some of those very men became in after
years repentant and ardent admirers.

182

REMINISCENCES.

His pupils would generally agree in the recollec-
tion that the best work he did with them was in pri-
vate, in conversation, in revising the essays of biog-
raphies he had sent them. From the most ancient
times there had come down the practice of " dispu-
tations " and " themes," the former upon questions
admitting of an affirmative and a negative side.
These exercises, as may be supposed, were mostly
done in a vei'y perfunctory manner. Newman asked
much more than this from those who were at all
willing to work for him. But whatever the exercise,
his first care was that the pupil should know what he
intended to say, and what his words stood for. Find-
ing, for example, the expression "principal of evil"
in one of my compositions, he pressed hard for an ex-
planation of what I meant by it, whether a person or
thing, and what was the nature of the evil.

Of " verse," in whatever language, he was a severe
ci'itic, and had a fastidious ear. After one of the
first examinations for the " Ireland," Keble, one of
the examiners, lamented to find so much scholarship
and so little poetry, and this was very much New-
man's view of the scholarship of the day.

Newman entered early into University office. He
was examiner in the Classical School in 1827 and
1828 ; he was a Pro-proctor for a year. There was
before him, in all human likelihood, a high University
career, with its usual consequences in the larger field
of the Church.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE " EVANGELICAL " SCHOOL.

The religious state of the country, prior to the
Oxford movement, is a matter upon which more and
more questions are asked, and more and more an-
swers given with increasing positiveness. The younger
people are, the more they think they know about it.
But even the oldest must speak with diffidence, for
they speak from expei'ienee, and experience cannot
but be local and personal. However, a moderate
observer and inquirer may contribute a lai'ge body of
recollections on this point. I believe I could, but
space only admits of a few. My own deep impression
at that time, left on me by all I saw and heard, was
there was a good deal of religion in the country at
the beginning of this century, but that it had little
opportunity of showing itself, or of taking concerted
action for any good purpose ; that the High Church
found its scope in the regular exercise of the pastoral
office, and the Low Church in preaching its peculiar
tenets, and in meetings and demonstrations of one
sort or another.

The difference of practice was quite as wide and
distinct as the difference of doctrine. The High
Church clergyman was seen daily in his parish ; he
was visiting sick folk, or calling upon the genteeler
ones ; once in the thoroughfares he met everybody
and exchanged a word with everybody. There was

18-t

REMINISCENCES.

no appearance of pressing business about him ; he
was not bound to an appointment, booked for a meet-
ing, or on his way to a coach-office. He might some-
times seem to be at an idle end, and even too ac-
cessible. But you saw him. If you wished, you had
a talk with him ; and if you wished more, a serious
talk. He was well read, that is in comparison with
his ordinary parishioners. He would sometimes be a
polemic, and if so a peppery one. He would have
small quarrels, and would look on dissenters invidi-
ously and helplessly, not knowing what to do about
them, and finding vent for wounded susceptibilities in
peevish expressions. When Sunday came he delivered
a cut and dried sermon ; if he was a big fellow and
had a strong voice, ore rotundo ; if not, in a monot-
onous tone, as much as to confess that what he was
saying was hardly worth your attention. Yet there
were very good and very energetic High Church
preachers in those days, but most of them were in
rural districts.

In the prevalent estimate of the clergy of that
period and of the preceding century, they are most
unfairly charged with what they could not possibly
help. It was not their fault that thousands of livings
were without parsonages, and with incomes so small
as not to admit of building or even of renting. It
was not their fault that non-residence was almost the
rule in some districts, and that even the pastoral
duties of which all clergymen are capable and which
are always welcome, were discharged intermittingly
and cursorily. It was not their fault if the church
fabrics fell into disorder and even decay. It was not
the fault of the clergy generally that bishops and
dignitaries made fortunes, and used their patronage

THE " EVANGELICAL " SCHOOL.

185

for private purposes. There was a broad line between
the rich and the poor clergy in those days ; but in
truth the poor clergy represented the Church, the
rich clergy her oppressors and plunderers. Never-
theless, whether rich or poor, there were scattered
here and there many who did their duty under in-
creasing difficulties. The public are plentifully in-
formed of those who went about preaching and speak-
ing ; who started movements, whose lives furnished
events, and who cooperated with many like-minded
men. But it is only in local or family traditions that
they live who did their work, that is their bounden
duty, quietly at home, and were better known among
their own cottagers than in strange churches, town
halls, and newspapers. It was the High Churchman
who was pastor. The two things went together
naturally, for the High Churchman assumed all in
his parish to be his flock, all to be Christians, all
on the road to heaven, though requiring much help,
guidance, and stimulus. Of course he had to work
quietly. There was no one to report or publish his
talk. His best things were said to one at a time. A
hard day's work would not be known even to the
next parish. Talking daily with poor country people
he became more and more like them, for we all grow
like those we are most with. His sympathies preyed
on his purse as well as his strength, and after a long
spell of this work, even an able man would become fit
for it and for nothing more.

The part of Evangelical preacher was the very
opposite of all this. The great mass of the people
committed to his care he assumed to be utterly bad
or hopelessly good, that is hopelessly trusting to good
works ; or perhaps waiting for the day and hour

186

REMINISCENCES.

when the Divine call was to reach, them. Anyhow,
he could discard them altogether from his considera-
tion. He had delivered his message and that was
enough, for hiin at least. He could thus reserve his
attention for a few, and would naturally consult his
tastes and preferences in the selection. Relieved thus
from the dull reiteration of house to house work,
and from close parochial duty generally, he became
mobilized. He preached and heard preaching ; he
spoke from platforms and heard speeches ; he came
across missionaries, philanthropists, and the flying
staff of societies. He saw something of the higher,
richer, and more educated classes. He was in the
world, and he daily acquired more and more of that
knowledge and of those manners that in the world
make the chief difference between one man and an-
other. The Evangelical preacher very soon discov-
ered that his vocation was not in cottages and hovels,
or in farm-houses, or in garrets and cellars far up or
down, in dirty lanes and courts. Very soon, too, did
he discover his own great spiritual superiority to the
rank and file of the Church, consigned to the only
drudgery the}' were capable of.

These clergymen were known, while the others
were unknown. Evangelical preachers were an-
nounced and paraded. The corners of the streets
and the newspapers proclaimed their appointments
and invited listeners from all quarters. They sought
the most capacious and best situated churches, and
long before the Oxford movement rich partisans were
fast buying up the most important pulpits for them.

The doctrine thus everywhere preached was simple
enough. Its fortunate discoverers and propagators
rejoiced in its simplicity. Simple I say it must have

THE " EVANGELICAL " SCHOOL.

187

been, for it excluded everything else. You were to
be quite sure not only that you had received a special
revelation that Jesus Christ died for yon in par-
ticular, but also that your salvation was now such a
certainty as to place you above all further anxiety.
You might have your faults, but you were saved.
Your neighbors might have their virtues, but want-
ing this personal assurance, they were not saved.
They were not even one step on the way to salvation.

I sat myself under this sort of preaching for many
years of my boyhood and early youth, indeed up to
my ordination, whenever I joined the family circle at
Derby, and I feel certain that the impression I ac-
quired of it is sufficiently grounded. I feel that all
the more because I liked some of the preachers per-
sonally, and much respected others whom I had not
the opportunity of liking more. The impression of
the system on my mind, after many years of such ser-
mons, nay thousands of such sermons, with hardly
any relief whatever, was that it put the character of
Jesus Christ entirely out of account, and that it re-
duced the Sermon on the Mount, all the discourses of
our Lord, and all the moral arguments and exhorta-
tions of St. Paul and other Apostles, to mere carnali-
ties that no real Christian need have anything to do
with. All that is tender, all that is touching, all that
appeals to our higher and nobler feelings, all that by
which Jesus Christ is the object of unbounded love
and adoration even to those who shrink from the at-
tempt to fathom the mystery of His being, was
thrown aside, behind I should rather say, trampled
upon, as likely to lead us astray from the real point
at issue, namely, whether we ourselves are personally
saved to our own certain knowledge.

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As to the effect of this preaching, repeated Sunday
after Sunday, it was simply none. Hundreds of times
have I looked round on a congregation specially moral
and respectable — for it had none of the political ele-
ment to be found in the principal church, and none
of the operative element to be found in no church at
all — to see how they took the final and irreversible
sentence of eternal doom sounded continually in their
ears. As often as not everybody was asleep, except
a few too stupid to be ever quite awake or quite
asleep. The sermon was brutum fulmen. Human-
ity and common sense revolted against such teaching,
and it could really no more reach the understanding
than so many letters of the alphabet shaken out of a
bag upon a table. A fanatic indeed may swallow
what a sane man and a good man will not ; but we
were not fanatics there.

CHAPTER XXX.

TWO CLERGYMEN OF THE PERIOD.

DURING all the period I speak of, which extended
from the Battle of Waterloo to the Reform Bill, there
were two clergymen at Derby placed by their circum-
stances far above the rest. Charles Stead Hope was
in all respects a big man, with a sonorous voice, a
commanding manner, and a quick temper. He was
of good family and undeniably a gentleman. He
held both the corporation churches, All Saints with
little income, and the better living of St. Alkmund's
to eke it out. He was a High Churchman after the
fashion of that day, and a Tory of course. Old mem-
bers of his congregation noted, without a murmur,
that they heard the same sermon very often. He
could, however, write a good sermon, and his power-
fid utterance made every word tell.

He had one great occasion, and as it resulted from
a combination of events for which history can pre-
sent few parallels, I will relate them as they bore on
one another. In June 1817, there was a rising of
poor stockingers and handloom weavers in the north
of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, very like some
former outbreaks. The men had no work, or wages
they could not live on. Though simple, they could
read the papers, and their leader had made an impor-
tant improvement in his machine. They believed
that their misery was owing to high taxation and cor-

190

EE.MIXISCEXCES.

rupt government. These indeed were the universal
topics of the day. A band of these men, never
amounting to a hundred, some armed with pikes and
swords, went about demanding bread and arms ; and
they seem to have thought that they might be strong
enough in a few days to march upon Derby or Notting-
ham, where, they were told, the soldiers would not fire
on them. Coming to a farm-house, and being refused
what they asked for, the leader shot a man through
the kitchen window. Already the wildest rumors had
been circulated as to their designs, and this made the
matter look very serious. The most serious part of
it, however, was that the population of Derby gener-
ally, and most of the people interested in trade and
manufacture, heartily agreed with the insurgents,
only differing from them as to the means to be em-
ployed. Charles S. Hope was Mayor, and immedi-
ately took the proper measures for the defence of the
town, calling up the Yeomanry and the Militia, swear-
ing in constables, and patrolling the approaches. The
insurgents were surprised and routed by the Hussars
from Nottingham, but were lodged in Derby jail.
A special Commission was issued, and opened at
Derby in October. The trial, however, did not take
place till the middle of November. The grand jury
had already, at the previous assizes, returned true bills
on the indictment for high treason against all the
men. Meanwhile the whole town was very much
moved. The charge of high treason was trumped up,
people said, for political effect. The leader, it was
true, was a fanatic and talked nonsense, but the rest
were workmen and wanted bread. The Liberal party,
which included the corporation generally, had the
mortification of witnessing two serious desertions

TWO CLERGYMEN OF THE PERIOD.

191

from their ranks. One of these was Copley, after-
wards Lord Lyndhurst, who had now taken a brief
from the Crown. The other was William Jeffery
Lockett, clerk of the peace for the county. He was
the leading lawyer of the town, a tall, grave figure,
Avith very marked and prominent features, and a per-
fectly sallow complexion. Pie had been a correspond-
ing member of the French Revolutionary Convention.
He was known to be at heart a kind and generous
man. But he was now to be solicitor for the Crown.
He lived next door to us, and I now often saw him
and Copley walking arm in arm ; himself the taller,
solemn and saturnine ; Copley bright, ruddy, and mer-
curial. The trial once begun did not take very long.
Denman exhausted his eloquence in vain, but deeply
impressed all hearers. The facts were undeniable ;
one or two guns and some newly-cast bullets in stock-
ings, were produced and handed about the court. So,
too, some strangely-written proclamations. An ex-
ample must be made. The leader and two others
were sentenced to be executed after the barbarous old
fashion. When the warrant came down it was found
that His Royal Highness had graciously remitted the
"drawing and quartering." A week was given them
to prepare. The day before the execution I and my
older brother went to the blacksmith's to see the in-
struments ; a ponderous axe, a small and handy one,
and a large knife, all beautifully finished, and sharp
as a razor. We tried the edges on our fingers. When
the morning came, all good people, whether as a pro-
test or in mere disgust, were to keep indoors. But
there was still an undefined hope of some intervention,
not probable, hardly possible in those days. The ex-
ecution was fixed for twelve ; the London mail was

192

REMINISCENCES.

to come in at eleven. As the clocks struck, it drove
up in the middle of the town. There was no reprieve,
but the Princess Charlotte with her babe was dead.
Iu a few minutes everybody in the town knew it, and
everybody asked whether it was possible the execu-
tion should take place after that. But there was no
possibility of stopping it. My father, after some
changes of mind, felt it a public duty to witness what
no doubt would be variously described. There was
a vast crowd. The hangman's work was then a very
ordinary business and made no sensation. There was
then a long pause. One of the poor creatures was
lowered, and something was done behind a low screen.
In matter of fact a young London surgeon did the
work with a knife. A grim fellow then stood up, and
raised high with both his hands the head of the chief
criminal pronouncing thrice in different directions
" the head of a traitor." At that hideous spectacle
the whole crowd, with a confused cry of horror, reeled
and staggered back several yards, surging against the
opposite houses. My father came home sick and faint.
For many days, after the small shop windows con-
tained coarse and vivid representatives of the scene.
We had a memento of the execution alwavs in sight.
Mr. Lockett soon after considerably enlarged and
beautified his house, throwing out a handsome stone
portico. It was speedily named " Brandreth's Gal-
lows," after the unhappy ringleader.

The terrible news of the morning seemed the end
of all things, so completely had the foreground of
hope been occupied by the newlj-married pair. No-
body knew with what expectation to fill the gap.
The Duke of York was Tory enough, but the Liberals
had now no fear of him. What else was there ?

TWO CLERGYMEN OF THE PERIOD.

193

Though the deceased Princess had taken her mother's
side, none knew how to estimate her loss in the polit-
ical reckoning. Only thus much was certain ; the
dynasty was now in peril.

In less than a fortnight followed the funeral. There
was to be one service, late in the evening, for the
whole town at All Saints. The corporation met at
the Town Hall, and went in procession with a long
train of flambeaux, headed by Hope, both Mayor and
Vicar. The crowd rushed in with them, and the
church, a very large one, was immediately a sea of
heads still heaving and eddying. I remember seeing
my own schoolmaster, Edward Higginson, the Unita-
rian pastor and teacher of the Strutts, beckoning to
friends and clambering over the pews. The best
lighting in those days was gloomy and fitful. But
one could see the town was there. Many indeed
heard that day their first and last sermon. Hope was
almost the only Tory in the corporation, and he had
just taken a strong side for the powei's that be. The
past was full of sores ; the future a very blank. He
had all the world before him. A man of greater
genius or inventive power might have failed. He
rose to the occasion, and seemed quickened by the
sense of difficulties. This was a blow that fell equally
on the whole nation, on all classes and parties, that
confounded all calculations, and united all in the
common sense of an inscrutable visitation. I was
just eleven when I heard the sermon, and the feeling
of national prostration it left on me has not wholly
departed to this day.

The temptations of such a position are obvious,
otherwise they that are in the world, and have to use
the world, would not be so emphatically warned not

194

REMINISCENCES.

to abuse it. I believe the clerical Mayor, who, it
should be considered, was surrounded by open foes as
well as candid friends, was said to be too free with
his tongue, and to sit too long at the table on con-
vivial occasions.

There are those who would say at once there is no
more to be said about such a person. Yet there are
simple tests to which even the discharge of the minis-
terial office is liable. There can be no just claim to
spirituality when there is no action or appearance at
all. Even when there is both appearance and action
we have to look sharp to our definition of spirituality
before we can say positively it is not there. We
have to be quite sure what spirituality is. The High
Church Vicar was always in the presence of his peo-
ple. I could not walk through the heart of the town
without it being more than an equal chance that I
met him somewhere between his two churches, or in
their neighborhood. He could not walk ten yards
without exchanging greetings, or fifty yards without
being stopped for a talk. This was early and late,
for I often saw him walking through the town before
breakfast with a garden tool in his hands. There
was no man or woman in the whole town who was
not familiar with the rather imposing figure of " Old
Hope,'* or " Charley Hope," as the older ones called
him. He resided constantly in his only parsonage in
one of his churchyards, just under the church tower.
He noticed my brother James and recognized him
again and again from the time my brother was barely
two years old. It was a case of mutual admiration.
In my oldest recollections of Derby I see him moving
along the thoroughfares, and hear him thundering
the Commandments from the altar of Gibbs* largest

TWO CLERGYMEN OF THE PERIOD. 195

and handsomest church. I see him laying, with ma-
sonic rites, the first stone of St. John's, the first
entirely new church built in Derby after the Refor-
mation. Well, there is something here, even if it be
matter to be well sifted.

Now for the Evangelical counterpart. This was
the Vicar of St. Werburgh's throughout the same
period, and for many years after. He was a nominee
of Lord Eldon, as a good many other Evangelical
clergymen were. He resided in a pretty villa, sur-
rounded by extensive grounds, out of his parish, and
a good step out of the town. I am certain that neither
I nor anybody else ever saw him in his parish except
when he drove in to take part in the Sunday services,
or upon some very special occasion. He knew abso-
lutely nothing of his parishioners.

At the time of the Irish Famine of 1825, or some
like occasion a little after that date, there came an
urgent appeal to the ministers and churchwardens to
canvas at their own houses those parishioners who
were at all likely to contribute. It had been appre-
hended that a collection in church would not produce
much. My father was churchwarden. He took care
to provide himself with a list. However, it was
proper to suppose that the Vicar had one of his own.
My father asked to see it before starting on the round.
The Vicar drew a dirty slip of paper from his pocket
and opened it. There were about twenty names.
The first three or four had been dead long ago ;
others had left the parish. There were not more
than three or four to the good. The paper had evi-
dently been made out at the Vicar's induction into
the living many years before, and he had never cor-
rected it or made another.

196

REMINISCENCES.

Of course he had curates ; but the whole matter of
these curates, their selection, their management, the
doctrine they were to preach, and all they had to do,
he deputed to a wealthy tradesman of the strongest
and bitterest M Evangelical " principles. Being a man
of business, and so far a man of the world, with much
natural shrewdness, this Gaius of Derbe, as his friends
called him, made a good selection within his own lines,
and entirely escaped the unhappy selections which
the best clergymen are apt to make. But if these
men had wished to preach the Bible or the Prayer
Book, they would not have been allowed to do it.
This censor sat over them, and if their tone had once
faltei'ed into mercy and grace, they would have been
sure to hear of it.

What they preached under this dire compulsion
was nothing more than the coarse blasphemies of the
market-place put into longer words and strung into
sentences. It meant about as much as what the fel-
lows say in the streets, and was taken at that value
by the generally sleeping congregation. It may be
said that this was an exceptional instance, but it is
not my own experience that it was exceptional, nor
is that the result of the inquiries which even then I
was making.

It was openly avowed that this was not the doctrine
of the Praj'er Book. A hundred times did I hear,
" I don't go by the Prayer Book. I go by the Bible,"
the fact being that the one was treated much in the
same way as the other. When a chapel of ease, not
then with a district, was built in the parish, a clergy-
man of these opinions and of a good county family
took it, as he proudly avowed, because it did not in-
volve baptisms, burials, and marriages, none of which

TWO CLERGYMEN OF THE PERIOD.

197

services he could conscientiously perform. Of course,
too, in the same view of pastoral duty, he had no oc-
casion to enter any house or exchange a word with
anybody, except in his own theological circle. Gen-
erally speaking, the Evangelical theory was held to re-
lieve the clergyman of his pastoral duties altogether.
All he had to do was to declare his message every
Sunday. They who accepted it were saved ; they who
did not were damned. That concluded the matter.
What more could he say or do ? The younger and
more active clergymen of the school were to be seen
flourishing about everywhere and heard everywhere,
except in their own parish. When heard of in their
own parish it was not among the weak and maimed
lambs of the flock, not among the aged, sick, and
dying.

In the year 1827, I was told by a Fellow of St.
John's, Cambridge, as a simple matter of fact, that
Simeon, the prophet of the school, having the charge
of an important parish in that town, gave up the
whole pastoral work to Robinson, afterwards Arch-
deacon. Robinson, in his turn, and for the same rea-
son, namely, a feeling that his call was rather to preach-
ing and committee work, passed on the whole pastoral
duty to another clergyman. This other clergyman
found pastoral duty as little in his line as did his su-
periors, and the result was the whole pastoral charge
of a paiish for which three clergymen were thus an-
swerable, was consigned with a small gratuity to a
very humble member of one of the college choirs.

Yet I know well there are men who stand on the
Prayer Book and yet are untrue to it ; and in like
manner there are men who can be happily untrue to
the most foolish dogma ever invented by man. There

198

REMINISCENCES.

is that which never fails, notwithstanding the changes
of appearance and form. Ten years ago, one winter's
day, I stood by the bedside of a village patriarch more
than ninety years of age. He had cleaned the shoes
of a Rector who had been Fellow of Oriel in the mid-
dle of last century. Finding him cheerful and seem-
ingly stronger than usual, I took the opportunity to
ask what he remembered of old times. " Was the
world better now than he knew it eighty years ago ?"
He collected his thoughts and said solemnly, u There
were bad people then and there are bad people now.
There were good people then and there are good peo-
ple now." That evening I was stepping out of a cot-
tage into the dark, and was awe-struck to hear a knell.
I thought of this or that, but becoming conscious of
some one nearing me from the village, I asked whom
the bell was tolling for. It was for the old man who
had given me his dying testimony to the perpetuity
of the true Church.

CHAPTER XXXL

COLLEGE COURTS.

Before the impending dispute on the tuition,
Newman, Froude, and Wilberforce — it was hard to
say which took the lead in it — tried a revival which
was at least very agreeable to the younger Fellows.
It might be called the sweet infancy of the " Oxford
movement." Oriel College has estates and manors
within easy distance of Oxford. It certainly was ad-
visable that as many of the Fellows as possible should
have some acquaintance with this property.

Some of them had a great deal to learn about agri-
cultural affairs. It was long after this that a Fellow
of the college, being driven over Salisbury Plain, was
so scandalized at the operation of paring the turf,
burning it, and spreading the ashes for manure, that
he got into a warm argument with his driver, and
finished by denouncing the act as a sin against the
majesty of nature and the ordinances of God.

The Provost was the only college official who
could be called permanent. The senior Treasurer
might give up his fellowship any day, before he had
learnt his duty. The visitation of the estates and the
holding of the manor courts, if held at all, was left
to the Provost and the Treasurer, perhaps more
generally to the professional steward. Yet all the
Fellows, from time to time, were called on to vote
upon questions of rent, renewals, fines, rebuildings,
or what not.

200

REMINISCENCES.

I remember that at some college meeting at the
Provost's house, he entered the room with a document
in his hand, observing that he had just concluded a
matter dating from about the Reformation, — he gave
the very date. Of course it was a lease on lives, and
this would be the determination of a lease that had
run for three centuries. None of the Fellows seemed
to know more about the matter than I did. This
alone would show how much depends on the life of
the Head of a College, happily so often almost pre-
ternaturally prolonged. Perhaps the little revival I
am now speaking of might be ascribed chiefly to the
comprehensive idea of restoring the college to its old
form and old ways. However that might be, the
Provost, half a dozen of the Fellows, and the steward,
made some pleasant visitations.

The college was very proud of Wadley, near Far-
ingdon. At the beginning of last century, a gentle-
man who held it on an old lease from the college,
and had a freehold estate of his own adjoining, think-
ing the leasehold as good as freehold, built a large
family mansion upon it. This possibly led to the
college raising its fines for renewal. Anyhow there
ensued a lawsuit, the progress of which was watched
with much interest by all concerned in this sort of
property all over the kingdom. The decision was in
favor of the college, which celebrated a great victory.

In 1830 the mansion had been some time unoc-
cupied, except that it was occasionally used for Yeo-
manry and county balls. We held a court there.
The Provost and Fellows put up their horses at the
stables, roamed over the house, and opened the court
in the servants' hall. The business was not such as
to require a large attendance.

COLLEGE COURTS.

201

The Provost, however, had received applications
from a number of laboring men at Littleworth, a
hamlet on the property, asking for cottage gardens, or
pieces of land to cultivate as they pleased. As luck
•would have it, under the instigation of some local
agitator, they had used language which indicated a
theoretical right rather than an appeal to benevolence.
This promised sport. The Provost bad taken care to
invite the presence of spokesmen both at the manor
court and at the hamlet itself. The men presented
themselves, looking not very like laborers, but more
like outcasts from a town.

The Provost and senior Fellows had their case
ready. A laborer's best chance is wages. His time
and strength are due to his employer. Land above
the scale of a garden is an encumbrance. Who is to
pay rates and taxes upon it? What is to be done
when the holders increase and multiply ? It was
fortunate that neither Whately nor Bishop was there,
or the discussion, one-sided, would have lasted long
enough. The laborers could only repeat that they
would like some land to do what they pleased with,
and that they had been told manors were for the poor
as well as for the rich. Oriel College was a very
great body. It had taken Wadley House from the
builder. It could do anything.

From the court the college rode to the hamlet, a
couple of miles off. It was not a very natural looking
place. The people might have been squatters, specu-
lating on the generosity or forbearance of the college.
But the argument was resumed, and being reinforced
by numbers became rather loud at one or two wicket
gates.

Whether the college ever tried the experiment of

202

REMINISCENCES.

a little Ireland I cannot say, but some years after-
wards C. P. Eden, a Fellow of the college, devoted
himself to the building of a pretty little church at the
place. He had to go to Cambridge and fight a hard
battle with Simeon, whom he described as a Hebrew
of the Hebrews, but he finally secured the patronage
for the bishop, and Littleworth, which includes
Wadley, now makes a proper appearance in the
Clergy List.

The college held another court at a village beyond
Ensham, in the northwest of Oxfoi'dshire. There
was not much to be done, and there were no episodes
to enliven it or spin it out. Froude, and one or two
others, including myself, made their way up to the
bell-chamber of the church tower, in the hope of
finding old bells and quaint legends. The bells had
been recast two years before, and bore the date and
the names of the churchwardens. The port provided
at the village inn was not drinkable. Accordingly
two of the Fellows, neither the oldest and wisest nor
the youngest and leastwise, took the bottle, minished
by a single glass, filled it up from the contents of the
cruet-stand and the saltcellar, recorked it, shook it
well up, and left it for the next customer.

Had the college extended its visitation some
twenty miles northward, it might have held a court
where it was really wanted. A large village had be-
come a reproach, a nuisance, and an eyesore, from the
fact of anybody with the requisite amount of money
and impudence seizing on any bit of the common
he fancied, and building a cottage or a public-house
upon it. The main street of the village itself had
been twisted and constricted, and rendered dangerous
as well as dirty, by lawless fellows who did what they

COLLEGE COURTS.

203

liked, and could not be restrained because the only-
authority was the lord of the manor. This was Oriel
College, that never went near the place, and only
knew of the state of things through a clergyman who
had complained so long and so often that nobody
listened to him.

But we had many other riding expeditions. In his
earlier Oriel days Newman rode a good deal. The
use, and still more the possession of a horse, was then
one of the principal charms of a Fellowship. Froude
was a bold rider. He would take a good leap when
he had a chance, and would urge his friends to follow
him ; mostly in vain. Any one who has seldom been
on the back of a horse till the age of twenty-two had
better not try bull fences. The two elder Wilber-
forces, properly accoutred, rode to London and back,
or to the South Coast. It was possible in those days
to do either of these journeys on roadside turf, with
frequent commons and open heaths. Froude delighted
in taking his friends for a gallop in Blenheim Park,
to the no small peril of indifferent riders, for the
horses became wild, and went straight under the low
hanging branches of the wide-spreading oaks.

Newman rode well enough to come to no mishaps.
Besides taking his chance of the Oxford hacks, he
had for some time a rather dangerous animal, Klepper,
a pretty creature with Arab blood, which had been
brought over from Ireland by Lord Abercorn, then at
Christchurch. It was said that she had been bred in
small square enclosures, where she had to get her
living by picking up what she could on the rough
edges of the ground. In such a place, when she
chose to take a run, she had to turn at a sharp angle
every two hundred yards. The tendency remained,

204

REMINISCENCES.

and involved some strain on the rider's attention,
and nerve also. Newman had always a difficulty in
keeping her straight and saving himself from his
own momentum. Klepper became mine, and I lent
her one day to C. P. Eden, duly warning him of the
creature's dangerous tendency. On his first and last
attempt to ride her, he found himself lying, sadly
contused, on the turf of Burlington Green, and
Klepper nowhere in sight.

CHAPTER XXXII.

SOME CHARACTERS.

But what was Newman in the Oxford world at this
time ? How did he stand to his University surround-
ings, and how were they mutually affected ? His
appearance was not commanding to strangers. It
never was. Henry Wilberforce, from the first, used
to speak of him as 'O Me'yas, but he knew the inner as
well as the outer man. Newman did not carry his
head aloft or make the best use of his height. He
did not stoop, but he had a slight bend forwards,
owing perhaps to the rapidity of his movements, and
to his always talking while he was walking. His
gait was that of a man upon serious business bent,
and not on a promenade.

There was no pride in his port or defiance in his
eye. Though it was impossible to see him without
interest and something more, he disappointed those
who had known him only by name. They who saw
for the first time the man whom some warm admirer
hud described in terms above common eulogy, found
him so little like the great Oxford don or future pillar
of the Church, that they said he might pass for a
Wesleyan minister. John Wesley must have been a
much more imposing figure.

Robust and ruddy sons of the Church looked on
him with condescending pity, as a poor fellow whose
excessive sympathy, restless energy, and general

206

REMINISCENCES.

unfitness for this practical world would soon wreck
him. Thin, pale, and with large lustrous eyes ever
piercing through this veil of men and things, he
hardly seemed made for this world. Canon Bull
meeting him one day in the Parks, after hearing he
had been unwell, entreated him to spare what fibre
he had for a useful career. " No ordinary frame can
stand long such work as yours."

His dress — it became almost the badge of his
followers — was the long-tailed coat, not always very
new. There is a strong tendency in religious schools
to express themselves in outward foruiSj often from
the merest accident. It has been said that the long-
tailed coat — morning same as evening — which pre-
dominated at Oxford sixty years ago, was a tradition
of the Eton Oppidans ; and it was so long kept up
by the new Oxford school as to be likely to become
as permanent as the distinctive garb of the Quakers.
Newman, however, never studied his "get up," or
even thought of it. He had other uses for his in-
come, which in these days would have been thought
poverty.

When the Duke of Wellington had come forward
to form a Ministry, at any cost of trouble or risk of
failure, on the occasion of an unexpected breakdown
of the Whigs, Keble, Froude, and other Oxford
Tories got up a subscription for a statue of Welling-
ton to be given to the University. The appeal was
not responded to by the country clergy as Froude
thought it ought to be, and a bust was now all that
could be hoped for. Newman took the part of the
clergy. " They can't afford it," he said. Froude
replied, " They can do with one coat less a year."
" Perhaps they are doing that already, and can now
do no more," Newman answered.

SOME CHARACTERISTICS.

207

It became the fashion of the party to despise so-
lemnity of manner and stateliness of gait. Newman
walked quick, and, with a congenial companion,
talked incessantly. George Ryder said of him that
when his mouth was shut it looked as if it never
could open ; and when it was open it looked as if it
never could shut. Yet he was never so busy or so
preoccupied but that he had always upon him a bur-
den of conscientious duties to be attended to, calls
of civility or kindness, promises to be fulfilled, bits
of thoughtful ness carried out, rules of his own to be
attended to.

Genius and a high vocation are sometimes pleaded
as an excuse from the common drudgery of life.
There are people too much in the clouds to trouble
themselves ;ibout accounts. Newman used to astonish
the High Street tradesmen with the rapidity and the
infallible accuracy with which he went through the
parish accounts. He was surpassed, it must be said,
in the college accounts by Coplestone, perhaps also
by Hawkins. Every term the Provost and several
of the Fellows used to meet in common room to add
up the weekly "battles" of all the undergraduates
and other i-esident members. Each bill would con-
sist of eight or ten sums in pounds, shillings, and
pence to be added up. Coplestone rapidly passed
his finger up the central column and declared the
sum, which was always correct. This was to add
three columns, nay more, at once, each step involv-
ing several carryings. Whately as a boy was an
arithmetical prodigy. When he became a scholar, a
logician, and a good deal morer he lost his powers
of calculation. In one point, which to Newman was
of no practical importance, he was deficient. He had

208

REMINISCENCES.

not much measure of length, breadth, height, and
capacity. It led him into no mistakes, for he could
state what he wanted, and that was a bare suffi-
ciency.

He never complained of any unexpected addition
to his work, or any interruption. I had undertaken
a Saint's-day sermon. An hour before the time I
presented myself a defaulter. I could not do it.
Newman threw aside the work he was busily and
esigerly engaged in, and wrote a sermon, which, when
delivered, might indicate days of careful preparation.

He always claimed to have been substantially the
same from first to last, only in progress and develop-
ment ; under Heaven-sent guidances, impulses, and
assistance. It was the fashion of that day to speak
of utter and complete change from one type of
character into another as possible, and indeed ordi-
nary, by the influence of education, or association, or
new circumstances, or a sudden call. Most young
people believed in this possibility and trusted to it ;
while some of their elders demurred.

On one occasion, when Newman was on a visit to
Derby, my father quoted the saying of a wise old
Yorkshire schoolmaster, that men never change. I
thought myself bound to protest against a maxim
which seemed to preclude hope and discourage ex-
ertion for the improvement of others, not to speak
of oneself. Newman, not to come between father
and son, turned round to me, shook his head and
smiled, as much as to say there was too much truth
in the maxim for it to be hastily put aside.

Newman looked out inquiringly, expectantly, and
believingly for the special powers and intentions of
his younger friends. They generally agreed that his

SOME CHARACTERISTICS.

209

fault lay in believing and expecting rather too much
of them. He would easily accept a promise, and
interpret silence itself favorably. This is common
with " movers," for they interpret others by them-
selves. But Newman had also another faith in accord
with his own career, and that was in the existence of
a particular part and a special work to be accom-
plished by everybody, in accordance with his
powers and his circumstances. In his own case he
was always consulting the auspices, so to speak, to
guide his course and to decide some question which
he found it impossible to decide simply on its own
merits. An unexpected act, or word, or encourage-
ment, or a check, the appearance of a book or an
article, pleasant or otherwise, a meeting, a sepa-
ration, came to him with the. significance of an inter-
vention.

Whatever happened, he interpreted it as provi-
dentially designed. We really have no choice but to
do this, though we may carry it too far, and may do
it by no rule but the merest fancy. His powers were
often taxed. Why was it ordered that such a one
should suddenly withdraw, perhaps turn round?
Above all, there occurred very frequently in the
course of a long and large career the always mys-
terious phenomenon of a man in the infancy or in the
maturity of his powers, with golden hopes, and work
in hand, being suddenly withdrawn from the seen
world to the unseen. One of Newman's common
interpretations was that such a one had done all the
good work lie could do or was likely to do. He was
withdrawn because he would do no more, or could
do no more. He had said his say in writing or in
the pulpit, he had put a parish in order, he had built

VOL. I. 14

210

REMINISCENCES.

a church, he had started a local movement, he had
left a name behind him ; more he was not likely to
do, for the work was thenceforward too much, and
he might possibly have lost in it what he had gained
before.

He would warn his young friends who had done
something to see that it was not the whole work of
their life. They might read in its very completeness
the completion of their own career. He had some-
thing of the Highland idea of an extraordinary ex-
uberance of spirit before departure, the dying note
of the swan. He once gave a humorous illustration
of it. My servant drove him in a pony trap from
Cholderton to Salisbury, — eleven miles. The poor
man, who was gardener, and always had a good deal
to say about the country and things in general,
talked the whole way. The next letter from New-
man ended with : " Pony went well, and so did
Meacher's tongue. Shoot them both. They will
never be better than they are now."

CHAPTER XXXIII.

NEWMAN, KEBLE, AND FROUDE.

As Newman kept careful account of his pupils,
with occasional allusion to their spiritual progress as
well as their other acquisitions, he would now and
then bring to their remembrance the great law so
emphatically laid down by Butler; the vital differ-
ence between the active and the passive reception of
truths and impulses. Whatever we do on the call of
duty we do easier next time ; whatever we fail to do
we find more difficult, that is we are still less dis-
posed to do it. We fall back on the sure law of
habit. Having not done it, we continue not to do it.
That may not be as Newman expressed it, for he
reverted to the topic often, with a great variety of
illustrations. One of these I heard repeatedly, for it
described what was then the universal danger. It
was the unhappy maid of all work, who has to light
the kitchen and parlor fire, to sweep the floor, to dust
the furniture, and to prepare the breakfast, but not
knowing which to begin upon, goes to bed again.
Another occurs to me : " You can't eat your cake and
have it," he would say of those who used up too
rapidly their powers and opportunities in the' idle
expectation of possessing them still for better pur-
poses.

Newman found in human character the same
variety, the same matter for contemplation and re-

212

REMINISCENCES.

search, that others do chiefly in the works of nature.
He had this at least of the traditional Jesuit about
him. There was in those days, and there still is,
a great deal of speculation about character, but it
is apt to take the turn of mere moralizing, rapidly
degenerating into unprofitable satire. Newman, early
hoping to move the world about him, and having no
means for the work except such human agencies as
Providence might bring in his way, considered well
what any man was good for, and had his eye on the
metal rather than on the dross. Crabbe, as is well
known, was one of his favorite authors, and no-
where can be found such generous and discriminating
appreciations of human character as in Crabbe's
poems.

Though Law's works generally were in great favor,
with Froude at least, the " Sei'ious Call," the most
entertaining of them, was never mentioned at Oriel
in my time, to my recollection. I have seen it lately
described as a much overrated book. That is easily
said. Five or six successive generations of readers
and admirers are now dead and gone, and, it is quite
true, their place is not supplied. My own copy I lent
or lost many years ago, and have not replaced it. If
I now looked into the " Serious Call," it would be for
criticism, which I don't care to bestow on a book so
valued in its day. It would, however, be worth the
while of a " serious " writer to point out its deficien-
cies. Perhaps I should say from memory that it calls
attention too much to externals, and thereby takes
the form of caricature, at once odious and useless.
It would enable anybody to ticket and catalogue his
neighbors, rather than divest himself of his own fol-
lies. What Froude and the others discussed contin-

NEWMAN, KEBLE, AND FROUDE.

213

ually was t/#os, the dominant moral habit or proclivity.
Newman several times put before me a question
which I know I shall not state well. No doubt, too,
it is well put somewhere in his writings. All there-
fore that I can say with certainty is, that such a
question he did put to me, and probably to his
other young friends, for their serious consideration :
Which does Scripture present to us as the ruling mo-
tive, and that most contributing to form the Christian
character and life, — the sense of sin, or to Ka\6v, the
beauty of holiness and of high moral aims ? The
two motives are necessarily presented to us, both in
succession, and also as continual and cooperating ;
both as severally applicable to classes, to characters,
and to stages, and also as universally applicable.
They contribute the one to the other. But it cannot
be said that they move only by mutual dependence.
In fact the one motive becomes often much more
prominent than the other. Men begin, or at least
they ought to begin, with penitence. The Saints
began with penitence, often in exaggerated and gro-
tesque forms ; churches begin with penitence ; di-
vines lay down a solid foundation of repentance from
dead works. But when these necessary preliminaries
have been executed, and the rough foundation laid,
all go off into spirituality, perfection, piety, holi-
ness, decorum, sweetness, and all the qualities that
figure in biographies, funeral sermons, and epitaphs.
One might suppose that most of the good people one
hears of had never done anything to repent of, except
some trifle, just sufficient to give occasion for the first
stage of Christian growth.

The proportion of the two motives cannot but vary
with the constitution and character, for there are

214

REMINISCENCES.

those whose tendency is to be happy, and those whose
tendency is to be miserable. Their religion must and
will take the constitutional form. There ai'e also
stages of life, and circumstances, in which it would be
very idle work to attempt to impress so deep a sense
of guilt and unworthiness as to keep down the more
ambitious sentiment in even its most secular forms.
What would be the use of telling a number of young
men, in health and spirits, with their programme of
studies and amusements fixed for days and months to
come, that they ought to have the constant feeling
that they are miserable sinners, unworthy of a mo-
ment's happiness ? Even especially Christian opera-
tions, such as the building of a fine cathedral, would
be unduly hindered by too much prostration of spirit.
I do not pretend, however, to elucidate Newman's
meaning, but to inform my readers that he repeatedly
touched on some such comparisons, indicating himself
no preference, but leaving it to us to feel more that
there were two classes of motives, neither to be un-
dervalued.

Was it ever in Newman's thoughts to derive from
the school of nature the proper proportions of the gay
and the grave? I several times heard him notice that
the sounds of nature, the wind, the water, the poor
beasts and even the birds, were all in the minor key ;
as, too, age itself, in comparison with youth. Energy,
contest, glory, and triumph were in the major key.
But as Newman had to think well over it, I suppose
this comparison may admit of some qualifications.

One striking peculiarity in Newman's character
must have been often noticed by his walking compan-
ions. It was his admiration of the beauties of earth
and sky, his quickness to observe the changes over-

NEWMAN, KEBLE, AND FROUDE.

215

head, and the meaning he put into them, sometimes
taxing the patience of a dull observer. Flowers, es-
pecially certain flowers, he was as fond of as a child
could be. He could seldom see a flower without it
reviving some memory. Old English forest trees he
delighted in.

On a visit a few years ago to my Devonshire par-
sonage he compared the garden, much to its advan-
tage, with those he had seen at several other parson-
ages better known and more largely endowed. Those
were surrounded by walls. This contained a grove
of oaks, elms, and ash trees. There were three ancient
and lofty poplars, covered witli moss, and the ground
rising round their stems. " I never cared for a pop-
lar before," he said, " but I like those. I shall like
poplars now." He looked wistfully at a large bed of
St. John's wort. He had tried several times to make
it grow at his Retreat, near Birmingham, but it would
not.

The walk from Oxford to Littlemore, especially
if taken every other day, might be thought monoto-
nous, but it never palled on Newman. The heavens
changed if the earth did not, and when they changed
they made the earth new. His eye quickly caught
any sudden glory or radiance above ; every prismatic
hue or silver lining ; every rift, every patch of blue ;
every strange conformation, every threat of ill, or
promise of a brighter hour.

