THE LIFE AND LETTEES 
 
 OF 
 
 FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER, D,D, 
 
 [The Copyright is reserved.] 
 

THE 
 
 LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 OF 
 
 FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER, D.D., 
 
 PBIEST OF THE OKATOBY OF ST. PHILIP NEBI. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN EDWAKD BOWDEN, 
 
 OF THE SAME CONGREGATION. 
 
 " Look out to God, love His glory, hate yourself, and be simple, 
 and you will shine, fortunately without knowing it or thinking 
 of it, with a Christlike splendour wherever you go and whatever 
 you do." Growth in Holiness^ chap vi. 
 
 -- ' *'0&h!i 
 
 LONDON : 
 THOMAS EICHAKDSON AND SON; 
 
 DUBLIN AND DEBBY. 
 1869. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The Life of Eather Faber will be attractive to 
 more than one class of readers. Those acquainted 
 with himself or his writings will naturally be glad 
 to follow his history, and to trace the growth of 
 those powers with which they have been familiar. 
 But his life will probably have an interest far 
 beyond the circle of those who have thus known 
 him. The change of religious thought in England, 
 arising from the Oxford movement of 1833, is the 
 object of increasing attention in every part of the 
 country; and all who wish to study its early pro- 
 gress will find much information in the life of one 
 who was intimately connected with it. 
 
 Eather Eaber's life was divided into two parts, 
 widely distinct in character, by his conversion to 
 the Catholic Eaith. Eor thirty-one years he 
 belonged to the Church of England, and although 
 in the course of that time his opinions underwent 
 considerable change, he did not withdraw from 
 active work in her service until the moment when, 
 his connection with her was severed. Moreover, 
 Oxford was his home for many years, and the object 
 of his most affectionate reverence ; and most of his 
 friends were members of the Tractarian party, of 
 which he became one of the most zealous adherents. 
 
 678G04 
 
Vi PREFACE. 
 
 These ties were broken at once by his conversion. 
 It made him a stranger to the University which he 
 regarded as a mother, and to those whose confidence 
 and love were among his chief enjoyments. Only a 
 few of his immediate friends took the same step as 
 himself, and even from these he was separated by 
 circumstances in after times. With the exception 
 of the first three years, the second period of his life 
 was principally spent in the foundation and govern- 
 ment of the London Oratory. There he found his 
 true vocation ; it was a work after his own heart, 
 and his labours in it were abundantly blessed. It 
 was to him, as he once wrote, " the happiest place 
 out of heaven," and its members were united to 
 him by the deepest affection, no less than by their 
 common rule, and by the difficulties which they 
 had passed through under his guidance. 
 
 It was the habit of Father Faber to communicate 
 to his friends with the utmost freedom the phases 
 of opinion through which he passed. Each of these 
 was taken up in its turn with so much ardour, 
 and announced with such clearness of expression 
 and beauty of illustration, that every transition 
 was clearly marked. In his letters he had no 
 thought of reticence or hesitation, but facts were 
 related and theories discussed with a freshness and 
 vigour which were among the greatest of his per- 
 sonal charms. Much of this correspondence has 
 fortunately been preserved, and has been placed at 
 my disposal by his friends. To all who have shewn 
 
PREFACE. Vll 
 
 this kindness I take the opportunity of expressing 
 my sincere thanks. I am also indebted to his 
 brother, the Her. F. A. Faber, for much important 
 information, and I have made considerable use of 
 a collection of memoranda relating to the years 
 1843 to 1847, made by the late Father Antony 
 Hutchison. 
 
 Without this valuable assistance, I should have 
 hesitated to undertake the compilation of Father 
 Faber' s biography, because it is only to the later 
 portion of his life that my own recollections 
 belong. I was introduced to him at Maryvale 
 on the 9th of August, 1848, and from the 25th 
 of January 1849 until his death in 1863, I was 
 under obedience to him in the Congregation of the 
 Oratory. 
 
 It will be seen that I have contented myself with 
 a simple record of the events of his life, given 
 as far as possible in his own words. My object 
 has been history, not panegyric : indeed, had it 
 been compatible with my past relations towards 
 him to put myself in the position of an impartial 
 critic of his character and work, it would have been 
 distasteful to me to sit in judgment, even for praise, 
 upon one to whom I owe so much, and for whose 
 memory I have so deep and affectionate a venera- 
 tion. 
 
 The Oratory, London. 
 
 St. Philip's Day, 1869. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 1814-34. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Birtli and parentage ... ... ... ... 1 
 
 Force of character ... ... ... ... 2 
 
 Poetical tendencies ... ... ... ... 3 
 
 School at Kirkby Stephen ... ... ... 3 
 
 Impressions of Lake District ... ... ... 3 
 
 Shrewsbury and Harrow ... .... ... 5 
 
 Death of parents ... ... ... ... 6 
 
 Matriculation at Balliol College, Oxford ... ... 7 
 
 Power of making friends ... ... ... 7 
 
 Keply to the charge of arrogance ... ... ... 8 
 
 Occupations at Oxford ... ... ... ... 8 
 
 Purity of life ... ... ... ... ... 8 
 
 Keligious convictions ... ... ... ... 10 
 
 Early Calvinistic teaching ... ... ... 10 
 
 Movement of 1833 ... ... ... ... 11 
 
 Keaction towards Calvinism ... ... ... 12 
 
 Letter I. To John Brande Morris, Esq. 
 
 Keligious biography substitution of exterior zeal 
 
 for the inward spirit of religion ... ... 12 
 
 Letter II. To the same. 
 
 Bias towards Calvinism ... ... ... 15 
 
 Letter III. To a Friend (A). 
 
 The Church as a profession merits and tendency of 
 
 Newmanism its rapid development ... ... 18 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 1835. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Scholarship at University College ... ... 23 
 
 Oxford University Debating Society ... ... 23 
 
 Oxford University Magazine ... ... ... 24 
 
 Letter IV. To a Friend (A). 
 
 The sense of power the greatest pleasure of life an 
 author's pleasure in his works ... ... 24 
 
 Newdigate Prize Poem ... ... ... ... 26 
 
 Letter V. To a Friend (A). 
 
 Danger of classical studies ... ... ... 27 
 
 Letter VI. To the same. 
 
 Spiritual life soiled with secular reading ... 29 
 
 Letter VII. To the same. 
 
 Butler's Analogy compared with the Bible ... 30 
 
 Letter VIII. To the same. 
 
 His power over others Remonstrance on his friend's 
 change ... ... ... ... ... 33 
 
 Letter IX. To the same. 
 
 The Providence of God ... ... ... 36 
 
 Letter X. To the same. 
 
 Difficult position with a friend request for prayers 37 
 Letter XI. To the same. 
 
 Solution of difficulty ... ... ... ... 38 
 
 Letter XII. To the same. 
 
 Return to Oxford exclusiveness of the Gospel ... 39 
 Letter XIII. To the same. 
 
 Reading for the schools George Herbert ... 40 
 
 Letter XIV. To the same. 
 
 State of Oxford false position of religion in the 
 country calls of the Holy Ghost ... ... 42 
 
 Letter XV. To the same. 
 
 Power of the Bible ... ... 44 
 
CONTENTS. XI 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 1836. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Return to Anglican principles ... ... ... 46 
 
 Letter XVI. To a Friend (A). 
 
 History of his religious opinions ... ... 47 
 
 Delay of examination ... ... ... ... 50 
 
 Recital of Prize Poem ... ... ... ... 50 
 
 Class List ... ... ... ... ... 50 
 
 Disappointment in fellowship election ... ... 51 
 
 Visit to Germany ... ... ... ... 51 
 
 Election to fellowship ... ... ... ... 51 
 
 Johnson Divinity scholarship ... ... ... 51 
 
 Letter XVII. To a Friend (A). 
 
 The opposition to Dr. Hampden ... ... 52 
 
 Letter XVIII. To the same. 
 
 The spirit of the age an antichristian spirit ... 52 
 
 Letter XIX. To the same. 
 
 Keble's Preface to Hooker ... ... ... 53 
 
 Letters XX. and XXL To the same. 
 
 Against Evangelicalism ... ... ... 54 
 
 Letter XXII. To the Rev. J. B. Morris. 
 
 Translation of the Fathers ... ... ... 57 
 
 Letter XXIII. To the same. 
 
 Duty of learning Hehrew repetition of the Pater 
 
 Noster. Dr. Wiseman on the Church of England 57 
 Letter XXIV. To a Friend (A.) 
 
 Viva voce examination ... ... ... 59 
 
 Letter XXV. To the same. 
 
 Probable failure in the schools line of theological 
 reading ... ... ... ... ... 60 
 
 Letter XXVI. To the Rev. J. B. Morris. 
 
xii CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Disappointment about class and fellowship resigna- 
 tion to the Will of God leaving old rooms ... 61 
 Letter XXVII. To a Friend (A). 
 
 Remonstrance and advice ... ... ... 63 
 
 Letter XXVIII. To the Rev. J. B. Morris. 
 
 Fellowship election ... ... ... ... 67 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 1837-42. 
 
 Preparation for Orders ... ... ... ... 69 
 
 Translation of St. Optatus ... ... ... 69 
 
 Reading party at Ambleside ... ... ... 70 
 
 Mr. Wordsworth ... ... ... ... 70 
 
 Ordinations ... ... ... ... ... 70 
 
 Assistance in parochial work at Ambleside ... ... 71 
 
 Visit to Belgium ... ... ... ... 71 
 
 Letter XXIX. To a Friend (A). 
 
 Mysterious character of religion ... ... 72 
 
 Letter XXX. To the Rev. J. B. Morris. 
 
 The Anglican Church ... ... ... 73 
 
 Letter XXXI. To the same. 
 
 Newman's Lectures ... ... ... ... 74 
 
 Letter XXXII. To a Friend (A). 
 
 Translation of St. Optatus ... ... ... 74 
 
 Letter XXXIII. To the Rev. J. B. Morris. 
 
 Preaching ... ... ... ... ... 75 
 
 Letter XXXIV. To a Friend (A). 
 
 Tract on the Prayer Book Laud's Private Devo- 
 tions ... ... ... ... ... 75 
 
 Letter XXXV. To the Rev. J. B. Morris. 
 
 Harm done by Propagation and other societies ... 76 
 Letter XXXVI. To the same. 
 
 Lectures at Ambleside 77 
 
CONTENTS. Xlll 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Letter XXXVIL To the same. 
 
 Belgian Churches ... ... ... ... ,77 
 
 Residence at Ambleside ... ... ... 78 
 
 Publication of the " Cherwell Water Lily" ... ... 78 
 
 Letters XXXVIIL, XXXIX. and XL. To the Rev. 
 J. B. Morris. 
 
 Marriage and Virginity ... ... ... 79 
 
 Letter XLI. 
 
 History and position of the Church of England ... 82 
 Letter XLII. To the Rev. J. B. Morris. 
 
 Want of charity at Oxford ... ... ... 86 
 
 Letter XLIII. To the same. 
 
 Illness Plans of travel ... ... ... 87 
 
 Departure from England ... ... ... 88 
 
 Through France to Genoa ... ... ... 88 
 
 Venice and Trieste ... ... ... ... 88 
 
 Greece and Constantinople ... ... ... 88 
 
 Return through Bulgaria and Austria ... ... 88 
 
 The "Styrian Lake" ... ... ... ... 88 
 
 " Sights and Thoughts in Foreign Churches" ... 89 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM JOURNAL. 
 
 1. The Bourbonnais ... ... ... ... 91 
 
 2. Avignon ... ... ... ... ... 92 
 
 3. Vaucluse ... ... ... ... 94 
 
 4. First view of the Mediterranean ... ... 96 
 
 5. Genoa ... ... ... ... ... 97 
 
 6. The Certosa of Pavia ... ... ... 100 
 
 7. Venice ... ... ... ... ... 102 
 
 8. Corfu 107 
 
 9. Athens ... ... ... ... ... 109 
 
 10. Greek scenery ... ..., ... ... Ill 
 
 11. The Dardanelles 114 
 
XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 12. The Greek Church ... ... ... ... 118 
 
 13. Constantinople ... ... ... ... 119 
 
 14. The Bosphorus ... ... ... ... 123 
 
 15. An invalid's dreams ... ... ... 128 
 
 16. A Greek servant ... ... ... ... 131 
 
 17. The Lower Danube ... ... ... 134 
 
 18. The Danube ... ... ... ... 138 
 
 19. Semlin ... ... ... ... ... 141 
 
 20. Hungary ... ... ... ... ... 142 
 
 21. Schonbrunn ... ... ... ... 145 
 
 22. MariazeU ... ... ... ... ... 147 
 
 23. Illness abroad ... ... ... ... 150 
 
 24. The Strubb Pass ... ... ... ... 151 
 
 25. Sunday in the Tyrol ... ... ... 154 
 
 26. The Bavarian Flats ... ... ... 156 
 
 27. Wiirtzburg ... ... ... ... 158 
 
 28. Nuremberg ... ... ... ... 159 
 
 29. A Benedictine Monastery ... ... ... 162 
 
 30. A Lutheran Sunday ... ... ... 165 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 1842-3. 
 
 Preferment to Elton ... ... ... ... 168 
 
 Letter XLIV. To the Rev. J. B. Morris. 
 
 Reasons for accepting Elton ... ... ... 168 
 
 Acquaintance with Dr. Wiseman ... ... ... 170 
 
 Visit to the continent ... ... ... ... 171 
 
 Letter XLV. To the Rev. F. A. Faber. 
 
 Provence, Genoa, Spezzia, Pisa, Siena, Rome ... 172 
 
 Stay in Rome ... ... ... ... 183 
 
 The Chiesa Nuova 183 
 
CONTENTS. XV 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Letter XLVL To the Rev. J. B. Morris. 
 
 Wonders of Rome Catholic unity controversy 
 two Romes ... ... ... ... 184 
 
 Letter XLVIL To the Rev. F. A. Faber. 
 
 Dr. Grant Protestantism rejected by the Church of 
 England Ascension Day at St. John Lateran St. 
 Peter's- Feast of St. Philip Neri the interest of 
 
 Rome ... ... ... 189 
 
 Letter XLVHL To the Rev. J. B. Morris. 
 
 Audience of Gregory XVI. Dr. Pusey's condemna- 
 tion at Oxford ... ... ... ... 195 
 
 Feast of St. Aloysius ... ... ... ... 198 
 
 Determination to become a Catholic ... ... 199 
 
 Naples and Salerno ... ... ... ... 199 
 
 Letter XLIX. To the Rev. F. A. Faber. 
 
 St. Peter's Day Pope Gregory XVI. Mola di 
 Gaeta ... ... ... ... ... 199 
 
 Illness at Naples ... ... ... ... 202 
 
 Florence ... ... ... ... ... 202 
 
 Letter L. To the Rev. F. A. Faber. 
 
 Leghorn Florence Dante's stone Milton and 
 ByronShelley ... ... ... ... 203 
 
 Letter LI. To the Rev. J. B. Morris. 
 
 Doubts about the Church of England ... ... 207 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 1843-5. 
 
 Beginning of work at Elton ... ... ... 210 
 
 Letter LII. To the Rev. J. H. Newman. 
 
 Fear of delaying conversion ... ... ... 211 
 
 Catholic practices ... ... ... ... 212 
 
 Choral service ... ... 212 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Necessity of reality in religion ... ... ... 213 
 
 State of the parish ... ... ... ... 214 
 
 Letter LIIL To a Friend (B). 
 
 Attempts to reform the parish ... ... ... 215 
 
 Recreations on Sunday afternoons ... ... 215 
 
 Confessions ... ... ... ... 216 
 
 Confraternity of young men ... ... ... 216 
 
 Penances ... ... ... ... 216 
 
 Disturbances in the house ... ... ... 216 
 
 Lives of the English Saints ... ... ... 217 
 
 Need of a confessor ... ... ... ... 218 
 
 Letter LIV. To the Rev. J. B. Morris. 
 
 Want of society ... ... ... ... 21 
 
 111 health ... 219 
 
 Letter LV. and LVL To the Rev. J. H. Newman. 
 
 Invocation of our Blessed Lady discontent with 
 
 Anglicanism ... ... ... ... 221 
 
 Letter LVII. To the same. 
 
 Fear of disregarding the call of God ... ... 222 
 
 Attacks on the Life of St. Wilfrid ... ... 223 
 
 Letter LVIII. To the Rev. J. B. Morris. 
 
 The English Saints conversion of a Methodist ... 226 
 Letter LIX. To Bishop Wareing. 
 
 Thanks for sympathy request for prayers ... 228 
 Letter LX. To the Rev. J. B. Morris. 
 
 More Roman than ever good effected at Elton ... 229 
 
 Conversion of Mr. Newman ... ... ... 230 
 
 Letter LXI. To Bishop Wareing. 
 
 Questions ahout reception into the Church ... 231 
 
 Bishop Wareing's reply ... ... ... ... 232 
 
 Letter LXIL To the Rfcv. J. B. Morris. 
 
 Necessity of conversion ... ... ... 233 
 
 Difficulty of leaving Elton ... ... ... 234 
 
 Pecuniary obstacles overcome ... ... ... 235 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Last services at Elton ... ... ... ... 236 
 
 Reception at Northampton by Bishop Wareing ... 238 
 
 Confirmation ... ... ... ... ... 238 
 
 Letters LXIIL, LXIY. and LXV. To the Eev. J. B. 
 
 Morris. 
 
 Happiness of being a Catholic desire for conver- 
 sion of friends ... ... ... ... 239 
 
 Stay at Birmingham ... ... ... ... 242 
 
 Letter LXVL To the Rev. J. B. Morris. 
 
 Account of a conversion ... ... ... 243 
 
 Conversion of Mr. Hutchison ... ... ... 244 
 
 " Grounds for remaining in the Anglican Communion" 245 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 1845-6. 
 
 Formation of Community ... ... ... 254 
 
 Mr. Hutchison's visit to Caroline Street ... ... 255 
 
 Journey to Italy with Mr. Hutchison ... ... 257 
 
 Rule written at Sens ... ... ... ... 257 
 
 Florence ... ... ... ... ... 258 
 
 Letter LXVIL To John Strickson. 
 
 Plans for the future probable temptations ... 259 
 
 Letter LXVIII. To William . 
 
 Happiness of sacrifice power of the love of Jesus 
 practice of the presence of God ... ... 261 
 
 Letter LXIX. To the Community in Caroline Street. 
 Memories of Elton Benedictions at Paris journal 
 of a day ... ... ... ... ... 267 
 
 Letter LXX. To John Strickson. 
 
 Temptations against faith St. Thomas of Canter- 
 bury devotion to the Will of God ... ... 270 
 
 B 
 
XVU1 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 Letter LXXI. To the same. 
 
 Description of journey ... ... ... 274 
 
 Letter LXXIL To the same. 
 
 Love of Jesus desire to work for England ... 275 
 
 Letter LXXIIL To William 
 
 Future prospects the desertion of the Apostles ... 277 
 Letter LXXIV. To the same. 
 
 Devotion to our Lady our Blessed Lord's service 
 
 and love of her ... ... ... ... 280 
 
 Foligno and Loreto ... ... ... ... 283 
 
 Rome ... ... ... ... ... 284 
 
 Kindness of Dr. Grant ... ... ... 284 
 
 Cardinal Acton ... ... ... ... 284 
 
 Letter LXXV. To M. Watts Russell, Esq. 
 
 Illness Reception at Rome ... ... ... 286 
 
 Letter LXXVI.- To J. B. Morris, Esq. 
 
 Future plans Protestant Bishop of Gibraltar at 
 
 Rome anecdote of Gregory XVI. ... ... 287 
 
 Audience of the Holy Father ... ... ... 289 
 
 Return to England ... ... ... ... 290 
 
 Rosary of the Seven Dolours ... ... ... 292 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 1846-8. 
 
 House at Birmingham ... ... ... ... 293 
 
 Letter LXXVIL To a Friend (B). 
 
 The Brothers of the Will of God ... ... 294 
 
 Brother Antony's description of the Community ... 296 
 
 Mr. Heneage ... ... ... ... ... 298 
 
 Increased accommodation ... ... ... 299 
 
 Customs and devotions ... ... ... 300 
 
 Visits to Maryvale ... ... ... ... 301 
 
CONTENTS. XIX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Letter LXXVIIL To a Friend (B). 
 
 Prospects in England happiness of the faith ... 301 
 Letter LXXIX.- To J. B. Morris, Esq. 
 
 Difficulties and misunderstandings effect of visit to 
 
 Rome ... ... ... ... ... 303 
 
 Letter LXXX. To M. Watts Russell, Esq. 
 
 Offer of Cotton Hall from Lord Shrewsbury . . . 308 
 Letter LXXXI. To the same. 
 
 Arguments for and against the offer ... ... 310 
 
 Consecration of the church at Cheadle ... ... 312 
 
 Transfer of the Community to Cotton Hall ... ... 313 
 
 Building of the church of St. Wilfrid ... ... 313 
 
 Letter LXXXIL To M. Watts Russell, Esq. 
 
 Work at St. Wilfrid's ... ... ... 314 
 
 Tonsure and minor orders ... ... ... 315 
 
 Retreat hy Father Cobh, S. J. ... ... ... 315 
 
 Illness and Extreme Unction ... ... ... 316 
 
 Missionary Work ... ... ... ... 317 
 
 Letter LXXXIII. To M. Watts Russell, Esq. 
 
 Calumnies ... ... ... ... ... 317 
 
 Suhdiaconate ... ... ... ... ... 318 
 
 Arrival of Mr. Wells ... ... ... ... 318 
 
 The Lives of the Modern Saints ... ... ... 320 
 
 Diaconate and Priesthood ... ... ... 322 
 
 Return to St. Wilfrid's and first Mass ... ... 322 
 
 Conversion of the neighbourhood ... ... ... 323 
 
 Letter LXXXIV. To M. Watts Russell, Esq. 
 
 Prospects of the Community ... ... ... 324 
 
 Controversy with a Methodist ... ... ... 325 
 
 Letter LXXXV. To M. Watts Russell, Esq. 
 
 Opposition to the Lives of the Saints ... ... 328 
 
 Letter LXXXVI. To the same. 
 
 First idea of joining the Oratory visit to London 
 
XX CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Bishop Wiseman's decision good effected by 
 
 Lives of the Saints ... ... ... ... 330 
 
 Community accepted by the Oratory ... ... 334 
 
 Letter LXXXVIL To M. Watts Russell, Esq. 
 
 Sacrifice in joining the Oratory Father Newman at 
 
 St. Wilfrid's ... ... ... ... 335 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 1848-9. 
 
 Noviciate at Maryvale ... ... ... ... 338 
 
 Opening of the Church at St. Wilfrid's ... ... 338 
 
 Death of Brother Stanislas ... ... ... 338 
 
 Sermon at St. George's Cathedral ... ... ... 339 
 
 Appointment as Novice master ... ... ... 339 
 
 Letter LXXXYIIL To M. Watts Russell, Esq. 
 
 Work of the Oratory ... ... ... ... 340 
 
 Removal to St. Wilfrid's ... ... ... 341 
 
 Controversy about the Lives of the Saints ... ... 342 
 
 Article in Dolman's Magazine ... ... ... 346 
 
 Suspension of the Series ... ... ... 348 
 
 Letter from Father Newman ... ... ... 349 
 
 Letter LXXXIX. To Bishop Wareing. 
 
 Regret at the suspension of the Series ... ... 350 
 
 Protests against the suspension ... ... ... 352 
 
 Retractation of the author of the Article ... ... 354 
 
 Resumption of the Series ... ... ... 356 
 
 Father Newman's Letter to Dr. Pusey ... ... 358 
 
 Mission in the Potteries ... ... ... ... 358 
 
 Foundation of the Oratory at Birmingham ... ... 359 
 
 Project of a London Foundation ... ... ... 359 
 
 The Oratory in King William Street, Strand ... 360 
 
 Opening of the Chapel ... ... ... ... 362 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTEK X. 
 
 > > 
 
 1849-54. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Bishop Wiseman and the Oratory . . . ... ... 364 
 
 Catholic Statistics of 1849 ... ... ... 365 
 
 Complaints against the Oratory ... ... ... 366 
 
 Success of the Oratory ... ... ... ... 368 
 
 Opening of the church in Farm Street ... ... 368 
 
 Visit to. Belgium ... ... ... ... 369 
 
 Cholera, at East Farleigh ... ... ... 369 
 
 Difficulties at King William Street ... ... 370 
 
 Letter XC. To Father John E. Bowden. 
 
 Present and future illness ... ... ... 371 
 
 Work in Lent ... ... ... ... ... 372 
 
 " Spirit and Genius of St. Philip"... ... ... 372 
 
 Confraternity of the Precious Blood ... ... 373 
 
 Separation from the Birmingham Oratory ... ... 374 
 
 Letter XCL To the Earl of Arundel and Surrey. 
 
 The coming elections ... ... ... 374 
 
 Election as Superior ... ... ... ... 375 
 
 Establishment of the Hierarchy ... ... ... 376 
 
 Letter XCIL To M. Watts Russell, Esq. 
 
 Agitation against Catholics ... ... ... 376 
 
 Letter XCIII. To the Countess of Arundel and Surrey. 
 
 Cure by a relic of St. Mary Magdalen of Pazzi ... 378 
 
 Conversion of Archdeacon Manning ... ... 379 
 
 Schools in Rose Street and Dunn's Passage, Holborn ... 380 
 
 Essay on Catholic Home Missions ... ... 381 
 
 Travels 381 
 
 Letter XCIV. To the Countess of Arundel and Surrey. 
 
 Malta 382 
 
 Sicily and Naples ... ... ... ... 383 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 Letter XCV. To Father Antony Hutchison. 
 
 Feast of the Immaculate Conception at Naples ... 383 
 
 Home and the Holy Father ... ... ... 385 
 
 Letter XCVL To Father Bernard Dalgairns. 
 
 St. Philip's Shrine ... ... ... ... 386 
 
 Return to England ... ... ... ... 387 
 
 Hither Green, Lewisham ... ... ... 387 
 
 Letter XCVIL To Father John E. Bowden. 
 
 Good health English air ... ... ... 887 
 
 Proclamation by Lord Derby's Government ... ... 388 
 
 Opening of St. Mary's, Sydenham ... ... 389 
 
 Purchase of Blemell House, Brompton ... ... 390 
 
 Mission at Dunn's Passage ... ... ... 391 
 
 Letter XCVIIL To the Countess of Arundel and 
 Surrey. 
 
 Account of Mission giving up everything to God . . . 392 
 
 Reformatory School ... ... ... ... 393 
 
 Essay on the Interest and Characteristics of the Lives 
 
 of the Saints ... ... ... ... 393 
 
 " All for Jesus" ... ... ... ... 395 
 
 Letter from the Bishop of Birmingham ... ... 395 
 
 ,, ,, Dr. Newsham ... .,, ... 396 
 
 Father Cardella, S. J. ... ... 396 
 
 Letter XCIX. To the Earl of Arundel and Surrey. 
 
 Criticisms on " All for Jesus" ... ... ... 398 
 
 Letter C. To a Religious Superior. 
 
 Answer to criticisms ... . . , ... ... 400 
 
 Building of the Oratory at Brompton ... ... 402 
 
 Closing of the chapel in King William Street ... 402 
 
CONTENTS. ram 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 1854-61. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Opening of the Oratory at Brompton ... ... 404 
 
 Daily habits ... ... ... ... ... 408 
 
 Interest in the Congregation ... ... ... 409 
 
 Visits to St. Mary's, Sydenham ... ... ... 410 
 
 Confraternity of Boys ... ... ... ... 41 1 
 
 Reading ... ... ... ... ... 412 
 
 Sermons ... ... ... ... ... 413 
 
 Frequent illnesses ... ... ... ... 416 
 
 Letter CL To the Earl of Arundel and Surrey. 
 
 Medical opinions ... ... ... ... 417 
 
 Letter CII. To Father Antony Hutchison (in Egypt.) 
 
 Work of last five years Theology and the Bible ... 418 
 Letter CIII. To Father John E. Bowden. 
 
 Illness and pain the Pyrenees ... ... 419 
 
 Letter CIV. To Father Philip Gordon. 
 
 Request for prayers -desire for rest ... ... 420 
 
 Letter CV. To Father John E. Bowden (in Switzerland.) 
 
 Illness ... ... ... ... ... 421 
 
 Triduo before the Immaculate Conception, 1854 ... 422 
 
 Sermon at the Synod of Oscott, 1855 ... ... 423 
 
 Pontifical Brief ... ... ... ... 425 
 
 Mission at the Oratory ... ... ... ... 425 
 
 Confraternity of St. Patrick ... ... ... 425 
 
 Ardencaple Castle ... ... ... ... 426 
 
 Chapel of St. Joseph ... ... ... ... 428 
 
 Death of Father Alban Wells ... ... ... 429 
 
 " Devotion to the Pope" ... ... ... 429 
 
 Death of the Duke of Norfolk ... ... ... 431 
 
 " Devotion to the Church" ... 431 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Letter CVL To Miss W. 
 
 Necessity of interior spirit ... ... ... 432 
 
 Letter CVII. To a priest. 
 
 Remonstrance ... ... 433 
 
 Letter CVIIL To Mrs. M. 
 
 Spiritual direction on ordinary duties ... ... 434 
 
 Letter CIX. To' Miss L. ' 
 
 Life at the Visitation . . . ... ... ... 435 
 
 Letter CX. To the Inmates of St. Martha's Home. 
 
 Feast of St. Wilfrid Devotion to St. Michael ... 436 
 Letter CXI. To- the children of St. Anne's Home. 
 
 Feast of St. Wilfrid ... ... ... ... 437 
 
 Letter CXII. To the Rev. J. B. Morris. 
 
 Vocations of penitents Eigoleuc on the Will of God 438 
 Letter CXIIL To a Lady (C). 
 
 Sanctification of sorrow ... ... ... 439 
 
 Letter CXIV. To the same. 
 
 Consolation in sorrow ... ... ... 440 
 
 Letter CXV. To the same. 
 
 Christmas Eve ... ... ... ... 443 
 
 Letter CXVL To the same. 
 
 Consolations in widowhood ... ... ... 444 
 
 Letter CXVIL To the same. 
 
 Love of God in sorrow ... ... ... 445 
 
 Letter CXVIIL To the same. 
 
 Divirie Love ... ... ... ... 447 
 
 Letter CXIX. To the same. 
 
 Anniversaries ... ... ... ... 448 
 
 Letter CXX. To the same. 
 
 Giving ourselves to God ... ... ... 449 
 
 Letter CXXL To Lady Minna F. Howard. 
 
 Her vocation as a child ... ... ... 452 
 
 Letter CXXIL To a Penitent. 
 
 Following the Lamb ... ... ... ... 453 
 
CONTENTS. XXV 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Letter CXXIIL To the same. 
 
 Devotions of a Triduo ... ... ... 453 
 
 Letter CXXIV. To the same. 
 
 Conversion and holiness of St. Paul ... ... 454 
 
 Letter CXXY. To Father William B. Morris. 
 
 Death of Mrs. Kenelm Digby ... ... 456 
 
 Letter CXXYI. To the Superior of a convent. 
 
 Treatment of a novice ... ... ... ... 457 
 
 Letter CXXVII. To the Rev. Mother Prioress, New 
 Hall, Chelmsford. 
 
 Condolence on the death of a sister ... ... 458 
 
 Letter CXXVIIL To Sister M. P. 
 
 On her profession ... ... ... ... 459 
 
 Letter CXXIX. To the same. 
 
 Perpetual prayer ... ... ... ... 459 
 
 Letter CXXX. To the Rev. Mother Prioress, Car- 
 melite Convent, Rue d'Enfer, Paris. 
 
 Need of a Carmel in London ... ... ... 461 
 
 Letter CXXXL To Sister Mary of the B. Trinity. 
 
 The spirit of St. Elias ... ... .=.462 
 
 Letter CXXXIL To the same. 
 
 Devotion to the Attributes of God ... ... 464 
 
 Letter CXXXIII. To the same. 
 
 The Most Holy Trinity ... ... 467 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Father Faber a leader of English Catholics ... ... 469 
 
 Fondness for Roman devotions ... ... ... 469 
 
 Lives of the Saints ... ... ... ... 471 
 
 Foundation of the Oratory ... ... ... 472 
 
 Introduction of spiritual books ... ... ... 475 
 
XXVI CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Writings ... ... ... ... ... 476 
 
 Preparation for publication ... ... ... 477 
 
 Letter CXXXIV. To the Kev. J. B. Morris. 
 
 Bethlehem collection of books on the Passion 
 
 Scotus ... ... ... ... ... 478 
 
 "All for Jesus" ... ... ... ... 478 
 
 Its circulation and popularity ... ... ... 479 
 
 " Growth in Holiness" ... ... ... 481 
 
 " The Blessed Sacrament" ... ... ... 483 
 
 "The Creator and the Creature' ' . . . ... ... 484 
 
 " The Foot of the Cross" ... ... ... 485 
 
 " Spiritual Conferences" ... ... ... 486 
 
 "The Precious Blood" ... ... ... ... 486 
 
 "Bethlehem"... ... ... ... ... 489 
 
 "Poems" ... ... ... ... ... 490 
 
 "Ethel's Book" ... ... ... ... 491 
 
 "Notes on Doctrinal and Spiritual Subjects" ... 491 
 
 "Hymns" ... ... ... ... ... 491 
 
 Characteristics of writings ... ... ... 492 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 1861-3. 
 
 Illness at Arundel ... ... ... ... 494 
 
 Letter CXXXV. To M. Watts Russell, Esq. 
 
 Recovery from illness ... ... ... 496 
 
 Letter to Mr. Marshall ... ... ... ... 497 
 
 Letter CXXXVI. To M. Watts Russell, Esq. 
 
 M. Olier Grignon de Montfort ... ... 498 
 
 Translation of Devotion to the Blessed Virgin ... 499 
 Letter CXXXYIL To Father John E. Bowden. 
 
 Short extracts 500 
 
CONTENTS. XXV11 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Letter CXXXVIIL To the Kev. F. A. Faber. 
 
 Bearing pain ... ... ... ... 501 
 
 Lent of 1863 ... ... ... ... ... 502 
 
 Last Sermons ... ... ... ... 503 
 
 Serious character of illness ... ... ... 503 
 
 Prayers and Novenas ... ... ... ... 505 
 
 The last Sacraments ... ... ... ... 505 
 
 Forty-ninth birthday ... ... ... ... 506 
 
 Death of Father Antony Hutchison ... ... 507 
 
 Assistance in illness ... ... ... ... 508 
 
 Visits received ... ... ... ... 508 
 
 Letter from Cardinal Wiseman ... ... ... 508 
 
 Letter from Father Gordon to Stone ... ... 513 
 
 Last Communion ... ... ... ... 514 
 
 Death ... ... ... ... ... 515 
 
 The Little Oratory ... ... ... ... 516 
 
 Funeral ... ... ... ... ... 517 
 
 Words of Mgr. Manning ... ... ... 518 
 
 Conclusion ... ... 519 
 
THE LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 OF 
 
 FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 
 
 CHAPTER I..., 
 1814-1834 '*' 
 
 FREDERICK WILLIAM EAJBER, was the seventh, 
 child of the late Thomas Henry Eaber, Esq., whose 
 family was one of those who took refuge in England 
 on the revocation of the edict of Nantes by Louis 
 XI Y. , and preserved with pride the evidences of 
 their Huguenot origin. He was born on the 28th 
 of June, 1814, at the Vicarage of Calverley, in the 
 West Riding of Yorkshire, of which place his 
 grandfather, the Rev. Thomas Eaber, was the 
 incumbent, and baptized on the 12th August, in the 
 parish church of St. Wilfrid. In the following 
 December his father was appointed secretary to Dr. 
 Barrington, Bishop of Durham, and removed imme- 
 diately with his family to Bishop Auckland, where 
 he remained until his death in 1833. 
 
 Erom his earliest years Erederick Eaber gave 
 promise of remarkable power of mind : and his 
 1 
 
2 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1814-34. 
 
 talents were carefully fostered and developed by his 
 parents, both of whom were persons of considerable 
 ability. Owing to the death of the three children 
 who were his immediate seniors, he was separated 
 by an interval of some years from his brothers, and 
 as they were absent at school and college during 
 the greater part of his childhood, his position in the 
 family was that of an elder, rather than a younger 
 child. The same circumstance was doubtless the 
 ; defuse o/t^|sjp6cial affection which his mother bore 
 :him> .and on. which in later years it was his pleasure 
 't6 'dilate:' 
 
 It was not long before the power and peculiarity 
 of his character began to manifest itself. Ardent 
 and impulsive, he entered upon everything, whether 
 work or play, with eagerness and determination ; 
 and whatever he took up was invested in his eyes 
 with an importance which led him to speak of it 
 in somewhat exaggerated language. The exercise 
 of his powers was naturally followed by the con- 
 sciousness of possessing them, and by a great 
 reliance upon himself. It was part of the candour 
 and openness of his disposition not to conceal by a 
 false humility the remarkable gifts which he had 
 received; and those friends who watched with 
 pleasure their ripening growth were not slow to 
 predict a successful career for the eager and earnest 
 boy. 
 
 One of the principal ingredients in his character 
 was its poetical element, the development of which 
 
1814-34.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 3 
 
 was materially assisted by the beautiful scenes in 
 which, his infancy and childhood were passed. The 
 episcopal domain of Bishop Auckland, intersected 
 by the Gaunless, the brook celebrated by Sir Walter 
 Scott in Harold the Dauntless, abounds in exquisite 
 pictures ; as do the neighbouring rivers Wear and 
 Tees, which descend from the wild mountainous 
 country on the confines of Cumberland and West- 
 moreland. In another direction, the ancient city 
 of Durham, wherein at that time the Bishop held 
 his court as Count Palatine with many of the 
 insignia of royalty, was well calculated, with its 
 feudal castle and grand cathedral, to supply images 
 of external splendour. 
 
 After a short course of instruction at the Gram- 
 mar School of Bishop Auckland, under the care of 
 the Rev. Robert Thompson, Frederick Faber was 
 removed to the house of the Rev. John Gibson, at 
 Kirkby Stephen, in Westmoreland. This was his 
 first introduction to the Lake scenery, and the 
 impression which its beauties made upon him was 
 never effaced. It was his chief delight to wander, 
 for the most part alone, amongst the hills and lakes, 
 his rambles sometimes extending over two or three 
 days. He describes himself in " the golden hours 
 of schoolboy holiday," as 
 
 " Thoughtful even then because of the excess 
 Of boyhood's rich abounding happiness ; 
 And sad whene'er St. Stephen's curfew bell 
 Warned me to leave the spots I loved so well. 
 
4 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1814-34. 
 
 Each hazel copse, each greenly tangled bower, 
 Is sacred to some well-remembered hour ; 
 Some quiet hour when nature did her part, 
 And worked her spell upon my childish heart." 4 
 
 In the preface to the second edition of Sir Lan- 
 celot, published in 1857, he wrote: "Various cir- 
 cumstances led me to fix the supposed action of my 
 poem in the reign of Henry the Third. My perfect 
 acquaintance with the Westmoreland mountains, 
 the scene of my first and very free school days, and 
 my familiarity with their changeful features, their 
 biographies of light and shade, by night as well as 
 by day, through all the four seasons, naturally deci- 
 ded me as to the locality of my poem. 
 
 " The same choice also permitted me to restore 
 the physical features of the country to the state in 
 which my boyhood persisted in representing them 
 to me, during the many solitary afternoons, and 
 long summer holidays spent among the ruined halls 
 and castles and moated houses, which are so fre- 
 quent on the eastern side of those mountains, the 
 abbeys shrinking rather to the west. The forests 
 were replanted; the chases were filled again with 
 deer, the ancestors of the red deer of the Duke of 
 Norfolk, which still drank at the brink of Ullswater 
 
 * On Revisiting the River Eden. No. VIII. Edition of 
 1857. 
 
1814-34.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 5 
 
 by Lyulph's tower; the heronries slanted again 
 over the edges of the lakes ; the unpersecuted eagles 
 woke the echoes of Helvellyn ; spear-tops glanced 
 in the sun on the steep paths that lay like pale 
 green threads across the mountains; the castles 
 rang with arms ; the bright ivy had not mantled 
 the ruddy sandstone beacons which warned men of 
 the Scotch ; the abbeys and chantries were haunted 
 by church-music, while the lesser cells in the 
 secluded pastoral vales heard once more the nightly 
 aspirations of wakeful prayer, and Cistercian shep- 
 herds could scarcely be distinguished, in their white 
 habits, from the sheep they tended, as they moved 
 across the fells, high up above their moorland 
 granges. As the warder on the battlements, or 
 rather as the alchemist from his turret, saw that 
 land of hills and woods and waters beneath the 
 starlight long ago, so did I see it always in those 
 ardent years. Prom earliest times it was to me the 
 land of knightly days, and the spell has never been 
 broken. When it became the dwelling-place of 
 manhood and the scene of earnest labour, the light 
 upon it only grew more golden ; and now, a year- 
 long prisoner in the great capital, that region seems 
 to me a home whence I have been exiled, but 
 which, only to think of, is tranquillity and joy." 
 
 On leaving Kirkby Stephen, in 1825, Frederick 
 Paber passed a short time at Shrewsbury School, 
 and then proceeded to Harrow, where he remained 
 until he went up to Oxford. During the greater 
 
6 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1825. 
 
 part of liis stay the school was governed "by Dr. 
 Longley, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, to 
 whose wise and paternal direction he always pro- 
 fessed himself to have been much indebted. At 
 one period, when he had taken up infidel views, the 
 gentleness and tenderness of Dr. Longley saved him. 
 from what might have been a serious injury. After 
 this he consulted the Rev. Mr. Cunningham, vicar 
 of Harrow, on his religious doubts, and imbibed 
 from his teaching and prayers much of the Evan- 
 gelicalism which was apparent in the first terms of 
 his residence at Oxford. It will be seen in the 
 sequel that he received much kindness at Dr. 
 Longley 's hands in after years. Whilst at Harrow 
 he gave much of his time to the perusal of English 
 literature, probably to the detriment of his classi- 
 cal studies. This passion prevented him from 
 taking an enthusiastic part in the ordinary recrea- 
 tions of the school, in which he did not distinguish 
 himself; he was, however, a good rider, and an 
 excellent swimmer. One day, while spending 
 his holidays with the late Sir Benjamin Brodie, he 
 said he had been calculating how much time he 
 could save in his life by signing his name Erederic 
 without the letter k. "I can tell you how much," 
 answered Sir Benjamin; "precisely the time you 
 have lost in making the calculation." 
 
 His mother died in 1829, and four years later he 
 lost his father. Prom that time the place of his 
 
1832.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. ^ 
 
 parents was supplied to him by his eldest brother, 
 the late T. H. Paber, Esq., of Stockton-on-Tees. 
 
 Frederick Paber was matriculated at Balliol Col- 
 lege, Oxford, in Act Term, 1832, and in the follow- 
 ing winter was a candidate for a scholarship there. 
 Although he was unsuccessful, his examination was 
 so satisfactory that he was offered rooms at once, and 
 thus enabled to come into residence in the Lent 
 Term of 1833. "Our first recollection of P. Paber," 
 writes one of his contemporaries in an obituary 
 notice, " is of a graceful and intelligent boy just 
 launched into a great public school; and next, as 
 a young man who had lately won for himself a 
 high place in honours at Oxford. No one could 
 have known him in those days without being 
 attracted by a grace of person and mind rarely to 
 be met with."* 
 
 His prepossessing appearance and remarkable 
 talent, together with conversational gifts of a very 
 high order, made him a general favourite, and he 
 soon laid the foundation of several lasting friend- 
 ships. The names of many of his friends are to be 
 found in the volumes of poems which he afterwards 
 published; among them were the Rev. J. B. 
 Morris, Sir Roundell Palmer, Mr. Beresford Hope, 
 Lord John Manners, Mr. Smythe, afterwards Lord 
 Strangford, Dean Stanley, and Bishop Claughton, 
 of Rochester. Some of these were Cambridge men, 
 
 * Dublin Review, January, 1864. 
 
8 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1834. 
 
 whom lie often visited there, always keeping up a 
 special affection for that University. As yet, how- 
 ever, his commanding powers were not fully recog- 
 nized; and as he expressed with his customary 
 freedom of speech the criticisms which his keen 
 sense of the ludicrous, as well as his natural abili- 
 ties, suggested to him, he drew down upon himself 
 the remonstrance of a friend, to whom he replied as 
 follows : 
 
 "August 25th, 1834. 
 
 " The character of being arrogant I shall most prohahly 
 never lose, for no efforts can efface a bad name ; I cannot, 
 however, say that this prospect gives me the slightest 
 uneasiness. If by the help of God's grace I can so far 
 change my disposition as to disprove it to myself and to 
 those friends whose opinions I value and respect, I shall be 
 most completely satisfied, and I shall make daily endeavours 
 to effect so important and happy a transmutation." 
 
 With regard to his occupations at Oxford, the 
 friend to whom the letter just quoted was addressed, 
 who knew him intimately during the whole of his 
 undergraduate career, and whom he regarded with 
 undiminished affection to the last, can attest to the 
 innocence and joyousness of his life, and to the 
 determination with which, in spite of severe and 
 often excruciating headache, he formed those habits 
 of study which, though little observed perhaps by 
 others, were nevertheless the foundation of his 
 future learning. A similar testimony is given to 
 his blameless manners: he resisted from first to 
 
1834.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 9 
 
 last the temptations to which, many succumb, and 
 by the grace of God was able to preserve unstained 
 the purity of his life. 
 
 Frederick Paber had not been long at Oxford 
 before he began to find new themes for his Terse in 
 its buildings and neighbourhood. At one time he 
 would note in the language of poetry the changes 
 of season and weather in the surrounding country 
 with a fidelity which showed him to be a close 
 observer, and at another would draw his inspiration 
 from some one of the many associations connected 
 with the venerable city itself. In the first year of 
 his undergraduate life he wrote one of his most 
 popular pieces, the Cherwell Water-lily, which, 
 however, was not published until 1840. 
 
 His heart, however, was still in the beautiful dis- 
 trict where he had passed his early years. In his 
 farewell copy of verses at Harrow, he said : 
 
 " Nature hath been my mother : all her moods 
 On the grey mountain or the sullen floods 
 Have charmed my soul." 
 
 "Here in Oxford," he wrote in 1835, "I literally 
 live among the mountain scenes of my schoolboy 
 days, and breathe, the liberal air, and feel the 
 mountain influences." In later years, his residence 
 at Ambleside, and his enthusiastic admiration of 
 Mr. Wordsworth, confirmed the old impressions, 
 and contributed to stamp on most of the produc- 
 tions of his muse the marks of the land of her birth. 
 
10 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1831. 
 
 When lie came into residence at Oxford, his reli- 
 gious ideas had already assumed a very definite 
 shape, for the spiritual training of his parents had 
 indoctrinated him with the Calvinistic views which 
 were traditional in his family, and these had been 
 further strengthened by what had passed at Harrow. 
 There was much in them to attract him : his ardent 
 nature was pleased with the warmth of expression 
 which they encouraged, whilst the personal inter- 
 course between God and the soul which their theory 
 of faith promoted, was well suited to one of his 
 affectionate temperament. How deeply the truths 
 of religion possessed his -mind appears from his 
 hymn, "The God of my Childhood,"* which 
 expresses a continual sense of the Presence and 
 Providence of God. It refers to the teaching of his 
 mother the sweet and wondrous things on which he 
 loved to dwell, and gives evidence of her love of 
 him in the verse, 
 
 " They bade me call Thee Father, Lord ! 
 
 Sweet was the freedom deemed, 
 And yet more like a mother's ways 
 Thy quiet mercies seemed." 
 
 He brought with him to the University a keen 
 interest in the theological questions which were at 
 that time coming forward into notice, and he entered 
 warmly into such political measures as affected the 
 position of the Church of England. Although very 
 
 * No. 11, edition of 1862. 
 
1834.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 11 
 
 eager in his partizanship, the truthfulness of his 
 character led him to discover the weak points of 
 his own case, and his friends were often surprised 
 at the clearness with which he anticipated the 
 remote consequences of the principles which he had 
 adopted. Prom the time of his arrival at Oxford, 
 he attended the parochial services at St. Mary's, 
 and soon hecame an enthusiastic admirer, "an 
 acolyth," as he termed it, of the Rev. John Henry 
 Newman, then vicar of that church. He was not, 
 however, personally acquainted with Mr. Newman 
 until three or four years later. 
 
 He threw himself eagerly into the great move- 
 ment begun in 1833 for the revival of Church 
 principles, the chief exposition of which was the 
 series of Tracts for the Times. His correspondence 
 about this time testifies to the interest which he 
 took in the doctrinal questions thus brought for- 
 ward ; in one letter, dated Jan. 1, 1834, he wrote : 
 
 " Transubstantiation has been bothering me : not that I 
 lean to it ; but I have seen no refutation of it. How can it 
 be absurd and contradictory to the evidence of our senses, 
 when they cannot by any means take cognizance of the 
 unknown being, substance, which alone is held up as the 
 subject of this conversion ? Answer that." 
 
 In another letter of the same year, he said, 
 
 " Ignatius I find to be quite as strong as the most High 
 Church could wish : ' Follow after your bishop, presbyters 
 and deacons ; for without these there is no Church.' And 
 
12 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1834. 
 
 again : ' os XdOpa ITTLSKOTTOV n Trotei Xar/oeuet TW Sia/3oAu).' It 
 
 becomes a very serious question now as to the obedience 
 demanded from us to his epistles, confessedly corrupt, and 
 about the text of which fresh disputes are daily arising." 
 
 There remained, however, in Frederick Eaber's 
 mind many traces of the feelings by which he 
 had been formerly influenced, and towards the 
 end of his second year at Oxford his views under- 
 went a change. Foreseeing the lengths to which 
 in consistency the Tractarian party would be 
 obliged to go, and being unwilling to commit him- 
 self to such developments, he was disposed to with- 
 draw from their teaching, and to fall back upon the 
 Evangelical tenets which he had forsaken for them. 
 The history of this reaction is given in the following 
 letters. 
 
 LETTER I. To JOHN BRANDE MORRIS, ESQ. 
 
 Stockton-on-Tees, Thursday evening, 
 
 September llth, A. S. 1834. 
 My dear J , 
 
 I begin another letter to you, because I am now 
 never happy unless I am thinking, talking, and writing 
 respecting things eternal. One, therefore, of my greatest 
 pleasures consists in writing to you. If the faith of the 
 good King David the most cheerful of saints and most melo- 
 dious of poets felt renovated and refreshed by going up to 
 the house of God with his familiar friend, how much more 
 should the degenerate Christians of these lukewarm days 
 rejoice in it ! No man is more eager after congenial society 
 than a religious man. His heart is teeming with a thousand 
 high themes; and utterance brings the same kind of relief 
 
1834.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 13 
 
 to him that tears do to the stupified heart-bursting mourner. 
 When, after writing to you and one or two other relations and 
 friends, I turn to pen a letter to my literary intellectual 
 friends, you cannot conceive how weak and uninteresting the 
 topics of discussion become. It is like one of Tom Moore's 
 melodies after an Handelian chorus, at once ludicrous and 
 disgusting from its inferiority. How pleasant three men, 
 entering into the church, and coinciding in serious views, 
 might make a college life ! 
 
 Keligious biography, which has ever" been my favourite 
 study, has this vacation occupied almost all my extra-classical 
 hours : and it would be no difficult matter for me to compile 
 a very respectable code of Christian experience from my late 
 reading. However, I will reserve all discussions on character 
 till we meet. What I am going now to say is this, that it 
 somewhat disheartens me to see the maturity of faith and 
 the spiritual perfection, to which many good men arrive so 
 early. They seem to be made Christians all at once. Their 
 conversion appears to have been almost miraculous ; and the 
 process as palpable as the scales falling from the blind man's 
 eyes. It is true that I have often had hours of extatic, 
 enthusiastic devotion, but the fever has soon subsided, and 
 my feelings have flowed on calmly and soberly in their accus- 
 tomed channels. Yet I have had none of those miraculous 
 heart- awakenings none of those visible interferences of the 
 Spirit to pluck me as a brand from the burning. However, I 
 suppose the power of religion acts in ten thousand different 
 ways, and by ten thousand various instruments according to 
 the constitution and temperament of those over whom its 
 agency is to be exercised. Nevertheless, I must likewise 
 confess that when I look for the fruits of my faith I cannot 
 find any. As old Hooker says : " The little fruit which we 
 have in holiness, it is, God knoweth, corrupt and unsound : 
 
14 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1834. 
 
 we put no confidence at all in it, we challenge nothing in the 
 world for it, we dare not call God to reckoning as if we had 
 Him in our debt-books; our continual suit to Him is and 
 must be, to bear with our infirmities and pardon our 
 
 offences." 
 
 C brings a charge against Oxford, which I fear we 
 
 must both acknowledge to be in the general true. He says : 
 "I am less acquainted with the interior of Oxford but 
 Cambridge abounds with men whose ardent desire it is to 
 glorify the Master who has loved them, and given Himself 
 for them. The great evil which I seemed to perceive at 
 Oxford was the substitution of a sort of zeal for the exterior 
 of religion for the inward spirit of faith and love. How easy 
 it is to mistake the love of our party for the love of our God 
 to put the Church of England in the place of the Church 
 of Christ and to care infinitely more for the outworks than 
 
 the doctrines she so zealously inculcates." Now, J , I 
 
 will fairly plead guilty, as an Oxonian, to this charge. There 
 is a great deal of this in our dear University. Not that it is 
 wrong : these things ought we to do, but not to leave the 
 other undone. I love the Church of England most fervently 
 and affectionately, and with a love which grows warmer and 
 warmer as I become more intimately acquainted with her 
 doctrines and her ordinances. But I will confess that I 
 suspect and mistrust that sort of religion in which apostoli- 
 city, establishment, episcopacy, K . r. A. are terms in more 
 frequent usage than depravity, atonement, justification, &c. : 
 in which the Church is defined to be a body corporate as 
 opposed to Dissent ; and not a mystical union and incorpora- 
 tion of its members with Christ and with each other, as 
 opposed to the carnal world. However, more of this anon. 
 I should like to hear your opinion on the subject. I think 
 that we best serve our venerable church, not by always 
 lauding her ordinances, but by practising in their primitive 
 
1834.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 15 
 
 purity, her truly Scriptural doctrines. This is a most 
 neglected truism 
 
 LETTER II. To THE SAME. 
 
 Stockton-on-Tees, September 28, 
 
 Sunday, A. S. 1834. 
 My dear J -, 
 
 I write to you on Sunday because I cannot bear to remain 
 even one day without unburthening my mind to you. It 
 distresses me extremely that I should have fallen under your 
 condemnation so seriously as I appear to have done. And 
 the purport of this letter is to free myself from some of the 
 most grievous imputations contained in your letter. I know 
 the French proverb celui s'accuse, qui trop s'excuse but I 
 must confess I do think myself somewhat unintentionally 
 
 wronged When I first felt a Calvinistic bias growing 
 
 upon me, stronger and stronger every day, it was the subject 
 of most earnest prayer to God that He would guide me into 
 all truth. I had been accustomed to have the most unre- 
 served communication with my Oxford friends on all matters 
 of religious opinion, and I shrunk from anything like con- 
 cealment. I was perfectly aware of your extreme dislike to 
 Calvinists, and as I knew you were a far better Biblicalist 
 than men of your standing usually are, and an infinitely 
 better one than myself, I felt unwilling to provoke a paper 
 discussion, feeling confident that neither party could clearly 
 convey their impressions save viva voce : and it is on this 
 account that I still decline paper controversy on this subject ; 
 not doubting that all things will be made clear when we 
 meet. The present letter then will not touch the most 
 remotely upon Arminian or Calvinistic or Middle Party 
 opinions. It will only, I trust, place my conduct before you 
 in a somewhat more pardonable light than that in which you 
 
16 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1834. 
 
 now view it. Unwilling, as I said before, to have any con- 
 cealment on this head, I could not help reflecting that if I 
 entertained this lias in silence, and did not mention it till we 
 met at Oxford, and yet kept writing letters to you on religious 
 topics, there would he an unpleasant appearance of hypocrisy, 
 or to say the least, of want of confidence and unfriendly 
 
 reserve on my part. With this impression I wrote to H , 
 
 and desired him to communicate to you what ? That I 
 had become a Calvinist ? That I entertained Calvinistic 
 opinions ? No that I had got a bias towards some of their 
 opinions. I went on to say that I considered the controversy 
 . one which demanded long and careful study : that I should 
 not make up my mind on the subject for three or four years 
 to come. I mentioned that I had with prayer read the New 
 Testament through twice without notes, and that hence had 
 sprung my bias. Now here, my dear Morris, is the grand 
 misunderstanding : you recollect the irrational precipitation 
 with which I rush to a conclusion in political and literary 
 matters, and you recollect also the pertinacious obstinacy 
 with which I adhere to a conclusion once formed, and it was 
 natural that you should imagine I had been doing the same 
 in matters of religion. Now I took care to guard most 
 
 earnestly against this idea in my letter to H . I said 
 
 there, as I repeat here, that I met with several passages, and 
 the whole tenor of several epistles, which I should have said 
 decidedly favoured the Calvinistic tenets : but I recollected 
 the great authorities against them ; I bore in mind my own 
 ignorance and incapability to decide, so / did violence to my 
 judgment; I refused to give an intellectual assent, because 
 that intellect was too immature to form a correct opinion of 
 the controversy. I appealed to Commentators : for the most 
 part they were in favour of the Calvinistic interpretation, and 
 where they were not so they seemed at a loss to explain the 
 passages in any unconstrained manner. The result of my 
 
1834.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABEH. 17 
 
 enquiry is simply this, that I disavow all Arminianism and 
 all Calvinism ; but I have lost entirely the prejudice which I 
 once had against the latter opinions, and I see most clearly 
 that the Calvinism of Calvin is not connected in the most 
 remote degree with fatalism, -and cannot hut be a spur to, 
 instead of a dissuasive from, , active and energetic action. 
 You quote Hooker with an air of triumph : I rejoice at it ; 
 all the Calvinism with which I have the misfortune to be 
 tainted may be found most clearly explained in that great and 
 good man's sermons on Justification by Faith, and on the 
 Certainty and Perpetuity of Faith in the Elect. I plead 
 guilty to Hookerism, and nothing further. At present 
 then, my opinions on the quinquarticular doctrines of the 
 Synod of Dort are in abeyance. I uphold in the fullest 
 and most latitudinarian manner the tenets of universal 
 toleration and the supremacy of private judgment. But 
 surely this is only the freedom and liberty of the Gospel not 
 the licentiousness of unsubdued pride. If a mere boy of 
 twenty were to interpret Scripture ad libitum form his own 
 creed and attempt to vindicate its infallibility decide where 
 the best and wisest of men have doubted rush in with 
 unhallowed precipitation where the angels of heaven fear to 
 tread ; would this, my dear Morris, be the exercise of private 
 judgment, or the insane flights of devilish arrogance and 
 high-exulting impiety? Do not then, I beseech you, think 
 so ill of me as to imagine that three months had or could 
 make me a Calvinist. It must and will take double that 
 number of years to make me adopt a creed contrary to the 
 one in which I have been brought up. A bias in doubtful 
 religious controversy requires years before it issues forth in 
 settled conviction : do not therefore be afraid of me. 
 
18 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1835. 
 
 LETTER III. To A FKIEND (A.) 
 
 University College, Oxford, 
 ' January, A. S. 1835. 
 
 I am almost inclined to differ from you on the subject 
 of ambition. I hold it to be a feeling which no generous or 
 ardent mind is without : and that unless it gains such 
 strength as to become oppressive, and to give us a wrong 
 bias, it is not desirable that it should be stifled. The regu- 
 lation and superintendence of it is certainly one of the most 
 difficult things in the moral government of ourselves. I 
 should never have been relieved of mine if it had depended 
 upon steady and vigorous mental discipline ; because as yet I 
 have lived by impulses. My freedom, or comparative free- 
 dom, is a piece of evrux"*- resulting from the accidents of my 
 Oxford career. In looking calmly back upon the intellectual 
 part of the two last years for every man has many biogra- 
 phies running in parallel lines it is not difficult for me to 
 point out these accidents. 
 
 a. I had been very much puffed up, very injudiciously so, 
 at Harrow, and when I came up to Oxford I found myself all 
 at once in a place where a totally different standard of mind 
 prevailed, and I became an inferior, a few weeks after I had 
 been in possession of an uncontested superiority. /?. My 
 feelings were crushed down by various heart-chilling things, 
 and I had not any energy left in me. These things were 
 enough to quell the most fiery furnace of ambition, even 
 though it was seven times heated by the applause popularis 
 Hergensis aurse. Besides, a process of quiet self-exami- 
 nation, a retiring to take the measure of myself, shewed 
 me the absurdity, while, I think I may add, religion 
 
1835.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 19 
 
 shewed me the wrongness of cherishing such wild day-dreams 
 to the extinction of practical virtue and usefulness. One 
 amhition I still have, to be eminently, useful in my profes- 
 sion. 
 
 # # # * 
 
 The Church (thank Heaven) presents an aspect now pecu- 
 liarly unpromising to those who would embrace it from mere 
 professional views : and I think that more comfort as to her 
 future prospects may be derived from the cathartic effect 
 (d)s CTTOS euruv) of her present prospects upon the troops 
 generally crowding to ordination, than from any other symp- 
 tom whatsoever. At the same time, it is 'a grievous thing to 
 see the great majority (and is it not the case ?) of young men 
 of sound intellect and high principle going into other profes- 
 sions, where the path to opulence or to eminence lies more 
 open, and is beset with fewer dangers, while the Church is 
 left to men of amiable, pious, but weak minds, whose good 
 intentions would sacrifice her to that mild-spoken philosophy 
 of expediency, so rife in these days. 
 
 I quite agree with you that the duties of a clergyman 
 always have been, and are now more than ever likely to be 
 of a stirring nature : but you rather misunderstood what I 
 said about possessing my soul in quietness. I did not mean 
 that dreamy quietism, such as Bramah reposes in, who is, as 
 his worshippers assert, an ocean without waves, a sleep 
 without a dream : but I meant that I could not keep my 
 enthusiasm in one channel my energies bent upon one 
 object. There is a desultoriness about me which a clergyman 
 ought not to have ; but I suppose I can get rid of that. 
 There is no fear of my changing my profession : I feel to 
 an almost sinful degree that I never could be happy or 
 content in any other profession. It seems my destiny : it 
 
20 TEE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1835. 
 
 has thrown a colour over all my boyhood : it has been my 
 life's one dream ; so much so that I sometimes fancy I am 
 called to it. So high however is the standard which I have 
 set up in my own mind, and so much below that standard 
 do I find myself, that I do at times question my fitness 
 for so awful a vocation. The love of display despicable 
 thing is, I fear, very strong in me : and the silent conflicts, 
 the under currents of persecution which a parish priest meets 
 with, must be met with that superhuman energy that places 
 its " strength" (according to that fine ogipwpov of Isaiah) 
 " in quietness and in confidence." 
 
 In arranging my thoughts for my Church Article, I have 
 been thinking a great deal on the merits and tendency of 
 Newmanism : and I have become more than ever convinced 
 of its falsehood. There is in the human mind at all times 
 a strong tendency to mysticism ; and when you add to this 
 natural propension the accidents of depth of thought, peculiar 
 line of study, and a somewhat monastic seclusion, I do not 
 wonder that Newman's mind has become deeply tinctured 
 by that mystical allegorizing spirit of Origen and the school 
 of Alexandria. I can answer from personal experience for 
 the manner in which it captivates a mind which is in the 
 least imaginative. But there is a cause beyond this. 
 Newman felt himself thrown into complete opposition to 
 Whately and that school which embodies the modern notions 
 on religion; and thus was led to take up a more decisive 
 position, to define and systematize floating ideas and theories, 
 and proselytize with greater vehemence than he otherwise 
 would have done. He who hung his dripping garments 
 and votive tablet to the ocean God had no doubt a keener 
 sense of the perils of the sea than any one else : and this 
 perhaps leads me to regard with deep sorrow the spread of 
 this amiable devotional mysticism in Oxford. It must 
 inevitably, as it surely does legitimately, lead to that 
 
1835.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 21 
 
 distinction between the religio philosophi and the superstitio 
 populi which was the main earthly cause of the tremendous 
 downfall of the huge fabric of paganism. No such conse- 
 quences can of course ensue in Christianity ; but a very 
 serious blow may be given to the Church by bodies of young 
 men going out to be parish priests, believing that there 
 are inner doctrines, which it is as ivell not to reveal to the 
 vulgar mysteries I am using Newman's own words, which 
 are his peculiar treasure " thoughts which it is scarcely 
 right to enlarge upon in a mixed congregation.' 1 
 
 Am I chimerical in anticipating quite as much danger 
 from the mysticisms of Newman as from the rationalities 
 of Whately ? It is not in my case, as you well know, that 
 he jests at scars who never felt a wound. I can most 
 sincerely say, that after having been an unprejudiced acolyth 
 of Newman's, an attentive reader of his works, a diligent 
 attender at his church I found the impressive simplicities 
 of the Bible irksome to me : all its quiet consolations were 
 knocked away from under, me, and vague, bodiless Platonic 
 reveries were the food my soul craved for. Observe, I know 
 that this is not the case with Newman himself: I believe 
 him to be an eminently pious, humble-minded Christian : 
 but I think that he has sat at the feet of the early contem- 
 plative philosophers with an unscriptural humility that he 
 has imbibed their notions and that his followers are likely 
 to become a sort of Christian Essenes. Of course it would 
 be preposterous in me to charge upon Newman what was 
 probably in a great measure my own fault ; but still I think 
 I may argue that the tendency of his system is bad : whether 
 it is that uncongenial minds misunderstand it, or wayward 
 fancies pervert it, I think it is bad : and I look upon its 
 onward course with fear and with distrust. What makes 
 me fear most is that I have seen Newman himself growing 
 in his opinions : I have seen indistinct visions become 
 
22 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1835. 
 
 distinct embodiments ; I have seen the conclusion of one 
 proposition become the premiss of a next, through a long 
 series : all this is still going on to my eyes more like the 
 blind march of error than the steady uniformity of truth 
 and I know not when it will stop. But you must be about 
 tired of this topic : I forgot that it was unlikely your 
 thoughts would have turned just at present in the same 
 direction with mine. 
 
1835.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 23 
 
 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 1835. 
 
 Towards the end of the year 1834 Frederick 
 Faber was elected scholar of University College, 
 and accordingly took up his residence there early in 
 1835. Mr. Donkin, now Professor of Astronomy 
 in the University, obtained another scholarship at 
 the same time. 
 
 From this time Mr. Faber gave himself up to the 
 task of preparing himself for the schools. "The 
 more however," he had written on the 18th July, 
 1834, " that I fathom my own classical knowledge 
 and consider my own advancement in scholarship, 
 the more I feel the improbability if not the impos- 
 sibility of my efforts being crowned with a First 
 Class. I surrendered myself, while at Harrow, so 
 wholly and unreservedly to the more easy charms of 
 modern literature that I fear it is too late now to 
 make myself a proficient in the studies of anti- 
 quity." 
 
 His work did not proceed without interruption. 
 The Oxford University Debating Society, afterwards 
 called the Union, attracted much of his attention. 
 He spoke frequently, and earned considerable fame, 
 even amongst such speakers as Sir Houndell Palmer, 
 Mr. Lowe, Mr. Cardwell, Mr. Ward, and Arch- 
 bishop Tait. He also contributed much to the 
 
2dd THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1835. 
 
 establishment of the Oxford University Magazine, 
 which, however, like many similar periodicals, had 
 a very brief existence. Among the articles written 
 by him was one on "The Christian Year," and 
 another upon "Philip Yan Artevelde," which he 
 undertook the more readily from the fact of Mr. 
 Taylor's father being an intimate friend of his 
 family. His work in the magazine is thus spoken 
 of in one of his letters. 
 
 LETTER IV. To A FRIEND (A.) 
 
 January 15, 1835. 
 
 I am now going to tell you what I have been 
 writing: imprimis, a brief article on Burns, Byron, and 
 Letter-writing. The thought, if there is any thought in it, 
 struck me while I was working at my Church Article, so 
 I sat down and scribbled it off at a sitting ; and now cannot 
 for the life of me correct one word in it ; so you may imagine 
 what a screed it is. 
 
 As to my Church Article one more hiss at the expediency 
 men, and my snake will coil itself up in quietude and joy, 
 never more to be unvolved in politics : because they asperitize 
 my mind, a thing which ought never to happen to a 
 Wordsworthian. 
 
 In one of my articles the other day, I had occasion to 
 allude to the pleasurable emotions resulting from a sense 
 of power : and after a great deal of clear-spirited thought f!J 
 I have come to the conclusion that, apart from religion, the 
 potestas efficax of which does not reside in or result from 
 man's own heart the greatest pleasure of life arises from 
 the felt sense of power : the greatest intellectual pleasure is 
 the sense of intellectual power ; for creative energy is clearly 
 
1835.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 25 
 
 the most luxurious, and it is power solely ; nay even 
 sympathy with the author you read is a modification of 
 power ; the power e. g., of applying his ideas to your own, 
 and eliciting the magical congeniality whence the pleasure 
 of sympathy arises. And the greatest physical pleasure we 
 have is the sense of physical power; and it is the most 
 closely connected with mind, for mind is the directrix of 
 animal energies, or ought to be ; and the more the 
 integrity of her regulating power is preserved, the nobler is 
 the nature of the individual. Therefore a felt sense of power 
 constitutes the greatest pleasure we enjoy. Q. E. D. 
 
 I want you to read Burns' letters when you come back: 
 they have given me such unmingled pleasure that I am 
 anxious you should participate in it. In discussing the 
 question why an author is incapacitated from passing a just 
 judgment on his own works (which, en passant, using the 
 word just in a popular sense, is true; in any other sense, 
 quite false) he explains it by saying that the poet pores and 
 pores so often on every part that at last the words hardly 
 convey the proper ideas to the mind ; and he becomes so 
 habituated to the sound that his critical acumen is dulled 
 and useless. But how few poets do pore and pore, &c. ? 
 Begging the pardon of so great a man as Robert Burns, the 
 cause, e/xoi So/<ei, lies far deeper than his e/>/y.>ji/evo-is. Take, we 
 will say, your last work it is short and simple : now are 
 there not numberless images and thoughts in your mind, 
 connected with different expressions and ideas in that short 
 poem, and yet which the mere words as printed do not 
 of necessity convey to the mind of the reader? Are there 
 not trains of thought opened up in your mind, when you 
 peruse the poem, which it is not probable, or at least 
 which there is no reason to suppose will be opened up in 
 the mind of another ? Now these accidental associations 
 as I should call them, pervade the mind of the author ; he 
 
26 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1835. 
 
 cannot read his poem without his soul being flooded with 
 them: to him his images convey a beautiful distinctness 
 which the public see not, his ideas possess to him a depth 
 of thought, recognizable by no one else : the very garb of 
 language in which his imaginings are clothed, shrouds their 
 real loveliness from those who are not admitted who cannot 
 be admitted to the inner shrine of the seer's own soul. 
 
 The most serious interruption of his classical 
 studies was caused by his competition for the 
 Newdigate prize poem. Prom his predilection for 
 verse, it was naturally expected that he would 
 turn his attention to the poetical prizes which are 
 open to undergraduates, but until his last year the 
 subjects given out did not take his fancy; but 
 when " The Knights of St. John" was selected in 
 1835 for the poem of the following year, he seized 
 upon it at once, and began to form his plan on 
 the very day that the subject came out. It was 
 finished in the month of July, although the prize 
 was not to be decided until the summer of 1836. 
 Mr. Paber had intended to pass the examination 
 for his degree in the Easter Term of that year, but a 
 severe attack of influenza obliged him to withdraw 
 his name, and to go down into the country for a 
 short time. During his absence, the prize was 
 awarded to his poem, which Professor Keble, an 
 ex officio judge, pronounced to be remarkably 
 elegant and highly polished; and it was after- 
 wards stated by the late Mr. Hussey, another of 
 the judges, that of the thirty-seven poems sent in, 
 
1835.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 27 
 
 none came into competition with the winner. It 
 was recited as usual in the Sheldonian Theatre, 
 at Commemoration, June 15, 1836.* 
 
 During the first half of the year 1835 Frederick 
 Faber enjoyed at Oxford the society of his more 
 intimate friends, and it was not until he was sepa- 
 rated from them during the long vacation that it 
 was necessary for him to resume his correspon- 
 dence. It will be seen from the following extracts, 
 that his letters, written in the full confidence of 
 friendship, display with fidelity the working of his 
 mind, sometimes describing the progress of his 
 composition for the Newdigate prize, or of his 
 classical studies, but more frequently setting forth 
 at great length his views on some religious ques- 
 tion. 
 
 LETTER V. To A FRIEND (A.) 
 
 Stockton-upon-Tees, Friday evening, 
 August 21, 1835, A. S. 
 
 It has pleased God, ever since I have been wakened 
 to a sense of my own utter helplessness, and convinced of 
 the love of my Redeemer, that I should enjoy to an almost 
 unexampled degree the use of the means of grace, more 
 particularly in the study of religious books. These must 
 now be in a great measure closed ; and I must look to God 
 
 * The Knights of St. John. Poems, No. IX. Edition of 
 
 1857. 
 
28 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1835. 
 
 with trembling hope that He will preserve my spirituality of 
 mind by an additional outpouring of His Holy Spirit upon 
 me ; for I have already had occasion to deplore the deadening 
 effect of so much heathen reading upon the soul's health. A 
 fearful responsibility rests somewhere in the matter of modern 
 education. The 'absence of nearly all those characteristics 
 which should mark Christian instruction, the familiarising 
 the susceptible mind of boyhood with representations of 
 crime and unnatural lust, which the apostle says it is a 
 shame even to make mention of, the entwining around the 
 remembrances of early study the fictions of an impure 
 mythology these will be fearful items of account at the day 
 of judgment. I am by no means for expelling the classics, 
 but reducing the monstrous excess to which the study of 
 them has been pushed. I know that they are peculiarly 
 fitted for calling forth the exercise of the mental powers ; 
 and I am satisfied that fitting the mind for the reception of 
 truth rather than filling it with knowledge is the proper 
 object of education. 
 
 ITow, to be more particular, it is said that the mind of a 
 boy is peculiarly susceptible, and that whatever he is taught 
 at that tender age sinks deep a Christian then takes care 
 that nothing shall be presented to his boy at such a critical 
 age, save those solemn and eternal truths which must have 
 an abiding place in the soul of a redeemed sinner : is this 
 the case? far from it. You teach him to pray night and 
 morning from his cradle upwards that he may not be led into 
 temptation ; and then you tamper with his lusts, his feelings, 
 his eternal welfare, by making him pore over Horace's Odes, 
 where all sorts of enormities are dressed up in all the felici- 
 ties of melody and diction in all the charms of levity and 
 jest. His Bible he is taught to read in his native tongue, 
 and but seldom ; but these impurities he has painfully to 
 work out from an unknown language, where the impression 
 
1835.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 29 
 
 is of course deeper and stronger. Now, I ask, what is this 
 but a plain and practical denial of the doctrine of man's 
 depravity ? What is it but to plunge your boy into that 
 temptation against which he is taught to pray ? And is not 
 this a mockery of God ? 
 
 LETTER VI. -To THE SAME. 
 
 University College, Oxford, 
 December 20th, A. S. 1835. 
 
 My reading goes on prosperously and rapidly ; but 
 still there is a dreary load of stuff to be won through before 
 I can look for rest, and it seems to thicken. I had no idea 
 till I commenced reading in earnest, how extremely weak my 
 constitution was, and how completely the struggles I had for 
 life in early boyhood had shattered me. 'Tis well to feel 
 how gentle a wrench will set me free ; and well to feel in the 
 heyday of life and spirits one's mortality pressed upon notice 
 every hour of every day. But my spiritual life is sadly soiled 
 with all this secular reading : and my thoughts are bent with 
 a dreadful intensity and an anxious looking onwards in merely 
 temporal matters. I really dare not say that I have once 
 said my prayers happily since my reading began. May God 
 bear through with me, and uphold me with His grace to the 
 end ; for in that is my only hope. Fond as I am now of the 
 classics, I cannot but feel the evil and the peril of so much 
 heathen literature all at once to one who from his years must 
 be a beginner in religion. 
 
30 THE LIPE AND LETTERS OF [1835. 
 
 LETTEB VII. To THE SAME. 
 
 Stockton-on-Tees, Tuesday, 
 August 25, 1835. 
 
 I find that Butler makes me think intensely, and 
 opens up my mind almost like Wordsworth or Niehuhr ; 
 but I object to getting it up for the schools, because I 
 think I should be better employed if I substituted in its 
 place some more Christian book I speak advisedly some 
 more Christian book than the work of that right reverend 
 prelate. You once told me that you did not think Butler's 
 low view of the Atonement the strongest objection to his 
 book. I confess I did not believe you when you said so : 
 I am now fully convinced of the truth of your remark. The 
 Analogy has now occupied my thoughts for a long time : and 
 the result of my study has been that if that is Christianity, 
 I am not, and God grant I never may be a Christian. Now 
 this is strong, but it is deliberate. And as I know you are 
 a vehement advocate of the metaphysical bishop's, I am 
 anxious to hear a detailed critical opinion upon a book which 
 I look upon as almost the greatest work of pagan wisdom I 
 ever perused. It would be almost useless to make specific 
 objections ; but lest you should misapprehend my drift just 
 let us run through my two favourite chapters, the most 
 lucid, and in one sense most satisfactory portions of the trea- 
 . tise : I mean chaps, iv. and v. of part i. Let us cast an 
 eye then over chap. iv. On a state of Probation, as im- 
 plying trial, difficulties, and danger. " With regard to 
 religion, there is no more required than what they are 
 well able to do, and what they must be greatly wanting to 
 themselves if they neglect. And for persons to have that 
 put upon them which they are well able to go through, and 
 
1835.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 31 
 
 no more, we naturally consider as an equitable thing ; sup- 
 posing it done by proper authority." Now, my dear A., 
 in the name of goodness, what system of religion is the 
 bishop talking of? For four years I have been intensely 
 studying the Christian religion ; it has gilded prosperity to 
 me with a more radiant hue, it has dispelled the gloom and 
 shade of despondency, it has exalted my intellect, and 
 ennobled every feeling of my nature. But the religion which 
 did all this, aye, and more for me, was a something unspeak- 
 ably different from the religion here delineated. The Chris- 
 tianity I found in the Bible (and if the features of spiritual 
 discernment be truly laid down in the Gospel, I was taught 
 by the Holy Spirit) did require infinitely more, not only 
 than I was well able to do, but able to do at all. It told me 
 to be perfect even as God is perfect ; to be pure even as He 
 is pure ; to mortify the flesh ; to watch % unto prayer ; it told 
 me that for every idle word I should speak, for every idle 
 thought I should think, I should be called to judgment ; that 
 God required truth in the inward parts ; and finally it pro- 
 nounced that awful fiat that without holiness no man should ' 
 see the Lord : and yet, regardless of paradox, this strange 
 book, this mysterious Bible, went on to tell me that I could 
 do no good thing of myself; that the imaginations of my 
 heart were evil continually, that I could not so much as 
 think a good thought of myself; that it was God that 
 worketh in me both to will, yes, even to will, and to do 
 of His own good pleasure nay, God Himself sums it all 
 up in Rev. iii. 17 ; He tells us, even us Christians, that 
 we are " wretched and miserable and poor and blind and 
 naked." And then to show that these were not declarations 
 made in random fits of inspiration, my system proceeds with 
 eminent consistency to show the remedy for all this. In the 
 same breath that it tells me of my utter helplessness, it tells 
 me that God has laid help on one that is mighty, and that 
 
32 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1835. 
 
 all my sufficiency is of God ; it tells me I am impure ; 
 it tells me I cannot advance more towards making myself 
 pure than the Ethiop towards changing his colour ; and 
 finally it tells me and I cling with the desperate energy of 
 a drowning man to the declaration that "the blood of 
 Christ cleanseth from all sin." 
 
 It almost looks like an insult to transcribe to you this 
 Scripture alphabet; and it is needless for me to point out 
 to your acute eye the multiform discrepancies between Bishop 
 Butler and myself; yet nearly every word I have written 
 is in the very words of the Bible. Well then, as Isaiah says, 
 " to the law and to the testimony; if they speak not accord- 
 ing to this word, it is because there is no light in them.'* 
 If then the fact that God demands more than " we are very 
 well able to do" be a legitimate subject of complaint, as is 
 surely more than implied by the bishop, then we may com- 
 plain. That everything which Jehovah does is, and must 
 from the essentialities of His nature ever be equitable, 
 there can be little doubt ; but original sin seems to have 
 tumbled, miro quodam modo excidisse, from his lordship's 
 articles of faith. Now A., I know you are a bigot of a 
 Butlerian, but I appeal to you, fairly and without special 
 pleading, if you as an Evangelical, a Calvinist, a Christian, 
 can reconcile my statement and the bishop's. I do not ask 
 you whether you agree to my statement or not, for I have 
 had the inexpressible pleasure during the last year of seeing 
 every item of it beautifully exemplified in your own daily 
 conduct and life, so I am easy on that score. I only there- 
 fore require you to show that my system is at one with his 
 is harmoniously accordant with that of our illustrious author. 
 
1835.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 33 
 
 LETTER VIII. To THE SAME. 
 
 Stockton-upon-Tees, 
 
 August 29th, 1835. 
 
 I may speak freely to you without the imputation of 
 conceit. You talk of my zeal for my dear Kedeemer. Alas ! 
 you cannot tell how it pains me to he so well thought of 
 as I am : hut I will say nothing of that. I want to lay 
 claim to your most fervent prayers for my conduct in the 
 critical position I am now placed in at Oxford. 
 
 When I reflected on all that God had done to me, and 
 when by His grace my whole soul hecame filled with the love 
 of Christ, I hethought myself in what manner I could hest 
 serve His cause. God has given to me a peculiar, to my mind 
 a very peculiar talent, at first sight alien to my character, 
 of attaching people to myself. I was first struck hy it 
 
 one day when Y , soon after his conversion, was 
 
 indulging in expressions of affection for me. He quoted a 
 
 speech which P had made use of at Harrow "I cannot 
 
 tell ivliy it is, but that Faber fascinates everybody" This 
 sunk deep into my mind : and I could not hut feel that I 
 should hasten to lay this talent at the feet of my Redeemer. 
 I began when I returned to Oxford a regular system : in an 
 incredibly short time I had collected round me a circle of 
 religious men, before unknown to me. The hand of Provi- 
 dence was palpably with me. I proceeded, as far as prudence 
 seemed to dictate, to organize, so to speak, a system of 
 aggressive efforts in favour of religion; and under my 
 guidance a number of prayer meetings was speedily estab- 
 lished ; and by God's grace I was enabled to do it with little 
 noise or ostentation. 
 3 
 
34 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1835. 
 
 Noiv how am I situated? I will speak unreservedly to 
 you. There are many men in Oxford who at this moment 
 look up to me as in some sort a spiritual guide and 
 counsellor; and many more in whose eyes the cause of 
 religion has hecome intimately hlended with myself ; so that 
 I have much to do in religion of an actual business-like 
 character. Now I am but a boy of 21, and on me has 
 all this devolved. In what danger do I stand of becoming 
 head of a party, of pride, of assumption, of self-sufficiency ! 
 and what injury would accrue to the cause of Christ from 
 any inconsistency in my Christian walk ! Oh ! my dearest 
 A., do I not need your prayers ? Do you recollect the 
 touching complaint of the Jewish Church, in the Song of 
 Solomon, " My mother's children were angry with me ; they 
 made me keeper of the vineyards ; but mine own vineyard 
 have I not kept." You know not how intensely I feel the 
 force of this verse. Often when I am in companies where 
 religion is not named, where earth and the things of earth 
 are dominant, the soft still accents of the voice of Christ 
 fall with meek power upon my ear. "Kise up, my love, 
 my fair one, and come aivay." And yet I do not sufficiently 
 come forth from the world, and take my stand manfully 
 beneath the banners of my Lord. "Awake, north 
 wind ; and come, thou south ; blow upon my garden, 
 that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come 
 into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits." It is in 
 moments such as these that the soul exults as she reflects 
 that all her sufficiency is of God. 
 
 And now my dearest A., I want to talk of you. Idem 
 velle ac idem nolle, firma amicitia est. As far as I was 
 competent to judge of your character before the summer of 
 1834, I should say that a change had come over you while 
 
 you were with S . But still last Michaelmas term, you 
 
 were not a decidedly religious character. From that period 
 
1835.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 35 
 
 you seem to me to have become gradually more and more so ; 
 during which time your religion appears to have divested 
 itself of its too intellectual character. Then I saw things 
 in you which as a Christian friend I ought to have noticed ; 
 and bitterly do I repent of my sinful silence. In your letters 
 this vacation I fancy I have seen much farther advances in 
 grace, and much deeper experience in divine things. Many 
 things have suggested themselves to me as having under 
 God's blessing been of spiritual edification, such as your 
 
 conversations with S , your brother's death, your constant 
 
 intercourse with M , &c. But still your religious 
 
 biography, so to spe"uk, is for the most part a mystery to 
 me, and I have hitherto refrained from asking about it. 
 
 The subject, my dearest A., is one of intense interest 
 to me, relating as it does to one whom I love above all 
 created beings, one whom alas ! I often fear I love too much. 
 I tremble when I think what would have been my line of 
 duty, if I had gone on in my religious course, and you had 
 not, or vice versa. I feel that the immortality of our 
 friendship depended upon it, and most thankfully do I adore 
 the love of our heavenly Father, who by His grace is leading 
 us in beautiful brotherhood on our Christian path. For 
 one so young, I have had much to do with religious 
 experiences ; and I have found by wide inductions how 
 completely the workings of the Spirit are like the comings 
 and goings of the wind, unaccountable by system or 
 philosophy. No wonder then I should be so anxious to 
 hear how your strong, proud intellect was brought in 
 lowliness to the feet of the blessed Jesus. 
 
36 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1835. 
 
 LETTEB IX. TO THE SAME. 
 
 Sherburn House, September 12th, A. S. 1835. 
 Saturday Morning. 
 
 To the eye of faith, that curtain which hangs 
 
 over all the invisible world is sometimes partially withdrawn, 
 and we behold in a certain closer and more intimate manner 
 the immediate workings of God's providence. I have often 
 thought it is but fanciful at best, yet harmless that our 
 first parents in their paradisiacal state could see far, or at 
 least farther than we can, into the invisible world ; they had 
 vocal communication with their heavenly Father, and perhaps 
 held converse with beings of one of the superior orders in 
 the spiritual hierarchy : and it may be that the hebetation, 
 the superinduced obtusity of this supernatural vision, was 
 part of the punishment of the Fall. And it has more than 
 once struck me that a total restoration of this vision would 
 overwhelm us, until we obtain, through the power of Christ's 
 resurrection, glorified bodies. For just imagine the curtain 
 drawn up, how TBEMENDOUS would be the spectacle before us : 
 the complex, intricate machinery of causation, the labyrin- 
 thine cycles of what we call accident and chance, the remote 
 developments and effects of the most trivial human actions, 
 the arrangement of the intertwisted harmonies of nature, 
 the wheel within wheel, by means of which the eternal 
 machinery is regulated, the magazine of storms, pestilences, 
 and earthquakes, the general laws upon which miracles and 
 apparent disturbances in nature depend, the "innumerable 
 company of angels" speeding on their ministrations to the 
 heirs of glory, the multiform spirits of evil going to and fro 
 on the face of the earth in hideous restlessness : Oh ! there 
 would be something so appalling in the magnificence of such 
 
1835.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 37 
 
 a spectacle, that the mind of man would be prostrated in 
 utter insanity. God therefore, in His wisdom and His love, 
 withholds what this our terrestrial childhood could not hear ; 
 and it may he reserved as a part of that inconceivable 
 inheritance, which is at His right hand for evermore. Still 
 I believe that He does at times and according to the counsels 
 of His own good will afford partial disclosures to the thinking 
 mind of man, thereby leading us to a more unreserved 
 acknowledgment of His glory and grandeur, and imbuing us 
 with such an idea of our own littleness the only thing in 
 which man is infinite as to lead us in timid adoration to 
 His footstool.., 
 
 LETTEB X. TO THE SAME. 
 
 September 29th, A. S. 1835. 
 
 I have never been placed in such difficult circum-. 
 stances as I am now. I have arrived here, and found that 
 
 poor Y had declined from his Christian profession, that 
 
 he was full of talk about enthusiasm, and the impertinence 
 of legislating for others in the matter of balls, theatres, &c., 
 and full of disputation as to how far renouncing the world was 
 a duty imperative on religious men 
 
 Mr. Y , for whom I have a high respect, has a violent 
 
 prejudice against what he calls the humbug of evangelicals, 
 
 and he has cautioned Y about enthusiasm in a very 
 
 special manner. The Spirit of God however will prevail ; 
 my friend is, I trust, again treading the straight road : but 
 he is overwhelmed with distress about his difference of 
 opinion with his father, which he fears must soon be known ; 
 he shrinks from a profession, and is miserably distracted with 
 the fear of man 
 
 I came here on my own invitation, and dare not leave 
 
38 THE LIFE AND LETTEES OF [1835. 
 
 before the fixed day for fear of giving offence. Books I have 
 
 given Y are proscribed as dangerous by the father. 
 
 The respect, the kindness, the confidence heaped on me not 
 long ago are all gone. I feel my heart cruelly, very cruelly 
 torn. Have I done right in coming here ? Can I be doing 
 the will of God while I stand in this frightful position 
 between a father and his son ? I cannot say confidently that 
 my faith faileth not : but oh ! think of the misery to me who 
 for long have been blessed with an assurance not often found 
 in one so young. 
 
 My spirit is crushed. Oh ! if it be Thy will, my God, that 
 I should fall away for ever, oh let me cry with my last 
 breath " Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him !" 
 Not a week ago, and my breast was the temple of the Holy 
 Ghost, filled with all joy and peace in believing ; and now 
 it is hell, black hell and raging despair. The deep waters 
 have come in upon my soul, and I fear I am going Oh ! my 
 dear, dear friend, do go and wrestle mightily with God in 
 prayer for me. 
 
 LETTER XI. TO THE SAME. 
 
 September 30th, 1835, A. S. 
 
 After my letter of yesterday, I should have thought it 
 my duty to write to relieve your mind, and to tell of the 
 greatness of redemption with which God hath redeemed me. 
 After a most frightful struggle with the powers of darkness, 
 during which I seemed to be treading the wine-press alone, 
 and just when I felt myself sinking, sinking, sinking in the 
 tremendous whirlpool, all on a sudden I felt the " everlasting 
 arms beneath me," bearing me up once more to the cheerful 
 light of day. My spirit seemed refreshed like a young eagle ; 
 my soul arose in the strength of my glorious, my ever-blessed 
 
1835.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 39 
 
 Kedeemer, and cracked in scorn the chains of darkness, like 
 the green withs of the strong man. Oh ! my soul and all 
 that is within me, praise the Lord. 
 
 LETTER XII. TO THE SAME. 
 
 University College, Oxford, 
 October llth, 1835, A. S. 
 
 I have this day resumed my attendance at 
 
 St. Peter's, which I hope will he now uninterrupted till the 
 month of June 1836 : hut many things may intervene, and 
 death among the rest. This gives us little uneasiness : God 
 caters for tomorrow ; we have nothing to do with it, and, so 
 far as peace of mind goes, are utterly indifferent about it. 
 
 I dined and spent the evening yesterday with D ; and 
 
 a wearisome evening it was to me. He was all kindness : 
 but the idle words, the frivolous conversation, the open and 
 coarse satire on the Evangelicals ! 
 
 I refrained even from good words, but it was pain and 
 grief to me : so I retired from the party before 8 o'clock, and 
 sought for rest to my troubled spirit in prayer and the dear, 
 dear Bible. I can enter fully into David's feelings, when he 
 says : " Mine eyes run down with tears because men keep not 
 Thy law :" but I do not bear a sufficiently bold witness for 
 that law. Would to God I had one tithe as much of the 
 simplicity of the dove as I have of the wisdom of the serpent ! 
 What a glorious conclusion that is of St. Paul's to a mind 
 jaded and harassed with worldly, Christless companions, 
 " There remaineth then a rest for the people of God." Oh ! 
 that we may both enjoy that rest in the bands of an eternal 
 brotherhood ! I grow more and more dissatisfied with the 
 world every day, and especially with people making a certain 
 profession of religion. My spirit is not near so catholic and 
 
40 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1835. 
 
 tolerant as it used to be. I see more clearly than ever that 
 exclusiveness is one of the leading features of the Gospel 
 of Jesus, and that much of what it is fashionable to call 
 verbal debate is in reality vital godliness. Consequently 
 every day is showing me more and more the value and the 
 blessedness of Christian friendship ; and thereby my gratitude 
 to God is greatly increased, and my love for you grows 
 daily, nay, almost hourly. So that it is hard to find 
 an evil from which the Christian will not educe some 
 
 blessing 
 
 I begin now to be very nervous about the backward state 
 of my preparations, and what is most provoking of all, 
 just now when I want to begin to read, an absolute fervour 
 of inspiration has carried away my spirit, like the wind in 
 its tempestuous strength, and I am up far away in regions 
 beyond Oxford honors, gathering the golden fruitage of sunny 
 thoughts and glorious imaginings. However it shall be 
 pent up, if it icill, and that is all I can say. Oh ! bitterly, 
 bitterly do I rue the day when I first put pen to paper, or 
 rather the sandpaper of fancy to the rusty swords of the 
 Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem 
 
 LETTER XIII. To THE SAME. 
 
 University College, Oxford, 
 Wednesday, November 11, 1835, A. S. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 I am now reading very hard, and beginning to enter- 
 tain an abiding sense of intellectual pleasure in a line of 
 reading hitherto distasteful to me. I begin to think that 
 I am a much better scholar than I used once to fancy myself : 
 and this new conceit arises not so much from a comparison 
 of myself with others as hearing men call Thucydides a 
 difficult author When a man comes to read the literature 
 
1835.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 41 
 
 of a bygone age systematically and engross ingly y the lights 
 shed on national character, the tone, style, and turn of mind 
 of an individual author, and the gleams of nobleness and 
 lovely feeling that every now and then burst upon us from the 
 ancient world, all evolve themselves clearly and beautifully 
 before the student. 
 
 I quoted Herbert just now : so a few words on him. I 
 never studied him as a poet till quite lately, and I regret my 
 never having done so. You will, when you read him, agree 
 with me that he takes a first rank among the poets of our 
 land. His individuality will prevent his ever being generally 
 popular : for to read him and appreciate him you must be a 
 thinking-mind, a quiet-thinking-mind, a religious-quiet-think- 
 ing-mind, a dutiful- Church-of-England-religious-quiet-think- 
 ing-mind. But with these qualifications you will, I am 
 sure, be delighted with a deep and attentive study of him. 
 To have read his Life is absolutely necessary even to the 
 intellectual understanding ; but of course you have read 
 Walton's Lives, and his among the rest. I cannot describe 
 to you my delight when late at night I close my classics, and 
 resign myself to the quiet influences of George Herbert ; the 
 fret of weariness melts down into the tranquil stillness of 
 devotion, and my spirit is sent with a gentle impulse to 
 tend its flock of quiet thoughts : 
 
 ' ' My God, no hymn for Thee ? 
 My soul 's a shepherd too ; a flock it feeds 
 
 Of thoughts and words and deeds. 
 The pasture is Thy word ; the streams Thy grace, 
 
 Enriching all the place !" 
 
 I feel that under the blessing of God the study of Herbert 
 has imparted to me more real, more felt humility and meek- 
 
42 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1835. 
 
 ness than ever I had before : and is I trust successfully 
 effecting the restoration of my mind's equilibrium, destroyed 
 by my recoil from Newman's theology and Platonism. So 
 true is that parenthesis of Butler's: "it is one of the pecu- 
 liar weaknesses of human nature, when, upon a comparison 
 of two things, one is found to be of greater importance 
 than the other, to consider this other of scarce any import- 
 ance at all," &c. And I think my unwarrantable suspicion 
 of a spirit of reverence was too vehement on account of the 
 blameable excess of that spirit before. 
 
 LETTEK XIV. To THE SAME. 
 
 University College, Oxford, 
 Sunday morning, December 6th, 1835. 
 
 The state of the University of Oxford is a very curious 
 one. It is in a state of religious dislocation, and yet in a 
 state of hopeful ferment. There are (blessed be the Lord 
 our God for it) many of its junior members now active on 
 the side of religion : to each his own peculiar track seems 
 by an unerring Providence to have been allotted. 
 
 Turn to the Church two thousand years ago or near it the 
 seeds of Prophecy were sown, yet ever and anon along the 
 history of the Church a blade, a slender blade had sprung up 
 to show us that the seed was yet alive ; and faith has fed 
 upon the little token, and her eyes are even now looking for 
 the harvest. Long years have passed since the bosom friend 
 of God saw from his lonely cave in Patmos the abomination 
 of desolation standing in the Holy Place, the Antichrist 
 slaughtering the witnesses in the streets of Jerusalem. Since 
 then the air has been impregnated with the decrees of God, 
 and frequently in unhealthy seasons of the world's history 
 there have been lowering murky tokens clustering on the 
 
1835.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 43 
 
 horizon, enough to show us that, though the fulfilment was 
 not come yet, still that the mystery of iniquity was even then 
 working, that the spirit of Antichrist was already in the 
 world. But now signs gather on signs, the Plot of Provi- 
 dence, if we may so speak, seems to be thickening ; and the 
 awful destinies of the Church are evolving with an extra- 
 ordinary rapidity every day. These are matters of fact, not 
 conjectural interpretations. But I may speak yet plainer. 
 The false position which religion now occupies in this 
 country, in Europe, and the world, calls with a might 
 not to be withstood upon every one whose abilities seem 
 peculiarly to fit him for it, to the more immediate service of 
 the sanctuary. If I have rightly estimated your intellect, 
 if I have rightly understood its particular capabilities, I 
 should have no hesitation in believing you to be called on 
 now. At any rate, it deserves consideration. If then, at the 
 end of the proposed year, the call of the Holy Ghost should 
 be upon you, your responsibility in refusing it will be beyond 
 what my words can express, and alas ! beyond what my 
 thoughts dare to conceive. But what do I mean by a call 
 of the Holy Ghost ? I will tell you an ardent affectionate 
 desire for the conversion of souls. Of course I do not mean 
 that kind of missionary feeling which the love of all who 
 love their Lord must ever entertain. It is something beyond 
 this. It is a something which makes the recipient's religion 
 different from other people's ; it brings this desire into more 
 prominence, makes it devour all other religious feelings; 
 it superinduces a painful desolate yearning over the lost 
 sheep of the House of Israel, like the yearning over an absent 
 friend. It is a private sacrament between a man and his 
 God. It is that which leavens his life, and to you I may 
 without peril add, it is a total oblivion of a man's own soul, 
 for verily that was no hyperbole of St. Paul, when he would 
 that his own name might be blotted from the Book of Life 
 
4A THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1835. 
 
 if but that his brethren would be saved thereby. Now, my 
 dearest A., if in such kind, though it may be not in such 
 degree, your feelings should be, then God be praised ! 
 " And in the meantime may the God of hope fill you with 
 all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope, 
 through the power of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 LETTER XIV. To THE SAME* 
 
 University College, Oxford, 
 Tuesday, December 22, A. S. 1835. 
 
 Have you never felt in some hour of lonely thought, 
 when stern self-examination has for awhile put by the curtain 
 and disclosed to you the depravity of your nature in its undis- 
 guised deformity in such an hour have you never felt an 
 aching void at your heart, a heavy dejection of spirits, and a 
 painful irritability which you knew not how to allay ? And 
 while your hand has been restlessly turning over the leaves 
 of your Bible that hallowed book to which the mourning 
 spirit ever betakes herself like a dove to its cote have you 
 never felt some wellknown oft-repeated text come home to 
 your mind with a strange unwonted power, flashing on you a 
 new and glorious lustre, and speaking to your troubled soul 
 in accents of gladness and of peace? I am inclined to 
 believe there is no spiritual Christian who has not experienced 
 this. 
 
 And then, while you have been gazing and gazing and 
 gazing still upon the sacred page, a series of peaceful sunny 
 thoughts begins to flow therefrom, like the bright rivers that 
 are gushing eternally from out the throne of God. Then 
 it is that the spirit drinks in the refreshing draught 
 then it is that the Holy Ghost resumes His reign within 
 the heart, and a season follows of spiritual exhilaration that 
 
1835.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 45 
 
 is almost a foretaste of those days when we shall be with 
 God, and drink of the rivers of His pleasures for evermore. 
 And it is then that the Christian comes forth into the world, 
 shedding around him as he moves that holy meditative 
 cheerfulness, which none but a disciple of the Blessed Jesus 
 can enjoy on earth, verifying those beautiful lines of Cowper : 
 
 " When one that holds communion with the skies 
 Hath filled his urn where these pure waters rise, 
 And once more mingles with us meaner things, 
 'Tis even as if an angel shook his wings ; 
 Immortal fragrance fills the circuit wide, 
 That tells us whence its treasures are supplied." 
 
46 THE LIFE AND LETTEES OF [1836. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 1836. 
 
 The reaction towards Calvinism in Frederick 
 Faber's mind, described in the letters given in the 
 last chapter, was not of long duration. The influ- 
 ences which had withdrawn him from it on his 
 first arrival at the University resumed their power, 
 and he became from that time forward a zealous 
 advocate of Anglican principles. His correspon- 
 dence supplies abundant evidence of their hold upon 
 him. The prerogatives of the Church, the necessity 
 of the sacraments, and other similar doctrines are 
 continually brought forward : from the study of 
 George Herbert he proceeds to Bishop Andrewes, 
 and in his correspondence Dr. "Wiseman's works are 
 quoted with approbation. 
 
 He did not however foresee, whilst carrying out 
 these principles to the utmost, that their natural 
 development would lead him to the Catholic 
 Church, but was still eager in his repudiation of 
 the claims of Rome. He wrote rejoicingly on the 
 9th June, 1836 : " Newman is delivering lectures 
 against the Church of Rome. I have just come 
 from a magnificent one on Peter's prerogative. He 
 admits the text in its full literal completeness, and 
 
1836.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 47 
 
 shows that it makes not one iota for the jurisdiction 
 of the Bishop of Rome." 
 
 He describes as follows the change of his reli- 
 gious views : 
 
 LETTER XVI. To A FRIEND. 
 
 University College, Oxford, 
 
 Sexagesima Sunday, 1836, A.S. 
 
 You desire me in your letter to report from time to 
 time the state of religious opinion in the University, and 
 certainly after Pusey's sermon last Sunday much might be 
 
 said. However, as K heard it, I shall say nothing, 
 
 except that I dare say he will give a widely different account 
 of it from what .1 should. Now I am going to give you some 
 plain reasons why I must decline being the chronicler of 
 religious opinion to you. 
 
 First and foremost, I have nothing to do with it. I have 
 had a great deal too much to do with it, but I have nothing 
 to do with it now. My own religious opinions are too much 
 altered to permit me to have anything to do with it. I will 
 explain myself. My religious education has been among 
 good and pious men of the party offensively, most offensively, 
 styled (not by themselves) Evangelicals. From them I 
 imbibed that view of the Christian Dispensation which goes 
 under their name in the world. My early prejudices are 
 all in favour of them, and I shall (I hope) retain an affec- 
 tionate reverence for them to the last. When I first came 
 up to Oxford in 1833, I attended Newman's church. I 
 heard opinions widely different (I am not speaking of eccle- 
 siastical opinions, remember that throughout) from those 
 I held. My intellect seemed to assent ; my heart did not : 
 and after a painful, (God is my witness,) I may add a dreadful 
 struggle, I thought I saw error in them, and rejected them. 
 
48 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1836. 
 
 So long then as I had much time for reading devotional 
 books, attending religious meetings, exhorting and praying 
 in the cottages of the poor, all was well. But quiet times 
 came on : my duties called me to continuous study in books 
 unconnected with religion. An occasional hour for private 
 prayer and daily searching of the Scriptures was all I could 
 seize. Then came the trial of that religious system I had 
 lived in. I had seemed to many of my friends to be much 
 advanced, for a young man, in spirituality of heart. But 
 alas ! I had laid nothing by : it was the natural result of 
 that system that nothing should be laid by. I had been as a 
 child walking across a room, helping itself by every chair and 
 table : in a word, I had lived upon the religious excitements 
 of the passing day, and I had yet to learn that a de die in 
 diem Christianity will not bring a man peace at the last. 
 I have much reason to thank God that I was not called upon 
 to pay the death I owe and must one day pay, while in this 
 state. Fearful must have been the despair of my last hour : 
 or on the other hand, more fearful still to have rushed into 
 the presence of my Judge, supported through the dark cold 
 time of dissolution by the tremendous delusion of excited 
 feelings. "How dear to me, God, Thy counsels are !" 
 
 You may perhaps think that I am unfair in charging these 
 results upon the so-called Evangelical system. But I think 
 not. Observe that I am not affirming the religion of every 
 member of that party to be, like mine, unstable as water. 
 Natural disposition, the mercy of God, many other concurrent 
 circumstances may prevent it. But (I speak merely as a 
 philosopher would) the result fairly and undisturbedly worked 
 out in the mind must from the reason of the thing be as I 
 have described it. 
 
 Could any one be selected more fitted for such an experi- 
 ment than myself? The collective weight of years of sin 
 and folly was not pressing on me. There was no violent 
 
1836.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 49 
 
 reaction from lost sinner to exulting saint. I was a boy' 
 eighteen years old, thoughtful from earliest infancy, of a 
 fervent heart, unacquainted with any other modes of Chris- 
 tian faith. But it is as well not to dwell too long on such 
 a subject. 
 