He carried his scenery with him, and on that ac-
count had not the craving for change of residence, for
mountains and lakes, that most educated people have.
Unless his voyage with Froude to the Mediterranean
in 1832 be excepted, he never made a tour for pleas-
ure sake, for health sake, or for change sake. He did

216

REMINISCENCES.

move about a good deal, but it was to the country
parsonages to which so many of his friends were early
relegated. He had much to say; he had to advise,
to direct, and he had occasionally a note to make.
He looked for progress of some sort or other. These
visits sometimes took him into districts singularly
wanting in the features constituting " scenery " and
" landscapes." But even in Salisbury Plain, where
there are no trees, no hedges, no water, no flowers,
no banks, no lanes, and now not even turf, and sel-
dom even a village or a church in sight, he would
walk or run with a friend as cheerfully as the prophet
ran before the king from Carmel to announce the
opened gates of heaven to Jezreel.

I must give Salisbury Plain its due. It has its
flowers, though they escape the eye by their minute-
ness, or by their shy habits. In 1831 I traversed the
Plain in a walk from Oxford to the Isle of Wight, in
the very agreeable company of Neptune, S. Wilber-
force's dog, whom I deposited finally at Brightstone.
It was a time of great heat and long drought, and the
Plain was as hard as iron, with about as much to be
seen on the surface as there is on a not entirely worn-
out Turkey carpet. Poor " Nep," a genuine New-
foundland, walked as gingerly as he would on a cook's
" hot plate." I sat down, keeping my open palm,
accidentally, flat on the ground for a quarter of an
hour. On removing my hand I was struck by the
exact impression left, and on further examination I
counted twenty-five different species of vegetation in
that very small area. On going to Cholderton, five
years after, I remarked on the want of flowers to
Walter Blunt, the curate in charge. Without saying
a word he went to a shelf and took down an album

NEWMAN, KEBLE, AND FROUDE.

2L7

containing in his own writing the Flora of the par-
ish, — 340 species.

Newman never went into architecture, though very
sensible of grand effects, and ready to appreciate
every work, of whatever style, good in its way. He
much admired the restoration of the interior of St.
Mary's, executed in his predecessor's time, and re-
cently threatened with utter effacement by the more
fastidious taste of the present Dean of Chichester.
He used to mention in a pathetic tone the fate of the
young man who designed it, completed it, and died.
It will be seen that when he finally withdrew to
Littlemore, he simply utilized a long row of stiibles
and sheds, and would not add a single architectural
feature. He asked me to give my ideas on the sub-
ject, and I sent some suggestions of a sort to redeem
the utter plainness of the existing walls, but they
made no appearance in the result.

Froude was most deeply interested in architecture,
but it is plain that he was more penetrated and in-
spired by St. Peter's than ever by Cologne Cathedral.
After spending three days with me in taking meas-
urements, tracings, mouldings, and sketches of the
interior of St. Giles at Oxford, one of the purest
specimens of Early English, he devoted a good deal
of time at Barbadoes to designing some homely
Tuscan addition to Codrington College.

Keble was a latitudinarian, if not a utilitarian, in
architecture. He could see a soul in everything if he
could only be allowed to enjoy the illusion. Travel-
ling with me on the top of a coach he came in sight
of the west front of Lichfield Cathedral, and fell into
raptures. " They do nothing like that in these days."
I let him go on for some time, and then had the

218

REMINISCENCES.

•wickedness to tell him that only a year before I had
seen the entire front chopped and chiselled away,
sheets of copper laid on the rough wall, big nails
driven in, tarred cords stretched from nail to nail, and
all the niches, saints and angels of the old work re-
produced in Roman cement upon this artificial back-
ing. I received a very sharp rebuke indeed for not
letting him remain under an illusion, which had been
honestly intended, and which had contributed to his
happiness. " What good could it do to him to know
how the thing was done?"

A few hours after, on my taking him into the
market-place of Derby, he was at once struck with
the very graceful and airy Ionic portico then standing
before the newly-finished Town Hall. " It seems to
take the town under its protection," he said, which
was indeed the effect. Municipalities have lost favor
with advanced Church people latterly, but Keble was
far too much of a scholar not to reverence the insti-
tution which formed the central point of so much an-
cient virtue and piety.

Many years after this, at the consecration of one
of his new churches in Hursley parish, he said to me,
" Come this way, and I '11 show you something very
unpleasant." It was the side of the church away
from the public road, where, for economy, brick had
been used instead of flint or stone.

I think we all of us found it easier to admire, and
even to criticise, than to design. Keble, Froude, and
Ogilvie undertook a memorial of William Churton,
to be placed in St. Mary's. It was to be simple,
modest, and unobtrusive, like the subject. Whether
the result carried out this idea I leave others to say.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

JOHN KEBLE.

John Keble was at this time the sun of this lit-
tle world. Most of its happy members knew the
" Christian Year " by heart. There were interest-
ing questions as to the meaning of a few passages,
and some of the transitions could be variously ac-
counted for. But a meaning there must be, even
though ordinary men might not be able to penetrate
into it. For some years after the publication of the
" Christian Year," and its intimate reception into
many thousand hearts and minds, there was no other
published work whatever that could be called the
distinctive literature of the new Oriel school, taking
the place of the "Noetic" philosophy. Not only did
Keble lead, but he was alone as an author. Had
Keble remained quite as he was for two or three years
more, and had the others been content to preach and
to talk, half Oxford, and a great part of England,
would have been called Kebleans to this day most
probably.

But Keble's shy, retiring habits must have always
disqualified him for the difficult task of getting many
men to work together in some practical fashion.
From all I could hear, he spent his earlier years in
what may be called the sacred seclusion of old Eng-
lish family life, among people enjoying a perfect har-
mony of taste and opinion. His nature, indeed his

220

REMINISCENCES.

very appearance, was such as to move the affection of
all about him, and he could hardly ever have the
least need of those rebukes and contradictions that
pursue ordinary people from infancy to manhood, in-
deed later still.

From the time he was known to write verses, he
could not go anywhere without finding that he must
leave a blessing behind him in the form of some con-
tribution to a lady's album. At least he must read
something he had written elsewhere. Some months
before the publication of the " Christian Year " in
1827, it was reported that Keble had been persuaded
to collect and publish his stray pieces. Several of
the Sundays had had to be composed very hastily, in
a morning's walk for example, to complete the series.
This must be all the foundation for the stories of
Keble going to this or that house, and reading the
whole "Christian Year" before publication.

Such a training had not that admixture of rough-
ness which is necessary to fit a man for the work 'of
this rude world. He could only live in a calm and
sweet atmosphere of his own. He had not the quali-
ties for controversy, or debate, which are necessary
for any kind of public life. He very soon lost his
temper in discussion. It is true there were one or
two in our college who might have tried the temper
of an angel, but there really was no getting on with
Keble without entire agreement, that is submission.
This was the more lamentable in that some very
small matters came in those days to be raised into
tests of loyalty and orthodoxy.

Keble was evidently shrinking from the general
society of the college in my time, though a large part
were devoted to him. But here was a puzzle, which

JOHN KEBLE.

221

often occurred to me, then and after. How had he
managed to get on with the old Oriel school ? Was
it that the theological question was less developed
then ? It was not till his deathbed that Keble would
give up the the famous line in the " Christian Year'1
that gave so much offence to his High Church ad-
mirers. Was it that all scholars, and all divines, and
all who read their Bibles through, had been thrown
together by a common necessity to defend faith,
truth, godliness, and common sense against infidelity
on the one hand and Simeon on the other ? No
doubt scholarship created a community of feeling,
for Coplestone and Keble might have much to say
to one another without approaching theology or any
Church question.

When Keble's favorite pupil, Sir William Heath-
cote, then member for Hants, and afterwards for the
University, invited him to Hursley, he created the
most beautiful picture of English society that this
century can show. Away from the garish metrop-
olis, the proud cathedral, and the restless University,
Keble pursued quietly that sublime life of pastoral
duty which is so little esteemed in these days. The
great poet of his Church was content to spend him-
self in those humble ministrations which noisy pul-
pit adventurers proclaim to be utterly beneath their
notice, not to say their contempt.

But there are inevitable drawbacks in any earthly
position. People felt, not unjustly, that Keble was,
as it were, a little smothered in the embrace of a
not very large-minded or open-minded section of the
aristocracy. Landowners cannot help being very
sensitive on points that affect, as they think, their
very existence, and this tenderness they cannot but

222

REMINISCENCES.

impart to their sympathizing surroundings. I re-
member one of Keble's curates, a strong, healthy
man, bursting into tears as he related that Sir Wil-
liam would probably have to put down one of his
equipages on the repeal of the Corn Laws. Well,
Keble would not have done this, yet it was impossible
not to feel that his sympathies were very one-sided,
and not enlarged or corrected, so to speak, up to the
actual state of things in the Church and fn the world.

Moreover, people who have found a quiet harbor
and made up their minds to remain there, are not
quite the best advisers for those who are still strug-
gling with the currents and storms of life. Keble in-
duced a number of his neighbors and friends to sign
a protest against Her Majesty choosing a Lutheran
Prince for one of her son's godfathers. It must im-
mediately occur to any reasonable person that the
Vicar of Hursley had nothing at all to do with it,
and that if anybody had a call to interfere it was the
Primate. But Keble can hardly have considered the
certain consequences to the signatories. He had him-
self renounced all hope of promotion, but there might
be some of them to whom it was almost a necessity.
Moberly was kept at the grindstone for many years
after his strength had begun to fail, and his soul to
desire refreshment, through his compliance with this
most unnecessary, indeed, unjustifiable act.

Keble had not the art, only to be attained by the
best natures, assisted by the best breeding and the
most propitious circumstances, of being quite ready
for any occasion and meeting it perfectly. If one
heard nothing at all about a man, except the very
trifling incident I am about to relate, one would call
him very absent, or awkward, or something of that
sort.

JOHN KEBLE.

223

On one of the few occasions on which I was at
Hursley, we spent the evening in the drawing-room ;
Keble and I on one side of the large round table of
the period, and Miss Coxwell, afterwards Mrs. Peter
Young, on the other side. We were talking. The
young lady was at some needlework that required
both the two candles to be brought close to it. The
candles, like all the candles of those days, rapidly
acquired huge chignons. Keble made a long arm,
drew the candles across the table close to the edge on
his side, and deftly applying the snuffers, restored
the wicks to their proper form. But he omitted to
replace the candles, and the young lady was even
worse off than before he had come to her rescue.
When sufficient time had elapsed to disconnect the
reclamation of the missing candles from their abstrac-
tor, she stretched across the table and replaced them
close to her work. In a quarter of an hour the same
double process was repeated, and so it went on all
the evening. I think we all three failed in this
matter. Keble of course did, in not completing his
well-intended kindness ; the lady might have asked
for the return of the candles in a way to impress by
its prettiness ; and I might have amused Keble, and
the young lady too, by pointing out what he was
doing.

Such matters, small as they are, nay the more
because they are small, are a school for important
matters, often ill done from want of " manner," that
is an address at once genial and plain. The art of
making really good capital out of such light stuff as
"chaffing" or persiflage is best learnt at public
schools and in good society, so as it be not the society
just of a parish or a clique. But of course there are

224

REMINISCENCES.

those who never learn it, for it requires a man to be
quick of tongue, simple and kind.

One little way Keble had which must recur to the
recollection of those who knew him. It was his habit
of suddenly rousing himself, shaking himself rather,
throwing his shoulders back, and raising his head.
Perhaps his friends, in view of George Herbert's con-
sumptive habits and early death, had often cautioned
him against stooping. Perhaps it was the heroic ele-
ment struggling against the downward tendency of a
weak frame. When I last saw Keble, past seventy,
he was brisk and upright, though reading and writing
more than most people. The trick I have mentioned,
which was indeed a spontaneous convulsion of the
whole frame, reminded me of George Herbert's
quaint appeal to England, to spit out her phlegm
and fill her breast with glory. If people would but
observe some such Sursum corda every quarter of an
hour, they would be able to make a better resistance
to the weight of years, and whatever else time and
decay are sure to bring.

CHAPTER XXXV.

FROUDE.

No one, even then, would have said that Newman
was simply the greatest man among Keble's admirers.
He was no more that than he was an " Evangelical "
of the St. Edmund Hall school, or a destructive
logician of the Whately type. He has repeatedly
said what he was at all times. He was always for a
thorough religious conversion, with a real sense of it ;
a deep sense of the necessity of doctrinal truth, and
an absolute devotion to its claims. No wonder that
even when Kehle might have heard him in the pulpit
many times, and must have had many talks with
him, alone or in company, and must also have heard
common friends discuss him freely, he still saw the
trappings of his old Calvinistic harness hanging about
him.

But what was there — who was there — that may
have contributed much to determine the direction of
this great movement ? Robert Wilberforce, besides
being a scholar and a theologian, was a conscientious
and most laborious man ; and, with his youngest
brother Henry, was no inconsiderable power. He
was also a very good college tutor, with the special
qualities for instilling philosophy, poetry, and schol-
arship into ordinary minds. But he attained not to
the foremost rank of the little body now about to
shake the Anglican world. If there ever could be

226

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any question as to the master spirit of this move-
ment, which now would be a very speculative ques-
tion indeed, it lies between, John Henry Newman
and Richard Hurrell Froude.

Froude was a man, sucli as there are now and then,
of whom it is impossible for those that have known
him to speak without exceeding the bounds of com-
mon admiration and affection. He was elder brother
of William, the distinguished engineer, who died
lately, after rendering, and while still rendering, most
important services to the Admiralty, and of Anthony,
the well-known historian, the sons of Archdeacon
Froude, a scholar and no mean artist. Richard came
to Oriel from Eton, a school which does not make
every boy a scholar, if it even tries to do so, but
which somehow implants in every nature a generous
ambition of one kind or other.

As an undergraduate he waged a ruthless war
against sophistry and loud talk, and he gibbeted one
or two victims, labelling their sophisms with their
names. Elected to a Fellowship, and now the com-
panion of Newman and Pusey, not to speak of elders
and juniors, he had to wield his weapons more rev-
erentially and warily. But he had no wish to do
otherwise.

His figure and manner were such as to command
the confidence and affection of those about him.
Tall, erect, very thin, never resting or sparing him-
self, investigating and explaining with unwearied*
energy, incisive in his language, and with a certain
fiery force of look and tone, he seemed a sort of an-
gelic presence to weaker natures. He slashed at the
shams, phrases, and disguises in which the lazy or the
pretentious veil their real ignorance or folly. His

FROUDE.

227

features readily expressed every varying mood of
playfulness, sadness, and awe. There were those
about him who would rather writhe under his most
cutting sarcasms than miss their part in the workings
of li is sympathy and genius.

Froude was a Tory, with that transcendental idea
of the English gentleman which forms the basis of
Toryism. He was a High Churchman of the uncom-
promising school, very early taking part with Anselm,
Becket, Laud, and the Nonjurors. Woe to any one
who dropped in his hearing such phrases as the dark
ages, superstition, bigotry, right of private judgment,
enlightenment, march of mind, or progress. When
a stray man of science fell back on " law," or a
" subtle medium," or any other device for making
matter its own lord and master, it was as if a fox
had broken cover; there ensued a chase and no
mercy.

Luxury, show, and even comfort he despised and
denounced. He very consistently urged that the
expenses of Eton should be kept down so low as to
enable every ordinary incumbent to send his sons
there to be trained for the ministry. All his ideas of
college life were frugal and ascetic. Having need of
a press for his increasing papers and books, he had
one made of plain deal. It must have been Wood-
gate who came in one day, and finding some red
chalk, ornamented the press with grotesque figures,
which long were there. Froude and Newman in-
duced several of the Fellows to discontinue wine in
the common room. As they had already had a glass
or two at the high table, they did not require more.
There was only one objection to the discontinuance,
but it was fatal at last ; and that was its inconvenience
when strangers were present.

228

REMINISCENCES.

This preference of tea to wine was no great inno-
vation in Oriel. When I came up at Easter, 1825,
one of the first standing jokes against the college, all
over the University, was the M Oriel teapot," supposed
to be always ready ; the centre of the Oriel circle,
and its special inspiration. How there ever came to
be such an idea I cannot guess, but wherever I went,
when I passed the wine, I was asked whether I would
not prefer some tea, much to the amusement of the
table.

Self-renunciation in every form he could believe
in ; most of all in a gentleman, particularly one of
a good Devonshire family. His acquaintance with
country gentlemen had been special, perhaps fortu-
nate. He had not been in the north of England, in
the eastern counties, or in the midlands. It was
therefore in perfect simplicity that, upon hearing one
day the description of a new member in the Re-
formed Parliament, he exclaimed, '* Eaucy a gentle-
man not knowing Greek ! " I chanced one day to
drop most inconsiderately that all were born alike,
and that they were made what they are by circum-
stances and education. Xever did I hear the end of
that. No retractation or qualification would avail.

When Mr. Bulteel, a Fellow and tutor of Exeter
College, mounted the pulpit of St. Mary's, denounced
the University and the Church of England, took his
name off the books, married the sister of a pastry-
cook in High Street, and set up a meeting-house
behind Pembroke College, Froude went about for
days with a rueful countenance, and could only say
" Poor Bulteel ! " He had married a housekeeper,
no doubt, Froude thoroughly believed, to chasten his
earthly affections and show what a minister ought to

FROUDE.

229

be. Nor was Froude's faith in his fellow-countryman
much shaken when it turned out that the pastry-
cook's sister was still young, accomplished, rather
good-looking, not at all dowdy, and that she had a
good fortune of her own.

Not to speak of Froude's laborious researches into
the history and correspondence of Thomas a Becket,
the writer most on his table and his tongue was the
above-mentioned William Law, of the second school
of Nonjuroi'S, the author of the " Serious Call," the
antagonist of Hoadly, and the " most honored friend
and spiritual guide of the whole Gibbon family," of
whom Warburton says that " he begat Methodism."

CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE TUITION KEVOLUTIONIZED.

In 1831, Newman had finally ceased to be tutor,
and to explain tins important and to him very pain-
ful deprivation, it is necessary to go back a year or
two. When he, Wilberforce, and Froude had been
working together in the tuition for some terms, and
bestowing on their pupils as much time and trou-
ble as is usually only expected from very good pri-
vate tutors, they proposed to the Provost some im-
provements in the course of lectures, the selection of
books, and the formation of the classes. Dornford
was still tutor, but that would have been no diffi-
culty, for he would have had the choice of profiting
by the new arrangement, or, if he should prefer it,
having his own classes and his own books, by the old
routine.

The discussions on these points extended through
the year 1829, and were concluded early in 1830.
Not to speak of the introduction of modern books to
be compared with the ancient classics, as, for ex-
ample, Butler's Analogy to be read by the side of
Lucretius, — an innovation claimed for Hampden by
his biographer, — the principles of the proposed ar-
rangement were an exacter regard to the character
and special gifts of each undergraduate, and a closer
relation between him and his tutor. It was a large
and novel proposition in those days.

THE TUITION REVOLUTIONIZED.

231

The Provost received it with a suspicion amount-
ing to dismay. He felt that the tutors would thereby
have the tuition entirely in their own hands, and
that he might find himself left out of the actual
course of studies and out of the current of college
thought and feeling. It might be all well, he said,
while those three men were the tutors, but supposing
a tutor with an ambitious spirit and revolutionary
views, how was the Provost to control him ?

There was also an immediate and practical diffi-
culty of which Hawkins must have had experience
the very first year of his Provostship. The three
tutors named were even then lecturing in new books,
such as the minor Latin poets. Three times a year,
at the end of each term, every undergraduate in his
turn was summoned to the Tower, that is the room
over the college gateway, and examined in all that
he had been doing. These Collections, as they were
called, were formidable enough to idle students ; not
so to the examiners, who had gone through the books
often, and who would select their own passages and
ask their own questions. But if the tutors were to
be always introducing new books, the Provost would
have to get them up also, or would have to be content
with taking little part in the examinations. Haw-
kins was about as equal to such an emergency as
most men would be. In his own lectures he would oc-
casionally save himself the trouble of laborious prep-
aration, yet detect the omission of it in the class.
Thus in reading the Tusculan Disputations he once
turned over several leaves and said, " Please go on

there, Mr. ." The unhappy man immediately

came upon the word Equuleus, and rendered it " a
little horse ; " nor was any one in the class wiser. It

232

REMINISCENCES.

is " a rack of torture." So ancient is the practice of
giving fond names to diabolical devices.

I do not think the Provost can have objected to
the moderate introduction of modern classics for
illustration and comparison with the old. His edi-
tion of Milton's " Paradise Lost," published before
this date, illustrates with a great abundance of quo-
tations the classical allusions in the poems just as the
school editions of Virgil give the passages from He-
siod, Homer, Aratus, Theocritus, and Columella. But
I should think it likely he would insist at least on a
veto in the selection of modern authors.

The proposals of the three tutors, however, went
beyond the selection of books, for they amounted to
a new organization of the college, as far as the studies
were concerned, and they were likely to include the
discipline also. There ensued a controvei-sy as to
the academic position of a college tutor, to which the
Provost would not allow a substantive character.
His idea was the French king's : "Z'<?£«£, cest moi"
As the three tutors persisted, the Provost announced
that no more undergraduates would be entered to
their names, so that in three years they would have
no classes at all, and that meanwhile he would find
lecturers to do the work.

There were younger Fellows coming on, and the
future was no difficulty. The present emergency was
serious, and the Provost met it with an expedient
which was a great shock to the old college traditions
of Oxford. Hampden, a former Fellow, a man of
ability and University distinction, was then residing
with his family, and taking private pupils at the
other end of St. Giles's, and the Provost invited him
to give the lectures, for which his learning and his

THE TUITION REVOLUTIONIZED.

233

intellect undoubtedly qualified him. It was not a
popular step, and it was not successful ; but if the
Provost was to hold to his declared views, there was
nothing else to be done, and he could hardly be
blamed for availing himself of a good instrument
found at hand in the hour of need. The tutors, find-
ing their classes dwindling, soon left the Provost in
sole possession of the ground, but only to find the ris-
ing tide of academic revolution bringing on changes
far greater than those he had resisted.

In some respects the points contended for by the
three tutors were singularly prophetic. They, asked
for subjects, rather than particular books ; they asked
for properly composed classes ; and they asked for
the fittest men to teach each class, though it does not
appear that they distinctly recognized that the last
demand would be likely in time to interfere with the
monopoly hitherto possessed by the college tutor.
Few can see the inevitable consequences of their own
acts. The Provost certainly did not see that he was
breaking up the college system, upon which his own
exclusive claims over the teaching of the undergradu-
ates depended, when he invited a married lecturer to
visit the college just for his hour's work and no more.
Little, too, did he see that by insisting on his rights
he was hastening the day when the younger mem-
bers, alike of the college and of the University, would
obtain their share in the government of both, and by
their greater activity and aptitude for new forma-
tions would in effect leave their elders behind.

Nevertheless it cannot be denied that the Provost
seemed to be justified by the event in not virtually
resigning the education of his college into Newman's
hands. He foresaw the consequences of Newman's

234

REMINISCENCES.

policy, though, happily for his present comfort, he
did not foresee the consequences of his own.

There were men, however, who might have been
consulted, and who ought to have been consulted,
and who could have told the Provost that the three
tutors had both right and tbe public interest on their
side. Arnold was now conducting Rugby on the
principle of selection, adaptation, and careful manip-
ulation. He was sending away every boy not likely
to do good to himself or to the school. Contenting
himself with a general oversight of the rest, he
chiefly devoted himself to the twenty boys most qual-
ified to benefit by his instruction. He also innovated
considerably on the old routine of books and studies.
It is impossible to imagine a greater innovation than
to occupy lads of sixteen and under in the unfathom-
able problems of Niebuhr's " Roman History."

Some years before this, when at Charterhouse,
beaten as I was out of the construing by the quick-
ness of the pace, I amused myself with drawing up
a genealogical table illustrating the absurdities of
Livy's chronology. I handed it to Russell, who
looked over it and returned it with a smile, as much
as to say it was a matter one need not trouble about.

The position Arnold made for himself was that of
a private tutor, with the pick of a large public school,
itself purged by frequent dismissals, and in the hands
of colleagues of his own choosing. It is hardly to be
supposed that he would have advised his friend the
Provost of Oriel to inflict on the three tutors an in-
variable routine, without any choice in the selection
or the arrangement of the young men admitted into
the college, not invariably by the rule of selection,
some indeed chiefly on the recommendation of wealth

THE TUITION REVOLUTIONIZED.

235

or rank. It is true the example of a public school
does not apply in all respects to a college ; for in a
public school the head master is the teacher, while
the head of a college is not. But Arnold's practice
pointed to the necessity of careful selection, manip-
ulation of classes, and adaptation of studies, to be
placed in the hands of the actual teachers, that is the
tutors.

Both the statutes of the University, and the prac-
tice ancient and still existent, left the studies very
much in the hands of the tutors, and at their discre-
tion ; indeed, during the last century to an extreme
degree. The Provost had to confess to this by alter-
ing the usage, and virtually violating the statutes, for
thenceforward he had to enter undergraduates no
longer under respective tutors, but under one com-
mon name for form sake. By accepting the tuition
on this footing, Hampden lent himself to alter the
custom of the college, to deprive the undergraduates
of real tuition, and to oust the real tutors, whom he
was invited to supersede.

Hampden was the man of all others to appreciate
the advantage of real tuition. It must have been
ever present to his mind that the practical interest
taken in him by his own tutor, Davison, from the day
he entered Oriel, had been, as they say, the making
of him. Davison himself was very strong on this
point. The " Edinburgh Review " had charged the
University of Oxford with the scantiness and weak-
ness of its public examinations. To this Davison re-
plied that the reviewer had forgotten that at Oxford
the colleges did the work of the University; and that
every undergraduate was under examination suffi-
ciently public every day, finishing with a solemn ex-

236

REMINISCENCES.

amination by the Provost and tutors at the end of the
term. This would not be thought a sufficient answer
in these days, but its very insufficiency shows the
immense reliance which Davison placed on the then
existing system of handing the undergraduate over to
the tutors, and expecting them to do everything for
him. Of course Hampden must be assumed to have
thought himself right, under the present circum-
stances, but he was not quite in a position to com-
plain of persecution, carried on, he said, not merely
in controversy, where he gave as much as he took,
but in the more painful form of social,, affronts, which
he imagined himself to be continually receiving.

More than a year elapsed between the introduction
of Hampden and Newman's final release from the
tuition. He held on till he found himself alone, when
he felt his position no longer tenable. Meantime
there had arisen an awkward question. The college,
not the Provost alone, had the appointment to the
college offices, dean, treasurer, junior treasurer, and
librarian. They had generally been held by tutors.
Froude and Wilberforce thought it important that the
Fellows should assert the right of independent choice,
as otherwise a precedent would be set up for allowing
the offices to be as much at the disposal of the Pro-
vost as he claimed the tuition to be. There were
certain names which it was understood the Provost
desired. A counter-programme was suggested, con-
taining Newman's name. On these occasions it was
the custom of the Fellows to form themselves in the
order of seniority, and for the youngest Fellow to be
called on first to name the man for the office. I hap-
pened to be the youngest Fellow. Every name of
the opposition programme in my hand was carried.

THE TUITION REVOLUTIONIZED.

237

I found it too much for my nerve. Passing the night
without sleep, all next morning's chapel I was in
tears. However, I met with nothing but kindness,
and between the Fellows themselves there Avas no
sore on this point.

Late in 1835 or early in 1836, the Provost walked
across the Quad in his academicals, and asked me
whether I was willing to take a part in the tuition.
I was much surprised at the question. I can now
hardly say why. From the beginning of the contro-
versy I had taken the part of the three tutors, and
had given up all thought of the tuition. I did not
take into account that the Provost had no call to
recognize this, even if he suspected it, and that he
was justified, indeed necessitated, to do whatever he
could to carry on the tuition as much as possible in
the old lines, that is by resident Fellows. But I had
to reply. I did not wish to argue the question be-
tween him and Newman ; indeed, it would have been
ridiculous for me to make the attempt. So I replied
that I did not feel myself equal to the tuition.

A thousand times have I asked myself the question
whether I lied or not in that statement. I had un-
bounded confidence in myself. I had all my life learnt
more by teaching than by solitary study. I could cer-
tainly keep ahead of my pupils, which was all that
many tutors ever did. I could come round my class
by questions they were not prepared for. I was sure
always to hear mistakes which it would be easy to
correct. In matter of fact a tutor often did no more
than half of the class could have done quite as well.
Though the method of instruction was very effectual,
yet it was easy sailing. Moreover, I had not quite
given up my classics, for I had been tutorizing a

233

REMINISCENCES.

younger brother, and had just taken a Winchester lad
at a hand gallo.p through the Odyssey, my instruc-
tions— very unnecessary — being not to make him
too much of a scholar. I had also had nightly village
classes in the New Testament.

The Provost made matters easier for my con-
science by the next question, which was to the effect
that he was to understand I had not kept up my
books. As for "my books," those that I had taken
up for my examinations were a beggarly account in-
deed, but the phrase was usually employed to denote
the "sciences," that is the chief philosophical works
of Aristotle, and other books of special difficulty. It
was quite true that I had not once looked into the
Rhetoric, or the Ethics, or the Politics, or the Greek
Plays, or Pindar, or even Herodotus. So it was true
I had not kept up my books. But though that was
true, it was not the whole truth ; for I had pur-
posely not kept them up, 'as having no thought of
the tuition, and this I did not tell the Provost. As
far as I am concerned I hope I have now made a clean
breast.

But why did the Provost make the proposal, and
with such solemnity ? I think I see it. On his view
of the case I was bound to take part in the usual
college duties. Nay, I had taken the office of junior
treasurer and also that of Censor Theologicus. As it
was my duty to take part in the tuition, it was his
duty to propose it. He had also laid down, as Cople-
stone had before him, that a Fellow ought not to take
rooms in college unless he were tutor, and there I was
in college, and not a tutor.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

NEWMAN AT ST. MARY'S.

Newman was now one of the preachers of the day.
Oxford, it must be remembered, receives twelve hun-
dred young men from all parts of these isles, three
times a year, sending them back again, after a few
weeks, to stand a fire of questions, to tell their fresh
experiences, to cheer solitudes with bright images, and
to enliven monotony with novel characters and utter-
ances. Every undergraduate visits alternately the
centre and the extremity of his system a dozen times,
and is every time more and more looked for and wel-
comed. By the year 1831, undergraduates from the
Lakes, from Ireland, even from Scotland, from houses
long addicted to Cambridge, or sat upon, from all
time, by the metropolis ; from parsonages occupied
by the same family and the same traditional opinions
time out of mind ; were all coming up and securing
the next Sunday afternoon a good place at St. Mary's.

Many of them, perhaps most of them, being of other
colleges, were never in the same room with Newman,
and never exchanged a word with him. Frederick
Faber came up in the summer of 1832, and at once
attached himself to the St. Mary's congregation. He
was a singularly attractive and popular person, mak-
ing friends all around, but was not personally ac-
quainted with Newman till three or four years after.
He missed at St. Mary's the continual introspection,

240

REMINISCENCES.

the experiences, the emotions, and the assurances in
which he had been bred up.

No wonder that Newman now found himself re-
garded with deep though indefinite suspicion by the
party which had hitherto claimed the monopoly of
gospel truth. That undergraduates should flock to a
parish service, to hear a man with whom they had no
University or college relations, was a serious incident
and must have its meaning. It brought, however, no
accession to the weekly tea-meetings at St. Edmund
Hall, and there was evidently a distance between the
two circles. The Evangelical parents of the man who
came home talking about nobody but Newman, and
about nothing but his sermons, were sorely perturbed,
and seized every opportunity for penetrating the
mystery.

Visiting such a household, many miles from Oxford,
in the summer of 1831, I was urged, besought, and
invoked a dozen times over in one evening, to say
truly and outright, with no faltering or speciality of
tone, but in the orthodox accents of unflinching cer-
tainty, whether Newman was a " good man." On the
right ring of the response depended the happiness of
a poor lady who had recently dismissed, after many
years of faithful service, a housekeeper whose only
crime was escorting a visitor across a single field in
her master's grounds on a Sunday afternoon.

An Oxford clergyman of the same school gave a
remarkable, though unintended testimony, to this oft-
challenged " goodness." There was cholera in Ox-
ford, and he had to take his usual holiday. There
might be some visiting necessary, and funerals involv-
ing; danger. Clergvmen under no obligation to in-
cur the risk might hold it their duty to avoid it. So

NEWMAN AT ST. MARY'S.

241

he carefully drew up a long list of clergymen to be
applied to in the order stated, and gave it to his clerk
in case of need. One of the clergy applied to took
the list out of the clerk's hand, and found it headed
with Newman's name, followed by those of his known
friends in the order of their reputed devotion to him.
After this came the clergymen of this gentleman's
own school. It was never known whether he made
this arrangement as thinking the clergymen first in
his list more likely to attend the summons, or .as
deeming their lives less precious than those of his own
friends.

Whether acting in defence or not, Newman had
resigned the secretaryship of the local Church Mis-
sionary Society, on the ground that it dispensed with
tlie necessity of Bishops, as he explained at length in
a pamphlet. The step much simplified his relations
with some former coadjutors. This pamphlet I read
at the time, — indeed, I think Newman gave me a
copy. I remember my impression, superficial as it
might be. It was that Newman had found it neces-
sary to make a stand against a general decay of faith
and authority. He would not be swept down in a
current overpowering in its bulk, though composed of
inferior material. He must cling to something, and
it must be a Divine ordinance, and this he found in
the Bishops, or in what shortly became a watchword,
and then a byword, "Apostolical Succession."

VOL. I. lc

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

ST. EDMUND HALL.

In a back lane, buried between the splendid build-
ings of Queen's, the Norman tower of St. Peter's, and
the tall limes of New College garden, is the very an-
cient Hall of St. Edmund, so named after an Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, canonized by Innocent III. It
had not been true to the religio loci ; in fact Henry
VIII. had stept in the way. When I came to Oxford,
it was "soon pointed out to me as the headquarters,
the cave, the den of the "Evangelical party." It was
entirely in the hands of the Vice-Principal, Mr. Hill,
who ran a long, a consistent, and an honorable career,
but, so far as the Hall was concerned, singularly un-
successful, — indeed, doomed to disappointment. Mr.
Hill was a good scholar. He did his duty to his men
as a tutor and as a shepherd of souls, and the Hall
had, I believe, a good character in the schools. But
it was expected to do and be more. It was to be a
burning and shining light in the surrounding dark-
ness, and that it entirely failed to be.

The society was formed by selection. It consisted
of young men who had shown early ability, and some
interesting form of goodness ; who made a profession
and aspired to the ministry, but whose immediate
relatives were too poor to send them to an ordinary
college. A benevolent friend, a good uncle, or a so-
ciety, had taken compassion on them, and sent them

ST. EDMUND HALL.

243

to St. Edmund Hall, where spirituality and economy
were said to be combined. Thus all the circum-
stances and signs of failure were here concentrated in
one focus. All were poor, struggling men, starting
with the fixed idea that they were out of society,
which, it was a comfort to think, was too worldly and
wicked a thing to be coveted, or envied.

There were men of reading and of learning there,
but they did not find themselves at home, and they
made their escape to another college at the first op-
portunity, — Jacobson to wit. Matters must have
been even worse at the beginning of the century.
An old family friend of mine, Mr. Wayland, together
with his friend Mr. Joyce, who became a popular
private tutor, and used to help Lord Grenville to write
Elegiacs on his departed dogs, and another literary
gentleman, found themselves thrown together by mis-
directed kindness in St. Edmund Hall. I cannot say
that they blessed the friends who had so ordered their
career. They were French and Italian scholars, and
had seen a little of the world. Mr. Wayland's favorite
author was Horace, and one of my saddest experiences
was the death of his only son Horace, when I was on
a visit to his parsonage. These three gentlemen, who
must have been at the Hall in the first years of the
century, declared there was then nobody there they
could associate with.

These Edmund Hall men could be known any-
where. They were either very shabby or very fop-
pish. They all had the look of dirt, which perhaps
was not their fault, for they had dirty complexions.
How is it that goodness, poverty, and a certain amount
of literary or religious ambition produce an unpleas-
ant effect on the skin ? There must have been some-

244

REMINISCENCES.

thing in the air of the spot, which certainly was a
dark hole. In those days the University sermons were
occasionally preached at St. Peter's, adjoining St. Ed-
mund Hall. The undergraduates of the Hall felt it
their own ground, and took early possession of the
front rows of the gallery. I shall not say who it was
— but he became a very distinguished Prelate — pro-
posed that before the opening of the church door
there should be arranged a row of basins of water,
with soap and towels, on the book ledge before the
front row, with the admonition to wash and be clean.

Having no secular literature, no great matters to
talk about, and very little indeed of what is now
called Biblical literature, these men gossiped, gos-
siped, gossiped, from morning to night, running about
from room to room in quest of somebody to talk with
and something to talk about. An acquaintance of
mine with friends there related that an undergradu-
ate, finding himself obliged to disappoint some regu-
lar callers, chalked on his " oak," " I shall be out till
two, after that I shall be in." Wit was not alto-
gether extinct in St. Edmund Hall, for a friend
chalked " st " before " out." and " th " before " in."

As the St. Edmund Hall men divided their time
between self-contemplation, mutual amusement, and
the reading of emotional works ; studying no history,
not even critically studying the Scriptures, and know-
ing no more of the world than sufficed to condemn it,
they naturally, and perforce were driven into a very
dangerous corner. This was invention. Their knowl-
edge was imaginary. So too was their introspection,
their future, sometimes even their past. All pre-
cocity is apt to take this form. The quick ripen-
ing mind, for lack of other matter, feeds upon itself.

ST. EDMUND HALL.

245

These young men had been reared on unsubstan-
tial and stimulating food ; on pious tales, on high-
wrought death-beds, on conversations as they ought to
have been, on one-sided biographies. Truth of opin-
ion, they had always been told, was incomparably more
important than truth of fact. Henry Wilberforce
used to relate the rather unguarded speech of a well-
known Archdeacon, friend of Sumner, Bishop of
Winchester. "It's remarkable that all the most
spiritually-minded men I have known were in their
youth extraordinary liars."

Golightly was shy of the St. Edmund Hall men.
He could not but be shy, for they would have ex-
pected introductions which he could not have given
them. Nor did he much like them. However, one
of them, by his insinuating manners and glibness of
tongue, managed to break through social defences,
and Golightly became much interested in him. He
had already won all hearts in his own Hall. His
name I remember, but when I have finished my say
the reader will see why I do not state it. When this
man had been at Oxford so long as to be about to
take his degree, there was a sad exposure. He had
been going on for years showing every now and then
most interesting love-letters from various ladies com-
peting for his hand, while he could still say he was
free. He showed also copies of his own replies, and
there would sometimes be a muster of his friends to
hear the next news from this or that distracted
adorer.

All at once it was discovered that the man had
written all the letters, those of the ladies as well as
his own. He had to humble himself before the Hall,
and Golightly came in afterwards to administer a tre-

246

REMINISCENCES.

mendous verbal castigation. In a year or so Go-
lightly heard that the man was about to be ordained
with a title to an important town curacy in one of
the home counties. He immediately drew up a full
statement of the man's delinquencies and sent it to
Sumner. By the very showing of the case it was now
a bygone affair. The man had repented ; he had
made public amends, and he had been absolved by
Mr. Hill, whose testimonials he presented to the
Bishop. Sumner could do nothing. But Golightly
was far from satisfied. He, shrewdest of men, with a
special insight into character, had opened his house
and his heart to a liar and an impostor. Unless I am
mistaken in the identity, the man achieved a long,
useful, and honorable career. No doubt, in other
spheres as well as in the Church, many a youthful
liar has become an honest man, though finding hon-
esty the less easy for his early bias the other way.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

THE "THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY."

In the year 18-31, in a Vacation, when Newman
and Blanco White had the college very much to
themselves, the same post brought them invitations
from Mr. Hugh James Rose to contribute to the
" Theological Library," about to be published by Mr.
Rivington. The first number, containing the " Life
of Wiclif," by Mr. Le Bas, came out the following
year, and the annexed programme announced that
there were already in preparation, the " Consist-
ency of Revelation," by Dr. Shuttleworth ; the " His-
tory of the Inquisition," by Joseph Blanco White ;
the " History of the Principal Councils," by J. H.
Newman ; and the " Life of Martin Luther," by H.
J. Rose. They were to be handy little volumes, uni-
form, and with appropriate embellishments.

Both the Oriel men were well pleased. It would
be Newman's introduction to the literary and theo-
logical world, for he had not yet achieved any con-
siderable publication. Blanco White was at the time
very much out of humor with litterateurs and pub-
lishers, and was becoming rather tedious in his gos-
sip about people little known at Oxford. So this
was a turn of fortune in his favor. The two col-
leagues, as they were now to be, compared notes, and
immediately made inquiries about the books it would
be necessary to read and the time they would have

248

REMINISCENCES.

to do it in. As they met frequently, and could not
but ask one another questions, there was a growing
sense of difficulty and something like reserve on both
sides. Up to this time there had been no reserve be-
yond that arising from difference of occupations and
studies, and from each having his own more intimate
friends.

Both were violinists, but with different instru-
ments. Blanco White's was a very small instrument,
whatever its technical name. Poor gentleman ! Night
after night any one walking in the silence of Merton
Lane might hear his continual attempts to surmount
some little difficulty, returning to it again and again,
like Philomel to her vain regrets. With Reinagle
and an amateur, Newman and Blanco White had
frequent quartettes at the latter's lodgings, where I
was all the audience. I have long been unable to re-
call the figure or the- performance of the nameless
amateur, and have latterly suspected him to be a
shade of my own raising, and that these were trios.
Most interesting was it to contrast Blanco White's
excited and indeed agitated countenance with New-
man's sphinx-like immobility, as the latter drew long
rich notes with a steady hand.

Neither of the above undertakings was fruitless,
but in neither case did the results appear in the
" Theological Library," or in the intended form, or
upon the matter that Hugh J. Rose had indicated.
In July, 1833, Newman's labors revealed themselves
in the " History of the Arians," completed the pre-
vious year, in writing which he saw what he calls the
"ghost," which eventually drove him to the Church
of Rome ; and in June, 1835, Blanco White gave to
the world, from Liverpool, his " Observations on

THE "THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY."

219

Heresy and Orthodoxy," announcing his rejection of
the whole patristic theology, and his profession of
Christianity as a Unitarian. That Hugh J. Rose
should have conceived it possible that either Newman
or Blanco White would be able to contain himself
within the form and dimensions of an entertaining
manual, shows how little even great men can esti-
mate the volcanic working of free and independent
thought.

Before these two friends finally parted in their
opposite directions, they could confer pleasantly upon
the restraints they were respectively suffering. One
Council Newman soon found to be more than enough
for his limits, and Blanco White soon made the dis-
covery that a true history of the Inquisition would
properly include every act of man which put the pro-
fessors of a different creed at a disadvantage, or made
them uncomfortable. This he deemed the special
vice of religious establishments, indeed of all definite
creeds, and very naturally expected all good people
to agree with him.

As the two contributors to Mr. Rivington's series
warmed up to their labors, they saw less and less of
one another. One Sunday evening, in the common
room, Newman roused himself and exclaimed, " Who 's
seen anything of Blanco White lately? Let's go and
take tea with him." Some three or four of us went
off to his lodgings, and found the poor gentleman at
home. After an hour's forced hilarity and agreeable-
ness, we all felt it a relief to say " good-night," and
part for our rooms. It was about the last incident of
a long residence, which had been a picturesque and
pleasant element in college society, but had latterly
taxed the forbearance of both the college and its
guest.

250

REMINISCENCES.

Blanco White enjoyed conversation, even with
much younger men, from whom he could learn but
little ; but it frequently occurred that he brought a
topic suddenly to a close, gently intimating that he
did not think it fair to say all he had to say when the
hearer might not be duly prepared for weighing it.
Nevertheless his topics were apt to be suggestive.
Indeed, they could not fail of it, for out of the abun-
dance of the heart every man speaks. One of his
topics was false enumeration, that is the numbering
of things not in the same category. It is a folly to
be found sometimes in our ordinary school books.
For example : " Write down a man ; his hands, his
arms and legs, his fingers and toes, his nose, eyes and
ears, his heart and his brains. How many are they
altogether ? " Such an enumeration and such an ad-
dition imply misapprehension at every step, and a
complete abeyance of the reasoning faculties. The
bearing of Blanco White's special dislike of this prac-
tice is of course obvious.

Then, what did people mean when they talked of
the Church? What was it? Who was it ? Where
was it to be found ? Did it signify more than certain
persons agreed to act together, and to make the same
profession ? But Blanco White was not the only
man then asking this question, for it would be hard
to say who were not asking it, if not openly, not the
less anxiously in their own minds. Though there
were men with a cut and dried answer, and very
positive, yet it might be found that no two agreed.
It was Keble who began at Oriel what some think
the worship of the Church as the mother of us all.
For my own part I will confess that I had to use
great force in regarding the Church as a mother,

THE " THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY." 251

though there was no gainsaying the fact that I was
born in her.

In the latter days of the movement proper,' when
Newman felt his moorings to the old shore looser and
looser day by day, a singular incident compelled him
to recognize openly his changed position. Isaac
Williams 'published a volume of poetry, called the
" Baptistry," upon a series of very curious and beau-
tiful engravings, by Boetius a Bolswert, in an old
Latin work, entitled "Via Vita) iEternaj." In these
pictures, besides other things peculiar to the Roman
Church, there frequently occurs the figure of the
Virgin Mother, crowned and in glory; the object of
worship, and distributing the gifts of Heaven. For
this figure Williams substituted the Church, and
thereby incurred a protest from Newman, for adopt-
ing a Roman Catholic work just so far as suited his
own purpose, without caring for the further respon-
sibilities. Blanco White would certainly have ob-
jected to the substitution quite as much as the orig-
inal, probably still more.

As to the subject of false enumeration I have men-
tioned above, the Provost used to approach it from
the opposite quarter, urging the convenience of keep-
ing in the head the number of persons, or things, or
duties, or engagements, each separately liable to slij)
out of recollection, but easily retained by the bond of
a number. Frequently recurring to the point, he in-
stilled the convenience of number, and so justified the
wisdom of antiquity in arranging all things in numer-
ical groups ; twelve of this, nine of that, seven of
something else, and three in some cases.

This, however, was comprised in a general and
very important instruction, often given by the Pro-

252

REMINISCENCES.

vost to young writers. It was, to pay such attention
to the arrangement of paragraphs and clauses, to the
due prominence of names and important words, that
upon returning to the MS. the writer would imme-
diately find himself as much at home with it as when
he left it, instead of having to waste precious time
and strength in recovering his lost relations with his
own handiwork. A MS. thus written has some chance
of impressing itself on the memory, and enabling the
writer to recall what he has written, without having
the trouble of going to the MS., and perhaps having
to look for it.

CHAPTER XL.

THE REFORM BILL.

We were nearly all Tories at Oxford. The com-
paratively few Liberals had indefinite yearnings in
the other direction, but no plans that we heard of.
Bonamy Price used to tell us, with bated breath, on
the authority of Arnold, that at Paris it was a settled
thing the Duke of Orleans was to succeed Charles X.
Price may not remember this. I do. I was a Bour-
bonist, knowing next to nothing of the Bourbons.

I did not know, for example, that not only Charles
X., but even Louis XVIII., always had ready for the
emergency the programme of a war with England.
Fortunately they were like the old lady who will
keep her ace of trumps so long in hand that it has
at last to be played in vain. Louis Philippe and
Guizot thought to profit by the mistake, and accord-
ingly kept the little quarrel with England always
simmering, apologizing privately all the time, on the
ground of political necessity. So whether it was for
the elder or for the younger branch, English sym-
pathy was equally unrequited. When the July Rev-
olution was coming on, I was exceedingly moved by
Prince Polignac's manifesto against the Orleanist
machinations. I thought it a document for all ages.
All Oxford, indeed, was for the " elder branch," and
was greatly scandalized when Harington of Brasenose,
then Denison's close ally, hoisted the tricolor in his
sailing boat.

254

REMINISCENCES.

We seemed very soon to be following in the wake
of France, excepting that here it was the King him-
self that led the way. During the progress of the
Reform Debates, Oxford men gave their character-
istic contributions to the controversy. Keble circulated
a most moving appeal to the British electors. Pusey
left the matter to his brother Philip. Newman neither
did nor said anything that I can remember. His
particular aversion was oligarchy. A monarch may
be " a fell monster of iniquity," or he may be a
church founder, or even the converter of a race. De-
mocracies may be wielded. They acknowledge the
tongue and the pen. Aristocracies have their divine
tradition and their natural gifts. But an oligarchy is
powerful for evil only, never for good. There are
always bad elements in it, and the bad elements al-
ways prevail. These, however, are abstract opinions.
Newman had plent\T to say on this or that utterance,
but I cannot recall that he had formed any estimate
of the working of the Reform Bill. When the Re-
formed Parliament began to show its animus towai'ds
the Church of England he became outspoken, but
not, that I can remember-, till then. For my own
part, not speaking much, I took in all the more.
While at Oxford that year one heard every day dread-
ful accounts of what was done, said, threatened, and
designed in all quarters. Much of this has been since
actually done ; and yet I live to tell the tale, nay
more, to have helped in doing some of it ; for I have
to confess that some things I thought very bad then,
I have since thought better of.

At Derby, such Tories as there were or had been,
were in despair. For many years the True Blue
Club, of which I was not a member, had annually

THE REFORM BILL.

255

testified to Church and State with jovial and exulting
celebrations. County and town then met together,
and the elite of the town received with open arms
some of the queerest personages to be found in it.
But the Reform Bill came like a simoom on this gay
and motley company. Our strenuous friend James
Dean, my brother James's private tutor, all backbone,
but all fire nevertheless, was quite ready to take a
pai't in a counter-demonstration. So after he had
consulted some old Tory colleagues, we set to work.
I was to write the petitions, to both Houses of Par-
liament I think, though that to the Commons would
not be of much use.

I drew up a monster indictment of- some fifty counts
against the Bill ; the policy, the party, Radicals, dis-
senters, and the rabble generally. I think I pretty
well succeeded in enumerating, as the inevitable con-
sequences of the measure, almost everything that has
actually come to pass during the last fifty years;
not quite everything, indeed, for the present state of
things in Ireland and in the House of Commons was
beyond my most dismal forecast. A meeting, sum-
moned by circular, was held in a room used for com-
mittee meetings, over a bookseller's shop in the mar-
ket-place, kept by a good sort of man whom my father
had brought to Derby in 1815. The leading "Church
and State" banker was in the chair; and my pretty
petition was, as I then thought, mauled a little, and I
dare say pruned of some extravagances. There had
been a magnificent display of moderation in the orig-
inal, but my friends now deemed it expedient to
make still further admissions. They were all now
desirous of a judicious and well-considered Reform.
We must have had wonderful faith to stand up

256

REMINISCENCES.

for the existing Parliamentary system, with such a
state of things as we saw even immediately around
us. Derby, Nottingham, and Leicester kept common
political accounts in the Whig interest. Any man
who could be perfectly trusted was made burgess of
all three boroughs, and these threefold burgesses
were a large if not preponderating part of the three
constituencies. In Derby every burgess who chose
to ask for it had his regular fee of two guineas for
his vote, as young William Strutt, afterwards Lord
Belper, found to his sorrow. Though a man might
have large property in the town, live in one of its
best houses, and employ scores of men, he had now
no chance of the freedom, unless he were a known
Whig.

The Reformers had the run of the Town Hall,
opposite our committee room. Poor " Charley
Hope," the leading spirit of the True Blue Club, was
now near the close of his fifth mayoralty, and they
insisted that he was bound to summon a meeting to
take the sense of the town. He consented, distinctly
stipulating that as soon as he had opened the meeting
he should be at liberty to vacate the chair, leaving
the meeting to fill it with some one more to their
mind. He did as he said he would do, but I, who
was present, saw it struck a damp into the people,
and they did not like to see his back as he left the
room. He ought to have retired facing the foe, and
covering his retreat with a blessing. But this is
more easily said than done. His withdrawal left the
coast clear, and full advantage was taken of it. The
enemy immediately denounced ours as a " hole and
corner " meeting, and the petition itself as a " hole
and corner " petition.

THE REFORM BILL.

257

It lay at the shop for signature, just opposite the
Town Hall, with due notice in the window that there
it lay within ; and my colleague and I went about
night and day rallying the scattered forces of the old
cause. Most declined on the ground of the uselessness
of the movement and the probable dangers to them-
selves. But there were more than a hundred names,
many of them of good and brave men. A better
hundred I believe there never were.

I sent it up, so it had been indicated to me as the
proper course, to the Marquis of Londonderry, for-
gotten now, but then a respected though vehement
politician. Together with it I sent a private letter,
describing, in what I thought proper terms, the
character of the meeting in the Town Hall, the lan-
guage of the speakers there, and the intentions every-
where avowed, and extending far beyond Parlia-
mentary Reform. The Marquis presented the pe-
tition, and I think read some of it, though that would
be a long business. He also read my letter, or the
greater part of it. I called one good man a " dem-
ocrat." I mentioned that Edward Strutt, now the
young leader of the Liberal party, did not himself
altogether approve of the Bill, which was probably
true, if only because it retained the freemen. But
what was most needless and most foolish, I mentioned
the withdrawal of the clerical Mayor from the chair,
after formally opening the meeting in the Town
Hall. The Marquis gave their lordships, and con-
sequently the people of Derby, the benefit of these
communications. The Duke of Devonshire, find-
ing his manor poached upon, demanded the name
of the writer, which the Marquis gave. The Duke
had only heard of one of the name in Derby, and he

VOL. la 17

258

REMINISCENCES.

was not likely to write such a letter. He was quite
right there. The gentleman, whose name was pro-
nounced, though not spelt, like mine, was an eminent
solicitor who had the care of several large county
estates, and with whom the Duke had business rela-
tions.

This was on Tuesday. The Bill was thrown out
after sunrise on Saturday, and the news, by a great
effort, arrived at Derby soon after sunset the same
day. Immediately very strong placards appeared in
the hostile shops, and wherever bills were usually
posted. The Reformers got at the late Mayor's own
church tower and rang a muffled peal. The placards
and the bellmen summoned the population to the
market-place. The streets were, however, already
thronged with the men, who had just received their
week's wages. Speakers were soon forthcoming in
the market-place. Some one proposed they should
wreck the shop, then right before their eyes, where
the " hole and corner " petition had lain for sig-
nature. So they set to work, gutted the shop, and
broke the windows.

Amongst other drunken men, there were some
from the iron and lead works. One of them con-
ceived the happy thought of fetching a sledge-
hammer and breaking the slight iron pillar sup-
porting the front of the building. He and his
comrade struck at the pillar for some time, with no
result happily ; for, had they succeeded, the whole
building would have come down upon them. The
mob waited to see the expected downfall, amusing
themselves meanwhile with a bonfire of the books
and stationery.

As the iron pillar refused to yield, something else

THE REFORM BILL.

259

must be done. A voice suggested our house, and a
friend in the crowd ran to give us warning. We
all rushed to close the front gates and the shutters.
While we were so engaged the mob made its ap-
pearance, and as the road contractors had left some
heaps of broken stone handy, the stones soon began
to fly in. Every pane in the forty front and side
windows was broken, but somehow the mob were
afraid of being caught in a trap by getting behind
the house. Of course the shutters, as well as much
of the stone work, were injured. It was a still night,
and the breaking of the glass was heard a mile out of
the town, and mistaken for a discharge of musketry.

Another body of Reformers went from the market-
place to the house of a Mr. Eaton, a surgeon, and a
rather noisy member of the True Blue Club. This
gentleman was great-grandson of Alderman Eaton,
who attended on the Duke of Perth in 1745, and
overheard the council of war in which the young
Pretender declared he would rather be buried alive
where he was than give up his march to London ;
but, after a long and hot discussion, had to consent
to a retreat northward. The Reformers gutted the
poor man's house and drove him into the Derwent,
that flowed by the foot of his garden.

Attacking many houses as they passed, they
gathered strong and took a stand in St. Alkmund's
churchyard, at the vicarage of the late Mayor, who
had offended them by vacating the chair at the Town
Hall. Here they broke every pane of glass, besides
other damage, and kept up such volleys of stones
that the inmates, including several ladies, were driven
from one corner to another, and even into cupboards,
to escape them. One division went to Chaddesden,

2G0

REMINISCENCES.

and broke every window in Sir Robert Wilmot's
house? back as well as front. Another went to
Markeaton Hall, the seat of the Mundys, and did
the same. It was the poachers probably who directed
the mob to these two houses. They were at this
work most of the night. A good gentleman, still
living, whom I had described as a democrat in my
letter to the Marquis, sent to offer us the use of his
house for the night. We managed to do without it.
He had not been quite hitting it off with his own
workpeople ; indeed, one of the charges I brought
against the leading Reformers was that they were
trying to turn against the political state of things
the discontent they were suffering from at home.
Of the wisdom or the justice of this charge I say
nothing. It must have been many mobs who did the
work of that night, several of them probably directed
by merely personal malice, since no other reason
could be found. Plunder there was, too, but it was
just the accident of a fellow fancying some article
and rescuing it from the wreck.

I and a brother got up early and visited the scenes
of devastation. The town was placarded with notices
put out by the new Mayor, inviting all well-disposed
citizens to a meeting in the Town Hall to take meas-
ures for the restoration of order. The previous even-
ing, at the approach of the mob, my brother had been
sent off to the Mayor to ask for assistance, though
what assistance he could render it was not easy to see.
So the poor man thought himself, for as soon as he
heard of the mob in the market-place, and the work
going on there, he went to bed. However, he pre-
sented himself to my brother in his nightcap, and
told him he did n't know what he could do. In the

THE REFORM BILL.

261

course of the night he issued the notice I have men-
tioned. The bellmen who the evening before had
been calling the population to a meeting in the mar-
ket-place, were now calling the citizens to a meeting
in the Town Hall. The Mayor's notion was that
the friends of order would be in the majority.

At nine, the appointed hour, the Town Hall was
full. By a side door I got to a seat a place or two
from the Mayor. Some one came up to me and
warned me of the danger of exposing myself, but my
face was not much known in the town ; nor did I
think anybody would harm me. In a few minutes a
man got up and proposed that they should proceed
to the town and county jails, and let out all the
prisoners. It was carried by acclamation. Upon
this I went home to breakfast, expecting the mob to
pass on its errand very soon. Some Jong-winded
fellow must have kept them, for they did not come,
and I began to think they had thought better of this
move.

Soon after breakfast we started for the half-past
ten service. On passing out of our gates we saw the
mob coming up the street. Common instinct took
us all, nine or ten, into the middle of the road, so that
we met the mob face to face. It divided for us, and
we passed through without saying a word ; indeed,
some touched their hats to us. During prayers we
heard distinct tumult, and before prayers were over
we heard shots. The mob had gone first to the old
county jail, now used as the town jail. Taking up
an iron lamp-post, they applied it as a battering-ram
against the door. When that began to give, the
governor surrendered at discretion, having already
opened the doors of the cells and mustered the prison-

262

REMIXISCEN'CES.

ers. There were about a score of them, some debtors
and some small offenders ; who now walked out of
jail to gratify their deliverers, and returned that
evening or the next morning.

Thence the mob went a couple of hundred yards to
the newly-built county jail, standing on an octagonal
area surrounded by a high wall, and with a deeply
recessed Doric entrance. The assailants could not be
touched from the walls, and a hundred of them could
have worked for an hour at the door without molesta-
tion from within. The governor and his turnkeys
scrambled to the top of some ornamental stone work
over the entrance, pointed guns, gave due warning,
and then fired as much downwards as they could,
killing one young man and wounding another, mere
lookers-on, of course. I might just as well have been
shot myself as I stood in the crowd that was breaking
the windows of the " Xew Times " office, on the
withdrawal of the Bill of Pains and Penalties in
1820. The siege of the county jail was raised quick-
ly, but the mob had entire possession of town and
neighborhood till the middle of Tuesday. The won-
der is they did not do worse than they did.

A troop of Yeomanry came into the town on Mon-
day, but as they were all neighboring farmers and
wrell-known faces, it was judged best that they should
do nothing. This might be right, but one may yet
ask what Yeomanry are for, if they are to do nothing
in the only case in which they can be wanted. The
question has also an important bearing on the scheme
of military centres, and regiments raised and kept
within given localities. The magistrates sent to
Nottingham, where there were two troops of cavalry ;
but these were wanted in the market-place to protect

THE REFORM BILL.

263

the shops, while the mob were gutting and burning
the Castle, situated in another hundred, and belong-
ing to the Duke of Newcastle. On Monday morning
the authorities sent the bellmen around again with a
general invitation to a meeting in the Town Hall to
address the King, praying him to persevere in Reform,
but the populace paid no attention to it ; indeed,
most of them were now too drunk to do anything
but break window's and commit petty acts of destruc-
tion.

On Tuesday there arrived a troop of Hussars,
which drew up and formed in the market-place, wait-
ing for orders. The mob assembled opposite them,
and the pavement all round was crowded with spec-
tators. Some fellows came out of the mob, made
speeches, and defied the soldiers to do anything.
The Riot Act was read, and the soldiers were ordered
to charge the mob, which they did slowly. One
orator held his ground till the horse's head was
almost over him, when the hussar fired his piece over
the man's head, and so killed a poor fellow as he was
carrying a tankard of ale across a street near two
hundred yards off. The hussars quickened their
pace ; the mob fled in all directions up lanes and
courts, pursued by the hussars, one of whom charged
up a high flight of stone steps, reared his horse against
the door, burst it open, and presented himself in the
midst of the terrified foe, returning however in peace.

The town was quiet immediately, except that the
rioters were too drunk to return to work, and lounged
about the sti-eets. The well-disposed inhabitants
were formed into patrolling parties, marching about
night and day for a fortnight, and were hospitably
invited to supper by those who could afford it. Some

264

REMINISCENCES.

rode about in pairs, with directions to give immediate
information of any gathering. I visited most of these
pickets, and was told I had better take care of myself.

The casualties were not many, but were very sad.
Henry Haden, eldest son of an eminent surgeon,
and uncle of Mr. Seymour Haden, the distinguished
etcher, was a favorite of the town and a musical
amateur. While watching the progress of the mob
in the heart of the town, he heard some fellows say
they meant to go nest to Kedleston Hall, the mag-
nificent seat of the Curzons, containing a fine gallery
of paintings. He was their medical attendant.
Trying to force his way through the mob to send a
messenger to Kedleston, he fainted, was brought
home, and died before morning. It could never be
known whether he had been exerting himself too
much, or had had some rough usage.

Poor Mr. Hope, whom I have introduced in a
former chapter as one of two clergymen of the period,
received such a shock to his system, and felt so deeply
his undeserved usage at the hands of old neighbors
and acquaintances as it were, that he soon dwindled
into the shadow of his once portly figure. Mr. Eaton,
the surgeon, who was driven into the river, died of
vexation and the chill. The poor youth who was
shot from the county jail had shortly before told his
mother he would go out and see what was going on,
and was brought home dying.

When all was over, people began to inquire into
the composition of the mob that had held possession
of the town so long. Derby was not then so populous
but that everybody could be traced. The active
members of the mob were a handful, two or three
dozen perhaps ; except that boys will always throw

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265

stones when they can do so with impunity. There
were many operatives then off work, or on half time.
The men who made the, apparently senseless proposal
to break open the jails were poachers, who seized
the opportunity to release some of their friends in
prison just at the beginning of the pheasant season.
The fellow who harangued the dragoons in the
market-place had been for many years in the habit
of coining to the benevolent ladies of Derby with
long stories of distress, want of work, and the inhu-
manity of his employers.

My father and the rest of the sufferers demanded
compensation from the borough. The demand was
resisted on the ground that the mob had not tried
to pull the houses down, which was necessary by the
Act. The sufferers were also told it was their own
fault. They made a common cause, and put forward
first the case of the shop in the market-place, where
the obnoxious petition had been agreed on and had
lain for signature. It was proved that the mob had
done its best to demolish the house by hammering
away a long time at the pillar supporting the front.
This decided the case against the corporation. No
such case of intended demolition could have been
made out for the other sufferers, but they proceeded
to prosecute their claims, and the corporation were
so disgusted by the length of their lawyer's bill that
they gave in, seeing that submission would cost
much less than victory.

The county, finding their new jail ill adapted for
defence — in fact, utterly unable to point a gun at
any assailant who could get close enough to the wall,
built eight lofty round towers at the corners of the
octagon, so pierced as to rake the walls outside.

266

REMINISCENCES.

They sadly jar with the very severe Doric entrance.
County magistrates are a race beyond the reach of
ordinary comprehension. Only a few years since,
having to provide a depository for the arms of the
Militia, the Derbyshire magistrates bought a deserted
brick-field commanded on all sides by ground varying
from ten to twenty feet above the site, and there
they planted their arsenal and barracks, which any
one could look down into from all sides. Some said
it was a job, but as these were honorable men, the
probability is they did not know better.

It was about three weeks after the above dis-
turbances that the populace of Bristol took advantage
of Sir Charles Wetherell's public entrance into the
city as Recorder, to burn down a square, several
streets, and the Bishop's place. James Dean, my
colleague at Derby, had the luck to engage the very
last thoughts of the unreformed House of Commons.
Upon the occasion of a Fast Day early in 1832, two
fellows went about Derby putting up blasphemous
placards and making speeches upon them. Dean
tore the placards down, and was accordingly assault-
ed by the men. He had them up and they were
sent to prison for two months. Four thousand men
in London petitioned for their release, on the ground
that they were in the right and Dean in the wrong.
There was a debate on this petition, which had gone
some way when the House was counted out on the
very eve of the dissolution.

CHAPTER XLI.

WHATELY, ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN.

It was just about this time, that is the rejection of
the first Reform Bill by the House of Lords, that
Whately was made Archbishop of Dublin, to the
great delight and encouragement of his friends and
admirers in and out of the Anglican communion. The
appointment took most people very much by surprise,
probably because they had not thought about it. I
had not thought at all about it, but even if I had, I
am sure I should never have guessed Whately for a
bishopric anywhere, least of all in Ireland.

I had always supposed Whately so disgusted with
the whole state of affairs in this country, temporal
and spiritual, and so dissatisfied with the ci-eeds, the
rites and ceremonies, and the Orders of the Church,
that he would be prepared any clay for any violent
change, a reformation of the Church on thoroughly
liberal principles, or a separation of Church and
State. Whately had been some time credited with
an anonymous pamphlet, pointing to the latter of
these alternatives, for no other reason that I am my-
self acquainted with than that it agreed with his
usual utterances, and there was nobody else in Ox-
ford likely to have written it.

Cardinal Newman has something more to say as to
this question of authorship. He has a recollection of
having assumed the pamphlet to be Whately 's in a

268

REMINISCENCES.

conversation with the Provost, who could hardly fail
to know whether it was his or not ; and of having
been left by the Provost to understand that the as-
sumption was right. But he has told me the Provost
does not remember this. So I leave it in the Cardi-
nal's hands.

AVhately's whole life had been a continual protest
against pomp and formality, and this was all the
more noticeable, inasmuch as nobody ever found him
wanting in good manners, or, at Oxford, in social
kindness. I remember, indeed, a story which might
be interpreted as showing him not quite equal to a
not very uncommon difficulty. He had asked some
neighbors to dinner at his country parsonage, and
after dinner their conversation became so disagree-
able that Whately threw the window open, jumped
out, and disappeared till late in the evening ; when
the coast was clear. One cannot help thinking he
might have played the triton easily among such very
small and dirty minnows.

Shortly after the news of Whately's appointment,
I came up to Oxford from Derby. I do not think I
was excited, though perhaps more than usually want-
ing in circumspection. My head must have been
running a good deal on the scenes I had left, and one
cannot look forward and backward at the same time.
The Provost greeted me with the remark that he
supposed I had made Derby too hot to hold me,
which, as a fact, was by no means the case.

Immediately on my arrival I made straight for
Christie's rooms. There I found in conversation
with him a rather common-looking man, of no partic-
ular significance or expression. I delivered at once
the fulness of my soul about the new Archbishop of

WHATELY, ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN.

2G9

Dublin. " What an appointment ! Could there be
a worse one ? Was he sent to Ireland to destroy the
Church and faith altogether ? " Christie became un-
usually excited. He stamped about the room ; looked
daggers, as they say, bit his lips, all in vain, for I
went on, thinking it possible the dull stranger might
be the cause of all this fhlgeting. The dull stranger
left the room. It was Christie's old friend, Pope,
Whately's brother-in-law. He was saying good-
bye, as he had to accompany Whately to Ireland.
It was painfully evident in after years that Whately
did not carry away pleasant impressions of Oriel, or
of the University.

When Christie was in the last of his many and
serious illnesses, his sufferings were increased, and
his recovery rendered hopeless, by his circumstances.
He had a numerous family, and he was leaving very
scant provision for them, having been open-handed
like the rest of us. He persisted in doing the duty
of his church and his parish, for he could not afford
to pay a curate, still less to find another temporary
home. A kind cousin, who had come to see him,
was shocked to see him struggling on in this deplor-
able state. He knew Christie had had many and
good friends, and that at one time he had seen much
of Dr. and Mrs. Whately. He drew up a circular,
stating these lamentable circumstances, and propos-
ing a subscription to pay a curate, and so give Chris-
tie the rest essential to his recovery. I received the
circular and responded to it. The cousin sent one to
the Archbishop, and received an exceedingly rough
reply. A few days after that he would see Christie's
death in the papers.

That Whately should think the case possibly exag-

270

REMIXISCENXES.

gerated, and that he should find himself under the
painful necessity of drawing strong lines in the dis-
tribution of his bounty, is so likely that any appli-
cant might have to take the risk of that. But the
reply received indicated a resolution to efface the
memory of Oxford, and of his Oxford friends gener-
ally, from his mind, and to be as if he had never
been at that University. This was, to sa}' the least,
very ungrateful, for Whately owed a good deal to
Oxford. It certainly was more than half the making
of him, whatever that making might be worth.

Whately had a strange idea that his acceptance of
the see was a service of danger, and that there were
many Irishmen fanatical enough to be ready to assas-
sinate so known and so powerful a foe to supersti-
tion. Blanco White may have contributed to this
belief, for he had himself a firm conviction that the
first day he showed himself in Dublin would be his
last. Accordingly, besides Pope, who was a very ro-
bust person, a still more stout and muscular cousin,
named Willis, was to form part of the escort. This
gentleman prepared for the worst, for he carried an
armory of pistols. On the arrival of the whole party
at Holyhead, Willis was dispatched to the post of-
fice. It was dark, and he fell into an ill-protected
cellar, breaking several bones badly. He had to be
nursed many weeks at Holyhead, and was then found
unnecessar}' at Dublin.

It was not long before there came from Dublin
some rather absurd stories. At the Viceroy's table
the Archbishop was airing his Liberalism gayly.
After a rapid succession of magnanimous surrenders,
he suddenly felt he must make a stand somewhere.
There was at least one thing he could not and would

WHATELY, ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN.

271

not abide. His Excellency smiled so graciously that
Whately went on stronger than ever. By and by he
felt various toes approaching his feet and shins under
the table, some right across. He broke out indig-
nantly, " What are you kicking me for ? " This
final stand happened to be the very point on which
the Viceroy was most open to censure. The young
aides-de-camp tried to sharpen their wit upon the
strange arrival, and it was said had been worsted.

An Archbishop, like everybody else, has to beware
of the prophetic force his own words may one day
be found to bear. The Viceroy wrote to ask whether
he had any objection to meet Dr. Murray, the very
gentle and amiable Roman Catholic Archbishop. Of
course he did not object, and need not have said more
than that. Privately, however, he said to his friends
that he would not object to meet anybody, no, not
even the Devil himself. Many years afterwards this
was remembered when Whately had to meet Cullen,
and did not get the best of it.

Whately took his Vice-Principal, Hinds, with him,
to act as Examining Chaplain. At Oxford they had
been almost inseparable ; the white bear and the
black bear, as they were called. As I remember,
Newman had a certain tenderness for Hinds, even
when the divergence from Whately had been con-
siderable. He would speak of " poor Hinds." But
I think there was just a suspicion of craziness. I was
myself very much startled one morning by finding all
the corners of the streets posted with " The Three
Temples, by the Rev. Samuel Hinds," as if the writer
had made some grand discovery, or was suddenly
throwing out a challenge to the Christian world. I
did not, however, take the trouble to see whether it
was so.

272

REMINISCENCES.

It spoke well for Whately's affection, but not for
his perception of character or general forethought,
that he should take with him as his best man one so
unfit for business, and so different in all respects from
any kind of Irishman. Whately very soon found
others on the spot more serviceable than Hinds,
more popular, and perhaps also more agreeable to
himself. Hinds had not the magnanimity to accept
what really was a matter of course, and he became
jealous and querulous. Whately, however, could not
send him into outer darkness. He would appear to
have borne long the discontents and caprices of his
old friend, and to have done what he could for him.
At last it became a State difficulty, and the knot had
to be cut, since there was no untying it. Whately
and Lord Clarendon, so it was said, recommended
Hinds to Lord J. Russell as a fit subject for high
English promotion, and Hinds became accordingly
Bishop of Norwich, a post which perhaps he had
better not have accepted, and which his characteristic
sensitiveness on a delicate matter induced him to
resign.

Whately had a very good saying about the major-
ity of preachers. " They aim at nothing, and they
hit it." Is it possible to describe better his own
episcopate ?

CHAPTER XLTI.

UNIVERSAL MOVEMENT OF 1831-1832.

PEOPLE who talk about the Oxford movement sel-
dom say anything about the universal movement
which immediately preceded it. In the year 1831
the whole fabric of English, and indeed of European
society, was trembling to the foundations. Every
party, every interest, political or religious, in this
country, was pushing its claims to universal accept-
ance, with the single exception of the Church of
England, which was folding its robes to die with what
dignity it could.

There is a singular feature of this period, almost
unnoticed, which must be described by a reference to
Plato's saying, that Truth is so beautiful that were
she seen really as she is, all men would love her.
Every clique, every sect, almost every middle-class
family, believed itself that Truth, and felt no doubt
that if any one of its members were to have the man-
agement of public affairs but for a very short period,
it could and would entirely regenerate the world.
The belief, monstrous as we may deem it, was not
quite unnatural. At that time all who held office in
the State, in the Church, in our county and munici-
pal institutions, and in the management of the army,
the navy, the colonies, and the other dependencies, —
in a word, the entire administration of the country,
had long been under a load of depreciation amount-
ing to the bitterness and weight of an anathema.

vol. r. 18

274 REMINISCENCES.

The people who contemned, denounced, and anathe-
matized, regarded it all as a matter simply of right
and wrong, and believed that every question could
be solved instantly and forever by the triumph of
the right, that is, of themselves. In the story books
of that date, and even long after that date, the good
man, the right man, and the true man, has only to
show himself and to say a few words, and he carries
all with him.

Indeed for a long period before this the assumption
of "good books" bad been that all the world was
wrong except a few of the author's own mind, and
that this privileged few only wanted the opportunity
to set everything right. Every ambition found its
stimulus in the doctrine that everything was wrong,
yet capable of being effectually and almost instantly
rectified. Popular writers urged the rising genera-
tion to choose their lines of reformation at once, and
pursue them obstinately to the assured end.

In all these matters, and in the census thus taken
of human affairs, people looked generally, so to speak,
over the hedge. One class took its measure of an-
other ; one trade of another ; one Christian bod)- of
another. The towns had but the most outside knowl-
edge of the county families, and by what they saw
passed judgment upon them. The church was pur-
suing an exclusive line. It made little appearance in
the good works of the day, and was condemned by
default. But nobody wished to be better informed
about the Church, for egotism was now the great
virtue, and nobody wished to go out of himself to be
another's friend and adviser, except to destroy him,
or tie him to his own chariot wheels.

Thus there prevailed universally, in one form or

UNIVERSAL MOVEMENT OF 1831-1832.

275

another, the idea of a great enterprise, in which one
man was to save his country, not to say the whole
world, the achievement to be all the greater because
done against the wishes and opinions of those that
were to be saved, and by the discomfiture and humil-
iation of all existing powers and influences.

At such a time, when a thousand projectors were
screaming from a thousand platforms, when all Eng-
land was dinned with philanthropy and revolution,
spirituality and reform, when the scissors and paste-
pot were everywhere at work on the Prayer Book,
when Whately was preparing to walk quietly over
two Churches in Ireland, and Arnold was confidently
hoping to surpass Bunsen's scheme of universal com-
prehension in England, Newman was laboriously
working his way into the hitherto unvisited region of
patristic theology, and closing his work almost before
he had begun it, in order to accompany a sick friend
to the Mediterranean, and there pass the winter and
spring, far from home, beyond the very tidings of the
demolition to be any day begun.

*-

CHAPTER XLIII.

ST. NICHOLAS AND ST. BUUWALD.

The year 1832 was to be a very broken one, as
indeed it was to many of us, for the vast locomotive
of " Church and State " was that year being shunted
from one line to another. I had just been ordained
to Deacon's Orders by Bagot, Bishop of Oxford. To
his very recent death, I never heard or saw the name
of Archdeacon Clerke, Bagot's chaplain, without a
fresh twinge of conscience at the remembrance of the
very indifferent figure I must have made in the ex-
amination. I had no occasion to be jealous of the
reader of the Gospel.

Early in January, Whi taker Churton, whom I had
admired as a sweet little child at Charterhouse, and
whom I should have liked if only for his brother
Edwai'd's sake, drove me to take his brother-in-law
Loveday's Sunday's services at East Ilsley, a village
in which the principal thoroughfares are divided into
pens for the periodical sheep fairs, the pens being the
best property in the place. A new parsonage was
rising from the ground. Loveday occupied it thirty-
four years, and died, or . resigned, fifteen years ago.
My first initiation into the secular responsibilities
attached to the pastoral office was when the clerk,
after service, requested me to sign a certificate that a
man I had never seen or heard of was the proper
recipient of a pension. I requested to see the man,

ST. NICHOLAS AND ST. RUNWALD. 277

and I did see him, but of course I was not much the
wiser for that, unless it were that I thought the man
looked like a pensioner. However, I signed the
document.

I wished for regular clerical duty. Newman and
Ogilvie of Baliol soon planned it for me, Ogilvie
taking me several times round the " Parks " to
satisfy himself as to my seriousness and to give good
advice. His chief recommendation was excellent, but
unfortunately too late, and I pass it on to those
whom it may concern. It was that I should start
with a good stock of written sermons. The only
sermons I had were those I had written for East
Ilsley. I can never say that I have wanted the op-
portunity of ministerial usefulness, for the opening
now offered was a most exceptionally good one. James
Round, father of the present member for East Essex,
but then unmarried, had been Proctor the previous
year. There had been a visitation of Cambridge
men, who had corne with the set purpose of making
disturbances. Round had taken vigorous measures,
shutting some of them up in the Castle. Their Ox-
ford friends had retaliated in various offensive ways,
particularly at Commemoration. He had taken it to
heart, and was suffering neuralgia.

I undertook his whole duty at Colchester, — two
parishes, one of them populous; two churches, daily
service, two full services on Sunday, two sermons to
write every week, and what was more than all, not a
minute's repose in the day. I lived with Round, and
had to be with him as much as I could. He was a
most agreeable and most instructive companion, while
his habitual seriousness was specially adapted to
supply my own lamentable want of it. The house

278

REMINISCENCES.

itself was charming to my tastes. It contained the
very large and interesting library of Mr. Morant, an
eminent antiquary, in a grand room built for it ;
and the gardens surrounded what was left of Col-
chester Castle, stoutly but vainly defended by the
Royalists against the Parliamentary forces. Time
out of mind there had been a family of wood-pigeons
in the garden. The ruins of a grand Norman church
were a few steps off.

But I had never five minutes of that absolute rest
which my poor nature required, and which less scru-
pulous or more courageous people obtain by the use
of tobacco. Had I gone there provided with a few
dozen sermons, or with some speaking power, I might
have remained at Colchester to this day. But the
necessity of writing two sermons a week interfered
with everything ; with the occasional rest I required,
with exercise, and with my night's sleep. They were
always on my mind, and, becoming drudgery, I was
conscious of their being ineffective. My visiting,
though there were some twelve or thirteen hundred
people in the two parishes, was not such a burden ;
indeed, Round seemed to think me rather an enthu-
siast in that way. Yet my first visit was a nervous
one. On returning to " Holly Place," after my first
afternoon service, I found waiting for me a summons
to a deathbed. I went to the " Barracks," as the
place was called, a large quaint old pile, let in tene-
ments ; a warren of poverty. Groping about and
winding about, I found myself at last in a wretched
bedroom, where two men, one evidently a minister,
stood by the sick man's bedside. They immediately
made way for me, and asked, as it appeared to me
simply and unaffectedly, that they might join in my

ST. NICHOLAS AND ST. RUNWALD.

279

prayers, for they saw I had a Prayer Book in my
hand. How I acquitted myself, and what good I
did, I cannot say, but if I was not prepared for the
pulpit, neither was I for the bedside.

One little matter of housekeeping I will mention,
not because it affected me, but because it affected my
Rector very much, and illustrates what people were
doing in those days, before the appearance of the
" Tracts for the Times." Round, though a thorough
invalid, very nervous, and full of aches and pains,
fasted all Lent, and particularly on a great fast, I
think for the cholera. He would scarcely touch
animal food, or any other pleasant food that had
passed through a cook's hand. But his friends had
put him under the care of an old family servant, who
did not like to see him fast, and who tried to circum-
vent the Church by a constant profusion of very
heavy plum-cakes, plum-bread, honey, jams, and
other sweet things. I used to wonder how a man of
sense could allow himself to be duped by such a dis-
tinction. On the great Fast Day he ate a scrap of
hard dry salt fish, and would not look at the egg
sauce. I had had one full service, and had another
before me, so I brazened my front, and helped myself
largely to the contents of the tureen. It was not
fasting, for I did not fast, but work without rest, that
was too much for me, and I soon broke down utterly.
The tone of Holly Place, it will be seen, was High
Church. There was a Low Church at Colchester,
and a Low Church clergyman ; a very good man, I
used to hear, for I never saw him. Round would
drop hints about making approaches to him, and so
bringing him round a little. Some time after this
episode, Round married a lady of a family certainly

280

REMINISCENCES.

not High Church, and I believe it ended in the Low
Church clergyman neutralizing Round. My Rector
made Bishop Ken his ideal, and Ken, I suppose,
now occupies a neutral position in the Church of
England.

When nearly as ill as I could be, I went to Oxford
to vote for Dr. Mills in the contest for the newly-
founded Boden Professorship, as I had promised be-
fore leaving Oxford. My friends told me I must see
a doctor, so I saw Dr. Wootten, and no doubt he went
by the Pharmacopoeia. He gave me a prescription,
which on my return I took to a good London chemist.
What he gave me I know not ; but it must have come
from Medea's own medicine-chest. I took the proper
quantum and went to bed, for I had been directed to
break my return journey by a night or two. I im-
mediately passed into another state of existence,
which next morning I resolved never to return to, if
I could help. It was chaos rather than life.

My Rector had given me a note to Bloomfield, then
Bishop of London. It was the Bishop's rule that
newly ordained deacons must be examined with his
own candidates before they could be admitted to
curacies in his diocese. So I had to receive instruc-
tions. I was also to ask whether my license was to
be for one of the two livings, or for both. This I
did. The Bishop seemed exceedingly put out, and
exclaimed, " What can it possibly signify ? " I quite
agreed with him, but I had done as I had been bid.
Nor could I be expected to know the technicalities
of the business.

I was so ill at the time, that on leaving the house,
which I did instantly, seeing it was expected of me,
I staggered across the street, and held for a quarter

ST. NICHOLAS AND ST. RUNWALD.

281

of an hour to the garden rails. This was the only
time I ever saw or heard Bloomfield, except when I
heard him preach upon an occasion, the same sermon,
I need not say a very good one, at the Chapel Royal,
St. James's, and at St. Paul's ; much better, of course,
in the morning than in the evening.

On my return to Colchester my friends there were
all as kind as they could be, but when, in another
month or so, the doctor told them confidentially I was
dying, they wei*e rejoiced at my receiving an invita-
tion to join our family circle at Teignmouth. I went
in one long day, from London to Exeter, feeling bet-
ter every mile of the road. A lady who chanced to
see me stepping down from the coach next morning
at Teignmouth, exclaimed, " What is the use of that
young man coming to lay his bones here ?" In three
weeks I was wandering over Dartmoor, losing my
way at nightfall, and passing the night in a poor cot-
tage at Manston. With my friends I took a very
pretty tour, much enlivened by the political situation,
for it was the conclusion of the long Reform debates.
Totnes looked dilapidated, the Reformers having
smashed every Tory window in the town the pre-
vious evening. We were rowed down to Dartmouth,
and received with discharges of artillery from the
quay by Colonel Seale's supporters, to the sad dis-
comfiture of a nervous lady and her invalid daughter.
We took shelter in the first hotel we came to, and in
ten minutes saw under the window the principal Tory
of the town, brought to bay by a triumphant Liberal
mob, thrown on the ground and deprived of a pistol
he had been foolishly pointing at everybody. As
there was no quiet to be expected on shore, we took
to the water, and were immediately surrounded by

282

REMINISCENCES.

the most impudent shoal of porpoises I ever knew,
staring at us, switching their tails, and squirting
water all about vis. After catching a sight of Start
Point, we returned through a sea of brilliant phos-
phoric effects. It was a dies mirabilis, pleasant to
recall.

CHAPTER XLIV.

BUCKLAND.