 I see that the Evangelical system feeds the heart at the 
 expense of the head ; and as man is constituted, what can be 
 more perilous ? I see that it tends to make religion a series 
 of frames of feeling; that with spiritual cowardice it flies 
 from forms for fear of formality ; that it makes an unnatural 
 union between the ideas of good works and legality, so as to 
 infuse into the whole man and his life's blood the subtle 
 baleful venom of Antinomianism ; that it looks at truth only 
 on one side. 
 
 I have therefore begun again to lay the foundations of my 
 religious character. Under God's grace, I will raise my 
 superstructure of love upon a solid groundwork of holjfear 
 the beginning of wisdom, the persuader of men. I have 
 submitted myself to a rigorous self-examination ; and I trust 
 I am slowly advancing in the daily practice of the more 
 quiet graces of meekness, humility, quietness, and childlike 
 obedience. 
 
 Now it is quite clear that with my character, (and every- 
 body else's too,) it is absolutely necessary that I should 
 religiously keep aloof from all controversy ; and that I should 
 be "in fastings often," and "in much prayer;" that as the 
 Blessed Apostle says, I should do violence buffet uironriao> 
 TO (rw/xa Koi SovAayjjyco and conquer my natural inclination to 
 that most unlovely, un-Christlike habit of disputation and 
 argument. True, it is my duty to watch the currents of 
 religious opinion flowing here and there in the Church. 
 Nay, it is my duty to do more than watch them. I will go 
 and speak about them to my God, and none shall hear but 
 
 He 
 
 4 
 
50 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1836. 
 
 I would fain turn away, as far as may be, from this 
 hubbub and perturbation, and listen to my God, who calls 
 me up into the mount to be with Him. And it is good 
 for me to be there. After Moses had fasted, the Lord God 
 passed with gracious proclamation before him ; after Elias 
 fasted, the Almighty chose that season for coming to His 
 servant in the still small voice ; after the Lord of all crea- 
 tures had Himself fasted, then was the time for angels to 
 minister. Surely God's view of fasting must be different 
 from man's ; for greatly has He blessed me in it. And with 
 fond eyes I turn to the primitive Church, and sit at the feet 
 of her apostles, bishops, and doctors, studying that system 
 of penitential discipline which this self-indulgent age derides ; 
 and I doubt not that I shall find, as they have left on record 
 that they found, that the " girdle of celibacy and the lamp 
 of watching" stood them in good stead in times of trial. 
 
 The year 1836 was an eventful one to Mr. Faber. 
 He was compelled by the pressure of ill-health, as 
 stated in the preceding chapter, to put off the 
 examination for his degree from Easter Term until 
 November, and he left Oxford on the 9th of May for 
 a short visit to the North, returning early in June, 
 in time for the recital of his prize-poem in the 
 Theatre on the 15th. He was prevented by similar 
 indisposition from devoting himself to reading 
 during the long vacation, and when the result of 
 the examination was published, his name appeared 
 in the second class. The examiners were Mr. 
 Oakeley, the Eev. H. B. Wilson, Sir Travers 
 Twiss, and Dr. Claughton, and although they were 
 precluded by the statute from saying how they 
 
1836.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 51 
 
 had voted, it was generally understood that the 
 decision which excluded him from the first class 
 was not arrived at unanimously, but that their 
 opinions being equally divided, the senior examiner 
 gave the casting vote against him. 
 
 This disappointment was closely followed by 
 another. He was defeated by Professor Donkin in 
 a contest for a fellowship in his own College. In 
 order to recover himself after this double failure, 
 and to recruit his exhausted strength, he accom- 
 panied his brother, the Rev. P. A. Eaber, to Ger- 
 many at the close of the year. They remained a 
 few weeks with some English friends at Mannheim, 
 and a day was given to Heidelberg, a record of 
 which appeared in his first poetical volume. 
 
 Shortly after his return in January, 1837, Mr. 
 Paber was elected to another vacant fellowship at 
 University College, and he also carried off the 
 Johnson Divinity Scholarship, open to all Bachelors 
 of Arts, for which there was considerable competi- 
 tion. The Rev. J. H. Newman was one of the 
 examiners. The Johnson Mathematical Scholar- 
 ship was awarded at the same time to Professor 
 Donkin. Mr. Paber also wrote an English essay 
 for the Chancellor's Prize, on the Classical taste 
 and character compared with the Romantic, but 
 without success. He failed again in the competition 
 for the Ellerton Theological Prize, on the Mission 
 of St. John the Baptist. 
 
52 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1836. 
 
 His letters relating to this period are given in the 
 order of their dates : 
 
 LETTEB XVIL To A FRIEND (A.) 
 
 University College, 
 February 18, 1836, A. S. 
 
 We are waiting in sad suspense regarding the Theo- 
 logical Chair. There is a complete hush at present : the 
 subject is seldom brought forward, and every one seems 
 quietly waiting the result, which I fear is not doubtful. 
 Newman's pamphlet has, I think, done very much to stop 
 the personal controversial turn which some were taking in the 
 matter I mean those who oppose Hampden merely because 
 he is a Whig, Radical, or what not, in politics. I must 
 confess that the manly Christianlike quiet zeal with which 
 the whole opposition was conducted has given me a ^higher 
 idea of the religious temper of the University than I ever had 
 before; and I only trust a confirmation of the appointment 
 may be met in like manner. 
 
 LETTEB XVIII. To THE SAME. 
 
 Stockton-on-Tees, May 22, 1836, A. S. 
 The Festival of Whitsunday. 
 
 We find that, in all ages, and under every conceivable 
 form, there has been a spirit of Antichrist, moving now in 
 the front ranks, now in the background of society, as 
 suited best its master's purpose, as an antagonist and dis- 
 turbing force to the peace of the Church. Next it occurred 
 to me that it was of importance to see whether there were 
 not certain invariable characteristics of this spirit by which 
 we might always know from what quarter we might look for 
 danger. The spirit of the age will always be found to be the 
 spirit of wickedness and sin : and the way in which the 
 
1836.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 53 
 
 arch-fiend works is this ; he manages to insinuate a religious 
 modification of the spirit of the age into some portion of the 
 Church. So that that portion is unconsciously doing the 
 work of the devil. Thus, if I am asked at any particular 
 epoch of the Church's annals what the antichristian spirit 
 was at that particular time, I first look for the spirit of the 
 age, and when I have found it, I look for some school in 
 the Church whose teaching is the spirit of the age Chris- 
 tianized. I do not think I have heen veiy clear : but look 
 what is the case in the present day. The spirit of the age is 
 mercantile ; in fact, utility. Now look at a party in the 
 Church, sincere, I do most firmly believe, but whose spirit is 
 utility -visible results tangible harvest. These are men 
 who decry forms, who think magnificence misplaced in 
 churches, and imagine church-room within four walls of brick 
 to be as good as in a temple fit, so merciful is He, for the 
 House of the Most High. You will see now what I mean. 
 Utility is the great implement of the evil one just now, and 
 it has thus been insinuated into the Church. In other 
 words, what is called the religion of the day is always the 
 antichristian power most active against the Church of God. 
 
 LETTEE XIX. To THE SAME. 
 
 New Stranton, July 21, 1836, A. S. 
 Thursday evening. 
 
 Since I saw you I have read almost the whole of 
 Hooker, with Keble's preface. This last seems to me to 
 be a valuable essay, especially as throwing a good deal of 
 light upon the different schools of early English theology : 
 but there is a tone about the writer which differs more than 
 I can express from the dignified gentleness and stately 
 vehemence of Newman or Pusey. There is a little infusion 
 of acrimony, not conveyed as Newman would have conveyed 
 
64 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1836. 
 
 it, in strong censure and mild language, but insinuated by 
 epithets into the whole texture of the Preface. The more 
 I study Hooker the more astonished I am that anybody 
 should ever have imagined him a low Churchman. I can 
 understand Arnold when he praises the first four books so 
 highly, and condemns the fifth as unworthy the writer of 
 the former ones. At the same time Hooker is not so high as 
 many others are ; and Keble shows that he individually raised 
 theology from the low views (comparatively low) of Jewel and 
 Cranmer, and he ascribes the advance shortly afterwards made 
 to the discovery of the genuineness of Ignatius' Epistles, 
 not known in Hooker's days, and hardly quoted at all, even 
 while he is arguing for the divine right of episcopacy. Still 
 Hooker goes thus far (v. 68) : "Now the privilege of the 
 visible Church of God is to be herein like the Ark of Noah, 
 that, for anything we know to the contrary, all without it 
 are lost sheep ;" and he makes the visible Church alone to 
 have that " commissioned ministry" which " hath to dispose 
 of that flesh which was given for the life of the world, and 
 that blood which was poured out to redeem souls ; to whom 
 the promise of the keys, the power of the Holy Ghost for 
 castigation and relaxation of sin was given." 
 
 LETTER XX. To THE SAME. 
 
 New Stranton, August 5, A. S. 1836. 
 Friday evening. 
 
 The more I reflect upon the ancient Catholic doctrine 
 of Baptismal grace, and the consequent view of Scriptural 
 repentance, the more do I feel myself humbled and abased in 
 God's sight. There is no possibility of measuring the harm 
 done to a man's religious habits by the admission and 
 temporary entertainment of an error, however ignorance 
 might seeni to excuse such an admission. I feel even now 
 
1836.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 55 
 
 the trammels of that human system of which all my religious 
 friends were advocates. It impedes my progress whichever 
 way I turn, albeit my intellect under (I hope and truly 
 believe) the teaching of the Spirit Who is in the Church 
 most fully acknowledges the unscriptural errors of that 
 system. It is very hard, accustomed as I have been to look 
 upon God even as such an one as myself, to root up the 
 idea of repentance which in such a school I have learned. 
 The dreadful facility of turning to God inculcated there 
 throws such a complete mist over the face of the depths of 
 the sacraments that it perverts and distorts all my views 
 of the symmetry of the scheme of Redemption. It seems 
 as if I never could get free from the entanglements of that 
 base theology. However, it is in such difficulties as these 
 that I find the doctrine of the Church such an inestimable 
 privilege. There I cease to be an individual. I seem to 
 fall into my own place quietly and without disturbance ; and 
 the noiseless path of childlike obedience, slow as my progress 
 must be, here a little and there a little, offers a calm and 
 peaceful prospect of spiritual growth. And the disciplines 
 recommended by her, and therefore to an affectionate son 
 enjoined, afford room for the unostentatious exercise of such 
 selfdenial as may bring the flesh into obedience to all godly 
 motions. 
 
 LETTER XXI. To THE SAME-. 
 
 New Stranton, Hartlepool, 
 
 Monday, August 22nd, 1836, A. S. 
 
 You have quite misapprehended my letter, and conse- 
 quently my present state of mind, at the same time that your 
 letter shows me how widely we differ in theological sentiment. 
 In nothing more is this shewn than in what you say of 
 " Make ventures.'' That sermon is just what I should have 
 pointed to, to give you a clear idea of my own idea of the 
 
56 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1836. 
 
 doctrine of Faith. In the sense therefore of your letter I 
 have " departed from the evangelical doctrine of Faith :" and 
 it is because I have departed from their sad notions of 
 Sacramental Grace 
 
 If by an attitude of hostility to "evangelical" (I use the 
 word for the last time) opinions, you mean bitterness to their 
 advocates, or bitterness against the opinions themselves, but 
 arising from the evil they have or I suppose them to have 
 done me, you are quite mistaken. 
 
 Let me not be misunderstood ; I trust I feel in true charity 
 with all the members of that party ; but I cannot, my dear 
 A., I dare not speak of them as you do 
 
 I hold them to be fundamentally wrong wrong in their 
 doctrine of Faith above all, because wrong in their doctrine 
 of the Sacraments. There can be no such thing as a con- 
 sistent low Churchman. There is no stopping short of 
 Calvinism, if you have once left the primitive doctrine of 
 the Sacraments : because your faith must depend upon 
 election, and election you must have separated from the 
 Sacraments beforehand. By adopting carnal views of the 
 Sacraments, a great handle was given against Kome. They 
 were therefore adopted. Then went of course, because of 
 its necessary union with the Holy Sacraments, the doctrine 
 of the " Church." Then the primitive ecclesiastical election 
 seemed, as well it might, preposterous; it was forthwith 
 thrown overboard, and then there was Calvinism. Some 
 have seen their way out of it by the help of our liturgy ; and 
 having taken one step out, there they stand betwixt and 
 between, theological anomalies : if their opinions be true, 
 the necessity of Calvinism is demonstrable, as you acknow- 
 ledged to me viva voce two years ago. I have hurriedly given 
 you not an argument, but the points of progress through 
 which my own mind has passed. You can easily fill up the 
 outline. 
 
1836.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 57 
 
 LETTER XXII. To THE KEY. J. B. MORRIS. 
 
 University College, Oxford, 
 Saturday, Oct. 15th, 1836, A. S. 
 
 I suppose the scheme of Newman and Pusey to which 
 you allude is the translation of the Fathers. I have only 
 heard of it incidentally, and shall be very anxious to hear 
 further and fuller upon it from you. I should be very glad 
 to do anything I can : but as I do not know either P. or N., 
 it is not likely that I shall be applied to. My whole energies 
 shall by God's grace be devoted to the welfare of His Church, 
 and I should be truly rejoiced to find myself anywise 
 employed in such a work already : more especially where 
 the object is a wider dissemination of the majestic teaching 
 of the old Catholic theology, 
 
 LETTER XXIII, To THE SAME. 
 
 October 21st, 1836. 
 
 I am very grateful to you for having mentioned my 
 name to Pusey, as I should certainly like to have some settled 
 Church occupation as soon as I could. At a time when 
 heresy has selected the foolishness of the old Church for 
 the object of its disdainful wisdom, it seems to be a duty 
 on all who have the opportunity, to become Hebrew scholars 
 that they may defend their own selves and those whom they 
 can influence from the desecrating effect of shallow and 
 flippant interpretation. And as to the Friday evenings, I do 
 but reckon admission there as another of those Oxford 
 privileges which we make so light of because we have them. 
 
 Z. will bring with him St. Cyprian De Orat. Domin : 
 I am sorry St. Athanasius has no treatise on the subject. 
 
68 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1836. 
 
 You will find it an ennobling task to catch some of the echoes 
 of great things, as they rise out of the depths of that 
 miraculous prayer. Alas ! of all the objections urged against 
 our Common Prayer, what more miserable than the complaint 
 of the over-repetition of that holy form of Truth ? I always 
 find that some One petition or other quite absorbs me while 
 I use the prayer, and thus I am glad of its recurrence, which 
 gives me the opportunity of being again absorbed by some 
 other petitions. To say nothing of other more obvious 
 reasons, it seems to me that we do not enough consider the 
 science of prayer, the scientific habit of devotion. It is 
 strange to contrast the systematicncss of the Primitive Church 
 with the straggling, extemporaneous irreverence of most of 
 the modern worship about us. Is not the Saviour's form to 
 prayer what the bishop is to the visible Church a centre 
 of unity and would not the positions occupied by it in the 
 Prayer Book seem to show that it was so deemed of by the 
 framers? But Pater Nosters we are told are popish, and 
 so we are dismissed, and the theology of the day will go on : 
 but stop I give you an extract from the lectures of Dr. 
 Wiseman, the Komanist. The allusion is to the Puritans ; 
 " But after these came a generation that knew not those days, 
 men with arms upfolded on their bosoms, and brows bent 
 in perpetual frownings ; and when they came before her, she 
 found that they had learnt rebellion from her example, and 
 from hpr lips had caught up the words of scorn and infamy, 
 wherewith she had disgraced her mother. And they cast 
 her down and trampled her in the dust, and did make her 
 eat her very arm for sorrow. Then indeed, by the arm of 
 power she was once more set up, but only to undergo a 
 crueller and more lingering doom ; to see, year after year, 
 her worshippers slinking away, and her temples less fre- 
 quented, and her many rivals' power exalted, as well as their 
 numbers ever more increased. And even now are not men 
 
1836.] FREDERICK "WILLIAM FABER. 59 
 
 dicing over her spoils, and quarrelling how they had beat 
 be divided ? Do they not speak irreverently of her, and 
 weigh her utility in iron scales, and value in silver pieces the 
 souls she serves? Is she not treated with contumely by 
 those that call themselves her children ? Is not her very 
 existence reduced by them to a question of worldly and 
 temporal expediency ?" 
 
 I read these lectures and I could only say, we walk by 
 faith and not by sight. And oh ! when he talks of our theory 
 and our rites and our liturgy, which we use not "I cannot 
 but look upon her as I should upon one whom God's hand 
 hath touched, in whom the light of reason is -darkened, 
 though the feelings of the heart have not been seared ; who 
 presses to her bosom and cherishes there the empty locket 
 which once contained the image of all she loved on earth, 
 and continues to rock the cradle of her departed child !" 
 
 LETTER XXIV. To A FRIEND (A.) 
 
 University College, Oxford. 
 Saturday night, Nov. 18th, 1836, A. S. 
 
 You will be sorry to hear that I have had a sorry 
 viva voce. It was a province in which I was far too nervous 
 ever to shine, and the knowledge that I needed a good one 
 added to rny confusion. My divinity W. and D. say was 
 very good : I recollect nothing of it except that it began 
 upon the fulfilment of the Law, and ended in the seven 
 Churches of Asia. Analogy fairish Oakeley was obscure in 
 his questions, though I am a prejudiced judge. I went on 
 swimmingly in the third and seventh Books of the Ethics. 
 Oakeley then took me into the sixth, and the minutiae of the 
 Book, putting his questions thus : what is Aristotle's 
 argument in such a chapter ? A notion flashed across me 
 that they suspected I had not read my books, and as I had 
 
60 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1836. 
 
 not the Ethics very minutely up, I lost all recollection, could 
 not understand Oakejey, and did not know what I said. 
 Your brother says that from that point my examination 
 became bad, but that he himself had the utmost difficulty 
 in detecting Oakeley's meaning. Wilson put me on in queer 
 bits of Hellenics, Thucydides and Herodotus, and gave me 
 a most absurd and incoherently meagre examination, at which 
 I was much disgusted. Oakeley chose the most dry short-line 
 dialogue in the Electra, which I construed right, but made 
 three false quantities, not knowing the metre : then a chorus 
 of Alcestis which I did all right, and Horace Sat. ii. 8, 
 which I missed two words of. I cannot think that if I 
 needed (which surely I did) a viva voce to redeem past 
 mistakes, I can now possibly succeed. However it cannot be 
 helped. 
 
 A season like the past is sadly unfavourable to the spiritual 
 man, and I require a season now to collect myself again, as 
 it sets one's spirit all abroad and incompact ; and in the 
 intervals of hard reading, at least I find it so, thoughts are 
 allowed to travel too much unquestioned over the highway 
 of one's heart. 
 
 LETTER XXV. To THE SAME. 
 
 University College, Oxford, 
 
 November 21, 1836, A. S. 
 
 Of course nothing definite is known about the classes, 
 but what little is known is very much against me. But if 
 it were not so painful to see Frank's miserable dejection and 
 wretchedness, I should not feel it much. I am quietly reading 
 theology, have written a good lump of my Theological Essay, 
 which I shall bring up with me, and am making prepara- 
 tions for beginning Plato. So that considering how long, 
 
1836.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 61 
 
 and oh ! how painfully, I have been kept from my favourite 
 studies, I am really a happy man. I think happier, because 
 calmer, from my disappointment. But enough of that sub- 
 ject for the present. 
 
 I want now to begin to fall into some system of reading, 
 and an idea has struck me upon which I want to have advice. 
 Of course, the substance of theology (considering the Sacred 
 Scriptures as the subject-matter) is contained in the Fathers, 
 who must be earnestly perused ; and I have been eagerly 
 anticipating the time when I could commence ; but now that 
 it is come, I begin to think that I am hardly fit for such a 
 line of reading, and that on other grounds it is unadvisable. 
 1. Because, though Biblical criticism occupies a theolo- 
 gian always, it ought to be all in all at first. 2. The 
 elements of Hebrew will take a good deal of mastering. 3. 
 I ought to be a better classic. 4. A few years' reading 
 of our own theology will give me a more extended and 
 accurate acquaintance with modern controversies, and I shall 
 then be able to apply the judicium Beatse EcclesiaB Catholics 
 more effectually. 
 
 LETTER XXVI. To THE REV. J. B. MORRIS. 
 
 University College, Oxford, 
 
 St. Andrew's Day, 1836. 
 
 I knew of my failure some days before the Class List 
 was out, and I will not conceal that my disappointment was 
 very, very bitter. For three days, ill in body as well as mind, 
 I had a grievous struggle. Many were the hard thoughts 
 of my dear Lord which were suggested to me ; but by His 
 help I conquered : and the conflict ended in such a mortifica- 
 tion of all proud thoughts and vain opinions of myself that I 
 was left in a calmness and evenness of spirit, more refreshing 
 to me than I can express. I did not think it possible to 
 
62 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1836. 
 
 have derived so many and so great blessings from any 
 disappointment whatsoever. 
 
 The Fellowship Examination begins tomorrow, but there 
 is no doubt of Donkin's election. This is part of the other 
 failure, an inevitable part, that the getting a Fellowship will 
 be delayed, I hope not prevented. If however it should be 
 so, and my failure in the schools should, as is most probable, 
 hinder my getting pupils in sufficient numbers, I must alter 
 my plans of life, and seek for some curacy in the country. 
 All this is at least very probable. But I trust I shall be 
 enabled to follow cheerfully my Master's bidding. By His 
 grace I have but one object, to do His will and to promote 
 His glory. He must choose the manner and the place. I 
 thought an academical sphere best suited for me; if He 
 decides otherwise, that decision must be true. But the 
 morrow will take thought for the things of itself. Pray for 
 me, that I may remain at ease, and ready to be carried 
 whither the Providence of circumstances may lead me. 
 
 Thursday. The Fellowship Election is over, and I have 
 had a fresh disappointment ; but I am still cheerful. Fiat 
 voluntas Dei : and He will take charge for me of the " things 
 of tomorrow." On Saturday I set off for Germany, from 
 whence I will write to you at great length. 
 
 My dear J , I am this day moving all my books out of 
 
 my dear old rooms ; you, who love Oxford so much, can 
 enter into my feelings, and will excuse the shortness of this 
 letter. God bless you and keep you. Ora pro nobis. 
 
1837.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 63 
 
 LETTER XXVIL To A FKIEND (A.) 
 
 University College, Oxford, 
 
 January 26, 1837, A. S. 
 
 Now I dare say you have by this time forgotten almost 
 all you said upon the subject of religion, especially as I feel 
 confident the letter was a hasty production ; consequently you 
 must let me recall it somewhat accurately to your memory. 
 It was in answer to my having called you a thorough 
 Protestant : and it branches off to a general disquisition 
 upon theological opinions. My dear A., it is not my 
 intention to argue the points of difference between us : we 
 will never have an argument on the subject again as long as 
 we live : it is not safe. No, I am not going to argue, I 
 am going to complain. You say "you do not care if I only 
 stick to Pusey" In this short sentence you assume as 
 granted that you stand on a superior and truer ground 
 of theological opinion, and although you deplore my belong- 
 ing to a class of opinionists who are, te judice, quite wrong, 
 yet "you do not care" (what an expression!) if I only stick 
 to Pusey. 
 
 This is only one instance of what I think the pervading 
 tone of your letter a quiet assumption of a man in the 
 right over a man in the wrong. Again : what are those 
 uncharitable dashes under Pusey's name ? Are they not 
 to imply censure of Newman ? Is it impossible to praise 
 one saint of God, but you must aim darts at another ? 
 Blame, reprobate, and give reasons for so doing, as you like, 
 but never, never let a religious character be censured by 
 implication. What faults you may charge on Newman I 
 cannot guess, and for your sake I will not attempt to 
 conjecture : but you know his reputed character for piety 
 
64 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1837. 
 
 and selfdenial, and therefore, as a Christian, you should 
 have eschewed such a contemptuous mode of disposing of 
 him ; and you knew too what I thought of him, and therefore, 
 as my friend, might have praised one whom I love without 
 so hitter a reflection on another to whom I owe a deht which 
 God only can and surely will repay him. But it is a serious 
 and a solemn thing to adopt as one's own any religious 
 tenets whatsoever ; it is a thing which runs up into eternity. 
 And it is somewhere written they are dreadful words and 
 very hard to he oheyed "call no man master." Oh A., 
 put side hy side with those words your way of designating 
 your friend's religious opinions, " 1 do not care if you only 
 stick to Pusey." I know you did not write those words 
 with thoughtful earnestness. I care not for any objections 
 made to the obedience some men pay to the K/H'CUS T&V SOKL^V 
 avSpwv. No ridicule will drive me from it God has made 
 all men for it, and me among the rest but I do care for the 
 offensive exaggerated statement of it contained in your words. 
 I do not wish to find my own road to my Saviour : but I 
 do wish my friend to acknowledge, what he does not for a 
 moment doubt, that my allegiance to that Saviour is always 
 too predominant a feeling in my heart to allow of my sticking 
 to any human guide. 
 
 It is painful to hear my religious belief so talked of as my 
 friend has chosen to talk: but it is far, far more painful 
 that he should have descended to talk in a light and trifling 
 tone of his own. " I would rather err with others (aliqua- 
 tenus) than be right with them." Is it possible that this 
 should be the earnest conviction of one who would educate 
 his soul in the love, the entire, unalloyed, unfaltering love of 
 truth ? Is it possible that such a sentence could have been 
 begotten of anything but a blind precipitate party-spirit 
 .such as never has actuated A. in any action of his life 
 
1837.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 65 
 
 hitherto, and God grant may not actuate that most solemn 
 of all actions, his adoption of theological opinions ? 
 
 Again, you talk very high things and very big words of 
 party spirit, as if you thought it were the actuating spring 
 and exclusive characteristic of those from whom you differ. 
 So you have written, and so you do not think. 
 
 I will not dwell upon your implied censure of me for 
 party spirit, because in the same breath you twit me a little 
 harshly with my change, and the two accusations are incom- 
 patible ; for party spirit is of course always enlisted against 
 change. But party spirit is not the worst vice of a religious 
 man. Like all other moral evils it is mixed with much of 
 good, and ever, so Heaven hath willed, with most of good 
 when circumstances render it most necessary. It oftentimes 
 requires an affectionate discrimination to distinguish between 
 party spirit and the being zealously affected in a good cause 
 being jealous for the Most High. 
 
 Now A. I have done my duty: I have said, right or 
 wrong it matters not, what I think. I have used, it may be, 
 some harsh language, some unaffectionate terms, and I have 
 wounded your feelings. All this I know I more than know 
 it, I feel it ; if I loved you less I would not have done it ; and 
 therefore, as I have said this much, I will dare to add some- 
 what more. 
 
 I will dare to divine what is your present state of mind, 
 and what is that modification of character which you appear 
 to me to be undergoing. You are living in an atmosphere 
 which is not congenial, among people who do not, cannot 
 understand you ; and all this is acting with unresisted sway 
 upon your peculiar pliability of disposition. You have come 
 to think that almost wrong which you once thought right. 
 You live in dread of that bugbear, imagination ; you believe 
 all the peculiarities of your character to be therefore defects, 
 
 and so you live on, fighting every day against nature, and if 
 5 
 
66 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1837. 
 
 you are victorious you will be miserable. My dearest, dearest 
 A., throw down all those barricades with which you are 
 encircling yourself, as if it were virtuous to do so simply 
 because the action gives you pain, like a poor Brahmin of 
 the East. Let all those exquisite sensibilities, which are 
 the beauty of your character, gush freely out, as once they 
 did ; be more fearless, more impetuous, more childish, more 
 natural. True, you are living in the world, and the touch 
 of cold hearts paralyzes you, and your sensibilities are 
 chafed, and you are altogether bewildered by the strange 
 sadness of the wilderness you walk through. But those 
 sensibilities were meant for immortality : oh ! beware of 
 stifling them here, because they happen at times to stand 
 in your way. Why try to be an old man before your time ? 
 Why have such a morbid dread of any change of thought 
 or opinion ? It only springs from a subtle pride of intellect. 
 Young men must be always changing : a young man's 
 opinions, though of great importance, are of little value. 
 Why then view that as a curse which a philosophic truth- 
 loving mind should rather deem a blessing the ability to 
 change ? Why seek a premature experience ? For what 
 is experience but that brawny callousness of character which 
 the ever falling blows of misfortune are daily tending to 
 produce ? 
 
 You are a young man, and should be full of ethereal hopes 
 and glorious aspirations and heavenly light; and yet you 
 are hourly struggling not only to appear, but to be what 
 you are not, to displace your natural disposition from its 
 domestic shrine, where He who formed it placed it. The 
 chance of your succeeding is a thought most horrible. Oh ! 
 could I bear you away where I can fearlessly allow my spirit 
 at certain times to go ; far, far above, traversing the region 
 where purity is, and which is the dwelling-place of vast and 
 solemn truths ; you would find how it braced you up for 
 
1837.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 67 
 
 the cheerful steady performance of the " common round, the 
 trivial task" of daily, weekly life. 
 
 But what is all this to you ? Does it seem the raving of 
 an unbridled fancy, the ebullition of mere boyishness, 
 musical indeed, as is the murmur of a brook, but as soon 
 to be forgotten ? If so, then I am TOO LATE ! 
 
 There is much matter for thought in this letter : and I 
 will add one word more. During the last three years, by 
 word and deed, you have had many an earnest of my 
 unwavering love : account this letter one, which has cost 
 me a sacrifice I feared I could never make, and given my 
 heart a wrench that makes me sick. It matters not what 
 you think of my letter : it is a proof at any rate of my 
 affection, such as you have never had before. " God give 
 you a right judgment in all things." 
 
 LETTER XXVIII. To THE KEY. J. B. MORRIS. 
 
 University College, Oxford, 
 
 January 31, 1837, A. S. 
 
 On Saturday night, my dear J , I was elected 
 
 Fellow of University; and my heart is so full that I can 
 only say with Bishop Taylor, "What am I that the great 
 God of men and angels should make a special decree in 
 heaven for me, and send out an angel of blessing, and instead 
 of condemning and ruining me, as I miserably have deserved, 
 distinguish me from many my equals and betters, by this 
 and many other special acts of grace and favour?" I seem, 
 as it were, landed in a harbour where I would be, hemmed in 
 on all sides by such means of grace as are not ordinarily 
 to be found elsewhere : and God grant that my growth 
 may be proportionable. Hitherto I have been foolish and 
 thoughtless, and over self-indulgent : I have now but one 
 wish, to employ my whole life in doing the little good to 
 
68 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1837. 
 
 Christ and His Church which my dear Master has rendered 
 me capable of doing in my generation. 
 
 Many thanks for your little poem : I shall not soon or 
 easily forget it. I was not at the Blessed Eucharist last 
 Sunday, because the examination had occupied the four 
 preceding days, and somewhat excited me; and therefore 
 you must transfer the same holy thoughts to next Sunday, 
 when the Feast is, as usual on the first Sunday in Lent, 
 celebrated in our own chapel. Be assured that I shall pray 
 most earnestly there that in this season of dimness and 
 severe heart- searching 
 
 " Our God, though He be far before, 
 May turn, and take us by the hand ; and more, 
 May strengthen our decays." 
 
1837.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 
 
 CHAPTEB, IV. 
 1837-42, 
 
 As Prederick Faber had always most ^earnestly 
 desired to devote himself to the service of God, 
 he looked forward eagerly to the time when he 
 could receive ordination as a minister of the 
 Church of England. As soon therefore as his elec- 
 tion to a fellowship gave him a secure position, 
 he set to work vigorously at the task of preparing 
 himself for orders. At this period he was a devoted 
 Anglican, full of hope that the movement begun 
 at Oxford would spread over the whole country, 
 and indoctrinate with its Catholic principles the 
 English Protestant Establishment. It is plain, 
 however, from expressions let fall in his correspon- 
 dence, that he was not without misgivings concern- 
 ing the theory which he upheld, and even that the 
 great religious change which he afterwards made 
 cast an occasional shadow over his mind. 
 
 Desirous of obtaining some acquaintance with 
 the works of the earlier Christian writers, he offered 
 his services to the compilers of the " Library of the 
 Fathers," and the translation of the Books of St. 
 Optatus was assigned to him. His share in this 
 undertaking procured for him an introduction to 
 Mr. Newman, of whose school he was already an 
 
70 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1837. 
 
 ardent disciple, and who, more than any one else, 
 influenced and directed in after years the course of 
 his religious life. 
 
 " My whole time is now so occupied," he wrote 
 to Mr. Morris on the 17th of April, 1837, "that 
 I have harely an hour to myself for letter- writing. 
 I have four pupils; and besides this a good long 
 list of hooks to read for the Bishop of Bipon; add 
 to which I am translating the seven Books of 
 Optatus, Bishop of Milevis, on the schism of the 
 Donatists ; so that you see my hands are already 
 more full than they ought to he. However, blessed 
 be God ! my health is extremely good, and if any- 
 thing, improving ; the anxiety attendant upon read- 
 ing for the schools wore me down very much ; and 
 of course it is much to be free of that." 
 
 "When the long vacation arrived, Mr. Paber took 
 a small reading party to Ambleside, near the head 
 of "Windermere, and thus began a connection with 
 that place which lasted for many years. Among 
 the friendships which he formed there the most 
 valued was that of Mr. Wordsworth, whose poetry 
 had been the object of his early admiration, and 
 had contributed largely to the formation of his own 
 poetical spirit. In after years he used to describe 
 the long rambles which they took together over the 
 neighbouring mountains, the poet muttering verses 
 to himself in the intervals of conversation. 
 
 On the 6th of August he received deacon's orders 
 in St. "Wilfrid's Cathedral of Bipon, from Dr. 
 
1839.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 71 
 
 Longley, his old master at Harrow, and at once 
 began to assist in parochial work at Ambleside, 
 generally preaching two sermons a week. Here he 
 remained until the end of the long vacation, when 
 he returned to Oxford. 
 
 The two following years were passed in similar 
 occupations. His preaching was very successful, 
 and some little tracts on Church matters which 
 he occasionally published obtained an extensive 
 circulation. In 1839 he received priest's orders from 
 Bishop Bagot at Oxford, on the 26th of May, a 
 day dear to him in later times as the Feast of his 
 holy father, St. Philip Neri. 
 
 In the course of the same summer he paid a 
 short visit to Belgium and the Rhenish Provinces, 
 from which he returned with a strong feeling of 
 dislike to the ecclesiastical practices which he 
 had witnessed in those countries, and with some- 
 thing like contempt for the intellectual condition 
 of the Catholic clergy. His judgment was too 
 hastily formed to be just, and he was obviously 
 unaware of many of the drawbacks under which the 
 Church was there labouring. 
 
 But little of his correspondence during this 
 period has been preserved. A divergence of views 
 on religious subjects had arisen between him and 
 the friend to whom many of the letters already 
 quoted were addressed, and who, it would appear 
 from Mr. Faber's remonstrances, hesitated to com- 
 mit himself to the advance which was daily 
 
72 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1837. 
 
 taking place in Tractarian principles. Their inter- 
 change of communication became less frequent, 
 and Mr. Faber's continually increasing occupations 
 prevented him from writing with his former regu- 
 larity to other correspondents. The following 
 extracts have been made from his letters to different 
 Mends in the years 1837-8-9. 
 
 LETTER XXIX. To A FRIEND. 
 
 Stockton-on-Tees, 
 March 17th, Friday morning, 1837, A. S. 
 
 There is to my mind a rudeness (so to speak) and an 
 immodesty in the lucid, as they are called, expositions of the 
 day. I abhor to see man's salvation thrown into a demon- 
 strative syllogism, or the things of God weighed by the short 
 measures of man, and not by the measures of the sanctuary. 
 I wish to see a mind bowed down before the seven-branched 
 candlestick of the Spirit, deeply influenced by the brooding 
 air of the temple, the fumes of the frankincense, and the 
 unearthly light of the glorious Pillar of Presence. I like to 
 Bee it just glancing with half averted eye to a deep, 
 mysterious subject, scarcely daring to rest there because it 
 feels the ground so holy. All things around him are full 
 of God, and God Visible is before him, so that, as Solomon 
 Bays, his words are not only wary, but FEW. 
 
1837.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 73 
 
 LETTER XXX. To THE KEY. J. B. MORRIS. 
 
 Stockton-on-Tees, 
 
 Easter Even, 1837. 
 
 I have been spending great part of this morning in 
 the study of Newman's Prophetical Office of the Church ; a 
 deep and difficult hook, which I foresee will give rise to 
 abundant cavil among the ill-instructed. God prosper it 
 in the world, and extend those old and wholesome views 
 far and wide among us. To my mind only I am young 
 and sanguine the Anglican Church of the present day 
 reminds me in no slight measure of the Valley of the 
 Bones. That Spirit, Who goeth where He listeth, like the 
 wind which is His type in natural things, seems to have 
 gone out amongst us : there is a noise, and there is a 
 shaking, and bone cometh to bone by the mild workings of 
 His unseen energy : but the full resurrection into unity is 
 not yet : and shall it ever be ? God only knows ! What is 
 best for us, and best for His glory, (for He and we are one in 
 the Body Mystical,) will doubtless come out at last. 
 
 X 
 
 LETTER XXXI. To THE SAME. 
 
 Stockton-on-Tees, 
 
 Friday evening, March 31st, 1837, A. S. 
 I think you will be delighted with Newman's Lecture. 
 It supplied me with what I had long wanted clear and 
 positive statements of Anglican principles. It has been too 
 long the fashion for the doctors and teachers of Anglicanism 
 to evolve their principles in the way of negation of Romanist 
 principles. 
 
74 TEE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1837. 
 
 LETTER XXXII. To A FRIEND (A.) 
 
 University College, Oxford, 
 May 5, 1837, A. S. 
 
 The fact is that having a few spare hours left after 
 the encroachments of pupils, and finding the want of some 
 definite task to employ those hours in, I offered through 
 Marriott to undertake the translation of one of the Fathers : 
 and St. Optatus has been entrusted to me. I made it to 
 be distinctly understood that it was to be the task of leisure 
 hours, and consequently that I could not bind myself down 
 to any given time. Besides which, though I believe a 
 translation of the old Catholic doctors will do much good, 
 and therefore that each translator will contribute his mite 
 to the great end, yet I was not wholly unselfish in my offer. 
 Wishing at some, I trust not far distant time, to commence a 
 serious and systematic study of the Fathers, and knowing 
 that a knowledge of Latin and Greek, though an essential, 
 was far from being a complete qualification for such a line of 
 study, I thought that if I was obliged to drudge at one 
 Father for the purposes of accurate translation, it would 
 tend somewhat towards making me a patristic scholar ; just 
 as at school one spends a year or so over one Greek play. 
 And I shall be longer over St. Optatus because the Donatist 
 schism opens out so distinct and interesting a province of 
 ecclesiastical history that I shall allow myself to be beguiled 
 into all the collateral reading which it brings before me. 
 
1837.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 75 
 
 LETTER XXXIII. To THE KEY. J. B, MORRIS. 
 
 Rothay Cottage, August 31st, 1837, A. S. 
 Thursday evening. 
 
 I thought before I was ordained that I would not at 
 first preach the doctrine of the Church too often : but I find 
 there is no such doctrine, it is only a way of viewing all 
 doctrines ; so now I am fearless. What I have said about 
 Baptism has been much noticed, and is doing good. " Truth 
 will find her own." 
 
 Pray for me. My uncle has set himself against what he 
 calls Oxford views, and has written at great length. Pray 
 that I may be meek. My duty is to teach, not to argue. 
 I will never prove out of the pulpit what I have taught 
 in it. I have now no masters but God and my bishop to 
 whom may I be always obedient. The Head preserve me 
 from controversy. But I need prayer, for I have a very fiery 
 heart. 
 
 LETTER XXXIV. To A FRIEND (A.) 
 
 University College, 
 
 May 7th, 1838, A. S. 
 
 I only returned to Oxford on Saturday last, having 
 extended my vacation a week beyond the legitimate time, for 
 idleness* sake. However, I did somewhat in the vacation, 
 seeing that I wrote and printed a tract on the Prayer Book. 
 I found when I got to Stockton that my old tract on the 
 Church was all sold ; and Archdeacon Todd and some other 
 clergy, who knew nothing of me nor I of them, had much 
 recommended it, so that another edition was to be got out, 
 most of which is sold already. I have also lately been 
 
76 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1838. 
 
 editing Archbishop Laud's Private Devotions, which will be 
 out soon, and I will send you one. Oh! it is such a 
 delightful book. It is not quite so fragmentary as Bishop 
 Andrewes, and yet there is so much Scripture and Liturgy 
 incorporated into it as to make it somewhat like his. He 
 must have been a very holy man under his rough uncourtly 
 exterior. Many of his prayers are for anniversaries of his 
 own, days when he committed some special sin, or received 
 some special blessing ; and these I have annotated from his 
 Diary. But it is so different from the long, weary, wordy 
 prayers of modern manuals that I am sure you will like it. 
 
 LETTER XXXV. To THE REV. J. B. MORRIS. 
 
 Ambleside, Kendal, Westmoreland, 
 
 July 18th, 1838, A. S. 
 
 I am sorry I can give you no information of any 
 kind about the English Propaganda. I only know enough 
 of it to dislike it : and occasionally to talk against it. 
 
 On the face of it these societies have done us abundant 
 harm by their uncatholicity ; yet it will be impossible ever to 
 persuade good men of this. It is a lesson to the Church 
 never to do good again after the world's fashion. Numbers, 
 and combination and centralized power and local associations 
 &c. have first struck the idea of bishops out of many a 
 mind that did not reason itself out of episcopal feelings, so 
 that the lines of the inner circle which the Spirit drew around 
 the Church within the world have faded more and more 
 away from men's eyes. And secondly, the duty of alms, as 
 it is given us in the four Gospels, has almost ceased by means 
 of these societies. The relief of mendicants is a dubious 
 question, but I have always stuck to it for want of other 
 channels. 
 
1839.] FREDERICK WILLIAK FABER. 77 
 
 LETTER XXXVI. To THE SAME. 
 
 Ambleside, Kendal, 
 
 July 24th, Eve of St. James. 
 
 My congregation is quite an educated one : to say 
 nothing of ahove thirty-five University men. Most of the 
 parishioners are serious people. They have, so far as I have 
 seen, no prejudices, hut ignorance profound. So I want, 
 having indoctrinated them somewhat keenly last summer, 
 to give a course of easy lectures as easy as I can make 
 them without heing washy, hut I do hate easy sermons on 
 Old Testament characters and histories. This, connected as 
 it is with their Bible reading, will leave more behind it than 
 a common course of sermons, and will leave abundant holes 
 for some few drops of something to be dropped in. People, 
 you know, swallow pills, because they are pills : they do 
 not always know the secret thereof. I am writing on Noah, 
 Job, and Daniel at present. How very awful it is : even 
 though I have no Fathers with me, yet my own following 
 out of their Catholic way is much : God bless it to these 
 kindhearted people. 
 
 LETTER XXXVII. To THE SAME. 
 
 Cologne, August 25th, 1839, A. S. 
 Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity. 
 
 I fear you will think me a sad Protestant. I deter- 
 mined, and so did M., to conform to the Catholic Kitual 
 here. We both of us got Mechlin Breviaries at Mechlin, 
 and go to Church pretty regularly every day to say the Hours, 
 and we say the rest of the Hours as the priests do, in 
 carriages, or inns, or anywhere. Also I have been tutorized 
 in the Breviary by a very nice priest, a simple-hearted, pious 
 
78 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1840. 
 
 fellow, with little knowledge of theology. But it all will 
 not do. The careless irreverence, the noise, the going in 
 and out, the spitting of the priests on the Altar steps, the 
 distressing representations of our Blessed Lord I cannot 
 get over them. The censing of the priests, the ringing of 
 bells, the constant carrying of the Blessed Sacrament from 
 one altar to another this I can manage : because I can 
 say Psalms meanwhile. But at best, when I can get away 
 into a side chapel with no wax virgins in it, and no hideous 
 pictures of the FATHER, I cannot manage well. 
 
 In the summer of the year 1840 Mr. Paber went 
 to reside in the house of the late Matthew Harrison 
 Esq., of Ambleside, in order to superintend the 
 education of his eldest son. Much of his spare 
 time was devoted, as in preceding years, to paro- 
 chial work. The parish was in a destitute condi- 
 tion, principally owing to the age and infirmity of 
 the incumbent, and it had lately experienced its 
 first inroad of dissent. During the few months in 
 which the care of it was undertaken by Mr. Paber, 
 much good was done, and the attendance at the 
 church was more than doubled. 
 
 A small collection of poems, which he published 
 in the autumn of this year, met with great success. 
 It took its name, "The Cherwell Water-Lily and 
 other Poems," from the piece which happened to 
 stand first. The author's own criticism on it was, 
 " It is juvenile exceedingly, but will float." 
 
 About this time a report that he was likely to be 
 married gained some credence among Mr. Paber's 
 
1840.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 79 
 
 friends. His letters shew that, while there was 
 some foundation for the story, there was no imme- 
 diate prospect of such an event, and moreover that 
 his wishes and prayers uniformly took an opposite 
 direction. 
 
 LETTER XXXVIII. To THE EEV. J. B. MORRIS. 
 
 Ambleside, Westmoreland, 
 
 October 21, 1840, A. S. 
 
 With regard to marriage, as one does not like foolish 
 reports to go about, I may as well say that I have no 
 prospect of it, however remote ; and neither have nor have 
 had any engagement on the subject. There is but one 
 person in the world whom I should wish to marry the 
 person alluded to in my poem called First Love. But I 
 have not the least reason for supposing she is in love with 
 me ; and I am quite sure she knows nothing of my affection 
 for her, and there are few things in the world less likely than 
 my marrying her. But you know my views on this subject ; 
 you may remember our talk in Christ Church meadow about 
 living alone, and moral as distinguished from physical conti- 
 nence. My present state is just this. I am not even in 
 love as most people would count love ; and I very seldom 
 turn my thoughts that way. I honour the celibate so highly, 
 and regard it so eminently the fittest way of life for a priest, 
 that if Christ would graciously enable me to learn to live 
 alone, I should prefer much, even with great self denials, to 
 live a virgin life, and to die a virgin, as God has kept me so 
 hitherto. But I am under no vow, and distrust myself too 
 much to make one. Secondly, I think my marrying more 
 likely at some time or other than I used to think it ; from 
 the great unhappiness I had at Oxford, and the difficulty 
 
80 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1840. 
 
 I felt in pressing my life into that mould. My health 
 suffered from it. I carried on the struggle with hope. I 
 have now less hope ; hut I have hy no means abandoned the 
 contest. I hope to live a single life; hut I shall not he 
 surprised if I marry. People who have not been deprived 
 of home and all home thoughts, as I have, in early boyhood, 
 who are not sick with pent-up domestic wishes, and have not 
 had "the vents of sweetest mortal feeling closed with cold 
 earth from the grave," having expended part of their nature, 
 are ill fitted to judge the trials of men left in early orphan- 
 hood, with hot feelings glowing in them unexpended still. 
 But of this enough. Overmuch anxiety about one's good 
 
 name is perhaps not well. Meanwhile, my dear J , meet 
 
 any reports you hear with such portions of this letter as you 
 like. I am not going to marry or to engage myself in 
 marriage : both acts seem to me at this moment more unlikely 
 than almost any other I can conceive. 
 
 LETTEB XXXIX. To THE SAME. 
 
 Ambleside, Westmoreland, 
 
 Thursday, Oct. 22nd, 1840, A. S. 
 
 I have been brought up much more self-indulgently 
 (God absolve the souls of my dear departed parents for it !) 
 than you ; and my occupation in religion hitherto has been 
 exclusively the putting off soft habits. Alas! this is far 
 from being done, very far ; but by God's mercy it goes on ; 
 and I trust He will carry on His good work to the end. 
 But of course I shall never be as I should have been if I 
 had not been a most spoiled child. Then again my early 
 loss of home and people to love, joined to my exuberant 
 temperament, to which I alluded in my yesterday's letter, 
 have considerable influence upon me. But why should I go 
 further ? I am not trying to defend myself, or to argue a 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 81 
 
 case. At present I have not put Holy Matrimony away from 
 me ; though I scarce think of it once a month. As I said 
 before, I am not going to he married, and I have no prospect 
 of marriage ; and the report has as much foundation as one 
 which should make me elect Archhishop of York. As to 
 my poems, except " First Love," all else is pure fancy, e. g. 
 "Lammas Shoots" and " Softly the Ships do sail"; except 
 these two, I helieve there are no feminine allusions in the 
 volume. Read "First Love" and "Birthday Thoughts at 
 Bishop Ken's grave." You will then know as much as I 
 
 can write and more My poems are less Catholic than I 
 
 am, being, as all poetry should be, language carefully stopped 
 short of thoughts. 
 
 LETTER XL. To THE SAME. 
 
 Ambleside, Westmoreland, 
 
 January 26th, 1841, A. S. 
 
 I am getting casehardened anent reports of my 
 marriage. However, as I know you feel interested in the 
 subject, I may as well say that I never felt so strongly 
 determined by God's grace to "make a venture of a lonely 
 life," as J. H. N. says, as I do now. I have too little 
 confidence in my own religious manliness to say more than 
 that I am at present purposed to lead a single life, and that 
 I have made it a subject of prayer, that God would of His 
 mercy corroborate that purpose in me. 
 
 But enough: I am too weak a disciple to talk thus. I 
 rather covet than enjoy the calm love of virginity ; but it 
 may be God will reveal even that unto me. 
 
82 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1841. 
 
 Concerning the position of the Church of Eng- 
 land, he wrote on the 25th November, to the Rev. 
 J. B. Morris : 
 
 LETTER XLL 
 
 I agree with you that Anglicanism seems to have a 
 double riOos, a deep one and a superficial one ; but either of 
 its tempers is better than the 5#s f Grallicanism, that idol 
 set up in the writings of so many modern Anglicans. Now, 
 as a school of latin theology, Anglicanism is a very curious 
 phenomenon ; if, as I once heard Newman say, Bishop Butler 
 is to be regarded as the " great doctor and prophet of 
 Anglicanism," then clearly it must be a very deep thing, 
 resting like a pyramid with its apex downwards, i. e-. with 
 a broad faith and a copious theology resting on slight world- 
 worn evidence. The essence and soul of such a system will 
 of course be caution : and as caution may bear two inter- 
 pretations according as men are deep, learned, austere, bold 
 and of a venturesome humility, or according as they are 
 shallow, ignorant, self-indulgent, timorous and of a private- 
 judgmentized humility, so in like manner will Anglicanism 
 have two tempers and a double r)6os. And I think you trans- 
 fer to Anglicanism itself, considered as a school of latin 
 theology, your very natural dislike of that poor, attenuated, 
 hungry rjtios, caught from a misrepresentation of its abstruse 
 caution. This is what I think. Have I expressed it plainly? 
 What you dislike in Anglican divines is coldness, unclear 
 statement, Gadarene humility, fearfulness of mysticism, 
 unmeaning, unintelligent dislike of Home, and a general 
 absence of the marks and characteristics of Catholic child- 
 hood. At least this is what I dislike. But really I think 
 all this is separable from true Anglicanism, even when 
 
ISil.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 83 
 
 considered as a very peculiar school of latin theology; and 
 if a persecution were to arise I dare not say we are in any 
 such state of grace as to profit by one perchance, under 
 Christ, these things might be separated from it. E. g. may 
 one not venture to say that the mighty Bishop Bull's 
 obtruding dislike of Home might be marked off from his 
 other teaching, even with advantage to that other teaching 
 in the way of consistency and so on ? If so, he is a type 
 of Anglicanism so far. 
 
 Now just run an eye over our history. Is it not plain that 
 "the perverseness of our Norman blood" wore a very peculiar 
 character into the English Church even while it was a limb 
 of the Koman obedience, an idiosyncrasy more strikingly 
 and ruggedly its own than that e. g. of the Spanish limb ? 
 Now, however valuable its evidence may be theologically, 
 I am not going to speak well of the ?0os of the Norman 
 English Church ; because I think badly of it, just as I 
 think badly of the Gallican ?<9os ; and were I a French priest 
 should belong to the school of De Maistre. What I mean is 
 that I do not think it fair to consider Anglicanism as the 
 joint product of the Reformation and the recoil from the 
 Reformation. It was born under the Norman kings. The 
 Norman English Church was in its real temper quite as 
 alien from the Saxon English Church as the Tudor English 
 Church was from the Norman. Well, the temper of the 
 Norman English Church gets worse and worse : under 
 Henry VII. it is deplorable. Then comes the storm and 
 the shipwreck on the shallows and sand-holes of Erastianism. 
 The storm was inevitable, the shipwreck not. Then the 
 period of Elizabethan degradation ; the ship in water, if not 
 deep water, again, though with much "damage of the 
 lading," yet Hooker on deck. Then the attempt to create 
 a moderate Romanist party doctrinally Roman, politically 
 Anglican by James and perhaps Charles, (Abbot strange 
 
84 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1841. 
 
 to say favoured it, Laud broke it) so as to supply a middle 
 term to complete the syllogism of reconciliation. Then a 
 true Anglican school among the hishops, and fostered by the 
 crown, trained in suffering, having three martyrs, a king, 
 a primate, and a lay lord ; but, for all that the king was so 
 good a Catholic, somewhat running to Erastianism. Then 
 the Non-Jurors, or Anglicanism among the bishops ; and so, 
 thwarting the state before it was strong enough to do so 
 successfully, crushed. Then a gentle Georgian shelving 
 down into a well-written, able, moral, gentlemanly Deism. 
 Then what we are in now : Anglicanism at work, not among 
 the bishops, where the state would notice it and crush it 
 because it would be prematurely troublesome, but at work 
 among the inferior clergy in a very bold way, and fortunately 
 with tongue-tied Convocations, and we hope with more sense 
 of the importance of personal following of antiquity : and so 
 perhaps, as even W. Palmer of Magdalen admitted to me, 
 with more chance, please heaven, of success than any former 
 attempt. Very well. Now what does all this show ? Why so 
 much, that Anglicanism is a thing in training, in tendency, 
 in aspiration, incomplete a real view, YET NEVER HITHERTO 
 KEALIZED. And things in tendency have many desagremens 
 which they will forego in their complete state. Now, I will 
 venture a reason why the realization of Anglicanism is so 
 impeded. It has realized to a great extent primitive teach- 
 ing : it has not realized primitive ?0os, because it has not 
 realized Catholicity. Catholicity cannot be realized without 
 considerable approach to Catholic communion; and the 
 nearest approach we have made is to communion with 
 Catholic antiquity. We make neither head nor tail of the 
 present Church. Western Christendom lies at our feet, and 
 we scamper over it every summer by hundreds. But we 
 forget it is that awful, old thing, Western Christendom. 
 Of course I anticipate all that men say about our being 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER,. 85 
 
 excommunicated, not able to worship, &c. &c. &c. ; partly 
 true, partly not. If we cannot make any use of Western 
 Christendom, we cannot. But it is still equally true that 
 Anglicanism remains unrealized for lack of making some use 
 of it. Surely, if Anglicanism he fixed and any way realized 
 as an insular, insulated, offstanding school of Occidental 
 theology, with properties as well as accidents of its own, 
 I do not well see how it can help heing a maimed, defec- 
 tive school : even if immense adherence to antiquity kept 
 us from heing a schismatic school, though I doubt that. 
 The " present Church," so overbearing an ingredient in such 
 few Eoman theologians as I have read, is non ens in almost 
 all Anglican. It is in such a state they don't know what 
 to do with it : more's the pity ; for I am sure I know still 
 less what we are to do without it. English travellers 
 say, What can we do ? we are excommunicate. Would it 
 not be something if they felt that excommunication on their 
 minds, as they travelled ? Would not you like to spend six 
 months among the Munich disciples of Mohler, Dollinger, 
 &c. &c. ? Of course I shall know more of all this when I 
 have travelled. I shall strive to realize all such little ways 
 of impeded communion as are unstopped. It will surely do 
 me good if no one else. 
 
 It was arranged that Mr. Faber should spend 
 the greater part of the year 1841 in travelling upon 
 the Continent with his pupil. For many reasons 
 the plan was very acceptable to him. It afforded 
 the best prospect of the restoration of his health, 
 which had suffered much from his various labours ; 
 and it saved him from the necessity of resigning his 
 post and returning to Oxford, which, with all his 
 affection for the University, he was unwilling to do. 
 
86 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1841. 
 
 Further, the relation of Anglicanism to the rest of 
 Christendom was a subject in which he was much 
 interested, and he left England with the determina- 
 tion of devoting the closest attention to it. 
 
 His views are stated with his wonted precision 
 in the following letters : 
 
 LETTER XLIL To THE BEV. J. B. MORRIS. 
 
 Ambleside, Westmoreland, 
 Monday night, November 16, 1840, A. S. 
 
 There certainly have been times when I have hoped I 
 might return no more to Oxford ; and two or three sonnets of 
 mine, College Life, Unkind Judging, and Admonition, will 
 put you honestly into possession of my feelings on this 
 head. But then daily service and weekly Communions, these 
 decide the question, now that I have them not and am pining 
 for them. I grant that go where one will one makes 
 enemies my temper would almost create them in the Sahara 
 Desert ; but so far as my experience goes, there is an edge 
 of harshness upon an Oxford enmity which poisons the 
 wound somewhat over and above. " Charity hopeth all 
 things" nowhere, as she ought ; but methinks she is singu- 
 larly unhopeful at Oxford. I suppose, as life goes on, one 
 gets thicker- skinned in these matters. And as I think 
 waywardly of certain academic harshnesses which still taste 
 in my mouth, bitter as this horrid quinine, I confess that 
 while I have an affectionate reverting to the cold night air 
 that is circulating in High Street, Broad Street, and the 
 other arteries of Oxford, still the blustering howl of wind 
 upon these mountains, which is now rocking the house, feels 
 more soothing to me. 
 
 You must excuse this brief epistle. I am bothered with 
 
1841.] FREDERICK: WILLIAM FABER. 87 
 
 work just now. Goodbye. Remember me to Dalgairns. 
 Tell him to take care of my French translation of Mohler's 
 Symbolik. There is a wealth of glorious divinity in that 
 book ; read especially the resemblance between Ultra-Protes- 
 tantism and Nestorianism. 
 
 LETTER XLIII. To THE SAME. 
 
 Ambleside, Westmoreland, 
 The Feast of the Circumcision, 1841, A. S. 
 
 I am sure you will think I have been guilty of a very 
 unaffectionate silence ; but till last Sunday relieved me of 
 the church here, and so of two sermons a week, I have been 
 quite beside myself with work of the most omnigenous 
 character. My health has entirely given way under it. Last 
 Sunday week I lost all control of my mind during service ; 
 but somehow or other I found the Prayers over and myself in 
 the vestry with the medical man. I am much better now, I 
 am most thankful to say, very much better, but still far 
 from well. I cannot help suspecting that my constitution is 
 undergoing some change ; and that I shall not be quite well 
 till the revolution has taken place. Really, to a man of 
 my soft habits, it is a hard thing to read and write in the 
 face of a refractory digestion. But enough of ailments, on 
 which one dwells overmuch. 
 
 Our travelling plans are a good deal altered, and very much 
 to my satisfaction. We set off at the end of February, to 
 spend, D. V., five months in Russia, Lapland, Sweden, 
 Norway, and Denmark. I fear I shall scarcely be able to 
 get more than a superficial view of the Graeco-Russian 
 Church. However, that will be very interesting. I expect 
 to be disappointed. First, the Waldenses are put up as a 
 prop to help us to do without Rome. Then, as hierarchical 
 opinions spread, the Greek Church. I suspect all this ; but 
 
88 THE LITE AND LETTERS OP [1841. 
 
 I speak, of course, in ignorance. My wishes are at present 
 so physical that I shall he well content if I may hut win 
 health from the hreezes of the shallow Baltic. 
 
 Before the time appointed for the departure of 
 Mr. Faber and his companion, their plans were 
 again changed, and when they left England on the 
 26th of February, it was to proceed direct to Paris, 
 and thence through the central provinces of France 
 to the Mediterranean. At Marseilles they took 
 ship for Genoa, and passed through Lombardy to 
 Venice and Trieste, where they arrived on the 13th 
 of April. The remainder of that month and the 
 beginning of May were devoted to Greece, from 
 which country they proceeded to Constantinople. 
 Here they were detained by the illness of Mr. Faber, 
 and it was not until the 2nd of June that they were 
 able to resume their journey. Taking what was 
 at that time a route but rarely travelled, they 
 crossed Bulgaria from Kiistendje, ascended the 
 Danube, and passed through Hungary to Vienna. 
 After a short stay in that capital, the travellers 
 made a tour through Styria, the Tyrol, and 
 Bavaria, returning to Vienna before proceeding 
 northwards through Bohemia and Saxony to Berlin, 
 on their homeward route. It was then the end of 
 August, and soon afterwards Mr. Faber and his 
 companion returned to Ambleside. 
 
 Several memorials of this tour are to be found in 
 Mr. Faber's poems, and one of them, the Styrian 
 Lake, gave its name to a volume which he pub- 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 89 
 
 lished in the year 1842. He kept a minute journal 
 of his travels, which ahounds in graphic and 
 interesting descriptions of the places which he 
 visited, some of which have been appended to 
 this chapter. This journal was the basis of a 
 work called " Sights and Thoughts in Foreign 
 Churches and among Foreign Peoples," which 
 appeared early in 1842, and was dedicated to 
 William "Wordsworth, Esq., "in affectionate remem- 
 brance of much personal kindness, and many 
 thoughtful conversations on the rites, prerogatives, 
 and doctrines of the Holy Church." Into this 
 volume the author introduced many remarks and 
 theories upon religious matters, chiefly in the form 
 of conversations with an imaginary representative 
 of the Middle Ages, whose appearance adds very 
 much to the attractiveness of the book. The 
 " Stranger" as he is usually called, personates in 
 fact Mr. Paber's own Catholic feelings and ten- 
 dencies, against which he appears to contend. The 
 work, which he intended to continue in a second 
 volume, only follows the journal as far as the 
 approach to Constantinople, and concludes with 
 the subjoined description of a dream (p. 643.) 
 
 " After midnight I fell asleep, and dreamed again. 
 Methought I was with the mysterious Stranger, on a bright 
 sunny bank of velvet turf, a little brook murmuring near, 
 and a copse hard by, full of meadow-sweet, the odour of which 
 filled all the air. Everything around spoke the voluptuous 
 languor of midsummer. The Stranger asked me to explain 
 
90 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1841. 
 
 all the doctrines and customs of my Church. So I took a 
 sheet of vellum, and I wrote them all out in columns, in 
 a fair hand, from the calendars and rubrics of the Service 
 Books. He was much pleased with it, and said it was very 
 beautiful and good. Then he proposed we should walk up 
 the stream some little way. So I hid the vellum among the 
 meadow-sweet, and we walked together up the stream. But 
 a heavy shower of rain came on, and we took shelter in a 
 cave which was in the face of a rock, all clasped with ivy, 
 bindweed, and eglantine. When the sun shone again we 
 returned to our bank, and I looked for the vellum, and the 
 rain had washed all the characters away. Upon this the 
 stranger said I had deceived him ; that if what I had written 
 were true, no rain would have washed it away ; and he 
 would not believe me when I said it was true, but he was 
 very angry. However, he said he would judge for himself. 
 So we rose up, and went a long way for many weeks, till we 
 came to Canterbury on Advent Sunday. From thence we 
 went all over the land throughout the parishes, and the 
 Stranger took strict note of all he saw and heard. At length 
 we came to the banks of the Tweed. The Stranger would 
 not cross over, but he lifted up his hands, and blessed the 
 land on the other side. So we turned back again towards 
 the south ; and on Ascension-day we were in a forlorn and 
 desolate chancel belonging to a spacious church. It was a 
 dreary unadorned place, for the beauty was lavished on the 
 nave rather than the chancel; and over the altar, a very 
 mournful symbol, were seven empty white- washed niches. 
 The Stranger regarded them with indignation, but did not 
 speak. When we came out of the church, he turned to me, 
 and said in a solemn voice, somewhat tremulous from deep 
 emotion, ' You have led me through a land of closed churches 
 and hushed bells, of unlighted altars and unstoled priests : 
 Is England beneath an Interdict ?' " 
 
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 91 
 
 EXTEACTS FKOM JOUENAL. 
 
 1. THE BOURBONNAIS. 
 
 The road from Orleans to Lyons ascends with the Loire. 
 The banks are very pretty here and there, and Gien and 
 one or two other towns are nicely situated. But there was 
 nothing at all which would justify any epithets rising above 
 pretty and nice. Indeed, the great prevalence of vineyards 
 wars successfully against sylvan beauty; for a vineyard, in 
 France and Germany at least, is never an interesting object, 
 except to persons learned in wines, or English children, who 
 think it fine to see grapes growing out of doors. From 
 Neuvy-sur-Loire we still followed the river as far as Nevers. 
 At Nevers we crossed the Loire, and followed the Allier to 
 Moulins. The river below should certainly never have been 
 called the Loire, just as the Thame should never have 
 influenced the name of Isis; but study maps, and you will 
 see that there is even less justice among rivers than among 
 men. The scenery was now beginning to improve, always 
 interesting, and not unfrequently rising into beauty. La 
 Charite is almost as picturesque as a Ehenish village. We 
 were also delighted at the sight of some hills, modest ones it 
 is true, yet indubitably hills, and a great relief after so many 
 leagues of tillage land with fruit-tree avenues. Looking 
 back upon Nevers, it reminded me strongly of Carlisle. True 
 it is the tower of Carlisle is of red stone, that of Nevers of 
 grey and white ; still the shape is the same, and the way the 
 town stands, and the flat around, and the blue haze on the 
 uplands. All this brought Carlisle, and the flat from the 
 
92 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1841. 
 
 Solway to Crossfell, irresistibly to mind. Why the ballad 
 should say, " The sun shines bright on Carlisle wall," it 
 is difficult to tell; but certainly the sun does seem always 
 to be shining there, and shining too as it shone on Nevers. 
 Of all the sunshiny towns of misty England, after Oxford, 
 Carlisle comes oftenest to my mind. Yet possibly a fit of 
 home-sickness may have helped me in making out the resem- 
 blance between Carlisle and Nevers. . The imagination seized 
 80 readily on the likeness that it did not even require a 
 kind-hearted bank of clouds wherewith to create Skiddaw, 
 and set it down in its proper place, and at its proper distance. 
 Altogether, the laughing flats, the woody swells, the broad 
 hazy rivers, the high-roofed houses, and the picturesque 
 costume of the Bourbonnais, have left a very pleasant 
 impression. 
 
 2. AVIGNON. 
 
 The Ehone from Lyons to Avignon is very beautiful, and 
 the continually changing outline of the mountains is singu- 
 larly pleasing. We stayed for a short time at Vienne, and 
 were interested with the sight of its old church, remembering 
 how dearly it had earned its place there, through the 
 constancy of its primitive martyrs, whose acts, addressed by 
 their brethren to the Eastern Churches, are among the most 
 instructive documents saved from the wreck of ecclesiastical 
 antiquity. The ravage of the late floods is, on both sides of 
 the river, truly awful ; whole tracts of land are covered with 
 uprooted mulberry trees and torn vines, and the ruined heaps 
 of dwelling-houses and farm buildings. But I presume that 
 the fertile hand of summer, in this genial climate, will soon 
 mask the desolation with her various greens. Our passage 
 to Avignon, at the extraordinary speed of the Ehone steamer, 
 was like a magical plunge into spring. The fruit-trees at 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 93 
 
 Avignon were all in bloom, as if covered with flakes of snow, 
 and the acacia trees were dressed in light green shoots. It 
 would not be easy to compare the scenery of the Khine and 
 the Ehone ; nor, indeed, does a genuine lover of natural 
 objects relish such comparisons. Of the various kinds of 
 scenery, perhaps a mountainous region, abundantly mixed 
 with woodland, is the most attractive ; but all kinds are 
 beautiful, from the valleys of Perthshire and the sea-coves 
 of Argyleshire, down to the straight watercourses and willow 
 avenues of an English midland county. Indeed, even two 
 scenes of the same kind can rarely be compared ; for there is 
 a peculiarity and distinctive character in each, preventing the 
 one from interfering with the other. This, if true, is 
 important to travellers. There is a dangerous facility in 
 comparisons ; and they are mostly used for the depreciation 
 of what is present, marring the pleasure we should otherwise 
 feel in what is before us. When comparisons do come into 
 the mind, it should be for wholly other purposes, and mainly 
 as handmaids to memory. 
 
 We saw many shops and magasins open, which had 
 evidently been at some time the hotels of cardinals and 
 princes. The streets are built very narrow, and the eaves of 
 the houses beetle over and almost touch, a style of building 
 most agreeable in hot weather, as the sun is almost entirely 
 excluded. Every here and there, in some filthy corner, a 
 gothic window or doorway is to be seen ; and not even the 
 interesting collection of Koman antiquities in the museum 
 can turn away the thoughts one moment from the middle 
 ages. The size of the old palace of the popes would be 
 almost incredible to one who had not seen it. Part of it is 
 a caserne, part a fortress, part a prison, part ruins. We 
 saw the tomb of John XXII. and the pope's seat in the 
 cathedral. We then mounted the tower to see the view. 
 The panorama is extremely good. The windings of the 
 
94 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1841. 
 
 Rhone and the Durance, the mountains heyond Vaucluse, 
 and the plain of the Khone planted with mulberry trees, 
 made up a pleasing scene. But Avignon itself was the most 
 interesting. It appeared a crowd of narrow, winding, poor 
 streets, shattered towers, broken gables of churches, piles of 
 white ruined houses ; and one might see almost with the eye 
 that the French Kevolution had passed like a flood, more 
 angry than the desolating Rhone, over this seat of past ages. 
 The nauseous tricolor, and the din of drums from before the 
 Hotel de Ville, and the French guards filing through the 
 gateway of the pope's palace, were an allegory of the Church 
 and the world, mournfully significant. 
 
 We were compelled to descend far sooner than we wished, 
 the glare created such pain in our eyes. We repaired to 
 Laura's tomb. There was something in the mien of the 
 priest who showed it to us very pleasing. He pointed out 
 different shattered churches and convents, which had suffered, 
 he said, in the Revolution. He spoke low and mournfully, 
 and, though his feelings came through his words in a way 
 not to be mistaken, he used no word of bitterness, no word 
 of condemnation. He seemed to regard the sufferings of the 
 Church in France as a providential humbling of her, and did 
 not choose to dwell on the other side of the question, the 
 sins of those who were God's instruments in so humbling 
 her. He seemed penetrated by that truly Christian temper 
 in a churchman, which it is so difficult to realize. 
 
 3. VAUCLUSE. 
 
 The scenery of Vaucluse would probably disappoint most 
 persons, especially if they came to it from the Pyrenees or 
 Italy ; but after flat France it is by no means disappointing. 
 The scenery, however, did not please us so much as the 
 singular vernal colouring of Provence, whose strange richness 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 95 
 
 increases daily, yet is wholly without grass. There was the 
 yellow or white earth newly turned up for the vines, and 
 then the lightest of all light greens, except larch, in the 
 young willow shoots, the gray motionless stains which 
 marked the rows of innumerable olives, and the Sorgue with 
 water of the deepest aqua-marine tint, and, where it broke 
 in blue foam, of a vivid shooting brilliance quite indescrib- 
 able. Mixing everywhere with this were hundreds of 
 almond-trees with not a leaf on, but lost in blossom, white 
 or blush-colour or rose-red, and, as the stems were mostly 
 hidden, the mass of bloom seemed almost floating like clouds 
 above the earth. At a distance, the mountains appeared, 
 towards their bases, to be covered with snow ; but, as we 
 came nearer, it proved to be a wavering, wind- stirred region 
 of almond-blossom. I never saw such colours in nature 
 before. In real beauty, the blending of an English woodland 
 scene is far beyond it. It was the strangeness which made 
 the impression. There was something of a fairy-land 
 bewilderment about it. 
 
 The rocky mountain cove is fine, and the double-arched 
 cavern with the fountain of the Sorgue. This translucent 
 river breaks from the earth, at once a copious brook. There 
 is neither jet nor bubble, not a foam-bell on the surface of 
 the basin to tell of subterranean conflicts, not even a faint 
 pleased gurgle to greet the realms of upper air, and soothe 
 the mountain solitude. When we were there, the basin was 
 so full that the river broke over the rocks in a copious and 
 sparkling waterfall, and yet the basin itself kept its unrippled 
 stillness. 
 
THE LITE AND LETTERS OF [1841. 
 
 4. FIRST VIEW OF THE MEDITERRANEAN. 
 
 Provence seems to be made up of two sorts of nakedness ; 
 flat nakedness, and hilly nakedness. The transition from Aix 
 to Marseilles is over a tract of hilly nakedness, whose copious 
 dust and sharp gravel furiously agitated by the vent de Use 
 were sufficiently miserable. But the view from the hill 
 above Marseilles is as splendid as fame reports it to be. We 
 had been traversing some very barren country, when one turn 
 of the road shifted the whole scene. We saw a large circle 
 of undulating ground, covered with shining villas. This 
 was hemmed in towards the east and north by a fine range 
 of craggy mountains, behind which, yet not so as to veil the 
 summits, heavy storm-clouds were hanging in enormous folds 
 of deep black and unclear crimson interwreathed. The city 
 crowded the little heights down to the water's edge; and 
 there too was the silver Mediterranean, whose waves the 
 mistral was lashing into foam ; and one bay, one only, which 
 fell beneath the shadow of the cloud, was of an inky purple. 
 The sun set, and left the eye resting where 
 
 " The mirror of the sea 
 He-images the eastern gloom, 
 Mingling convulsively its purple hues 
 With sunset's burnished gold." 
 
 It was quite a scene to make a date of in one's own mind. 
 
 There are sometimes ideas which can occupy the imagina- 
 tion for hours with a vague delight, which scarcely resolves 
 itself into separate or tangible thoughts. So I felt with a 
 childish weakness when my dream was realized. I was 
 looking upon the Mediterranean : it was the first time those 
 haunted waters had met my gaze. I pondered on the name 
 the Mediterranean as if the very letters had folded in 
 
1841.] FEEDEEICK WILLIAM FABEE. 97 
 
 their little characters the secret of my joy. My inner eye 
 roved in and out along the coasts of religious Spain, the land 
 of an eternal crusade, where alone, and for that reason, the 
 true religiousness of knighthood was ever realized ; it 
 overleaped the straits, and followed the outline of St. 
 Augustine's land, where Carthage was and rich Gyrene, and 
 where now, by God's blessings, which are truly renewed every 
 morning, a solitary Christian bishop sits upon the chair of 
 Algiers, the germ, let us pray earnestly, of a second Catholic 
 Africa ; onward it went to " old hushed Egypt," the symbol 
 of spiritual darkness, and the mystical house of bondage ; 
 from thence to Jaffa, from Jaffa to Beirout ; the birthplace 
 of the Morning, the land of the world's pilgrimage, where the 
 Tomb is, lay stretched out like a line of light, and the nets 
 were drying on the rocks of Tyre ; onward still, along that 
 large projection of Asia, the field ploughed and sown by 
 apostolic husbandmen there is corn growing still, but 
 detached and feeble ; then came a rapid glance upon the little 
 JEgean islands, and upwards through the Hellespont, and 
 over the sea of Marmora. St. Sophia's minaret sparkled 
 like a star ; the sea-surges were faint in the myriad bays of 
 Greece, and that other peninsula, twice the throne of the 
 world's masters, was beautiful in her peculiar twilight ; and 
 the eye rested again upon the stormy bay of Marseilles. It 
 was a dream. Has history been much more ? 
 
 5. GENOA. 
 
 Early in March the hot weather broke upon us in Genoa. 
 There had been a continuance of rainy days, till a nocturnal 
 thunderstorm brought with it the change. It was beautiful, 
 yet a beauty which awed the beholder, to see the ships, the 
 Fanale, and the hills, lighted up every other minute by 
 long-abiding sheets of deep-blue lightning. And such a day 
 7 
 
98 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1841. 
 
 dawned upon the sea, tranquillizing and brightening its angry 
 purple. We climbed the " olive-sandalled" Apennines at 
 mid-day, by the steep Via Crucis, notwithstanding the heat. 
 The views amply repaid us. The Mediterranean was a 
 bewildering blue; a blue I had seen in dreams, but never 
 elsewhere till now. Here the plain of the sea was covered 
 with glossy wakes from grotesquely rigged fishing boats ; 
 there a breeze from the hills was ruffling the blue into a 
 purple ; far out again it was a silvery green, with the hazy 
 mountains of Corsica rising faintly out of its breast. To 
 the left was a bay, guarded by brown rocks, beautifully 
 shaped, and wherein was a steamy mist hanging over the 
 sea, a noonday mist, blue as the water and the sky. To the 
 right, headlands after headlands put themselves forth, fainter 
 and more faint, guarding and concealing as many quiet bays, 
 and above them rose a glorious range of higher mountains, 
 towards Piedmont, covered with snow, tinged, very slightly 
 tinged, with a light orange hue. And at our feet, couched 
 like a living creature, lay " Genoa the superb," blazing with 
 white houses ; her crescent port, her domes and towers, her 
 palaces, that are each and all old pages of history, torn from 
 some illuminated manuscript of the middle ages, and whereon 
 the illuminations are well nigh faded or effaced by time and 
 violence. Then, if on all this we turned our backs for a few 
 moments, what a sudden change awaited us ! We looked 
 into the very inner windings of the Apennines, with here 
 and there a quiet village, whose one white straggling street 
 seemed in the very act of scaling the rugged treeless steep ; 
 and such a brooding calm was there, a calm such as never 
 comes except at noonday. It seemed a marvel two such 
 worlds should be so near. On this side, the blue pageant of 
 the Mediterranean, shrinking, as it were, in honourable 
 homage from the beach, where Genoa still dreams over the 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 99 
 
 past in her empty palaces : on the other side, BO soft, so 
 speechless, so green a desolation ! 
 
 On that platform of the Apennines and threshold of Italy, 
 its history may well rise before us ; how Florence hated Pisa, 
 and Venice Genoa ; and how all alike were trodden under- 
 foot of rough Transalpines, and all because the land was so 
 beautiful, because Italy was so fatally dowered that the 
 German bridegrooms have sought her hand with arms. 
 
 " Italia ! Italia ! tu cui feo la sorte 
 Dono infelice di bellezza !" 
 
 I had thought that all the feasts wHich fell in Lent were, 
 by the Roman Church, postponed till afterwards. In Genoa 
 this did not seem to hold with the feast of the Annunciation 
 of our Lady ; as it does not in the Greek Church. The 
 city was plunged in one entire tumult of holiday. All the 
 shops were shut; but booths of fruit and every kind of 
 eatables crowded the streets. Lent seemed forgotten. The 
 churches were thronged by men well dressed, and women 
 almost gorgeously appareled. Bells ringing, chiming, and 
 playing tunes without intermission all day. Genoa was a 
 chaos of bells. All sounds of labour were hushed ; the 
 steamboats were stopped in the middle of their voyages, and 
 every street was filled with heaps, or rather stacks of 
 flowers, wherewith to honour the images and altars of the 
 Blessed Virgin. We ourselves were quite possessed with the 
 Sunday feeling of the day; and, not to be utterly without 
 sympathy with the Genoese around us, we decorated our 
 room with a bunch of crimson tulips, apparently the favorite 
 flower, that we might not be without somewhat to remind us 
 of her 
 
 "Who so above 
 
 All mothers shone ; 
 The mother of 
 The Blessed One." 
 
100 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1841. 
 
 6. THE CEETOSA OF PAVIA. 
 
 About five miles from Pavia, on one side of the road, 
 stands the Certosa of Chiaravalle, beneath the walls of which 
 the battle of Pavia was fought. It certainly is a most 
 gorgeous church ; but it looked desolate and forlorn, and in 
 want of worshippers. The suppression of the monastery in 
 this particular spot is to be regretted. It was one of the 
 wholesale reforms of Joseph II., the Austrian Henry VIII., 
 but a better and honester man, and a wiser sovereign. This 
 house of Carthusian monks was begun by one of the Visconti, 
 Dukes of Milan, in the fourteenth century, as an expiation 
 for his sins, which were in truth many and onerous. The 
 building of it occupied a hundred years. The whole of the 
 interior, which is spacious and in the form of a Latin Cross, 
 is one mingled mass of marble, precious stones, brass, 
 bronze, fresco-painting and stained windows, most dazzling 
 and costly. We observed much elaborate work in very 
 precious materials, in more than one place where it could 
 scarcely be seen by any human eye. This is always delight- 
 ful. It is very contrary to our spirit. We would as soon 
 throw ourselves from our own steeples as do anything 
 elaborate or beautiful or costly, where it would never meet 
 the eyes of men. How the spirit of the middle ages dwarfs 
 this selfish, unventuresome meanness. What a refreshment 
 it is, how grateful a reproof to wander up and down, within 
 and without, the labyrinth of roofs in an old cathedral, as we 
 did at Amiens, and see the toil and the cost of parts to which 
 the eye can scarcely travel, so isolated are they in the air 
 tracery, exquisitely-finished images, fretwork and the like ; 
 and all an offering of man's toil and intellect and cost to the 
 Holy Trinity. The Certosa is a signal instance of this spirit. 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 101 
 
 It is one heap of riches, and of earth's most magnificent 
 things, wrought by the deep and fertile spirit of Christian 
 art into a wondrous symbolical offering to God, shaped after 
 the Cross of His Son. Once indeed it had a continual voice, 
 a voice of daily and nightly liturgies, which re se up from it 
 before the Lord perpetually. But the fiat : of -a*> 'Austrian 
 Emperor went forth, and from that hour there was &> mush 
 less intercession upon the earth. The Cerfdsa is now^a sileiit 
 sacrifice of Christian art. It is, as it were, a prayer for 
 the dead, rising with full though speechless meaning up to 
 heaven. 
 
 I came out from the church, and loitered about the 
 tranquil collegiate quadrangle in which it is situated. I 
 remembered Petrarch's letter to some Carthusian monks with 
 whom he had stayed. "My desires are fulfilled. I have 
 been in Paradise, and seen the angels of heaven in the form 
 of men. Happy family of Jesus Christ ! How was I 
 ravished in the contemplation of that sacred hermitage, that 
 pious temple, which resounded with celestial psalmody ! 
 In the midst of these transports, in the pleasure of embracing 
 the dear deposit I confided to your care, (his brother, who 
 had taken the habit,) and in discoursing with him and with 
 you, time ran so rapidly, that I scarcely perceived its 
 progress. I never spent a shorter day or night. I came 
 to seek one brother, and I found a hundred. You did not 
 treat me as a common guest. The activity and the ardour 
 with which you rendered me all sorts of services, the 
 agreeable conversations I had with you in general and par- 
 ticular, made me fear I should interrupt the course of your 
 devout exercises. I felt it was my duty to leave you, but 
 it was with extreme pain I deprived myself of hearing those 
 sacred oracles you deliver. I did purpose to have made you 
 a short discourse ; but I was so absorbed, I could not find a 
 moment to think of it. In my solitude I ruminate over 
 
102 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1841. 
 
 that precious balm which I gathered, like the bee, from the 
 flowers of your holy retreat." 
 
 O kings and queens ! how swiftly runs the pen through 
 the letters of your signature, and what power is allotted by 
 heaven to the prince's written name to humble or elevate the 
 world! fcomQ. tranquil morning at Schonbrunn, it may be, 
 $he Raiser was detained one moment from the elm tree walk 
 Beneath the windows, and ere the sentinel would have time 
 to change guard, that Carthusian world of peaceful sanctity, 
 of king-protecting intercession, of penitence and benediction, 
 of heaven realized below, was signed away, swept from the 
 earth by a written name. It was as though the Kaiser had 
 stopped the fountains of one of the Lombard rivers. 
 
 7. VENICE. 
 
 Our road after Padua followed the canal of the Brenta, 
 till at last Venice broke upon the view ; Venice, with all her 
 history upon her, all her crime and all her glory, all that 
 whole volume of thought which rushes upon the mind when 
 the word "Venice" is pronounced. And how is it to be 
 described? What words can I use to express that vision, 
 that thing of magic which lay before us ? All nature 
 seemed in harmony with our natural meditations. Never 
 was there so wan a sunlight, never was there so pale a blue, 
 as stood round about Venice that day. And there it was, a 
 most visionary city, rising as if by enchantment out of the 
 gentle-mannered Adriatic, the waveless Adriatic. One by 
 one rose steeple, tower and dome, street and marble palace. 
 They rose to our eyes slowly, as from the weedy deeps ; and 
 then they and their images wavered and floated, like a dream, 
 upon the pale, sunny sea. As we glided onward from 
 Fusina in our gondola, the beautiful buildings, with their 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 103 
 
 strange eastern architecture, seemed, like fairy ships, to 
 totter, to steady themselves, and come to anchor one by one ; 
 and where the shadow was and where the palace was, you 
 scarce could tell. And there was San Marco, and there the 
 Ducal Palace, and there the Bridge of Sighs, and the very 
 shades of the Balbi, Foscari, Pisani, Bembi, seemed to hover 
 about the winged lion of St. Mark. And all this, all, to the 
 right and left, all was Venice ; and it needed the sharp 
 grating of the gondola against the stair to bid us be sure it 
 was not all a dream. 
 
 We spent the evening in a gondola, shooting over the 
 blue canals of this enchanted city. It was a mazy dream 
 of marble palaces, old names, fair churches, strange cos- 
 tumes; while the canals were like the silver threads, the 
 bright unities, of one of sleep's well-woven visions. We 
 seemed to be actors for a night in some Arabian tale. The 
 evening left no distinct remembrances. The pleasure of the 
 excitement absorbed everything. 
 
 However, we awakened the next morning, and found it 
 was not all a dream. Venice was still there, and the shadows 
 of her palaces were heaving on the water. The sea was no 
 longer the blue of Genoa, but a delicate pale green, like the 
 back of a lizard ; and the sky was cloudless, yet a pearly 
 white ; and the transparent sea haze which hung over the 
 city seemed to float like a veil. It looked more wonderful, 
 more dream-like than ever. I was struck on land with the 
 strange colouring of the scenery of Provence : the barren 
 white hills, the dull blue grey of the olives, the white and 
 deep rose-red of the almond blossoms mingled together in an 
 indescribable way. What Provence in early spring is for 
 country colouring, Venice is for city and for sea. It brought 
 Canaletti's pictures strongly to mind; yet not even those 
 convey the colours as they really are, a white, blue, green, 
 and red, utterly unlike any other white, blue, green and red 
 
THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1841. 
 
 I ever saw in nature or in art. Yet who is there that has 
 ever heen at Venice, but will confess that the memories of 
 that fair city refuse to blend with any others in his mind ? 
 They demand a temple to be built for themselves. They 
 will be enshrined apart from the recollections of all other 
 places. And willingly is this conceded to thee, thou glitter- 
 ing vision. It is long, long before the glory of wonder and 
 delight wears off from the memory of the bewildering thing 
 thou art, sitting in the white sunshine by the sea ! 
 
 Our very room at Venice is affectionately remembered. 
 The house had probably been the palace of an old Venetian 
 noble. The apartment in which we lived was hung with 
 embroidered silk, much faded and tarnished ; and the ceiling 
 was painted with the exploits of some general or admiral, 
 probably one of the owners of the palace, in the Turkish 
 wars ; and the coat of arms, which he is holding in his 
 hand, is repeated in the cornice at both ends of the room. 
 Beyond the windows, a covered balcony, also with windows, 
 hung over the quay, and afforded an exquisite view. It was 
 close to the Doge's palace, and faced towards the sea, and 
 consequently the greater part of the terra firma of Venice 
 was at our command ; and we could pace about the Piazza di 
 San Marco, thinking of Shylock or Othello, or lost in 
 admiration of an architectural group which is beyond all 
 description. 
 
 The palace of the Doges, that view of it, at least, which 
 we have from the sea, is known to almost every English eye, 
 from the number of engravings which there are of it. It 
 is a strange building, with its multitudinous little marble 
 columns and grotesque windows, and the giant staircase, all 
 glorious, of the purest marble of Carrara, carved and chiselled 
 into ornaments of the most beautiful minuteness. A splendid 
 palace indeed it is ; yet while 'my eyes wandered in a few 
 minutes over the gorgeous part of the structure, they were 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 105 
 
 riveted for long with undiminished interest upon the little 
 round holes, close to the level of the sullen canal heneath 
 the Bridge of Sighs : holes which marked the passages to 
 the Pozzi or Wells, that is, the dungeons beneath the level 
 of the canal. There for years were the victims of this wicked 
 merchant-republic confined. They are five paces long, two 
 and a half wide, and seven feet high. They have holes into 
 the passages, through which enough damp air found access 
 to keep the prisoner alive, and through which also his food 
 was thrust. One man, whom the French found there, had 
 been confined sixteen years. Really, when we consider that 
 in many cases the prisoner was secretly denounced, never 
 knew his crime, or was confronted with his accuser, the 
 thought becomes insupportable. "We know, from our own 
 English experience, how much prouder, meaner, and more 
 insolent towards inferiors an aristocracy of wealth is than 
 an aristocracy of blood ; and it is not strange that a merchant- 
 republic should have exceeded in diabolical cruelty all the 
 old European monarchies, bad, atrociously bad, as they were. 
 Let the Rath-haus of gloomy Ratisbon, and the corpse-laden 
 waters of the midnight Danube, testify to that. But Venice 
 has been scarcely outdone by the sultan himself, and the 
 scenes in the dungeons of the beautiful seraglio, and the 
 horrid secrets committed to the reluctant keeping of the 
 Bosphorus. 
 
 Let a man stand upon the low bridge close to the Ducal 
 Palace ; let him look up to the Bridge of Sighs which hangs 
 above him, then down to the taciturn canal, then to those 
 round holes upon its level ; and upward again to the 
 bleached leads of the palace roof, beneath which were 
 those infernal dungeons called the Piombi, close under the 
 leads, and the heat of which in summer was so appalling, so 
 excruciating, as almost to cause madness, -and to make the 
 holes beneath the canal very dwellings of delight. Let him 
 
106 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1841. 
 
 then look ronnd on the gay, green Adriatic, the various 
 costumes upon the quay, the cries of mariners, the gesticula- 
 tions of the improvisatore, the violins, organs, punchinello, 
 pyramids of oranges and other fruits, men Bleeping on 
 mats upon the stones, a most pictorial and merry confusion. 
 Let him look at the tall bright Campanile of St. Mark, the 
 arches and pillars of the palace, the two columns ; and then 
 let him think of a poor wretch, secretly denounced, dragged 
 by night from the bosom of his family, examined by torture, 
 and perchance for some slight word dropped in holiday mirth, 
 immured beneath those waters for twenty, thirty, forty years, 
 yea, for half a century ! What was all the brightness of 
 the Adriatic to him ? what the beauty of his own native 
 Venice ? and what must the strength be of a native's love 
 for such a magic city? Think how many suns rose and 
 set on Venice, how the morning lay like a miracle of loveli- 
 ness upon these fair lagoons, how the evenings came and 
 music stole over the water, and gilded gondolas, ere yet 
 the sumptuary law prescribed the funereal black, shot here 
 and there, with their lamps like dancing fire-flies, and birth 
 and beauty were abroad and busy, and how hundreds of 
 moons rose upon St. Mark's leaded cupolas, and turned 
 Venice into a fairy city, and swathed it in very spells of 
 moonlight, and how everything about the city was very, very 
 pleasant. And is it possible that two worlds should be so 
 near each other, should rest upon each other's confines ? 
 The bewildering mirth and oriental life upon the Grand 
 Canal, and that concentrated world, that life which is only 
 life because it is far, far more horrible than death, close by, 
 beneath those few feet of cold, clear, green water: a life 
 without sight, for daylight comes not there ; a life without 
 sound, for stone and water muffle every noise, and the 
 booming of the bells and the splash of the canal would be 
 mercies, were they but granted to the ear, mercies compared 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABEU. 107 
 
 to the tingling silentness of those sepulchral dungeons. Let 
 a man think of all this, and exult when he looks round on 
 Venice, beautiful beyond compare, but stricken and decrepit, 
 and wasted, and almost lifeless ; let him see even written 
 upon the blighted greatness of these Adriatic lagoons the 
 righteousness of God, " He is the Lord our God : His judg- 
 ments are in all the earth." 
 
 8. CORFU. 
 
 We passed close along the shores of Albania. The coast is 
 very mountainous, and the hills barren, stony, and with a 
 few exceptions, woodless. They belong, in point of scenery, 
 to the same class of mountains as Blencathra in Cumberland, 
 and present the same sort of scathed appearance. There was 
 one particular point of view which, for a sea prospect, could 
 hardly be exceeded. Albania was on our left, Fano and 
 Merlera on our right, and the broad north end of Corfu facing 
 us. Yet this view is far exceeded by the roadsteads of Corfu. 
 There must be few such scenes in the world. With the 
 exception of one or two at Constantinople, we saw nothing so 
 magnificent for a single view, as that from the rock at Corfu, 
 standing on the top of the fortifications and looking north- 
 ward. Below is a beautifully shaped basin of blue sea, 
 covered with the white sails of picturesquely rigged boats, 
 with two or three men-of-war amongst them. The north 
 promontory of Corfu, and the wild high headlands of Albania, 
 lock one within anotjber, catching on their different folds of 
 green mountain- side various lights according to their distance, 
 shutting the outlet of the straits, and giving the sea the 
 appearance of a large and glorious lake. It is a most 
 wonderful combination of mountain and water. The fortified 
 rock itself, the Adriatic Gibraltar, is a beautiful object, from 
 
108 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1841. 
 
 the quantity of luxuriant plants of every possible green, which 
 cluster and wave from the crevices. 
 
 What traveller does not know the delight of getting among 
 foliage whose shape and hue are not like that of his native 
 land ? The interior of the island of Corfu was to us a sweet 
 foretaste, of oriental foliage. We rode amongst strange 
 hedges of huge cactus, fields of a blue-flowering plant, 
 occasional palms, clouds of blue and white gum-cistus, 
 myrtle-shoots smelling in the sun, little forests of the many- 
 stemmed arbutus, marshy nooks of blossoming oleander, 
 venerable dull olives, and lemon groves jewelled with pale 
 yellow fruit. It was a dream of childhood realized, and 
 brought with it some dreary remembrances barbed with 
 poignant sorrows. Dreams alas ! are never realized till 
 the freshness of the heart is gone, and their beauty has 
 lost all that wildness which made it in imagination so 
 desirable. 
 
 Corfu is indeed a charming island, full of lovely views, 
 rude mountain pictures, and most choice sea bays : but 
 Albania and the roadsteads might be gazed at untired for 
 ever. 
 
 I sat upon the deck of the Mahmudie, looking on the grey 
 forehead of St. Salvador, and deciding, contrary to authority, 
 that it could not be Istone, because of its distance from the 
 site of the town. But my topographical perplexities were 
 dispelled by the commencement of a vigorous cannonade from 
 an English man-of-war. When I saw the smoke and the 
 flash, and the balls ploughing up the bay, and throwing up 
 white water- spouts, and heard old Albania with her hills at 
 work, like some gigantic drums, and the echoes travelling 
 fainter and fainter inland, and many an English flag stooping 
 languidly from masthead or battery, I could not help thinking 
 of what Shakespeare calls the revenges of the whirligig of 
 time. Those ill-looking, meagre crowds, which line the 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 109 
 
 shores, are the sons of Corinth's supercilious colonists. 
 These blue glassy bays and those mountain sentinels of old 
 Epirus, were, of a truth, the scene of that fearfully interesting 
 and most bloody deed, the Corcyrean sedition. Little did 
 Coeur de Lion dream, when he landed here on his return from 
 Palestine, and kept the Feast of the Nativity, that in a few 
 centuries the children of the foggy rock beyond the gates of 
 the west should be lords of fair Corcyra, and the head of a 
 daughter of a barbarian house beyond the Khine be the 
 reverse of the flying horse of Ephyre upon the silver of these 
 Ionian islands : while here and there a mutilated stone bears 
 traces of the winged lion of Saint Mark, a witness and memo- 
 rial of Venice, a name passed away, but the wakes of whose 
 vessels are still dimly to be seen upon the faithless Adriatic. 
 I thought too, as a scholar should, of the sadly faithful pages 
 of Thucydides ; but the Christian poet recalled me to a graver 
 lesson. He bade me to remember, whenever I read of these 
 acts of multitudinous carnage, crime, and suffering, that what 
 history contemplates calmly, as masses, religion regards with 
 awe, as individual souls, each this April day as much alive 
 as I am, with all his hopes, fears, memories about him, 
 dwelling in the dark or luminous circle wherewith his own 
 acts have encompassed him. 
 
 9. ATHENS. 
 
 The pale outline of the highlands that run round the gulf 
 of Nauplia, was on- one side wavering and indistinct, on the 
 other, the smooth and luminous fields of the open Mediterra- 
 nean, and our wake was dancing with phosphoric bubbles. 
 There was little sleep among us foreigners on board, but a 
 happy, wakeful silence. One thought, one word, one look, in 
 every mind, from every tongue, on every face, the morning 
 sight of Athens ! 
 
110 THE LIFE AND LETTEIIS OF [1841. 
 
 At daybreak, and while everything on deck was wet with 
 the heavy dew, we saw the pale green Salamis, and dropped 
 anchor in the Piraeus. But our enthusiasm lost us the day ; 
 it was wasted in hurry and excitement, while our minds 
 were surrendered to an inundation of vague and joyous 
 sensations, which left no distinct or profitable impressions 
 behind. To say what thoughts we had at Piraeus, on the 
 olive- screened road from thence to Athens, between the 
 desolate columns of Olympian Zeus, beneath the Propylaea, 
 by the divine Parthenon, and old walls of the Acropolis, 
 upon the bema of the Pnyx, and stone steps of the 
 Areopagus, would be to indite a mere rhapsody, a chain 
 of exaggerated epithets which would leave no character to 
 anything* The day came to a close in Athens ; we had laid 
 hold of nothing, realized nothing, in a true sense, enjoyed 
 nothing. But the tranquillity of evening brought with it 
 soberness, and with soberness came wisdom, and with wisdom 
 pleasure. We went out in the starry twilight, and found 
 the little shrunken pools of Ilyssus, and drank from them ; 
 and when we saw the pale blue sky of the early night through 
 the weather-coloured columns of Olympian Zeus, a ruin 
 most glorious, we could have dreamed we were at Palmyra : 
 for we had already seen camels browsing between Athens 
 and Piraeus. Even yet Athens was quite as much a dream 
 as Palmyra ; but when beneath Hadrian's Gate we were 
 saluted by a Greek with the old 'Eo-Trepa, the dream was 
 realized. From our lofty apartment, a glorious scene pre- 
 sented itself by night, more than equalling the one at Venice. 
 Athens is below, gleaming with irregular lights ; the moon, 
 Sir Patrick Spence's moon, " the new moon with the auld 
 moon in her arms," hanging over Salamis and Egina, with 
 one large star by her side ; the Acropolis standing out sharp, 
 bold and dark against the night sky, with a star twinkling 
 among the columns of the Parthenon, and Hymettus with 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. Ill 
 
 clear and liquid outline beyond. Here, as in some other 
 very famous localities, faith and sight forego their usual 
 offices. Sight brings doubt, and destroys faith with a very 
 trouble of unbelief. Of what use truly in moral unbelief 
 would a visible miracle be ? It would but feed the profane 
 craving for fresh proof. Am I not surrounded by a thousand 
 visible proofs of Athens, and yet I am bewildered ? I 
 demand a sign. Those sixteen stone steps on Mars' Hill 
 has the sandal of the wonder-working Paul left no trace 
 behind? Where the murmur of the people rose as he 
 explained the faith, is there no sound now more ghostly than 
 the wind waving the barley fields ? We must leave Athens 
 then, and visit it a second time, when we can make it a 
 familiar place, and ponder on its ruins with a solemn, 
 unexcited pleasure. 
 
 10. GREEK SCENERY. 
 
 It is difficult to say anything of Greek scenery. Some 
 persons, with quite equal means of judging, have pronounced 
 it full of the most delightful landscapes : an opposite opinion, 
 which I formed, should therefore be put forward very diffi- 
 dently. Of course, Greece is a most interesting country to 
 travel in. Every name sounds like a trumpet in one's ears ; 
 and even though a man may not have any very great classical 
 enthusiasm, still from his very education he must feel himself 
 pursued all through Greece by an indefinite feeling that 
 "this is Greece," which smooths every disappointment, 
 slightly increases every pleasure, and throws a general 
 enchantment over the whole journey. Then again to a 
 student of history it is an interesting country. Everywhere 
 he finds vestiges of three great changes, pieces of wreck left 
 high and dry by three memorable tides in time. A ruined 
 
112 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1841. 
 
 Ionic pillar in the plain, an old Latin tower by a brook or 
 fortalice on a hill, and a broken mosque in many a poor town 
 throughout the land. These are the features of Greek 
 landscape, its historical features. The traveller sees with 
 his eyes continually a type of the incongruous history of 
 Greece; and this gives an interesting character to almost 
 every prospect. In point of geography, Greece struck me 
 very much indeed. Everybody knows beforehand from maps 
 how small it is ; but I do not think anyone, when he really 
 came into the country, could help being astonished at its 
 actual littleness. All the objects seem brought close together 
 in a most extraordinary way, and one is almost vexed at 
 seeing so much from so small an eminence, for example, as 
 the Aero-Corinth. Even without being a naturalist, a 
 traveller's pleasure may be likewise increased by the number 
 of beautiful butterflies, and birds with superb plumage. And 
 as to flowers, in spring the whole land is carpeted with 
 them in fragrant plenty. I never saw such a sight, either 
 for variety, delicacy, colour, or smell. Earlier on in the 
 year, probably, they would not have looked so well, as the 
 deciduous trees would not have been in leaf, and their 
 light cheerful green is much wanted in a land oppressed 
 with evergreen foliage. Had we been later than May, the 
 heats would have been intolerable, the flowers faded, and 
 the brightness of the deciduous trees tarnished by the 
 sun. 
 
 One great defect of Greek scenery is the absence of valleys. 
 We have but seen one in Greece, the valley of the Marathona, 
 and it was very pleasing. What would have been valleys 
 in. any other country, are in Greece either mere defiles, 
 occasionally picturesque, or plains, almost always treeless 
 and streamless, perfectly flat, with hills rising straight out 
 of them, as though they had been beds of lakes. The great 
 plain of Thebes exactly answered to the notion I had in my 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 113 
 
 mind of what Keble calls " Asia's sea-like plain." Water is 
 singularly absent everywhere ; and woodland scenery also. 
 Various sorts of evergreen shrubs, especially to a northern 
 stranger, from their novelty and the foreign air they give 
 to a scene, have a charm at first. But they soon pall upon 
 the eye. There is no grouping or blending of divers greens, 
 no masses of foliage, no tall stems or antler-like branches. 
 Besides, there is an invariable dulness in the green of ever- 
 greens. In all these respects Greek scenery would be likely 
 to fail in the judgment of most men, unless they were such 
 lovers of nature as never to compare one scene with another, 
 and unless they delighted in any scenery which has a 
 distinctive character. I derived much pleasure from the 
 scenery of Greece; still the features of the country are as 
 I have described them : only tjiat Thessaly and Arcadia 
 must be excepted from my remarks, as we did not visit 
 them. Speaking of kinds of scenery, perhaps the most 
 attractive is mountainous woodland; woodland such as is 
 not often met with out of the British Isles, except in those 
 very homes of beauty, the Austrian provinces of Styria and 
 Carinthia. But there is one kind, and that a very high land 
 of scenery, in which Greece is surpassingly rich; namely, 
 coast views, beautiful bays and fine headlands, whether seen 
 in morning or evening lights. I have navigated almost the 
 whole outer coast of the Morea, close in land, ridden from 
 Oropo to Egripo, along the shore of the Euripus, with the 
 tall coast of Eubaea opposite; and sailed from the Gulf of 
 Salona to Lutrarchi at the very end of the Bay of Corinth, 
 and again from Epidaurus to Athens, coasting ^Egina; 
 and may therefore say with confidence, that the blue bays, 
 headlands, isles, and rocky creeks of Greece are infinitely 
 beautiful, and cannot disappoint any one. Wordsworth calls 
 Greece 
 
 8 
 
THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1841. 
 
 " A land of hills, 
 Elvers, and fertile plains, and sounding shores." 
 
 This, specially because of the omission of valleys, is most 
 correct, except in the matter of rivers. And this is no 
 inaccuracy : how should there be inaccuracy in him who 
 banished it, with all loose writing and thinking, from modern 
 poetry ? He spoke not in this matter as a topographer, but 
 as a scholar, putting sweet faith in the delightful and known 
 exaggerations of the old poets, who shed "the power of 
 Yarrow" on many a dry bed and impoverished pool. 
 
 11. THE DARDANELLES. 
 
 Who would not be interested in the passage of the 
 Dardanelles, the broad Hellespont of old Homer? The 
 scenery, especially on the European side, is not particularly 
 beautiful ; but still there are fine views of woody Asia, and 
 there are the cliffs of Europe, and the blue water, and the 
 white-winged ships, and all the glorious history which crowds 
 either shore. Just before entering the straits we passed the 
 island of Imbros on our left, with a mountain seen over it, 
 which we were told was in the sacred Samothrace. The 
 Sigeian promontory guards the Asiatic side of the entrance ; 
 it is now called Cape Janissary. The sea on the Asiatic 
 shore then makes an inland crescent, whose other horn is 
 the Khaetaean promontory. In this bay the Greek ships were 
 drawn up during the siege of Troy. The Trojan plain lies 
 beyond, with Ida in the background. Some few bends 
 further is the Castle of Anatolia, and exactly opposite to it, 
 on the Thracian side, is the Castle of Roumelia. These 
 were the batteries silenced by the English fleet in 1807. In 
 the miserable village attached to the Castle of Roumelia is 
 the barrow of Hecuba, the ill-fated queen. Sestos and 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 115 
 
 Abydos were not here, as used to be thought, but further 
 down, and by no means opposite to each other. We kept close 
 to the European side, and could not therefore make out the 
 mouths of the two streams which must stand for the immor- 
 tal rivers of Simois and Scamander. A little further north, 
 on the Asiatic side, (we must keep leaping backward and for- 
 ward), is the mouth of the brook Kara- ova- su. This was the 
 famous and disastrous .ZEgospotamos where Lysander ended 
 the Peloponnesian war by his victory. The large bay into 
 which the Hellespont swells, when you get north of the 
 castles, ends in a long, low, flat point ; and opposite to it, 
 beyond the cliffs which mostly form the European shore, there 
 is a flat projection of shingle. Here, it is said, and indeed 
 it is almost the only possible place, Xerxes built his bridge of 
 boats. 
 