A few weeks more and I was back at Oxford.
Moreton Pinckney, in Northamptonshire, just then
fell vacant. It was about thirty miles from Oxford,
and had been served many years by a dual arrange-
ment. Tyler and Dornford had successively held the
living, with curates in charge, occasionally taking their
place, and frequently riding down even in term time.
They had found it an agreeable relief from their col-
lege duties. Fronde, whether spontaneously or not,
suggested that I should take the living and he should
share the duties. I agreed at once, and for a week
or two supposed that to be the arrangement. But
Froude had by this time begun to show the approach
of that disease which always seemed imminent, but
which he had defied rather than guarded against.
His father put his veto on the plan. I have to con-
fess that I felt a little relieved, for I knew that a
moiety of the work on high ecclesiastical principles
would prove to be a heavier burden than the whole
on my own lines. My Derby friends hardly knew
what to say to my taking the living. My father con-
sulted Pickford. He must have studied the college
patronage, dividing it into prime, secondary, and in-
ferior joints, for he told my father Moreton Pinckney
was an "offal " place. It had the recommendation of
lying between Oxford and Derby. The curate in

284

REMINISCENCES.

charge wished to remain till Michaelmas, but mean-
while John Marriott had accepted as a title for orders
the curacy of Buckland, a pleasant ride from Oxford,
and he wanted a locum tenens for four months.

The arrangements made for a population not far
from a thousand illustrate the kind and comfortable
practice of those days. The Vicar having died, leav-
ing two young children, the Roman Catholic patron,
or his trustees, gave the living to old Mr. Stevens,
Rector of Bradfield, to hold with his own, on the un-
derstanding that, after providing for the duty, he
would band the proceeds to bis sister-in-law, the late
Vicar's widow, for herself and her children. Bishop
Burgess was an old friend of the Rector of Bradfield,
and paid him occasional visits ; so he could be sure
the arrangements would be properly carried out. In-
deed there was no doubt it would. Marriott had
taken an empt)r cottage with four rooms and two gar-
rets, and he gave me £50 to furnish it. Mrs. New-
man said it could be done, and she would do it for
me. She went with me from shop to shop ; and we
completely furnished the cottage, parlour, kitchen,
two bedrooms, and two garrets, for the money, not a
shilling over. When Marriott came into the cottage
he was quite satisfied with the use we had made of
his money, excepting that the " sofa," or settee, be-
sides being large and ugly, was very hard and knotty.

Newman rode in from Oxford, more than once I
think. It was about that time he wrote to me a long
and earnest letter, calling me to greater devotion of
life, more regularity in duty and study, and more
consideration of the end of my being. Already his
name was great, and through him the name of Ox-
ford was greater than it had been. The widow at the

BUCKLAND.

285

parsonage — poor lady, who sang one song, and that
was "The Last Rose of Summer" — was most anxious
to see him, for her son was going to Oriel, where her
brother Tinney, the Chancery barrister, had been
Fellow.

Even more desirous to see him was her daughter
Cecilia, a very lively, talkative, clever girl of thirteen,
as honest, good, and true as her wretched brother was
the contrary. She charged herself with a store of
questions about the great Oxford world, and all that
was doing there and everywhere ; and when Newman
came she kept up an incessant battery, which, as she
was very nice looking, and had a sweet voice and a
charming manner, was not disagreeable. Newman
answered so fully and pleasantly that time only failed
for more. He relapsed into a musing mood ; perhaps
he was thinking of John Marriott. " I suppose Cecilia
will marry the curate some day," he said. JTeu vatum
ignarce mentes ! Her mother was a sad wilful woman.
When I had carefully prepared two of her servants
for Confirmation, she sent word at the last moment
that she could not spare them, as she had asked a
friend to dinner that day. This from the widow of
the Vicar and the occupant of the parsonage ! When
she left Buckland she took up her residence at Bath.
Cecilia had had an epidemic, and was not quite suffi-
ciently recovered to go to a ball. But she must go,
and she must be set up. The doctor gave a pre-
scription that was to fortify her. It was taken to the
druggist. The shopboy made some horrible blunder,
and Cecilia died in agonies the next day.

Yet since I wrote these very lines memory has
brought together what had laid separate in my mind
for half a century. Newman's forecast was fulfilled

286

REMINISCENCES.

in some secondary sense or form. The coming cu-
rate, that is John Marriott, married Cecilia's cousin,
Tom Stevens' sister, who thus took her place in the
prophecy.

Even for so little as four months, Buckland would
be a long story to tell. Some of the incidents, how-
ever, are of the period. I took forty candidates to be
confirmed by Bishop Burgess at Abingdon, but I had
to reject a good many. Farmer Church waylaid me
at a stile and begged hard for four grown-up daugh-
ters. I had tried them ; they could not say the Cat-
echism or learn it. The father said he had never
heard of a man or woman who could say the Cate-
chism. It was very hard. uBut," said I, "they can-
not even say the Belief or the Commandments."
"Nor can I," he said, M and I 'm not the worse for it."
I heard a few months after that when he was about
to introduce a step-mother into the house, the four
unconfirmed daughters made him break off the en-
gagement, with the threat that if the lady came they
would throw her into the horse-pond.

As I am confessing the faults of others rather freely,
aye, of poor souls long gone to their account, I ought
not to be chary of myself. I had had four baptisms
one Sunday afternoon during service. A few days
after a good woman, begging many pardons, said she
wished to tell me something that did n't much signify,
but it made people smile. Why did I put my finger
into the font before signing the baptized child with
the sign of the cross ? They had never seen it done
before. It was a fact that I had been doing this, and
must have done it scores of times at Colchester. Of
course it was inadvertency, nay, downright stupidity
on ipy part. Before I administered myself I don't

BUCKLAND.

287

know that I had ever seen a baptism, so as to have
my eye on the performance of the act. I had cer-
tainly never seen a Roman Catholic baptism, which
might have suggested some such idea. I had never
seen any one using " holy water," as is done upon
entering and leaving a Roman Catholic church. Of
course there is not the slightest warrant, or excuse,
or even palliation of my little piece of hyper-ritualism.
A very little thought would have put me right. This
present confession will cause a few smiles, not all of
them as kind as could be wished, or as respectful ;
but I think it just possible that there are other clergy-
men doing the same thing, with nobody to tell them
they are wrong.

I was kept well informed of those who were back-
ward in bringing their children to baptism. There
was a well-to-do couple, the husband a shoemaker,
who had a fine child two years old, not yet baptized.
It was the usual story. None of their friends were
good enough to stand for a child. My sister Anne,
who was with me all my stay at Buckland, undertook
to be godmother, and the little girl was baptized the
next Sunday.

I had a warm controversy with one of the very few
Unitarian survivors of a Presbyterian congregation,
that the first Lord Barrington, his friend Locke, and,
in his earlier days, Shute Barrington, afterwards
Bishop of Durham, had occasionally joined. There
were more than a hundred Roman Catholics, and a
resident priest, whom I only once caught a sight of.
There was a village raven that walked backwards
and forwards before the blacksmith's shop, ready to
pick a quarrel with anybody that came that way. I
had accepted a quarrel, and was gently teasing him,

288

REMINISCENCES.

when suddenly the " priest " appeared on the scene.
" So there are three of us," I said to myself, and
walked away.

Just before I went to Buckland some village mis-
creants had stolen a number of silver pheasants on
which Mr. Robert Throckmorton set great store. So
he resolved to make a clean sweep of the bad subjects.
To as many men as, with their families, amounted to
more than a hundred, he offered the choice between
the workhouse and emigration. They chose the lat-
ter, and were soon put on board a ship at Southamp-
ton, bound for the United States. Coming on deck
the next morning they saw the Isle of Wight, and
shouted for joy at having so soon arrived at a beauti-
ful new home. They would have at least six weeks'
tossing before they reached it.

The parsonage was a house divided against itself,
for a sister and a gentleman parishioner living there
while Carswell House was building, were Low Church
and strongly anti-papist. They gave me warning of
several dangers ahead. One was that I was not un-
likely to be asked some day to let the son of the late
Vicar read the lessons in service. This came to pass,
as did another warning. In due time a man came to
me, asking me to add my signature to that of six
householders, backing his petition for a public-house
license. As advised, I refused. There were too
many public-houses already, and one of them was
only a few steps from the house for which application
was now made. I had to refuse again and again, but
before long I heard the license had been granted, and
that my signature had not been found necessary. My
parsonage friends — that is the coterie in the Ultra-
Protestant parlor — affirmed that Mr. Throckmorton

BUCKLAND.

289

held a mortgage on the property, and would never
have got either capital or interest unless he could
manage to get it made a public-house. Is not this a
case of permissive legislation, and is that compatible
with a squirearchy?

The Throckinortons were very civil to me, asking
me to dinner, and so forth. They always had foreign
visitors, among them a very handsome young German
Baroness, rather on the look-out for amusement.
Nicholas Throckmorton, the wicked wit of the family,
had taught her all the slan<r he could think of, mak-

DO 7

ing her believe that it was ordinary and fashionable
phraseology. The result was she sometimes surprised
even a fast partner at a county ball. As taught by
the said Nicholas, upon some appeal to her finer in-
telligence, she replied to her partner, not at all pre-
pared for it, by putting up her forefinger to the side
of her nose and saying, " I smoke." I still tingle
with shame at the recollection that, having promised
to take her up to the top of my church tower, I
thought better, or worse, of it and absconded.

Another young friend of ours at Buckland was a
girl just from a boarding-school, and almost as lively
as the Baroness. This was Miss Pusey, afterwards
Mrs. Cotton. The widow at the parsonage found
Philip Pusey a man of the world, and a very agreea-
ble neighbor at a dinner table, but somehow could
never feel much at home with Edward, who had noth-
ing to say to her that she cared for. My own brief
experience was the other way.

When I had been at Buckland about two months,
to my great surprise I heard the church bell ringing
at a very early hour, — four o'clock I think it was.
This was that all the gleaners, or leasers as they were

vol.. i. 19

290

REMINISCENCES.

called, should start fair. The women and children
assembled at certain points just out of the village,
and when the bell went down, made the best of their
way to the fields. The farmers complained that they
could get no women to assist the reapers or to rake
the corn. It was so much more worth their while to
pick it up for themselves.

No doubt many things are much improved since
then, there as everywhere else. Yet in these days
of universal reading, writing, and arithmetic, people
may be little aware how much could be once done
without them. I was giving some commissions to the
Oxford carrier, a plain, elderly man, and, finding he
took no notes, asked if he was sure he could remem-
ber them, for there were not only shops and articles,
but quantities and qualities in my orders. He an-
swered that he could not read or write, that he car-
ried his accounts in his head, that he had sixty-three
different orders for his next day's journey, and often
had many more. The people at the parsonage told
me that he never was known to make a mistake.

In the neighborhood I met Archdeacon Berens, an
old Oriel Fellow, and a very pleasant man. He
amused us all with his stories of country life, then
new to me. In those days wills were occasionally
proved before the Archdeacon after the other work
of a visitation. A farmer's will was presented and
duly spread out. " What 's this ? " exclaimed Be-
rens. " Here 's a name scratched out. Explain it,
please." The widow stepped forward. " I tells you
how he be, sir. When we comes to look into the
will, we sees £50 left to John Wheeler. What's he
to do with master's money ? says I. So I gets a knife,
and us scratches he out ; and that 's just how he

BUCKLAND.

291

be, sir." The Archdeacon replaced the name, and
warned the family party of the consequences of an-
other meddling with a will.

It was the year of the cholera. The widow at the
parsonage walked into the vestry as I was preparing
for the morning service, entreating me to take care of
myself, for Mr. New, a very fine young gentleman,
had died of cholera the day before in the next parish.
Only on Thursday he was eating currants from a
garden wall. I had the exclusive use of a very fine
fig-tree at the parsonage, as Charles I. had had dur-
ing his captivity at Buckland House. Nobody else
cared for figs that year.

I was here in the thick of the excitement conse-
quent upon the first general election after the Reform
Act. The Puseys were very grave indeed about it.
Philip had written rather violent political tracts for
distribution. William had found himself charged
with the payment of the shillings which the farmers,
on principle, would not pay for registration. Mr.
Throckmorton could only laugh about it, especially
when the other Liberal candidate was named. I
chanced to mention this many years after to the other
Liberal candidate. " He had a right to laugh at me,
for he left me to pay his expenses as well as my
own."

CHAPTER XLV.

NEWMAN AND FROUDE ON THE MEDITERRANEAN.

In July, 1832, the " History of the Arians " was
ready for the press, and as Newman was now relieved
of his college duties, he was more a man of leisure
than he had ever been, and was also in more need of
rest. Hurrell Froude, as Richard was always called,
though there was another Hurrell in the family, had
now to submit to be ruled by his anxious relatives.
He must spend the winter on the Mediterranean and
its shores; friends were taking him, and Newman was
easily persuaded to go with them. In these days it
requires little persuasion to induce ordinary people,
who happen to be free from pressing engagements, to
accept the offer of a continental trip, especially south-
ward, in the winter. But this did rather take New-
man's friends by surprise, and the only reason they
could suppose was his great anxiety for Hurrell
Froude.

The new circle of which Oriel was the centre had
no sympathy, or even charity, for the common run of
tourists going a round of cathedrals and mountains
simply to amuse themselves, and bringing home a
sorry stock of hotel gossip, road adventures, and old
tales. Sacrifice and self-denial were the new fashion,
and there were those who were giving yearly to new
churches and other religious objects what would have
taken them pleasantly half through the Continent, and
might have done them much good.

NEWMAN AND FROUDE ON THE MEDITERRANEAN. 293

It had been a busy year with. Newman, and he was
full of work to the day of his departure. The tour
he was about to make was in those days more of an
epoch in a man's life than it now is, and it might it-
self be a turning point in his career, as many have
since felt that it really came to be in Newman's.
But he was now just over thirty. A man had made
up his mind at thirty, if he ever made it up, he used
to say. This very year he had been writing earnest
letters to us all, urging a more definite plan and more
devotion of life, with reasons addressed to our respec-
tive characters, powers, and circumstances. Early in
the year he had put together and circulated among
his friends his birthday poems and other fugitive
pieces, of all dates from 1818 to 1831, with the title
of " Memorials of the Past," and a motto which
showed that a change was passing over him, and he
was entering upon a future. This very month, as he
said long after, a " ghost " was pursuing him. He
had already vowed to give his heart to no earthly sur-
roundings, however sweet or beautiful. But the cri-
sis was a stirring one. The Reform Bill had passed,
after a long struggle, and more reform was coming.

At Oxford, Mr. W. Palmer, of Worcester College,
but a frequent guest at Oriel, had now, with much
assistance from Bishop Lloyd's papers, completed and
brought out his " Antiquities of the English Ritual."
Palmer was so quiet a man, so unimpassioned and so
unambitious, that he really hid his light in a bushel.
Yet when this work came out it made a great sensa-
tion. Its simple statement of facts and documentary
evidence took with people who were wearied with
logic and jaded with style. If Newman was to dis-
appear from the scene for half a year, this seemed to
come opportunely to supply his place.

294

REMINISCENCES.

Once on the road, with his plans laid out for him,
Newman found his spirit taking wings. Among the
things of the past is the old corner inn at Whit-
church, where the road from Oxford to Winchester
crosses that from London to Exeter. Many a weari-
some hour can old Oxford men of the southwestern
counties remember to have spent at that dull spot,
the interior of the inn, and the town, being equally
unattractive. I have seen a respectable representa-
tion of the University there, forming groups on the
roadside. The landlord's only chance was a good
shower of rain, when the men, even if they would
not eat or drink, must find shelter, and had to pay a
shilling a head for it. It was here, while waiting for
the mail to Falmouth, that Newman wrote the verses
on his Guardian Angel, beginning, " Are these the
tracks of some unearthly Friend ? " and going on to
speak of the vision that haunted him. On such oc-
casions as this he composed whatever appears with
his name in the " Lyra Apostolica," published at first
in the " British Magazine."

In his " Apologia " Newman gives a very brief
sketch of this remarkable tour. The materials for a
full account must exist in the very interesting letters
he found time to write to all his friends, but' their
place has been supplied so far by large extracts from
the correspondence of his humorous and brilliant com-
panion, R. H. Froude, published in his " Remains."
Even with much time lost in quarantine, storms,
calms, and slow steamers, they saw more of the Med-
iterranean ports, cities, churches, and peoples, than is
usually done in little more than half a year, and
whatever they saw or heard came upon highly sensi-
tive minds and concentrated attentions. They had

NEWMAN AND FROUDE ON THE MEDITERRANEAN. 295

not the time, the opportunity, or the desire to see the
interior of either the political or the religious systems
they came upon.

Most tourists leave their own religion behind them,
and amuse themselves by gazing at the externals of
other religions. The two voyagers and their kind
friends were at one in this matter, for the yacht was
their church, and they kept up their daily devotions,
as good Church of England men. All kept their eye
on the compass, as it lay on the cabin table, to be
sure they addressed their prayers towards the east,
that is to Jerusalem and not to Rome. Arriving at
Rome, they had interesting conversations with Dr.
Wiseman and Mr. Bunsen, but no more approxima-
tion to one than to the other, at least no more that
they were then conscious of. They seem to have
found things abroad very much as they had left them
at home. The people had a religion of their own
sort ; the cities had that show of religion which con-
sists in churches, services, and bell-ringing, and so re-
minded them of Oxford ; the clergy were everywhere
trimming and knocking under to the State, which
was generally irreligious as well as rapacious. In
Rome they saw the magnificence of all the world col-
lected by a Pagan power to be converted into the
monuments of Christian saints and martyrs.

A single word dropped by Newman at Rome, soon
forgotten, and indeed variously related, reached Ar-
nold, and fell on him with the weight of a papal ex-
communication — taken off some years afterwards.

The only service they attended at Rome, or any-
where else, was the Tenebrse, at the Sistine Chapel,
for the sake of the Miserere. Newman says his
general feeling was, " All save the spirit of man is

296

REMINISCENCES.

divine." The Bill for the suppression of Irish Sees
was in progress and filled his mind. In a fit of indig-
nation with the course taken by the Bishop of Lon-
don, he wrote from on board a steamer to decline that
Prelate's offer of one of the Whitehall chaplainships,
just put on a new footing. He had " fierce thoughts
against the Liberals." Perhaps even when he long
after recorded these feelings, he little anticipated that
Mr. Gladstone would one day supplement the obnox-
ious half measure with a whole one.

Newman left his companions and returned alone to
Sicily, for which he seemed to have a strange long-
ing. Sicily, besides its extreme natural beauties, is
the common ground of Greek and Roman history and
poetry, and has always been the abode of an op-
pressed and comparatively simple people. Palermo
the traveller had thought more beautiful than Naples,
and the temple of Egesta grander than those of Pces-
tum. Cicero's picture of Enna, now Castro Giovanni,
described by other ancient as well as modern writers
as the most beautiful spot on the face of the earth,
had always dwelt on Newman's memory. He went
there, and being now alone, and moving about more
freely, had conversations and adventures.

Some days before he was aware of it, he was in
the gripe of a dangerous fever, in which priests and
others nursed him for several weeks. In his long
delirium he said things which he knew not, but which
they brought to his remembrance. For a long time
after his return to Oxford there arrived frequent
letters elaborately addressed to the Reverend John
Henry, brother of the college Stce. Jim-ice Virginis at
Oxford. The burden of a work to be done was too
much for one no longer cheered by company, and en-

NEWMAN AND FROUDE ON THE MEDITERRANEAN. 297

countering fatigues ; he was really sick unto death,
but he felt he should not die, so he said in his de-
lirium, for he had not sinned against knowledge.

Returning homewards in an orange boat bound for
Marseilles, he was becalmed a whole week in the
Straits of Bonifacio, and there, within sight of Ca-
prera, since known as Garibaldi's home, he wrote,
"Lead, kindly light," now sung in all our churches,
with a various, but we will hope a convergent, sig-
nificance.

All this time there was raging at home a contro-
versy on the whole matter of the Church of England,
if controversy that could be called which was almost
wholly on one side. Every table was covered with
pamphlets, many of bulky dimensions, and generally
embracing all the topics comprised in the idea of
Church Reform. Writers not wanting' in learning or
conscientiousness gave their views under thirty or
forty heads on the Liturgy, the Creeds, the Bible, the
revenues, the government, the basis and composition
of the Chnrch. Pamphlets were quickly followed by
postscripts and second parts. Industrious men were
already publishing Collectanea of the views of all the
reformers in the field, — a legion of them. The one
idea pervading all these divers utterances was to sur-
render everything which the old school of churchmen
had thought essential to the Church, for the sake of
the Church, that is for the sake of the name.

Newman, hardly yet recovered from his Sicilian
fever, and travelling too rapidly for his strength,
reached England and his mother's house on July 9,
his brother Frank having arrived there from Persia a
few hours before. This was on Tuesday. The fol-
lowing Sunday, July 14, Keble preached the Assize

298 REMINISCENCES.

Sermon in the University Pulpit, published under the
title of " National Apostasy." " I have ever con-
sidered aud kept the day," says the writer of the
" Apologia," " as the start of the religious movement
of 1833."

CHAPTER XLVL
fkoude's comments on the pantheon.

It must have been soon after Froude's return from
the Mediterranean that I had with him one of our
old talks about architecture. He was as devoted to
science and as loyal to it as any materialist could be.
But architecture and science are very apt to be at
variance, and Froude was always disposed to side
with the latter. As for Greek architecture there is
no science in it except the mystery of proportion and
a certain preternatural and overpowering conception
of beauty. The temple of Egesta, which won the
hearts of our travellers, has no more science in its
construction than Stonehenge. But Roman architec-
ture was for all the world, for its gods as well as for
its mortals. The arch, and still more the vault, were
mighty bounds into the time to come.

Always leaning on tradition where possible, Froude
wished to believe the pointed arch the natural sug-
gestion of a row of round arches seen in perspective.
Of course a deep round arch in a thick wall only
shows its roundness when you stand directly before
it, but seems pointed from any other direction. I
remember ventilating this idea to Sir Richard West-
macott and Turner, the great painter, at the former's
table, and I remember also the great contempt with
which the latter dismissed such mechanical ideas from
the realm of the picturesque.

300

REMINISCENCES.

But it was the dome that chiefly exercised Froude's
mind. It was a positive pain to him that so grand a
building as the Pantheon should have been con-
structed, as he believed, in such ignorance of science.
His notion was that if Agrippa had known the quali-
ties of the catenary curve he would have used it in-
stead of the semicircular curve, — that is, in this
instance, the spherical vault. A spherical vault re-
quires one of two things ; either an immense loud
upon the haunches, indeed on all the lower part of
the vault, or a great quantity of metal ties passed
round the vault.

The Romans adopted the former plan. With any
quantity of rough material at their command, and
any quantity of slaves trained to march in procession
up zigzag inclines, they very quickly filled up the
space between the vault and the parapet walls, and
made it all one mass of hard concrete. As it stands,
the Pantheon is a huge grotto cut out of a solid
mountain. This required walls of proportionate so-
lidity. With a catenary curve the masonry of the
vault need not have been more than two feet thick,
that of the walls not more than four.

Had any common utilitarian made such a sugges-
tion, I should not have thought it worth notice. I
only mention it as showing the scientific character of
Froude's tastes. The objections are obvious and over-
whelming. In the first place beauty must lead in
architecture, and construction must obey. Like
poetry and music, it is an art that lives to please.
The catenary curve, familiar as we are with it in a
chain, is a very ungraceful one, and would utterly
fail to satisfy the eye in a vault or a dome. There is
no want of examples sufficiently near the catenary

froude's comments on the pantheon. 301

curve to test the question of beauty. The Italian
domes of the age before St. Peter's, the Saracenic
domes, such as at Cairo, and the two domes of the
International Exhibition of 1861, at South Kensing-
ton — lemon-shaped, or melon-shaped, they are called
— are very distasteful to the English eye. Their
plan is the catenary curve slightly modified and
disguised. It is a sound principle of construction,
whereas the semicircular dome is an impostor.

Yet nature and education combine to make the
sphere the most beautiful of forms, whether concave
or convex. The heavens expand overhead, and do
not converge rapidly to a point or form a hollow
cone. Neither do they start abruptly inwards from
the horizon. The eye requires that a dome shall not
leave the upright walls too abruptly, that it shall not
rapidly incline from the upright, that it shall afford a
large space overhead nearly horizontal, and that it
shall be roomy and recessed midway. These con-
ditions are fulfilled in a spherical dome, and they are
not fulfilled in any other form of dome, not at least
nearly so well. Even the most graceful elliptical
dome seems flat and unnatural.

If anybody will take the trouble to draw a semi-
circle, and then hang a chain by the two ends so that
the two curves may hang from the same points and
fall down to the same depth, he will see that the
space included in the catenary curve is not nearly so
large as that in the semicircle ; that the catenary
curve starts at a palpable incline from the upright,
and that the greater part of the catenary curve would
form not so much a vault as a cone, that is a common
kiln. It is needless to speak of the exterior effect,
which would be quite as unpleasant. So much for
the effect.

302

REMINISCENCES.

Then for the construction. The catenary curve
would stand strong enough and long enough, if se-
cured at the base, that is at the spring of the arch.
This could only be done by a metal tie like that im-
bedded by Wren round the cone of St. Paul's, or by
an adequate abutment, which would have to be pro-
vided by raising the walls, as Wren has done also.

Spherical domes are the crux and the pitfall of
architecture. They involve false construction and
positive deception. Froude appears to have remained
under the impression that the dome of St. Peter's
was a piece of simple masonry, for he notices with
surprise the fact, if such it be, that the courses are
laid horizontally. There are, I believe, a hundred
and twenty iron or bronze bands round that dome,
which would not stand for a second without them.
It is therefore substantially a metallic construction.
One of the finest domes in the world is in this me-
tropolis, namely, that of the Reading Room in the
British Museum. But it is an iron structure, filled
in with the lightest possible brickwork.

A cupola, both for the structure and for the effect,
is not compatible with an exactly spherical dome.
But a dome without a cupola does not please the eye.
All London would be in a fury if the dome of the
Reading Room at the British Museum were to show
itself over the roof of the portico. I well remember
the indignation of the British public at the big pud-
ding, as they called it, on the top of Buckingham
Palace as it came out of the builder's hands. It had
to be hidden immediately.

Froude had a soul for beauty ; but he did not like
shams. He did not like a thing to seem what it was
not. Few buildings are prepared to stand such a

fkoude's comments on the pantheon. 303

test. Amiens Cathedral, for example, the first love
of the English tourist, is nothing more than an iron
cage filled in with stone.

The dome, that is the hollow hemisphere, is always
regarded as the grandest of Roman additions to Greek
forms. It proved too much even for its Epicurean
poet, who complained of the Roman millionaire,
mutat quadrata rotundis. To raise the Pantheon
over the grand vaulted basilica of Constantine was
the proud boast fulfilled in St. Peter's. The Pan-
theon, whatever its first destination, represents the
universe. It is a globe, 145 feet every way, placed
on the ground, with the substitution of a cylinder for
the lower half. In one respect it has a strange re-
semblance to that vast temple of Nature into which
one can enter day and night. It disguises its own
immensity. I have entered it scores of times under
every condition of light, and I have seen it from
an inner balcony under water, in which the pillars
seemed to double their length, but I never could
realize or even quite believe its enormous dimensions.
It is half as high again as the nave of Westminster
Abbey, the highest in England. It is twice as high
as Westminster Hall, and more than twice as wide.

CHAPTER XL VII.

AFTER THE MEDITERRANEAN VOYAGE.

It was now deep in Long Vacation, but no period
in the annals of Oxford was ever more pregnant with
consequences than the next two months. The return-
ing travellers had lost time. The world had got the
start of them, and they had to make up for it.

Froude's imagination teemed with new ideas, new
projects, topics likely to tell or worth trying; to be
tried indeed and found variously successful. They
came from him like a shower of meteors, bursting
out of a single spot in a clear sky, for they had been
pent up. Every post had brought the travellers some
account of fresh "atrocities." The "Examiner"
was the only paper that talked sense. Conservative
Churchism Froude now utterly abhorred. In passing
through France he had listened with hopefulness to
the dream that a deeper descent into republicanism
than that represented by Louis Philippe would land
that country in High Churchism. How could the
Church of England now be saved ? By working out
the oath of canonical obedience? By a lay synod,
pending the apostasy of Parliament ? By a race of
clergy living less like country gentlemen ? By deal-
ing in some way or other with the appointment of
Bishops ? By a systematic revival of religion in large
towns ; in particular, by colleges of unmarried priests ?
By excommunication ? By working upon the pauperes

AFTER THE MEDITERRANEAN VOYAGE. 305

Christif By writing upon the early Puritans who
had so much to say for themselves against the tyranny
of Elizabeth? By preaching apostolic succession?
By the high sacramental doctrine ? By attacking
State interference in matters spiritual? By an apos-
tolic vocabulary giving everything its right name?
By recalling the memory of the Gregorian age ?

It was perhaps a happy diversion of his thoughts
that he had so much to say on other topics, such as
architecture, and the construction of ships and dock-
gates. It was now plain that he had brought home
with him not only his own fervid temperament, but
some of the heat of sunny climes, where indeed he
had not taken proper care of his health, or any care
at all. Like most other Englishmen, he would not
be indoors by sunset, or put on warmer clothing
when the thermometer dropped twenty or thirty
degrees. It happened to be an exceptionally cold
winter in the Mediterranean. As far as regards
health, the expei'iment had been a failure.

One thing, however, is quite clear from his letters
and other remains ; and, as he was all this time
somewhat in advance of Newman, it has a bearing on
his mental history. Froude came home even more
utterly set against Roman Catholics than he had been
before. His conclusion was that they held the truth
in unrighteousness; that they were wretched Triden-
tines everywhere and of course ever since the Refor-
mation ; that the conduct and behavior of the clergy
was such that it was impossible they could believe
what they professed, that they were idolaters in the
sense of substituting easy and good-natured divinities
for the God of Truth and Holiness.

Froude stayed in England just long enough to

vol. i. 20

306

REMINISCENCES.

take a present part in the great movement, and to
contribute to it, and then, as he sorrowfully s;dd of
himself, like the man " who fled full soon on the first
of June, but bade the rest keep fighting," he found
himself compelled by his friends to leave England
for the West Indies.

All these vivid expressions, delivered with the
sincerity of a noble child or a newly-converted sav-
age, chimed in with Newman's state of feeling, and
struck deep into his very being, to bring forth fruit.
Yet in neither Fronde nor Newman could now be
discovered the least suspicion of what these outbursts
might lead to, for at every point they found Rome
irreconcilable and impossible.

Newman, as we have seen, did not return to Eng-
land till July 9, 1833, and it was exactly two months
after, on September 9, that the first four, or rather
in Tegard to the subjects, the first eight " Tracts for
the Times," suddenly appeared, beginning with the
famous words, " I am but one of yourselves, and a
Presbyter." The "movement" then, in the very
form in which it actually began, had but a short
incubation and a very perturbed and unpromising
one. Newman was scanning earth and sky, and cast-
ing his arms about wildly for some one to help him,
and for some form of action more practical than those
which had hitherto been found ineffective.

Strange to say, the alternative for the " Tracts for
the Times," perhaps one may say their first form,
was a series of letters to the " Record." Five years
before this, in 1828, Newman had contributed a small
sum to the starting of that paper, and had become a
subscriber and constant reader. So he now wrote
several letters on Church Reform, beginning with

AFTER THE MEDITERRANEAN VOYAGE.

307

Church, discipline in its various aspects. The letters,
besides being long, could not be very palatable to the
habitual readers of the " Record," and by and by
came to a point of absolute divergence. The editor
cut short the correspondence, explaining his reasons
in a courteous letter to the writer.

It must be considered that Newman had now been
seven months away, in another world, at sea, or
seriously ill, or in strange scenes and among new
faces. For a long period before that he had been
engrossed in his " History of the Arians." He had
found that a very laborious, difficult, and, his critics
discover, an ungenial work, for he had labored to
throw himself into those times, and had not suc-
ceeded, so they say. Instead of comprehending all the
principal Councils, he had not seriously treated of
more than one, that of Nicsea, and had only given it
twenty pages out of four hundred. Newman, these
critics observe, had evidently not got into the spirit
of the Church of those times when he wrote this book.
That is not only true, but confessed by the very fact
of it costing the writer so great an effort to introduce
the reader and himself to the period. The book
represents the operation of sinking a shaft for water,
or for precious ore.

An incident of the two months that intervened
between Newman's return from the South and the
appearance of the "Tracts for the Times," rather
relieved the stern character of the crisis, though
Newman did not seem to think it quite in keeping.
Clerical celibacy used to be either a vulgar necessity
or a heroic devotion at Oxford, where the great ma-
jority were Fellows waiting for livings. In its more
exalted form it was one of the favorite ideas of the
new school, which, however, had by and by to suffer

308

REMINISCENCES.

a long list of cruel disappointments as one Benedick
after another proved faithless to his early professions.

Newman was full of something for a day or two
which he hardly knew how to tell. At last it came
out. He was afraid Keble was about to make a
" humdrum marriage." It was for the best of rea-
sons, that is in order to discourage young men from
aiming at a standard above the age, and possibly also
above their own power to attain. It was like Keble,
the humble, lowly, retired walk, and there was much
of the sort in his poetry. I was fairly taken in by
this account of the matter. I had known what I
might have called humdrum marriages that one could
hardty account for. I might indeed have remem-
bered how I had been taken in by Froude's explana-
tion of Bulteel's unexpected marriage, and how the
flesh-chastising " housekeeper " in that case had turned
out to be a lady not wanting in either youth, looks,
wit, money, or accomplishments. The stupid, how-
ever, are always deceived, and only recover from one
mistake to fall into another.

Keble was over fifty. The intended was the sis-
ter of his younger brother's wife. Of course it must
be the elder sister, and that would make the union
" suitable." For the younger brother to marry the
younger sister, and the elder brother to marry the
elder, is quite proper and even humdrum. But it was
no such thing in this case. The lady was the younger
sister of Mrs. Thomas Keble, and was a rather
strikingly handsome, pleasing, and dignified woman.
Not only was Keble quite justified on the most ordi-
nary grounds in marrying her if she would have him,
but he had already shown the bent of his inclination,
having, long before this, " loved and lost," on the
lines of youth and beauty.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

MEETING AT HADLEIGH.

In a very few days after his return home, New-
man was in communication with Hugh J. Rose, who
besides being one of the two editors of the " Theo-
logical Library," and the editor of the " British
Magazine," was the one commanding figure, and very
lovable man, that the frightened and discomfited
Church-people were now rallying round. Few people
have left so distinct an impression of themselves as
this gentleman. For many years after, when he was
no more, and Newman had left Rose's standpoint far
behind, he could never speak of him or think of him
without renewed tenderness.

There ensued much correspondence, and, to bring
matters to some point, there was a meeting of Rose's
friends at Hadleigh. They were rallying round the
Church of England, its Prayer Book, its faith, its or-
dinances, its constitution, its Catholic and Apostolic
character ; all more or less assailed by foes and in
abeyance even with friends. The suppression of Irish
Sees gave immediate prominence to the doctrine of
Apostolic succession, which it was said to set at
nought. This of course would not be the aspect in
which Apostolic succession is generally regarded,
which is that certain special gifts of the Spirit are,
ordinarily, only communicated by officers appointed
for that purpose by the Apostles, and by successors

310

REMINISCENCES.

occupying their place in the Church. The aspect
now regarded was that insisted on by some of the
Nonjuring Bishops, not by all. It was that each see,
and each local succession, must be perpetual. The
Roman Church, it is well known, makes a point of
preserving every episcopal succession, even though
the see has long ceased to possess any visible exist-
ence ; and there have been Bishops in jiartibus who
could not even say where their sees lay, or had ever
lain.

Dr. Morris, Bishop of Troy, was for many years
one of the best known names in this metropolis, be-
ing always at hand when a Bishop was wanted. All
the world credited him with the city founded by
Rome in the Troas, at or about the site of Homer's
Troy, and so he did himself. Having to preach at
the Oratory in behalf of the sick and wounded in the
Crimean War, he introduced with much propriety
and feeling the neighborhood and relation of his own
diocese to a war which was not without points of
resemblance to that which had made ancient Troy
memorable. In the vestry Frederick Faber thanked
his lordship, but pointed out that he appeared to be
under some misapprehension as to the locality of his
see, which lay in Magna Graxna, not Asia Minor.
During the Saracen occupation of that part of Itahr,
Troy had disappeared like its Asiatic sister, and a
more convenient town had risen in its neighorhood.
But Rome would not allow the title to pass away.
The perpetuity of the see was the pledge of the per-
petuity of the Church, and must thus therefore be
contended for as a vital question.

It was Newman's way to accept the suggestion of
times, circumstances, and persons, and so to allow

MEETING AT HADLEIGH.

311

people to believe themselves the original movers, if it
were at all possible. This sometimes gave an undue
appearance of originality and finality to a proceed-
ing, or to a mere concurrence. If he always left
as it were a nest-egg for something beyond, that he
did not heed, for though it might not be in the pro-
gramme, it was not beyond the scope of the occasion.

From the first he insisted on what may be called
a loose formation. He would neither bind or be
bound. He had seen enough of societies. He did
not like committees. He suspected everything met-
ropolitan. Great cities were great evils, he used to
say. Yet there must be a centre. Universities, he
said, were in this country the centres of intellect and
of religion. So they that chose to write on the lines
of the Church of England might send him what they
had to say, and lie would see to have it printed and
circulated. Of course there must have been also
some distribution of subjects. But several writers, in
particular Mr. Perceval, conceived a most extraordi-
nary idea of the " Hadleigh Conference," as if it were
at once a great beginning and a grand finality. They
who heard of it as one of the many incidents of the
day can only be surprised that any man of sense
should think it possible Newman, or even Froude,
could be comprised and shut up by a few strokes of
the pen, and henceforth warranted to keep pace with
so very casual an acquaintance as Mr. Perceval.

CHAPTER XLIX.

THE " TRACTS FOR THE TIMES."

In two or three weeks, accordingly, appeared that
portentous birth of time, the " Tracts for the Times."
Tracts had long been the most familiar form of re-
ligious propagandism, and there were many thousands
of ladies and gentlemen who made it their business
to deliver tracts by the house row, by the post, or to
anybody they chanced to meet. Yet this was a start-
ling novelty. The distributors of tracts, that is the
clergy and educated classes, had hitherto enjoyed,
themselves, an exemption from tracts. So this was
to turn their own battery against them. There were,
too, great practical difficulties. The booksellers did
not like tracts. They are litter ; they occupy space,
they encumber accounts ; they don't pay. Messrs.
Rivington, however, undertook the London publica-
tion, it must be presumed for conscience sake. For
the convenience of the publishers they were to come
out with the monthlies. They were to be anonymous
and by different hands, each writer singly responsi-
ble. If such an arrangement be not simply impos-
sible, it could at least only work upon an occasion
and for a brief movement. In a series, or in a peri-
odical either, the editor is responsible or the writer,
and in the latter case the name must be given. The
plan worked, because the writers were soon known ;
indeed proud to be known, and so were responsible.

THE " TRACTS FOR THE TIMES."

313

But now came the great difficulty. The only one
who could write a tract, possibly because the greatest
reader of tracts, was Newman himself. He m-ged
all his friends to contribute, and if any one of his
acquaintance did not contribute, it was because he
was idle or was not in heart. The contributors wrote
sermons and treatises, but not tracts. They dis-
charged the contents of their commonplace books, or
they compiled from indexes, and thought it impossi-
ble to give too much of a good thing. Compared
with Newman's, their "tracts" were stuffing and
makeweights, learned, wise, and good, but not calcu-
lated to take hearts by storm. They were useful
because it is an ascertained fact that bulk is neces-
sary, as they say it is in food, and that it helps the
real essence of a publication to keep its place on the
table, or on the shelves. There are, too, people who
really think more of an opinion when they see that a
great deal is to be said for it.

The tracts had to be circulated by post, by hand,
or anyhow, and many a young clergyman spent days
in riding about with a pocketful, surprising his neigh-
bors at breakfast, lunch, dinner, and tea. The corre-
spondence that ensued was immense. Nobody was
too humble in intellect or in clerical position not to
be invited, and enrolled as an ally. Men survive, or
have but lately passed away, who can never have
known what it was to share a glory and a greatness
except at that happy time. The world would now
wonder to see a list of the great Cardinal's friends,
lie had a remarkable quality which presents a strange
contrast to the common habit of vulgar depredators.
Like Walter Scott, he could only see the best and
highest parts of the human character, hoping ever

314

REMINISCENCES.

against hope. He expected rivers out of the dry
ground, and found poetic beauty in the quaintest and
most rugged writers. Wise and experienced Oxford
observers smiled at the confidence he reposed in men
•who were at best broken reeds and bulrushes, if not
stocks and stones. He could appreciate writers whom
nobody else could, seeing sense in their obscurity and
life in their dulness.

But it is proper to say that this excessive apprecia-
tion was not confined to the crisis when the zeal of
propagandism, or of partisanship, might seem to ac-
count for it. When Newman was tutor the college
wiseacres often commented on his misplaced confi-
dence, and lost labor upon the most barren and un-
gracious material. He would often have to his rooms
for private talk and instruction men who went away
and called it a bore. There were some men of high
rank and expectations in Oriel at that time who had
come to Oxford, they conceived, to learn how to en-
joy this world, to take their place in its society, and
to win its prizes. Newman tried to reach their
hearts and understandings. It was not without ef-
fects, which revealed themselves many years after,
but which did not show themselves at that time.
There were other examples and advisers in the college
too potent for Newman, and these he could not reach
or eliminate. The most courageous law-makers and
founders have declared it to be impossible to lay
down rules for the young nobility of this country,
insomuch that they must be treated as exceptional
and foreign. But they have hearts, and a time ar-
rives when they are no longer young. A bitter expe-
rience has then reduced them to the level of a com-
mon humanity.

THE " TRACTS FOR THE TIMES." 315

The heir of an ancient and much-loved name who
lived to take a high part in the government of the
country, and to be anxious to retrieve by magnificent
Church work the errors of his youth, found that he
must choose between Newman and associates more
of his quality and more to his taste. He closed with
the latter. He studiously adopted the tone and the
conduct most likely to repel interference. When
Newman finally gave up the tuition, his pupils sub-
scribed near two hundred pounds to purchase a set of
the Fathers for him, and the movers of the subscrip-
tion would gladly have done without this man's
money. He heard of the subscription and sent ten
guineas, which it was impossible then to refuse. But
George Ryder and the other members of the com-
mittee had good reason to suspect that Newman
would refuse the testimonial if he knew this name
was in the list of subscribers, and, notwithstanding
his frequent entreaties, they would never let him
know the names. Had Newman been less hopeful
he might have been more forgiving, for it is the most
generous and confiding who most feel ingratitude.

At the time now under consideration, Newman
seemed to have had hope of everybody. Whoever
was not against him might be for him. For months
he kept his friends daily informed of the reception
which the tracts and the views contained in them
received in many and unexpected quarters. The
great world, indeed, whether of politics or of religion,
was but slowly moved, and this new mode of assault
had to be carried on for two or three years before it
encountered an opposition worthy of its own audacity.
The tracts indeed were for some time as seed cast on
the waters. It must be said that some were heavy

316

REMINISCENCES.

reading, and the series presented even greater vari-
eties of style than are commonly found within the
same covers.

Meanwhile, it was not without a certain degree of
impatience that Newman found himself only one
strand in the weighty and multifarious coil of the
" Tracts for the Times." While he was anonymous,
the crowd of other writers deadened, if they did
not drown, his own intense individuality. So, with
a great effort, he got over his old scruple against
divulging to the world at large what had passed
between him and his congregation, and published in
1834 a volume of " Parochial Sermons."

It was as if a trumpet had sounded through the
land. All read and all admired, even if they dis-
sented or criticised. The publishers said that the vol-
ume put all other sermons out of the market, just as
" Waverley " and " Guy Mannering " put all other
novels. Sermons to force their way without solicita-
tion, canvassing, subscription, or high-sounding rec-
ommendation were unknown in those days, and these
flew over the land. They rapidly proceeded to suc-
cessive editions, and were followed by "University
Sermons," and " Sermons on Holy Days."

The title of " Parochial Sermons " represents the
fact, but not fully. The parish contains a score or
two shopkeepers, their servants, and some college
servants, also. Strangers used to wonder to hear
sermons which might tax the highest intellect deliv-
ered to housemaids. But long before the publication
of his sermons Newman had gathered round him the
best part of his own college and of some others, —
men to whom the sermons were the treat of the
week, and who would often recall to one another the
passages that had most struck them.

THE " TRACTS FOR THE TIMES." 317

Newman and his friends had for some time been
contributors to the " British Magazine," in Hugh J.
Rose's hands. Much of the " Lyra Apostolica,"
whether by him or the other six contributors, ap-
peared first in this magazine. This now famous col-
lection was the growth of many minds, and many
places, and many occasions. It has been abundantly
criticised on the score of poetry, Christianity, and
common sense. But it holds its ground and seems
to address itself to a great variety of readers, for the
very reason perhaps that it actually represents that
variety of origin and suggestion which poets are often
obliged to affect and to invent for the occasion.

CHAPTER L.

ROUTH, PRESIDENT OF MAGDALENE, AND PALMER,
OF WORCESTER.

Slnce the movement became historical the question
how it began, and who began it, has been continually
asked, and answered in very different ways. Fashion
has put its form on a fact which it could not easily
accept or conceive in any other form. For a long
time past it has been a fashion to ascribe causes,
revivals, and human changes generally either to indi-
viduals possessed with extraordinary qualities and a
distinct forecast of the future, or to some very excep-
tional origin. The fact is, as far as the bystanders
could see, there was no such idea of origination of a
cause or a party in Newman's mind, even though
Fronde, and possibly one or two others, might play
upon the thought. He stirred up everybody to act
for the best on his own lines. He had a wonderful
faith in men and in the call of circumstances. He
much desired to impress upon everybody the great
power he possessed for good, though generally content
to leave the work and the manner of it to the man
himself. He put into the hands of his young friends
the books that had done his own soul good. He saw
substantial merits and recognized services in all quar-
ters, and never encouraged the tone of disparagement
too common in young people full of themselves and
new to persons and things.

BOUTH AND PALMER.

319

Long before the earliest date that could be as-
signed for a " movement," Bishop Webb, Mr. Forster,
author of " Mahomedanism Unveiled," Canon David-
son, the Oriel writer on Prophecy, and John Miller,
of Worcester College, were great names in the circle
of friends ; indeed a sort of foundation for such work
as there was to be done. Newman held Van Mildert
in much esteem, and quoted his Bampton Lectures.
Old-fashioned clergy of those days talked much of
Norris of Bemerton, of Tucker's " Light of Nature,"
and of Jones of Nayland, as a kind of esoteric school
leading to better things, but like many other authors
these had been crowded out of Oriel. Froude early
established Law as the prophet of the last century.
Resigning assigned specialties to other hands, New-
man devoted himself to the great questions imme-
diately before him. This could not but limit the
range of his studies. He had now begun a life of
action, and even reading must be subordinate.

The greatest name in patristic theology at Oxford
— indeed a name in Europe, which is a rare thing to
be said of any English scholar — was Routh, the aged
President of Magdalene. Newman was sometimes
asked why he did not enlist the old gentleman more
directly in his cause by dedicating to him one of liis
works. The reason of this he gave in confidence to
a few friends. It was a painful one. The President
had been for a very long time notoriously negligent
of the discipline of his college. In his excessive care
of himself and his almost morbid craving for Ion-
gevity — the longevity of Tithonus — he made a rule
of caring for no other person or thing, and of let-
ting the college go its own way, as it did. He could
even derive amusement from the scandals which the

320

REMINISCENCES.

seniors of the college would have prevented if be had
given them the requisite authority and support.

It was long after this, when Routh must have
been ninety, that Faber, the chief college officer in
the matter of discipline, called upon him one morn-
ing, evidently preparing to break some sad news.
"Stop, I know what you 're going to tell me," he said.
'• One of the Fellows has died drunk in the nisdit."

O

"It is indeed so,*' said Faber. But before he could
give the name the President exclaimed, " Stay, let
me guess." He guessed right. " There, you see
I knew the men well. He 's just the sort of fellow
to die drunk." As longevity is justly regarded as
a blessing, it may be well to remember that it is
possible to survive, not the physical powers, or the
mental, but such heart as one may have. It may
be possible to attain length of years without becom-
ing at all better for it.

Newman's early scruples as to the enlistment of
Routh's honored name was one of the delicacies
which, like his hesitation to publish his " Parochial
Sermons," he lived to abandon. The " Lectures on
Romanism and Popular Protestantism," referred to
above, and published in 1837, ai-e dedicated to Routh
in terms which the writer no doubt hoped might
suggest to him " the day of account," in which he
would want "support and protection." There was
no help for it. All the work of life has its roughness.
There is some defilement in all labor. Hinc mihi
so?-dcs. If a man will save every scruple he will have
to sit still and do nothing. Yet it seemed to those
about Newman as if a little of his bloom was rubbed
off when he addressed what to vulgar eyes seemed a
glowing panegyric to the faithless guardian of a great

ROUTH AND PALMER.

321

Christian college. But what they grieved was the
necessity forced upon him.

William Palmer, of Worcester, had the English
Liturgy and the Constitution of the English Church
for his work, and Newman was almost alone in recog-
nizing his great services. Palmer's extreme sedate-
ness, shyness, and seeming coldness of manner, stood
much in the way of his general acceptance.

Among the many and great scandals of the
Church of England there is hardly a greater than its
gross and stupid neglect of this able and excellent
man. He came from Trinity College, Dublin, to
pursue inquiries for which Oxford was a more con-
genial as well as convenient place. In his own prep-
aration for Holy Orders he had had to study the
Prayer Book, and for this purpose he found abun-
dance of commentaries of a doctrinal and practical
character. But he desired to learn the origin and
history of our formularies, and for this he could find
little or no help. So he came to Oxford. Fate, or
the kindness of a friend, directed him to Worcester
College ; choice took him often to Oriel. He had at
once placed in his" hands Bishop Lloyd's annotated
folio Prayer Book, and an older document of the
same kind in the Bodleian, besides other MSS. there.

It should be said there had been a sort of revival
of these studies a few years before. Shepherd, a
promising young clergyman, had announced a Prayer
Book with historical illustrations ; and had set about
it with industry, when he died. The very frag-
mentary work done was published by his sister, and
several thousand guinea subscriptions testified to the
interest felt even then in the antiquities of our
ritual.

vol. r.

21

322

REMJXISCEXCES.

Mr. Palmer brought out his " Origines Liturgicae,"
as stated above, in 1832, tbe year before the ap-
pearance of tbe " Tracts for tbe Times." There is
not a more interesting work to a scholar and divine,
and hardly a more useful one to an ordinary clergy-
man. It was a great addition to our national liter-
ature. To most Oxford men it was like an incident
of continental travel before railways, the sudden view
of a vast plain full of picturesque objects and his-
torical associations.

Mr. Palmer was always ready to talk on the
subject and to exchange information. He could
impart his knowledge clearly and succinctly, in good
and incisive language. There could be no suspicion
of party, or bigotry of any kind about him. The
work was in the straightest lines of the Church of
England, without a shadow of deflection.

Henry Wilberforce thought he bad detected a
latent humor in Palmer's defence of the introduction
of the Ten Commandments into the Communion
Service. The gist of that defence was that all
churches had read some portion of the Scriptures,
generally of the Law and the Prophets, in this place.
Some had varied the passages, some had not. The
old Irish Church, and tbe Malabar Church, had used
tbe same passages always. Comparing one passage
with another, the Ten Commandments were as use-
ful as any. All this, however, is put with so much
gravity and solemnity, that if there were humor,
there is great virtue in its effectual concealment.

His " Treatise on the Church of Christ," published
six years after, in 1838, is a defence of the Church
of England, full of careful statement and valuable
information, though the writer's Irish birth and edu-

ROUTH AND PALMER.

323

cation come out with unexpected force in the his-
tory and denunciation of the " Irish schism," that is
the Roman Catholic Church in that island.

After residing some years at Oxford, taking the
tenderest care of an aged mother, long the sole com-
panion of his walks, Palmer left for a remote coun-
try living, and died, it may be said, in obscurity.
Reward he wanted not, but he had not even rec-
ognition.

CHAPTER LI.

BISHOP MARSH.

Most people have some information, and conse-
quently some rational grounds for their own opinions
upon the working of the " Oxford movement." Such
opinions will vary according to predisposition and
circumstances, but there will always be something
to be said for them. It is far otherwise with regard
to the times before the movement, and its antece-
dents so to speak. The popular ignorance with re-
gard to that period is amazing. People have taken
up a book, generally a biography, and upon finding
it chiming in with their own ideas, they have accepted
it for authentic history, and given it even a wider ap-
plication perhaps than the writer intended. My own
belief is that the history of no period in our Church
is to be written, or judged, in that way. In particu-
lar, I feel sure, as the result of much observation and
inquiry, that people are under a very great error in
their depreciation of the last century. The clergy
lived and worked under the greatest difficulties. Their
net receipts from their livings were little more than
two-thirds what they now are, or about 70 per cent.
The country roads were very bad, and in many
months of the year almost impassable. There were
but scanty means of enlivening the rural solitude with
newspapers and periodicals. Few clergymen could
afford a horse, or a man-servant, and if they could,
botli horse and man must have been of the roughest.

BISHOP MARSH.

325

I believe that, as a rule, the clergy did their best
under these circumstances, and were often shining
lights in dark neighborhoods. I can attach no credit
whatever to the stories of clergymen frequently mar-
rying the lady's maid, or lower still, picked up by
Macaulay from satirical novels, farces, lampoons, and
caricatures. These were generally written by men
who had forfeited their character with all respect-
able people, and who accordingly revenged themselves
on the gentry, the clergy, and Christians generally by
their pictures of extraordinary characters whom they
represented as typical of the class. Macaulay wished
to believe the worst of the gentry and the clergy,
and he would not be at a loss for evidence, nor would
he care to sift it.

In my time at Oxford, and I suspect long before
my time, the expression "three-bottle orthodox" was
often used to denote some class supposed to exist in
the last century and reaching down into this. The
phrase is one to fix itself in the memory, like many
other foolish phrases, but it will not bear a minute's
examination. Putting aside the question of physical
possibility, which would involve an inquiry into the
question whether port in those days was a beverage,
like claret, or a liquor as it now is, the cost of the
feat would prevent its performance, except by very
few persons, and on very rare occasions. If it could
be supposed a daily practice, the great majority of
livings would not pay the wine bill.

But the whole clergy, one used to hear it said,
frequented the public-house, and drank beer with
their parishioners. That they sat and talked with
their parishioners was so much to the good, and it
could not be worse to drink beer with their parish-

326

REMINISCENCES.

ioners than to drink wine with their neighbors. If
there be any moral difference between drinking a pint
of wine with the squire and a pint of beer with the
laborer, the latter has the advantage in economy and
health, and opens a wider scope of usefulness. The
squire both can and will educate himself, but the
laborer has to be taught both the will and the power.
In the course of long walks, pedestrian tours, and
cross-country travelling, I may safely say I have
never found such disgusting conversation as I have
heard at gentlemen's tables, or anything to censure,
except now and then a piece of ignorance to smile
at. Every clergyman sincerely desirous to have talks
with his poor parishioners finds it difficult. He must
not interrupt them at their work, and it is very sel-
dom that he can find them at home. Why should he
not join them when they are taking a rest, and talk-
ing with one another? With the Bible in our hands,
it will not do to throw the public-house out of the
pale of the Church.

When I went to live in Salisbury Plain, I saw at
Netheravon an elderly, grave-looking clergyman, a
very spare figure, living alone at the dull roadside
parsonage. " He 's a queer fellow," people said; "he
goes to the public-house, and drinks with his parish-
ioners." I did not hear anything worse about him.
This was the parish, and the parsonage, where
Sydney Smith had been once for two years, dining
generally at the great house, but very much put out,
and giving bad names to the locality, because, when
he sat down to some roast veal, he found he could
not get a lemon without sending to Amesbury, five
miles off.

Netheravon is just two miles from the humbler vil-

BISHOP MARSH.

327

lage where Addison spent the first fifteen years of his
life. He went daily to Amesbury School, and it was
in his walks to and fro, in the very track the ser-
vant would have to go for a lemon, that he gathered
the touching imagery for his translation of the 23d
Psalm. Here, too, it was that he found the original
of his Sir Roger de Coverley in Richard Duke, of
Bulford House, which he daily passed. The Paking-
tons claim Sir Roger de Coverley, but Addison is
more likely to have taken his ideal from an acquaint-
ance, of his youth than from a gentleman who sur-
vived him many years.

Samuel Rickards, of whom I hope to say more, told
me that his uncle, a Leicester incumbent, used to take
a seat every day before a public-house in the market-
place, ready to have a talk with anybody who wanted
it. He was never without a companion, and some-
times had a circle of listeners.

I took charge of my Northamptonshire living about
Michaelmas, and was ordained Priest at Christmas,
at Oxford, by Murray, Bishop of Rochester, Bagot
being then unwell. I was to go to Peterborough, to
be licensed, not instituted, for it was a Perpetual
Curacy. This name has been abolished, young in-
cumbents not liking a designation which seemed to
imply perpetual subalternship, but it may be doubt-
ed whether they have gained much by being called
Vicar or Rector, as if they had received their final
preferment and had nothing better to expect.

I went to Peterborough from Derby. The palace
struck me as a dull solitude. Marsh, who, if my
memory is not at fault, wore a Welsh wig, sat at a
Bmall reading-desk in the middle of a scantily fur-
nished room, .looked a homely old gentleman, and

328

REMINISCENCES.

made kind inquiries about my parish and my pre-
decessors. " Mr. Mozley," he then said, "how do
you propose to go to your living?" " That is just
what I am in a difficulty about," I replied. He went
on : "I have always found that my best way from
one end of my diocese to the other is through Lon-
don." It is quite true, as I found, that this would
be the best, the cheapest, and the most expeditious
route. I wished, however, to see Northamptonshire,
and therefore traversed that long county.

The Bishop added : " Mrs. Hinchcliffe, widow of
Bishop Hinchcliffe, told me that her husband used to
go about in his visitations and confirmations on a
pillion behind the churchwarden, and that this was
the only possible way he could travel in Northamp-
tonshire." I thought of this when I saw many years
after a beautiful picture of Mrs. Hinchcliffe and her
sister, by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

As I walked away from the palace with Mr. Gates,
the secretary, he seemed to think it necessary to
make some apology. The Bishop's palace was out
of the way, and there was no society, but the Bishop
was in years, and it was an advantage that he had
not the trouble of entertaining.

The Cathedral, as I remember, holds its own for
grace, solemnity, and cheerfulness. Catherine of
Arragon, lies there, and when Henry VIII. was re-
minded that she wanted a monument, he used to say
she had the finest monument in England, — the
Cathedral itself.

I met the Bishop and Mrs. Marsh, who always
took charge of him, on two occasions afterwards, — a
visitation and a confirmation ; and being the youngest
incumbent on both occasions had to take out Mrs.

BISHOP MARSH.

329

Marsh to the lunch. I think there was rather more
under-play going on than I expected or liked, but the
clergy had come from long distances and were glad
to see one another. At Brackley there must have
been near four hundred young people, most of them
coming in wagons, as mine did. Old women occu-
pied all the approaches to the church with large
baskets of black cherries ; the day was hot, the roads
dusty, and the young people soon blackened their
lips, faces, and hands, much to the spoiling of their
pretty looks. One clergyman, singularly wanting in
self-management and with a remarkably large mouth,
fell into the snare, and made himself a terrible object.
Head, in his " Bubbles from the Brunnens of Nas-
sau," relates an incident of the same kind.

Not long before I went to Moreton Pinckney,
Bishop Marsh had attempted to stop the use of a
hymn-book at a church near mine, and after an ex-
penditure of .£4,000 had been foiled or worn out.
His opponent had been a good-looking shopman at
a linen-draper's, who attracted the notice of a young
woman left with a large fortune, and became her
husband. She took him to a University. He was
ordained, and in due time she presented him to a
good living. Though he beat the Bishop, he avenged
the Bishop himself, for he became a scandal to the
Church. He had to hide himself, his living was
sequestered, and he only reappeared to make a dis-
graceful figure in the courts.

CHAPTER LII.

DISTRIBUTION OF THE TRACTS AMONG THE OLD
CLERGY.

When the " Tracts for the Times " made their
appearance, I had been a twelvemonth at Moreton
Pinckney, but while that put me right into North-
amptonshire, it did not take me far from Oxford, and
the distance was nothing to me. Upon going to the
place I had felt under an obligation to do whatever
work Newman might think me capable of. I was
now to put the tracts in circulation, and to inform
people of the movement generally. Names were
given to me. The most distinguished churchmen in
Northamptonshire, not to speak of a political agita-
tor mentioned elsewhere, were Mr. Sikes, of Guils-
borough, Mr. Crawley, of Stowe Nine Churches, and
his son Lloyd Crawley.

Stowe Nine Churches lay the nearest, and perhaps
the name was something in the scale. Putting on a
great-coat and mounting a shaggy pony at the dawn
of a winter's day, I rode there with a bundle of tracts.
I passed close to the window of a room where a con-
siderable party were still at breakfast, and I was
conscious of fluttering the Volsci. The front door
was promptly opened by a wonderfully handsome
man, much over ninety, asking shortly what I wanted,
and looking askance at the hoof-marks of my pony
on his smooth gravel. I explained, and instantly had

THE TRACTS AMONG THE OLD CLERGY. 331

a most welcome invitation to come in and have some
breakfast. He seemed puzzled by the tracts them-
selves, but had that eager thought of a better time
coming that would accept anything. He gave me
names and directions and advice, but above all, I
was to see his son Lloyd.

The old gentleman was himself a martyr, or at
least a confessor, to the good old cause of — what
shall I say ? But it really was not so small a matter
as some of my readers might imagine. When he
first came to Stowe Nine Churches — it must have
been before the Declaration of American Independ-
ence — the village was singular for its beauty, its
seclusion, its simplicity, and its virtues. The world
had not found its way to Stowe Nine Churches. But
the Birmingham people wanted a straight way to
London, and did n't care what they did for it. They
got an Act for a road right though his parish, and
so let both London and Birmingham loose upon him ;
besides mauling his sweet hill sides, choking up some
valleys, and spoiling some pretty lanes.

He had scarcely recovered from this blow when
the Birmingham people found they could not do
without something else — a canal, of all things in the
world. This he would fight against, and he did, but
to no purpose. They got their canal, and from that
time it was impossible to have fowls, ducks, or geese,
or anything worth carrying off, within half a mile of
the canal. It certainly was the fact that the boat-
men laid their hands on all the poultry they could
get at, spent the night in plucking them, sold them
in London or Birmingham, and the next time they
had a furniture removal ripped open the featherbeds,
took out the costly down, and replaced it with the
dirty and blood-stained feathers of their other booty.

332

REMINISCENCES.

Mr. Crawley now thought he had suffered all that
human cupidity or malignity could inflict on him.
But no ; at an age when he might justly expect to be
left gliding peacefully to the grave, they were mak-
ing, almost by the side of the turnpike road and the
canal, a railway cutting his hills right in two, stop-
ping up his streams, and transforming his parish
almost beyond recognition. But, thank Heaven, he
did not believe they would ever complete it. The
traffic could never pay ; the poor rates alone would
ruin it ; the damages for setting fire to crops and
farm-buildings would be overwhelming. As far as I
remember, the old gentleman had most of the talk.
But he inquired much about my Oxford friends.

Soon I rode to his son, Lloyd Crawley. I found
him a very spare, active little man, near seventy,
with a great deal to say. His living had been given
to him when he was still young, on the understand-
ing that he was to vindicate some disputed rights of
tithe. He did it and succeeded, for the case was
clear, but he had never had a day's rest since, or,
to judge from his large wakeful eyes, a night's rest
either. The beaten tithepayers had built a meeting-
house, and he could have no dealings with them.
He and his people were most interested in the Ox-
ford doings, but he kept returning to the London
world, and the work of the Societies, as the true
scene of action. I must see Mr. Sikes, he said. It
was too far, I replied ; twenty miles or more from
Moreton Pinckney. I gave it up. My pony was a
borrowed beast.

However, I made my appearance there again, just
in time to see Lloyd Crawley mounting for a ride.
" What a pity ! " he said ; " I must go and see Sikes.

THE TRACTS AMONG THE OLD CLERGY.

333

They say he 's not well. We can't afford to lose
him. But stay, I '11 mount you. It 's nothing of a
ride ; only ten miles." I accepted the offer gladly.
Another horse was brought out, which Crawley
mounted, giving me that I had found him on. The
new horse looked, for a horse, just what his rider
looked for a man, — all wire and fire. When a little
way on the road Crawley observed, " I 've ridden this
horse twenty years. But he tires me. He pulls too
much. He will take his own pace, which is rather
too much for me now. I came home with a strained
arm, fatigued rather than refreshed." It was just as
he said. Do what the rider could, his horse would
keep ahead of mine.

In three quarters of an hour or less we were at
Sikes' gate, and were received in a charming library,
light, airy, and full of well-bound books, ornamental
as well as useful. Sikes was a fine-looking, elderly
man, with a dignified bearing and a very kind ex-
pression, ready to talk about everything, but with a
certain languor and sadness which might or might
not be more than his wont. We must join him at
his early dinner. I remember it was a boiled leg of
lamb and spinach. I had never seen a boiled leg
of lamb before. Sikes made the kindest inquiries
about the Oxford people.

But all his talk was against pushing Church prin-
ciples too hard, and making breaches never to be
healed. There were zealots in Northamptonshire, he
said, who would bring Church teaching to a point
that would necessarily exclude dissenters. As things
were there was inconsistency on both sides, on the
side of the Church managers as well as the dissenters.
But he had always urged privately that these incon-

334

REMINISCENCES.

sistencies should be endured. If the dissenters will
bear it, surely we may. Their children are often the
best in our schools. They do us good, and we may
do some good to them. The Northamptonshire
schools, he said, stood high, and he believed it was
owing to a quiet, conciliatory policy. Avoid disturb-
ance if you possibly can.

I may seem to claim a too distinct memory of a
conversation so far back as 1833 or 1834, but it im-
pressed itself upon me much, and has recurred a
thousand times, especially when I chanced to read
any of G. A. D.'s effusions. I have often asked my-
self what gave the conversation this turn. I suppose
that Sikes regarded me as another firebrand, nay, as
one of a whole pack of firebrands, and he then was
longing for peace. Yet he spoke with much respect
of my Oxford friends. At parting he was very kind,
and indeed tender. There was a great work to be
done. He was not to have a part in it. He could
only give his prayers. A fortnight after I was
shocked to hear of his death. Had I put things to-
gether I should have been better prepared for it.

I could not but think of his words in connection
with my own village school. The best boy in it was
the only son of a small Baptist farmer, and had not
been baptized. The chief book in my school, as I
found it, and kept it, was Crossman's Catechism. I
always shudder as I write the name, as I should
shudder at the mention of the rack, the boot, or the
wheel. My schoolmaster was a machine, and drove
his plow and his harrow fast and straight over the
ground. I spoke to him occasionally, asking special
consideration for the poor lad, who might well have
been allowed to leave Crossman alone, for he could

THE TEACTS AMONG THE OLD CLERGY. 335

repeat every answer in the book without a single
mistake, and did so. But the master must go his
own pace. Like the omnibus horse, he could only
do his day's work on the condition of not having to
think. Once or twice have I had the opportunity of
inquiring about the poor lad taught after the straitest
manner of Crossinan. The only conclusion I have
come to is that in such cases there ought to be a
distinct and friendly understanding with the parents,
and some special and private instruction given to the
child necessarily placed in an ambiguous and dan-
gerous position. Carpenter, for that was his name,
did not much credit to his school, to Crossman, to his
master, or to me.

By the time we got back to Lloyd Crawley's par-
sonage, it was too late for me to continue my journey
to mine. So he gave me a bed. At seven next
morning he tapped at my door and asked if I would
like some warm water. I had never used warm water
in my life for washing or for shaving. Well, I said
to myself, here my good host has got up early to take
the trouble to offer me hot water ; it 's only a proper
acknowledgment of his kindness to accept it. In the
course of the morning he mentioned that he always
used cold water himself.

CHAPTER LIII.

NOEEIS OP HACKNEY.

That year, or early the next, I had an urgent sum-
mons from Lloyd Crawley to attend a meeting of the
Christian Knowledge Society, at which a great issue
was at stake ; nothing less than the future of the So-
ciety and of the Church of England. The question
lay between an existing committee and a new one
altogether. But what committee was it ? Was it a
committee for the choice or preparation of books of
useful or entertaining knowledge, or a committee for
the selection of all the new books to be put on the list?
Whatever it was, the difference between the commit-
tee, past and to come, was said to compromise the
principles of the Society.

I seem to remember that Tyler and Cunningham
of Harrow were names in the new committee proposed.
To me the question was one only of principle, or of
party, if the reader thinks that the truer way of put-
ting it. I had never been able to read or to use the
Society's books. If I could n't, I could scarcely expect
my poor parishioners.

However, I went up to town, met Crawley, and
with him proceeded to Bartlett's Buildings. A very
large room was already crammed. By-and-by the
landings and staircases were crammed too. Most of
these people had come great distances, and had started
with a strong impression that they were likely to be

NORRIS, OF HACKNEY.

337

outjockeyed in some way or other by the people on the
spot. So now they were desperate. There arose a
wild cry for space, which became louder when it was
known that Howley had taken the chair. Angry
voices came up as from an abyss, and imputations of
foul dealing were freely made. Some one proposed
an adjournment to Freemason's Hall, a couple of
hundred yards off, then often used for like purposes.
It was seconded by a thousand voices.

The Primate mildly and effectively remonstrated.
What would the world say if it heard of a long pro-
cession of excited clergymen, perhaps in warm discus-
sion, passing along a public thoroughfare ? It would
put the worst construction on such a scene. At pres-
ent we kept our differences very much to ourselves,
and so got over them. The outsiders were therefore
sent to another room, with a suitable chairman, and
they were to be kept well acquainted with the pro-
ceedings of the larger assemblage.

It was soon plain how things would go. The Arch-
bishop said it was quite gratuitous to suppose that the
new committee would represent a different theology
than that of the old one, and so make a substantial
change in the Society. The names in the proposed
committee were a sufficient guarantee for that. It
would undertake to make no such change, but to work
on the old lines. The members of the Society them-
selves would watch, and they would have the remedy
in their own hands. He could not say that he wished
often to see a meeting beyond the capacity of these
premises, but he would tnke from the present occasion
an assurance that their future meetings would not be
so ill-attended as they had frequently been. If the
gentlemen before him would be so good as to come,

vol. I. 22

338

REMINISCENCES.

some at a time, they would be of the greatest benefit
to the Society's deliberations. All together, they were
too many for counsel.

My good friends had committed the usual error of
impulsive natures. They had had no definite pro-
gramme, or common forecast, and they had not borne
in mind that the moment the Primate opened his
mouth, he would be master of the situation. That
would be pretty sure of any Primate ; it would be a
dead certainty in Howley's case. With my then
boyish ideas of eloquence, I was much struck by his
perfectly simple and conversational way of speaking.
But there was no answer to it, for when the Primate
had pronounced the new committee all good and true
men, who could say otherwise ?

But this day really was the day of doom to the old
High Church party. The chief clergyman in the com.
mittee to be superseded, or supplied with new blood
in a preponderating quantity, was Norris, of Hackney,
commonly called the Bishop-maker. During all Lord
Liverpool's long premiership, it was said that every
see was offered to him, with the request that if he
could not take it himself, he would be so good as to
recommend some one else. Now for seven years he
had been relieved of this unenviable responsibility.
But he was still everything at the S. P. C. K., and the
country members looked to him to represent them.
So this day his reign was over, and Norris was a de-
throned potentate.

Crawley, who was to be Norris's guest at Hackney,
introduced me, and I was asked to accompany him to
dinner. Norris took us in his carriage. We arrived
at a large and comfortable house, parsonage or not
I do not remember. It seemed quite in the country,

NORRIS, OF HACKNEY.

339

standing in the midst of thirty -five acres of green fields,
plantations, and full-grown hedge-rows. One could
hardly see a roof or a chimney to remind one of the
metropolis. There was something like a farm-yard,
with a large haystack, near the house. We walked
out and looked around. Norris was thankful he had
been the means of reserving all this open space so
long from the invasion of builders. He said nothing
of its future. Looking up I saw some strange objects
far overhead. Crawley, who lived near Lord Spen-
cer's, said at once they were herons. Norris said he
often saw them. They were on their way from a
heronry down the Thames to one far up, I think near
Cliefden, and they made a point of skirting the me-
tropolis to avoid its smoke and smell.

But I have not given my recollections of Norris.
With his very well-formed and well-chiselled features,
he seemed to me an ideal of Cardinal Wolsey, finer,
though not so powerful. At dinner the talk ran on
people. There was not a word about the business
of the day. Not very long after Mrs. Norris and
another lady or two had left the room, Norris fell
into a very deep sleep. Crawley was embarrassed.
What was he to do ? The butler came in and told us
what was the regular thing. We were to steal out
into the drawing-rooms separated by a door. The
door would be left just ajar. In due time, when Mrs.
Norris gave the word, the butler would step in and
tell his master tea was waiting. This was the course
every evening. But here was the deposed monarch
of a mighty spiritual empire sleeping the sleep of a
child, the day of his fall from that high estate.

Hackney had long been regarded as a sort of High
Church rival and counterpoise to Clapham. But

340

REMINISCENCES.

Norris must have found himself sadly destitute of re-
sources. He lacked the men, the measures, and the
literature. Edward Churton had a proprietary school
there for some time, but what he did out of his school,
or could have done, I never heard. N orris was so
ready to close with anybody who was not an " Evan-
gelical," that he had strange mishaps. He had Hamp-
den, Baden Powell, and I think Hinds among his
curates.

Late in the evening I returned to the city, as it
seemed to me through several miles of tillage, by
very scantily lighted roads. The next time I heard
the name of Crawley, it was, I think, in connection
with Littlemore.

CHAPTER LIV.

OUTCOMES OF THE MOVEMENT.

• Newman took little or no part in those special out-
comes of the movement in which it is most presented
to modern eyes. He left to others hymnology,
though himself a writer of hymns ; church music;,
though a devotee and a performer ; and even church
ritual, which has latterly given a name to the An-
glican section of his followers. Church architecture
and church decoration he even more easily resigned
to those who might care much for them. In all these
matters he acted not as an author, or as prime mover,
but as a sympathetic bystander, hailing the heaven-
sent gifts of genius and grace.

The year 1834, in respect of events, was as the
calm which precedes the storm, but it was one of vast
preparation and incessant labor. Nine or ten men
were now doing their best to out-talk, and out-write,
and out-manceuvre the world, and so heartily did
the}r set about it that there ensued a certain degree
of competition. There were writers who could write
nothing short ; writers who could write a good son-
net or an ode, but nothing in prose under a volume ;
and all disclosed a life of incubation. If one of them
saw that his colleague had ventured on thirty pages,
he would take sixty, and soon found himself exceeded
by the same rule. The tracts took time to write, and
perhaps more time to read. Sermons were preached

342

REMINISCENCES.

everywhere, even in the Chapel Royal, but mostly in
country places, and published with long introductions
and copious appendices. High and Low Church
stood by amazed, and very doubtful what it would
come to ; but meanwhile equally pleased to see life in
the Church, which the House of Commons seemed to
think incapable of thought, will, or action. The cor-
respondence grew. Oxford resumed its historic place
as the centre of religious activity. This was the
golden age of the movement, and men talked rather
gayly. Some readily accepted the charge of conspir-
acy, and were far from prompt to disavow that there
was more in the background.

As the vastness of the work to be done now loomed
before the hardy projectors, it became evident that a
school of divinity had to be founded. There was no
provision either for students or for teachers in divin-
ity at Oxford. A University that could make Doc-
tors of Divinity as easily as Birmingham can make
brass tokens had no occasion for teachers or exami-
ners. Oxford was too conscious of its want of disci-
pline to encourage residence, except for the twenty
months necessary for a B.A. degree. It was then the
merest chance whether a man got a Fellowship, and
even that did nothing for him in the way of divinity,
except board and lodging, and a society more or less
disposed to think theology worth a sensible man's at-
tention. I remember a conversation with a newly-
elected probationer at Oriel, a " first class " man,
when something was said as to the choice of a profes-
sion. He had made up his mind against Orders.
There was nothing more to be learnt in theology.
There was no progress in it. This gentleman event-
ually took Orders, and became a rather popular
preacher.

OUTCOMES OF THE MOVEMENT.

343

So Newman and Pusey took a house nearly oppo-
site the west front of Cbristchurch, fitted it up in
simple fashion, and supplied housekeeping for young
graduates willing to study divinity. Some will set
this down as a device for ensnaring, training, and
chaining young minds to some narrow circle of ideas.
It might be the very danger that drove the Provost
of Oriel to extreme measures. The experiment had a
fair trial. My brother James had recently taken his
degree ; as also a young relative of Pusey's. There
were one or two others. After a couple of years, the
" Hall," for such it was, was found not to attract in-
mates even on gratuituous terms, and Pusey very
generously took the surviving members under his
own roof. This might be construed into the device
of the fisherman for drawing his fish into a smaller
and still smaller enclosure. But whatever had been
proposed, Heaven disposed otherwise. My brother
James, who was his inmate till his election to a Mag-
dalene Fellowship, became the very distinguished
Regius Professor, and the author of works in which
agreement with Newman, or with Pusey, was appar-
ently the last thing desired.

What was the rest of the University doing ?
What especially the old Oriel school ? If work is to
be estimated by events, they must be credited with
marvellous sagacity and prescience. Towards the
end of 1834, Dr. Hampden, who was now, thanks to
his loyal and steady friend the Provost of Oriel, Prin-
cipal of St. Mary's Hall, and Professor of Moral Phi-
losophy, produced an able but startling pamphlet,
entitled, "Observations on Religious Dissent, with
particular reference to the use of Religious Tests in
the University." Without referring to the " Tracts

344

REMINISCENCES.

for the Times," or other publications of the day, he
struck at the root of the movement; for he stated
that the Creeds were but opinions, for which a man
could not be answerable, and that they were ex-
pressed in obsolete phraseology. In this pamphlet and
in other forms, there was now before the University
a distinct proposal to abolish subscription to the
Thirty-nine Articles.

A Bachelor of Divinity, writing with the pen of
a master, commented on the proposal, and on the
pamphlet, in a circular laid on the common room ta-
bles ; and early next year, 1835, a " Clerical Member
of the University " (Henry Wilberforce), addressed
a very powerful letter to the Primate, entitled,
" The Foundation of the Faith Assailed in Oxford."
Beyond a certain degree of irritation betrayed by
Hampden, nothing came of these anonymous attacks,
for the object of them was not a man to waste his
shot on an unseen foe. He knew too that the issue
would be decided in London, not at Oxford.

A local work, small, but charged with conse-
quences, now began to cost time and money, and
some anxiety also. Attached to the vicarage of St.
Mary's was the hamlet of Littlemore, three miles off,
without even a place of worship. Newman often
walked over, generally with a companion. His
mother and sisters had taken charge of the school
and the poor. The names of the families and of the
most interesting characters had become familiar to
Newman's friends. There must be a church some
day there, but there was no prospect of endowment ;
the vicarage of St. Mary's was but a poor one, and
when Newman, no longer tutor, continued to occupy
his rooms in college, it was because the vicar of the

OUTCOMES OF THE MOVEMENT.

345

parish attached to the University Church had no
other residence.

Not a few must still remember the lower London
road as associated with the Newman family, and per-
haps with some slight incident. Here is one pleasant
and suggestive. As Mrs. Newman, her daughters,
and myself were walking on the road between Little-
more and Iffley, we passed some laborors digging a
large rotten stump out of a bank. One of them ran
after us, exhibiting a portion of the stump, with
several enormous grubs or caterpillars eating their
way through it. I brought it home to Oriel, showed
it to George Anthony Denison, and asked him to take
it to his brother Edward, at Merton College. He
immediately brought it back, with the box neatly
inscribed in handwriting long afterwards presenting
itself from time to time in the midst of more anxious
matters : " Cossus ligniperda, or Great Goat Moth.
For its anatomy, see Lyonnet, who has written an
octavo volume upon it. It is figured in Donovan."

It is easy to understand how a church became
every year more regarded as a necessity at Littlemore.
The want of it was even a scandal, for there had
once been a chapel there ; nor was this the only
place where a chapel had been disused on Oriel
property. There was the perfect, but desecrated,
chapel of St. Batholomew's, in a farmyard not a mile
out of Oxford, in the same direction as Littlemore.

Newman's own ideas of a village church were
simple, almost utilitarian. So little part had he in
the great ecclesiological and ritual revival, which has
changed not only the inside of our churches but the
face- of the land, that from first to last he performed
the service after the fashion of the last century. At

346

REMINISCENCES.

his own church of St. Mary's was retained the cus-
tom, said to be from Puritan times, of handing the
sacred elements to the communicants at their places
down the long chancel, the desks of which, covered
with white linen for the occasion, looked much like
tables. All he wanted at Littlernore was capacity
and moderate cost.

He consulted me, but I was equally at a loss for
an original idea. A happy thought occurred to me.
Mj' Northamptonshire church had a simple Early
English chancel with lancet windows; a triplet till-
ing the east end. I had much admired it. A Lon-
don cousin of mine, an amateur in water-colors, had
made a beautiful picture of the interior. Taking
drawings of this, adapting them, and enlarging the
scale, I produced something like a design, which was
at once approved and handed to an Oxford architect
to put in working form. The material was to be
rough stone, dug on the spot, the corners and windows
in Headington stone. There was to be no chancel,
or vestry, or tower, or porch. The work became an
object of much interest, and long before it was com-
pleted, it was evident that much more might have
been done ; but one of Newman's rules was to owe
no man anything, not even on a church account.

As soon as the building showed what it was likely
to be, it was perceived that a mistake had been com-
mitted in supposing that a design good on a small
scale would be equally good on a much larger one.
However, it became the model of many churches and
chapels, and Pugin himself, after expressing high
approval of it, reproduced it in the Norman style
next year at Reading.

The first stone was laid in July, 1835, when New-

OUTCOMES OF THE MOVEMENT.

347

man noticed the discovery of four skeletons lying
east and west, showing that this was holy ground,
and that the dust of saints was under their feet, with
the moral that "the ancient truth alone endures ; as
it was in the beginning, so now and forever."

Froude, who had now bidden farewell to Toryism
much in the same key as he had written of old Tyie
and the Cities of the Plain, was contributing to the
tracts from Barbadoes, and also freely criticising
them when they seemed to him to temporize or to
fall into modern conventionalisms. In fact, he was
keeping Newman, nothing loth, up to the mark.

In May, 1835, he returned from Barbadoes. On
landing he found a letter from Newman calling him
to Oxford, where there were several friends soon to
part for the Long Vacation. His brother Anthony
was summoned from his private tutor, Mr. Hubert
Cornish. Froude come full of energy and fire, sun-
burnt, but a shadow. The tale of his health was
soon told. He had a " button in his throat" which
he could not get rid of, but he talked incessantly.
With a positive hunger for intellectual difficulties, he
had been studying Babbage's calculating machine,
and he explained, at a pace which seemed to accel-
erate itself, its construction, its performances, its fail-
ures, and its certain limits. Few, if any, could
follow him, still less could they find an opening for
aught they had to say, or to beg a minute's law. He
never could realize the laggard pace of duller intelli-
gences. I have not the least doubt he did his best to
explain Babbage's calculating machine to his black
Euclid class at Codrington College, and that without
ever ascertaining the result in their minds.

The third or fourth day Anthony returned to his

348

REMINISCENCES.

tutor at Merton, a few miles from Oxford, availing
himself of a " lift " I offered him in that direction.
Within sight of Merton he suddenly woke from a
reverie and exclaimed, "Lor', what a goose I am ! I
have n't told Hurrell Bessie's going to be married."

Hurrell Fronde went home a dying man, though
it was not till the following January that the end was
seen to be near.

A remarkable illustration of the state of the Oriel
society at this time, and of Newman's relations to it,
occurs in a published letter of the late Bishop of
Winchester. It is dated November 10, 1835. " By
the way, Newman is just publishing a third volume
of sermons. I spent a day very pleasantly at Oxford.
Newman was very kind indeed — stayed at our inn
till eleven o'clock with us. I dined in common room,
where the sights and sounds were curious : the can-
tankerous conceit of ; 's pettishness ; the

vulgar priggishness of 's jokes ; the loud ungen-

tlemanliness of 's cutlip arguments ; the disin-
terred liveliness of and the silence of Newman,

were all surprenant, nay epouvantable."

Samuel Wilberforce, it should be borne in mind,
had tried for a Baliol Fellowship and had not been
elected ; his brother Henry had tried without success
at Oriel. He might now be excused for even an
over-anxiety to prove to himself that a wise Provi-
dence had ordered better things for him than an
academic career.

But perhaps he did not consider sufficiently that
these men, thus disposed of with a dash of the pen,
had had few or none of his own immense advantages.
Few men, certainly few college Fellows, have such a
father, or such friends, or the choice of all the best

OUTCOMES OF THE MOVEMENT.

349

households, whether in the Church or in the State, to
comprise in a round of visits recurring not unfre-
quently. A college Fellow, that is, in an open col-
lege, becomes such by force of character more than
by force of circumstances. He has generally had to
make his way through a mass of opposing difficulties,
and among such friends as he could make or chanced
to find. With great force of character there mostly
goes -some peculiarity, if not eccentricity. The open
colleges, inviting candidates from all quarters, were
bound to be true to their profession, and to elect men
by worth and merit, without favor or prejudice, that
is, whether they liked a man or not, or whether they
expected to find him a pleasant companion or not ;
and it has happened that a man has been twice re-
jected for his rough manners, and finally elected for
his solid recommendations, which it was felt could no
longer be disregarded without positive injustice.