 It must have been a sight of fearful interest, when the sun 
 rose from eastern Asia upon Europe, still lying in the grey 
 shadows, and the immense multitude, in that infinite variety 
 of national costume so carefully depicted by the pleased 
 Herodotus, worshipped the rising god of light, and the 
 despot, and an amiable despot too, did reverence after the 
 Magian fashion, as through the distorting narrative of the 
 Greek historian we may discern he did, to the divine 
 character of the Hellespont ; and then to the sound of 
 oriental war-music, the army began to defile across the 
 unsteady bridge. In this place the strait is only a mile 
 and three quarters wide ; and by the time the whole bridge 
 was filled with men, it must have been one blaze of pennons, 
 glittering arms, and gay costume : Asia pouring her wrath 
 out upon the plains of Europe ; Asia, already bright in 
 sunshine, typifying her civilized arts and elegant luxury ; 
 Europe, still grey in the struggling dawn, yet breaking her 
 barbarian fetters fast away. I thought of thee, thou pale 
 green Salamis ! 
 
116 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1841. 
 
 What a scene was that in history ! And that lovely bay, 
 too, below Lampsacus, at the mouth of jEgospotamos ! Its 
 loveliness has been witness to a scene in history as grand, 
 though of a sterner grandeur, the victory of Lysander and 
 the fall of Athens. I looked upon the curving shore, the 
 green- trees, the white walls of Lampsacus, the background of 
 swelling woody mountain ; and I remembered Xenophon's 
 description of the arrival of the news at Athens ; for 
 Xenophon, shame on him for a base, bad citizen ! could even 
 be coolly eloquent upon his country's fall. He says that- 
 from the Piraeus to Athens was heard one cry of wail, and 
 they remembered what they had done to the Melians, the 
 Histiaeans, and the Scioneans, and the Toronaeans, and the 
 JEginetans, and many more. And no eye in Athens slept 
 that night. A terrible retribution it was upon Athenian 
 pride. It reminded me of that sad scene and touching 
 outburst of popular sorrow described in the Bible, when the 
 spies returned from the promised land with a false report 
 of its terrors, and it is said that "all the congregation lifted 
 up their voice and cried ; and the people wept that night." 
 
 Lampsacus, now Lamsaki, was one of the three towns 
 given by Xerxes to Themistocles. Kings made presents on 
 a grand scale in those days, or perhaps cities were on a 
 poor one. Lampsacus was to furnish the clever exile with 
 wine, Myus with meat, and Magnesia with bread. In 
 situation Lampsacus is very beautiful ; it stands on a flat 
 tongue of land projecting into the strait. There is a sweet 
 bay, full of verdure, just below, and a fine hill view behind. 
 Soon after leaving Lampsacus we passed a town called 
 Chandak, on the Asiatic side, and nearly opposite to it is the 
 old city of Gallipoli, which stands in Europe, at the very 
 entrance of the Sea of Marmora. From the water it has an 
 imposing appearance, and the high minarets stood out above 
 the hills in strong relief against the clear evening sky. The 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 117 
 
 sunset was wild and red, and gave us some lovely lights 
 down the Hellespont. 
 
 So ended the Hellespont, and a delightful voyage we had 
 through it. At first Asia seems to recede, while Europe 
 throws herself forward upon the opposite continent in cliffs 
 and headlands. But, as you go further up, Asia comes 
 forward with a holder coast, and more frequent promontories, 
 and Europe retires into creeks and hays. Throughout the 
 passage the scenery of Asia is finer than that of Europe. 
 It is curious that the scenery of the coast of Asia, ever after 
 we left Chios, was more like England than anything we had 
 seen since we left home. The Asiatic side of the Hellespont 
 reminded me continually of the parts of Herefordshire towards 
 Ledbury and the western slope of the Malvern Hills ; while 
 the green corn and hedgerows of the European shore recalled 
 the tamer uplands of Leicestershire. But on neither side is 
 there any very fine scenery. The best is in the neighbour- 
 hood of Lampsacus. Yet all of it is rather rich, fertile, and 
 excessively green, than striking or beautiful. The strait of 
 the Euripus between Eubcea and the Greek continent is far 
 finer as scenery. But history makes the difference. Obscure 
 Greek villages straggle in white lines up the steep shores of 
 the Euripus with barbarous unhistoric names, while some 
 of the choicest recollections man can treasure up of worldly 
 glory stand, like ranks of silent sentinels, upon the shores 
 of the two continents. And thus, though far inferior to the 
 Euripus in natural scenery, the Hellespont is superior in 
 intense interest to any maritime scenes in the world, except 
 the shore where Jaffa is, and Tyre, and Carmel's top. 
 
 Gallipoli was past. Cold thick night settled down on the 
 rough purple of the sea of Marmora, the old Propontis, a 
 wide and magnificent sea-chamber, shut in by the Hellespont 
 below and the Bosphorus above, a fitting antechamber to 
 imperial Constantinople, once the gorgeous capital of the 
 
118 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1841. 
 
 civilized world. Night was on it. A hundred and eight 
 miles of the sea of Marmora were before us, between us and 
 the glories of Constantinople ; and we looked through the 
 darkness with eager hope and a disturbed impatience to see 
 the first sunbeam strike the highest crescent upon St. 
 Sophia's. 
 
 12. THE GREEK CHURCH. 
 (LETTER TO THE REV. J. B, MORRIS.) 
 
 Constantinople, May 26th. 
 The Feast of St. Austin of Canterbury, 1841, A. S. 
 
 I have learnt much in these last few weeks, but shall 
 not fairly digest it till I can read my journal and meditate on 
 it at home. I have seen Athens, Corinth, Smyrna, Constan- 
 tinople, and the site of Chalcedon ; places of deep Christian 
 interest. Alas ! I can learn little good of the poor forlorn 
 Greek Church. It is, excepting the Russian branch, of which 
 I know nothing, in a very sad state. They are doing some 
 very little at Athens ; but the king is Roman Catholic, which 
 is a misfortune. They keep reprinting Archbishop Plato of 
 Moscow's book, eulogized by Palmer of "Worcester, as a text 
 book, which is I suppose well. I have got it, but have had no 
 time to study Romaic reading yet. Neither do I much like 
 the Armenians here. They are a sort of Christian Jews. 
 They are driven from their own country, and are bankers and 
 usurers all over the Levant. Only a few acknowledge the 
 Pope, but they are all utterly dediti pecuniae. Depend upon 
 it, cast about as we will, if we want foreign Catholic 
 sympathies, we must find them as they will let us in our 
 Latin mother. 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 119 
 
 1 3 . CONSTANTINOPLE . 
 
 The huge city of Constantinople is divided by the sea into 
 three quarters. Stamboul itself stands on a triangular 
 peninsula, washed on one side by the sea of Marmora, on 
 the other by the Golden Horn, and in front, where the 
 seraglio point projects, by the Bosphorus. On the opposite 
 side of the Golden Horn stands the quarter of the Franks, 
 comprising Pera, Galata, and Tophana ; while the third 
 quarter, Scutari, stands along the Asiatic shore of the 
 Bosphorus, pointing to the mouth of the Golden Horn. Stam- 
 boul and Scutari are inhabited, I believe exclusively, by the 
 natives, Turks, Greeks, Armenians and Jews. In Pera there 
 is but one mosque, and in Galata and Tophana the Frank 
 population much predominates over the Mahometan. The 
 population of Constantinople, and a gay and motley popula- 
 tion it is, is estimated at 500,000. It has above two hundred 
 mosques and above five hundred fountains ; and the beauty 
 and magnificence of it in a view are not to be described. 
 But nearly all the houses are of wood, partly, it is said, 
 because of earthquakes, in which wooden houses hang better 
 together, and when they tumble their downfall is not so 
 disastrous. Yet it makes the city almost a nightly scene of 
 shocking devastations by fire. The streets are narrow, and 
 inconceivably filthy; though they are dirtiest in the Frank 
 quarter. The pavement is rude and execrable, making a 
 walk quite painful. There is hardly room in these so-called 
 streets for above four or five to pass abreast, and one heavy 
 shower, as we found to our cost, makes them ancle-deep in 
 very unfragrant mud. So that when a horse passes by, or 
 asses laden with wood, you stand a good chance of measuring 
 your full length on the stones or of having your shoulder 
 dislocated. To this nuisance must be added the immense 
 
120 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OE [1841. 
 
 multitude of ownerless dogs which occupy every corner. I 
 confess so far as my experience goes, and I have trodden 
 upon great numbers of them, they are very good natured ; 
 and they doubtless act the part of scavengers well. Yet they 
 add to the general barbarity of the place. The streets have 
 no names and the houses no numbers, and as the roofs 
 almost meet over head, you have no chance of detecting any 
 friendly minaret which you may recognize, and whereby you 
 may steer yourself through the vast wilderness of lanes. In 
 one respect I should think it was like an ancient Greek town, 
 the commingling of splendid public buildings with the shabby 
 abodes of private citizens. Squalor and magnificence are 
 scarcely anywhere moored so close alongside of each other 
 as in Constantinople. Yet the peculiar effect of their 
 favourite colour in painting their houses a deep mulberry 
 with the green of the numerous trees, cannot be too often 
 alluded to. Then again one is struck with the total absence 
 of clocks and bells, and the almost total absence of carriages. 
 Nothing can exceed the silence of the streets. Even in the 
 crowded bazaars the noise is that of trampling feet, shuffling 
 along in loose and flapping slippers, while every now and 
 then comes the cry of a sherbet-seller, pushing his way 
 among the crowd. What Slade says is perfectly accurate ; 
 "We leave Pera, a regular European town, and in five 
 minutes we are in scenes of the Arabian nights. The shores 
 of the Bosphorus realize our ideas or recollections of Venetian 
 canals or Euphrates' banks. Women, shrouded like spectres, 
 mingle with men adorned like actors. The Frank's hat is 
 seen by the Dervish's calpack ; the gaudy armed Chuvass by 
 the Nizam Dgeditt ; the servile Greek by the haughty 
 Moslem ; and the full-blown Armenian by the spare Hebrew. 
 The charsheys resound with Babel's tongues; the streets 
 are silent as Pompeii's ; nothing seems to attract notice ; 
 there are no indications of joy or grief; no pleasure but 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 121 
 
 debauchery, no trouble but death. Between prisons and 
 baths they place their harems, and the capital of slavery, 
 the grand Seraglio." 
 
 Another peculiarity which strikes one in taking a walk 
 through Constantinople is the meeting with cemeteries in the 
 most crowded parts of the city. There seems no wish to 
 put death out of sight. To their ideas and indeed from their 
 religion, there is something voluptuous in the melancholy 
 excited by the things pertaining to death. And nothing 
 strikes at the root of active virtue more effectually than 
 sentimental or voluptuous notions of the grave. In general, 
 declivities are selected for the cemeteries, as it is believed 
 the soul comes to sit upon the grave, and that it delights in 
 beautiful views. Between death and burial the soul is in 
 torment, so that the friends of the deceased hurry the funeral 
 as much as possible ; and a Turk is scarcely ever seen walking 
 quick except when carrying the corpse of a relative or friend 
 to the grave. A hole is always made in the centre of the 
 flat tombstones, whereby the angel may enter at the last day, 
 and lift the body by the right or left hand as its doom is to 
 be. A man is considered to have fully discharged his duty 
 to his dead Mend, if he has secured for him a resting-place 
 in the cemetery, which commands a fine view. 
 
 A walk through Constantinople thus presents you with all 
 sorts of moral contradictions, and amusing, often instructive, 
 .anomalies. The people themselves, even in their famed 
 virtue of cleanliness, are an apt type of their strange city. 
 They make continual ablutions of their limbs, and yet wear 
 their dirty clothes, night as well as d&y, for a year or more ! 
 Such is the celebrated city of Constantinople, that once sent 
 up to. heaven a continual peal of multitudinous bells from 
 the superb churches of its fourteen regions, and over which 
 may now be heard five times a day from two hundred 
 minarets the harsh wailing cry of the Muezzin, chanting the 
 
122 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OE [1841. 
 
 Ezan. " Almighty God ! I attest that there is no God but 
 God, and that Mohammed is his Prophet. Come, ye faithful 
 to prayer come ye to the temple of salvation. There is no 
 God hut God. Prayer is preferable to sleep !" a beautiful 
 cry for a city to be vocal with, were it only out of a truth- 
 keeping heart and by a Christian priesthood. 
 
 May 19. Another night of pain, and another forty-eight 
 piastres to the Embassy physician. Last night, as I rolled 
 and tossed about, listening to the torrents of rain splashing 
 from the eaves, I felt tempted to fret at losing any of the 
 few precious days we have at ' Constantinople. But the 
 Muezzin's evening call to prayer put better thoughts into 
 me ; and as Dr. Johnson resolutely set himself to make 
 Greek verses, in order to see whether his fit had affected 
 his intellect, I strove to regain composure and temper by 
 hammering out some most reluctant rhymes. 
 
 Far o'er green barren Thrace the sun had set 
 
 In stormy red : upon a couch of pain, 
 
 Listening the dripping of the dismal rain, 
 
 Over the mighty city, dark and wet, 
 
 I heard the countless Turkish Ezans swell, 
 
 Bidding the vespers of the infidel 
 
 With long, harsh wail from viewless minaret. 
 
 The cross lies hard upon my fevered brow 
 
 And aching frame ; and slumber's pleasant spell 
 
 Is backward o'er my restless limbs to creep. 
 
 Yet from that Ezan have I learned but now 
 
 That prayer is sejenfold more sweet than sleep. 
 
 Then shall I count these little pains a loss 
 
 Which thus can make the Crescent preach the Cross ? 
 
 But the poor sonnet stumbles and trips, as if it were 
 walking over the pavement of Constantinople ; and this con- 
 vinces me that I am really ill. . 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 123 
 
 14. THE BOSPHOKUS. 
 
 I took boat at the landing place near the fountain of 
 Tophana, and went upwards, clinging all the way to the 
 European shore, and obediently following its windings, 
 gaining by evading the current more than I lost in point 
 of distance. After passing the suburb of Funduklu, we 
 came to the simple monument of Barbarossa, which meets 
 the eye before reaching the sumptuous summer palace of 
 Beschiktasche. The shape of this palace, its position 
 between two exquisite glens, the luxuriant green and profuse 
 blossoms of its gardens, the extravagant splendour of the 
 gilding of its water gates, are all fitting types of the gor- 
 geous sensuality in which eastern despots are wont to pass 
 their days in this their brief trial scene. A man can scarcely 
 have a solemn thought whose days are spent amid such a 
 delicious confusion of courts, fountains, kiosks, trees, wilder- 
 nesses of scented creepers, and undulating grassy banks, as 
 awaits the master of the Ottoman Empire, when he passes 
 from his winter abode to this fairy land. As the caique 
 moved slowly past, I felt aa if I was waking from a dream, 
 and turned involuntarily round to see if the Beschiktasche, 
 the Palace of the Rough Stone, had not disappeared. But 
 there it still was, looking down into the Sea of Marmora, 
 with the sun gleaming upon its gilded water gates. 
 
 The village of Kuru Tschesme succeeds the summer 
 palace, and here first the light of the legend of the Argonauts, 
 that most simple, most beautiful of Grecian tales, is seen. 
 Here Medea and Jason landed, as they came from Colchis, 
 and Medea planted a laurel tree, not the only laurel of 
 renown in the Argonautic legend. 
 
 The next opening of the Bosphorus is gained by being 
 pulled by a rope along the shore, so violent is the stream. 
 
124 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1841. 
 
 It is far stronger, and boils more, or did today, than any 
 part of the Rhine or Rhone which I have navigated. In 
 this hay is a village inhabited by Albanians, Greeks, and 
 Jews. The promontory by which we get into it is the 
 narrowest part of the Bosphorus, and the stream is called 
 the Devil's Current. But the opening beyond is the Bay 
 of Bebek ! The loveliness of Bebek is inconceivable. Here 
 we might wish to cast anchor, and ride in the caique for 
 ever, so dazzling are the banks, so magical the bend. A 
 low ring of treeless hills runs round it, of the deepest and 
 most lustrous green which Thrace can show, and the green 
 of barren Thrace is wonderful. The blending of houses and 
 verdure, gilded alcoves, the sultan's kiosk, and garden 
 terraces, up which an infinite variety of gaudy creepers 
 clamber and bloom, and the loveliness of the opposite shore 
 of Asia, make this bay a perfect paradise ; and yet I dare 
 not say it is the loveliest bay of the Bosphorus. For all 
 the fourteen bays are quite unlike each other, and all sur- 
 passingly lovely. But, though I blessed the stream for 
 curbing the impatient caique, the strong arms of my two 
 Mussulmen prevailed. We shot beyond the Castle of Rou- 
 melia, and the Bay of Bebek closed behind us, like a too 
 short scene in Shakspeare. 
 
 # * # * 
 
 When I had satiated myself with gazing on the melan- 
 choly leaden-coloured Euxine, and remembered what secrets 
 of shipwreck horrors were locked up in its heavy grey waters, 
 I descended from the lighthouse, and embarked in my caique, 
 shot over to Asia, and came down the Bosphorus on the 
 Asiatic side. And before I forget it, I must remark that 
 beautiful as the Bosphorus is in the ascent, it is incomparably 
 more so in the descent. In order to catch the favourable 
 force of the current, the boatmen keep more towards the 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 125 
 
 middle of the channel, so that the views are much better than 
 when close under the land. 
 
 Also, the Asiatic shore is perhaps the most delightful of 
 the two. The character of its scenery is softer. What are 
 romantic glens on the Thracian shore are in Asia sunny 
 wooded valleys, with patches of velvet sward. The dark 
 poetry with which Thrace, by the worship of her muses, 
 enriched the otherwise cheerful Greek intellect, is well typified 
 by the sternness of its shores, showing even on the Bosphorus 
 through a gay masque of smiling woods and bright gardens. 
 Consequently, we find from the number of gardens and 
 palaces that the Asiatic shore has been on the whole the 
 most favoured by the Ottoman Sultans. 
 
 Let us now glide with the current along the Asiatic shore 
 of the Bosphorus. After passing the lighthouse in Asia and 
 the Elephant Cape, we come to the Cape of Anatoli Kawak. 
 This, spite of what the books say, seems to me to be the 
 narrowest part of the Bosphorus. It is the end of the moun- 
 tain chain of the Bithynian Olympus, and the opposite cape 
 is said to be the termination of the Thracian chain of Hsemus. 
 But I doubt the correctness of both assertions. One of the 
 roots of Hsemus certainly ends in the Cape of Kumili Kawak, 
 but I think not the main one ; and the mountain chain 
 terminated by the Cape of Anatoli Kawak is rather that line 
 of hills running on the south side of the Agack Denizi, or 
 Sea of Trees, than the proper chain of the Bithynian Olym- 
 pus, which is broken between Nice and Nicomedia. The 
 Genoese castle standing here was a most picturesque object 
 with the slant sun of the afternoon upon it. Next comes 
 the Giant Mountain, whereon, according to a rude Mahometan 
 tradition, Joshua is buried. And the lovely, dreamlike 
 valley beyond is the Landing Place of the Emperor, a 
 favourite summer residence of the sultans. It was here that 
 in 1833 the famous treaty was signed between Russia and 
 
126 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1841. 
 
 Turkey, whereby Turkey is bound, in case of need, of which 
 need the Kussian ambassador is to judge, to shut the 
 Dardanelles against England and France. There is really 
 something Roman in the immoral straightforwardness and 
 long prospective arrangements of Russian diplomacy, which 
 accord well with the position she may some day assume, of 
 the great northern power of Scripture prophecy. 
 
 Next the caique almost moves too swiftly is the village 
 of Begkos, or the harbour of the Mad Laurel. Here again 
 we find our legendary Argonauts. Here lived Amycus, king 
 of the Bebrycians, and here he fell in his contest with Pollux. 
 A laurel was planted by his grave, and whosoever broke off 
 one of the leaves, was straightway transported beyond himself, 
 and involuntarily insulted and quarrelled with every one he 
 met. Sultania Bay, the Fig village, and the village where 
 the ancient convent of the monks who never slept stood, 
 followed rapidly this afternoon : till we came upon the sweet 
 village of Kanlidsche, a glittering cluster of bright fantastic 
 kiosks. Beyond the fortress of Anatoli Hissari appears the 
 mouth of "The Valley of the Heavenly Water," which is the 
 river Goksu. It is said to exceed the four chosen Edens of 
 Asia, the plains of Damascus and of Sogd, the beautiful 
 meadows of Obolla, and the fair valley of Schaab Bewan in 
 Persia. The Valley of the Heavenly Water appears, when 
 you are at it, to be the most lovely scene imaginable ; but the 
 promontory and village of Kandili, which succeed, seem even 
 lovelier still. Is it possible such a scene can be not a dream? 
 Look up or down the Bosphorus, you are lost in scenes of the 
 most varied beauty all, earth, water, wood, the city and the 
 ships, all is beauty, intense, fairy-like, bewildering beauty. 
 The colours of the woods and gardens are all of the richest 
 gaiety. Mosques, kiosks, and palaces send up one wild 
 gleam of gilded brilliance, and when the stream has carried 
 you a little onward, the other bays of the Asiatic shore are 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 127 
 
 forgotten, for full in front and curving round the Golden 
 Horn lies Constantinople. Never shall I forget this evening's 
 view of it. A dark, black, storm cloud was behind it, the rich 
 sunlight of evening full upon it, yet mistily. Whether it 
 were a city or a forest or a bank of clouds you scarce could 
 tell. Cypress and minaret blended one into another, and 
 looked down into the Golden Horn, which glowed like a sheet 
 of gold, while all the ships that rode upon its deep waters 
 were covered with flags flaunting the infidel city because of 
 the Ascension of the Lord. 
 
 I landed at Tophana fatigued and ill, after a day of such 
 tumultuous rapture and excitement as I never felt before. 
 There is nothing now in Oriental tale which I will not hence- 
 forth believe ; because I have seen the Bosphorus and spent 
 one long May day upon its double shores, and there is 
 nothing of bud, blossom, garden, wood, river, fountain, palace 
 or voluptuous seraglio which Arabian prose or Persian verse 
 can describe, equal to the real show upon the Bosphorus, 
 where Europe masks in consummate beauty her romantic 
 sternness, and all but blends with the voluptuous softness of 
 Asiatic scenery. There the emulous continents look upon 
 each other in every variety of contrast and comparison, like 
 two Sultanas jealous of each other, and the sea with its blue 
 snaky windings flows between, a mirror for Asia in the pearly 
 dawn, and glassing Europe's trees and spires and hundred 
 cupolas in seven gorgeous sunset bays : and Europe in the 
 morning sun, and Asia in the long yellow beams of afternoon, 
 form together such a vision as no sorrow can cloud, no wear 
 and tear of time efface, even when I am far away, and the 
 Greek legends are lighting others on from cape to cape, and 
 the Black Sea wind is wafting the odours of Therapia and 
 Kandili down to old Byzantium. 
 
128 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1841. 
 
 15. AN INVALID'S DKEAMS. 
 
 There are sometimes hours of such full, thrilling, unalloyed 
 and innocent happiness, that they deserve to be chronicled 
 whenever they do occur. Today I enjoyed the English 
 invalid pleasure of arranging the flower pots in the little 
 balcony before my window, placing them so as to make the 
 thickest green show, and half hiding, half displaying my 
 four recently opened monthly roses. When this was done, 
 and I was as happy as a child in doing it, and missed not 
 what my companions were seeing without me, there came 
 such an evening of calm and splendid beauty in sea, sky, and 
 earth, as I have rarely seen before. Some dim remem- 
 brances of certain summer evenings at Harrow are working 
 in me, but I cannot quite realize them. The Seraglio point 
 was at my right hand. This last week has much broadened 
 the leaves and deepened the green ; and it looked more 
 marvellous than ever, with its fairy-like palaces ; and the 
 red Ottoman flag upon the ships in the Golden Horn 
 mingling with the seraglio cypresses in the background 
 looked as if those mourning trees had blossomed scarlet 
 blossoms in the last few days. Then at the opening of the 
 Bosphorus, a little way into the Sea of Marmora, lay the 
 fair Princes Islands, with their rich green tops and low red 
 cliffs rising out of the bright sea ; and the Sea of Marmora, 
 seen over the Seraglio Point, is covered with quiet ships, 
 with all sails set, yet scarcely stirring in the calm, and the 
 far off mountains of Asia are brought quite near by evening 
 gleams ; and then below me are Pera and Galata, with the 
 mulberry- coloured houses, getting gradually masked in 
 luxuriant foliage, and the windows glancing in the sun ; and 
 the top of St. Sophia's cupola is blazing above all. The 
 scene is most lovely, but the holy tranquillity of the evening 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 129 
 
 is more strange, more soothing, than the scene. It is as 
 if my boyish faith were true, and perhaps it is, that birds 
 and beasts and fields knew and acknowledged the day on 
 which their Lord and ours rose from the dead to " save both 
 man and beast." I remember many a Sunday evening with 
 my mother on the sands at Seaton, I wondered the gulls 
 walked so quietly close to us on the wet, shiny sand, as 
 the sea ebbed, when they would never come near us on 
 weekdays. So it seemed tonight. The swallows weaved 
 their swift figures and flights, and whistled as they did it ; 
 but it did not seem to interrupt the tranquillity. It was 
 just such an evening as I spent in July 1839 by myself in 
 Ross churchyard. 
 
 It was sufficiently warm to allow me to be out a good deal 
 in the balcony, and having bought a copy of Wordsworth 
 at Athens, I had it with me* For, well or sick, cheerful or 
 sad, I can almost always get happiness and quiet and good 
 resolves out of the old poet God bless him ! So I sat 
 brooding over some of his sonnets on liberty ; for one may 
 hang on one sonnet of his by the hour, like a bee in a 
 foxglove, and still get sweetness : and occasionally I read, 
 and occasionally I looked up, and watched the thin rosy mist 
 that was stealing over the shore of Asia, the islands, and 
 the sea ; and occasionally I smelt one of my roses, and 
 occasionally I listened to the swallows whistling; and I 
 forgot that I was ill, and I was in the seventh heaven of 
 dreamy enjoyment when my eye chanced to rest upon some 
 lines, and a sting went into me, and a sense of forlornness 
 rushed like an autumn wind upon me, and I looked up, and 
 the evening seemed the dullest of all the summer evenings 
 I had ever known. For I pined to be at home. My thoughts 
 were in the green valleys of Kent : I thought of 
 
 9 
 
130 THE LIFE A1SD LETTERS OF [1841. 
 
 " The cock that crows, the smoke that curls, that sound 
 Of bells ; those boys who in yon meadow ground 
 In white-sleeved shirts are playing ; and the roar 
 Of the waves breaking on the chalky shore 
 All all so English." 
 
 I thought that "VYindermere was looking brighter than the 
 Bosphorus this Sunday evening ; that a fairer haze was 
 lying on the Grasmere mountains ; and I thought of the 
 sunset in Langdale, and of the gentle Owen Lloyd, the 
 setting of whose sun at last in Christian peace I only heard 
 of yesterday ; and I looked up again, and the evening looked 
 cold, and the place foreign, and I shivered and went in. At 
 first I was angry with my Athenian Wordsworth, and shut 
 it, and was on the point of sentencing it not to be read again 
 till I should be in quarantine on the Danube. But I 
 bethought me that it was an allegory of the kind of influence 
 Wordsworth always exercises, the attitude in which the 
 gentle-mannered tyrant holds his patriarchal sceptre, restrain- 
 ing us when we would be prodigal of happiness. The 
 power of evening was on me, and I was merely making 
 a dreamy joy of it, and forgot to be thankful for its power 
 over my sick body ; and so the poet brought England over 
 the scene, and Constantinople was eclipsed, and my lofty 
 thoughts degenerated into a weak desire to be at home. It 
 was as if the book had said, a little more sternly than he 
 himself would have done so, 
 
 " Thou art in self-government too slow 
 The invisible world with thee hath sympathized ; 
 Be thy affections raised and solemnized." 
 
 I looked upon my blue volume, which I had been about to 
 upbraid and sentence. I acknowledge it for a fairy now, and 
 
ISM.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 131 
 
 stand reproved before " the plain presence" of its double- 
 columned dignity. A man would lead a safe life whose con- 
 duct was ruled by the " sortes Wordsworthianae ;" for he 
 could never light upon a line which was not good, and good 
 rules are never inappropriate. But it is not every man 
 who, like me, possesses a Wordsworth, instinct with life, 
 and which can comment on itself after such an allegorical 
 sort. Some of the power of the Arabian nights has got 
 into it, doubtless, in this oriental place. 
 
 16. A GREEK SERVANT. 
 
 This afternoon I parted with Demetri a sorrowful busi- 
 ness for both of us, as he was much attached to me and 
 I to him. He kissed my hand, and rubbed it with his 
 forehead for the last time. He begged me not to forget 
 him, and as he left me not yet quite well, he begged I would 
 write him a line before I went up the Danube, to tell him 
 how I was. He went away with tears in his eyes. I feel 
 quite lonely this evening, while he is ploughing the Sea 
 of Marmora back to Athens. We have had abundance of 
 conversations, especially while I have been in bed unwell, 
 and I hope I have combated successfully some of his loose 
 Greek notions. He is on the whole a very good fellow, and 
 has a purity of speech and feeling with an artless highminded 
 delicacy by no means common among men. I suppose it 
 is infinitely unlikely we shall ever meet again on this side 
 of the grave ; and partings of such a sort would be intolerably 
 heavy-hearted events, if it were not for the Christian hope 
 which shines with such an awful sweetness on the places 
 beyond the grave. 
 
 It is a painful privilege to sow flower seeds, whose bloom- 
 ing you may never see. I pray God to bless him and keep 
 
132 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1841. 
 
 his young heart pure, and bring to maturity what he has 
 learnt. I intended to make him learn to read and write 
 while I was here, that I might leave him with a gift more 
 precious than the piastres of bad Turkish silver which he 
 carries away. But his stay has been too short for that : 
 and yet his long unemployed winters must make his inability 
 to read somewhat dangerous for one so young. However, I 
 hope he has learned something of moral good, and of the 
 things concerning his faith. For it seems to me a heartless 
 thing to come across a man, and use him as a slave, and 
 think the pay he gets a sufficient distinction between a 
 servant and a slave. It is a heartless thing to leave a man 
 as you found him, after weeks of intimacy. To be so incom- 
 municative is scarcely right-principled, though multitudes 
 are so. Some virtue surely ought to go forth from servants 
 of a Master, the very fringes of whose garments were filled 
 with miraculous health. 
 
 I felt Demetri's going so much more than I expected that 
 I was fain to take a lonely walk. I went to the large 
 cemetery beyond Galata, and roamed about in the inter- 
 minable cypress gloom ; now skirting the trees so as to see 
 the Bosphorus, with its bright palaces and ships beneath 
 me; now, as the wayward humour impelled, plunging into 
 the thickest golden-green darkness, vocal with a hundred 
 nightingales, and misty as the aisles of a gothic cathedral. 
 But the Turkish turbans on the tombs disturbed me, and 
 I bent my way to the Armenian Cemetery. The green 
 terebinth trees give no such pleasant gloom as the cypress, 
 but then the graves are Christian. Close beneath a noisy 
 barrack, I saw an old stone on three steps. It was the 
 grave of an English merchant, surrounded by others of his 
 countrymen. It told that he was a native " de vico Driffield 
 in comitatu Glocestrias." I do not know Driffield. But 
 when I saw his bare and sun- scorched grave, I thought of an 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 133 
 
 English churchyard in a midland county, cinctured with 
 patriarchal elms, alone unpollarded of all the neighbouring 
 elms ; and of the greenly decaying rail, and the waving grass 
 of the mound, sinking back "by its proper weight" into the 
 breast of earth. And for the clamour of the infidel barracks 
 I substituted the evening thrush upon the vicar's lawn ; and 
 surely a grave must be more blessed, waited on by such 
 sights and sounds as those, than in a foreign thoroughfare of 
 darkeyed misbelievers. I can recollect when I had no love 
 for my country, and understood not what it meant ; and now 
 I cling with something almost like disease to everything 
 belonging to her or characteristic of her, grievously as "her 
 plain living and high thinking" have disappeared. " De 
 vico Driffield in comitatu Glocestriae" beautiful words they 
 seem to me, and sacred from the infidel; for he knows no 
 Latin, and has no paradise in his gross imagination so 
 sweet and fair as the elmy fields and apple-garths of Glouces- 
 tershire. And poor Demetri has no country like, that to 
 go home to across the Sea of Marmora. What is his Zante, 
 the "flower of the Levant," to that rocky brilliant that 
 shines on Europe from the brow of the huge Atlantic ? 
 Melancholy, when it begins to be sweet, degenerates into a 
 querulous enjoyment. It began to do so with me ; but I 
 remembered the lesson I learned not many weeks ago, when 
 I walked by the Brathay in winter, and saw his current low 
 and shrunken as in summer. 
 
 Low spirits are a sin, a penance given 
 
 To over- talking and unthoughtful mirth. 
 
 There is nor high nor low in holiest Heaven, 
 
 Nor yet in hearts where heaven hath hallowed earth. 
 
 Yet are there some whose growth is won in strife, 
 
 And who can bear hot suns through all their life. 
 
134 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1841. 
 
 But rather for myself I would forego 
 
 High tides of feeling, and hrief moods of power, 
 
 Than share these languors with the showy flower, 
 
 Which the shade-loving herb doth never know. 
 
 O Brathay ! wisely in thy winter grounds, 
 
 Wisely and sweetly are thy currents chiming, 
 
 Thus happily to every season timing 
 
 The same low waters and the same low sounds. 
 
 I know the majority of people would consider such an 
 influx of feeling at parting with a common servant, whom 
 I had only had for five weeks, as romantic and unreal. I 
 hasten to read the "Wishing Gate." It will be a safeguard 
 to me against such miserable cold beliefs. 
 
 17. THE LOWER DANUBE. 
 
 I have been much pleased with today's voyage, and yet it 
 cannot be said to have had any scenes of real beauty or 
 picturesque landscape. But I suppose illness and confine- 
 ment in Constantinople have made me wild about green 
 things ; and fresh air, blue sky, white clouds, warm wind, 
 leafy trees and grazing cattle pour a tide of joy into a con- 
 valescent. However there has been some striking foliage. 
 The Wallachian bank particularly is well wooded : and 
 the islands off its shore are very sweet. We passed two 
 or three in the afternoon. They were densely covered with 
 trees, principally planes and silvery willows. A great pro- 
 fusion of a vine-like creeper hung in festoons from trunk to 
 trunk, every now and then throwing off from the end of the 
 branches long prodigal tendrils, which either flung themselves 
 like green streamers on the wind, or when the air was still, 
 hung downward to the earth, forming a dark natural tent. 
 Then every now and then the mighty Danube in some mood 
 of wintry wrath has broken into the wood, making a fresh 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABEIl. 135 
 
 channel for two or three miles ; and the eye is carried far 
 into the darkness of the groves, and trees have heen uprooted 
 and are dead, while the creepers, whose roots have not been 
 killed, have sprung up and mantled all the huge dead 
 branches with beautiful green in masses of the most grotesque 
 shape. All the islands too seem full to excess of noisy 
 nightingales, and are really altogether, though mere clouds 
 of dense and various foliage, the fittest spots I ever saw to 
 make the scenes of some romantic tale or wild poem. I 
 have been much pleased with them, as well as with the sweet 
 Thames-like touches which the Danube brings in these parts 
 nearly every hour. We passed Kassova and the dismantled 
 fortress of Hirsova during the day, and in the evening 
 stopped about half an hour at Silistria, the capital of 
 the Pachalik of that name. It is a striking looking place 
 with its six or seven minarets, when viewed from the river ; 
 and so most of the Danubian towns are said to be, but dirty 
 and mean when you enter them. Silistria belonged once 
 to the Eussians, but was given up to the Turks by the 
 treaty of Adrianople in 1838 (I think). A little before 
 nightfall we came upon a herd of buffaloes swimming across 
 the river. 
 
 June 8. Old Orsova, the Austrian town, was now in sight, 
 the end of our voyage in the good barge Saturn. The seven 
 hours voyage in the barge has been through scenery of the most 
 delightful kind. The river twists and bends, though always 
 with a broad and kingly current, through high conical hills 
 clothed in dense luxuriant woods. Here and there through 
 an opening we could look up the ravines, and see seven or 
 eight mountains, one rising behind another, all clothed in 
 wood, with different lights upon them. Some of the hills too 
 were topped with broken white cliffs like castles. The woods 
 seemed principally of hornbeam, but interspersed with a 
 
136 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OI 1 [1841. 
 
 great number of trees with silvery leaves, like service-trees. 
 I never saw such a bewildering extent of woodland. There 
 were also several little islands of the kind which pleased me 
 so much before, lower down the river. We passed under 
 these islands in our barge, and saw the big twisted roots of 
 the ancient trees, from which the river had washed all the 
 earth ; and I scarcely remember to have seen any woodland 
 views so sweet as those we had of the green woody mountains 
 on the opposite shore through the leaves and between the 
 trunks and branches of the islands close to us. 
 
 Between old and new Orsova there is a broad break of 
 about three miles in the Carpathian mountains. Neither do 
 the mountains rise inland for about four or five miles. 
 Through this plain the river Cserna, a small stream which 
 rises in Mount Sturul, flows down into the Danube through 
 well- wooded banks. In this plain stands the Lazaretto of 
 Schupanek, in which as pestiferous people we were to be 
 incarcerated for ten days of quarantine. It stands about 
 half an hour's walk from the Danube. As we were marched 
 from the river to our prison, we were much amused at the 
 precautions taken to prevent our escaping. There were 
 sentinels at every lane and path, and if we happened to 
 walk near the drivers of our carts, they pushed at us with 
 long poles to avoid our pestiferous contact, and if anything 
 dropped out of the carts, they would not touch it, but left us 
 to pick it up ourselves. 
 
 In due time we arrived at our prison, and gate after gate 
 closed upon us with its creaking lock. The Lazaretto is 
 divided into different lodgments. There are three of us in 
 one. We have two rooms, a kitchen, and a hole for the 
 guardiano to sleep in ; and out of doors we have a little court 
 of a few yards. But in the daytime we are allowed to visit 
 our friends in the other lodgments, provided they came into 
 quarantine at the same time that we did. Here then I have 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 137 
 
 made up my mind to be happy, contented, and industrious 
 for ten days. It is true an English poor man's cottage is 
 internally far more comfortable than are our quarters at 
 Schupanek. Still there are out-door materials for happiness. 
 We have two cherry-trees, two apple-trees, a swallow's nest, 
 and a sparrow's nest with young ones in our court. These 
 shall be to me in quarantine what my monthly roses were 
 to me in sickness at Constantinople. Then we have a table 
 with benches under the shadiest of the apple-trees, and here 
 for ten days I can surely learn German and read Wordsworth 
 very contentedly. Again, although the brick wall is many 
 feet higher than it need have been, our court is not like 
 many of the others, whose rooms are better, open merely to 
 roofs and walls ; ours is open to the hills and sky. We can 
 see the summits and nearly half way down the sides of a fine 
 amphitheatre of wooded mountains, and we know moreover 
 that those mountains are the Carpathians. In the evening 
 I walked up and down my prison yard. I saw the evening 
 star come sweetly out above the tranquil woody outline of 
 the hills ; I heard two herons overhead uttering a wild cry 
 as they flew homewards from the Danube ; I could not hear 
 that river's mighty rush, but I knew it was hard by. Now 
 surely here are materials for happiness, not to be expended 
 in ten days, even by the most prodigal lightheartedness. I 
 do not mean to say that to all travellers the Lazaretto at 
 Schupanek is invested with the same rosy colours. But it 
 may be so. If my contentment is imaginative, yet is it 
 strictly true; for I have not invented one atom of its 
 advantages. I have se.en or heard the apple-trees, the 
 cherries, the swallows, the sparrows, the herons, the woody 
 hills, the evening star. All are matters of fact. I may say 
 then with Wordsworth's Vagrant, 
 
138 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1841. 
 
 I hear my neighbours in their ' courts' complain 
 Of many things which ' do' not trouble me : 
 
 for'I am resolved to be happy for my ten days imprisonment. 
 
 June 9. Sure no persons can be more fortunate than wo 
 are. We came into quarantine yesterday, and I for one had 
 virtuously made up my mind to be a happy, tranquil prisoner 
 for ten days, when lo ! an imperial rescript from Vienna 
 " Whereas there has for some years been no plague in Euro- 
 pean Turkey, and whereas the wars in Bulgaria are over, per- 
 sons are no longer to endure quarantine between the two 
 countries, but their effects are to be aired for twenty-four 
 hours, and their dirty linen to be soaked in water." Today 
 there is visible gloom on the official faces within the Lazaretto 
 of Schupanek, and weak, childish, loud lamentations on the 
 part of our own guardiano ; and there is louder and more child- 
 ish glee on the faces and in the voices of the pestiferous 
 prisoners who, by tomorrow's early sun, are to be turned 
 loose into Hungary among the woody Carpathian mountains. 
 
 18. THE DANUBE. 
 
 No language can possibly describe the superb scenery of 
 today's journey. It far transcends anything I ever saw or 
 conceived of woodland or of river scenery. It is the part 
 of the Danube where the waters break from the great basin 
 of Hungary through the mountains. When we first left 
 Orsova the hills were one green wilderness of massive and 
 unbroken foliage, and the views up the valleys were very 
 sweet indeed. But soon huge and hoary cliffs began to show 
 themselves among the woods, and once or twice the Danube 
 pressed his waters through awful walls of sheer precipice. 
 At first I thought it like the Ehine, only much, very much 
 superior, because of the woods, instead of miserable, tame, 
 
ISJil.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 139 
 
 formal vineyards ; but presently the magnificence and almost 
 fearful grandeur of the scenery drove the Ehine utterly out 
 of my thoughts. The woods were principally deciduous 
 trees, with an immense profusion of walnut, and they were 
 all matted together with wild vines, clematis, and very large 
 white convolvulus ; while between his banks the river writhed 
 and boiled over bars of rock, effectually forbidding all navi- 
 gation. But now the cliffs receded, and there came some 
 miles of incessant wood, with beautiful valleys, through 
 whose woody gates we obtained exquisite glimpses up the 
 mountainous glens. One in particular I remember, of con- 
 summate loveliness. It was on the Servian shore ; and far 
 inland there rose a huge mountain, in shape like a couching 
 lion, and the valley broadened out, and left the mountain 
 standing alone against the sky. Then came a large sea-like 
 bay, with a Servian village and church on a tongue of green 
 fields. The broad river went' by quietly, wheeling solemnly 
 in glossy eddies. It was a scene of perfect loveliness. Not 
 a feature could be heightened or improved. Then came the 
 cliffs again, no longer white and hoary, but a deep mottled 
 red. For the next hour I was well nigh beside myself; 
 had it been the time of many- coloured autumn, instead of 
 broad-leaved June with its heavy green, I should have lost 
 my senses. Ked cliffs, masked in infinitely various degrees 
 by foliage, or standing abrupt like walls, or shooting up into 
 spires and pinnacles like castles, here receding from the 
 river, there throwing themselves forward and shutting the 
 waters up into a narrow turbulent rapid : these were the 
 features of the scenery. To describe them is quite impos- 
 sible. At last we turned from the cliffs, and saw the densely 
 wooded hills above Drenkova, backed by the deep, dull 
 crimson of a stormy sunset, and we arrived absolutely weary 
 with the strength of the impressions made upon us by the 
 scenery. Such a glorious and divine mingling of grandeur 
 
140 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1841. 
 
 and of loveliness, of nature's smiles and frowns, as decks 
 the royal Danube all this day's journey, I never saw in my 
 life : and I believe I shall never forget the silent astonish- 
 ment in which I travelled for many hours. I almost envied 
 the birds who were free to drop anywhere in the leafy wilder- 
 ness, or on the rocky ledges, or to suspend themselves in 
 the air over the middle of the rushing Danube. 
 
 But the scenery was not the only object of interest, though 
 it was quite sufficient to absorb all others. We saw on 
 the Servian shore the holes in the cliffs, where those 
 wonderful Komans had put in beams to make one of their 
 great military roads. When I remembered the savage nature 
 of the people and country, ,the remoteness of the capital, 
 and saw that the Roman road *was just in the very place 
 where modern civilization has compelled a similar road on 
 the other and less eligible shore, it gave me no inconsiderable 
 idea of the nature and grandeur of their power. We entered 
 also a large cave, the Cave of Golumbacz, where St. George 
 is said to have killed the dragon, from whose rotting carcase 
 the peasants believe the fearful mosquitoes of these parts to 
 spring. They fortunately only last a few weeks, but num- 
 bers of the cattle die, notwithstanding that the peasants keep 
 large fires burning near the herds all day. The people 
 themselves rub their hands and faces with a decoction of 
 wormwood. There are two swarms a year ; but we, I believe, 
 were fortunate enough to make our voyage between the death 
 of the first swarm and the birth of the second. The Turks, 
 I am told, were accustomed to use this cave as a prison for 
 their Christian captives. This was the dragon turning on 
 St. George with a vengeance. 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 
 
 19. SEMLIN. 
 
 June 12. We have remained the whole of today at 
 Semlin, which is a small Hungarian town, with environs 
 full of green and pleasant gardens. Part of the day I spent 
 in walking about the willowy fields, and part in dreaming 
 upon deck. There I had the broad river flowing slowly past, 
 and meeting the Save just below. The view of ^Belgrade, 
 which is but a mile and a half distant, is singularly 
 picturesque, especially with the sun upon its white houses 
 with red roofs, and the green bank on which the fortress 
 stands. But my main pleasure today has been in hearing 
 the bells ring. Church bells have always been to me the 
 most sweet, most solemn music that I know ; but in Greece 
 I heard none, in Constantinople none, and now they come 
 upon me with greater power than ever. They made me very 
 homesick. I lay half asleep on deck this afternoon, and, as 
 rny eyes were not quite closed, I could see the smooth water 
 gliding by, and I dreamed all at once that it was the lake of 
 Grasmere, and the bells of Semlin were the bells of Gras- 
 mere, and 
 
 "Fancy sees 
 
 The tower time-stricken, and in shade 
 Embosomed of coeval trees ; 
 Hears, o'er the lake, the warning clock 
 As it ' doth' sound with gentle shock, 
 At evening, when the ground beneath 
 Is ruffled o'er with cells of death." 
 
 And yet, though the bells were the bells of Grasmere, some- 
 how the clock was the clock of Kydal, and I was slowly 
 wending my way to Ambleside, when some one spoke in 
 German close by, and the spell was broken. It was the 
 farthest extremity of Hungary : a desolate distance from the 
 
142 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1841. 
 
 coves of the Westmoreland hills, as they are this evening in 
 all the beauty and quietness of an English June. 
 
 20. HUNGARY. 
 
 June 16. We reached Pesth about seven o'clock this 
 morning, and spent an energetic and laborious day in 
 lionizing it. It is, however, almost totally devoid of interest. 
 It is quite a modern town, and has risen with great rapidity 
 to its present considerable size. It reminded me a good 
 deal of Trieste, although there is no similarity in the 
 situation. But Pesth, like Trieste, is a rising town, and a 
 town which, in the jargon of guide-books, would be called 
 handsome; for the streets are broad, the houses spacious, 
 and there are several buildings, the theatres, casino, and 
 others, which have a great deal of stucco pomp about them. 
 Indeed, there is a general air of whitewash magnificence; 
 but I did not see a single really fine building in the whole 
 place. It stands in a large bleak flat on the edge of the 
 Danube, the opposite shore of which is occupied by the 
 town of Buda, with a range of rocky hills close behind it. 
 Pesth seemed altogether not an inappropriate type of that 
 upstartness of spirit which the Hungarians have recently 
 exhibited. I was much more pleased with Buda, which is 
 old-looking and irregular, the old Koman Aquincum. Yet it 
 has not much street-picturesque to boast of, and in neither 
 of the towns is there a single good church. If Hungary 
 advances in wealth, education, and moral condition, as she 
 promises to do, Pesth will soon rank among the important 
 towns of Europe. Just outside the town is the Kakosfeld, 
 where the wild military diet of the Magyars was held, and 
 their kings elected. There seems to be at Pesth, as in 
 the rest of Hungary, a very strong Anglomania. 
 
 Jane 17. We were so tired of steamboats, that we deter- 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 143 
 
 mined to go from Pesth to Presburg, the capital of Hungary, 
 by land; especially as it would give us an opportunity of 
 seeing more of the interior of Hungary. We were bold 
 enough to try the Bauern-Post. The Bauern or Peasant 
 Post is an arrangement among the peasants themselves, and 
 is quite independent of the Royal Post. Unless you have a 
 carriage of your own, you are deposited in a bad peasant's 
 cart, without springs, and with a cross seat to sit on ; four 
 wild-looking and fine horses are attached to it, and away you 
 go at a tremendous pace over the putzas or plains of 
 Hungary. We left Pesth in a cart at six in the morning. 
 For some few hours the road led over a low range of partially 
 wooded, partially desolate hills, called the Bakonver Wald. 
 To this succeeded plains in a very high state of cultivation, 
 full of Indian corn, with pumpkins growing between the rows. 
 We breakfasted at a solitary auberge on a common, and soon 
 after passed by Gran, which we did not enter. It looked 
 extremely picturesque, especially with its tall rock crowned 
 by the new cathedral. Gran is the second city of Hungary, 
 and the Prince-primate is said to be the richest bishop in 
 Christendom. The city itself was rescued from the Turks by 
 Sobieski in 1683, after having been long the residence of 
 the Kings of Hungary, and the birthplace of St. Stephen. 
 Soon after leaving Gran, we had a view of the town of Dotis 
 on our left. There seemed to be a fine church there, and the 
 town looked very picturesque, as it had an amphitheatre of 
 low blue hills round it. It was not altogether unlike Treves. 
 We now entered upon a boundless, boundless putza or prairie. 
 Here and there we saw much cultivation, and again in other 
 places miles of barren common. The plain was however 
 relieved by the reaches of the Danube, and several very pretty 
 Hungarian villages, nestling in oases of acacia. We could 
 descry the villages at a considerable distance by the bright 
 foliage of the acacias. They looked like yellow patches on 
 
144 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1841. 
 
 the plain. The great division of religious opinion among 
 the Hungarians generally causes each village to have two or 
 three spires, which add much to the landscape. In almost 
 all places, the Greeks and the Roman Catholics have 
 churches ; and in many the united Greeks, the non-united 
 Greeks, the Roman Catholics, the Lutherans and the 
 Calvinists, all have places of worship : a sad similarity to 
 poor divided England. 
 
 A regular tourist would in all probability describe our 
 today's journey as lying through uninteresting scenery. 
 But, though it had nothing of beauty or romance about it, 
 it was peculiar ; and it always pleases me to observe the 
 different characteristics of different countries, and to make 
 the different counties of England stand for types of so many 
 sorts of scenery. Today for example, there was a great deal 
 of character in the scenery, and also certain resemblances to 
 England. We began as if among the Sussex downs, we 
 had the wet green and silvery willows of Huntingdonshire, 
 and some hours of country which much resembled the 
 monotonous environs of Ely. But for vastness and wilder- 
 ness-like aspect the plains of Hungary have no peers in our 
 own land. I was not fatigued by the immense breadth of 
 them. If ever I am in pain or dulness, or tossing on a 
 weary sleepless bed at home, I will try to send my spirit 
 back to the immense plains of Hungary, stretching out far 
 and wide, and roam with the herds of wild horses even to yon 
 gleamy, misty, wavering boundary which marks the huge 
 fence of the blue Carpathians, bounding with them at full 
 speed, and with flashing eyes over the unending green floors, 
 swept ever by exhilarating winds, till my whole being is 
 filled and refreshed with the pure, unhindered vastness of 
 these solemn plains. Painful and wretched as our mode 
 of conveyance was, I was delighted and elevated as we sped 
 for some seven hours over a putza, and still seemed no nearer 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 145 
 
 to its boundary. In the evening we passed outside the 
 walls of the town of Raab, The number of spires gave 
 it a pleasant appearance, especially to travellers fresh from 
 the land of minarets. After eighteen hours of furious 
 driving in peasants' carts, with a pleasing interlude of an 
 old rattling caleche, we arrived at Wieselburg. The pain 
 and suffering we were in, our aching bones and heads, the 
 pains in our sides, our dusty mouths, ears, eyes, noses, 
 and necks, and our sun-stricken faces, added to sundry 
 intimations of likelihood of upsets since nightfall, fairly 
 overcame our courage. Before we entered Wieselburg we 
 had made up -our minds, if we could get some clean straw, to 
 lie down till daybreak. Alas ! our sensual delight was 
 almost degrading when we found an auberge with three little 
 beds in a room, clean sheets, and excellent coffee. I mention 
 this because Murray's Hand-Book speaks of the filth of 
 Hungarian inns. We have been into several little out of the 
 way auberges, and some peasants' cottages in Hungary, and 
 in all we were struck with the scrupulous, Dutch-like cleanli- 
 ness that reigned within. 
 
 21. SCHQNBRUNN. 
 
 June 20. After a rainy morning, the fineness of the 
 afternoon tempted us to the imperial palace of Schonbrunn, 
 the Austrian Versailles. It is only half an hour's drive from 
 Vienna. The chateau itself is large and handsome, but 
 without any architectural merit. But the gardens are 
 delightful. They are in the old trim clipped style, very 
 extensive, and beautifully kept. There were broad straight 
 walks, and narrow alleys of gloomy green, and branching 
 avenues, and ponds, and lawns, and formal flowerbeds, all 
 in the most exquisite perfection. The whole scene laid great 
 10 
 
146 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1841. 
 
 hold upon iny imagination. It threw me into past times. I 
 looked up to the window of the room where Napoleon's son 
 died, and I thought of the middle window at Versailles. 
 I wandered on beneath deep chestnuts, or in beechwood 
 alleys and walks, twisting and diving for ever among close 
 trunks and branches. At last I came upon a place where 
 the children of the court are wont to play ; and methought I 
 met a little girl trundling a hoop, and hiding herself among 
 the beech alleys as her companions drew near ; then when 
 they had passed she laughed out loud, and trundled her 
 hoop upon the gravel ; and ever as they pursued she darted 
 once more amongst the coverts of the branches. Methought 
 I came upon her by surprise. She gazed upon me like a 
 startled fawn. Her hair hung loose over her face and neck, 
 she was flushed with exercise, her eyes were full of laughter, 
 and she was very beautiful, and she looked the daughter 
 of a queen. Her limbs were finely shaped, her skin won- 
 drously fair, so fair and transparent that you might see 
 her Hapsburgh blood flowing beneath it. Some thirteen 
 summers had clothed her with the surpassing loveliness of 
 girlhood, and high birth, the highest birth, was stamped 
 on every feature. Oh, how wildly, how merrily her face 
 looked, as it glistened among the green boughs, with her 
 little white hand resting on her hoop. Fair child, fair 
 Austrian flower, sweet Marie Antoinette ! I thought of the 
 window at Versailles, of the yelling mob, of the Temple, 
 of "Fouquier Tinville's judgment bar," of the long cares 
 that broke the light heart and refined it to saintly endurance, 
 of the miserable mother, the anguish-stricken wife, of the 
 foreign guillotine. The wind rustled chilly among the J>eech 
 branches, and the face disappeared, just as the sun went 
 behind a cloud. I started and shivered, and after a few 
 minutes' silence I said, scarcely knowing what I said, 
 " Surely it is very cold for June." 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 
 
 22 . MABIAZELL. 
 
 Today has given us an example of the benefit of early 
 rising. We had got all our sight-seeing over by twelve 
 o'clock, and were ready to start, when the rain came down. 
 It continued sufficiently long to prevent our leaving Mariazell 
 in such time as would give us reasonable hope of attaining 
 any tolerable sleeping place by nightfall. So we made up 
 our minds to remain. The rain was a series of driving 
 thunder showers, and we had in the intervals wonderful 
 sights up a savage valley, full of writhing mists, now and 
 then kindled by the sun. At half past three a walk seemed 
 practicable. We set forth, and found the mountains most 
 glorious ; some were clear and green in the sun, others had 
 mists clambering up their sides, or flowing in a level line 
 along their breasts ; and one was utterly covered with the 
 thinnest possible mist, quite transparent, and hanging in 
 silky threads from bough to bough : while the hymns of 
 hundreds of pilgrims, and the booming of the church bells 
 added much to the effect of the scenery. We wandered on 
 for about three miles, till we reached the little lake which 
 had pleased us so much in the morning. 
 
 It was changed. Beauty and gloom had striven,"and the 
 strife was over. The serpentine mists, that were coiling 
 themselves up on the tops of the woods, were symbols of 
 gloom, drawing off his vanquished forces. And beauty 
 seemed to be expanding herself over the lake, and even in 
 the pellucid depths, which were of pure and sparkling green. 
 The power of summer afternoon was on the hills. There was 
 that breathing stillness which is the moistened earth's 
 thanksgiving after rain a Benedicite as thrilling and as 
 tuneful as when the winds are out, and the woods and 
 
148 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1841. 
 
 waterfalls and clamorous caverns are swelling the outbreak 
 of stormy praise. And nothing broke that breathing stillness 
 but the woodman's axe far up, and the distant drowsy tinkle 
 of the sheepbell. I was then once more walking by a lake- 
 side, and there were crowds of ruddy-finned perch motionless 
 by the margin. A lake ! History, geography, politics, all, 
 all fled. Springs of old enjoyment broke up within me, and 
 I received into the very recesses of my being the whole scene 
 before me. Then the power of summer evening throned 
 herself upon the spot. How beautiful it was how beautiful ! 
 how holy ! It came not with the gauzy purple veil of radiant 
 light which clothes our English hills, but with a pale blue 
 green, mingled almost with a kind of gilding, yet all of it 
 faint as faint could be. In silence and deepest gratitude I 
 left the place. It seemed like a message from above, so 
 significant was the intense tranquillity. The very face of the 
 unfurrowed lake was full of calm meaning, of heavenly 
 expression. I stole away. The mountains beyond were 
 again bringing down the clouds, but they had those rims of 
 light along their outline which always give me the strange 
 idea that some sunshiny place is beyond which I know and 
 love and have visited before. One step more, and a high^ 
 long-ridged mountain came in sight, the same one which had 
 the thin mist on it before ; it was flooded with sunshine. 
 It had no pine wood, but was of a brilliant light green, broken 
 with cliffs as white as snow, and from a hollow white-mouthed 
 cavern rose the end of a broken rainbow. In another 
 moment the cloud came down, and the pomp was over. 
 Blessed be the Lord God Omnipotent Who reigneth ! Nor 
 was the thought my own alone ; for my companion said, as 
 it were thinking aloud, ye mountains and hills, bless ye 
 the Lord, praise Him and magnify Him for ever ! 
 
 I have written these lines while the impression is yet 
 warm within me. The valleys are filled with muttering 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 149 
 
 thunder, the organ is pealing most loudly from the church, 
 and the Ave Maria of the multitudinous pilgrims is accom- 
 panying the sun to his cloudy setting, 
 
 July 1. Still detained at Mariazell by the weather. The 
 village is thronged with thousands. Early in the morning 
 various processions arrived. From hundreds of male and 
 female voices has Mary's holy name swelled along the valleys 
 and up the savage heights* It is a dark, cold and cloudy 
 day, hut no rain falling ; yet the scenery is not visible . 
 Strange it is amid these rude fastnesses, to hear those words 
 once spoken by the angel re-echoed from every side, till the 
 whole mountain hollow and the valleys that strike out from 
 it, seem to send up towards heaven one long and incessant 
 "Hail Mary!" About half past ten the Vienna procession 
 arrived, in number from two to three thousand. The bishop, 
 the priests, the numerous banners, the costly offerings, made 
 an imposing spectacle, while the kettledrums and trumpets 
 contended with the swell of multitudinous voices. There 
 was a considerable congregation in the church before the 
 procession entered. It is a very spacious building ; but I 
 never saw so close a mass of human beings before. I went 
 into one of the upper galleries, and looked down upon them. 
 Each had twined around the pilgrim's staff a sprig of fir and 
 some wild flowers, and very many of the women looked weary 
 and way-worn. One or two were weeping bitterly ; perhaps 
 the relatives of those who had fallen by the way. Tuesday 
 was a day of intense heat, and as we came along from Vienna 
 we pitied the poor pilgrims. After climbing the high hill 
 of Annaberg, their thirst was so strong upon them that they 
 rushed, hot and fainting, to the cold mountain springs. The 
 pilgrims wended on, but four were corpses at Annaberg, and 
 three were struggling for life upon beds of sickness. 
 
 When the organ burst forth, and about three thousand 
 
150 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1841. 
 
 voices raised the hymn to the Virgin, I thought the roof of 
 the church would have been lifted up. I never heard such a 
 volume of musical, really musical sound before. Then the 
 grand Mass began, and the incense floated all around. It was 
 a bewildering sight. I thought how faith ran in my own 
 country in thin and scattered rivulets, and I looked with 
 envious surprise at this huge wave which the Austrian capital 
 had flung upon this green platform of Styrian highland a 
 wave of pure, hearty, earnest faith, 
 
 23. ILLNESS ABKOAD. 
 
 July 6. In bed. At home when I was ill among comforts, 
 luxuries and overflowing sympathies, nothing used to annoy me 
 so much as the expression of sorrow, frequent enquiries, and so 
 on. Now, here in this Carinthian village, a foreigner, full of 
 wants, and discontents, and ill-humours, I find still the same 
 overflowing sympathy. The Carinthian girl who bustles 
 about me with quiet steps, doing what offices she can for me, 
 is full of sympathy. We cannot talk, yet her manner, her 
 very eyes, are full of concern. We cannot keep her out of the 
 room. There is no end to her making of soups and slops, 
 nor to her entreaties that I should drink them, though she 
 knows I do not understand her language. She insists on 
 remaining by my bed while I attempt to eat. The whole 
 household seem to have the same kind-hearted concern. The 
 man whom we hired at Vienna has become gentle from rough, 
 and attentive from being supercilious. This is a lesson to 
 me. I feel I have no right to be annoyed with this officious 
 sympathy. I have no right to forbid the expression of it. I 
 sinned in being angry and impatient with the poor Carinthian 
 girl. I am a foreigner here, and have shown myself hard to 
 please. Why then am I met by all this sympathy, if it were 
 not that sorrow and sickness, on ever so small a scale, are 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 151 
 
 gifted with a divine virtue to call it forth ; and that the heart of 
 man has an indefeasible right to pour out its sympathies upon 
 the suffering ? I then have no right to oppose it, no right 
 to be irritated by it. I used in illness to demand much 
 trouble, and yet to be irritated by much sympathy. It was 
 selfish ; and I will forswear it, and begin by striving to be at 
 ease in the continual presence and multiform ministrations of 
 my Carinthian handmaid. My old course was a violation of 
 the rights of the human heart. It is the privilege of suffering 
 to breed soft thoughts in others. There distils a virtue out 
 of sorrow, whereof are born sympathies, and gentle moods, 
 and little self-denials, and chaste joys. Surely I must have 
 had a bad temper to be troubled with sympathy. Doubtless, 
 it was one of the manifold transformations through which 
 pride passes. When it is so again, I will think of the exu- 
 berant sympathy, the loquacious pity that will not be gain- 
 sayed, of this Carinthian damsel ; for the bard makes it one 
 of the evil traits of his bad woman, that when 
 
 " Her husband's sister watched 
 Her dreary pillow, waited on her needs ; 
 The very sound of that kind foot 
 Was anguish to her ears." 
 
 24. THE STRUBB PASS. 
 
 July 10. Soon after leaving Salzburg we entered 
 Bavaria, and continued in it for about ten miles. But 
 they gave us very little trouble about our passports, and 
 none about our luggage. We have had but a taste of 
 the open plain, and are now buried among the high hills 
 once more. The scenery from Reichenhall to Lofer is 
 very magnificent indeed. The Stern Pass, and the Strubb 
 Pass, by which we entered the Tyrol, are well known to 
 hunters after mountain beauty and grandeur. But many 
 
152 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1841. 
 
 of the vales had another interest beside their scenery. They 
 were not made famous only, but, for the sacredness of the 
 cause let the word be said, made holy by the blood of Hofer 
 and his generous Tyrolese. Many a time was the flood of 
 lewd Frenchmen and pert Bavarians heroically repelled from 
 these mountain valleys. There is something almost fearful in 
 a mountaineer's love of his country. Either the dread forms 
 of nature enter into him, and imprint themselves upon the 
 very substance of his moral being, or else he is absorbed by 
 them, and the vital powers of his mind and spirit become 
 transfused into the objects around. So that, if separated, 
 he pines away. It is like cutting a river off from its foun- 
 tains. It shrinks, stagnates, and disappears. The joy, and 
 the peculiar thrill akin to tears, which I always experience 
 when after some months upon the plain of Oxford the West- 
 moreland hills rise before me, is but a feeble mimicry of that 
 intense and haunting love of his fatherland which rests at 
 the bottom of a mountaineer's heart when all else is gone 
 from it. 
 
 At Elmau we saw a very glorious show. On our left was a 
 huge Alp 'towering into the air, with tall splintered spires of 
 rock of the most wild appearance. The mountain was long, 
 and with a very varying outline ; and it was entangled in a 
 vast mist. Here it was thick and fleecy; while in another 
 place it was a thin transparent vapour. Sometimes it seemed 
 issuing in long, slow pomp from the chambers of the moun- 
 tain, sometimes it was kindled by the sun. Sometimes it 
 fell all at once, as if dropping from an invisible hand, and 
 disclosed a thousand feet of peak and precipice, and then 
 presently, and almost as suddenly, it was caught up in the 
 grasp of some strong wind, and the whole Alp was clothed 
 again. As we were passing it, it looked like some gigantic 
 creature that had torn itself upon the craggy armour of the 
 mountain, and was writhing in monstrous, but pitiful con- 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 153 
 
 tortions, catching here and there the sun on its gigantic folds. 
 When we had passed ahout ten minutes, I looked hack. The 
 suffering of the monster was over. The mighty Alp stood up 
 in the hlue sky and open air and clear sunbeams, while at its 
 feet, upon the top of some low fir-clad hills, lay the snowy 
 creature coiled in four or five enormous folds, sullen and 
 still. 
 
 We passed for a long while up the valley of the Saal, 
 then up the Achenache, and threaded a series of very 
 heautiful glens. The scenery throughout the whole day's 
 journey was very romantic. But alas ! the wrinkles of her 
 spring-time anger were still visible on nature's face, grievously 
 deforming her heauty, like angry light in a woman's eye. 
 
 The desolating track of torrents, the paths which the 
 fierce waters had cut for themselves down the woody steep, 
 the meadows strewed with gravel, the ruined alder copses, 
 were visible on all sides. It made me rememher that these 
 vales have other seasons than the gay hour for travellers. 
 In the winter I hope to be at home, and then will I 
 remember, one by one, many of these green valleys, whose 
 features are imprinted on my mind. I will remember 
 that I saw them flushed with the glowing breath of 
 deep summer, and I will realize the dead white mass of 
 inert snow, the half-buried chalets, the stalled kine, the 
 voiceless streams, the appalling hush of the Alpine winter, 
 broken only (can it be said relieved ?) by the winds and the 
 wolves alternately ; and when the snowdrop is gemming the 
 brown earth of England, and the green buds bursting on 
 the hawthorns, and the primrose peeping forth on the sunny 
 side of the hedge, and the rooks at their noisy nest-building, 
 I will remember the ruinous spring-tide here, the crash of 
 the avalanche relaxing its gripe from the cliff, the burst 
 of the torrents, and the devastating floods of earth and 
 gravel. Yes, beautiful and calm and leafy as these glens of 
 
154i THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1841. 
 
 Tyrol are now, in winter the curse of Adam, like an 
 enchanted loom, is plying incessantly round ahout every one. 
 The sons of Adam are fighting with the snowdrift, with the 
 torrent, with the avalanche, with the forest, with the moun- 
 tain, with the merciless and overhearing elements, which so 
 frightfully invade his prerogative. Surely in such grim 
 seasons, and cut off from the world, the deep and tranquil 
 haven of domestic purity and happiness should be in every 
 chalet, wherein for the vexed peasant to anchor his soul and 
 be at peace, and have trust laid up on high. Then, with 
 wife and children, or even with a wife, the winter indoors 
 tasks of Virgil's husbandman might afford means of chaste 
 enjoyment, of impassioned peace, nay, of true moral elevation. 
 I have looked on many a hard, honest, weather-beaten face, 
 and wished them from the bottom of my heart a loyal 
 and a sweet wife, the queen of their fir-wood cottages, the 
 refuge of their spring and winter hours, their treasury of 
 gentle affections, earthly content, and undoubting hopes 
 beyond the earth. In such case they may be in a plight next 
 winter to retort my commiseration on myself. 
 
 25. SUNDAY IN THE TYROL. 
 
 July 11. Sunday morning. This morning at seven I 
 occupied myself very pleasingly in watching the people come 
 to the church, which is just opposite my windows. It is 
 pouring with rain, and has been for some hours ; yet, early 
 as it is, no one seems prevented from coming to church. 
 Many of them must have come from the country, for I am 
 sure the village itself can never contain so large a congrega- 
 tion. Most of them are wet through, yet men and women 
 of every age are thronging in notwithstanding. It is no 
 high day, but a common Sunday, with ordinary Mass and 
 sermon. I have observed them with pleasure, and, remeni- 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 155 
 
 bering they were Tyrolese, with honour also. For when 
 " sapient Germany lay depressed beneath the brutal sword," 
 
 "A few strong instincts, and a few plain rules, 
 Among the herdsmen of the Alps, have wrought 
 More for mankind, at this unhappy day, 
 Than all the pride of intellect and thought." 
 
 There were tottering old men with straggling hairs, who 
 may well have remembered Hofer, and perchance have 
 followed his heron plume to victory, or to a defeat more 
 glorious in its holy hardihood and unvanquished moral 
 strength than a thousand victories of Marengo or Austerlitz. 
 The early hour and the beating rain kept not these ancients 
 of the mountain hamlet from their church. Then there were 
 gallant stout-looking men of middle age, with firm step 
 and upright eye, doubtless the householders of the dales. 
 There were young bachelors, livers out of doors and hard 
 workers, too old for a mother's thrall, and yet not safely 
 chained as yet to the sweet and sobering slavery of wedded 
 cares; a class, so lamentably few of which we can allure 
 to our parish churches. And there were wives and mothers, 
 active, bustling, neatly attired, brimful of greetings. Many, 
 I am sure, were the very wives I was wishing for my Tyrolese 
 yesterday; wives who will fulfil their duties to their hus- 
 bands, according to the prophecy which King Lemuel learned 
 from his mother : " The heart of her husband doth safely 
 trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil. She 
 seeketh wool and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands. 
 She stretched out her hands to the poor. She is not afraid 
 of the snow for her household. She is like the merchants' 
 ships; she bringeth her food from afar. She looketh well 
 to the ways of her household ; and in her tongue is the 
 
156 . THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1841. 
 
 law of kindness. Her children arise up and call her blessed ; 
 her husband also, and he praiseth her.'* 
 
 There were troops also of boys and girls, gay and happy, 
 even in the rain. 
 
 26. THE BAVARIAN FLATS. 
 
 July 14. As oil upon the waters, as balm to a wounded 
 spirit, as a morning sleep after a tossing night, so have been 
 to me this day the sea-like flats of tame Bavaria. Strange it 
 should be so to one who haunts the mountains where he has 
 no home, and where his library is not, drawn to them by an 
 irresistible instinct of his nature. Yet so it is. My spirits 
 began to flag from the vehement excitement of the sublime 
 recesses of the mountains, among which I had been ever 
 since we left Vienna. But now the flats of cornfield or pine- 
 wood, which diversify the broad plain of Munich, allow me 
 to subside into the luxury of pleasant dulness, of silly talk, 
 of unthoughtful reverie, nay, of the animal enjoyments of 
 eating, drinking, sleeping and locomotion. My senses and 
 my mind have broken up for the holydays. Yet was I this 
 morning not unlike a dog barking after a carriage, and not 
 knowing where to stop, but returning to it again and yet 
 again. For nearly the whole forty miles from Benedictbeuern 
 to Munich, I was twisting my head round to look at the 
 magnificent panorama of the Tyrolese Alps in the clear light 
 of early morning. I need not praise the view, for what 
 higher commendation can be bestowed by a man than the 
 simple fact of his keeping his head turned and twisted in 
 a carriage to look at it posture of all postures most 
 harrowing ? 
 
 At Wolfrathshausen we joined the Isar, a river which, 
 wherever I have seen it, has a desolate domain of gravel-beds, 
 uprooted alders, and sprawling trunks of overturned trees. It 
 
1811.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 15? 
 
 is the same Isar which Camphell so unhappily commemorates 
 in his lyrical poem on Hohenlinden unhappily, for the Isar 
 is quite innocent of bringing his "rolling flow" within twenty 
 .miles of the said battle-field. 
 
 About seven miles off, the dull, round-capped towers of 
 Munich cathedral came in sight, and shortly after, the whole 
 city. It is by no means imposing at a distance, and answers 
 exactly to the description, the most graphic I ever read any- 
 where, or of any place, and which I have never forgotten since 
 I read it at Oxford, given of it by the Abbe de la Mennais 
 in his Affaires de Rome. He deserves great praise for his 
 description, for it is almost impossible to convey any accurate 
 idea of a place in French, or of a scene either. Their class 
 of panegyrical words is not extensive, and their own use of 
 them quite indiscriminate. They will often describe a scene 
 by two words, both of which by the force of etymology cannot 
 be applicable to the same place at the same time. Neither 
 when they use a single epithet do they wish to convey 
 anything characteristic by it. For instance, when a French- 
 man calls a view magnificent, he does not intend to convey 
 to you the idea of its inspiring you with great thoughts by 
 sublime he does not mean distinctly that the scene at once 
 elevates and depresses you either by a sense of awe or a sense 
 of solitude neither by a noble view has he any wish to give 
 you the idea of extent, or a corresponding expansion of 
 thought and sentiment. By all these epithets, which he 
 duplicates and reduplicates in honor of the same scene, he 
 simply wishes to give utterance to a confused feeling of 
 admiration, which he has not sufficient sympathy with 
 external nature to analyze. 
 
158 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1841. 
 
 27. WURTZBURG. 
 
 July 19. A number of petty but vexatious obstacles 
 prevented our leaving Wiirtzburg before nine o'clock, and we 
 were thus exposed to the merciless heat of the day. The 
 country for some miles was a series of ugly undulations of 
 monotonous fertility ; but the road soon descended into some 
 rich and well- wooded lowlands. The green of broad woods, 
 and the dark tint of red earth, always compose a pleasantly 
 coloured landscape. The wind was very high, and our 
 carriage made so much noise upon the paved road, that I was 
 indulged in a most favourite enjoyment that of watching the 
 strong wind imprisoned in a close wood, and bending the 
 stout stems and tossing the leaf-laden branches in his 
 struggles to pass onward; to watch this, and hear nothing 
 to be on some hill side removed from the clamour of the 
 gust, and behold the causeless commotion. Today it was 
 delightful, for most of the wood was birch, and every now and 
 then a blast split through the wood, flung back the curtains 
 of foliage in every direction, and disclosed long arcades of 
 slender and glistening birch stems. As the wood lasted for 
 some miles, I watched and mused upon the strange effect 
 produced, when one sense is compelled to take cognizance by 
 itself of an object where it is accustomed to have the aid of 
 another. The eye felt the lack of the ear, for still the carriage 
 prevented my hearing the wind. There are some lines in the 
 Excursion describing the appearance of natural objects to one 
 born deaf, which express my feeling of pleasant strangeness 
 exactly, 
 
 When stormy winds 
 
 Were working the broad bosom of the lake 
 Into a thousand thousand sparkling waves, 
 
1841.] PREDEKICK WILLIAM FABER. 159 
 
 Rocking the trees, or driving cloud on cloud 
 
 Along the sharp edge of yon lofty crags, 
 
 The agitated scene before his eye 
 
 Was silent as a picture : evermore 
 
 Were all things silent, wheresoe'er he moved. 
 
 The woodlands continued to thicken, till at last, in the 
 bosom of some massive beechwoods we came upon the Abbey 
 of Ebrach, once the richest in all Franconia. It has been 
 dissolved and sold. The pile of building is immense ; and 
 the church is a handsome gothic building with some good 
 round windows. It was founded by St. Bernard early in the 
 twelfth century. I have a great affection for these woodland 
 homes o the old Cistercians, homes akin to the "hollow 
 grove " of Furness, or Vale Crucis by the " clean- watered 
 Dee," 
 
 Where gentle-mannered monks were wont to hymn 
 The blissful Mother, as the day grew dim. 
 
 28 . NUREMBERG. 
 
 A man accustomed to find the Reformation ranked with 
 the English Rebellion and the French Revolution, as the 
 desecrator of holy houses and the defacer of cathedrals, will 
 be pleased to learn that the Nurembergers embraced Pro- 
 testantism without an iota of this spirit. The churches 
 remain as they were. There are even bones of dead saints 
 in wire cases over one of the altars. Not one of the 
 numerous altars is removed or mutilated ; nay, though not 
 used, clean white cloths are kept upon them all. On one 
 side of the Pegnitz is the quarter of St. Sebald, on the 
 other the quarter of St. Laurence. The church of St. 
 Sebald, though not first rate, is handsome, and the interior 
 exiremely good, containing the exquisite shrine of St. Sebald, 
 
160 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1841. 
 
 at which Peter Vischer worked for thirteen years, for the 
 praise, as he says, " of God Almighty alone, and the honour 
 of St. Sebald, prince of heaven." The Frauenkirche in the 
 market-place, a Eoman Catholic church, has an exquisite 
 doorway. Two old chapels in the imperial castle, and Albert 
 Durer's house, are also worth seeing in this quarter. 
 
 In the other quarter the church of St. Laurence is a 
 magnificent gothic church, with a beautiful east exterior ; 
 but the inside is superb. The natural ruddy tint of the 
 stone is unprofaned, the aisles of thirteen shapely columns 
 most beautiful, the roof of the choir and the painted windows 
 of the east end all exquisite. But there is a tabernacle of 
 open work for the Holy Sacrament, reaching from the floor to 
 the roof, of the minutest and most elaborately ornamental 
 work in stone, which I think the ne plus ultra of gothic art 
 and beauty. The whole is sustained on three kneeling 
 figures, the sculptor Adam Kraft and his two apprentices. 
 Four years of incessant toil were consumed over it, and the 
 Nurembergers then left him to die in an hospital, while their 
 posterity wonder at his Sacraments-Hauslein, a"s the miracu- 
 lous thing is called. It would have converted Vitruvius to 
 gothic. 
 
 These are the main single sights worth seeing in Nurem- 
 berg ; but they do not constitute the charm of the place. 
 You must riot in odd streets, bewilder yourself in lanes, 
 courts, and grass-grown squares without exit, you must 
 people it all out of Froissart and Monstrelet ; and you will go 
 away, not delighted only, but having imbibed no inconsider- 
 able amount of the romantic spirit and temper, which will 
 broaden and deepen the lights and shadows of your mind. 
 To have been at Athens and at Nuremberg is a privilege so 
 great as to involve a responsibility, of a moral as well as an 
 intellectual sort. 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 161 
 
 July 21. We found the journey from Nuremberg to 
 Eatisbon sufficiently long to occupy the day, especially with 
 the miserable Bavarian post. But the country is somewhat 
 more interesting, or, to speak more accurately, less mono- 
 tonous than Bavaria generally is. The ground is broken, 
 and there is a good deal of wood, though most of it is fir. 
 We breakfasted at Feucht, and then proceeded to Neumarkt. 
 This was once a free city of the Empire, and its gates 
 and walls and old houses standing gable-wise into the streets 
 still attest its antiquity. It has now dwindled into a 
 spacious, sombre village. Alas \ how pathetic is the interest 
 with which these relics of broken Germany are invested. 
 The mighty geographical revolution wrought by the passage 
 of the Cape of Good Hope has done all this. The ocean has 
 sucked in the great streams of inland commerce, and asserted 
 it as her own by indefeasible prerogative. Yet, to indulge in 
 a fanciful speculation, it is possible that the land may still be 
 avenged upon the sea. The Rhine, united by railway with the 
 Danube, as it soon will be, must surely swell the throng of 
 trade along* this superb highway across the European con- 
 tinent ; though the uncertainty which will hang for the next 
 century aver the destiny of the Black Sea and the mouths of 
 the Danube, will thwart the progress of inland commerce. 
 At present, however, commerce has ebbed from the heart of 
 Europe, as it were by instinct, into the sea, its natural recep- 
 tacle ; and these ancient cities are left high and dry, stranded 
 upon the old historical beach. Now and then, perchance, 
 an irregular wave of prosperity, straining against the ebb, 
 may suddenly fling itself upon the shore and wet the moulder- 
 ing walls of one of these cities ; but the moisture sinks into 
 the sand, and its footprint is quickly effaced. Such temporary 
 visitations do but wrong the favoured city; for they over- 
 whelm the quaintness and character which alone exact the 
 
 homage of mankind to these shrines of departed greatness. 
 11 
 
162 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1841. 
 
 Nay, Germany itself, what is it now? There is no such 
 country. It is a political phantom, a geographical conveni- 
 ence. It denotes a past epoch, an existing literature, and is 
 the title of a wide- spread and many-dialected language. This 
 is all which remains of Germany, the religious, the wise, the 
 glorious Germany, which wrought more for mankind than any 
 other people save the wonderful and awful Romans. Germany 
 is departed, and the Ambassadors of Europe watch round the 
 empty coffer at Frankfort, on which her potent name is 
 inscribed. Sweet and reverend deceit ! Europe is slow to 
 believe that Germany has passed away ! All that is good in 
 Europe, except in the three Mediterranean peninsulas, (and 
 there is little good there), is German. Our Ambassadors may 
 well worship at our mother's tomb. 
 
 29. A BENEDICTINE MONASTEBY. 
 
 July 25. We left the Enns reluctantly, but had no reason 
 to be discontented, for our stony path kept mounting and 
 mounting upwards, leading us through many a scene of wild 
 sublimity. Grandeur now began to divest herself of the robe 
 which she had borrowed from beauty in the valley of the 
 Enns. All wood ceased but fir or ash. The mountains 
 rose in gigantic splinters and leaning obelisks of hoary rock, 
 bare, precipitous. Here and there a splinter of more obtuse 
 point than its neighbours had a coronal of dark herbage. We 
 had several sunny showers down below, and the lofty white 
 peaks in the clear sun glistened beautifully through the 
 misty shower, which seemed to refine them to a substance 
 almost as thin and spiritual as the mist itself. One view was 
 singularly striking. On our left was a large mountain 
 covered with black fir, and above it the air was filled with a 
 thin white cloud. I happened to be gazing on this cloud, 
 when all at once it parted asunder two ways, like a scene in a 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 163 
 
 theatre, and two huge, sharp, white mountain heads started 
 out some two thousand feet above us. They came upon the 
 eye with a shock like that of an unexpected flash of lightning. 
 We had, indeed, great opportunity this afternoon of witness- 
 ing the alchemy of mists. At length we reached one of those 
 high, bald, ash-tree valleys, which all who study mountain 
 scenes know when to expect in traversing the upper galleries 
 of a mountainous region. From this we descended into the 
 broad valley of the Enns once more. At the foot of the 
 mountain we stopped to bait the horses, and took the oppor- 
 tunity of walking over some fields to get a view of the end of 
 the valley. It is the entrance of the famous pass of Gesause, 
 (the Sounding Pass), through which the Enns forces a 
 passage amid scenes of the most superb and oftentimes 
 desolate character. The view of the portal is truly sublime. 
 On every side are lofty mountains with high fantastically 
 shaped walls of crags. Between two of these there is a space 
 occupied by romantic but diminutive hills of white rocks 
 crowned with rings of fir. They are like the Trosachs of 
 Loch Katrine, only that there is here no such fair colouring 
 as the drooping birch, the red heather, and the many-tinted 
 ferns combine to make between Benan and Benvenue. Among 
 these Styrian Trosachs the Enns twists and doubles, and 
 escapes as best it may. But how I cannot conceive, for 
 immediately behind these diminutive hills rises a stupendous 
 mountain, many thousand feet into the air. It rises like a 
 thick cone, its shingly side ribbed with alternate stripes of 
 dark and light green herbage ; but when it should taper off 
 into a summit, it bulges out in beetling precipices, with a 
 huge head like a Koman mural crown, divided into battle- 
 ments, with gigantic clefts between. It is all of whitest 
 stone, with yellow furrows between the battlements, and its 
 outline is so jagged, and splintered, and sharp, that the deep 
 blue sky, which has such a power to incorporate almost every 
 
164 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1841. 
 
 harsh outline with her own soft self, can give no smoothness 
 or transparent appearance to this stern mural crown. 
 
 As we ascended the river from this mountain pass, the valley 
 opened out into a wet and sterile and forlorn hasin. In the 
 midst of this stands the spacious Benedictine monastery Ad 
 Montes. It was founded hy Gebhard, Bishop of Salzburg, 
 in 1074. The pile of building is immense. There are ninety 
 monks in it, who have theological pupils under them, and 
 also instruct the poor of the parishes on their estates in agri- 
 culture and domestic arts. The usual indomitable energy of 
 the monks has done much to cover this bleak basin with 
 cultivation; but, like an imperfect garment, it only calls 
 attention to the nakedness it would fain conceal. Yet I saw 
 phalanxes of wheatsheaves along the river side, and many 
 unpromising spots upon the steeps were fragrant with red 
 clover. Almost every Englishman in books, letters, and con- 
 versation, is ready with the hack phrases to which a few "Whig 
 historians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have 
 tuned us, such as, " lazy monks, drones of monasteries, fat- 
 teners on the poor," and the like. Yet, if men, who would or 
 could think, were to wander, as I have done, up river courses, 
 threading sequestered valleys, and tracing hill-born brooks, 
 and exploring deserted woodlands, not for any such purpose 
 as to gather evidence in behalf of monks, but merely to foster 
 and strengthen meditative power, they would see how under 
 the toiling hands of the old monks green grass and yellow corn 
 encroached upon the black heath and unhealthy fen, how lordly 
 and precious woods rose upon unproductive steeps, how waters 
 became a blessing where they had been a curse, irrigating the 
 lands which once they ravaged, how poor communities were 
 held together by their alms in unhopeful places for years, till 
 the constrained earth yielded her reluctant fruits ; and cities 
 are now where the struggling tenant villages of the kind 
 monks were, as the monks' salt-pans are now the princely 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 1G5 
 
 Munich. If we are to add to this the improvements in 
 husbandry and domestic arts which we owe to the monks, 
 and the copies of the Holy Scriptures and other good books 
 multiplied by their astonishingly indefatigable pens, when 
 printing was not, we surely shall not be so ready with our 
 " drones" &c. &c. ; or anyhow we should mark our chronology 
 when our inkpot is seething to abuse the monks. And 
 surely their praise and prayer and intercession was not quite 
 nothing, even though it wrought less visibly than their spades 
 and pens. As we continued the ascent of the river, the 
 valley grew richer, and again exquisitely beautiful, though 
 not like yesterday ; but as we approached Lietzen, our resting 
 place, the fair vale was filled with the glory of evening, and 
 at the end of a long mountain avenue stood a huge hill with 
 a glacier sparkling in its hollow bosom, like a colossal 
 brilliant. St. James's day last year was a happy day. I 
 have been minute therefore with its successor's seeings and 
 doings. 
 
 80. A LUTHEKAN SUNDAY. 
 
 August 8. I got up early this morning to read the service. 
 It was one of the Sundays on which I have yearned almost 
 to tears for an English country church. After breakfast we 
 went to the Koman Catholic church to hear Mass. The 
 music is said to be very fine, and so indeed it was ; yet I had 
 no pleasure in the service. I felt ashamed of being there, 
 the spacious but tasteless church being so evidently converted 
 into a crowded theatre, where swarms of English and of 
 native Lutherans almost elbowed the worshippers out of the 
 building. Dresden is the first Protestant capital which we 
 have hitherto visited, and I never in any Roman Catholic 
 capital saw Sunday so fearfully profaned. I have no puri- 
 tanical notions concerning Sunday, and never have acknow- 
 
166 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1841. 
 
 ledged it as either the sabbath or a sabbath ; and I do not in 
 the least object to the large gardens with music being opened 
 near the large cities, for we know how our young men spend 
 their Sunday afternoons at the corners of our village streets. 
 But the Dresdeners seem to regard coffee and music and 
 leafy walks as far too tame a way of spending their Sunday 
 afternoons. We wished to find out the gardens, and took at 
 a guess the street where most people seemed thronging one 
 way. The stream at last brought us to a collection of booths 
 around which from three to four thousand people, if not 
 more, were collected. The tents covered a considerable 
 space, and we walked through the whole of them. I never 
 saw a more profane scene, or a more ridiculous one. There 
 was every species of gambling, smoking, drinking, singing, 
 shooting at targets, tumblers, fire- works, jugglers, merry- 
 andrews, shops, and divers unintelligible amusements. The 
 most popular were swings, mimic railways with little carriages 
 whirled round by men pulling, a stag-hunt on the same 
 principle, and so forth. In these we saw big soldiers, old 
 men, six feet high babies, riding and swinging, shouting for 
 glee. Now the great bulk of this crowd must have been 
 Lutheran, for Dresden itself is a thoroughly Protestant town. 
 The Lutheran churches were to my knowledge shut the whole 
 afternoon, while the Protestants of the German Florence were 
 thus keeping holy the Lord's day. Yet year after year are 
 we assured in England of the connection between Popery and 
 whatever is disagreeable in the foreign way of keeping 
 Sunday. No person who has not been abroad, and heard 
 and seen and investigated for himself, would credit the 
 extensive system of lying pursued by English travel writers, 
 religious tract compilers, and Exeter Hall speechmakers, 
 respecting the Roman Church abroad ; and whether the lies 
 be those of wilfulness or of prejudice, ignorance and indolence, 
 I do not see much to distinguish in the guilt. These 
 
1841.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 167 
 
 dirt-seekers scrape the sewers of Europe to roughcast the 
 Church of Rome with the plentiful defilements. Nought is 
 left behind. Humanity itself is whitewashed, and the dogma 
 of inherited sin reduced to a mere notion of spiritual helpless- 
 ness, rather than that one sin should be left unappended, as 
 effect to cause, to some corruption of Roman theology. I 
 have seen this in a hundred ways, and when I stood among 
 these childishly profane Lutherans today, I felt again, as I 
 have often felt before, a proper indignation of such coarse 
 falsehood as would make the Romish system exclusively 
 responsible for these puerilities. 
 
168 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OE [1842. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 1842-3. 
 
 Mr, Paber remained at Ambleside during the 
 greater part of the year 1842. In the summer he 
 was called from "Westmoreland to the sick bed of 
 his brother, the Her, P, A. Paber, who was lying 
 ill with typhoid fever at Magdalen College, Oxford, 
 and whom he nursed with affectionate devotion for 
 some weeks. 
 
 In the autumn the rectory of Elton, in Hunting- 
 donshire, was offered to him by his college ; and 
 although he declined it in the first instance, he 
 afterwards determined to accept the charge. His 
 purpose in doing so is described in the following 
 letter ; 
 
 LETTER XLJV.-^To THE REV. J. B. MORRIS. 
 
 Ambleside, Friday, 
 
 December 16, 1842, A. S. 
 
 I have today made up my mind to accept Elton when 
 it is formally offered. I really trust that in the prayer and 
 fasting of this Ember Week I have been enabled to put 
 aside my own will in the matter: yet I would speak 
 diffidently about it, as knowing my wilfulness. This living 
 hovered about my head in the spring like a bird uncertain 
 
1842.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 169 
 
 where to light. That was an admonition. Again, I posi- 
 tively refused it, consulting my own wilfulness, ten days ago : 
 then the Master forced the consideration of it upon me 
 again. And, as Pusey says somewhere, " events not of our 
 own seeking are mostly God's ordering,," Further, I feel 
 that my chief rock of offence is the subduing the poet to 
 the priest ; and I have felt more strongly this Advent than 
 ever that I have very sinfully permitted the man of letters 
 to overlay the priest. Abstinence from poetry I could with 
 gome small difficulty practise ; but Keble thinks it would 
 be wrong, being obviously my chief, if not sole gift : and 
 temperance in poetry is most difficult, yet a plain duty in 
 a priest. Now, the necessity of parish duty comes like a 
 divine interference with my wilfulness, and I do not think 
 that I am so far worldly as that I should dare to neglect 
 that duty. And indeed, the whole pastoral office, which is 
 very unacceptable to me, seems aptly remedial to the poetic 
 temperament ; more so than the less definite duties of college 
 life. 
 
 I do believe, my dear J 9 that I am judging right 
 
 in this matter. I feel so happy and open, I know not why 
 or how, that I think I must be doing right ; and oh ! how 
 slight a sacrifice after all will it he to part with this sweet 
 mountain land, and all my dear friends, for a man of such 
 faults as mine. My books are gone, and now my mountains 
 go. God be praised ! Oh pray for me that, buried in that 
 village, I may endeavour to live an apostolical life in church, 
 parsonage, and cottages. God being my helper, I solemnly 
 purpose to do so. Twice, if not three times, has Advent had 
 a special mission to me. May my sole care in life be now 
 to rehearse for meeting the true Advent, and the merciful 
 fire of that day ! Ora pro nobis. 
 
 Mr. Faber also notified his intention to Mr. 
 
170 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1843. 
 
 Wordsworth, who replied: "I do not say you are 
 wrong ; but England loses a poet." 
 
 Before entering upon his new duties, Mr. Paber 
 determined to pay a short visit to the Continent. 
 The last four years had brought about a great 
 change in his feelings towards the Catholic Church ; 
 and it was now more as a learner than as a critic 
 that he intended to study her operations. He had 
 a new source of interest in the enquiry ; for the 
 office which he was about to assume made him 
 anxious to gather hints for the work which it 
 would impose. He determined therefore to examine 
 closely in Catholic countries, and especially in 
 Home, the methods pursued by the Church in 
 dealing with the souls entrusted to her care. 
 
 With this view, he provided himself with letters 
 of introduction from Dr. Wiseman, then Coadjutor 
 Bishop of the Central District of England, to 
 Cardinal Acton and Dr. Grant, both resident in 
 Rome. His acquaintance with Dr. Wiseman arose 
 out of the publication of " Sights and Thoughts in 
 Foreign Lands." In that work he attacked Dr. 
 Wiseman for saying, in his Lectures on Holy 
 Week, that the services of that season are " drama- 
 tic." In a later portion of the book he quoted from 
 the same volume a passage of considerable length, 
 which, owing to an error of the printer, appeared 
 without inverted commas or other acknowledgment. 
 Mr. Paber therefore sent the Bishop an apology, 
 which led to further correspondence. 
 
1843.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 171 
 
 On Sunday, the 2nd of April, 1843, Mr. Eaber 
 read himself in at Elton, and preached to a very 
 crowded church. He was much affected by the 
 reception he met with from his flock, and said that 
 on his return from his tour he should feel as if he 
 were returning to an old home. 
 
 On the following day he left Elton again, 
 accompanied by a former pupil, and proceeded 
 in the course of the week, by Southampton and 
 Havre, to Houen. Erom thence he wrote with 
 unbounded admiration of the examples of Gothic 
 architecture contained in the city; and especially 
 of St. Ouen, "which" he said "in the view from 
 the heights, seems like a magnificent latin cross of 
 stone dropped from heaven." He also took an 
 opportunity of finding fault with the new geogra- 
 phical arrangement of the country : " This miser- 
 able division of Erance, the land of conscription 
 and tricolor, into departments, in lieu of the old 
 provinces whose very names were precious sounds 
 of history, seems to un-Froissart the country, and 
 to hide, as it were, old Erance, the land of 
 Catholicism and chivalry; I have been disgusted 
 ever since I left Havre that I might not speak 
 of Normandy: and then the guide-books tell me 
 that Rouen is the chef-lieu, departement Seine 
 Inferieure, which is enough to excite indignation."* 
 
 * See Poems. No. LXXXIL Edition of 1857. 
 
172 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1843. 
 
 Proceeding somewhat leisurely across Prance, 
 and making a detour to Bordeaux, where they 
 spent Easter, Mr. Paber and his companion reached 
 Marseilles before the end of April. The remainder 
 of his journey to Rome will be best given in his 
 own words. 
 
 LETTER XLV. To THE BEV. F. A. FABER. 
 
 While residing at Marseilles for a couple of days, 
 imprisoned in my room most of the time by the persevering 
 bise, I thought it best to have a bise of my own, which 
 I had in the shape of a poetical afflatus, wherein a poem 
 of above two hundred lines came into existence, on the 
 present Catholic movement in France ; the poem is perhaps 
 more erudite than poetical, and on second thoughts I deter- 
 mined not to transcribe it for you, lest it should bore you ; 
 and I have already sent it to a Koman Catholic gentleman 
 in England, giving him leave to make what use he pleases of 
 it. I am not sure that we did quite right in not going to 
 Toulon ; but it is out of the way, and we must, the Pyrenees 
 over, plead guilty to a certain amount of impatience to get 
 to Italy. Instead, therefore, of turning down from Aubagne 
 to Toulon, we went up to the hills, which brought us into 
 some very striking scenery among mountains clothed with 
 stone pines. After crossing one range we came to Brignolles, 
 erewhile the second city of Provence, and night overtook us 
 before we reached Le Luc, where we slept ; but the tremulous 
 flashing of the stars among the spiral trees on the hilltops, 
 the cool incense of the fir woods, and the noise of the falling 
 streams, made our journey after dark as agreeable as it had been 
 during the daylight. The country from Le Luc to the river 
 Var might be called the Paradise of Provence, and we are just 
 
1843.] FREDERICK WILLIAM PABER. 173 
 
 in the nick of time for it : the season is far enough advanced 
 for the flowers, and not far enough for the heats to have 
 destroyed the verdure. The stony hills were covered with 
 straggling pines, and carpeted with pink and white gum-cistus, 
 while irregular veins of yellow cytisus ran here and there. 
 The bean-fields smelt like England, and what more sweet ? 
 to my fancy, not the orange flowers which here and there 
 wafted to us tributes of odour. Now and then large 
 rose-grounds attached to distilleries overwhelmed us with 
 their scent, and tangled wilderness of delicate colour. In 
 short, it was a picture of plenty, of beautiful plenty vine, 
 olive, corn, fig, mulberry, rose, orange, lemon, jujube, 
 walnut, cherry, and I know not what, and all with fine 
 dappled mountains to the north ; and on the south, scarcely 
 ever absent from the eye, the glittering indigo of the 
 Mediterranean. I felt admonitus locorum at Frejus, where 
 Tacitus was born ; and on seeing the island of Lerins off 
 Cannes, where St. Vincent of Lerins, the great doctor of 
 tradition, lived and taught. Oh how well I remember sitting 
 in the window of my lodgings at Rothay Cottage, in the 
 summer of 1837, and reading a picturesque description of 
 that very monastery in St. Vincent's Commonitorium adversus 
 hcereses. Towards evening we crossed the Var, and were of 
 course in Italy, that 
 
 " Bel paese 
 Che 1'Appenin parte, e '1 mar circonda e FAlpe." 
 
 I cannot say that I see much to admire in this Anglicised 
 city of Nice, except the smell of the orange blossom, and the 
 blue of the sea. But I have had a quiet Sunday here, which 
 is something. If I may use such a term, I enjoyed the 
 prayers much, for I was famished for want of worship ; but 
 Oh the preacher ! 
 
THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1843. 
 
 Genoa. Once more in this beautiful city, once more 
 looking out upon the blue harbour, and the countless masts, 
 and the tall Pharos, and the Palazzo Doria. Our road from 
 Nice is not to be described, the beauty of it is so exquisite. 
 It is, as its name imports, a Cornice, being the restoration 
 of the old 2Emilian Way ; for what modern improvement is 
 there which those awful Eomans did not anticipate ? The 
 road runs by the sea shore, now on the strand, now hundreds 
 of feet above, in and out, now facing the sea, now the hills. 
 Remember that that sea is the Mediterranean, that the 
 shore is spotted with gay white towns, that every headland 
 is capped with a ruined tower raised against the Barbary 
 Corsairs, that now you are among orange gardens, now in 
 woods of pinaster, and by cliffs with giant aloes sticking out 
 of the rifts ; add to this the sensual pleasure of alternating 
 between slow ascents and rattling descents, the childish thrill 
 of joy at there being no parapet on the cliffs, and but you 
 have no nose the orange flowers and the hothouse smell of 
 the fig-leaves, and what can be wanted by the tourist ? The 
 mountains are high, many covered with snow, so you have 
 dignity, as well as loveliness. It is, in short, a hundred 
 and fifty-four miles of a mountain paradise. Here we are at 
 Genoa ; yet let not Savona be passed without a word; you 
 know the exquisite description of it in Wordsworth, but it ia 
 Chiabrera's epitaph, written by himself, that I mean. It 
 has affected me very deeply indeed : I have often alluded 
 (to you) to the struggle in myself between the poet and the 
 priest, on account of the absorbing character of such a 
 pursuit as poetry, and the exclusive character of such a 
 calling as the priesthood. More than once I have desisted 
 from composition, but in the end nature got the upper hand 
 of holier resolutions. All this has been passing through 
 my mind lately, and in the acme of another struggle Chia- 
 brera rises from the dead, and preaches from his tomb in 
 
1813.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABEll. 175 
 
 San Giacomo at Savona. These are the words he ordered to 
 be engraved, 
 
 AMICO, 10 VIVENDO CEBCAVA CONFOBTO 
 
 NEL MONTE PABNASSO I 
 TU, MEGLIO CONSIGLIATO, CEBCALO 
 
 NEL CALVARIO ! 
 
 I do not think I ever got such a sermon in my life ; and, 
 remembering that I have hardly ever written a line directly 
 in honour of our Lord, I have vowed a poetical work in 
 honour of Calvary itself ; and have begun it. It is a tran- 
 slation of some most sweet ascetical hymns to our Blessed 
 Lord on His Passion and Cross, arranged for prayer or 
 devotional meditation. If I succeed in translating them 
 simply, with such changes as I think will adapt them to 
 English devotional uses, they will make a little book of about 
 one hundred and fifty pages, which I shall publish under the 
 title of the Kosary of our Lord Jesus Christ the name they 
 bear in the book from which I take them. Of course I 
 shall in the execution do them as well as I can, yet I shall 
 always sacrifice poetical effect to simplicity of scriptural 
 expression, or literal rendering of a line whose quaintness 
 has devotional depth in it. At any event it is a delightful 
 occupation to fill in the interstices of my time on a journey, 
 and keep me from wandering thoughts. 
 
 Spezzia. I am not ashamed to confess that in this 
 beautiful paradise my thoughts have run a good deal on 
 Shelley, and his hapless fate in this voluptuous bay. I do 
 not mean to say that I think him a worthy object of 
 sympathy, for he was a low, unprincipled scoundrel, not a 
 romantic dreamer; but I owe so much to him of joy and 
 pleasure, that his death has given a melancholy interest in 
 my eyes to this Gulf of Spezzia laving the foot of the 
 
176 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1843. 
 
 "olive-sandalled Apennine." Shelley was for ever singing 
 the praises of the Apennines ; I thought as I came along 
 today, that I should like to do the same, hut in a different 
 way. To a theological poet the Apennines are peculiarly 
 interesting, for they contain the Umhrian Sanctuaries, 
 and are the seats of the exquisite Franciscan legends ; 
 and indeed the summits are constantly crowned with 
 monasteries. It is a glorious thought, that this chain of 
 mountains from Savona to Benevento is, at all hours of day 
 and night, positively alive and resonant with prayer and 
 psalmody. 
 
 It is very remarkahle that three tracts of country in Chris- 
 tian Europe have always had something supernatural about 
 them, viz., Umhria, the part of France confining on Pied- 
 mont, and the vicinity of the German Brocken. I remember 
 Leo of Halle, the splendid historian of Italy, in his rational- 
 istic way speaks of Umbria, apropos of St. Francis, producing 
 from its solemn scenery gloomy religious enthusiasts. It is 
 all very well to dispose of matters after this physical fashion ; 
 but really when you consider that Umbrian enthusiasm 
 changed the whole aspect of the Church, that it forced 
 art and poetry to take new directions, that it diverted the 
 course of, though it did not crush, the heathen Kenaissance 
 of the Medici and their loathsome school, that even to this 
 day the character of the whole Roman Church is visibly 
 Umbrian, it seems scarcely reverent to think such great 
 changes were not intended in God's Providence as the work 
 which supernatural Umbria was foreordained to accomplish. 
 But I must not go prosing on about Umbria, which is a 
 hobby of mine, for I see I have not told you anything about 
 our journey from Genoa here. 
 
 I really think the Eiviera di Levante, i.e. below Genoa, is 
 even finer than the Riviera di Ponente, above Genoa, which 
 I have already described. After some posts of most delicious,' 
 
1843.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 177 
 
 eea views the road turns inland, and leads into the penetralia 
 of the Apennines, which are entirely clothed with immense 
 forests of Spanish chestnuts. We are a little too early for 
 the full beauty : the hills are just clothed in a vapoury, ver- 
 nal green ; but when in full leaf the inequalities of the hills 
 must produce magnificent folds of shadowy and sunny foliage. 
 The deep valley of the river Yara is very striking, and the 
 descent upon Spezzia, with the grey and white marble- 
 streaked mountains of Carrara in front, the blue sea, and 
 pale Corsica beyond, and white and red Spezzia muffled in 
 palms and oranges, is superb. This afternoon's drive, too, 
 was enhanced by the bells of the mountain churches ; for it 
 is St. Monica's day, and the peasants were in holiday attire 
 in honour of St. Augustine's mother. 
 
 This is the fourth of May, and we were to have been in 
 Rome on the fifth. I hope we shall get there before Ascen- 
 sion Day, at any rate. 
 
 Pisa. I begin now to feel that I have little need to 
 journalize for you, as I am in your old route, and you must 
 remember all these places as well or better than I can 
 describe them. The road still continued most beautiful, 
 even after we had deserted the Mediterranean at Spezzia ; 
 it turned inland and carried us to the little city of Carrara, 
 which is beautifully situated at the base of five striking 
 Apennines ; over one of these we passed, and descended on 
 the picturesque city of Massa, and thence to Lucca. The 
 churches at Lucca would be more interesting to a man who 
 understood pictures than they were to me. Marble exteriors 
 are not good ; those at Pisa are more equably weather-stained 
 than any I have seen elsewhere, and consequently look less 
 diseased ; and the airy style of Gothic prevalent in these 
 parts is of course beautiful; yet, compared with a German 
 minster, or a Flemish, or an English, or a Norman, it is 
 
 a Rossini's operatic Stabat Mater en face with Handel's 
 12 
 
178 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1843. 
 
 Judas Maccabeus. One thing at Lucca pleased me : there 
 hangs from the nave of the roof a coarse iron cresset, on 
 which flax is burned before the bishop whenever he celebrates 
 mass pontifically, i.e. as a bishop, that the light flames and 
 the sic transit gloria mundi may remind him of the true 
 nature of his earthly dignity. This is a ritual common to 
 heathens and Christians ; it is the monarch's slave in another 
 shape ; but it seems to come with peculiar propriety before the 
 celebration of the holy Sacrament by an ecclesiastical grandee. 
 
 Before touching on Pisa let the beautiful walks on the 
 Lucchese ramparts be mentioned. To pass from Lucca to 
 Pisa, to know that at Pisa you are six posts from Florence, 
 and ten hours from Siena, is to an historical scholar 
 like standing on the Aero-Corinth. The geographical 
 littleness of what is historically so extensive is difficult to 
 be realized. Two hours of a sunny afternoon brought us 
 from Lucca to Pisa ; indeed, the Campanile and Duomo 
 were visible long before ; yet what an infinite distance of 
 feeling, what difficulty of transit, there was wont to be when 
 those two republics fought like cat and dog, and left their 
 contest to be a part of history, for the genius' sake of those 
 who were engaged therein. In point of real importance, 
 i.e. of enduring natural consequences, how stand the wars 
 of Pisa and Lucca, Florence and Siena, Athens and Sparta, 
 with reference to the Tweedside wars of our own Scotch 
 border ? and as to literature, the ballad of Chevy Chase is 
 worth a good slice of Thucydides. Pisa certainly has no such 
 beautiful situation as Lucca, but it is truly a fairy town. 
 
 How often it happens, when the mind sets out bent 
 on the capture of some special train of thought, that an 
 insignificant matter intercepts and detains it. It was in a 
 measure so with me at Pisa. You know the quiet meadow, 
 withdrawn a little space from the noisy streets, from whose 
 smooth turf rise the Cathedral, the Campanile, the Baptistery, 
 
1843.] FEEDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 179 
 
 and the cloister of the Campo Santo, a group hardly 
 equalled in the world. Of course I repaired there at once, 
 pretty well knowing what to find. But it so happened that 
 the turf is just now closely carpeted with white clover 
 in full flower, and overpoweringly fragrant. The odour was 
 of such a home kind that away went buildings, art, history, 
 Pisa, Italy, and the whole concern ; my eyes saw, hut 
 reported not what they saw. I was in England ; and yet 
 the leaning tower fixed the exact spot in England, namely, 
 the side window of the drawingroom at Auckland, looking 
 out upon the Bishop's gateway, and wherein stood an old 
 stained table, the drawer of which specially pertained to me. 
 There I played the geographical game with my mother for 
 hours; there I studied a fat duodecimo in red sheep, 
 entitled The Wonders of the World, where the Wall of 
 China and the Leaning Tower of Pisa made an ineffaceable 
 impression upon me. Oh ! I cannot tell you how that tower 
 brought my dear mother back to me. The picture, I think, 
 leaned somewhat more effectively than the reality. Yet that 
 was a rightful fraud ; for childhood is greedy of wonder, 
 and not easily satisfied : the impression would have been 
 less correct if the delineation had been more accurate. It 
 was some time before I recovered this first mood, and became 
 alive to the real beauty of the wonderful scene before me. 
 
 To my taste, the cathedral, except the fa9ade, is poor ; but 
 the Baptistery is divine, the cloisters glorious, though 
 inferior to Gloucester ; and it is the group which is so won- 
 derful : and I mused, and mused, and mused, pacing about 
 on the thick clover till all my senses were wrapped in a 
 delicious dream of art and history. This was my second 
 mood. Now it happens that this voluptuous silent poetry 
 which Italy engenders in so many, is just what I have been 
 arming myself against beforehand, as effeminate, sensual, 
 literary; not devotional, priestly, Catholic, Christian. I want 
 
180 THE LIFE AND LETTEHS OF [1843. 
 
 to go to Italy, not as a poet, or a tourist, or a pleased 
 dreamer, but as a pilgrim who regards it as a second 
 Palestine, the Holy Land of the West, and here at Pisa was 
 I vanquished on the very threshold. Those luxurious gar- 
 dens on the Mediterranean, with aromatic orange flowers, 
 have unmanned me; but at last I succeeded in shaking 
 off the poetic fit, and then, as the flowers had brought home 
 before me, and the beauty had brought art and history, 
 so the character of the buildings, and especially the striking 
 calmness of the locality, brought the Church to mind. 
 Unaffectedly aloof from the city, in a calm meadow, the great 
 tower leaning like a telescope pointed towards Rome, the 
 minster whence the chanting faintly sounded, the glorious 
 Baptistery, a temple (most unusual sight !) raised to the 
 sole honour of the sacrament of regeneration, the veritable 
 earth of Palestine in the cloisters where the dead sleep ; 
 all seemed a world (to use a wrong word) of its own, apart 
 from the other world, yet near; unlike, yet into which the 
 other world must pass. It symbolized the character of the 
 Church, it illustrated its history. This was my third 
 mood, and the only one which has lasted, because the only 
 worthy one. We arrived here on Friday ; it is now Sunday, 
 and tomorrow morning we start for Siena, having determined 
 not to visit Volterra. Except to Etruscan scholars, I think 
 a sight of Cortona will be enough for those antiquities. 
 D. V. we shall on Monday sleep at Siena, on Tuesday at 
 Ponte Centino beyond Kadicofani, on Wednesday at Viterbo, 
 and on Thursday at Home. 
 
 Siena, None of the Italian cities, except Venice, has ever 
 struck me so much as Siena has done ; and although I am 
 Buffering severely from a bilious attack (I have scarcely been 
 free from headache since I left England), yet I have staggered 
 about the streets in mingled pain and delight. I do not 
 mean to say that I approve of any of the elaborate details of 
 
1843.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 181 
 
 the cathedral, but the miraculous whole runs away with any 
 critical objections, and I paced the nave and aisles for long 
 in perfect extasy. A red and stormy sunset was making its 
 way into the building through the narrow windows, and 
 playing with the alternate stripes of black and white marble 
 in a marvellous manner, while in the gloomy side chapels the 
 candles burnt like steady stars before the several altars. La 
 Comunita, i.e. Hotel de Ville, is also a delicious building, 
 and for fairy-like effect I really prefer it to the Campanile of 
 St. Mark's at Venice. Altogether I am fascinated with Siena, 
 and could write pages to you about it, were it not for the 
 tremblement de systeme which my bilious attack is causing. 
 I shall ever retain a grateful remembrance of the city of St. 
 Catherine and St. Bernardine, and my favourite study of 
 hagiography will be pursued at Elton with fresh zest after 
 all these new topographical remembrances. Tomorrow for 
 " bleak Kadicofani" as 6 TTOUJTTJS calls it that is to say if I 
 am well enough. 
 
 The bleak Kadicofani is passed ; and a beautiful ascent 
 led us up to Acquapendente. The exterior is very pleasing ; 
 the cliffs are waving with golden broom, the Spanish 
 chestnuts are in full yellow-green leaf, and the cuckoo crying 
 in the woods. From the steep of San Lorenzo we looked 
 down on the Lake of Bolsena. What a beautiful scene it 
 is ! Yet the silence of its houseless shores, and the 
 labourers returning up the hill from their day's labour to 
 sleep on the heights, were admonitions of the treachery 
 of all this beauty. Yet the nightingales sang bravely to 
 cheer us as we wound along through the blue mist on the 
 shores. Bolsena interested me from its being the scene of 
 the famous miracle of the Bleeding Wafer, in consequence 
 of which the feast of Corpus Domini was instituted by Urban 
 IV. in the thirteenth century. We durst not, however, stay 
 at Bolsena to sleep; so we left it by moonlight, and as a 
 
182 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1843. 
 
 monastery bell rang the monks up to midnight prayers, we 
 arrived at Viterbo, where the musical plash of a fountain 
 soon put me to sleep. The extreme filth and squalor of 
 Viterbo render it quite needful to make a manly effort to 
 call up the recollections of history in order to enjoy to the 
 full the consciousness of being in Viterbo. To one at all 
 versed in Pontifical history it is full of admonitus loci, and 
 there is no department of modern history so romantic, so 
 various, so illustrative of humanity as the history of the 
 Popes. So, thinking of Charles of Anjou, I left Viterbo. 
 But how shall I describe to you the view which burst upon 
 me from the top of Monte Cimino, when the long ascent 
 was done? At my feet lay the beautiful blue lake, far to 
 the right the gleamy line of the Mediterranean, in front 
 the pale green undulations of the Campagna, to the left 
 the Apennines of Albano, and the Sabine hills ; and, deeply 
 purple and alone, rose from the Campagna SORACTE. Vides 
 ut alta stet nive candidum came out loudly from my lips 
 unconsciously ; yet I know your weakness, and Byron shall 
 comment on the candidum, 
 
 " The lone Soracte's heights displayed, 
 Not now in snow, which asks the lyric Eoman's aid 
 For our remembrance, and from out the plain 
 Heaves like a long swept wave about to break, 
 And on .the curl hangs pausing." 
 
 The Campagna, with its singular pale green, and veins or 
 fosses of verdure, delighted me. From the lip of the crater 
 of Baccano I saw the dome of St. Peter's : I have crossed 
 the Ponte Molle, where Constantino vanquished Maxentius, 
 and established Christianity, and by moonlight I have prayed 
 at the Tomb of the Apostles, almost alone in the metropolitan 
 
1843.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 183 
 
 church of the whole world. To describe my feelings is 
 impossible. 
 
 , MAI. ix. MDCCCXLIII. 
 
 Thanks to the kindness of Dr. Grant, the present 
 Bishop of Southwark, and of Dr. Baggs, then 
 Rector of the English College, and afterwards 
 Vicar Apostolic of the Western District of England, 
 Mr. Faber was enabled to see much more of the 
 various works of charity and religion in B/ome than 
 falls to the lot of an ordinary visitor. He devoted 
 himself to the study of Italian, in order that he 
 might understand the numerous lives of Saints 
 published in that language. His master, Signor 
 Armellini, taught him by reading aloud to him, 
 and directed him to conjugate the verbs by the 
 simple process of taking the Latin which he knew, 
 and giving it the Italian modification, the irregu- 
 larities being the same in both languages. 
 
 It was at this time that he acquired his first 
 devotion to St. Philip Neri, his future Father. He 
 has recorded in the Spirit and Genius of St. Philip, 
 preached and published in 1850, the impression 
 made upon him by a visit to the Chiesa Nuova. 
 Speaking of the room in which the Saint used to 
 say mass, he writes: "How little did I, a Pro- 
 testant stranger in that room years ago, dream 
 I should ever be of the Saint's family, or that the 
 Oratorian father who shewed it me should in a 
 few years be appointed by the Pope the novice- 
 
184 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1843. 
 
 master of the English Oratorians. I remember how, 
 when he kissed the glass of the case in which St. 
 Philip's little bed is kept as a relic, he apologized 
 to me as a Protestant, lest I should be scandalized, 
 and told me with a smile how tenderly St. Philip's 
 children loved their father. I was not scandalized 
 with their relic-worship then, but I can understand 
 better now what he said about the love, the child- 
 like love, wherewith St. Philip inspired his sons. 
 If any one had told me that in seven short years 
 I should wear the same habit, and the same white 
 collar in the streets of London, and be preaching a 
 triduo in honour of Rome's apostle, I should have 
 wondered how any one could dream so wild a 
 dream." 
 
 The continuation of his letters gives a vivid 
 description of his occupations and feelings during 
 his stay in Rome. 
 
 LETTER XL VI. To THE KEV. J. B. MORRIS. 
 
 Rome, No. 22, Via di Propaganda, 
 May 20, 1843. 
 
 You will naturally expect to hear from me at Rome, and to 
 learn something of what I have felt, and learned, and seen, 
 and whether I am likely to find my way home again ! Well 
 with the separate wonders of Rome I have, with the exception 
 of the Coliseum, heen much disappointed, and further know- 
 ledge and repeated visits either to St. Peter's or elsewhere, 
 only keep up the original feeling of disappointment. Picture 
 galleries and museums I have not entered, neither have I 
 
1843.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 185 
 
 taken any pains about the antiquities, except such as are con- 
 secrated by Church traditions. I do not wish either the 
 pettifogging criticisms of art or literature to mingle with the 
 feelings proper to a first visit to mysterious Kome. I have 
 consequently a great deal of time to myself, and am reading 
 theology with great application. Dr. Wiseman's letters have 
 engaged me the cheerful kindness of several of the Koman 
 clergy, and a portion of almost every day is spent with them, 
 either visiting the holier churches, and convents famous for 
 miracles and the residence of Saints, or in amicable discussion 
 of our position in England. And hitherto I have found my 
 occupations very profitable ; for although one may be disap- 
 pointed with the details of Rome, it is quite impossible for 
 any Christian to be disappointed in Rome. You walk through 
 the streets here stood the centurion's house, and beneath 
 that church St. Luke wrote the Acts of the Apostles there St. 
 Ignatius shed his blood from that pulpit St. Thomas of 
 Aquino preached in that room St. Francis slept in that 
 house St. Dominic first began his order in that shabby 
 basilica Pope Zosimus heard and judged Celestius and con- 
 demned the Pelagian heresy beneath that tomb are the 
 relics of St. Peter and St. Paul in yonder church five famous 
 councils were held in those catacombs are the bones of the 
 nameless martyrs known to God only and so one might go 
 on for ever. Some of the traditions may be incorrect, many 
 are clearly not so, and withal, if the locality be wrongly 
 fixed, the city itself somewhere must contain the true one. It 
 is truly a " dreadful" place, and lays a great weight on the 
 spirit. 
 
 It is natural that while thus adoring the Divine Footsteps 
 in history, and overwhelmed by the admonitions of such 
 holy places, one's thirst for Catholic unity should increase 
 to an extent which might lead one to undisciplined acts; 
 living too with saintly men and hearing their affectionate 
 
186 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1843. 
 
 eloquence on unity and Rome. Moreover, I am specially 
 anxious to keep my mind open to conviction, and to expel all 
 rude, unreasoning dislike out of my thoughts : for neither 
 shame, nor station, nor interest would, I hope, prevent me 
 from going where conscience leads. But I do not find myself 
 shaken at all, though in many ways humhled ; and in pro- 
 portion to the openness with which I lay myself out to receive 
 impressions and views, I persevere in prayer not to be led 
 astray nor to seek anything of my own will ; and I find 
 my attachment to the Church of England growing in Rome, 
 the more I hewail our position. All arguments on the 
 doctrine of indulgences, &c., I have put aside, telling my 
 friends that in reality the one thing necessary to prove was 
 that adherence to the Holy See was essential to the being of 
 a Church ; to the we^-being of all Churches I admit it 
 essential. 
 
 If this point were demonstrated by Catholic tradition, I 
 apprehend the controversy is over with me. They did not seem 
 quite to like this simplification of the matter ; and have been 
 quite unable hitherto to establish a case. One professor, 
 whom I much esteem, urged upon me his own firm faith that 
 I should not be saved : I said that of course it was most 
 distressing to be told so, but afforded no ground to leave my 
 Church, and that if we were humbly submitting ourselves to 
 antiquity, and truly penitent for our own sins,, and spoke no 
 evil of our brethren, I could not but hope that God " would 
 reveal this unto us also," if needful. 
 
 On returning home and reading the evening service, I was 
 delighted on meeting in the Psalms the verse, " And no good 
 thing shall He withhold from them that lead a godly life ;" it 
 seemed to come with great force, and to justify the method 
 in which I had put the controversy. In another discussion of 
 a very grave nature, I said to the Rector of the English 
 College, " It is not right to press me in this way ; before you 
 
1843.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 187 
 
 urge me to leave my (so-called) Church, you must first prove 
 that she is no Church, or is unchurched, otherwise you urge 
 me to what is, in your own moral theology, a sin, viz., a 
 disobedient act of self-will and self-judgment against an 
 authority whose lawfulness you have not disproved. This is 
 not right ; you are urging my conscience to a sin." He took 
 my hand, and said I was right ; that so long as I felt in my 
 conscience that I could not without sin leave my Church, he 
 would never give me advice to leave it, or welcome my con- 
 version. 
 
 Thus at present I feel much benefited by my visit to Rome, 
 and my allegiance to England quite unshaken. Of course I 
 could not make any use of a feeling as an argument, yet I 
 confess that sometimes when I am hard pressed I feel that 
 there is a little fortress in the background quite unsuspected 
 by the enemy, namely, recollections of Oxford and the good 
 people there. I feel, however unable I may be to put it 
 echolastically, that there is evident work of the Holy Spirit, 
 Whose sanctifying influences they would restrain, so far as 
 any real advance in holiness is concerned, to the Eoman 
 Church. I confess also that I have not forgotten the plea- 
 Bant contrast between all I saw in my Roman tour in England 
 last Lent, and your demeanour and conversation on my return 
 to Oxford. There is a catholicity which barbara celarent 
 darii and that confraternity cannot hold or represent ; and 
 the rj0os of heresy is never invisible, even in men who try to 
 be good in their way, as with our puritans. I write all this 
 to you, because I think you ought to know it, and will be 
 interested in knowing it. It is plain I am in somewhat of a 
 dangerous position, yet from which I think it would not be 
 right to fly, and in which I have not been shaken hitherto. 
 I feel my chief security to be in continuing to regard the 
 matter one much more to be decided by moral temper than 
 |>y scholastic theology : however you must pray for me. 
 
188 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1843. 
 
 And another ground of confidence, which I think I am not 
 wrong in mentioning to you, is the gradual accession of 
 seriousness which has gone on for some months and has heen 
 much corroborated in Home ; and one may humhly hope that 
 amid increasing contempt of self, fear of judgment, and love 
 of Christ, the Evil One may not be permitted to catch me 
 falling away from changeahleness or trust in intellect or any 
 other of those sins out of which religious metamorphoses 
 sometimes spring. You are now pretty much in possession 
 of my state at Home. I do not think I ever read less than- 
 six or eight hours a day, partly Perrone's Prelections and 
 partly St. Teresa's practical works. I keep DO journal, and 
 write no poetry, lest I should dissipate my mind. 
 
 Now that I have been to Rome I do not wond:er at the 
 contradictory accounts given of the mighty capital of 
 Christendom. There are two separate Homes ; the Rome 
 of the English, exclusive, frivolous, ignorant, surrounded 
 with valets de place who think to please the Protestants by 
 inventing scandals of the Pope or amours of the cardinals or 
 priests; eating ices, subscribing to reading-rooms, buying 
 cameos, examining artists' studios, coursing over picture 
 galleries, reading the last novel, going to mass to hear the 
 music "not discerning the Lord's Body." This is one Rome, 
 which lies mainly to the north east, and of which I see only 
 glimpses now. The other is made up of residents, native 
 or foreign, quiet Cardinals, humble Jesuits, unobtrusive 
 monks, pious scholars, kindhearted, simple-mannered, erudite 
 full of interest of all kinds the existence of which second 
 Rome ninety-nine out of a hundred of the English tourists 
 no more suspect than that of a secret club at Ispahan : 
 yet cross a few streets and you are in it. Of sin there is 
 perhaps neither more nor less than in any other great capital, 
 and a considerable increase of it pious men of different 
 persuasions agree in referring to the increase of English, 
 
1843.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 189 
 
 French and American tourists. As in the Church itself, 
 so in Eome, there is quite enough evil to hide the good 
 from the unsympathizing, uncandid, or inobservant. I find 
 much, very much both to love and revere. I shall be here 
 till after St. Peter's Bay, so if you write directly you will 
 catch me. 
 
 LETTEE XL VII. To THE REV. F. A. FABEB. 
 
 Rome. Via di Propaganda. No. 22. 
 The Feast of St. Augustine of Canterbury, 1843, A.D. 
 
 I have ceased to make daily records of my proceedings ; 
 they have been almost all of one kind viz., visiting churches 
 in company with Dr. Grant, Cardinal Acton's chaplain. I 
 am pretty tolerably well-read in hagiography, and have a 
 great reverence for many of the modern Saints, so I got Dr. 
 Grant to carry me to little obscure places where interesting 
 memorials of them are to be seen, or at least where one can 
 court admonitus locorum of an edifying sort. I have entered 
 none of the picture galleries, and only went to that part 
 of the Vatican where the implements with which the primitive 
 martyrs were tortured, the early church vessels, and the 
 like are to be seen. My lionizing is not therefore hurried 
 or wearisome, and I have plenty of time for reading theology 
 and papal history. 
 
 Venerable Bede's Day, May 27. Many thanks for your 
 letter, which refreshed me much. What you say of the 
 impropriety of using hard words of bishops, even of such 
 as Latimer, is probably true ; one cannot think too highly of 
 the episcopate. Yet it is right, on the other hand, to 
 remember the essential impiety of Protestantism, and of 
 Protestantism as such. You must remember that the Church 
 of England is not Protestant, and that in one of her own. 
 
190 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1813. 
 
 convocations of the last century she authoritatively rejected 
 the name, thereby rendering it binding on the consciences 
 of her members to reject the heretical name. That there 
 is plenty of Protestantism in the Church of England I am 
 not wild enough to deny ; but one cannot too openly or* too 
 consistently assert one's opinion that it is a spirit alien to 
 that of the Church, condemned by the Church, and separable 
 from it; just as a demon is separable from the sufferer 
 whom he is allowed to possess. I have declared this so 
 repeatedly and so publicly that I beg you will not think it 
 necessary to suppress anything of mine on that account. 
 Depend upon it, we have a hard enough game to play with 
 the Church of Rome ; and nothing but a prominent bringing 
 into view of the Catholic, i.e. anti-Protestant, character of our 
 Church, can save our best, holiest, and most learned mem- 
 bers from leaving her. Protestantism has had three centuries 
 of existence; in Prussia, where it rose, it has degenerated 
 into a blasphemous rationalism, denying the four Gospels ; 
 in Switzerland, its second home, it has sunk into the worst 
 form of Socinianism ; in English dissent it has degenerated 
 into an impious caricature of the truth ; and in the Church, 
 it is now fighting for its life against sacraments and good 
 works. We must take our parts. Violence of language is 
 perhaps always blameable ; but, come what will, opinions 
 formed on strict and conscientious research must not be 
 withheld. 
 
 To take or allow the very name of Protestant, rejected by 
 our own Church, is to disobey the Church, and so commit, if 
 knowingly done, a mortal sin ; and in proportion as our 
 honest conviction of this is suppressed will be the number of 
 our members who will leave us and go over to the Church of 
 Rome. Now I pray you do not suppress this letter. If 
 God prolongs our lives a quarter of a century, our doubts 
 will be solved. Protestantism is perishing : what is good in 
 
1843.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 191 
 
 it is by God's mercy being gathered into the garners of 
 Rome ; what is bad in it is running into blasphemy and 
 unbelief. Whether our Church be a Church, be something 
 more than, something over and above, a form of Protestantism, 
 will be seen by the issue of this struggle : if she is not, 
 God help us : we must go to Eome : if she is, which I 
 BELIEVE, then are we Catholics, then do we enjoy the 
 priesthood and sacraments of Christ's one (Ephes. iv.) 
 Church, without having to bend and break our consciences 
 to what modern Home has reared upon the ancient super- 
 structure. My whole life, God willing, shall be one crusade 
 against the detestable and diabolical heresy of Protestantism, 
 the very name even of which has been publicly and authori- 
 tatively abjured by my own Church. Arianism, Pelagianism, 
 and the like are awful enough, and soul-destroying : but 
 Protestantism is the devil's masterpiece. It has broken into 
 the English pastures, and must be hunted down. I will do 
 my best in my little way, because I doubt the salvation of 
 Protestants, and my office is to save souls. 
 
 Last Thursday was of course Holy Thursday, and the Pope 
 celebrated the Ascension in St. John Lateran, " the mother 
 Church" of the world, as it is called, and the Pope's cathedral. 
 Oh what a sight it was ! I got close to the altar, inside the 
 Swiss Guards, and when Pope Gregory descended from his 
 throne, and knelt at the foot of the altar, and we all knelt 
 with him, it was a scene more touching than I had ever seen 
 before ; the red robes of the prostrate cardinals, the purple of 
 the inferior prelates, the kneeling soldiers, and miscellaneous 
 crowd, the magnificence of the stupendous Church, and the 
 invisible presence of its grand historical memories, and in the 
 midst that old man in white, prostrate before the uplifted 
 Body of the Lord, and the dead, dead silence Oh what a 
 sight it was ! St. Augustine used to say he should like to 
 have seen a Roman triumph ! His wish would have been 
 
192 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1843. 
 
 more than fulfilled had he seen last Thursday's pomp, and 
 seen the saintly (for a great saint he is) Gregory in the 
 Lateran. On leaving St. John's by the great western door, the 
 immense piazza was full of people ; but we got a good place 
 immediately under the Pope ; and, in spite of the noonday 
 sun, I bared my head and knelt with the people, and received 
 with joy the Holy Father's blessing, till he fell back on his 
 throne and was borne away. I do not think I ever returned 
 from any service so thoroughly Christianized in every joint 
 and limb, or so right of heart, as I did from the Lateran on 
 Thursday. 
 
 Yesterday, Friday, I went through all the Trastevere, and 
 the island of St. Bartholomew, the classical island of ^Escu- 
 lapius; saw the church of Sta. Francesca de Eipa, where 
 St. Francis of Assisi lived when in Rome ; the church of San 
 Pietro in Montorio, where St. Peter is said to have been 
 crucified; Sant' Onofrio, where Tasso died, and where St. 
 Philip Neri taught the little children of Rome ; and the 
 Corsini and Farnese palaces. I think the view of Rome from 
 the platform in front of San Pietro in Montorio one of the 
 most striking things I ever saw, and we had a beautiful 
 evening for it. 
 
 Today, Saturday, Cardinal Acton's chaplain has been kind 
 enough to take me all over St. Peter's. The roof gives one 
 the true notion of its enormous size : the cottages of the 
 workmen, with the spacious offices, the fountain, and the 
 whole appurtenances of a little village, seem only to occupy a 
 moderate portion of the roof of a single church ! The idea 
 of people living, cooking, sleeping, &c. on the roof, struck 
 me beyond anything. The view was glorious : the sea 
 looked almost at my feet, while the monster of a building 
 respired incense from the masses going on below. I mounted 
 into the ball, but it was like a furnace, and I could scarcely 
 stay there an instant. On descending we went into the 
 
1813.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 193 
 
 subterranean church, which is full of most interesting 
 mosaics, and sweet Christian sculptures taken from the old 
 basilica of St. Peter. In the presence of the bodies of the 
 two apostles, fear got the better of my faculties, and I 
 remember nothing but the general golden appearance of the 
 subterranean altar. That was the altar the sight of which 
 Dr. Wiseman hoped would bring me to the "true fold." I 
 was in truth immensely impressed, but not that way. 
 
 Eome was all alive yesterday, keeping the feast of St. 
 Philip Neri, certainly one of the greatest men the Church has 
 had since early times. I must tell you a new anecdote of 
 him, which I learned from Dr. Grant; for it gives me the 
 greatest idea of submission and self-denial (not in the Saint, 
 for it only proves his marvellous discernment) I ever heard. 
 When the Magdeburg centuriators published their famous 
 Protestant Church History, and others were abusing it, St. 
 Philip said, " No ; it is a great work : we must now have 
 a book." Then he went to a man whom he knew, and the 
 character of whose mind he had fathomed better than the 
 man himself, and said to him, " See, you must write 
 a history of the Church." The man stared, and said it was 
 impossible, for history was a study to which he had never 
 given himself, and which he did not like. St. Philip said; 
 " I will not leave you till you undertake to write a history 
 of the Church." He compelled the man ; he was daily with 
 him at his work, inciting and cheering him. The reluctant 
 but obedient man was the immortal Baronius : thus to St. 
 Philip Neri we owe under God one of the most stupendous 
 works of pious erudition which the world possesses. What 
 faith and what obedience Baronius must have had to turn the 
 full force of his intellect to a study which he disliked, and to 
 face such an overwhelming work as a history of twelve 
 centuries, which I think he completed in thirteen folios of 
 
 Latin, double columns ! And now during these eight days 
 13 
 
THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1843. 
 
 which 'follow St. Philip's feast, the Romans crowd to see 
 conjointly the room of St. Philip with his old coat and writing 
 desk, and the room where Baronius during the progress of 
 his work taught his church history to a class who came to 
 learn from him : and these things I too must go to see. 
 
 Upon my word, the interest of Rome is something 
 inconceivable, even to one so little interested in art as I am. 
 It is quite different from any place I have ever been at ; I 
 bless God that there is such a place upon the surface of this 
 sinful earth. What piety, humility, self-sacrifice, saintly 
 grandeur, have I not come across, with awful admonitions of 
 history and monuments of faith ! I feel as if I should like 
 to satisfy my feelings by walking barefoot and bareheaded in 
 the streets, as one would do around the Holy Sepulchre at 
 Jerusalem, so present does God seem in this mysterious city. 
 And yet there is a little world around me of my countrymen, 
 buying mosaics, lounging in the Corso, promenading on 
 the Pincian, giving soirees, criticising at studios, lisping 
 artistical nonsense about cameos ! It makes me very sad, 
 very sad, very sad. Oh that they had better and graver 
 thoughts ! 
 
 It has been a great advantage to me having Dr. Grant 
 with me. He is younger than I am, and adds to the perfect 
 knowledge of a cicerone much solid erudition, true catholic 
 feeling and enthusiastic piety. I have indeed seen Rome 
 under most favourable auspices : and when I am weary of 
 lionizing and reading, I seek no cafe, no fashionable English 
 ice-shop, but mount by the SS. Trinita de' monti, and look at 
 Mr. Wordsworth's pine, sailing evermore, yet anchored 
 evermore, in the pale blue of the morning, or the delicate glow 
 of saffron which renders these Italian sunsets so inexpressibly 
 pathetic ; and I think of the yew-trees on Rydal Head, and 
 how the sun is coming slantwise out of Langdale and almost 
 consuming their black foliage in his vivid amethyst, and 
 
1843.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 195 
 
 falling in a noiseless cataract of light upon the northern 
 side of Wansfell. That mountain side is as it were a cushion 
 on which my homesick thoughts repose at ease, in a kind 
 of natural vespers, yet not without religion of their own. 
 
 LETTER XL VIII. To THE REV. J. B. MORRIS. 
 
 Rome, Villa Strozzi, 
 
 St. Alban's Day,* 1843. 
 
 We left Rome yesterday to spend a few quiet days at 
 Alhano, and this morning we were just setting off to hury 
 ourselves in the woods, when my kind friend Dr. Grant burst 
 into our room. I said, " You here ! what is the meaning of 
 this ?" He answered, "I have come all the twelve miles to 
 fetch you back to Rome immediately." It appears that 
 yesterday evening he had called upon me, not knowing that I 
 had left town immediately after the ceremonies of Corpus 
 Christi ; upon my table he saw an official letter from one of 
 the prelates, which he thought it best to open ; it was to 
 order me to be in full dress at the Vatican library at 5 p.m. 
 today, to have a private audience, which Cardinal Acton had 
 asked for without saying a word to me; and Dr. Grant most 
 goodnaturedly came off early in the morning to catch me. In 
 five minutes more we should have been irrecoverably in the 
 woods, and what a mess there would have been ! The Rector 
 of the English College accompanied me, and told me that as 
 Protestants did not like kissing the Pope's foot, I should not 
 be expected to do it. We waited in the lobby of the Vatican 
 library for half an hour, when the Pope arrived, and a prelate 
 
 * June 17th, according to the Calendar of the Anglican 
 Prayerbook. 
 
196 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OE [1843. 
 
 opened the door, remaining outside. The Pope was perfectly 
 alone, without a courtier or prelate, standing in the middle of 
 the library, in a plain white cassock, and a white silk skull- 
 cap, (white is the papal colour). On entering, I knelt down> 
 and again, when a few yards from him, and lastly, before him; 
 he held out his hand, but I kissed his foot ; there seemed to 
 be a mean puerility in refusing the customary homage. With 
 Dr. Baggs for interpreter, we had a long conversation; he 
 spoke of Dr. Pusey's suspension for defending the Catholic 
 doctrine of the Eucharist, with amazement and disgust; he 
 said to me, "You must not mislead yourself in wishing for 
 unity, yet waiting for your Church to move. Think of the 
 salvation of your own soul." I said I feared self-will and 
 individual judging. He said, " You are all individuals in 
 the English Church, you have only external communion, and 
 the accident of being all under the Queen. You know this : 
 you know all doctrines are taught amongst you anyhow. 
 You have good wishes, may God strengthen them ! You 
 must think for yourself and for your soul." He then laid his 
 hands on my shoulders, and I immediately knelt down; 
 upon which he laid them on my head, and said, " May the 
 grace of God correspond to your good wishes, and deliver you 
 from the nets (insidie) of Anglicanism, and bring you to tlie 
 true Holy Church." I left him almost in tears, affected as 
 much by the earnest affectionate demeanour of the old man, 
 as by his blessing and his prayer; I shall remember St. 
 Alban's Day in 1843 to my life's end. (His companion 
 reported that the Holy Father, when first told he came 
 from England, said twice, " Jnghilterra ! Inghilterra !" and 
 burst into tears.) 
 
 Sunday morning. I hope by the time you receive this 
 your nerves will be a good deal better ; I fear you have been 
 overworking with your book. As to Pusey's business, I feel 
 an excessive indignation, which has too much of temper 
 
1843.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 197 
 
 mixed with it to be altogether right ; hut. in- what a state of 
 corruption our Church must be, when one of her four univer- 
 sities can suffer a board of doctors, without instant excom- 
 munication, to pass such a sentence ! Where can a protest 
 be made ? Where can the truth be authoritatively asserted ? 
 How can the Church show it is not her sentence ? No way : 
 there is no unity, no order, no authority, even where the 
 honour of the Lord's Body- is blasphemously slighted : we 
 may explain it away, to be sure, on technical grounds, but 
 after all, in the eyes of plain -thinking people, has not the 
 Church of England, in negligent silence, permitted the 
 theological authorities of the University of Oxford to deny the 
 Real Presence, and implicitly to assert the damnable heresy of 
 Zuinglius ? There is rottenness somewhere, 
 
 As to myself, nothing retains me but the fear of self-will ; 
 I grow more Roman every day, but I hope not wilfully. I 
 used and blessed it was to invoke the Saints, but since the 
 day last Lent, when you said you feared it was not justi- 
 fiable on our system, I have desisted ; for, please God, I will 
 obey in all things while I can* But I do not know what the 
 end will be indeed ; I hardly dare read the articles ; their 
 weight grows heavier on me daily. I hope our Blessed Lady's 
 intercession may not cease for any of us, because we do not 
 
 seek it, since we desist for obedience sake May God bless 
 
 us all, and keep us in the right way, and free us either from 
 self- interest or from self-will ! 
 
 It is not surprising to find that Mr. Faber was 
 on the point of being received into the Church at 
 this time. Every manifestation of Catholic life 
 seemed to answer a doubt, or to dispel a fear ; the 
 advice given to him by the Holy Father touching 
 the importance of saving his own soul, pressed upon 
 
198 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1843. 
 
 him with great weight, whilst the unhesitating 
 condemnation of Anglicanism pronounced by the 
 Roman professors whom he consulted, gradually 
 convinced him of the untenable nature of the 
 theory on which he had taken his stand. On one 
 occasion, when he lost his way in going from the 
 English College to the Piazza di Spagna, and found 
 himself, first at the Ponte Sant' Angelo, and then 
 at Monte Citorio, he compared his wanderings to 
 his position as a Protestant, seeking to guide him- 
 self by private judgment. 
 
 He was much struck by the procession on the 
 feast of Corpus Christi, and by the variety of objects 
 and devotions represented by the religious orders 
 and congregations engaged in it, accounting for it 
 by the fact that the Blessed Trinity is so broad, 
 that the Church, as it were, "went into Com- 
 mittee," and distributed Its Attributes for worship. 
 Again, after praying at the shrine of St. Aloysius 
 on the feast of that Saint, he left the church 
 as if speechless, and not knowing where he was 
 going. He said afterwards that he saw then that 
 he must within three years either be a Catholic 
 or lose his mind. After his reception, he told Dr. 
 Grant that on the 21st of June St. Aloysius had 
 always knocked very hard at his heart. 
 
 " It has pleased God," he wrote to Mr. Morris 
 from Florence on the llth of August, " to make my 
 journey mainly one of great suffering, both of body 
 and of mind : what I went through at Home I am 
 
,1843.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 199 
 
 sure my most forcible words could not explain; 
 and I think I told you I twice took my hat to 
 go to the Collegio Inglese to abjure." On each 
 occasion some trifling circumstance interfered to 
 prevent him from carrying out his purpose ; and 
 this he attributed at the time to his Guardian 
 Angel, whom he fervently and constantly invoked. 
 His anxiety on the subject was the cause of 
 physical injuries, from which he suffered during the 
 remainder of his life. 
 
 Prom Rome he went to Naples and Sorrento, 
 paying a short visit to Salerno before turning his 
 face northwards. The later incidents of his stay 
 in Rome, and his journey to Naples were described 
 as follows : 
 
 LETTEB XLIX. To THE REV. F. A. FABER. 
 
 Naples, Wednesday, July 5th, 1843, A. D. 
 
 What a change to come over the spirit of a man's 
 dream ! The solemn magnificence of old Rome, the silence, 
 the holiness, the unworldly aspect of that Holy of Holies 
 is left behind the Latin hills, and here is the loud mirth, 
 the extravagant splendour, the military glitter, the eternal 
 revel, the dolce far niente, of this earthly paradise. I feel 
 quite oppressed; I feel as if I was smothered by the bad 
 that is in the world, as if the devil had visibly got the upper 
 hand, and had put down Providence. The effect is quite 
 strange : at Rome the good conies uppermost ; the nearest 
 approach I can make to an imagination of heaven is that 
 it is like Rome, not the Rome of the Piazza di Spagna, 
 
200 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1843. 
 
 the tourists and their friends the valets, hut the other true 
 Borne wherein I dwelt. I know there is an immense deal of 
 piety in Naples, hut the heautiful, the voluptuous, the idle, 
 the happy, that is the only Naples which meets the eye. 
 Dear somhre Home ! the tawny Campagna, with its "broken 
 aqueducts, is better than this Elysian seaside. 
 
 My twenty-ninth birthday was St. Peter's eve. I attended 
 vespers, and saw the Pope bless the palls, and heard the 
 
 Roma felix of Boethius. Afterwards came the illumina- 
 tion ; I stood ^n the piazza and watched the first illumination, 
 the architectural one, which is much the most beautiful to 
 my fancy ; I then ran off to the Pincian, saw it from there, 
 rushed back to St. Peter's, and arrived breathless in the 
 piazza, just as the marvellous burst took place. But the 
 finest view was on my return home from the Trinita steps 
 out of the Piazza di Spagna, the steps you used to shirk. 
 
 1 thought of the last illumination on my birthday at Oxford, 
 the Queen's coronation, our Nuneham day. 
 
 On Thursday morning I went to the Pontifical Mass : its 
 effect on me was just as much as I could bear ; one moment 
 was intolerable; the thousands in that tremendous building 
 of course made a considerable noise, but when the Canon 
 of the Mass began all sank on their knees, and not a pin 
 could have dropped unperceived, and (I had not been told 
 of it before) when the Pontiff, his eyes streaming with tears, 
 slowly elevated the Lord's Body, suddenly from the roof 
 some ten or twelve trumpets, as from heaven, pealed out 
 with a long, wailing, timorous jubilee, and I fell forward 
 completely overcome. One other thing touched me extremely: 
 the Pope receives the Communion standing at his throne, 
 and as they were bringing It up to him, when It came near, 
 in one moment, without arranging his robes, without dignity, 
 
1843.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 201 
 
 he threw himself down on the ground till It reached him, 
 when he rose to receive It. While he stood praying before 
 It, his heating and striking of his hreast were so vehement 
 that you could hear them all over, and he looked a saint. 
 All his servants say that he is a most edifying man. He is 
 a Venetian, and in their way supports himself hy coffee 
 several times a day ; now that day he had been up between 
 four and five working, he sang the Mass, it was twelve before 
 he received, he is seventy-eight years of age, yet had fasted 
 till then, though his age would have licensed him. I was 
 also pleased with the halt in the procession, half way down 
 the church, when the ambassadors huddle off, and the old 
 Pope from his throne makes a loud protest against Sicily and 
 its investiture being taken from him. Thus the Papacy goes 
 on, biding its time : this is now a tourist's show : I would 
 wager my life that the Pontiffs will be lords of Sicily again 
 sometime, and the continuity of the protest will be of great 
 importance. It has been so with a hundred other things. 
 
 Dr. Pantaleone (a medical doctor) tells me that an im- 
 mense number of the English who expose themselves to the 
 sunset dews at Rome are saved from ague by retaining their 
 national habit of scalding themselves internally with tea ; he 
 said coffee would not do. I could have hugged him ; hearing 
 the praises of tea is like listening to a eulogy on one's 
 
 parents or brothers. On Friday afternoon H was well 
 
 enough to go a few stages, and we slept at Velletri, on the 
 edge of the Pontine Marshes. On Saturday we arrived at 
 Mola di Gaeta. What a paradise ! We had a room with a 
 balcony amid lemon groves, close to the sea, among the ruins 
 of Cicero's villa. I cared mighty little for Cicero or his villa, 
 but gazed upon that bay, and Vesuvius smoking far off, and 
 the beautiful city of Gaeta opposite, as Hartlepool to Seaton, 
 
202 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1843. 
 
 ,and I did think of JEneas' ships, and the old nurse dying 
 there. Here I was entranced for two days, roaming on the 
 soft velvet sands, getting my whole hody inflated with good 
 air, till I was nearly drunk with it, after the enfeebling 
 siroccos of the Roman Campagna. At five on Sunday 
 morning I was rolling like a porpoise in the Mediterranean, 
 and hoped to have done so on Monday and Tuesday, hut 
 either I stayed in too long, or went under water too often 
 or for too long a time, which you know I always preferred to 
 
 other aquatic tricks 
 
 I certainly have got a cranky body, for I have more 
 sufferings to relate. Those Neapolitan postillions managed 
 to keep us ten or eleven hours on the road to Naples. We 
 set off early in the morning to avoid the heat, the conse- 
 quence was that Phoebus played in upon us, as our vehicle 
 is a kind of britska ; the carriage became so hot it was like 
 a furnace ; not a twig or leaf stirred ; clouds of white dust 
 rose up from the horses' feet, and there being no wind, 
 lingered about the carriage, so we breathed dust, fire and 
 dust mixed. "We groaned, but all in vain; not a puff, not 
 a breath, not a cloud, but the frightful sun shimmering 
 away, and the cicala screaming (I may say that) as if their 
 trees were on fire: the ' 'fields through which pleasant Liris 
 glides," as Bishop Taylor hath it, were peculiarly bad. 
 Capua saw us kept for an hour for passports in the breathless 
 panting streets 
 
 A short but severe illness rendered him unequal 
 to the exertion of travelling by land, and he 
 therefore went by sea from Naples to Leghorn, 
 renouncing his intention of visiting the Franciscan 
 sanctuaries of Umbria. Florence was his next 
 halting-place, and there he began "a course of 
 
18-13.]- FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 203 
 
 Parish Lectures for the Eltonians on the Sacred 
 Infancy and Childhood of our Lord." " I shall 
 attempt, of course, no great depth," he wrote, " hut 
 much is opening upon me; and anyhow I shall 
 live (D.V.) a happy fortnight in the dolcezza of the 
 suhject. It was St. Antony of Padua's special 
 devotion (as the Romans use that word), and surely 
 to all of us who are trying to win hack the honour 
 due to the Heal Presence, all subjects which touch 
 the Lord's Blessed Humanity get a douhle sacred- 
 ness in our eyes." 
 
 The following letters continue the narration of 
 the events of his journey. 
 
 LETTER L. To THE REV. F. A. FABER. 
 
 Florence, August 13, 1843, A. D. 
 
 One day we spent in the most delightful manner. We 
 
 hired a sailing boat with an awning, and went from Leghorn 
 to the mouth of the Arno, ascending about a couple of miles ; 
 we then dismissed the boatman for awhile, and dined under the 
 trees. Before dinner, three of us disported for a long while 
 in the Arno, and I shall not easily forget the singular pictu- 
 resqueness of the view from the middle of the river, looking 
 north. On our left was the blue Mediterranean, with one 
 glistening streak of white water on the river bar ; on our right 
 was the Arno doubling through an old wood of stone-pines, 
 running towards Pisa, and in front rose the fine mountains of 
 Carrara, with their white splintered spears, and the fore- 
 ground was pale green sandy plain, part of the Grand Duke's 
 farm, whereon were droves of white oxen, and innumerable 
 
204 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1813. 
 
 camels stalking about with the graceful laziness of Asia Minor. 
 It was quite a notable view 
 
 On Thursday (10th) we passed through Pisa, and came to 
 Florence. Of course it has been most imperfectly lionized as 
 yet, and I can only give you my first impressions ; which are, 
 that after Venice, and not including Rome, which belongs to 
 the world, and not to Italy, Florence is the most interesting 
 Italian city I have been in ; but before I say anything of the 
 city, I must express my delight in the promenade, the Cascine ; 
 that plain of green farm-like fields, the mighty elms, the lucid 
 Arno in the evening, and the purple mountains behind Fiesole 
 and downwards beautiful they are, yet I do not mention them 
 for their independent beauty, but get behind a tree which 
 hides the domes of Florence, and where a friendly side-branch 
 erases the white terraces of Fiesole, and first, you would swear 
 you were at home and not abroad ; and secondly, you would 
 perceive for a certainty that you were at Llangollen, and you 
 would point out the blue gorge up the winding of whose 
 tributary stream couch the ash-curtained ruins of Vale Crucis 
 abbey. So much is due to the Cascine. And the city itself 
 is much to my taste. The gorgeous, though unfinished, 
 cathedral is, as to exterior, most glorious and imposing. The 
 interior, with its harmonious blending of white and brown 
 wash is quite awful, and the less said of it the better. 
 The church of the Annunziata, Sta. Maria Novella, the 
 Ambrosian basilica of St. Lorenzo, and many others, are very 
 fine indeed, in the Italian way. There is a shower of rain, I 
 must go and look at it and smell it ! 
 
 Thursday morning. The last three days have comprised 
 so much lionizing, and so much delightful, and to me 
 congenial, society that I have had no time to continue my 
 letter. Tuesday was the feast of our Blessed Lady's Assump- 
 tion, and of course we saw a Florentine holyday to great per- 
 fection. I won't bore you with describing what you know as 
 
1843.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 205 
 
 well as I do, the churches of Florence, of which San Michele 
 and Sta* Groce are much the finest, after the Duomo. But 
 my endless, endless delight in Florence is that maraviglia 
 of a Campanile, where architecture and painting unite to 
 produce a tower really worthy of the city of Dante, and whose 
 glorious ideal can only have sprung out of a mind highly 
 congenial to his. I regret to say, a'nd Wordsworth's sonnet 
 makes me regret it still more, that Dante's stone has heen 
 taken down, and let into the pavement, so that hardly any 
 one could observe it : this is among some recent " municipal 
 improvements:" verily the plague of churchwardens and 
 town-councilmen is not confined to poor England. Dante's 
 stone has to my fancy lost nearly all its interest, now that 
 it is no longer a chair, because the historic interest arose 
 from its having been the stone seat whereon he sat watching 
 the building of the marvellous Duomo, for which he was 
 asked to give the plans : and indeed by breaking an egg and 
 leaning all his weight upon it without crushing the broken 
 half he did give the first idea of the dome. Another delight 
 of mine here is looking down the Arno, where the trees of 
 the Cascine, already mottled with autumnal gold, are backed 
 by the mountains of Llangollen. Though the view from our 
 windows is not so decidedly Welsh as in the Cascine itself, 
 yet it is Welsh, and very beautiful also. 
 
 Friday. August 18. I spent a delicious evening at 
 Fiesole yesterday, and not being, as I had feared, tormented 
 by a single thought of the execrable rebel and heretic Milton, 
 I had nothing to disturb the beautiful tranquillity of the 
 sunset, and the rosy mists of the garden-like Valdarno. I 
 confess many a scene in Italy has been marred for me by 
 some officious friend reminding me of the godless Byron, 
 and had I not yesterday been with a religious Roman Catholic 
 family, I doubt not I should have been reminded of that 
 worse child of the devil, whose grand poem is so horridly 
 
206 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1843. 
 
 instinct with hatred of the 'Son of God, and blasphemy 
 against His Divinity. As it was, the famous lines in 
 Paradise Lost, which I thought of this morning, kindly 
 tumbled out of my memory yesterday evening. I must say 
 that I cannot comprehend the anomaly which strikes me both 
 in guide-books and conversation, of quoting and praising men 
 like Milton and Byron, when a man professes to love Christ 
 and to put all his hopes of salvation in Him: To love 
 Christ in church, yet to praise His blasphemers in society ; 
 to pray and speak against unchastity, as a thing hateful to God, 
 yet to praise one whose works as well as life were full of it. 
 I cannot understand the nice distinction of the man and the 
 poet, pure passages and impure. If a man wronged the person 
 of my love, I could not receive aid or pleasure from him ; 
 and I cannot conceive how anything like a delicate and ardent 
 love of the Saviour can enjoy the works of the Saviour's enemy. 
 The mind admits the distinction, the heart does not. Milton 
 (accursed be his blasphemous memory) spent great part of 
 his life in writing down my Lord's Divinity, my sole 
 trust, my sole love ; and that thought poisons Comus. 
 Byron trampling underfoot his duties to his country, and 
 scorning the natural pieties, lived disgracefully in exile, 
 dressing up crime and unbelief in verse : the beast who 
 thrust (I tremble to write it) Christ into company with Jove 
 and Mahomet, is a beast to me in his purest passages. And 
 I have never repented the hour when at University I threw 
 into the fire my beautiful four-volume edition of Shelley. 
 " So spake the bard, holiest of men" if my tears could 
 wash out those words, and the word "divine," the Excursion 
 would go down to posterity free from that burden which now 
 makes so many good men, at Oxford and elsewhere, look at 
 it with coldness and distrust, when they might feed upon 
 its Catholic grandeurs with so much profit to themselves ; 
 but I will not blame them ; to be jealous, even to a scruple, 
 
1813.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 207 
 
 
 
 of anything which interferes with the honour of Christ, both 
 God and man, is a saintly fault, if it be a fault at all. 
 England has no " need" of Milton : how can a country 
 have need of anything, policy, courage, talent, or anything 
 else which is unblessed of God, and how can any talent in 
 any subject matter be blessed by the Eternal Father for 
 one who in prose and verse denied, ridiculed, blasphemed 
 the Godhead of the Eternal Son ? Si quis non amat DOMINUM 
 nostrum Jesum Christum, sit anathema : that was St. Paul's 
 view : but enough. 
 
 Whilst at Florence he was persuaded to wear a 
 miraculous medal, and shortly afterwards he wrote 
 from Bologna a letter which seemed to him to 
 contain unanswerable arguments against Anglican- 
 ism. He returned to England by Switzerland, 
 reaching Elton in the course of October. Prom 
 Berne he wrote the following description of his 
 state of mind, which sufficiently shows that his 
 remaining a member of the Church of England was 
 due to the personal influence of others, to whose 
 authority he elected to submit. 
 
 LETTER LI. To THE REV. J. B. MORRIS. 
 
 September 30, 1843. 
 
 Whatever be the end of my doubts, I can already rejoice in 
 one thing, namely, that I have suffered ; one of the Saints 
 said, patire e morire, to suffer and die, but Sta. Maria Madda- 
 lena de' Pazzi went further, vivere e patire, to live and suffer. 
 If we are not now in the One Church, but in a concu- 
 bine, (so long as it be a doubt), we may hope, in the endurance 
 
208 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1843. 
 
 of that last mercy, Purgatory, to be knitted into the true 
 body ; but if it grows beyond a doubt what then ? You will 
 say, suffer, suffer, suffer. If it be so, I must go on, and God 
 will reveal this also to me. If I try to pray, if I kneel with- 
 out words in acknowledgment of God's Presence, if I try to 
 love Christ, if I meditate on the Passion, all is in the mist and 
 in the dark. 
 
 I think all this must begin with the One Church ; are you 
 in it ? If not, of what good is all this ? You have had it 
 put before you look at her catholicity, unity, sanctity, fruit- 
 ful missions, clear miracles, wonderful Saints, ancient things ! 
 In one age, while we groaned under dryness and irreverence, 
 were vouchsafed to her Saints Philip Neri, Charles Borromeo, 
 Francis Borgia, Francis Xavier, Francis of Sales, Ignatius, 
 Felix of Cantalice, Aloysius, Camillus of Lellis ! You pray 
 in vain, because you have not really humbled yourself before 
 the Church so revealed to you; you confess in vain, you 
 communicate in vain ; all are shadows. So thoughts rush 
 upon me. If in happy times I say, ainore amoris Tui mundo 
 mortar, qui amove amoris mei dignatm es w Cruce mori 
 then comes the chilling question, "Why are not you in the 
 communion where he was who said that, and lived upon it ? 
 
 But you will answer, You think too much about the 
 salvation of your own soul, and too little about the Church. 
 
 But, my dear J , I have not the consolation of thinking 
 
 that I am running a risk (most dreadful idea) for the Church, 
 but of harming a number of misbelievers by not following 
 
 the light given me to show me where the Church is 
 
 It comes to this : to stay is misery at present, and I dare not 
 go away. .You must pray for me, you and T. and Dalgairns; 
 I do for all of you, but I fear that will bring none of you any 
 good yet. 
 
 In another letter he sums up the effects of his 
 
1843.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 209 
 
 tour in these words : "I have been much altered 
 since I came abroad this time; but I am very, 
 very, very Roman. I have learnt an immense 
 deal, both inwardly and outwardly; and I hope 
 it will lead to something more than feelings." 
 
 On his return he brought home with him two 
 rosaries blessed by the Pope, and gave them to two 
 friends, who subsequently became Catholics, one a 
 little before, and the other a little after himself. 
 To the latter he gave a copy of St. Ignatius' 
 Exercises, dated on his birthday (which he used to 
 keep as the feast of St. Irenseus at one time) in 
 which were written the words of the hymn : 
 
 " Eoma felix, quse duorum principum 
 Es consecrata glorioso sanguine ; 
 Horum cruore purpurata caeteras 
 Excellis orbis una pulchritudines." 
 
 Trifles of this sort often exhibit the discrimination 
 of character for which he was afterwards remark- 
 able, while they also help to show that his conver- 
 sion was not a sudden one, but the result of a 
 gradual process. 
 
 14 
 
210 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1843. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 1843-5. 
 
 On returning "to England, Mr. Faber lost no 
 time in commencing his work at Elton. He had 
 determined to put aside for a while the long enter- 
 tained doubts concerning the Anglican Church, 
 which had been strengthened by his visit to 
 Italy. His convictions remained the same on all 
 the details of the controversy; but, fearful of 
 acting from self-will, he judged it better to remain 
 quiet for a time, than to take a decisive step on 
 what might prove to be a mistaken impulse. As 
 rector of Elton, he had the opportunity of putting 
 the powers of the Church of England to the test 
 of practical work, and he hoped to derive from this 
 a confirmation or refutation of his opinions respect- 
 ing them. 
 
 It must be remembered that at this period the 
 idea of conversion was not familiar to the minds 
 of Anglicans. Their greatest leader was living in 
 seclusion at Littlemore, as yet uncertain what 
 course it would be his duty to pursue ; the delay 
 which he had imposed upon himself he also 
 recommended to those who sought his counsel ; and 
 
1843.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 211 
 
 it was in deference to his judgment that Mr. Faber 
 remained for two years longer in the Anglican 
 communion. He had already written as follows : 
 
 LETTER LIT. To THE KEY. J. H. NEWMAN. 
 
 Berne, September 30th, 1843. 
 
 It is a great comfort to me to see you recommending 
 delay even in my state of mind ; for ' I told Dr. Grant at 
 Kome, when I was in an extraordinary tumult of mind in 
 the church of St. Ignatius, on the feast of St. Aloysius, that 
 I would not make up my mind till the same day in 1845. 
 And it is on this point that I have suffered most since I left 
 Rome, as they have worked on my natural timidity by 
 representing this as perhaps the moment of finalis gratia, 
 which passed, I am hardened and lost ; and indeed this has 
 caused me much misery of mind. 
 
 It is a great enough evil to have to fight with a doubt, 
 while one is fighting with one's sins also : to doubt the 
 sacraments one is seeking, to have any holy feelings chilled 
 by the thought that this is (vulgarly speaking) putting the 
 cart before the horse, and of no use till one is in the One 
 Church, that to begin anywhere else is useless altogether. 
 But this may be a punishment for past sins : and I must 
 make the best I can of it. Anyhow, I will wait ; and it is 
 a great joy to me to know that I have your prayers mean- 
 while 
 
 I hope the end of it all with all of us will be the being 
 led into all truth, and that we may be patient during the 
 dismal meanwhile which is before some of us. 
 
 It was Mr. Faber's intention to model his pas- 
 toral operations on the system pursued by the 
 
212 THE LIFE AND LETTEUS OP [1843. 
 
 Catholic Church, and to work his parish, as he 
 expressed it, "in the spirit of St. Philip and St. 
 Alphonso." What he had thus announced he 
 carried out. "Without paying so much attention 
 as most Anglicans were accustomed to do to 
 ceremonies and decorations, he relied, for the 
 reformation of his people, on preaching, and on 
 what he believed to be the sacraments. His ser- 
 vices were conducted with proper decency and 
 reverence; but so little value did he set on what 
 in many places were considered points of vital 
 importance, that when the surplice controversy was 
 agitating the Church of England, he told his 
 congregation that he usually preached in a surplice 
 because he preferred it, but that, far from insisting 
 on doing so, he would preach in his shirt sleeves, if 
 it would be any satisfaction to them. 
 
 He was at considerable pains to form a choir, 
 and full cathedral service was performed in his 
 church on Sundays and Saints' days, during the 
 last year of his residence at Elton. In prosecution 
 of the determination above mentioned, he circulated 
 amongst his people a history of the Sacred Heart, 
 thinking that nobody would object to devotion to our 
 Blessed Lord. But the instinct of the neighbour- 
 hood did not fail to discover Popery in it; nor can it 
 be said that it belongs to the genuine spirit of the 
 Established Church to rejoice in anything like carry- 
 ing out the details of the Incarnation or the Passion. 
 To wish others to do so was a proof that Catholicity 
 
1843.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 213 
 
 was gradually making a conquest of him. He also 
 published three tracts on Examination of Con- 
 science, a practice then scarcely known out of the 
 Catholic Church. 
 
 A year later he expressed himself as follows, in 
 the Life of St. "Wilfrid : 
 
 " Let us be men, and not dreamers : one cannot dream in 
 religion without profaning it. When men strive about the 
 decorations of the altar, and the lights, and the rood screen, 
 and the credence, and the piscina, and the sedilia, and the 
 postures here and the postures there, and the people are 
 not first diligently instructed in the holy mysteries, or 
 brought to realize the Presence and the Sacrifice, no less 
 than the commemorative Sacrament, what is it all but 
 puerility, raised into the wretched dignity of profaneness by 
 the awfulness of the subject matter? Is there not already 
 very visible mischief in the architectural pedantry displayed 
 here and there, and the grotesque earnestness about petty 
 trivialities, and the stupid reverence for the formal past? 
 Altars are the playthings of nineteenth century societies, 
 and we are taught that the Church cannot change, modify, 
 or amplify her worship ; she is, so we learn, a thing of a 
 past century, not a life of all centuries : and there is abusive 
 wrangling and peevish sarcasm, while men are striving to 
 force some favourite antiquated clothing of their own over the 
 majestic figure of true, solid, abiding Catholicism. It is 
 downright wickedness to be going thus a-mumming (a 
 buffoonery doubtless correct enough out of some mediaeval 
 costume book,) when we should be doing plain work for our 
 age and our neighbours. But sentiment is easier than action, 
 and an embroidered frontal a prettier thing than an ill- 
 furnished house and a spare table, yet, after all, it is not 
 
214 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1843. 
 
 so striking ; and a wan face gives more force to a sacred rite 
 than an accurately clipped stole, or a handsomely swelling 
 chasuble. The world was once taught by a holy man that 
 there was nothing merely external in Christianity ; the value 
 of its forms consists in their being the truthful expressions 
 of inwardly existing convictions ; and what convictions of 
 the English poor, who come unconfessed to the Blessed Sacri- 
 fice, does all this modern ancientness of vestment and adorn- 
 ing express? Children are fond of playing at funerals; it is 
 touching to see nature's fears so working at that innocent 
 age : whereas, to see grown up children, book in hand, 
 playing at mass, putting ornament before truth, suffocating 
 the inward by the outward, bewildering the poor instead 
 of leading them, revelling in Catholic sentiment instead of 
 offering the acceptable sacrifice of hardship and austerity 
 this is a fearful, indeed a sickening development of the 
 peculiar iniquity of the times, a masterpiece of Satan's 
 craft. This is not the way to become Catholic again ; it is 
 only a profaner kind of Protestantism than any we have 
 seen hitherto. Austerity is the mother of beauty : only so 
 is beauty legitimately born." p. 205-7. 
 
 Materials were not wanting for the exercise of 
 his zeal. The parish was in evil repute amongst 
 its neighbours, and as his predecessor had done little 
 or nothing towards its reformation, it had hecome 
 almost a byword for its intemperance and profligacy. 
 " I have tumbled," he wrote soon after he reached 
 Elton, "into a sad parish; eight hundred people, 
 and nearly four hundred rabid Dissenters, who 
 have found out that I am, to use the expression 
 of a hostile churchwarden, tainted, to say the least, 
 with Puseyism." The experience of a few months 
 
1813.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 215 
 
 confirmed his first impressions : he said on the 24th 
 of March in the following year : 
 
 LETTEE LIII. To A FBIEND (B). 
 
 I feel impatient, thinking I could do all things in 
 my parish as if I were a Koman, and had not my feet in 
 the stocks of our system. 
 
 I have nearly one thousand people here, and everything 
 wants doing. But I have no right to complain : the Dis- 
 senters are very violent : they worship the Sabbath, and really 
 though they seem to cheat and live impurely on weekdays, 
 none of their neighbours seem to doubt but what they are the 
 elect. I get from twenty-five to thirty poor on Wednesdays 
 and Fridays and Saints' days, besides the children, and we 
 average about forty monthly communions. The weekday 
 services seem a sort of test, for I find they just collect 
 the quiet, unobtrusive, unboastful people, "the merely 
 moral," as the Dissenters call them. On Sunday evening, 
 my choir, at my request, when at practice in the evening 
 with locked doors, tried to sing the litany without organ, 
 which we do in church now : and it is believed that I shut 
 myself up with them and celebrated mass ! although it 
 chanced that I never went to the church that particular 
 evening." 
 
 It was not long before the fruit of Mr. Faber's 
 exertions manifested itself. His preaching soon 
 became very popular, and the Methodist chapel 
 in the village began to be deserted. On Sunday 
 afternoons the rectory grounds were thrown open 
 to the parishioners, rich or poor, and at these 
 times, in imitation of St. Philip, he used to be on 
 
216 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1843. 
 
 the look out to catch souls. Some scandal was 
 taken at the games of cricket and football, which 
 were introduced at these gatherings ; hut the moral 
 improvement which resulted from them overcame 
 all opposition. The affection which his people bore 
 him was such that when his effects were sold at 
 the rectory after his departure, numerous insignifi- 
 cant articles were sold for many times their value, 
 the poor parishioners vying with each other for 
 the possession of some object which had once been 
 his. 
 
 A number of the parishioners, chiefly young men, 
 began to go to confession to him, and to receive 
 communion frequently. Out of the most promis- 
 ing of these penitents he formed a sort of commu- 
 nity. They were accustomed to meet in the 
 rectory every night at twelve o'clock, and to spend 
 about an hour in prayer, chiefly in reciting portions 
 of the Psalter. On the eves of great feasts, the 
 devotions were prolonged for three or four hours. 
 The use N of the discipline was also introduced on 
 Fridays, eves of festivals, and every night in Lent, 
 each taking his turn to receive it from the others. 
 It would seem .that these vigils excited the anger 
 of the evil spirits, for mysterious noises used to 
 be heard in the house at the time, often apparently 
 just outside the door of the oratory where the 
 members were assembled. Sometimes, on these 
 occasions, they took lights, and searched all over 
 the house, but without finding anything which 
 
1843.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 217 
 
 could account for the noises which had been heard. 
 These disturbances did not avail to put a stop to 
 their nightly meetings, which were persevered in 
 up to the time of Mr. Faber's departure from 
 Elton.* Several of those who frequented the 
 rectory were also members of a Society of St. 
 Joseph, and employed in visiting the sick, as well 
 as in other works of charity to the parishioners. 
 
 To these influences the inhabitants of Elton 
 gradually yielded, and in a short time the appear- 
 ance of the village was completely changed. The 
 authority and example of the rector won over the 
 most disorderly to his side, so that regular devotion 
 and honest recreation took the place of those scenes 
 of dissipation and riot for which it had been 
 notorious. 
 
 The superintendence of his community, the 
 thorough visitation of his parish, and the repairs 
 of the church, which he undertook, engrossed so 
 much of Mr. Faber's time during the two years 
 of his parochial charge as to allow him but little 
 leisure to continue his literary pursuits. He con- 
 trived, nevertheless, to write the lives of St. Wilfrid, 
 St. Paulinus, St. Edwin, St. Oswald, and others, in 
 the series of English Saints, published by Mr. 
 Toovey, as well as to revise and bring out " Sir 
 
 * These particulars were collected by the late Father 
 Hutchison from so many persons who were present at 
 different times that he was quite satisfied of their truth. 
 
218 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1844. 
 
 Lancelot/' a poem in ten books, and to collect 
 several minor pieces into a volume, the proceeds 
 of which were applied to the repairs of his 
 church. 
 
 The chief interest, however, of this period of his 
 life is to be found in the struggles of his mind 
 towards the centre of Catholic unity. Restrained 
 by the obedience under which he had placed 
 himself from following out his strong attraction 
 towards the Church of Rome, and yet devoted 
 with all his heart to her doctrines and practices, 
 it is no wonder that he found his position 
 almost unendurable. He had obtained a con- 
 fessor in his friend, the Rev. M. Watts Russell: 
 but he pined for a spiritual director whom he could 
 consult more frequently. In asking an Oxford 
 friend to send him a curate, he wrote : " the rector 
 wants a confessor quite as sorely as the parish a 
 curate." His views of the necessity of confession 
 are seen in the following passage of another letter 
 (July 14, 1844) : " I shall never be easy about you, 
 my very dear friend, till I hear that you have 
 laid that only sure foundation of saintly living, 
 the practice of sacramental confession. The longer 
 I live, and the more experience I have in the 
 conduct of souls, the more deeply I am convinced 
 that in these days it is almost the only safeguard 
 against self-delusion. Bodily austerities are not to 
 be compared with it as a means of sa notifica- 
 tion." 
 
1844.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 219 
 
 The absence of congenial society weighed heavily 
 upon him at times ; he wrote on July 17, 1844 : 
 
 LETTER LIV. To THE REV. J. B. MORHIS. 
 
 You see I have no educated, no religious person near 
 me : my solitude is, in effect, as utter as that of the Thebaid : 
 the horrors without the honours of an anchoret. Sometimes 
 I see in this a penance, very gracious, for my peculiar 
 defects ; sometimes I do not ; anyhow it enervates me at 
 times, because I am psychologically eating myself. One 
 while I think of betaking myself to read some mere intellec- 
 tual book ; but I have lost my taste for literature now, and 
 it seems time lost to read any but spiritual books. Another 
 while I think of poetry, but with me that is too engrossing. 
 Except a few lines on you, and such mutations as Sir 
 Lancelot wants in his passage through the press, I have 
 
 written no poetry since I came to Elton 
 
 It does not sound well for a priest to say that the poor are 
 not company enough for him : still I do feel a want of those 
 entretiens de recreation which even monks have ; though I 
 do not think that I am presumptuous enough, in a great 
 Anglican parsonage, to fancy myself a monk. However, 
 I should like to have some advice how to be cheerful 
 with a great stone round one's neck (I mean our cramping 
 parochial system). 
 
 Mr. Eaber's letters at this time spoke of his 
 being engaged in frequent prayer, and the decline 
 of his health told as clear a tale of abstinence and 
 penance. In mental prayer he followed the system 
 of St. 'Ignatius; and Rodriguez on Spiritual Perfec- 
 tion was constantly in his hands. He was also 
 
220 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1844. 
 
 familiar with the Life of St. Philip, which he "began 
 to translate into English, the works of St. Francis 
 of Sales, St. Alphonso, and many other Catholic 
 writers. 
 
 He fasted rigorously, often taking for his dinner 
 nothing hut a herring and a few potatoes, and on 
 more than one occasion during Lent he fainted 
 while reading morning prayers. Sundays were the 
 only days on which he could be said to take a 
 meal, and his medical attendant ascribed many of 
 his attacks of illness to the want of proper nourish- 
 ment. 
 
 The details given by those who lived with him, 
 in spite of the pains he took to conceal his austeri- 
 ties from observation, shew the great extent to 
 which he carried the practice of them. On this 
 point he appears to have been his own director, 
 and he was certainly most unsparing of himself, 
 habitually wearing, amongst other penances, a thick 
 horsehair cord tied in knots round his waist. Yet 
 he wrote (August 22, 1844,) "It is very hard to 
 keep alive the spirit of compunction, where penance 
 is in a great measure self-chosen, and has not the 
 safeguard of being imposed from without, specially 
 when one is effeminately inclined." 
 
 A few extracts from his letters will give the best 
 idea of the state of his mind during the later months 
 of 1844. 
 
1844.] [FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 221 
 
 LETTER LV. To THE REV. J. H. NEWMAN. 
 
 St. Clare's Day, (August 12,) 1844. 
 
 I seem to grow more Eoman daily, and almost to 
 write from out the bosom of the Eoman Church instead 
 of from where I am. I suppose I am not going on as I 
 ought to do, for our system seems more and more to enervate 
 me, and I sometimes get a glimpse of a state of mind which 
 would view my position as a parish priest as that of a man 
 telling a lie to people. I douht not the fault is in myself ; 
 and I have (I think more than once) written to you to 
 ask you to remove your prohibition against invocating our 
 Blessed Lady, the Angels and Saints, but I have destroyed 
 the letters in what I fancied were better moods, and in 
 truth I want restraints to keep me where I am. I know 
 
 M does not pray to our Blessed Lady, and it would 
 
 be very absurd in me to run ahead of him in wants of that 
 kind. But, you know, I see nobody from month's end to 
 month's end, often do not speak for days, except a few 
 words to the servants, and now in the throng of harvest I 
 have not even the gossip of the cottagers ; so that I get 
 moody about Church matters, and then one's position looks 
 so very dismal. 
 
 LETTER LYL To THE SAME. 
 
 November 28, 1844. 
 
 I have a request to make which I cannot any longer 
 refrain from making; but I shall submit at once to a No, 
 if you will say it. I want you to revoke your prohibition, 
 laid on me last October year, of invoking our Blessed Lady, 
 the Saints, and Angels. Really, I do not know whether I 
 ask this in a lower and less spiritual mood than usual, or 
 
222 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 
 whether the mere pain I feel in not speaking to the Blessed 
 Mother of God drives me to it ; but I do feel somehow 
 weakened for the want of it, and fancy I should get strength 
 if I did it. Orel has become almost intolerable. However, 
 obedience will do me more good than invocation ; so if you 
 still really think I had better refrain, of course I will do so 
 still. 
 
 For some weeks past I have confronted the notion of a 
 change, and seem to have recoiled from it further than I 
 was before ; and yet I can really give no good grounds for 
 my staying where I am. I hope there are no low motives 
 at bottom which keep me ; but I know so much evil of 
 myself that I am sure it is quite possible. 
 
 LETTEE LVII. To THE SAME. 
 
 December 12, 1844. 
 
 Not having daily service in public, the private 
 recitation of the English office has been more easily infringed 
 than the keeping of the Diurnal Hours of the Roman Breviary, 
 which was of course self-love. I hope I am now quite 
 content to wait patiently where I am, and keep my thoughts 
 more on my own shortcomings than on anything else. I 
 am afraid to speak evil of myself, lest it should look humble, 
 which I am not yet ; still I may say that I am leper enough 
 to stay where I am till I myself am far other than I am. 
 When others move, then I shall begin the serious considera- 
 tion of what I am to do. I only wish to be where God wills 
 me to be : but then sin deafens one ; He may speak and I 
 not hear : He may have spoken, e. g. at Rome, and I not have 
 heard. What they said about finalis gratia there, sometimes 
 runs like cold steel through me. Do what I will, I cannot 
 outgrow the fear of being " damned" as out of the Church : 
 and so I too much overlook the risk of the same awful event 
 
1844.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 223 
 
 through my own sinfulness and ineffective penance. I pine 
 to feel sure, and that is self-love again. Yet, if I can be 
 confident of anything, it is that I am to an extent within 
 reach of grace : whether corresponded to or not, I am sure 
 it is offered; so I may well be patient. I cannot help 
 fancying that the grace comes always or mostly through what 
 in my life is borrowed from another system, not from what 
 I have of my own ; and so I feel as if I was living a dishonest 
 life : and this is painful, and yet once more it is self-love 
 of which this pain cornes. So the upshot is that I must 
 not decide for myself, but, as you say, be patient till the 
 way is mercifully cleared for us : and I suppose so long as 
 one can get a little purer, and one's temper a little evener, 
 and one's habitual thoughts sometuhat more stayed on God, 
 the poorest growths may be considered as proofs of Christ 
 being with us so far, for it would be absolutely unendurable 
 not to have some mark of being in Him. 
 
 The beginning of the year 1845 was marked 
 by a violent attack upon the Lives of the English 
 Saints published by Toovey. The Life of St. 
 Stephen Harding, with which the series began, 
 had been considered by men of great weight (so 
 it is stated in Dr. Newman's Apologia, p. 339,) 
 to be of such a> character as to be inconsistent with 
 its being given to the world by an Anglican 
 publisher. The irritation caused by its appearance 
 was not appeased by any of the succeeding volumes, 
 but the Life of St. Wilfrid provoked the most 
 hostile feeling, for in it the Catholic tendencies of 
 the Tractarian school were developed with the utmost 
 freedom. It was no secret that it was written by 
 
224 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1844. 
 
 Mr. Paber, who had no sympathy with the policy 
 of reserve in such matters, which was adopted by 
 several of his friends. " I cannot see," he wrote 
 to Mr. Morris, "the meaning or the honesty of 
 reserve : but I am ready to admit that I am not in 
 such a state of moral advancement as to allow me 
 to practise ' economy/ while others are." He spoke, 
 therefore, with characteristic energy on points of 
 Catholic doctrine and practice, which had but few 
 supporters in the Anglican communion. It is 
 difficult to conceive how the following passages, 
 selected almost at random from the Life of St. 
 Wilfrid, could have been written by a member of 
 the Church of England. 
 
 "He (Wilfrid) saw that the one thing to do was to go 
 to Rome, and learn under the shadow of St. Peter's chair 
 the more perfect way. To look Eomeward is a Catholic 
 instinct, seemingly implanted in us for the safety of the 
 faith." (p. 4.) 
 
 "Wilfrid felt that there were few parts of a bishop's office 
 BO important as a strict vigilance over the monastic orders. 
 Monastic orders are the very life's blood of a Church, 
 monuments of true apostolic Christianity, the refuges of 
 spirituality in the worst times, the nurseries of heroic 
 bishops, the mothers of rough-handed and great-hearted 
 missionaries. A Church without monasteries is a body 
 with its right arm paralysed." (pp. 62-3.) 
 
 " Certainly, it is true that he materially aided the blessed 
 work of riveting more tightly the happy chains which held 
 England to St. Peter's chair chains never snapped, as sad 
 experience tells us, without the loss of many precious 
 
1845.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 225 
 
 Christian things. Wilfrid did hetray, to use modern 
 language, the liberty of the national Church ; that is, 
 translated into Catholic phraseology, he rescued England, 
 even in the seventh century, from the wretched and debasing 
 formality of nationalism." (pp. 84-5.) 
 
 " Never was there upon earth a tribunal so august as that of 
 Eome ! While in the local Churches, party spirit and 
 factious tumult, the wrath of kings and the strife of prelates, 
 keep all things in effervescence, the patient discernment, the 
 devout tranquillity of deliberation, the unimpassioned dis- 
 entanglement of truth from falsehood, the kindly suspense, 
 the saintly moderation without respect of persons, the clear- 
 voiced utterance of the decree at last, how wonderful were 
 all these things in the court of Rome ! With profoundest 
 reverence be it spoken, did not this tribunal faintly shadow 
 forth the imperturbed peace, long-suffering, merciful delay, 
 yet loving promptitude of the divine judgments? Earth 
 trembled and was still : for many a century was .this true of 
 Rome ; surely it was the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in 
 our eyes." (p. 172-3.) 
 
 These were startling utterances from a Protestant 
 rectory: and the opponents of the series were not slow 
 to seize the opportunity which was thus afforded 
 them. They saw in it a sufficient proof that Home 
 was the end at which the Anglican party was aim- 
 ing: the authority attributed to St. Peter's Chair, the 
 necessity which was proclaimed of the Eucharistic 
 Sacrifice, the miraculous legends related with appro- 
 val, the whole spirit as well as the contents of 
 Mr. Faber's volume, were all taken as signs that his 
 party had at last thrown off the mask, and that 
 15 
 
226 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1845. 
 
 their next step would inevitably be a declaration 
 of their allegiance to the Church of Rome. 
 
 Nor was it only by the avowed enemies of the 
 Tractarian movement that the Life of St. "Wilfrid 
 was condemned; many of the author's friends 
 were displeased at its outspoken frankness, which 
 appeared to commit their party to greater lengths 
 than they were, prepared to go. Their judgment 
 was keenly felt at Elton; and Mr. Faber wrote 
 January the 29th, 1845 : 
 
 LETTER LVIII. To THE REV. J. B. Monms. 
 
 I am quite sure, though I do not see how, that there 
 is some sin in the matter, when you, Marriott, and Pusey all 
 speak so strongly : but Newman's admission that he read the 
 whole and passed it through the press, and did not feel the 
 objection so strongly as to speak, and Oakeley's letter to 
 acknowledge the good he got from it, must be consolations 
 to me. 
 
 It is quite clear to me that I must retire from the Lives, 
 and for a season from all writing. The whole business brings 
 home to me very forcibly the culpable forwardness and 
 presumption of my venturing at all to take an active part in 
 a movement, the very avowed object of which is to unsettle 
 men's minds is, HAS BEEN, and WILL BE. I ought never to 
 have stepped out in the way that I have done. I feel this 
 more particularly because in the case of St. Wilfrid I have 
 done no more nor half so much to Romanize men's minds and 
 unsettle them, as others have done unblamed : and I think 
 it is simple and most justifiable want of fiducia in the 
 individual that makes his colleagues willing to throw him 
 
1845.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 227 
 
 overboard when the cry comes, for outcries are periodical, and 
 have little intrinsic connection with the thing cried out at. 
 This makes me think the admonition more Providential : I 
 have long felt called to a much stricter and more contem- 
 plative life than I have hitherto led, and severer penance : 
 and it does seem God's "Will I should keep to my obscure 
 duties, and great retirement here. For instance, on Saturday 
 night, after Marriott's second letter, a very striking con- 
 version and confession of a methodist took place. On Sunday 
 night, after your letter, a great grown up farmer who had 
 never shewn any contrition confessed, and though above six 
 feet high and very strong, he so nearly went into fits that I 
 was obliged to fetch wine to restore him. And today after 
 receiving your letter I recited the seven Penitential Psalms, 
 for whatever wantonness (Pusey's word) there was in St. 
 Wilfrid, and I seemed to have quite a light ut instruam te in 
 via liac qua gradieris. 
 
 There is no reason why I should make vows &c. against 
 writing, or do any other absurd thing : I merely mean that I 
 think it my duty to live somewhat differently for a while. 
 My school, my sick, my penitents, my sermons, form enough 
 of active duty for several hours daily. 
 
 "What has passed about St, Wilfrid during the last fortnight 
 has done me more good than anything which has happened 
 for a long while. The book is so wholly beneath the piece of 
 work made, that it can only be sent as a lesson ; so now to 
 learn it " with what appetite I may." 
 
 Although Mr. Faber had said, apropos of the 
 condemnation of Mr. Ward at Oxford, that from 
 the far-off serene bosom of the Holy Eoman 
 Church, such squabbles in a duck-pond must 
 appear infinitely little, he received a proof at this 
 
228 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1845. 
 
 juncture of the affectionate interest with which 
 her rulers were watching the spiritual growth of 
 those whom they were soon to admit within her 
 pale. The controversy ahout the Life of St. Wil- 
 frid attracted the attention of the Right Rev. Dr. 
 Wareing, Vicar Apostolic of the Eastern District, 
 and he sent a letter of condolence to Mr. Eaber 
 on the attacks which had been made upon him. 
 To this the following reply was returned. 
 
 LETTER LIX. To BISHOP WAREING. 
 
 Elton Kectory, Stilton, 
 
 Feast of St. Agnes, 1845. 
 My Lord, 
 
 Allow me to thank you for your obliging note. It 
 is natural that sympathy should be welcome from any quarter, 
 but it is especially so from one of the rulers of the Holy 
 Roman Church. Your Lordship will of course understand 
 why I should feel reluctant to enter at all upon the present 
 perplexities of the Anglican Communion, and also what sort 
 of difficulties are forced upon any one when he confronts, 
 even in thought, a change of religion. But I may be allowed 
 to say that I shall much cherish the thought that your Lord- 
 ship prays for me, and perhaps sometimes remembers me at 
 the Blessed Sacrifice. God grant that self-will may not 
 accelerate, nor self-interest retard, any change He may beckon 
 me to. I am far too great a sinner to be plainly told His 
 will, yet I trust your lordship will acknowledge that even in 
 my position, I am within reach of grace enough to find the 
 right way, if I do not from self-seeking hold back when light 
 
 is given, 
 
 I remain, your obedient servant, 
 
 FRED. WM. FABER, 
 The Bight Rev. Dr. Wareing, Northampton. 
 
1845.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 229 
 
 Despite the renewed eagerness with which Mr. 
 Paher applied himself at this time to his parochial 
 duties, the uncertainty which he felt concerning 
 his position made steady progress. His moorings 
 were slipping daily ; and, do what he would to 
 Anglicanize himself, he was growing more and more 
 Roman. In a letter to his constant correspondent, 
 Mr. Morris, he gave some interesting details of the 
 work which he was carrying on, and of the affection 
 with which he regarded it. 
 
 LETTEB LX. To THE KEY. J. B. MORRIS. 
 
 March 11, 1845. 
 Tuesday after Passion Sunday. 
 
 The more I think, the more I fancy it hest to take 
 my name off the hooks at Oxford, in order to stand in a 
 simple ecclesiastical position. I seem more Koman than 
 ever, yet more frightened than ever at going, hecause of my 
 parish. There are now seventeen persons strikingly con- 
 verted, all confitentes, some really heing led in extraordinary 
 ways, and perfectionwards : some confess weekly, five or six 
 of them. Thirty-one persons came to the early communion 
 last Sunday ; and the sermons on examination of conscience 
 seem to have moved the whole place : numbers come almost 
 daily in grief or distress, and I douht not many -of these 
 will become confitentes. I can hardly open a hook now, let 
 alone write ; for seeing people here privately occupies three 
 or four hours daily, or averages that. (I have just been 
 interrupted by a confession.) People are beginning to come 
 beforehand when they wish to communicate ; the little 
 children in the school, by simple minute catechising in the 
 
230 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1845. 
 
 Passion open their little griefs and sins to me ; the actual 
 face of the village is changed obviously to worldly eyes, in 
 sobriety and nocturnal quiet : I really cannot without 
 anguish confront the idea of throwing this up, and leaving 
 these souls to I know not what. 
 
 This anxiety about his state, and the severe 
 bodily penances which he inflicted on himself, 
 combined with the pressure of Lenten work to 
 injure his health materially; and in the course of 
 the summer he was obliged to take rest and change 
 of air. He could not bear, however, to be long 
 away from his beloved parish, and his absences 
 were only of short duration. 
 
 In the autumn of 1845 many of his friends 
 were received into the Catholic Church, and he 
 soon saw that his own conversion was only a 
 question of time. The Saints, in whose spirit he 
 had endeavoured to work, drew him surely onwards 
 to the centre of unity from whence their own 
 holiness had been derived. Although Elton was 
 spoken of by a high authority in the Establishment 
 as a sign of life, and a model parish, where the 
 system of the Church of England was fully carried 
 out, it was to its rector a place where Anglicanism 
 had been fairly weighed in the balance and found 
 wanting. His doubts were much strengthened by 
 the conversion of many whose judgment he 
 valued, especially by that of Mr. Newman, to whose 
 teaching his first attraction ' to the Church had 
 been mainly due, and to whose authority he had 
 
1845.] FREDERICK WILLIAM TA13ER. 231 
 
 been accustomed to submit. A friend, who was 
 staying with him at the time of Mr. Newman's 
 reception into the Church, well remembers the 
 impression made upon them both by his urging 
 upon Mr. Eaber that he was " out of the one true 
 fold." The words had an awfulness to him, because 
 God had long been preparing his mind for the 
 change. 
 
 That change was not long in coming. Imme- 
 diately after the reception of Mr. Newman at 
 Littlemore, Mr. Paber wrote the following letter : 
 
 LETTER LXI. To BISHOP WAREING. 
 
 Elton Kectory, Stilton, Hunts, 
 
 October 14, 1845. 
 My Lord, 
 
 I fear I am but trespassing on your patience, yet I am 
 sure I am not wrong in reckoning on your episcopal kindness, 
 in asking you to be so kind as to let me know how much of 
 abjuration is involved in an Anglican's reconciliation with the 
 Koman Church, how far he is supposed to pass, any opinion 
 on the validity of his own orders and past ministerial acts. 
 Your Lordship will, I am sure, understand that many things 
 may seem clear enough to a man when he has been some time 
 in the enjoyment of Catholic communion, which he cannot feel 
 clear about beforehand ; and if a man's convictions have got 
 so far that he has fixed a definite period, at the expiration 
 of which, if his convictions stand the test of time and prayer, 
 he would beg for reconciliation, of course it is desirable for 
 him to know as much as he can beforehand. I must beg 
 your Lordship to receive this letter as confidential, and to 
 
232 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1845. 
 
 remember the most unworthy writer of it in your prayers, 
 pardoning the intrusion upon you of one who is such a leper 
 that he durst not hope for affectionate solicitude except from 
 those whose office it is to recall the wandering ; pray forgive 
 this raw note, and believe me, 
 
 Your Lordship's 
 
 Most humble servant, 
 FRED. W. FABER. 
 
 To this the Bishop replied : 
 
 My dear Sir, 
 
 The " forma reconciliandi conversum," as standing in 
 our Ritual, is only so far an abjuration of any false doctrine 
 as is necessarily involved in the solemn profession of what is 
 believed to be the truth. A member of the Anglican Church 
 in complying with this form, is not called upon totidem verbis 
 to pass any opinion upon the validity of his orders or his past 
 ministerial acts. He simply and sincerely professes his 
 adherence to doctrines which he believes to be orthodox, 
 and to a Church which he believes to be divinely taught ; but 
 the question is not mooted how far these doctrines and this 
 Church coincide with Anglicanism. That is a question left 
 to the exercise of his own reasoning powers and his quiet 
 good sense to decide upon. May I be allowed to add that we 
 almost invariably find that where a single-hearted desire to 
 embrace the truth precedes, peace and satisfaction on many 
 previously perplexing points follow. I am sorry you should 
 think any apology necessary for consulting me ; it affords me 
 real pleasure to render you any service, and you may rely on 
 our correspondence being strictly confidential. 
 
 I am, with sincere regards, 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 Yours truly in Christ, 
 * WILLIAM WAREING. 
 
1845.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 233 
 
 On the 27th of October he consulted the Bishop 
 again about several points connected with reception 
 into the Church, and enquired how soon a convert 
 would be allowed to proceed to minor orders, and 
 to the priesthood. During this time of suspense 
 he was redoubling his prayers and penances, in 
 order to obtain light to know and strength to carry 
 out the holy will of God. 
 
 Mr. Faber also acquainted his relations and 
 friends with the step he was about to take. In one 
 letter on this occasion he said (Oct. 21, 1845 :) 
 
 LETTEE LXII. To THE KEY. J. B. MORRIS. 
 
 Of course one is tempted, for devotion's Bake, to quiet 
 one's mind, and it is very much in our power to do so ; and 
 then one takes that quieting brought ahout by known moral 
 laws, for a conviction the other way, brought about spiri- 
 tually. I really cannot exaggerate to you the intense cutting 
 misery of last week about my most dear flock ; but as R 
 pointed out, one's flock is not one's only duty to the Church 
 of England. He said very truly that Pusey was quite 
 unshaken, for he claims to be in suspense about all Roman 
 
 doctrines, instancing even Purgatory; but, my dear J , 
 
 are you and I in suspense about them ? Do we not honestly 
 hold all Tridentine doctrines for holy and true ? Do you 
 not practise even invocation ? So, anyhow, Pusey's quietness 
 is wholly inapplicable to us ; he is on a different doctrinal 
 standpoint. Now I do think that this consideration tells 
 very materially (I do not say decisively, but very materially) 
 
234 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1845. 
 
 on the whole question of subscription. You hold your 
 fellowship on a subscription of Articles XIV., XIX., XXI., 
 XXII., XXIV., XXXI., and the oath of supremacy; now 
 just read those articles over quietly, not as Pusey may with 
 his suspended judgment, but as a man who would subscribe 
 ex animo the Trent decrees tomorrow, and see how they 
 sound. I am putting this before you without quite knowing 
 its force ; but so it lies before me at present, and seems very 
 much to simplify my condition. 
 
 I hope we may all have 1. honesty to seek God's Will, 
 2. light to find it, 3. love to know it when found, 4. 
 strength to follow it, and 5. special preserving grace to keep 
 us from stifling convictions which five things may we get 
 through daily oblation of ourselves to the Five benignant 
 
 Wounds. R says to me what St. Alphonso Liguori said, 
 
 I believe, to the cardinals in their perplexity : " Tout ce que 
 je trouve a dire, c'est qu'il faut beaucoup prier." 
 
 His reception was delayed a little by two con- 
 siderations. The first was the necessity of aban- 
 doning the work which had been entrusted to him 
 at Elton, involving, as it would, spiritual injury 
 to many. He applied, therefore, to one whose 
 counsel he had always followed in times of diffi- 
 culty. " Your own soul," he was told, " is the only 
 consideration, and you must save that, because" 
 " No," interrupted he, " I have obeyed you as a 
 Protestant without the because, and I don't want 
 to hear it now." 
 
 The state of his pecuniary affairs was another 
 cause of his delay. On taking possession of his 
 rectory, he had borrowed a considerable sum of 
 
1845.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 235 
 
 money from two members of his family, in order 
 to put his house in repair, and to make improve- 
 ments in his glebe lands. The income of each year 
 had been freely spent. Always generous in his 
 gifts, he frequently procured from London large 
 parcels of groceries for distribution in his village . 
 He also began to turn the stables into almshouses, 
 which he intended to be supplementary to those 
 already existing in the parish ; but the alteration 
 was not far advanced when he left Elton. In the 
 event of his conversion, he would be unable to pay 
 either principal or interest of this debt, and indeed 
 would have nothing in the world beyond the pro- 
 ceeds of the sale of his furniture. Justice, there- 
 fore, to those who had advanced the money on the 
 security of his living, seemed to require him to 
 act against his convictions, and to remain Hector 
 of Elton until his debt should be paid. Eeeling 
 certain that if he consulted any Catholic on the 
 subject he would be advised to join the Church 
 at all costs, he had recourse to an Anglican 
 dignitary of his own party, who answered his 
 question by saying, "Depend upon it, if God 
 means you to be a Catholic, He will not let that 
 stand in the way." 
 
 Mr. Paber accordingly determined that this 
 obstacle should not prevent him from carrying out 
 his purpose, and he had only just despatched the 
 letters announcing this decision, when he was 
 relieved from his difficulties by the generous act 
 
236 THE LIFE AND LETTEUS OF [1845. 
 
 of a friend, who, hearing of his perplexity, wrote 
 to him, expressing sorrow that such a man as he 
 was should have his freedom thus impeded, and 
 enclosing a cheque for the amount of his deht, 
 begged him to accept it, on the condition that the 
 subject should never be mentioned between them. 
 The fact that this friend had no drawing towards 
 the Catholic Church, and regarded the converts 
 with a certain feeling of bitterness, makes his 
 generosity the more noble. 
 
 Thus freed from his embarrassments, Mr. Eaber 
 made preparations for his hardest sacrifice, 
 departure from his beloved Elton. After inter- 
 views with Dr. Pusey in London, Dr. Wiseman 
 at Oscott, and Mr. Newman at Littlemore, he 
 determined to go to Northampton, and make his 
 abjuration to Bishop "Wareing. This determination 
 was not arrived at without a painful struggle and 
 much inward suffering. One night (November the 
 12th) when he went to give communion to a 
 sick parishioner, such a conviction sprang up in 
 his mind that it was no real communion, and he 
 himself no real priest, that from that time he felt 
 that he could no longer administer it. It is curious 
 to learn that, being in doubt whether to give this 
 communion or not, he remembered the teaching 
 of St. Alphonso, and determined to act on what 
 he considered only a probable opinion. 
 
 On Sunday, November the 16th, he officiated for 
 the last time as Hector of Elton. He did not admin- 
 
1845.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 237 
 
 ister the communion in the morning, as was stated 
 at that time by those who wished to cast a slur 
 upon his good faith. At the evening service, after 
 a few preliminary words, he told his people that 
 the doctrines he had taught them, though true, 
 were not those of the Church of England; that, 
 as far as the Church of England had a voice, she 
 had disavowed them, and that consequently he 
 could not remain in her communion, but must go 
 where truth was to be found. Then he hastily 
 descended the pulpit stairs, threw off his surplice, 
 which he left upon the ground, and made his way 
 as quickly as possible through the vestry to the 
 rectory. 
 
 For a few moments the congregation remained 
 in blank astonishment, and then, while the majority 
 turned slowly homewards, some of the parishioners, 
 among whom were the churchwardens, followed 
 him to the rectory, and implored him to reconsider 
 his decision. He might preach whatever doctrine 
 he pleased, they said, and they would never 
 question it, if he would only remain with them : 
 but finding him immoveable, they took a sorrowful 
 farewell, and left him. 
 
 So much was he worn by anxiety and illness, 
 and so keenly did he feel the separation from his 
 place and people, that he feared to fail in the 
 accomplishment of the sacrifice, and extorted a 
 promise from those about him, that they would 
 take him, if necessary by force, on the following 
 
238 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1845. 
 
 morning to be received. Arrangements had been 
 previously made, and on Monday morning, Novem- 
 ber the 17th, 1845, Mr. Paber left Elton, accompa- 
 nied by Mr. T. P. Knox, scholar of Trinity College, 
 Cambridge, whom he had invited to be received 
 into the Church with him, his two servants, and 
 seven of his parishioners, who had been members 
 of his little community, and were resolved to 
 become Catholics likewise. The party had hoped to 
 escape notice by starting early, but the parishioners 
 were on the look out, and as they drove through 
 the village every window was thrown open, and 
 the poor people waved their handkerchiefs, and 
 sobbed out, " God bless you, Mr. Paber, wherever 
 you go." Their feeling will be understood by those 
 who in later years felt the fascination of that sweet 
 manner and musical voice, with which his sym- 
 pathizing and loving heart attached so many to 
 then? father. 
 
 On the evening of the same day he and his 
 companions were admitted into the Church at 
 Northampton, by Bishop Wareing, who was assisted 
 by the Kev. Mr. Kennedy, and on the following 
 morning they received their first Communion, and 
 the Sacrament of Confirmation. Prom that time 
 Mr. Paber enjoyed the perfect inward peace of 
 full Catholic communion; and he afterwards said 
 that when he was confirmed he felt himself, like 
 the Apostles at Pentecost, permeated by the sen- 
 sible presence of the Holy Ghost. At the end of 
 
1845.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 239 
 
 a letter to Mr. Morris, which, on account of illness, 
 he dictated to one of his companions, he wrote 
 with his own hand the words "Peace, peace, 
 peace !" 
 
 In Confirmation he took the name of his patron 
 St. Wilfrid, with whom he had "been much con- 
 nected through life. "Is it not a little odd," he 
 wrote from Elton in 1844, " that I was one of 
 the first deacons ordained by the new hishop in 
 St. Wilfrid's old cathedral of Bipon, and that the 
 church tower, or spire rather, which looks so "beau- 
 tifully into my garden here, should prove to he 
 the Undalum (Oundle) where St. Wilfrid died." 
 When at Home he had lived, as the Saint did, near 
 Sta. Maria Maggiore, and douhtless often knelt in 
 prayer before the same ancient image of the Blessed 
 Mother of God. 
 
 Prom Northampton he proceeded to his brother's 
 rectory at Saunderton, near Tring, whence he 
 wrote : 
 
 LETTER LXIII. To THE KEV. J. B. MORRIS. 
 
 November 19, 1845. 
 
 My dear J , 
 
 I have now a little breathing time to write you a few 
 lines, though still, as you may conceive, busied and bothered 
 with many temporal concerns. I was confirmed yesterday 
 morning, and made my first Communion. I prayed for you 
 at the time, and, indeed, every hour now seems to dispel 
 doubts, and so to augment inward peace, that I cannot but 
 
240 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1845. 
 
 yearn that those I love should enjoy the same privileges with 
 myself. A new light seems to be shed on everything, and 
 more especially on my past position a light so clear as to 
 surprise me ; and though I am homeless and unsettled, and 
 as to worldly prospects considerably bewildered, yet there is 
 such a repose of conscience as more than compensates for the 
 intense and fiery struggle which began on the Tuesday and 
 only ended on the Monday morning following. 
 
 A little later lie wrote again from Birmingham : 
 
 LETTER LXIV. To THE EEV. J. B. MORRIS. 
 
 F. of St. Birinus, (Dec. 5.) 
 
 My own dear Friend, 
 
 While every day adds to my happiness, and the sense 
 of Catholic communion dilates within me like a new life, 
 I feel more and more the tvant of your conversion. How 
 long is it to be delayed ? How long is the unhelpful bondage 
 of that communion with nothing and with nobody to keep you 
 from the open profession of all those sweet truths which you 
 have lived up to far better than I have, and which form your 
 secret life at this day ? Indeed I felt most vehemently the 
 strength of all the ties which still bind you, and now how 
 poor and weak and nothing-like they seem ! 
 
 Whatever the Council of Trent enunciates in the face of 
 Christendom, of course every individual Catholic is to all 
 honest intents and purposes committed to, and does himself 
 enunciate in the face of Christendom. The same is the case 
 with you and the Anglican enunciations : so that my beloved 
 J. B. M., while next Monday he is saying the sweet office of 
 our B. Lady's Conception before that awfully grand crucifix, 
 is enunciating in the face of Christendom these Catholic 
 antiphons out of the Homilies, to which the Articles, on 
 
1845.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 241 
 
 which he holds his orders, put their imprimatur : vide Peril 
 
 of Idolatry, part 3, and that on Rebellion : and yet P 
 
 wonders and is bitter because, when God's goodness has 
 translated our vileness into the kingdom of His dear Son, 
 and so opened our eyes to ' see what is behind us, we utterly 
 loathe that unaltared, unsacrificed prison-house of heresy 
 and schism out of which we have been delivered. I cannot 
 tell you how every day, every mass, seem more and more to 
 show me the greatness of the peril from which I have been 
 so mercifully rescued ; and natural it is that I should yearn 
 the more intensely while on the hill-top I watch the angel 
 leading those I love out of the burning Sodom. I trust 
 N.'s book will finish the good work, Deo adjuvante ; and 
 meanwhile I have given your name and others to the Nuns 
 of the Infant Jesus, who will transmit them to the Arch- 
 confraternity of the Heart of Mary, all over France and 
 Belgium. 
 
 After Mr. Morris' conversion, Mr. Faber wrote 
 again : 
 
 LETTER LXV. To THE SAME. 
 
 My heart gets more and more gladdened as I come more 
 and more to realize that our separation is over. When once 
 the turmoil and the irksomeness of new forms, and the 
 stiffness of one's new costume, so to call it, are over, how 
 happy will you be ! First there comes a feeling of truthful 
 naturalness highly grateful then the gifts and treasures of 
 the Church. Every day seems to increase my happiness, and 
 to deepen, in a way I knew nothing of before, union with 
 God. 
 
 After his conversion, many circumstances com- 
 16 
 
242 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1845. 
 
 bined to lead Mr. Faber to Birmingham. Under 
 the direction of the Rev. Mr. Moore, the church 
 and house of St. Chad in that town had become 
 a great centre of Catholic life, and many of the 
 recent converts having made their abjuration there, 
 had naturally settled in its neighbourhood. Most 
 of them had given up their homes for their faith, 
 and had nothing therefore to induce them to take 
 up their residence elsewhere. Tke presence of 
 Mgr. "Wiseman, Coadjutor to the Bishop of the 
 Central District, at Oscott College was another great 
 attraction, as the interest he took in the Oxford 
 movement was well known. Mr. Moore had also 
 been most kind in assisting Mr. Eaber to provide 
 for the converts who had followed him from Elton. 
 He therefore accepted an invitation to stay at St. 
 Chad's until he could settle his affairs, and make 
 arrangements for his future life. Bishop Wareing 
 proposed to admit him to priest's orders, and to 
 employ him at once in missionary work, but his 
 humility led him to refuse the offer. 
 
 During this period he was not idle, but made 
 the most of every opportunity to bring about the 
 conversion of others. One instance is thus described 
 by him (December 8, 1845.) 
 
1845.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER,. 243 
 
 LETTER LXVI. To THE EEV. J. B. MORRIS. 
 
 My journey has been providentially delayed, for a young 
 Protestant came out of curiosity (on his road through Birm- 
 ingham) to mass yesterday, and ventured to stare at the 
 elevation of the Host. The effect upon him was immediate : 
 contrition for his past life, and what he deemed a call 
 to the Catholic Church. He would, however, have left 
 Birmingham without speaking, had he not heard accidentally 
 from the verger 'of the cathedral that I was here. He was 
 very fond of my books, and wrote me a note from the inn 
 ran after the messenger to get it back again, but could not 
 catch him. The result was an interview of many hours, and 
 I took him to the Convent of our Lady of Mercy to the Bene- 
 diction of the Blessed Sacrament. He wishes to return here 
 tomorrow, when, I trust, please God, that he will enter the 
 Catholic Church ; anyhow, he wishes me to be here to see 
 him. 
 
 An undergraduate of Trinity College, Cam- 
 "bridge, Mr. Hutchison, has left the following record 
 of his first visit to Birmingham, which he made 
 with the intention of heing received there. 
 
 "I went up to Mr. Moore's room. There I saw a person 
 on his knees before the fire, trying to make it burn up better : 
 his hair was grey, he was dressed in a long black coat and 
 tweed trousers, and he looked to me hungry and worn. I 
 thought, this is some poor fellow whom they keep here out of 
 charity, and as there were a good many books round the 
 room, I took it into my head that it was the library, and this 
 person was employed as librarian. What other views I 
 should next have taken I don't know, for Mr. Moore pro- 
 
244 THE LIFE "AND LETTERS OF [1845. 
 
 ceeded to introduce me to him, and to my astonishment he 
 proved to be Mr. Faber. I little thought then that that 
 was really the most fortunate moment, as it has been also the 
 turning point of my life. 
 