Samuel Wilberforce was not the first who found
himself out of his element and his plumage a little
ruffled among Oriel men. There is a remarkable
passage in one of Lord Dudley's letters to Dr. Cople-
stone which makes a very good pendant. " I saw
Davison the other day in town," he says ; " it is quite
astonishing how with such an understanding and such
acquirements, his manners should be entirely odious
and detestable. How you could live with him with-
out hating him, I do not understand. Clever as he
is, there must be some great defect in his mind, or he
would try to make himself a little more sufferable."
The man who stunk in Lord Dudley's nostrils, and
from whom he recoiled with detestation, was one of
the best men and the greatest minds that ever came
into Oriel College. So true is it of manners, as it is

350

REMINISCENCES.

of raiment, " They that wear soft clothing are in
kings' houses."

There can be no difficulty in identif}Ting the charac-
ters touched off by Samuel Wilberforce's too ready
pen. The portraits are highly exaggerated, and they
also afford some explanation of the Bishop's patronage
in after times. He showed a decided preference for
men of good family, good figure, and good social qual-
ities, but he was sometimes deceived ; and on the
other hand he neglected men who were not in his
eyes sufficiently men of the world.

CHAPTER LV.

HAMPDEN REGIUS PROFESSOR.

The year 1836 was eventful. Richard Hun-ell
Froude died, working and writing with his usual
spirit almost to the long foreseen end. He had just
time to speculate on the results of Dr. Burton's death,
for the chair of the Regius Professor of Divinity was
thereby vacant. To look at Burton's large bony
frame, and to hear his strong voice, few would have
thought he was to die before Froude. He seemed
destined to a long episcopate in some see requiring a
man of work. But his reply to Bulteel showed him
excitable, and not always able to command himself.
Feeling not quite well, he went down to Ewelrne for
a few days' rest, took a walk in the fields, met a dis-
senting farmer who told him he did not preach the
gospel and so forth, had a warm argument with him
— the farmer getting very violent — came home in a
fever, and died in a few days.

Lord Melbourne had designed to nominate Edward
Denison, who, besides his strong personal claims, had
one of a political character, his eldest brother having
carried his election at Liverpool at a critical time,
before the passing of the Reform Bill, after a long
and expensive contest. It was represented, however,
to Lord Melbourne, that Hampden was suffering
much tribulation, particularly for his pamphlet advo-
cating the abolition of University tests, and that he

352

REMINISCENCES.

ought therefore to be supported. George Anthony
used to say that Newman and his friends had to thank
themselves for the appointment, as they had forced it
on Lord Melbourne, who would much have preferred
Edward Denison.

As soon as it became known that Hampden had
been recommended to the King, his Bampton Lec-
tures, delivered in 1832, when Newman was prepar-
ing to accompany Froude to the Mediterranean,
emerged into notice.

It has been stated by writers who no doubt be-
lieved what they said, that these lectures were at-
tended by large and deeply interested congregations,
as if Hampden had really been the Abelard his an-
tagonists would make him. As generally happens, a
considerable number went to hear the first lecture,
because something startling was expected ; but when
they were not startled, but very much puzzled, and
when indeed they found it difficult to understand the
lecturer at all, they ceased to attend, and left the
preacher to the empty benches which are often the
only audience of a Bampton lecturer. If the lectures
were not heard, neither were they read, and no one
who knows what the mass of Oxford men are, and
who will also take the trouble to read a few sentences
in these lectures, can think it at all likely that they
were either listened to or read. Perhaps they ought
to have been listened to, and perhaps they ought to
have been read, but the question is one of fact, and
they were neither.

Their history was no secret at Oriel, and it had
been several times asked why nobody called atten-
tion to them ? Why indeed ? when there were not
more than half a dozen people in the world who

HAMPDEN REGIUS PROFESSOR

353

could have recalled a single passage. Not very long
after the publication, some one — Hugh J. Rose. I
think it was — wrote to Newman, "You must notice
Hampden's Lectures, and if possible move the Uni-
versity to condemn them, for they say he is to be
made a Bishop, and then what shall we do ? " New-
man replied that he could do nothing in the matter,
for there was necessarily a personal question between
him and Hampden, the latter having been employed
by tbe Provost to oust him and the other tutors.
Under the circumstances he wished to keep at peace
with Hampden, whom he was coming across daily.
He was, however, at that time, telling everything to
Henry Wilbcrforce, who would do something. He
fagoted Hampden's pamphlet on "Religious Dissent"
with several other scandals, as he deemed them, in
the " Foundations of the Faith Assailed," already re-
ferred to.

At the time the Lectures were written, there was
only one man in Oxford who knew anything about
the scholastic philosophy, and that was Blanco White.
Hampden, an intimate friend of that gentleman from
his first appearance in Oxford, was now thrown a
good deal into his society, and was qualified as well
as disposed to enter into Blanco White's favorite sub-
ject of comment and denunciation. They saw one
another almost daily, and Blanco White's spmts rose
as the time approached for the doom of orthodoxy.
Most feelingly did he express his disappointment
when he heard that the lecturer had stopped short of
that decisive blow which he held to be the legitimate
conclusion. The difference between the two men was
great, for Blanco White was singularly destitute of
judgment, decision, and self-control, whereas Hamp-

VOL. L 23

354

REMINISCENCES.

den, while ready to make a plunge, yet knew where
to land himself.

Hampden recognized, as he believed, the encroach-
ments of a rash and presumptuous human element in
the domain of revelation, which he could both de-
scribe and arrest. It was reasonable and legitimate
that he should avail himself of the only guide through
this intricate region to be found in Oxford, even
though he knew there must be a point where he
must take his stand, and say " Thus far and no
farther."

Blanco White is so little to be regarded as a per-
fectly reasonable being, that it really was small
blame to Hampden that Blanco White held himself
aggrieved, and to a certain extent duped. He felt it
very severely, indeed it was the death-blow of a long-
cherished hope. He now saw that his work, what-
ever it was, could not be in the Church of England,
and must therefore be pursued out of it, as Arch-
bishop Whately before long had to impress upon
him.

CHAPTER LVI.

blanco white's part in the preparation op
hampden's bampton lectures.

The above particulars as to the relations of Blanco
White and Hampden have been disputed with much
warmth, and some very rough language which it is
not necessary to recall. It is, however, a question of
testimony. I am certainly a competent witness as
far as opportunity goes, for I had frequent talks
with Blanco White at the time Hampden was also
frequently at that gentleman's lodgings, and that was
while Hampden was preparing these lectures.

It is rather ignominious for any one to be called
upon, in very unpleasant language, to corroborate
that which he has stated as a matter of actual knowl-
edge. This, however, I must do to the extent of dis-
posing of the argument against it. My statement is
that in the latter part of 1831 and the early part of
1832, these two gentlemen saw a good deal of one
another, and that one of them derived from the other
material assistance in the way of information, authors
to be read, and general insight into the subject, in
view of the lectures he was about to deliver on the
" Scholastic Philosophy considered in its relation to
Christian Theology."

The main objection made to this statement is that
the " germs " of these lectures are to be found in
Hampden's previous writings ; in particular in an

356

REMINISCENCES.

essay on the " Philosophical Evidence of Christian-
ity," published in 1827, written with the view of car-
rying out and applying the principles of Butler's
"Analogy;" in two articles contributed about 1831
to the " Encyclopaedia Britannica " on " Aristotle
and Aristotle's Philosophy ; " and in another article
contributed to the same work on " Thomas Aquinas
and the Scholastic Philosophy." These articles,
Hampden's biographer states, were written partly in
London, where he still retained his house in Seymour
Street, and partly in Oxford ; and of that last article,
namely, that on " Thomas Aquinas and the Scholastic
Philosophy," the biographer specially adds : " This
article appears to have excited much interest. It
opened up a branch of inquiry that had been much
neglected, and the subject (which might seem a dull
one) is made of interest to the reader by the deep
interest with which the author evidently enters into
the research, and by the power and vigor of the
writing."

By other writers it is added that there is such a
unity of thought and of style in the whole series of
Hampden's writings, as to forbid the idea of a certain
intrusion of foreign elements. A very excitable dig-
nitary thought it necessary to his purpose to speak
rather contemptuously of the " Spanish Gamaliel,"
or the " refugee from Seville," and, since everything
that grows must come of a parent stock, he declared
that Hampden's works generally were the legitimate
offspring of the old Oriel school, so much so as to
repel the suspicion of a foreign graft.

Now, in the first place, whatever may be said
about the " germs " or the original stock and the par-
ent stock of the lectures, " Scholastic philosophy,"

HAMPDEN'S BAMPTON LECTURES.

357

to the extent to which Hampden treated it, was a de-
cided novelty. So is it said with much emphasis and
proper pride hy Hampden's biographer. There was
a remarkable ignorance of the subject at Oxford
Before Hampden's reappearance at Oxford, Newman
used to say that Whately, and his master Coplestone,
had missed Aristotle's logic, and certainly without
having caught that logic no one can understand the
school-men. The old Oriel school would not have
blundered as it did in its desultory attempts to mend
the Athanasian theology, had it possessed even a
moderate acquaintance with the " Scholastic philoso-
phy." The classics were everything in those days,
and the great scholars would then rather enlarge the
circle of the classics than leave an opening for early
Christian theology. Gaisford induced the Clarendon
Press to spend £2,000 in an edition of " Plotinus,"
by a German he brought over. Showing Christ-
church library to a visitor, he walked rapidly past
all the Fathers. 'Waving his hand, he said " sad
rubbish," and that was all he had to say. Hamp-
den's biographer was proud to cite a high authority
as to the singular originality of his design. In a letter
from Lord Melbourne to the professor, he says : " I
see Hallam in his new publication, 1837, says you are
the first Englishman who has ever known anything
about Scholastic theology. People who will tread
into new and untrodden ground cannot expect to do
so with impunity, as you have found."

Blanco White brought this " Scholastic theology "
with him from Seville ; he was ready to produce it
on every occasion, and he had been one of Hampden's
friends many years before the date of these conversa-
tions, which were in 1831 and 1832. Blanco White

358

REMINISCENCES.

began a year's residence in the city of Oxford, under
the auspices of Shuttleworth, whom he had met at
Holland House, in October, 1814. His most intimate
and most valued friends at Oxford at that time were
the two Bishops, of whom William was already Fel-
low of Oriel. At the previous Easter, 1814, Hamp-
den had been elected Fellow of Oriel. Shuttleworth,
who had brought Blanco White to Oxford, was among
Hampden's " most valued friends," though in after
years there arose differences between them. William
Bishop was also his very attached friend. Here, then,
were the two Bishops, Shuttleworth. Blanco White,
and Hampden, all in a bond of close intimacv in
1814.

After a long interval, passed chiefly in London,
and the neighborhood, and in frequent communica-
tion with his old friends. Blanco White returned to
Oxford in August 1826, aud after the Long Vacation
became a member of the University and of Oriel Col-
lege and common room. In 1829 Hampden returned
to Oxford, and resided there in frequent communica-
tion with the older members of the Oriel circle, in-
cluding Blanco White, till the delivery of the Bamp-
ton Lectures.

Let it be observed that all the matter in question,
including the M germs *' and what not, was written
and published in the period between 1829 and 1832,
while Hampden and Blanco White were residing at
Oxford and seeing much of one another. The arti-
cles on Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas were written
in the years immediately preceding the delivery of
the Bampton Lectures, and may be considered as pre-
paratory to them. The single "germ" mentioned
as to be found in any previous work, that is before

hampden's bampton lectukes.

359

Hampden's return to Oxford, is in the preface to the
essay on the " Philosophical Evidence of Christian-
ity," where the author says : " It will readily be ac-
knowledged there is a strong primd facie objection to
the assertion of a philosophical theology," etc. But
there was nothing here conflicting with the statement
that in 1831 Hampden opened what at Oxford was
entirely a new subject, with Blanco White, a most
competent, well-informed, and willing adviser at
hand.

But instead of treating the alleged part of that
gentleman in the history of these lectures as a gross
affront to the lecturer, and something like a charge
of dishonesty, which certainly was never intended, it
would have been quite competent to ask what that
allegation really amounted to. Is it wrong for a man
charged with an important public duty, and under-
taking a new and difficult titsk, full of peril, to avail
himself of the only informant, the only man at all
familiar with the subject, within reach, that inform-
ant being also an old and intimate friend ? Would
it have befitted the lecturer himself, his position, or
the interests of the University, to neglect an oppor-
tunity ready at hand, and of a very exceptional char-
acter ? There is no such folly, no such cause of utter
breakdown and disgrace, as the silly pride of doing
things quite by oneself, without assistance. Hamp-
den never claimed that originality, which as often as
not is the parent of error. He was a laborious and
conscientious reader and thinker, whose chief anxiety
seems to have been to work on a recognized founda-
tion, and to use all the means at hand for doing his
work as well as he could.

What, then, are Universities made for, if not to

360

REMINISCENCES.

bring students together, and to enable them to com-
pare notions and render mutual services ? Nor does
a statesman or an orator demean himself, and prac-
tice a fraud, because he avails himself of professionals
and experts.

Blanco White was a very pleasant talker, onlv
wanting somebody to draw him out, aud perhaps also
to keep him to a subject. He only desired to be
drawn out by any one with whom he could feel on
equal intellectual terms. Newman and the other
Fellows at this time were no longer caring to hear
much what he had to say. They did not want to
be engaged in a controversy which would onlv end in

DO w J

nothing: and to be brought to agony point, only to
recoil. It was no longer as it had been four years
before, when Blanco White entered in his journal :
u February 18, 1827. Taken ill and confined to the
house the whole day. Newman drank tea with me.
March 11. A walk with Newman and Whately.
October 31. Called on Pusev, who walked with me.
Pusey, Wilberforce, and Froude came in the evening
to learn the order of the Roman Catholic Service of
the Breviary."

There is a very remarkable passage in a letter of
Hampden's, written October 31, 1835, in reply to
some remarks in the nature of friendly warning from
Archbishop Whately. M I have certainly tried to
think for myself, and have had a fondness for taking
up subjects of discussion which appeared to me not
to have been fully treated before, because they coin-
cided with my turn of mind, or stimulated my
curiosity more than some others. At the same time
I have not pursued the study with the vanity of an
independent thinker. I have always sought every

HAMPDEN'S BAMPTON LECTURES.

361

information that I could obtain, whether from books
or conversation, and have taken care, where I re-
membered it, distinctly to refer to the source of my
information, — not with the view simply of avoiding
the imputation of plagiarism, but often for the pur-
pose of leading those who might be so disposed to
examine the points referred to in the authorities
themselves."

And now what is the account of these lectures
strenuously and angrily maintained by persons who
can have no pretence whatever to a present and con-
temporary acquaintance with the circumstances, such
as I have? It is that this extraordinary revelation
came and went of itself in a day, so to speak, begin-
ning in 1831 and ending in 1832. Excepting the
above " germ," which had shown itself a year or two
before, there was nothing in Hampden's publications
before 1831 to prepare for his Bampton Lectures,
nothing in his after publications in keeping with them.
The " Observations on Religious Dissent," published
two years after, admit of being described as the prac-
tical application of the Bampton Lectures, but they
are, in fact, simply a summing up of the Latitudina-
rian plea, with arguments long familiar to the politico-
religious world. Hampden assumed his position in
regard to Scholastic philosophy in 1832, and imme-
diately abandoned it. Not that he renounced it ;
not that he would budge an inch, or explain away,
or meet objections in any way damaging to his own
writings, but simply that he laid the matter down.
He dropped it, for he had now something else to do.

But he could not have dropped it had it been a
part of his mind in a developed and habitual form.
It must have stuck to him and come out in all he

362

REMINISCENCES.

said. The subject for a time so important and en-
grossing was discarded, and thenceforth was nothing
to him. Hampden acted for the best, from his own
point of view. But it would have been impossible
for a man to be so filled with a great theme, and so
utterly discharged of it, to all appearance, had it not
been substantially the work of a day, done upon a
concurrence of favorable circumstances, including a
very opportune informant and sufficient aid.

To my apprehension the tone of the Bampton
Lectures is that of a man almost carried off his legs
by the sudden sense of a great discovery and a delight-
ful emancipation. It has often reminded me of the
well-fed horse that Homer describes as breaking
loose from his stall, and galloping, with loud neigh-
ings, to join the wild herd in the open plain. With-
out the thought of a comparison, I felt much the
same of the "Essays and Reviews," chiefly of
Wilson's, I believe. " Why, this fellow 's a cow in
a clover field," I said, almost unconsciously. Hamp-
den, I must allow, deserves the nobler comparison of
the two.

CHAPTER LVIL

CONDEMNATION OF THE BAMPTON LECTURES.

The Bampton Lectures, however, unread as they
were, and unreadable as they might be to ordinary
readers, had now the authority of a Regius Professor
of Divinity. The majority of the residents only
wanted some one to move and to lead the way.
First there must be definite grounds to proceed upon.
The " Elucidations " were drawn up by Newman for
this purpose in one night, — at a sitting, so to say.
The pamphlet became the text of the controversy, to
the shame, it must be said, of many who could have
turned to the original lectures, and, as self-constituted
judges, ought to have done so.

A now famous meeting was held in the common
room of Corpus Christi College, under the presidency
of Mr. Vaughan Thomas, a much respected, though
rather grotesque, specimen of Oxford orthodoxy.
There is a singular absence of authentic history as to
what was done ; and they who were in the thick of
it, and lent a hand at every stage, will differ as to the
many proposals made, accepted, and acted upon. It
was soon seen that it would be useless to ask that
the appointment might not be made. The Univer-
sity had no choice but to submit to the appointment.
So it was proposed and carried that the Convoca-
tion should be summoned to suspend, so far as
Dr. Hampden was concerned, the provisions of the

364

REMINISCENCES.

statute for the nomination of Select Preachers, con-
stituting the Regius Professor of Divinity one of the
Board of Nomination ; and also to deprive him of his
place as one of the judges on any complaint of
heretical teaching made to the University. The
alleged ground of the double deprivation was that
the University had no confidence in Hampden. This
was vote of deprivation to the utmost extent possible.
It would still rest with each Bishop whether he would
require, or even accept, as a qualification for Orders,
a certificate of attendance on Dr. Hampden's Lectures;
but this was really a very small affair, and very much
a matter of form.

A mythical account of these proceedings describes
the meeting of forty Fellows from all the colleges in
Oxford in a common room as a conspiracy, and adds
that the conspirators adjourned from Corpus common
room to Baxter's printing-office. I have no recol-
lection of any such adjournment, nor can I see what
occasion there could be for it.

One ridiculous incident I do remember, which
shows the slack and open character of our operations.
After helping to fold and direct some hundred copies
of a circular — I forget which — I undertook to post
them. Stuffing as many as I could into my pockets,
I set out with unusual gravity for the Post Office.
Near Carfax I made the discovery that my pockets
were lighter than I expected, and, turning round, I
saw that the pavement all the way from St. Mary's
was strewn with circulars. The passengers, seeing
that there were many of them, concluded that they
were not worth picking up, and I believe I recovered
the whole, though it is quite possible one or two may
have fallen into strange hands.

CONDEMNATION OF THE LECTURES.

365

A Convocation was summoned, and the clergy
came up from all England. A shower of pamphlets
in every form, every tone, and every variety of title,
descended from Oxford over the land, covering count-
ers and tables, more easily written than read. The
vote of exclusion from the choice of Select Preachers
and from judicial functions had a majority of the
Doctors and of the Masters, but was vetoed by the
Proctors, as had indeed been anticipated. A few
weeks afterwards there were new Proctors, and,
another Convocation being convened, the vote was
carried.

If any one will think quietly upon the nature of
this audacious act, he will be led to the conclusion
that the clergy, and probably the people in general,
had a less defined and less exalted idea of the Royal
Supremacy, and indeed the whole Royal Prerogative,
in 1836, than they have now. Whether the lawyers
maintained it or not, it would now be generally un-
derstood and felt that whenever the Queen appoints
to an office, she appoints to that office with its full
existing complement of powers and privileges. To
say to the Sovereign, " You may take the hard letter
of your right, but we will shear it and prune it till
nothing is left but the name," certainly would have
cost a few heads in Tudor times, and historians
would have accepted that result as a matter of
course.

Any reasonable person, too, may doubt the validity
of an net depriving the Regius Professor of Divinity
of privileges appertaining to the very essence of the
office. If he is not to have a voice in the selection
of University preachers, or upon a charge of heresy,
where is he ? The delivery of lectures to candi-

366

REMINISCENCES.

dates for Orders — a few young men twice a year —
is but a small part of his office. Some account has
to be given of the facility with which many hundred
well-educated gentlemen defied and insulted the
Crown. That account is to be found, perhaps, in
the continual decline of loyalty from the days of the
Regency to the end of William IV. 's reign. The
language employed about all the royal personages
during that period — the vituperation, insinuation,
and ridicule, not only in the lower organs of the
press, but in journals taking a side in religious con-
troversy, and laid on the tables of the wealthy, the
educated, and the good — would be incredible in
these days. To judge by the simple facts, the Crown
is indebted to the present wearer for the recovery of
its old prestige and its inherent dignity.

One other feature in this act of deprivation the
triumphant majority could hardly fail to be aware of,
though resolved to encounter it. There would inevi-
tably ensue a war of retaliation, for if one side ostra-
cized Hampden to the extent of their power, Hamp-
den's friends would assuredly ostracize every one in
the opposing ranks ; and if they thought the law had
been stretched or even broken against themselves,
they would have the less scruple to stretch or break
the law in their turn.

By this time, Dr. Hampden's inaugural lecture was
eagerly waited for; but he had now to defend an
ecclesiastical as well as a philosophical position. He
contented himself with a series of doctrinal statements
which it would have taken a gi-eat deal of learn-
ing and ingenuity to prove quite incompatible with
his lectures, and which so far saved his orthodoxy.
Neither of the belligerent parties liked a result which

CONDEMNATION OF THE LECTURES. 367

seemed to show that it had been wasting a good
deal of power, not to say character ; and it spoke
well for Dr. Hampden's private virtues, that he still
had the sympathy and admiration of many friends.

CHAPTER LVIII.

TJNREADABLENESS OE THE BAMPTOJST LECTURES.

The whole proceeding has received from the begin-
ning a great variety of comments, and time has con-
tinually thrown new lights upon it. A great Uni-
versity, the most important theological University in
the world — for Oxford was now the only rival of the
Vatican — pronounced the strongest possible con-
demnation of a book and of its author, inflicting upon
him an injurious and penal deprivation. He was
now to have no voice in selecting the preachers of
that theology of which he was himself the chief pro-
fessor and teacher, or in protecting it from error.
The great mass of the multitude that inflicted this
penalty were very, if not entirely, ignorant of the
book which was the corpus delicti. They might have
seen it on a counter, or on a table ; they might have
opened it, turned over a leaf or two, and might even
have had their attention directed to a few passages.
The very great hurry in which the thing was done,
and the fact that the book was and is comparatively
rare, forbid the supposition that there could have
been much, or even an adequate, acquaintance with
its contents. There were very few in the kingdom
capable of following the writer into the question of
the fitness of the Scholastic phraseology for the state-
ment and exposition of divine truths. The first look
of the text was such that High Church and Low
Church would equally recoil from it.

UNREADABLENESS OF THE LECTURES. 369

The country members of Convocation, as fast as
they came up, implored their resident friends, with
pitiable importunity, to tell them all about it, gen-
erally in vain, for their resident friends knew as
little about the book as themselves. This may seem
passing strange to outsiders, but, apart from the
special difficulties of this volume, Bampton Lectures,
as often as not, are preached and paid for, and duly
added to the author's titles of honor, but are not
listened to or read. The institution exists chiefly
for the simple folks who may naturally think it
something that a man has been a Bampton lecturer.

There was once a Bampton lecturer of whom Dr.
Hawkins, Provost of Oriel, could justly boast that
he was the only man who understood him, or could
say what he had preached about. This was Archdea-
con Goddard, who delivered the lectures in 1823.
Hawkins was Censor Theologicus of his college that
year, and in that capacity had to attend the Univer-
sity sermons, and comment on the notes sent in by
the undergraduates. Goddard's usual plan of com-
position was to write what he had to say simply
enough, and then to expand every word into a
sentence, and repeat that process in successive ampli-
fications of the text, till the last cooking had swollen
the matter to the required bulk. This is often done
to some extent, even by writers wholly unconscious of
a plan, but the Archdeacon had carried the license
too far. Hawkins perceived at once that the
lectures would severely tax his own ever-watchful
attention, and probably quite beat the apprehension
of the undergraduates. He saw, too, that the strain
on his own memory would be considerable, especially
as in reading the undergraduates' notes he would find

vol. i. 24

370

REMINISCENCES.

himself in a maze of incorrect renderings. So he
took very careful notes himself, and kept them
always before him till he had gone through those of
the undergraduates. His own notes were a consid-
erable labor. There is no love like that which men
have for the work of their own hands, and the
Provost in after times would refer to his notes on
Goddard's lectures, and show that at least in one
matter he had an undisputed superiority, indeed mo-
nopoly, at Oxford.

Goddard, whom I once met at the Provost's, was
a dignified personage, but as dark as his own sen-
tences. His sermon at the consecration of Bishop
Howley, copiously quoted in the " British Critic " of
the day, shows him an adept in the art of amplifica-
tion ; but in that instance it was done by a free use
of the parenthesis.

When Hampden was appointed Regius Professor,
his Lectures were almost as unknown a book at
Oxford as Goddard's. The Provost of Oriel no doubt
had followed and studied them, and had probably
gone some way with them. Newman also had looked
into them. Others did the same when Hampden's
name was up for promotion. Hampden himself, like
most authors, cherished the impression that the friends
or acquaintances to whom he had presented copies,
and who returned their polite acknowledgments, did
this upon some acquaintance with the contents of the
book. That impression would be probably correct
with regard to some of his friends, for at the delivery
of the lectures he had been a member of Oriel
College twenty-one years, — a distinguished member
of it; and his old friends would be likely to have
some advantage over his newer acquaintances in the
Btudy of the lectures.

UNREADABLENESS OF THE LECTURES. 371

But with regard to one of his oldest college
friends, his loved and valued tutor, Davison, there
arose a curious controversy. Hampden stated on
some occasion that Davison had read the lectures,
that he had agreed with them, and had expressed his
entire approval. This was thought inconsistent with
Davison's known character and views. It was even
stated that he had expressed himself unfavorably
of the lectures. He was a very timid and diffident
theologian, and this grew upon him, insomuch that
when his friends were expecting some fresh outcome
out of his studies, he was found more and more un-
willing to commit himself by publication. Davison
wrote freely, vigorously, and even brilliantly on such
matters as education, particularly Lovell Edgeworth's
scheme of professorial education, and the attacks on
the University of Oxford in the" Edinburgh Review,"
on civil and judicial institutions, and even on the
poor-laws. So, too, in his nearer approach to Chris-
tian theology, on the prophecies of the Old Testa-
ment, on the origin of sacrifice, and on the evidences ;
but even here he always seemed hampered, as if he
recoiled from a further advance into sacred ground.
When he left college and went into the country, he
would certainly be more at large and his own master.

Davison was now regarded as a man who had long
been slowly emerging from a school in which he was
notoriously and avowedly not quite at home, but for
which he felt the bonds of affection, as well as con-
siderable agreement. But the people who were now
expecting him to act more like himself, and from the
dictates of his own nature, forgot perhaps that he was
now past middle age, that he had never had a very
youthful mind, that he had always wanted self-asser-

372

REMINISCENCES.

tion, and that the habit of an imperfect development
must by this time have become incurable. There
was, however, actual information coming again and
again that Davison was known to be engaged upon
a Commentary on the Scriptures. The hesitations,
whatever they were, that had pursued him through
life, dictated at last an instruction to his widow to
destroy all his MSS. She felt it her duty to execute
this order, and no doubt did execute it, though she
knew that he had written this Commentary, or parts
of it, several times over. Was he likely at once to de-
clare his approval of a work which it would take
much time and close attention to master?

So the widow was written to. She searched
through the library and found the Lectures, only one
leaf cut open, and with no signs of having been read.
This seemed conclusive, and there was much joy at
Oriel in the removal of what seemed a slur on Davi-
son's memory. Nevertheless, Hampden was able to
produce a letter which must be admitted to have
justified him in appealing to Davison's unqualified
and intelligent approval. But this opens other ques-
tions ; first, Davison himself, and his state of mind,
and then the whole chapter of presentation copies,
presentation letters, and presentation replies.

Davison was now magni nominis umbra. The
silence of his house was awful, visitors said, for he
could not bear the footsteps or the voices of his own
children. Going over the same ground over and over
again, he seems to have arrived at hopeless inde-
cision. Why, then, decide so quickly upon such a
work as these lectures? He had every inducement,
and no doubt every wish, to say something agreeable
of the crowning work of a pupil, indeed a pi-omising

UNREADABLENESS OF THE LECTURES. 373

and favorite pupil, whose success in life he had
prophesied almost at first sight, and whose only fault
in his eyes was an excess of modesty, interfering with
freedom of intercourse. A dip here and there might
afford the materials for a kind acknowledgment, and
save the conscience of the reader. The volume on
his shelves showed that it could only be a dip here
and there. Many people acknowledge presentation
copies at once, in order to save the necessity of read-
ing them; but they must say something about the
book, and Davison possibly read enough " to swear

by-"

However, he had passed all his days in the old
Oriel school, in the same rock Hampden himself was
hewn from, and possibly the new Oriel school were,
after all, mistaken in relying on the permanence of
the special convictions which were supposed to have
made him an exception to the general character of
that school. He had need of something more than
convictions to be proof against the fascination of
Coplestone, then by far the ablest and most agree-
able man in the University. Such a fascination long
felt, and endured in the period of rising manhood,
would not easily be shaken off in its failing years.
It had long been his duty to defer to the judgment of
those around him, one of them at least his superior
in all that makes personal influence, and so far au-
thority. In the main principles he agreed with Cop-
lestone and others ; and he seemed ever to postpone
the inevitable parting. The embarrassment betrayed
in his writings was conspicuous in his conversation.
It became his habit and his consolation to contem-
plate with simple awe that mystery which neither
mathematics nor logic could reduce to language, and

374

REMINISCENCES.

he spoke jealously of the hope expressed by a rising
philosopher that he would live to see things now be-
lieved inscrutable expressed in mathematical formu-
las.

There is another consideration bearing on the
point. I do not think Davison and Hampden could
have seen one another since the latter left Oxford
in 1816. Their courses lay wide apart. I resided at
Oriel from 1825 to 1832, and I am very sure Davison
never appeared in Oriel during that period. Up to
the latter date Davison's recollection of Hampden
would be that of a very studious and promising youth
of twenty-three.

There were old college stories about Davison that
might be interpreted one way or another. He was
described as like the mysterious old gentleman in the
"Vicar of Wakefield," who by a single monosyllable
would dispose of a long flow of nonsense. He would
sometimes cut impertinence very short with an unex-
pected sally. Driving his own carriage to Gloucester,
he put it up at a small inn in the suburbs, and pre-
sented himself at one of the principal hotels in the
city. He was sharply asked, " Where did you come
from, and how did you. come here ? " His reply was
as sharp. " From Bristol jail by the wagon." Pos-
sibly it was some such reply that obtained for him
Lord Dudley's " detestation."

Other old friends, and other authorities besides
Davison, were afterwards appealed to as having read
and approved, but at the time they said nothing.
They did not make the slightest effort to remove the
blackness of darkness which seemed to have closed
round the lectures from the day they were delivered.

CHAPTER LTX.

GLADSTONE AND S. WILBERFORCE.

Newman and his friends had been deeply im-
pressed with the necessity of removing this universal
ignorance of the matter to be adjudicated on, and of
supplying the deficiency. Various writers took it in
hand, and no common work has been so extracted,
elucidated, analyzed, tabulated, and furnished with
helps to the eye and the understanding as was this
volume, necessarily, in a very few days.

But here again came a new form of the difficulty.
Can a book be known by extracts ? Illustrations are
made for a purpose. Texts are separated from their
context. One of the standing jokes of that day was
" textes," that is the scoi*e or two texts which old
women would substitute for the whole of the Bible,
as containing all they wanted out of it, of course in
anything but the true sense of the words. Expla-
nations are constructed, a passage here, a passage
there. You may build or carve what you please out
of a quarry. It cannot be denied that even if there
were as much honesty as there certainly was indus-
try in the presentation of Hampden's book to the as-
sembled members of Convocation, the result would
still fall very short of careful study and real knowl-
edge. In fact, the work of elucidation, quotation,
and comment exceeded the limits of the occasion and
the capacities of most of the intended readers. They

376

REMINISCENCES.

had neither the time nor the power to do justice to
either the book or the commentaries.

Two men, both of whom may be considered great
men in their respective ways, and who certainly were
not wanting in the power of acquiring knowledge,
had many years afterwards to make the humiliating
confession that while ready at the time to condemn
Hampden's lectures, they in truth knew nothing
about them. Eleven years afterwards, when Hamp-
den had been nominated to the see of Hereford, the
Church of England protested, it may be almost said
en masse, against the appointment. The significance
of the appointment had now every possible aggrava-
tion ; the resistance to it every possible disadvantage.
Hampden's chief antagonists had left the field, and
in so doing had discredited their old cause, and left
it in weaker hands. Samuel Wilberforce, divided,
distracted, and beset, after signing a futile episcopal
remonstrance against the appointment, allowed him-
self to be drawn into the difficult path of persuasion
pointed with menace, and negotiation concurrent with
hostile acts. Acquiescing in legal proceedings, he
besought Hampden to give him an easy victory by
explaining away his lectures. Hampden had now to
fight not only for his opinions, but still more for the
Royal Prerogative. The latter was an impregnable
position. Hampden did nothing ; said nothing ; and
was unassailable. As peace there must be on the
Bench, and he would not submit, others must. S.
Wilberforce then began to read the lectures seri-
ously ; at least as he had never done before, and the
result was an apology to Hampden for all he had
himself done, on the plea of ignorance.

The other recantation was still more remarkable.

GLADSTONE AND S. WILBERFORCE. 377

Thirty-four years after the delivery of the lectures,
Hampden, to his great surprise, and somewhat quali-
fied pleasure, received a letter from Mr. Gladstone,
written in the very abyss of penitence and self-
humiliation. He had done his best for a whole gen-
eration to understand the lectures, without the
slightest success. As it was utterly past his power
to understand them, he had been clearly wrong to
condemn them on the information of others.

One can imagine Hampden reading the letter
backwards and forwards, upwards and downwards,
and holding it up to the light, to see what he could
make of it. The very curious reason given by Glad-
stone for his ill-success, namely, that for a good many
years past he had found himself ill able to master
books of an abstract character, must have satisfied
Hampden that the case was utterly hopeless. The
writer could not possibly have known the meaning of
the word " abstract," which really is about the last
word to be applied to Hampden's lectures, difficult
as they are. Hampden wisely put the letter into a
drawer and said nothing about it.

His biographer regarded it in the light of a most
flattering testimonial from the most competent of
judges, and accordingly was proud to publish it.
Hampden's extreme modesty and unwillingness to
obtrude himself were the only account the biographer
could give of its suppression.

What, then, it may be asked, is the difficulty, the
confessed difficulty of these lectures, and why even
now is it rare to find any one who can pretend to
have read them, and very hard to believe him ? The
difficulty lies in the immense quantity of matter that
Hampden labors to bring within the compass of eight

378

REMINISCENCES.

lectures. The composition suggests the idea of notes
made while reading several new authors, in order to
reduce to a still smaller compass their over-loaded
pages. The taking of ample notes is a process very
useful, indeed necessary, in the preparation for a
great work to be published without limitations of
time or space ; but it is sure to disappoint when all
that can be done is just to present the notes them-
selves in the most grammatical English possible
under the circumstances. .

Gibbon was not an abstract writer, for he robbed
every person and thing of its abstraction. He had a
marvellous way of working his materials into con-
tinual scenes and pageants, making history an endless
drama. Upon the same- ground, and with the same
materials, Gibbon is a novelist and Hampden a book-
worm. Gibbon gave the best part of his life to his
woi-k, and Hampden had only a few mouths for his.
Excepting in the Long Vacation of 1831, he had his
hands full of work, and his biographer says that he
sometimes even ascended the pulpit with his lecture
so incomplete that he had to dispense with the MS.
befoi-e he got to the end.

There comes, then, the question, Ought judgment
to have been done, by such a tribunal, and upon
such imperfect information ? The only answer is the
necessity of the case. There must either be such a
trial of the book, or none at all. Certainty all Eng-
land, up to that time, did look to Oxford to protect
the orthodox doctrine, and the orthodox exposition
of it. The very institution of Regius Professor of
Divinity testifies to that. Unfaithful as the Evan-
gelical party believed many of the Oxford clergy to
be to their trust, they would have been the first to

GLADSTONE AND S. WILBERFORCE. 379

accuse them of further unfaithfulness had they let
Hampden's appointment alone. By this time his
opinions were known. He had brought the lectures
to a practical point and a working bearing in a
pamphlet written in plain English and intelligible to
an ordinary reader. There was no choice but to do
what had to be done in the only way possible. Such
has been the common fate of all the most important
and critical acts and facts in history. They have
been done in haste, hurry, slovenliness, with very
mixed agencies and very indifferent tools, and with
much disregard of appearances ; for there was no
other w;iy, and the work had to be done first and
criticised afterwards.

There comes, then, the far more important ques-
tion, then hardly entertained, for Hampden's friends
advised him so far to yield to the storm : Was he
really in the right, and was his cause that of truth ?
Is it true that the school-men have corrupted Divine
truth ? They who believe it the mission of Aristotle
and of Plato to provide ideas and expressions before-
hand for the Christian revelation will be ready to
accept thankfully and unreservedly the work of their
disciples. The old and the new philosophy go to-
gether and cover a large space in the Christian con-
troversy. Blanco White said that the Athanasian
doctrine of the Trinity and Transubstantiation were
inseparable, the latter being the necessary outwork
of the former. He rejected both ; Newman accepted
both. Almost every modern disbeliever in the su-
pernatural, whether in the Bible or in Nature, will
tell you that it was Plato who corrupted Christian
truth and made the Church of history and of the
present day.

380

REMINISCENCES.

Hampden, once in the seat of authority, gave up
speculation, unless it were speculation to see how far
he could satisfy the Evangelical party in the Church
without entirely repudiating his own published
opinions.

CHAPTER LX.

VOICE, LOOK, AND MANNER.

There is one element of the question which has to
be stated, as otherwise the story would be imperfect.
We may please to regard it as a small matter, but it
has much weight in most careers and in all human
affairs. The historian, the poet and the novelist
alike do their utmost to bring before the reader the
figures and the manners of the principal personages,
and we all find these poor externals inseparably as-
sociated with their action and speaking.

Dr. Hampden, when he reappeared in Oxford at
the age of thirty-six, was one of the most unpre-
possessing of men. He was not so much repulsive
as utterly unattractive. There was a certain stolidity
about him that contrasted strongly with the bright,
vivacious, and singularly lovable figures with whom
the eyes of Oriel men were then familiarized. Even
the less agreeable men had life, candor, and not a
little humor. Hampden's face was inexpressive, his
head was set deep in his broad shoulders, and his
voice was harsh and unmodulated. Some one said
of him that he stood before you like a milestone, and
brayed at you like a jackass.

It mattered not what he talked about, it was all
the same, for he made one thing- as dull as another.
At one of the Oriel " gaudies," or festive anniversa-
ries, he and Hinds, and one or two others, discussed

382

REMINISCENCES.

the old idea that our first parents were created radiant
as we picture the angels, and even the saints ; that
this radiancy was the badge of their heavenly citizen-
ship, and the chief element of their dominion over the
brutes ; that they lost it at the fall, and that the loss
revealed to them that they were naked ; that the
Lawgiver reappeared with this radiance from the
Mount, and again with the Prophet at the Mount
of Transfiguration ; and that this will be the lost
robe of righteousness to be restored to the saints at
the last day.

Such a toj)ic might be tenderly, reverentially, and
plausibly treated. Hampden and his friends brought
it down to the level of Rabbinical lumber. The real
question is that on which Dr. Bull has collected the
opinions of all the Fathers, and decided in the affirm-
ative, namely, that our first parents had a " supernatu-
ral habit of grace," which was in one sense an investi-
ture, inasmuch as they were divested of it at the fall,
and were immediately aware of the change.

Hampden's appearance and manner helped to ex-
plain the charge of persecution and annoyance he
brought against the majority of University men.
Both he and they were in a real difficulty. Between
all men who had ever met at Oxford there was in those
days some recognition, in most cases civil and slight.
Hampden, not quite certain whether he was to be cut
or recognized, looked for a very marked recognition,
which some men doubtless found it not easy to give.
Others met the emergency by doing what Hamp-
den evidently looked for, and then he took it rather
amiss when they gave their votes in Convocation to
incapacitate him from his chief functions. Walking
over Magdalene Bridge, I met Hamilton, afterwards

VOICE, LOOK, AND MANNER.

383

Bishop of Salisbury, and found myself, as I thought,
the object of a most emphatic and beaming recogni-
tion, as if something unusually pleasant had hap-
pened. The mystery was immediately solved by my
finding that Hamjnlen was just behind me. Yet
Hamilton voted to disqualify Hampden.

Henry Wilberforce, as the author of the " Foun-
dations of the Faith Assailed at Oxford," and a mem-
ber of the same college, had his full share of this
trouble. He said that Hampden glared at him, and
that he recognized in the glare that gentleman's
West Indian blood. If, as was possible, the planter
glared at the emancipator, it is to be considered that
there is much reciprocity in the commerce of eyes,
and that it is often hard to say which has begun the
friendly, or unfriendly, interchange.

Moreover, it is to be confessed that the English are
not such mastei's of the art of recognition as the
French or the Italians. Perhaps they are too honest,
as they think it, and would rather be a little rude
than seem to dissemble.

In one not unimportant matter Hampden jarred
with the Oriel taste, and the taste of the old school
as well as the new. They were with hardly an ex-
ception very simple in their ways, caring nothing for
furniture and upholstery. There was not a bit of
ornamental work or drapery to be seen in the Fellows'
rooms. Newman might never have put a new thing
into his rooms since he took them, as the custom was,
ready furnished from his predecessor. The only lux-
ury ever seen there was a clean towel always handy,
to dust any book that had lain long on its shelf.

The Provost evidently applied to his own house
and establishment the same rule of moderation he

384

REMINISCENCES.

had afterwards to recommend to me, in vain, in the
matter of my church. He must have taken all Cop.
lestone's furniture, and Mrs. Hawkins must have been
very unlike other women if it was not a trial to her.
When the Duke, after his installation, came on his
round of complimentary calls, we were all invited by
the Provost to join in the reception. When we were
all mustered, and the visit was imminent, there arose
an anxious question. There were barely chairs
enough, and several of them were in a very untrust-
worthy condition. The shaky chairs and the lighter
weights were relegated to the corners of the room,
and a chair that could be entirely depended upon to
bear the weight of a hero was disposed opportune
for the new Chancellor ; with another selected chair
for his guide and prompter on this occasion. Of
course the Duke was found well up to Coplestone
and other Oriel celebrities.