 " In the first place it secured my conversion. I had many 
 long talks with Mr. Moore, in the course of which I pro- 
 pounded various questions about indulgences, praying to the 
 saints, &c., and received satisfactory answers ; but indeed I 
 had no real difficulties as far as the doctrines of the Church 
 were concerned. I was not sufficiently in earnest, however, 
 to make up my mind to be received at once, and perhaps I 
 should have drifted away from the Church after all, had it 
 not been for Faber. I did not get on well with him the first 
 day from shyness, but afterwards we became more intimate, 
 and then, when he began to talk to me about our Lord when 
 dying on the Cross, thinking of me individually, and shedding 
 His Blood for me as if there had been no one else in the 
 world, he made me realize all this in a way I had never done 
 before. From that time I made no more excuses for delay, 
 but acted on his advice, and on the 21st of December, St. 
 Thomas the Apostle, I was received by Mr. Moore, in the 
 private chapel in the Bishop's house. On Christmas night I 
 made my first Communion, and on St. Thomas of Canter- 
 bury was confirmed by Bishop Walsh." 
 
 Thus began that most intimate and cordial friend- 
 ship between Mr. Eaber and Mr. Hutchison, which 
 ended only with their lives. 
 
 Like many other converts, Mr. Faber published 
 a pamphlet on his submission to the Catholic 
 Church, a short summary of which will fitly con- 
 clude this chapter. 
 
 It was written in the form of a letter to a friend, 
 
1845.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 245 
 
 dated January 10, 1846, and entitled " Grounds for 
 remaining in the Anglican Communion" (Toovey). 
 After commenting upon the prominence given by 
 Catholics, as contrasted with Protestants, to the 
 necessity of the salvation of each single soul, he 
 points out to his Anglican friend that the latter 
 must either recognize some authority in his Church 
 to which he is willing to bow, or investigate his 
 position for himself, with his own powers of mind 
 and in constant prayer. 
 
 The writer considers the first of these alterna- 
 tives impossible in the Anglican Church, and 
 therefore urges the second, continuing : "If the 
 result of that investigation is to cast over you a 
 horrible overwhelming doubt as to whether you 
 are not in a position most disadvantageous to your 
 soul, then act as a man would act who cares for 
 nothing else but his soul." 
 
 Before answering in detail any argument in 
 defence of the Anglican position, Mr. Faber 
 replies to the charge of ingratitude towards the 
 Church of England, which was commonly brought 
 against converts, in the following passage : 
 
 " Why should it seem to you so unnatural that those who 
 have left you should feel anything rather than loyalty and 
 affection to a system, or anything hut kindly reminiscences of 
 a dreadful position, which they were forced from hy the 
 simple fear of everlasting ruin ? Where do I owe my Chris- 
 tian allegiance ? Is it not to the Church of my haptism ? 
 And surely you at least cannot he so foolish as to suppose 
 that any one is baptized into any particular, insular, national 
 
246 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1845. 
 
 or provincial part or branch of the Church, or into anything 
 short of the Catholic Church of Christ. It is there my 
 allegiance is due, and it is there your allegiance is due also. 
 A false system took me from my mother, as soon as I had 
 either sense to do overt acts of schism, or wilfulness to commit 
 a mortal sin : that system nurtured me in hatred of the Holy 
 See; it nurtured me in false doctrine; it has had the strength 
 of my youth, and formed the character of my mind, and 
 educated me in strange neglect, as well of doctrinal instruc- 
 tion as of moral safeguards ; and now, do I owe allegiance to 
 the mother from whose breasts I was torn, and whose face 
 was so long strange to me ? or to her who tore me from her, 
 and usurped a name that was not hers, and whose fraud I 
 have discovered ? No ! I owe my allegiance to the Church 
 into which I was baptized, the Church wherein my old fore- 
 fathers died, the Church where I can help my later fathers 
 who died away from her in their helpless ignorance ; and, like 
 the stolen child who has found his mother, her loving 
 reception and the outbreak, the happy outbreak, of his own 
 instinct tell him, and have told him, more truly than all the 
 legal proofs of parentage can do, that this, and this only, is 
 the true mother who bore him years ago to God, and welcomes 
 him now, in a way that humbles him most of all, without 
 suspicion, probation, or reproof." 
 
 The succeeding pages are devoted to an exposure 
 of the fallacious nature of the grounds usually 
 relied upon by those who remained in the Anglican 
 communion. The second one is thus stated : " You 
 say these difficulties (the disadvantages of the 
 Anglican position) are trials sent from God for the 
 strengthening of your faith, and that impatience 
 to get rid of them would be sinful." Admitting 
 
1845.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 247 
 
 that some difficulties are trials from God, the 
 author shews the necessity of caution before decid- 
 ing that those of Anglicans are so sent, and 
 continues : "I would have you consider whether 
 this theory of your ecclesiastical difficulties being 
 trials, under which it is your duty to be quiescent, 
 does not in reality militate against all idea of a 
 visible Church at all." 
 
 Further he adds : " We are to have doubts and 
 perplexities; but surely the Church is to support 
 us under them, not to be the very fountain of 
 them. We are to be cross-bearers : but where 
 are we ever led to be prepared for anything so 
 terrible as that our Church is to be our cross ? 
 Yet you acknowledge your Church to be itself a 
 very realizable cross to you : your light is darkness ; 
 alas ! that it should be so. But you may say, it 
 is not so much that the Church itself is darkness, 
 as that your sins hinder you from discerning the 
 
 countenance of the Church But a Catholic 
 
 would tell you that to none is the countenance 
 of the Church more clear, for none so plain, with 
 its pitiful inviting look, as the poor sinner." 
 
 To the argument that it would be wrong for an 
 Anglican to abandon his position until he has tried 
 all the means of grace which it affords, it is 
 answered that on that principle " no one ever 
 could be converted from falsehood to truth ; for it 
 is hardly conceivable that there should be in the 
 world a false position, in which more moral helps 
 
248 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1845. 
 
 are not vouchsafed than any one lives up to, or 
 makes full use of :" and it is remarked that until 
 the best Methodist has made full use of the means of 
 humiliation, of affectionate counsel, and of spiritual 
 direction, which his class-meeting affords, it would 
 be immoral, on the Anglican theory, in the rector 
 of the parish to urge him to join the Establishment. 
 " If, my dear friend/' the writer proceeds, "you 
 have a proper scruple of leaving the Anglican 
 Establishment till you have tried all her means 
 of grace, ought you not to have a scruple in using 
 secret devotions and ascetical practices, which 
 cannot be openly taught, and which are alien to 
 the spirit of your communion ? Are you not living 
 two lives, an Anglican and a Roman ? Are you 
 not mixing religions ? Are you allowing the reli- 
 gion you profess to be a rule over you, as you ought 
 to do ? Are you not picking and choosing, your 
 own pope, your own bishop, your own spiritual 
 director ? Are you not more like an Eclectic than 
 a Catholic ?" 
 
 On what maybe called the "Branch" theory, Mr. 
 Faber next enquires : " When did this theory of 
 ' Branch 5 Churches begin, for it is strange-sounding 
 language ? Are all the Churches branch Churches ? 
 Is there no trunk Church ? If there is, where 
 is it ? If it be the Roman, a branch cut off, 
 solemnly sawed away by the teeth of an excommu- 
 nication, need not boast much of its branchship. 
 I must insist, also, that when Anglicans talk of 
 
1845.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 249 
 
 Branch Churches, they are bound to add, what is 
 the very distinctive part of their theory, the fatal 
 epithet 'non-communicating? 'The E/oman doc- 
 trine of the Church/ " he proceeds to quote from 
 the letter of a friend, " c is a key to the analogy 
 of a tree and its branches : your theory of Branch 
 Churches is not. Catholics in England are a 
 branch of the visible trunk in Home ; but Angli- 
 cans are a branch of an invisible trunk (which 
 is not the invisible counterpart of the visible trunk, 
 but) a pure creation of their own fancy, unwar- 
 ranted either by Scripture or tradition. 5 ' 
 
 After condemning, as serving man rather than 
 God, those who think it safe and humble to wait 
 till such and such men join the Roman Church, 
 the pamphlet points out the isolated position of an 
 Anglican in his Church, and says, " You quote 
 Athanasius contra mundum, and so goes the bench 
 of Protestant Bishops to the four winds of heaven. 
 Well, but is this humble ? Are you sure that 
 you and yours put together weigh an Athanasius ? 
 Are you quite confident that Athanasius would 
 have been with you just now? Indeed, I have 
 a very shrewd suspicion that we should have seen 
 him with a Popish chasuble over his shoulders, 
 rather than an Oxford or a Cambridge hood." 
 
 The same remark, it is stated a few pages 
 later, applies with increased force to those who 
 quote as a token of the Catholicity of their Church 
 the fact that in times past she produced Laud and 
 
250 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1845. 
 
 Andrewes. The fact of the Roman Church having 
 produced St. Francis of Sales, and St. Philip Neri, 
 and St. Charles Borromeo, since the Reformation, 
 is a much stronger argument for joining her com- 
 munion than the other is for staying away. With 
 regard to Laud and Andrewes, one or two points 
 are then put forward. To the latter, the spiritual 
 vigour with which the Catholic Church has been 
 reinforced since his time by the operation of the 
 reforms of the Council of Trent, and the number 
 of canonized saints who have been produced by 
 what is called Tridentine morality, would have been 
 most moving considerations; whilst the former 
 would have been equally affected by the develop- 
 ment of Continental Protestantism into heresy and 
 unbelief. Anglicanism, it must be remembered, 
 was then an untried system ; it was not known 
 how it could adapt itself to new circumstances, cope 
 with new difficulties, deal with schism, be a pillar 
 and ground of the truth against heresy. " How 
 does Anglicanism fare now? Where is its manly 
 struggle ? It has the wealth, and the dignity, and 
 the power, the churches, the colleges, the schools, 
 and the inestimable vigorous privileges of the 
 Cathedra Victoria, we have a right to expect 
 wonders from it : where are its daily triumphs ? 
 Around the very stoves of its carpeted vestries it 
 is being beaten continually." 
 
 Mr. Paber then defends the recent converts, as 
 a body, from the charges brought against them 
 
1845.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 251 
 
 of unfair hostility to the Establishment, of causing 
 division in families, of trying to unsettle and con- 
 vert others, and shows that such proceedings are 
 only the natural consequence of their change of 
 faith. 
 
 He proceeds, after exposing the fictitious cha- 
 racter of the late revival in the English Church, 
 to treat the vexed question of Anglican orders. 
 Purposely avoiding theological arguments, and 
 keeping to the peculiar grounds relied upon by 
 his friend, he thus addresses him : " You say that 
 the Church has never decided the question, and 
 that the Pope has passed no dogmatic judgment 
 upon it, to which you would bow when given. 
 Now, my dear friend, in the outset let me ask 
 you if you are acting honestly towards the Anglican 
 communion, when you remain in it with a deter- 
 mination, ready beforehand, to submit to a decree 
 of Gregory XVI. on the subject of the orders of 
 your ministers ? To be plain, is not this quite 
 dishonest? And then, in the next place, has not 
 Borne implicitly settled the question of your orders 
 by the administration of Confirmation, and of 
 Ordination also, without any condition ? This is 
 the more remarkable from the way in which the 
 Church administers conditional baptism to con- 
 verts ; without ceremonies, and with every possible 
 want of solemnity beyond what mere safety 
 requires, to intimate her fear of sacrilege, and the 
 
252 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1845. 
 
 simple prudence of charity which has forced her 
 thereto." 
 
 He next goes on to give instances of the way 
 in which theologians, looking at the question from 
 the different points of history, intention, or juris- 
 diction, agree in deciding against the validity 
 of Anglican orders. But, granting for a moment 
 their validity, it is part of the injury of schism 
 that "valid sacraments do not give safety" their 
 efficacy being suspended " until the charity of the 
 Gospel, the caritas of St. Augustine, which he ever 
 explains of the unity of the Church, gains them 
 access to the souls of men." 
 
 Contenting himself with a bare mention of the 
 secret motives which influence many to remain in 
 the Anglican communion, the author makes a 
 touching appeal to his friend to come into the 
 One Fold of Christ, and concludes, " You are 
 not a Catholic, and so such belief alone is yours 
 as St. Ambrose speaks of, (how long shall it be 
 true of you and yours ?) Credis quod tibi prodesse 
 prcesumis; non credis quod Deo dignum est" 
 
1845.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 253 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 1845-6. 
 
 The new life which began for Mr. Faber at his 
 conversion was one after his own heart. The 
 security and happiness of the present seemed to 
 have been cheaply purchased by the sufferings and 
 anxieties of the past; and he entered upon the 
 enjoyment of his newly acquired privileges with a 
 zest which can be appreciated only by those who 
 have endeavoured to nourish themselves with uncer- 
 tain means of grace, and to find peace where none is 
 possible. In spite of the pecuniary difficulties 
 which confronted him, he became happier day by 
 day ; the doubts which had been weighing on his 
 mind for so long were set at rest for ever, and all 
 other difficulties seemed to him as nothing in 
 comparison with that tranquillity. 
 
 It was his first thought to devote himself to the 
 cause of the Church by every means in his power, 
 and her authorities readily accepted the services of 
 so promising an auxiliary. In addition to the 
 endeavours which he made to induce many of his 
 Anglican friends to submit to the Catholic Church, 
 the little band of companions, about eight in 
 number, who had followed him from Elton, occu- 
 pied much of his attention. Their conversion had 
 
254 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1845. 
 
 been his work, and they still retained the habit 
 of dependence upon him. They were anxious to 
 resume, if possible, the quasi-religious life which 
 they had led before, and accordingly Mr. Faber, 
 with the cordial approbation of Dr. Wiseman 
 and Mr. Moore, determined to collect them together 
 into a little community, and to take up his abode 
 with them. As early as the Eeast of the Imma- 
 culate Conception he could write : " I hope by the 
 end of next week to get all my dear monks around 
 me in a little hovel here; how we are to be 
 supported I do not know ; mutual love is next 
 door to victuals and drink, and it is some comfort 
 to me that I shall be simply on a level with them, 
 and live like a poor man. I hope a monastery 
 may grow out of it in time, and I shall go to Italy 
 in a few months to see if I can get means towards 
 it." 
 
 A small house, No. 77, Caroline Street, Birming- 
 ham, was taken, and on the 19th of December, 1845, 
 the new community entered into possession of it. 
 No definite rule was drawn up at first. Mr. Paber 
 was the superior, and was implicitly obeyed. 
 There was a general plan of training the lay bro- 
 thers, which the Elton converts were to be, so that 
 they might be useful as assistants to the clergy 
 in visiting the sick, giving instructions, and similar 
 duties. In fact, they were to be something like 
 what Scripture-readers are among Protestants, but 
 acting under proper guidance. The duties of the 
 
1845.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 255 
 
 choir brothers were to be decided at a later period. 
 Mr. Hutchison has left the following amusing 
 account of a visit which he paid to the community 
 in Caroline Street, a few days after its establish- 
 ment : 
 
 "I visited them on the 22nd. Preparations for dinner 
 were going on. The Superior (Faher) was acting as cook, 
 and though terribly scorched by the fire, was perseveringly 
 stirring without ceasing a kettle full of pea- soup. He and 
 the lay brothers wore black cassocks of the Anglican pattern 
 which they had brought from Elton. I remember well the 
 impression that John Strickson (afterwards Brother Chad) 
 made on me. He wore a cassock made of some very woolly, 
 shaggy material, and he looked so gaunt and hungry that I 
 thought him the very beau-ideal of a wolf in sheep's clothing. 
 I have since found him however to be a most innocent and 
 excellent wolf. The furniture of the house was very scanty. 
 They had certainly a chair apiece, and a long deal table for 
 their meals ; each had also a knife and fork and a mug ; a 
 benefactor had given them some pewter spoons with the 
 temperance pledge stamped on them, and as they were too 
 poor and too ascetic to drink anything stronger than tea, the 
 pledge was not likely to be broken. A small round three- 
 legged deal table, split across the centre, and a Windsor 
 armchair completed the furniture of this room, the front 
 parlour, which served as refectory, recreation-room, and 
 parlour for guests. The armchair and round table were for 
 Faber. On it stood the ivory crucifix which used before to 
 stand in his oratory at Elton, and at this table, when I 
 first visited Caroline Street, he was busy, when not cooking, 
 in writing his pamphlet, which soon afterwards appeared 
 under the title of ' Grounds for remaining in the Anglican 
 Communion.' 
 
256 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1845. 
 
 " Behind the refectory was a miserable back kitchen, and 
 up stairs four small rooms. One of these was used as the 
 Chapel. It had no furniture whatever, not even an altar, 
 but only a crucifix on one wall. Here they assembled at 
 fixed hours and recited various litanies and other prayers. 
 The other rooms were dormitories : the beds were all on the 
 floor, as they could not afford to buy bedsteads, and there 
 was an old second-hand chest of drawers in which Faber 
 kept his clothes. His bed was on the ground like the rest. 
 
 "It will be understood from all this that the life they led 
 was an extremely hard one ; in fact, I believe they depended 
 in a great measure at this time on alms for their daily food. 
 Still every one seemed very happy and cheerful, Faber 
 especially so, though his health was suffering a good deal, 
 and he often had violent headaches, brought on by the 
 hardships he was undergoing." 
 
 As it became evident that without external 
 assistance the infant community could not be 
 supported, the superior resolved to visit Italy, in 
 the hope of interesting in its behalf a friend 
 who had formerly held out hopes of coming to 
 his relief. A seasonable alms which he received 
 at this time enabled him to undertake the journey, 
 and also to make some provision for the support 
 of the brothers in his absence. The difficulty of 
 separation from the community was overcome by 
 the kindness of Mr. Moore, who promised to act 
 as its superior. It was also arranged that the 
 brothers should try to get employment from some 
 of the Catholic tradesmen in the town. In this 
 they soon succeeded, and during the absence of 
 
1846.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 257 
 
 their superior they continued to go out to work in 
 the daytime, and to return to Caroline Street at 
 night. 
 
 Mr. Faber invited his friend Mr. Hutchison to 
 accompany him abroad, and the offer was gladly 
 accepted. They started on the Feast of the Purifi- 
 cation, February 2, 1846, and after a few days in 
 London, during which time Mr. Paber was the 
 guest of the Her. Mr. Sisk, at the Chapel-house, 
 Chelsea, they proceeded by Southampton to Havre, 
 where they landed on the morning of the 8th. 
 On that day they began the practice of saying the 
 Divine Office together, which they kept up through- 
 out their journey. 
 
 On the 14th of February they were at Sens, and 
 visited the relics of St. Thomas of Canterbury, 
 which are venerated in the cathedral. It was here 
 that the first idea of a complete rule for his new 
 community struck Mr. Faber, and on leaving the 
 town he proceeded to note it down in the fly leaves 
 of his companion's guide-book. On that day, two 
 years later, the community was received into the 
 Congregation of the Oratory, almost at the very 
 hour at which the first idea of the rule was con- 
 ceived in the cathedral of Sens. 
 
 At Lyons the travellers were amused at reading 
 a pastoral letter from the archbishop, directing 
 thanksgivings to be made for the recent conversions, 
 which had given the Newmans, the Oakeleys, and 
 
 the Fabers to the Church. 
 17 
 
258 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1846. 
 
 It had been part of their original intention to 
 make a short visit to the Holy Land, hut when 
 they reached Marseilles they found themselves 
 obliged to change their plans, and to proceed direct 
 to Italy. They accordingly went by sea to Leghorn, 
 and thence to Florence, where Mr. Faber was 
 entertained by Mr. F. J. Sloane, at the Palazzo 
 Boutourlin, while Mr. Hutchison established him- 
 self in lodgings in the Piazza di Sta. Maria Novella. 
 Here they remained for some weeks, enjoying to 
 the full the religious life of a Catholic town, and 
 frequenting Expositions, Benedictions, Novenas, 
 and other functions with great assiduity. Like 
 most converts of that date, their tastes were what 
 is called Gothic, and they were consequently dis- 
 posed to criticize unfavourably some of the eccle- 
 siastical arrangements which came under their 
 notice. Such dispositions, however, gradually 
 disappeared under the influence of the edification 
 which they received, and before they returned home 
 their fastidiousness had given place to a hearty 
 admiration of the material as well as spiritual 
 developments of Italian piety. 
 
 It was natural that Mr. Faber 's thoughts should 
 often revert to his little community at Birmingham. 
 From every halting place he despatched a long 
 letter to one or other of its members. They were 
 little sermons or chapters rather than letters, and 
 were intended to encourage the brothers to perse- 
 verance in spite of the difficulties of their position. 
 
1846.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABEE. 259 
 
 Sometimes, by a vivid picture of the wonders of 
 tlie Church which he was witnessing, more often 
 by direct spiritual advice founded upon his know- 
 ledge of the character of each, and always with 
 an affectionate remembrance of the circumstances 
 and occupations of those whom he was addressing, 
 he endeavoured to supply the blank which his 
 absence made. A few extracts from them will 
 illustrate at once the spiritual state of the little 
 body, and the watchful jealous care with which 
 they were regarded by their superior. 
 
 LETTER LXVIL To JOHN STKICKSON. 
 
 Havre de Grace, France. 
 
 Septuagesima Sunday, 1846. 
 My dear John, 
 
 "We landed here quite safely this morning after a very 
 tempestuous passage, during which I had work enough to 
 keep in bed, without thinking of sleep. You may be sure I 
 am glad enough to get clear of England after all the annoy- 
 ance of the last three months, and travelling will be a very 
 different thing to me now, as I find the Church and the 
 Blessed Sacrament everywhere, so that everywhere I am at 
 home. What will be uppermost in my mind are of course 
 our plans for the future, and I shall endeavour as much as 
 possible to learn in Catholic countries what will be useful for 
 poor England; but after the miserable foothold which the 
 world and the flesh have gained in our little household at 
 Birmingham, I believe my absence is very necessary as a 
 trial to you all, to prove who is to do God's work in the world 
 without self, and who is not. Those who are honestly 
 
260 THE LIFE AND LETTEIIS OP [1846. 
 
 seeking from God a saintly vocation will have temptations 
 of a very dangerous sort to go through, and it is these which 
 I want to speak to you ahout now. When a few weeks are 
 gone, you. will hegin to fancy that you are not living so strict 
 a life as you ought to do; the rules will not be severe enough, 
 and they will not always be kept as they ought to be ; and so 
 you will fancy it is no use going on and that you had better 
 return home. You will be sure to feel all this : but now 
 observe where the mistake lies ; you are impatient to be a 
 monk, and so you will fancy you are one already, instead of 
 being only in trial to be one. You will want more rule, more 
 prayer, more fasting, more spiritual reading, more religious 
 peace and modesty and silence; and of course it is only 
 through the grace of God that you can have such good and 
 holy wants as these ; but even in spiritual things God will 
 in some measure and for a time keep back from you what 
 you want, partly in order to increase your appetite, partly in 
 order to try your patience, partly in order to prove to myself 
 and others the reality of your vocation. Now you must put 
 steadily before yourself this one thing that your present 
 position is an awkward and in some respects an uncomfortable 
 one, which is to be your trial till I come back, and no longer : 
 if then it be four months, or six, or nine, be patient, and 
 think that if God does give you the grace and the happiness 
 to become a monk at last, this waiting will really have been but 
 a small price to pay. You will not, cannot get what you 
 look forward to, till I come back ; bear this in mind, put up 
 with what is not to your liking, and sanctify yourself as well 
 as you can with your present means of grace, which are 
 indeed very many, as you well know. Above all, keep a 
 strict watch over yourself ; look what has happened among us 
 already ; depend upon it, it is the devil's doing, in order to 
 v sappoint a great plan which was for God's glory. But as I 
 before, your temptation will be to be dissatisfied with 
 
1846.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 261 
 
 your present amount of strictness, and this you must guard 
 against; be as much as possible in the chapel; read Kodriguez 
 on Conformity to God's Will, through and through and 
 through ; and in a few months, please God, we may make a 
 start. You may be sure that in many a hundred places, 
 when kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament, I shall think of 
 Caroline Street. Pray every day for Hutchison and myself, 
 and remember us at mass. Give my kind love to all, and 
 tell George to pray much to St. Joseph, and L. to take 
 care, for he is near to falling. God Almighty bless you 
 all. 
 
 Yours affectionately in Christ Jesus, 
 
 FEED. WILFRID FABER. 
 
 LETTER LXVIII. To WILLIAM . 
 
 Kouen, Tuesday, February 10, 1846. 
 
 My dear William, 
 
 I had not time to say as much to you as I could have 
 wished before I came away, about your wish to become a 
 monk. I think it is God's Holy Spirit Who has put that 
 wish into your mind ; but a great deal will have to be done 
 on your part before it can be fulfilled. You must remember 
 that in becoming a monk, you give yourself altogether to 
 Almighty God, body as well as soul, mind and will and 
 liberty, and all you are and all you have. To be sure, this 
 is but a little, a very little sacrifice to make to Jesus in return 
 for the unspeakable one He has made, and makes on the 
 altar every day for you ; but it is a hard sacrifice for us weak 
 sinners to make ; and because it is a sacrifice of love, Jesus 
 counts it a great sacrifice, and not a little one. How happy, 
 how very happy are those who have strength given them to 
 make this sacrifice to the Lord, to crucify themselves unto 
 
262 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1846. 
 
 the world, and to die to it and to its most tempting pleasures 
 here, that they may live to Jesus and Mary hereafter. But 
 our Lord says in the Gospel, that when a man wishes to 
 build a tower, he ought first of all to sit down and count the 
 cost. Now my dear William, the Christian perfection at 
 which you aim is just such a tower, a very high tower, for its 
 top reaches heaven itself ; and so, though it is a blessed thing 
 to wish to build such a tower at all, yet it is a wise and a 
 humble thing to sit down first and count the cost. I do not 
 wish, my dear William, at all to discourage you ; very far 
 from it ; indeed it would be a great and a bitter disappoint- 
 ment to me now, were you not to persevere in your holy 
 desire, but it is quite right you should think a little of the 
 hardships ; it is better to stay where you are than to go 
 further and then to draw back, and so lose your vocation. 
 "! STou see you are very young ; God has, almost in spite of 
 3 yourself, preserved you from certain very great sins ; and 
 * then, without my so. much, as asking you, He was pleased to 
 lead you into His One True Fold, the Holy Catholic Church. 
 All life is before you ; there are many who love you and who 
 will be glad to be kind to you ; and after all, while a man is 
 young and strong and well, the world is a pleasant place, far 
 too pleasant a place to live in ; you can marry, you can have 
 ja home ; God may bless you with children, you can have rest 
 and ease and comfort and holiday, and all this without sin ; 
 you may save your soul in the next world without putting up 
 with a monk r s hardships in this. Now this is a very bright 
 picture, a picture any one might well enough fall in love with. 
 What is it then which makes men turn their backs on all 
 this, and fall in love with a poor rough uncomfortable dress, 
 with short sleep and lorjg praying, with hard lying and coarse 
 eating, with fasting and discipline, and teaching the stupid, 
 and nursing the sick, and attending the dying, and dull 
 silence and stiff obedience, fighting and fighting and fighting 
 
1846.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 263 
 
 till one's head aches and one's appetite fails and one is sick 
 with the weary fight ? What makes a young man like you 
 in love with all manner of comfortless things like these? 
 What was it you were thinking of, William, when you threw 
 your arms round me the other day, and begged of me to make 
 you a monk ? You know you asked far more of me than I 
 could do : it is grace and grace only, which can make men 
 monks, and I need rather to he prayed for as the filthiest 
 leper in the doorway of God's Church, than to he spoken to 
 as you spoke to me then ; but what were you thinking of 
 when you made such a request ? I will tell you what was 
 in your mind, even though you might not be aware of it ; it 
 was the Three- and- thirty years in which our Blessed Saviour, 
 the Almighty Creator of the world, lived and moved and 
 spoke and ate and drank and slept and watched and prayed 
 and suffered on His own earth for you and me ; it was the 
 Five sweet adorable Wounds of His Hands and Feet and 
 Side, which like so many sweet singing-birds sang to your 
 heart, and you loved the music of them more than the gayer 
 and the louder songs of the world, the flesh and the devil ; 
 it was the Seven dear awful Blood- sheddings which dropped 
 their sevenfold drops upon you, and softened your heart of 
 stone, and not softened it only, but heated it with Divine 
 Love, and made you long to lead a hard life for the sake of 
 Jesus, and for the love of His Mother Mary, the Blood of 
 the Babe's Circumcision, the Blood which stained the roots 
 of the olive trees on the mount, w^ich dyed red the scourges 
 of the scourgers, which spirted up as the thorns went into 
 His Skull, which flowed from the old stripes when they 
 rudely tore His clothes from His Back on Calvary, which ran 
 from the nails they drove into His Hands and Feet, and 
 which followed the spear that dared to enter His Side when 
 He was dead. These Seven Blood- sheddings were in your 
 heart when you begged to be a monk ; and in truth, William, 
 
264 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1846. 
 
 marriage and home and money and comfort and happiness do 
 sound odd unloving words to me, when scourges and thorns 
 and nails and spear and cross are all that tell of Jesus and of 
 the life He chose and William, of our sins which made 
 Him choose it. Well then, what you want is to choose a life 
 where all day long and in all your commonest duties you can 
 honour Jesus with His Three-and-thirty years, and His 
 Five Wounds, and His Seven Blood-sheddings. Hardships 
 for His sake seem to you better than happiness for your own 
 sake ; and indeed they are so, much better ; but then think 
 it well over : is it really the steady wish of your heart ? Do 
 you long with a sort of holy impatience for the dull life of a 
 monk ? or was it only a feeling of love to me which made you 
 long not to be separated from me ? and if once you were a 
 monk, do you feel humbly sure that by God's grace you 
 should not repent of it ? What does Elton seem as we look 
 back upon it ? those gettings up at the cold midnight, the 
 teasing hair girdles on Wednesday and Friday, the harsh 
 disciplines at midnight, the long, long vigils of the Saints' 
 days, what do you think of them now ? To me they seem 
 like heaven, although we were not yet Catholics. 
 
 You see, poor T., even amid the graces of the Holy 
 Church, has gone and hid his talent in a napkin, has fled 
 back into Egypt without St. Joseph to guide him, has 
 forsaken Jesus, and will not, even for the sake of the awful 
 cross or the sweet manger, give up the delights of selfish 
 love, and chastise his rebellious flesh. This success of the 
 devil in a quarter where I so little expected it has wounded 
 me very deeply ; and therefore I am the more anxious that 
 you, whom I never expected to be a monk, and who, with so 
 much love and zeal offered yourself of your own free will, 
 should count the cost beforehand, and then take good heart, 
 shoulder the cross, and follow Jesus over rough and smooth. 
 Now William, if this letter finds you still in the same mind, 
 
1846.] FBEDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 265 
 
 steadfast in your holy purpose, and anxiously longing till 
 God shall of His mercy open a road for you to fulfil your 
 desire, let me give you a word or two of advice. If you 
 wish not to lose your vocation, you must pray daily to God 
 to give you the gift of virginity, that you may preserve the 
 virginal innocence which He has of His mercy not allowed 
 the devil to rob you of. God gives nothing, much less His 
 chief gifts, unless we ask often and ask for long together. 
 To ask often and to ask long together, these are the two 
 necessary things in prayer. Every mass you hear, and every 
 Communion you receive, think of your wish to be a monk, 
 and ask of Jesus to keep you in the same good mind ; and 
 every night when you have put your light out, and laid down 
 in bed, ask of the Blessed Virgin not to forget your wish 
 to be a virgin, but to pray for you and for your perseverance 
 in your vocation, and as you wish to fly from all the Herods 
 of this world into religious retirement, ask St. Joseph to 
 protect you in your journey, say to him, " Holy St. Joseph, 
 pray for me, that I may be made worthy of the promises 
 of Christ," and then very often when you are tired and 
 fainting, and half inclined to give up your holy resolution, 
 St. Joseph will turn round and shew to the eyes of your 
 faith the Child whom he is carrying in his arms, and you 
 will feel your heart warm again to Jesus, and by His mercy 
 you will thus keep your vocation. Then with regard to what 
 I remember were your besetting temptations, I would say 
 that of all kinds of Catholic devotion none is so proper for you 
 as the continual memory of the PRESENCE OF GOD. Your 
 work will not allow you to make long prayers ; but no work 
 stands in the way of remembering the Presence of God. Get 
 into the habit of often saying short sentences to Him, such 
 as, my God, I love Thee, make me love Thee more Jesus 
 keep me pure, and such like. Get the habit of thinking of 
 God whenever you hear the clock strike, and say, God give 
 
266 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1846. 
 
 me perseverance ; whenever any one rings for you, say as you 
 go up stairs, In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and 
 of the Holy Ghost, Amen ; and take every means you can to 
 keep yourself united to God by thinking of His Presence. 
 You will find that meal-times are the worst for forgetting 
 God, and so before each meal you can lift up your heart 
 secretly to God for half a minute, and beg that you may have 
 grace not to forget Him all the meal, nor to speak as you 
 would not dare to speak if you were at table with Jesus and 
 His disciples. Do not put yourself out or make a scruple if 
 you forget any of these things ; only do your best to keep 
 always in mind, in any manner which you find easiest and 
 pleasantest, the Presence of Almighty God, and learn to love 
 that Presence as well as to fear it. Remember, William, 
 how that Presence is about you now ; how priest after priest 
 comes in on a morning who has had Jesus, the real Jesus, 
 within him, and day and night He lies upon the cathedral 
 altar with only one little star of light to burn before Him and 
 do Him honour. Try to get ten minutes a day to pray before 
 the Blessed Sacrament in Church ; it is worth an hour of 
 prayer anywhere else. " The star went and stood over the 
 place where the young Child was :" were not the wise men 
 glad when they saw it ? Follow that star, William, the star 
 of the Blessed Sacrament, and when the devil presses you, 
 let him press you there let him drive you to that twinkling 
 lamp, and to the little tabernacle where Jesus has made 
 Himself a prisoner for the love of those who pray there for 
 the love of Him. Write to me when you have time, Mr. 
 Moore will tell you my direction. God bless you, William ; 
 pray very, very often for me, lest I should fall away. 
 
 Yery affectionately yours, 
 
 FRED. WILLIAM FABEK. 
 
1846.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 267 
 
 LETTER LXIX, To THE COMMUNITY IN CAROLINE STREET. 
 
 Paris, Thursday, February 12, 1846. 
 The Will of God, 
 
 To my dear family in Caroline Street, 
 
 Some clock in the street has just struck eight; so I 
 suppose some of you are at this moment in St. Chad's at 
 Benediction, and I trust are remembering me in the Presence 
 of the Blessed Sacrament. I scarcely think of anything but 
 you and England all day long. I can find no services any 
 where like those at St. Chad's, but still I can find our dear 
 Lord on the altars and in the tabernacles of the churches, and 
 everywhere it is my own church, and I can pray and be at 
 ease. Today I managed to be at two Benedictions, though 
 the churches were a great distance from each other, yet by 
 walking fast we managed to be in time. I heard mass in the 
 church of St. Sulpice, a church to which I have a great 
 devotion, because I have got so much good from the famous 
 book of M. Tronson, composed for the use of the scholars 
 there. Some of you will remember the little French book out 
 of which I used sometimes to read examinations of conscience 
 to you at Elton, which were very hard to come up to ; and 
 I used to read one examination out of it every day after my 
 twelve o'clock prayers in the poor little chapel at Elton : the 
 book smells of the cinnamon of the chapel, and when I read 
 it now, I fancy I can almost see the colours of the painted 
 glass falling on the pages as they used to do through the 
 window at Elton. I do not think I shall ever love any place 
 as I loved that chapel. However, I must not regret it. 
 There was many and many an hour of bitter and of earnest 
 
268 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1846. 
 
 prayer in it as to whether I should become a Catholic, many 
 a kissing of the feet of the crucifix, and imploring Jesus to let 
 me stay in the English Church, if it could he His Will, and 
 many a heartfelt prayer that I might not draw back when His 
 Will should be made known. And His Will was made 
 known, and the hour came, and how it was that I did not 
 draw back I cannot tell; I only know it was not my own 
 strength which gave me courage ; and so, though I may not 
 regret the beautiful little chapel which God made me give up 
 for Him, abandoned to bare walls, to silence, or to the rats, 
 yet I may love it as the place where many of us got grace to 
 follow Christ along the comfortless road He called us, and 
 honoured us by calling us. In the blotting-book, on which I 
 am writing, there is a little bit of paper with these words 
 scribbled on it : " my dear Jesus, accept this intense 
 misery for my sins, and bless my dear mourning people. 
 Elton Kectory, November 16, 1845. Amen. Amen." I 
 suppose I wrote it just after I ran down home after afternoon 
 church. I shall always keep it as a memorial of God's good- 
 ness to me, and also to shame me into a strict life if ever I 
 should be tempted to live a comfortable one. Alas ! when we 
 have gone through so much, it will be a thousand shames to 
 aim at anything less than perfection ! 
 
 You see, my little French book has put me in mind of all 
 this, and I must confess that my heart is always, always 
 going back to Elton, and that the cross of leaving it grows 
 heavier every day instead of lighter. But God will find work 
 for us all to do, work in England, work among our uncon- 
 verted countrymen. But I was going to tell you about our 
 Benedictions today. We went again to the church of St. 
 Sulpice at four o'clock; I went to the Lady Chapel and said 
 the Litany for the House of St. Wilfrid in Caroline Street, 
 and then begged of our sweet Lady that she would be the 
 Mother of you all, and bless all our future plans. I then 
 
1846.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 269 
 
 returned to the high altar, and at Benediction prayed 
 especially for you. Immediately afterwards we walked as fast 
 as we could to the church of SS. Gervasius and Protasius, the 
 two martyrs whom you invoke in the Litany of the Saints ; 
 and then, in the Lady Chapel, I begged St. Ignatius, who 
 founded his order there in Paris, to take you under his pro- 
 tection, and to get grace for us all to have good vocations, and 
 to persevere in them. Benediction was given from the high 
 altar, and again I prayed for the House of St. Wilfrid in 
 Caroline Street, and said the Litany for England. So you 
 see, though I am far away, I am far from forgetting you or 
 the great plan which, if it please God, some of us may yet 
 live to see fulfilled. But there are many distractions and 
 temptations in travelling, and again I must beg of you to 
 pray very, very often for Mr. Hutchison and myself. To- 
 morrow morning we are going to set off on a pilgrimage to 
 three places which St. Thomas of Canterbury has rendered 
 sacred. As he is one of our patrons, you may be sure I only 
 make this pilgrimage for one end prayer, prayer, prayer 
 that we may live to see monks of St. Wilfrid and St. Thomas 
 of Canterbury, humbly striving after the new conversion ot 
 poor faithless England. Amen. 
 
 I must give you some notion how we spend our days. The 
 first thing in the morning is to say the prayers for travellers 
 in the Roman Breviary, and such other prayers as we can. 
 Of course I observe the rule of kissing the ground, &c., as in 
 Caroline Street. Then, either on the road, or in a church, or 
 in our rooms, we say the whole of the day Office of the Church ; 
 and in the evening, the whole of the office of the dead, offered 
 for the English dead who are forgotten and have no one to 
 pray for them ; and, lastly, before we go to bed, we say the 
 Litany of the Saints for the House of St. Wilfrid at Birm- 
 ingham. Thus, you see, we are as like two Wilfridians as 
 we can be, even though we are far away from you and always 
 
270 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1846. 
 
 on the move ; I only fear we are not doing much work for God, 
 and life is short ; I quite long to be at work for England : 
 but a few weeks ago I was preaching and teaching and con- 
 fessing and directing, and now I am floating about Europe 
 like an idle straw on a pool. In my next letter I shall tell 
 you about my pilgrimage. God Almighty bless you all, and 
 keep you fervent and persevering ; let us love Him, and let 
 Him do what He will with us. 
 
 Your very affectionate servant, 
 FEED. WILFRID FABER. 
 
 LETTER LXX. To JOHN STRICKSON. 
 
 Auxerre, Saturday, February 14, 1846, 
 
 The Will of God. 
 
 My dear John, 
 
 Since I last wrote to you I have got some way further 
 on my journey, and what is still more to the purpose, I hope 
 some way further towards the plan in which some of us are 
 so deeply interested. This morning (Saturday) a week ago I 
 communicated at a chapel in London, and left England the 
 same day ; and this morning, just one week absent, I commu- 
 nicated for the first time in a foreign church. I can hardly 
 tell you what my feelings were. During the last two days I 
 had had rising doubts about the Catholic faith. I was 
 tempted to regret that I had left Elton and all its comforts, 
 and the people that I loved so very much ; I thought that I 
 could have saved my soul there, and need not have become a 
 Catholic; and then I had doubts whether the Christian 
 religion was not false altogether. Of course it was plainly the 
 work of the devil, and I did not give way to his miserable and 
 accursed suggestions ; still it was high time for me to fortify 
 
1846.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 271 
 
 myself with the bread of the strong in the Blessed Sacrament 
 of the altar. I reached Sens last night ; in the cathedral is 
 the same altar at which our patron St. Thomas of Canterbury 
 said mass, and the chapel in which it stands is now dedicated 
 to him. I got to the cathedral by seven this morning, and 
 first went into the treasury where the relics are kept. I was 
 shown a small part of the True Cross, and kissed the crystal 
 ' case which covered it ; I saw also some relics of St. John the 
 Baptist, St. Gregory the Great, and others ; but what 
 interested me most was the priest's dress of St. Thomas of 
 Canterbury; I kissed the glass of the window through which 
 I was allowed to see them ; and after this went to mass in 
 the Lady Chapel, and communicated with a number of poor 
 French women. I was very much affected, because I have 
 often been abroad before, and always as a stranger, shut out 
 of the church ; but now, quite unknown, in a strange place, 
 and among foreigners, I went up to the altar just as I 
 should have done at St. Chad's. At Communion I made 
 
 mention of you all by name, as well as of P and N 
 
 at the bishop's house; and then I prayed that our plan 
 might be prospered for the glory of God and the conversion 
 of poor England, and then I said the Litany of Loreto, 
 recommending our household once more to the patronage of 
 the Mother of Jesus. When I had finished my prayers 
 after Communion I went to the chapel and altar of St. 
 Thomas, and there I mentioned all of you, and invoked 
 him very, very earnestly, and besought him to further our 
 plan by his prayers ; after that I said the Litany for 
 England, which you say after dinner, and all the while, in 
 the chapel of St. Thomas at Sens, I thought of you and the 
 little oratory in Caroline Street. Then I said the seven 
 Paters, Aves, and Glorias in honour of the Seven Blood- 
 sheddings, which you say before breakfast ; and lastly, some 
 of my Church Office. I seldom remember being more filled 
 
272 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1846. 
 
 with divine love than I was in that cathedral at Sens, and 
 for some hours after. But what has struck me most, as 
 connected with my solemn invocation of St. Thomas, is that 
 nearly all the day I seem to have received great and 
 astonishing lights about our plan ; so that, what I never 
 could do before, I have been able to draw up a complete 
 set of laws for it, its duties, its constitution, its method of 
 government, its special devotions, and the like ; and seem to 
 have been plainly guided to strike away from it one very 
 important part of the scheme which we intended before. 
 Of course, I must speak to a spiritual director about these 
 things ; but I assure you I have been in an extraordinary 
 way all day, and I trust it has been God who has been with 
 me, blessed be His Holy Name ! Alas ! how I regret that 
 any whom I love so much, and from whom I looked for so 
 much, should have turned back to the pleasures of the world 
 and the comforts of an easy life : I prayed earnestly that 
 they might recover their vocation, when I was at Sens today ; 
 but God's holy will be done, and may He bless them where- 
 ever they go. I never think of them but my spirits are 
 immediately overclouded; but may every plan we make be 
 ruined, so long as His sweet adorable Will has its own way 
 
 in the world and in the Church Remember, above all 
 
 things, to cultivate a spirit of special devotion to God's holy 
 Will, to which devotion I long since, before the crucifix in 
 the little chapel at Elton, promised to dedicate myself, if 
 God would mercifully vouchsafe to let me know if it was 
 His Blessed Will that I should join the Roman Church. 
 Whether in a monastic state or out of it, obedience is the 
 queen of virtues ; and in Protestant England it is the hardest 
 of all virtues to practise ; and the only royal road to win this 
 grace is to recognize God's sweet Will in little vexations and 
 to love it, as well as submit to it. There are so many things 
 to learn in religion that a man may well be puzzled what to 
 
1846.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 273 
 
 begin first, and what to go to next : but aim at conformity 
 to God's Will, and in winning that you win all. Was it not 
 the special character of Jesus ? Why did He come into the 
 world at all ? Lo, I come to do Thy will, God ! What 
 was His food, His sacrament, if I may so call it, during 
 those Three-and-thirty years? My meat is to do the Will 
 of Him that sent Me. And what else were His Passion 
 and Death but an act of conformity to the Eternal Father's 
 Will ? Not My Will but Thy Will be done, was His prayer 
 on the Mount of Olives. And what unites us more closely 
 and more dearly to our Jesus than to do God's Will ? Oh 
 think of those mighty words in the Gospel : The same is My 
 brother, and My sister, AND MY MOTHER. Only let us do 
 His Will, and we are all of us Maries, and angels will hail 
 us, and Christ will be born of us, and though His cross may 
 cause us seven and seven times seven sorrows, yet at the last 
 He will assume us into heaven and crown us there, doing 
 to us in our measure what He has done to Mary in her 
 measure : and, if this be true, who would not earnestly 
 strive to have a special devotion to the sweet adorable Will 
 of God ? God Almighty bless you all : help me with your 
 prayers, lest I should become a castaway. 
 
 Ever your most affectionate servant, 
 
 FREDERICK WILFRID FABER. 
 
 Ste. Wilfride ^ 
 
 Ste. Thoma de Cantuaria S orate pro nobis. 
 
 Ste. Philippe Neri ) 
 
 18 
 
274 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1846. 
 
 LETTEB LXXI. To THE SAME. 
 
 Palazzo Boutourlin, Florence, 
 
 Ash Wednesday, 1846. 
 
 The Will of God. 
 
 My dear John, 
 
 We left Marseilles by the steamboat on^ Saturday, and 
 soon after the engine broke, and we were obliged to anchor 
 off a rocky island for several hours : however, the sea was 
 very calm, and when the mischief was repaired we had a 
 good voyage to Leghorn, and arrived there on Monday 
 morning. I was very much affected when I saw the moun- 
 tains of Italy; when I was last at Leghorn I was Rector 
 of Elton, returning to reside there, and with my head full 
 of plans for the spiritual welfare of my parish : now how 
 different all is ! I feel fifty years older, tired and broken 
 down, and no longer in love with life, for life has nothing to 
 offer ; but I feel still an unabated desire to do God's Will, 
 and a daily increasing hunger for hard work, and hard work 
 in England. I confess that just for one moment, when I 
 saw the beautiful mountains, and the glorious blue sky, and 
 the church towers of Italy, I felt as if I never, never would 
 go back to the difficulties and disturbances and enmities 
 and evil speakings of England ; but it was a mere temptation 
 which passed away. Comfort and luxury and home and 
 ease are not meant for those who wish to follow Christ. 
 I shall now, my dear John, set myself at once to see what I 
 can do for Caroline Street, and it would, of course, very 
 much strengthen me and quicken my zeal to hear that you 
 
 and B and L still continue steadfast in your holy 
 
 desire and purpose ; so write to me as soon as you can. 
 
1846.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 275 
 
 LETTER LXXII. To THE SAME. 
 
 Palazzo Boutourlin, Florence, 
 
 Wednesday, March 11, 1846. 
 
 My dear John, 
 
 I have been in luck today, for I went out after my 
 Italian lesson at ten o'clock, to see if I could find mass in 
 some church, and came in for a most beautiful Benediction ; 
 how or why it was in the morning I do not know ; but I felt 
 deeply affected by it, and prayed for you all by name. And 
 when I came home I found your letter on the table. God be 
 thanked that you are all quite well, and so far persevering in 
 your new faith. Let us bless God more than ever for giving 
 us enemies whom we may forgive for the sake of His Son's 
 dear Passion. I am sure there is no privilege on earth so 
 great as that of having any little likeness to the Passion of 
 Jesus in what may happen to ourselves, and in my mental 
 prayer this morning I begged that favour of our Lord. 
 
 I cannot tell you what is passing in my soul ; I love Jesus 
 more and more and more and more; every day it seems as if 
 I had never loved Him before, never known Him before ; so 
 sweet, so new, so fresh does He seem every morning ; and 
 what is the consequence of all this ? why, that I am a 
 prisoner, caged up : I pine to be in England, to work for 
 England, to be with you all again with you, but in a very, 
 very different way from what I have been heretofore : all for 
 God, all for Jesus, day and night, week and month and year. 
 God's Will be done, whatever that gracious Will may be ! 
 My journey here has been of great use to me, because it has 
 quieted my mind, it has enabled me to put all the past away, 
 to look at what God wants of me, to seek light from Him 
 
276 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1846. 
 
 and to be patient. Difficulties and uncertainties are still all 
 around me ; and of course I am deeply pained at heart with 
 the disappointment I have received in some of my converts ; 
 but I may say that so much as this is settled ; we can live 
 together, under rule, without any work but religion ; and if 
 the experience of some months should show us that we have a 
 real vocation, then we could become actual monks. There is 
 something in this plan which is very dear to me, as one or 
 two of you, whom I love and earnestly desire not to be 
 separated from, may perhaps be induced to try this temporary 
 plan, as it leaves them free liberty to go back to the world 
 hereafter. 
 
 Depend upon it, my absence will now be very short, very 
 short indeed ; for I feel that you ought not to be left alone 
 longer than can be helped. Let your mind be quiet ; look 
 calmly and humbly forward to the holy life which God will 
 shortly give you an opportunity of choosing; do not be 
 disturbed at difficulties and temptations in mental prayer; 
 the Holy Ghost will be with you ; He will instruct you ; and 
 you will have solid fruit from meditations which seem dry, 
 cold, and formal. Anyhow, one blessing God has already 
 given you; you may be at ease about my plan; as far as 
 human things can be seen, that is sure ; death may prevent, 
 many things may prevent; but He who has led us so far 
 will lead us farther. Write to me very, very often, and tell 
 me everything which happens ; for the least things interest 
 me, so long as they concern Caroline Street. 
 
1846.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 277 
 
 LETTER LXXIII. To WILLIAM 
 
 Wednesday, March 11, 1846. 
 My dear William, 
 
 I need not say what a great pleasure it was to me to 
 hear from John Strickson of your perseverance in your good 
 resolutions and holy purposes. The love I have for you all, 
 and my ardent desire to see you all go on. to perfection, 
 naturally makes me uneasy when I hear of your having temp- 
 tations to fall away; hut, William, I could not expect that 
 the devil would leave you free from temptations. But I shall 
 not he long away from you now, and, as soon as I return to 
 England, you shall come to me, and satisfy your wishes. I 
 have had much difficulty and doubt to encounter, but all that 
 is over now, and you shall be a monk ; and we shall have a 
 little house where nothing but peace, and love, and kindliness, 
 and prayer, and meditation shall be known all brothers 
 together all given up heart and soul to serve Jesus in 
 obedience and in purity. I cannot yet fix the time of my 
 return to England, but it will be very much sooner than the 
 autumn ; indeed, I think I shall be with you before St. 
 Peter's Day in June, perhaps some weeks before that. I am 
 sure I am as anxious to be back to you as you to be back to 
 me. What a change since last Lent ! This time last year 
 I was preaching my sermons on Examination of Conscience, 
 and on the Seven Last Words of our Blessed Lord, and now 
 trying to set up a popish monastery ! This is a pretty trick 
 for a Protestant rector ; to say nothing of my running away 
 with my arms full of young men ! I think very often, and 
 very affectionately, of our little monastery in the rectory, and 
 you in your shaggy cassock. However, we shall have no mid- 
 night services, and fewer bodily severities in our new monas- 
 
278 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1846. 
 
 tery ; yet it will not be very unlike the rectory. The chapel, 
 however, will be much more beautiful ; for I am promised all 
 manner of grand ornaments for it; and we shall all be as 
 happy as monks, who are in reality by far the happiest people 
 in the world. Tell John Strickson he may expect in a few 
 days to receive a copy of the Kule of the Congregation of St. 
 Wilfrid ; I will send him a little bit at a time, as I have 
 leisure to copy it out. I daresay it will want a good deal of 
 improvement and alteration before it is quite finished ; but it 
 will give you all some idea of the kind of life we are going to 
 lead. Meanwhile, my dear William, pray hard for God's 
 blessing on our poor little plan for His glory and the conver- 
 sion of our dear country, pray for me, the greatest sinner of 
 you all, pray for your own perseverance in your heavenly 
 vocation. I will tell you a history, which had something like 
 a resemblance to what has happened with us Eltonians ; it is 
 the same history I told you when first you came to my study 
 at Elton, and shed tears, and threw sin away. There was all 
 beauty and all brightness, all power and all peace, love, 
 happiness and glory, immense, unutterable, far away, and yet 
 all over, when there was neither sky, nor earth, nor sea, and 
 there was God, the Three, unspeakably loving each other, the 
 Eternal Father, with His Son eternally begotten in His 
 Bosom, and the Spirit eternally proceeding : such love, such 
 peace, never can man conceive or speak rightly of. Ah ! we 
 are all ignorant; the brightest scholars do not know what 
 they say when they speak of God. Well, from out of all this 
 beauty, brightness, love and peace, the Eternal Son conde- 
 scended to borrow a fleshly Body of the humblest Virgin on 
 the earth. When He was thirty years old, He was so kind 
 as to gather round Him twelve dear friends ; He, the glorious 
 God, talked with them, taught them, was kind to them, did 
 all manner of little loving things for them, day and night, for 
 three years. Would not those twelve men have willingly died 
 
1846.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 279 
 
 for Him, died with Him ? They said so, and I am sure at 
 one time they felt so. "Well, and how was it at the last ? 
 Thursday night came ; they had four ways of shewing their 
 love to Jesus, four ways, William, which we unworthy con- 
 verts have of showing our love to the same Jesus ; either by 
 betraying Him, or by running away from Him, or by following 
 Him, like bad-hearted cowards, afar off, or by denying Him. 
 We none of us thought, in the little monastery at Elton, that 
 we should do such things as these; well, let us take care we 
 do not do them then, for there was a time when the apostles 
 felt quite as sure as we feel, that they should never do any of 
 these things to such a meek Master as Jesus, a Master whose 
 very sweet characteristic it was that He always behaved more 
 like a servant than a Master ; for He loved to be then, what 
 He just as much loves to be now, everybody's servant. Judas 
 had received the Blessed Sacrament that very evening; he 
 ventured to kiss his Master's lips, the very act of kissing was 
 treachery : thus many keep on praying, having sweetness in 
 prayer, and even communicating ; and yet, after all, they are 
 cherishing, as Judas did his money-bag, some one self-will, 
 and so they in the end, never dreaming of it, become Judases 
 themselves. Others run away from Him when the trial 
 comes ; they will not go along with Him up the steep road of 
 His Passion ; they hide themselves among the olive trees on 
 the mount, and are content to watch from under the shelter 
 the lights and lanterns of those who are carrying off Jesus 
 like a thief ; ah ! the day will come when He will come more 
 like a thief in the night than He looked that Thursday, but 
 there will be no olive trees then to hide under. Others follow 
 Him afar off, not too near, not in the way of perfection, " afar 
 off," says Scripture : out upon them ! why not try to get as 
 near Jesus as one can ? half-hearted Christians, why, was He 
 a half-hearted Jesus? Shame upon them, too; and what 
 comes of their far off fashion of following, why, one of the two 
 
280 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1846. 
 
 denies Him ! He swore lie would go with Him to death ; it 
 was his vocation; he made a great profession of faith, and 
 now he begins hy following afar off, then he goes creeping 
 up to the warm fire of this world's comforts, (for it was a cold 
 night, the Testament says), and then all his spirit gets 
 warmed and relaxed, and he curses and swears that he does 
 not know " the Man," as he contemptuously calls Him, calls 
 his own Jesus ! Oh if people only knew what mostly comes 
 of far off following ! Blessed be God ! for the worst of them 
 there is always the chance (alas ! but a chance) of Peter's 
 tears. 
 
 LETTER LXXIV. To THE SAME. 
 
 Florence, St. Benedict's Day, 
 
 March 21, 1846. 
 
 v"|D. 
 
 My dear William, 
 
 We are all of us now preparing to celebrate the Feast 
 of our sweet Mother, the Annunciation ; and so I will begin 
 my letter to you with her, and try to persuade you to become 
 very devoted to her, a true son, and a loving one, and then 
 she will be a loving Mother to you. Alas! William, we 
 belong to a country where the people think it fine to talk 
 against the Mother of Jesus ; they really seem to think that 
 they please Jesus when they refuse to pay honour to His 
 Mother, whom He loved so tenderly, and whom He has 
 now exalted to the brightest, brightest glory. Let us then, 
 when we become monks, make it one of our chief ends to 
 make up in our poor way to this sweet Mother for the 
 ignorant rudeness of the Protestants. Without great devo- 
 tion to the Blessed Virgin it is quite impossible ever to arrive 
 at Christian perfection ; and indeed, many of the chief 
 
1846.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 281 
 
 doctors of the Church think it is impossible to be saved 
 without devotion to her. You are full of strong feelings 
 of love ; when you become a monk your heart will long for a 
 mother, besides your earthly mother ; a mother who can be 
 always near you, always full of love to you, always as able 
 as she is ready to help you in heaven above. Mary is the 
 Mother of monks; so she must be your Mother and mine. 
 sweet Lady, dearest Mother, be a Mother to us two, now 
 and in the hour of our death ! Of course, there cannot be 
 any manner of doubt but that Mary can obtain, from Jesus 
 all that we want for our salvation and perfection. He it is 
 who said, Honour thy father and thy mother; how great then 
 will the honour be that He will pay to His Mother ! He 
 used to hear her prayers upon earth ; He said at Cana that 
 His time was not yet come, but for all that He worked 
 a miracle before His time, because Mary asked it of Him : 
 will He not much more hear her prayers now that He haa 
 taken her up, and put her on a throne, and crowned her 
 with bright stars ? To be sure He will. And if we know 
 beyond a doubt that Mary can obtain all we want for our 
 salvation and perfection, I am sure we can have no doubt 
 but that she wishes to obtain it for us, wishes to obtain it 
 even more than we wish it ourselves, because we are so 
 dull and cold and formal and heartless and self-loving 
 and are always missing grace because we have not love 
 enough to ask for it ! Do you not remember, "William, how 
 she stood at the foot of the cross, and watched the Passion 
 of her Son, how she counted the minutes and the drops 
 of Blood, how she looked up and would fain have wiped the 
 clotted Blood from out of His beautiful Eyes, but she could 
 not reach so far, how every pang went into her own soul like a 
 eword ; and do you think she does not long with all the long- 
 ing of a wonderful mother to increase the fruit of that dear 
 awful Passion ? And what is its best fruit but the souls that 
 
282 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1846. 
 
 are made perfect through the three vows of obedience, poverty, 
 and chastity ? She can ohtain all grace for us ; who doubts 
 but that she wishes to obtain it ? Ah ! and we will not let 
 her : we put our coldness in the way, our unbelief, our silly 
 hankerings after the ways of the world and its carnal joys. 
 She can obtain all and she wishes to obtain all ; throw 
 yourself then, my dear boy, into her loving arms, promise to 
 be her son, to love her as Jesus did, and to do all your little 
 common actions as a servant, just as Jesus did all His 
 common actions in the house at Nazareth. Ah ! think how 
 many times He went for water to the well, how many times 
 He swept the floor, how many times He turned the grind- 
 stone for St. Joseph, think what He was in Mary's eye when 
 Bhe sat on the step of the door and watched the Boy who 
 created the worlds, helping St. Joseph in the shop. dear, 
 dear Jesus, happy, happy Mary, Mother of us all : what 
 else is there on earth to love but Jesus and Mary ? Devote 
 yourself then, "William, devote yourself to that sweet Mother ; 
 picture to yourself that you are a young man of Nazareth, 
 knowing the secret of that wonderful house, and telling it to 
 no one, only behaving to Mary, Joseph, and Jesus as you 
 would have done. how happy, how quiet will your life be, 
 if you can live it so : how happy shall I be in seven 
 or eight weeks time to find you living so, and then to take 
 you to live with me, to edify me and to set me a good 
 example, to help me with your prayers and to make me happy 
 with your obedience and your love. This love and devotion 
 to the Holy Virgin Mother of Jesus is one of the chief marks 
 of difference between Catholics and Protestants ; and so ought 
 to be more precious to us who have been brought out of the 
 darkness of Protestantism, and have to try to make up for the 
 coldness and the forgetfulness of our past life towards the 
 most Holy Virgin. But I can write no more at present : let 
 me hear how you are, and whether you are still firm in your 
 
1846.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 283 
 
 vocation. I hope to be with you about the 26th of May. 
 God bless you, my dear William, and believe me ever 
 
 Very affectionately yours, 
 
 F. W. F. 
 
 After spending some weeks at Florence, Mr. 
 Faber and Mr. Hutchison determined to proceed 
 to Rome, in order to make their first Easter 
 Communion in the Holy City. They accordingly 
 started on the Feast of the Annunciation, "Wednes- 
 day the 25th of March, and taking the road by 
 Arezzo and Perugia, arrived at Foligno on the 
 afternoon of Saturday. The next morning, before 
 continuing their journey, they assisted at the Messa 
 de' Cacciatori, a mass celebrated in the cathedral 
 before daylight for the benefit of the young men 
 of the town, who were going to spend the day in 
 shooting in the neighbourhood. 
 
 A slight detour was made in order to visit Loreto, 
 which was reached on the 30th of March. The 
 Holy House, of which Mr. Hutchison was hereafter 
 to be the defender,* made a great impression upon 
 both the travellers, who received within its walls a 
 notable accession of devotion to the Blessed Virgin. 
 With a few stones from the beach as memorials of 
 their visit, they left Loreto for Rome, taking with 
 them out of charity one of the Fate-bene-fratelli of 
 
 * Loreto and Nazareth. By William Antony Hutchison, 
 Priest of the Oratory. London : Dillon. 1863. 
 
284 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1846. 
 
 St. John of God, who was also on his way thither. 
 He proved an agreeable companion, and repaid the 
 service rendered him by curing Mr. Faber's feet, 
 which had become sore and painful from walking. 
 On the Saturday before Palm Sunday the 
 travellers entered Rome, for the first time as 
 Catholics. They drove at once to the English College, 
 where they were most hospitably received by 
 the rector, Dr. Grant, who invited them to take 
 up their residence there during their stay in the 
 Holy City, an offer which was gratefully accepted. 
 Their time was spent pleasantly and profitably 
 under the guidance of Dr. Grant, and they suc- 
 ceeded in obtaining what they had proposed to 
 themselves as one of the great objects of their visit 
 to Italy, that they should get thoroughly steeped 
 in Catholicism. Many consultations were held 
 with Dr. Grant on the subject of Mr. Eaber's plans, 
 which were also submitted to, and approved by, 
 Cardinal Acton, who remarked that he thought it 
 better, when practicable, for converted clergymen 
 to become priests, because Englishmen have the 
 idea of there being something indelible about orders, 
 and do not like their passing away altogether.* 
 
 * With regard to Anglican orders, Mr. Faber, instead of 
 being anxious for their validity, used to say that it was a 
 comfort to feel the contrary, because of the sacrilegious 
 communions which would otherwise be made by people who 
 have no idea of contrition as a preparation. He also thought 
 
1846.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 285 
 
 At Easter Mr. Hutchison formally proposed 
 himself to Mr. Eaber as a member of the new 
 community. He had expressed a wish to this effect 
 several times before in the course of their journey, 
 but Mr. Faber, not wishing to allow his companion 
 to commit himself to such a course until his mind 
 should be fully made up, had refused to enter upon 
 the subject. This was the more disinterested on his 
 part, inasmuch as the hopes of assistance with 
 which he had undertaken the journey had been 
 disappointed, and the contributions which Mr. 
 Hutchison would have it in his power to make 
 would put an end to the pecuniary difficulties with 
 which his project at Birmingham was surrounded. 
 At this time, however, by the advice of Dr. Grant, 
 Mr. Hutchison's proposal was accepted, and it was 
 agreed that he should join the community as soon 
 as he returned to England. 
 
 On the Thursday in Holy Week, Mr. Faber wrote 
 to Mr. Watts Eussell, at Birmingham : 
 
 it absolutely necessary that all converts should be baptized 
 under condition, saying that, although he was himself careful, 
 he would not for the world that any one baptized by him 
 should not receive that sacrament conditionally when received 
 into the Church. 
 
286 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1846. 
 
 LETTER LXXV. To M. WATTS RUSSELL, ESQ. 
 
 If I can begin with a household of five to match our 
 Saviour's Wounds I shall be content. But it is uphill work, 
 and, truth to say, I am worn out, worn out, worn out. My 
 last year's complaint in my feet has broken out again ; and I 
 feel more than ever the burden of beginning life over again 
 at my age, standing alone, and surrounded with uncertainty. 
 Then again I find here that there are a host of canonical 
 objections to the Rule and Congregation, and I hardly know 
 how to turn myself. I am like a tired out spider, whose web 
 has been demolished so often that he is inclined to give up 
 spinning it over again. St. Wilfrid seems to get for me a 
 kind of dogged cheerfulness, and so I go on and on and 
 on ; and perhaps I may not live much longer, and then it 
 will be well to have worked up to the last moment. But 
 
 enough 
 
 Tell Mr. Moore all manner of kind things from me, and 
 that he must fabricate monks as rapidly as possible, which I 
 suppose is a new kind of Brummagem ware. I thought of 
 you all at Communion this morning, having made my Easter 
 confession at the Gesu to a Jesuit with whom I quarrelled 
 three years ago. I went to confess in his cell, and he did not 
 know me again; afterwards I introduced myself, and he 
 received me in the most affectionate manner possible. At 
 Florence the superior of the Camaldolese expressed a great 
 desire to see me ; he was ill in bed, and his bed full of snuff ; 
 he seized my head, buried it in the snuffy clothes, and kissed 
 me most unmercifully. Cardinal Acton fell on my neck, and 
 embraced me like a mother. Mr. Sisk kissed me twice at 
 Chelsea ; and Mr. F. nearly upset me in your drawing-room : 
 there must be something very nice about me. 
 
1846.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 287 
 
 Easter week was pleasantly spent with the 
 English College at Monte Porzio, whence excur- 
 sions were made to Tusculum, Nemi, Albano, and 
 Genazzano, famous for its miraculous image of the 
 Mother of Good Counsel. On Easter Tuesday, Mr. 
 Eaber wrote to Mr. Morris : 
 
 LETTEB LXXVL To J. B. MOBKIS, ESQ. 
 
 I received your most welcome letter yesterday. I 
 left Rome in the morning with the English College, which 
 has migrated to their country house here for a few days of 
 fresh air, when we return again to Rome. 
 
 I am so, so happy, I cannot tell you. I have had great 
 temptations, very great ones ; but I made a pilgrimage to 
 Loreto, and I hardly dare say what happened to me there. 
 It is enough to say that I asked a great thing of our dearest 
 Lady in the Santa Casa, and she got it for me in ten 
 minutes, and I quite burn with love to her. Perfection 
 consists in doing God's Holy Will ; otherwise, for my own 
 spiritual advancement I fancy the Jesuit noviciate would be 
 the place for me ; but as far as one so vile as I can judge, 
 it seems not to be God's Will. His Providence seems to 
 have committed me to England, and given me spiritual ties 
 there which I may not rupture. I hope therefore to be back 
 by St. Philip Neri's day, in England the 27th of May, and 
 then, with the Bishop's leave, I will try my community plan 
 for eighteen months, and if it should fail I shall ask Newman 
 to take me in at Mary vale. On my return I shall ask the 
 Bishop to draw out a little plan of reading for me, which I 
 shall follow under his obedience, so that if I should ever be 
 judged fit (which I hardly can be) for the priesthood, I may 
 
288 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1846. 
 
 have been directing my studies rightly. This is my plan, so 
 far as I have any. 
 
 Meanwhile, the complaint in my feet has returned vio- 
 lently: I hardly kept Lent at all, my confessor and the 
 medico prohibiting it, but Holy Week I rather perversely 
 kept, and I think it has done some harm, or at least did at 
 the time. However, they say in Rome that the complaint is 
 quite incurable ; so one must take the incommodity (for it is 
 rather that than pain) as a favour from our Lord. 
 
 I had a mass said for Newman and Maryvale in the 
 Portiuncula at Assisi, in the little chapel where St. Francis 
 composed his Rule ; and I had another one said in the Santa 
 Casa for the same intention. I hardly ever hear mass or 
 visit the Blessed Sacrament without making special mention 
 of Maryvale; and today, because my heart was yearning 
 towards a certain friend there who is always blowing me up, 
 I heard a mass for him early, before the mass at which I 
 communicated, and I hope he will sometimes return the 
 favour. I communicated this morning for my poor boys, "W. 
 and J. Pitts, who seem to be persevering delightfully. I had 
 three masses said for them in the house at Assisi, where the 
 boy St. Francis was confined by his father. 
 
 I go to the Pope next week : I was rather anxious to avoid 
 this, but the Cardinal thought that I ought to do so. The 
 Protestant bishop of Gibraltar has been here, i. e. at Rome, to 
 confirm, and there was a dispute between the Puseyites and 
 Evangelicals whether he should have a cross carried before 
 him; but the Evangelicals carried the day. The Romans 
 were disgusted with the impertinence, but they could not 
 make the dear old Pope angry ; he chuckled hugely, and said 
 he really had not been aware hitherto that Rome was in the 
 diocese of Gibraltar ! ! 
 
 Tell W. that if I could manage to conceal it under a heap 
 of rosaries, I would get a tea-kettle blessed for him by Santo 
 
1846.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 289 
 
 Padre, but I fear it is impossible. The other day Hia 
 Holiness took a fit of unholy mirth, and nothing would 
 content him but he must mimic to an English Catholic the 
 way the English Protestants did homage, a familiar nod with 
 their chin, as if they had swallowed pokers ; he did it 
 inimitably well ; I suspect the next Anglican who goes (if 
 he did but know this) would prostrate himself from sheer 
 vexation. Since he got his interview with the Czar over he 
 has been like a boy that has said a hard lesson and is safe ; 
 he sang Mass most lustily on Easter Day. 
 
 The presentation to Pope Gregory XVI., which, 
 is alluded to above, is thus described by Mr. 
 Hutchison : 
 
 " His Holiness received us most kindly, and was reminded 
 by Dr. Grant that some years before, Faber had been pre- 
 sented to him when he was an Anglican, and that His 
 Holiness' blessing had not been without effect. When the 
 Pope learnt what was the annual value of the living which 
 Faber had given up, he seemed a good deal impressed, and, 
 slapping him on the shoulder, said, 'Ah! that was a fine 
 patrimony ! ' The interview ended by his giving us his 
 blessing, and telling us to go back to England and convert as 
 many of our friends as we could ; words in which we pleased 
 ourselves in seeing a certain mission and authorization of our 
 plans." 
 
 About this time several copies of the pamphlet 
 published by Mr. Paber on the occasion of his 
 conversion reached Rome, but the first distribution 
 of them was stopped by the religious censors, who 
 were misled by the title, and imagined that they 
 
 really contained " Grounds for remaining in the 
 19 
 
290 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1816. 
 
 Anglican Communion," and were consequently 
 heretical. The mistake was soon rectified ; and the 
 Master of the Sacred Palace, in expressing to the 
 author his regret that it had occurred, compli- 
 mented him by saying he must remember that 
 the devil sometimes disguised himself as an angel 
 of light. 
 
 Mr. Paber's anxiety about his community at 
 Birmingham prevented his making a long stay in 
 Rome. Pilled as both the travellers were with the 
 love of everything Roman, they consoled themselves 
 for their departure by the thought that they were 
 going to work for Rome in England. They had 
 learned much that was afterwards of use to them, 
 and had been encouraged by the valuable advice 
 given them by their kind friend Dr. Grant. Prom 
 Cardinal Acton they had also received many proofs 
 of affectionate interest in their plans, and he gave 
 them reason to hope that there would be much 
 less difficulty than they had anticipated in their 
 being admitted to Holy Orders. 
 
 On the 25th of April they began their return home. 
 As they left the city they stopped at the Chiesa 
 Nuova to make a parting visit to St. Philip, and 
 then, taking leave of Dr. Grant on the steps of the 
 church, proceeded on their way to Civitavecchia 
 through the Piazza of St. Peter's, where the clergy 
 of the different Basilicas were assembling for the 
 procession of St. Mark. On the following day they 
 embarked for Leghorn, whence they continued their 
 
1846.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 291 
 
 journey to Florence. After spending a few days 
 there, they travelled rapidly by Genoa, Turin, and 
 the Mont Cenis to Annecy, where they venerated 
 the relics of St. Prancis of Sales and St. Jane 
 Prances de Chantal. Pressing onwards by Geneva 
 and Strasburg, they went down the Hhine to 
 Cologne, and thus to Ostend, where they took the 
 steamer for London. Mr. Hutchison thus describes 
 their feelings on returning to England : 
 
 " I suppose no one can approach London by the river from 
 the sea, the only fit way of approaching it, without being 
 deeply impressed by the immensity of the great city, with its 
 perpetual canopy of smoke, which seems to conceal, and yet 
 perhaps magnifies its vast extent. But to us, who could but 
 look upon it as the great sinful capital of heretical England, 
 the sight of it was painfully interesting and almost depress- 
 ing ; for what could we hope to do towards furthering the 
 conversion of this great empire, and yet it was with the view 
 of devoting ourselves to this work that we had now come 
 back to England." 
 
 Once landed at London Bridge, the travellers 
 set off for Euston Square, so as to reach Birming- 
 ham on the evening of the same day, Saturday 
 the 16th of May. Their arrival was quite unex- 
 pected, as it was supposed that they would be 
 detained for some time longer in Italy. They 
 brought with them large stores of rosaries, medals, 
 crucifixes, prints, &c., and a collection of Italian 
 books of asceticism and piety, then unused in Eng- 
 land, which became the source of the 'popular 
 
292 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1846. 
 
 devotions since practised at the Oratory. The 
 Hosary of the Seven Dolours was at that time a 
 novelty in this country, and as it first "became 
 widely known in it through the Oratory, it must 
 be counted among the fruits of this visit to 
 Italy, 
 
1846.] FKEDEHICK WILLIAM FABER. 293 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 1846-8. 
 
 The work which Mr. Paber had undertaken 
 presented difficulties of no ordinary character. 
 Himself a convert of few months standing, and 
 still a layman, he was charged with the government 
 and training of a number of young men, whose 
 experience of Catholic life was no longer than his 
 own, and whom he was to mould into a religious 
 body. In short, he was compelled, under the direc- 
 tion of, or rather under obedience to, the ecclesias- 
 tical authorities of the Central District, to assume 
 the position of founder and superior of a new 
 congregation. The proceedings of converts were 
 regarded at this time with a watchful jealousy, and 
 Mr. Paber' s undertaking was not likely to escape 
 scrutiny and criticism. 
 
 During his absence in Italy steps had been taken 
 towards obtaining a more commodious residence 
 for the community. Mr. M. Watts Russell had 
 secured for it an empty house in Colmore Terrace, 
 Birmingham, next door to his own, which he also 
 transferred to Mr. Paber when he left the town 
 shortly afterwards. The simple wants of the com- 
 munity made the preparation of the premises for 
 
294 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1846. 
 
 their reception an easy task, and within a fortnight 
 of Mr. Faber's return from the continent the 
 brothers were in possession of their new quarters. 
 Mr. Eaber thus describes his prospects in a letter to 
 an old friend : 
 
 LETTEB LXXVIL To A FRIEND (B.) 
 
 77, Caroline Street, Birmingham. 
 Sunday within Oct. Ascens. 1846. 
 
 On St. Augustine's day,* I enter a monastery ; what my 
 happiness is at this prospect I can hardly describe to 
 you. Though troubles, trials, and outward persecutions, 
 and the most distressing calumnies are all around me, 
 and though I have shrunk from the invidious task which 
 holy obedience has now laid upon me, yet nothing seems to 
 disturb my inward peace. To be sure, the blue sky, and the 
 green fields, and the river-side, and the grey gables, and the 
 idolatry of Elton are far other than the smoke, and the dense 
 streets, and the denser mass of unbelief, and utterly aban- 
 doned souls, and the stifling sick rooms, and the hooting and 
 pelting of Birmingham, yet the last is more to my mind noiv ; 
 and I hope God may bless us and quicken our love for these 
 poor English artisans more and more 
 
 You must at any rate come and see me ; and I hope you 
 will find Brother Wilfrid walking the smoky lanes of 
 Birmingham, with the boys cutting jokes on his habit, a 
 being not a whit less gay than the Frederick Faber of the 
 Lakes ; and a great deal more boyish, for all that his dear 
 angry friends have persecuted him into grey hairs. 
 
 * May 26, the Feast of St. Philip Neri. 
 
1846.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 295 
 
 The community consisted, at the time of its 
 removal to Colmore Terrace, of the superior, who 
 took the name of Brother Wilfrid of the Humanity 
 of Jesus, three choir brothers, and nine lay bro- 
 thers. Mr. Hutchison had been received as 
 Brother Antony of the Blessed Sacrament, and 
 Mr. Mills, another Cambridge convert, now a 
 Father of the Birmingham Oratory, as Brother 
 Austin of the Ascension. They were established, 
 with the permission of the bishop, under the 
 title of Brothers of the Will of God, and placed 
 under the patronage of our Blessed Lady, St 
 Joseph, and St. Wilfrid. Erom the name of the 
 latter Saint they were commonly called Wilfridians. 
 
 The object of the institute, as far as concerned 
 the choir brothers, was to provide a body of priests 
 who should be ready to undertake the charge of 
 any good works which might be entrusted to them 
 by the bishop and the parochial clergy. It was 
 also to afford the advantage of confessionals open 
 at all times to any one who might come, thus 
 exhibiting one of the peculiar characteristics of the 
 Oratory. The work destined for the lay brothers 
 has been already described. The Wilfridians were 
 to take the three simple Vows, and the property 
 of the members was to be in common. By a fiction 
 invented by Brother Wilfrid in order that he might 
 avoid the title and dignity of superior, the true 
 superior was considered to be St. Joseph. 
 
 Whitsunday, in that year the last day of the 
 
296 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1846. 
 
 month of Mary, was the date at which the Wil- 
 fridian community was fairly launched, and began 
 to observe its rule. Its austere manner of life was 
 described by Brother Antony as follows : 
 
 " We had three abstinence days in the week, and breakfast, 
 to an Englishman usually the most comfortable meal, was 
 rendered very much the reverse by being taken standing, in 
 silence, and consisting of dry bread and tea without sugar. 
 Butter and permission to sit were given on festivals, to whose 
 coming I, for one, used therefore to look forward with 
 satisfaction. We rose at half past five. At six we assembled 
 in the room fitted up as a chapel, for half an hour's medi- 
 tation in common. Then the choir brothers said the 
 Hours, after which we went to St. Chad's to mass, in parties 
 of two or three. After mass and Communion we returned to 
 Colmore Terrace to breakfast ; then came a short visit to the 
 chapel, after which the lay brothers were busy in household 
 work. At half-past twelve the choir brothers said Vespers 
 and Compline, and the others came to join in some devo- 
 tions. 
 
 " Then came dinner, during which there was spiritual 
 reading. This was followed by recreation, up to which the 
 rule of silence was observed from the beginning of the day, 
 except on Sundays and festivals. 
 
 " The afternoon was left tolerably free till about five, then 
 came Matins and Lauds. After tea and recreation we gene- 
 rally assembled in the chapel to receive instructions in 
 mental prayer, examination of conscience, and such subjects, 
 from Brother Wilfrid. After this followed the giving of the 
 meditation for the morrow, the Rosary of the Seven Dolours, 
 and other night prayers of the community. The brothers 
 were encouraged to practise other devotions during the day. 
 
1846.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 297 
 
 and to use the discipline in their own rooms. A triduo or 
 novena was almost always going on, and a relic of a Saint 
 exposed on the altar. 
 
 " One day, I remember, when a relic of St. Thomas of 
 Canterbury was exposed, a Protestant was brought to be 
 converted. Among other things, the man said he did not 
 like to see that lion and unicorn in the Protestant churches, 
 in which Brother "Wilfrid of course agreed. After they had 
 talked for some time, he took the man into the chapel. 
 There the visitor, seeing the relic surrounded by lights, 
 enquired what it meant, and on its being explained tp him, 
 he asked further to be told the history of St. Thomas. This 
 Brother Wilfrid skilfully epitomized by saying that he was a 
 most holy man, who lost his life in resisting the introduction 
 of the lion and unicorn into church. Nothing could have 
 given the man a better idea of the Saint, for whom he at 
 once expressed the greatest veneration." 
 
 The brothers wore a black cassock, buttoned in 
 front like that of the Roman secular clergy, with 
 wide sleeves, and on the breast a cross between the 
 letters Y. D. (Voluntas Dei) in red cloth. Over 
 the habit was a scanty cloth cloak, also black, on 
 which the same device was repeated. Round the 
 waist was a black leathern girdle, from which a 
 rosary was suspended. The choir brothers wore 
 the Roman collar, and the laics the stock without 
 the white collar. 
 
 Eor the first few weeks the community had to put 
 up with many inconveniences. Their accommoda- 
 tion was not sufficient for their numbers, until the 
 departure of their neighbours put the adjoining 
 
298 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1846. 
 
 house at their disposal: also, as Colmore Terrace 
 lies low, and is surrounded by houses, the unusual 
 heat of the summer of 1846 was severely felt. 
 
 Bishop Wiseman and Brother Wilfrid were both 
 of opinion that it was not advisable to involve the 
 community in external occupations at that early 
 stage of its existence, before its members had under- 
 gone a certain amount of training and made their 
 noviciate, and consequently, with the exception of 
 visiting a few sick people, they were engaged in 
 little or no work beyond their own walls. This 
 however did not meet the wishes of Mr. Moore, 
 who was then their confessor. Ever active himself, 
 and deeply impressed with the necessities of his 
 flock, he did not see the force of Brother Wilfrid's 
 reasons for the delay, and therefore, lest the young 
 community should suffer from his desire to thrust 
 it into work, the bishop determined to appoint the 
 Rev. Mr. Heneage of Erdington, near Oscott,* 
 to be its confessor in his place. The change was 
 greatly to the advantage of the brothers, as Mr. 
 Heneage devoted one whole day in each week to 
 the community, and was thus enabled to give ample 
 time to each penitent. 
 
 Towards the end of June, Brother Wilfrid was 
 put in possession of the adjoining premises, and the 
 necessary alterations were at once made for throw- 
 
 * Now chaplain to the Convent of the Good Shepherd, 
 Hammersmith. 
 
1846.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 299 
 
 ing the two houses into one, by which the regularity 
 and comfort of the community were much in- 
 creased. A large room was fitted up as a library, 
 in which some of Brother Wilfrid's books from 
 Elton, the Lives of the Saints and other spiritual 
 works purchased in Italy, and a few volumes of 
 theology were arranged. (This collection has since 
 formed the nucleus of the Library of the London 
 Oratory.) But the greatest benefit which was 
 derived from the increased accommodation was the 
 fitting up of a chapel sufficiently large to receive 
 the whole community. A room of considerable 
 size, which had formerly been the drawing-room, 
 was devoted to this purpose, and decorated in the 
 Gothic style, with red walls, a blue ceiling, and a 
 handsome altar after a design by Pugin, so as to 
 present a fairly ecclesiastical appearance. The 
 bishop gave permission for the reservation of the 
 Blessed Sacrament in this chapel, a priest from St. 
 Chad's saying mass there occasionally, beginning 
 on the Peast of St. Anne, July the 26th. 
 
 The brothers had now a large garden at the back 
 of their house, and although it was but a forlorn- 
 looking place, filled with black smoky fruit-trees 
 and sickly evergreens, it gave them the opportunity 
 of taking exercise without the necessity of going out 
 into the town. In the evening they used to allow a 
 number of poor Catholic boys to come and play in 
 it, ending their games always with the Litany of 
 Loreto sung in procession. If the community had 
 
300 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1846. 
 
 remained long in Birmingham, this would have 
 received further development, and have led to the 
 establishment of some sort of Little Oratory or 
 Confraternity. 
 
 Pew incidents occurred at first to interrupt the 
 quiet manner of life which was thus adopted. To 
 quote Brother Antony again : 
 
 "We went out but little, except to Mass at St. Chad's 
 on weekdays, and to the High Mass and Vespers on Sundays, 
 when the choir brothers occupied seats in the stalls. At 
 first we went through the streets in our habit, but at Mr. 
 Moore's request this was discontinued. 
 
 "-Inside our house I think we succeeded to a great extent 
 in doing what Brother Wilfrid proposed, ignoring the exist- 
 ence of Protestantism, and living as if we were in Italy. 
 Perhaps it was because we were still in the first fervour 
 of our conversion, but certainly in those early days we seemed 
 to live almost in the companionship of the Saints and the 
 Madonna. We led a most unworldly life, and I do not think 
 it was unreal, notwithstanding perhaps a little occasional 
 eccentricity. It is true we were merely beginners, revelling 
 in the beauty of Catholic devotions with which, for the most 
 part, we had till then been unacquainted. We gained much, 
 both in experience of community life, and in many other 
 ways, during those first months at Birmingham. 
 
 "We adopted many Italian customs and practices of devo- 
 tion, especially to the Madonna. The devotion of Maria 
 Desolata was observed every week from Friday evening to 
 Sunday morning. On the Yigil of the Assumption the 
 chapel was adorned with an abundance of candles and fir 
 trees, which was our great idea of decoration in those days, 
 and we took it in turn to watch each for an hour in the 
 
1846.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 301 
 
 chapel during the night before the Feast. We used also 
 every evening at the Ave to burn a candle before a picture of 
 the Madonna in the library, and this on one occasion served 
 to guide a friend whom we had known in Kome to our house. 
 He was coming to stay with us, and arriving in the evening, 
 was wandering about the road trying in vain to find the 
 house, when through the curtains of a window which were 
 half undrawn, he saw the Madonna with her burning light, 
 and understood at once that there must be the house he 
 sought." 
 
 Occasionally, as was natural, Brother Wilfrid and 
 Brother Antony visited Mr. Newman and his friends 
 at Old Oscott, to which they had given the name of 
 Mary vale. Indeed, it was proposed hy Brother 
 Wilfrid to resign his community into the hands of 
 Mr. Newman, to be governed or altered at his 
 pleasure, but the offer was not accepted. This took 
 place before the introduction of the Oratory into 
 England had been decided upon. 
 
 Brother Wilfrid was requested by the bishop 
 about this time to found a new monastery of his 
 order at Nottingham, and a house and chapel were 
 offered to him for that purpose, but want of funds 
 prevented him from entertaining the project. 
 
 " Perhaps it is quite as well," he wrote in a letter to a 
 Protestant friend (Letter LXXVIIL) describing the bishop's 
 proposal, " that we papists should remain in the catacombs a 
 little longer ; our business is with the poor and artisans ; we 
 must spread there first, before we can expect to find success 
 in higher quarters, or in rural districts. I believe the large 
 manufacturing towns will be converted, and that their weight 
 
302 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1846. 
 
 will decide the rest of England ; and few people have any true 
 idea of how far that work has already gone. For myself I 
 have neither wishes nor anxieties about the matter, in a 
 political point of view : I merely long to increase the fruit of 
 my dear Saviour's Passion, and in my beloved England to 
 increase the number of worshippers of Mary, for I know no 
 better expression. That sweetest, dearest and kindest of 
 mothers is ever with me, and my heart burns, actually burns 
 with the most enthusiastic love for the glorious, mighty, 
 gentle, enthroned Deipara. I never knew what it was to love 
 Jesus till I laid my heart at the feet of Mary, and that great 
 Lady spurned it not. In the streets of Birmingham she is 
 with me, or my heart is far away with her, and I am hardly 
 conscious to myself that it is not centuries ago, right in the 
 heart of the Ages of Faith. Brother of my heart, once 
 Brother in Faith, I cannot describe to you my abounding 
 happiness : I cannot tell you how sweetly dear Catholic truth 
 seems to me, or how plain is the falsehood and treachery and 
 stiff heresy and quibbling schism which yet, but not for long, 
 enthrals my dear friend ; but I must not argue. I think 
 it is best to refrain from that. I am a Brother of the Will 
 of God, and I must wait on that Will, as my rule binds me. 
 Life now is little short of heaven, and the bliss increases 
 daily, because the calmness of it deepens daily ; for I am 
 reading hard, and a quiet rational undoubtingness of the sole 
 exclusive privileges of the Holy Koman Church grows on me 
 as I read. Still I would fain that you could know a little 
 of what I feel; men will say that the fervour of a new 
 convert is of little account. Alas ! a day's fervour in the 
 love of God brings grace enough to make a man a saint; 
 and eight months is long for a fit of fervour, and that it 
 should increase instead of diminish is also strange, and that 
 amid poverty and uncertainty and outward difficulties not a 
 few. How beautifully Oakeley describes a convert's feelings 
 
1846.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 303 
 
 in his three articles in the Dublin, two in the March numher, 
 (on Prayers for England, and Pusey's Sermon) and one in 
 the June numher (on the Ordination Service), and how 
 solemnly Newman describes them in his extraordinary 
 article on Keble in the June numher. I wish everybody 
 
 could read them My mouth waters when you " babble 
 
 o' green fields" and " St. Catherine's by the silver lake;" the 
 thought of the awful gulf that is now betwixt me and flesh, 
 blood, and places I idolized before sends a cold chill over 
 me; but the red cross on my rough habit must keep that 
 little beater down, and bid it beat, not less ardently, but for 
 Jesus only Jesus, my daily Guest, my Lord, my Life, my 
 
 Love, my All 
 
 Most affectionately and devotedly yours, 
 
 WlLFBID OF THE HUMANITY OF JESUS, F.V.D. 
 
 Blessed be the Immaculate Conception of Mary. 
 Viva Gesu, Giuseppe, e Maria ! 
 
 The work at Colmore Terrace progressed steadily, 
 although, many ill-natured reports were circulated 
 against it. Brother Wilfrid mentioned several of 
 these stories in a letter to Mr. Morris, who was at 
 that time at Maryvale, and cautioned him against 
 giving heed to them. 
 
 LETTEB LXXIX. To J. B. MOEKIS, ESQ. 
 
 Voluntas Dei. 
 St. Wilfrid's, Colmore Terrace, Birmingham. 
 
 August 5, 1846. 
 
 Many thanks for your most kind letter. I shall begin 
 by saying that I do not doubt the whole of it, so far as blame 
 is concerned, is quite true and richly deserved by me, and I 
 
304 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1846. 
 
 will try to realize it more and more in the Presence of God 
 by distinct acts. With regard to the rest, I think it well to 
 make some remarks for your information more than anything 
 else. By the way, talking of our plans, we have no " plans :" 
 different things have come before us ab extra, which we could 
 not and cannot but consider ; meanwhile we have been simply 
 praying and communicating to know God's Will, or rather 
 that He should make it known to our superiors. For myself, 
 intellectually, I can argue so equally on both sides, that I do 
 not at all see my way, or want to see it ; morally, I am in the 
 state of the most stonelike indifference, if I know myself, and 
 am not unsettled by the undecided state we are left in. I 
 would not lift up a finger either way, to decide it. 
 
 All you have said, so far as it is any more (and it is a great 
 deal more) than a very well deserved censure on myself, is a 
 strong argument for leaving Birmingham. Here we have lots 
 of strange priests almost daily, and they ask one's views 
 downright, and speak of the Kule, and one can hardly help 
 speaking dogmatically, without in a short visit getting that 
 character of jealous reserve which old Catholics fancy they 
 see in most converts, and by which they are specially dis- 
 gusted. They come at all hours, stay to meals, take one by 
 surprise, throw one into a hurry, and I must not deny that 
 they have not unfrequently put me out of temper ; and I do 
 not think I was in a good humour the night you were here. 
 Hence the importance, even spiritually, of getting out of a 
 large town at present, of withdrawing from notice and remark, 
 of being more with God and one's books for three or four 
 years' training. Here a public position is forced upon us ; 
 I cannot as a young layman without vows shut my doors, 
 without the charge of affectation, or of a wish to hide myself 
 from old Catholics. I do not think that any but Dr. 
 Wiseman, and to some extent Mr. Heneage, know what I 
 have had already to do ; but you do know my own earnest 
 
1846.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 305 
 
 desire to abandon it all and be under obedience, not in 
 command. But Dr. Wiseman holds me here. It is odd 
 enough that one of the very arguments used for my staying 
 is the great edification which many of the strange priests 
 have said they received in this house, and how much they had 
 been struck by some things which they wish to imitate. 
 
 And as to the word Mariolatry, all I meant to say was, 
 that we spent all our time in teaching people what we were 
 not to do to Mary, instead of pushing forward the ardent 
 worship of her, as we ought to do. Mr. K. could not have 
 taken me au pied de la lettre ; and you will remember he fell 
 foul of St. Alphonso's doctrine of equivocation, whom the 
 Church has canonized, declaring that in his works there is 
 nothing rash, scandalous, or quod sapit errorem; and the 
 Church is infallible in materia morum. In good truth it is 
 odd that I should go to Loreto to beg devotion to our dear 
 Lady, and that afterwards in two solemn Communions I 
 should have vowed my life, health, strength, intellect and 
 senses to be her slave and to spread her devotion, in great 
 measure because I feared converts relapsing from want of 
 that great sign of predestination ; and then that it should 
 bethought that I was like one who never " warmed," aa 
 a bishop expressed it to me, to Mary. 
 
 Now for all there may be of self-defence in what I have 
 said, may God forgive me and humble me. I have really 
 written under a sense that it is a very important matter. 
 I am in a position of immense difficulty, and danger no 
 less. I seemed to be placed here, not by myself, but by 
 a continuation of the circumstances under which I was 
 converted. I was actually placed here by the bishop ; he held 
 me here against my will ; nothing is done or " driven" by 
 us without his knowledge and consent ; he writes to warn me 
 that I shall " not be understood, even by many good people," 
 
 but that in spite of that I- am to hold on, confident of his 
 20 
 
306 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1846. 
 
 affection and complete confidence. Lastly, as to my falling 
 
 away, I can only say, my dear J , pray for me. I fear 
 
 I am far more obstinate than vacillating : in old times, to 
 which you allude, I am not aware I ever changed. When I 
 passed from an Evangelical to a Puseyite, I never went 
 the lengths others did, and so they complained, and you 
 amongst the re^, whom I used to think disobedient to 
 Anglicanism. I offended many by leaving Oxford and throw- 
 ing up a literary life, you and Newman among the number ; 
 and you called it fickleness. I can look quietly back upon 
 it, and I believe I took all existing means to find out my 
 vocation, and that I solemnly believed that my vocation was 
 to pastoral activity and not to study. I think so still. I 
 believe I am more reserved than I need be to friends, and so 
 do not in general give all my reasons for conduct, as not 
 much caring to be justified; so I obstinately rejected all 
 the advice you gave about my leaving Ambleside, and I think 
 rightly. 
 
 In 1843 my visit to Rome completely changed me, I 
 grant. I returned with principles as different from those 
 of ordinary Puseyites in one direction, as they had been dif- 
 ferent in the opposite direction from yours and theirs before I 
 went ; till we were both Catholics, you and I never stood on 
 one standpunkt of religious belief; and perhaps few know 
 how slight (sacraments excepted of course) the change has 
 been to me ; the Italianism of 1843, kept up in a disadvan- 
 tageous way till I left Elton, merely goes ahead more freely 
 and naturally and honestly.* I twice oscillated towards 
 Rome, and Newman forcibly held me back ; I am not aware 
 
 * Mr. Faber wrote to Dr. Grant after his conversion: 
 " By the grace of God, and the love of Rome in my heart as 
 you put it there, I am a Catholic." 
 
1846.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 307 
 
 that I ever took a step back, i. e., vacillated, for a moment. 
 But, after all, whether naturally vacillating or not, one cannot 
 realize too much that it is simply God's grace (to which the 
 Anglican doctrine of habit, so abhorrent to my old evan- 
 gelical leaven throughout, contributes nothing) which keeps one 
 out of mortal sin, and that if He is angry with me I shall fall. 
 To me, one of the most striking things is, that the more 
 Roman I get, the more I seem to recover, only in a safe way 
 and with makeweights, of old boyish evangelical feelings, 
 instead of the cold gentility-izing ethics of Williams and 
 others, which never came natural to me. 
 
 However, thank you once more very much for your letter, 
 and pray that it may have its right effect. Seek my perfec- 
 tion, but do not be alarmed at what you hear people say; 
 remember, the bishop even forewarned me of this ; I am in 
 his hands ; I have not one secret from him ; you must have 
 confidence that all will come right. Alas! that such an one as 
 I should have to be where I am ! it is but yesterday that Mr. 
 Heneage has peremptorily ordered me to take a line of con- 
 duct in a certain matter which will have a most proud pre- 
 suming appearance; I ventured to object, but he bids me 
 forget myself, and realize the position the bishop has placed 
 me in ; and that I must disregard my own reputation, 
 because of my duty as superior to others. But, my dear 
 friend, if you give ear to what you hear around you, you will 
 be full of fears, and the worst of those fears will be that they 
 will not quicken, but distract your prayers for one, whose 
 predestination for anything you know may be made depen- 
 dent upon them. 
 
 In the month of July the Brothers began to think 
 of extending their operations by the erection either 
 in their garden, or on some ground close by, of a 
 larger chapel, in which they could occasionally 
 
308 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1846 
 
 have some popular services ; and enquiries were 
 being made concerning designs and estimates, when 
 an event occurred which entirely changed their 
 plans. 
 
 " I must tell you,'* Brother Wilfrid wrote to Mr. Watts 
 Russell on the 23rd July, (Letter LXXX.), " that we do not 
 seem to get on here for reasons too long to enter into ; and I 
 have vowed my life to my dear Lady, body, soul, and spirit, 
 to spread her devotion ; and we are keeping a Novena to her 
 mother, St. Anne, with great fervour, and are learning God's 
 Will about buying a site, &c. &c. And would you believe it ? 
 on Tuesday, Lord Shrewsbury, who has an enthusiastic I 
 don't know what for me and for my order, sends to offer me as 
 a free gift a piece of land adjoining the church at Cheadle, 
 which he has given 1,730 for! and Cotton Hall for the 
 maison de campagne of the order, and Newman rushed in to 
 tell me the news. I hesitated, because God's Will is my 
 
 rule 
 
 " Strange to say ! Saturday is the last day of the Novena 
 to the glorious St. Anne, and Lord Shrewsbury has oddly 
 fixed to come over to me from Alton Towers on that very day 
 to have my final answer, and Mr. Heneage has ordered me to 
 decide nothing, but that when Lord Shrewsbury speaks God 
 will put into my mouth what to say. You may judge of Lord 
 Shrewsbury's kind feelings by the tone of his last: 'Dear and 
 Rev. Sir, I am much obliged by your kind favour, and shall 
 do myself the pleasure of calling at the monastery between five 
 and six on Saturday afternoon, if it be not too inconvenient 
 an hour, that is, if I hear nothing to the contrary. Lady 
 S. is also very anxious to make your acquaintance, and, 
 as I presume that your Kule excludes ladies from your 
 precincts, we must hope you will be able to find a moment's 
 leisure on Sunday to come and see us at the Railroad Hotel, 
 
1846.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 309 
 
 as you were good enough to offer to do. I trust to hear that 
 you have not altogether turned a deaf ear to my message 
 through Mr. Newman. I have just spoken to our good 
 bishop on the subject, and lie at least approves the project, 
 and I still hope before long to show you the localities, as we 
 cannot yet (I had refused his invitation) renounce our expec- 
 tation of seeing you here (Alton Towers) on occasion of the 
 dedication of St. Giles. Believe me, Eev. and dear Sir, 
 very truly and faithfully yours, Shrewsbury.' It is but a few 
 months since two Protestant parsons gossiped over a crude 
 dream in the garden at Benefield, and but seven months 
 since the founder was a beggared expectant of a prison from 
 his Protestant successor; surely God must have a purpose 
 upon us." 
 
 The princely offer of Lord Shrewsbury was made 
 the subject of most anxious consideration and 
 prayer. The opinions of Brother Wilfrid's friends 
 were much divided ; the Birmingham clergy, natu- 
 rally unwilling to lose such valuable auxiliaries, 
 were opposed to the removal of the community from 
 the town and neighbourhood. Mr. Newman, on 
 the other hand, who had brought Lord Shrewsbury's 
 message to Brother Wilfrid, was strongly in favour 
 of the proposed change, thinking it a great advan- 
 tage for the Brothers, as removing the danger of 
 their being too soon swallowed up by active work, 
 and thus breaking down. Bishop Walsh and Mr. 
 Heneage took the same side ; and in the following 
 letter from Brother Wilfrid to Mr. Watts Russell, 
 dated Aug. 2, 1846, an account is given of the 
 arguments for and against the scheme, and of the 
 
310 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1846. 
 
 state of holy indifference in which he himself desired 
 to await the decision of his superiors ; 
 
 LETTER LXXXL 
 
 Lord Shrewsbury came on Saturday week, and then 
 Lord and Lady S. came on Sunday, as I preferred her 
 coming to us to my going to an hotel. But I am so startled 
 with the possibility of doing what is not God's sweet peaceful 
 Will, that I have begged for time, and Lord S. has 
 kindly granted it. The Birmingham people are affectionately 
 up in arms against our going, and Lord S. found the 
 feeling so strong that he said he would be contented with 
 a filiation, and says I may divide his offer if I please, and 
 take Cheadle without Cotton or Cotton without Cheadle, if I 
 can't manage both. Thus the offer has been the means of 
 showing us that we are more esteemed here than we had 
 any notion of; but I don't see how a filiation can be 
 managed so early. They do not like the idea of being 
 separated from me, any of them, and think they are not 
 sufficiently trained in the spirit of the Rule and Order. 
 Then again comes the question whether the change of locality 
 will not necessitate some amount of change in the Rule, and 
 so in the peculiarity of the Institute. Indeed the pros and 
 cons are balanced with a perplexing nicety. My simple 
 business, as superior, is to realize, as far as possible, the 
 indifferentia of St. Ignatius, and I hope by God's grace that 
 I have done so. The whole Congregation is pressing me on 
 in the direction of change, and I feel certainly burdened by 
 the duty of decision. I went to Cheadle on Thursday night 
 to collect facts, and to Cotton on Friday morning, and 
 returned to St. Wilfrid's the same night, lest green trees and 
 fresh air and Elton-looking rustics should do me a mischief ; 
 
1846.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 311 
 
 so far as I know of myself, I feel just as a lifeless stone about 
 the two, but I dread keenly, most keenly, the swerving from 
 the V." D. in the matter. We are, in consequence, keeping the 
 month of August to the Heart of Mary, and thirty-three 
 days to St. Joseph and eighteen Communions to him, that we 
 may know God's will ; and meanwhile I am sad and over- 
 weighed, but in perfect peace. They warn us here that if 
 we leave Birmingham we shall strike a serious blow at the 
 interests of religion generally, and give scandal ; and one 
 priest says that the whole offer is a plain temptation of the 
 devil. However distressing it is to be thus driven two ways, 
 I hope I am no more shaken by this vehement positiveness 
 than elloui by the offer itself. I fear we have not money 
 enough for a separate filiation ; and besides I think (if it is 
 not conceit) that at present they could not do without me in 
 a house. To be at first more separated from the world, to 
 retire, as converts jealously regarded, from public gaze for 
 preparation, to gain more influence with God first of all by 
 increased sanctification ; to avoid being prematurely forced 
 on work, and so breaking down : these are all in favour of 
 moving. But, God willing, I will not decide the question 
 myself. His Will is the one thing ; it seems to magnify its 
 own sweetness the longer and the more lovingly we adore it ; 
 one is fit to burst out into raptures of venturesome congratu- 
 lation of God that His Will is so all- strong, and we so base 
 and vile ; and to wonder that He has not crushed us in the 
 path of some great Providence instead of making such as we 
 are a part and parcel of His overwhelming onward-bearing 
 Will. Indeed, indeed, when the burden of government is 
 heaviest, one can gaze on the glittering door of the taber- 
 nacle that holds our willing Prisoner of Love, till one can 
 almost fancy one hears the huge Will of the Supremely 
 Blessed making melody as it moves along and wheels round 
 us, and sparkles in its rapidity, giving light for a moment to 
 
312 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1846. 
 
 its own beautiful movements, and then leaving us on our 
 knees in the darkness once again, with the music of the 
 same perpetual "Will all round ahout. But after all, the hot 
 choking alleys of Birmingham, with the weary sacrifice of 
 limb and spirits to our neighbour, are sweeter, with that 
 music of THE WILL in them, than the solemn woods 
 and sighing yews of Cotton, however it might seem that we 
 should be more with Jesus there, if it be not the music of 
 THE WILL, but the poetry of SELF which should stir the 
 spirit there. Viva Gesit, Giuseppe e Maria ! That ends all 
 my consultations, for with them the decision must rest. 
 Meanwhile, pray for us that we may be guided, and pray 
 also that Dr. Wiseman may be guided in what he shall 
 decide when he returns from Germany. With this I give 
 three cheers for indifference, and remain, with kindest love, 
 Very affectionately yours, 
 
 WlLFKID OF THE HUMANITY OF JESUS, 
 
 F. V. D. 
 
 On the 1st of September, the beautiful Church of 
 St. Giles erected by Lord Shrewsbury at Cheadle 
 was solemnly dedicated, and Brother "Wilfrid, 
 Brother Antony, and another member of the com*- 
 munity, were invited to Alton Towers, in order that 
 they might assist in the ceremony of consecration, 
 which was performed by Bishop Walsh. It is 
 probable that on this occasion, if not sooner, Brother 
 Wilfrid signified to Lord Shrewsbury his grateful 
 acceptance of the offer of the house and grounds of 
 Cotton, or as it was more commonly called, Cotton 
 Hall. Thither the community was transferred from 
 Colmore Terrace in the early part of September, the 
 
1846.] . FREDERICK WILLIAM FABEK. 313 
 
 first Sunday spent there being the Feast of the 
 Holy Name of Mary, Sept. 13, 1846. 
 