When Hampden was appointed by the Chancellor
Principal of St. Mary Hall, he stepped into a house
upon which " Johnnie Deans " had spent not only
his own fortune, but also all the " caution money,"
to the great disgust of the member's of the hall, and
to the scandal of the University. As he was a very
humorous man, of considerable ability, people were
amused perhaps more than grieved at the disclosure.
As soon as Hampden stepped in he set about rebuild-
ing and furnishing, Henry Wilberforce said, "in West
Indian fashion, all purple and gold," to the amount
of £4,000.

The result was that when Hampden, only three
years after, was made Canon of Christchurch, he
could not find it in his heart to resign his hall. The
whole University cried out against the plurality.

VOICE, LOOK, AND MANNER.

385

Hampden put in a good man as Vice-Principal, but
the University was not satisfied, and there ensued a
correspondence with the Duke of Wellington, who
stuck to his opinion that Hampden ought to give up
the hall. He did not, and the comment he made on
the correspondence with the Duke was that the only
thing he was sorry for was that it had disabused him
of his old illusion that the Duke was a magnanimous
man. The truth is, Hampden never could see a
bit of good in any human being that thwarted his
wishes.

It was said just now that Hampden's voice was
not one to invite and enthrall attention, indeed that
it was a real impediment in the way of his influence.
Oriel College was spoilt for ordinary voices at that
time. The richness and melody of Coplestone's voice
surpassed any instrument. No one who had only
heard him take his part in the Communion Service
could ever forget the tone. It penetrated everybody,
entered into the soul, and carrying with it much of
the man himself, made the least thing he said adhere
to the memory and be easily producible. It was no
small part of the daily amusement of the under-
graduates to repeat what Coplestone had said, and
just as he s;iid it, and to vary it from their own boy-
ish imaginations. The gravest men in the college
could not resist the contagion of mimicry, and would
sometimes go a little farther.

The second of the four Froudes, who died young,
made this a special study. Coming out of Tyler's
room, after a lecture, he; tapped gently at the door,
and said in the exact Coplestone tone, " Mr. Tyler,
will you please step out a moment?" Tyler rushed
out, exclaiming, " My dear Mr. Provost ! " but only

vol. l 25

386

REMINISCENCES.

saw the tail of the class descending the staircase.
" You silly boys, you 've been playing me a trick,"
was all he could say.

A son of Sydney Smith was at Oxford at that time,
much amongst Oriel men, and often at the Provost's.
" Mr. Smith," he said, with much solemnity, " next
Thursday the college will be fifty and I shall be five
hundred years old." "Indeed, Mr. Provost, I knew
you were getting on, but hardly thought you so old
as that," he replied, with paternal readiness.

The most complete instance of unconscious imita-
tion by long and intimate acquaintance was that of
Mr. Joseph Parker, the bookseller. He had daily
talks with Coplestone, Gaisford, Shuttleworth, and
other literary men in his pleasant upper rooms, and
though he heard many voices, he was absorbed into
Coplestone's. If one turned one's head away, so as
not to see the man, one could hardly believe it was
not Coplestone speaking, — the same sustained note,
measured cadence, and careful choice of words.

Tyler had a full, rich utterance, like his genial
character. Voice must have had no small part in
Hawkins' election to the Provostship. His was a
remarkable combination of sweetness with strength,
sincerity, seriousness, and decision. Newman's voice
has had ten thousand admirers, and needs no de-
scription, for it has enthralled half the English
world. Whately had a grand roll, sometimes rather
overpowering, but such as it is pleasant to recall.
Froude's voice combined the gravity and authority
of age with all the charms of youth, for he might
be at once reasoning with a senate and amusing a
circle of children.

The Wilberforces had the sweet voice of their

VOICE, LOOK, AND MANNER.

387

father. A few whispers, a few words of assent, a few
scarcely articulate sounds, were all I heard from him,
and it was my own fault that I did not hear more,
but it was to the last the tone that the House of
Commons had known and followed as sheep follow
their true shepherd's. S. Wilberforce's voice became
by use less natural and more formed. Utility had its
cost. The result was that it became the most imita-
ble, that is, the voice most inviting imitation, and
most certain to be imitated. The present Bishop of
Ely made an absolute acquisition of it. I once heard
him preach in a very small country church. Sitting
under the pulpit, I could have thought it the then
Bishop of Oxford overhead all the time, though I
had known the true voice near half a century. The
Bishop of Oxford was aware of it, and when asked
who was the best preacher in the country, answered,
with an expressive smile, " Oh, of course I think
Woodford." The best he heard was his own echo.

Mannerism of any kind, not the less if it be the
mannerism of genius and goodness, perpetuates and
propagates itself till it becomes an institution. A
very distinguished preacher has carried into the
Church of Rome Newman's style and S. Wilber-
force's tone, no doubt in spite of himself. A very
marked voice will survive long in a household, in a
choir, or even in a small congregation, so that its
owner will be heard long after he has departed. All
this shows the great and mysterious power of that
human voice, which is the most perfect of all instru-
ments ; the loss by the want of it, and the mischief
done by its imperfections. Pusey's voice might want
music and flexibility, but, whatever the cause, it was
a powerful engine. A man with a harsh, or rum-

388

REMINISCENCES.

bling, or husky, or squeaky voice, preaching those
sermons, would never have been listened to. Strange
it is that when voice is such a power, and has been
so in all ages, from the "falling flakes " of Ulysses to
this day, it should be so little cultivated.

CHAPTER LXI.

NEWMAN, 1836-1837.

The opposition to Hampden's appointment, baffled
as it seemed, told on the country. The clergy of
London and of the great provincial cities realized
the existence of a cause and of a work at Oxford.
What was its real nature? What would it tend
to? What good was to be got out of it? The incum-
bents of large metropolitan parishes and the secre-
taries of religious societies came, some by invitation,
some on their own motion, to see with their own eyes,
to hear with their own ears, and to take a measure of
persons and things. Suspicious and jealous to begin
with, they did not like the look of things. They were
surprised to see so many young men in the affair,
young men, too, wholly free from the solemn conven-
tionalisms of old religious partisanship. They had
come from town prepared with terms, with a working
basis of agreement, and ultimatums to be settled with
chiefs ; but they found Newman in companionship
with free-spoken men who might wreck a cause in a
day. Hume Spry, an old Oriel man, was one of the
diplomatic class. The metropolis was to arrange
matters with the University, and the larger body was
not to be hastily compromised by the impulses or
caprices of the smaller. It was necessary to ascertain
who were the men doing the work, and whom Newman
had about him in a confidential capacity. Who was

390

REMINISCENCES.

this, and who was that, and what pretence had they
for setting things right, and perhaps thereby patting
their feet on the first round of the ladder that leads
to promotion?

Newman called on Hume Spry by appointment,
in Beaumont Street I think it was. He asked me
to go with him. Hume Spry directed his eyes at us
both alternately, as much as to ask who I was, and
whether I was a safe person. It seemed to me that
he was only wishing to learn the state of things with-
out committing himself. Andrew Brandram came
down, an Oriel man, a first class, and a big, heavy
fellow. He had his eyes, and what wits he had,
always about him. I had a particular interest in
him. His father, a London merchant, had been a
favorite scholar of my great-grandfather at Gains bro,'
who had taken great trouble with him. The father
acknowledged it by offering an uncle of mine the
choice of a cadetship in the India Civil Service or
a berth in an East Indiaman. He chose the latter,
not an uncommon preference in those days. Finding
Andrew Brandram alone in the common x*oom, I tried
to exchange family notes with him. He promptly
informed me that he had heard his father was a
native of Gainsbro', but that he knew nothing about
his education or early acquaintances. While he spoke
his eyes were ranging over the room, as if in quest of
something strange and significant. He had a great
mystery to penetrate. No detective could look more
vigilant or more perplexed. It was interesting to
speculate on the report he took back to the Bible
Society.

The " Tracts for the Times " of course received a
fresh impulse from this movement, however otherwise
abortive it might seem to have been.

NEWMAN, 1836-1837.

391

It was about this time that Newman tried the ex-
periment, for such it must have been, of extempore
lectures on ecclesiastical subjects less suitable for the
pulpit. They were delivered in Adam de Broome's
Chapel, an aisle of St. Mary's Church, but partitioned
from it and used for the University robing-room. As
the newly-founded lectures on political economy were
given in another part of the sacred edifice, there could
be no objection to this use of the addition made to
the church by the founder of Oriel College. The
lectures were well attended, and there were those who
could follow them easily, but Newman was not a
practiced orator. He could only attain fluency by
running away from his hearers, unless their attention
were as disciplined and as swift-footed as his own in-
tellect. I had to follow him as the toiling hero did
the striding Sibyl, always a little behind.

But the changes which this year, 1836, saw in the
Church, the University, and in the inner circle of
friends, were to come even still nearer home. They
found Newman deeply impressed with the law of
change. It appeared in his letters and conversations.
" Do something ; the time is slipping away from us."
Coming out of St. Mary's with me on Good Friday,
he was struck by the sight of very large flakes or
feathers of snow, falling into the black swollen gutter
and instantly disappearing. " So," he said, quoting
the quaint language of the Oriel statutes, "are human
affairs tending visibly to not to be."

The summer of the year saw the breaking up of
the Newman family. About Midsummer his younger
sister was married at Iffley Church to my brother
John. Newman officiated, myself assisting, so there
was no one to give the bride away. Henry Wilber-

392

REMINISCENCES.

force kindly took this part. We had almost to run
from Oxford to be in time, causing some anxiety.
Henry had arrived the evening before up to his knees
in thick mud, and having to appear at a dinner party
asked the loan of my only presentable trousers. After
some earnest reclamations on my part, barely half an
hour before the time fixed for the ceremony, he was
engaged with a table knife cutting and scraping the
mud off his own garment, in order to resume it and
restore what he had on to its owner. A day or two
after the wedding Mrs. Newman fell ill, and in a
fortnight she was gone, when Rosebank had to be
given up.

A few weeks later Littlemore church was conse-
crated. Though it was now Long Vacation, many
University men came. Hamilton, afterwards Bishop
of Salisbury, had to stand and kneel, by my side, on
the bare stone. There could not be a church more
devoid of ornament or less fitted to receive it. New-
man, on seeing the design, had doubts about the lancet
windows admitting light enough. When I assured
him that they would, though not with painted glass,
he was satisfied. The builder or the glazier was not
so well pleased with the very plain work they had to
execute, and accordingly inserted a single suggestive
quarry of red glass high up in the middle lancet of
the east window. This was gravely described in the
" Record " as a drop of our Saviour's blood.

They who remember their acquaintance with New-
man at this period, and who shai'ed even partially
his convictions or his leanings, will naturally search
through their own recollections to ascertain what
they expected of the movement, which thus far took
its name more from Newman than from Pusey. If

NEWMAN, 1836-1837.

393

any of them, as well as Newman himself, proved mis-
taken as to its probable tendency, it was not for want
of being cautioned. But as they had expected this
warning, they heeded it not. The common design
supposed in their conversation, and no doubt deep in
the hearts of the more serious amongst them, was a
second Reformation of a reactionary character to
bring back the Anglican Church to the faith and
practice of that Primitive Church which all had on
their lips, and few indeed knew much about. What-
ever people may assume to be the Primitive Church,
the Ante-Nicene Church, one point all must agree
upon. That Church was not a State Church ; it did
not affect to be one with the empire, or to recognize
as its actual members all human beings within a cer-
tain territory. Such magnificent conceptions were re-
served for later, and, as they believed themselves,
better periods.

Any reversion to the earlier idea involved at once
a question as to the propriety, not to say validity, of
infant baptism. The question of propriety, that is
the wisdom and the expediency, often returned to
Newman's mind. Really, in these days, he said, in
towns at least, where there was little security that
children would be educated in the true faith, indeed
in any faith, or even in common morality, it did seem
a question whether infant baptism was a charitable
act, the ground on which it is justified, or rather ex-
cused, in the Baptismal Service. Newman gave not
only much of his mind, but some of his heart also, to
the special pleas of the various dissenting communi-
ties. They had a good deal to say for themselves.
The theory of the Church of England had no longer
that basis of facts on which it avowedly rested.

394

REMINISCENCES.

As Newman's friends and admirers credited him
with a much distincter forecast of the work to be
done than they could make themselves, some of them
knew not what to think of the almost indiscriminate
character of his advances in all directions. He in-
vited and seemingly expected the cooperation of peo-
ple whom it was charity to suppose at one with him
in essentials, and who could not have preached a sin-
gle sermon without a protest against the views now
associated with his name. Like Froude, Newman
certainly felt deep respect and warm sympathy with
anybody he believed to be serious, so as he was not
under some utter delusion. What may be called the
hagiology and the traditions of the Low Church still
held their gi-ound in his heart and soul, even side by
side with Saints, Fathers, and Councils. He lived in
a region of faith, and therefore not of exact calcula-
tion.

Men of the world, with defined and practicable ob-
jects, easily understand one another, and know both
what they will do and what they will be done by.
Their first instinct is to know the value of instru-
ments and the efficiency of means. Newman was
really not of the world. Out of the domestic circle,
in which he was invariably kind and affectionate, he
could not freely associate, except for one common
object, and where this was wanting his patience was
apt to be tried, and he was a shy, not to say a re-
served man. He described himself and the movement
as vox damans in deserto. For several later years
of his residence in the college he was hardly of it,
avoiding the common room, though having a common
breakfast with two or three friends.

The formation of a party which had no regard to

NEWMAN, 1836-1837.

395

the organization of the University, and which con-
sisted of younger and still younger men, could not
but be disagreeable at that date to the elders of the
University. Time and growing considerations of con-
venience had sharply divided Oxford into the elders,
that is the Heads of Houses, Canons of Christchurch,
and one or two of the professors ; and the youngers,
that is the undergraduates, and the Bachelors of Arts,
keeping a term, and still in statu pupillari. In the
wide interval between these were the tutors, more or
less, sometimes it is true very little indeed, under the
direction of the Heads. The resident Fellows not
engaged in college tuition were few ; some had pri-
vate pupils, others came and went ; none found much
scope in Oxford. There was only one circle of female
society, and that was the ladies of the Heads and of
the Canons.

It follows that if any one chose to apply to Oxford
the prevalent notions of the outer world, he might
understand by the term " Oxford societ}^," the Heads
of Houses, Canons, and their families. It is vain to
say that no man of sense, or intelligence, or high feel-
ing, or common candor, would do this, for the melan-
choly truth is that no amount of these qualities will
save a man from the grossest mistakes, or from actu-
ally grovelling in the dust, where " society," social
rank, and social recognition are concerned. The phi-
losopher and the saint alike bow to the idols of qual-
ity and fashion, even in forms surpassing the stupid-
ity of Buddhist conception.

When Arnold discharged his torrent of abuse at
Newman and his friends, the worst thing he had to
say of them was that they were nobodies in Oxford ;
almost unknown there ; not in society, hardly indeed

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REMINISCENCES.

admissible, so he insinuated. Arnold at that time
knew no more of Oxford than he did of Italy, when
upon finding himself in Genoa he wrote down, " I am
now in the land of cowards, rogues, charlatans, liars,
and impostors," or words to that effect. He had
hardly put bis foot in Oxford for many years. He
must therefore have derived his estimate of persons
and things from bis own contemporaries, that is a
comparatively small body of elder residents. These
latter could not but side with tbe Provost of Oriel in
the quarrel about the tuition, even though most of
them left their own tutors to do very much what they
pleased, and some were thankful to get a decent tutor
on any terms. Nor would they like a religious move-
ment at all of a strength to upheave the surface of
the University.

Arnold took their word for it, and tried to crush
the movement with social contempt. Unhappily, the
most distinguished of his pupils believed themselves
justified in saying everything he had said, and they
described Newman as an unknown person at Oxford,
seen in the pulpit once a week, never at any other
time, and having nothing to do with the world, that
is " society." In a certain sense it may be said that
the Apostles, and the Fathers of the first three cent-
uries, were not in society, socially unknown and in-
significant. In that sense the studiously contemptu-
ous expressions of Arnold and some of his pupils may
be true. The same and even more may be said of
John Wesley, whom some of these writers profess to
admire. When the Bishop of Exeter asked John
Welsey to dinner at the palace, and invited some of
the clergy to meet him, the diocese thought his lord-
ship had been much too kind.

NEWMAN, 1836-1837.

397

The truth is, nobody in Oxford was seeing so
many people, and such a variety of people, and peo-
ple of such significance in the matter of religion, as
Newman, and, as he had much to do besides, he had
to be content with but slight acquaintance in that
upper circle of Arnold's imagination, however much,
upon Arnold's reckoning, he lost by it.

CHAPTER LXII.

SOME INCIDENTS.

Newman's well-known rooms, on the first floor
near the chapel, communicated with what was no bet-
ter than a large closet, overlighted with an immense
bay window over the chapel door, balancing that of
the dining-hall. It had usually been made a lumber
room. Newman fitted it up as a prophet's chamber,
and there, night after night, in the Long Vacation of
1835, offered up his prayers for himself and the
Church. Returning to college late one night I found
that, even in the gateway, I could not only hear the
voice of prayer, but could even distinguish words.
The result was, Newman contented himself with a
less poetical oratory. College life, except for strictly
educational purposes, is a fond idea and little more,
and Newman's case is one of many showing how
easily and how soon a man may become a for-
eigner, an anomaly, and an anachronism in his own
college.

When strangers were daily coming to Oxford and
making it their first business to see the abode of the
man who seemed to be moving the Church of Eng-
land to its foundations, they were surprised to find
that he had simply an undergraduate's lodging. In-
deed he shared the same staircase with four under-
graduates, and Charles Marriott who occupied the
rooms below. Marriott's rooms were of exactly the

SOME INCIDENTS.

399

same size as Newman's, but he found himself too
straitened to take all his books out of the boxes they
came in, and he was accordingly obliged to pile the
boxes on one another in lines across his floor for want
of wall space.

In dealing with younger men, whether as tutor or
as a clergyman, Newman kept a sharp look-out for
the hypocrisy of fluent and empty professions, and
put them to some practical test. He exercised disci-
pline equally on himself and all around, with more
or less success, but he would not be a teacher without
acting up to his own words. He and his friends had
declared strongly against the new Marriage Act,
which relieved dissenters of the necessity of coming
to church to be married, but did not relieve the clergy
of the necessity of marrying them, if they preferred
to come to church for that particular occasion. He
suddenly found himself called on to perform the mar-
riage service for one of the pretty daughters of a
respectable pastry-cook in St. Mary's parish. The
family were Baptists, and the young lady was not
baptized. Newman ascertained this by inquiry, and
refused to perform the service, or to allow the mar-
riage in his church. The University was shocked at
his inhumanity on such an occasion. Not so the
young lady herself. She immediately expressed her
wish to be baptized, declaring she was glad of the
opportunity. She was baptized and married ; and
became an attached member of Newman's congrega-
tion, followed in time by the whole family. On an-
other occasion he was not so successful. Braham
was advertised to take a part in the annual musical
services at St. Mary's for the benefit of the Radcliffe
Infirmary. Newman had his objections to Braham,

400

REMINISCENCES.

and sent him a note interdicting him the church.
Braham opened the note, read it, and made no sign.
At the appointed time in the programme he stood up
in the organ gallery, and filled the church with his
magnificent voice. Newman waited for him at the
foot of the organ staircase, to demand an apology for
this invasion of his rights. All he got was, " You
did your duty, and I did mine," saying which, Bra-
ham brushed past him and hurried away. On one
occasion Newman had to forego discipline in the in-
terest of humanity. In Bear Lane, the poorer part
of St. Mary's parish, there were houses let in tene-
ments. The occupant of one came to Newman and
complained that over*her head there were a number
of dogs kept by a woman who could not feed them ;
that they were whining day and night for food, and
must soon be actually dying. Newman went to the
room, and on entering it found himself surrounded by
a crowd of famished dogs begging for food. They
had been kept by the undergraduates of his own col-
lege, contrary to strict rule, and these young gentle-
men, upon going down for the Long Vacation, had
left small sums with the dog-keeper, promising to
send her more, but failing to do so. Newman ad-
vanced what was necessary for the maintenance of
the dogs for the rest of the Vacation.

One little matter of self-imposed duty, arising out
of a painful occasion, will be remembered by all who
ever accompanied Newman in a country walk. One
morning Dornford asked him whether he was going
to Littlemore that day, and whether on foot or horse-
back. He had to reply that he was riding there,
when Dornford proposed to accompany him. This
gentleman, having served two years in the Rifle

SOME INCIDENTS.

401

Brigade in the Peninsular War, and being proud of
his military character, was in the habit of cantering
on the hard road, and had generally to do it alone.
But Newman was in for it. In those days the first
milestone between Oxford and Iffley Avas in a narrow,
winding part of the road, between high banks, where
nothing could be seen fifty yards ahead. Dornford
and Newman heard the sound of a cart, and the
latter detected its accelerated pace, but the impetu-
ous " captain," as he loved to be styled, heeded it
not. It was the business of a cart to keep its own
side. They arrived within sight of the cart just in
time to see the carter jump down, and be caught in-
stantly between the wheel and the milestone, falling
dead on the spot. The shock on Dornford was such
that he was seriously ill for two months, and hypo-
chondriac for a much longer time. The result in
Newman's case was a solemn vow that whenever he
met a carter driving without reins, or sitting on the
shaft, he would make him get down ; and this he
never failed to do.

Several years after this sad affair, I was walking
with him on the same road. There came rattling on
two newly-painted wagons, drawn by splendid teams,
that had evidently been taking corn to market, and
were now returning home without loads. There were
several men in the wagons, but no one on foot. It
occurred to me that as the wagoners were probably
not quite sober, it was only a choice of evils whether
they were on foot or in the wagons. But Newman
had no choice ; he was bound by his vow, and he
compelled the men to come down. We went on to
Littlemore, were there for some time, and then turned
our faces homewards. Coming in sight of the public-

VUL. I. 2<i

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REMINISCENCES.

house at Littlemore, we saw the two sbow teams, and
something of a throng about them ; so we could not
but divine evil. It was too true. Tbe wagoners had
watched us out of sight, and got into their wagons
again. The horses had run away on some alarm, one
of the men had jumped out, and had received fatal
injuries.

Another resolution constantly observed by New-
man would have cost most people even more effort.
While at Oxford he never passed a day without writ-
ing a Latin sentence, — either a translation, or an
original composition, before he had done his morn-
ing's work. Frequently, when on the point of leav-
ing his room for an afternoon walk, he has asked me
to stay a minute or two while he was writing his
daily sentence.

One more habit, for such it was, must be men-
tioned. As well for present satisfaction as for future
use, Newman wrote and laid by a complete history
of every serious question in which he was concerned,
such as that of the college tuition. He had to render
account of it, and he prepared himself accordingly.
But whatever may be said in favor of such a prac-
tice, it may be considered fortunate that to most con-
stitutions it is difficult, not to say repulsive. Few
men are, or ought to be, so perfectly satisfied with
their own part in a series of transactions as to wish
to see a final record ; and it is hardly possible to
frame such a record oneself without some excess of
self-justification. It must be added that Newman
did the same with every book he read and every sub-
ject he inquired into. He drew up a summary or an
analysis of the matter, or of his own views upon it.
As bearing upon his own studies, his pupils will re-

SOME INCIDENTS.

403

member that when he set them voluntary tasks, they
were not essays on abstract propositions, or morali-
ties, but biographies, and accounts of periods, polit-
ical constitutions, crises, and changes. He desired
me one day to write an account of Cleomenes, the
Spartan reformer ; and such were the characters, if I
remember rightly, that he generally chose for these
exercises. Public opinion has latterly decided very
strongly in favor of historical as compared with moral
essays. Public opinion may be right ; but on the
other hand it is to be considered that certainly a
majority of young minds can write much more easily
on a moral subject than on one mainly and formally
historical.

Newman paid visits to my Derby friends, both
when I was there and when I was not. He natu-
rally expected to see clergy, and one good man he
did see, it was true. But when I took him to the
Evangelical vicar, who never entered his parish on a
week day, and to the minister of the chapel of ease,
who could not either perform the Baptismal Service
or take the cure of souls, they were simply surprised
to see me, for both regarded me as an unconverted
heathen. Newman acquitted himself with his usual
tact on these unpromising occasions. He said the
few things he could say under the circumstances in a
way to make them "stick," though it was out of the
question to elicit any sympathy.

I cannot be exact as to the year in which I took
Newman to a small meeting over a shop in the
market-place — the one that suffered in the Reform
riot — for a declaration in defence of the Chui'ch. It
had been got up by my clerical friend, a High Church-
man, but it had to satisfy his old friend the iufluen-

404

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tial banker, who was quite the other way. The
banker, of course, was in the chair. He insisted on
the necessity of Church and State, but was not so
sure as to the necessity of retaining everything in the
Church that might be found standing in the way
of that union. In fact, he thought a good deal of
change in the comprehensive direction desirable.
Personally and socially this gentleman did not appear
to like dissenters much more than we did, but he
thought we might give up a good deal, not so much
to gratify them as to strengthen our own position.
The reader will judge how far this chimed in with
the feelings of our Oxford visitor. The result of the
meeting was a milk-and-water declaration, which sig-
nified nothing, and which nobody would care to read.
The chairman had taken the opportunity of laying
on the table a petition of a very comprehensive char-
acter for the better observance of the Sabbath. I
looked at it and signed it, and thereby earned the
just rebuke I got from my more conscientious brother
John.

On one of these visits my brother James and an-
other brother took Newman to a public meeting for
the declaration of dissenters' grievances. It was
held in the Independent Chapel. Mr. Gawthorne, a
tall, bony man, with a stentorian voice, was the chief
speaker. These meetings were frequent, and I had
myself attended one of them. Never shall I forget
the tremendous energy with which Mr. Gawthorne,
after a solemn pause, pronounced the words, "Awake,
arise, or be forever fallen ! " or the tremendous ac-
clamation which they elicited. They seemed to go
home to every one there. On the above occasion,
when Newman was there, it was the old story, but I

SOME INCIDENTS.

405

have been told that he expressed to ray brothers a
good deal of sympathy with the speakers, believing
that they had a real grievance. Parliament and pub-
lic opinion have since concluded that they had, but
dissenters don't seem to be so much the better for the
removal of their many grievances as they expected.
Unhappily, the social element preponderates in the
great question between the Church and dissenters,
and no legislation will eliminate it.

One of my brothers remembers an incident of one
of Newman's visits that suggests a curious question.
He left by the coach for London, but was warned he
would have to change coaches at Leicester. Accord-
ingly at Leicester he was on the look-out, and saw
ready horsed the coach that was to take him on. He
naturally took the seat corresponding to that he had
occupied in the coach from Derby. A Nottingham
passenger made his appearance and demanded the
seat for his own. He had come in it all the way from
Nottingham. Newman stoutly and successfully re-
sisted the claim. This was no longer the Notting-
ham coach ; it was the Leicester and London coach.
To that seat on that coach he had the right of first
occupation. He had nothing to do with any previous
arrangements that coach had been bound by. This
was a new start. He had to fight hard for it, but he
carried his point and left the Nottingham gentleman
to think over the metaphysical question, Was this
the identical coach in which he had come from Not-
tingham ?

On one occasion, having to pass through the town
of Derby, we found our way stopped. There was a
so-called funeral procession of two thousand opera-
tives on strike. A young woman had died, they

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REMINISCENCES.

alleged from starvation, a victim to the cruelty of the
mill-owners. Wherever we turned we came upon
them, for they wound about the town like a huge
serpent. Every one carried a sprig to throw into the
grave. Each " lodge," consisting of about forty men,
was headed by the warden and sub-warden, both wear-
ing rather short, tight-fitting, white, cotton surplices.
The operatives generally were pale and thin, but the
officials were invariably stout and high colored. The
surplices did not become them. Here was ritualism
half a century ago. Little did I think I had before
me the surplice of the future. My own surplice of
that date, which I still wear, would have cut up into
four of them.

One of Newman's topics I ought to have men-
tioned earlier. Perhaps it was suggested by his
almost daily alternation between academic and rural
life. It was the moral probation and proper excel-
lence respectively of the rich and of the poor. The
former have more to do; the latter more to bear.
The former have greater powers and opportunities,
which they are to make the best use of ; they have
also greater temptations to resist and gi-eater diffi-
culties to surmount. The latter have to endure
hunger, thirst, cold, heat, sickness, weariness, and
dulness. The higher class borders dangerously on
the angelic state ; the lower on the brutish. The
difference is so great that each side can hardly see
the possibility of virtue in the other. The rich man
sees in the poor man a machine ; a creature of in-
stinct, appetite, and habit ; a subject for the natural
historian. The poor man sees in his rich neighbor
enjoyment, caprice, idleness, selfishness, wastefulness,
and a bold attitude alike to God and man. Has he

SOME INCIDENTS.

407

not at least his reward ? How can he expect more ?
The answer to the moral question is that each class
has to consider its own mission and end. But there
is another consideration sometimes forgotten in the
contrast. It is that the rich have often to show the
virtues of the poor, and the poor the virtues of the
rich. The rich have often to endure sickness, loss of
appetite, ennui, confinement, monotony of place and
of persons, quarrels, the cares inseparable from money,
house, and land. The poor have often to show the
most heroic virtues in the routine of the field, the
farm-yard, the pit, the manufactory, not to speak of
household troubles and vicissitudes. Newman was no
morbid philanthropist or indiscriminate alms-giver.
Some of us were far too much this way, and perhaps
he early detected the dangerous tendency, the first
trial of the Church of the Apostles, as should always
be borne in mind.

CHAPTER LXIIL

SPREAD OF THE MOVEMENT.

By the end of 1837 the " movement" had diffused
itself all over England. Every month there was a sen-
sation, and a new controversy. What the " Tracts "
had now grown into appears in the fourth volume,
published this year, containing a Letter by Pusey, 42
pages ; Catena Patrum, No. III., 118 pages ; Purga-
tory, 61 pages ; Reserve, first tract on that subject,
83 pages ; Catena Patrum, No. IV., 424 pages ; total
728 pages of small print. The Catena Patrum sup-
plied the universal want of clerical libraries. Most
of the writers quoted were not accessible except by a
long journey, or an expensive purchase. This was
the first introduction to living eyes of many works,
indeed of many names, famous in their day. These
men had lived in controversy. The compiler of the
Catena divides the long list into the men who gave to
the world the fruits of deep learning, and the simpler,
sort that handed down what they had received ; but
this fails to give an adequate idea of the storm which
has raged round these questions in all ages of the
Church, so long as it bad life in it; or of the very
controversial character of most of these writers. It
was, however, a grave and honest appeal to former
ages.

The appeal was promptly met on all sides. Fathers
of all ages and all churches were collected and pub-

SPREAD OF THE MOVEMENT.

409

lished in endless series. As lengthy as any other
series, as unreadable, as foreign to the present modes
of thought and feeling, there came out a series of the
" English Reformers," costing many who could ill
afford it a couple of sovereigns a year. They came
out in cherry cloth binding, which soon lost its color.
At the house of a zealous reformer in Hampshire, I
wished to see what Cranmer said upon baptism.
Mounting on a chair I took out first one volume,
then another, of a long row, and found not a leaf
opened, but thick dust on the upper edges. They
who bought, and they who read, did so to the ex-
clusion of other literature, and many subjects must
have fallen to the rear, while Church controversies
were resuming their old rank in the front of human
action and progress.

The opponents of the movement one and all pro-
nounced us on our way to Rome. Certainly very few
of us could say where we meant to stop, or what we
had in view as the future of the Church of England.
For my own part I never knew where it was all to
end, except somewhere in the first three centuries of
the Church, and I have to confess that I knew very
little indeed about them. Happily for us the case of
our opponents was not a bit better than our own.
They did not know where they stood, or what they
would have, or what they tended to. None of them
liked the Prayer Book. As for the Book of Homilies
it was now an offensive missile, a dead cat, flung first
at a Low Church head, then at a High Church one.
Nobody cared to read a line of it, except to send it
flying at his neighbors.

The " Tracts for the Times" went straight against
the whole course of the Church of England for the

410

REMINISCENCES.

last three centuries. That Church had generally
given up fasting, daily Common Prayer, Saints' Days
and Holy Days, the observance of Ember Days, the
study of the Primitive Fathers, even so far as they
are quoted in the Homilies, the necessity of the Sac-
raments and of a right faith, the idea of any actual
loss by want of unity, voluntary confession to the
clergy, and the desirableness of discipline ; all held
and transmitted by the Reformers, but since their
day gone out of fashion and out of thought. Nor
had the disuse been simply that of forgetfulness, for
all England had been more than once agitated on
these very questions.

The tracts preached what a King and a Primate
had lost their heads for ; what the monarchy, the
Church, the whole constitution, and the greater part
of the gentry had been overthrown for; what, after-
wards, Bishops and clergy had been cast out for, and
the Convocation suspended a century for. These
doctrines had been all but prohibited in the Church
of England, as they probably would have remained
to this day, had not the revolutionary aspect of the
Reformed Parliament seemed to place the Church of
England in the old dilemma between the bear closing
up behind and the precipice yawning in front.

The new teaching was accepted as a reactionary
protest against the existing state of affairs, and as
affording the best basis for the impending general
controversy. Some that received it gladly, not all,
attempted to put it into practice. The difficulties
immediately presented themselves. The clergy had
to lead the way. We have only to imagine the not
uncommon case of a young clergyman cast in a remote
and secluded agricultural parish. He had to invite

SPREAD OF THE MOVEMENT.

411

his parishioners to daily service, when every one of
them was all day at work, generally far away from
the church. He had to inculcate fasting, when most
of them fasted already in the poverty and scantiness
of their daily fare. He had to invite to confession
those whose practice and antecedents were already
well before the eyes of their neighbors. He had to
invite to formal unity persons born and bred in
schism, when they could not but prefer a good un-
dei'standing between all opinions and sects, which it
was not easy, if desirable, to interrupt. He had to
urge the new doctrine in season and out of season,
especially to the few educated neighbors who could
understand him, and who soon settled the question
by reducing their intercourse to occasional and un-
avoidable civilities. As often as not he found his
own household incapable of going along with him.
His wife had children to look after, and his servants
were no more than the work absolutely required.

Perhaps in spite of every obstacle he persisted.
He had the church day after day, year after year, to
himself alone, and perhaps two or three school-chil-
dren. His people were then told by authorities they
were accustomed to respect that he was making an
idol of the church, and that he prayed like the Phari-
sees in the synagogue instead of his own chamber.
He fasted after some fashion, and found himself
incapable of work ; not only weak but light-headed.
He found his elder clerical neighbors genei'ally dead
against him, and the squires only too glad of the
excuse to have nothing to do with him. If he tried
weekly communion, it was with results too sad to tell.

It seems to be forgotten that there were two move-
ments, two restorations ; Oxford the centre of one,

412

REMINISCENCES.

London of the other. Bloomfield and his advisers
had their compromise, or middle course ; they took
their stand on it, and fought it out. It consisted of
such requirements as the offertory and prayer for
the Church Militant after the sermon, the use of the
surplice in the pulpit, baptism in the course of the
afternoon service, and a more rigid inquiry into the
character of sponsors. These restorations were quite
as unpalatable to the people generally as anything
proposed in the " Tracts for the Times ; " but the
" Tractarians " felt themselves bound to contend for
them, coming as they did from high episcopal author-
it}', and with several centuries of antiquity in their
favor. There was a period, and a long one, when
the London ordinances were raising far more dissatis-
faction and actual rebellion than the Oxford ones,
but Oxford got all the credit of these consequences.

The authors of the movement lived in a University,
in the midst of cheerful and educated, if not always
congenial society, libraries, magnificent buildings,
frequent services, and it must be added, all the com-
forts and elegances of life. Something amounting to
an appreciable sacrifice could be taken out of this
superabundance, and yet leave a large and solid re-
mainder. Even a saint, not to say a confessor, might
enjoy life at a University.

But it was quite impossible that these saints and
confessors could enter into the case of men banished
far away from all these things, and amid the very
opposites. The position of a country clergyman is
the least understood thing in the whole sphere of
British intelligence. Nobody understands it. States-
men and Prelates are alike at fault. Metropolitan
Societies, managed by the race that looks upwards

SPREAD OF THE MOVEMENT.

413

and flocks to the centre, only regard the country
clergy as sheep to be fleeced or butts to be laughed
at.

Then country people, and country clergymen, soon
become countrified, and are apt to be simple and lit-
eral in their apprehensions. By fasting they under-
stand doing without pleasant food or very nutritious
food, and by consequence doing without cheerful so-
ciety. Early in the movement I heard that one of the
Oxford leaders fasted on boiled mutton, because he
did not like it. It is one of the luxuries of a tithe
dinner, and I have been accustomed to look forward
to it. I now think he was a sensible man ; but at
the time I was puzzled to see how it could be fasting.

In after years I had to go to Oxford from the
country on the affairs of the " British Critic," and
my principal apprehension on going there was that
my incurable worldliness would clash with the se-
rious and saintly tone I imagined to be inspired by
the movement. I felt guilty of irreverence by intrud-
ing on one of the contributors, the largest contributor
I may say, one Wednesday in Lent. He was observ-
ing the fast no doubt honestly and in a true sense, but
he was still in bed at eleven A. M., and a large dish of
mutton chops was keeping hot for him at the fire.
The scout informed me this was his custom. I have
not a word to say against this mode of fasting, though
I do remember some of my Oxford friends making
rather merry at the expense of Coplestone, a martyr to
dyspepsia, asking one of the tutors how he got through
the morning, and adding, with his usual gravity,
" About twelve o'clock I feel a sinking in the stom-
ach, and must have a mutton chop."

Such free and enlightened understandings of fast-

414

REMINISCENCES.

ing are simply impossible in the country. If a clergy-
man were to begin Lent by proclaiming a fast, in any
sense intelligible to bis simple flock, and were next
day to lie in bed till noon, and then rise to a good
dejeuner d la fourchette, he might speedily find him-
self gibbeted or burning in effigy.

The men at Oxford worked indeed, and that was
their enjoyment, and so they might be held indiffer-
ent to the ordinary attractions of the place ; but the
very fact that the clergy scattered far and wide over
meadows, marshes, and downs, are seldom men of a
high intellectual quality or of unusual energy, was
an aggravation of their difficulties. They had to
fight against odds without and within. Many per-
severed in a dogged way. In the true lines of the
Church they could not be wrong. But they made
mistakes ; they were inconsistent ; they had no
friendly advisers ; they lost their temper ; and they
found themselves confronted with men wise in their
generation, over full of common sense, and able to
command their tempers even when their own cause
was bad and their conduct indefensible. There is
too much reason to fear that from the beginning, and
still more in after years, many disciples of the new
school, especially those of the weaker sex, lost their
health and strength by too much working, fasting,
and praying, and shortened their lives.

But while the central agitation was telling on the
whole of the country, it became itself the object of
reciprocal influences. Everybody who had a want,
everybody who had a difficulty, everybody who had a
quarrel, everybody who could not do what he wanted
to do, wrote to Newman, or to one of his friends, or
to an editor, or an author, or simply to a man at

SPREAD OF THE MOVEMENT.

415

Oxford. What was he to do ? His parishioners
were dead against him. They took in such a news-
paper. His preaching had been grossly misrepre-
sented. He had tried more perfect services, but
could get nobody to come. He must restore his
church, which had been pewed up to the altar.
Then how was he to understand such a text, or such
a passage in the tracts, or in Newman's sermons, or
in the " Christian Year " ? He thought it meant so
and so, but he bad been criticised, perhaps lam-
pooned for saying it. Ought he to read the Homi-
lies ? Should he insist on the parents not being
sponsors? Must he allow any stranger to commu-
nicate? What books would his friend recommend,
what hymns, what prayers ? Nobody knows, till he
has turned agitator, the immense preponderance of
what may be called the feminine, or dependent ele-
ment in society. The greater part of the world cries
out, " Lead us. Put your stamp on us. Fix your
bit in our mouths, and have a good hold of the reins.
Save us from the trouble of thinking. Spare us that
terrible responsibility. We incline to do this or that.
Tell us that we ought and must, so that, like a beast
of burden, we may do our duty without thinking of
it."

Of course all this reacts on the leader, deciding
him, intensifying him, hardening him, allowing him
no retreat, not even time to think about what he is
doing. Had it been his nature to give his whole life
to anxious questions, and pass them on undecided to
the next generation, he is not allowed a day. The
applicants have put off writing to the last moment,
and now want answers by return of post. Are they
to exercise godly discipline the very next day, and

416

REMINISCENCES.

pronounce the sentence of excommunication ? Are
they to tell the Bishop he is another Balaam, or the
Primate that he is no better than Caiaphas, the very
next morning, the latest hour at which the solemn
duty can now be done ?

Many such questions appear in newspapers, and in
that case it is the public that is invited to answer
them. The public is not backward in doing so, but
there is a certain gayety, not to say levity in its tone,
that hardly betokens a painful sense of responsibility.
A religious agitator, on the contrary, becomes a
father confessor and director. Thousands pour their
scruples or their troubles into his ear, and ask private
direction. If he complies, he finds himself directed in
return ; or rather swayed by the surging movements
of the mass of which he has now constituted himself
the organ.

In the year 1836 Newman had entered into an en-
gagement to supply a quarter of the contents of the
" British Critic," which, from being a monthly of
some standing, had lately assumed the form of a
quarterly, and was now edited by Boone, with Le Bas
for his chief contributor. The latter gentleman was
a pleasant and even a brilliant writer, as well as a
man of large general acquirements. Some approach-
ment of views seems indicated by the fact that the
writer of the Lives of Wiclif and of Cranmer was
now engaged on a Life of Laud. Still there is some-
thing almost ludicrous in the partnership, which did
not last long. Two years after this, in 1838, New-
man became sole editor, and the review, always High
Church, in the old sense, became the organ of what
had now come to be called the Oxford party. Iu
1837 Newman published a work that had cost him

SPREAD OF THE MOVEMENT.

417

years of labor, and frequent changes of shape and
plan, the " Prophetical Office of the Church viewed
relatively to Romanism and Popular Protestantism."
The title was meant to indicate an Anglican theology-
based on Anglican authorities, and, as it challenged
both sides, was not likely to please many. Whatever
its success, it appears to have been what may be
called a " pet " of the author, not always the best
judge. The " Library of the Fathers of the Holy
Catholic Church anterior to the division of the East
and the West," the original text and translations, had
now been announced a year, placed in many hands,
and worked at with an expedition hardly compatible
with even that moderate grace of style which is all
a translation admits of. Perhaps it is impossible to
translate a Christian Father so as to make him pleas-
ant reading, or even to satisfy the requirements of
common sense. Every attempt at a translation only
brought out the immense superiority of that Book,
which is the unfailing delight of the rich and the poor,
the learned and the unlearned, in all places and times.
The first volume of the " Library of the Fathers "
came out the following year, containing a translation
of the Confessions of St. Augustine revised from a
former translation by Dr. Pusey. It is the first book
of patristic theology put by the French Seminarists
into the hands of their pupils.

The Oxford party was not wanting in enterprise or
even in aggressiveness this year. As the " Tracts for
the Times " had been now four years coming out with
increased energy, it may be asked why the movement
was allowed to take its course with so little serious
challenge. We must bear in mind that other topics
divided attention. The Church and the universities

vol i. 27

418

REMINISCENCES.

•were menaced with radical and violent change. The
Conservatives of the Church did not like to quarrel
with its foremost and ablest champions, however rash
and self-willed they might seem to be, and perhaps
were waiting, like wise Gamaliel, to see by the result
whence this new doctrine had come.

The Oriel tutors from 1837 to 1840 inclusive
were Clement Greswell, Charles Marriott, Charles P.
Eden, Church the present Dean of St. Paul's, Pritch-
ard, Fraser, now Bishop of Manchester, and W. J.
Coplestone. Rogers, now Lord Blachford, was also
residing. Newman had no college office or work,
and was seldom seen in hall ; but he gave receptions
every Tuesday evening in the common room, largely
attended by both the college and out college men.

CHAPTER LXIV.

BISHOP BURGESS.

Bishop Burgess one used to hear of as an Apos-
tolic Bishop. He was reputed to be a man of very
simple habits, and, if I mistake not, the expression
" gig bishop " arose from some one having met him
making the round of the diocese of St. David's in a
vehicle of that sort. At Salisbury he did as his pre-
decessors had done. In 1831 I passed some days at
old Mr. Stevens', the Rector of Bradfield, with whom
Bishop Burgess had been staying over a Sunday not
long before. The. Bishop kindly preached. The
church is barely half a mile from the parsonage, and
the road to it then lay across private grounds. The
Bishop went in his carriage, with two apparitors
bearing wands walking before the horses all the way,
making it, as the old Rector said, very like " a black
job." The year after this I conducted a respectable
detachment of Buckland parish to be confirmed by
his lordship at Abingdon.

It was four years later, in 1836, when, immediately
after my actual resignation of Moreton 1'inckney, I
went to Salisbury to be instituted to the rectory of
Cholderton. My Oxford* friends had warned me that
the Bishop would probably try to make me promise
to study Hebrew, so that I must make up my mind
beforehand on that point. I had to wait some time
in the drawing-room, in the company of a pleasant

420

REMINISCENCES.

young fellow who was there on a similar errand. He
confided to me that he did not expect to find the
Bishop in the best of humors, and accordingly, when
I had finished my business and had returned to the
drawing-room, he asked me rather anxiously what
mood I had found his lordship in. He was to be in-
stituted to the rectory of Fuggleston, comprising
Bemerton, George Herbert's church and parsonage,
and he knew the Bishop did not like the appoint-
ment. What made matters worse was that in a
fortnight he would have to come to the Bishop again
to be instituted to the equally important and valu-
able rectory of Fovant, to hold with the other. It
would be too great a trial to the Bishop's equanimity
to tell him of both the appointments at once, so
Fovant was to be mercifully reserved till the Bishop
had recovered from the first shock.

This young gentleman has now held these livings,
I believe with credit, for forty-six years. The par-
sonage, when I saw it three years ago, had been
much enlarged, but it retained as much as possible of
George Herbert's edifice, evidently thought ample in
his days. A new church has been built some years,
and the old church, a small barn-like structure stand-
ing before the parsonage, not ten yards from the
front door, has been entirely cleared of internal fit-
tings, but otherwise put into good order, and left open
all day for all Christians to enter and pray their own
prayers where George Herbert prayed.

But I must return to my new Bishop. He asked
many questions about Oriel, naming Charles Marriott
as a great scholar. He very soon began upon He-
brew. At Cholderton I was likely to find my time
hang heavy on my hands. Could I not take the

BISHOP BURGESS.

421

opportunity to learn the sacred language ? If I once
began I was sure to go on, and find it an unfailing
resource. He would always be glad to see me and
hear how I was getting on. I could only hold out
the barest possibility of my following his lordship's
advice. Indeed, I am ashamed to say I shared the
common opinion of those days about Hebrew, derived
probably from the old prejudice against Jews. Latin
and Greek were then everything ; and that not to
master the great classical authors, but to make feeble
and useless attempts to write in their style. Not far
from Bath, in 1827, I met a Mr. Longmire, a labori-
ous Hebrew and Oriental scholar. All he got for it
was that his neighbors played on his name and called
him Mr. Talmud.

The only convert to Hebrew that I ever heard of
the Bishop making was his own nephew, that I had
known from his boyhood. Poor little Burgess, the
only son of the well-known manufacturer of sauces
and pickles in the Strand, came to Charterhouse in a
skeleton suit at the age of ten or eleven, the same
day that I did, Ours was a new house, and for a
whole term there were only seven in it. The poor
child was very shy, very silent, very helpless, and
perfectly inoffensive. How he was shut up ! What
had he not to endure ! How case-hardened did he
become against insult! Chow Chow was the least
offensive name by which he was familiarly called.
The day after his arrival there came two honorables,
who could only express their disgust at finding
themselves in the same room with the son of a fish-
sauce maker. For five years was I in the same room
with him, and I could almost say that I had never
once seen him open his mouth, except that I do

422

REMINISCENCES.

seem to remember the convulsive and mechanical
action of the jaws when suddenly and peremptorily
called into exei'cise.

Burgess followed me to Oriel, which he must have
found a pleasanter place. There he studied Hebrew,
and I believe won a newly founded Hebrew scholar-
ship. Thus qualified, he received from his uncle the
living of Streetley. His father, passing through
Oxford, asked me to dine with him and his son at
the Angel. He was a pleasant, conversible man,
with a good deal to say for himself, and, as it ap-
peared to me, quite competent to find out for himself
the motto commonly said to be found for him by his
brother the Bishop, Gravi jam dudum saucia cura.

The Apostolical Bishop left .£70,000, appointing
his widow, with a life interest, Archdeacon Clarke,
and Mr. Fawcett, a young cousin of his wife's, ex-
ecutors. A year or so before his death the third
executor was crippled for life by an injury of the
spine, and at the Bishop's death must have been
confined to his bed, and forbidden to exert either
body or mind. The Bishop, however, did not name
another executor. The Archdeacon died first ; after
some years Mrs. Burgess. Mr. Fawcett, still an
invalid, received one day a copy of the will, with an
intimation that he must immediately see to its ad-
ministration. On looking into it he found that all
was left to be divided amongst nephews and nieces,
several of whom were dead. His lawyer told him at
once that he must let the will alone, as it would raise
questions, and might involve litigation. So he wisely
renounced his executorship, and the will was admin-
istered by the next of kin. As it happened, the neph-
ews and nieces recognized the claim of the great-
nephews and great-nieces, and all ended well.

CHAPTER LXV.

CONVOCATION.

From early in the movement Convocation was a
frequent topic at Oriel. There was an increasing
sense of indignity at the suppression of the Church's
only legislative organ, continued from one Par-
liament to another, even when every class, every
communit}', and every interest had its regular oppor-
tunity and form of discussion. The whole of the
Church system was under attack, and on all sides
were popular writers and orators urging Parliament
to step in and make a clean sweep, in order to a
new Church of some kind or other. Yet the existing
Church was not to be allowed to stand on its defence
and speak for itself. I cannot recall that Newman
ever went beyond the initial fact of its being an
insult, a wrong, an incapacity, and a point to be
insisted on in any discussions for the reformation of
the Anglican Church.

The Church had a Convocation, and it ought to
be a real, living, and active one, instead of a piece of
lumber dragged out one day and dragged back into
its closet the next. For the existing form of the
Convocation Newman could not be an enthusiast, for
it was, and indeed is, a close corporation, very similar
to the worst of the old municipal corporations then
condemned. It had fai less of a representative
character than the old unreformed House of Com-

424

REMINISCENCES.

mons. Convocation was and is nothing more than a
Royal Commission, and for that character fairly well
constituted, at least in the opinion of its Royal and
Parliamentary conveners.

But while Newman himself said little or nothing,
others, such as Henry Wilberforce, Wilson, and per-
haps generally the country clergy, took up the sub-
ject of Convocation warmly, reopened the discussions
of the last century, and even tried to persuade them-
selves that in Convocation they saw the assembled
Church of England, only waiting for leave to think
and speak. A new reign seemed to present a new
opportunity. The two Houses of Convocation would
have to address the Crown, and the form of address
would have to be proposed and put to the vote. That
would be an opening for an amendment, asking leave
to meet and confer upon the affairs of the Church,
as in old times.

It fell upon me, I know not how, to put about
such a form of amendment, and indeed to act upon
it. Perhaps it was simply because I was now rector
of Cholderton, not more than eleven miles from
Salisbury, where I had at least one friend in Daniel
Eyre, an Oriel man. Like the rest of the clergy I
received a regular summons to a meeting somewhere
about the cathedral, not in the Chapter House, if
I remember right, to elect two Proctors for the dio-
cese.

I presented myself in my gown, rather to the sur-
prise of the two or three officials. There certainly
could not have been half a dozen heads altogether,
counting my own. I stated that as the names must
be formally proposed, I should propose other names,
and have hands counted, unless some one could under-

CONVOCATION.

425

take for the names first proposed that they would
move Convocation to ask for freedom of debate. I
wholly forget the name of the official that took me
in hand, unless it were Grove. Surprised as he was,
he did it well, according to the rules of high ecclesi-
astical art. Everybody there present, he said, was as
desirous as I could be to see Convocation free ; but
no such amendment as I proposed could be moved in
Convocation without previous conversation and con-
cert with other members, and it must rest with
every member to decide whether it would be worth
his while to take any action. After some civil words,
I folded up my gown and came home, not quite know-
ing whether I had received a pat or a blow.

Among others to whom I sent the proposed amend-
ment was Manning, who had lately become a widower,
and was said to be entering warmly into the coming
struggle for the independence of the Church. I had
known him, as a friend of the Wilberforces, from his
first coming to Oxford, and had frequently heard him
at the Union. It is not easy for me to identify the
Manning of my early recollections with the Father of
the Council whom I heard preach at the church of St.
Isidore on St. Patrick's Day, and whom I saw lately
in company with his brother Cardinal at the Oratory.
He must have grown taller, and his head larger, since
he was a very nice-looking, rather boyish freshman.
When S. Wilberforce left Oxford, Manning seemed
to drop quietly into his place at the Union. Pie spoke
at every meeting, on all subjects, at length, with un-
failing fluency and propriety of expression.

It is a thing elders don't sufficiently bear in mind
that there is nothing young people like better than
talk. There is no music sweeter to them than a

426

REMINISCENCES.

musical voice that never flags. They can bear any
amount of it, so as it does not offend the taste. In-
different speakers and disappointed speakers may
sneer at it, but they have to admit that all the world,
except themselves, run after it and cleave to it.

There are occasions that seem to defy eloquence,
but Manning was more than equal to them. Some
one came in to me one evening, and observed that
Manning had just made a very good speech an hour
long. On what subject ? I asked. It had to be ex-
plained, and then I fully recognized the occasion.
The Union took in an immense quantity of news-
papers, about half of which were never read. Among
the latter were two American papers, one the "Bal-
timore Democrat," and the other a Republican paper,
I think of Philadelphia. My impression is that no-
body ever looked at either. It had become necessary
to economize, and the committee proposed to discon-
tinue one of the American papers. The " question "
of the evening happened to have been disposed of
quickly. So time was no consideration. Manning
arose, and began by deprecating any retrograde step
in the progress of political knowledge and inter-
national sympathy. Did we know too much about
the United States ? Did we care too much for them ?
It was the order of Providence that we should all be
as one. If we could not be under the same Govern-
ment, yet we had a common blood, common faith,
and common institutions. America was running a
race with us in literature, in science, and in art, and
if we ceased to learn from her what she could teach
us, we might find ourselves one day much behind-
hand. So Manning had gone on, till his bewitched
hearers had quite forgotten the original proposal to

CONVOCATION.

427

save a few pounds, and only felt themselves going
along with Manning, whatever he might be driving at.

When Manning left Oxford he passed rapidly and
completely from politics to a high ecclesiastical part.
He was heard of as a great speaker at religious meet-
ings, and as a rigorous disciplinarian in his church
and parish. Among other rules, he insisted that none
had a right to join in the service unless they had
joined in the confession and received the absolution.
To mark his displeasure at the late ones, he made a
rule of stopping till they were seated, and had pre-
sumably done penance for their remissness. The
church door opened one day. Manning stopped. An
old lady was heard slowly tottering to her pew. There
was a terrible fall. It was Manning's own mother,
who had vainly endeavored to hurry her pace during
the reader's awful pause.

Manning was soon appreciated by his Bishop,
who made him Archdeacon, lie became prematurely
bald, venerable, and wise. Henry Wilberforce used
to affect, in his own amusing way, a continual sense
of injustice in the comparison made by the world
between him and the Archdeacon. As a fact, he was
several months the elder of the two, but people
would persist in regarding the Archdeacon as ten
years older. Repeatedly in company he was desired
to hold his tongue, for the Archdeacon was speaking,
when poor Henry declared he was quite sure that
what he was saying was much better worth listen-
ing to.

But I have wandered far from my own mark,
which is Convocation. It must have been in the
summer of 1837 that I sent Manning the proposed
amendment. 1 take the liberty, which I am sure His
Eminence will excuse, to give his answer in full : —

428

REMINISCENCES.

My Dear Mozley, — I have been many times at
the point of writing to you to thank you for your
letter, and the draft of the amendment, and also to
ask you to consider whether a somewhat different
line would not more surely attain our purpose ; and
that is to move your amendment, substituting for the
prayer for license to debate in -Convocation, either a
petition that no measure of the Ecclesiastical Com-
mission should be laid before Parliament until it shall
have received the assent of the Church in a Council
of the Province, or offering both this, and your pro-
posal as an alternative, of which without doubt, if
either, the Provincial Council would be most favor-
ably received. Perhaps the expressed alternative of
Convocation might have a very good effect in that
Avay.

The reasons for suggesting this are : 1. That Con-
vocation probably contains three parties. One (z)
against all change ; the second (x) hot for Convoca-
tion ; the third against Convocation, but anxious for
some active measure. The two last, if combined, will
be a majority ; if disunited, altogether defeated. I
cannot say decidedly that I could vote for your amend-
ment as it stands. For the alternative I could ; and
so would the Convocation men.

2. The Bishops would to a man resist your pro-
posal, but a large number would vote for a Provincial
Council ; probably all who are now so opposed to the
Commission, and in this way the amendment would
probably pass both Houses, and for once unite them.

3. I believe many laymen in and out of Parlia-
ment are ready to support a measure to obtain the
consent of the Church, and to restore some canonical
Council, but not Convocation. These are some of

CONVOCATION.

429

the reasons why I believe the amendment as it stands
would be both defeated in Convocation, and unpal-
atable out of it. I write in great haste ; pray let me
hear how it strikes you, and what is doing in your
Diocese. In our Archdeaconry the address is going
on very successfully, — forty-five replies, and only five
refusals, and that in about a fortnight. It is also in
circulation through the Proctor in the other Arch-
deaconry (Lewes), and I know of some approvals.
Believe me, my dear Mozley, yours very sincerely,

H. E. Manning.

Festival of All Saints.

Do you know Mr. Strutt, who married the Bishop
of Cliichester's daughter? Tell me if you know any-
thing of his religious opinions.

The answer to this is that there was a Convoca-
tion, whereas there was no such thing as a Provincial
Council. Parliament at that time would not have
listened to any project for reviving an obsolete insti-
tution in order to give independence and power to
the Church of England ; whereas it might come to
see the injustice of not allowing an existing assembly
of the Church to exchange opinions, or even freely
exercise the constitutional right of petition. The
practical differences between a Convocation and a
Provincial Synod are very nice questions, and could
not be stated in any accurate or probable form with-
out much inquiry into ecclesiastical law, historical
fact, and the tendencies of human nature under vari-
ous circumstances.

It is quite certain that Provincial Synods have not
always conducted themselves with judgment, or even

430

REMINISCENCES.

common sense. " In the year 1281," we read in
Collier, " in the reign of Edward I., Archbishop
Pecham convened a Provincial Synod at Lambeth.
In his mandate to Richard Gravesend, Bishop of Lon-
don, after having mentioned the convening of the
suffragans, he gives him to understand that he de-
signed to summon all the inferior prelates ; those dig-
nitaries, according to the canon, being obliged to
appear in council. Now, by inferior prelates we are
to understand abbots, priors, deans, and archdeacons.
But of any other representation of the inferior clergy
the mandate takes no notice ; which is an argument
the state of the Convocation was different from what
it is at present. . . . By the second canon (passed
in this Provincial Synod), the parish priests, when
they administer the Holy Communion, are enjoined
to acquaint the more ignorant sort of the laity (sim-
plices') that the body and blood of our Saviour, in
the integrity of the Sacrament, is contained under
the single species of bread. They are likewise to
teach them that what they receive in the chalice is
unconsecrated wine, and given them only that they
may swallow the other species with more conven-
iency." In the year- 1287, in the same primacy, a
Diocesan Synod, convened by Peter Quivil, Bishop
of Exeter, made a solemn protest against this ex-
planation, and enjoined " that the priest tell the
people what they eat is the body of Christ, and what
they drink His blood."

The debates of the Lower House of Convocation
some years since on the subject of the Athanasian
Creed may suggest a compai'ison with the above most
extraordinary rubrical interpretation ; yet it would
be unfair to describe them as more blasphemous and
ridiculous.

CHAPTER LXVI.

RESERVE IN COMMUNICATING RELIGIOUS KNOWL-
EDGE.

The confidence and strength of the movement, now
about at high tide, could not he move illustrated than
in some remarkable numbers of the " Tracts for the
Times," on reserve in communicating religious knowl-
edge. There never was a more extraordinary com-
bination of privacy and publicity, shyness and audac-
ity, and, it may be added, wisdom and rashness, than
in these treatises. That which people do instinctively
and even unconsciously, by methods and rules of their
own, was here built up into a grand argument, swollen
to the bulk of a volume, and dinned into the ears of
the whole world.

Isaac Williams was the simplest of men. He had
the happiness to live among friends with whom he
entirely agreed ; whom he loved and admired ; whose
sympathy almost excluded the outer world, and whose
loy;dty and power made him indifferent to vulgar
opinions. Whatever he had said, or his friends had
said, wisely and truly enough, he proclaimed from
the house-top. In some respects this was the com-
mon temptation and the common fault of all the
writers. Moving in a phalanx, with a certainty of
support, they all said with tenfold freedom and ful-
ness what they would have thought a good deal more
about, had they been called on to do it singly on their
own separate account.

432

REMINISCENCES.

But what was it tbat was done in this instance
by a man retiring and modest even to a fault, who
could never have seen a dozen people together with-
out a wish to hide himself ? He first looks out for
the word that shall bear the most terrible sigmifi-

fc>

cance, raise the most alarms, and give the greatest
offence. Common enough as the word " reserve "
may be in its application to manners and morals, it
is an entirely new word as applied to education and
religious instruction. Having thus put on the most
questionable of guises, and grasped the most danger-
ous of weapons, Isaac Williams blows the trumpet
and convokes the whole Church, indeed the whole
world. " Listen to me," he proclaims, " I 've a great
deal to tell you. But I shall keep back from you the
most important things that I have to say till you are
quite fit for them. I shall wait to see whether you
are ever fit for them. You would reject them now,
for you would not care for them or understand them.
You would probably hate them. So I must educate
you for them. I must be clever and crafty, reserved
and economical. I must ensnare you, hook you,
hoodwink you, decoy you into my net, commit you
to my ulterior designs before you know what you are
about. I must exercise upon you artifices, frauds,
stratagems, plots, and conspiracies."

Nobody would say this in so many words ; no-
body would intend this in fact ; but anybody who
announces that he means to practise reserve is at
once understood to mean all this. He will say that
he means no more than all teachers do, all fathers,
mothers, — all who are older, wiser, or better than
those they have to deal with, as a matter of fact, and
by sheer necessity. That may be quite true, but the

RESERVE.

433

difference is they don't proclaim it and he does. All
the world practises all kinds of reserve, but never
mentions the word. The world does not write in
large letters over this spot " secret ; " over that
" strictly private ; " over another, " a deep mystery ;"
over another, u a dark corner ; " and over the dark-
est corner of all, " this is what you are come to at
last." If, as it is said, there is a skeleton in every
household, it is kept in a closet, and the closet door
is not labelled " a skeleton here."

Secrets of State there must be, else there need be
no Secretaries of State, or " Cabinets," except what
anybody might walk into. No statesman can help
having a policy which stretches into the future. He
must have something behind ; that is, yet to come.
His opponents do their best to draw this out of him,
or to create the impression that it is something very
objectionable ; but it is not he that invites attention
to it, or avows that the most important part of his
policy is that which he will not at present reveal, so
odious would it be thought.

In the whole matter of preaching the Gospel and
of Christian education there will be the question
what part shall take precedence, that is what doc-
trine ought to be presented first and foremost. Some
will put one part first, some another. This inevitably
implies that some part will be left a little back, for
of two things, if one be before, the other must be
behind. But this question of priorities and prefer-
ences must not be carried too far, for neither nature
nor circumstances admit of such regular succession.
Dr. Johnson said on the matter of education that if
you thought too much and too long which of two

things to teach first, you would find that your quicker
vol. i. 28

434

REMINISCENCES.

neighbor had taught his pupil both before you had
taught yours one.

Isaac Williams in truth only made a pretty theory
of what all the 'world does in one way or another.
It was his application of it that provoked a general
attack on the policy of reserve. Now for a long time
it has been the way of the religious world, whether
Roman Catholic or Protestant, to put the Atonement
foremost. A large part of the Christian world, in
this country at least, preached the Atonement, and
nothing more, on the simple reckoning that without
the acceptance of the Atonement everything is worth-
less ; with it everything else is unnecessary. The
Roman Catholics cannot be accused of deficiency in
their teaching, but the Incarnation and the Passion
are what they put foremost, and proclaim in the
streets and highways. If out of twenty dissenting
communities in a town, one were to avow an unwill-
ingness to place the Atonement before mere children
or hardened sinners, it would be scouted by all the
rest.

The Church of England is supposed to show her
highest wisdom and her most maternal tenderness in
the Catechism, meat for very babes and sucklings.
In this Catechism, immediately after the infant
catechumen has lisped out the Apostles' Creed, it is
asked what it chiefly learns from the Creed. Three
short answers are put into its little mouth. The
second of these is, " I learn to believe in God the
Son, who hath redeemed me and all mankind."
Those words are universally explained in the sense
of the Atonement, — yes, in the popular sense of the
Atonement ; as salvation by the death of Christ
offered to all who will accept that doctrine. Nor can

RESERVE.

435

it be said that after bringing this doctrine to the very-
front, and emblazoning it over the very portals of
the Church, the Catechism throws any reserve over
the doctrine in its exposition of the Sacraments.
What then can be the use of inculcating reserve, un-
less one is prepared to quarrel with the very ground-
work of the Church of England's doctrinal method ?

But this quarrel with the Catechism and the
Church of England will not stop thei*e. There is no
knowing how far it will widen. Isaac Williams in-
sists very much on the teaching of our Lord and of
the Apostles as being always adapted to the occasion,
to the state of knowledge, and to the character. But
in two or three generations all these teachings were
collected and read all over the world, to all ages, and
to all the varieties of faith, education, and character.
The facts, too, which covered the doctrines were
everywhere known. Whatever the tongue or the pen
of man then failed to do the press has since done,
and the Bible is now the most universal book in the
world. Where it goes there can be no reserve.

No doubt the result of the actual universal usage
has been the very wide acceptance of doctrine in
place of a consistent life. For many centuries prac-
tice has lagged in the rear of faith. Isaac Williams
hoped to bring duty more to the front ; but it was
scant wisdom to tell the world he proposed to
cheat it out of its easy confidence and reduce it to
hard service. Could the man himself have been
exhibited at Exeter Hall, interviewed in soirees at
Willis's Rooms, or even invited to show the almost
sacred lineaments of his face in a fashionable London
pulpit, people would have seen what a simple rogue
the poor child was, what an imitation Guy Fawkes,
what an innocent Inquisitor.

486

REMINISCENCES.

As it was, arid in total ignorance of the man, the
world fell or affected to fall into a paroxysm of terror
at the infernal machinations preparing against it.
The front line of the advancing foe it could venture
to cope with in open fight and measure swords with.
It was the awful indefinite reserve and the dark am-
buscade that made ten thousand pulpits tremble to
the very foot of the steps. For many years after,
whenever the preacher had exhausted his memory or
his imagination, and run out his circle of texts and
ideas, he could easily fall back on the dark doings of
Oxford. Congregations of London shopkeepers were
told that Newman and Pusey inculcated and practiced
systematic fraud, concealment, and downright lying
in a good cause, — that is, in their own. When one
looked round to see the impression made by the
dreadful charge, the congregation either were so fast
asleep or they were taking it so easy that they must
have heard it often before, or perhaps after all did
not think habitual lying so serious a matter. It
could only have been under the protection of num-
bers, loyalty, and talent that any one would ever
have promulgated such a policy as reserve. Not even
when so protected would any one have done that,
had he not lived in great seclusion from the common
sense and common feeling of the world.

The Bishop of Gloucester denounced the tract very
heavily, upon the title alone, without any acquaint-
ance with the tract itself. Thomas Keble, a singu-
larly quiet man, was moved to remonstrate with his
Bishop, and to point out that the tract itself did not
justify his lordship's remarks. The Bishop made so
lame and reluctant an apology and so little retracta-
tion, that T. Keble resigned his rural deanery, and

RESERVE.

437

elected to remain for the future on cool terras with
the Bishop. Yet it is hard to see what the Bishop
could do but protest against the thesis contained in
the title of the tract, even though his many occupa-
tions might prevent him from ever opening it. A
Bishop has to defend his Church from ill surmises,
and to disavow complicity in ill teachings ; especially
when some of the writers are in his own diocese.

Suppose, for example, some clergyman with more
learning than discretion, under Bishop Wilberforce,
had published a thick closely-printed octavo, entitled
" Doubt the School of Faith/' If the Bishop had
been true to his rule of stamping out doubt instantly,
lest it spread further, he would certainly have con-
demned the book, and preached against it, without
reading it, probably without seeing more than a
picked sentence or two. Since the man chose to affix
such a title, proposing evidently to do half his work
by his title, he must stand the consequences.

In the course of the movement there befell to many
of the writers, indeed to all of them, that which
themselves had done — some very lightly, indeed —
in the Hampden business. They had not read the
famous lectures, and could only know of them second
hand. They came up to Oxford to condemn him,
and did condemn him there and then. By the same
rule they found themselves condemned without being
read. It may be said, tha't within a certain circle of
intelligence, there is more writing than reading.
People will write big volumes, and people will not
read big volumes. Nobody in his senses will read
several hundred closely-printed pages in favor of a
practice which he knows he cannot observe, and does
not intend to observe, and has no intention of trying
to make others observe.

438

REMINISCENCES.

Most books, those of great interest and importance,
are known only by their titles, and an author may
be considered fortunate if his title has been read
right, and right through. The majority of those who
talk about Butler's Analogy have taken upon hearsay
half the title, quoting it as the " Analogy of Natural
and Revealed Religion." Butler, they proceed to
argue, must have been a very bad logician, and the
victim of a ridiculous fallacy, if he could suppose
Christianity the more likely to be true because it had
a strong family resemblance to Paganism. The title
really is, " The Analogy of Religion, Natural and
Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature;"
a thesis which requires careful argument, but is very
different from that in most instances substituted for
it.

Till the " Tracts for the Times " finally exploded
with No. 90, Isaac Williams must have been working
night and day to retrieve the error of an ill-selected
thesis and an offensive title. In the year 1840, he
brought out No. 87 of the series, Part IV., on Re-
serve, 143 closely-printed pages. Had the tracts
gone on, and had he lived long enough he would have
published a library on the duty of not telling people
all we believe and know, be it ever so necessary to
be believed or known.

A man so sensitive to the least touch of irreverence
received many a wound, 'which he survived to tell.
Finding himself one Sunday at Southampton, and
not being acquainted with the churches there, he
walked up the High Street to enter the first that
promised well. He found himself before a church of
the best architecture, went in, and was placed in a
pew which looked old-fashioned enough. The con-

RESERVE.

439

gregation was respectable, better dressed indeed than
his own poor rustics. One or two things produced
a queer sensation rather than a positive misgiving.
A hymn was sung, not very unusual in country
churches. As the last note of the organ died on his
ear, the minister sprung up : " Last Sunday, if you
remember, I was telling you about Matthew the pub-
lican." Isaac Williams quickly disappeared.

CHAPTER LXVII.

ATTACKS ON THE MOVEMENT.

The next year, 1838, saw the burst of the storm
which may be said to have raged round the devoted
band, till by the loss of its chiefs, and to a large ex-
tent of its original character, it settled by degrees
into the somewhat less heroic form and consistency of
the " Ritualistic" party.

Newman was now sole editor of the " British
Critic." The only other religious periodical admit-
ting essays, or reviews, of any length, was the " Chris-
tian Observer," which had but little circulation in
Oxford. The most urgent appeals were made to the
clergy to read and to circulate the " Observer," but
the importunity itself betrayed weakness. It might
be twenty years after this date I was passing through
a by street from Blackfriars to the Temple, when I
saw two immense wagons, which had just received
from a warehouse huge loads of waste paper. I never
see a bit of printed paper without a certain curiosity,
and on examining the loads closely I found they con-
sisted entirely of unsold " Christian Observers " for
many years back.

At this time, or about 1838, they that were of the
movement had full swing, they that were not of it
had to content themselves with publishing sermons
and pamphlets, that cost money and were not read.
Thus reduced to an extremity, they could not be ex-

ATTACKS ON THE MOVEMENT.

441

pected to be particular in their choice of a champion.
Dr. Faussett, the Margaret Professor of Divinity, had
approved himself as a matador of great courage and
some skill in an attack on Milman's " History of the
Jews," preached at St. Mary's in 1830. The sermon
nearly threw poor Blanco White into convulsions. He
could only speak of Faussett as " that butcher." The
sermon was so far in unison with the general senti-
ment at Oriel College, that the Provost, when Mil-
man came to be his guest, could scarcely get a single
Fellow of the college to meet him. But Dr. Faussett
was now charging in another direction. He was not
a man of great learning. When Henry Wilberforce,
as successful candidate for the Theological prize, had
to confer with him, he found him wholly unacquainted
with that portion of Dr. Bull's " Defence of the
Nicene Creed," on the " Subordination of the Son,"
which brought that divine into much controversy
and some disfavor. Dr. Faussett was however a
scholar, a clever writer, and a telling preacher ; that
is, capable of striking hard blows. He had also to
fight for dear life. The Margaret Professor is elected
by the graduates in Divinity for two years only,
though always reelected. Divinity was now becom-
ing a study, and there was no knowing how many
graduates in Divinity, or with what bias, there
might be in a few years. So he preached and pub-
lished on May 20, 1838, a sermon on the " Revival
of Popery."

His style, if not his tactics, was the same as that
which had proved so effectual to give pain on the
former occasion. He had carefully culled from New-
man's writings, from the " Tracts for the Times," but
most of all from Froude's " Remains," all the expres-

442

REMINISCENCES.

sions used by writers more anxious to speak to the
full extent of their feelings and convictions than to
regard the perplexity or the pain they might inflict
on some readers.

Froude, for instance, was brimful of irony, and
always ready to surprise and even shock men of a
slower temperament, when he could by a smile soothe
or disarm them. As he talked, so he wrote in his
letters. The editors of his " Remains " were under
a temptation, which they construed into a necessity,
to reproduce him as be really had been, to the very
words and the life, and let his words take their
chance. Upon the whole they were right ; for no
one ever charged, or could now charge, on Froude
that his expressions had brought any one to Rome,
or could doubt that Froude himself was Anglican to
the last.

Dr. Faussett avoided all personal allusion to New-
man, probably in compliance with the University
etiquette that the preachers occupying the same pul-
pit shall steer clear of one another. Newman, how-
ever, could not but reply, which he did at great
length, giving the Professor a hundred pages for his
fifty. Dr. Faussett published a second edition, with
notes, in which he complained bitterly of the length,
and, as he would have it, the irrelevance of the matter
he was expected to read. It must be admitted that
Newman did not always take into account the pa-
tience of his adversaries, or their physical capacity
for enduring a protracted castigation. On the other
hand, no one has a right to complain who can release
himself from the triangle by simply shutting the
book or throwing the pamphlet aside.

The weak point in Dr. Faussett's case was that

ATTACKS ON THE MOVEMENT.

443

while, eight years before this, he bad solemnly pro-
tested against the corruption of the faith by the new
German philosophy, and had now testified to the im-
mense increase of Papists and Popish chapels in this
century, previous to the Oxford movement, he had
done nothing to stay these evils. All that he had
done during the ten years he had held the chair was
to deliver two sermons, neither of them quite fit for
a Christian pulpit, and both calculated to give pain
and do nothing more.

Shortly after this passage of arms the Bishop of
Oxford (Bagot) delivered the Charge which gave
the note to the more vehement and less unreserved
utterances of all his brethren. It illustrates the crisis
and the terror which then possessed even wise and
moderate men, that in this Charge the Bishop pro-
tested against the Board of Ecclesiastical Commis-
sioners, as "a power as irresponsible as it is gigantic,
an imperium in imperio, which before long must su-
persede all other authority in the Church, and whose
decrees are issued in such a manner as to render ex-
postulation and remonstrance unavailing." Newman
respectfully thanked the Bishop for the attention he
was giving to the new Oxford publications, assuming
apparently that where there was so much "vigilance,"
what was not condemned was approved.

In July this year Newman had to take what he
no doubt felt the very painful step of telling Samuel
Wilberforce that it was evidently impossible that the
"British Critic" could continue to insert articles
plainly at variance with the tenor of the periodical,
— indeed, positively antagonistic to the other writers.
Of course the same difficulty had occurred when
Boone was the editor and Newman the contributor,

444

REMINISCENCES.

and it was then settled by Newman acquiring the
undivided editorship. In the present case the only
possible solution was S. Wilberforce's retirement.
This was small denial to a man who had the Univer-
sity pulpit, some hundreds of other important pul-
pits, and as many more platforms, competing for the
aid of his charming and persuasive oratory ; and who
had only to put his name to a publication to secure
for it as many readers as the " British Critic " could
help him to.

Dr. Shuttleworth, Warden of New College, and in
times past a guest at Holland House, now presented
himself as a controversialist in a pamphlet, which,
when he had finished it, he did not know whether to
call " Not Tradition, but Scripture," or " Not Tradi-
tion, but Revelation," and left that question, as well
as his meaning generally, a riddle to his readers.
Dr. Shuttleworth shared with others of his school a
combination of intellectual facility of practical inde-
cision. He became, not unworthily, Bishop of Chi-
chester, but would have been Bishop of that see
sevex-al years earlier had he not felt as the Bishop of
Oxford did on the new Church Acts.

CHAPTER LXVIII.

DEAN HOOK, DEAN CHURCH, AND CHARLES
MARRIOTT.

In June, 1833, Hook, preached on "Hear the
Church," before the Queen and her Court at the
Chapel Royal. The sermon had a prodigious circu-
lation, and raised a corresponding amount of discus-
sion. The Queen was only just nineteen, and barely
a year on the throne. She was unmarried. Was it
right to attempt to infuse into her mind what most
people would be ready to call a one-sided view of the
great question ? Hook himself had evidently felt the
difficulty of bringing the question home to her in a
sermon written for the purpose. He had gone to the
heap, and had there found an old sermon that would
do. It had acquired prescription, for he had preached
it at Coventry, Leeds, and elsewhere. Even if it had
been too uncompromising, would it not have been
cowardice to soften it down to royal ears ?

It had been preached to the units of a great mul-
titude, perfectly free to choose their own religion,
and to apply the principles of that religion as they
pleased. It was now preached to the Sovereign of
three discordant realms, professing as many, and
indeed many more, religions, herself bound to respect
all. But with the preacher, so Hook appears to have
thought, there must be no respect of persons.

Its being an old sermon was no defence, for it is

446

REMINISCENCES.

almost invariable that offensive sermons are old ones,
and, if you are to be run through the body, an old
sword is as bad as a new one. A sermon preached
up and down the provinces was likely enough to put
things in that absolute form which does not much
signify to those who have no special concern in them.
You may safely tell village and even town congre-
gations that Saul was bound to obey Samuel, and
David to accept the rebuke of Nathan and the judg-
ment of Gad. It is another matter when you are
addressing a Queen, and when tbe question of the
day is, Who is Samuel, who is Nathan, and who is
Gad?

In further extenuation of the sermon it is stated to
have been one of a series; but a series is a machine,
a mere process of mathematical evolution. It goes
its own way, unswerving, pitiless, and reckless of con-
sequences. The truth is, a sermon must justify itself,
if it is to be justified at all. It won't do to say, "I
hit }Tou at random," or "You had the ill-luck to come
in the way of my machine."

To prove the absence of premeditation and de-
sign, Hook pleaded the slovenly composition of the
sermon, which he purposely published without cor-
rection. But the truth is, he was always too full
of matter and of feeling to express himself accu-
rately.

The Queen is said to have been much pleased with
the sermon. She might well be, for everybody
listened to Hook with admiration, and even with
pleasure, whether agreeing with him or not. But if
she were pleased, and could not help being pleased,
that might be all the more reason why the sermon
should not have been preached to her. The Queen's

DEAN HOOK, DEAN CHURCH, C. MARRIOTT. 447

advisers were not pleased. They had to square mat-
ters with .the Church of England, the Church of
Scotland, the Irish Catholics, and the English dis-
senters, and they did not feel themselves assisted by
a peremptory command from the pulpit of the Chupel
Royal to hear the only true Church, namely, the
Church of England.

However, the sermon set all the reading world
talking, thinking, and feeling too. It announced to
many for the first time the doctrine of Church au-
thority, and the claim to be the Church possessed
of that authority. The political bearings of the ser-
mon were both for it and against it, for Hook was
one of the most eloquent exponents of Conserva-
tism in those days. The Conservatives generally
liked the sermon ; the Liberals of course did not.

Manning, long known as an eloquent and agree-
able speaker at Oxford, became now more widely
known as the preacher of a learned sermon at Chi-
chester on the Rule of Faith. This year came out a
translation of Cyril's Catechetical Lectures, almost
wholly by Church, Fellow of Oriel, and nephew of
General Church, who fought with the Greeks in their
struggle for independence.

Within five years of the beginning of the move-
ment, which cannot be put earlier than Newman's
return home from the Mediterranean, July 9, 1833,
it had acquired numbers, energy, and momentum
sometimes the work of generations, or only won to be
lost as easily. There had never been seen at Oxford,
indeed seldom anywhere, so large and noble a sacri-
fice of the most precious gifts and powers to a sacred
cause. The men who were devoting themselves to it
were not bred for the work, or from one school.

448

KEMIXISCENCES.

They were not literary toilers or adventurers glad of
a chance, or veterans read}7 to take to one task as
lightly as to another, equally zealous to do their duty,
and equally indifferent to the form. They were not
men of the common rank casting a die for promotion.
They were not levies or conscripts, but in every sense
volunteers.

Posey, Keble, and Newman had each an individu-
ality capable of a development, and a part, beyond
that of any former scholar, poet, or theologian in the
Church of England. Each lost quite as much as he
gained by the joint action of the three. It is hard to
say what Froude might have been, or might not have
been, had he lived but a few more years, and been
content to cast in his lot with common mortals bound
by conditions of place and time.

Charles Marriott threw in his scholarship and some-
thing more, for he might have been a philosopher,
and he had poetry in his veins, being the son of the
well-known author of the " Devonshire Lane." No
one sacrificed himself so entirely to the cause, giving
to it all he had and all he was, as Charles Marriott.
He did not gather large congregations ; he did not
write works of genius to spread his name over the
land and to all time ; he had few of the pleasures or
even of the comforts that spontaneously offer them-
selves in any field of enterprise. He labored night
and day in the search and defence of Divine Truth.
His admirers were not the thousands, but the schol-
ars who could really appreciate. I confess to have
been a little ashamed of myself when Bishop Burgess,
as I have mentioned above, asked me about Charles
Marriott, as one of the most eminent scholars of the
day. Through sheer ignorance I had failed in ade-
quate appreciation.

DEAN HOOK, DEAN CHURCH, C. MARRIOTT. 449

I remember he could address himself at once to
any difficulty, but he must not be disturbed in the
work. While so engaged, or absorbed, he felt an in-
terruption of any kind as he would the stroke of a
bludgeon or the shock of a railway collision. It was
agony, and with upraised hands he closed eyes and
ears. Nothing could exceed his singular tenacity of
purpose, of which he once gave an amusing illustra-
tion. He bad to go to town one day and return the
next. This gave him an evening, and he resolved to
spend it with his twin Fellow now Lord Blachford, at
Eliot Place, the other end of Blackheath. His first
idea was to be in time for dinner, failing that for tea ;
but business, accidental delays, trains not suiting, the
distance of the station from the house he was seeking,
and his finally losing his way, as he might do easily,
several times, ended in his ringing the bell some time
after the family had retired to rest. However, he
was there. Rogers was waked up, and was very glad
to see him. They had a pleasant talk, but whether
Marriott could even then be persuaded to stay the
night I do not remember. Marriott had but a poor
constitution, and, working his head continually, was
frequently ailing. An Oxford doctor told him he
must reduce his wine, which Marriott promised to do.
It occurred to him, however, to ascertain the exact
reduction to be made. Restrict yourself to four
glasses a day, the doctor said. Marriott replied that
he never drank more than half that in a day. I have
often found the most extraordinary misapprehensions
arising from the use of general terms.

Charles Marriott was for some yeai-s the very dil-
igent, and, I believe, the very successful Principal
of Chichester Theological College. Before entering

vol. i. 29

450

REMINISCENCES.

upon his work he had to see the Bishop, who hap-
pened to be at Derby, with his son-in-law, William
Strutt, afterward Lord Belper. My eldest brother
met him at dinner there, and thought him a great
curiosity. Several kinds of light wine were passing
round the table. " Which wine are you taking,
Mr. Marriott?" the host inquired. "Which you
please," the guest replied. This was ridiculous, but
Marriott was hardly to blame for it. Was he to
affect a preference or to avow indifference ? In fact
he was only submitting to necessity, for he proba-
bly did not know the difference between the wines,
and did not want any at all. Was the host right in
assuming him to be choice in his wines ? Marriott
was not in his element that day. How he managed
to get on with Bishop Otter, " neither fish, nor flesh,
nor fowl " as he used to be called, I can hardly
understand.

Date Due