 The position of Cotton Hall was in many ways an 
 advantageous one. Standing at a considerable 
 elevation on the north-east side of a deep valley, the 
 lower part of which was filled with thick wood, it 
 looked across to an opposite bank, crowned by a 
 clump of Scotch firs. "With a sloping lawn in front, 
 trees at the west side, and a spacious garden, it 
 must have seemed a paradise to those accustomed 
 to the narrow lodgings, flowerless yards, and smoky 
 atmosphere of such a town as Birmingham.* 
 
 The Brothers of the Will of God entered at once 
 with zeal and energy upon their new work. Many 
 alterations were made in the grounds by the for- 
 mation of gardens and walks, and the plantation 
 of trees, This was principally done by the lay 
 brothers, one of whom had been gardener at Elton 
 Rectory, the choir brothers, who spent the mornings 
 in study, joining them in the afternoon. At first a 
 room in the house was used as a chapel, but as this 
 was totally inadequate to its purpose, it was deter- 
 mined that a suitable church should be built, in the 
 Gothic style, from designs by Mr. Pugin, the neces- 
 sary funds being provided by three of the brothers, 
 assisted by a donation of 1000 from Lord Shrews- 
 
 * Many of the characteristic features of St. Wilfrid's, 
 Cotton, are alluded to in Father Faber's Hymn, Flowers for 
 the Altar, No. 92, edition of 1862. . 
 
314 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1846. 
 
 bury. It is believed that the principal contributor 
 was Brother Antony, although the mention of this 
 fact is carefully avoided in his notes relating to that 
 period. The first plan was simple enough, but as 
 the work proceeded, many additions were made to 
 it, and other* buildings were undertaken for the use 
 of the community. The Brothers had the advan- 
 tage of a resident priest, at first the Rev. Mr. 
 Kennedy, who had assisted at their reception into 
 the Church at Northampton, and afterwards the 
 Rev. Dr. Paa di Bruno. On the 5th of October, 
 not quite a month after the migration to Cotton, 
 henceforward known as St. "Wilfrid's, Brother 
 Wilfrid wrote to Mr. Watts Russell ; 
 
 LETTER LXXXII. 
 
 You can scarcely form an idea of the confusion, hurry, 
 work, I may actually say ubiquity, which have heen required 
 of poor me during the past weeks. From Alton Towers to 
 Cotton, at Cotton from the house to the garden, from the new 
 church to the new school, from the quarry to the wood, from 
 bricklayers and carpenters to painters and glaziers, from Dr. 
 Winter the Dominican to Mr. Winter the steward, from 
 Lord Shrewsbury to Brother Chad, trees, walls, windows, 
 seem to echo Brother Wilfrid, Brother Wilfrid, and the 
 unfortunate Brother Wilfrid was everywhere but in the one 
 place where he ought to have heen, viz., before the Blessed 
 Sacrament. 
 
 I can say no more now than, 1. that I am to receive 
 minor orders with Brothers Antony and Austin, at the 
 Towers on Monday; 2. that the bishop had fixed St. 
 
1846.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 315 
 
 Edward's day, but that ultimately turning out inconvenient to 
 Lord Shrewsbury, it will now be, D.V., on St. Wilfrid's day; 
 3. that on the same day, the bishop with mitre and crosier 
 will walk round the foundations of my new church of St. 
 Wilfrid, and bless it, and sing the litanies over the rising 
 walls; Pugin says it will be "the only perfect church in 
 England,'* with "an east window he could die for;" 4. 
 that I desire you much to pray for me that I may have a 
 most abundant and overflowing share of man's scorn and bad 
 opinion and calumny; I think God means it, and I am 
 earnestly begging it ; I think, with His grace, I can drink 
 that portion of our dear Lord's cup. 5. Pray also for the 
 Catholic clergy, that they may have more of the ecclesiastical 
 spirit, and be less like ministers; that God may raise up 
 Newman or some one to get us a " seminaire," as distin- 
 guished from our present Oxford-mimicking colleges. I 
 have come to see that that is what we need; turn all your 
 prayers that way, and if you can get hold of it, read the new 
 Vie de M. Olier, Fondateur de S. Sulpice. 
 
 I go into three days' retreat on Wednesday night, and into 
 a ten days' one a week after, the first time under an Italian, 
 the second under an English Jesuit. 
 
 These arrangements were carried out as projected. 
 Brother Wilfrid received the tonsure and the four 
 minor orders from Bishop Walsh, on the 12th of 
 October, the feast of his patron Saint, together with 
 Brother Antony and Brother Austin, and on the 
 same day the first stone of the new church of St. 
 Wilfrid was blessed by the bishop. The ten days' 
 retreat spoken of in the foregoing letter was given 
 to the community by the Rev. Eather Cobb, S.J., 
 before the Feast of All Saints. The unbroken 
 
316 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1846. 
 
 silence, and the long hours of solitary meditation 
 were more than Brother Wilfrid's frame could bear : 
 he was exhausted and enfeebled by the months 
 of anxiety and fatigue through which he had 
 passed, and during the retreat he was harassed by 
 the idea, which Father Cobb regarded as a tempta- 
 tion, that he had mistaken his vocation, and was 
 really called to be a Jesuit. The result was that 
 at the conclusion of the exercises he was seized 
 by a violent attack of nervous fever. Although he 
 was not deprived of consciousness, the symptoms 
 were so alarming that on the evening of All Saints' 
 day it was judged expedient to give him the 
 Sacrament of Extreme Unction. A little later he 
 made his profession of faith, bade his community 
 farewell, and received the last blessing and Papal 
 Indulgence, whilst Brother Antony put into his 
 hands a crucifix which had been given him by the 
 Holy Father. It pleased God, however, to hear 
 the pleadings of the Brothers for their father's life, 
 and to restore him in a short time to his usual 
 health. 
 
 The retreat was productive of great good to the 
 community. By the advice of Father Cobb, several 
 changes were made in the Brothers' manner of life, 
 and the kindly encouragement which he gave was a 
 stimulus to increased fervour and exertion. 
 
 As soon as possible after their establishment at 
 St. Wilfrid's, the Brothers began to do a little 
 missionary work among their neighbours. A 
 
1846.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABEK. 31? 
 
 beginning was made by opening a school for boys 
 in a loft over the stable, and as early as the month 
 of November the numbers amounted to forty-six. 
 On Sundays the scholars were catechised in the 
 chapel by Brother Wilfrid, and their parents and 
 others were invited to attend. Still the work was 
 much limited by the fact that there were no priests 
 in the community, and it was not until after 
 Brother "Wilfrid's ordination that any considerable 
 number of conversions took place. 
 
 In the meantime, the enemies of the community 
 spread many reports to its disadvantage. The 
 following extract from one of Brother Wilfrid's 
 letters will suffice to show the absurd nature of 
 some of those in circulation. (October, 1846.) 
 
 LETTER LXXXIII.To M. WATTS BUSSELL, ESQ. 
 
 I am said to have strangled one of my monks : the 
 
 story is all over the land and is believed. Mrs. K came 
 
 to see me at St. Wilfrid's to " see the man ;" and, glaring at 
 me in silence like a tigress, she told Lady Shrewsbury and 
 Lady Arundel that I was quite capable of all she heard, and 
 that her faith in it was established ! 
 
 A relative of Brother Antony has sent a Scotch physician 
 here to inspect and report ; the said relative has also written 
 a letter in which I am " an ambitious villain and a hellish 
 ruler," and that wherever he goes in London "the finger of 
 scorn is pointed at" me. God be praised ! this looks like 
 work and vocation, and a seal of heavenly love. This 
 obloquy is what I have lately been praying for : God grant 
 that I may have the cup of the Mount of Olives to the dregs ! 
 
318 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1847. 
 
 I never felt so utterly to belong to and to love my sweet 
 Jesus as now. I beg you never to say a word in my defence 
 to any one ; I keep a most tranquil silence : I feel most for 
 the poor fratelli who mourn in silly sympathy for me. 
 
 In the course of Advent Brother Wilfrid was 
 summoned by the Bishop to Oscott, and received 
 from him the order of subdeacon on the 19th of 
 December, the last circumstance deserving of notice 
 in this eventful year. 
 
 Among the first to be attracted to the coTn.irnmi.ty 
 of the Brothers of the Will of God by the repu- 
 tation of its superior and the development of its 
 institute was Mr. Frederick Fortescue Wells, who 
 was admitted as a novice in the beginning of the 
 year 1847, under the name of Brother Alban. His 
 family resided near Elton, and he thus made the 
 acquaintance of Mr. Eaber, from whom he learned 
 many Catholic principles. These soon worked their 
 way out to their legitimate conclusion. Whilst an 
 undergraduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, he 
 heard of Mr. Paber's conversion, and at once 
 obtained leave of absence from his college tutor, 
 with the intention of proceeding to Birmingham to 
 see his friend. He had not then made up his mind 
 to become a Catholic, but in a few days his remain- 
 ing doubts were solved, and he was received into 
 the Church by Mr. Moore. He spent the months 
 of December and January in London, where he 
 became acquainted with Mr. Hutchison, Mr. Eowe, 
 and other converts. He also received the sacra- 
 
1847.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 319 
 
 ment of Confirmation from Bishop Griffiths. Being 
 still under age, he was committed by his family 
 to the care of a Protestant clergyman as tutor, in 
 the hope of bringing him back to the English 
 Church. His faith, however, was proof against all 
 such attempts, and he was allowed to practise the 
 duties of his religion without further hindrance. 
 In the course of the summer of 1846 he renewed 
 his intercourse with Brother Wilfrid, and occasion- 
 ally passed a few days with the community at 
 Colmore Terrace. At this time he first expressed 
 his desire to become a Brother of the Will of God, 
 although he could not carry out his wish until he 
 came of age in the following January. In the 
 meantime, however, he accompanied the Brothers to 
 the opening of the new church at Cheadle on the 
 1st of September, and took an active part in the 
 removal of the community from Colmore Terrace to 
 St. Wilfrid's. It was therefore as an old friend 
 that he was received by the Wilfridians, when the 
 completion of his twenty-first year enabled him to 
 join them. The natural brightness of his disposi- 
 tion soon endeared him to all, whilst his talents and 
 energy rendered him a valuable coadjutor in mis- 
 sionary work. 
 
 At the end of January Brother Wilfrid was 
 summoned to Derby to meet the bishop, who in- 
 formed him that he was to receive the diaconate 
 on the Saturday before Passion Sunday, termed 
 " Sitientes," occurring in that year on the 20th of 
 
320 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1847. 
 
 March, the feast of St. Cuthbert, patron of Durham 
 and of University College, Oxford, and the priest- 
 hood on Holy Saturday, April the 3rd, the feast of 
 St. Richard of Chichester, and the anniversary of 
 his father's death. 
 
 He took this opportunity to arrange with 
 Messrs. Richardson the puhlication of a series of 
 Lives of the Saints, for which he had heen making 
 preparations for some time. He had obtained the 
 assistance of many of his friends in the translation 
 from foreign languages of the lives of servants of 
 God, whether canonized, beatified, declared vener- 
 able by authority, or commonly reputed among 
 Catholics to have died in the odour of sanctity. 
 The object of the collection, as stated in the pros- 
 pectus, was, 
 
 " 1. To supply English Catholics with a cabinet library 
 of interesting as well as edifying reading, especially for 
 families, schools and religious refectories, which would, for 
 many reasons, be particularly adapted for these times, and 
 would, with God's blessing, act as a counter influence to the 
 necessarily deadening and chilling effects which the neigh- 
 bourhood of heresy and the consequent prevalence of earthly 
 principles and low views of grace may have on the temper and 
 habits of mind even of the faithful ; 
 
 "2. To present to our other countrymen a number of 
 samples of the fruit which the system, doctrine, and moral 
 discipline established by the holy and blessed Council of 
 Trent have produced, and which will be, to inquirers really 
 in earnest about their souls, an argument more cogent than 
 any that mere controversy can allege, and 
 
1847.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 321 
 
 "3. To satisfy a humble desire which they feel to spread 
 the honour and love of the ever-blessed Queen of Saints, 
 by showing how greatly an intense devotion to her aided in 
 forming those prodigies of heroic virtue with which the Holy 
 Ghost has been pleased to adorn the Church since the schism 
 of Luther, more than in almost any previous times , and whose 
 actions, with a few exceptions, are known to English laymen 
 only in a very general way, and from meagre abridgments ; 
 while the same motive will prevent the series being confined 
 to modern Saints exclusively." 
 
 It was proposed that six volumes should be 
 published in the course of each year, and that the 
 series should commence as soon as practicable 
 with the life of St. Philip Neri. This choice 
 indicates the great devotion to that Saint which 
 existed in the Wilfridian Community, and that 
 drawing towards his spirit which ultimately led its 
 members into the Congregation of the Oratory. 
 The translation of his life had been begun by Mr. 
 Faber at Elton, and was completed by him at 
 St. "Wilfrid's, with the assistance of Brothers Antony 
 and Alban. 
 
 During the short interval between his return 
 from Derby and the time fixed for his ordination, 
 Brother Wilfrid applied himself with assiduity to 
 the preparation necessary for his reception of the 
 priesthood. Besides the prosecution of his theo- 
 logical studies, he disposed himself by prayer and 
 penance for the celebration of the adorable sacrifice 
 
 of the Mass. " Of course," he wrote to Mr. Morris, 
 21, 
 
322 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1847. 
 
 who was engaged in the same preparation, "one's 
 utter indignity to offer the Most Holy is so next to 
 infinite, that the very difference between saint and 
 sinner dwindles in looking at it : all you say of 
 yourself is of course only a terrific a fortiori for me, 
 whom you have had for years to lug on behind by 
 rebukes and example and secret prayers. I never 
 think of saying Mass without throwing myself at 
 our sweetest Mother's feet, and holding my peace, 
 even of my own unworthiness ; she will give me 
 over, or has done so, to St. Joseph." 
 
 According to the arrangements made at Derby, 
 Brother "Wilfrid received the diaconate on the 20th 
 of March, and the priesthood on Holy Saturday. 
 After the ordination, which was held by Bishop 
 Wiseman at Oscott, he received faculties to hear 
 confessions, and was entrusted with the sole 
 charge of the mission of Cotton. He returned 
 there the same afternoon, and was met at some 
 distance from the house by the people, who took 
 the horses out of the carriage, and dragged it 
 in triumph to St. Wilfrid's. That evening he 
 began his work by hearing confessions, and on 
 Easter Day he said his first Mass. On the fourth 
 Sunday in Lent, in addressing the people, he had 
 used the following words : 
 
 "For eight years of my life I have been a Protestant 
 clergyman with important parishes entrusted to my care, until 
 it pleased Almighty God of His infinite mercy to show me 
 the dreadful errors and unscriptural doctrines of Protestan- 
 
1847.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 323 
 
 tism, and to lead me into His True Church, and give me the 
 unspeakable happiness, a happiness which increases every 
 day, of being a Catholic. During those eight years I gave 
 up my life to the poor, lived among their children, was 
 continually in their cottages, or at their deathbeds ; and, as 
 an Englishman bred and born, no object was so dear to me as 
 the English poor, so miserably neglected, illused, or coldly 
 treated as they are now ; and now that I am on the point of 
 being ordained a Catholic priest, I feel even more strongly 
 than ever the desire to devote all my health and strength to 
 win my poor countrymen to the true light of the Gospel, to 
 console them in all their tribulations, whether of body or of 
 soul, to sacrifice my own ease and comfort for them, and 
 knowing so well as I do the trials and difficulties of the poor, 
 to endeavour to make religion as easy and as kindly to them 
 as possible to make the yoke of Jesus what He Himself 
 called it, a light yoke and merciful." 
 
 The Brothers had been engaged, since the begin- 
 ning of the year, in missionary work among their 
 neighbours, and the ordination of Brother Wilfrid 
 enabled them to organize their labours with greater 
 effect. The population, being thinly scattered over 
 the country, was not easily accessible, and a yast 
 field of operation was open, inasmuch as, with the 
 exception of Alton and Cheadle, there were no 
 other missions within several miles. Districts were 
 accordingly marked out and assigned to the 
 Brothers, who each devoted a great portion of the 
 day to a systematic visitation of every house within 
 their limits, The people were invited to assist at 
 the services, and instructed in the more necessary 
 
324 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1847. 
 
 parts of Christian doctrine. The fruit of this was 
 soon apparent, for such as visited St. Wilfrid's 
 were favourably impressed, and doubtless contrasted 
 the zeal and energy of their Catholic friends with 
 the neglect of their own ministers. During the 
 summer it was Brother Wilfrid's custom to preach 
 on Sundays in a yard near the house, or under the 
 beech trees in the garden, as the chapel was far 
 too small to contain the numbers who flocked to 
 hear him, 
 
 LETTER LXXXIV. To M. WATTS RUSSELL, ESQ. 
 
 Eve of St. Mary Magdalene, 1847. 
 
 We are fairly in for work, God has greatly blessed 
 our poor missionary labours, and I think I have taken 
 about a hundred and fifty into the Church since Easter. 
 Brother Antony will be ordained priest on the Assumption, 
 and this will be an immense help to us. Brother Austin 
 will be ordained deacon at the same time, and Brother 
 Alban tonsured and put into minor orders.* As time, and 
 study, and work go on, the community seems to consolidate, 
 and things look more and more like permanence. The roof 
 is now being put on our church, and a most glorious build- 
 ing it will be, tower and spire all complete; and we have 
 had five painted windows given us, but they will not be 
 finished for two years or more. I returned last night from 
 Birmingham, where I had been preaching at the opening of 
 
 * The retreat previous to this ordination was given by 
 Father Dominic, of the Congregation of the Passion. 
 
1847.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 325 
 
 the new church of our Lady at Handsworth. I preached for 
 I think more than an hour on the Madonna, and then cut 
 back to St. Wilfrid's without going to the banquet in the 
 House of Mercy, whereby I escaped all criticism, i. e., escaped 
 hearing it. 
 
 In a very few months there remained hut one 
 Protestant family in the parish, and the Protestant 
 church, which stood within the grounds of Cotton 
 Hall itself, was almost entirely ahandoned.* 
 
 So great, a change was not accomplished without 
 opposition. In Brother Wilfrid's correspondence 
 with Mr. Watts Russell, the following passage 
 occurs, under the date of July 20th, 1847: "We 
 have much fighting and squahhling with parsons 
 and Methodists, and I preach in the streets 
 in hahit and with crucifix." On one occasion 
 Father Faher, as he was now commonly termed, 
 was followed into the room of a sick man hy 
 a minister of the Primitive Methodists, who 
 insisted on remaining there to hear what was 
 said in confession, and it was only when the poor 
 invalid had three times implored him to leave the 
 house that he reluctantly agreed to do so, Father 
 Paher saying that at another time and place he 
 should he ready to discuss points of doctrine with 
 him. The minister, Mr. M., seems to have 
 
 * Brother Antony wrote : " We have converted the pew 
 opener, leaving the parson only his clerk and two drunken 
 men as his regular communicants. 
 
326 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1847. 
 
 understood this as a challenge to a public disputa- 
 tion, and, on Father Faber 's leaving the house, 
 began an argument with him in the presence of 
 several persons. Being worsted in this, he proposed 
 a more formal dispute at another time, (which 
 however he declined to fix,) taking the Word of 
 God only as the basis of it, but insisting on the 
 acceptance of the Protestant translation. Father 
 Faber replied that in order to avoid the question 
 of different translations, it would be better to make 
 use of the original Greek. For this Mr. M. was 
 not prepared, and after a correspondence of some 
 length, in which Father Faber was treated with 
 considerable discourtesy, not to say insult, Mr. M. 
 contrived to evade the proposed discussion. 
 
 In protesting against the abuse which his adver- 
 sary substituted for argument, Father Faber took 
 occasion to point out to the Protestants of the 
 neighbourhood the unfair manner in which the 
 controversy was conducted, Catholic priests being 
 treated as prisoners called up to the bar for sen- 
 tence, not as opponents with equal rights in a 
 dispute. He also expressed his belief that many 
 conversions were due to the violence of the tac- 
 tics adopted by Mr. M. and other clergymen. His 
 words were : 
 
 "What has been the policy of our adversaries, and the 
 fashion of their warfare ? One clergyman of the Establish- 
 ment rides into our garden on his pony, and refusing to bow 
 or return my salutation, tells me that because I persist in 
 
1847.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. - 327 
 
 trying to convert his people and visiting them in their own 
 houses, my ' conduct is neither that of a Christian, a gentle- 
 man, or an honest man;' that he is 'on the look out to 
 catch me breaking the penal laws, and to make an example 
 of me/ 
 
 " You and yours are far more effective Catholic missionaries 
 than we are ; and I assure you hardly a week passes without 
 some one or more stragglers being driven into the bosom of 
 the holy Roman Church, declaring themselves fairly wearied 
 out by the incessant curses fulminated against us from the 
 pulpits of the State Church, and humbly echoed back, with 
 fury even wilder still, from the Dissenters' chapel and camp- 
 meeting, and desirous to seek a refuge where they hear only 
 of Almighty God, of the love of Jesus, and of duty, charity, 
 peace, and kindly affection towards all, whether Catholic or 
 Protestant. You and your allies of the establishment have, 
 indeed, done our work well and wisely, though most unin- 
 tentionally; and had you all been our hired and salaried 
 servants, you could not have done it better. We shall go on 
 as heretofore, in the face of secret spite and of unmanly 
 persecution, without one feeling of ill-will towards either 
 methodists, clergymen, or others, and daily praying for them 
 all; men of peace, yet ready for war when you choose to 
 provoke us to it, but war in your own camp and by your own 
 fireside; and though I am sure you will forgive us if we 
 cannot at all times resist a good-humoured joke against you, 
 when you persist in laying yourself open to it, one thing, by 
 God's grace, you will not provoke us to, and that is, one 
 really uncharitable thought or one really unkindly word ; and 
 you yourself should always have a good-tempered and a 
 smiling welcome if ever you choose to call upon us; and 
 while from State Church and Methodist camp the furious 
 thunder of anathemas and curses week after week breaks the 
 blessed stillness of the holy Sabbath, we will be content to go 
 
328 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1847. 
 
 on in our old way, preaching Jesus Christ and Him crucified, 
 and love to the poor whom Jesus left behind Him to fill His 
 place and for His followers to love." 
 
 In the account of this controversy, published at 
 the time, Father Paber left the whole matter to 
 the common sense, the English fairness, and the 
 Christian gentleness of the lovers of truth, remark- 
 ing that the Protestant attack " was like an angry 
 child beating the huge buttress of a strong stone 
 church, because it has hurt its foot against it, 
 breaking and bruising its own poor little knuckles, 
 and then crying, half with pain and half with spite, 
 because the hard old church will not tumble down 
 for its puny knocks." 
 
 In the case of one of Brother Wilfrid's most 
 cherished schemes, he had to encounter the oppo- 
 sition of those of his own faith. So little familiar 
 were English readers with the supernatural mani- 
 festations which abound in the biographies of the 
 Saints, that exception was. taken in several quar- 
 ters to the publication of the Life of St. Philip 
 Neri. 
 
 LETTER LXXXV. 
 
 September 23, 1847. 
 
 I ought to tell you (Brother Wilfrid wrote to Mr. 
 Watts Kussell) that, like all my schemes, even our Saints' 
 Lives are ^in a perilous storm. All this is only a proof 
 that the series is already doing the work we intended 
 it to do, and that opposition should arise in so unex- 
 pected a quarter, and upon so clearly right an action, is 
 
1847.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 32$ 
 
 extremely consoling, and goes far towards proving the Divine 
 approval. If we can get eight or ten volumes fairly out, we 
 shall be too strong to be disturbed. The third volume, 
 containing St. Rose of Lima, Blessed Colomba of Rieti, and 
 St. Juliana Falconieri, will cause the storm to wax louder, 
 
 unless I am very much mistaken I refused to preach at 
 
 the opening of the new church at Rugby, thinking to be 
 humble and quiet, but in vain. On Sunday week I have to go 
 to Wolverhampton to rouse an educational movement there ; 
 and the four following Sundays and Mondays I am going to 
 give a mission in the Potteries, fifteen miles off, where I may 
 have a chance of martyrdom. Think of me amid the glories 
 of Christian Rome on those Sunday evenings in October, all 
 dedicated to dearest Mama ! I shall be waving my crucifix 
 about in a crowd of those rough heathen potters. Thus, by 
 God's grace on our vileness, the Wilfridians are allowed to 
 work their double work, against ignorance and brutal sin 
 among these lost poor of Christ, and against mezzo-protestante 
 freddezza by the Lives of the Saints. What an immense 
 pleasure it is that you are working with us in this ! I often 
 think in the middle of the weary drudgery what invisible 
 secret good this or that life may do what love to Jesus and 
 Mary it may breed what souls it may stir onward to perfec- 
 tion and how the blessed Saints will love those who thus 
 work to manifest Quam mirabilis est Deus in sanctis suis. 
 
 The Community of the Brothers of the Will of 
 God had now been in existence sufficiently long 
 to admit of the vows of religion being taken by 
 its members. Brother Wilfrid accordingly proposed 
 that he and Brother Antony, the only ones who 
 were priests, should visit London in the course of 
 Advent, and pronounce their vows in the hands 
 
330 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1847. 
 
 of Bishop Wiseman, who was then administrator 
 of the London District. Before his lordship's 
 answer was received, news arrived in England of 
 Father Newman's proximate return as superior of 
 the Oratory, and the idea of joining that Congrega- 
 tion again presented itself to Brother "Wilfrid's 
 mind. His own account of this, taken from a 
 letter of Decemher llth to Mr. Watts Russell, shall 
 be given without abridgment. 
 
 LETTER LXXXVI. To M. WATTS EUSSELL, ESQ. 
 
 On the feast of St. Andrew, St. Wilfrid's patron Saint, 
 I chose for my next morning's meditation St. Joseph's delay 
 about putting our Lady away, -and his sorrow ; and, reflecting 
 on my own responsible position, I asked as the fruit of my 
 meditation the gift of counsel and the grace of prudence ; you 
 must know that our Wednesday's meditation is always on 
 St. Joseph. The next morning I rose at five, and made my 
 meditation ; it was full of distractions, but I took pains with 
 it, although I had no particular sweetness in it, nor was there 
 anything signal about it in any way. Towards the conclusion, 
 when making my colloquies, and repeating my petition for 
 counsel and prudence, when nothing was farther from my 
 thoughts, all on a sudden I felt an interior call to join the 
 Oratory of St. Philip, and in one instant all the perplexity 
 of the faculties of my soul which I had experienced for some 
 weeks was calmed. I ought to have told you, by the way, 
 that we were preparing to take our vows. I immediately set 
 myself to work on my knees to argue against this call, and to 
 combat it in every way. I appealed to St. Joseph, our own 
 special patron and superior, but he seemed to answer that 
 God's Will was his great end, and that we were to go, with 
 
1S47.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 331 
 
 other like things. I then took the relic of St. Philip, and I 
 appealed to him as now enjoying the Beatific Vision, and 
 having no self-love ahout his own institute, hut he seemed to 
 answer that all had heen his doing hitherto, and now as the 
 consummation : that I had begun to translate his life at 
 Elton, that he had heen my model there, that my rule was 
 only an expression of his spirit adapted to England, and that 
 now the Vicar of God had himself modified the Oratorian 
 rule for England,* that he (St. Philip) had gradually displaced 
 St. Wilfrid as foremost in our devotions, &c. &c. I then tried 
 to throw myself back upon a certain repugnance I had always 
 felt, but I found it was gone, thawed away in some mysterious 
 manner. I then went and said mass for the Anime Sante, 
 though I could scarcely tell what I was doing, yet I was 
 wonderfully calm. My thanksgiving was of course entirely 
 occupied with this matter ; Elton was to come over again ; 
 the Will of God was to hunt me out of my new home, to snap 
 all ties ; so I passed, little indeed to my thinking, once again 
 to the calm brokenheartedness of the past, and I let God strip 
 me as He pleased. My dear Michael, you must try to under- 
 stand all this as well as you can ; it passed in my interior in 
 such a way that it seems impossible for me to describe it. 
 How everything seemed changed when I went out! everything 
 had ceased to be mine : the rising spire of our magnificent 
 church, the young trees, all seemed buried in the one thing, 
 God. 
 
 I had now to face my choir brothers, whose aversion to 
 the plan was very vehement; and as we were to take our vows 
 shortly, no time was left me to prepare things. That same 
 
 * On this point Brother Wilfrid had been misinformed. 
 The changes made for England in the Institute of the Oratory 
 are very trifling, and cannot be called modifications. 
 
332 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1847. 
 
 day, Wednesday, I took Father Hutchison out, and told him 
 the whole ; he immediately said, "It is from God, I will go 
 with you." His repugnance was utterly gone. The same 
 happened with Brother Alhan and Brother Austin ; this 
 seemed wonderful. I then proposed that I should go down to 
 the Jesuits to make a retreat, and to make out if all this 
 really came from God. The next morning a letter came from 
 Dr. Wiseman, fixing that Father Hutchison and I should 
 come up to town on the Immaculate Conception B. M. V., to 
 take our vows ; this letter made us consider how far it would 
 he well to go down to Stonyhurst without Dr. Wiseman's 
 knowledge and permission, as he had been our director all 
 along. So Father Hutchison and I started for London at 
 once. 
 
 Strange to say ! the first Oratorian in England, Father 
 Stanton, in the habit, arrived just before us, and was with the 
 bishop in Golden Square. I was up with the bishop till 
 midnight on Thursday ; he solemnly approved of the whole 
 as coming from God, and being His adorable Will. The next 
 day, St. Francis Xavier, we both said Mass for it, and after- 
 wards the bishop pronounced definitively that so it was to be. 
 You will not be surprised now at my falling ill ; I could not 
 get my breath in London, so I asked the bishop to let me go 
 down by railroad to Tring to sleep, where I could breathe. 
 Father Hutchison, also white as a corpse and very ill, set off 
 with me on Friday at two p. m., but when we got to Euston 
 Square we were obliged to go to bed. In the evening we got 
 up, and went all the way to Derby, and arrived here on 
 Saturday evening in time for the confessional. And now the 
 lay brothers and catechists, Elton and non-Elton, follow me, 
 and N. Darnell of New College also, seventeen in all. It is 
 at present a profound secret, as we do not know whether 
 Newman will accept us ; you know he refused me at Maryvale. 
 The bishop says St. Wilfrid's can, by the Pope's modifications, 
 
1847.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 333 
 
 be kept and become an Oratorian house, and he has pledged 
 himself to me, that our most prosperous mission will be 
 carried on. 
 
 What the people will do without "poor Father Fable," 
 as they say, I know not ; they were all in misery at a foolish 
 report that I was going to be made a bishop. However, 
 Fiat voluntas ! And now, fratello mio, you must pray hard : 
 I shrink from the prospect before me very, very much; to 
 fall from founder and superior to novice, and a novice who 
 must naturally be an object of extreme jealousy from his 
 influence over the rest of the brothers; to meet the ludi- 
 brium of all our old- Catholic enemies, to stand the evil 
 opinion of those who, as J. M. does, think all this from 
 Satan, will require no little grace. It is possible to face it 
 well in meditation, with the dignity of the sacrifice to 
 support us, but the daily irritating detail, there will be the 
 trial, and it is for that I so much need masses and prayers. 
 Still the call has come, our bishop and director approves, 
 and forbids the Jesuit retreat ; humility and obedience alone 
 remain. We are all, thank God, in good spirits in the 
 house,, and prepared to do God's Will; we have felt quite 
 wonderfully in His hands ever since the decision was come to. 
 
 I am again under persecution about the Lives of the 
 Saints, and I have offered to discontinue the work. I think 
 the blessed Saints will not let matters come to that, and I 
 hope Dr. Wiseman will be firm. I have now forty writers, 
 of whom nineteen are ecclesiastics of more or less distinc- 
 tion ; the sale is advancing rapidly, and in America the 
 series is doing great things. Four thousand pictures of St. 
 Philip Neri have sold, and his Maxims, which I published 
 only the other day, will do good service I think. A thousand 
 copies of each of the four volumes already out will have been 
 disposed of by Christmas, and about a thousand of your edi- 
 tion of Nouet are sold, so that I shall have to reprint that next 
 
334 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1847. 
 
 year, and will do it in a nicer size and type, and with your 
 name. But this is a great sale for Catholic books here in 
 England. I am constantly in hot water about all this, and 
 what with coldness, jealousy, and persecution, am worn out : 
 instead of being able to think only of God, I have to fight 
 with my crucifix for charity, charity, all day long. Yet I am 
 sure that all these people think me a wild, dangerous, ultra 
 lad t grievously needing curb and snaffle, and that they are 
 doing God service by snubbing me ; and perhaps they are. 
 I ought to get holiness out of it all, and yet I do not. Heu 
 mini quia incolatus meus prolongatus est ! Now at least I 
 am free to die; my community is disposed of, I am no 
 longer necessary to any one, and it has quite come to me 
 with a feeling of joyousness that perhaps God means all this 
 as a prelude to taking me away. However, what I have 
 got steadily to look forward to is this everyday trial of 
 obedience, submission, and harassing change; pray for me 
 that I may have grace in detail, and more and more dis- 
 taccamento every day from earth and the affections of earth. 
 My community was an attaccamento ; God must mean good 
 to me by cutting it away from me. 
 
 Pather Newman readied England on Christmas 
 Eye, and in the month of January, 1848, Brother 
 Wilfrid and Brother Alban visited him at Maryvale. 
 To the former the proposal to join the Oratory 
 involved a great sacrifice, nothing less than the 
 abandonment of the work at St. "Wilfrid's, which 
 gave so fair a promise, the destruction of the 
 Institute which he had formed, and the exchange 
 of the position of superior and founder for that 
 of simple novice. On the eve of the change, when 
 the Fathers at Maryvale had decided to admit the 
 
1848.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 335 
 
 Wilfridians to their Congregation, Father Faber 
 wrote to Mr. Morris (February llth, 1848) : 
 
 " I am on the whole in very good spirits, with a downcast 
 fit now and then about my health ; but it is a great thing 
 to be putting oneself in the way, as most people seem to 
 think, of doing the utmost one is capable of for the glory 
 of God and the love of dear Mama. Giving St. Wilfrid's up 
 seems to unroot one altogether from the earth, and the future 
 is such a complete blank that one feels as if one was going 
 to die. It will be a great charity if you will communicate 
 for me on Monday, and get Edward Bagshawe to do the 
 game, as he has had many a memento from me." 
 
 His position and feelings were more fully de- 
 scribed in the following letter of the same date, to 
 Mr. "Watts Eussell : 
 
 LETTER LXXXVII. 
 
 Now I suppose I must tell you a little of myself. 
 Four of our lay brothers have gone to Maryvale ; and tomorrow 
 night I expect Father Superior with Fathers Ambrose and 
 Richard (St. John and Stanton) ; they stay Sunday here, and 
 on Monday, St. Valentine, the day on which two years ago I 
 visited the relics of St. Thomas of Canterbury at Sens, and 
 drew up the draft of the Wilfridian rule, we shall all be 
 solemnly admitted Oratorians. My courage fails me a little ; I 
 am to remain here a few weeks and then go as a "strict 
 novice" to Maryvale, and I understand I am never to return 
 to St. Wilfrid's. So away goes home, church, flock, Eltonian 
 children and all. The people are up in arms about it, 
 memorializing Father Superior, the Shrewsburys are vexed, 
 the neighbouring priests are writing letters, the lay brothers 
 
336 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1848. 
 
 are downcast : as to Father Wilfrid himself, he hopes he is 
 happy. Certainly, rickety and ailing as my health now is, I 
 have occasional fits of low spirits ; I cannot move my library 
 to Maryvale, so I shall he separated from that as well, neither 
 will Maryvale he my settled home. In my first spoliation I 
 kept my hooks and my Elton children ; now I lose these two : 
 Deo gratias et heato Philippe ! Certainly the Oratory has 
 been a bloody husband to me because of the circumcision ; 
 but I trust that it will also bring with it a fresh covenant of 
 grace. The Oratorians are remarkably kind to us, and seem 
 very anxious to make us feel happy and at home ; and I hope 
 we may have grace not to disappoint them by taking too 
 much upon us and forgetting our place as novices. But this 
 will be very hard ; so you must help us by your prayers. I 
 have had a house full of temptations and repugnances to 
 govern for some weeks past, but by the grace of God and 
 dear Mama's help I hope to steer my little crew into the port 
 of San Filippo without a loss. All this devil's work pleases 
 me, because it seems to betray his fear of what we are doing. 
 Father Superior seems to think large towns my proper 
 sphere ; and it is a great joy to me not to have to decide for 
 myself, but to work under blind obedience. My new name of 
 Father Wilfrid begins to sound quite natural to me again ; 
 and when I have once got over the wrench of leaving, I hope 
 I shall be quite cheerful. But you know what a desperate 
 fellow I am for local affections ; and St. Wilfrid's represents 
 eighteen months of arduous and interesting struggle, besides 
 its own excessive natural beauty. The trees I have planted, 
 the walks I have planned, the streams I have turned, every 
 one has got a shockingly tight hold upon me, and all the two 
 hundred converts ! Well, all that can be said is that if I can 
 dislocate myself with a moderate indifference and distacca- 
 mento, I shall be a lucky fellow ; God does not often give a 
 man two opportunities of a holocaust ; doubtless, my dearest 
 
1848.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 337 
 
 Mama has obtained this for me. And now, enough of this, 
 and perhaps too much. 
 
 Thursday, February 17. Father Superior has now left us, 
 all in our Philippine habits with turndown collars, like so 
 many good boys brought in after dinner. In the solemn 
 admission on Monday morning, he gave a most wonderful 
 address, full of those marvellous pauses which you know of. 
 He showed how wonderfully we had been all brought together 
 from different parts, and how, in his case and ours, St. Philip 
 seemed to have laid hands upon us, and taken us for his own, 
 whether we would or not. Since my admission I seem to 
 have lost all attachment to everything but obedience ; I could 
 dance and sing all day, because I am so joyous; I hardly 
 know what to do with myself for very happiness. 
 
 22 
 
338 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1848. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 1848-9. 
 
 The first six months of Eather Eaber's Oratorian 
 life were marked by few incidents. On the 21st of 
 February 1848, he was called to the noviciate at 
 Maryvale, where, under the Father Superior himself 
 as novice master, he was to be practised in the 
 exercises of the Congregation. Contrary to his 
 expectation, however, he was sent back to St. 
 Wilfrid's in the course of a few days. On Easter 
 Tuesday, April the 25th, the new church was 
 solemnly opened, and almost the whole commu- 
 nity from Maryvale assisted at the ceremony. The 
 exertions of Eather Eaber in making preparations 
 for this event, together with the labours of Lent 
 (during which he preached in several of the London 
 chapels,) and Holy Week, brought on a severe 
 attack of rheumatism, which lasted for some days. 
 On his recovery he was much occupied in atten- 
 dance upon Brother Stanislas, one of the lay 
 brothers, who had been one of the Wilfridian com- 
 munity, and was now dangerously ill. After the 
 holy death of this brother on the 21st of May, 
 Eather Eaber proceeded to Maryvale, in time to 
 assist at the celebration of the Eeast of St. Philip. 
 
1848.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 339 
 
 As he was still in a suffering state of health, 
 he was sent to the east coast of Yorkshire for 
 change of air, and remained there about three 
 weeks. One night during his stay at Scarborough 
 he wrote, at the request of Father Hutchison, the 
 two first of his Hymns, those on Our Blessed 
 Lady and Corpus Christi, popularly known as 
 " Mother of Mercy/' and " The Blessed Sacra- 
 ment." 
 
 In the beginning of the month of July he was 
 present with Father Dalgairns at the opening of 
 St. George's Cathedral, Southwark, and preached 
 in that church on one of the evenings within the 
 octave. 
 
 It was not considered necessary to require from 
 Father Faber the complete noviciate of three years, 
 which is prescribed by the Institute of the Oratory. 
 On the Feast of St. Mary Magdalen, July the 22nd, 
 1848, he was dispensed from the remaining portion 
 of it, and appointed at once to the important office 
 of novice master. 
 
 About this time it was proposed to establish an 
 Oratory in London, by accepting the offer of a 
 piece of ground at Bayswater, together with a sum 
 of money for building a church. After some dis- 
 cussion the plan was rejected, and although the 
 offer was frequently renewed at later periods, and 
 pressed upon the acceptance of the Fathers by the 
 Rev. James O'Neal, one of the trustees of the pro- 
 perty, they could never be induced to avail them- 
 
340 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1848. 
 
 selves of it. The church of St. Helen and St. 
 Elizabeth was subsequently built on the ground, 
 and eventually made over to the Congregation of 
 the Oblates of St. Charles, by whom it was dedi- 
 cated to St. Mary of the Angels. 
 
 Father Paber wrote to Mr. Watts Russell on the 
 13th of August : 
 
 LETTER LXXXVIIL 
 
 The Oratory is flourishing exceedingly ; we have our 
 trials and crosses ; so much the better. My noviciate has 
 been terminated by dispensation, and I am now master of 
 novices ; an office which I love extremely, though I feel my 
 own unfitness for it. Our new church and house at Bays- 
 water are to be begun immediately, and I suppose in a year's 
 time we shall all be in London and hard at work. 
 
 "We are now ten priests in community, and four more will 
 be ordained very shortly, so you see we are a strong body 
 already. But we begin to see our way to storms and tem- 
 pests, and the sooner the better, if God only gives us grace to 
 quicken our charity within the more we are pressed without. 
 I think there is a great work for us to do. My time is of 
 course wholly occupied with training my dear novices in the 
 interior life. I am now just where I would be, hidden 
 completely, doing a secret work, and one which I love above 
 all other works ; I can hardly get through all I have to do, 
 yet I would not part with one trial or cross which it brings 
 upon me ; it all drives one upon God alone. We English 
 Catholics are quarrelling about trumpery roodscreens, when 
 poor heretic England lies at our feet, like Lazarus at the feet 
 of Dives. "We take no part in it ; but all the land is wild 
 
1848.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 341 
 
 about it, and we mourn over the childishness and bigotry 
 of it all. 
 
 The increase of the Congregation by the arrival 
 of postulants soon rendered the occupation of a 
 larger house desirable, and as there seemed to be 
 no immediate prospect of making a settlement in 
 Birmingham, it was resolved to transfer the whole 
 establishment from Maryvale to St. "Wilfrid's. 
 This was accordingly done in the month of October, 
 and the community found the benefit of the change 
 from the inconvenient premises and heavy atmo- 
 sphere of Maryvale to the bracing air and roomy 
 buildings of St. Wilfrid's. The difference was 
 certainly considerable. Maryvale was a large 
 rambling house, of which it was difficult to under- 
 stand the plan. With long winding passages, and 
 staircases in the most unexpected places, it was the 
 sort of house to have the reputation of being 
 haunted. It lay low, without any view except over 
 its own little plot of ground. St. Wilfrid's, on the 
 other hand, when the community arrived there, 
 presented a most attractive aspect. The red stone 
 of the new buildings harmonized beautifully with 
 the autumnal tints of the woods. An image of our 
 Blessed Lady under a canopy on the lawn faced 
 down the valley as though blessing it. The addi- 
 tions, in the Gothic style, to the old house of Cotton 
 Hall, the short cloister connecting it with the 
 church, the west front of which, conspicuous for 
 its graceful spire, stood at right angles to the house, 
 
342 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1848. 
 
 the Stations of the Cross in the garden all com- 
 bined to give a Catholic appearance which was rare 
 in those days. 
 
 Here the community, now numbering more than 
 forty members, performed its exercises with exem- 
 plary regularity. The ceremonies of the Church 
 were carefully carried out, and there were frequent 
 services for the people, who showed by their 
 attendance and devotion that they appreciated 
 the spiritual advantages provided for them. The 
 Blessed Sacrament was sometimes taken in proces- 
 sion to the houses of the sick, and on the occasion 
 cf a funeral, the body was accompanied from the 
 house where it lay to the church, in the manner 
 practised in Catholic countries. 
 
 About this time a controversy again arose con- 
 cerning the series of Lives of the Saints edited by 
 Father Faber, which resulted in its suspension for 
 a short time. The series had been opposed from 
 the first by persons who considered the publication 
 of such lives injudicious, as being both unsuited 
 to the condition of English Catholics, and likely 
 to disgust and repel Protestants. " It seemed to 
 many," says the preface to the Treatise of Benedict 
 XIV . on Heroic Virtue, " a departure from Chris- 
 tian prudence, to expose to the gaze of heretics 
 the inner life of the servants of God, and to publish, 
 in an unbelieving land, operations of grace which 
 are necessarily beyond the material experience of a 
 sceptical and indifferent generation. 5 ' In his pre- 
 
1848.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 343 
 
 face to the volume published in September 1847, 
 containing the Lives of St. Rose of Lima, the B. 
 Columba of Rieti, and St. Juliana Palconieri, the 
 Editor had written : 
 
 " English readers, who may not have been in the habit of 
 reading the Lives of the Saints, and especially the authentic 
 processes of the Congregation of Sacred Rites, may be a little 
 startled with the Life of St. Eose. The visible intermingling 
 of the natural and supernatural worlds, which seems to 
 increase as the saints approach, through the grace of God, to 
 their first innocence, may even offend where persons have been 
 in the habit of paring and bating down the ' unearthly' in orddr 
 to evade objections and lighten the load of the controversialist, 
 rather than of meditating with awe and thankfulness and deep 
 self-abasement on the wonders of God in His saints, or of 
 really sounding the depths of Christian philosophy, and 
 mastering the principles and general laws which are discern- 
 ible even in the supernatural regions of hagiology. The 
 habit of always thinking first how any tenet, or practice, or 
 fact, is most conveniently presented to an adversary, may 
 soon, and almost imperceptibly, lead to profaneness, by 
 introducing the . spirit of rationalism into matters of faith ; 
 and to judge from the works of our greatest Catholic divines, 
 it would appear that the deeper theologian a man is, the less 
 does he give way to this studious desire of making difficulties 
 easy at any cost short of denying what is positively de fide. 
 They seem to handle truth religiously just in the way that 
 God is pleased to give it us, rather than to see what they 
 can make of it themselves by shaping it for controversy, and 
 so by dint of skilful manipulation squeeze it through a diffi- 
 culty. The question is, not * What will men say of this ? 
 How will this sound in controversy ? Will not this be 
 objected to by heretics?' but, 'Is this true ? Is this kind of 
 
344 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1848. 
 
 thing approved by the Church ? Then what good can I get 
 out of it for my own soul ? Ought not my views to he deeper 
 than they are ?' The judiciousness of publishing in England 
 what are actually classical works of piety in Catholic countries 
 is a further question, which the result alone will decide, and 
 that possibly at no very distant date. All that need be said 
 here is, that it has not been done in haste, in blindness, or 
 in heedlessness, but after grave counsel and with high 
 sanction. 
 
 "If, then, any one unaccustomed to the literature of Catholic 
 countries, and with their ears unconsciously untuned by the 
 daily dissonance of the errors and unbelief around them, 
 should be startled by this volume, let him pause before he 
 pronounces judgment. A Catholic, do what he will, cannot 
 weed his religion of the supernatural ; and to discriminate 
 between the supernatural and the superstitious is a long work 
 and a hard one, a work of study and of reverent meditation. 
 how hard it is, if men do not kneel to meditate, to hear a 
 thing denied all round them every day, and yet maintain a 
 joyous and unshaken faith therein ! 
 
 " In this one volume we have two lives, both taken from the 
 authentic processes : one is of a holy woman of central Italy 
 in the fifteenth century ; the other a South American in the 
 seventeenth ; and when the series gets on, and the reader 
 finds men and women of different centuries and vastly 
 different characters, of the hills of Apulia and Calabria, from 
 the plains of Lombardy and the stony forests of Umbria ; 
 from Spanish convents and French seminaries ; from the dark 
 streets of a Flemish town, the margin of a Dutch canal, or 
 the ilex woods of Portugal ; from the cities of Germany and 
 Hungary, or the mines and river-sides of South America ; 
 popes and simple nuns, bishops and common beggars, the 
 learned cardinal and the Capuchin lay brother, the aged mis- 
 sionary and the boy in the Jesuit noviciate, the Roman 
 
184*8.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 345 
 
 Princess and the poor bed-ridden Estatica, before the Kefor- 
 mation and after it all presenting us with the same picture, 
 the same supernatural actors, the same familiarity with good 
 and evil spirits, the same daily colloquial intercourse with the 
 unseen world, the same apparently grotesque anecdotes of 
 miraculous control over nature and the lives narrating all 
 this translated from four or five different languages, and 
 composed by grave theologians and doctors the erudite 
 Augustinian, the judicious Dominican, the good Franciscan 
 full of simplicity and unction, the fluent Oratorian so eminent 
 in devotional biography, the sound, calm, discriminating 
 Jesuit, who, above all others, has learned how to exercise 
 the constant caution of criticism without injuring his spiritual- 
 mindedness when all this is before him, crowned with the 
 solemn and infallible decrees of canonization and beatification, 
 it may seem to him then a serious question whether he 
 himself is not out of harmony with the mind of the Church, 
 whether his faith is not too feeble, and his distrust of God's 
 wonders too overweening and too bold, whether, in short, for 
 the good of his own soul he may not have the principle of 
 rationalism to unlearn, and the temper of faith, sound, 
 reasonable, masculine, yet childlike faith, to broaden, to 
 heighten, and to deepen in himself by the very contemplation 
 of what may now be in some degree a scandal to him 
 namely, Quam mirabilis est Deus in sanctis suis." 
 
 In a postscript to the same Life the Editor said : 
 
 "Let us thank Almighty God in the fervent simplicity 
 of our faith for the seal His Church has set upon these 
 authentic wonders ; wonders not lost in dubious antiquity, 
 but adequately proved in the face of modern criticism so short 
 a time ago : and remembering that this bold exhibition of 
 the marvellous is, by no less an authority than the Catholic 
 
346 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1818. 
 
 Church, presented to our veneration and our love, let us 
 take it like awe-struck children, as a page from the lost 
 chronicles of Eden, and strive to unlearn that bold timidity 
 with which we have too often been inclined to court favour 
 where we shall never get it, and to avoid sneers which are to 
 us as an heritage and vouchers of our truths, by smiling 
 with the profane and doubting with the sceptical. For one 
 of the faithful to look as like an unbeliever as he can, is a 
 sight which never won a soul to Christ, or gained for the 
 Church the esteem of an opponent. Rose of Lima is now 
 raised upon the altars of the Church by the decree of her 
 canonization ; she is a Catholic saint ; no sneer of man can 
 wither the marvellous blooming of her leaves ; but he will 
 find a thorn who shall dare to handle roughly this sweet 
 mysterious Rose which St. Dominic planted in the garden of 
 liis Master." 
 
 The prediction was soon fulfilled. The views of 
 the opposing party found their voice in an article 
 on the Life of St. Rose of Lima, by a well known 
 writer, which was published in Dolman's Magazine 
 for September 1848. The reviewer, while holding 
 that "a good biography of a saint of God is an 
 invaluable work," considered that its great end 
 is " edification." It is not to record incredible 
 austerities, or macerations, or astounding miracles ; 
 " these are the externals, and sometimes only the 
 
 semblances of piety." " Where the recorded 
 
 actions of saints strictly agree with the precepts 
 
 and counsels of the Gospel they are the useful 
 
 and practical pattern of true sanctity. Where they 
 are otherwise, when they utterly oppose themselves 
 
1848.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 347 
 
 to the natural end and being of man, they are 
 worthy neither of admiration nor imitation, and 
 had far better be consigned to respectful oblivion. 
 They provoke cavil. They give wrong impressions 
 of what true piety really consists in. They reduce 
 religion to an unmeaning course of puerilities. " 
 
 After quoting the description of some of the 
 Saint's penances, which, it should be remembered^ 
 have been approved in a Papal Bull, he continued : 
 " Reader, as an English Catholic, we may ask, and 
 we trust without offence, are these austerities 
 approved of, or even sanctioned by the Church ? 
 We trust not. And we grieve, and that most 
 sincerely, that such details, so harrowing to a 
 sensitive mind, so dangerous from their initiating 
 weakly disposed minds to similar excesses of reli- 
 gious zeal (we had almost said fanaticism) should 
 ever have been published."..." Alban Butler had 
 doubtless read all this, and perhaps more. He 
 wisely and prudently omitted it. "Why resuscitate 
 such more than charnel horrors ?" 
 
 Towards the close this protest occurred: "In 
 the name of all those who know their religion, in 
 the name of all those who revere it in its innate 
 and immaculate purity and truth, we protest most 
 solemnly against this and such like publications. 
 However painful to our feelings, we must not 
 shrink from a public and sacred duty in thus 
 exposing the dangerous tendencies of this species of 
 modern hagiology." 
 
348 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1848. 
 
 The reviewer did not stand alone in his criticism : 
 the principles which he laid down were asserted, 
 although not perhaps in such unmeasured language, 
 by many Catholics who looked coldly upon the 
 series. Amongst other expressions of opinion, 
 Father Newman records that " a wise prelate, who 
 was properly anxious as to the line which might 
 be taken by the Oxford converts, then for the first 
 
 time coming into work was apprehensive of the 
 
 effect of Italian compositions, as unsuited to this 
 country.' 5 * This feeling was apparently shared by 
 others in high ecclesiastical positions; {he attack 
 upon the series met with no check or rebuke, but 
 on the contrary, its promoters loudly boasted that 
 the authority of the episcopate was on their side. 
 
 For some time no action was taken by the Editor 
 or the Congregation to which he belonged in 
 consequence of this agitation ; but as soon as it 
 was understood that the ecclesiastical authorities 
 of the District had expressed a wish that the series 
 should be discontinued, the following circular was 
 issued. 
 
 " To THE TRANSLATORS AND SUBSCRIBERS. 
 
 " St. Wilfrid's, Feast of St. Martin, 1848. 
 " It lias become my duty to inform you that I have 
 suspended the publication of this series, which you have so 
 kindly encouraged, whether by subscription or by taking part 
 
 * Letter to Dr. Pusey, p. 23. 
 
1848.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 349 
 
 in the labours of translation. A few words will suffice to 
 explain the circumstances which have led to this suspension. 
 When, in February last, I entered the Congregation of the 
 Oratory, I submitted my work to the Fathers with a view to 
 obtaining their judgment on its continuance. They, for 
 various reasons, put off their determination till the close of 
 the year, and upon what grounds they have at length made it 
 will appear from the following letter, which I have received 
 from the Father Superior. 
 
 " 'Maryvale, October 30th, 1848. 
 
 " ' My <3^r Father Wilfrid, 
 
 ~25t* 
 ' ' I have consulted the Fathers who are here on the 
 
 subject of the Lives of the Saints, and we have come to the 
 unanimous conclusion of advising you to suspend the series 
 at present. It appears there is a strong feeling against it on 
 the part of a portion of the Catholic community in England, 
 on the ground, as we are given to understand, that the lives 
 of foreign saints, however edifying in their respective coun- 
 tries, are unsuited to England, and unacceptable to Protes- 
 tants. To this feeling we consider it a duty, for the sake of 
 peace, to defer. For myself, you know well, without my 
 saying it, how absolutely I identify myself with you in this 
 matter ; but as you may have to publish this letter, I make it 
 an opportunity, which has not as yet been given me, of 
 declaring that I have no sympathy at all with the feeling to 
 which I have alluded, and in particular, that no one can assail 
 your name without striking at mine. 
 
 " ' Ever your affectionate friend and brother 
 in our Lady and St. Philip, 
 " ' J. H. NEWMAN, 
 
 " ' Congr. Orat. Presb. 
 
 " 'Rev. F. Faler, St. Wilfrid's.' 
 
350 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1848. 
 
 " That this determination will be a great disappointment to 
 you, who, as subscribers and purchasers, number nearly one 
 thousand, and especially to the sixty-six friends, who, in our 
 colleges and elsewhere, are engaged in the kind labour of 
 cooperation with me, I cannot doubt; but I am sure you 
 will at once submit with the most perfect confidence, that 
 what has been done so religiously will turn out for the best. 
 It is, in fact, a great gain to have to give up a plan for the 
 good of others upon which our hearts were bent ; and if we 
 have for the present to see removed from us what we knew 
 was profiting so many, and looked upon as an additional help 
 to perfection for ourselves, we must not therefore think that 
 it will come to nothing, or be labour lost. A^low me to 
 thank you all most sincerely for your willing and affectionate 
 support and cooperation in this arduous and extensive under- 
 taking. Meanwhile you with me will find no little comfort 
 in the words with which mother Church has been haunting 
 us for many days past, and which have only just died away 
 upon her lips. quam gloriosum est regnum, in quo cum 
 Christo gaudent omnes Sancti, amicti stolis albis, sequuntur 
 Agnum quocumque ierit. 
 
 "F. W. FABER. 
 
 " Congr. Orat. Presb." 
 
 When forwarding this circular, Pather Faber 
 addressed the following letter to Bishop "Wareing: 
 
 LETTER LXXXIX. 
 
 November 16, 1848. 
 My dear Lord, 
 
 You will get this on the morning of St. Hugh, the 
 day you kindly received me into the Church three years ago. 
 How little did we, whom the Lives of Catholic Saints helped 
 
1848.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 351 
 
 so much towards conversion, then dream that the Catholics 
 of England should be so frightened, ashamed, or unsym- 
 pathetic, whichever it may be, as to refuse to tolerate 
 Catholic Lives of their own Saints, from Catholic pens and 
 with Catholic imprimaturs, and that we, for whom it might 
 have been feared that we should not become Catholic enough, 
 should be authoritatively silenced for overmuch sympathy 
 with the Catholics of other lands. Alas ! if we could but 
 make our fellow Catholics feel how this policy lowers the 
 Church in the eyes of our Protestant countrymen ! For us 
 obedience is better than sacrifice ; but the effect of this step 
 in Oxford and elsewhere will be far beyond what any of you 
 believe, just when we are expecting another great move 
 there. Converts may surely claim to know best what will 
 convert others ; but it is a sad confession on the part of 
 Catholic authorities that the English Catholics are unable to 
 digest the literature of Catholic countries, and start away 
 from what is not found too strong even for their Protestant 
 countrymen. However, omnia cooperantur in bonum; and 
 begging your Lordship's blessing, I remain, 
 
 Your very obliged and affectionate servant, 
 F. W. FABER. 
 
 Congr. Orat. Presb. 
 
 In the meantime the friends of the series through- 
 out England had not been idle, and, among other 
 testimonies of their zeal, several able articles 
 appeared in the Tablet, which were of material 
 service to the cause. Letters were received by 
 Father Paber from all quarters, lamenting the sus- 
 pension, and expressing the hope that it was but 
 temporary. Many instances thus came to light of 
 
352 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1848. 
 
 the good which the Lives had done, one person, to 
 take a single instance, declaring that they had 
 saved him. from apostasy. 
 
 Very shortly this reaction was sufficiently strong 
 to justify the continuation of the series. It was 
 suggested by some that the Lives should be pub- 
 lished in an amended form, with the omission of 
 such passages as would be likely to give offence. 
 The suggestion was quite impracticable for many 
 reasons, some of which were pointed out by Father 
 Hutchison, naturally an ardent supporter of the 
 series, in the following extract from a letter to Mr. 
 Lewis. 
 
 1. On what principle is this pruning system to be con- 
 ducted ? One miracle is as authentic as another, and thus to 
 omit one throws a doubt on the authenticity of all. 
 
 2. Such omissions would seem to imply a want of perfect 
 faith in the history of the Saint on the part of the Editors, 
 and the very suspicion of this would cause many readers to 
 look on the Lives as mere tales and legends. 
 
 3. Very often a miracle might be omitted as being too 
 extravagant and "ridiculous" or "loathsome," and yet 
 perhaps in succeeding lives a score of similar ones might be 
 found which would have confirmed the one thus omitted, and 
 would have shown it to have been one of a whole class. 
 Nothing is more common in the Lives of the Saints than to 
 find similar miracles worked by different saints which thus 
 corroborate one another. There is I believe, scarcely a single 
 miracle or wonderful event to be found in any Saint's life, 
 to which a parallel cannot be found in the life of another, and 
 thus 
 
1848.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 353 
 
 4. By giving in to this principle of omissions, one of the 
 greatest of the motives of credibility would be lost. 
 
 5. Each life must be looked at not as standing by itself, 
 but as an integral part of a great series ; this series is not 
 intended only (like a pocket-book) for the year 1848, but for 
 1948 as well, just as the Saints themselves were not intended 
 only for the edification of their contemporaries. And there- 
 fore the series to be really valuable and in order to answer its 
 end must be conducted faithfully and honestly. Its end 
 being to impart to this country the same advantages which 
 Catholic countries enjoy in having a multitude of the Lives 
 of the Saints in the vernacular, this end would not be 
 obtained by publishing only abbreviated and dwarfed transla- 
 tions of such lives. 
 
 For instance, one can from a comparison of several Italian 
 lives of different Saints observe certain points of similarity 
 and draw certain conclusions and lay down certain principles ; 
 but how could this be done with a miserable series of stunted 
 lives such as our objectors would have ? in one life perhaps 
 something might have slipped in by chance which should 
 have been omitted and its parallel in other lives had been 
 omitted this particular event or miracle would then be noted 
 as singular, whereas it might be one of the commonest things 
 possible in the genuine Lives of the Saints, e. g. the marriage 
 of St. Catherine of Siena to the Infant Jesus is paralleled 
 by St. Kose, St. Veronica Giuliani, and a host of others. 
 
 6. Then again see what a pretty thing the life of a Saint 
 would be slashed and cut up in this way. Take St. Alphonso. 
 One person doesn't like the abuses among the clergy to be 
 spoken of so leave out all the history of the years of his 
 episcopate except a few dates and commonplace facts. 
 Another thinks the account of his devotion to Mamma not 
 suited to these times, so leave out that, and all about that 
 
 dreadful Image or Picture that spoke to him and shot out 
 23 
 
354 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1848. 
 
 rays of light. Then his disobedience to his father in 
 becoming a priest is likely to offend many fathers of families, 
 so leave out that. His austerities of course must be omitted; 
 bitter herbs with his mutton is a revolting and loathsome 
 notion. The Gothic party wouldn't have liked the arrange- 
 ments of his church when they hung the brick walls with red 
 calico. Then, too, he was not quite so obedient to some of 
 his ecclesiastical superiors as he might have been, and the 
 younger clergy may be led astray, so that too must be cut 
 out. In short, the life edited on these principles would be 
 very like the picture which that misguided painter exhibited 
 with a request that folks would correct any little fault they 
 might see in it. 
 
 And lastly, what would be said if a set of converts were to 
 take on themselves to correct and adapt for England works 
 bearing the Imprimatur of Home? As to writing original 
 lives, it is impossible ; we have not the time, and these lives, 
 unless they contained all the facts related in the sources from 
 whence they were derived, would be open to nearly all the 
 above objections. If they did contain all, our present 
 objectors would be as much opposed to them as they are now, 
 and we should be called on to give the authority for each 
 separate part, instead of resting all as we do now on the 
 originals and their Imprimaturs. In fact the series must be 
 such as it is, or else we can publish none at all. 
 
 The result was all that the most enthusiastic 
 admirer of the series could have desired. To quote 
 Father Hutchison again: " The author (of the 
 article on St. Rose) has apologised and recanted 
 in the new number of Dolman, and has written 
 a most humble apology to Bishop Ullathorne, 
 and another to Father Faber. In both of * these 
 
1848.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 355 
 
 he expresses the greatest sorrow for what he has 
 written, and for the scandal he has given, and 
 also for the way in which he attacked Father Faber. 
 His apology is everything that could he wished. 
 He says that he has regretted the article ever since 
 it was written, and that he shall regret it to the 
 last day of his life. He assures Father Faber that 
 he had never read the Life of St. Rose till it was 
 thrust into his hand hy another, who urged him to 
 attack it as he has done. Henceforth, he says, he 
 shall always strive to forward the views, &c., of 
 Father Newman and the Oratory. The most satis- 
 factory thing in the apology, however, is that it is 
 the generous apology of a Christian, and not merely 
 of a man who has heen horsewhipped." Although 
 the actual words used by the reviewer in his private 
 letter have not been preserved, the following 
 portions of another written by him to - Father 
 Faber in the year 1851 sufficiently testify to his 
 sincerity. 
 
 Feast of St. Eose of Lima. 
 My dear Father Faber, 
 
 I have made this day a little act of reparation which I 
 hope will he acceptable to Almighty God. Three years ago, 
 I am sure that I deeply offended Him and pained dear St. 
 Eose hy my rash and intemperate review of her life 
 
 That unhappy state of feeling did not, however, thanks be 
 to God, last longj and I have often begged pardon (of Him), 
 and of the ever-blessed St. Eose for all in what I had 
 offended 
 
 Pray for me, my dear Father, that I may persevere to the 
 
356 THE LIFE AND LETTEES OF 
 
 end. Your last excellent volumes have much helped me, 
 particularly the life of St. Jane Frances ; I have read it with 
 many tears. 
 
 May Almighty God eternally bless you, my dear Father, and 
 
 believe me, 
 
 Yours most affectionately in Jesus Christ, 
 
 * * * 
 
 The resumption of the series was announced in 
 the following circular, dated St. Wilfrid's, Feast of 
 the Epiphany, 1849. 
 
 "LIVES OF THE CANONIZED SAINTS. 
 
 " The Congregation of the Oratory is now enabled to take 
 upon itself and to continue the Series of Lives of Saints, which 
 was begun some time since by the Rev. Father Faber, and has 
 lately been suspended. 
 
 " The Fathers have never yet been formally responsible for 
 that Series; their connexion with it being limited to the 
 accident that, when it was already in course of publication, 
 its Editor joined their body. On taking this step, the Editor 
 felt, as they did, that some new arrangement was required by 
 the altered position in which he stood, and that either they 
 must take his work upon themselves, or he must bring it to 
 a close. They postponed the determination of so important 
 a question to the end of the current year; when, by accidental 
 coincidence, a strong opposition to the Series manifested 
 itself in one quarter of the English Catholic body, resting for 
 support, as was supposed, on venerable names, which neces- 
 sarily commanded their most serious attention and deference. 
 Anxious not to involve the Congregation in a party contest at 
 the commencement of its course, the Fathers forthwith came 
 to the decision of not committing themselves to the publi- 
 cation for the present ; and in consequence recommended the 
 Editor to suspend it. 
 
1848.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 357 
 
 "It is both a surprise and a great consolation, and they 
 give thanks and praise to the Father of mercies, and to the 
 intercession of the Saints, whose Lives were the subject in 
 dispute, that they are enabled, after so short an interval, with 
 the kind wishes of their ecclesiastical superiors, of the heads of 
 Colleges and Eeligious bodies, and of all generally whose good 
 opinion they covet, and by whose judgment they desire to be 
 guided, nay, at the express instance of those parties who had 
 been foremost in the opposition, to take upon themselves a 
 responsibility from which, without such general countenance 
 and encouragement, they felt themselves justified in shrinking. 
 And they hope they may without presumption accept it in 
 some sort as a reward for the readiness with which they gave 
 up their own wishes to the claims of Christian charity and 
 peace, that the very suspension of the Series has been the 
 means of eliciting an expression of sympathy towards them- 
 selves and it, so cordial and unanimous, and testimonies to 
 the good it was effecting so decisive, as to allow of their 
 undertaking it consistently with the edification of their 
 brethren, and with comfort to themselves. 
 
 "Accordingly they propose in the ensuing August, when 
 the last volume promised by Father Faber is to be published, 
 to transfer the Editorship from him to themselves ; and 
 meanwhile they earnestly beg of the good friends who have 
 given him so zealous a support, to assist them also with their 
 prayers, that they may continue this important work with that 
 wisdom and discretion which become the glorious Saints to 
 whose honour it is dedicated." 
 
 The account of this controversy would be incom- 
 plete without the following extract from Father 
 Newman's Letter to Dr. Pusey on his Eirenicon, 
 which has been already alluded to. (It should be 
 
358 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 
 premised that in the original no words are in 
 italics.) 
 
 "When I returned to England, the first expression of 
 theological opinion which came in my way, was apropos of the 
 series of translated saints' lives, which the late Dr. Faber 
 originated. That expression proceeded from a wise prelate, 
 who was properly anxious as to the line which might be taken 
 by the Oxford converts, then for the first time coming into 
 work. According as I recollect his opinion, he was appre- 
 hensive of the effect of Italian compositions, as unsuited to 
 this country, and suggested that the Lives should be original 
 works, drawn up by ourselves and our friends from Italian 
 sources. If at that time I was betrayed into any acts which 
 were of a more extreme character than I should approve 
 now, the responsibility of course is mine ; but the impulse 
 came, not from old Catholics or superiors, but from men whom 
 I loved and trusted, who were younger than myself. But to 
 whatever extent I might be carried away, and I cannot 
 recollect any tangible instances, my mind in no long time fell 
 back to what seems to me a safer and more practical course." 
 (pp. 23-4.) 
 
 Before the close of the year 1848, Father Eaber 
 was engaged with Father Dalgairns in giving 
 a mission at Lane End, now called Longton, in 
 the Potteries. He also conducted the ordination 
 retreat of his novices in Advent, and after Christ- 
 mas visited London, to preach the panegyric of 
 St. Thomas of Canterbury (Dec. 29) in the church 
 of that Saint at Fulham.* 
 
 * Published in Notes on Doctrinal and Spiritual Subjects, 
 vol. i. p. 355. 
 
1849.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 359 
 
 It was impossible, because of the rule that an 
 Oratory should always be in a town, that St. 
 Wilfrid's should ever be the permanent home of 
 the English sons of St. Philip, and therefore Father 
 Newman, anxious to begin the real work of his 
 Congregation, took a house in Alcester Street, 
 Birmingham, and removed a portion of his commu- 
 nity thither on the 25th of January. 
 
 Eather Eaber was one of those who remained at 
 St. Wilfrid's : he continued to hold the office of 
 novice master, and as he was still in charge of the 
 mission, he generally preached to the people on 
 Sundays. He was assisted in his parochial work 
 by Eather Hutchison. Occasional help was given 
 to the chapel at Alton Towers, but with that 
 exception, the community at St. Wilfrid's did not 
 engage in external work beyond the neighbourhood. 
 
 This period of inactivity did not last long. There 
 being now many more Eathers than were likely to 
 be required at Birmingham, it was resolved to carry 
 out without further delay the project, often dis- 
 cussed before, of erecting an Oratory in London. 
 The plan received additional impetus from the 
 circumstance that Mr. Lewis, an old friend of 
 many of the Eathers, and formerly Mr. New- 
 man's curate at St. Mary's, brought down with 
 him to St. Wilfrid's, before Holy Week, his friends 
 the Earl of Arundel and Surrey, and Mr. Eullerton. 
 Their object was to spend the remainder of the 
 season of Lent in retirement and prayer, but they 
 
360 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1849. 
 
 also availed themselves of the opportunity to urge 
 upon the Fathers the importance of making a 
 foundation in London, to which they promised 
 their warmest support and cooperation. On the 
 morning of Palm Sunday, a letter arrived at St. 
 Wilfrid's from Father Newman, containing the 
 outlines of his scheme for the division of his whole 
 community into the two houses of Birmingham and 
 London. In these proposals the memhers were 
 divided in various ways, but as it was understood 
 that Father Newman preferred to remain at Bir- 
 mingham himself, and to send Father Faher at the 
 head of the London detachment, one of the plans 
 containing that arrangement was ultimately adopted. 
 No time was lost in putting it into execution. On 
 Easter Tuesday, April the 10th, Father Faher and 
 Father Hutchison left St. Wilfrid's to pass a week 
 at the Oratory at Birmingham before proceeding 
 to London. In the meantime Mr. Lewis had made 
 enquiries concerning some premises which he con- 
 sidered suitable for the temporary establishment of 
 the Oratory, and had visited them in company with 
 the writer. .On the arrival of Father Faber and 
 Father Hutchison in London, they expressed a 
 favourable opinion of the selection, and after some 
 negotiation obtained a lease of Nos. 24 and 25 
 King William Street, Strand. Three friends of the 
 Congregation made themselves responsible for the 
 rent, a guarantee, however, which they were never 
 called upon to fulfil. 
 
1849.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 361 
 
 Behind the two houses thus engaged ran a large 
 and commodious "building, divided by a floor into 
 two spacious rooms, each about sixty feet by thirty, 
 the upper one being about fifteen feet high, and 
 lighted by louvres in the ceiling. They had passed 
 through various uses, having served as assembly 
 rooms, and latterly as an establishment for the 
 sale of Kinahan's whiskey. They were approached 
 by a broad passage through the house ; and it was 
 determined that the upper one should be fitted up 
 as the principal chapel, while the lower one was 
 furnished with an altar from the old Portuguese 
 chapel, now in the Little Oratory at Brompton, 
 in order that greater facilities for hearing Mass 
 might be afforded to the people on Sundays. 
 After a short time, however, this part of the 
 arrangement was found impracticable, and the 
 lower or St. Wilfrid's chapel was divided into two 
 parts, one serving as the Little Oratory, and the 
 other as the refectory of the community. 
 
 On Saturday the 28th of April, several members 
 of the community arrived late in the afternoon 
 from St. "Wilfrid's, to find themselves in possession 
 of a large house, formed by piercing a door 
 between the two. Although they began with 
 scarcely an article of furniture, they managed to 
 prepare an altar, and on the following morning, the 
 Feast of the Patronage of St. Joseph, the first Mass 
 was said by Father Faber. Lord Arundel and 
 Mr. Lewis assisted at Mass, and remained to 
 
362 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1849. 
 
 breakfast, at which, the deficiency of crockery 
 caused considerable amusement. 
 
 The work of preparing the chapel was at once 
 begun. The building was absolutely empty, with- 
 out preparation for altar or sanctuary, without 
 organ or gallery, and destitute of all the ordinary 
 furniture of a chapel. 
 
 The day fixed for the public opening was the 
 31st of May, which left but little time for all 
 that was to be done. Those who visited the chapel 
 on the afternoon of the 30th found it difficult to 
 believe that it would be ready for the ceremony 
 at the appointed time. The benches were being 
 brought in, some of the Fathers were fitting up the 
 altar, the gallery was unfinished, and the organ 
 was being tuned, although numbers of its pipes 
 were still lying on the floor. Every obstacle was, 
 however, overcome by the indefatigable energy of 
 Father Faber, assisted chiefly by Father Hutchison, 
 who was ever, while health and strength were given 
 him, the especial supporter of Father Faber in every 
 work. 
 
 On the 31st of May, Thursday within the Octave 
 of Pentecost, at a somewhat late hour, everything 
 was ready. Dr. "Wiseman, Vicar Apostolic of the 
 London District, assisted pontifically, and preached 
 at the High Mass. After Vespers, which were sung 
 in the presence of the bishop, Father Newman 
 delivered the sermon which he has published in his 
 
1849.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 363 
 
 Discourses to Mixed Congregations, under the 
 title of " Prospects of the Catholic Missioner." 
 
 The community consisted of six Fathers, namely, 
 Fathers Faber, Dalgairns, Stanton, Hutchison, 
 Knox, and Wells, and two novices, Father Gordon 
 and the writer. They were still considered to belong 
 to the Congregation of Birmingham, and Father 
 Newman was still their superior, but they were more 
 immediately governed by Father Faber, with the 
 title of rector. They also received at King William 
 Street, for the completion of his education, the 
 writer's brother, Charles H. Bowden, who had lived 
 with the community at Maryvale and St. Wilfrid's 
 since the preceding July, and who joined their body 
 as a novice in 1856. 
 
 From this time the history of Father Faber 's 
 life is merged in that of the London Oratory, at 
 the head of which he remained until his death. 
 His chief interest was in his Congregation, and to 
 it his energies were almost exclusively devoted ; 
 its successes were his joy, its difficulties his hea- 
 viest cross ; he sought to make no name or reputa- 
 tion for himself, but was content to spend his 
 time and health and powers in the promotion of 
 St. Philip's work. 
 
364 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1849. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 1849-54. 
 
 A short reference to the state of the Church in 
 London at the beginning of the year 1849 will 
 cause the position which was taken up by the new 
 Oratory to be better understood. The present 
 dioceses of Westminster and Southwark formed the 
 London District, presided over by Dr. Wiseman, 
 successor to Dr. Walsh, who governed it only for 
 a short period. Dr. Griffiths, the predecessor of Dr. 
 Walsh, had been unwilling to disturb the existing 
 order of things, and had not allowed any religious 
 order or congregation to open a public church 
 within the limits of his jurisdiction. Dr. Wiseman 
 took a different view ; and one of the greatest works 
 of his episcopate was the introduction and pro- 
 tection of numerous religious bodies. 
 
 To him, indeed, the establishment at King 
 William Street was an especial pleasure, for it was 
 with him that the first idea of an English Oratory 
 originated, many years before its actual founders 
 were members of the Catholic Church. As a 
 Brother of the Little Oratory in Rome, he pictured 
 to himself the good which would result from the 
 practice of its Exercises in this country, and he 
 
1849.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 365 
 
 made a promise to St. Philip that he would intro- 
 duce the Congregation of the Oratory into England, 
 if it should ever be in his power to do so. Father 
 Newman has recorded that to Dr. Wiseman his 
 vocation to the Oratory was principally due; "I 
 present for your Lordship's kind acceptance and 
 patronage," he wrote in the dedication of his Dis- 
 courses to Mixed Congregations, "the first work 
 which I publish as a Pather of the Oratory of St. 
 Philip Neri. I have a sort of claim to do so, as a 
 token of my gratitude and affection towards your 
 Lordship, since it is to you principally that I owe 
 it, under God, that I am a client and subject, 
 however unworthy, of so great a Saint." The 
 London Congregation of St. Philip always found in 
 Monsignor, afterwards Cardinal Wiseman a kind 
 protector, to whom they could turn with confidence 
 for encouragement and Advice. 
 
 A comparison of the statistics given by the 
 Catholic Directory of 1849 with those of the present 
 year (1869) gives the following results. At the 
 former period there were in the London District 97 
 churches and chapels, there being now 268 ; instead 
 of 156 priests then, their numbers are now 407 ; or 
 if the country missions are excluded from the com- 
 parison, there were in London and its immediate 
 vicinity 42 churches and 84 priests in 1849, against 
 97 churches and 246 priests now. The difference 
 between the two periods is not one of numbers 
 only : the fittings, decorations, and vestments of 
 
366 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1849. 
 
 1849 were very different from those possessed by 
 the majority of the churches now ; to take a single 
 instance, the only statue of our Blessed Lady in 
 London was at St. Mary's, Chelsea. The number 
 of convents has risen from 15 to 59, and that of 
 religious communities of men from 2 to 30. The 
 Passionists had a house at Hampstead in 1849, and 
 the Redemptorists at Clapham, but neither had as 
 yet a public church, although rooms in their respec- 
 tive houses were used as chapels. Four Fathers of 
 the Society of Jesus resided in Hill Street, but no 
 public work is assigned to them in the Directory, 
 as their church at Farm Street was not finished, 
 and they had not then undertaken the charge of 
 the mission at Westminster. 
 
 It appears therefore that the Oratory in King 
 William Street was the first public church served 
 by a religious community, which was opened in the 
 diocese ; and Catholics of the present day, who are 
 happily accustomed to look upon such opening 
 ceremonies as matters of frequent occurrence, can 
 hardly realize how much objection was made to it 
 only twenty years ago. The secular clergy were 
 disposed to resist the introduction of a body of 
 priests, whose labours, if successful, would in their 
 opinion be likely to draw the faithful away from 
 those chapels which had an older claim, and who 
 yet took no part in parochial work. Further, it 
 was remarked that the Fathers were all converts, 
 and as far as London was concerned, untried men ; 
 
1849.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 367 
 
 the public wearing of their habit was considered an 
 indiscretion; and they were looked upon with 
 suspicion in some quarters, as being the first to 
 depart from those precautions and restrictions, 
 which the remembrance of times of persecution 
 still imposed upon the freedom of Catholic worship. 
 Another source of complaint against the Ora- 
 tory was found in the devotions which it 
 introduced. It may be said that popular services 
 on weekdays, as now understood, were quite un- 
 known. There were occasional Benedictions, and 
 usually Compline on one or two evenings in Advent 
 and Lent. The Directory for 1849 states that in 
 Kentish Town Chapel there were evening prayers 
 daily throughout the year, and on Thursdays 
 Benediction, "followed by a familiar discourse on 
 the moral duties of a Christian," but this, with 
 perhaps one or two others which may have been 
 overlooked, was an exceptional case. Indeed, the 
 materials for a vernacular service were very scanty ; 
 the three hymns given in the Garden of the Soul 
 did not afford much variety, and such prayer-books 
 as the Golden Manual and others, containing 
 translations of foreign devotions, had not yet 
 appeared. 
 
 "When, therefore, the Exercises of the Oratory 
 began with new hymns, new prayers, and a new 
 style of preaching, it was no wonder that even 
 Catholics should be astonished ; indeed, formal 
 >mplaints were laid before the bishop. It was 
 
368 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1849. 
 
 represented to him that the Exercises were a 
 dangerous novelty, and ought to be suppressed, on 
 the ground that they were conducted in a Metho- 
 distical rather than a Catholic style. It is curious 
 to remember that one of the devotions to which 
 the greatest exception was taken was that of the 
 Seven Offerings of the Precious Blood, now so 
 generally in use. 
 
 These suspicions were dissipated after a time by 
 the success of the experiment ; and many of those 
 who had been the loudest to condemn became the 
 foremost to praise, and even to copy, the services 
 of the new Congregation in King "William Street. 
 The church was always well attended, both at 
 the Masses in the morning, and at the evening 
 Exercises, which have been continued, without any 
 material alteration in their form, up to the present 
 time. The musical talent of Father Alban Wells 
 was of great service in the selection of music for 
 the hymns, which have always been a prominent 
 feature in the services at the Oratory. The zealous 
 priests of the London chapels, when they saw the 
 fruits produced by the new Institute, were not slow 
 to profit by the example ; and in a short time there 
 were but few congregations to which Father Faber's 
 hymns were not familiar. 
 
 On the 31st of July, the Eeast of St. Ignatius, 
 the church of the Immaculate Conception in Farm 
 Street was solemnly opened, and on the Sunday 
 
1849.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 369 
 
 within the Octave, August 5th,] Pather Paber 
 preached there at the High Mass.* 
 
 The services of the Oratory were interrupted for 
 a few weeks about this time for the completion 
 of the decorations of the chapel. It had been 
 hurriedly prepared for the opening in May, and the 
 work was now finished in a suitable manner, at the 
 expense of a distinguished benefactor of the Con- 
 gregation. Pather Eaber took advantage of this 
 interval of leisure to pay a short visit to the 
 principal towns of Belgium, accompanied by Pather 
 Hutchison and Pather Wells. 
 
 In the month of September the services of some 
 of the Pathers were required to assist the sufferers 
 from an outbreak of cholera among the Irish hop- 
 pickers at East Parleigh, in Kent. As they were all 
 Catholics, the rector, Mr. H. W. Wilberforce, made 
 an application to Pather Paber, who dispatched two 
 of his Pathers the same day, following them him- 
 self shortly afterwards. Two Sisters of the Good 
 Shepherd were also sent to aid in the good work. 
 The parish schoolroom was turned into a hospital, 
 with a crucifix and holy water stoup over each bed, 
 and Mr. "Wilberforce and his family were indefati- 
 gable in their exertions to provide whatever was 
 necessary. Thanks to the facilities they afforded, 
 Pather Paber, who was prevented by his duties in 
 London from making a long stay at Parleigh, was 
 
 * Notes on Doctrinal and Spiritual Subjects, vol. ii. p. 319. 
 24 
 
370 . - THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1849, 
 
 able to make ample provision for the administration 
 of the sacraments to the dying, and for the recon- 
 ciliation of many of the survivors to the Church. 
 Mr. Wilberforce and his family had the happiness 
 of being received into the Catholic Church in the 
 following year, on the anniversary of the day on 
 which the Fathers of the Oratory had been invited 
 to Farleigh. 
 
 The four years during which the community 
 remained at King "William Street were passed in 
 much hardship and difficulty : the high rent of the 
 premises, and the numerous struggles incidental to 
 a new foundation were burdens which pressed 
 heavily upon its members. There was, however, 
 much consolation in the abundant fruit which 
 resulted from their labours. On the 21st of Novem- 
 ber, 1849, Father Faber wrote to his old corres- 
 pondent, the Rev. J. B. Moms : " "We are in the 
 full swing of work : lawyers, medical students, &c. 
 pouring pell-mell into the Church, I have received 
 twelve quite lately, but we keep them snug. I am 
 worked off my legs, and as Edward Bagshawe, who 
 put on the habit today, will tell you, can hardly 
 get through my controversial and spiritual cor- 
 respondence. The success of the Oratory has been 
 certainly most marvellous: we have nearly five 
 hundred communions a week now; the bishop is 
 most affectionate to us, and we are more jolly than 
 I can say with each other." 
 
 The following passage is extracted from a letter 
 
1850.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 371 
 
 addressed to the writer, who was passing the winter 
 at Malta. 
 
 LETTER XC. 
 
 The Oratory, London, 
 
 St. John's Day, 1849, A. S. 
 
 I have been very ill, more so than ever, since my 
 return from Bath. I never shall be well in London. I have 
 two vocations, one for my body, and one for my soul ; and 
 they happen to be incompatible, so the body must do the 
 best it can, and the soul must roughride it for another sixty 
 years, which is supposed to be the term of incessant head- 
 ache still left me. "When you and I sit toothless together, 
 shaking our palsied heads at recreation, we shall look down 
 upon the junior Fathers, who have only been thirty or forty 
 years in the Congregation, with an ineffable contempt ; and 
 when my dotage comes on, I shall fancy myself still novice 
 master, and you a refractory novice, and I shall trip you up 
 on your crutches for mortification. 
 
 In the course of the autumn Father Faber took 
 the principal part in a mission given at St. 
 Wilfrid's, which he never visited afterwards. After 
 passing through many changes, the property was 
 made over to the authorities of Sedgley Park 
 School, who have opened there a branch of their 
 establishment. 
 
 Great preparations were made by the Fathers for 
 the services of their first season of Lent at King 
 "William Street. In spite of his numerous illnesses, 
 and the violent headaches from which he frequently 
 suffered, Father Faber was indefatigable in his 
 work. Without assistance from others he gave a 
 
372 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1850. 
 
 Retreat in the church for the benefit of persons 
 desirous of leading spiritual lives, preaching a 
 meditation for two hours in the morning, and a 
 conference for two more in the afternoon, every 
 day for a fortnight. Immediately afterwards he 
 took a large share of the Lenten sermons, and on 
 Good Friday preached the Devotion of the Three 
 Hours' Agony. The following account was given 
 of him in February : " Father Wilfrid is working 
 like a steam engine more than a man. Whether 
 he is well or not I don't know, I hope he is, but 
 his work is something quite prodigious. He has 
 got up twenty-six sermons for Lent, is now giving 
 a Retreat, is getting up sermons against Transcen- 
 dentalism, has written devotions for Jesus Risen, 
 is to give the Tre Ore, and has poured out verses on 
 Santo Padre by the mile." 
 
 Three sermons were preached by Father Faber 
 before the Feast of the Patron Saint of the Congre- 
 gation, and afterwards published under the title of 
 " The Spirit and Genius of St. Philip Neri." About 
 the same time Father Newman delivered in the 
 church his lectures on Anglican Difficulties, which 
 were instrumental in determining many persons to 
 enter the Catholic Church. His audience, which 
 was admitted by tickets, was a remarkable one, and 
 comprised, in addition to a large number of Angli- 
 can clergymen, many persons distinguished in the 
 literary and intellectual world, for instance, Mr. 
 Thackeray, Miss Charlotte Bronte, and others who 
 
1850.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 373 
 
 were well able to appreciate Ms marvellous style and 
 power of reading. 
 
 On the first Sunday of July the Confraternity of 
 the Precious Blood was formally erected. This 
 devotion had always been a favourite one with 
 Eather Eaber. It was doubtless connected in his 
 mind with the theological reminiscences of his 
 earliest years, and on his reception into the Church 
 he had embraced with avidity those practices of 
 it which have been approved and indulgenced, and 
 of which a translation recently made by an English 
 convert was placed in his hands by Dr. Grant on 
 his arrival in Rome in 1846. The branch of the 
 Confraternity which he had erected at St. Wilfrid's 
 in 1847 had had a great success, and it was a con- 
 solation to him to extend its usefulness to London, 
 on the first celebration of the Eeast of the Precious 
 .Blood, instituted by the Holy Father on his return 
 from exile at Gaeta. Its erection in London was 
 confirmed by a Papal Rescript bearing date August 
 the 12th, 1850. 
 
 During the summer Eather Eaber allowed him- 
 self short intervals of rest, which were mainly spent 
 at Lancing, in Sussex, in a small house taken for 
 the season, to which the other members of the 
 community repaired by turns. This recreation was 
 provided by the kindness of W. G. Ward, Esq., 
 an old friend of Eather Eaber, who took great 
 pleasure in discussing theological questions with 
 him. The Congregation was indebted to Mr. Ward 
 
374 TUB LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1850. 
 
 for much valuable assistance in the early years 
 of its foundation. Father Eaber also preached 
 on the 15th of September at a new church which 
 had been lately opened at Sheffield. 
 
 About this time it was considered that the 
 Oratory in London had acquired sufficient strength 
 to stand alone, and it was therefore resolved that 
 the Rule of St. Philip, requiring that his Congrega- 
 tions should be independent of each other, should 
 be observed in its integrity. Accordingly, on the 
 9th of October, Father Newman and the Fathers 
 with him at Birmingham released the community 
 in London "with much regret and sorrowful 
 hearts" from then* obedience, and deputed them to 
 erect a separate Congregation. 
 
 It was obvious that the choice of a Provost or 
 Superior by the Fathers would fall on no one but 
 Father Faber, who, on the eve of the election, 
 thus expressed himself to the Earl of Arundel and 
 Surrey : 
 
 LETTER XCI. 
 
 The Oratory, October 11, 1850. 
 
 I cannot look without alarm on the prospect of heing 
 elected Father Superior tomorrow, and the interests and 
 credit of St. Philip's family in the hugest city in the world 
 being entrusted to such as I am. The very thought makes 
 one wish that all the world could know what I really am, 
 that they might hate me and put me into a perpetual 
 Coventry, which would be my desert. And yet, when I am 
 elected, for all I know I shall have movements of self- 
 
1850.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 375 
 
 complacency about it, instead of seeing that my elevation 
 will simply be an evil out of which God will magnify Himself 
 by bringing forth good ; and it will be privilege enough for 
 me to be an ugly foil to the beauty of His sweet Providence. 
 
 On the 12th of October, the Feast of St. Wilfrid, 
 the customary elections were held, and Father 
 Faber was chosen to be Superior, an office which 
 he held until his death, being re-elected every three 
 years, according to the Rule of the Oratory. 
 
 Although the immediate connection of the Fathers 
 with Father Newman was thus terminated, they did 
 not the less regard him with feelings of the deepest 
 affection and respect ; and Father Faber only spoke 
 the mind of his whole community when, five years 
 later, he wrote the dedication of his work on the 
 Blessed Sacrament; "To my most dear Father, 
 John Henry Newman, to whom, in the mercy of 
 God, I owe the faith of the Church, the grace of 
 the Sacraments, and the habit of St. Philip, with 
 much more that love knows and feeds upon, though 
 it cannot tell in words, but which the last day will 
 show." 
 
 The community had already received several 
 additions to its number, and was much in want of 
 increased accommodation. In this conjuncture it was 
 assisted by Mr. Charles Kenny, who kindly vacated 
 the house, No. 27 King William Street, in which 
 he was then residing, in order to place it at the 
 disposal of the Fathers. 
 
 The conclusion of the year 1850 was marked by 
 
376 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1850. 
 
 the agitation consequent upon the establishment 
 of the Hierarchy, during which the habit of the 
 Fathers rendered them conspicuous objects for the 
 display of popular feeling. "It is an anxious 
 time," Eather Eaber wrote, "but quite as full of 
 great hopes, as of great anxieties." He described 
 the state of affairs at greater length to Mr. Watts 
 Hussell, who was at Home ; 
 
 LETTER XCIL 
 
 The Oratory, King William Street, Strand, London, 
 Feast of St. Gertrude, 1850. 
 
 Charissime, I naturally think of you and yours on 
 this day of your patron Saint. May she obtain for you all, 
 not her marvellous gifts, hut what is of higher price far, 
 a quiet spirit of mortification and of prayer. I suppose, 
 amidst tomhs of Saints and Domenichine and relics, and what 
 not, you are fast becoming saints yourselves, which I regret 
 to say is very far from being the case with me, though I am 
 always making a start in that direction. But I go to bed 
 like an animal every night, sheerly worn out with fret and 
 work, and I rise in the morning nearly as tired as I was 
 when I went to bed. London is a frightful place for work. 
 I daresay you see the English papers, and therefore you know 
 in what plight we are just now in England. We have the 
 honour of bearing rather more than our share of the public 
 indignation, which may be partly owing to the Bishop of 
 London's honouring us by a charge. All over the walls you 
 see " Down with the Oratorians," " Beware of the Orato- 
 rians," "Don't go to the Oratory," "Banishment to the 
 Oratorians," and in Leicester Square a triple placard of 
 singular truthfulness, " No Popery ! Down with the Orato- 
 
1850.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 377 
 
 rians ! No religion at all !" We are cursed in the streets : 
 even gentlemen shout from their carriage windows at us. All 
 this is well. But the real anxiety is how our own people 
 will conduct themselves. 
 
 Of late, in praying for the Cardinal I have felt strongly 
 drawn to pray that he may have a great share of the spirit 
 of mortification. This is what we need ; and if the present 
 clamour forces us into this it will indeed be a blessing to us. 
 My dear Michael, we have all been too cocky here in 
 England, both old Catholics and converts. We have gone 
 on as if the game was in our own hands ; we have run off to 
 shows, pageants, functions, fine churches, gentlemanliness, 
 publicity, and not corresponded to what God was doing for 
 us outwardly, by an increase of asceticism, or prayer, or the 
 practices of an interior life generally. We were getting more 
 hollow and presumptuous daily. Whether then the present 
 distress be God's letting the devil bark for our instruction, 
 or bite for our chastisement, I only hope it will not be 
 thrown away, but will be allowed to accomplish the work 
 whereto it has been sent. Alas ! the misery is that so few 
 people take a supernatural view of things. Diminutae sunt 
 veritates a filiis hominum. All this is what I am saying to 
 my crucifix every day, and so, when I come to write, out it 
 comes ; and yet it seems \iav afaXov to write to you on St. 
 Gertrude's day, and do nothing but croak, but it may hint to 
 you in what direction to turn your prayers for us. 
 
 On the 2nd of December, Father Faber wrote 
 to the Countess of Arundel and Surrey the following 
 account of a cure which he received from a relic 
 of St. Mary Magdalen of Pazzi, a Saint to whom 
 he had, when in Florence, conceived a great devo- 
 tion, and to whom he bore a strong personal 
 resemblance. 
 
378 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1850. 
 
 LETTER XCIIL 
 
 And now I have so many things to tell you that I 
 hardly know where to begin. Some time ago, a lady at 
 prayer in our church thought it was revealed to her that St. 
 Mary Magdalene of Pazzi wished to confer some grazia on me 
 in connection with my headache. Her director gave her 
 permission to act upon this; whereupon she wrote to me, 
 begging me when my headache came on, to apply a relic of 
 the Saint to my forehead. Some days elapsed; I asked Father 
 Francis, my director, for his leave to do this ; as it was a 
 merely temporal thing, he took some time to consider. I 
 became ill, and had a night of great pain. I thought he had 
 forgotten all about it, and that it would be a blameworthy 
 imperfection in me to remind him of it. The morning after, 
 he came to confession, and found me ill in bed; he was 
 going away, but I knew he was going to say mass, and so I 
 made him kneel down by my bedside, while I put on my 
 stole, and with considerable pain heard his confession ; when 
 he rose I gave him the stole, and asked him to hear my 
 confession, which he did. Afterwards he said, "Well, now, 
 I think it would be well to try this relic." I answered, 
 "Just as you please." I was in great suffering, and very 
 sick besides. He gave it me, and walked away to the door to 
 say mass. I applied the relic, a piece of her linen, to my 
 forehead, a sort of fire went into my head, through every 
 limb down to my feet, causing me to tremble ; before Father 
 Francis could even reach the door, I sprang up, crying, " I 
 am cured, I am quite well !" He said I looked as white as a 
 sheet : I was filled with a kind of sacred fear, and an intense 
 desire to consecrate myself utterly to God. I got up and 
 dressed, without any difficulty, or pain, or sickness. This 
 was on the Wednesday. On the Saturday I had another 
 headache, but I had not asked Father Francis' leave about the 
 
1851.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 379 
 
 relic, and felt I ought to take no steps to get rid of my cross. 
 In the afternoon he told me I might apply it. Fathers 
 Philip and Edward were in the room. I was on my bed ; I 
 took the relic and applied it ; there was the same fire in a 
 less degree, but no cure. I then said to the Saint, "I only 
 ask it to go to the Novena and Benediction." The cure was 
 instantaneous, while Father Philip had such an impression 
 that the Saint was in the room, that he was irresistibly drawn 
 to bow to her. Well, I said all my office, then in an hour or so 
 came the Novena and Benediction ; and as soon as I returned 
 to my room I was taken so ill again I was obliged to go to 
 bed. Meanwhile I had totally forgotten what the others 
 reminded me of afterwards, that two years ago Michael Watts 
 Russell wrote to me from Florence, and said, " The children 
 send their love, and desire me to say they have just come 
 from the tomb of St. Mary Magdalen of Pazzi, whom they 
 have been asking to cure Father Wilfrid's headache." 
 
 After all this, I am sure I shall lose my soul if I do not 
 serve God less lukewarmly, so please pray for me. 
 
 At the beginning of the year 1851, several 
 Anglican clergymen were received into the Catholic 
 Church. One of the most distinguished of these, 
 Archdeacon Manning, now Archbishop of West- 
 minster, who received Holy Orders from Cardinal 
 Wiseman in the course of the spring and summer, 
 exercised his offices of subdeacon and deacon for 
 the first time at the Oratory, and when ordained 
 priest, was instructed by Father Faber in the cere- 
 monies of Mass. 
 
 In the month of June a committee was 
 formed at the instance of Father Hutchison, 
 for the purpose of supplying with schools the 
 
380 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1851. 
 
 children of the more destitute class of Catholic 
 poor, and thus counteracting the pernicious effect 
 of Protestant Ragged Schools. It was proposed to 
 open at first a day school for about two hundred 
 boys, under the superintendence of the Fathers 
 of the Oratory, and afterwards, if the necessary 
 funds were forthcoming, to establish a complete 
 system of schools for girls as well as boys. The 
 work was entrusted to Father Hutchison, who 
 spared neither his time nor his money to ensure 
 success. On the 9th of October a school was 
 opened in Rose Street, Coyent Garden, and trans- 
 ferred in the following year to more commodious 
 premises in Dunn's Passage, Holborn. The success 
 of the undertaking was beyond all expectation. 
 Upwards of eleven hundred children were soon in 
 the habit of receiving instruction in the schools. 
 Facilities were also afforded them for attending 
 Mass on Sundays, and for receiving the Sacraments 
 of Confession and Communion. They were all of 
 the poorest class, and the good effected among them 
 was so notable as to attract the attention of the 
 magistrates of the neighbouring police court. One 
 project led to another, and Father Hutchison was so 
 unsparing of himself in the prosecution of the work 
 that his health entirely gave way, and he was 
 obliged to resign the management of the schools 
 to Father E/owe, by whom they were maintained 
 in the same high state of efficiency, and afterwards 
 removed to the spacious buildings in Charles 
 
1851.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 381 
 
 Street, Drury Lane. It was found eventually that 
 the distance of the schools from the Oratory at 
 Brompton, and the continually increasing work of 
 the Fathers, were objections to their remaining in 
 the hands of the Congregation, and accordingly in 
 the year 1863 the whole establishment was pre- 
 sented to the diocese. 
 
 Although Father Eaber had been able to pass a 
 few weeks at the seaside late in the summer, during 
 which time he completed an Essay previously begun 
 on Catholic Home Missions, the state of his health 
 on his return was so unsatisfactory as to occasion 
 considerable alarm. It was judged advisable that 
 he should give up all work for a few months, and 
 try the effect of total change of scene. He therefore 
 determined to carry out the plan which he had 
 formed years before of visiting the Holy Land, and, 
 with the Rev. George E. Ballard as his companion, 
 he left England early in October. During his 
 absence the Eathers were kindly assisted by the 
 Bishop of Southwark, who preached frequently in 
 the Oratory. After a short delay at Marseilles, 
 caused by Eather Eaber 's illness, the travellers 
 embarked in a Erench steamer for Beyrout. The 
 passage was a very rough one, and on reaching 
 Malta Eather Eaber found himself unable to pro- 
 ceed further, and was obliged to make a complete 
 change in his plans. On the 30th of October he 
 wrote to the Countess of Arundel and Surrey : 
 
382 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1851. 
 
 LETTER XCIV. 
 
 I have broken down, and have been obliged to abandon 
 the Terra Santa. Our voyage from Marseilles was very 
 disastrous and fearful, though the storm was magnificent and 
 exciting. "We had to cruise about behind Gozo for twenty- 
 four hours, as our boat could not live in the mountainous 
 waves on this side of the island, and the harbour of Malta 
 could not be entered at all, even if we could reach it. My 
 poor head gave way completely under the fatigue, and I feel 
 it a duty to remain here to recruit, which I suppose is tanta- 
 mount to giving up Jerusalem altogether. 
 
 I have got a very nice little lodging on the quarantine 
 harbour, and the dear Augustinians have given me an altar at 
 seven every morning, so that F. George and I are begin- 
 ning to live like Christians again. I am already much better 
 from the rest, and rather think of preaching at the Gesii on 
 Sunday, as people seem so anxious about it. I have also 
 promised to preach to the sailors at San Filippo, as soon as 
 the fleet comes in next week. 
 
 At Malta he was much amused at being taken 
 for his uncle, the Hey. G. Stanley Faber. 
 
 " A certain Canon Psaila," he wrote to Father Hutchison 
 on All Saints' Day, "has written an answer to my uncle's 
 Difficulties of Komanism in 780 pages : a copy is coming to 
 me to read ! I am said to have written the Difficulties in 
 old times, and priests cry over me, and say, Che grazia ! 
 At first I denied it, but found I was not believed ; and on 
 Monday, the two antagonists Canonico Psaila and Dr. Faber 
 are to meet. II Canonico e molto consolato, especially as he 
 says the mala fecle del Faber about the early fathers was 
 dreadful ! I shall have it all to explain, and then he will be 
 so sconsolato." 
 
1851.] FREDERICK WILLIAM PABEE. 383 
 
 In the middle of November Father Faber and 
 his companion left Malta for Messina, whence they 
 proceeded to Catania, Palermo, Naples, and Rome. 
 In each town their first care was to present them- 
 selves at the Oratory, where they were sure of an 
 enthusiastic welcome, and where they applied 
 themselves to learn all they could of the working 
 and the spirit of their Institute. At Messina 
 Pather Paber preached in Italian to the Brothers 
 of the Little Oratory, to their great delight and 
 edification ; and at Palermo, he met with Lord and 
 Lady Shrewsbury, by whom he was most warmly 
 received. He arrived at Naples on the Peast of the 
 Immaculate Conception, and described the scene 
 in a letter written on the following day to Father 
 Hutchison. 
 
 LETTER XCY. 
 
 Just as we dropped our anchor in the harbour yesterday, 
 a signal was given from the church where the pontifical 
 function was, of the Elevation of the Host ; it was like magic, 
 all the ships blossomed scores of colours ; the castles, the 
 ships, the bastions, roared with cannonading, till the moun- 
 tains echoed and echoed again ; the bells all along the bay 
 rang madly without any tune, in the rum Italian way, and 
 old Vesuvius smoked so benignantly in the sunshine, that I 
 nearly cried; it was such a big act of faith from a whole city; 
 one felt (I speak with all due respect to San Gennaro) that 
 our Lady had reasons for prohibiting the volcano to send his 
 lava in this direction. A Yankee man of war, and an 
 English war steamer, with their wintry rigging, unflagged, 
 d their silent guns, were the only Protestant blots in the 
 
384 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1851. 
 
 scene. Thanks to Lord Palmerston, all the nations, Russian, 
 Belgian, American, Italian, French, had their permissions to 
 land at once ; hut the English, Piedmontese, and Swiss, were 
 kept waiting ever so long. We reached our own church just 
 as they were taking the Blessed Sacrament down to give 
 Benediction, which was jolly. I followed them into the 
 sacristy, and made myself known, and was very affectionately 
 embraced. I sat for some time in the house with some of 
 the Fathers, and today some have called here. I have been to 
 see Father Costa, but he was unfortunately engaged. There 
 were illuminations last night, and abundance of squibs, and 
 firing of pistols, and altarini up the sides of the streets, and 
 festoons of muslin and tinsel everywhere ; and what pleased 
 me most was that many of the shut shops were so adorned, 
 which took off the London Sunday look of a Festa. 
 
 The Fathers here are so urgent that I do not feel sure we 
 shall be able to leave so soon for Rome. This morning I 
 have spent with the old Preposto, a most engaging old man. 
 I then spent a long time with the librarians in the Library : 
 it is of the same size as the one at Palermo, 22,000 volumes ; 
 very rich in MSS. and rare classics ; but for go, and use, I 
 would rather have the Palermo Library. I adored one book 
 
 St. Philip's thumbed copy of Richard of St. Victor. 
 
 Consolini had written something in the beginning of it ; his 
 handwriting is just like Father Newman's. 
 
 I have also been to the Cardinal Archbishop (Sforza), and 
 I had the coolness to go in seculars ! Directly I saw him, I 
 felt I knew him quite well, but when or where I can't 
 remember; and when he dismissed me, he said, "You must 
 go to Rome and see Santo Padre ; remember, it was Gregory 
 XVI. when you were there." I suppose I must have known 
 him a Monsignore in 1843, but I am not sure. 
 
 If I can get one, I will bring one of the rum things they 
 put on the altar in Advent and Lent, when flowers are 
 
1851.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 385 
 
 forbidden; they take my fancy hugely. At present I have 
 charitable Fathers scouring the bookshops to get certain 
 books I want for the Library, most of which were printed 
 here. I shall get another Viva, if it be possible, for it is a 
 book which will bear duplicating. Milante on Theses 
 DamnatsD was printed here I know ; and they tell me Gerdil 
 is often in the market. They can get them cheap, whereas 
 an English face would treble the price at once. Tomorrow 
 all the relics are to be opened for me : alas ! the argenteria 
 was all taken at the Kevolution. Words can't describe the 
 bitterness of my weariness fuori la Congregazione. I think 
 of it day and night, and find no rest. I keep fancying you 
 have received a novice ; I wish it may be true ; but I fancy 
 all manner of things ; and now I shall reach home without a 
 letter. 
 
 They remained only a few days in Rome, where, 
 however, they had the honour of being presented 
 to Pius IX. The Holy Father received them most 
 graciously, and asked Father Faber what privileges 
 he would like to have. " Nothing for myself alone, 
 Beatissimo Padre," was his answer, " but whatever 
 your Holiness pleases to give to my Congregation." 
 On his presenting a petition for a daily Plenary 
 Indulgence for the Church of the Oratory, the 
 Pope said, "This must go to the Congregation 
 of Rites." " Ah ! Holy Father," answered Father 
 Faber, "you can do it yourself if you will;" upon 
 which the Pope laughed and signed the paper. 
 
 The Superior of the Chiesa Nuova, Padre Collo- 
 redo, gratified Father Faber's devotion by having 
 the shrine of St. Philip opened and lighted up. 
 25 
 
386 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1851. 
 
 Padre Colloredo, lie wrote to Father Dalgairns, (Letter 
 XCVI.) was quite loving : and after recreation told me that as 
 soon as the Church was locked at the Ave Maria, Santo 
 Padre's shrine should he opened and lighted up in honour of 
 the " Preposto di Londra." I asked for nothing, and I think 
 this warmed his heart. So I hrought Lord Fielding &c. ; and 
 a wondrous consolation it was to see the dear Saint lying 
 so calmly, with his feet resting on the end of the coffin, and 
 his hands crossed in front, and that grand crown upon his 
 head. I was a good deal overcome by it, as well as by the 
 relics, which are like a life of him the crumbs he left at 
 his last supper, the Crocefisso senza croce, the bag of sup- 
 posed relics he worked miracles with, but you know and 
 have seen them all. Padre Colloredo slightly wept when we 
 parted, and after kissing me most lustily, he held my hand 
 in his, and said, carissimo, O carissimo mio. I won his 
 heart in the morning by cutting jokes on him. .1 was 
 walking through one of the corridors with my hat off, when 
 he begged me to put it on ; I told him I preferred to have 
 my head uncovered, and said laughingly, Ho la testa calda, 
 ed il cuore freddo. (My head is hot, and my heart cold.) 
 Whereupon Father Joseph Gordon burst out laughing, and 
 Padre Colloredo said, I can see plain enough that your heart 
 is anything but freddo. Finding that a complimentary 
 speech was coming, I began lurlare, and joked him about 
 pretending to have discerni7iiento degli spiriti, just because 
 he was Preposto of Chiesa Nuova. Our friendship dated 
 from this. 
 
 Turin, Dec. 26, 1851. I am longing to be at home, and 
 almost regret the day lost here. Since we began locomotion 
 on land, all my bad symptoms have gone, and I sleep like a 
 top every night. Home will set me all right. 
 
 The remainder of the journey was rapidly per- 
 
1852.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 387 
 
 formed. Passing through Florence, the travellers 
 halted for Christmas Day at Genoa, and then 
 crossing the Alps by the pass of the Mont Cenis, 
 reached London on the last day of the year 1851. 
 
 Father Faber's anxiety to ba at home had 
 brought him back before the time fixed by his 
 medical advisers, and he was far from being well 
 enough to resume his work. He therefore hired for 
 a few months a small house at Hither Green, near 
 Lewisham, in Kent. Being within an easy distance 
 of London, he was able to receive frequent visits 
 from members of his community and other friends, 
 and could be referred to for advice in matters of 
 importance. It was also easy for him to super- 
 intend from time to time the building of the 
 country house of the Congregation, St. Mary's, 
 Sydenham Hill, the foundations of which were 
 begun on the Feast of the Purification, February 
 the 2nd, 1852. His health improved considerably 
 during his stay at Lewisham. 
 
 LETTER XCYII. -To FATHER JOHN E. BOWDEN. 
 
 Hither Green prospers greatly (he wrote to Malta on the 
 22nd of January) as far as I am concerned. I am nearly 
 blown away by the cold winds, which send health and joy 
 through every limb and fibre. I struggle across ploughed 
 fields, and wade through the liquid mud of the lanes in my 
 patent clumped shoes, to my heart's content. I eat like a 
 wolf, I sleep like a top, I am in immense spirits, and how my 
 digestion goes on I am unable to tell you, for I am never in 
 any way reminded of the existence of a stomach, except when 
 
388 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1852. 
 
 I stoop to tie my shoes, an operation which is daily becoming 
 more difficult. 0. my dear John ! this is the only pure air in 
 the world, a dear, clear, cold, whistling wind, that blows one's 
 hair about, flies one's hat over hedges, goes up the arm of 
 one's coat, roars in the chimney and pipes through the 
 keyhole. None of your nasty hot suns, withering siroccos, 
 cloudless skies, for me. Yesterday I walked out without my 
 hat in the rain, and it was delicious beyond expression. 
 
 One of the chief events which concerned the 
 Oratory in the year 1852 was the trial of Father 
 Newman in the Court of Queen's Bench, at the 
 instance of Dr. Achilli. Father Newman remained 
 at King William Street whilst it was proceeding, 
 and those who saw him during that time of excite- 
 ment, remaining day and night almost without 
 interruption hefore the tahernacle, will not readily 
 forget the edification they received from his serenity 
 and evenness of mind. 
 
 About the end of June a proclamation was issued 
 "by the government of Lord Derby, recalling to 
 mind the statutes which forbid Roman Catholic 
 ecclesiastics to wear the habit of their order. It 
 became necessary therefore for the Fathers of the 
 Oratory to discontinue the practice which they had 
 adopted, and to wear their cassocks only within the 
 limits of their own premises. 
 
 Father Faber preached at King William Street 
 every evening of the Octave of the Precious Blood 
 at the beginning of July, and shortly afterwards 
 went down to superintend the completion of St. 
 Mary's, Sydenham. It was first inhabited on the 
 
1852.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 389 
 
 17th of July, and the Blessed Sacrament was 
 reserved there for the first time on the 2nd of 
 August. On the 10th of the same month, after the 
 ordination to the priesthood at the Oratory of four 
 Fathers, of whom the writer was one, Cardinal 
 Wiseman, Dr. Grant, the bishop of the diocese, 
 and a large party of friends, including Prince 
 Massimo, were entertained at St. Mary's, where His 
 Eminence and Prince Massimo planted trees in 
 commemoration of their visit. The Massimo family 
 have maintained their connection with the Oratory 
 at Home ever since the lifetime of St. Philip, by 
 whom Paolo de 5 Massimi was miraculously restored 
 to life. 
 
 In the month of September Father Faber went 
 to Ireland for the first time, accompanied by Father 
 Bagshawe, and was received everywhere with great 
 enthusiasm. He preached at the Jesuits' church in 
 Gardiner Street, Dublin, during the celebration of 
 the Triduo in honour of the Beatification of Father 
 Peter Claver, and one or two other sermons in other 
 chapels for charitable objects, after which he paid 
 a short visit to his friend Mr. Monsell, at Tervoe, 
 near Limerick, before returning to England. 
 
 It had never been the intention of the Fathers to 
 remain in the confined premises which they occu- 
 pied in King William Street. They always looked 
 forward to the time when they would be in posses- 
 sion of a more spacious church, and of a house 
 better adapted to the daily life of the community. 
 
390 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1852. 
 
 As early as the year 1850, a committee of laymen, 
 with the Earl of Arundel and Surrey, A. G. 
 Fullerton Esq., and D. Lewis Esq., as its Honorary 
 Secretaries, was formed for the promotion of this 
 object. Many were the schemes proposed, and as 
 many were the disappointments. Once only did 
 any plan seem likely to be accomplished, as the 
 Fathers had signed an agreement to purchase a 
 large house in the neighbourhood of Regent Street, 
 the negotiation for which, however, was eventually 
 broken off by the proprietor. At last, in the 
 autumn of 1852, a plot of ground with a residence, 
 known as Blemell House, Brompton, was purchased 
 by the Congregation ; the buildings upon it, which 
 were not in good condition, were pulled down, 
 and the erection of the present Oratory was begun. 
 
 The original plans of the house were conceived 
 by Father Faber on a scale of great magnificence, 
 but the estimated cost of their execution necessi- 
 tated their being modified to the design actually 
 carried out. The work was begun in March 1853, 
 and such was Father Faber' s power of commu- 
 nicating his own energy to those under his super- 
 intendence that the whole of the spacious buildings 
 were finished and occupied within twelve months. 
 This was only one instance of the grandeur with 
 which Father Faber always made his plans ; and 
 he and his Fathers often laughed over the wonder- 
 ful schemes which he projected. 
 
 In the mean time, the work at King William 
 
1852.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 391 
 
 Street did not slacken. Besides the daily preaching 
 and constant confessions in the church, a mission 
 was given during the first three weeks of Advent 
 by Father Faber and some of the other Fathers in 
 the new schools at Dunn's Passage, the object 
 of which was to give an impetus to the work of 
 education by the revival of religion in the families of 
 the children who frequented them. The majority of 
 those who attended the services were Catholics only 
 in name, and were found to be so ignorant that 
 several brothers of the Little Oratory were con- 
 stantly employed in teaching them the elements 
 of Christian doctrine. It was difficult to move 
 souls which had been so long hardened by neglect, 
 but at length Father Faber, at the end of an 
 impassioned sermon, which was but coldly listened 
 to, exclaimed : " How can I touch your hearts ? 
 I have prayed to Jesus ; I have prayed to Mary ; 
 whom shall I pray to next ? I will pray to you, 
 my dear Irish children, to have mercy on your own 
 souls." These words, and the sight of Father 
 Faber kneeling before them, had a wonderful effect ; 
 the whole congregation fell on their knees, and for 
 some minutes nothing was heard but their sobs and 
 prayers. After the Mission, the work was con- 
 tinued by hiring rooms in the most crowded courts 
 of the neighbourhood, to which the people were 
 summoned every evening by a bell, in order to 
 receive instructions, to sing hymns, and to say the 
 Rosary together. Some account of the Mission 
 
392 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1852. 
 
 was given by Father Paber in the following 
 letter : 
 
 LETTER XCVIII. To THE COUNTESS OF ARUNDEL AND 
 SURREY. 
 
 The Oratory, Nov. 29, 1852. 
 
 The mission has begun with immense consolations. 
 Thanks to the Precious Blood. There were about a thousand 
 crammed in there ; many most unhappy women, who, before 
 it was over, were on their knees before the crucifix, sobbing 
 and beating their breasts. You know it is in the very heart 
 of London's worst dens of iniquity. We have got about a 
 hundred and fifty masses promised, and several convents are 
 praying. Mind and pray hard ; tell our dear Lord He must 
 give grace now, without measure, without measure, without 
 measure ! No common supply will do. Oh if you saw that 
 mass of poor creatures, you would yearn for their souls. The 
 heavens must positively rain Precious Blood. That is what 
 we want. It must be all done by prayer. So pray all day 
 long. 
 
 I am wonderfully well, for I am in my element, and 
 Tegart's tonics furnish the strength. I fear I am only too 
 happy. God is so good in every way. Today I made a 
 meditation on giving up to God promptly, sweetly, and with- 
 out a word, the soul He has given me, and I found there was 
 nothing to hinder it. Not Brompton or Sydenham. Not 
 home and the graves of my father and mother, for I have now 
 not been home for twenty years. Not my relations, though 
 unconverted. Nor any of the Fathers. Only one penitent, 
 who wants me, is a little tie. Then, as to being fit, why, I 
 never shall be fit. I do not know, of course, if I shall be 
 saved. But then, at best, I must always trust that doubt to 
 God, and why not as well now as any other time ? Dear me ! 
 it seems as if we all of us made too many difficulties about 
 
1852.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 393 
 
 serving God. Oh for the time when we shall be able to give 
 God, not three quarters of an hour, but an eternity of praise. 
 Now pray for these poor souls. I have made them over to St. 
 Joseph and St. Philip. The Superioress in Queen's Square 
 declares she has compromised all Paradise in the affair. If 
 we could only make our Celts saints, we could do something 
 to our Saxons. 
 
 Not content with the addition to his work at the 
 Oratory of the management of the schools at 
 Dunn's Passage, Father Hutchison was the origi- 
 nator and active promoter of the endeavours 
 made at that time to provide a Refuge for young 
 Catholic prisoners. Father Faber was much inter- 
 ested in the matter, and his name was on the 
 committee which was formed for the furtherance 
 of the ohject. At the end of November Father 
 Hutchison and Dr. Manning concluded an agree- 
 ment to take Blythe House, Hammersmith, for a 
 Catholic Reformatory School, which it was hoped 
 would be ready for its inmates in the following 
 spring. 
 
 Before the conclusion of the year Father Faber 
 sent to press an Essay on the Interest and Charac- 
 teristics of the Lives of the Saints, dedicated to 
 Cardinal Wiseman, "whose kind encouragement, 
 valuable suggestions, and peculiar devotion to the 
 modern Saints, fostered the beginnings, and defended 
 the progress of the English series of their Lives." 
 It deserves more attention than it has received; 
 for, besides the defence of the Oratorian series 
 
394 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1852. 
 
 against the charge of literary defects, for which it 
 was mainly written, it contains a minute and 
 valuahle account of the influence upon the whole 
 spiritual life of the study of hagiography. A 
 reminiscence of earlier days appears in the following 
 passage on the power of literary excellence in sus- 
 taining traditions. 
 
 "If the Arian heresy was propagated and rooted by means 
 of beautiful vernacular hymns, so who will say that the 
 uncommon beauty and marvellous English of the Protestant 
 Bible is not one of the great strongholds of heresy in this 
 country ? It lives on in the ear like a music that never can 
 be forgotten, like the sound of church bells which the con- 
 vert hardly knows how he can forego. Its felicities seem 
 often to be almost things rather than mere words. It is part 
 of the national mind, and the anchor of the national serious- 
 ness. Nay, it is worshipped with a positive idolatry, in 
 extenuation of whose grotesque fanaticism its intrinsic beauty 
 pleads availingly with the man of letters and the scholar. 
 The memory of the dead passes into it. The potent tradi- 
 tions of childhood are stereotj^ed in its verses. The power 
 of all the griefs and trials of a man is hidden beneath its 
 words. It is the representative of his best moments, and all 
 that there has been about him of soft, and gentle, and pure, 
 and penitent, and good, speaks to him for ever out of his 
 English Bible. It is his sacred thing which doubt never 
 dimmed, and controversy never soiled. It has been to him 
 all along as the silent, but how intelligible voice, of his 
 guardian angel ; and in the length and breadth of the land 
 there is not a Protestant, with one spark of religiousness about 
 him, whose spiritual biography is not in his Saxon Bible. 
 And all this is an unhallowed power ! The extinction of the 
 
1853.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 395 
 
 Establishment would be a less step towards the conquest of 
 the national mind, than, if it were possible, (but we are 
 speaking humanly, and in our ignorance), to adopt that Bible, 
 and correct it by the Vulgate. As it is, there is no blessing 
 of the Church along with it, and who would dream that 
 beauty was better than a blessing ?" 
 
 The beginning of the year 1853 found Father 
 Faber again engaged in the work of composition. 
 After High Mass on the Feast of the Holy Name 
 of Jesus, January the 16th, he began the first of 
 his series of spiritual works. " All for Jesus, or, 
 the Easy Ways of Divine Love," was continued at 
 St. Mary's in the course of the spring, the author 
 frequently writing as much as sixteen hours a day. 
 It was published in the middle of July, and 
 received with so much enthusiasm by the Catholic 
 body that a second edition was called for in less 
 than a month. Father Faber had the gratification 
 of receiving expressions of the highest approval of 
 his book from several distinguished ecclesiastics. 
 The following extracts have been made with his 
 Lordship's permission from the Letter of the Bishop 
 of Birmingham. (August 18, 1853.) 
 
 " I have read all your book, which you so kindly sent me, 
 entitled 'All for Jesus,' except the last chapter. I am not 
 merely pleased, I am delighted with it, and moved by it. 
 It is the very book we wanted. It was wanted to draw 
 'pious' people out of themselves, to tear their souls away 
 with affectionate violence from that glutinous adhesion to 
 their subjective, narrowed in, and merely personal estimation 
 of divine things, and of divine ways. It rouses like a 
 
396 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1853. 
 
 trumpet, and penetrates like a fire, and draws forth the soul 
 out of that obscure cavern of self-complacency, almost 
 irresistibly, to place her on the side of God and of His divine 
 interests. 
 
 "I am sure it will do great good, and I heartily thank you 
 for it, and for all those labours it must have cost you, and 
 for which God will reward you. One thing be assured it 
 will do. It will remove all remaining impressions as to 
 whether the doctrine about holy familiarity with God and 
 divine things, which seems in your first Catholic writings 
 almost to exclude that of fear and reverence, be duly tempered 
 in your own mind or not." 
 
 The Very Rev. Dr. Newsham wrote from St. 
 Cuthbert's College, Ushaw. (July 28, 1853.) 
 
 "I have read your recent work, 'All for Jesus,' with 
 infinite delight, and I believe to my great spiritual profit. 
 I always felt the immense importance of that mode of 
 drawing souls to God, and it has been my constant theme 
 both in my instructions and in the confessional. But I find 
 you have handled the glorious subject so much better than 
 I have ever been able to do that I am delighted, and I thank 
 God for the great lights He has been pleased to give you 
 for His own divine honour and the good of His people. I 
 am most anxious to spread the beautiful devotion you so 
 sweetly inculcate, not only through this college, but amongst 
 the clergy ; and I will recommend the perusal and study of 
 your invaluable book whenever I have the opportunity." 
 
 Father Faber also received the following from 
 the Rev. Father Cardella, S.J., of the Collegio 
 Romano : 
 
 " Will you allow one who is quite unknown to you, but a 
 friend and brother in Jesus Christ, to wish you much joy 
 
1853.] FREDERICK: WILLIAM FABER. 397 
 
 for the beautiful book you have written of late. Your book 
 'All for Jesus,' has been sent to me from England by a 
 kind friend ; and as I wrote to him, so I tell you, that few 
 books have I ever read with so much pleasure as this of 
 yours. What I like most is that richness of thoughts and 
 pious feelings, that unworldly spirit, that kind of instruction 
 so practical and so encouraging for all, in short, to say it in 
 your own words, that beautiful variety of easy ways of divine 
 
 love 
 
 " Believe me that few books are so much to my taste as this 
 of yours. It seems to me that you have hit the very point 
 in so many things. I cannot help saying that, amongst so 
 many other things, I have been exceedingly pleased with 
 what you say about theological sermons, the devotion to the 
 Divine Person of the Incarnate Word, and the knowledge of 
 God. I remember, when reading the meditations, soliloquies, 
 and manuals which go by the name of St. Augustine, having 
 often wished to see them translated into English, either in 
 the whole or in part ; precisely because there is so much 
 theology there, so touching, so forcibly and sweetly raising 
 the heart from this lonely vale of tears to our God. Often 
 have I said that preachers ought to speak more of God and 
 Jesus our Lord. More than once I have seen the greatest 
 effect produced on poor simple people by a theological sermon 
 on the missus est, explaining historically the great mystery 
 of the Incarnation, the Divine message to Mary, the over- 
 shadowing of the Holy Ghost, the Divine Maternity. I am 
 sure nothing is so touching as the Christian Mysteries, and 
 for me nothing touches me so much in the sweet devotion to 
 Mary as her being Mother of God ; the more she is over- 
 shadowed by mystery the more touching and lovely she 
 appears : therefore you will not be surprised if I say it again, 
 that few books are more to my taste than ' All for Jesus.' " 
 
398 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1853. 
 
 In spite of these favourable judgments, the book 
 was criticized by some as making the way to 
 heaven too easy ; the objectors failing to notice 
 the frequent mention in its pages of several kinds 
 of penance almost unknown in England at that 
 time. On this criticism, which reached him a few 
 months later, Pather Eaber expressed himself as 
 follows : 
 
 LETTER XCIX. To THE EARL OF ARUNDEL AND SURREY. 
 
 St. Mary's, Jan. 2, 1854. 
 
 Here are sounds all round, as of a growing storm, about 
 my book. It is going to be a year of crosses, and this may 
 be one. However, tbere sball be no controversy. I have 
 resolved to hold my tongue. The book may be all wrong, 
 most likely is, coming from a beast like me, but I wrote it to 
 help souls, and to get our Lord some more love. There is 
 no good in defending it. If it is against mortification, how 
 was it likely that such an effeminate, soft lived valetudinarian 
 as I am, should be able to teach people mortification ? The 
 more thanks to those whose tongues and criticisms will force 
 a little bit of mortification upon me, of a sort far sharper to 
 my thin-skinned conceit than the lash of a discipline. My 
 only prayer is that these good regulars, and others, will not 
 wantonly take my bad bread out of the children's mouths 
 without giving them better and more nourishing food. 
 Wheat flour is the right thing ; but potato and pea flour are 
 better than famine. 
 
 They say I send people to heaven lolling on a sofa ; they 
 used to say of my Santo Padre reproachfully, that he sent 
 people to heaven in a coach and four, and what is my modest 
 little brougham to that ? 
 
1853.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 399 
 
 If a man can do the austerities, tanto meglio, lie will have 
 his heart full of God then. But if he can't whip, hum, 
 scarify, and starve himself, why should he give up what he 
 can do in the way of love, and go back to precepts and the 
 eight indulgences ? Surely, surely it will he a sad thing for 
 God's dear glory, if men make so many who have found help, 
 and who are making efforts, doubt and distrust the book, and 
 fall back again on the coldness and dryness of the past. 
 
 However, God will have His glory anyhow ; and if there 
 be an ounce more to Him in my condemnation and the pro- 
 scription of my book, I am only too glad to be the means of 
 His getting it ; and so Yiva la gloria di Dio ! Viva San 
 Filippo ! 
 
 In the first edition of All for Jesus the following 
 passage occurred, and the censure contained in it 
 was much felt in some quarters ; 
 
 "Now, when nuns set to work and praise themselves under 
 cover of praising their holy community, or their holy rule, 
 or their holy founder, when they are full of pity for people 
 living in the world, eloquent on dangers and snares from 
 which they are delivered, and loud in self-congratulation on 
 the grace of their vocations, I cannot avoid, perhaps in a 
 spirit of contradiction, arguing thus : These good nuns must 
 take a low view of what Jesus requires of His spouses, or 
 they would be more frightened about their own short- 
 comings ; I suspect our Lord does not fare over well in that 
 community, and that the interior life of it is sadly shallow. 
 Self-praise is apt to be the besetting sin of nuns ; and they 
 should sometimes remind themselves that a publican in the 
 world needs less pity than a Pharisee in the cloister. An 
 occasional week's meditation on the awful and adorable purity 
 of God would accomplish this end with especial benediction. 
 
400 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1853. 
 
 If a good soul were to see all at once what it has pledged 
 itself to in the way both of perfection and of suffering by 
 religious profession, perhaps without a miracle it would not 
 endure the vision and live. Ah ! the lively, spiritual prattle 
 about convent joys and convent privileges must come either 
 from a very young novice, or a sadly inexperienced nun. It 
 is never heard in those delightful houses, where all breathes 
 of the supernatural, of abasement, of tranquillity, of God, 
 where the very air rebukes proud thoughts, and from which 
 we carry away a precious dis-esteem of self without the 
 conceited bitterness of self-reproach." 
 
 In reply to a Religious Superior who reported 
 to him the objection taken to these remarks, Pather 
 Faber thus justified himself : 
 
 LETTER C. 
 
 St. Mary's, Sydenham Hill, Kent, 
 Saturday, January 28, 1854. 
 
 My dear Kev. Mother, 
 
 Your letter has only just reached me. Our house at 
 Brompton is not yet finished, and some of the workmen took 
 in the letter and forwarded it. However, my naughty head, 
 which is just now behaving very badly with rheumatism, 
 would not have let me accept your kind invitation for to- 
 morrow. 
 
 Poor me ! all you good nuns throughout the land seem to 
 be anathematizing me; and, like an obstinate heretic, I am 
 wicked enough to take it as a proof that I am in the right. I 
 grant that I am not fit to write a spiritual book, but having 
 perpetrated the egregious conceit of doing so, does not all 
 this follow logically : That it is the business of a spiritual 
 writer to point out the faults which beset each state of life 
 and vocation. That if nuns laugh while I laugh at ladies in 
 
1854.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 401 
 
 the world living half like nuns and half like patronesses of 
 Almack's, or while I laugh at members of parliament 
 worshipping politics, &c. &c., they, the nuns, must either 
 
 1. Maintain that nuns can have no fault, 
 
 2. Or bear with my pointing them out. 
 
 That the faults in question are constantly mentioned by 
 spiritual writers, even so old as St. Bernard, who taunts 
 cloistered men and women with those very things in his 
 sermons on the Canticles, and therefore that I can hardly be 
 wrong in following him. 
 
 I certainly know more of foreign convents than of English 
 ones ; but I had no convent at all in my eye when I wrote 
 those remarks, which a bishop begged me to put in. Nay, I 
 have never had anything but edification in every convent 
 where I have been in England, and owe great debts to all of 
 them, from Llanherne to Darlington. 
 
 You see you are not touchy about it, but don't you think 
 those who are feel the cap fits ? Now, is not that an ill- 
 natured speech ? 
 
 After all, is a spiritual book written to praise people, or to 
 correct and amend them? 
 
 However, there shall be a council of all your Kev. Superio- 
 resses in England, and as I so hugely value convents, and 
 look on nuns as the choicest lily-bed in all the Spouse's 
 garden, I will do any penance you shall unitedly impose, to 
 make my peace. " Blessed are the peacemakers." See, Eev. 
 Mother, what a chance you have of gaining a blessing you can 
 never find in your own convent, viz., of appeasing a quarrel. 
 Reconcile the angry nuns to me, and that will be peace- 
 making indeed. 
 
 Ever, my dear Rev. Mother, with great respect, 
 Your faithful and obliged servant in Christ, 
 F. W. FABER, 
 
 Congr. Orat. 
 26 
 
402 -THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1854. 
 
 Whilst thus engaged, Father Faber's attention 
 was often called to other work. He preached at 
 the Oratory in his turn, and took the principal part 
 in all the deliberations of the Fathers with their 
 architect, the late J. J. Scoles, Esq., concerning the 
 plans of their new house at Brompton. In the 
 summer he paid a short visit to the Lake Dis- 
 trict, and on the 25th of September preached 
 the consecration sermon of Dr. Goss, Bishop of 
 Liverpool. 
 
 As the works at Brompton were approaching 
 completion, the Fathers made an arrangement with 
 the proprietor of the premises occupied by them in 
 King William Street, by which the lease was taken 
 off their hands. As the time for closing the chapel 
 drew near, it was daily filled with persons desirous 
 of seeing again the place where they had received 
 so many spiritual blessings, before it reverted to 
 secular uses. The last services in the old Oratory 
 were held on Sunday the llth of September, the 
 Feast of the Holy Name of Mary. The High Mass 
 was sung by the Bishop of Northampton, and the 
 sermon preached by the Bishop of Southwark. The 
 usual meeting of the Confraternity of the Precious 
 Blood was held in the evening, with a sermon by 
 Father Faber.* 
 
 With all their joyful anticipations of their new 
 
 * Notes on Doctrinal and Spiritual Subjects, yol. ii. p. 329. 
 
1854.] FREDERICK WILLIAM EABER. 403 
 
 home, it was not without sadness that the Fathers 
 listened, for the last time in that building, to the 
 familiar sounds of hymn and litany. If before 
 them lay a wider field and a more secure abode, 
 there remained the memory of many blessings, with 
 which their first sphere of work as a Congregation 
 must always be associated. 
 
404 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1854. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 1854-61. 
 
 The majority of the Congregation found room, on 
 their departure from King "William Street, at St. 
 Mary's, Sydenham, and the usual triennial elections 
 were held there on the Eeast of St. Wilfrid. Father 
 Faber, now elected Superior for the second time, 
 directed from thence the progress of the new 
 buildings, and remained there until the 1st of 
 March 1854, when he removed with a few Fathers 
 and Brothers to the Oratory at Brompton, where he 
 was joined by his whole community in the course of 
 the ensuing fortnight. 
 
 After the enforced inactivity of the last six 
 months, the Fathers resumed their community 
 duties and external works with much satisfaction. 
 The special fitness of their new quarters to Oratorian 
 life was greatly appreciated, and the immense 
 change from the limited capacity of their premises 
 in King William Street caused the opening of the 
 house at Brompton to be almost the re-founding of 
 the Congregation. 
 
 Towards the large expenses which had been 
 incurred, the following benefactions had been 
 received ; 10,000 towards the purchase of the site 
 
1854.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 405 
 
 from a lady who desired that her gift might he 
 anonymous; 4,000 for the wing of the house 
 containing the Oratory and Lihrary, from the Earl 
 of Arundel and Surrey; and 700 towards the 
 erection of the church, collected through the 
 instrumentality of the committee hefore mentioned. 
 By far the greater portion of the cost was supplied, 
 although with difficulty, from the private resources 
 of the Fathers themselves. 
 
 A temporary church, long and low, without 
 side-chapels or attempt at decoration, was huilt and 
 fitted up at an expense of nearly 4000. As 
 previously at King William Street, so at this time 
 also, there were not wanting croakers to predict 
 failure. Among other things, the size of the 
 church was ridiculed, and the Fathers were asked 
 if they hoped ever to fill it. That prohlem was 
 soon solved, and if there were any regrets ahout 
 the matter, they were that it had not "been made 
 considerahly larger. It was opened to the public 
 hy the Yicar General, Dr. Maguire, on the 22nd 
 of March, the transferred Feast of St. Joseph. The 
 sermons at High Mass and Vespers were preached 
 hy Father Fahei*.* His anxiety "brought on one of 
 his terrible headaches, and in the morning it 
 appeared impossible for him to attempt the ser- 
 mons. Many prayers were offered, and at last a 
 vow was made to erect a statue to St. Joseph if he 
 
 * Notes on Doctrinal and Spiritual Subjects, vol. ii. p. 332. 
 
406 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1854. 
 
 would enable Father Faber to preach. At the last 
 moment Father Paber left his bed to ascend the 
 pulpit, and no one who heard the sermon would 
 have suspected the difficulties under which it was 
 delivered. Confessions, now heard in the church 
 daily and hourly, were begun on the eve of Palm 
 Sunday, and the evening Exercises were com- 
 menced on Easter Monday with a course of 
 Lectures by Pather Paber. 
 
 Every evening, except Saturday, which is left 
 free for the sake of hearing confessions, sermons are 
 preached, with hymns and devotions, and Benedic- 
 tion is given on Thursdays and on many feasts. 
 Pather Paber laid great stress upon the Oratorian 
 custom of daily sermons. " We must be careful," 
 he once said to his Congregation in chapter, " not 
 to do anything with the quotidiana parola, which I 
 believe has been the main cause of our success, the 
 foundation of the fulness of our confessionals, and 
 of our not sinking into a district Congregation." 
 The meeting of the Confraternity of the Precious 
 Blood is held on Sunday night, when, after the 
 intentions of the members have been announced, a 
 sermon is preached, followed by Benediction. The 
 seasons of Lent and the Month of Mary are marked 
 by additional services, and Benediction is given on 
 Thursday and Saturday afternoons throughout the 
 year. 
 
 Although at this time there were few Catholics 
 residing in the neighbourhood, the services in the 
 
1854.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 407 
 
 church were well attended from the first. The 
 evening Exercises were very popular, and no long 
 time elapsed before the hymns and other devotions 
 were taken up with the same animation as at "King 
 William Street. This success was owing in a great 
 measure to the pains which Father Eaber took with 
 every detail. The selection of the devotions and 
 hymns, the subjects and style of the sermons, the 
 arrangements of the Benedictions, the exact per- 
 formance of every ceremony prescribed by the 
 rubrics, were all the objects of his minute personal 
 superintendence. The Exercises, seen in their per- 
 fection on Sunday evening, seldom fail to impress 
 strangers ; on one occasion, the late Mother Mar- 
 garet Mary Hallahan, who occasionally lodged near 
 the Oratory, declared with characteristic energy 
 that she would willingly have come on her knees 
 from Stone to hear them. 
 
 With the establishment of the Oratory at Bromp- 
 ton began the last period of Eather Eaber 's life. 
 He never had another home; one year followed 
 another without bringing any change to his occu- 
 pations, and his frequent and severe illnesses were 
 the only interruptions to his work. On the Eeast 
 of the Patronage of St. Joseph, just after settling at 
 Brompton, he wrote to Lady Arundel : "It is five 
 years today since I said the first Mass in poor King 
 William Street, and Lord A. had the austerest 
 breakfast he has ever had before or since. What a 
 five years it has been ! And that God should have 
 
408 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1854. 
 
 done so much for such creatures as we are ! May 
 it not be that one day He will say, ' Verily, you 
 have had your reward ? J ' 
 
 Before proceeding to the events of subsequent 
 years, it will be well to insert a few details of his 
 manner of life at this period. He was a very early 
 riser, and had usually said his Mass in the private 
 chapel of the house before the rest of the com- 
 munity were stirring. He would then take a cup of 
 tea, and after making his meditation, write steadily 
 until breakfast. The morning was principally spent 
 in conversation and discussion with different Fathers, 
 who reported to him the progress of the works 
 entrusted to their care, and received from him the 
 necessary directions for their management. Most of 
 their undertakings beyond as well as within the 
 walls of the Oratory were due to his suggestion for 
 their beginning, and to his encouragement and 
 advice for much of their success. The difficulties 
 encountered, and the questions arising in their 
 prosecution, were promptly and confidently referred 
 to him for solution. At all hours his room was 
 the frequent resort of the Fathers ; there were few 
 who would not have felt a blank in the day if 
 they had not paid a visit to what seemed to renew 
 amidst themselves the e School of Christian mirth* 
 of St. Philip's room at the Chiesa Nuova. Indeed 
 in all matters it was to "the Father," as in the 
 affectionate parlance of the Oratory the Superior 
 is always styled, that each was accustomed to turn, 
 
1854.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 409 
 
 " Secure, 'mid danger, wrongs, and grief, 
 Of sympathy, redress, relief, " 
 
 On feast-days especially he took pleasure in seeing 
 all the Fathers as early as possible, and was particu- 
 larly careful on such occasions that everything in his 
 room should be more than commonly neat, so that 
 his very aspect seemed to denote a festival. One 
 Easter morning, when a Father noticed the orderly 
 appearance of his room, he remarked that the 
 napkin in the Sepulchre was found folded at the 
 Resurrection, shewing that our Lord hated untidi- 
 ness. 
 
 In everything connected with the Congregation 
 he took the liveliest interest, and as its sphere of 
 usefulness widened, the responsibilities it entailed 
 upon him became numerous and heavy. The 
 domestic affairs of the house demanded considerable 
 attention, as the financial condition of the commu- 
 nity required that the closest economy should be 
 practised. It was not endowed, and the private 
 resources of its individual members had been largely 
 drained by the expenses of the new foundation. 
 For this, moreover, a debt was due, the interest on 
 which amounted to a considerable sum. The 
 receipts from the church, which, in accordance with 
 Oratorian custom, is never, expected to contribute 
 in any way to the support of the house, almost 
 always fell short of the money expended in the 
 maintenance of its public worship, and the Fathers 
 were obliged to make good the deficiency out of 
 
410 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1854. 
 
 their own pockets. The common difficulty of 
 making both ends meet was thus a constant anxiety 
 to Father Faber, and many of his attacks of illness 
 were traceable to this cause. 
 
 In addition to his work and anxiety as Superior, 
 he also after 1856 fulfilled the duties of novice 
 master, his favourite office, for which he often 
 declared himself more fitted than for that of 
 Superior, and he devoted to its discharge much 
 time and attention. Moreover, as his name became 
 better known by his books, he received applica- 
 tions for advice and assistance from all parts of the 
 country. These were scrupulously answered, often 
 at considerable length, so that his correspondence 
 occupied a good deal of his time. One of his 
 Fathers, finding in his room a large heap of letters 
 ready for the post, expressed envy of his talent for 
 answering letters. "Talent!" exclaimed Father 
 Faber, " it's the fear of God." 
 
 He rarely left the house, except for an occasional 
 walk in the garden, and still more seldom did he 
 pay a visit. He sometimes went to the different 
 establishments under the charge of the Fathers, 
 especially the schools at Dunn's Passage, Holborn, 
 and Charles Street, Drury Lane, where his appear- 
 ance was always hailed with enthusiastic delight. 
 His principal recreation was to pass a few days at 
 St. Mary's, Sydenham. The grounds there had 
 been laid out under his personal direction, and in 
 thus exercising his taste, he developed quite a 
 
1854.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 411 
 
 remarkable talent for landscape gardening, the 
 result of his keen sense of natural beauty. Excel- 
 lent as the locality of St. Mary's is for position and 
 commanding view, it was entirely uncultivated, but 
 after it had been in Father Faber 's hands for a few 
 years, many persons experienced in such matters 
 expressed their admiration not only of the variety 
 of trees collected, but also of the taste and skill 
 with which the place had been arranged. There, 
 nevertheless, he used to carry on his literary 
 labours with unceasing application. He enjoyed 
 having the novices about him, and in providing 
 occupation and amusement for them in the grounds. 
 The predilection of 'the Oratory for children, 
 which it has received as a tradition from St. 
 Philip, and which was especially strong in Father 
 Faber, also found scope in the invitation to St. 
 Mary's of small parties of boys, belonging for the 
 most part to a Confraternity formed by Father 
 "Wells in dependence on the Little Oratory. Among 
 the most frequent of these visitors was Giulio Watts 
 Russell, who was killed whilst fighting as a 
 Pontifical Zouave at Mentana, and whose connec- 
 tion with Father Faber is related in the touching 
 biography of him written by Father Cardella, S. J. 
 Of the rest, one has become a secular priest, three 
 have joined different religious orders, and one has 
 entered the Congregation of the Oratory. An old 
 friend, writing at the time of Father Faber's 
 death, spoke of the "indescribable charm of his 
 
412 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1854. 
 
 private intercourse, of that wonderful brilliancy of 
 conversation in which he excelled all those whose 
 social powers have made them the idols of London 
 society as far as they have excelled ordinary men, 
 of the magic play of his countenance and of his 
 voice, of the unprecedented combination of tender- 
 ness in affection, unearthliness of aim, and worldly 
 wisdom which characterized his private intercourse, 
 of his power of attracting little children and learned 
 men, one as much as the other."* 
 
 Father Paber was an indefatigable reader, and 
 even during illness he was generally to be found 
 with a book in his hand, none but the more 
 serious attacks interfering with his practice in this 
 particular. Besides theological works, especially 
 those treating of the subjects which he proposed 
 to handle in books or sermons, he read most of the 
 publications of the day on physical geography and 
 natural science. Narratives of travel had also a 
 great charm for him, his power of imagination 
 enabling him to realize vividly the pictures they 
 described. He procured with great pains many 
 rare theological works, but his favourite books 
 were those on mystical theology and the spiritual 
 life, of which he had formed a large collection. 
 Whatever had any bearing on this subject he sought 
 for eagerly, being always on the watch for the 
 
 * Notice signed " H. W. W." in the Weekly Register of 
 October 11, 1863. 
 
1854.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 413 
 
 publication of new lives or revelations of the Saints. 
 During the later years of his life, he had con- 
 stantly by him the edition of Blosius published by 
 Dr. Newsham, which he warmly recommended 
 to ecclesiastics. He read rapidly, noting in pencil 
 at the end of the volume references to what- 
 ever promised to be of use. As the scheme of 
 his various works was always made several years 
 before they were written for the press, he thus 
 accumulated a considerable store of information and 
 illustration relating to them, which his retentive 
 memory enabled him effectively to introduce. 
 
 He was in the habit of preaching in the church 
 on the Sunday mornings in Lent, and also in 
 May and June, besides his sermons at other times 
 of the year. In Lent, and sometimes in May, 
 he gave lectures on one or two afternoons in 
 each week. He was most careful in preparing 
 everything he preached : with all his learning, 
 force of language, and power of imagery, he always 
 made notes beforehand, even for such little occasions 
 as addresses to the children of the schools. He 
 impressed the same frequently upon the Fathers, 
 repeating that what was not carefully prepared 
 was never worth listening to. He rarely preached 
 elsewhere, partly because he was unwilling to make 
 engagements which the state of his health might 
 not allow him to fulfil, and partly because his work 
 at home was so overwhelming as to prevent him 
 from assuming any additional burden. The ner- 
 
414 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1854. 
 
 vousness arising from ill health, as well as constant 
 physical pain, made this burden far more severe; 
 and many times when his auditors listened to his 
 fluent and powerful words, he was undergoing an 
 amount of suffering under which persons with less 
 strength of will would have been unable to rise 
 from their beds. 
 
 In spite of the same difficulty, he always exerted 
 himself to assist at those functions at which, 
 according to the custom of the Oratory, the whole 
 community is present in choir. On points connected 
 with the ceremonial of the Church he was inflexibly 
 strict with himself and with others : he observed 
 the slightest faulty detail of individual demeanour, 
 and was especially severe upon any who allowed 
 their private devotion to interfere with their atten- 
 tion to the ceremonies. This was a matter on 
 which he felt so strongly that his manner in the 
 correction of such faults was almost an exception 
 to his usual gentleness. A Eather, himself scrupu- 
 lously exact and well informed in rubrical matters, 
 once told him that in a function he " trembled in 
 knowing that his eye was upon him." He bestowed 
 the same care upon the sacristy, and all material 
 arrangements regarding the worship, as upon the 
 personal service of the sanctuary. 
 
 In all things Father Faber was generous and 
 openhanded, always giving more than the occasion 
 seemed to require. Yet in nothing was this spirit 
 more conspicuous than in the magnificent scale on 
 
1854.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 415 
 
 which all his plans for the church were formed. 
 He would have everything of the best ; and that not 
 merely where it would be visible to others, but in 
 every particular connected with the worship of 
 God. Once he expressed great disgust because 
 at the Exposition at another church there were 
 flowers on the altar under glass shades. "When the 
 new high altar of marble was put up in the Oratory 
 he was much dissatisfied because the back of it was 
 not finished like the front, and he found fault 
 with the altar rails for the same reason, complain- 
 ing that the inner face, " the side next our Lord," 
 was plain instead of being ornamented by mould- 
 ings. One of his last acts was to order from Siena 
 at his own expense the large candlesticks which 
 adorn the sanctuary on the greatest feasts of the year. 
 In his vocation of the Oratory he found ample 
 field even for his exceptional talents : to found it 
 on a permanent basis, to introduce and establish 
 the traditions necessary for its well-being, to har- 
 monize the exigencies of its community life with 
 the external works of its members; in short, to 
 build up the whole spiritual edifice of the Congre- 
 gation was a work which demanded all his time 
 and strength. Por the same reason he was not 
 often able to sit in the confessional, although he 
 continued until a late period to see and direct many 
 of his former penitents ; and thus, whatever further 
 good he could do to others was done from the 
 bosom of his Congregation by his published works. 
 
416 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1854. 
 
 The regularity of Father Eaber's life was often 
 broken by illness. The violence of the headaches 
 to which he had long been subject was in no way 
 diminished as he advanced in years, and to these 
 were frequently added sciatica, ecsema, and other 
 painful maladies. In the summer of 1855, when 
 he left London after an unusually fatiguing season 
 to pay a short visit to Ireland, he was seized with 
 an attack of illness immediately on reaching 
 Dublin. The exertion of making the journey had 
 been beyond his strength, and symptoms of a 
 dangerous as well as painful disorder appeared. He 
 was at once removed to Bray, where, under the 
 judicious treatment of Sir Philip Crampton, the 
 progress of the disease was arrested. The strong 
 remedies applied had the effect of weakening him 
 further, and some weeks elapsed before he was able 
 to return home. Before leaving Ireland he wrote 
 to Lord Arundel, August 31, -1855 : 
 
 "As to health, the left side is the great crux; the diges- 
 tion, &c., improve. I fear I am not to look for a cure. It 
 must stick to me now ; and though I shrink from the pros- 
 pect, j^et at present the necessity of daily opium is the worst 
 feature, as I fear I shall write no more hooks. However, the 
 great thing is for God to have what He is pleased to will ; if 
 work, work; if suffering, suffering. Sit nomen Domini 
 benedictum." 
 
 The following was written shortly after his return 
 to London : 
 
1854.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 417 
 
 LETTER CI. To THE EARL OF ARUNDEL AND SURREY. 
 
 The Oratory, Sept. 11, 1855. 
 
 I have been examined twice hy Sir B. Brodie. He 
 took me by the hand, and said, "It is no use concealing 
 matters from you ; I fear you are only at the beginning of a 
 very bad business, and in its present stage I can do very little 
 for you. You must go through great suffering, and long.'* 
 
 Well ! it is something to know the worst. I can't get well 
 except through excruciating torture. It may come soon, it 
 may be delayed for months. Science can't help it on ; all it 
 can do. is to diminish the interior production of some peculiar 
 acid with a hard name. 
 
 Don't think me out of spirits. At present I am a little 
 excited, and I may mope a little afterwards. But, as far as 
 my ivill goes, I am quite ready for the suffering, and don't 
 doubt it is an immense love which makes God think it worth 
 His while to take so much pains with me. What I fear is 
 my patience, temper, and the proper degree of unselfishness. 
 
 Pew would have suspected from Father Faber's 
 appearance how much or how often he suffered. 
 His courage seldom failed him, and he would con- 
 tinue his work under a pressure of bodily pain 
 which would have prostrated many stronger persons. 
 The amount of suffering which he had to endure 
 and his perseverance will be best shewn by 
 extracts taken almost at random from his letters 
 between 1857 and 1861. 
 
 To SISTER M. PHILIPPA. 
 
 March 30, 1857. 
 
 I am but a wreck of a man my brain quite wrought 
 out with lecturing and writing, and constant pain and lame- 
 27 
 
418 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1854. 
 
 ness, so that I can get no exercise. There will be no respite 
 now till May is done. 
 
 LETTER CIL To FATHER ANTONY HUTCHISON (in Egypt.) 
 
 Feast of the Purification, Feb. 2, 1858. 
 First of all, a happy new year to you and a safe return. 
 Then what shall I say next, or where begin my egotistical 
 gossip ? I have nothing interesting to say, and no news to 
 retail. Your letter from Thebes has just come, and is very 
 jolly. I wish I could wander, but I should be simply miser- 
 able. I can't give up writing. Since the 15th of October up 
 to the Epiphany, no use of leg, horrid pain, consultations of 
 "Wilson and Tegart in my room, never in the refectory since 
 St. Wilfrid's day. Nevertheless thankful. Now mending 
 can walk. 
 
 Now, look here, it was Jive years last Sunday fortnight 
 since I began after the High Mass SS. Nominis Jesu All for 
 Jesus. Since then, 1. All for Jesus. 2. Growth in Holiness. 
 3. Blessed Sacrament. 4. Creator and Creature. 5. Edition 
 of Poems, with three thousand new lines. 6. Sir Lancelot, 
 immensely changed. 7. Foot of the Cross. 8. New Hymns, 
 besides the thirty new ones now. 9. Bethlehem. 10. Con- 
 ferences. 11. Ethel's Book. 12. Innumerable preachings. 
 13. Three books partially prepared, viz., Precious Blood, 
 Holy Ghost, and the second volume of Conferences. 14. 
 Confessing and directing. 15. Business as Superior. 16. 
 Correspondence. 17. A certain amount of intercourse with 
 God. 18. The bearing of pain when I could do nothing 
 else. It is plain that life can't be lived at this rate. But my 
 mind is now like a locomotive that has started with neither 
 driver nor stoker. I can think of nothing but being seized, 
 put on board one of her Majesty's ships of war as compulsory 
 chaplain, and carried round the world for two years. If I was 
 on land I should jib and come home. 
 
1854.] FEEDEKICK WILLIAM FABER. 419 
 
 Creator and Creature has sold out (two thousand copies), 
 and I am now re-editing it with considerable changes, and a 
 better type. A newspaper says of me, that the charac- 
 teristic of my mind is that "it looks forward, not so much 
 with horror, as with eagerness, to the fruition of eternal 
 glory!" Also, that while in Sir Lancelot my "genius is 
 manifest, my devotion is apparently sincere !" 
 
 I envy you your quiet evenings on the Nile. I am never 
 quiet now. What you say about the lake is very interesting. 
 We shall never understand the Bible till we see that natural 
 things and divine are one. The whole notion of miracles 
 wants reforming, and nature wants re-inaugurating. You 
 must write a book when you come home. 
 
 LETTER CIII. To FATHER JOHN E. BOWDEN. 
 
 St. Mary's, May 16, 1859. 
 
 One line from my bedroom Quite crippled 
 
 and grievously tormented with some sciatica, or something of 
 the kind. Mr. Tegart has just ordered me into a hot bath. 
 My patience is nearly worn out. My only comfort is, Filios 
 quos recipit, flagellat. 
 
 To THE SAME (at Toulouse). 
 
 The Oratory, Saturday, May 5th, 1860. 
 The last six months have been on the whole very hard 
 ones to me, from pain, and from serious matters of govern- 
 ment and responsibility : and I am sighing for the holidays 
 to rest; and that is more than two months. Antony was 
 sad at my leaving St. Mary's, but I stayed with him three 
 weeks, and, besides that the London season clamoured for 
 me, I was importunately wanted here. 
 
 I was unhappy about the statistics furnished about us, as 
 have always felt that numbering penitents and converts was 
 
420 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1854. 
 
 in St. Philip's eyes like David numbering his people. It is 
 a most un-Oratorian spirit, so I pray God we may forget both 
 the facts and figures we sent. I have forgotten them already. 
 
 Best love to the Signora Madre, as well as E. I pray for 
 them daily, and get Mass most days now, because, although 
 I have three punctual hours of great neuralgia in the head 
 and nausea in the morning, Mr. S. says that the morning 
 nausea of gout poison never produces vomiting, though it 
 feels like it. 
 
 You are going all over my wanderings in 1843, when I 
 Eastered at Bordeaux. You won't get the smell of box out 
 of your nose for a year. I smell the bitter steaming glens of 
 the Pyrenees even still, the bitter of the box foliage, and the 
 honey smell of the yellow fluffy box flowers in April : 
 
 The breath of thy gardens, the hum of thy bees, 
 And the long waving line of the blue Pyrenees 
 
 Macaulay hadn't been there the savage valleys smell 
 more aromatically than the gardens : but I regret that 
 Huguenots are allowed to smell the aroma of the box at all. 
 
 To THE REV. J. B. MOEEIS. 
 
 St. Mary's, July 30, 1860. 
 
 There is hardly a day your trouble does not weigh 
 upon me, and stir my sympathies. I am weighed down 
 with sorrows and cares of my own, but they seem only to 
 make me feel the sorrows of others more keenly and more 
 affectionately. 
 
 LETTER CIV. To FATHER PHILIP GORDON. 
 
 St. Mary's. 
 
 You must all of you pray hard for me. I am breaking 
 under my load. They want me to go and stay with 
 Now, I didn't want to mention it, but I am very unwell 
 
1854.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 421 
 
 from sleepless nights, neuralgia in the head, and fits of 
 sickness. I have come to the end of my tether. I have 
 nursed dear Antony for ten weeks next Sunday, with no break 
 but that Ketreat. I am worn down with trouble about 
 housekeeping. I feel the repose of home necessary, if I am 
 either to work for the community or to keep observance. 
 I have been counting the days to Brompton. What can I 
 
 do? I fear the consequence will be an autumn and 
 
 winter of illness, and I have not the bravery to face it. 
 Of course I must go, and take the consequences. I have 
 done nothing but pray these ten weeks, and now the cross 
 comes, and I am quite cowed. What I want is to get 
 prayers. I am determined to go through with it all, but I 
 
 don't see the end 
 
 Best love to all. My only comfort is that all you fellows 
 have enjoyed yourselves so much. To me it seems that if I 
 could lie for an hour on the heather, and look down on a blue 
 loch, and think dreamy thoughts of God, it would be heaven ; 
 but I suppose stumbling up Calvary is better for a reprobate 
 like me. It was in my brother's sick room at Magdalen that 
 I wrote the lines, 
 
 Time ! Life ! ye were not made 
 For languid dreaming in the shade, 
 Nor sinful hearts to moor all day 
 By lily-isle or grassy bay, 
 Nor drink at noontide's balmy hours 
 Sweet opiates from the meadow flowers. 
 
 It seems a shame if a Catholic priest can't practice even his 
 Protestant poetry. 
 
 LETTER CV. To FATHER JOHN E. BOWDEN (in Switzerland.) 
 
 The Oratory, September 18, 1861. 
 
 I can't write you a letter, but I will dictate a few 
 
 lines. You have, I think, heard of my serious illness last 
 
422 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1854. 
 
 week. I am out of bed now and slowly mending, but Tegart 
 says my recovery will be very slow. It appears to be some 
 disease of the mucous membrane. The five weeks illness at 
 Filey was not a cause but an effect of this disease. Tegart 
 seems to attribute it to the interruption of anxiety and 
 responsibility. It was a week of great suffering. God be 
 praised ! Of course I am not mixing with the community 
 yet ; but I hope tomorrow night to begin giving a ten days' 
 retreat to the juniors I wish there was some moun- 
 tain pass by which I could get out of this world and rest 
 0ecoi/ fv yovvavi Karat. 
 
 But to return to the order of events. Amongst 
 other occupations, at Vespers during the octave of 
 Corpus Christi, 1854, Father Faber preached a 
 course of sermons which was afterwards made the 
 foundation of his hook on the Blessed Sacrament. 
 He was also engaged in writing " Growth in 
 Holiness," the materials for which had heen for 
 some years in preparation. 
 
 On the 9th of July he had the honour of heing 
 created Doctor of Divinity hy the Holy Father, and 
 shortly afterwards made the customary profession 
 of faith privately in the hands of Cardinal Wiseman. 
 
 Before the end of the year he preached a Triduo 
 in preparation for the Feast of the Immaculate 
 Conception,* this heing the day on which that 
 mystery was declared to he an article of faith. 
 In his book on the Blessed Sacrament, (p. 186,) 
 Father Faher calls this "the most glorious defini- 
 tion of the Catholic faith, one which the torment 
 
 * Notes on Doctrinal and Spiritual Subjects, vol. ii. p. 403. 
 
1855.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 423 
 
 of cruel heresy has not wrung from the reluc- 
 tant reverence of the Church, but which is the 
 irresistible and spontaneous outburst of doctrine 
 and devotion, too hot to be longer pent within her 
 mighty heart." "Blessed be the mercy of the 
 Most High/' he says in a note to page 73 of the 
 same work, " who cast our lot upon these days, and 
 kept us alive to see this triumph of our Mother's 
 honour 1" When the Definition was celebrated in 
 the Diocese of Westminster, on the Second Sunday 
 after Easter, 1855, Father Faber preached a sermon 
 entitled "The Living Church,"* in which he pointed 
 out how the definition brought home to those in 
 the Church the blessings of her maternal love. 
 
 The Second Provincial Synod of Westminster was 
 held at Oscott in the summer of 1855, and Father 
 Faber was invited to assist at it as a theologian. 
 He declined out of humility to be placed on several 
 of the Committees to which it was proposed to 
 nominate him, but exerted himself very actively 
 on that for the compilation of the Catechism. He 
 was also asked to preach before the assembled 
 Fathers, and delivered a sermon on the words 
 " Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto 
 you,"t (St. John xiv. 27.) He then paid a short 
 visit to Ireland, but was attacked immediately on 
 his arrival by the illness already mentioned, one 
 of the effects of which was to prevent him from 
 preaching for the remainder of the year. In the 
 
 * Notes, &c., vol. ii. p. 21. | Notes, &c., vol. ii. p. 23. 
 
THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1856. 
 
 following Lent he again took his place in the 
 pulpit, and was able to continue his sermons regu- 
 larly during the spring and summer. On the Feast 
 of St. Philip, the Panegyric was preached by 
 Cardinal "Wiseman, and afterwards published, with 
 a joint dedication to Father Newman and Father 
 Faber. " One has brought," wrote His Eminence, 
 " the resources of the most varied learning, and the 
 vigour of a keenly accurate mind, power of argu- 
 ment, and grace of language, to grapple with the 
 intellectual difficulties, and break down the strongly 
 built prejudices of strangers to the Church. The 
 other has gathered within her gardens sweet flowers 
 of devotion for her children ; and taught them, in 
 thoughts that glow, and words that burn, to prize the 
 banquet which love has spread for their refreshment." 
 
 In the summer of 1856 the cholera broke out in 
 several parts of London, and Father Faber at once 
 offered the services of his Community to the Cardi- 
 nal Archbishop for the assistance of such districts 
 as might require it. Happily, the danger did 
 not last long, and although Father Knox was sent 
 to Warwick Street, and Father Bagshawe to St. 
 Patrick's, Soho, the comparative cessation of the 
 epidemic soon allowed them to return. 
 
 About the same time the Congregation, by desire 
 of Cardinal Wiseman, undertook the charge of a 
 mission or parish, and a large portion of the sur- 
 rounding district was assigned to it. This addition 
 to its work, in many respects inconsistent with its 
 
1856.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 425 
 
 Rule and manner of life, entailed fresh anxieties 
 upon Father Faber, upon whom, as usual, its 
 arrangement devolved. 
 
 He had, however, the consolation of receiving 
 from Father Stanton and Father Hutchison, on 
 their return from a short mission to Rome, a 
 Pontifical Brief confirming the erection of the 
 Congregation of the Oratory in London by Apostolic 
 authority, and enforcing the rule that there should 
 only be one house of the Institute in each town by 
 a clause forbidding the erection of another within 
 ten miles of Brompton. 
 
 In the month of February 1857, Father Faber 
 took an active part in a Mission which was given 
 by the Fathers in their own church. Its con- 
 clusion was marked by the solemn introduction 
 into the Mission of the Oratory of the Confrater- 
 nity of St. Patrick in honour of the Holy Mass 
 and the Blessed Sacrament, which had been founded 
 by Father Faber some years previously at the 
 schools in Holborn. It had soon become popular, 
 and spread into other Missions, the late Bishop of 
 Beverley, Dr. Briggs, having been especially zealous 
 in introducing it. Its members wear the blue scapu- 
 lar of the Immaculate Conception, and besides 
 assisting devoutly at Mass and Benediction, do all 
 in their power to bring negligent Catholics to those 
 functions. A small body of visitors is formed, who 
 have courts or districts regularly assigned to them, 
 which they visit on Sunday mornings, to exhort and 
 
426 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1857. 
 
 invite the people to go to Mass. The Confraternity 
 has been enriched by the Holy Father with many 
 Indulgences. As lately as the 16th of January 
 1869, a Missionary Priest, in a letter to the Weekly 
 Register, speaks highly in its praise, saying, " I 
 found the benefits arising from St. Patrick's Con- 
 fraternity more numerous and enduring than from 
 the first mission or spiritual retreat given here by 
 a religious order. And this is so, although the 
 mission was the first ever conducted here, and was 
 considered most successful." 
 
 Father Faber afterwards preached his accustomed 
 sermons and lectures both in Lent and May, the 
 subject in the former season being the Passion, and 
 in the latter the Infant Jesus, or Bethlehem. 
 
 Through the kindness of Anne, Duchess of 
 Argyll, Father Faber spent some part of the 
 summers of 1857 and 1858 at Ardencaple Castle, 
 near Helensburgh, Scotland. Accompanied by one 
 of his novices, he used to visit from thence the wild 
 country of Argyllshire, and the neighbouring shores 
 of Loch Lomond, enjoying to the full their varying 
 beauties, as well as the seclusion from the cares 
 which pressed upon him at home. On his return 
 to the Oratory in September, threatening symptoms 
 of apoplexy appeared, but he refused to proceed to 
 the Bohemian baths prescribed for him, and re- 
 mained at home, to pass a winter of continual 
 suffering. He was, however, able to lay the 
 first stone of St. Wilfrid's Convent, Bond Street, 
 
1858.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 427 
 
 Chelsea, on the Feast of St. Raphael, October 24, 
 1858. 
 
 It must not be supposed that these short records 
 adequately represent the amount of Father Faber' s 
 work. But it would be impossible, without des- 
 cending too minutely to particulars, to give a closer 
 account of his life at this period. His general 
 habits have been described, and their frequent 
 interruption by illness; his books will form the 
 subject of a separate chapter ; and there remain but 
 few events to mark the difference between each 
 succeeding year. 
 
 When Mother Margaret Mary Hallahan visited 
 London in May 1858, with the idea of undertaking 
 the Hospital of St. Elizabeth in Great Ormond 
 Street, she received much assistance and encour- 
 agement from Father Faber. They had never met 
 before, but there sprung up at once between them 
 a close and intimate friendship. There was a great 
 similarity between their souls ; they had the same 
 largeness of heart and singleness of purpose, and 
 both were engaged in works for the glory of God, 
 which in their respective spheres were certainly 
 without an equal. Father Faber delighted in 
 Mother Margaret's bold simplicity and religious 
 fervour, whilst she was in turn filled with admira- 
 tion of his practical wisdom and holiness. She 
 used to relate how one day, when she returned 
 somewhat out of spirits from a long meeting where 
 there had been a good deal of discussion without 
 
428 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1858. 
 
 any tangible result, Father Paber cheered her by 
 saying "Don't you know, my dear Mother, that 
 there are always ninety-nine f says' for one * do' ?" 
 "When she came to take leave of him on her return 
 to Stone, she stood looking up at him, and repeating, 
 " Oh what a man you are! what a man you are I" 
 
 Pather Paber's notes on the Precious Blood were 
 preached in the Lent of 1858, together with a most 
 instructive course of lectures on the Management of 
 our Grace,* to which he had devoted especial pains. 
 His sermons were, however, brought to an earlier 
 close than usual by the shutting of the church for 
 three months, in order that a considerable addition 
 might be made to its height. This alteration, 
 together with the great improvements made at a 
 later period in the sanctuary, was due to the 
 munificence and devotion to St. Philip of the 
 Duchess of Argyll. 
 
 Pather Paber availed himself of this opportunity 
 to erect a side chapel in honour of St. Joseph, for 
 which he had been collecting subscriptions for 
 some years. It was opened with the rest of the 
 church at the end of September, but the altar and 
 other fittings were not finished until the winter of 
 1861, when Pather Paber was lying on what seemed 
 likely to be his bed of death at Arundel. 
 
 He took his usual share of work in the spring, 
 the subject of his Lenten sermons being the Pear 
 of God. He preached five sermons during the 
 
 * Notes, &c., vol. ii. p. 137. 
 
1859.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 429 
 
 Novena of St. Philip. A short visit to Filey some- 
 what recruited his health, and he also passed two 
 of the summer months at St. Mary's. 
 
 The elections held in 1859 confirmed him in the 
 offices which he had previously held. Simulta- 
 neously with this came the loss of one of the 
 Fathers who had "belonged to the Congregation of 
 the Brothers of the Will of God at St. "Wilfrid's. 
 Father Alhan Wells died of consumption at Red- 
 leaf, near Penshurst, in Kent, on the 16th of 
 October. Although his health had been always 
 delicate, and he had frequently been obliged to pass 
 the winter out of England, he had never given up 
 working. With an especial gift for the conversion 
 and direction of young men, he had, as Prefect of 
 the Little Oratory, gathered many round him, and 
 with true Oratorian zeal, been most ingenious in 
 providing them with recreation as well as instruc- 
 tion. The music of the church had also been often 
 under his care, and the exercise of his talent in 
 that department had been productive of the most 
 beneficial results. His cheerful and lively disposi- 
 tion had endeared him to all, and his loss, the first 
 which the community had sustained, was severely felt. 
 
 The year 1860 began with the Devotion of the 
 Forty Hours for the necessities of the Sovereign 
 Pontiff, and at the Mass of Exposition Father Faber 
 preached a sermon, which was published under the 
 title of " Devotion to the Pope." It was at once 
 translated into French, and afterwards into Italian. 
 
430 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1860. 
 
 The latter version had the honour of being cor- 
 rected by the Holy Father himself, who struck 
 out with his own hand the word " almost" in the 
 following passage : 
 
 " It is a day when God looks for open professions of our 
 faith, for unbashful proclamations of our allegiance. It is a 
 day also when the sense of our outward helplessness casts 
 us more than ever upon the duty of inward prayer. This is 
 the other duty. The open profession is of little worth 
 without the inward prayer ; hut I think the inward prayer 
 is almost of less worth without the outward profession." 
 
 The sermon was an expression of that remarkable 
 devotion to the Holy See which is manifest in all 
 his writings, and which led him in the year 1861 to 
 found an Association of St. Peter, the sole object 
 and duty of which was to offer prayers for the 
 Sovereign Pontiff. " He taught men to regard the 
 Pope as their Father, and not as their King only ; 
 he could not bear to hear of rights, or privileges, 
 or customs in any local Church, unless they had 
 been allowed by the Holy See : for his obedience 
 was a loyal love, that knew no questioning in the 
 presence of a Father whose rights he would never 
 measure."* 
 
 On the Fridays of Lent Father Faber preached 
 a course of Lectures on the Old Testament History, 
 the notes of which were published after his death. 
 The summer months of this year were chiefly spent 
 
 * Tablet, Oct. 4, 1863. 
 
1861.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 431 
 
 at St. Mary's, Sydenham, with. Father Antony 
 Hutchison, whose illness, already of long standing, 
 now gave cause for very serious anxiety. Father 
 Faber 's own health was also failing, but this did 
 not prevent him from accepting an invitation 
 to Arundel Castle, where he proceeded in the 
 beginning of October. The Duke of Norfolk was 
 then lying in his mortal illness, and for eight weeks 
 Father Faber remained beside him, strengthening 
 him with his counsel and prayer, encouraging and 
 directing him to the complete sacrifice of his will to 
 Almighty God, and preparing him for the holy 
 death which ended his life on the Feast of St. 
 Catherine, November the 25th, 1860. What Father 
 Faber J s presence gave of comfort and peace to that 
 mourning family cannot now be told; but the 
 season of bereavement was fraught with no Common 
 grace, and the Hand of God rested upon the house 
 for blessing as well as for sorrow. 
 
 The beginning of 1861 found Father Faber again 
 at the Oratory. From the end of January to the 
 beginning of July he preached almost every Sunday, 
 as well as on the Fridays of Lent as usual. On the 
 Feast of Pentecost he delivered a sermon on Devo- 
 tion to the Church, which was published at the 
 desire of those who heard it. In the course of the 
 summer he spent a few weeks at Filey, accom- 
 panied by Father Hutchison and two other Fathers. 
 Whilst there he completed his book of Hymns by 
 writing the " Nativity of our Lady ;" the first, 
 
432 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1861. 
 
 "Mother of Mercy," haying been composed at 
 Scarborough, in 1848. 
 
 His correspondence with his penitents and friends 
 abounds in interesting passages, of which a few 
 are appended to this chapter. 
 
 LETTER CVL To Miss W. 
 Freehills House, Bursledon, near Southampton, 
 
 September 1, 1851. 
 As I am not on the spot, I hardly think I am competent 
 
 to form any judgment on the matter. Mr. would 
 
 advise you hest. On the whole, I wish for the present you 
 had fewer plans. You must think of your own soul, not 
 other souls, just now. You are in danger of pouring yourself 
 out upon external things ; and just when you are new in your 
 religion, it would he best to be quiet, hidden, and at work 
 with self. For example, you want to do something for God, 
 something generous, and to be a saint, and your wish is to 
 find a vocation to a contemplative life; yet here you have 
 been working among children, till your physical strength 
 was overtaxed. I mistrust all this esterioritd, as the Italians 
 call it. If you are to do anything for God, it must be by 
 disappearing for a while, not by continuing good works begun 
 in Anglicanism. I know this sounds harsh, but I have 
 thought of it these five years, and I am satisfied that you 
 must be content to let all go in order hereafter to gain all. 
 This I always say to those who wish to be priests or nuns. 
 They stand in a different case from others, who are called to 
 live in the world. You must learn awhile, and not teach ; 
 your superstructure will be only delusion if you lay no founda- 
 tions. Think this over, and see if it has not reason along 
 
 with it. I do not say Do not co-operate with Miss for 
 
 the good of those poor children ; but what I say is, If the 
 plan be good, help it if you can pecuniarily, but keep quiet 
 
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 433 
 
 yourself. God has doubtless a purpose on you : take care 
 not to spoil it by pious fidgets. WAIT, WAIT, WAIT. God 
 bless you abundantly, as He will do. 
 
 Your most faithful servant in Christ, 
 F. W. FABER, 
 
 Congr. Orat. 
 
 LETTER CVIL To A PRIEST. 
 
 Hither Green, Lewisham, 
 
 January 23, 1852. 
 
 You have all your life long had a tendency to be against 
 every one, and to set every one against you in authority, 
 whether heads of houses or bishops, and this Ishmaelitish 
 tendency brings out the least noble and lovely parts of your 
 character. Now your position sets you against bishops and 
 presidents and what not, just as your acquaintance with D. 
 set you against Dr. Cullen and papal rescripts against the 
 godless colleges; e.g. I can't tell you how you made me 
 ivince, when you told me you and others had called on J. 
 "because" you thought your bishop wrong. I can't realize 
 this in a Catholic ecclesiastic. Not for charity, not for a 
 single eye to God's glory, not merely to win the poor man's 
 soul, but practically to contradict, censure, and protest against 
 your bishop. You would not have done this, if the atmos- 
 phere of your position had not affected you. The Holy 
 Spirit is very jealous, and His finer graces and higher spirit 
 of prayer and best gifts of a fastidious conscience are drawn in 
 like touched snails for a slight cause. I think, but you know 
 I have not read the context, some passages shown me in your 
 book would not have been written, but for the blunting effect 
 of the old Ishmael in you. I can't fancy any context recon- 
 ciling me to them. All this is the reason why I want you 
 away, to obedience, submission, optimism, and inferiority, 
 
 where I could admire you as much as I love you. instead of 
 28 
 
THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 
 being made to love you in spite of things which I can't 
 admire. Valeat quantum. 
 
 LETTER CVIIT. To MRS. M. 
 
 The Oratory, Brompton, Sept. 28, 1854. 
 I am a little anxious about you, and wish very much 
 you should seriously reflect in your own mind over what I 
 said in our last interview. I am afraid of a subtle self-love 
 insinuating itself into all you do, and utterly spoiling it. 
 Your temptation is to postpone your duties as a mother to 
 the exercises of the spiritual life. Surin notices this in his 
 spiritual dialogues as a notable delusion in the pursuit of 
 perfection. Now, it has been your fault all along, and it is 
 what you will most have to dread in your last account to our 
 Lord. I have been a long time, perhaps too long a time, in 
 coming to this conclusion ; but now that I feel convinced of 
 it in my own mind, I must speak very strongly to you about 
 it. I want you to see that your fault is all from self-love. 
 < First, God imposes your duties as a mother upon you, 
 whereas you choose and impose your spiritual exercises on 
 yourself. 
 
 Secondly, your disposition prefers the spiritual exercises to 
 being teased with the children ; and in a spirit of immorti- 
 fication you take what you like best, and neglect what you 
 like least. So that it is your own will and your own choice 
 that you are worshipping all through, and not the sweet 
 adorable Will of God. 
 
 Now, I do not want you to go into excess, nor to neglect 
 the spiritual life ; but I want you fully to understand, 1. That 
 the spiritual life consists far more in the interior spirit in 
 which you do things, than in the things themselves which 
 you do. 2. That it consists rather in the circumstances in 
 which Providence has placed you, than in devotions or 
 prayers. 3. That the fact that your external duties are less 
 
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 435 
 
 pleasant to you is a sign that you must more than ever give 
 yourself to them, as a practice of mortification; and 4. That 
 duties which concern the salvation of others are of greater 
 moment when they are duties, than spiritual exercises and 
 private devotions. 
 
 I know how weak and ill you are, and I do not want to 
 exact from you what you may have neither health nor spirits 
 to bear. But I want you, 1, to have the children more with 
 you ; 2. to look after their faults more ; 3. to talk to them 
 more of God, Jesus Christ, our Blessed Mother and the 
 Angels; 4. to take more pains to attach them to you and 
 to win their love ; and 5. to consider a quarter of an hour so 
 spent of fifty times more spiritual consequence than hours 
 of mental prayer. 
 
 Think all this over. I think you have been much in fault 
 about it ; and I dread your falling into a delusion which will 
 spoil the whole of your spirituality. 
 
 See what an unkind letter I have written when you are so 
 ill and suffering ! But I am so very anxious about you that 
 you will attribute it to my deep interest in you. Be sure you 
 will have prayers here. But to please God and to do His 
 Will is the great thing, and to do it at the expense of our own 
 is the greatest thing of all. 
 
 God bless you with His best blessings. 
 
 LETTEB CIX. To Miss L. 
 
 St. Mary's, Sydenham Hill, Kent, S. E. 
 
 June 27, 1857. 
 
 Your whole case lies in a nutshell, though, alas ! to 
 poor nature it is a big world rather than a nutshell ; you 
 want taking to pieces and putting together again. Your 
 experience must have taught you how a regular tire after 
 hard work comes out like a bruise. When you get rest, 
 
436 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 
 then you begin to feel more tired, for days and days, 
 perhaps for weeks. It is the fatigue coming out of you. So 
 it is with us converts. We had all things wrong, even right 
 things by the wrong end ; and our heresy comes out of us, 
 and takes sometimes years in the process. Oh, it is a sancti- 
 fying process, if we will only put up with it. Look with deep 
 reverence on the Visitation Life, even down to its minutest 
 feature. It came, like a creation, out of the mind of one 
 who now lies deep in God's Bosom. It was not without 
 inspiration. God also gave him a Saint to fill the vessels full 
 of life, and start the celestial traditions. Happy you, if 
 those two Saints will let your home be there ! My prayer for 
 you is that the two Saints may give your superiors patience 
 with you. They must unscrew a bit of you every day sand- 
 paper-ize the bits sharply till they shine, and when you are 
 all lying loose up and down the convent, a bit of you in choir, 
 a bit in the refectory, and a bit in the recreation room, then 
 they must put you together again, and screw you tight, and 
 you will do. God bless you. 
 
 LETTER CX. To THE INMATES OF ST. MARTHA'S HOME. 
 
 The Oratory, St. Wilfrid's Day, 1858. 
 My dear Children, 
 
 As today, St. Wilfrid's Day, is my Feast, I have asked 
 him to let me send you his blessing. It adds to my 
 happiness today to think of your happiness. There is no 
 happiness like peace with God, no joy like the joy of feeling 
 that Jesus loves us. And this is your joy. God looks upon 
 you with great and tender love. Great as His glorious 
 majesty is, He allows Himself to be honoured by your 
 grateful affection and your little services. But you are not 
 onl y joyful yourselves. You are also a joy to others. You 
 are a joy to the Angels in heaven. This makes me think 
 
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 437 
 
 of a devotion which I wish to recommend to you, to be one 
 of the characteristic devotions at St. Martha's. It is devotion 
 to St. Michael. The grace you will most need is that of 
 strength, of fortitude, of perseverance. The devil is very 
 angry with you. Like St. Michael, you have taken the side 
 of Jesus against the devil. Like St. Michael, you hail the 
 pure Mary as your Queen. Like St. Michael, you feel that 
 there is no one like God. Now, St. Michael was God's 
 general. He fought against the wicked angels, and drove 
 them out of heaven. So, if you ask him, he will help you 
 in your fights with the wicked angels. He will give you 
 force, and strength, and fortitude. And it will please 
 Almighty God to see you have a great devotion to the Prince 
 of His Angels, whom He loves so tenderly, and to whom He 
 has given such magnificent graces. Father Hutchison, I 
 dare say, will tell you all about St. Michael, and will show 
 you in what way you can best be devout to him. 
 
 Perhaps, after speaking of the glorious St. Michael, I 
 ought not to speak of myself. But I cannot resist saying to 
 you that you are also a joy and a consolation to me by 
 your good conduct, and your regularity and your piety. 
 
 My Children ! God will gain great glory from you, and I 
 doubt not that, while Jesus hung upon the Cross, He saw 
 your humility and faith, and it consoled His suffering Heart. 
 Your affectionate servant in the Fear of God, 
 FRED. W. FABER, 
 
 of the Oratory. 
 
 LETTER CXI. To THE CHILDREN OF ST. ANNE'S HOME. 
 
 The Oratory, St. Wilfrid's Day, 1858. 
 My dear little great-grandchildren, 
 
 Today is the Feast of my Saint, St. Wilfrid, and I 
 have asked him to let me send you his blessing. I have 
 a great many things to do, and a great many cares on my 
 
438 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 
 mind, and I am sometimes inclined to be out of spirits. 
 One of my ways of getting cheerful again is to think of you, 
 my dear Children, and of the way in which you are trying 
 to love Jesus, and to be good, and to have hearts in you 
 like St. Philip's Heart. I have got gray hair, and you are 
 quite, quite young and little. How much more time you will 
 have to work for God than I have ! How much good may 
 you do in your life, if only you get St. Philip's sweet spirit 
 into you ! I love to think of it. I love to think of the 
 after-years when you will affectionately remember St. Anne's 
 Home, and all that the dear Mother of the Convent, and 
 also Sister A., did for you. You will see what a blessing 
 it all was. You will laugh and cry both together for joy, 
 when you think of those funny refectory tables, and that 
 snug dormitory, and that grand cupboard full of bonnets and 
 umbrellas, which I always visit and admire so much. I 
 hear nothing but good of you, my dear Children ; only you 
 must not be proud. It is Jesus who makes you good. I 
 love you very much, and always pray for you. You are a 
 joy and a treasure to me, my dear Children. 
 
 Yours affectionately in Jesus and Mary, 
 F. W. FABEK, 
 
 of the Oratory. 
 
 LETTER CXII. To THE REV. J. B. MORRIS. 
 
 My own practice always is to give my penitents leave 
 to go into a convent, if I judge it well. But I never 
 correspond with the convent. I leave all that with the 
 penitents. I have reasons for it, but do not lay it down as 
 any rule. It has answered with me so far. No confessor 
 is worth anything as a judge beyond 1. that his penitent 
 seems called to religion, 2. Whether it is active or contem- 
 plative : and the best superioresses have told me they always 
 find it % so 
 
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 439 
 
 I have so much work to do of the common sacerdotal kind, 
 that if I did not cut off all literature and news I should not 
 get time for prayer, and so be damned. Indeed, on the 
 whole, I read no book now but the New Testament, the 
 Old Testament, the Imitation, and St. Teresa, and little 
 enough of these. I am by way of writing no letters ; but the 
 necessary ones often exceed ten per diem. Moreover, I see 
 
 hardly any one, so I hear no gossip 
 
 Follow what seems to you the Will of God. Nothing 
 in my dear old Father Eigoleuc, the Jesuit, pleases me so 
 much as where he says he almost wishes people would think 
 less about the glory of God and more about His Will. There 
 is a depth of spirituality in that remark, the more remarkable 
 as coming from the Ad majorem Dei gloriam school. For 
 myself, the act of love I should crave from you would be 
 that you should sometimes offer to Jesus all His own love for 
 me which He felt during His Passion, and which I never offer 
 half enough to Him. 
 
 LETTER CXIIL To A LADY (C.) 
 
 St. Mary's, Sydenham Hill, S. E. 
 
 September 17. 
 
 You may be sure I pray for him and you. Of course I 
 pray for his health ; but, unless I fancy things, it always 
 seems as if this cross had yet a spiritual work to do for both 
 of you, and that it was to be a crisis in both your lives. God 
 wants more from both of you, and He sends this because He 
 icill have that more. I cannot shake off this impression, nor 
 yet the feeling that it comes from God. I ask our Lord to 
 give you an increased devotion to His Passion and to His 
 Mother's sorrows, in order that you may not be absorbed in 
 this grief in the way in which our corrupt nature is apt to be, 
 and so lose the graces it brings with it. God never will 
 let a grief be lawfully the whole breadth of our liveg. Our 
 
440 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 
 other duties remain duties, even while they are almost 
 intolerable as distractions. This is God's time with you, 
 and therefore should be a time of more prayer and of more 
 generosity. When He visits us, He intends that the season 
 of His visitation should be the very season of our fulfilling 
 our past resolutions, of aiming higher, and of getting nearer 
 to Him ; but, unfortunately, it is just the time when our 
 nature suggests to us cowardly things, smooth reasons for 
 delaying, and a hundred little dispensations of an unspiritual 
 prudence. Sorrow does not sanctify as of itself, or by a 
 passive process, but solely in proportion to our efforts. For 
 myself, I feel that there are few things which make me more 
 earthly, more entangled with anxious attachments, or more 
 full of thoughts in which God is not supreme, than attending 
 upon the sick ; but I know also that by an effort it all turns 
 the other way, and makes us full of God. See, this is twice 
 I have written you an almost uncheerfully serious letter 
 forgive me it is because I cannot dispossess myself of the 
 impression that this is not to be a short trial, or that its 
 shortness will depend on your correspondence to its graces. Do 
 not keep things at arm's length. Crosses want looking well 
 into, lest we should miss God's meanings, and not decipher 
 His messages. Meanwhile we must all pray affectionately 
 hard for the invalid's recovery, while we pray also for all the 
 graces of patience, of compunction, and of the practice of the 
 Presence of God, necessary to carry him well through that 
 most difficult of all sanctifications, the sanctification of bodily 
 malaise and the engrossing incommodities of illness. 
 
 LETTER CXIY. To THE SAME. 
 
 The Oratory, London, Dec. 22. 
 
 It is no use trying to find out why the last few days 
 should have so far exceeded in fearfulness their predecessors. 
 Grief surges up in the heart, no one knows why. It is like 
 
FREDERICK WILLIAM PABER. 
 
 the ocean, it cannot rest. It would suffocate you, if it 
 stagnated. And so there come these terrible vicissitudes. 
 Only, of one thing be sure, the days have not been more, 
 frightful because God has been less with you. It has been 
 from no ebb of grace. In many ways I hope yesterday would 
 do you good. St. Thomas' day is one of those untimeli- 
 nesses, which make an impression upon us. Bethlehem 
 disappears; we feel as if the long thick graces of Lent had 
 been gone through, and there is a fragrance of Easter, sights 
 and sounds of the Eisen Life, just when we are building the 
 Crib, in our hearts as well as in our churches. " My Lord and 
 my God," is the motto of the day; and is it not just all you 
 have to say yourself just now ? My Lord and my God, 
 twice over King, twice over supreme, King in the sorrow He 
 has willed, King in the marvellous consolations with which 
 He has surrounded it. My Lord and my God ! how much 
 that says. Then, too, it is a kind of feast of the Five 
 Wounds the Wounds in which you are to meet him in 
 eternity. I felt all day as if the feast must be doing you 
 good. Ego sum resurrectio et vita ; that, too, was part of 
 the feast. It was too great a joy for St. Thomas to believe, 
 till the Five Wounds showed it him. What a devotion he 
 must have had ever after to the Five Wounds, and how our 
 Lady must have loved him, and I should fancy must have 
 asked to kiss his apostolic hands which had been so lovingly 
 allowed to probe the blessed Wounds ! And how, in old 
 times, you had St. Thomas's unbelief, and could hardly 
 believe in the amazing goodness of God ; and now, in your 
 very darkness and woe, how it has been given you to handle 
 and see how good God is, even when He is so terrible ! The 
 seven weeks in that dear room ! it was not faith in grace, 
 it was sight. Think of the many widows of Christendom, 
 who will weep at Christmas, how few have been gifted with 
 such a glory as those seven weeks ! I suspect not one. How 
 
442 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 
 many, whose hearts are aching with those intolerable uncer- 
 tainties about eternity, would say to you, as Gabriel said to 
 Mary : " Benedicta tu in mulieribus. Blessed art thou 
 amongst women." Oh, God is incredibly good ; but it is 
 only sorrow which unveils the abysses of His goodness. 
 Where is the God you believed in before last October ? He 
 is something which has passed away, a light lost in a brighter 
 light, a love overwhelmed by a greater love. He has spiritu- 
 ally let you do to Him what Jesus let St. Thomas do, and 
 even by his grave I must think he sometimes whispers to 
 you, " Be not faithless, but believing." " Belie ving,"- 
 charity is greater than faith ; yet are there not times when 
 love's highest love is in believing ? Is not that time come 
 with you ? "Be not faithless, but believing." But your 
 poor heart ! it cannot always realize these thoughts. No ! 
 No ! Nor must it reproach itself when it cannot. He who 
 is breaking it, it is He who made it. He who is crucifying 
 it, it is He who was crucified for it. Poor heart ! He will 
 not spare it the pang ; but how He will lavish love over it 
 because of the pang ! Poor little creatures as we are, omni- 
 potence must hurt us, even when its touch is gentlest. Even 
 when sorrow is wild, do not fear; sorrow's wildness is always 
 an unblamed thing with God, when the will lies in His Will 
 all the while. Grief has its storms : but Jesus knows it all, 
 even though He is asleep. You need not wake Him. 
 Dearest, sweetest Master ! He will wake of Himself when 
 the time comes, and that is always before your uttermost 
 of bearing comes. I yearn to be able to comfort you ; and 
 yet I have a kind of pleasure in not being able to do so, 
 because it is so much better that only God should comfort 
 you. And now I try to put you with all the might and main 
 of my truest sympathy into the Heart of Jesus ! 
 
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 443 
 
 LETTER CXV. To THE SAME. 
 
 The Oratory, London, Christmas Eve. 
 You must manage to find some joy in God, even 
 downright joy, on tomorrow's feast. There was sorrow in 
 Bethlehem, even in the Babe's Heart : hut it was almost 
 transfigured hy heavenly joy. Remember, it will he a very 
 glad day with him tomorrow, whether he he in heaven or yet 
 on the way thither ; and you must not keep the feast in a 
 different spirit from him. Thank Jesus, Mary, and Joseph 
 for all they did for him on earth, and for all they have done 
 for him since he left the earth. Mary was not without 
 Joseph at Bethlehem. Thus you have a sorrow she had 
 not. But then, does it not point to you a more tender and 
 confident devotion to St. Joseph than you have ever had 
 hefore? I think so. You will greatly need him, not now 
 at Christmas only, hut all along, and for years to come. So 
 let the beginning of an increased devotion to St. Joseph be 
 one of tomorrow's works. I do not forget how in England 
 Christmas is a family feast, and so must to you bring even 
 a redoubled sorrow in some respects. All I want is that it 
 should not be a day all of sorrow. Let the feast tell upon 
 you. Kejoice in God, rejoice in the children, even rejoice, 
 nay, most of all rejoice, in their father. 
 
 It would also be a good Christmas work to ask particularly 
 in your prayers for grace to manage your sorrow rightly. 
 It is hard to be natural with sorrow, or to deal simply with 
 it. It should not become a habit ; that is the most dangerous 
 form'of it, because it is the most unspiritual. It ought to 
 pass out of its own separate existence, not to be a thing 
 apart, a thing of itself, but to enter into all other things, 
 into the performance of all other duties, as a motive, as a 
 shadow, as an invisible haunting. Sorrow may be lifelong, 
 but it can only blamelessly be so when it enters into life as 
 
444 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 
 an ingredient, not when it makes itself the shape and mould 
 of life. No sorrow may shape life, except the mystical sorrow 
 of the saints and contemplatives for the Passion of our 
 Blessed Lord. It is true, sorrow is a grace ; but we all 
 know it is quite one of the hardest, perhaps, next to illness, 
 the hardest of all God's graces to use rightly. So take as 
 one of your spiritual objects in these successive Christmas 
 feasts the obtaining of grace to use your sorrow rightly, 
 purely for the glory of God and the greater union of your 
 own soul with Him. 
 
 LETTER CXVI. To THE SAME. 
 
 The Oratory, Feb. 14. 
 
 You should not have thought about the notes. You 
 were indeed suffering terribly, and I felt obliged to do to 
 you what I should have wished done to myself. I did not 
 try to console you. It was beyond that. But we must hope 
 for more quiet, and we must pray for it. But efforts to be 
 quiet will not bring it. Try, when you can, to think of the 
 immense love God has for you, and is feeling for you at all 
 instants. Rest must come at last with such a thought as 
 that. See how He loves you, how He trusts you, how He 
 does not touch you and pass on, but keeps pressing upon 
 you ! The immensity of the cross is a measure of His love, 
 and of what seems to me almost more than love, His trust 
 in you. Then, you are the widow of a saint. You almost saw 
 God making him a saint under your eyes. There was not 
 a natural nobleness but you saw grace ennobling it over again 
 for God ; not an unselfishness which you did not see growing 
 into a sanctity; not a sweetness which was not turned into 
 a patience that was not the least like the patience even of a 
 patient nature ; it was a grace. The mind grew beautiful 
 as the soul did ; the words grew beautiful ; the ways, the 
 
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 445 
 
 manners, the gestures, all were beautiful ; nay, even the very 
 face was freshly and differently beautified. I know all this 
 is part of the very bigness of the sorrow, yet it is also a 
 demonstration of God's immense love of you and of him. 
 We may both of us live many years yet ; but I cannot think 
 it will be given us to see over again what God gave us to see 
 then. It was a great grace God gave us. I wish both of us 
 could grow to the size of it. It is what he wishes now for 
 both of us. For yourself, fight the days over one by one, 
 in a contented weariness and with an unforecasting abandon- 
 ment of yourself to God. As to rules, observances, and the 
 like, we must not think of them. God Himself must be 
 your time-paper. He will send each day to claim His own. 
 It was a sweet thought of our Lord to name the Holy Ghost 
 the Comforter. He knew there were times and sorrows when 
 we could not comfort each other. 
 
 LETTER CXVII. To THE SAME. 
 
 The Oratory, London, April 26. 
 
 I can well understand all you are Tstill suffering. And 
 you know we can neither of us do anything to anticipate 
 God's time of consolation. I do not say, Check your sorrow. 
 No : but do not be without fear of it, lest you should come 
 to live upon your sorrow, and not upon God. I can never 
 
 help thinking of my letter to , where I said, Sorrow is 
 
 never in God's ordinance the whole law of life. I do not 
 remind you of this, as if you were not afraid lest your sorrow 
 should lead you from God : and yet, from what you have 
 said several times, it is possible you may think more of your 
 sorrow not leading you nearer to God, than of the more 
 likely danger of its leading you insensibly away from God. 
 I doubt if in your case your duties will be distractions 
 from your sorrow, even when best performed. With you it 
 
THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 
 is different. The greatness of your sorrow does not come so 
 much from the greatness of your suffering as from the 
 greatness of your love. Hence, as I said months ago, I would 
 have you try to love God more, to make more frequent acts of 
 love, even if you do not seem to feel them really, and 
 altogether to cultivate love of God. This will hring peace, 
 by absorbing into itself and uniting into itself the love 
 which feeds the sorrow. Sometimes sorrow is prolonged, I 
 mean prolonged in its vehemence, beyond what God wills, 
 by the mourner aiming only at conformity to God's Will, 
 and not at love of God Himself. Also, there is another 
 consideration. The sympathy of seeing you in sorrow, and 
 its effect upon them, is good for the children, especially 
 the elder ones, for a time. But it will be a great evil if 
 prolonged too much, and a greater evil to the elder ones 
 than to the younger. As I said in your room months 
 ago, God insists on inheriting the love whose object He 
 has taken from you. He is not content it should all go 
 to sorrow. Hence your way to peace must lie, I feel con- 
 fident, through a greater, a warmer, a more tender, a more 
 personal love of God. This idea grows upon me more and 
 more. Still, you see, it has been but a short while. We 
 must not be impatient for peace. It is not one little half 
 year yet. An access of sensible grief, although more endur- 
 able perhaps from its being sensible, was sure to come. 
 The rooms, the trees, the very sounds of the place, are all 
 full of him. The very things that are done because he has 
 gone terribly fetch him back to the heart. The memory 
 always burns most when the eye does not see. Then also 
 B. has gone, and seems to have taken him with him, and 
 further away. Oh truly there is no consolation but in loving 
 God more ! Would that it might please Him at least to give 
 you peace. 
 
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 447 
 
 LETTEB CXVIII. To THE SAME. 
 
 June 5. 
 
 I cannot help reminding you of St. Philip's words, 
 Ad uno, il quale ama veramente il Signore, non vi e cosa 
 piu grave ne piu molesta, quanto la vita. Divine love was in 
 him the cause of the insupportable tedium of life : in us it 
 may be the effect. Nothing but love will fill up the void which 
 the taking away of love has caused. God must grow into the 
 empty place. Meanwhile, what a drag it is upon you ! It 
 is like a cross which is too long, so long you cannot balance 
 it on your shoulder, so it drags and jolts over every stone, 
 and so goes on wounding and weakening you more and more, 
 just when people look for time's healing and strengthening 
 you. There is no cure but Divine Love not simply Divine 
 Worship but Divine Love. God must become more and 
 more dear, more and more desirable. Then He will become 
 more and more of an occupation, and He will haunt you 
 more, and so gradually will become more and more all-suffi- 
 cient to you. We are certainly very vile ; for it seems a 
 base thing that we should pine and languish and be weary 
 and find all things insipid, when we can have God, and have 
 Him as immensely as ever we can take Him in. If we pine, 
 it ought to be after the Face of God. The one want of life 
 should be, that, loving God so much, we do not love Him 
 more. Yet we are so little, so occupied with many things 
 as Martha was, so full of the exaggerations of self-love, that 
 it is not easy to love God more. We have not the courage to 
 empty our own hearts j so He empties them for us, and it 
 seems cruel. A great cross means a great grace. We must 
 not let your cross miss of its grace, and of its full grace. 
 The cross is great enough, God only knows how great : well 
 then, the grace must be so also. 
 
 You see, therefore, that what we want is Divine Love. 
 
448 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 
 LETTEB CXIX. To THE SAME. 
 
 June 19. 
 
 I know today will be a day of trial and suffering again, 
 as all anniversaries must be; though God knows, that as 
 human life is allotted, it is a day which ought to have more 
 than one Te Deum. Nevertheless I feel somewhat of what 
 you must be feeling, and I prayed especially for you at Mass 
 through the intercession of St. Juliana. I have been think- 
 ing what I could say to you, which would help you. I say 
 help, because it is useless to think of consolation, in any other 
 sense than that of spiritual help. And I cannot quite tell 
 why it should be so, but those words of St. Paul will keep 
 coming to my mind, The things which are seen are tempo- 
 ral ; but the things which are not seen are eternal. There 
 are no true nuptials but those between our soul and God. 
 It is a huge blessing of God when other nuptials are not only 
 sweet shadows of the eternal marriage, but actually help the 
 two souls towards it. And truly, by a most peculiar and 
 amazing mercy of God it was so with you two. But he is 
 already at the marriage-feast of the Lamb, called there ivhen 
 he was and as he was by a complication of special and sin- 
 gular mercies, which we shall never know or understand on 
 this side the grave. You have to get nearer the Lamb. It 
 is not your time yet to sit at this marriage-feast. Kest is 
 not yet. The weary feet have yet to wander on their pilgrim- 
 age. But all the wandering must be to bring you nearer to 
 the Lamb. Who are more the spouses of Christ than the 
 true widows of His Church ? The eternal marriage-feast 
 he already there : this seems to me the thought of the day. 
 For the things which are seen are temporal ; but the things 
 which are not seen are eternal. 
 
 To him then today is part of his now everlasting Festa : 
 
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABEU. 449 
 
 while you are in loneliness, bereavement, and that excessive 
 tedium of life which makes duty almost a martyrdom. This 
 seems a cruel inequality. He cannot come to you in your 
 tedium, from his place of extatic and rapturous interest. 
 You must go to him, and seek him where he is by seeking 
 what he has found. It was a good inspiration to have today's 
 masses in honour of the Five "Wounds : for you remember the 
 words he said, " Tell her I will meet her in the Wounds of 
 Jesus in eternity." Eternity! it is just that which has made all 
 the change. It is just that which is casting the great shadow. 
 It is his glory which is your cross. You cannot love him 
 now, you cannot get at him with your love, unless your love 
 of him be part of your love of God. Doubtless it was not 
 enough so while he lived. But now it must be wholly so ; 
 and again, for the same reasons : for the things which are seen 
 are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. 
 He is eternal now part of the eternity of God's love. This 
 is why he is not seen. He called it his home, he fixed it for 
 your mutual meeting-place : " I will meet her in eternity." 
 
 LETTEB CXX. To THE SAME. 
 
 December 20. 
 
 Anything is better than to sit still and dream. 
 Yet you know how I have always wished you did less, 
 and had more leisure. It would be a real gain to your 
 soul. I cannot say hoiv you are to do this ; but I think 
 some amount of details might be neglected. The only thing 
 I can think of is your concentrating yourself on the succession 
 of mysteries in all these great feasts. I am sure God's 
 meaning in it all is your own growth in love of Him. He 
 had not your whole heart of old, and now He wants it. He 
 wants you to find your delight, your repose, your compensation 
 
 in Him and in His things ; but more in Himself than in His 
 29 
 
 
450 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 
 things, whether His Church, or His poor, or anything else, 
 however good and holy. In all sorrow there is a time when 
 nothing hut an increase of heavenly-mindedness will make it 
 endurable. Earth, earth's interests, earth's occupations 
 become inefficacious and wearisome, while earth's consolations 
 become almost as insupportable as the grief itself. I feel in 
 a measure what you are feeling. For some years past, even 
 when not ill, my own life has been so joyless a burden, that 
 every evening it feels as if the past day were an enemy con- 
 quered, or a punishment inflicted and over, but that there 
 was no strength left to bear another tomorrow. God lets me 
 love Him just enough to hold on with. I am sure you must 
 fill your mind and occupy your thoughts far more with God 
 and His perfections, with Jesus and His sweetnesses, with 
 Mary and her attractions. This alone will bring with it any 
 relief. You have grieved, perhaps to some excess, for him, 
 yet your witt, on which your own eternity depends, has never 
 for one instant left the side of God's Will; so it is with 
 occasional fits of anguish about the coming departure of 
 your child. They may depress and irritate your phy- 
 sical weakness, but you have given that beautiful virgin 
 soul to God. No one has felt more fully than you have 
 done that no one is worthy of her but He. I know that 
 when I bid her goodbye myself, I shall feel that another 
 light has gone out to me, and what then must your feel- 
 ings be ? I do not want you, more than is necessary, to 
 make efforts. Efforts have their recoil. But you must make 
 something like an effort to think of God, to fill your mind 
 with Him, to make acts of love to Him, and still more of 
 delight in Him. You have not strength to carry your cross ; 
 yet God puts no cross on any one without engaging Himself 
 to supply the strength to carry it with it. What then is the 
 meaning of this in your case ? It is this. He gives you no 
 more strength, because He wants, not so much to give you 
 
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 451 
 
 more strength to carry more, but that you should let Him 
 carry it with you. He wants you to find such a delight in 
 Him, that it shall be to you much more than mere strength 
 would be. His eternal happiness is in his delight in God. 
 Your own eternal bliss is to be in nothing else. You see 
 before your eyes one of your own children, your own flesh 
 and blood, one of the most loving, tender hearts that ever 
 blessed a family, so inebriated with delight in God, that she 
 seems hardened and steeled to all the natural attractions of 
 her happy home, which none feels more sensibly than she 
 does. You see her looking on home as a prison and the 
 cloister as liberty, pining to be away from eyes, and voices, 
 and faces, on which you know she absolutely doats, and all 
 because of her delight in God. This is what God wants of 
 you. He wants your grief for your own lost love to lead you 
 into more true communion with him you mourn, by leading 
 you into a life of the same delight in Him which he has in 
 heaven. There will be no solace, there can be none, except in 
 this. "Delight thou in the Lord, and He will grant thee all 
 thy petitions," are the beautiful, deep words of the psalm. I 
 believe there is, by God's grace, nothing on earth I would not 
 do or bear, to lighten the grievous weight you have to bear ; 
 but there is nothing short of that delight in God, of which I 
 have been speaking. Study God more ; fill your mind more 
 with Him, and make acts of love, however unreal and formal 
 they may seem. I wish I could point out easier ways. I 
 feel as if I had not written kindly enough, or touched so 
 desperate a wound as tenderly as I ought, and I feel it more 
 because I always have a feeling of cruelty to you whenever I 
 have cheered M. on, and tried to fortify her resolution. I 
 see now more than ever, that God only can be the Comforter 
 of the afflicted. 
 
452 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 
 LETTER CXXI. To LADY MINNA F. HOWARD. 
 
 The Oratory, London, 
 Feast of St. Nicholas, 1850. 
 My dearest Minna, 
 
 So you are seven years old, and you have made up 
 your mind to be a nun. "Well now, what must you do? 
 Must you put on a strange dress, and cut all your hair off, 
 and go into a convent, and live a hard life ? No ! not just 
 yet. By and bye, with our dearest Lady's blessing, it may be 
 so. But then, as you always, always say, but then I cannot 
 wait so many, many years. Well, Sister Minna of the Infant 
 Jesus ! you need not wait. I will tell you how to be a nun, 
 at once, directly, in the Hotel Bellevue, and with the consent 
 of papa and mamma. Now, I am sure this will both please 
 and surprise you, and it will make V. open her eyes, and 
 noisy M. be quiet. How am I to be made a nun of 
 directly ? Sister Minna ! Sister Minna ! What is it to be 
 a nun ? Listen. To be a nun is to love no one else but 
 Jesus, and to love Him always, and very much, and to love 
 everybody else, papa, mamma, sisters, boy, Father Wilfrid, 
 and all the world, because Jesus loves them so much. This 
 is being a nun. When Sister Minna likes her own will and 
 loves her own way, then she is not a nun. When Sister 
 Minna does not do what she is told, or does it complainingly, 
 then she is not a nun. When Sister Minna says an angry 
 word, then she is not a nun. But when Sister Minna loves 
 Jesus, Oh so much, so very, very much; and when she is 
 always asking her dear Mother in heaven to make her love 
 Jesus more and more, then she is a nun, a real, real nun ! 
 So you see you can be a nun whenever you like. dear ! 
 how many questions this letter will make you ask ! 
 
 And now, goodbye, dearest Minna ! I pray the dear little 
 Jesus in Mary's arms to take care of you, the dear little Jesus 
 
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 453 
 
 who is the great, great God, for all He is so little. 
 Minna ! if the huge God could loye you and me so much that 
 He could become a little Baby, helpless as Ethel was, for you 
 and me, why do not we both love Him ten hundred thousand 
 million times more than we do ? Get an answer ready for 
 
 that question, Minna ! 
 
 Yours most affectionately, 
 
 F. W. FABER. 
 
 LETTER CXXII. To A PENITENT. 
 
 Only imagine God allowing one of His creatures to 
 take so magnificent a vow! How can He ever be loved 
 enough ? When we think of the unutterableness of His 
 resplendent Majesty, would not our humility become simply 
 cowardice, if it were not sustained by love ? Kemember, too, 
 the supernatural destiny of virgins. It is, as St. John says, 
 " to follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth." " Whither' 
 soever /" What a word ! All His ways, His turns, His 
 retreats, His hidings of Himself, His compassionate unbend- 
 ings of His glory, His unspeakable familiarities of love 
 whithersoever Yes ! not to Carmel only, but to Calvary also. 
 And " to sing the new song of the Lamb" new, always new, 
 because it is always a new love of Him, always new because 
 always more and more and more ; and then, too, His sweet- 
 ness is always new ; it is a new Jesus every hour, so new, yet 
 always so like His own old self! All this is what you have to 
 
 think of. Only your offering must be free, your own 
 
 Our dearest Lord's visits are most frequent in the morning. 
 The morning is His favourite time of the day : for He is 
 Himself the Sunrise of the world. 
 
 LETTER CXXIII. To THE SAME. 
 
 I have been in bed and suffering nearly all day, so 
 you will excuse my not writing so fully as I should have 
 
454 THE LIEE AND LETTERS OF 
 
 done, and there is no time for delay. We must begin the 
 Triduo on Tuesday, please. 
 
 Tuesday in honour of God the Father. Think of being 
 a daughter to Him as Mary was, promising to be all for 
 Jesus ; to worship His, the Father's, adorable Will, to bless 
 Him for sending Jesus : lastly and mostly, to wonder lovingly 
 at His letting you, such as you know yourself to be, much 
 more such as He knows you to be, love Himself and His 
 daughter Mary, and bind yourself to Him. 
 
 Wednesday in honour of God the Son. Promising to be 
 a mother to Him as Mary was, and a virgin mother; to 
 soothe Him, to make reparation to Him, to take up His 
 cause, to spread the knowledge and love of Him, to receive 
 Him in the Blessed Sacrament as Mary did, to minister 
 always to Him, to have no other love, no other interest, no 
 other occupation, &c. : mostly and lastly, to wonder lovingly 
 at His letting you, such as you know yourself to be, much 
 more such as He knows you to be, love Himself and His 
 Mother Mary, and bind yourself to Him. 
 
 Thursday in honour of God the Holy Ghost. Promising 
 to be a spouse to Him, as Mary was, always to be listening 
 to His inspirations, to follow the least whisper, to covet His 
 graces, to burn with His fire, to share His jealous zeal for 
 Jesus and Mary, to pine and sigh with Him for the conver- 
 sion of souls : mostly and lastly, to wonder lovingly at His 
 letting you, such as you know yourself to be, much more such 
 as He knows you to be, love Himself and His true spouse 
 Mary, and bind yourself to Him. 
 
 LETTER CXXIV. To THE SAME. 
 
 London, Conversion of St. Paul, 1863. 
 Ought not I to have been choked with tears at the 
 altar today? Such a day, such a Feast, such a grand 
 pathetic Mass, and to be allowed to say Mass at all. Thanks 
 
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 455 
 
 to God, to Mary, to Paul ! The usual tremor which I 
 always have today is on me that strange frightening Office 
 of God's creature Paul ! No asking for mercy, no douht, no 
 fear : hut the little man, for he was very little, cried out, as 
 no other creature ever did, Scio cui credidi, et certus sum, 
 quia potens est depositum meum servare in ilium diem, 
 Justus judex! There is no other saint I know of who 
 has dared to stand in that attitude before God : and it 
 glorifies God so intensely ! Then, when St. Ananias 
 thought the Eternal Wisdom was speaking ironically with 
 him, and said, Lord ! I have heard of this man, &c., 
 how grandly Jesus says, Vade, quoniam vas electionis est 
 mihi iste ! Then out comes another of those trumpet-like 
 cries of the immense-hearted apostle, Gratia Dei in me vacua 
 non fuit. What other saint ever ventured on such words ? 
 Then again, incredible, incredible words ! comes another 
 Pauline cry, Bonum certamen certavi, cursum consummavi, 
 fidem servavi, corona reposita est. There is but one thing 
 in the whole world like this ; it is Job rising from his 
 dunghill and arguing with God, and making God defend 
 Himself; and God loved it: and Job's pious friends, who 
 blew up Job, and defended God, God simply tells them to 
 get Job to offer sacrifice for them, that their foolish words 
 may be forgiven. Why, it is a revelation of God and of 
 God's love of human nature, a revelation in itself which 
 would feed an Angel's eternal contemplation. 
 
 Dear, dear St. Paul ! always big for God, always impetuous 
 for God, always full of God, always burning for Jesus, 
 always preaching, always talking, always writing God, God, 
 God, the "Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" ! What will it 
 be to see St. Paul, to kiss the feet so dusty on the Koman 
 roads, to see the eyes so sore and bleared and winking, now 
 gazing full on the Divine Essence ; to hear the voice with its 
 sweet thunderstorms of eloquence, and to say, Is that indeed 
 
456 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 
 the tender, girlish, woman-hearted old man who wrote the 
 fascinating epistle to Philemon ? But I must not run on. 
 
 Ever affectionately, 
 
 F. W. FABER. 
 
 LETTER CXXV. To FATHER WILLIAM B. MORRIS. 
 
 S. M. S. July 21, 1860. 
 
 Many thanks for your affectionate letter. St. Philip 
 has only put me over his children, in order to show that his 
 Institute stands not by man's help, but by God. My sons 
 must show their love of me by unintermitting prayer for me 
 that my heart may be altogether changed, that I may be 
 quite turned to God, more full of prayer, more brave in 
 mortification, and more abissato in the sense of my own 
 vileness. This is what you must do. You must not trust 
 me, but God's Will in me. If people knew the graces I 
 have had, they would see I was simply the greatest sinner 
 that ever has been upon earth. Yet sometimes I think 
 myself good ; and I feel pleasure at others thinking me good. 
 This makes me fear I shall go to hell. So do not talk of 
 
 trusting to me, but only to God's grace in me 
 
 Mrs. Kenelm Digby has died quite suddenly, and almost 
 the most beautiful death I ever heard. She went out, Mr. 
 Digby tells me, to walk on the beach at Dover with her 
 daughter Mary Anne. They sat down on a bank, and 
 Mrs. D. took out her book and read some prayers. Then 
 she and her daughter rose and walked on "gaily" and 
 " laughingly." They went to the chapel, where Mrs. D. said 
 her Eosary, and then prayed a little while before the Blessed 
 Sacrament. Coming out of the chapel, a poor woman asked 
 an alms. She gave her a shilling. A moment afterwards 
 she fell, and the poor woman just relieved caught her in her 
 arms. How beautiful ! So will the Great Lover of the poor 
 catch her in His everlasting arms ! See how He can make 
 
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 45? 
 
 even a sudden death into a beautiful grace! It almost 
 breaks my heart, it is so beautiful ; and so like, so very like, 
 our dearest God. 
 
 LETTER CXXVL To THE SUPERIOR OF A CONVENT. 
 
 St. Mary's, Sydenham Hill, Kent. 
 
 My dear Sister in Christ, 
 
 Many thanks for your letter. I am not surprised 
 about Miss C. You will have done her great good. If she 
 had been my penitent of late, I never would have sent her, 
 and I doubt if she has any vocation in her. 
 
 One thing is on my mind to say, though I dare say you 
 have all thought of it. Have you not observed that when 
 God is going to give great graces, He often gives up the 
 person's mind to be the prey of unutterably humiliating 
 thoughts ? Sometimes it is satanic hatred of superiors. 
 Sometimes it is littlenesses like those of the poor sister. 
 Now, if she tells them all openly to superiors, knowing how 
 awfully humiliating it is, is not that of itself almost heroic, 
 almost a proof that they do not belong to her better self? 
 Her vivid imagination enables her to create a hundred fancies 
 a minute. You must deal with them as with temptations. 
 They flow through her like torrents, they dance before her 
 eyes, they sing in her ears, they dash her heart against her 
 side, they almost take her tongue from her, and speak by 
 it. You know, too, how she exaggerates her faults. Do 
 not, my dear sister, let her suffer for her openness to her 
 superiors. 
 
 I have no right to talk in this way to you, but I fear, I 
 always have feared, this might be the case. I beg of you to 
 go by her actions, not by her feelings ; to judge her, not by 
 her repugnances, but by her solid submissions. It is a 
 greater grace in her to tell you her humiliating meanness, 
 
458 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 
 than it would be not to be so tempted. I know her faults, 
 but I know her worth also. Nothing but anxiety for her soul 
 would induce me to write thus to you, but I venture to sub- 
 mit it to yourself and Mother T., and I beg you will chari- 
 tably forgive me my impertinence, as I know you will do. 
 
 Ever your affectionate servant in Christ, 
 F. W. FABEB, 
 
 of the Oratory. 
 
 P.S. It is not often that an untroublesome novice makes 
 a subject worth a straw. 0, what travail till Christ be formed 
 over again in them ! 
 
 LETTER CXXVIL To THE KEV. MOTHER PRIORESS, 
 NEW HALL, CHELMSFORD. 
 
 The Oratory, Brompton, London, 
 
 Dec. 16, 1856. 
 My dear Bev. Mother, 
 
 I need not say how sincerely I offer to you and your 
 holy community my condolences on the death of the dear 
 sister. I know well how those, who have long been sufferers, 
 come to be, as it were, indispensable objects of love in a 
 community, and when they are taken, it is as if some 
 favourite piece of furniture were stolen from tne house, or 
 some deeply beloved picture taken away, or some old familiar 
 tree, under whose shadow we recreated, cut down. There is 
 something missed in the little loving occupations of the day, 
 a kind of blank which at first is dreary. I often think a 
 chronic invalid is one of the best treasures of a religious 
 house, a revenue of grace and supernatural sweetness to it. 
 But we must not grudge her the peace which her Spouse at 
 last has given her. I have said two masses for her, as I 
 regard her as one of our benefactors ; and it seems also to be 
 a natural opportunity to thank you also again, my dear 
 
FREDERICK WILLIAM EABER,. 459 
 
 Mother, for the help which you allowed the dear sister to give 
 me in the Lives of the Saints. 
 
 Begging a remembrance in your prayers, 
 
 Believe me, with great respect, 
 
 Your faithful servant in Christ, 
 F. W. FABEE, 
 
 of the Oratory. 
 
 LETTER CXXVIII. To SISTER M. P. 
 
 Whit-Tuesday. 
 
 I congratulate you a thousand times on the great and 
 happy event of today. You must he a daughter of the Holy 
 Ghost, a daughter of fire. You will not know till the hour 
 of death all the blessedness of being a child of St. Dominic. 
 You must take for the virtue of your noviciate, simplicity. 
 Want of it is your failing. You must not look too closely 
 into yourself, or scrutinize motives, or analyze feelings, or 
 exaggerate disquietudes. You must be foolish as a child with 
 a holy foolishness. Say all you feel to superiors, but do not 
 say it twice, do not urge it, do not paint it. Walk slowly 
 and speak without emphasis ; if you can manage these two 
 exterior things, I will. answer for your interior peace. If you 
 don't, you will lose your own vocation and destroy M.'s ; and 
 if you do that, won't purgatory be too good for you ? Say all 
 kind things for me to Sister R. P. May the Spirit of fire 
 burn both your hearts to pieces, and the Spirit of peace make 
 His nest in the ruins. 
 
 LETTER CXXIX. To THE SAME. 
 
 The Oratory, London, S. W. 
 
 January 4, 1859. 
 
 What is the use of wishing you a happy new year ? 
 What else can the years of a religious be except happiness 
 from the first of January to the last of December ? What a 
 beautiful life to have so much time for prayer as you have ! 
 
460 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 
 It is so incredibly sweet to pray; the Face of God grows 
 daily more clear ; the very sense of our own utter nothingness 
 becomes quickly a positive sweetness. It is so grand to be 
 allowed to say daring words to our dearest, dearest God ; and 
 then it is so unutterably heavenly to lie at His Feet in 
 silence, without even so much as looking up. Then some- 
 times, perhaps it is not very often how wonderful it is to 
 feel ourselves melting away in God. Lord ! show us the 
 Father, and it is enough. Oh, I have always loved the 
 apostle St. Philip for that exclamation of his deep, tender, 
 yearning, contemplative heart. But why are we not always 
 praying ? Why do anything else but pray ? Alas ! there is 
 that horrid eating, and that idle sleeping, and then swimming 
 an hour or two every day in that dirty, dingy ocean of venial 
 sins, which in religious houses we call recreation rightly so 
 called, for I am sure we all need creating over again after each 
 recreation. I always say the Veni Creator as I go from the 
 refectory to the recreation room for those gifts of the Holy 
 Ghost which an old Oratorian Father said were essential to 
 a holy recreation. But it is not of much use to me, for I 
 always say more than I ought to say, and much which had 
 better be left unsaid, and I come away weary and peevish, 
 because I feel less with God. "Why then can't we be always 
 praying ? What brutes we are, scarcely half so meditative as 
 placid cows. Very well, then, I retract what I said at 
 starting, that the lives of religious were nothing but happiness 
 from the first of January to the last of December. It is only 
 a happy unhappiness, growing more and more as we get more 
 holy. We pine for God. We pine to be out of the way of 
 sin. We pine to be unable to offend our Heavenly Father. 
 So let us wish each other no more happy new years; but 
 sigh, and sigh, and sigh for the Eternal Peace, the sweet 
 welcome for ever on the Face of God. Well ! but is it quite 
 clear that we cannot be always praying ? No ! it is by no 
 
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 461 
 
 means clear ; and I vote that you and I make a good try this 
 year, and see if we cannot accomplish what our dearest Lord, 
 who never makes hard laws, tells us to accomplish PER- 
 PETUAL PRAYER. 
 
 LETTER CXXX. To THE REV. MOTHER PRIORESS, 
 CARMELITE CONVENT, RUE D'ENFER, PARIS. 
 
 My Very Rev. Mother, 
 
 The occupations of Lent in this great heathen city 
 have hitherto hindered me from writing to your Reverence. 
 I do not know how sufficiently to thank you for your goodness 
 in writing to me, and in writing to me such welcome news. 
 It is a privilege of which I am quite unworthy, that God 
 should have allowed me to send some of my spiritual children 
 to Carmel. But it must have been not in consequence, but 
 in spite of my direction. The vehement impulse of the 
 Holy Ghost in the hearts of those dear children saved them 
 from the torpor and misery of my unworthy direction. I 
 hope your Reverence will make both of them pray hard 
 for me; for I go on always preaching to others, and 
 immersed in external things, and so my own soul does not 
 get converted. I may say, like the spouse in the Canticles, 
 they made me keeper of the vineyards, but mine own 
 vineyard have I not kept. Ah ! we all of us, priests and 
 people, want a Carmel in London. One good house, fervently 
 glowing with the spirit of St. Teresa, would infuse new 
 strength into our weakness ; it would give supernatural rest 
 to our fatigue, and it would uphold our infirmity by the 
 blessed impetuosity of its prayers. God and St. Teresa 
 grant that this great blessing may some day be ours. 
 
 Commending myself to the prayers of your Reverence and 
 the community, permit me to remain, 
 
 With profound respect, 
 
 Your unworthy servant in Christ, 
 F. W. FABER. 
 
462 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 
 LETTER CXXXI. To SISTER MARY OF THE B. TRINITY. 
 
 St. Mary's, Sydenham Hill, 
 
 St. Vincent of Paul, I860., 
 My dear Child, 
 
 Your letter was a great joy and consolation to me. 
 I am here nursing poor Father Hutchison, who is very 
 slowly but gradually worsening. I fear his recovery is out 
 of the question now. So pray for all the needful graces for 
 him, especially patience and the spirit of prayer. I shall 
 keep the feast with you in spirit tomorrow ; for I have long 
 had a special devotion to St. Elias. I get more and more of 
 a Carmelite in my affections ; I wish I did so in spirit 
 and in practice. The two things which my dear old Blosius 
 tells us to be, seem so exactly the description of a true 
 Carmelite, placid and mature. Are they not two beautiful 
 words ? Placid and mature I seem as if I could never 
 have done meditating on them. And what a description 
 they are of dear blessed St. Elias ! The fire of God ! that 
 is what I call him : a burning zealot, a heavenly enthusiast, 
 with a warrior's heart and a seraph's mind ! Think of his 
 grand rudeness, of his majestic impetuosity, how he shouted 
 on earth for the honour of God as Michael shouted in heaven 
 of old, Who is like unto God? He seems to have in his 
 soul all the concentrated essence of martyrdom. You 
 remember how rude those boy and girl martyrs were to the 
 heathen magistrates in the primitive persecutions. All 
 martyrs have some sanctified rudeness. They are witnesses, 
 and witnesses against human respect. But look at the fire 
 of great Elias now. Do you think it burns any lower, any 
 less fiercely, any less purely, any less vindictively ? Oh no ! 
 Yet how placid it is. So quiet, so patient, so vehemently 
 tranquil, so imperturbably beautiful. Is it not like anger in 
 God ? Not a trouble, but a peace ; not a ruffling, but a 
 
FEEDEEICK WILLIAM FABER. 463 
 
 calming; not a disturbance, but an intensity. Oh what an 
 adorable thing anger is in God ! The implacability of 
 infinite forgiveness and St. Elias is a glorious type of this. 
 And then how mature also is his magnificent soul ! There it 
 is ripening away for centuries, its flames all sheathed in the 
 gentlenesses of the most tender contemplations, as if his 
 Old Testament spirit were quelled by the spirit of Bethlehem 
 and the lovingnesses of the Incarnation. His holy wrath is 
 loud no more, but only echoes in his soul like the soft 
 booming of the perpetual summer sea at the base of Carmel, 
 or the little Te Deums which the bees hum in the thyme 
 beds on the slopes of Carmel. dear and beautiful Elias ! 
 how the thought of him makes my heart burn ! Was he ever 
 gentle when he was on earth ? I have thought of that and 
 searched the Bible to see. He seems very kind to the poor 
 Sidonian widow, and very unprovoked when in her maternal 
 love she spoke so rudely. Yet when God came to him not in 
 foe wind, nor in the earthquake, nor in the fire, but in the 
 whispering of a gentle air, I have fancied that God meant to 
 each him how to make his zeal placid. But it was very nice 
 Q!' St. Elias letting Eliseus go back after his vocation to kiss 
 his father and his mother. I wonder if St. Teresa would have 
 done so. But you know the women saints are always sterner 
 than the men saints. Poor Elias ! Then what a lesson 
 he is about unanswered prayer ! How he threw his whole 
 heart into his prayer under the juniper tree, and requested 
 for his soul that he might die, and said, "It is enough 
 for me, Lord ! Take away my soul ; for I am no better 
 than my fathers." And yet, here he is, still in his tranquil 
 shades of Eden, still waiting, still out of work ; and fancy 
 the zeal of St. Elias out of work ! He is maturing, maturing 
 placidly, like a sort of eternal saint. You see he had been 
 ambitious. It was just like him, like his forwardness, in 
 which he so resembles St. Peter. He had made up his mind 
 
464 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 
 to be better than his fathers; and now he says, I am no 
 better than my fathers. Great Saint ! and yet he is better 
 than tens of thousands of his fathers. So you must be 
 ambitious also, and make up your mind to do grand things 
 for God ; and then great grace will enable you to see how 
 little you are, and how bad. St. Elias' one prayer was to die. 
 God's one Will about him was that he should live, miracu- 
 lously live, drag his life on beyond the time ; and in this he 
 resembles St. John the Evangelist. Perhaps all this long 
 while he is learning to be more and more like Mary, his own 
 vision-seen Mary, beheld so far off and loved by such a mar- 
 vellous anticipation. Mary was the melodious whisper of the 
 gentle air in which God has come to all of us. Like us, St. 
 Elias perhaps has learned the incomprehensible tenderness of 
 God from the sight and the study of Mary. And now he has 
 two heavens waiting for him, the heaven on earth of shedding 
 his blood for Jesus, and the heaven in heaven of being, I 
 suspect, between St. Michael and St. Joseph for ever. 
 
 God bless you. Pray to St. Elias for me. Kindest 
 messages to SODUT de S. Philippe. 
 
 Most affectionately in Jesus, 
 F. W. FABER. 
 
 LETTER CXXXII. To THE SAME. 
 
 Please tell my unknown daughter, Sister Marie de 
 Gonzague, that I have taken St. Teresa for my year Saint 
 this year, and that what I want are these three things ; a very 
 copious spirit of prayer, a tremendous humility, and a great 
 sweetness of temper so these are the three things she is to 
 get for me ; and in return I will ask St. Teresa to give her an 
 exceeding spirit of gaiety, which I think will be her shortest 
 road to the top of Carmel. Now about yourself. I wish I 
 could inspire you with a particular devotion. You know my 
 
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 465 
 
 own great and absorbing devotion is to the Attributes of God. 
 I have brought this devotion forward in all my books, and am 
 doing so still more prominently in the Precious Blood. 
 Nowhere is this devotion more beautifully exemplified than in 
 the Carmelite lives, especially in that sweet treasure of 
 interior science, the Chroniques. Nowhere also is this 
 devotion shown in more exquisite harmony with the various 
 devotions to the Sacred Humanity of Jesus, than in the 
 Chroniques. This is as it should be, because it was exactly 
 the spirit of St. Teresa. Now what I think about you, is 
 that you ought to have a special devotion to the Omnipotence 
 of God. I cannot tell you in how many ways I think it fits 
 in with your natural character, and suits the particular kind 
 of grace which God has given you. I believe you will feel it 
 all yourself, as if by intuition, as soon as I mention it. If 
 then it seems good to your superiors, see if you cannot 
 dedicate yourself in your inmost heart with trembling love 
 and childlike delight to the majesty of this dear Attribute. 
 It will suit well with your new name. You are called "of the 
 Blessed Trinity." Happy you ! what a life of joyous crosses 
 is before you, a life perhaps of bleeding feet, because the ways 
 of Carmel are flinty, but a life of a glad heart, because the 
 air of Carmel is so bracing and so pure. In all this, a special 
 devotion to the Omnipotence of God will be a great help to 
 you. It will increase your gift of faith ; and of all our gifts, 
 pure faith is the one whose increase we ought to seek most 
 especially, while it is at the same time the one most capable 
 of increase. It will give you huge courage, and it needs 
 huge courage to bear being sanctified. God's Hand must 
 always be heavy, while He is at work upon our little shrinking 
 souls, even though He presses as lightly as He can. The 
 contemplation of the same dear Attribute will always fill 
 you full of an inexhaustible gladness, singing songs in 
 
 your heart for ever. It will fill you with fervour. It 
 30 
 
466 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OE 
 
 will fill you also with exceeding peace. I could go on 
 for ever about this sweet Omnipotence. But I must not 
 write you a book instead of a letter. Here are a few 
 texts about Omnipotence, and its curious hidden connection 
 with God's gentleness and sweetness.* They are out of the 
 Book of Wisdom, the eleventh and twelfth chapters. "But 
 Thou hast mercy upon all, because Thou canst do all things. 
 Thou sparest all, because they are Thine, Lord who lovest 
 souls. For Thy power is the beginning of justice; and 
 because Thou art Lord of all Thou makest Thyself gracious to 
 all. Being master of power, Thou judgest with tranquillity, 
 and with great reverence disposest of us ; for Thy power is at 
 hand when Thou wilt." Are not all these wonderful words? 
 You might pray over them for years, and not get all the 
 honey out of them. Oh I see volumes of beautiful theology 
 streaming out of them. How sweet heaven will be with all 
 these worshipful Attributes drowning us in all their vast seas 
 of light and love for evermore ! Another thing I must say 
 about this dear Attribute of Omnipotence. It is full of 
 treasures for those who practise holy poverty. There, now I 
 will stop, or else you will think it as bad as one of my long 
 High Mass sermons at the Oratory. 
 
 I used to say, God bless you a thousand times ; now I say, 
 God bless you a million times. 
 
 Hold on up that steep Carmel and give God glory. Be 
 detached, and St. Teresa will love you. 
 
 Ever your most affectionate Father in Jesus Christ, 
 
 F. W. FABEB. 
 
 * Cf. the prayer for the 10th Sunday after Pentecost; 
 "Deus qui omnipotentiam tuam parcendo maxime et mise- 
 rando manifestas." 
 
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 467 
 
 LETTER CXXXIIL To THE SAME. 
 
 The Oratory, London, 
 
 Easter Sunday, 1861. 
 My dear Child, 
 
 I hope these few lines will catch you before you go 
 into Retreat. Lent and Holy Week hindered my writing 
 before ; and now I am so fatigued and worn that I can do 
 little in the way of letter writing. What a happy being you 
 must be ! To sit on the ledges of Mount Carmel, the world 
 in your ears making no more noise, nay less, than the 
 humming of the bees in the thymy sward, and to have 
 always outspread before you the vast sea of the interminable 
 perfections of the Most Holy Trinity for that I suppose 
 will be the usual food of your prayers. Misty and blue the 
 sea, that sea, must look to you now ; and yet even in its 
 indistinctness it is a beauty, a rapture, a gently forcible 
 tranquillity. 
 
 You will find in " Bethlehem/' which I send you by Father 
 Bowden, many things which will help you to thoughts about 
 the Most Holy Trinity. What a most dear mystery it is ! 
 How it seems to throw its arms around us, and keep us 
 from all harm ! How it lifts us up, and carries us, and 
 pillows us on itself, and nourishes us, and rests us mar- 
 vellously in some enchantment of its own ! Humility is 
 easy : it is a daring word to say, but I will say it, humility 
 is easy to one who specially devotes himself to the contem- 
 plation of that queen of mysteries : for it not only makes us 
 feel our littleness, but it makes us love our littleness, and 
 like to feel it. But you must always remember the advice 
 of your great Mother and Doctress that the way to gain 
 a grand and yet a safe devotion to the Most Holy Trinity is 
 to have a most ardent devotion to the Sacred Humanity of 
 Jesus. Moreover, if I do not mistake, I infer from your 
 
468 THE LIFE AND LETTEES OF 
 
 Chroniques, that most delicious of books, that there has 
 always been in your Order a peculiar attrait to the mystery 
 of the Eesurrection ; and you see your Retreat and your 
 Espousals will both be in Paschal-tide. Well, you must 
 make a brave Resurrection of it, almost an Ascension. I 
 feel as if you were going to heaven. And what last word 
 shall I say? The words of Ecclesiasticus xliv. "Glorify 
 the Lord as much as ever you can ; for He will yet far 
 exceed, and His magnificence is wonderful. Blessing the 
 Lord, exalt Him as much as you can : for He is above all 
 praise. When you exalt Him, put forth all your strength, 
 and be not weary : for you can never go far enough.'* 
 
 God give you millions of Easter blessings, and then the 
 ETERNAL EASTER. 
 
 Ever most affectionately in Jesus and Mary, 
 F. W. FABER, 
 
 of the Oratory. 
 
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 469 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 It has been well said that Father Faber has no 
 claim to be considered a spokesman for English 
 Catholics. A spokesman is one who expresses the 
 sentiments of a large body, being deputed to do so 
 because he understands and agrees with their 
 opinions. Such a position Father Faber never 
 occupied : he was a leader, not a spokesman ; the 
 mission he accomplished was to educate, not to 
 represent, the Catholics of England. Although the 
 proofs of this are succinctly stated in a letter 
 written to him by Cardinal Wiseman, which will be 
 given in the following chapter, it may be well to 
 give them here at greater length. 
 
 When he entered the Church, his first care was 
 to put himself in harmony with her spirit, not as 
 he found it in a country where the remembrance of 
 recent persecution, and of the necessity of conceal- 
 ment, still hampered the freedom of its operation ; 
 but as it flourishes in lands where all traditions are 
 its own. Especially did he endeavour to study it at 
 its fountain-head in the city of Rome, under the 
 shadow of St. Peter's Chair. Fully recognizing the 
 claims of his own country to his labours, he made 
 it his business to introduce into it in every possible 
 way the devotions and practices which are conse- 
 crated by the usage of Rome. The Faith was 
 
470 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 
 making rapid progress in English, hearts, and he 
 sought to promote its development into true Catholic 
 piety. 
 
 Himself considerably in advance of his fellow- 
 countrymen in this particular, he translated and 
 printed the various expressions of foreign Catholic 
 devotion, teaching and persuading all who came 
 under his influence, first to adopt, and then to 
 disseminate them. In one of his sermons he 
 remarked, as though in answer to those who 
 objected that Italian practices were unsuited to 
 English minds : 
 
 "Truth is not ours to bate and pare down. Truth is 
 God's ; it has God's majesty inherent within it, and it will 
 convert the souls of men, even when it seems rudest and most 
 repelling; and it will do so for this one reason because it is 
 God's truth, and because we through the grace of God have 
 boldness and faith to put our trust in it. And again, beware 
 of another evil, that of trying to throw aside or to pare down 
 what seems most faithful and warm in the devotions of 
 foreign lands ; do not tell that cruel falsehood, do not tell it 
 to those whom you love, and are longing and yearning to 
 have within the Church, do not tell them that the faith is 
 other here than what it is elsewhere ; do not throw aside 
 devotion and sweetness, and worship and affection, as though 
 they were not fit for us, as though God's Church were not 
 one ; for this is nothing less in reality than to deny the unity 
 of God's Church/'* 
 
 In three especial ways Father Paber may be 
 
 * Notes, &c., vol. i. p. 368. 
 
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 471 
 
 recognized as a leader of English. Catholics. First, 
 by the publication of the Lives of the Saints. With 
 all its literary defects, this series did a great work, 
 by familiarizing the minds of men with the highest 
 examples of Christian holiness. Its object was " to 
 help on the practice of asceticism, and to assist 
 those who should be lured by God's grace from 
 precepts to counsels, from the world to the religious 
 life, from ordinary attainments to the perfection 
 which resides in generosity and interior mortifica- 
 tion. 55 * Saintly maxims and rules of conduct were 
 thus introduced, to the profit and edification of 
 many, under the authority of names to which, by 
 reason of the decree of their canonization, no excep- 
 tion could be justly taken. Through the gradations 
 of the spiritual life, exemplified in their perfection 
 in the annals of the servants of God, men were 
 brought to the knowledge and love of Him. 
 
 Father Faber wrote : 
 
 "It is our ignorance of our religion which more than 
 anything else prevents our discerning the extreme lovingness 
 of God. To the savage, on whose inobservant mind no 
 phenomena are forced hut those of power, such as the storm, 
 the flash, the sun, the sea, the wind, the Creator is simply 
 a Spirit of might. Could he see the affections and instincts 
 of animals, as science would put them before him, then he 
 would come to change his notion of the Creator. So, when 
 men are absorbed in worldly pursuits, and do not occupy 
 themselves in the things of God, it is only the phenomena of 
 
 * Essay on the Interest and Characteristics of the Lives 
 of the Saints, p. 5. 
 
472 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 
 power in religion, such as death, mortal sin, judgment, hell, 
 predestination, which engage their attention. They must 
 descend into the minute laws of grace, the secrets of prayer, 
 the arrangements of merit and glory, the affectionateness of 
 indulgences, the sweet mysteries of Jesus and Mary, in order 
 to get anything like a true idea of the length and breadth of 
 God's amazing love. The thunderclap can strike the 
 inattentive ; but it is only the listener that catches the 
 sea-like whispers of the summer air in the pine-tree tops."* 
 
 Again, a new impulse was given to Catholic 
 devotion by the hymns and popular services of the 
 London Oratory, the one directed and the other 
 written by Father Faber. Here the prayers and 
 aspirations of the Saints are brought into familiar 
 use, to form the basis of the spiritual -life of many 
 pious souls. The plain, unadorned style wherein 
 St. Philip directs his children to set forth the 
 mysteries of the Faith serves the same end. Another 
 most powerful instrument is the Confraternity of 
 the Precious Blood, now so well known in this 
 country. Having prayer for its sole object, it unites 
 the supplications of thousands, and not one of its 
 weekly meetings passes without many acknow- 
 ledgments of blessing received through them. 
 
 One of the great attractions of these services was 
 naturally Pather Faber 's preaching. His eloquence 
 has been thus described by a distinguished ecclesi- 
 astic :f 
 
 * All for Jesus, chap. viii. 
 t Dublin Be view, January 1864. 
 
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 473 
 
 " As a preacher, he possessed certain gifts beyond any one 
 we remember to have heard. He had a facility and flexibility 
 of mind and voice, a vividness of apprehension and of 
 imagination, a beauty of conception and expression, a 
 beauty, that is, to the eye and to the ear, with a brightness 
 of confidence, as of a man who lived in the light and peace 
 of God, and a longing desire to make others possess the 
 happiness he enjoyed, which we have hardly seen united in 
 the same degree." 
 
 Another eminent authority, Dom Prosper Gueran- 
 ger, Abbot of Solesmes, has written as follows : 
 
 " Father Faber was always ready, always abundant and 
 copious, always full of unction, disclosing in every word the 
 liveliness of his faith and the ardour of his love of God. 
 Rising above all motives of policy and above all weakness, 
 neither his words nor his pen were ever checked by any human 
 consideration. He would never consent to gloss over either the 
 absolute formulas of dogma, the severity of the moral law, or 
 the maxims of the spiritual life. He was aware that among 
 his numerous hearers, Protestants as well as fervent Chris- 
 tians thronged around him, yet the desire of obtaining the 
 unanimous applause of so mixed an audience never extorted 
 from him one of those compliances or one of those reserves 
 to which it is so easy to give way. His holy pride in possess- 
 ing the truth through the Church, which alone on earth can 
 give it to us, forbade his accommodating it to men who can 
 only be its humble disciples ; and if he at times gave offence to 
 certain minds, imitating in this respect the Son of God and 
 His apostles, he attracted others who felt themselves entirely 
 carried away by the fervour of his words and the force of his 
 convictions."* 
 
 * Le Monde, January 25, 1864. 
 
THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 
 Father- Faber's own words were : " Let us only 
 preach and teach the Divinity of 'Jesus, no matter 
 how uninviting may be the notion of theological 
 sermons, and we shall soon see how hearts will melt 
 without eloquence of ours, and how Bethlehem and 
 Calvary will give out their rich depths of tender- 
 ness to the poorest and the simplest of Christ's 
 humble poor."* For the conversion of Protestants 
 the same means were relied on ; and it was soon 
 found that the simple unargumentative explanation 
 of Catholic truth was the most efficacious means of 
 bringing wanderers into the Fold. This is taught 
 in one of Father Faber's hymns : 
 
 " By haughty word, cold force of mind, 
 
 "We seek not hearts to rule ; 
 Hearts win the hearts they seek ! Behold 
 The secret of our school !" t 
 
 After the course of lectures on Protestantism with 
 which the daily evening Exercises of the Oratory 
 were commenced at Brompton, Father Faber never 
 preached a controversial sermon. As in the first 
 days of his "Wilfridian Community at Birmingham, 
 he desired that all should be carried on as it 
 would be in a Catholic country. He would never 
 allow difficulties to be thrown in the way of the fre- 
 quentation of the Oratory by Protestants; and in the 
 year 1862, when the Church was thronged by stran- 
 
 * All for Jesus, chap. viii. 
 t St. Philip Neri, No. 79, Edition of 1862. 
 
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 475 
 
 gers whom the International Exhibition attracted to 
 the neighbourhood, he allowed them to walk about it 
 without restraint, saying that he would not have it 
 on his conscience to prevent their receiving grace 
 by doing so. On the other hand, their prejudices 
 were never considered in his sermons, nor in the 
 plan of services carried out under his direction. 
 Such was his confidence in the power of the Faith 
 that he never feared to speak it boldly, or to put 
 forward its fullest developments; and thus to those 
 who, although Catholics, were not acquainted with 
 the soundness of his theological conclusions, his 
 language was sometimes startling. On one occa- 
 sion, at King "William Street, he began a course of 
 Lectures on the Immaculate Heart of Mary; 
 but after the delivery of the first he received 
 letters from some of his hearers, who objected to 
 the doctrines taught. "When therefore the time 
 appointed for the second came, he went into the 
 pulpit, and merely announced that he had received 
 these complaints relating to his sermon, and that 
 consequently the course would not be continued, 
 " Because,' ' said he, " I trust I know what is due 
 to my Lady's honour better than to cast her pearls 
 before swine." 
 
 Contemporaneously with the publication of the 
 Lives of the Saints, and the foundation of the 
 London Oratory, Father Faber contributed much 
 to the circulation in England of foreign spiritual 
 books, as those of Boudon, Surin, Eigoleuc, the 
 
476 THE LIFE AND LETTEES OF 
 
 two Lallemants, Courbon, Lombez and Nonet. 
 The Spiritual Doctrine of Lonis Lallemant, and the 
 Octave of Corpus Christi, by Nonet, were translated 
 at his suggestion, and edited by him. lie also 
 published the School of St. Philip Neri, as a 
 supplement to the lives of that Saint and of his 
 companions. 
 
 The third and greatest service which Pather 
 Paber rendered to English Catholics was the publi- 
 cation of his works. Whilst they contain much of 
 the learning and piety to be gathered from the 
 perusal of the Lives of the Saints, the talent, 
 eloquence, and literary merit which they display 
 attract the attention of many who would think the 
 Oratorian Series beneath their notice. They also 
 extend to a wider circle the benefit derived by those 
 whose good fortune it was to hear many of them 
 delivered, nearly in the same form, from the Chair 
 of the Oratory. Original and characteristic, their 
 every line recalls to any one who ever formed part 
 of Pather Paber 's audience the power and fascina- 
 tion of manner and voice which brought his teach- 
 ing home to every listener's heart. 
 
 Between January 1853 and December 1860, that 
 is, in the short space of eight years, Pather Paber 
 wrote and published as many closely printed 
 volumes. During the whole time, the anxiety and 
 responsibility of the foundation and government of 
 the Oratory rested upon his shoulders, and for the 
 latter five years the charge of the noviciate was 
 
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 477 
 
 added to his cares. He was often prostrated by 
 illness, a severe attack infallibly following the 
 completion of one of his books : he took his turns 
 of preaching with the rest of the Community, and 
 his leisure time was further shortened by the 
 numerous calls upon him for assistance and advice. 
 The preparation for his books was always 
 elaborately made. 
 
 "It has been my custom," he wrote in the preface to 
 Spiritual Conferences, "to have the notes of them, very full 
 and detailed, prepared several weeks, often several months, 
 before delivering them. They were then revised before 
 preaching, and very often annotated immediately after 
 preaching, when necessary or desirable changes struck me 
 in the act and fervour of delivery. There is nothing which 
 brings out any want of logical sequence, or any dispropor- 
 tionate arrangement of thoughts, more vividly than the act 
 of preaching, and I have repeatedly profited by this fact. 
 The notes were then laid aside, some for two years, some for 
 one year, some for a few months, before I finally revised 
 them for writing, and at last wrote them out. I have long 
 adopted this custom with what concerned the Spiritual Life, 
 so as to secure myself from putting forth mere views struck 
 out in a heat, and also that I might convert the opinions 
 expressed, whatever their intrinsic value might be, into 
 judgments ascertained with care, matured by experience, and 
 revised with jealous repetition under various circumstances 
 and in different moods of mind." 
 
 An instance of Father Paber's sedulous compila- 
 tion of materials is given in the following letter : 
 
478 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 
 LETTEK CXXXIV. To THE KEY. J. B. MORRIS. 
 
 Ardencaple Castle, Helensburgh, N.B., 
 
 July 17, 1858. 
 
 My volume of Conferences was ready for the press 
 months ago, and Bethlehem nearly a year ago. But 
 Christmas year is the earliest date at which I shall puhlish 
 Bethlehem, as it is a wildish Faberian book 
 
 Remember in catalogue reading, that my Calvary, 
 preached in the Lent of '57, after eight years reading, is now 
 awaiting the period of gestation before I write it so mention 
 to me any books you see on the Passion. I have about a 
 hundred, some very valuable, which Watts Russell got at an 
 old place in Venice. My last work at Calvary was an analy- 
 sis of all the stigmata and passional phenomena of the saints, 
 out of Gorres and others. 
 
 I hope you'll be able to read Scotus. I can't. I am 
 obliged to do him in Montefortino. Subtilis himself is like 
 a needle in a bottle of hay. 
 
 Father Faber wrote rapidly, and his manuscripts 
 scarcely ever needed a correction before they were 
 sent to the printers. The fair sheets of straw- 
 coloured paper, closely covered with neat lines 
 of peculiar character, resemble a carefully made 
 copy rather than original matter, frequently 
 embracing vexed theological questions, which 
 required the most delicate handling. 
 
 The first of those works on which Father Faber's 
 reputation as an author mainly rests, All for Jesus, 
 was written for the press in a period of about six 
 weeks. Its second title, The Easy Ways of Divine 
 
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 479 
 
 Love, explains its popular nature. The preface 
 thus describes its scope : 
 
 " As a son of St. Philip I have especially to do with the 
 world, and with people living in the world, and trying to he 
 good there, and to sanctify themselves in ordinary vocations. 
 It is to such I speak; and I am putting hefore them, not 
 high things, hut things which are at once attractive as 
 devotions, and also tend to raise their fervour, to quicken 
 their love, and to increase their sensible sweetness in practical 
 religion and its duties. I want to make piety hright and 
 happy to those who need such helps, as I do myself. I have 
 not ventured to aim higher. If it causes one heart to love 
 our dearest Lord a trifle more warmly, God will have hlessed 
 hoth the work and its writer far ahove their deservings." 
 
 This volume, published in July 1853, was 
 received by the public with a cordiality which far 
 exceeded the expectations of its author. A large 
 edition was sold in less than a month; a second 
 and third rapidly followed, and a fourth appeared 
 before Easter 1854. The work met with a similar 
 reception in other countries : three Prench transla- 
 tions of it were published, the sale of which has 
 reached more than forty thousand copies, whilst in 
 America its circulation has been far beyond what 
 had been predicted for it. Its popularity has been 
 well maintained, and none of Father Paber's suc- 
 ceeding works have attained the same circulation, 
 either in England or abroad. He had, however, no 
 reason to complain of their reception ; whatever he 
 wrote was eagerly welcomed, and immediately trans- 
 lated into different languages. As the translations 
 
480 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 
 appeared in French, German, Polish, Italian, or 
 Flemish, they were most favourably criticized by the 
 leading organs of Catholic opinion in each country. 
 In France especially they were received with enthu- 
 siasm, and soon made their way throughout the 
 length and breadth of the land, national feeling 
 being humoured by the substitution of "Ausfcer- 
 litz" for "Waterloo" in the first chapter of All for 
 Jesus. The various schools of Catholic thought in 
 that country agreed in approving them : Mgr. 
 Sibour, late Archbishop of Paris, lost no oppor- 
 tunity of recommending all of them, but especially 
 Growth in Holiness, as "drawn from the purest 
 sources of Catholic tradition," while M. Louis 
 Veuillot wrote, in his " Historiettes et Fantaisies"; 
 
 " J'entremele mon Tableau Politique de quelques tranches 
 des Conferences Spirituelles du P. Faber. Livre ascetique, 
 livre Anglais, livre traduit ; et pourtant j'y prends gout. 
 Veritablement le docteur Faber est un maitre homme, et je 
 sais grand gre au P. Abbe de me 1'avoir mis aux mains. II 
 roule son pecheur, le masse, le pelote, le broie, le desosse 
 avec un art qui fait penetrer le jour dans beaucoup de recoins 
 que Ton tenait soigneusement fermes 
 
 " Je continue a me distraire avec le P. Faber, qui me fait 
 des peurs bleues, accompagnees de fortes envies de conver- 
 sion. Ce P. Faber est un maitre ecorcheur, et il a des 
 pinces etranges pour saisir les fibres les plus tenues et les 
 plus cachees sous la peau qu'il enleve dextrement." 
 
 The following are the words of the venerable Abbot 
 of Solesmes, who is alluded to in the last extract : 
 
 "It will be agreed that Father Faber united in himself 
 
FUEDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 481 
 
 many of those qualifications which make up the true spiritual 
 writer holiness of life, knowledge of divine things, and 
 experience of the operations of grace both in himself and in 
 others. A sound theology enabled him to speak worthily of 
 its mysteries, a faith scrupulously orthodox guided his mind 
 in safety through the rocks with which his path was strewn, 
 a profound and well reasoned study of ascetical and mystical 
 books of every school directed his course rightly in a world 
 which is far above the world of nature, an intimate acquaint- 
 ance with the Lives of the Saints revealed to him the secrets 
 of grace, and a complete humility accompanied him during 
 his whole career as a spiritual writer. There is not a page 
 of Father Faber, whether it be severe or sparkling, in which 
 we do not discover the saint, the man who never wrote a 
 single line to put forward or recommend himself."* 
 
 Father Faber possessed many qualifications for 
 the spiritual direction of souls. His kindliness of 
 heart and geniality of manner readily won confi- 
 dence, and he brought to the solution of questions 
 proposed to him a clear judgment, an unaffected 
 piety, and a remarkable gift of discernment of 
 spirit. He was, moreover, intimately acquainted 
 with the literature of the spiritual life, and with its 
 extraordinary as well as ordinary phenomena. It 
 was his intention to write three treatises on this 
 subject, and he gave some account of his plan in 
 the second chapter of the only one which was ever 
 finished, Growth in Holiness, or, The Progress of 
 the Spiritual Life, published at the end of 1854. 
 
 * Le Monde, Jan. 25, 1864. 
 31 
 
482 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 
 " I have made a sort of map of the spiritual life in my 
 own mind. I have divided it into three regions of very 
 unequal extent and of very diversified interest. First there 
 comes the region of beginnings, a wonderful time, so wonder- 
 ful that nohody realizes how wonderful it is, till they are 
 out of it, and can look hack on it. Then stretches a vast 
 extent of wilderness, full of temptation, struggle, and fatigue, 
 a place of work and suffering, with angels, good and bad, 
 winging their way in every direction, the roads hard to find 
 and slippery underfoot, and Jesus with the cross meeting us 
 at every turn. This is ten or twelve times the length of the 
 first region. Then comes a region of beautiful, wooded, 
 watered, yet rocky mountains, lovely yet savage too, liable to 
 terrific tempests and to those sudden overcastings of bright 
 nature, which characterize mountain districts. This last is 
 the land of high prayer, of brave self-crucifixions, of mystical 
 trials, and of heights of superhuman detachment and abjec- 
 tion whose rarefied atmosphere only chosen souls can 
 breathe." 
 
 The first of the three volumes necessary for the 
 completion of this sketch was to have heen entitled 
 First Fervours, and the third, The Gate of Heaven. 
 
 Growth in Holiness is occupied with the direc- 
 tion of souls engaged in traversing the central 
 wilderness described in the above extract, " the 
 wilderness of long patient perseverance in the 
 humbling practices of solid virtue." After a pre- 
 liminary statement of their condition, the Author 
 deals successively with the dangers they have to 
 fear, the precautions it is necessary that they should 
 take, and the practices by which their well-being is 
 to be ensured. He was accustomed to say that 
 
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 483 
 
 the key-note of the whole was the chapter on 
 Abiding Sorrow for Sin, and this, with the four 
 immediately preceding, on Prayer, Temptations, 
 Scruples, and the office of Spiritual Director, forms 
 the most interesting and valuable portion of the 
 book. Considering the great variety of opinion 
 which exists upon these subjects, the conclusions of 
 Father Faber's treatise have been but little ques- 
 tioned, and its reception bears witness to the 
 success of his attempt " to harmonize the ancient 
 and modern spirituality of the Church, with some- 
 what perhaps of a propension to the first, and to 
 put it before English Catholics in an English 
 shape, translated into native thought and feeling, 
 as well as language."* 
 
 The Feast of Corpus Christi, 1855, was the time 
 selected by Father Faber for the publication of 
 The Blessed Sacrament, or, The Works and Ways of 
 God. It was written "to popularize certain por- 
 tions of the science of theology, in the same way 
 as handbooks and manuals have popularized 
 astronomy, geology, and other physical sciences," 
 and it met with so much favour that a second 
 edition was soon called for, although the first had 
 consisted of two thousand copies. In its four books, 
 the Blessed Sacrament is considered as the Greatest 
 Work of God, the Devotion of Catholics, a Picture 
 of God, and a Picture of Jesus. It contains, 
 
 * Prefatory Letter. 
 
484 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP 
 
 together with a vast mass of learning and research, 
 some of the most beautiful passages ever written 
 by the author. The first three pages of the third 
 section of the second book, the Babe and the 
 Host, are a good specimen of his power of uniting 
 clear theological teaching with rare eloquence of 
 expression. 
 
 The opening sentences of the Creator and the 
 Creature, which was published towards the end of 
 1856, shew that it was written in the autumn of 
 1855, at St. Mary's, Sydenham. No sooner was 
 one book fairly launched than Eather Paber set to 
 work upon another, which itself had been for some 
 time in one stage or another of its preparation. 
 The Creator and the Creature " stands to the 
 author's other works in the relation of source and 
 origin. It has been this view of God, pondered for 
 years, that has given rise to the theological bias 
 visible in the other books, as well as to the opinions 
 expressed on the spiritual life : >J and " this treatise 
 explains in detail the point of view from which the 
 author habitually looks at all religious questions, of 
 practice as well as of speculation." It is divided 
 into three parts; the first "a description of the 
 phenomena around us, a detailed account of what 
 it is to have a Creator, and of what follows from 
 our being His creatures : the result of this inquiry 
 being to find that creation is simply an act of 
 divine love, and cannot be accounted for on any 
 other supposition than that of an immense and 
 
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 485 
 
 eternal love :" the second, occupied with the diffi- 
 culties and depths of this creative love; and the 
 third, answering objections started in the course 
 of the enquiry, chiefly those concerning the number 
 of the elect, and concluding with an account of the 
 nature, power and prevalence of worldliness, the 
 only escape from which is "personal love of the 
 Creator, a religion which is simply a service of 
 love, a love which brings us within the suck of 
 that gulf of the Divine Beauty which is our 
 holiness here as it is our happiness hereafter." 
 
 The next book, which Father Paber published 
 before the Lent of 1858, was the Poot of the Cross, 
 or, The Sorrows of Mary. It was part of a series 
 of works on the Passion of our Blessed Lord, which 
 was left incomplete at the author's death. Besides 
 a minute account and analysis of each of our 
 Lady's Dolours, shewing an unusual acquaintance 
 with mystical theology, it contains a chapter on 
 her martyrdom in them, their fountains and charac- 
 teristics, and the spirit and devotion with which 
 they should be regarded, concluding with a com- 
 parison, in itself almost a treatise of theology, 
 between her Compassion and the Passion of her 
 Son. In a notice of the Poot of the Cross, which 
 appeared in the Civilta Cattolica,* the organ of the 
 most distinguished writers of the Society of Jesus, 
 Pather Paber is styled "the eloquent writer of 
 
 * January 1867. 
 
486 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 
 ascetical works, which unite the most mystical 
 devotion to the most profound theological learning. 
 In fact," the article proceeds to say, " we consider 
 this one of the best books ever published on the 
 
 Dolours of Mary There will be found in it 
 
 the most notable features of the life of Mary, and 
 very beautiful reflections on the Passion of our 
 Divine Redeemer; besides great clearness of doc- 
 trine, much valuable teaching concerning the 
 Christian life, and investigations of great subtlety 
 on the subject matter of the book itself." 
 
 The volume of Spiritual Conferences, published 
 early in 1859, represents fairly enough the sermons 
 which Pather Paber was in the habit of preaching. 
 Sometimes, as in the case of " Heaven and Hell," 
 two sermons have been thrown into one Conference. 
 The volume abounds in the author's characteristic 
 excellences, and, taken as a whole, is perhaps one 
 of the most brilliant which ever proceeded from his 
 pen. The teaching is often conveyed in short, 
 epigrammatic sentences, full of practical wisdom, 
 which strongly resemble the Sapiential books of 
 Scripture. In the first Conferences, on Kindness, 
 a sentence occurs wherein he unwittingly describes 
 himself : " A genial man is both an apostle and an 
 evangelist; an apostle, because he brings men to 
 Christ ; an evangelist, because he pourtrays Christ 
 to men." 
 
 The Precious Elood, or, The Price of our Salvation, 
 was written for, and dedicated to, the Confraternity 
 
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 487 
 
 of that name at the Oratory, counting (Lent, 1860) 
 upwards of thirty-eight thousand members, a num- 
 ber which has been much increased since that 
 time. Numerous examples are to be found in this 
 book of Eather Paber's power of making religion 
 attractive, and of enticing men to the practice of 
 it, without making any abatement of its principles. 
 Thus he writes (p. 216) : " Roses grow on briars, 
 say the wise men of the world, with that senten- 
 tious morality which thinks to make virtue truthful 
 by making it dismal. Yes ! but as the very 
 different spirit of piety would say, it is a truer 
 truth that briars bloom with roses. If roses have 
 thorns, thorns also have roses. This is the rule of 
 life. Yet everybody tells us one side of this truth, 
 and nobody the other." In the last chapter the 
 Author thus recapitulates his work : 
 
 " We began with reflecting on the mystery of the Precious 
 Blood, because all devotion starts best with doctrine. The 
 incredibilities of divine love become more credible when we 
 have learned them first as dogmas. It was also the more 
 necessary to begin with doctrine in the case of a devotion, 
 which claims to be an adoration also. We then turned from 
 God to man, and strove to form a right estimate of the 
 Precious Blood by studying from various points of view our 
 extreme need of it, and our immeasurable wretchedness with- 
 out it. We then traversed its empire, learned its character by 
 studying the method of its government, and judged of its 
 magnificence by the splendour of its dominion. Our next 
 step was to unfold its chronicles. We found there a whole 
 revelation of God, and much of the secret history of His 
 
488 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 
 eternity. We discovered there our own place in creation by 
 discovering our place in the procession of the Precious Blood. 
 From its history we passed to its biography, to that notable 
 characteristic of it which especially reveals its spirit, its 
 prodigality. We saw then how God's prodigalities are 
 not excesses, but most orderly magnificences ; and also how 
 our poverty is so extreme that we can only live on from day 
 to day by being economical of Grod's most exuberant liberali- 
 ties. As we had begun with doctrine and adoration, we have 
 had to end with practice and devotion. The history, the 
 characteristics, and the spirit of the devotion to the Precious 
 Blood have been the concluding subjects of our reflections." 
 
 In explaining the alliance of this devotion with 
 others, and especially with that to the Sacred 
 Heart, Father Faber shows the foundation on which 
 his long-standing preference of it rested (p. 307) : 
 
 " It was precisely the Precious Blood, and nothing but the 
 Precious Blood, which was the chosen instrument of our 
 redemption. It is this singular reality, this unmated office, 
 this unshared privilege, in which the grandeur of the Precious 
 Blood resides, a grandeur which is also communicated to the 
 
 devotion The mysterious fact that the Blood, 
 
 and only the Blood of Jesus, was the chosen price of man's 
 redemption, and that it was only the Blood, and the Blood 
 shed to death, which did actually redeem us, confers a 
 distinctive majesty upon the Precious Blood, in which our 
 Lord's Body and His Soul only participate concomitantly." 
 
 It was also as the characteristic devotion of this 
 age, and its special worship of the Sacred Humanity, 
 to which the instinct of the Church, under the 
 guidance of the Holy Father, is now turning, that 
 
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 489 
 
 Father Faber loved to regard the devotion to the 
 Precious Blood. In the last chapter of his book, 
 he thus expresses himself: 
 
 " There was already a commemorative feast of the Precious 
 Blood in Lent. But when Pius IX. returned to the Holy 
 City from his exile at Gaeta, he issued a decree to the whole 
 world, instituting a new feast of the Precious Blood on the 
 first Sunday in July. There is surely a great significance in 
 this decree. The Holy See has taken the lead in this special 
 devotion, and has thereby immensely increased its popularity, 
 the usual result of authority. Moreover the selection of the 
 devotion is of still greater significance. The latest new 
 devotion of the Church was the devotion to the Sacred Heart. 
 The choice has fallen next upon the Precious Blood, which is 
 as it were a development of the devotion to the Sacred Heart. 
 So that there is a sort of historical or chronological fitness 
 in it. It seems part of Catholic piety to believe, that, while 
 these things are by no means supposed to lie within the gift 
 of infallibility, there is a peculiar guidance of the Holy Spirit 
 in them." 
 
 Father Faber published his last great work, 
 entitled Bethlehem, at the beginning of Advent 
 1860. In the preface he expresses his obligations 
 to Father Antony Hutchison for " all that is correct 
 and accurate and pictorial about the scenes which 
 it describes," and proceeds to explain that "where 
 the imagery bears upon itself so many traces of the 
 lochs of the Clyde, and the mountains of Argyll," 
 this is owing to his residence at Ardencaple whilst 
 engaged upon its composition. As its name im- 
 plies, it is a treatise on the mysteries of the Sacred 
 
490 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 
 Infancy. The Author used to say that he wrote the 
 rest of his hooks to please others, hut Bethlehem to 
 please himself. 
 
 The eight works thus enumerated do not repre- 
 sent the whole of Father Faher's literary produc- 
 tions during the period hetween 1853 and 1861. He 
 published in 1857 a collected edition of his Poems, 
 the different volumes in which they had formerly 
 appeared "being out of print; and a year later he 
 reprinted his poem of Sir Lancelot. Considerable 
 additions were made to most of them : among these, 
 Prince Amadis, a fragment hefore, was completed ; 
 and the Author's visit to Malta in 1851 enahled 
 him to insert a description of that island in the 
 " Knights of St. John." Perhaps the most interest- 
 ing are those concerning the earlier period of his 
 life, which are full of affectionate and religious 
 feeling. Of the rest, some are reminiscences of 
 travel, vivid and hrilliant pictures, others were 
 written at Oxford, and have almost the character of 
 hymns, whilst a large numher relate to his sojourn 
 in the, Lake District. "When they were first 
 published, the phraseology of the North Country 
 was not so well known as at present; and his 
 printer three times returned to him a sonnet in 
 which the word " tarn" occurs, with the line 
 
 "By the black barn where Fairfield meets Helvellyn !" 
 
 In most of his compositions it is apparent that 
 his master and model was Mr. Wordsworth. When 
 
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 491 
 
 at Ambleside he was a great favourite with the 
 venerable poet, but some years previous to that 
 time, he had been proud to style himself a 
 Wordsworthian. The admiration was reciprocal, 
 and on one occasion, when staying at Elton, Mr. 
 Wordsworth remarked that "if it was not for 
 Frederick Faber's devoting himself so much to his 
 sacred calling, he would be the poet of his age." 
 
 Ethel's Book, each story of which was written in 
 a single morning, was also published in 1858. Its 
 aim is told in the short letter of dedication : 
 " Suppose we take the Angels instead of fairies, 
 and the Dead instead of ghosts, and then see how 
 we get on ?" 
 
 The notes of other books, on Calvary, the Holy 
 Ghost, the Pear of God, two chapters of which were 
 written in full, and the Immaculate Heart, were put 
 into a forward state of preparation, but remained 
 incomplete at the time of the author's death. 
 Some of them have been published as they were 
 found, in two volumes, under the title " Notes on 
 Doctrinal and Spiritual Subjects," a wealth of 
 thought and meditation, although, like the gleaning 
 after the harvest, collected by unskilful hands, 
 when the reaper had gone to his rest. 
 
 Father Faber's book of Hymns remains to be 
 noticed. A few were printed in 1848, for the use 
 of the congregation at St. Wilfrid's, and many 
 others were added in a volume called " Jesus and 
 Mary," which appeared in 1849. More were given 
 
492 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 
 in the " Oratory Hymns," but in an abridged form, 
 and others remained which had not yet been made 
 public. In order that it might correspond with 
 the Psalter, the author chose the number one 
 hundred and fifty as the limit of his collection, which 
 was published in 1862. In Catholic churches, 
 wherever the English language is spoken, the use 
 of Father Faber's Hymns is almost universal. 
 Some of them, as "The Pilgrims of the Night," 
 and "The Land beyond the Sea," are widely 
 circulated as sacred songs. Many are to be 
 found in Protestant collections. Among others, 
 "Hymns Ancient and Modern" contains several, 
 and the " Hymnal Noted" no less than twenty-four ; 
 the chief favourites being, " O come and mourn 
 with me awhile," "The Precious Blood," "I was 
 wandering and weary," " Sweet Saviour ! bless us 
 ere we go," and " O Paradise ! O Paradise !" 
 
 Many of the characteristics of Father Faber's 
 writings appear on the surface ; but there are others 
 which only a thoughtful investigation will discover. 
 In order to make theology popular, it is necessary 
 that the expositions of it should be clear and true ; 
 and in his works it will be found that under the 
 familiar and ardent language of a preacher there 
 lies an extreme accuracy of theological statement ; 
 so that passages which are seemingly written with 
 the carelessness of exuberant eloquence will bear 
 the closest examination as simple statements of 
 doctrine. Again, his intimate knowledge of the 
 
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 493 
 
 human heart and its workings is seen in all his 
 books, but more especially in the Foot of the Cross, 
 which treats of suffering, as well as in Growth in 
 Holiness, and the Spiritual Conferences, which 
 display a remarkable familiarity with the ingenuity 
 of men in deceiving their consciences. 
 
 The chapter may fitly conclude with the words 
 of the article in the "Dublin Review" for January 
 1864, to which reference has been already made ; 
 
 " "We know of no one man who has done more to make the 
 men of his day love God and aspire to a higher path of the 
 interior life ; and we know no man who so nearly represents 
 to us the mind and the preaching of St. Bernard and St. 
 Bernardine of Sienna, in the tenderness and beauty with 
 which he has surrounded the names of Jesus and Mary." 
 
494 THE LITE AND LETTERS OF [1861. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 1861-3. 
 
 Although Father Faber had been for a long time 
 in a critical state of health, owing to the complica- 
 tion of diseases from which he suffered, it was not 
 until the close of the year 1861 that his work was 
 Seriously interrupted. His career as an author was 
 never resumed after that time, and the four sermons 
 which he preached in the Lent of 1863, can hardly 
 be considered an exception to the rule of silence 
 which was imposed upon him. On the Feast of All 
 Saints 1861 he began the Octave of the Holy Souls 
 at the Oratory with a sermon on "Our Dead,"* 
 and on the 4th of November preached the panegyric 
 of St. Charles at St. Mary of the Angels, Bayswater. 
 On the llth of the same month, the day after the 
 consecration of Dr. Cornthwaite, Bishop of Bever- 
 ley, by Cardinal Wiseman at the Oratory, Father 
 Faber left London for Arundel Castle, whither 
 he was summoned to visit the Very Rev. Canon 
 Tierney, then lying on his deathbed. Shortly after 
 his arrival, Father Faber was seized by a violent 
 attack of bronchitis. Inflammation of the lungs 
 speedily resulted, and symptoms of disease of the 
 heart which manifested themselves made the case 
 alarming. For a few days the greatest anxiety was 
 
 * Notes, &c. vol. ii. p. 387. 
 
1861.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABETL 495 
 
 felt concerning him, althcmgli his medical adviser, 
 Mr. Eyershed, of Arundel, in whom he had the 
 greatest confidence, did not consider the danger so 
 imminent as to require the administration of the 
 last sacraments. True to his habits of work, Father 
 Faber insisted on seeing every day the proof sheets 
 which were sent to him of the new edition of his 
 Hymns, and even made additions to them. On hear- 
 ing that Lady Minna Howard, who assisted him in 
 the revision of them, had expressed surprise that he 
 could write such beautiful verses as the 19th, 20th, 
 and 21st of " The Starry Skies," when suffering so 
 much, he asked whether she did not know that 
 swans always sang sweetest when they were going 
 to die ? 
 
 Happily, the disease took a favourable turn, and 
 Father Faber, rallying with his usual power, was 
 able to return to London in time to keep the Feast 
 of the Immaculate Conception with his community. 
 In a letter to the writer, dated November the 
 29th, 1861, the Rev. F. Balston, who had been 
 despatched from London as infirmarian, on the 
 first tidings of Father Faber's illness, thus describes 
 the dispositions of his patient ; 
 
 " The Father must look forward to a life of suffering. He 
 is not in the least dismayed about this. He says he has felt 
 for two years that his heart was wrong and that he does not 
 feel the least desire that things should be otherwise. He 
 says that if God does not choose to take him now and he 
 says that he knows well enough that he is not fit for it he 
 is most willing that God should punish him for twenty years, 
 
496 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1861. 
 
 if He will only give him the grace of final perseverance. He 
 says God has been wonderfully good to him this illness he 
 was quite peevishly fretful to get home, whilst it was coming 
 on but from the hour when he was actually prostrate he is 
 not aware that he has had even the slightest temptation to 
 murmur or be impatient and to his surprise he cannot feel 
 the least desire that any of his sufferings should be less. 
 The one he has felt hardest to bear, has been the complete 
 prostration with the inability to lie down, but even this has 
 given him a joyous devotion to the posture of Jesus on the 
 Cross. At the same time he begs us to remember that he is 
 in the midst of a ducal palace, with stacks of down-pillows 
 all about him, his own people to nurse him, all the servants 
 literally making a joy of sitting up with him, and taking all 
 kinds of trouble, even the very children of the house having 
 independent services for him in the room where their father 
 died, and the Duchess determined he shall be healed in the 
 best possible way ; so, as he observes, there is not much 
 likeness between him and Jesus on the Cross." 
 
 He himself sent the following to Mr. Watts 
 Kussell, December 6, 1861. 
 
 LETTEB CXXXV. 
 
 It has pleased Almighty God to raise me up from 
 the bed of death in a very wonderful manner, and I take an 
 early opportunity of dictating a few lines to my infirinarian, 
 
 to say with what interest I read your letter 
 
 I hope you won't let those darling boys pass through 
 London again without coming to the Oratory. You know it 
 is not to me only, but to many of us that they are dear. 
 You have so many things to pray for that I hardly like to 
 ask you for special prayers : but if you have the time I 
 
1862.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 497 
 
 should greatly value from youVthree Te Deums, and that you 
 should ask your favourite St. Gertrude to present them to the 
 Divine Majesty ; the first to thank God for all the sufferings 
 of my late illness, the second to thank Him for all the graces 
 and spiritual sweetnesses experienced during it ; and the 
 third, to thank Him for His holy Will in my recovery. 
 
 Father Faber's recovery from this illness was far 
 from complete, and the Fathers judged it advisable, 
 with the concurrence of Mr. E. Tegart, jun., who 
 was then his medical attendant, to request him 
 to abstain from preaching during the whole of 
 the ensuing year. To this he consented, but he 
 remained at Brompton, directing and superin- 
 tending all the work of the Congregation as usual. 
 
 At the beginning of 1862, he wrote to Mr. 
 Marshall, the author of " Christian Missions," a 
 letter testifying his extreme gratification with that 
 work, in which he remarks : 
 
 " What strikes and pleases me most in the book, is the 
 way in which it brings out how utterly soaked and saturated 
 you are with Christian instincts and r(0os. Of course, 
 pious books are another affair ; but I know of no writer so 
 thoroughly Christian as you are, except Louis Veuillot. It 
 is this which so makes me delight in his books. The very 
 love story in Ca et La, or the Breton fun, are so intensely 
 Christian. It oozes out, like blood from a living man : it is 
 not trotted out nor consciously expressed. So with the Parfum 
 de Home, its very nonsense and wit and fun are all so indelibly 
 Christian. It is this which strikes me so much in your book, 
 and I can't help telling you so. God bless you a thousand 
 
 times for the grand boon these volumes are to the Church ! 
 32 
 
498 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1862. 
 
 You will not have fair play, either in sale or in reviews ; but 
 you will have a silent and growing success, and a success 
 with souls." 
 
 On the 23rd of January he wrote, in answer to a 
 question on mystical theology : 
 
 LETTER CXXXVL To M. WATTS RUSSELL, ESQ. 
 I should hardly be a fair judge, for two reasons. First, my 
 spiritual life has so changed during the past years that I can 
 take little, if any, interest in theological refinements, which 
 once were the delight of my meditations. It seems as if God 
 arrested me at the threshold, and so filled the general truth 
 with surpassing sweetness, and at the same time with vague 
 misty intelligence, that I cannot proceed to details, and I feel 
 almost a dislike to having truths brought nearer or made 
 clearer. For instance, with the Passion I say to myself, 
 "Passus sub Pontio Pilato," and I can go no nearer and see 
 no clearer, without appearing to lose the presence of God, and 
 to dull the sensation of His touch. However, enough of that. 
 Second, I am in my devotional instincts rather out of 
 harmony with some of those you quote. Intensely as I 
 admire M. Olier, I find his spirit most uncongenial to mine. 
 There is something in that interior mincemeat of spirituality 
 which I cannot digest. It seems never to forget itself, its 
 postures, or the graceful arrangements of its toga, even in the 
 presence of God. There is no St. Francis-like childishness. 
 No impulse, none of that intensely reverential familiarity, 
 which belongs to Italian and Spanish saints. , Delightful as 
 his life is, the sanctity never forgets to be French by becoming 
 utterly Catholic. How seldom can you find that un-Italian 
 element utterly absent in a French life of an uncanonized 
 person. I know of no instance except him who is the object 
 of my most enthusiastic and filial love, that wonderf al copy 
 of my own St. Philip, the Cure d' Ars. 
 
1862.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 499 
 
 With regard to Grignon de Montfort, my devotion to him 
 began in 1846 and 47. I got his life from old Lord Shrews- 
 bury, and I have it still. I have made two attempts with his 
 " Vraie Devotion." One some years since, and the other a 
 short time ago. Indeed, I made an attempt to model my 
 whole life on his devotion to Mama. But I could not do so 
 without great violence, and much interior suffering. It is a 
 great delight to me that the Nihil obstat of the Congregation 
 of Kites testifies that all is right. But with my present low 
 attainments I am unable to embrace it. I am delighted with 
 the book, with its sweet sensible unction, and its glorious fire, 
 and I owe much to it in the way of increased devotion to 
 Mama. But parts jar me beyond what I can tell you ; and 
 after twice studying the report of the proceedings in the 
 " Analecta Juris Pontificii," I cannot but feel that, while the 
 answer of the Avvocato dei Santi proves that the objections 
 establish nothing in him against faith or morals, it does 
 no more. It fails to bring the teaching home to me as 
 acceptable doctrine. 
 
 Before many months had elapsed, Father Faber 
 saw reasons for changing this opinion, and, feeling 
 himself unequal to the task of original composition, 
 dictated to Father Herbert Harrison the translation 
 of the treatise on true devotion to the Blessed 
 Virgin, by the Venerable Grignon de Montfort, 
 which was published by Messrs. Burns and Lam- 
 bert. Shortly afterwards another version of the 
 same treatise was published in Dublin, with the 
 imprimatur of Archbishop, now Cardinal Cullen. 
 
 The summer months of 1862 were passed by 
 Father Faber at St. Mary's, Sydenham ; but his 
 health often failed him, as appears in the following 
 
500 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1862. 
 
 extracts from letters addressed to the writer, who 
 was then in Switzerland. 
 
 LETTER CXXXVIL To FATHER JOHN E. BOWDEN. 
 
 July 29, 1862. 
 
 Yesterday I had one of the King William Street bilious 
 attacks. It was a sad day. Last night I really slept fairly, 
 not quite a perfect night, still not to grumhle at, and I said 
 mass this morning. I shall go on staying from day to day, 
 seeing how it answers. I suspect Sydenham is doing me 
 good in substantial; but it is an awfully hot house, and I am 
 glad you are out of it just now. 
 
 August 12. 
 
 As to myself, last week was among the worst of my 
 illness, but I hope there is some amendment this week. The 
 pain is now almost incessant, and the tedium of life almost 
 more than I can bear. I am also greatly afflicted with those 
 troubles which generally choose this time of the year for their 
 exhibition. However, silence is the best thing about them. 
 At worst, you can but drop under a burden which you can no 
 longer bear. I do not, by advice, go in for the festa ; and all 
 members of the community are to be prohibited coming here, 
 except one a week, to hear my confession, that I may keep my 
 plenary indulgences. Thus I hope to struggle through some 
 more miserable weeks of solitude, without the ability either to 
 read or to take exercise. 
 
 August 25. 
 
 I am laid up again. I seem to get on for three days, and 
 then back. The thought is growing upon me that I have an 
 undiscovered disease, nephritic perhaps, and that in another 
 twelve months I shall be gone. It sometimes depresses me 
 but it need not only make me more pious. Pray for me. 
 
1862 J FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 501 
 
 "Worn with, pain as he was, he could still rejoice 
 in sympathy with others ; saying that it was almost 
 like health to him to have refreshing accounts of 
 everybody else's enjoyment and happiness, and 
 writing to those who chanced to be absent amusing 
 accounts of the sayings and doings of the rest of 
 the Community. On his return to the Oratory, the 
 triennial elections were held, and in spite of his 
 many infirmities, Father Faber was re-elected to the 
 offices of Provost and Novice-master. The winter 
 passed without a recurrence of his more serious 
 attacks, although he suffered constant pain. 
 
 LETTER CXXXVIII. To THE REV. F. A. FABER. 
 
 October 10, 1862. 
 
 I suppose pain is always a precious gift of God, and the 
 greatest of all assimilations to our dear and blessed Lord. 
 Yet I find in my own case the melancholy truth of Thomas a 
 Kempis, " Pauci ex infirmitate meliorantur." Pain does not 
 altogether dispense either from penance or. from prayer ; and 
 yet it is hard either to do penance or to pray in illness. 
 Ejaculations about the Passion, and mental acts of conformity 
 to God's Will, do me most good, only one wants them to be 
 continuous, and one would like them to be hot; however, 
 this last quality is not necessary to their acceptableness. One 
 feels it is most compassionate of God to let us have our 
 purgatory on this side the grave. Still, in sufferings here 
 one may fall from God by sin, by impatience, and the like ; 
 whereas in purgatory, as the tree falls so must it lie ; if it 
 has by His huge mercy fallen heavenward, there can be no 
 sin nor shadow of sin in our calm conformed endurance of any 
 severity of purgation which His minute justice and exacting 
 
502 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1863. 
 
 holiness may inflict upon us. Increased sweetness to others, 
 increased thoughtfulness and legislation for the tiny comforts 
 of others, and a snubbing of the body's inventive appetite for 
 lots of little things and little extras not absolutely wanted ; 
 these are what I set before myself in illness, and then, seeing 
 how little way I have the pluck to go, at least makes me a 
 trifle more humble and self-hating, and so there is some good 
 done. 
 
 On the 3rd of December, he wrote : " It is 
 fifteen years today that the Cardinal and I said 
 Mass in his chapel at Golden Square, to see whether 
 we were to join the Oratory. What a long fifteen 
 years it seems, and you see both Antony and I bave 
 lived our lives too quick, and are now getting 
 shelved" 
 
 Father Faber bad long been in tbe habit of 
 selecting a patron Saint for eacb year, and perform- 
 ing daily in tbeir honour some little act of devotion. 
 For tbe year 1863 be decided upon taking St. John 
 Baptist, because that Saint was the patron of the 
 holy Cure* of Ars, whom he had not the authority 
 of the Church for invoking as his protector. 
 
 As tbe Lent of 1863 approached, Father Faber, 
 anxious to resume his share of sermons, determined 
 to begin preaching again on the Sunday mornings 
 of that season. This was agreed to by bis medical 
 adviser, on condition that his intention should not 
 be advertised, and that another Father should be 
 prepared with a sermon, in case Father Faber 
 should find himself unable to preach when the 
 time came. On four out of the first five Sundays 
 
1863.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 503 
 
 Father Pater was in the pulpit, but on the third 
 Sunday of Lent he was prevented by illness from 
 appearing there. The sermon on the last occa- 
 sion but one on which he preached, concluded 
 with the following remarkable passage: "The 
 devil's worst and most fatal preparation for the 
 coming of Antichrist is the weakening of men's 
 belief in eternal punishment. Were they the last 
 words I might ever say to you, nothing should I 
 wish to say to you with more emphasis than this, 
 that next to the thought of the Precious Blood, 
 there is no thought in all your faith more precious 
 or more needful for you than the thought of eternal 
 punishment." His last sermon, preached on Pas- 
 sion Sunday, was on "Our Blessed Lord bowing 
 His Head upon the Cross."* 
 
 Shortly after Easter, which in that year fell on 
 the 5th of April, it became evident that the infirmi- 
 ties from which Pather Paber suffered were assum- 
 ing a more serious character. Additional advice 
 was called in, and it was discovered that the 
 malady called Bright 's disease had fastened 
 upon him, and had already made considerable 
 advances. At first it was hoped that its progress 
 might be checked, but the expectation speedily 
 proved delusive. Pather Paber himself anticipated 
 the worst ; he said in a letter to the writer, dated 
 April 23, 1863, before the medical consultation was 
 
 * Notes &c., vol. i. pp. 25 and 295. 
 
504 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1863. 
 
 held, " It has come to me to feel not sure of my 
 recovery now : I am more ill than is thought : but 
 all is in God's Hands. I do not see how I can 
 recover now: if the feeling lasts, the Community 
 must not ask me to he away." During the month 
 of April, he paid two or three short visits to 
 Southend, without however deriving much benefit 
 from the change. On the 26th, the Peast of the 
 Patronage of St. Joseph, and the anniversary of the 
 foundation at King "William Street, he said Mass 
 for the last time, and afterwards gave his blessing 
 to one of his spiritual children, who left England 
 on the following day to carry out the vocation to 
 the Carmelite Order which he had fostered and 
 encouraged in her since she had been a little child, 
 and to which he often referred as one of his most 
 unmixed consolations as a spiritual director. 
 
 The Fathers were slow to believe that so precious 
 a life was in real danger : it seemed almost impos- 
 sible that they should lose him who had been their 
 centre and leader from the first. Of the twenty- 
 seven members of the Community subject to him, 
 there were only four who had not been brought 
 to St. Philip by his guidance, and none who did not 
 feel the more, as years went on, that their religious 
 perseverance and progress were dependent upon him 
 more than upon any other human influence. 
 
 As the news of his condition became widely 
 rumoured, enquiries and expressions of sympathy 
 poured in from every side. Prayers, Communions, 
 
1863.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 505 
 
 and Masses were offered up, in the hope that one 
 so highly valued and so tenderly loved might yet 
 be spared to his children and his people. Prom the 
 Continent, as well as from England, many assur^ 
 ances were received of the intercession which was 
 continually being made for this object. Two 
 Novenas were arranged for the same intention, one 
 in preparation for the Feast of St. Philip, May the 
 26th, and another privately made at the end of 
 June, under the patronage of the holy Cure* of 
 Ars. 
 
 Pather Paber meanwhile was getting rapidly 
 worse, and on the 16th of June, after the visit of 
 the doctors, it was thought necessary to admin- 
 ister to him the last sacraments at once. About 
 half-past eight in the evening, the Holy Viaticum 
 was brought to him by Pather Dalgairns, the senior 
 Pather and confessor of the house, accompanied by 
 all the members of the Community. Pather Paber 
 received it with great devotion, sitting in an arm 
 chair, dressed in his habit. He said the Confiteor 
 very clearly, and made all the responses himself. 
 When the Blessed Sacrament had been taken back 
 to the chapel, the same procession returned to 
 Pather Paber's room with the Holy Oil. Before 
 receiving Extreme Unction, he replied to the 
 questions appointed by the English Ritual. To 
 some of the answers he made slight additions : 
 when asked whether he firmly believed all the 
 articles of Paith which the Holy, Catholic, Apos- 
 
506 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1863. 
 
 tolic, Roman Church believes and teaches, he said, 
 "Most firmly, most firmly. 55 To the question, 
 " Do you, for God's sake, forgive from your heart 
 every one who has offended you, or been your 
 enemy ?" he answered, " Yes, I do ; I never had 
 any." The next was, "Do you now, from your 
 heart, ask pardon of every one whom you have 
 offended by word or deed?" to which he replied, 
 "I do ; especially of every member of the Com- 
 munity : I have been proud, uncharitable, and 
 unobservant, and I ask pardon of all." After all 
 the questions he said again, " I have been unkind 
 and uncharitable ; I wish I had been more kind :" 
 and as, after the administration of Extreme 
 Unction, the Fathers left the room, he repeated, 
 " Thank you all," two or three times : then, turn- 
 ing to the one who happened to remain in atten- 
 dance on him, he said: "Ah John! it's a grand 
 thing- to die a Christian," and, after a pause, "I 
 have nothing to forgive anybody for, nothing against 
 a single member of the Community : I would give 
 my life for any one of them." 
 
 The dangerous symptoms of Father Faber's illness 
 increased so fast in the latter part of the month of 
 June that his medical attendants thought the end 
 was near at hand. On the evening of the 28th, his 
 forty-ninth birthday, he saw the members of the 
 Community one by one, recommending himself to 
 their prayers, and giving to each some parting gift. 
 To one he said, speaking with frequent pauses, 
 
1863.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 507 
 
 " God has been so good, and arranged it all so well, 
 I like to have it settled today. This is my 
 birthday, and the doctor says I am going fast 
 and probably without pain; no, not without pain, 
 for that is impossible, but with as little pain as 
 
 possible I wish to die stripped of everything 
 
 one thing we must all go on doing pray that I 
 may save my soul. He that perseveres to the 
 
 end " 
 
 At this time Father Faber was not the only 
 invalid in a dying state at the Oratory. Father 
 Antony Hutchison, whose health had been destroyed 
 by the labours he had imposed upon himself during 
 the first years of the establishment of the Congre- 
 gation in London, especially in the foundation of 
 the schools in Holborn, and who had been for some 
 years a constant sufferer, was now rapidly approach- 
 ing his end. On the 23rd of June he received the 
 last sacraments, but still continued the work on 
 which he had been engaged, of passing his book on 
 Loreto and Nazareth through the press. On the 
 llth of July he revised the proofs, with the assist- 
 ance of Father Law, said his office as usual, and 
 was taken into the garden in a bath chair, but 
 towards evening it became evident that his strength 
 was failing. Mr. A. Smee, his brother-in-law, 
 under whose medical care he had been for the last 
 few weeks, was immediately sent for, but was 
 unable to suggest any remedies, and Father Hutchi- 
 son tranquilly expired shortly after midnight, on 
 
508 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1863. 
 
 Sunday, the 12th of July. He was buried at St. 
 Mary's, Sydenham, on the 16th of July, the Feast 
 of our Blessed Lady of Mount Carmel. 
 
 For eighteen years he had been the constant com- 
 panion and friend of Father Faber, for whom he 
 had the greatest admiration and love. Himself 
 singularly gifted both in mind and person, he 
 loved to work in secret, and few even of the 
 frequenters of the Oratory were aware of the influ- 
 ence which he possessed in the Congregation. 
 Father Faber cordially reciprocated his affection, 
 and valued his talents so highly that some years 
 before, when speaking of the change which his own 
 death would make in the government of the house, 
 he said, "The Community will first take (for 
 Superior) the next senior Father, and then Antony." 
 At this time many were found to say of the two 
 friends, "Lovely and comely in their life, even in 
 death they were not divided." 
 
 On the 14th of July Father Faber received a visit 
 of farewell from His Eminence Cardinal "Wiseman, 
 who also sent him the following letter : 
 
 London, July 14, 1863. 
 My dear Father Faber, 
 
 There were many things which I desired to say to you 
 this afternoon, but which I did not say; so I must write some 
 of them. 
 
 I cannot but think bow consoled and fortified you must now 
 feel, by your having, from the moment of your joining the 
 Church, so entirely devoted your time and abilities to the 
 
1863.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 509 
 
 particular and almost exclusive work of promoting and 
 extending in it the spirit of holiness and of true piety. And 
 your exertions have been eminently blest not only in England, 
 but in every country, as the Holy Father himself declared 
 to me. 
 
 Thousands must now be praying to God, to return to you 
 the blessings you have been the cause of to them. 
 
 If I may use the expression, you have put under contribu- 
 tion every treasure of God's grace, in your own favour. 
 Mary's joys and sorrows, Bethlehem and Calvary, our Lord's 
 Sacred Passion, the most Adorable Eucharist, and His Whole 
 Self. Surely, the hour has come for the reward of all this, 
 or rather, for the fullest return from the love of Jesus and 
 Mary to their faithful and devoted servant. 
 
 I cannot doubt that it is so ; though it is natural for him 
 to look at the other side of the account, and think of his 
 debts rather than of the accumulated claims which he has 
 been erecting to divine clemency, indulgence, and liberality. 
 There can be no danger in dwelling on the mercies rather 
 than on the justice of God; and therefore none in making the 
 best of our claims upon the former, so to disarm the latter. 
 If one has for years been endeavouring to cleave to the cross, 
 and to cling to the hem of Mary's garment, it is the office of 
 hope to plead these affectionate occupations of a life in favour 
 of mercy, grace, and confidence, at the approach of death. I 
 only wish that I could look forward to similar motives and 
 rights, when, in the same crisis, the sense of such heavy 
 responsibilities, so little answered, will weigh on me. 
 
 I will not dwell on the great work which you have founded, 
 
 and which will remain, not long, but for ever, to perpetuate 
 
 the good you have done while living. It is not the mere 
 
 edifice, however great, of the Oratory, which will do this, but 
 
 he spirit of St. Philip which you have brought into London, 
 
510 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1863. 
 
 and which will ever continue alive and active in his children. 
 To have founded such a work as this ought much to comfort 
 you, and fill you with peace, and even joy. Indeed, this 
 spiritual cheerfulness and humhle confidence is so completely 
 the spirit of St. Philip, that your hour of suffering and 
 anxiety is not so much its truest test, as it is its very natural 
 and native element ; as the beautiful phosphorescence of the 
 sea can only be seen in agitated waters. 
 
 Your good Father will be near you in this your trial; never, 
 indeed, possibly more so, and with him those many Saints 
 and servants of God, whom you have made known, reverenced 
 and invoked, by so many in this country. 
 
 And if my sincere affection, expressed to God and His 
 Blessed Mother, in fervent prayer, and my poor blessing, can 
 add a further drop to the abundance of better and holier 
 consolations, you have them fully and cordially, daily 
 repeated. Ora pro me. 
 
 Your affectionate servant and Father in Christ, 
 N. CARD. WISEMAN. 
 
 Father Faber was attended during his illness 
 by Dr. Bence Jones and Dr. J. W. Ogle, who, if 
 they were unable to check his malady effectually, 
 were constant in their endeavours to mitigate the 
 sufferings it entailed. He was also visited several 
 times a day by Mr. E. C. Pollard, whose unwearied 
 kindness he gratefully acknowledged. The infir- 
 marian of the Community was Father Philip 
 Gordon, and upon him the charge and responsi- 
 bility of nursing him mainly devolved. When 
 he left London at the end of August, his place 
 
1863.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 511 
 
 was taken by Father Benedict Cumberlege. The 
 infirmarian was assisted by the devoted services of 
 Brother Philip Ryan, a lay-brother of the Congre- 
 gation. It is needless to say that all the members 
 of the Community did what they could to assist 
 them in their work, each taking with alacrity and 
 joy his turn of attendance upon their beloved 
 Father. It is impossible to look back upon those 
 months of anxiety without seeing the grace with 
 which they abounded for all, and feeling the strength 
 of the tie of love by which St. Philip's children are 
 united. 
 
 At all times during his illness, whenever Father 
 Faber felt that he had given way to some impa- 
 tience, or had any other burden upon his conscience, 
 he would send for one of the Fathers to give him 
 absolution, and as often as was practicable he 
 received the Holy Communion. He would fre- 
 quently have prayers read to him, chiefly from the 
 Prayers of St. Gertrude, a work which he had been 
 in the constant habit of using, and recommending 
 to others. He had the happiness of receiving, 
 through the kindness of Mgr. Talbot, the special 
 benediction of the Holy Father, which filled him. 
 with much joy. 
 
 He was occasionally strong enough to be carried 
 down to a carriage, and to take short drives. Once 
 or twice he visited St. Mary's, where he would sit 
 on the lawn, overlooking the view into Kent, and 
 giving directions about the superintendence of the 
 
612 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1863. 
 
 grounds when he should himself he gone. His last 
 visit there was on the 24th of June, after which 
 time he felt unequal to so distant an excursion. 
 
 He lingered on, however, from day to day, and 
 week to week, in a state of excessive pain. At 
 times he would he unahle to rememher the proper 
 words to express his thoughts, and he afterwards 
 told one of the Fathers that this inability to speak 
 accurately, when his mind was still clear, was the 
 greatest suffering of all. He still took great 
 interest in Community affairs, conversing freely 
 with the Fathers who were at home, arranging 
 matters of husiness, and dictating many letters. 
 He also received the visits of a numher of friends, 
 who came to see him for the last time. Many had 
 heen strangers to him for years, and he rejoiced 
 especially to have the opportunity of renewing old 
 ties of friendship hefore he died. One of his last 
 visitors, a priest, availed himself of the occasion 
 to ask advice ahout a plan he had formed of settling 
 at Oxford, when Father Faher, who had heen 
 unusually depressed hefore, at once "brightened up, 
 and with his old voice and manner, said, " If you 
 do, you'll lose your soul." His visitor urged the 
 good that might he done to others, hut he answered 
 repeatedly, " Yes ! you may do good to others, hut 
 you will lose your own soul." Towards the end of 
 July, he was much gratified hy a visit from Father 
 Newman, who came from Birmingham to hid him 
 farewell. On the 30th of July, Father Gordon 
 
1863.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 613 
 
 wrote to Sister Mary Philippa, at the Convent of 
 St. Dominic, Stone, where a report of Father 
 Faber's recovery had gained credence : 
 
 The Oratory, S. W., 
 
 July 30. 
 
 I am sorry to say that the report you have heard is 
 quite untrue. The doctors have never given the slightest 
 hope of cure. When the dropsy first set in it was thought 
 probable it might carry him off quickly. Then came 
 erysipelas, and there was the chance of that spreading rapidly, 
 and so causing death, but the remedies have kept it below the 
 knee. At the same time all these are symptoms of the steady 
 progress of the fatal disease ; but the worsening or improving 
 of these various symptoms gives rise to contradictory reports. 
 Now that the dropsy is kept down, one sees how wasted the 
 Father is ; he has not laid down for a month, and his legs 
 below the knee are all covered with open wounds. 
 
 Today there is a great decrease of strength, and I should 
 not be surprised if he was to leave us on the Assumption. 
 
 I am writing this in the Father's room, and he begs you 
 will tell "dear Mother Margaret" that there is no one in 
 England with whom he has more heartily sympathised than 
 with her, and no one from whom he and his Congregation 
 have received more unvarying kindness than from her. It 
 has pleased God mercifully now to take from him the fear of 
 death, but he feels as if his spiritual state might have been 
 more safe and certain if the fear had remained. The devil 
 has not been allowed to trouble him in his faith, though 
 there have been plenty of temptations to temper and im- 
 patience; and for the last five weeks there has been daily 
 Communion. He says he knows he need not beg that she 
 will continue her prayers for his poor soul, and above all that 
 
 God will send some Cure d'Ars into dear England. Finally, 
 33 
 
THE LIFE AND LETTERS OP [1863. 
 
 if she has any opportunity of doing so, without bringing him 
 forward obtrusively, he would like her to say for him to Dr. 
 Ullathorne many affectionate and respectful things. 
 
 Matters continued in the same state during the 
 month, of August, but early in September, as the 
 patient's weakness increased, attacks of delirium 
 became frequent, and the sedatives employed to 
 promote sleep caused so much irritation that he 
 experienced but little relief from. them. He re- 
 ceived the Holy Communion daily up to the 24th 
 of September inclusive. A considerable change was 
 perceptible on the 25th. He became quite still, 
 and his attendants were able to put him into bed, 
 which had not been done since the month of June. 
 Here he lay supported by pillows, not speaking, but 
 gazing steadily at a large white crucifix before him, 
 and moving his eyes sometimes from one of the 
 Five Wounds to another. As evening came on it 
 was clear that his end was approaching, and his 
 confessor, Father Dalgairns, determined to watch 
 with him through the night, as well as Father 
 Cumberlege. When he was told that his death wa& 
 near, he only repeated fervently his favourite excla- 
 mation, "God be praised!" Shortly after midnight 
 the Community was summoned to assist at his last 
 moments, and the commendation of his soul was 
 made, but the crisis passed over, and the Fathers 
 again retired. 
 
 When the writer entered his room at six o'clock 
 on the morning of the 26th, it was plain that he 
 
1863.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 515 
 
 was not likely to live more than an hour. The 
 time passed almost in silence ; the dying Father 
 was lying on his hed breathing heavily, with his 
 eyes closed, or when open, still fixed upon the 
 crucifix. About half past six, Pather Howe said 
 that he would go and say mass for him, and an 
 intelligent look showed that his intention was 
 appreciated. Just after seven a sudden change 
 came over the Father ; his head turned a little to 
 the right, his breathing seemed to stop ; a few 
 spasmodic gasps followed, and his spirit passed 
 away. In those last moments his eyes opened, 
 clear, bright, intelligent as ever, in spite of the look 
 of agony on his face, but opened to the sight 
 of nothing earthly, with a touching expression, 
 half of sweetness, and half of surprise. His own 
 words came forcibly upon one who knelt before 
 him, for it seemed the realization of the picture 
 which he himself had drawn : 
 
 " Only serve Jesus out of love, and while your eyes are yet 
 unclosed, before the whiteness of death is yet settled upon 
 your face, or those around you are sure that that last gentle 
 breathing was indeed your last, what an unspeakable surprise 
 will you have had at the judgment- seat of your dearest Love, 
 while the songs of heaven are breaking on your ears, and the 
 glory of God is dawning on your eyes, to fade away no more 
 for ever !"* 
 
 For this was the end of a life which from first 
 * All for Jesus, chap. ii. 
 
516 THE LITE AND LETTERS OF [1863. 
 
 to last had been religious. In early childhood the 
 things of God had been his joy; as he grew up he 
 had sought painfully and anxiously the truth as it 
 is in Christ, and then had given up all to find 
 it. Every letter tells that it was his engrossing 
 thought, every line of poetry bears the mark of 
 heavenly aspiration ; the golden words wherein his 
 work will be still continued, and the sweet music 
 of his hymns of praise, speak in language which 
 cannot be mistaken the singleness of purpose with 
 which he sought the interests of Jesus, and the 
 chivalrous ardour with which he promoted the 
 Church's cause. To this he devoted talents, energy, 
 and health, only caring to labour where the "Will 
 of God had placed him, and thus, when he came to 
 die, his history might have been written in the 
 simple words he served Jesus out of love. 
 
 The preparations for the funeral were quickly 
 made. The body was dressed in the sacerdotal 
 vestments which Father Faber had carefully pre- 
 pared for his burial, and shortly afterwards several 
 photographs were taken of it by Mr. T. R. Williams, 
 of Regent Street. It was then taken down to the 
 Little Oratory, which was opened to the public, 
 in order that the faithful might satisfy their devo- 
 tion by praying around their Father's body, as it 
 lay on a plain mattress on the floor of the chapel, 
 in a repose which seemed that of sleep rather 
 than of death. Several Fathers were continually 
 
 occupied in touching the hands with the rosaries, 
 
 .A . . 
 
1863.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 517 
 
 medals, &c., of the people who crowded round. 
 The same was the case on the next day, although it 
 had been found necessary to close the coffin in the 
 morning. 
 
 On the evening of Tuesday the 29th, the body 
 was taken through the house to the Church, 
 where Vespers of the Dead were sung. On the 
 following morning at half-past nine, the Solemn 
 Dirge began. While the body of the church was 
 filled by the mourning people, the upper part, as 
 well as the sanctuary, was thronged with priests, 
 who had come to pay to Father Faber their last 
 tribute of respect. One hundred and twenty were 
 thus assembled, the majority of whom belonged to 
 the'diocese of Westminster. The religious commu- 
 nities were represented by some of their members, 
 and the Oratory at Birmingham by Father Newman 
 andJFather St. John. It was noticed that, as in life 
 he had left his own people to obey the call of God, 
 so in the whole crowd of mourners around his coffin, 
 there was not one who was connected with him by 
 ties of blood. The Mass of Requiem was sung by 
 Father Stanton, and after the absolutions at its 
 close, Father Faber was borne away, amidst the 
 tears and lamentations of the multitude, from the 
 Church he had served so faithfully, and the people 
 he had loved so well. The funeral carriages were 
 accompanied on foot by many to St. Mary's, Syd- 
 enham, where the remainder of the office was per- 
 formed. It was a fine autumnal day, and the sun 
 
518 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF [1863. 
 
 shone brightly as Eather Eaber's body passed slowly 
 down the walks which he had so often trodden, and 
 was laid in the quiet little burial-ground, which he 
 had himself marked out and planted round. His 
 grave had been prepared at the foot of the cross of 
 its consecration, and there, with the conviction that 
 they would never look upon his like again, his 
 sorrowing children left him. 
 
 Not alone at the Oratory, and among his own 
 people, was lamentation made over Father Eaber's 
 death. Ear and wide, as the tidings spread, did 
 the Catholics of England and Erance mourn the 
 loss of one whose name had become a household 
 word. Many were the prayers offered for the soul 
 of the departed, and many were the words spoken 
 to commemorate his worth. On the Sunday after 
 his death, the Right Rev. Mgr. Manning, in 
 recommending Eather Eaber to the prayers of the 
 congregation of St. Mary of the Angels, Bayswater, 
 used these words, which were noted down at the 
 time: 
 
 " I cannot read this last name to you, dear brethren, 
 without saying a few words. Yesterday a great servant of 
 God was taken from us ; we all knew him, some have 
 listened to his words, some have been his penitents, all have 
 known him by his writings, but I think I may venture to 
 say that no one knew him so long or so intimately as myself. 
 I knew him as a boy ; we were at the University together, 
 and even then I was astonished at the wonderful gifts which, 
 we have all seen developed since. I will not speak of his 
 natural gifts, although for the gift of intellect, for beauty of 
 
1863.] FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 519 
 
 mind, and eloquence of speech, lie stands almost unequalled. 
 These gifts are small compared to the supernatural graces 
 bestowed on him. He was a great priest ; he was the means 
 of bringing multitudes into the One Fold, and he died as a 
 priest should die, amid the prayers and tears of his flock. 
 Though he lived in the world, I never saw any one so 
 detached from the world ; if ever there was a higher or a 
 lower path to choose, he always chose the higher; if ever 
 there was a truth to be spoken, he spoke it unhesitatingly, 
 without any desire to accommodate it to the tastes and 
 fashions of men. I know of no greater glory that can come 
 upon the head of a priest than this. The name of his first 
 book is like a note in music ; in all his writings, in all his 
 teachings, there is the same strain throughout All for Jesus. 
 I should not have detained you so long, but I could not pass 
 over in silence the name of Father Faber. I repeat it again, 
 a great servant of God has been taken from us. I am sure 
 you will all join me in the prayer, ' May my soul die the 
 death of the just, and my last end be like to his.' " 
 
 No biographer can end his labours without feel- 
 ing that they are incomplete. If he has been on 
 terms of intimacy with his subject, he recalls many 
 characteristic words and actions which he cannot 
 permit himself to record. The yery ties which 
 bound him most closely to his friend, in which the 
 dear memory is especially present, must be passed 
 over in silence. Many a time, when thinking of an 
 incident which to him is full of eloquence, he must 
 restrain his pen ; and at last he gives his work to 
 
520 THE LIFE AND LETTEKS, ETC. [1863. 
 
 the public almost with dissatisfaction. Pacts may 
 be stated clearly, and the course of events accurately 
 traced, but the most faithful biography can only be 
 an imperfect portrait, and those to whom the 
 original has been familiar will ever miss the rich 
 colour, the soft shading, and the thousand other 
 nameless graces by which their love was won. 
 
 It would be unreasonable to hope that in the 
 present instance it could be otherwise. There is 
 scanty comfort in funeral honours; a monument, 
 cere perennius though it be, is a monument still ; a 
 remembrance, but not so much as a shadow, of the 
 living. Words cannot reproduce the gracious 
 presence, the musical voice, the captivating smile 
 cannot give back to earthly life the charm of 
 person or the fascination of manner, any more than 
 the fire of genius or the nobility of soul and 
 cannot therefore satisfy those whose labours were 
 cheered and sorrows comforted, whose interior lives 
 were formed and directed to God, whose brightest, 
 happiest hours were blessed, by the wisdom, holi- 
 ness, and love of Frederick William Faber. 
 
 RICHARDSON AND SON, PRINTERS, DERBY, 
 
WOBKS BY THE YERY BEY, DB, FABEB, 
 
 PUBLISHED BY KICHAKDSON AND SON, 
 
 LONDON ; DUBLIN J AND DERBY. 
 
 NOTES ON DOCTEINAL AND SPIRITUAL SUBJECTS, selected from 
 
 the Papers of the late Very Rev. Father Faber, D.D., Priest of the Oratory 
 
 of St. Philip Neri, edited by J. E. Bowden, Priest of the same Congrega- 
 tion, in two Vols. 10s. 
 ALL FOR JESUS : or the Easy Ways of Divine Love. With a copious Index. 
 
 Eighth Edition, (15th thousand). Price 5s. 
 THE PRECIOUS BLOOD ; or the Price of our Salvation. Second 
 
 Edition, (Fourth Thousand.) Price 5s. 
 BETHLEHEM. , With a copious Index, fine cloth lettered, price 7s. 
 
 (Second Edition.) 
 
 THE BLESSED SACRAMENT ; or the Works and Ways of God. (Com- 
 panion to "ALL FOR JESUS.") Third Edition, (Sixth Thousand) with a 
 
 copious Index, price 7s. 6d, 
 THE CREATOR AND THE CREATURE, or, the Wonders of Divine Love. 
 
 Fourth Edition, (Fifth Thousand,) Price 6s. 
 GROWTH IN HOLINESS, or the Progress of the Spiritual Life. Third 
 
 Edition (Sixth Thousand), with a copious Index, 6s. 
 SPIRITUAL CONFERENCES. Second Edition, ^(Fourth Thousand,) 
 
 with a copious Index, 6s. 
 THE FOOT OF THE CROSS: or the Sorrows of Mary. With a copious 
 
 Index. Third Edition, (Sixth Thousand,) 6s. 
 HYMNS, hitherto scattered in different Publications, together with the' 
 
 addition of 56 New Hymns, price 6s. ' 
 ETHEL'S BOOK: or, TALES .OF THE ANGELS. Secon<J Edition, 
 
 price 2s. 6d. 
 
 SIR LANCELOT, a Tale of the Middle Ages, Second Edition, 5s 
 POEMS. Third Edition. Price 7s. 6d. 
 
 AN ESSAY on CANONIZATION and BEATIFICATION. 3s. 
 AN ESSAY ON THE INTEREST AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE 
 
 LIVES OF THE SAINTS. Price 2s. 
 AN ESSAY ON CATHOLIC HOME MISSIONS, Is. 6d. 
 JESUS AND MARY, a Catholic Hymn Book. Price Is. . 
 DEVOTION TO THE POPE. Price 4d. 
 DEVOTION TO THE CHURCH. Price 4d. 
 A LETTER to the Members of the Confraternity of the Most Precious 
 
 Blood. 8 pages 8vo. fine paper d. 
 
 SCHEME OF INTERCESSORY PRAYER for the MONTH. Id 
 HYMNS FOR THE PEOPLE, adapted to popular tunes. Id. 
 DEVOTION TO THE POPE AND DEVOTION TO THE CHURCH. 
 
 Third Edition. Price 3d. 
 THANKSGIVING AFTER COMMUNION. From " ALL FOB JESUS." Price 
 
 Id in wrapper. 
 THE LONDON ORATORY and the Union Newspaper. Being Three Letters 
 
 on the Respect Due to Our Blessed Lord, Id. 
 
Published ly Bichardson and Son. 
 
 THE NEW GLOEIES OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. Translated 
 from the Italian, by the Fathers of the London Oratory, at the Bequest 
 of the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, with Preface by His Eminence, 
 superfine paper, 4s 6d 
 
 LIVES OF THE FATHERS OF THE DESERT, translated from the 
 German of the Countess Hahn-Hahn. By E. F, B. With an Introduction 
 on the Spiritual Life of the First Six Centuries, by J. B. Dalgairns, Priest 
 of the Oratory. 7s. 6d. 
 
 THE MONTH OF MARY CONCEIVED WITHOUT SIN. Translated 
 from the French of A. Gratry, Priest of the Oratory of the Immaculate 
 Conception, wi.th an Introduction by the Very Rev. F. W. Faber, D.D;, of 
 the London Oratory: Superfine paper, cloth lettered, price 3s. 
 
 DEVOTION TO THE HEART OF JESUS, with an Introduction on the 
 History of Jansenism, by the Rev. Father Dalgairns, Priest of the Oratory, 
 fourth edition, greatly improved by the Author, 3s. 6d. 
 
 EDITED BY THE VERY REVEREND DR. FABER. 
 
 0f % 
 
 Translated from various languages, for spiritual reading, with Prefaces, 
 post 8vo, cloth lettered, price 4s per volume. 
 
 St Philip Neri, 2 vols Companions of St Philip Neri, 1 vol St Thomas 
 'of Villanof a, and St Francis Solano, 1 vol St Rose of Lima, B. Colomba of 
 Rieti, and St Juliana Falcbnieri, 1 vol Fathers of the Oratory, B. Sebastian 
 Valfre, De^ S"anti, Matteucci, 1 vol St Ignatius, 2 vols B. Sebastian of 
 Apparizio, 1 vol St Alphonso Liguori, 5 vols Companions of St Alphonso, 
 1 vol F. Claver, Cardinal Odescalchi, 1 vol F. Anchieta, Alvera Von Vir- 
 mundt, V. John Berchmans, 1 vol St Mary Magdalene of Pazzi, 1- vol 
 B. Benedict Joseph Labre, 1 vol Fathers of the Oratory, V. Fabrizio DalT 
 Aste, V. Mariano Sozzini, 1 vol V. Margaret M. Alacoque, and St. Catherine 
 of Bologna, 2 vols St Joseph Calasanctius, B. Ippolito Galantini, 1 vol St 
 Camillus of Lellis, V. Louis da Ponte, and F. La Nuza, 2 vols Fathers of the 
 Oratory, Talpa, Eustachio, and Prever, 1 vol Fathers Segneri, Pinamonti, and 
 V.John De Britto, 1 vol B.- Leonard, of Port Maurice, and B." Nicholas 
 Fattore, 1 vol St Jane Frances de Chantal, 2 vols St Catherine of Ricci. 
 
 1 vol St Francis of Assisi, 2 vols B. Paul of the Cross, 3 vols St Francis 
 de Sales, 1 vol St Peter of Alcantara, and Ven. Father Ignatius Azevedo, 
 
 2 vols Pope Benedict XIV. on Heroic Virtue, 3 vols. In the press St Fran- 
 cis de Sales, vol. 2 & 3. 
 
 Sets complete up to present time, forty-two vols 8 8s 
 
 Any volume may be had separate. 
 The ivhole may be had in every style of binding, 
 
 LIFE OF ST. PHILIP NERI, Apostle of Rome, and Founder of the Con- 
 gregation of the Oratory, complete in one YO.lume, price 5s. 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 BERKELEY 
 
 Return to desk from which borrowed. 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 1&OW53DF 
 
 Gen: 
 
 12NOM 1 * 5 
 REC-D 
 UOV 5 vysg 
 
 
 MftRl5V96?59 ^ 
 
 C _. 
 
 c>. 
 ^2: 
 
 l 
 
 ^, \ 
 
 ,cT -6^ 
 ^^ 61 
 
 u0^ pFP ^ 
 
 is-" 
 
 
 S 
 
 jQN 91989 
 
 m 
 
 
 1 
 
 LD 21-100TO-ll,'49(B7146sl6)476 
 
 
 
 
 
- m 
 
 
 <s I mi 
 
 
 
 678604 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY