UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORN! 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 j6^^ -^^
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D.D. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 PRINTED BV 
 
 SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE 
 
 LONDON
 
 /.i^.'/ta//<:€^. zta&i^-^yn^y'J'fyyMit- 
 
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 y('^'A.A:^^u/i^.m.<^..
 
 THE 
 
 LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 OF 
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D.D. 
 
 LATE DEAN OF WESTMINSTER 
 
 By ROWLAND E. PROTHERO, M.A. 
 
 BARRISTER-AT-I.AW, LATE FELLOW OF ALL SOULS COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 
 with the i'O-opcration and sanction of the 
 
 VERY REV. G. G. BRADLEY, D.D. 
 
 DEAN OF WESTMINSTER 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES— VOL. I. 
 With Portraits and Illustrations 
 
 LONDON 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 
 
 1893
 
 
 :bx 
 
 DEDICATED 
 
 HY GRACIOUS PERMISSION 
 TO 
 
 HER MAJESTY 
 
 THE QUEEN
 
 PREFACE 
 
 In January 1892 the materials for writing the life 
 of Dean Stanley between the years 18 15 and i860 
 were placed in my hands. The remainder was 
 received in February 1893. 
 t« Of Dean Stanley's personal kindness to myself I 
 
 ^ retain a grateful recollection ; but from our relative 
 oQ ages it was impossible that I should have the per- 
 sonal knowledge of him which is essential for a 
 ^ biographer. So far as my deficiencies in this respect 
 
 2 could be supplied, they have been made good by 
 
 3 the constant assistance of the late Dean's relations 
 and friends. 
 
 § Throughout this work I am indebted, above all 
 
 ^ others, to the present Dean of Westminster for many 
 useful suggestions, and for most generous aid of a 
 special kind. When I began to read the materials 
 for the early life, I found that down to August 
 1840 he had already told the story with a fulness of 
 detail which left little scope for additions. This con- 
 tinuous narrative, partly in type, partly in manuscript, 
 he handed over to me, with full permission to use it 
 for the purposes of the biography. Though reduced 
 
 424090
 
 [8] LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 
 
 in length by considerably more than a half, and 
 therefore necessarily rearranged and in part re- . 
 written, it forms the basis of my first seven 
 chapters. 
 
 From the end of 1839 my work is of an inde- 
 pendent character, though in all my difficulties 
 I found, both in the Dean of Westminster and in 
 Sir George Grove, most useful and indefatigable 
 advisers. 
 
 I wish also to take this opportunity of expressing 
 my gratitude for invaluable assistance to Mrs. 
 Vaughan, Lady Frances Baillie, Miss Drummond, 
 Lady Emma Osborne, Lady Flower, the Dean of 
 Salisbury, Canon Francis Holland, Mr. Locker- 
 Lampson, the Rev. A. G. Butler, Dr. Gerald Harper, 
 and Mr. Victor Williamson. 
 
 Rowland E. Prothero.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE FIRST VOLUME 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Intkoductiox 1!Y the Dean of Westminster . . . [13] 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 1805-1815 
 A1.IJERLEY Rectory ....... i 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 1815-182S 
 
 Birth and Childhood of Arthur Stanley — Seaforth — The 
 
 Pyrenees ........ 8 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 1829 
 
 First Year at Rugby . . . . . -37 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 I 830- I 834 
 
 Rugby Life continited . . . . . . -53 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 August-December 1834 
 
 Hurstmonceux and Balliol College, Oxford . . . 106 
 
 CHAPTER \T 
 
 1834-37 
 
 Balliol College, Oxford ...... 138 
 
 CHAPTER VH 
 
 1837-39 
 
 Oxford— Bonn— Ordination . . . ... 1S9 
 
 Appendix to Chapter VII. : 
 
 (i) ' Hints on the Formation of a Plan for the Safe and 
 Effectual Revival of the Professorial System at 
 Oxford' — (2) Stanley's Answer .... 230
 
 [lo] LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 
 
 CHAPTER \TII 
 1840-41 
 
 I'AGK 
 
 TorR IN Italy AND GRF.rxi;. ..... 234 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 1841-44 
 
 'Tract No. 90'— Dr. Arnold's Dkaiu-Tiie 'Likk and Corre- 
 spondence ' ....... 290 
 
 CHATTER X 
 1844-48 
 
 Oxford — Degradation ok Mr. Ward— Work as Collece 
 
 Tutor ........ 325 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 1846-48 
 
 Select Preacher, 1S46-7— Sermons on 'The Apostolical Age ' 
 
 —Paris in 1S48 ...... 366 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 1849-52 
 The Death of the Bishop of Norwich— Refusal of Deanery 
 of Carlisle— The Gorham Controversy— Secretary to 
 the Oxford University Commission— Canon of Canterbury, 
 1851 . . . . . . . . .409 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 1852-3 
 
 Rome in 1852— Funeral of the Duke of Wellington— Pro- 
 clamation OF THE French Empire— Tour in Egypt and the 
 Holy Land— Constantinople on the Eve of the Russian 
 War ........ 436 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 1S53-56 
 Life at Canterbury, 1853-56- ' Memorials of Canterbury,' 
 1854— ' Commentary on the Epistles to the Corinthians,' 
 1855—' Sinai and Palesitne,' 1856— Professor of Ecclesi- 
 astical History in the University of Oxford, 1856 . . 465 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 1856-58 
 
 Introductory Lectures as Professor of Ecclesiastical 
 History, February 1857— Tour in Sweden and Russia, July- 
 September 1857 -Installed as Canon of Christ Church, 
 Oxford, March 185S ...... 498
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 IN VOL. I. 
 
 DEAN STANLEY { froni a riioto^raph by Samuel B. 
 
 JValke!-) ....... Frou/ispiece 
 
 ALDERLEV RECTORY AND CHURCH . . fo fare f. 5 
 
 THE BISHOFS PALACE AT NORWICH . . ,, 185 
 
 STANLEY'S ROO>[ IN THE PALACE, NOR\YICH 
 
 {from a Draiviug l>y a Member of Jiis Family) . . ,, 25 S 
 
 STANLEY'S HOUSE AT CANTERBURY . . ,, 465,
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 BY 
 
 THE DEAN OF WESTMINSTER 
 
 Moke than twelve years have elapsed since Arthur 
 Penrhyn Stanley breathed his last, In his home at 
 the Deanery, Westminster, on July i8th, 1881. 
 There are many who can recall the shock with 
 which the announcement was received, alike In 
 his own country and beyond its borders. It 
 touched with a pang of personal bereavement 
 men and women who had never seen him ; and it 
 left a void in the hearts of numbers who, in every 
 station, from the highest to the humblest, in the 
 Old World and the New, had felt the spell of his 
 unique and attractive personality. From that date 
 to the present it has been widely felt that special 
 value would attach to an adequate biography of one 
 who held so prominent a place In the ecclesias- 
 tical, literary, and social history of more than a 
 generation ; and It has been thought right to prefix 
 to these volumes some account of the circumstances 
 which have delayed the completion of the work. 
 Dean Stanley himself. In his will, dated March
 
 ;[l4l ^-IFE OF DEAN STANLEY 
 
 Sth, 1879, bequeathed to the Rev. Hugh Pearson, 
 Mr. Theodore Walrond, and Mr. (now Sir George) 
 Grove, all his ; capers, manuscripts, and documents of 
 a like nature, to dispose of as they should decide, 
 after consulting, if they should think fit, with Pro- 
 fessor Jowett ; with his brother-in-law. Dr. Yaughan, 
 Master of the Temple ; and with myself, at that time 
 Master of University College, Oxford. 
 
 The choice of his three literary executors is 
 easily explained. The Rev. Hugh Pearson, Vicar 
 of Sonning and Canon of Windsor, had been for 
 forty years the closest, the most beloved, and the 
 most inseparable of his friends. He was again 
 and again his companion in his travels, both abroad 
 and at home, his host at Sonning, and his guest 
 at his own successive residences, and up to the 
 last he was the recipient of his most confidential 
 thoughts and feelings in a series of many hundred 
 letters, which have proved of inestimable value for 
 his biography. The death of ' H. P.,' as he was 
 familiarly called, lamented by all who had learned 
 to know his sterling goodness, from the humblest 
 of his parishioners to his Sovereign, quickly followed 
 that of the friend to whom he had been so dear. 
 He was laid in his grave at Sonning in April 1882. 
 
 Theodore Walrond, as one of Dr. Arnold's 
 most trusted pupils, had been long known to Arthur 
 Stanley, whom he accompanied throughout the 
 great Eastern journey of 1853, and 'without his 
 companionship,' the Dean writes in the Preface to 
 ' Sinai and Palestine,' ' that journey would probably
 
 INTROD UCTION [15] 
 
 never have been accomplished. On his accurate 
 observation and sound judgment I have constantly 
 relied, both on the spot and since.' It was at the 
 request of the Dean and of Lady Augusta Stanley 
 that Mr. Walrond undertook the Memoir of her 
 brother, Lord Elgin, Governor-General of India ; 
 and to the end of Stanley's life he retained his 
 position as one of the most valued and trusted of 
 all his friends. 
 
 Sir George Grove had been for twenty-five years 
 closely associated with Dean Stanley's literary work. 
 His aid and co-operation are often warmly acknow- 
 ledged, as in the Preface^ to Vol. I. of the 'Jewish 
 Church,' where Stanley expresses his gratitude for 
 ' Mr, Grove's continued aid — such as I could have 
 received from no one else in like degree — in all 
 questions connected with Sacred history and geo- 
 graphy.' In ' Sinai and Palestine ' - he similarly 
 acknowledges his obligations. Sir George Grove 
 was one of the two friends who accompanied the 
 Dean to America, and was present at his deathbed. 
 It was Stanley's wish that his Life should be written 
 by him ; but Sir George Grove having been, early in 
 1882, charged by the Prince of Wales with the forma- 
 tion and direction of the new Royal College of Music, 
 it soon became evident that the performance of so 
 absorbing a literary task was incompatible with the 
 duties of this important post. Such assistance as he 
 could give has, however, always been at the disposal 
 
 ^ Page xiii. 
 
 - Sinai and Palestine^ Achertisement, p. ix. Also p. 473.
 
 [l6] rfl'E OF DEAN STANLEY 
 
 of those who took his place in writing the memoirs 
 of one so deai* to him. 
 
 Meantime, it was with a feehng of hope and 
 confidence that all who could appreciate the diffi- 
 culties attaching to the biography welcomed the 
 acceptance of the work, in 1883, by Mr. Walrond. 
 From that time to his death all the leisure which 
 he could spare from his important official " occupa- 
 tions was devoted to the task, and such progress 
 had been made that there was every ground for 
 looking forward with confidence to the timely com- 
 pletion of a work the materials for which he had so 
 thoroughly mastered and assimilated. 
 
 These hopes were abruptly frustrated by Mr. 
 Walrond's sudden death in the early summer of 
 1887. 
 
 The crisis in the preparation of the biography 
 was obviously of the gravest nature. The materials 
 for the work were there, almost overwhelming in 
 their abundance and variety ; but he who had so 
 laboriously weighed, pondered, studied, classified, 
 and mastered them had been called away, leaving 
 only a fragmentary record of his long and careful 
 preparation for a work which had to be begun and 
 completed by another. 
 
 Under these circumstances I was invited to 
 undertake the task which had fallen, with such 
 startling suddenness, from the hands of one with 
 whose calm judgment and healthful temperament, 
 
 ^ He was then Her Majesty's Chief Commissioner for the Civil 
 Service.
 
 I NT ROD UCTION [17] 
 
 alike of mind and body, I had been familiar from 
 boyhood. 
 
 It was with something more than hesitation, and 
 in opposition to more than one warning voice, that 
 I felt bound to accept what seemed to myself and 
 others a call that I had no right to set aside. 
 
 Something of the interest and of the nature of 
 the task I had already tested. In the year that 
 followed the date of my entering on my present 
 office I had written a short biographical sketch of 
 my beloved predecessor, drawn partly from my own 
 reminiscences, partly from a large amount of material 
 placed at my disposal.^ In 1886 I had contributed 
 an article on his life and work to the ' Encylo- 
 paedia Britannica.' On the other hand, I was fully 
 aware how small a fraction of the materials that 
 would need careful study I had even glanced at; 
 and experience had brought home to me much 
 of my deficiency in the gifts specially needed for 
 carrying on side by side with other and exacting 
 duties a work that required so much concentration of 
 thought and prolonged attention. But the task was 
 one for which I might earnestly trust that strength 
 would be given me, guided, as I was, in undertaking 
 it, alike by the judgment of those to whose opinion 
 I was bound to attach the greatest weight, and by 
 overpowering considerations of duty, gratitude, and 
 affection. 
 
 In the autumn of 1887 I began the work. 
 
 ■* ArtJiur PeJU'Jiyji Stanley : Lectures delivered in Edinburgh hy 
 G. G. Bradley, Dean of Westminster. Crown 8vo. 1883 (Murray). 
 VOL. I. a
 
 [l8] LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 
 
 Assistance and encouragement poured in from all 
 sides. Fresh materials were added to the extra- 
 ordinary amjunt already in my possession. It was 
 a delightful task, absorbing and fascinating even 
 beyond my warmest hopes, but of an extent which 
 I had never thoroughly realised until the mass of 
 materials was consigned to my keeping. 
 
 The first difficulty which presented itself was the 
 assignment to each period and episode of his life the 
 proper space in proportion to the necessary limits of 
 the work. I began my task with the intention of 
 deferring any necessary curtailment to a later stage. 
 
 By the summer of 189 1 I had completed a con- 
 tinuous narrative, with copious extracts from his 
 letters, reaching to August 1840. Of this, the greater 
 portion was set up in type, and would have more 
 than filled a large octavo volume. I had, further, 
 sketched out in my own mind sufficient material to 
 enable me to carry the Life on without much addi- 
 tional labour to the death of Dr. Arnold, in 1842. 
 But by this time I began sorrowfully to feel that, 
 increasingly delightful as the work was, the duties 
 of my position were such as to make it difficult, nay, 
 almost impossible, to find the uninterrupted hours 
 essential to work which demanded consecutive and 
 unbroken attention. My health had more than once 
 failed under the strain of pressing and conflicting 
 claims, and I had reached an age which warned 
 me that I had no right to expect to discharge duties, 
 already sufficiently onerous, with greater facility than 
 heretofore. Accordingly, with a sense of inexpres-
 
 INTROD UCTION [ 1 9] 
 
 sible pain which has never left me, I determined to 
 place in other hands a task which had proved too 
 arduous for my powers, which I dared not hope to 
 complete, and had no right to retain. I at once 
 conferred with all those most interested in the matter, 
 including the late Mr. Murray, the publisher, and 
 his son and successor, and we ultimately agreed to 
 hand over what I had written, and all the existing 
 materials, to Mr. Rowland Prothero, of whose 
 special talents and keen interest in the subject of such 
 a biography I had long had ample evidence. Even 
 at the time of Mr. Walrond's death, in 1887, I had 
 seriously entertained the thought of placing the work 
 in his hands, not merely as my associate, but as the 
 actual writer. 
 
 It was my own express desire that not only my 
 notes and memoranda, but also those parts of my 
 work which I had already completed, whether in 
 type or manuscript, should be placed in Mr. Pro- 
 thero's hands, to deal with according to his judg- 
 ment, and that he should condense, re-arrange, re- 
 write, or omit any portion without reference to myself, 
 treating them simply as so much material for the 
 actual biography. By this course I felt that I should 
 best consult the one single object which I and those 
 associated with me had at heart — the successful exe- 
 cution of the work entrusted to him. I continued 
 to read carefully, so far as time allowed me, the 
 more important of the materials which I had not yet 
 studied. 
 
 Although this is not the place in which any judg-
 
 [2o] LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 
 
 ment on Mr. Prothcro's work shoiild be recorded, I 
 cannot refrain from expressing my confident belief 
 that the result of his labours will be cordially- 
 welcomed by all who read the volumes to which 
 these few pages are the introduction. I may add 
 that the proof-sheets of Mr. Prothero's work have 
 been carefully read and annotated by Sir George 
 Grove, as Dean Stanley's sole surviving literary 
 executor, and by myself. 
 
 A few words may be added as to some portion 
 of the materials available for this biography. 
 
 The foremost and most important place must be 
 given to Arthur Stanley's own letters. He was the 
 most indefatigable of letter-writers. His early letters 
 from Seaforth, from Rugby, from Hurstmonceux, 
 from Oxford, from Cambridge, from Westmore- 
 land, from Ireland, from Norwich, from Baden- 
 Baden, would of themselves fill more than a volume. 
 As a boy at Rugby, as an undergraduate at Balliol, 
 his letters to old schoolfellows who had preceded 
 him to Oxford, such as Dr. Greenhill, or had re- 
 mained at school for some time after his own quitting 
 it, such as the present Dean of Durham, or were 
 resident at the sister-University, such as the present 
 Master of the Temple, were treasured with an in- 
 stinctive sense of their present and their future value. 
 And as years went by, and the circle of correspondents 
 widened, the habit became one of his most character- 
 istic features. It is impossible to reproduce in 
 writing the charm of his manner, the fascination of 
 his voice, his face, his gestures. Yet much of that
 
 INTROD UCTION [2 I ] 
 
 which defies description survives in his letters, so 
 early did he learn to transfer to paper with singular 
 freshness and fidelity the impressions and the scenes 
 of his daily experience. And the habit thus formed 
 he preserved, as almost a necessity of his being, 
 throughout his life. It would be difficult to name 
 anyone who, from boyhood to the verge of old age, 
 so rarely allowed himself to see a single scene, or 
 object, or person which stirred his quick and eager 
 sensitiveness without at once recordinof in some 
 letter a vivid picture of the exact effect produced ; 
 and probably there is no one whose records of what 
 he saw and felt have been preserved, long before 
 their writer became an object of public interest, with 
 such extraordinary care. Doubtless it was inevitable 
 that these impressions, so rapidly recorded, should 
 often be marked by hasty and unstudied language, 
 by the strong expressions and exaggerations of 
 which he spoke more than once, later in his life, as 
 often recurring in his earlier letters. But in this, no 
 doubt, lay much, not only of the charm which those 
 letters had to those who received and treasured them, 
 but also of their value in any attempt to place before 
 a larger circle a true picture of him who wrote 
 them. 
 
 Many of these faithful transcripts of each suc- 
 cessive phase of his life have been, doubtless, irre- 
 coverably lost. Not a few have been largely repro- 
 duced in his published works. The number that 
 remain and that have been collected, preserved, 
 copied, and classified by loving friends in every
 
 [2 2] LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 
 
 Station, from the highest to the lowest, must be 
 almost unexampled. The difficulty that lay before 
 his biographer was, not to find materials, but to sift 
 them ; to determine, not so much what to select, 
 as what to set aside — to set aside often with a 
 feeling of perplexity and a sigh of regret. 
 
 Next in importance to his own letters are those 
 addressed to him, of which a valuable series has 
 been preserved. To these should be added 
 communications from friends who had known him 
 at Rugby, at Oxford, at Canterbury, and at West- 
 minster, or who had been his companions in 
 foreign tours, written with the express design of 
 aiding his biographer in the work of presenting to 
 the reader a full picture of the impression which he 
 made on schoolfellows, or pupils or friends, or on 
 fellow-workers or fellow-travellers, or members of 
 the working-class in London and its vicinity. 
 
 On his own printed writings, whether in the 
 fugitive form of lectures, sermons, addresses, articles, 
 letters to the Press, or in the volumes of his collected 
 works, it is needless to enlarge, as they are dealt 
 with in the following pages. I venture to think that 
 many as yet unpublished are fully equal in interest 
 and instruction to those which have found many 
 readers and a wide circulation. 
 
 It would be almost an endless task, and I might 
 even add an invidious one, to attempt to put on 
 record the names of those without whose aid the 
 materials for the present volumes would never have 
 existed.
 
 INTRODUCTION [23] 
 
 It has been already stated that from his child- 
 hood onwards his letters to his home had been care- 
 fully preserved, chronologically arranged, and some- 
 times, in later years, copied in duplicate by his sister, 
 Mary Stanley, and others. An extremely valuable 
 store of biographical matter was also provided by his 
 letters to his cousin, the Hon. Louisa Stanley, which 
 were arranged and copied by his kinswoman, Miss 
 Adeane. For the last five years of his life his 
 letters to Mrs. Drummond, carefully preserved, and 
 copied by her daughter, became Mr. Prothero's chief 
 source of biographical information. To Mr. Augustus 
 Hare thanks are due for copies of letters that passed 
 between Arthur Stanley's mother and her sister, his 
 own mother by adoption, Mrs. Augustus Hare. 
 Among the most valuable collections of his private 
 letters are those addressed to friends at Oxford — to 
 Dr. Liddell, then Dean of Christ Church, and to 
 Professor Max Mliller. Side by side with these 
 rank the letters to Benjamin Jowett, whose election 
 in November 1838, while still an undergraduate, to 
 a Fellowship at Balliol, had helped to cheer Stanley 
 in his own exile — as for a time he felt it — to his new 
 home at University College, It was even as these 
 lines were in preparation that the grave closed over 
 the early friend in whose cause Arthur Stanley, in 
 many respects cast in so different a mould, yet bound 
 to him by the closest tie of sympathy and affection, 
 had braved more than one arduous conflict. It 
 would be vain to attempt to record the names of 
 many others to whom the warmest thanks are due ;
 
 [24] LJFE OF DEAN STANLEY 
 
 but 1 may be allowed, In llic name of myself and Mr. 
 Prothero, to offer a humble and loyal acknowledg- 
 ment to Her Majesty the Queen for her gracious 
 permission to make use of Her Majesty's private 
 correspondence with Dean Stanley and with Lady 
 Augusta Stanley. 
 
 No guidance or assistance has been grudged by 
 those most closely connected with Stanley by the ties 
 of kindred or affection. The work done by Mr. 
 Theodore Walrond, and the debt of gratitude due 
 to his widow, need no further mention ; the assist- 
 ance given by my brother-in-law, Sir George 
 Grove, always ready to aid any worker in the 
 task whose completion was so dear to him, calls 
 for no further recognition here. But it would be 
 Impossible to avoid a passing word of gratitude 
 foj- the assistance given by Mr. Victor Williamson, 
 not only in arranging and summarising the contents 
 of the letters to Hugh Pearson, and other important 
 documents, but for his constant readiness from time 
 to time to assist in reducing to order documents 
 which, owing to any cause, required rearrangement 
 or careful revision. To the work done by the late 
 Mrs. Drummond of Megginch and her daughter, 
 Miss Drummond, in carefully reading, sorting, and 
 preparing for a future biographer the most con- 
 fidential and, in some ways, the most interesting, 
 of the letters which reached him after his mar- 
 riage it would be difficult to assign a sufficient 
 value. 
 
 Finally, my personal thanks are due to Dr. Trout-
 
 INTROD UCTION [25] 
 
 beck for much valuable aid in the work on which 
 I was engaged between 1887 ^^^ 1891. 
 
 I have already exceeded the limits which I had 
 proposed for myself in this Introduction. But I ven- 
 ture to prefix to Mr. Prothero's pages of careful and 
 thoughtful analysis some few remarks, as a contribu- 
 tion from one who, more than half a century ago, 
 became the pupil and friend of the newly-appointed 
 College Tutor at Oxford, and who has naturally 
 thought much and often on the varied qualities 
 which gave his beloved friend so marked a place in 
 the thoughts and affections of his contemporaries. 
 
 That place was, no doubt, extremely difficult 
 to define. To many he was known mainly as the 
 theological controversialist, whom they regarded, 
 some with grateful sympathy, others, with terror and 
 aversion. By many more he was recognised as the 
 forcible, picturesque, and attractive writer who gave 
 a fresh and vivid colour to the details of a Scripture 
 narrative, or aided them, as none other could, to 
 realise through the gathered dimness of centuries 
 events and scenes and persons of long-past ages. 
 There were not a few who had found in him a 
 teacher who had a power of awakening them to an 
 undying interest in important studies, such as no one 
 else had ever inspired ; and there were others who, 
 in an age of unsettlement and perplexity, had found 
 in his written or spoken words counsels which had 
 served to guide and uphold them through periods 
 of mental strain and spiritual disquiet. Others 
 were drawn to him by the magnetic infiuence of his
 
 [26] LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 
 
 attractive personality ; the charm of liis social gifts ; 
 the brilliancy of his conversation ; the range of 
 his interests ; the inexhaustible stores of a mind 
 that was daily adding to its treasures things new and 
 old, and daily bringing forth from those treasures a 
 wealth of illustration and instruction. And there 
 were many who saw in him — especially in his later 
 years — the very embodiment of a true and gentle 
 courtesy, at home alike in the circle of a Court, in a 
 meeting of students or inquirers, in a group of 
 children, or among a gathering of working-men and 
 women : one endowed with a wide and open-hearted 
 sympathy, always striving to find points of union and 
 agreement between those who were estranged from 
 each other by divergent views or systems ; always 
 striving to unite in peaceful intercourse, and, so far 
 as possible, in community of work, men of conflicting 
 views, the leaders or the followers of opposing parties. 
 It is hardly necessary to point to him as one ready 
 at all times to resist every attempt to narrow the free- 
 dom of the individual spirit essential, as he believed, 
 to the existence of the Church of which he was a 
 member; or to his readiness and promptness at every 
 period of his life to espouse the side of those who 
 were exposed to persecution or obloquy. Yet, though 
 plunged, as he felt himself to be, in incessant con- 
 flicts, and though always yearning for sympathy and 
 aid, he never harboured a resentful thought, was 
 always ready to recognise the claim to honour, and 
 even to reverence, of those who had felt bound to 
 refuse him their sympathy or co-operation, or had
 
 INTRO D UCTION [27] 
 
 passed the sternest judgments on his own most 
 cherished aims. 
 
 Of his ceaseless activity, of his readiness to aid by 
 all his powers those who sought his aid, there is still 
 a cloud of witnesses. He never spared himself: 
 his active brain, his kindly heart, gave him no rest. 
 He never turned away from the work for which his 
 special gifts so singularly marked him out. And 
 how many are there still, of those who shared his 
 friendship, who feel that his loss has made life seem 
 different since he was taken from them. Not in any 
 narrow sense, but in many senses, he has had no 
 successor — no one who has exercised the same kind 
 of influence, alike in the circle of those who entered 
 into the controversies which divided the reliofious 
 world, and those outside that circle. And it is 
 hardly too much to say that, whatever were the 
 limitations to his powers, whatever the gifts denied 
 him, few men have ever lived who have aimed with 
 more undeviating and consistent steadfastness at 
 the one great purpose which he set before him — that 
 of propagating, by teaching and by example, a spirit 
 of real and genuine Christian charity and mutual co- 
 operation among all who follow after truth and value 
 goodness ; that few have ever more fully entered into 
 the sacred words which were so dear to him — the 
 blessings passed on the pure in heart, on the peace- 
 makers, on those who hunger and thirst after 
 righteousness. 
 
 G. G. Bradley. 
 
 The Deanery, Westminster : 
 November 1893.
 
 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 1805—1815 
 
 ALDERLEY RECTORY 
 
 Sir Thomas Stanley of Lathom and Knowsley, called 
 to the House of Lords by Henry VI. as Baron Stanley 
 in 1456, left three sons. The eldest, Thomas, was created 
 Earl of Derby for his decisive services on the field of 
 Bosworth. John, the third son, by his marriage with the 
 heiress of Weever and Alderley, founded another branch 
 of the family, whose representative, Thomas Stanley of 
 Alderley, was created a Baronet by Charles II. at the 
 Restoration. 
 
 In the history of the descendants of Sir Thomas 
 Stanley of Alderley, no event requires notice before the 
 marriage of Sir John Thomas Stanley, the sixth Baronet, 
 with Margaret Owen, heiress to the estate of Penrhos, 
 near Holyhead. To the results of that union between 
 the Cheshire gentleman and the Welsh heiress, Arthur 
 Stanley was fond of referring as an instance of the sudden 
 impulse often given to ' a sluggi.sh, steady, stagnant stock 
 of purely English extraction by contact with the imagina- 
 tive, lively, mercurial character of Celtic parentage.' 
 
 The eldest son of this marriage, Sir John Thomas 
 VOL. L 1}
 
 2 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1805 
 
 Stanley, was raised to the peerage in 1839 as Lord Stanley 
 of Alderley. His only brother was Edward, the future 
 Rector of Alderley and Bishop of Norwich, father of the 
 subject of the following biography. 
 
 Edward Stanley was born on New Year's Day, 1779, 
 six years after the birth of his youngest sister, and thirteen 
 years after that of his elder brother. His educational 
 advantages were few or none ; he received little of the 
 attention so often lavished on a child born under similar 
 circumstances. Denied the gratification of his boyish 
 passion for the sea, he, in 1798, entered St. John's College, 
 Cambridge, where he at once realised that he had ' to 
 beo^in his course of academical study from the very 
 foundations.' This deficiency he to a great extent 
 remedied by his unremitting exertions. His name appears 
 in the list of Wranglers for 1802. After spending the rest 
 of that year in Continental travel — the keen taste for 
 which he shared with his parents and transmitted to his 
 children — he was, soon after his return to England, 
 admitted to Holy Orders. 
 
 In 1805 Edward Stanley was presented by his father 
 to the Rectory of Alderley, where he remained till his 
 appointment to the see of Norwich in 1838. His picture, 
 painted in early life, confirms the incidental description 
 which is given of him in a letter written fifteen years later 
 by his sister-in law, Maria Leycester.^ The portrait is 
 that of a handsome, keen-eyed, black-haired, black-browed 
 youth, of slight, active frame, and of stature below the 
 average. Endowed with a cheerful, sanguine temper, a 
 vi«"orous constitution, a quick sense of humour, an enthusi- 
 astic and affectionate disposition, a singular gift for the 
 observation of outward nature, and a courage, moral and 
 physical, which neither danger nor difficulty could daunt, 
 
 ' Me»io>-ials of a Quiet Life, i. 39.
 
 CHAP. I ALDERLE V RECTOR Y 3 
 
 Edward Stanley brought to his new post exceptional 
 qualifications. His blameless life, cultivated tastes, and 
 strong sense of duty were combined with deep religious 
 feelings, and a standard of the requirements of his sacred 
 profession far above that which was generally recognised 
 by the clergy in his neighbourhood.^ He was the life and 
 soul not only of his home but of his parish — now galloping 
 through the lanes on his little black horse, with his pockets 
 full of sugar-plums for the children, with words both of 
 sympathy for the sick or sad, and of sharp rebuke for the 
 vicious or disorderly ; now returning to study eagerly the 
 latest works on history or natural science, or to write a 
 lecture for his parishioners on the birds or plants of the 
 neighbourhood, or to arrange and classify the specimens 
 which he had collected in his rambles. He was in many 
 ways unlike his gifted son, who inherited little of his 
 father's physical activity — at least, in the form of love of 
 riding and mountain climbing — and nothing of his keen 
 delight in the study and observation of various forms of 
 natural history. But, on the other hand, he consistently 
 set to his children the example of a hatred for every 
 form of injustice, and of a fearless disregard for obloquy 
 or opposition, where principles or causes dear to him were 
 at stake. To his father Arthur Stanley owed his energy, 
 vigour, toughness of fibre, sense of duty, interest in public 
 questions, and liberal opinions, whether in politics or theology. 
 Edward Stanley married, in 18 10, Catherine, the eldest 
 of the four children of the Rev. Oswald Leycester, who 
 till the previous year had resided at Toft Hall, and 
 held the vicarage of the adjacent town of Knutsford.^ 
 
 * For the manner in which Edward Stanley discharged his duties as a 
 country rector, or as Bishop of his diocese, the reader is referred to Arthur 
 Stanley's Life of his father, published in 1849, or to his Memorials of Edivard 
 and Catherine Stanley, published in 1879. 
 
 ^ In 1809 the Rev. O. Leycester removed to the Rectory of Stokeon- 
 
 B 2
 
 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1805 
 
 The Leycesters of Toft had lived in close intimacy with 
 their ancestral friends and neighbours, the Stanleys of 
 Alderley, and the young rector made no secret of his 
 attachment t( their eldest daughter. The extreme youth 
 of Catherine Leycester, who was barely sixteen when her 
 engagement was conditionally sanctioned by her parents, 
 caused an interval of two years to elapse before the 
 marriage took place, at her father's rectory of Stoke, in 
 May, 1 8 10. 
 
 The letters of Catherine Stanley, published and un- 
 published, are full of quiet pictures of every detail of 
 domestic and social life at home and abroad, sketched 
 with rare delicacy of touch and keenness of observation. 
 Their language, alike on the wider political and social 
 problems of the day, and on the deeper questions of 
 religion and theology, bespeaks not only the clear, open 
 eye for all that is true and good, but, to use her son's 
 words, something of ' a spiritual insight which belonged to 
 that larger sphere of religion which is above and beyond 
 the passing controversies of the day.' Quiet, calm, 
 observant, somewhat reserved and reticent to those out- 
 side her own immediate circle, dignified in manner even 
 in early womanhood, Catherine Stanley grew to be the very 
 ideal mother for her gifted son, whose early development 
 she watched with a mother's anxiety, and aided with more 
 than motherly wisdom and sympathy. From her ' porcelain 
 understanding,' delicate perceptions, liveliness of mind, 
 quickness of thought, and methods of studying subjects 
 that interested her by collecting rays of light from every 
 quarter, he inherited some of his most characteristic gifts. 
 And his sense of the debt which he owed to her grew with 
 his growth. If in his earlier years, with his mother's full 
 
 Terne, in Shropshire, the adjoining parish to that of Reginald Heber at 
 Hodnet.
 
 CHAP. I ALDERLEY RECTORY 5 
 
 encouragement, he made his sister the representative of 
 the family circle in the unceasing flow of his correspond- 
 ence, yet the place which she retained in his affection 
 to the last moment of his life was precisely that which the 
 mother of such a son might well have prayed to hold. 
 When death had severed him in advancing life from the 
 wife 
 
 Whose smile had made the dark world bright, 
 Whose love had made all duty light, 
 
 he could find no fitter words in which to describe her sup- 
 porting love, than that ' her character, though cast in 
 another mould, remained to him, with that of his mother, 
 the brightest and most sacred vision of his earthly 
 experience.' ** 
 
 The home to which the Rector of Alderley brought his 
 young wife was ' a low house with a verandah, forming a 
 wide balcony for the upper storey, where birdcages hung 
 among the roses ; its rooms and passages filled with 
 pictures, books, and old carved oak furniture.'^ In front of 
 the house was the ' well-mown short-grassed lawn,' sloping 
 to the south-west, a favourite resort of the feathered tribe, 
 of whose habits the author of ' The Familiar History 
 of British Birds ' was so keen an observer. Close to 
 the lawn lies the churchyard, and, so near as to cast its 
 shadow on the garden grass, the old, square-towered, ivy- 
 mantled church, with its ancient yew-trees, its deep porch, 
 and its old-fashioned staircase which gave private access to 
 the pew of the ' Family of the Park,' then the residence 
 of Sir John Stanley. Within a stone's-throw of the 
 Rectory grounds is the site of the old Hall, burned down in 
 1779, of which the only remaining traces are the moat that 
 
 ^ Memorials of Edward and Catherine Stanley, p. 339. 
 '■' See an article by Mr. Augustus Hare in Alacmillaii's Magazine for 
 September 1881.
 
 6 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY . 1805 
 
 once surrounded it, a few fragments of buildings, and a 
 picturesque old mill, whose wheel is turned by a tiny- 
 stream which, after passing under the road, runs through the 
 Rectory grounds. 
 
 The visitors of to-day may read on the church walls 
 the tablets raised to the memory of Edward Stanley, who 
 was buried in 1849 in his Cathedral Church of Norwich ; 
 to that of Catherine Stanley, his wife, who lies beneath the 
 ancient yew-tree, where a white marble cross marks the 
 graves of the mother, who died in 1862, and of her eldest 
 daughter, Mary, who followed her mother in 1879 \ to that 
 of the two sons, Charles the youngest, and Owen the 
 eldest, one of whom died in 1849 and the other in 1850, 
 each within a few months of their father's death, and ' before 
 either could mourn the other's loss.' And in the church- 
 yard also are the grave and gravestone of Sarah Burgess, 
 for thirty-eight years the devoted servant and beloved 
 friend of the household, who died at Canterbury in 1856, 
 and whose funeral sermon was preached at Alderley by the 
 Arthur whose infancy and childhood she had so tenderly 
 nursed. 
 
 But in 1 8 10 these sad and sacred associations lay in the 
 distant future. In due time six children gathered round 
 Edward and Catherine Stanley. Alderley Rectory was 
 the birthplace of all. 
 
 Owen, the light of his father's eyes, the inheritor of his 
 passion for the sea, from earliest childhood always busied 
 with drawing, building, or sailing boats, with a frank bold 
 spirit that made its way everywhere, was born June 13, 
 1811. 
 
 Mary was born December 19, 1812, the slave of Owen 
 when he was at home, but the constant, unselfish, devoted 
 sharer of all the whims and plans, tastes and studies, of her 
 younger brother, Arthur. To her unfailing sympathy in
 
 CHAP. I ALDERLEY RECTORY 
 
 eveiy interest, intellectual, moral, grave, or gay, the latter 
 owed much of the rapidity and freedom of his expansion, 
 the fluency and ease which practice in writing brought him, 
 and the habit of always giving his best self, however trivial 
 appeared the occasion. Even in those early days Mary was 
 learning to carry out her mother's lesson, ' to sow that others 
 might reap,' and laying firm the foundations of a life of quiet, 
 unobtrusive, active usefulness, which found a larger sphere 
 as her father's right hand among the poor in Norwich, in 
 the hospitals of the Bosphorus, and in the streets and 
 lanes of Westminster. ' Never weary in well-doing ' are 
 the words fitly inscribed upon the cross which marks the 
 spot where, close to the home of her early years, she rests 
 at last in her mother's grave. 
 
 Lastly, to pass over Arthur, of whom so much will be 
 said hereafter, came Charles (born June 15, 1819), and 
 Catherine (born June 29, 182 1), younger than the rest 
 both in age and disposition, enjoying to the full, with their 
 bright and affectionate natures, that special share of family 
 affection which is often the heritage of younger children. 
 Charles was the first of that happy circle to be called to 
 his rest. Catherine is the last survivor.
 
 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1815 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 1S15-1828 
 
 BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF ARTHUR STANLEY — SEAFORTH — 
 THE PYRENEES 
 
 Such was the home, in which Arthur Penrhyn Stanley 
 was born on December 13, 181 5. He was, as already 
 stated, the third child. Owen, named after his Welsh 
 grandmother, was the eldest. Mary was born three 
 years earlier. Almost the first event which she could 
 recall was ' waking from sleep and seeing the nurse sitting 
 by the fire with a new baby on her knees.' The child was 
 christened Arthur, mainly, doubtless, in honour of the hero 
 of Waterloo, whose name was at that time on all men's 
 lips, partly, perhaps, like the firstborn of the first Tudor 
 king, in memory of his Welsh ancestry. 
 
 During his infancy his mother's letters to her sister at 
 Stoke describe him as ' extremely sensitive to every sound, 
 but soon becoming extremely fond of music, whether 
 piano, flute, or singing ' ; and, again, as ' really suffering 
 from want of speech, and labouring to express himself by 
 action and sound with as much pain at not being under- 
 stood as a dumb person.' Later on he is spoken of as at 
 one time lively and talkative, at another strangely shy 
 and sensitive, ' with nothing of a boy about him except 
 his love of horses and hatred of dolls, . . . very liable to 
 be spoiled, with simple pretty ways, and a kind of hanging
 
 CHAP. II CHILDHOOD 
 
 on, dependent manner, that calls out tenderness, . . . with 
 a stranfTc sense of delicate beauty that runs through every- 
 thing, . . . in ecstasies over every new flower, . . . calling 
 Elizabeth, " Anne," because he dislikes the name of Eliza- 
 beth ' ; and, again, as ' seldom without a pencil in his hand, 
 and drawing stags, goats, birds, horses, all with some 
 characteristic difference.' Before he was six years old, 
 he would sit with a book all day, if allowed, learning by 
 heart poetry, or anything that attracted him, but ' does 
 not like being questioned, colouring much, and hesitating.' 
 At six years old, during a period of prolonged illness, he 
 amused himself 'of his own accord by making maps, 
 drawing one of a different country almost every day, print- 
 ing the names, and keeping the character, the outline, of 
 each.' ' In this way,' his mother adds, 'he has quite taught 
 himself geography.' 
 
 The double aspect presented by his extremely sensitive 
 and nervous organisation, that left him 'at times too 
 languid for anything to make an impression, at others 
 eager to enter into everything with spirit and delight,' was 
 a subject of grave anxiety to his parents. In the September 
 of the year 1822, his mother writes of him as having regained 
 ' all that liveliness of manner which he always gets by the 
 sea. He runs and plays, is not a bit shy with anyone, 
 climbs the sandhills, is never tired in mind or body, and 
 looks beautiful.' Yet on his return home his shyness 
 reappeared to such a degree, that ' he would never speak if 
 he could help it, even when alone with his mother.' These 
 alternations of an excessive shyness with brightness and 
 charm of demeanour are worth recording. The boy is 
 father of the man, and the double picture drawn by a 
 mother's hand casts a light on the very opposite impression 
 which he made long after in different circles. There are 
 many who can only recall Arthur Stanley, whether young,
 
 lO LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1822 
 
 middle-aged, or older, as the most delightful of compan- 
 ions, always lively, sympathetic, genial, generally overjflow- 
 ing with conversation and anecdote. To other observers, 
 not least to some who met him in the circle of his own 
 family, he seemed to suffer from an amount of constraint, 
 reserve, and difficulty in expressing his feelings, which he 
 never fully overcame till the death of his father and his 
 brothers forced him to make efforts which were finally and 
 entirely successful. 
 
 Through these curious alternations of spirit and tem- 
 perament ' the boy grew,' and, at eight )-ears old, ' the 
 little sylph,' as his aunt styled him, ' Prince Pitiful ' as his 
 father sometimes named him, spent some weeks at Hoylake, 
 on the Cheshire coast. \ childish letter of May 1824 
 still remains, full of the beauty ' of a little island opposite 
 the Dee shore, all covered with sea pinks and wild violets,' 
 and of the fun of playing with other boys, and even of 
 seeing rabbits hunted and taken. ' We got two, which 
 Ben hung upon his stick, like the picture in the " Cries 
 of London." ' He returned ' a renovated creature, speaking 
 faster and louder,' and early in September 1824 it was 
 felt that the time was come when the society of other 
 boys, and some approach to ordinary school life, might be 
 beneficial. He was accordingly taken by his mother to a 
 small preparatory school at Seaforth,^ then a quiet seaside 
 hamlet at the mouth of the Mersey, now transformed into 
 a populous suburb of Liverpool. There, under the care 
 of Mr. Rawson, the incumbent of the neighbouring church, 
 and in company with from nine to a dozen boys, mainly 
 
 ' The name Seaforth, as denoting a locality in the neighbourhood of 
 Liverpool, demands a word of explanation. It was borrowed, early in the 
 present century, for his house, and the surrounding land, at that time entirely 
 uninhabited, by the elder Mr. Gladstone, from the title of Lord Seaforth, the 
 head of the Mackenzies, the family to which his mother belonged.
 
 CHAP. II SCHOOL AT SEAFORTH ii 
 
 the sons of Lancashire and Cheshire families, he spent the 
 next four years. 
 
 The experiment of transplanting so tender a shoot to a 
 society of boys was thoroughly successful. His heart was 
 no doubt always at Alderley, and from his first week at 
 school he formed the habit of writing letters to his sister 
 Mary, all carefully preserved, in which he laid the foundation 
 of his future gift as the most voluminous and fascinating 
 of correspondents. Though here, and even at Rugby, 
 he was never entirely at home in the whole range of 
 schoolboy life, yet he soon overcame his first feeling of 
 strangeness and isolation, and entered upon his new career 
 with much cheerfulness and spirit. 
 
 'The next day,' wrote his mother in September 1824, 
 * when I went to see him, he seemed as if he had been there 
 a year, so many new ideas were opening to him.' Happily 
 the general rule, that ' letters should be first written on a 
 slate, and then shown to Mr. R., who corrects what is very 
 bad, and then we copy them on paper,' was very soon 
 relaxed in his favour, and the result is a mass of correspond- 
 ence rarely in need of correction. Among the very first 
 letters is one of November 1824 to his mother, recount- 
 ing a visit to Mr. Gladstone's, describing very fully the 
 stuffed animals which he saw there, and, after telling her 
 that he ' has quite finished As hi prcssenti', adding, ' there is 
 an Illiad \sic\ here which I like very much, for it is all 
 about the gods and the Grecians and Trojans.' From that 
 time the current flows homeward unceasingly, though he 
 often deprecates Mary's reproaches. ' You know I am 
 always a shocking letter-writer. Sometimes I am in a 
 humour for writing, and sometimes not' ' No such things 
 happen at school as at home.' A day's visit to Liverpool 
 is welcomed because it ' sfives him something to write
 
 12 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1824 
 
 about,' but in the main the facile pen of the future is already 
 there in germ. 
 
 ' He is grown,' his mother writes in December 1824, on 
 his first return home, ' and his hands feel more substantial. 
 The report of him is that he is as rough as the other boys 
 when with them, but of this there is no symptom. The 
 shyness, colouring, reserve, and susceptibility seem to be 
 rather increased.' But his lips were clearly unlocked to- 
 wards his schoolfellows. Southey had been, and still was 
 his favourite poet. ' We have great fun,' he writes to Mrs. 
 Stanley in February 1825, 'playing at " Thalaba and 
 Kehama." I am Khawla and Handfield is Mohareb, and I 
 tell them stories at night.' Canon Rawstorne, his school- 
 fellow at Seaforth, and afterwards his fag at Rugby, re- 
 members * his remarkable gift as a raconteur, and his relat- 
 ing to a group of boys in a corner of the sandhills a great 
 part of the story of " Kenilworth," especially that part 
 about Wayland Smith. I think all his stories were recol- 
 lections from books, for he was never very great at inven- 
 tion. 
 
 He has been taken to Liverpool, and writes, in a letter 
 to his sister, that he has ' seen a giant, who said he had been 
 in Buonaparte's army ' ; and again, ' I have seen " Waver- 
 ley " acted, and liked it very much ' ; and there is a graphic 
 account, on November 12, which assumes larger propor- 
 tions in each successive year, of the bonfire and fireworks 
 on the 5 th of November. ' One of the boys had bought a 
 very tall Pope for the bonfire, and a Guy Fawkes. . . . 
 Mr. Gladstone gave the wood, and we had tar-barrels, and 
 it was great fun.' But his heart was more in his books 
 than in his play, and with each half-year the literary 
 instinct becomes more developed. ' How do you like 
 " Madoc " ? ' he asks his sister ; ' not so much as " Roderic," 
 I am sure.' He has ' told the boys all the German stories
 
 CHAP. II SCHOOL AT SEAPORT H 
 
 13 
 
 and all the Irish legends ' which he has read in the holidays. 
 He has begun Greek, and does not think it very hard. If 
 his sister, who is stajn'ng near London, ' sees " Faustus " 
 and the " Freichuts " \sic\ she is to be sure to look at the 
 scenes for an improvement to their little cardboard theatre, 
 and he sends earnest directions to Mrs. Stanley to get ' a 
 scene with a tent in it, whether ugly or not.' He has 
 played at castles on the sandhills, and has been hit by a 
 stone from one of the besiegers. ' It bled a great deal, 
 and a slight scar remained for life. He illustrates a letter 
 to his sister with a sketch of a lame man, drawn by two- 
 large dogs, ' trotting away as fast as he can.' He likes drill- 
 ing pretty well ; it is ' at all events very good fun doing^ 
 double quick march, which is running as hard as we can. 
 He is reading Virgil ; and is glad that Mary likes 
 
 * Ivanhoe.' He records the ' drums and trumpets ' of the 
 village club, and has heard something of riots at Man- 
 chester, and ' horrible stories of people in distress dying of 
 hunger ' ; and soon he writes two letters (June 20 and 26) 
 giving the numbers of the poll at the Liverpool election, 
 and describing the conduct of a sailor, who ' actually jumped 
 into Mr. Huskisson's chair, but was soon pulled out by six 
 constables.' He recounts, too, his being taken to a three 
 hours' missionary meeting at Liverpool, at the end of which 
 
 * I felt rather sick, and was obliged to go out.' 
 
 In the next half-year, on September 15th, 1826, he tells 
 his sister that he has ' discovered a small unbound Dryden's 
 Virgil for four shillings,' which he will get for her. He 
 apologises for a short letter ; ' as you must recollect that 
 I scarcely see anything to describe but sand, and rushes, 
 and water, and houses ; and now and then a beautiful 
 sunrise, as my window lies to the east, and sometimes the 
 moon shines in beautifully.' As the year goes on the letters 
 become longer, the childish hand freer, the accounts of the
 
 14 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1826 
 
 next ' burning of the Pope ' more graphic and detailed, and 
 before the end of the year (on December 9, 1826) he an- 
 nounces that he has ' written three English odes out of my 
 head, which ar^^ addressed to — 
 
 The humming-bird bright, 
 The screech-owl of the night, 
 And the stork snow-white. 
 
 He adds also that he has bought 'a little i8mo., "The 
 Remains of H. K. White," several of them very nice things.' 
 
 On his return to school in January 1827 there is the 
 question to Mrs. Stanley, ' Am I to be drilled and do 
 gymnastics too ? ' and we catch from time to time a glimpse 
 of his mother's anxiety to develop the muscular and 
 physical side of the little student. She must have been 
 cheered by hearing on April 2 that ' our chief game is called 
 rounders, which the. rest are playing at this very moment. 
 I like it very much, and hope it will go on ' ; or, a few weeks 
 later, by the statement that he has been playing at cricket, 
 and though ' once there was nothing I disliked so much, 
 now I like it pretty well' 
 
 He is full of ' Woodstock.' His sister had lately passed 
 through the town to Oxford, and he fears ' that the hand- 
 some parish church which she saw at Woodstock was not the 
 same in which the Rev. Nehemiah Holdenough preached,' 
 but hopes that ' I shall wear the cap and gown some 
 day when I am at Oxford.' He writes a delighted letter 
 on March 8th, upon receiving one ' from dear little Charley, 
 without one word spelt wrong, no not one,' and contrasts 
 it with a letter from his cousin who has gone to Eton, and 
 who in writing even to Mr. Rawson spells ' school ' as 
 ' scool.' He is in raptures with a 'dear little Shakespeare,' 
 bought with his own money, and ' not a bit too expensive, 
 the Plutarch too, the very thing I wanted.' He is reading 
 Cicero and translating some odes of Horace ; and he
 
 CHAP. II SCHOOL AT SEAFORTH 15 
 
 confides to his mother a copy of his ode ' to an Eagle, 
 which I have made in my mind, but don't mean to show 
 up, and if I don't write it down I shall forget it.' He is 
 now busy with an ode to Superstition, ' and I have made 
 her a sorceress sitting in her cell.' He longs to have been 
 with them to see the Heda and Captain Parry's boats, 
 and Woolwich. The famous Arctic navigator had married 
 his cousin, Isabella Stanley, in the previous autumn, and 
 was now preparing to leave his bride for one more expedi- 
 tion.^ 
 
 There is a detailed report of a tumultuous meeting 
 at Liverpool on the Catholic Question, which he owns to 
 having ' liked a great deal better than the missionary 
 meeting.' But whatever he sees or describes, poetry is 
 still stirring within him. ' April has begun at last, and a 
 most beautiful beginning it is here, the sun shining, and so 
 warm and nice that to-day, when I had to write some Latin 
 verses, I wrote five or six lines about Spring. And besides 
 this I have written some more English verses on the Return 
 of Coriolanus. I walk in the paths of poetry every 
 Thursday, and of course I like it better than any other 
 lesson.' In successive letters he reports himself as having 
 
 * written forty lines on Time, and ' some more English 
 verses on Forgiveness, on Sleep, two odes to Minerva and 
 Neptune,' and as engaged in May on a long poem on the 
 Death of Vortigern, ' who is to die in great agony in the 
 midst of the flames with his wife Rowena.' 
 
 For a time his home correspondent is his mother, as 
 
 * poor Mary ' was suffering from an inflamed eye. ' I will 
 
 * Captain Parry, who had long been an intimate friend of the Rev. Edward 
 Stanley, was married at Alderley Church to Isabella, fourth daughter of Sir 
 John Stanley, on Oct. 23rd, 1826. He started on his fifth and last Arctic 
 voyage, with the Hecla and boats, in the attempt to reach the North 
 Pole for magnetic observations, in April 1827, and returned in the following 
 September.
 
 1 6 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1827 
 
 promise (when I come home) to come and sec you before 
 my beautiful dear Httle Shakespeare and Plutarch.' But 
 Mary soon resumed her place, and though he pleads the 
 claims now of 'my poetry and cricket,' now of 'my Greek 
 grammar,' now of Latin verses, 'not nonsense verses, tell 
 Papa,' the letters follow each other thick and fast. ' We 
 had no holiday on the 29th of May, that glorious day 
 when the King enjoyed his own again.' He has not yet 
 finished ' Vortigern,' but ' a thunderbolt is to come down 
 to-night, and set the Castle on fire.' He has another 
 poem on his brain, which he tells his sister that he will 
 send if she likes, on the ' Destruction of the Druids.' 
 • I had long wanted a subject that would suit the metre of 
 a poem of Walter Scott called the " Mountain of Helvellyn," 
 which I liked very much, so that the difficulty here was 
 to get a subject for the metre, not a metre for the subject, 
 and at last I found this.' The letter itself soon falls into 
 rhyme, and ends up with a kiss 
 
 To my Charley sedate, 
 And my sweet little Kate, 
 With the round curly pate. 
 
 The correspondence ceases for the summer holidays.^ 
 In August the flow of letters recommences. On his way 
 back to school, he spends some hours at Liverpool with 
 the faithful ' Sarah.' ^ His insatiable passion for sight-seeing 
 is already developed. He visits with great enjoyment ' the 
 chameleon who changed green, turned his eyes, crawled on 
 the tree, and ate two flies most beautifully for us.' Then 
 ' to the Diorama, where I could not persuade Sarah to go ' ; 
 but where he had the great enjoyment of seeing the Valley 
 of Sarnen, his first introduction to Swiss scenery : 
 
 3 During his few weeks at home there was a passing attack of illness, 
 mainly noticeable as having taken the form of erysipelas, which so many years 
 later was to prove fatal to him. 
 
 ' Sarah Burgess, his nurse. See p. 6.
 
 CHAP. II SCHOOL AT SEA FORTH 17 
 
 ' A beautiful valley, surrounded by high mountains, and 
 in the middle a clear smooth lake with woody shores. In 
 the foreground was a Swiss cottage just like that in 
 Mamma's room, and under it there 7'olkd over the rocks a 
 beautiful pure brook, which I am quite sure was real, for I 
 could see it running down. After some time the clouds 
 rolled over the sky ; it became dark and miserable ; the rain 
 came down, and then it gradually grew light. ... I liked 
 it very much indeed.' 
 
 Then the indefatigable sightseer, who was in after 
 years to tax the activity of so many companions, persuades 
 Sarah to visit the Panorama of Corfu. ' As you know it, 
 I need not describe it.' Then he is off to school, and the 
 next morning he has ' written all this before breakfast, with 
 my patent pen.' But he at once returns to the Muse. He 
 writes a long letter to Mary on September 15, 1827, in 
 rhyme, describing his various employments. 
 
 Last Thursday I roved in the paths of delight, 
 For verses we wrote on that joy-bearing night. 
 
 His own composition of forty lines was addressed to 
 ' Heavenly Justice.' The verses are remarkably vigorous. 
 And he is meditating a poem on Hofer and the Tyrol. Very 
 soon he reports himself and schoolfellows as preparing for 
 the Fifth of November. The little Protestant demonstrator 
 is clearly stronger than he was. He goes out with his 
 schoolfellows to get wood, instead of waiting for a cartload 
 and seeing others pile it. ' A gentleman near has been 
 cutting down trees, and has given them to us for our bon- 
 fire ; so we have been dragging, pulling, tugging them 
 along the road for many days.' I^ut dearer still than any 
 bonfire is a poem which is seething in his brain : 
 
 ' It is once more " The Destruction of the Druids," 
 but so altered that you would scarcely know it. It is the 
 same metre, and begins, " It is the hour of deep mid- 
 night ! " . . . A hoary old Druid mounts upon a rock, 
 VOL. L C 
 
 J^
 
 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1827 
 
 and makes a long speech. Then there is a sacrifice, and a 
 cromlech ; then the Romans come ; the Britons drive 
 about in sc}'thed cars, and are killed. I think I shall do 
 it in four lessons.' 
 
 Poetry asserts its claims, above even the excitement ot 
 the Fifth of November, or the thoughts of the holidays : — 
 
 ' My head is in such a strange jumble now ; two or 
 three hymns, a part of a new " Deluge," scraps of " Vorti- 
 gern," half-translated odes of Anacreon into verse, monsels 
 of other little odes, " Despair," battles, squibs, crackers, 
 bonfires, all shooting into morsels of " The Tyrolese," &c. 
 I long to disgorge some of them upon paper, but I have not 
 time. Thank Sarah for her supply of honey ; I certainly 
 expect Jako ' (the parrot) ' to be able to say something 
 polite when I come home.' 
 
 In November, on the birth of Captain Parry's firstborn 
 son at Alderlc}-, he encloses to his sister a long and 
 spirited * Birthday Ode,' adding both notes and various 
 readings, to be adopted according to the colour of the 
 infant's eyes, &c. He ends the letter with a translation 
 of Anacreon's ' Ode to Woman.' The former was most 
 warmly acknowledged ; but the sentiments of Anacreon 
 were strongly disapproved of by Mary, as she found her 
 sex denied all gifts except that of beauty. ' I dare say/ 
 replies the young translator, 
 
 ' that Anacreon did not trouble to find out whether she 
 (woman) had sense, though to be sure it was very incon- 
 siderate of me to send it to you in that way. . . . That 
 joyful, important, happy time, the holidays, is drawing near, 
 but so is the examination, that awful time — long, so long ! 
 I have just finished an ode on " Perseverance," in which I 
 have spoken of— you may guess whom. I have been 
 thinking and gnawing the top of my pen, but can think of 
 nothing to say, and feel too dull to write any poetry.' 
 
 I
 
 CHAP. H SCHOOL AT SEAFORTH 1 9 
 
 But before his next letter he has had a visitor : 
 
 ' About 7 A.M., as I was coming downstairs, I heard 
 a car or " gingle " come to the door ; I heard a voice 
 that I thought I knew ; I came quite down, and there I 
 saw a great tall man and a little man. You may guess 
 who they were. [The visitors were his father and Captain 
 Parr^^] Papa talked to Mr. Rawson, Captain Parry to me ; 
 they had breakfast here, so all the boys saw the celebrated 
 man. . . . They were much pleased ; but were quite en- 
 chanted with him when he asked for a holiday for us.' 
 
 Mary's fifteenth birthday is at hand, and he ends the 
 letter with a long ode in honour of the day, which happened 
 also to be the birthday of the great Arctic navigator. On 
 December 14th he writes to acknowledge his own birthday 
 letters : 
 
 ' I am now twelve years old, a big boy. I admire your 
 beautiful blue-fringed, blue-flourished, blue-flowered, blue- 
 lined, blue-written, and almost invisibly-written letter. 
 Please thank Captain Parry for his letter, and tell him that 
 if my Muse is not lame like his, I shall be most happy to 
 compose another ode on the christening of his accom- 
 plished and amiable young son.' 
 
 He goes on to say how ' one night, as it was very windy, 
 I awoke, and, as is my custom when I am in a poetical 
 mood, I set to work, and since I was rather sleepy, I 
 addressed Sleep,' and encloses a set of verses, of which a 
 few lines are worth quoting, not for their poetic merit, 
 but as the curious ' night thoughts ' of a boy of 
 barely twelve. After speaking of the wind and pattering 
 rain : 
 
 Did Shakespeare then, did Shakespeare speak untrue, 
 When he declared, my pleasing friend, that you 
 Loved with the ship-boy on the mast to dwell ? 
 Alas ! I fear that thought's unceasing flow,
 
 20 LTFE OF DEAN STANLF. Y 182S 
 
 And restless fancy's fires thai in me glow, 
 Are far more potent than the blasts that blow, 
 And thou, perhaps, my eyelids wouldsl have blessed 
 If I to thee this prayer had not addressed. 
 
 His corrcspo.idcnce begins again with the new school 
 half-year (February 17, 1828). He has no headache, and 
 has not forgotten his waltz step. He is writing verses 
 on ' The Defence of the Tyrol,' and he has ' told " Kenil- 
 worth " twice through.' Soon follows a long letter to Owen, 
 his elder brother, now a midshipman on board the Ganges. 
 He tells him how delighted all the boys have been to see 
 the ' Great Man ' (Captain Parry) ; and adds also that he 
 has just read a book called 'The Subaltern' — a volume 
 which formed, no doubt, the first introduction to military 
 history for many generations of schoolboys. 
 
 In his next letter to Mary he announces himself as per- 
 fectly well, ' headacheless, cold less, coughless, and in a very 
 odd sort of a humour,' and goes on to wTite a frolicsome 
 epistle, full of messages to Charley, ' dear little Pusskin,' and 
 his nurse Sarah ; while to his mother he sends a message 
 that he is reading Homer and Herodotus. Poetry soon 
 resumes its sway ; he has found a ' terrible mistake ' in 
 some Latin verses which he had written to his grandfather, 
 whom he had addressed as Attave, spelt with a double /, 
 but he takes refuge in English, and sends a long ode to 
 ' Solitude,' with copious annotations ;' it is in a various 
 metre, which I know you can't bear, but I think it is 
 not very, very various, like " Despair," &c.' ; and he adds at 
 the end a sonnet on ' Spring,' with a word or two to his 
 mother on the source whence he drew the metre. He ends 
 with a cry of delight at hearing of the appearance of a 
 new novel by Walter Scott. 
 
 His letters throughout April and May are full of suc- 
 cessive portions of a poem on ' St. Bartholomew's Day ' ;
 
 CHAP. II SCHOOL AT SEAFORTH 21 
 
 but he encloses messages from time to time to his mother 
 that he is doing all he can to get over his dislike to cricket, 
 though without much success. He tries, however, to com- 
 fort her with the assurance that * I had much rather ride 
 well than write Latin verses,' and so she ' need not be 
 under any alarm about my riding these holidays, for I do 
 really like riding.' Meantime all other thoughts are lost 
 in the prospect of a tour abroad. Normandy was at first 
 contemplated. ' Oh, what joy to go to Portsmouth, Havre, 
 Harfleur, Rouen, and Bayeux ! ' 
 
 The more immediate interest is a series of lectures on 
 architecture from a Mr. Wood, of which he writes to Mary 
 voluminous accounts. The delight they caused him was 
 great. He recounts all the stories the lecturer had told of 
 Stonehenge and Merlin, and says he has drawn, partly from 
 recollection and partly from copies, ' Kenilworth, Pompeii, 
 Persepolis, and Coningsburgh,' which the lecturer had de- 
 scribed as ' probably the very castle into which Walter Scott 
 in his " Ivanhoe " introduced the Saxon Prince Athel- 
 stane ! ! ! Only conceive my delight ! At last appeared 
 what I most wanted to see, a picture of Kenilworth. ... I 
 am just recovered from a rage of drawing temples and 
 columns and ruins.' The letter itself is embellished with 
 small representations of the three ' orders of architecture. 
 He squeezes in a P.S. to say, ' I have not yet conquered 
 my dislike to cricket so much as not to be glad that I was 
 not at home on Owen's birthday to meet the terrible com- 
 pany of twenty-four boys.' 
 
 A letter of June 26th is noteworthy on other grounds. 
 The holiday plans are finally settled ; and the tour to the 
 South of France and the Pyrenees is fully decided on. 
 Few will read without interest the account of the morn- 
 ing spent with the future orator, writer, statesman, and
 
 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 
 
 Prime Minister, some five )-cars his senior, and then at 
 home from Eton : 
 
 ' How dcli'^htful— how enchanting — how charming ! 
 How much better than Rouen is this, so far away, so nice 
 to have Auntie'' and Lucy,'' so romantic to ride over the 
 mountains on mules, through verdant valleys and snow- 
 capped hills ! And the Spaniards, too, and the Cagots — I 
 must get benighted and go to a " Cagot's" hut. . . .William 
 Gladstone is at home now, and last Tuesday I and one of 
 the other boys were invited to breakfast with him ; so we 
 went, had breakfast in grand style, went into the garden and 
 devoured strawberries, which were there in great abundance, 
 unchained the great Newfoundland, and swam him in the 
 pond ; we walked about the garden ; went into the house 
 and saw beautiful pictures of Shakespeare's plays, and came 
 away at twelve o'clock. It was very good fun, and I don't 
 think I was very sh}-, for I talked to William Gladstone 
 almost all the time about all sorts of things. He is so very 
 good-natured, and I like him very much. He talked a 
 great deal about Eton, and said that it was a very good 
 place for those that liked boating and Latin verses. I think, 
 from what he said, I might get to like it. . . . He was very 
 good-natured to us all the time, and lent me books to read 
 when we went away, " The Etonian," &c. . . . Oh ! how 
 soon — next Tuesday week, and then the sea, the Pyrenees ! ' 
 
 He adds in a P.S. : ' I will see if I cannot lay hold of any 
 book about the Pyrenees.' Those who enjoyed his com- 
 panionship in later years will recall the future traveller on 
 the deck of a Baltic steamer, refusing to look round him 
 as he devours books on Russia, or on the back of a camel 
 in the Syrian desert, intent on Robinson's volumes on 
 Palestine. As a supplement to the letter may be added 
 .an incident told by its writer in later days. ' Have you 
 read Gray ?' said his }-oung Etonian host. 'No? Then 
 
 ^ His mother's younger sister, Maria Leycester, who in the following 
 year became Mrs. Augustus Hare. 
 
 * His cousin, the daughter of Sir John Stanley of jMderley, who in 
 1833 became the wife of Mr. Marcus Hare, the L. A. S. and L. A. H. of Mr. 
 Hare's Uleinonals of a Qta'et Life.
 
 CHAP. II TOUR IN THE PYRENEES 23 
 
 take this volume and read it.' ' I took it awa}^' said 
 Stanley, ' and read it immediately.' From that time dated 
 his familiarity with a poet whose words rose to his lips alike 
 amongst the ' old poetic mountains ' of Greece and the 
 royal tombs of the x^bbey. 
 
 The holidays came, and on July 17th, 1828, the start 
 was made by a voyage from Liverpool to Dublin, and from 
 Dublin to Bordeaux. The party consisted of the Rector, 
 Mrs. Stanley, two of their children, Mary and Arthur, 
 together with ' Auntie ' and Lucy. It included also Sarah, 
 the faithful nurse, so often mentioned in his letters home. 
 The tour lasted from July 17th till towards the end of 
 the following September. 
 
 The young traveller kept a continuous record of every 
 day's proceedings. The whole is written in a perfectly 
 clear, if boyish, handwriting. There is scarcely a page that 
 has not some characteristic touch. It is impossible to read 
 this register of every day's incidents and thoughts without 
 feeling that the delicate child, whose sensitive organisation 
 had caused such anxiety to his parents, was gradually 
 outgrowing his early weakness. True, notices occur of 
 occasional attacks of sickness, and the remedies adminis- 
 tered are as faithfully recorded. There is mention also of 
 passing headaches, which seem to disappear in the excite- 
 ment of travelling or of writing. And more than once on 
 their expeditions he is called le pairore petit by stalwart 
 guides, one of whom even offered to carry him, rather than 
 let him walk. But there are also abundant evidences of 
 bodily activity, and a boyish relish not only for mountain 
 expeditions, but also for the varied fare, his indifference 
 to which in later journeys sorely perplexed his com- 
 panions. Even in this, his first journey, there appears that 
 unwearied energy in the pursuit of objects of interest 
 which, to the end of his life, taxed the endurance of his
 
 24 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1828 
 
 more robust fellow-travellers. Constantly, in each new 
 halting-place, the little boy ' goes a stroll by himself,' or 
 with his sister Mary, to see something that has been over- 
 looked. Whoever stays behind on an excursion, he is 
 always one of the part)'. He enjoys riding heartily, and 
 is delighted with a little black pony that Frontin (their 
 French guide and courier) had chosen on purpose for 
 him. He returns home from the greatest and most de- 
 lightful of his expeditions, that to the Maladetta, which 
 had lasted from midnight till 3.30 P.M., ' not in the least 
 tired.' He seems, with occasional exceptions, to be full 
 of mirth and health, and gifted with every capacity for 
 enjoyment. 
 
 In reading the record of his travels, it is difficult at 
 times to realise that we have before us the unstudied and 
 unaffected journal of a schoolboy of twelve years old, 
 written entirely by himself, without help or guidance. There 
 is abundance of simple enjoyment and of youthful spirits ; 
 but there is an amount, also, of keen observation, which 
 was obviously part of his nature, cost him no conscious 
 effort, and is written down day by day without trouble 
 and with scarcely an erasure. Above all, there is a sus- 
 ceptibility to the beauties of Nature, which is expressed 
 with a strength of feeling far beyond his years, in language 
 that seems at times to border on exaggeration. Yet every 
 word, however highflown, is to him the natural mode of 
 transcribing the feelings of the moment. A letter written 
 from Pau by his mother to a friend, describes the effect 
 on him of the ' sudden appearance high above the clouds 
 (higher than Lucy's imagination had dared to place it) 
 of a granite peak. . . . Arthur danced about in ecstasy, 
 exclaiming, " Oh, what shall I do ? what shall I do ? " ' 
 So, a year and a half later, in pouring out to Mary his 
 joy at winning a prize for a poem at Rugby, he adds,
 
 CHAP. II TOUR IN THE PYRENEES 
 
 25 
 
 ' Great as was my joy at getting the prize, yet it by 
 no means came up to what the Maladetta gave — oh no ! 
 that zvas joy ! ' Indeed, the intensity of dehght with which 
 he entered into this first revelation of the charm of 
 mountain scenery was as genuine as his enjoyment of 
 •* the swelling and rolling and foaming waves ' on his voyage 
 out, ' when I and Mary sat upon the deck screaming with 
 rapture.' 
 
 If in some respects he already possessed the germ of 
 many of his future gifts as a traveller, it is curious to 
 notice one or two obvious points in which the m.an differed 
 widely from the boy. The change was partly physical. 
 As his organisation grew formed and settled, some con- 
 stitutional defects became more distinctly marked. The 
 high-strung nerves lost their sensitiveness. It was not only 
 that he lost his ear for music, but his eyesight was not 
 strong, and he was singularly deficient in the two senses of 
 taste and smell. If the boy could enumerate with some- 
 thing of boyish relish every //c?/ at his first French dejainer, 
 and his first dish of ' gigot of izard, tasting like hare,' the 
 profound indifference of the grown man to what are called 
 ' the pleasures of the tabic,' and even his readiness to forego 
 necessary food for the sake of any object of interest, were 
 by turns the amusement and the despair of his friends. 
 But the change meant more than this. It was not merely 
 that, in descriptions of Nature or of scenery, his childish 
 exuberance of language was toned down and kept in check, 
 but by degrees the love of Nature for its own sake — of 
 Nature as apart from historical, personal, or ideal associa- 
 tions — retired into the background. He would face any 
 fatigue to see the scene of a great event, or of something 
 that had impressed him in poetry or fiction, but to scenery 
 as scenery he grew comparatively indifferent. Canosa 
 and Vallombrosa would have a great and an equal charm
 
 26 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1S2S 
 
 for him. The mountains of Greece, the swelh'ng hills of 
 Palestine, thrilled him with inspiration ; but the Alps of 
 Switzerland became to him mere ' unmeanini^ masses.'" A 
 friend, who accompanied him nearly thirty years later to 
 Sweden and Norway, remarked that he took infinitely more 
 interest in hunting for the legendar}' pile or ' stock ' that 
 gave its name to Stockholm, than in the most beautiful 
 Norwegian sunset. When, in the }'car before he died, he 
 re\'isited the very places described in his journal, he .showed 
 no enthusiasm for the Pics and Dents of the mountains ; 
 but was distressed bej'ond measure at being prevented 
 from visiting the scenes of Southey's ' Roderic' No friend 
 ever travelled with him but could give similar instances, 
 and no one familiar with his published writings can fail to 
 feel the different form which the boy's ' picturesque sensi- 
 bility' assumed in manhc)od. Even the moon 'walking in 
 her brightness,' of which in the journal he gives a rapturous 
 description, would scarcch' have stirred his enthusiasm in 
 later years, unless she lit up some scene of historic interest 
 or awoke some literary association, while the power of 
 registering the menus of foreign meals soon perished 
 from the total indifference with which such subjects were 
 regarded. 
 
 It is difficult to choose the passages most likely to 
 give a true impression of the general effect of his Diary. 
 Perhaps it may be well to select portions of the account of 
 the first sea voyages from Liverpool to Dublin and from 
 Dublin to Bordeaux, of the adventure with the sheepdogs 
 and of the expedition to the Maladetta. 
 
 He begins with July 17th, 1828 : 
 
 ' I got up at four o'clock on Thursday (i/th) morning, 
 came down to breakfast, and ate a very good one. We 
 laughed very much at one another in our tra\'elling-dresses. 
 
 ' The plirase used by him in .i letter to A. C. Tail, Feb. 1S41.
 
 CHAP. II TOUR IN THE PYRENEES 27 
 
 When we came to Liverpool, we got out at the steam-packet 
 office, where we saw Papa. The ladies were very angry 
 with him because he laughed at their bonnets, and called 
 them a set of housemaids. 
 
 ' We sate a long time on the pier by our luggage waiting 
 for the packet. I was very impatient for it, and thought it 
 would never come ; but at last the long-wished-for Leeds 
 made its appearance, to our great delight. W'e and our 
 luggage soon got on board, and at half-past three we left 
 the shores of England. Hoylake and Seaforth and the 
 Welsh mountains looked beautiful as we passed by, and the 
 day was lovely, and the sea was calm ; but, in spite of all 
 this, I began to feel rather uncomfortable, and Sarah said 
 she felt miserable. \\q. were the only passengers (except 
 one boy), and had the immense packet all to ourselves. 
 The berths were very snug and comfortable. When we 
 went down to dinner, I could scarcely eat anything, and 
 Captain Easton said I had better go on deck before an 
 accident happened. So up I went, but I soon came down 
 again, and lay on a sofa and fell asleep, till Mary awoke me 
 and said I must come and see the sunset ; so I went up 
 again and saw it : it was a lovely evening and a beautiful 
 sunset. The tea was bad, and I could not drink it, and 
 threw it overboard. Then went to bed and slept \'ery 
 soundly till morning (i 8th), when I found m}'self quite well 
 and comfortable, and in Kingstown Harbour.' 
 
 They land, and after a drive — ' six of us terribly 
 squeezed in a car' — to Phoenix Park, he enjoys the 'gay 
 and pretty sights of the crowds of people, tents, beggars, 
 &c.' which marked the return from the races. He records 
 the 'joint petition of Mary and myself to Papa to buy the 
 " Fortunes of Nigel " for us to read in the packet.' Papa 
 said the price was too much ; ' but at last the bookseller 
 brought one which had been read, and Papa was so kind as to 
 get it, to my great delight.' Once on board the Bordeaux 
 packet, he gives an account of each one of his fellow-pas- 
 sengers, from ' the little boy and girl, \\ith whom, as they 
 were very talkative, I soon got acquainted, and their father, 
 Mr. Savar}', a very nice civil man, who gave us cherries
 
 2 8 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1828 
 
 after dinner,' to ' the boy with his mother, whose name 
 we could not finil out, but we always called him the " dirty 
 boy," who was our detestation.' Soon 
 
 'the unhapp)' ladies shut themselves up quite sick, and 
 many of the i^entlemen were in the same condition. I read 
 a good deal of the " Fortunes of Nigel," which was a real 
 comfort to me. It was a beautiful night, and the crescent 
 moon shed a wild light on the dark sea, and all went on 
 well till I went to bed. 
 
 ' I got up early in the morning (20th), not quite comfort- 
 able, and after an expedition to the deck, to find that it was a 
 drizzly morning and we were out of sight of land, returned 
 to my berth, fell asleep again, woke, had a very poor break- 
 fast, and went to bed again. By this time the faint cry of 
 " Steward, Steward, Stewardess ! " was heard from all sides.' 
 
 On his recovery he spent the day on deck, ' the ladies 
 creeping out of their cabins one by one, and I finished my 
 first volume [of" Nigel " ] and began the second.' The next 
 day (2 1 st) he describes the sufferings of the adult passengers : 
 
 ' Mamma invisible, shut up in her cabin, the calls of 
 " Steward," the paralytic man the most vociferous, the por- 
 poises flouncing about and showing their tails, and the 
 captain and sailors saying that they didn't know what to 
 make of the weather. . . . 
 
 ' In the chops of the Channel the waves were magnificent, 
 and Lucy, Mary, and I sat on deck screaming with rapture; 
 for they came swelling and rolling and foaming, and the 
 vessel heaved and rolled, and once when we were unpre- 
 pared a great wave came, and we all three fell from our 
 seats, and lay prostrate on the floor. I thought Lucy had 
 at least broken her leg ; for there she lay till Papa and 
 Mr. Cameron raised her up, and then we all burst out 
 laughing, and have done so ever since at thinking of it. . . . 
 
 ' I was delighted with the waves till I went to bed, and 
 then I did not like them so much, for I thought I should 
 have tumbled out. In the morning when I got up, I found 
 myself in the formidable Bay of Biscay, so much dreaded 
 by Sarah, who had asked so often during the voyage, " Are 
 we in the Bay of Biscay, sir?" It certainly was smoother 
 than the Channel. The cries and groans of the sick had
 
 CHAP. II TOUR IN THE PYRENEES 29- 
 
 greatly diminished, and several who had not been seen 
 before now appeared. ... I finished " Nigel " that day. On 
 Wednesday morning early [23rd], Papa awoke me and said 
 we could see the coast of France ; so I jumped out of bed, 
 dressed myself, and rushed on deck, and there it was — the 
 long-wished-for sight, the coast of France ; but not, as one 
 would think, covered with woods and vines, but a line of 
 barren sandhills, without a spot of verdure, and two land- 
 marks, frightful as can be imagined. The only thing worthy 
 of notice was the stately Tower of Cardouan, rising by itself 
 over the water.' 
 
 The two following extracts are only fair samples of the 
 contents of the two closely-written manuscript volumes 
 that contain the record of his first travels. They are 
 merely chosen as giving an account of an adventure which 
 was long remembered, and of the excursion to the Maladetta,. 
 to which there are constant references in his later letters. 
 
 ' The next morning (August i) Papa, Mary, and I went 
 out (from Eaux Bonnes) at 7 o'clock on an expedition 
 towards the Pic de Ger. We wound along the path through 
 the valley, resting when we were tired, and collecting 
 plants, butterflies, &c., till we came to a beautiful wood 
 from which there was a magnificent view of the Pic. It 
 was a lovely spot, in the middle of a forest of pines ; 
 immense pines ninety feet high, in perfect solitude, with 
 the Pic lifting up its bare pointed summit above the dark 
 trees, and the other lesser hills surrounding it on every 
 side. It was the sweetest morning we had had since we 
 came : there was not a cloud to be seen in the clear blue 
 sky, and as we sat on a fallen pine — blown dow^n by a 
 whirlwind — and ate peaches and wild mountain strawberries, 
 and gazed on the beauties around us, we saw a large eagle 
 soaring over us ; without moving his wings, as he sailed 
 through the blue sky, he alighted on a peak three miles off 
 in a minute. When we set off to return, we lost the path, 
 and were soon plunged in the deep thickets. We tried to 
 get down to the river, and I got separated from the others, 
 and I had to clamber up again ; then Papa had got before 
 us, and the farther we went, the more we were lost. The 
 ground was rugged and full of holes ; there was scarcely
 
 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 
 
 anything but brambles and briers to lay hold of; every 
 now and then an immense pine la\' before us, blown down 
 by the whirlwind ; and such a scramble we had as we 
 never wished to have again. At last we came up to Papa, 
 and after wandering about some time, we found something 
 like a path, and at last we heard a tinkling of sheep-bells, 
 and congratulated ourselves, thinking that some shepherds 
 were coming with their flocks. At last the sheep made 
 their appearance ; but, alas ! with no shepherd ; but an 
 immense Pyrenean wolf-dog, as large as a Newfoundland, 
 as fierce as the fiercest wolf, as strong as a lion, and as 
 faithful to his sheep as any dog could be. We hoped to 
 get out of his way by sitting on the bank while the sheep 
 passed by, but the dog bounded before us, and, opening 
 his terrific jaws, set up a savage bark. We then slipped 
 into the bushes, but still we heard him rustling behind us ; 
 at last he stopped, and we got into the path on the opposite 
 side. Unluckily, we met some more of his sheep, upon 
 which he stood on the opposite rock, barking furiously. 
 When those went past, we met two stray lambs, and the 
 dog darted down from his station with a terrible howl, and 
 bounded down the valley, and in a moment we heard his 
 horrid bark close behind us, and saw him issue from the 
 bushes, wagging his tail with a savage joy, and with his 
 jaws opened to devour us. Papa told us in a low voice 
 (lest it should startle the dog) to go on before, and he 
 walked behind slowly, the monster following close behind, 
 barking the whole time ; and when Papa turned round 
 and looked at him steadih', he stopped. If we had run 
 or screamed or shown any signs of fear, he would have 
 attacked us instantly, and if he had, there would have been 
 no chance : there was no person near to help us, and we 
 had nothing to defend ourselves with. We two hurried on 
 before, and so he could not have reached us first. At last, 
 after having followed us for half a mile, and put us all in 
 the most horrible fright, to our great delight we saw him turn 
 round (as he was sure of his sheep) and disappear among 
 the bushes. After this last perilous adventure, we hurried 
 along the path, which we had now found, and got safe 
 home to tell it.' 
 
 The second extract is from a portion of his account ot 
 what he calls ' the most interesting of all his expeditions,'
 
 CHAP. II TOUR IN THE PYRENEES ^i 
 
 that to the Port clc Vcnasquc and tlic Maladctta. They 
 had risen (Aug. 29) and breakfasted at 1 1 I'.M., and at 
 midnight were joined b\- a party of friends, and started 
 on horseback ' under the lii^ht of a half-moon and stars 
 twinkling in multitudes above us.' 
 
 ' All was silent, except when the loud \\'ild shrieks of 
 the horned owls resounded from the height above. As we 
 looked up, we saw, like a star on the mountain, the fire of 
 an izard-hunter. All this time we ascended, and it grew 
 very cold, so that we were not sorry, after about three hours' 
 riding, to arrive at the Hospice, a lonely house on purpose 
 for travellers, &c., to stop and refresh themselves. It is on 
 an open grassy space, with the forests behind, and the Port 
 de Venasque in front. We dismounted and entered : the 
 first room was quite dark, the second was lighted up by a 
 blazing log, which lay on the large hearth, round which 
 were placed benches. Round the room lay several shep- 
 herds sleeping on large sacks, &c. We were very glad to 
 range ourselves round the fire, which the people of the 
 Hospice soon kindled into a warm and cheerful blaze, 
 before whose influence we soon revived. There was great 
 laughing at Frontin in his capot, which is a kind of large 
 cloak with a hood, that the shepherds wear. After about 
 an hour's warming we set out again, and I now was fortified 
 against the cold by two hoods. We soon began to ascend 
 the Port de Venasque, up a steep zigzag road, which wound 
 and turned, and on each side steep, high, rugged rocks and 
 mountains, among which the Pic de la Pique was the most 
 conspicuous. 
 
 ' We soon got far above the Hospice, and when we were 
 about halfway up, the morning began to dawn over the 
 eastern mountains, and tinge the sky with rosy streaks ; 
 but still the moon was bright before us, while the stars 
 faded away. By degrees the rays of rosy light began to 
 spread through the heavens, and the lofty Pic above to 
 catch the light, but the sun had not yet made his appear- 
 ance. All along the sides of the path were scattered broken 
 rocks and stones, the signs of the avalanches that fall there ; 
 and there was a cross put up, where some person had been 
 crushed by one. It was now colder than before ; for we 
 passed several large masses of snow which lay among the 
 rocks. The road was like a staircase, but the horses per-
 
 32 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1828 
 
 formed their part admirably. At last \vc came into a vast 
 amphitheatre of stupendous rocks, out of which it seemed 
 impossible to pass, and all their tops were <^lo\vini^ in the 
 morning light. At the bottom of this magnificent place 
 was a small lake, which was joined to some smaller ones. 
 Its water was black as ink ; but the rocks and rosy sky 
 were reflected in it beautifully. W'e looked round, not 
 knowing how we were to pass out, for the rocks towered 
 above us and surrounded us as if with a wall ; but we 
 followed the guide, who led us winding on, till all of a 
 sudden there appeared a pass — very narrow — looking just 
 as if it had been cut into Spain, just what I could fancy the 
 Breche de Roland to be. There was scarcely room for more 
 than two to pass at a time ; but the moment we had got 
 through the snowy range of the mountains of Aragon burst 
 upon us, and mighty and stupendous above them all, with 
 its awful and magnificent height covered with eternal snows, 
 the Maladetta rose before us ! Never shall I forget what I 
 felt on seeing it burst forth so suddcnl)- in all its grandeur 
 and desolation — so well deserving the name of Maladetta, 
 with its many dark granite peaks, rising out of the vast 
 beds of snow with which it was crowned, its vast girdle of 
 grey rocks, and the wild cliffs beneath only speckled with 
 black pines. There was the feeling, too, of having passed 
 by that narrow opening through the mighty barrier that 
 divided France from Spain. All (with the exception of 
 
 Mr. , who immediately went down into the valley and 
 
 fell asleep) were struck dumb with awe and admiration. 
 We all dismounted, and stood gazing on the grand scene 
 before us. All was still as death, except the awful sound 
 of distant cataracts, rushing down from the snows of the 
 Maladetta. We then went down upon a kind of platform 
 (the Penna Blanca) before the Maladetta, with large rocks 
 of white and black schist that rose up in every direction. 
 It was so awful thinking that this mighty Maladetta had 
 burst up out of the earth, driving every other mountain 
 before it ; and, as one looked round, seeing them all lean- 
 ing away from it, as if they shrank in terror from their 
 king.' 
 
 The return to Bagneres by the Port de Picade is de- 
 scribed with equal vigour and minuteness, and the expedi- 
 tion ended at half-past three the next afternoon ; the one
 
 CHAP. II EFFECT OF THE TOUR 33 
 
 drawback to its joys being that ' Lucy was not able to go 
 with us, she would have enjoyed it so.' 
 
 The memorable tour was at last finished. The journal 
 closes with a passage beginning, ' We embarked on board 
 the Leeds ^ and bade adieu to the shores of France. 
 There we sat on deck like Mary Queen of Scots. . . .' The 
 concluding page is missing, but it no doubt contained the 
 well-known farewell attributed to the Queen. The im- 
 pression made on the sensitive and active brain was prolific 
 in immediate results. A whole series of youthful poems 
 was composed during, or after, the tour, on one and another 
 of the innumerable subjects of interest which his new ex- 
 perience had suggested. There still remains a large portion 
 of an unfinished ' historical novel,' written obviously within 
 the same year, the scene of which is laid in the Pyrenees, 
 and every page of which is full of reminiscences of his 
 tour ; and letter after letter from Seaforth and Rugby 
 shows how years passed before his imagination ceased to 
 be haunted by the skies and peaks and valleys of Southern 
 France. 
 
 The young traveller returned for one more half-year to 
 the school whose educational appliances he was obviousl}^ 
 beginning to outgrow. His days at Seaforth were numbered- 
 The choice of a public school had been for some time under 
 discussion. It was a serious question in the case of a child 
 so far removed in tastes and habits from the generality of 
 boys, and yet endowed with gifts that pointed so clearly tO' 
 the academical life for which he had already shown a 
 childish preference. Eton and Winchester had both been 
 proposed ; but the influence of Augustus Hare (who in 
 the following year married Mrs. Stanley's sister, Maria 
 Leycester, the ' Auntie ' of her young nephew's journal and 
 letters) was decisive in favour of Rugby, where Dr. Arnold 
 had been installed as Head Master in the summer of 1828. 
 VOL. I , D
 
 34 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1828 
 
 The letters, therefore, from Seaforth often turn, as the 
 )'ear wanes, on the hopes and fears inspired b\' the i)r(xsi)ect 
 of Rugby. The description of the Fifth of November fire- 
 works ends with : ' I do so long to hear about Rugby : mind 
 and tell me all about it.' A week later he writes : ' I like the 
 account of Rugby very much. The hare and hounds will 
 be very good fun, and oh ! how delightful the little study 
 will be ! I long to see the picture of it. Pray send it as 
 soon as }-ou can.' But even with this prospect before- 
 him, he can hardly write a page without reference direct 
 or indirect to the Pyrenees. It is clear that a whole world 
 of fresh ideas had been opened to the brother and sister 
 by their tour. His first letter after his return to Seaforth 
 begins with : ' Here I am .settled at school, done with the 
 Pyrenees, and quite, happy. It is such fun telling my ad- 
 ventures, showing on the map where I went, and telling 
 all about my curiosities,' &c. It ends with : ' I have just 
 finished an ode on the birth of Henry IV., and am going 
 off to bed. Give my love to all at home, especially my 
 Pyrenean friends.' But he adds a P.S. on the ' contrast 
 between the pale blue cloudy sky and hazy moon, and 
 the sky behind the Pic de Geres, and the moon that shone 
 on the Champ de Mars and lighted us to the Maladetta.' 
 
 He cannot .send a message to Charley as to the growing 
 coldness of the sea, which made it impossible to unite 
 bathing with sailing the Winchester without adding, 
 ' This morning I think it was almost as cold as the black 
 lake at the Port de Venasque.' ' Only last night,' he says 
 in the same letter, ' I wrote a long ode, not yet finished, on 
 the Maladetta.' Mr. Rawson was soon admitted to a de- 
 scription 'of our adventures and a sight of my curiosities. . . . 
 I did so long for Ramond's map ; it seemed such a little 
 way (on his one), and so little was put down.' The curiosi- 
 ties consisted of a Virgin in a little chapel, ' whose con-
 
 CHAP. II EFFECT OF THE TOUR 35 
 
 stitution got so injured by being always in my|pocket that 
 I have wrapt her carefully up in my " comfortable," and 
 laid her in my drawer ' ; a Rosary in a box, ' which too 
 often takes a fit of obstinacy and won't open ' ; and a 
 fragment of pain beni, which at last, ' after dwelling in 
 my pocket till it was as hard as a stone, I laid in 
 my drawer, and the mice have been so sacrilegious as 
 to eat.' 
 
 If he records ' having just begun Sophocles, which looks 
 as if it would be hard,' he adds in the same sentence that 
 he has 
 
 * finished the Maladetta. ... I am so pleased when I find 
 anything in books about the Pyrenees, for they seem, poor 
 things, so much neglected and despised. ... I have just 
 been writing two long letters *to my friend Rose,*^ with an 
 account of my tour.' 
 
 In his annual report on November 5th, in which this 
 year there was ' only a very small bonfire,' but a display 
 ' of 5/. worth of fireworks,' the irrepressible subject recurs : 
 
 ' The rockets w^ere beautiful, and I thought of Gavarnie 
 as I saw their falling stars vanish away. ... It was over 
 about eight o'clock, to the satisfaction of everyone. I do 
 so long to hear more about Rugby : mind and tell me all 
 about it. The day before November 5 we had a grand 
 exhibition, in which there were many Pyrenee^ people, 
 as you may think. The other night the clouds made 
 such beautiful mountains in a long range, with mists 
 floating round them ! It was so very like the view from 
 the Pic de Bergons, if it had had snow. It was such 
 fun showing the boys which was like Mount Perdu, and 
 the Breche de Roland, for all these were quite perfect. 
 Now good-bye, my dear Mary.' 
 
 * No doubt the Rev. E. Rose (brother of his future friend, Mrs. Bonamy 
 Price), for many years Vicar of Weybridge. 
 
 ' A really well-executed and spirited coloured sketch of six ' Pyrenean 
 men and women ' (the work of Arthur Stanley in 1828) probably belongs to 
 this occasion. 
 
 D 2
 
 36 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1828 
 
 A week later, in the midst of increasingly anxious 
 inquiries about Rugby, he writes : 
 
 ' I have concluded my Pyrenean poems with the Cirque 
 de Gavarnic, or, as I now call it, the " Circle of Gavarnie," 
 for I always anglicise my French words with Mr. Ravvson. 
 . . . The sandhills here are beginning to rise a little in my 
 eyes, as the Maladetta, Mount Perdu, &c., fill my mind 
 less.' 
 
 Even yet there is no letter without at least a reference 
 to the unforgotten subject, though the next poem is on the 
 burning of Moscow, the last in ' my five volumes of school 
 poems,' which he promises to bring home with him for the 
 holidays.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 1829 
 
 FIRST YEAR AT RUGBY 
 
 On the last day of January 1829 Arthur Stanley was 
 taken to Rugby by his father. A long letter to his sister 
 (February 4th) gives a full account of the new-comer's im- 
 pressions and experiences in the strange world of a public 
 school, as well as of his first meeting with the great teacher 
 whose name will be always inseparably linked with his own. 
 It may be well to remind modern Rugbeians, that in the 
 year 1829 by far the greater number of the five or six score 
 of boarders lived in boarding-houses, which were kept, not, 
 as at present, necessarily, or even generally, by assistant 
 masters, but by persons unconnected with the school who 
 were authorised to receive them. The Rev. C. A. Anstey, 
 one of the assistant masters, who had been appointed under 
 Dr. Wooll's head-mastership, was at that time on the point 
 of opening a new boarding-house, built expressly to receive 
 boarders, and of this Arthur Stanley was to be an inmate. 
 But as the house was not yet ready to receive its full 
 number, the new boy was placed for his first half-year in 
 ' Townsend's,' a house in the middle of the town, near 
 the Eagle Inn, just beyond the present school book- 
 seller's. Dunchurch, it may be added, is a small town, 
 once well known as a coaching and posting centre. It stands 
 on the road from London to Coventry and Birmingham, 
 and three miles west of Rugby. Rugby itself lay on the 
 
 4ii40i)()
 
 o 
 
 8 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1829 
 
 cross-road running eastward from Dunchurch to Lutterworth 
 and Leicester. 
 
 'Rugby: Feb. 4, 1829. 
 
 ' My dear ]\iar)-, — According to)-our wish I write to you. 
 Nothing remarkable happened on the journey. . . . We 
 had our breakfast at Dunchurch, got into a chaise, and set 
 off for Rugby ! The country was very pretty — long sweep- 
 ing meadows, and trees. I looked out for boys, but none 
 were to be seen, as they were all in school. Presently we 
 saw the towers of Rugby rising up above the trees, and a few 
 moments after the whole school burst upon us in all its 
 beauty : and beautiful it was — an immense long building, 
 towered and turreted (very like the print), of stone, and I 
 don't think it looked at all too new. At one end of it — joined 
 to it, and just the same kind of building — was Dr. Arnold's 
 department, and on the other the chapel, close to it — small 
 and pretty, but nothing very striking. [I must just leave off 
 here to go to dinner.] The playground is a fine large field, 
 with several fine trees. We drove through the town, which 
 is just behind the school, and stopped at Mr. Townsend's. 
 There we saw him and his wife. We went to look at the 
 studies, some of which were ranged round a yard, and some 
 upstairs ; some were indeed small, but some were a very 
 tolerable size, with sofas, tables, bookcases, fitted up as nicely 
 as could be. Papa and I then walked to Dr. Arnold's, and 
 presently Mrs. Arnold came in — she was very nice indeed. 
 At last came the Doctor himself; but I certainly should not 
 have taken him for a Doctor. He was very pleasant, and 
 did not look old. When Papa asked him whether I could 
 be examined, he said that if 1 would walk into the next 
 room he would do it himself; so, of course, in I went with 
 him, with a feeling like that when I am going to have a 
 tooth drawn. So he took down a Homer, and I read about 
 half a dozen lines, and the same with Virgil ; he then asked 
 a little about my Latin verses, and set me down without 
 any more ado in the great book as placed in the fourth 
 form. I felt such a weight taken off my mind when that was 
 done. And then Papa and I walked to a place about two 
 miles off, where the boys were skating, to inquire for Entwisle 
 (a sixth-form boy), who soon appeared — a tall young man. 
 I gave him the letter, and we then walked off again, and I 
 went to Mr. Townsend's again to dine with the boys. The 
 dining-room was a place with a large fire, and a table with
 
 C HA P. 1 1 1 FIRS T YEA R A T R UGB Y 39 
 
 benches, on the former of which was placed the dinner 
 (which consisted of pudding and meat), and on the latter 
 the bo}'s— in number about seven — and two men-servants to 
 wait upon us. Not a word was passed between me and 
 them the whole of dinner-time. I glanced my eye round 
 to discover how v^zxvy frill-covipanio7is I should have, and 
 there was only one, and I rather think there are not above 
 two more in the whole school ! Pudding first, and then vcal^ 
 and we certainly were not stinted in our allowance. Mucli 
 laughter and joking passed among the bo}'s, and after 
 dinner one or two of them spoke to me about where I was 
 placed, &c. Papa and I walked to see the new house, which 
 promised to be a very pretty one ; and I was then com- 
 mitted to the charge of one Howard, who was a boarder 
 at Mr. Townsend's. We walked about a little, and at a 
 quarter to five I went to take leave of Papa, who dined at 
 Dr. Arnold's. We had a good tea at half-past five, when 
 we were locked up from going into the streets. I sate for 
 the rest of the evening with a boy of about my age whose 
 name was Highton,' from Leicestershire. He seemed to be 
 clever, and had a very comfortable study, well stored with 
 books — many English. My study was a small, comfortable 
 room, with a table and two chairs ; but as it was in the yard, 
 and the boys might throw water or anything else in at the 
 window, I thought it best to change to one upstairs. We 
 had bread-and-checse for supper. The bell rang for us at 
 a quarter to ten, and at ten we were all in bed. Now don't 
 you expect some dreadful story of pulling toes, &c. ? I am 
 afraid Mamma and you will be very much disappointed, for 
 I slept very quietly all night. In the morning I found it 
 was a usual custom for new boys not to go to the first 
 lesson, so I stayed at home ; and, moreover, I discovered that 
 it was an unknown, an unpardonable thing for a Rugby boy 
 to wear a cap : so I got a note from Mrs. Townsend (that 
 is, such a thing as this — " Hat for Stanley — Mrs. Townsend " 
 — and then it will be put down in the bill), and got a hat 
 with all speed. After breakfast, at a quarter to ten, went 
 with the other boys to the great schoolroom, where we sate 
 construing the second lesson to one another till half-past 
 ten. . . . We, then, of the fourth went into a smaller 
 
 ' Henry Highton, also a new boy, afterwards one of the most conspicuous 
 of A. P. Stanley's Rugby and Oxford contemporaries — for many years an 
 assistant master at Rugby, and for a time Head Master of Cheltenham College.
 
 40 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1829 
 
 schoolroom, where Mr. Bird, the master, in his college dress, 
 made first one and then another get up and construe. I 
 was very much confused, but I took two or three places, 
 and found myself most deficient in grammar. At half-past 
 twelve we came out, and Arthur Pigot very kindly offered 
 to walk with me ; but as it was a wet drizzly day we soon 
 parted. Dined at half-past one. ... At a quarter-past 
 two to school again — third lesson — Ovid — the same 
 manner as before. Just let me notice here, without think- 
 ing it vanity, that Mr. Bird said of me to some of the boys : 
 "That boy is only just come, but if you don't mind he'll 
 soon be up to you." Fourthly, and lastly, Greek exercises, 
 and we came home just as the locking up, and calling over, 
 and tea began ; and here I am in my study upstairs, with 
 the First Day over. I think the only misery I have endured 
 is that this night the boys have been smoking me with 
 burnt paper through the cracks in the door. My study is 
 not yetw^iat I call comfortable-looking. All the books are 
 on the floor, and there is no other place to put them till I 
 get my bookcase. As to collars, pray bring them with you, 
 for though they are not so necessary as hats, yet I should 
 like to have them very much. The first advice about my 
 hat was, " Put your name in it, or you'll have it bagged " — 
 which means stolen ; and as soon as I got to school, " Keep 
 your books close, and have your name in them, or they'll be 
 bagged in a minute." ... I heard one of the boys talking 
 about the prizes one of the others had got — " Oh," he said, 
 " it was nothing — only ' Ivanhoe.' " Thought I to myself, If 
 that is considered a bad one, what must the best be? They 
 have three days' holiday at Easter, and make speeches then. 
 I find I shall have but little time. It is a very common 
 thing for boys to sit with one another.' 
 
 So far he has written cheerfully ; he ends in a different 
 strain : 
 
 * Though I have no miseries, I feel such a sense of desola- 
 tion sometimes — such a difference from Seaforth, where I 
 could do almost what I liked — that I wish I was anywhere 
 else. I am so distracted that I dare say I have left out many 
 things you want to hear, but tell me of them in the next 
 letter. Love to all. 
 
 ' Yours most affectionately, 
 
 ' A. P. Stanley.
 
 CHAP. Ill FIRST YEAR AT RUGBY 
 
 41 
 
 ' P.S. — Unfortunately the vvriting^-master here is called 
 Stanley, and so I think I shall get the nickname of Bob 
 Stanley's son.' 
 
 The new boy was, it will be remembered, barely thirteen, 
 and, vivid as is the picture given of his feelings and of the 
 first incidents of school-life in his letters to his sister, the 
 following extract from the letter of a contemporary, who 
 was one of his few familiar associates at Mr. Anstey's, will 
 be read with interest. Mr. H. G. Allen, late M.P. for the 
 Pembroke Boroughs, writes as follows : 
 
 ' I well remember the report of a new boy of great 
 talents having joined us, who was likely soon to pass over 
 the heads of his contemporaries, and the interest with which 
 his first appearance at our house and in the school was 
 regarded. He was then thirteen years of age, short in 
 stature, of slight frame, small and delicate features, with 
 the gentle and amiable expression which marked him until 
 the close of his life. His general appearance was feminine, 
 and obtained for him the passing nickname of " Nancy " 
 during the short time before he got into the fifth form. 
 I recall him dressed in a round, blue, many-buttoned 
 jacket, and grey trousers adorned by a pink watch-ribbon, 
 being somewhat earlier than the general run of boys were 
 trusted with watches. His manners were as gentle as his 
 appearance indicated. He was shy and timid, but full of 
 vivacity when accosted ; and it was soon perceived that his 
 attainments and powers rather exceeded than fell short of 
 the report of them which had circulated among us. No 
 new boy was then placed higher than the fourth form ; 
 but Stanley, having very soon got to the top of that form, 
 was at Easter removed into the Shell, and, passing through 
 that form with equal rapidity, was promoted to the fifth 
 before the summer holidays ; .so that in six months he had 
 attained to the dignity of being among the class exempt 
 from fagging.' 
 
 The letter to Mary already quoted alludes to a visit 
 which his mother and sister were to pay him at Rugby. 
 Their coming was anticipated with mixed feelings. A
 
 42 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1829 
 
 letter to his sister of Februar)' 26th beg^ins with most earnest 
 serio-comic injunctions, into the meaning^ of which school- 
 boys will fully enter : 
 
 ' I am very glad to have an opportunity- of writing to 
 you again, to give you sundry directions, &c. If you come 
 on Tuesday, you will most likely find me disengaged at 
 half-past twelve. First, you must mind and not tell Dr. 
 Arnold what I have told you. Second, you must mind, 
 none of you, to scream at me, and fly upon me, and kiss 
 me. Third, if you walk about and look into my study, you 
 must take care and not speak loud, lest the boys should 
 hear you. Can you remember all this ? ' 
 
 There is an amusing sign of the half-unconscious 
 yearning after his old position as raconteur : 
 
 ' How you would laugh if you heard me dropping hints 
 that I had been in France. ... I am asked questions, but 
 I never dare go on as I did at Seaforth. ... I sometimes 
 feel afraid that I shall not care about my poor old 
 Pyrenees, and that I shall not be able to see Maladetta in 
 my mind ; but now it comes rushing upon me while I am 
 writing, with all its granite peaks and sheets of frozen snow ! ' 
 
 And then comes an important announcement ; his 
 reputation is obviously spreading : '^ 
 
 ' I have made one step at last, and have got into the 
 middle remove, from which I hope soon to arrive in the 
 upper. As soon as I come into school in the morning 
 about half a dozen boys run up to me, exclaiming, " Give me 
 a construe, give me a construe " ; and each one tries to get 
 me, and one pulls one way, and another another, tillat last 
 they all come and sit, stand, or crouch round me whilst I 
 give them one. I have also a great reputation as a verse- 
 maker, and am beset on all sides for them. I never, how- 
 ever, let any English verses escape me.' 
 
 - ' I well remember,' writes an old schoolfellow, 'the day, now fifty-five 
 years ago, when he was placed in the fourth form under Roger Bird, and leapt 
 at one bound to the top— a little fellow in a round jacket — thereby displacing 
 " old Mills" (A. Mills's brother), and Bird saying prophetically to Mills, " I 
 don't think you will get your place again, Mills " ; nor did he.'
 
 CHAP. Ill FIRST YEAR AT RUGBY 43 
 
 Nearly of the same date is a long and grateful letter 
 to his old schoolmaster, Mr. Rawson (March loth) — one of 
 several written at intervals in the next five years. He gives 
 a full account of the constitution, divisions, and buildings 
 of the school, ' with its towers and turrets looking like a 
 stately castle,' and draws a cheerful picture of his own life 
 and progress. Two short paragraphs are worth quoting : 
 
 ' I thought of you, sir, the other night — as I was chosen 
 to write out one of the praepostors' prize essays, on account 
 of my writing such a good hand. As yet I believe there arc 
 not more than 167 boys, but the number is rapidly increas- 
 ing with Dr. Arnold's fame. ... I have ;z^/ fixed upon any 
 one whom I should like as a friend,' 
 
 adds the solitary new boy, who had at Seaforth been the 
 centre of a young circle of listeners, friends, and admirers. 
 
 The visit of his family to Rugby was paid ; and the 
 mother and sister went away on the whole satisfied, though 
 Mrs. Stanley notices in a letter to her sister ' the shyness and 
 colouring when spoken to,' which for long after this caused 
 a natural, if excessive, anxiety in the home-circle. His 
 correspondence with Mary is at once resumed. The little 
 fourth-form boy's account of his earliest impression of 
 Arnold as a teacher will be read with interest : 
 
 ' We have been examined again by Dr. Arnold in 
 Latin,' he writes on April 7th : 
 
 ' and he seemed very much pleased with mc, and said 
 I had done extremely well. He is very particular ; the 
 least word you say or pronounce wrong he finds out in 
 an instant, and he is very particular about chronology, 
 history, and geography. He does not sit still like the 
 other masters, but walks backwards and forwards all the 
 time, and seems rather fidgety. . . . Only a fortnight to 
 Easter and the Speeches. There are to be English verses. 
 How I shall listen ! Tell Sarah that Dr. Arnold has 
 only preached three times this half-year, .so he does not 
 waste many of his sermons upon the young gentlemen. 
 I am perfectly well and \cry happy — but no friend yet.
 
 44 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1829 
 
 I am nc\cr boglcd (Rugby phrase) with smoke or 
 
 squirts, and so long as I do not fag at my lessons very 
 much I am not teased at all. We had this time to do the 
 map of France. You may be sure I did not forget my 
 dear, dear Pyrenees. ... I very nearly made a great blot 
 in trying to make Maladetta larger than the others. As 
 to friends, I have not pitched upon one, and I think I am 
 better without one just now ; as I can always get some one 
 to go out with, it is quite enough. I don't expect I shall 
 find a regular friend till next half, when I shall begin to look 
 about more particularly for one, as I shall be more settled.' 
 
 Of the school prize poem on ' The Ruins of Rome,' to 
 which he listened with all his promised attention, he sends 
 home specimens both of the best lines — ' some of which,' he 
 says, ' reminded me of Reginald Heber's " Palestine " ' — and 
 a couplet, of which the }'oung critic disapproved. He adds- 
 a word of satisfactionabout his own immunity from fagging. 
 His rapid rise in the school had made an unusual impres- 
 sion on his seniors. ' Strange to say, I have only been fagged 
 once, being always excused by praepostors whom I never 
 knew before — and sometimes by the most severe. I am 
 very lucky to be favoured by them.' 
 
 There is every attempt in his letters home to present the 
 cheerful side of his school-life. Yet it is clear that his own 
 memory of his first few weeks was one of much loneliness 
 and depression. Writing nearly four years later (December 
 1832) to a friend at Oxford (W. A. Grecnhill) on all he had 
 gained at Rugby, he uses such language as ' I looked for- 
 ward on my coming here to a long farewell to all goodness 
 and happiness, and wondered how I should ever come out 
 safe again.' 
 
 But in due time, as the sense of strangeness and desola- 
 tion wore away, old tastes revived. ' I must rub up my 
 poetry, for it has grown rusty, as I have not done any for 
 the last two months, except Latin verses, which you may 
 tell Grandpapa I think I am improving in ' ; and he begins
 
 CHAP. Ill FIRST YEAR AT RUGBY 45 
 
 to puzzle for a subject, and to suggest two or three names 
 from Spanish story. The epistolary current is slightly 
 checked by a bad fall, and a sprained arm, and a stay 
 in the sick-room. But even in a letter written partly with 
 his left hand he recounts at full length, besides a number of 
 school details, and a kindly visit from Mrs. Arnold, a dream 
 of a visit to Pau and the Pyrenees, and expresses his delight 
 at hearing that ' the King has knighted Captain Parry, as 
 well as Captain Franklin.' ' I am very happy,' he says 
 (on May 25th, 1829), ' and very well.' Soon he has events 
 to record. Dr. Arnold has 
 
 ' heard the Shell ' (into which he had been promoted after 
 Easter) ' a lesson. Oh ! how particular he is ; but at the same 
 time so mild and pleasant. I like saying to him very much. 
 He asks very much about history, and asks queer out-of- 
 the-way questions. I daresay you will be glad to hear 
 that I got up to the top once for answering something 
 about Themistocles. He seems very much pleased when 
 I answer anything.' 
 
 In the following month (June 1829) his form has been 
 once more examined by Dr. Arnold ; and he has seen Mrs. 
 Arnold, 
 
 ' who talked to me about her children, and told me that 
 little Mat [the eldest of her boys] that morning had been 
 in the garden and got a red and white rose for her, and 
 showing them to Dr. Arnold, said, " See, Papa, here are 
 York and Lancaster " ; and it so happened that that very 
 day the lesson with Dr. Arnold was history, and, though 
 there was nothing particular about it in the lesson, he asked 
 a good deal about what were the devices of York and 
 Lancaster. I daresay he was thinking about Mat and his 
 roses. I am high in the form, though I cannot hope to be 
 so very rapid as to be in the fifth at the end of the half; 
 by the middle of next half, however, I hope and expect that 
 my days of fagging will be over, and I shall be in the fifth
 
 46 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1829 
 
 form — though I cannot complain about it, as I am so very 
 seldom fagged ; but when I am in the fifth I shall be out of 
 the praepostors' power. I have had one copy of verses to 
 write out — that i >, when they arc very good we write them 
 en a book.' 
 
 He already begins to scent the holidays : 
 
 ' Oh ! when I do get home, and see you once more, quite 
 iDcyond Rugby, praepostors, and fags — when I can go to the 
 Edge without shirking, my own master ! And will Lucy 
 he there? Tell her that I have not at all forgotten the 
 Pyrenees. Joy, joy ! I am quite well — very happy, and 
 all that. The half-year seems to have gone very quickly. 
 This time last year I was trembling at the thought of going 
 to a public school ; and now I am at it. I must go to 
 school now.' 
 
 On June 22nd he concludes his letter with, ' sixteen days 
 — oh ! ' In a short letter written home on June 28th, after 
 the cry, ' Oh ! Wednesday week,' he goes on : 
 
 ' The other day Wombwell's wild beasts came. I saw 
 them fed, and heard the lions roar, the hysena laugh (oh ! 
 what a horrible laugh), leopards growl, &c. They were very 
 fair lions, and I sent Charley a long account of it. Next 
 Saturday my fate will be decided, whether I shall be a fag 
 or not next half . . . What else can I say ? Unluckily, I 
 have no miseries of any kind to tell you. I have only been 
 " called back " twice by praepostors, once got off with 
 nothing, once with 150 lines to write out.' 
 
 He returned with joy to Alderley, to the family circle, 
 outside which he was yet for some time to feel a difficulty 
 in forming close intimacies, and where, even if there still 
 hung about him at times a cloud of shyness and reserve 
 which it took years entirely to remove, he plunged into 
 home life with unalloyed enjoyment. A letter to Owen, 
 written from Alderley, gives a full account of his Rugby 
 life and of the school system. ' On the whole,' he says, ' I 
 have been very happy. Garside, Tipping, and some other
 
 CHAP. Ill FIRST YEAR AT RUGBY 47 
 
 big boys have been very kind to me. In my boarding- 
 house there was very little fagging, and no bullying, except 
 some smoking or squirting through the study doors.' 
 
 On his return to Rugby he entered for the first time 
 the larger boarding-house which was to be his home till 
 his school-life was over. He is now in the fifth form, 
 ' quite out of the reach of praepostors ' — ' very happy, but 
 have not made any particular friend yet ' ; finds it ' such 
 fun shaking hands with everybody, and am glad to see 
 that it is generally a cordial shake ' ; has been ' to Isaac 
 the Jew to buy a foot-rule to measure my study,' of which 
 he sends (on September 4th) a carefully drawn plan, with a 
 commission to Mary, who was staying for a short time at 
 Leamington, to buy him a carpet ; he does not ' mind what 
 it is like, if it is not ugly or extraordinary.' He is 
 delighted when it comes — ' Oh ! how comfortable and warm 
 it looks with its green and red stripes ' — no less than with 
 his father's paper on ' The Mauvais Pas,' ^ a second copy 
 of which is acknowledged in some interesting lines from 
 Dr. Arnold (on September 14th), written, as was common in 
 those days of heavy postage, on a spare side of A. Stanley's 
 letter. His spirits rise as he becomes familiar with his 
 new home. He sends a plan of his arrangement of all the 
 pictures that adorn his study walls, some bought by him- 
 self, others given by his new friend, Lake.* He sends al.so, 
 on September 27th, a drawing of a hanging book-case, ^ 
 present from an older schoolfellow, surmounted by a ' little 
 bust of Lord Byron that one of the boys gave me.' More 
 than one plan remains of his study, with his ' favourite 
 table,' and a ' drudge table,' carefully marked. He tells 
 ' How regularly and diligently I sweep out my study every 
 morning, turning everything topsy-turvy, and really keep 
 
 ^ In Blackwooir s Magazine, September 1829. 
 
 ^ The present Dean of Durham, whose parents then resided at Rugby.
 
 48 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1829 
 
 it very clean and tidy. ... It looks toward the Island and the 
 trees ; and if I had an\- smell I might catch the passing 
 perfume from a garden almost beneath the windows.' 
 
 * Mary,' he bursts out, ' I am very happy here ; the boys, 
 all of them almost, are very kind to me. ... I am not, as 
 Charley says, quite miserable zvheji I think of home, only 
 sometimes little thoughts come. ... I often laugh when some 
 of the boys do things for me, almost as if I could fag them ; 
 quite out of their own good will, for you may be sure I am 
 not one that could command anything.' 
 
 He even in the same letter appeals to Mary for congratula- 
 tions on 
 
 ' playing football three days running. To be sure, I am a 
 very poor player, but it is a great thing to have broken thro' 
 the ice ; for last half-year, to say the truth, I don't think 
 I ever played at any game in the playground. I do really 
 like it — it is such an enlivening, warm game ; though I 
 sometimes catch myself looking at the sunset instead of 
 the ball. Perhaps in time I may like cricket.' 
 
 The new-born taste perished in its first infancy, and 
 the faint hope was never realised. There is still the same 
 yearning for friendship, and the same difficulty in passing 
 beyond certain limits in schoolboy intimacy. ' Do you 
 
 want to know,' he says, ' how and I get on ? Why, we 
 
 are very amicable, &c., but I am afraid,' he adds modestly, 
 ' that he is a sphere above me. I think we shall always go 
 on well and peacefully, but never be loving friends — like 
 Waverley and Flora Maclvor ! ' But he names one or two 
 whom he ' likes very much ' — one to whom he can even talk 
 about the Pyrenees ; ' he has been abroad, on the Rhine, 
 and we show each other where we have been on the map, 
 and I listen to him very attentively.' 
 
 In time the events of school-life give him, as he says 
 to Mary on October i6th, ' some substance to talk about.' 
 He describes a visit paid in state by Dr. Arnold to Mr. 
 Anstey's House, and the formal elevation of every fifth-form
 
 CHAP. Ill FIRST YEAR AT RUGBY 
 
 49 
 
 bo}- under his charge to the rank of praepostors within their 
 own house. He reports also Mr. Anstey's speech which 
 followed, in which ' when he spoke of manual strength he 
 glanced at me and laughed.' And he sends home an elabo- 
 rate account of the amount and limits of his new powers, 
 and of his announcement to the ' three fags ' who were now 
 to clean out his study by turns, that he ' did not mean to be 
 very strict.' 'There is much joking,' he owns, ' among the 
 other prsepostors about my " manual strength," and I have 
 only twice called Silence, on one of which times I said Hush 
 instead. However,' he adds proudly, and with an unusual 
 dash of boasting, ' at all events, I think I can say what no 
 other at the school can, that at the beginning of one half- 
 year I was in the fourth and had to sweep out another 
 boy's study, and at the beginning of the next I had fags to 
 sweep out my own.' ' Fags and I agree very well,' he writes 
 a few weeks later ; and there is abundant evidence in the 
 testimony of his contemporaries that the little that the 
 young praepostor required was cheerfully performed. 
 
 An event of even more importance than his elevation at 
 the age of thirteen to the dignity of a 'house praepostor ' 
 was his first appearance at Rugby in the character of the 
 schoolboy-poet. The incident, which seems to have made 
 an unusual impression on the minds of his schoolfellows, 
 may be told in his own words : 
 
 ' I will now give you the history of my English copy 
 [poem]. On Saturday, October 17, the subject was given 
 out. It was Brownsover, a little village, or rather a 
 cluster of miserable cottages, on the top of a hill, at 
 about a mile and a half from Rugby. The chief recom- 
 mendation is that Lawrence Sheriff, the founder of Rugby, 
 was born there ; besides this, the Avon — Shakespeare's 
 Avon —flows under it, and a little river called the Swift runs 
 into the Avon, into which the ashes of Wickliffe (who lived 
 at Lutterworth, about six miles from Rugby) were thrown I 
 I had only been at this place once, so I and two or three 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1829 
 
 other boys set out on a pilfrrimage there the next evening. 
 It was a truly poetical evening, calm and lovely. We passed 
 over the Avon, and arrived at Brownsover just as the sun's 
 red orb was setting. The cottagers looked very contented, 
 and we then went to the churchyard. The church, or rather 
 chapel, is about the size of a large barn, rude and simple 
 to a degree — without spire, without ornament — in short, a real 
 village chapel. We asked a venerable old man, who was 
 standing by the gate, whether Lawrence Sheriff was buried 
 there. 'T knows of no Sheriff as has been buried here since 
 I've been here," was his reply — very probably not, Lawrence 
 Sheriff having been a grocer at the beginning of Queen 
 Elizabeth's reign. Before we left nearly twenty of the boys 
 had come to this place of the Muses to pick up pieces of 
 poetry. I formed about half a dozen lines on the spot, and 
 we then returned. W^e had four days to do it in, but it 
 would have been very preposterous in me, the last of the 
 fifth, to have done so much as forty or fifty lines. So that 
 I was obliged to curtail it and leave out unnecessary verses, 
 and I did, as I thought, a very decent copy, nothing more 
 About two days passed betw^ecn the tim.e of showing up and 
 being called up for them ; but during that time the fifth- 
 form master^ had shown several of the verses to his son, 
 who is at school, and from him I received the first intima- 
 tion that I had done the best in the form ! And the 
 next morning so it was that mine was the best of all the 
 thirty in the fifth. To see, I suppose, whether we had done 
 them ourselves, the evening before we had to write English 
 verses in school, in an hour's time, on Tripontium, an ancient 
 Roman fort a few miles from Rugby, of which he gave us 
 an account. In the hour I did twenty-four, and was called 
 up head again. I am somewhat bothered for copies, but 
 not plagued about it, any more than being called " poet " 
 now and then, and my study " Poet's Corner." I had not 
 the least expectation of it. Some day I intend going to 
 Lilburn, where Tripontium was. . . .' 
 
 The lines on Brownsover are still remembered by his 
 
 surviving contemporaries as having made a great impres- 
 
 ^ The Rev. Mr. Moor, at that time Master of the Rugby Fifth Form, w ho 
 by his practice of devoting ' 4th lesson ' to EngHsh verses to be done in school 
 on a subject named at the lime, did much to cultivate a taste for poetryamong 
 some few at least of the Rugby fifth-form boys. See letter of the Dean of 
 Llandaff, p. 104.
 
 CHAP. Ill FIRST YEAR AT RUGBY 5 1 
 
 sion on boys and masters, and, together with his rapid rise 
 in the school, soon placed him in a position of which he 
 seems to have been singularly unconscious. It is almost 
 a pleasure to add that the same letter which records his 
 success tells also of his having been engaged, praepostor 
 though he was, with the rest of his house, in the unlawful 
 occupation of letting off squibs. 
 
 'Just as I had let one off, out came Mr. Anstey himself 
 We all stood stupefied ; he came directly up to me, and 
 caught me by the arm, and another boy near me ; the 
 others all escaped. We each of us got about one hundred 
 lines of Horace to translate.' 
 
 To himself the resumption of his old pursuit as a writer 
 of English verses was an intense delight. His lines on 
 Brownsover and on Tripontium are sent home to be added 
 to the five copy-books of Seaforth poems, and he writes 
 to Mary explanations of one or two phrases, such as * the 
 idea of the cottages ^^ finding a nest Upon the grassy up- 
 land's breast',' which I took from pictures of ladies in Queen 
 Elizabeth's time, whose jewels seem to nestle in their 
 bosoms.' Side by side with his poetic and literary interests 
 is a most vigorous account of his having gone out ' hare 
 and hounds ' for the first time, describing how ' I, the very 
 fat boy, and another,' after running more than three miles, 
 were quite distanced and turned back ' It was capital 
 fun,' he ends ; ' I hope I shall succeed better next time.' 
 The taste for such forms of enjoyment, however genuine 
 for the moment, seems to have been exceedingly short- 
 lived. 
 
 Not less humorous is the picture drawn of the terrors 
 of the coming examination, and of his sitting up, in 
 company with two other boys, for a whole night's sur- 
 reptitious work, ' partly to fag, partly to see what it was 
 like.' The experience was instructive.
 
 52 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1829 
 
 ' For two hours \vc did not speak above a whisper, or 
 dare light a fire ; at midnight one of them lit a small fire. . . . 
 We fagged away, but were growing very sleepy, and lay 
 down for sleep a little after one — two of us, one at each 
 end of a short sofa, the other on three chairs. . . . We 
 woke again and again very uncomfortable, and wishing we 
 were in bed, till at last we heard the door open and were 
 comfortable for only ten minutes before we were called. 
 We have never stopped up since,' he adds. 
 
 In the same letter he reports himself as having been 
 ' called up first ' for an English theme ' On the Advantages 
 and Disadvantages of Castes in India ' ; but in the next 
 breath Nature asserts herself in the precocious essayist, and 
 he goes on like any other child of his age, ' Oh, Mary, a 
 fortnight to-morrow ! ' He will be dropped at a friend's 
 house by the coach, and they are to send for him, ' but pray 
 don't come yourselves.' He is ' fagging away terribly, 
 taking up Extras — in Divinity, Leslie on Deism ; in Greek, 
 half the Hippolytus ; in History, some of the reigns of the 
 kings of England ; and under Mathematics, some Con- 
 versations on Natural Philosophy. Arithmetic is the only 
 thing that I almost despair of 
 
 The terrible examination passed off well. He describes 
 himself to Mary, on December 4th, as ' in such agitation ! ' 
 on going into the awful presence of the Head Master. 'At 
 the end Dr. Arnold said, " Very well, Stanley ; you have 
 done very well now and throughout the half" This of 
 course pleased me very much, and I went out with such a 
 load off my mind. However,' he adds, ' Dr. Arnold has 
 not seen my sums yet ! ' 
 
 So ends his first year at Rugby, with words that many 
 a boy and young man in an age of multiplied examinations 
 can sadly echo : ' Oh, I am so glad to be relieved from such 
 fagging, fagging work at last ! '
 
 53 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 1830- 1834 
 
 RUGBY LIFE CONTINUED 
 
 It is impossible to relate in minute detail the remainder of 
 Arthur Stanley's life at Rugby. The claims of his later 
 career cannot, in justice, be set aside for the employments 
 and thoughts of a schoolboy, however gifted. Yet the 
 picture, drawn so unconsciously and so unintentionally in his 
 Rugby letters, is too valuable to be entirely lost. It seems 
 worthy of preservation on more grounds than one. In the 
 first place, English literature affords no adequate parallel 
 to such a sustained and continuous record of the story of 
 any English boyhood, conveyed, as it is, in a series of 
 pictures which owe their rare freshness and fidelity to the 
 fact that they are not drawn from memory and coloured 
 by later experience, but arc sketched on the spot and filled 
 in at the moment. In the second place, the type of boy- 
 hood which is here presented is so remote from the pre- 
 vailing impressions, and, it may be added, from the most 
 graphic delineations, of an P^nglish schoolboy's life, that the 
 record might fairly claim attention solely on the ground of 
 its marked and singular individuality. The letters paint 
 the portrait of a boy bound by the closest ties of affection 
 to the circle that he has quitted, and only able by slow 
 degree to admit others to any full share in the confidence 
 and intimacy which were long reserved for those familiar 
 with his childhood. They depict his vain efforts to throw
 
 54 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1830-34 
 
 himself into the ordinary pursuits and amusements of 
 schoolboys, his intense andgrowing avidity for freshideasand 
 fresh knowledge, his extraordinary delight in, and capacity 
 for, intellectual activity, his shrinking from the coarseness 
 and vice that stain school-life, the reserve and shyness of 
 his sensitive nature, which were yet so combined with a high 
 breeding and a charm of manner and appearance as to save 
 him alike from rough usage and from all imputation of 
 conceit or pedantry. They reveal his early attraction, and 
 growing devotion, to his great teacher, the Thomas Arnold 
 who, during Stanley's schooldays, reached the very height 
 of his unpopularity in other circles, and who, even at Rugby, 
 was as yet far from having won the affection and reverence 
 which he afterwards inspired. In the background of the 
 main portrait the letters throw vivid side-lights on the 
 general aspect of English school-life at a critical epoch in 
 English education, and on the personality of the most 
 renowned figure in the roll of English schoolmasters. And, 
 above all, as they illustrate the steady growth and develop- 
 ment of the powers, the tastes, the habits, and the character 
 of the young letter-writer, they bring into clear prominence 
 the remarkable unity that ran through his life, and linked 
 his childhood and boyhood to his youthful and maturer 
 manhood. 
 
 Stanley's letters from 1830 to 1834 are partly a chronicle 
 of the details of his school-life. At the beginning of 
 1830 he returned to Rugby as a fifth-form boy, and a 
 praepostor in his House. The most noteworthy event in 
 this early portion of his career marks the result of his first 
 attempt at dealing with history. 
 
 The subject of ' Sicily and its Revolutions ' was set for 
 an English essay open to competition for the fifth form, 
 and after much doubt he resolves to try. History is a 
 new field for him, and he has to set to work at ' Rollin and
 
 CHAP. IV PRIZE ESSAY ON SICILY 55 
 
 Russell,' which he borrows, and other books to which his 
 friend Lake helps him. 
 
 * If I do get it, of which I think there is but little 
 chance, I shall have to speak it at Easter before all the 
 people, and to have a large prize ! So much for Sicily ; my 
 head is full of it — tyrants and princes and successions all 
 rolling about in it, and making it like Mount Etna.' 
 
 The excitement of writing the essay weighs on him for 
 a time : ' I am always thinking what improvements I can 
 make.' ' At last the load is off — it has gone with all its 
 faults upon its head. ... It ends with two lines from the 
 " Giaour : " 
 
 So soft the scene, so formed for joy, 
 
 So curst the tyrants that destroy. 
 
 Earl}- in April 1830 he begins a letter with, ' Dear Mary, 
 dear good People at home,' and goes on to say, ' I have 
 got the prize. I can scarcely believe it while I tell you ! 
 Now for the account of it.' He tells them how, ' when 
 
 * I was sitting at breakfast in my study, half through my 
 first cup of tea, the door burst open, and a friend of 
 mine appeared, breathless with haste. I trembled, and 
 after talking about who was likely to get it, he said, " You 
 have got it." I did not eat very much more. . . I was 
 very, very glad ; but still I thought it might be a mistake.' 
 
 On the same afternoon, 
 
 'as I was running home from 'school, a cry of " Stanley to 
 Dr. Arnold ! " reached my ears. I turned, and bursting 
 through the outstretched arms, and " You have got it," stood 
 before Dr. Arnold. He said he congratulated me upon 
 having gained the prize. Oh ! what a moment ! and when 
 I came out such a shaking of hands, such congratulations. 
 There is a German sentence which we had in our lesson 
 the other day, which is, " My heart laughs to me in my 
 body " ; that is just my feeling.' 
 
 He goes on to describe his interview with Dr. Arnold on 
 the next day :
 
 55 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1830-34 
 
 ' He told mc Lhat he had written to I'apa to coinc and 
 hear me speak it. ... I am afraid that I shall be more con- 
 fused if he does. ... He showed mc how and in what to 
 correct it. Th-' fault was that it was too much of a 
 regular dry detail of history — the beginning and the end 
 were very well. I am to shorten the rest much.' 
 
 The Speech Days followed. He tells Mary how, on 
 the second day, to which residents in Rugby were ad- 
 mitted, 
 
 ' at the end of the speech before mine I trembled very 
 much, but after I had got up, and read about five lines, I 
 felt somehow — I can't describe \\.—Jiorny ; was able to 
 make reflections — " am I speaking loud enough ? Yes, I 
 am " ; but there I was much disappointed — neither boys nor 
 masters heard me a bit. ... I must scream to-day. . . . 
 There are many jokes on me : " Oh ! Stanley must have a 
 stool to stand on, and a wheelbarrow to wheel away the 
 prize." ' 
 
 He is soon able to send a full account of the great 
 day. ' Though when dressing I was in the greatest fright, 
 and would almost have given up prize and all not to 
 speak, yet after a glass of wine — the only glass of wine 
 I think that I ever liked,' he was ' a good deal revived, 
 was able to exchange smiles with Papa,' and to pay due 
 attention to the ' louder,' ' which a boy behind me had 
 been requested to say, if necessary, and which broke upon 
 me pretty often.' He ends his description by recording 
 his satisfaction at ' tumbling into his own stockings, and 
 out of the white trousers ' — the ' white ducks ' and silk 
 stockings, in which the young speakers were in those days 
 arrayed. 
 
 There is abundant evidence that the impression which 
 he had already made on his schoolfellows was of an unusual 
 kind. His immunity from fagging, even in the first weeks 
 from his entering Rugby, has been already noticed. It 
 affords a significant proof of the position which he at once
 
 CHAP. IV DISTASTE FOR GAMES 
 
 57 
 
 gained among his older schoolfellows. His escape from 
 rough usage at the hands of boys more of an age with him- 
 self is another sign of the impression which he uncon- 
 sciously made upon those who were least likely to ap- 
 preciate his intellectual gifts. ' Arthur,' writes his mother, 
 ' says he does not know why, but he never gets plagued 
 in any way like the others ; his study is left untouched, his 
 things unbroken, his books undisturbed.' He himself writes 
 to the same effect, but with a characteristic addition. * So 
 far from being plagued and bullied, except just at the 
 beginning, I have been most fortunate in all that, especially 
 considering wJiat I aui! He was keenly alive to his in- 
 capacity for games, which debarred him from the readiest 
 road to influence in the world of a public school ; to his 
 manual helplessness, which might naturally provoke the 
 ridicule, if not the horseplay, of youthful critics ; and to the 
 shyness and reserve, whichisolated him from thecompanion- 
 ship of his schoolfellows. His efforts to conquer these 
 defects were only partially successful. At football he at 
 onetime hoped to improve. '/ //^//^X',' he writes in 1830, 
 ' I kick the ball, whereas before they used to tell me I only 
 pushed it with my foot.' But these hopes were short-lived. 
 If he continued to play, it was, as he confesses, for the 
 sake, not of the game, but of other advantages. 
 
 ' I have compelled myself to play our big side (my first) 
 at football {i.e. a game in which the great ones of the school 
 play, and the fags are fagged to play) — partly for my own 
 benefit — partly for ray proteges, as each praepostor may ex- 
 cuse three fags. Think what a privilege ! I shall go on 
 playing, I think, though it is a joke among the boys, and 
 a form to myself for the most part, as I do very little more 
 than run backwards and forwards after a crowd for the 
 space of two hours.' 
 
 On his helplessness with hands and feet he often com- 
 ments. It was with ' patient endurance ' that he accepted
 
 58 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1830-34 
 
 his mother's efforts to develop his ph}-sical capacity, though 
 the process was as 'horrible' to him as it was delightful 
 to his brother Charles. His mother writes to her sister of 
 her two sons at Christmas 1831 : 
 
 ' I am going to have a sergeant from Macclesfield to 
 drill them in their holidays — to Charlie's great delight, and 
 Arthur's patient endurance. The latter wants it much. 
 It is very hard always to be obliged to urge that which 
 is most against the grain. I never feel I am doing m}' 
 duty so well to Arthur as when I am teaching him to 
 dance, and urging him to gymnastics, when I would so 
 much rather talk ivitJi him of his note-books, &c. Then, 
 with Charlie, vice versa! 
 
 But the deficiencies proved unconquerable. Those who 
 knew Arthur Stanley in later life will recognise him in the 
 following extract from a letter written in November 1832 : 
 
 ' Last night we {i.e. five) went to dine with Arnold. I, 
 being the head, was in deadly fear of making blunders in 
 taking Mrs. A. in to dinner, carving, &c. I did make 
 great work about taking her in, but that being over, she 
 took all the carving to herself, till at dessert there happened 
 to be a cake before me, which I had to cut ; but unfor- 
 tunately I thought, at every slice I cut, I had cut enough, 
 and consequently laid down my knife, and was four times 
 asked to go on again, reminding me of the lady curtseying 
 to the King, and his saying " Come a little nearer.^' So much 
 for the bodily part of it. The intellectual part, i.e. the con- 
 versation, occasionally flagged much, but part of it was very 
 good indeed.' 
 
 In the same connection ma\' be placed two further 
 extracts from his schoolboy letters. The first, taken 
 from a letter written in October 183 1, is filled with a 
 humorous description of an alarm caused by a fire in a 
 neighbouring study — promptly extinguished by pouring the 
 contents of his teakettle over the burning window frame — 
 ' after pausing for a moment (don't laugh at me very much) 
 to think whether the boiling water would not increase it.'
 
 CHAP. IV DISTASTE FOR GAMES 59 
 
 The description ends with a remark, significant to those 
 who were famih'ar in later times with his want of the 
 senses of smell and taste. ' One advantage I had was 
 that, while everyone else was holding his nose from the 
 smell of the stuff-curtain being burnt, and the smoke and 
 fire, it had no effect at all on me.' 
 
 The second extract, taken from a letter to his brother 
 Owen, throws some light also on the experience of those 
 who in later years rode with him in Malta, or Spain, or 
 Egypt, or the Holy Land. Though quite incapable of 
 managing, or holding in, an unruly horse, he was singularly 
 free from the timidity natural to a bad rider. 
 
 *I had a much happier visit at Delamere than my 
 Christmas visits have been in general — especially my last 
 year's. There were no young men there, only towards the 
 end Lord William Beresford, who made great friends 
 with Charley, and was quite a boy — the rest were none of 
 them older than me. There was, luckily, no frost, so that I 
 had not to go out and pretend to slide, as I did at High 
 Leigh, but we went out coursing — I being put on a large 
 pony said to be vicious. There were four others on horse- 
 back, all boys. I did not feel veiy easy on setting out, 
 but the pony carried me famously up and down the steep 
 hills, where I was most thankful I was not on Dick. My 
 trousers were for the most part up to my knees, except 
 when I got them fastened down with a shoe-string on one 
 side, and a weed on the other. I avoided a leap as long 
 as was possible, but at last, after having been carried per- 
 force up a dirty lane backwards and forwards full gallop, 
 so as to cover me with mud, I found m}-self with the others 
 in a labyrinth of hedges — out of which was no way but by 
 a leap : I looked in vain for a gate. One after the other 
 they cleared the hedge — and so I followed — and made two 
 gallant leaps without any damage at all. It was ver}- 
 warm work, and I liked it very much.' 
 
 His aversion for mathematics may perhaps be regarded 
 as the intellectual complement of his bodily unreadiness. 
 His picturesque and concrete mind recoiled from the
 
 6o LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1S30-34 
 
 abstractions of the exact sciences. Writing to Mary in 
 February 1830, he speaks of having 
 
 ' had to do the fifth proposition of EucHd, Book I., which 
 is very hard (as they say, for I scarcely know which is hard 
 and which is not), and has the ominous name of the ' Asses' 
 Bridge.' ... I am to do it again. ... I can quite fancy 
 Archimedes not attending to the soldier who came in, if he 
 was as much engaged and puzzled in his problem as I am.' 
 
 In spite of his efforts, in spite also of Dr. Arnold's 
 personal instruction, mathematics always presented in- 
 superable obstacles to his mind. His incapacity for 
 accounts formed, with his ignorance of architecture and 
 indifference to music, the three serious disqualifications for 
 his work at Westminster, to which in later days he w^as 
 wont, half seriously, half jocularly, to refer. 
 
 Nor were his incapacity for games and his bodily un- 
 readiness counterbalanced in the eyes of his schoolfellows 
 by that general accessibility and expansiveness of tempera- 
 ment, which often secures for a boy a wide share of popu- 
 larity. He was, in the early part of his Rugby career, 
 singularly friendless, reserving his confidence for the one 
 or two boys with whom he felt in sympathy. 
 
 Both at home and at school he suffered from a reserve 
 and a difficulty in expressing his feelings which, as a boy, 
 he never fully overcame. His gifts of utterance and his 
 conversational facility were a later growth. The defect 
 escaped neither his mother's observation nor his own self- 
 examination. 
 
 ' Arthur,' wrote his mother in June 1832, 
 
 ' wants the free use of his powers of mind as well as of body. 
 The embarrassment and difficulty of getting out what he 
 knows seems so painful to him, while some people's pain 
 is all in getting it in ; but it is very wholesome to have 
 drawbacks in everything.'
 
 CHAP. IV HIS SHYNESS AND RESERVE 6 1 
 
 In a curious fragment of bo)-ish introspection (January 
 1831) he notices the ' fear of expressing myself badl}-. 
 Shall I say this or that ? which ends in my saying nothing.' 
 He laments his ' aversion to games, and withdrawing into 
 myself, and avoiding compan}%' and he confides to his 
 sister in June 183 1 his resolution 'to fag with circumspec- 
 tion, and make myself more agreeable and conversational.' 
 
 His contemporaries at school were perhaps less im- 
 pressed by his shyness and silence than would be expected 
 from his own or his mother's language. One, indeed, a 
 little his junior (the Rev. J. P. Whalley), recalls him before 
 he had reached the sixth form as ' a very sh}', quiet boy, 
 hurrying along, his books under his arm, with short quick 
 steps, to or from school ; with nothing to say to an ordinary 
 boy whom he met, absorbed apparently in his own thoughts ' ; 
 but adds also, that ' he might be seen going out for a walk 
 at much the same pace, when he would be found talking fast 
 enough to some particular friend.' ' Shy and reserved,' 
 says another, ' but brightening up when accosted.' ' The 
 feeling about him in the house was of a respectful nature, 
 which left him alone and prevented all annoyance.' ' Once 
 within his study, the door was closed, and you saw no more 
 of him. Very few were admitted into that study.' His 
 position at Rugby, gained in spite of many drawbacks, was 
 a striking tribute to his moral and intellectual qualities. 
 His contemporaries, even in those rough times, showed 
 themselves capable of appreciating one whose tastes, habits, 
 pursuits, and tone of mind were separated by so wide a gulf 
 from those of the ordinary schoolboy. It may be well 
 to give here a few more lines from a letter of one of the 
 many early friends (Mr. H. G. Allen) whose affection he 
 retained through life : 
 
 ' In the fifth form, and being in the same boarding-house, 
 I became intimate with Stanle}-, and felt attracted towards
 
 62 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1830-34 
 
 him by his intcUccLual gifts, as well as by his unj^rctcnding 
 sweetness of disposition. Though not addicted to the 
 usual games, Stanley used to take long walks after the 
 school hours, and soon found companions in these exercises 
 who, like himself, felt no aptitude for the games, or gave 
 them up for the pleasure of his company. There was 
 certainly such respect entertained for intellectual powers in 
 our school society, that none of us held Stanley in less 
 esteem because he was not a cricketer or football-player. 
 The regard for strength and activity is always a prevalent 
 feeling among boys, but I am confident that at Rugby, at 
 least in my time, equal, if not greater, regard and respect 
 were entertained for intellectual vigour and mental acquire- 
 ments. In the course of Stanley's first half-year in the 
 fifth form, our master required of us an English poetical 
 exercise, giving as a subject " Brownsover," which was a 
 small village near Rugby, on the Avon, chiefly, if not 
 solely, entitled to commemoration as the birthplace of 
 Lawrence Sheriff, the founder of our school. Our poems 
 were handed about to one another, and all were struck by 
 the great superiority of Stanley's, which was announced by 
 the master, Mr. Moor, as entitled to the first place. Our 
 verses were usually Latin, in which language the rhythmical 
 position of words, and appropriate epithets commonly dug 
 from the "Gradus ad Parnassum " went some way towards 
 making up for meagreness of imagination ; but we were 
 much impressed by the " higher mood " of Stanley's verses, 
 unsupported by Gradus or other common forms. I think 
 that his Latin verses were not remarkable for classical or 
 artistic finish, but in imagination he far outstripped any 
 of his competitors. It was probably for this reason 
 he was beaten in the fifth-form Prize Poem on " Malta " 
 in the following summer, but obtained a prize for his 
 historical essay on " Sicily and its Revolutions." Stanley 
 had a turn for drawing, but was too much occupied other- 
 wise to allow himself any time for the pursuit of that art. 
 I had a spirited drawing of his for some years between the 
 pages of my volume of Cicero in Verrem, in which a vast 
 beast of the Megatherium class was lying down, but being 
 teased by a quantity of smaller animals clustered about 
 him and endeavouring to excite him by pinching and 
 poking him with sticks. . . . When he and I had, as head boys 
 of our house, to receive a challenge from the " schoolhouse " 
 (Dr. Arnold's) to play us and another house at cricket, and
 
 CHAP. IV RUGBY 63 
 
 thought we were hardly strong enough for the contest, 
 Stanley said, " At least let us receive them with dignity, 
 as the Roman Senate did the ambassadors of the Gauls," 
 and he arranged us in my study, seated, with our shoulders 
 bare, and putting our biggest champion uppermost, and 
 himself, as not being a player, last. Though defeated 
 in the match, we happily were not massacred, like the 
 Senate.' 
 
 In August 1 83 1 he was promoted into the sixth form. 
 His feelings and impressions on entering upon new duties, 
 and coming into that closer contact with his Head Master 
 which was to be the main feature of the next three years 
 of his life, are fully recorded. 
 
 ' I am firmly established (Sept. 4) in my new foun- 
 dation, and am very comfortable and happy. First, as 
 head of the house, I am not very much overpowered 
 with the miseries of royalty ; yet the former head is very 
 kind to me in not altogether dropping his dignity. My 
 subjects have not yet involved me in very great distress or 
 anger on their account. The greatest nuisance I have yet 
 experienced has been the collecting of the taxes for the 
 newspapers, and being obliged to reckon up over and over 
 again, as I forgot the calculation as soon as I had finished ; 
 however, that is pretty nearly over, . . . The sixth I like 
 very much, and shall learn abundance, though I always feel 
 rather quaky when I am called up ; yet it is not so awful 
 with Dr. Arnold as I expected : he is certainly a splendid 
 man. I feel as if he could magnetise one directly. I 
 think the chief difference between him and our late 
 master in the manner of teaching (of course putting his 
 immensely greater knowledge out of the question) is the 
 questions he asks in the modern history we do — such very 
 useful ones.' 
 
 Within the next ten months he had given fresh evidence 
 of his powers by winning the prizes for an English Essay 
 and for an English Poem. The subject of the first ' is a 
 very odd and, as I think, very hard subject, Novels and 
 Novelists ' ; and he writes to Mar)- to hunt for extracts, 
 ' in the Reviews in the dining-room,' and in books which
 
 64 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1830-34 
 
 he names to her. Meantime, he himself is at work at 
 every authority on which he can lay hands, from the 
 Academic des Inscriptions and Chalmers' Dictionar)-, 
 to Dr. Johnson in the Rambler ; and is tryinf^ to find 
 some ' good account of the progress of novels and of 
 novelists — v/hat kind of pcojjlc the}- were ' ; also attempting 
 
 ' to draw a line (if there is one to be drawn) between 
 novels and romances ; and puzzling my.self to avoid on 
 the one side confusion, and on the other, repetition, pro- 
 voked sometimes at getting hold of a fine thought which I 
 dare not follow up, as it would lead me from my subject ; 
 and rather alarmed at seeing how few of my thoughts arc 
 original, and how many of them come directly or indirectly 
 from Dr. Arnold's sermons, &c.' 
 
 The Essay was sent in. He feels ' rather hopeful,' 
 though pleading guilty to ' criticising books which I 
 have never read,' and gives a long list of ' many books and 
 many persons ' that have helped him. But he is hard at 
 work again. The subject for the English Poem is ' Charles 
 Martel ' ; ' a rather odd subject,' he says, ' at present I 
 don't much like it.' But its greatness and its interest dawn 
 upon him as he reads more. He is ' at work at Gibbon, 
 Hallam, Percy's Reliques, Ellis's Metrical Romances. 
 Memoires de I'Academie, Bayle's Dictionar)-.' He sets 
 Mary to hunt with ' the people at Stoke ' — the Leycesters, 
 and the Hebers of Hodnet — for further authorities. He 
 busies himself, just as he would have done in later life, to 
 ascertain the exact topography and scenery of the great 
 battle which saved Christendom. ' I may begin with the 
 Pyrenees, which the Moors crossed, but I dare not linger 
 upon them,' he tells his sister. But he has since 'been 
 happy to find that the Saracens were cut off in the moun- 
 tains, which can mean no other than the Pyrenees, therefore 
 they will figure very well.' Mary, 'and the Charles Martel 
 hunters at Stoke,' have not been able to send him \-ery
 
 CHAP. IV SCHOOL PRIZES 65 
 
 much useful information, ' but comfort }-ourself by thinking 
 of the great good you did me in the Essay. There, I was 
 at the first quite destitute ; here, I have matter enough and 
 to spare close at hand. ... I was much amused at his 
 large nose, but large noses are not poetical. I am rejoiced 
 that I have found him to be a really great man.' At last 
 the Poem, which, with the Essay, is the earliest of his 
 compositions that remain in print, was sent in ; and he, 
 and the family circle, who in all these matters more than 
 shared his hopes and fears, were not kept long in sus- 
 pense. In the first week of April he is able to announce 
 that, 'the Doctor's voice has just proclaimed Stanley as 
 the winner of the Essay Prize. My head is even now 
 whirling under it.' He tells how reports became rife of 
 ' the extraordinary goodness of one cop\',' and how, 
 
 ' as I went down to school, before I got to the quadrangle, 
 a shout went out for Stanley ! so I had to run breathless 
 into the school, where it was given me accordingly. Dr. 
 Arnold then said that as my verses were so exceedingly 
 good, he should give a half-holiday for them ; especially 
 after the disappointment of the year before, when the 
 English verse had not been good enough for a prize to be 
 given. . . . All this was very satisfactory, wasn't it ? I 
 forget whether I told you that I got the third prize for 
 Latin Verse. ... I have got my Essay back from Dr. 
 Arnold, but I shall not be able to send you a copy just 
 yet. ... I went to have it looked over with him. . . . He was 
 looking at something about Smollett, and said " Humphrey 
 Clinker " was not thought enough of generally — and upon 
 my telling him I had never read it — " Oh ! you must read 
 ' Humphrey Clinker ' ; if you have not got it, I will lend it 
 to you. It is not too much to say that I have read it through 
 fifty times" — and accordingly he jumped up and got it down 
 for me.' 
 
 A few days later, he is revising his poem, and writes to 
 Mary to remind him of ' any sound which we heard besides 
 the owl on the " Venasque night " in the Pyrenees ' ; he is 
 VOL. I. F
 
 66 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1830-34 
 
 * much distressed at having, for the sake of rhyme, written 
 the '^ Eagle's yell" — "yell " is in itself bad, though I shield 
 myself under Scott, but I am afraid they do not }-cll at 
 night!. . . Dr. Arnold has looked over the poem, and corrected 
 only one ambiguous word, and left out two lines. . . . When 
 he came to the words, that before the Moors, as they passed 
 the Pyrenees, " Lay the green vines and sealike plains of 
 France," Dr. Arnold said he was sure, when he read that 
 line, that it was written by some boy who had been in 
 France.' 
 
 On April 26th, he writes a minute account of his own 
 performance, under his father's eyes, on the Speech Day in 
 Easter week ; — 
 
 ' I think I made my hair decent, without the help of arti- 
 ficial curls . . . was in a very great fright when the Latin 
 Poet was speaking, but w4ien he had done, got up with my 
 " Charles Martel " in- my hand, and, trying to look at no one 
 in particular, I set off as loud as ever I could, and did not 
 feel very much alarmed. When I came to the " sealike 
 plains of France," I waved my arm over the plains. But 
 I made some blunders. I said the unknozvn ocean and the 
 boundless shore, and forgot my first bow before I went up 
 for my prize — two large folios, which it was all I could do 
 to carry back. As I got up to speak, I felt just as if my 
 hair was standing on end, but it very soon went down, and 
 then as I went to get the last prize, there rose from all sides 
 a tremendous peal of clapping. Those few moments gave 
 me as much pleasure, I think, as I have ever had, and did 
 fully repay me for all my trouble. . . . After the speeches 
 came the dinner, in which fortunately I sate before veal ; I 
 had not a single slice to carve. ... I had to propose the 
 customary toasts, which I cut very short, without bestowing 
 any praise on the persons proposed — and then the day was 
 over — such a whirl as I have never had, I think.' 
 
 The unusual impression made by his prize compositions, 
 and by the scene at the speeches, is not yet forgotten by 
 those who were present. It was reported at length in the 
 Leamington and other county papers, and is thus recalled 
 by one of his contemporaries : ' I have a vivid recollection
 
 CHAP. IV SCHOOL PRIZES ^y 
 
 of the Speech Day, when, after reciting his beautiful prize 
 poem, " Charles Martel," he returned from Arnold's chair so 
 loaded with prize-books that he could hardly carry them 
 — his face radiant, yet so exquisitely modest, and free from 
 all conceit, that we outsiders all rejoiced at " little Stanley's" 
 successes.' 
 
 The little boy, ' in a frill and blue jacket, with the pink 
 watch-fob in relief against the grey trousers,' was no longer 
 a child. Even as a new boy he had been treated with some- 
 thing of a tenderness, and almost a deference, unparalleled 
 in those rough days of the history of Rugby. He had 
 now not only reached the sixth form, but he was already 
 recognised as one of its leading members, and had carried 
 off two of its principal prizes — one for a poem which had 
 produced an unprecedented effect on the world of school. 
 From this time his position in that world was thoroughly 
 assured : a peculiar and unusual position no doubt, but one 
 which after the lapse of half a century vividly impressed 
 those who recalled it. Henceforth he followed more 
 entirely his own course in school-life. He no longer con- 
 tinued his ineffectual and rare attempts to interest himself 
 in school games, but sought his only relaxation in the 
 society of the few friends with whom he could find full 
 sympathy in his literary tastes, and in his almost insatiable 
 avidity for fresh knowledge and new ideas. As those older 
 than himself left the school, his influence, as well as his 
 responsibilities, increased. He writes more and more 
 cheerfully of his position at Rugby ; he acts as head of 
 his house, real as well as nominal, without friction or diffi- 
 culty ; he is elected first president of the Debating Society, 
 plays a prominent part in suppressing a threatened rebellion, 
 takes a decided line in a sixth- form discussion, adding in 
 words which will have a touch of interest to those who 
 remember his many controversies in later life, ' It is the 
 
 F 2
 
 68 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1830-34 
 
 only row I have ever been in where I have been in the 
 right, and at the same time in the majority, which last 
 makes a great difference in the comfort.' 
 
 The following portions of letters from the Rev. J. N. 
 Simpkinson and the Rev. Sir John L. Hoskyns record the 
 impression which Stanley made upon his schoolfellows : — 
 
 'The treatment which Arthur Penrhyn Stanley experi- 
 enced in his school-life at Rugby was a marvellous homage 
 to the purity and elevation of his character. Rugby was a 
 rough place in those times, as is seen sufficiently in " Tom 
 Brown's School Days," and in George Melly's " Experiences 
 of a Fag " ; and it was considerably worse some years before. 
 Stanley was a good deal senior even to Tom Hughes and his 
 brother, who came to the school only a few months before he 
 left it. Yet it is not too much to say that he was never per- 
 secuted nor bullied, and scarcely ever laughed at, though 
 habitually abstaining from games, and habitually diligent 
 in school work. The beauty and goodness of his character 
 seemed to impress the roughest of his schoolfellows, who felt 
 him to be a being of a higher order than themselves, and not 
 to be judged by their conventional standard. And he knew 
 as little of them and of their ways ; so that when " Tom 
 Brown " came out, he remarked about it : " It is an absolute 
 revelation to me : opens up a world of which, though so 
 near me, I was utterly ignorant." His great ability (or 
 more correctly speaking, his genius) was universally 
 acknowledged, though not of course under that name : and 
 the boys were proud of him as a brilliant phenomenon. 
 When, in 1831, the fifth form was for the first time sub- 
 jected to a searching examination to decide their places for 
 the next term and to settle the promotions into the sixth, 
 it was only what all expected when he, though much 
 younger than most of his competitors for the highest place, 
 came out first on the list. His four }'ears in the sixth 
 form, under the immediate teaching of Dr. Arnold, were 
 years of intense enjoyment to him. There was the most 
 perfect confidence between them, and something even of 
 deference on the part of the great master, when listening 
 to his pupil's answer to a question, or his English rendering 
 of some passage in a classical author. His chief friends 
 during that time, and latterly, at least, the only ones with
 
 CHAP. IV IMPRESSIONS OF CONTEMPORARIES 69 
 
 whom he could be said to be intimate, were Vaughan and 
 Lake — the present Deans of Llandaff and Durham. To 
 the rest of us, he was always pleasant and courteous, but 
 holding himself somewhat aloof. . . . The three exercised 
 great influence in the school ; which was shown remarkably 
 •on the occasion partly described by Tom Brown, when a 
 neighbouring squire's fishing rights in the Avon were very 
 justly enforced by Dr. Arnold against the boys, producing 
 in them a reckless spirit of rebellion. In the "levy" of the 
 fifth and sixth, which was held to discuss the grievance, it 
 was by the three friends above all (and certainly not least by 
 Stanley) that the folly of resistance was exposed, and the 
 turbulent majority brought to reason and submission. 
 After gaining every prize and distinction in the school that 
 was open to him, and winning the head Balliol scholarship 
 at Oxford before he went into residence, he ended his 
 school career by being bracketed with his future brother- 
 in-law, C. Vaughan, as first exhibitioners — the examiners 
 being the future Bishops of Salisbury and Lincoln, Doctors 
 Moberly and Wordsworth, who were greatly struck with both 
 of them, though pronouncing them, as Dr. Wordsworth re- 
 marked, niagis pares qiiani similes' (J. N. S.) 
 
 ' After years of slow climbing, I at last reached the sixth, 
 and there again met Stanley in class. He was very near 
 the top, with Vaughan and Lake. There was no taking 
 places. What struck me was the way in which Arnold 
 referred to them in matters of criticism or points of history. 
 " Stanley, what do you think about that ? " " Vaughan, how 
 would you construe that ? " — folding his gown and leaning 
 upon the table, and looking towards them with such 
 respect, shown in the very tones of his voice, and always 
 getting a good answer. Then after their construes — often 
 in the most difficult bits of /Eschylus or Thucydides — "Very 
 good " : — not like the cold " that will do," or terrible " sit 
 down, and come to me afterwards " — words which more than 
 once made me quake. Then came the memorable day 
 when " little Stanley " returned triumphant from Oxford, 
 having " won the Balliol," and beaten Eton's best man, 
 Lonsdale, to my intense delight. He became quite our 
 hero, and again the sweet modesty and unaffected satisfac- 
 tion at seeing our pleasure struck me very forcibly, and it 
 seemed almost impossible that such a clever fellow should 
 be so humble, and entirely unspoilt by such successes. It 
 was, I think, Stanley's singular modesty as a boy that
 
 70 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1830-34. 
 
 made many of his schoolfellows— who, like m}'self, did not 
 know him well — wonder in after years at his undaunted 
 courage and perfect fearlessness, and even combativeness.' 
 (J. L. H.) 
 
 These two letters contain a record of the principal 
 events in his Rugby career. They bridge over the gap' 
 which intervenes between his promotion into the sixth 
 form in 1831 and the great crisis of his school-life — a crisis 
 that must be described in his own words, his competition 
 for the Balliol scholarship in November 1833. The scholars 
 of Balliol had already secured a leading position among the 
 undergraduates of the University, and the attainment of 
 either of the two annual scholarships was a distinction 
 much prized in the educational world. But Rugby, so 
 repeatedly successful in later years, had never as yet 
 achieved the prize. It was therefore natural that the can- 
 didate who was to represent the school should look forward 
 with some trepidation to the coming contest. The result 
 of the examination is communicated in a letter to his sister 
 on November 29th, 1833. 
 
 ' 1 will begin my letter in the midst of my agony of 
 expectation and fear. At two o'clock to-day I finished 
 my examination — at eight o'clock to night the decision 
 takes place — so that my next three-quarters of an hour 
 will be dreadful. As I do not know how the other schools 
 have done, my hope of success now depends on nothing, 
 except that I think I have done well — better, perhaps, from 
 comparing notes, than the rest of the Rugby men. Oh ! 
 the joy if I do get it, and the disappointment if I do not. 
 And from seven of us trying at once, I fear the blow to 
 the school would be dreadful if none of us get it. My 
 consolation will be that I shall perhaps get down earlier to 
 Rugby than I should were I to get it. Reports are not 
 many, but various. . . . Rugby will be a dull place after 
 this week's excitement. Last night I dined at Magdalen — 
 which is enough of itself to turn one's head upside down — - 
 so very magnificent ; from thence to a supper at another
 
 CHAP. IV SCHOLAR OF BALLIOL 7 1 
 
 place, and from thence to the Debating Society, where there 
 were some very good speeches, particularly Massie's,' who, 
 I believe, is a brother of Owen's friend — a very clever man 
 here, who is the president. One thing I am very agreeably 
 disappointed in is the great soberness and civility about 
 wine at all places I have been at, as I have never had the 
 least trouble about it. 
 
 ' Now wait for half an hovu". I will go on regularly. 
 We all assembled in the Hall, and had to wait an hour, 
 the room getting fuller and fuller with Rugby Oxonians 
 crowding in from various parts to hear the result. At 
 last the door opened — the Master's servant appeared and 
 called for Mr. Stanley. I clapped my hands — rushed 
 forward amidst congratulations — everybody ran to the 
 door, when you may conceive how angry I was to find it 
 was only a note from someone to breakfast. I tore up 
 the note without seeing who it was. I said I could not. 
 Well, another quarter of an hour passed ; every time the 
 door opened my heart jumped, but many times it was 
 nothing. At last the Dean appeared in his white robes, 
 and moved up to the head of the table. He first began a 
 long preamble — that they were well satisfied with all — that 
 those who were disappointed were many in proportion to 
 those who were successful, &c., &c. All this time everyone 
 was listening in the most intense eagerness, and I almost 
 bit my lips off, till " The successful candidates are — Mr. 
 Stanley" — I gave a great jump, and there was a half-shout 
 among the Rugby men — the next was Lonsdale from 
 Eton. The Dean then took me into the chapel, where 
 were the Master and all the Fellows — in white robes — and 
 I then swore that I would not dissipate the property, 
 reveal the secrets, or disobey the statutes of the College. 
 I was then made to kneel on the steps, and admitted to 
 the rank of Scholar and Exhibitioner of Balliol College, 
 nomine Patris, Filii et Spiritus Sancti. I then wrote my 
 name in a book — and so all was finished. I am to be 
 matriculated to-day, and so shall get back to Rugby in 
 good time. We start at two to-day in a chaise-and-/i?2/r — 
 for the glory of it. You may only think of my joy. The 
 honour of Rugby is saved, and I am Scholar of Balliol.' 
 
 ' Edward Massie, Ireland Scholar 1S2S, afterwards Fellow of Wadham, 
 and Arthur Stanley's private tutor in 1837, was one of the most distinguished 
 pupils of Dr. Butler, of Shrewsbury.
 
 72 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1830-34 
 
 The young scholar, it need hardly be said, left Oxford 
 in high spirits. l^ut owing to a delay caused by his 
 matriculation, he did not arrive at Rugby till midnight. 
 ' At half-past five vvc started in a chaise-and-four for 
 the first stage ; my things,' he says, as his later fellow- 
 travellers can well believe, ' being confusedly thrown into 
 the chaise, and then on more humbly, two outside till the 
 last stage, when we all five — one of us had gone on in the 
 morning by the coach — got in and made a merry party, 
 I lying at the bottom, till we got to Rugby at half-past 
 one.' There Stanley and one of his companions, ' after 
 fruitless attempts to make ourselves heard, found beds at 
 the Inn. I was received, of course, the next morning with 
 many congratulations, had tea with Mr. Price to tell my 
 adventures, to their great amusement. Dr. Arnold is 
 delighted.' 
 
 The post was slower in those days, and it was not till 
 
 December 6th that he was able to acknowledge the loving 
 
 letter of delight and congratulation which reached him 
 
 from his home. 
 
 ' You are all of you worthy of having the scholarship,' 
 he replies. ' I was looking out for your letter eagerly, as 
 the last finishing stroke. ... I think on the whole I felt 
 my glory the most at Oxford, where there was more general 
 and visible anxiety than here, where there are so many who 
 care so little. It was, however, the greatest delight to see 
 Dr. A. after it, and all the masters are very much pleased. 
 . . . My visit to Oxford has certainly most wonderfully re- 
 conciled me to what I had before such a dread of — going 
 up to reside there, as now, instead of being associated with 
 gross bigotry and gross profligacy as before, it is associated 
 with the recollections of one of the happiest weeks I ever 
 have had — even besides the scholarship, besides seeing all 
 my old Rugby friends, and the great excitement of it — I am 
 .sure the very sight of the place must shake one's prejudice 
 against it. It is amusing to compare Charley's matricula- 
 tion ' (at Woolwich), ' so to call it, with mine — his distress 
 from his stock, mine from the very opposite, my white tie
 
 CHAP. IV LAST STEECH-DAY AT RUGBY ^ T) 
 
 and bands ; his being obliged to wear boots, and I swearing 
 to abstain from that absurd and conceited custom of walking 
 about in boots.' '-^ 
 
 Stanley, though now a matriculated member of the 
 University, did not go into residence at Oxford till the 
 beginning of the next October term. He remained at 
 Rugby till July 1834. During this period he competed 
 unsuccessfully for the Newdigate Prize Poem at Oxford, 
 the subject being ' The Hospice of St. Bernard.' His 
 disappointment was to some degree compensated by 
 further triumphs at school. Before the end of March 
 he was able to announce that : ' my circle of prizes is 
 complete. I have got the Greek Iambics and the Latin 
 Prose, i.e. all that can be got.' No one had ever before 
 won all the six, the five given to the sixth form and the 
 fifth-form prize. ' I have done enough,' he tells the 
 family circle, ' for myself at Rugby ; what now remains 
 is to establish the fame of Rugby elsewhere. ... I had a 
 very hard contest for both — particularly my Latin Prose. 
 . . . My Greek Iambics are said to be particularly, my 
 Latin Prose not particularly, good. . . . How differently,' 
 he adds, ' you will take this from my three first prizes.' 
 
 On April 5th, 1834, he sends a full account of his last 
 public appearance as a winner of prizes at the Rugby 
 Speeches on the Wednesday before Easter : — 
 
 ' There was a large meeting ; a good many old Rug- 
 beians from Oxford and Cambridge. . . . The Latin Prose 
 I read, and then came the last of the sixth-form prizes 
 with the Greek Verse. I had in my hurry forgotten to 
 write down the subject of the Essay, and so reckoned on 
 being able to say it when I got up. I was rather in afright 
 when I found that, on there being a general clapping as soon 
 as I got up, for which I was not at all prepared, it had been 
 entirely put out of my head ; however, I managed to make 
 
 "^ I.e. in the oath then required at matriculation to obey University statutes, 
 many of them entirely obsolete.
 
 74 ]-}I'^E OF DEAN STANLEY 1830-34 
 
 out something, and this was the only breakdown. My 
 Greek Verses, about which I had been rather fearful, having 
 to say them, I got through beautifully. ... I had always 
 been told before that I could not be heard ; so this time — 
 the last speech I shall ever make in Rugby School — I 
 shouted to the top of my voice. When I went up for the 
 last of my six prizes, Dr. A. stood up and said : " Stanley, 
 I have now given you from this place every prize that can 
 be given, and I cannot let it pass without thanking you 
 thus publicly for the honour you have reflected upon the 
 school, not only within these walls, but even already at the 
 University." The applause was great ; and so ended my 
 Rugby career with the most glorious hour I have ever had ; 
 more glorious even than my one at Balliol, though not of 
 such unmixed pleasure. That was the beginning of my 
 successes at Oxford, and this (it makes me melancholy to 
 think of it) the last of my successes at Rugby. However,, 
 it is something to think that henceforth every honour 
 which I get must bring with it twice the pleasure of any 
 before, as involving two credits instead of one. I finished 
 the work by going into our dinner . . . just stayed long 
 enough to return thanks for my health being drunk, " as 
 having," in the language of the proposer, " done what had 
 never been done before in the memory of man ! " ' 
 
 Those who remember their own schooldays will not 
 wonder at the unaffected delight which Stanley shows at 
 the reception given him at such a time by his master, 
 his schoolfellows, and the visitors. It was perhaps not 
 less, but more, welcome from special causes. His entire 
 isolation from the pursuits of the majority of schoolboys, 
 the extremely small number of those who shared his in- 
 timacy, and his undisguised detestation of all that was 
 coarse or immoral in the school-life around him, might in 
 ordinary cases have involved no small amount of general 
 dislike and unpopularity. Of the existence of such a feel- 
 ing it is difficult to find even a trace in the memory of his 
 surviving schoolfellows. All other feelings seem to have 
 been lost in the general sense that he was, and somehow 
 had a right to be, unlike other boys, and in the admiration
 
 CHAP. IV LAST SPEECH-DAY AT RUGBY J <, 
 
 that was caused by his great gifts and marked successes. 
 Nor can there be any question of the strange spell that he 
 already cast over the few who penetrated the narrow circle 
 in which he lived, and even over the larger number to 
 whom he showed those little acts of kindness which often 
 leave so lasting an impression. 
 
 ' I well remember,' says the author of ' Tom Brown '' 
 (April 13th, 1888), 
 
 'how when George and I went to Rugby in February 1834 
 (I being ten), we had a letter from George Atkins, son of 
 a neighbouring squire, to Arthur Stanley. Two days after 
 the sixth came back, we got an invitation to breakfast in 
 his study at Anstey's, which was, I remember, marvellously 
 packed with other new boys. His welcome filled us with joy, 
 and induced us at first to haunt the walk under Arnold's 
 garden-wall to get a nod from him as he scuffled along, to 
 or from Anstey's, with his hat on the back of his head and 
 mighty books under his arm. Soon, however, this part of 
 the Close became the hunting-ground for the purveyors of 
 island-fags for the sixth, who cultivated that spot for the 
 yearly visit of the guests who came to the Easter speeches. 
 This drove us small boys out of bounds. I don't think I 
 ever spoke to Stanley again at Rugby, but I was one of the 
 heartiest shouters on the topmost bench in the big school — 
 close up, I remember, to the board on which the exhibitioners' 
 names were painted — when he got all the prizes which it 
 took two fags to carry up to Anstey's, and the Doctor told 
 us that he had not only got everything he could at Rugby, 
 but had already gained high honour for the school at the 
 University.' 
 
 When once the excitement had passed away of what 
 he calls ' the most glorious hour of my life hitherto,' he is 
 haunted by the 'melancholy thought of leaving Rugby. 
 His heart sinks at the prospect. He counts the days that 
 remain to him ; ' only three weeks, next Wedncsda}- ! It 
 seems so different to the time when I used to count the 
 days and hours for the holidays to come, and now I should 
 like the time (I hope you won't be affronted) to be trebled.'
 
 76 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1830-34 
 
 He is oppressed alike by the thought of leaving Rugby, 
 and b}' the work of the final school examination, on the re- 
 sults of which dc^pended the award of the School exhibitions. 
 
 ' I feel,' he writes on July 3rd, 'it is all the better that 
 the examination and the close of my Rugby career should 
 come together ; as the relief of having finished the one will 
 in some measure compensate for the sorrow of the other. 
 However, you must treat me very well when I come. I 
 have settled much to read with you, and look forward to 
 happy holidays. . . . Think of me between 3 and 4 P.M. on 
 Tuesday next, walking up and down the cloisters in the 
 agony of expectation.' 
 
 The Examiners were George Moberly from Balliol, 
 afterwards Head Master of Winchester and Bishop of 
 Salisbury, and Christopher Wordsworth from Trinity, Cam- 
 bridge, the future Head Master of Harrow, Canon of West- 
 minster, and Bishop of Lincoln. The result was announced 
 on July 6th. Stanley and Vaughan were bracketed first. 
 ' I was proclaimed first in the Quadrangle as first in the 
 school, but our equality was announced in the Library,' 
 to which those elected to exhibitions were always sum- 
 moned in order to be presented to the trustees. 
 
 In a letter written to a friend during the leisure of the 
 holidays (July 22nd), he begs him not to be ' disappointed at 
 my being bracketed even with Vaughan,' and not to ' think 
 it affected in me to think and say that I could not possibly 
 have wished it better.' He assures him that there is in 
 the result ' all that is necessary to gratify my own indi- 
 vidual vanity, all to make me happy for Vaughan, to whom 
 I should not have grudged the first place, all to make 
 me happy for the school.' 
 
 On the same evening (July 6th) came the parting between 
 the great schoolmaster and the most devoted of his pupils. 
 The story is told minutely in the same letter. ' I went to 
 take leave of the Arnolds, with as heavy a heart as was
 
 CHAP. IV LEAVING RUGBY 
 
 17 
 
 compatible with the reh'cf of all being over and the joy of 
 so good a settlement. He was going out, so I saw him 
 only for a few minutes, but those few minutes were worth 
 much.' He describes the brief conversation, the look and 
 voice of his master, ' speaking in that low, choked voice 
 which you know. . . . After saying how sorry he was to 
 lose me : " God bless you, Stanley," he said, " here and 
 hereafter, and let me see you and hear from you as often 
 as you can." And then he called mc in again after I 
 had gone out, and again blessed me, and said that he 
 would give me letters to Oxford, one to his old pupil and 
 dear friend, W. K. Hamilton, and one to Roundell Palmer, 
 a very able man, he said, who had asked Arnold to intro- 
 duce to him any of those whom he thought highly of And 
 so we parted.' He goes on to lament the close ' of that con- 
 stant and delightful and blessed intercourse ' which he had 
 enjoyed ' with him for three years ' ; the close, too, of ' my 
 life at Rugby, the place where I have spent five happy 
 years, learned knowledge, human and divine, as probably 
 I shall never learn it again — the place, too, of my several 
 friendships, to last, I hope, none lessened by the coexistence 
 of the others, to the latest hour of my life — the place, too, 
 of so many little sorrows and some great ones for a time.* 
 Even yet the letter is not at an end. He adds a word 
 suggested by the reference to his ' several friendships,' and 
 begs his friend always to bear in mind that his ' failing is 
 not pride, but want of great depth of feeling, together with 
 rather a love for seeing various people. I go,' he adds, 
 'towards the end of August to Julius Hare, who, though 
 it was convenient when I was younger to express our rela- 
 tionship by " Uncle," is no more really so than you are.' 
 
 But much is still wanted to complete the portrait of 
 Arthur Stanley from 1830 to 1834. His Rugby letters are far 
 more than a chronicle of the successes or the failures of his
 
 78 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1830-34 
 
 school career. On every page they reveal the warmth of his 
 home affections, whether the exj)re.s.sion of his feelings is 
 elicited by a thought of the holidays, or by a letter to his 
 sister, or by the return of his brother Owen from sea, or by 
 the presence of Charlie at Rugb}\, or by the keenness of 
 his own self-reproaches. They form a confession — as 
 genuine as it is unreserved — of his inner character, his 
 simplicity, modesty, and generosity, his keen interest in 
 other boys, combined with his peculiar difficulty in making 
 friends, his indecision, his militant hero-worship, his un- 
 disguised detestation of the coarser sides of school-life, the 
 courage, and even combativeness, that underlay his shyness, 
 the chivalrous spirit which in after-life prompted him to 
 spring to the defence of anyone who was either dear to 
 himself, or seemed to be unjustly assailed. They illustrate 
 with an abundance of detail, which would be .sufficiently 
 remarkable if his time and his pen had been otherwise idle, 
 his literary tastes and mental habits, his veritable passion for 
 miscellaneous reading, his special enthusiasm for poetry and 
 history, the development of his critical faculties, his ready 
 command of the wealth of a well-stored memory, his 
 ventures in various fields of composition, and, as he grows 
 older, his widening interests, not merely in the historic past, 
 but in the social, political, and ecclesiastical questions of the 
 day. And, above all, they record the growing affection for 
 Arnold, which became the strongest influence of his Rugby 
 career, and rose from a schoolboy's awe to the height, as 
 he himself notices, not without a touch of momentary mis- 
 giving, of almost idolatrous veneration. 
 
 No evidence is needed by anyone, who reads the letters 
 of Arthur Stanley or his writings in later life, to see how 
 happy were the home influences under which he passed 
 his boyhood, or how keenly in advancing years he 
 cherished the memories that gathered ' beneath the roof
 
 GHAP. IV LOVE FOR HIS BROTHERS 79 
 
 of a country parsonage, still, after all the vicissitudes of a 
 chequered life, familiar, dear, and sacred, beyond any other 
 spot on the surface of the earth.' Nor does his love for 
 his sister Mary require any other monument than the 
 voluminous correspondence in which it is enshrined. But 
 some pleasant notices of the affectionate relations between 
 his two brothers and himself, and some evidences of the 
 striking contrasts between their characters and tastes, may 
 be gathered from the letters. 
 
 In 1830 his brother Owen returned, after an absence 
 of more than three years, in the Adventure from South 
 America. The effect on the whole family of the return of 
 the sailor son from his first long absence is one which gives 
 a characteristic picture of English household life ' sixty 
 years ago.' If the mother was thinking of the drawing 
 and Italian she would teach him on shore, if the youngest 
 sister, ' sitting on Sarah's bed, was first laughing then cry- 
 ing,' the young Rugby schoolboy fully shared the family 
 excitement. 'The Adveittwe,' — his letter to Mary on 
 October 17th begins with the name in huge letters— ' that 
 was the word that sprang up to my eyes, as clearly as if 
 it had been printed, or as I have written it.' ' I threw 
 down the paper,' he writes, ' after Adventure, Beagle, and 
 " Rio Janeiro," and ran up into my study to ruminate. I 
 pictured to myself the scream, the shout, the running 
 up and down, and Sarah, " not really, Miss Mary .' " and 
 Mademoiselle, " Est-il vraiment arrive?" and Emmy 
 (Owen's favourite cousin) coming down in such raptures. 
 . . . This first thought has swallowed up all the lean scraps 
 that I generally cook up to make a letter. Your first 
 letters were all moonshine, your next comets and meteors, 
 your last all sunshine ; ' and he adds a short note to 
 ' Emmy,' from her ' very glad cousin,' begging her ' to keep 
 Mai [his usual pet name for his sister Mary] from going
 
 8o LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1830-34 
 
 quite mad.' A fortnight later (October 3 ist) he writes again, 
 while his brother was still detained at Portsmouth : — 
 
 ' I must writ J to him, if it is only to draw us nearer to- 
 gether. ... I do feel so odd about it, very happy, but 
 there is such an indescribable feeling of .shyness, and when 
 I come to consider coolly how much I remember of him, 
 there is so very little. His voice I have not the least re- 
 collection of — his living, real, conversable face very little 
 also, and I think I always had an awe of him. . . .' 
 
 He can recall 
 
 ' little pieces of advice about school here and there, and 
 spinning yarns, and a little scolding. ... I must get 
 thoroughly acquainted with him in the holidays, that I 
 may not have such another blank to look back upon, or 
 the difficulty in writing letters to him which you know I 
 have now. How odd it will be having a young man in the 
 house always. I am sure I shall be making such civil 
 speeches to him and trying to entertain him.' 
 
 Within a few days comes a letter from Owen himself, 
 proposing to spend a day with him on his way to Alderley. 
 Soon the meeting takes place. He goes to Dunchurch and 
 back, a six miles' walk, after second lesson, to inquire about 
 the coaches. 
 
 'After dinner away I set off again to Dunchurch. Till 
 that day I had not been so painfully anxious for it [the 
 meeting], but now I was. I ran a good part of the way, 
 and reached Dunchurch just as " The Wonder " entered the 
 other end of the town . . . but away it went, rattle, rattle. 
 I was left with half an hour or an hour more to wait — a 
 gusty, rainy day in the dullest of towns, shewn up into a 
 room in the inn with windows looking the other way, and 
 two stout farmers on their way to Rugby horse-fair ; so I 
 went and walked up and down the streets. Another coach 
 goes rattling off without stopping. At last I heard a horn 
 and sound of wheels. The coach stopped at the Green 
 Man. Amidst the bustle, I saw one small figure which, 
 though it was not the least what I had expected, I was con- 
 vinced must be Owen. We met each other — what passed 
 I can scarcely say — we did not kiss — I said very little — we
 
 CHAP. IV LOVE FOR HIS BROTHERS 8 1 
 
 went into the Inn. The room was full of horse-traders, so we 
 marched out dow n one road in the rain, and then down 
 another, and oh ! how happy I was ! But you asked me for 
 a minute account of my feelings. They were really indescrib- 
 able — and I can scarcely say what I said or did. I thought 
 at first, as you did, that he was very much altered, chiefl}-, 
 I think, from my having tried to build up a face out of the 
 picture, which I don't think he is like ; then every no\\' 
 and then a look or word brought back, not the picture, but 
 Owen himself strongly to my remembrance. . . . We went 
 into the inn, where we found the room empty for us, when 
 Owen ordered dinner, of which I did not eat much ; and we 
 went on talking, and I got more and more at ease with him, 
 and longed for hours more, when at half-past five the sound 
 of the coach-wheels was heard at the door, and Owen got 
 in ; the coach rumbled away, and I was left pursuing m)- 
 dark and solitary journey along the starlit road (for they 
 were all reflected in the puddles) from Dunchurch to Rugb}-, 
 — and it was not till then I felt \\ov; very happy I had been. 
 It was just like a dream — and yet scarcely a pleasant 
 dream, for I brooded over it, thinking what I wished I had 
 said or done, and not said and not done, and when I got 
 back there was that loneliness which has always come upon 
 me after having seen any of you — in a more or less degree 
 since that miserable night at Seaforth.' 
 
 December 1830 was the last Christmas which the three 
 brothers spent together as boys. To those who remember 
 that, in less than twenty years, two of them, the eldest and 
 the youngest, were to be called away from posts of arduous 
 duty on the other side of the globe, and their graves to be 
 
 ' Severed far and wide 
 By mountain, stream, and sea,' 
 
 the following extract from their mother's letters to her sister 
 will have special interest : — 
 
 ' I was so amused the other day taking up the memo- 
 randum books of the two brothers — Owen's full of calcu- 
 lations, altitudes, astronomical axioms, &c. ; Arthur's, of 
 Greek idioms, Grecian history, parallels of different histo- 
 rical situations. Owen does Arthur a great deal of good b\- 
 being so much m.ore attentive and civil. It piques him to 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1830-34 
 
 be more alert. Charlie profits by the two brothers. Arthur 
 examines him in his Latin, and Charlie sits with his arm 
 round his neck, looking up with such profound deference in 
 his face for his exposition of V^irgil.' •' 
 
 The contrast was not confined to their note-books. No 
 two brothers could be more unlike than the two who met 
 for those Christmas holidays, and were to ' part ' so early 
 ' for manhood's race,' The one with every bodily sense 
 always on the alert — quick, ready, prompt, active in all 
 outdoor exercises ; having, in his mother's words, ' entire 
 command of his limbs, he is not in the least awkward, has 
 perfect self-possession — no shyness, and yet no forwardness.' 
 The other, still shy and taciturn in company, feeding 
 eagerly on some fresh field of literature, and as unready 
 with voice or hand as he was ever ready with the pen. xAnd 
 the contrast was one which was possibly heightened and 
 intensified by daily intercourse. It left its mark on the 
 sensitive conscience of the young student. 
 
 Two small sheets of paper, dated January 17th, 1 83 1, 
 contain a record of a searching self-examination carried 
 out in these Christmas holidays. He taxes himself with ' bad 
 temper, and with being sulky and unaccommodating,' and 
 with ' being indecisive — very — which makes me unhappy 
 often.' He writes of the ' agony of deciding between two 
 things, even small things, which I remember feeling for a 
 long time.' He speaks even of his ' love of reading ' with 
 some distrust : ' it varies so much ; at present, much taken 
 up with History and Antiquities ; at times discouraged by 
 the quantity I have forgotten — the immensity I want to 
 read.' He feels afraid of his ' being blunted to fine ideas 
 and fine scenery'; he shrinks from the 'cold water' that 
 school so far seems to him ' to throw on all that is bright 
 and good in affections, imagination, and everything else. 
 ' Mrs. Stanley to Mrs. Augustus Hare.
 
 CHAP. IV SELF-REPROACHES ^t^ 
 
 I cannot help thinking that I don't care so much for them 
 as I did.' 
 
 On his return to school, he confessed to his sister his 
 having been made miserable all the way back by not 
 having been as happy in the holidays as he ought to have 
 been, and his ' not wondering if she felt cross or vexed ' — 
 ' when I think how unaccountably foolish I was ' — and at 
 last he fully unbosoms himself (June 19th) : — 
 
 ' I have made good resolutions for these holidays. I 
 hope I may keep them, and fill up some of the blank 
 Owen must have left, who, as poor Catherine observed in 
 floods of tears, " could be grave and like a grown-up person 
 with old people, and play like a little child with little chil- 
 dren." Last holidays I wanted that sort of disposition. I 
 had that half-year first begun for good an intense pursuit 
 after history, &c., and I was thoroughly wrapped up in it, 
 so that the consequence was, that when I came home full 
 of it, I was thrown out of my regular course. ... I got out 
 of humour with myself and everybody else . . . and in 
 short I was anything but happy. This half-year I began 
 in the usual way of fagging, and indeed have gone on most 
 part of it ; but gradually as I went on became more and 
 more conscious of what I have just told you — that it in- 
 sulated me and made me sulky. This perception of the 
 case I think I owe a little to one of the characters in 
 Mitford's " History of Greece," which struck me very much 
 with the evil of putting oneself alone in that way. Of course 
 I don't mean that I shall become thoroughly idle — indeed, 
 it would be impossible for me now, I think — but to fag 
 with circumspection and make myself more agreeable and 
 conversationable. I should not have given you all this 
 long talk, but I have just come out from one of Dr. Arnold's 
 beautiful sermons, given in his emphatic manner, which was 
 so particularly applicable in some parts to my case. Now, 
 my dearest Mai, with dear love to all, 
 
 ' Your very affectionate brother, 
 
 ' A. P. S.' 
 
 His younger brother, 'Charlie,' joined him at Rugby in 
 February 1832. ' Young Stanley's ' advent was anticipated
 
 84 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1830 34 
 
 with some brotherly misgivings. Mindful of his oww frill 
 days, he says, 
 
 ' Of course you are prepared to have him in collars 
 before he comes here. I think it would serve you right if 
 I were to revenge myself by insisting on having coat-tails, 
 to be more dignified as " old Stanley." ' 
 
 The relations between the two brothers at Rugby arc 
 of the tendercst, and at the same time of the most charac- 
 teristic, description. Arthur Stanley describes, with his 
 usual minuteness, the long coach journey which brought 
 them to Rugby in 1832. ' Charley at .starting very happy : 
 she [the young sister Catherine] not crying when we kissed 
 her, but I think crying bitterly when I turned round to 
 look afterwards.' He adds full particulars of his taking 
 Charley to be examined in Homer and Virgil in the school- 
 house study, and of ' the Doctor' being obliged to confess 
 that ' my Homer has travelled about with me so much 
 that it has no Book I. left ; will you please get one for me? ' 
 The letters which follow are full of Charley, who, after a day 
 or two of ' bewilderment,' and one or two amusing new- 
 boy blunders, is ' as happy as can be ' ; ' holds a fair place 
 in his form ' ; is ' quite petted amongst the boys, so that 
 it is evident that there is no very general ill-will towards 
 old Stanley ' ; is declared by his mathematical tutor (Mr. 
 Bonamy Price) to be ' a much better mathematician than 
 his brother ' ; sleeps in his brother's room ; and, though 
 he has a share in another study, sits mostly in ' old 
 Stanley's ' ; ' takes his turn in sweeping it with the other 
 fags, and does it very well, only he is rather too long ' for 
 the eager student. ' When I am busy, I sit as if nobody 
 was in the study, except that, now and then, by signs and 
 monosyllables, I order my little slave to snuff the candles, 
 give me a book, or look out a word, which he performs 
 very obediently.'
 
 CHAP. IV CHARLES STANLEY AT RUGBY 85 
 
 ' In short nothing could be more harmonious and happy 
 than we arc ; the uncomfortable feeling ' (with which he had 
 looked forward to their joint life at Rugby) ' wears off, and 
 I feel more united to him than ever I did. We indulge 
 ourselves with "Charley" and "Arthur" in private, and 
 behave orthodoxly in public (calling out " old Stanley " 
 and " young Stanley ") ; but I did not execute your com- 
 mission of giving many kisses to Charley.' 
 
 The elder brother watches over the younger with 
 tender solicitude. ' Charley ' is laid up with measles, and 
 Arthur furnishes him with ' The Abbot ' to beguile him ; or 
 again, ' poor little Charley has got wet and had a touch of 
 rheumatism, but is getting better. I have given him " Kenil- 
 worth," choosing it as having been read by Catherine.' 
 Soon he sends word to Catherine that he is making ' Charley 
 learn some " Marmion " to say by heart to get him up in 
 his form, which saying any lines out of regular work does. 
 He has been learning the last part, about the battle ; and 
 he says them to me in bed (at night — not in the morning), 
 and I guess all the right words when he says them wrong.' 
 The studious brother thinks this the best way of ' giving him 
 something to do, as a check to his idleness.' He makes 
 the acquaintance of a new master, Mr. Grenfell, and 
 takes care to note that he said, ' without my asking, that 
 Charley was a good mathematician.' He leaves space 
 for a delightful schoolboy letter from Charley to Catherine, 
 with a full account of two white mice which ' I and Corbet ' 
 are keeping, and which ' run up and down my arm, and do 
 not try to get away ' ; and of his having ' seen a man with 
 coat and waistcoat off walking backwards as hard as he 
 could, and found that he was to walk six miles an hour — 
 half of it backwards — which he did in fifty-nine minutes.' 
 The handwriting, the matter, the very spelling of the letter, 
 with its final story ' of the strange little mouse — the colour 
 of a dormouse, only much smaller, and it had no fur on
 
 86 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1830-34 
 
 its tail, and a longer nose, . . . and it ran up [my sleeve 
 and down my back, and I was obliged to undress to get 
 it out ' — has a charm of its own, as well as from the 
 contrast in every line to the style of the other half of the 
 sheet. 
 
 He ends another letter with, ' I shall make Charley 
 write next time. He wants practice, and I want time.' The 
 result is a boyish letter from Charley. There is not a 
 word on an}' literary subject, just a passing hint that he 
 has been ' examined, but not got a prize ' ; and all the 
 rest is taken up with the nearness of the holidaj-s — 
 ' only a fortnight ! ' — with a description of a wild-beast 
 show, and a full account of the dress of the monkeys 
 — ' one like a little bo)', the other like an old woman 
 in a red gown and white apron ' ; with a picture of a 
 Rugby horse-fair — ' all the town full of horses ' ; news of 
 the death of the white mice ; impatience to see ' our ne\\' 
 ponies ' ; hopes for a ' good hard frost for skating,' and 
 the ' good fun of football, now it is so cold.' It gives a 
 glimpse into an innocent schoolboy world of which, and of 
 much that lay behind it, the elder brother knew but little. 
 
 Incidentally the letters already quoted have revealed 
 many points in Arthur Stanley's character. But other 
 traits are also illustrated in these simple confessions of his 
 inner feelings. 
 
 He lived his own life at Rugby so entirely that he 
 might be supposed to have lacked sympathy with his 
 schoolfellows. Such was not the case. His letters are 
 filled, for instance, with careful accounts of his Cheshire 
 proteges. Of one little fellow especially, a future Admiral, 
 he reports that he is ' doing famously,' in spite of coming 
 in ' plaid check waistcoat and trousers, which make him 
 too conspicuous, as it is always unlucky for a newcomer 
 to have an)- peculiarity of dress or appearance, as he may
 
 CHAP. IV HIS FRIENDS AT RUGBY 87 
 
 get a nickname which sticks to him long after the thing 
 itself is gone away.' 
 
 There are already the germs of that abounding interest 
 in those younger than himself which marked the man, and 
 which attracted boys and young men so irresistibly to his 
 side that they forgot, as he forgot, the disparity of years 
 in the freshness of his sympathies. 
 
 It was no lack of interest in others which left him for 
 some time without a chosen companion, and narrowed the 
 circle of his intimate friends. Rather it was the constraint 
 and reserve, which have been already noticed, that led to his 
 comparative isolation. He speaks in 1832 of his plan for 
 ' an Ecclesiastical Tour,' but confesses that ' it is difficult to 
 find companions who will take long walks and see churches 
 at the end.' The difficulty did not last long. It was about 
 this time (1832) that his friendly acquaintance with C. J. 
 Vaughan (now Dean of Llandaff and Master of the 
 Temple), and W. C. Lake (now Dean of Durham), began 
 to take the form of a close, and almost exclusive, com- 
 panionship, and to ripen, not least with the former, the 
 future husband of his ' dear little Catherine,' into a lifelong 
 friendship. In June 1832 begins the series of letters to 
 C. J. Vaughan, the friend who did so much to teach him 
 his first lesson in the difficult task of attaching himself 
 ' deeply or long to anyone outside of my own family.' 
 Many friends, who in later times prized the affection borne 
 them by Arthur Stanley as among their most precious 
 recollections, have to thank the little group of Rugby boys 
 who first opened those inexhaustible springs of friendship, 
 that thus far had been sealed, and were henceforth to 
 flow in such increasing volume. 
 
 When once the barriers of constraint were broken down, 
 the confidence was unreserved, and the affection expressed 
 with all the warmth of Arthur Stanley's tender eagerness.
 
 88 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 183034 
 
 The following letter was written in his last half-year 
 at Rugby to C. J. Vaughan, the friend whom in the last 
 hours of consciousness he named as the most fitted to 
 preach in Westminster Abbey on the Sunday after he 
 had passed away. ' He has known me longest.' 
 
 ' If I have been of any use to you, I am most thankful 
 for it ; will you believe me also when I thank you for all 
 the good you have been to me ? I hope you will not find 
 that you have been leaning on a broken reed in trusting to 
 me. Surely — I speak it out of the abundance of the simple 
 truth — you must have seen over and over again, and the 
 more, I should think, as compared with yourself, my extra- 
 ordinary want of energy and real strength of character. 
 For this I assure you I do look up to you most entirely. . . . 
 I have never ventured, much as I have wished, to speak to 
 you of your father. I should very much like to see the 
 sermons you speak of — and now that I have lost my poor 
 uncle,* who was a father to me in the few times I saw him, 
 and would have been much more to me when I should have 
 known- him better, I feel that we have something in 
 common.' 
 
 In this letter Stanley speaks of his 'want of energy and 
 real strength of character.' His indecision was, as we have 
 seen, another source of self-reproach. ' I am now,' he writes 
 in November 1833, ' in one of my most dreadful states of 
 indecision,' ' perfectly miserable,' ' exactly equipoised, and 
 consequently wretched.' To the end of his life, he would 
 say that he was liable to fits of indecision which made him 
 ' unfit for any post of command.' Yet on occasions he could 
 act with a firmness that showed the reserve of courage, and 
 even of combativeness, which underlay the apparent shyness 
 and timidity. A .serious disturbance was caused at Rugby 
 by the arrest of one or two boys, who had taken part in a 
 
 ■* Augustus Hare died February i8th, 1834.
 
 CHAP. IV HIS COURAGE AND COMBATIVENESS 89 
 
 fishing expedition to a part of the Avon which had been 
 recently closed to the school. ' The school,' he says, ' was 
 on the eve of a rebellion ; many of the sixth quavered in 
 their allegiance. There was, however, a party firmly and 
 deliberately opposed to the whole affair — I was one.' In 
 conjunction with Vaughan and Lake and a few others, he 
 acted with a decision which averted the danger, and he 
 characteristically adds to his minute and picturesque story 
 the statement that, ' for myself, I rather enjoyed the excite- 
 ment' 
 
 His courage easily passed into combativeness where 
 his affections were engaged. It is worth while to record 
 the strong language which he uses on behalf of a friend 
 Avho is fully able to protect himself He shrank from the 
 prospect of going to Oxford, partly because of the hostility 
 with which Arnold was regarded by many of the leading 
 men in the University. He is speaking of his intention 
 to try for the Balliol Scholarship. 
 
 ' I still doubt ; I hope my visit will be satisfactory, as, 
 if my present aversion to Oxford is not lessened, I don't 
 know what will be the end of it. I am afraid it will come 
 hard on me after Rugby ... I shall have to go from a 
 place which I love with more than ordinary affection to a 
 place which I hate with more than ordinary hatred. . . . 
 
 has told me that that party seriously think, or at 
 
 least are anxious to get him [Arnold] turned out of the 
 Church, and to thwart his influence in every way they can.' 
 
 The Rugby letters are more than a chronicle of school- 
 life, a record of home affections, and a confession of inner 
 feelings. They illustrate in varied details his literary 
 tastes and his insatiable avidity for knowledge. Now he 
 has
 
 90 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1830-34 
 
 'taken to read Milton all through again, partly because 
 I am afraid of disliking poetry through misuse ; partly 
 because I have so much forgotten it, and that I want to 
 see how I like it ; partly because it is useful for school-work 
 for the reference to history, &c., in the similes and for the 
 comparison of it with the old writers.' 
 
 Now he is feeding on 'Sintram'; now reading the eight 
 volumes of Mitford's Greece, and noticing with malicious 
 amusement the mistakes, ' I mean such as calling the same 
 man different names, making men alive and in different 
 places, when they were dead and in one place ' ; now * dis- 
 appointed with Sir W. Gell's ' Itinerary,' because it is 'a 
 mere road-book of modern Greece.' At another time he is 
 delighted with Whately's Historic Doubts, or devouring 
 Gibbon's Decline and Fall or Walton's Lives, or ' read- 
 ing steadily through (that is, skipping in my usual way) 
 Boswell's Johnson,' or ' reading in my superficial way 
 Southey's Colloquies.* Nor did he read uncritically. He 
 formed his own opinions on books and authors. He re- 
 commends Byron to his brother Owen for his descriptions of 
 Greece, but admits that the poetry reminds him 'of over- 
 ripe fruit.' Or, again, he advises a friend to read Keble's 
 Christian Year ' as midway between Wordsworth and the 
 more usual type of poets, and between sacred poetry and 
 secular poetry.' 
 
 And the knowledge which he gathered was always avail- 
 able for allusions and other purposes. If he writes on 
 St. Valentine's Day, he remembers that the first earthquake 
 in London was on St. Valentine's Eve, 1 247 ; or that ' one 
 of the most unfortunate of marriages, that of the Queen of 
 Hearts (James the First's daughter) and the Count Palatine, 
 took place on St. Valentine's Day.' He recognises a false 
 reference in his father's article on ' The Port of Venasque,'''' 
 and writes to say that the line quoted from Spenser is 
 
 ^ B/ack'iVOOifs Magazine, April 1 830,
 
 CHAP. IV HIS LITERARY AND HISTORICAL TASTES 91 
 
 really from Chaucer, a striking proof of the curious reading 
 of a boy of fourteen. 
 
 In the midst of school work, prize competitions, and 
 correspondence, he is fascinated by a legend of King Harold 
 surviving the battle of Hastings, and dying an anchorite, 
 blind of one eye, in the Abbey of St. John at Chester. At 
 home he traces the topography of the story ; at school he 
 tracks the tradition to its earliest authorities, and composes 
 a ballad on the legend, which he sends from Rugby to his 
 sister. Eager in his search for monuments of the past, 
 he visits the churches and houses near Rugby, walking, 
 for instance, seven and a half miles there and back, to 
 Combe Abbey, because the ancestor of Lord Craven had 
 married James I.'s daughter, the Queen of Bohemia, and 
 ' consequently, the house is filled with pictures of her and 
 all her family, among which I felt quite as if I was among 
 old friends, as a good many are the originals of Lodge's 
 portraits.' 
 
 Such references to his literary tastes, and poetical or 
 historical enthusiasms, abound. Nor were his interests con- 
 fined to creations of the imagination or memories of the past. 
 Questions of the day, whether political, social, religious, or 
 ecclesiastical, occupied an increasing measure of his atten- 
 tion. 
 
 At first, indeed, politics intruded but little into his 
 world of thought. If the ferment of the Reform Bill agita- 
 tion reached him in his study, it did not check his thirst for 
 readincr. If he ' dreamed of the Reform Bill,' the dream 
 ' was ridiculously mixed up with Homer and Latin verses.' 
 Yet he repudiates the idea that he was entirely uninterested 
 in political questions. 
 
 ' It was too bad of you to think I did not know what can- 
 vassing is. Though I am not a great politician, it alwa}'s 
 puts me in a great ferment to hear politics talked, espcciall}^
 
 92 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1830-34 
 
 by a violent adversary to my {i.e. our) opinions (for all 
 boys of course follow their fathers* politics) ; but I think 
 that in this Reform Bill there are more for it than against 
 it, so I am much better off than in the Catholic Question, 
 when there were so few on my side.' 
 
 He reads the newspapers diligently, and will be ' glad 
 if Mamma will fill a letter with political knowledge,' as his 
 newspaper ' perhaps perverts things.' But he admits his own 
 political impartiality. ' The bitterness of Whigs and Tories 
 seems,' he says, ' to increase daily. It seems to me a sort of 
 Scylla and Charybdis.' The establishment of the ' Rugby 
 Debating Society ' compelled him to take sides, and he 
 joins the ' small but growing Whig minority.' He was 
 elected President, to his great surprise — ' a new argument 
 against the ballot, you may think!' His first speeches 
 were not entirely successful. Of one debate he writes : — 
 
 ' I spoke against the taxation ' (of American colonists) 
 ' of course, but soon got quite confused, and ended by 
 being swamped in the waves of the Atlantic' 
 
 ' I found,' he says of another debate, ' that I got on very 
 well while I stated facts or abused my adversaries ; but the 
 moment that I said an}'thing out of the common way, ap- 
 proaching to a metaphor or fine speech, I felt directly that 
 I was making myself ridiculous.' 
 
 As his career at Rugby drew to its close other subjects 
 besides politics disputed the exclusive supremacy of history, 
 poetry, and antiquities. He discusses at length such ques- 
 tions as the perpetual obligation of the Sabbath, the 
 prospects of the Church of England, ' the Oxford Tracts,' 
 the evils of transportation, the dangers and drawbacks of 
 public school-life at Rugby, Eton, and Harrow. He anti- 
 cipates the judgment of older men in his language on 
 transportation : — 
 
 ' Consider,' he says to his friend, ' the enormous evil we 
 inflict on New Holland, for instance, by .sending it a popu-
 
 CHAP. IV INTEREST IN THEOLOGY 93 
 
 lation of the greatest rogues in England, who do not get 
 better, but worse ; the evil being greater all the while in 
 that this population is Christian, and therefore — as nothing 
 is so worthless as salt that has lost its savour — how can 
 Christianity ever take root in a place where she must 
 have such just prejudices to encounter ? ' 
 
 It is remarkable to see a schoolboy of barely eighteen 
 writing as he does, more than fifty years ago, to a friend 
 of his own age (C. J. Vaughan) on the difficulties of the 
 Mosaic cosmogony. 
 
 ' It seems far more Scriptural to suppose that the whole 
 account of the six days is an allegory, or whatever is the 
 name for it, to impress more vividly on people's minds, in 
 that early time in which Gen. i. i-ii. 3 was written, the 
 great practical truth that the world was created and not 
 self-existent — this, I say, seems to me more Scriptural than 
 to suppose that there was an actual revelation made to 
 man, not on any practical, not on any even theoretically 
 religious subject, but merely on geology. I don't know 
 how the geology of the case is. If, however (which I don't 
 deny may be the case), it is clear from scientific induction 
 that there were six periods, in which were creatures corre- 
 sponding to those mentioned in Genesis, then I can only 
 say that it is an exception to the general rule (of revelation). 
 . . . Arnold has never, to my knowledge, directly expressed 
 himself one way or the other.' 
 
 So in the next letter he adds : — 
 
 ' If, however, it is proved either that plants and animals 
 were really created in the order there mentioned, or that 
 that order is inseparably connected with the fact of the 
 seven days, I am perfectly willing to allow that this is an 
 exception to the general rule. ... As for the exact degree 
 of inspiration in the Old Testament, I don't suppose it can 
 ever be settled to everyone's mind, because the exact 
 meaning of dsoirvsvaros can never be settled. Happily it 
 is of no importance whether the sun or moon were made 
 first.' 
 
 To another friend, who hesitated what profession to 
 adopt, he writes in 1834 : —
 
 94 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1830-34 
 
 ' As to the Church, I am, on the whole, well satisfied 
 with it for myself ; though it seems to me that the pleasure 
 of it may be modified in infinite degrees by the situation 
 and nature of your living. One thing before deciding on 
 it I would certainly advise, and that is to make sure of 
 believing all the Articles, and if you do not believe them 
 all to the letter, to read one of those books, which I suppose 
 exist, to explain better than I can how far they can still be 
 conscientiously subscribed. I almost dread touching on the 
 subject, because I am so afraid of prejudicing either myself 
 or other people about it ; however, I believe I am myself 
 very sound as to the Articles, so yon need not be afraid.' 
 
 Shortly before this last letter he had himself 
 
 ' read through for the first time the Thirty-nine Articles, 
 and though I think I could conscientiously sign them 
 myself, I could never think the worse, but the better, 
 of one who would not sign such as the third, the end of the 
 sixth, the eighth, the twenty-first, the thirty-fifth, and the 
 end of the twenty-eighth.' 
 
 On these, and all other, questions his mind was more 
 and more coloured by the influence of Dr. Arnold. The 
 growing veneration of the pupil for his master becomes 
 the most striking, enduring, and important feature of 
 Stanley's career at Rugby. Early in 1832 he wrote the 
 following letter to his old master at Seaforth : — 
 
 ' I am now, as you may have heard, in the sixth, i.e. the 
 head form of the school, and constantly under Dr. Arnold. 
 I don't know whether you have heard much of him, or 
 whether you have heard or conceived bad opinions of 
 him — all I can say is, that he is to my mind the most 
 powerful-minded man I have ever had to do with — and I 
 may say also, I think, one of the best. It is possible you 
 may have heard him abused in every way — he has been 
 branded with the names of Sabbath-breaker and infidel — 
 but seeing so much of him as I do, I may safely say that he 
 is as thorough a Christian as you can anywhere find. His 
 sermons are certainly the most beautiful I ever heard, and 
 rendered doubly impressive by his delivery. He has pub- 
 lished two volumes of them — and almost all those in the last
 
 CHAP. IV INFLUENCE OF DR. ARNOLD 95 
 
 volume I have heard.'' He has reformed the school in every 
 possible way — introducing history, mathematics, modern 
 languages, examinations, prizes, &c., &c. — and altered all 
 the rest so much as to make it quite a new thing. The 
 information I get from being in his form is quite won- 
 derful. I am afraid you would not find many in the school 
 to give him as good a character as this — as perhaps he has 
 got a little more than the usual odium attached to a public 
 school head master — but I think there are few who would 
 question his talents or his sermons. I am, as you may 
 perceive, thoroughly prejudiced in his favour. The common 
 report now is that he will be a bishop. I hope it will not 
 be before my departure. Of course the advantage which 
 one is to get depends chiefly on oneself — -but it is hardly 
 possible for anyone in the school to be so ignorant as they 
 might have been before Dr. Arnold's time. . . .' 
 
 His worship of his Head Master gathers strength. He 
 thinks that Dr. Arnold's arguments on the Catholic Question 
 are incontrovertible. He notices with delight Niebuhr's 
 reference to Dr. Arnold in his Roman History. He records 
 VVhately's opinion, that he had ' known many cleverer 
 men, but none who grew so fast.' He observes that 
 among the few books at Eaton Hall was a copy of Arnold's 
 * Sermons.' He transcribes verbatim a sentence from 
 the very striking sermon which the Head Master had 
 preached in the autumn of 1832 on Christian Friendship." 
 It is that in which, after speaking of the Roman Chris- 
 tians as having looked on St. Paul with suspicion because 
 he had preached boldly the indifference of outward things, 
 such as circumcision or holy days, or meat and drink, he 
 added: 'The blessed Apostle Paul, whose name is now 
 beloved from one end of the Christian Church to the other, 
 was esteemed by the Christians at Rome a latitudinarian 
 and a heretic' To this his pupil adds the words — writing, 
 
 * The second volume of Arnold's Sermons was published at the close of 
 1831. 
 
 ' Sermons, Vol. III. xxvii.
 
 96 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1830-3+ 
 
 it will be remembered, before the storm had burst which 
 followed the publication, early in 1833, of the famous pam- 
 phlet on Church Reform : ' His indiijnant tone quite made 
 me start, besides that the application seemed to me so 
 obvious, that he himself, who is esteemed by the Chris- 
 tians at Rugby and Oxford a latitudinarian and heretic, 
 will, in future time, have his name beloved from one end 
 of the Christian Church to the other.' 
 
 As yet, indeed, his schoolboy awe of the Head Master 
 — he was barely seventeen — prevented him from feeling at 
 his ease in Dr. Arnold's presence. He will convey his 
 parents' invitation to Dr. and Mrs. Arnold to come to 
 Alderley (November 1832), 
 
 ' though I don't think they will come, and, on the whole, 
 for myself at least, I had rather they would come after I am 
 gone from here ; because, though I do like him very much, 
 yet I stand in such exceeding awe of him, that I don't 
 think I could ever have a perfectly comfortable talk with 
 him till our relations as schoolmaster and schoolboy are 
 snapped asunder. I can hardly help laughing every time I 
 open " Boswell's Johnson " to see how very like my feeling 
 towards him is to Boswell's towards Johnson.' 
 
 Gradually this sense of awe is lost in other feelings. 
 ' Tell me,' he writes to Vaughan, who was staying with the 
 Arnolds at the Lakes in January 1833, 'all the news, moral, 
 intellectual, &c., about my great idol that you think yourself 
 entitled to disclose.' He reads the famous pamphlet on 
 Church Reform as soon as it appears, and likes it ' very 
 much ' ; — 
 
 ' Almost everyone that I have heard speak of it says, as 
 you do, that it is "beautiful but impracticable." But then 
 Arnold would say that it is foolish to sit down in despair — • 
 see the end of his Preface to his second volume of Sermons. 
 It is the same complaint I have more than once heard 
 of his Sermons, that they hold up too high a standard of 
 duty.'
 
 CHAP. IV INFLUENCE OF DR. ARNOLD 97 
 
 He is eager to know what is thought of the pamphlet, 
 and indignant at the tone in which it was criticised. ' Have 
 you heard,' he asks an Oxford friend, ' much about Keble, 
 w^hether he is very angry with Arnold for the pamphlet ? ' 
 He has read carefully Mr. William Palmer's answer to 
 Arnold, and discusses it at length, pointing out the only 
 pages in which he thinks the objections are of weight. 
 
 ' All the texts,' he says, ' I have not looked out yet ; but 
 some of them seem grossly misapplied. When Mr. Palmer 
 applauds our fathers of the seventeenth century, does he 
 remember, what I believe was the fact, that on one point 
 (that of the observance of Sunday) the orthodox of that day 
 were the ultra-latitudinarians of this ; the dissenters of that 
 day, the orthodox of this ? ' 
 
 In his eagerness for the Head Master's reputation, he 
 expresses his horror of a reported denunciation of his hero 
 from the University pulpit. 
 
 ' Pray,' he asks, ' who was the preacher ? It fills up the 
 catalogue of Oxford enormities. I really rejoice more and 
 more that I am not coming up next term, as perhaps the 
 storm will be in some measure blown over by the time I 
 come. As it is, of course I shall be a perfect heretic' 
 
 Revolted by what he has heard of a too prevalent side 
 of undergraduate life and conversation, he breaks out with 
 unusual vehemence : 
 
 * Monstrous, that these men should have the amazing in- 
 consistency to attack a man because he is not made after 
 their notion of orthodoxy, or dare to pretend that they care 
 a straw for the Church of God. ... I have read Arnold's 
 pamphlet over again, and, whereas, before, I was startled at 
 many places, I do now, with very few exceptions, agree 
 with it entirely. However, I suppose I must keep my 
 thoughts to myself at Oxford. I am afraid that I have 
 quite a bad prejudice against orthodoxy — except, to be 
 sure, that it is somewhat hard to say wherein it consists." 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1830 34 
 
 A reported expression of ' ]\Ir. Ne\\-man, who once knew 
 him well, and is a very able and good man,' is ' for that 
 reason doubly painful,' and is referred to repeatedly. An- 
 other leading member of the University is said to 
 
 'have compared him to Cobbett for the force of his 
 language and the mischief that he does. . . . He has been 
 denounced in the pulpit as "a political and literary quack, 
 who has gained far more reputation than he can possibly 
 deserve," while Mr. Froode (I don't know the spelling) 
 really does consider him " as a sort of special agent of the 
 devil to deceive men by his apparent goodness." I think 
 this last is the most reasonable supposition of any, as I do 
 not see how they can otherwise reconcile all his infidel and 
 abominable principles with the goodness of his writings 
 and his practice.' 
 
 His enthusiastic veneration for Dr. Arnold, and his 
 eagerness to rush to his defence, are alike characteristic 
 of Arthur Stanley. At one moment he fears that the 
 Head Master will become a Bishop, and he prays that all 
 the Bishops maybe kept alive. At another time he dreads 
 lest the Doctor may be hounded from the school by the 
 opposition of one or two of the older masters, or by the 
 strong political feeling of the county gentry, or by the de- 
 nunciations of many of the clergy at Oxford ; but he com- 
 forts himself with the thought that ' the trustees will keep 
 him at all ri.sks.' Rugby without Arnold is a ' terrible 
 possibility,' ' the worst thing that could happen to me here,' 
 ' a world without a sun.' He feels that he owes everything 
 to his teacher. He reads Shelley's ' Queen Mab,' ' the first 
 professedly infidel book I ever read ; it made me only more 
 o-lad to think that I had fallen in with Arnold.' He says 
 that he answered most of his questions in the Balliol 
 scholarship ' from Arnold's mouth, so our boys have only to 
 pay decent attention, and his teaching will do the business 
 for them.' He breaks out with —
 
 CHAP. IV INFLUENCE OF DR. ARNOLD 99 
 
 ' What a wonderful influence that man has had on my 
 mind ! I certainly feel that I have hardly a free will of 
 my own on any subject about which he has written or 
 spoken. It is, I suppose, a weak and unnatural state to 
 be in, for I do not at all consider myself to be naturally of 
 the same frame as he is.' 
 
 It was above all in the chapel of Rugby School that 
 Dr. Arnold obtained so great an influence over his pupil. 
 It was Stanley's weekly practice to write down all that he 
 could remember of his master's sermons. 
 
 * . . . Whatever happens in the week to diminish my respect 
 for him, it always comes again on the Sunday, when I hear 
 him preaching.' 
 
 He speaks with the utmost enthusiasm of the ' striking 
 thoughts,' or ' beautiful language,' or impressive delivery, of 
 the sermons. Of one, which he heard in the last half-year 
 of his stay at Rugby, he says : 
 
 ' I cannot describe it to you, but I never heard or 
 saw anything which gave me so strongly the idea of inspira- 
 tion, or of the effect which truth in the mouth of a man 
 of uncommon excellence and wisdom ought to produce, than 
 this, made yet more striking by the breathless silence from 
 one end of the chapel to the other. I have made a reso- 
 lution that I will, if I possibly can, be here every Easter 
 Sunday till he goes.' 
 
 In the summer of 1833 the Arnolds paid their visit 
 to Alderley, Stanley travelling with them from Rugby. 
 
 'The journey surpassed my utmost hopes. We set off 
 at seven o'clock ; he and I outside, which situation we pre- 
 served all the way except two stages, when Miss Robertson 
 came out instead of him. I certainly could hardly credit 
 my senses that I had him actually there ; it certainly was a 
 most total change from the exalted state in which he has 
 appeared to my eyes for the week before — such childlike 
 joy and simplicity. . . . He talked of his talk with Cole- 
 ridge the other night, about chivalry, geology, and phreno- 
 logy; and Queen Caroline and mobs, and Niebuhr and
 
 lOO LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1830-34 
 
 Thucydides, and triremes, and genealogies and races, &c. 
 &c. . . . Arnold was rather shy and tired at night (at 
 Alderley) ; indeed he fell asleep more than once outside 
 as we were coining, which completed the extraordinary 
 metamorphosis from the Head Master of Rugby in his 
 full pontifical robes and exalted dignity to something so 
 very familiar ; but in the morning he spoke of his prin- 
 ciples (in his pamphlet) quite like himself on Sundays. . . . 
 I was rather alarmed, for the carriages were at the door, 
 and the children packed in, and all on the point of setting 
 out, and not one word of my going to the Lakes, when he 
 at the last moment gave me the fullest invitation to come 
 whenever I liked. I cannot go till towards the end of 
 the holidays, when I certainly shall. I hope to goodness I 
 shall be the only one there — but I hardly dare look on to 
 anvthing so purely delightful without some take-off' 
 
 His letters during the long-hoped-for visit to Dr. Arnold 
 at Allan Bank are full, partly of striking descriptions of 
 scenery, — of scenery described for its own sake, and entirel}' 
 unconnected with any historical associations, — partly of 
 Boswellian accounts of Arnold's conversation on various 
 topics, from the House of Lords, animal magnetism, the 
 effect of Reform on the House of Commons, America, 
 Republicanism, female succession to the Crown, the Apo- 
 calypse, to paper currency and Royal marriage laws. But 
 nothing beyond his account, written to Mary in August 
 1833, of Wordsworth as seen at his own home and at Allan 
 Bank, need be quoted here : 
 
 ' In the afternoon with Dr. Arnold to R}'dal Mount. 
 Wordsworth had come back on Friday. . . . He is an old 
 man with silver-grey hair, and rather untidily dressed. I 
 don't think there is anything peculiar in his face except 
 perhaps a great mildness. He went with us to give his 
 opinion on Fox How. He recommended for planting, 
 oaks, birches and Spanish chestnuts — where there had been 
 any trees before naturally — objected to a smooth-shaven 
 ]awn — asked after Julius and Augustus Hare, saying that 
 they were very great friends of his. Wc then went home 
 by " Moderate Reform " and so by the Wishing Gate, where
 
 CHAP. IV INFLUENCE OF DR. ARNOLD loi 
 
 it is said that everyone may wish and have what he wishes. 
 It looks over into a beautiful view of the mountains round 
 Grasmere. It was quite touching to see Dr. Arnold leaning 
 over it, with such an evident yearning love and affection to 
 the mountains for the last time of his summer stay. As 
 we went on, he said, " I know that there is both moral and 
 physical evil here ; but it is a great comfort of this country 
 that there is less here than elsewhere." ' 
 
 ' We had for dinner the Wordsworths, Pasleys and 
 Fletchers. Wordsworth, they said, was quite himself, for of 
 late he has been in a very gloomy mood. Unfortunately 
 the conversation did not turn on anything in which he could 
 talk advantageously, but he was very merry and laughed 
 heartily. He told a story of a man having got up a speech 
 all ready for him, and discharging it on his brother-in-law 
 instead — who is a plain farmer — and not being able to 
 reload again in time for him, when he found the mistake. 
 He was telling a story about a man on a precipice, when 
 suddenly Sir T. Pasley broke out with the " Mauvais Pas," 
 not knowing who had written it. . . . When we came 
 out, to our — at least to my — horror, there had taken place 
 a vast inundation of a large travelling party, who had been 
 expected for some time, but of whom we had given up all 
 thoughts. This was a regular spoiling of the whole party, 
 — the father of the family took hold of Wordsworth, and I 
 saw no more of him for the rest of the evening.' 
 
 In a letter written about the same time to W. A. Green- 
 hill, he adds one or two touches to his descriptions of the 
 most conspicuous of Arnold's neighbours. He speaks of 
 Captain Hamilton as ' lame from a wound at Albuera,' and 
 of Hartley Coleridge as ' son of the poet — so eccentric as to 
 border on madness.' Of Wordsworth he says that — having 
 heard that the poet lived where he saw no one but his 
 admirers and idoliscrs — ' the only sign I saw of conceit was 
 his being dressed untidily ! he looks rather like a farmer ; 
 is quite old, above sixty. . . . The only evening on which 
 I saw him, he gave me the idea of a pleasant old gentle- 
 man, was not dictatorial, and did not engross the convcrsa-
 
 I02 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1830-34 
 
 tion.' He adds. *jw/ will perhaps like to hear ' (his 
 correspondent was no Wordsworthian) ' that Arnold ' — a 
 profound, but not indiscriminate, admirer of the poet — 
 ' thinks Goody lilake and Harry Gill immoral, a remnant 
 of Wordsworth's Jacobinism, and ludicrous as poetry, and 
 that he called one of the sonnets stuff.' 
 
 The visit to the Arnolds at the Lakes, if possible, in- 
 creased Stanley's devotion to his Head Master. The 
 following letter is but one among many in which the in- 
 tensity of his feeling is expressed. It was written in May 
 1834, to C. J. Vaughan, a few weeks before Stanley's school 
 career terminated : 
 
 ' Six Sundays more, and only six. Alas ! Alas ! I 
 never in the days of my first coming wished so earnestly 
 for the arrival of the holidays as I now dread it ! Oh, may 
 God grant you strength and health, that I may carry on to 
 my last hour that association of almost perfect happiness 
 which I have so often enjoyed here, and that as I trust we 
 have begun, so we may end together in the service of 
 Christ. . . . Most sincerely must I thank God for His good- 
 ness in placing me here to live with Arnold. Yet I always 
 feel that the happiness is a dangerous one, and that loving 
 him and admiring him as I do to the very verge of all love 
 and admiration that can be paid to man, I fear I have 
 passed the limit, and made him my idol, and that in all I 
 may be but serving God for man's sake. 
 
 ' It is fortunate then, perhaps, that I can stay here no 
 longer — for this feeling must grow as long as I have him 
 before me. What I shall do without him I know not. 
 Whether this will be succeeded by indifference or dislike, or 
 increased yet more and more, I cannot tell. ... I say this 
 now, as I may not have another opportunity, and to let you 
 see fully how the case stands. It may be foolish — and it 
 may wear away ; though God grant that it is not the one — 
 and that it may not be the other — but I can hardly tell you 
 the relief I felt last Sunday night, when he was hearing the 
 children their lesson, that from all the abounding wickedness 
 in the school and in the world, one might always turn to 
 the image of that pure Christian family. 
 
 ' As I feel it now, it is wound up with my very life. But
 
 CHAP. IV A RUGBY REMINISCENCE 103 
 
 I must stop. You too love him and admire him as much as 
 he deserves — but not more, and not dangerously, and you 
 can help me — I would hardly say to love him less — but to 
 love God more. And now believe me, my dear Vaughan, 
 
 ' Yours ever affectionately, 
 
 ' A. P. S. 
 
 The record of Stanley's life at Rugby cannot be better 
 closed than b}' the following reminiscences, communicated 
 by the present Dean of Llandaff : 
 
 ' You ask me to send }'OU a few reminiscences of our 
 friend as a boy at Rugby. I have to go back sixty years, 
 into the furthest recesses of a not very tenacious memory, 
 to do this : let me try. 
 
 ' He had been one }-ear at Rugby when I went there in 
 January 1830. What a strange place was my boarding- 
 house, long since swept from where it stood in the old 
 market-place, as far as possible from his, which was a 
 master's house looking into the school close ! The first 
 time I heard Stanley's name was in the idle chatter of a 
 breakfast in what we called our hall, and in connection with 
 some exercise which he was said to have done for someone, 
 in the somewhat lax way in wdiich things were then con- 
 ducted. I remember being confused by the name, which 
 was also that of one of the dames' houses, kept by a former 
 writing-master of the school, whose son, " Ned Stanley," was 
 one of the young men of the town, coming and going be- 
 tween Rugby and Oxford, in preparation, 1 think, for being 
 a clergyman. 
 
 ' The first time that I remember seeing our friend was 
 on the Good Friday afternoon of that first half-year, when 
 he came into chapel, from under the organ gallery with its 
 old inscription, " sv^pdvdrjv sttI TOi<{ slprjKocn jjuol,'' his face 
 turned by blushes from rose-colour to scarlet in the joy and 
 pride of his first triumph, the prize for the Fifth Form 
 English Essay (on " Sicily and its Revolutions") having been 
 just adjudged to him. His face and look are as vividly 
 before me as if it was a scene of yesterday — the black hair, 
 cut close as always, the bright ingenuous child's face, the 
 round jacket and twilled trousers, and the quick gliding 
 movement, three steps to a man's one — all these I could
 
 104 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1830-34 
 
 draw, if I were an artist, into a far livelier picture of him 
 than any of those that are left to us. 
 
 ' At Easter I was moved into the P'ifth Form, and there 
 we were together till a year and a quarter afterwards, when 
 what was then a new invention, the Fifth Form examination 
 for places, shook up the old fifty into all manner of strange 
 reverses, and placed this young boy of fifteen at the head 
 of the whole number for promotion into the Sixth at 
 Midsummer 1831. 
 
 ' The Fifth Form, under " old Moor," was a really re- 
 markable institution. He was an elderly man, to our eyes 
 at least ; and his rusty knee-breeches and worsted stock- 
 ings, as well as a general slovenliness of apparel, added, no 
 doubt, to his years. He was Vicar of Clifton, near Rugby ; 
 an excellent clergyman, with a voice the melody of which 
 is still in my ears as he read out to us from time to time 
 some little English poem done in school by the youthful 
 genius in which he took an evident pride and delight. He 
 maintained a vigorous discipline over a somewhat difficult 
 herd of fifty (for the most part) oldish boys, by various in- 
 genious devices which lengthened the irksome school hours 
 for the idle and abridged them for the good ; and although 
 the idea of the man was old-fashioned, his practice was 
 thorough and sensible, and his love of modern history, and 
 his keen enjoyment of poetry both ancient and modern, 
 contributed something, I cannot but think, to the early 
 interests and tastes of Stanley himself 
 
 ' During our three years together in the Sixth Form 
 under the daily teaching of Arnold himself, we grew by 
 degrees into a very close and intimate friendship. Having 
 neither of us any taste for games, our intercourse was 
 chiefly in the form of long walks — indeed, of walks long 
 and short, for he had already that solemn sense of the di^ty 
 of air and exercise which was characteristic of him to the 
 end. 
 
 ' There were also endless talks in his study, some four 
 feet square, at an upper corner of Anstey's boarding-house 
 looking upon the Close, with its already considerable store 
 of books, its metallic sofa, and its large copper kettle, 
 generally hissing for the feeblest tea. 
 
 'We discussed all things — politics and politicians, 
 theology and theologians, notably (when their turn came) 
 the Church Reform pamphlet of r833 and the Thirlwall 
 controversy of 1834. His own prize compositions, which I
 
 CHAP. IV A RUGBY REMINISCENCE 105 
 
 used to write out for him, furnished a fruitful subject. School 
 politics, at times somewhat revolutionary, were treated as 
 moral matters, with a little too much (it may be) of grown- 
 up sternness. 
 
 ' But the secret of this, and of much else in his early 
 thought and talk, was that growing and absorbing devotion 
 to his great head master, of which he sometimes accused 
 himself as tending to the idolatrous. The intensity of his 
 effort, in school and chapel, not to let one word or one tone 
 of that voice escape him, till it was inscribed (in letters then 
 sometimes legible) in one of that interminable succession of 
 note-books which began thus early and ended only with 
 life, is one of those memories which must die with one. 
 The influence of Arnold's character, at once so high above 
 and so powerfully in contact, gave to this early period of 
 his life a sort of fire of zeal (if I might so express it) at 
 which Oxford undergraduates might afterwards smile, but 
 which had in it the making of the future man, with that 
 unresting energy, that forthright purpose, that resistless 
 attraction, that clean and pure soul.'
 
 I06 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1834 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 August-December 1834 
 
 hurst:\ionceux and balliol college, oxford 
 
 The parting from Dr. Arnold and from Rugb}- launched 
 Arthur Stanley into a new world of experience and of 
 thought. In the second half of the year 1834 he was not yet 
 absorbed by the stream of work which, for the next three 
 }-ears, laid such heavy claims upon his time and faculties ; 
 and during these six months there is scarcely one of his 
 letters which would not interest any student of the academi- 
 cal, or intellectual, or religious life of England in the stirring 
 period at which they were written. Before six months had 
 gone by he had passed some weeks under the roof of Julius 
 Hare, who, while sympathising in many points v/ith Dr. 
 Arnold, was in many other respects singularly unlike the 
 Head Master of Rugby. He had lived in close intimacy 
 with one so capable of influencing an impressionable youth 
 of eighteen as John Sterling. He had spent eight weeks 
 as a freshman at Balliol, and had recorded his first impres- 
 sions, both of academical life and of men like J. H. Newman, 
 Dr. Puscy, and others, who were giving a fresh direction to 
 the whole religious life of England. He had been thrown 
 into constant contact with young men trained in different 
 schools from himself, such as Frederick Faber and W, G. 
 Ward. He had not only paid his first visit since childhood 
 to London, but had also spent some days at Cambridge, and
 
 CHAP. V HURSTMONCEUX AND BALLIOL 107 
 
 made the acquaintance of Thirhvall, Whcwcll, and other 
 leaders of the sister-univcrsit}-. 
 
 On leaving Rugby, Stanley returned at once to Alderlcy 
 ' hardly able yet,' as he wrote to C. J. Vaughan, ' to fancy 
 that 1 have really left Rugby for good, and finding no one 
 even here to sympathise with me fully.' ' However,' he 
 adds, * I dare say it will do me good, though my last parting 
 with Arnold was not calculated to lessen my idolatrous 
 affection for him.' It is touching at this distance of time 
 to read his acknowledgments of some want of adequate 
 responsiveness to the enthusiastic affection with which he 
 inspired more than one of his schoolboy friends, and his 
 readiness to tax himself, now with ' want of patience,' now 
 with ' want of depth of feeling,' and to quote against 
 himself the words of Aristotle, ' that one who has many 
 friends is not (plXos to any, only apsaKOS to all.' 
 
 After telling his friend of his multifarious literary occu- 
 pations, he enters into an elaborate paper discussion on 
 what was to be to himself a subject of lifelong interest, the 
 possibility of so altering the formularies of the Church as 
 to admit, so far as possible, all English Christians to member- 
 ship of the National Establishment.' It is interesting to 
 notice the boldness with which even then, in arguing against 
 the position that ' unity of doctrine is essential to the idea 
 of a Christian Church,' he questions the statement that 
 ' absolute unity of religious opinion on all subjects,' 
 involving as it does ' the idea of absolute intellectual per- 
 fection, is necessary to make up our notion even of the 
 Church in heaven,' and asks ' whether improvement is not 
 necessary to our notion of happiness.' ' Eor myself,' he 
 
 ' The Bill for the admission of Dissenters to residence and degrees at the 
 Universities was rejected by a large majority in the House of Lords on Aug. ist, 
 1834. ' Alas for the Dissenters Bill ! ' cries A. P. S. in a letter from Toft Hall. 
 
 Au£r. loth, 18^4.
 
 I08 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1834 
 
 adds, ' I should not ask more to make up my notion of the 
 unity of the Church (even) in heaven, than that they all 
 loved one another as Christ's redeemed servants, and all 
 loved God in Chiist.' 
 
 On August 22nd, 1834, he left Alderley to pass some 
 weeks at Hurstmonceux with Julius Hare, the younger 
 brother of his ' uncle Augustus,' who had lately abandoned 
 his tutorial life at Trinity College, Cambridge, for the living 
 of Hurstmonceux. Mrs. Augustus Hare, the ' Auntie ' so 
 often mentioned in Arthur Stanley's letters, still in the first 
 months of her widowhood, was residing at the time with 
 her brother-in-law. John Sterling, the close friend of 
 F. D. Maurice, and the future subject of two biographies 
 (one by his rector, the other by Thomas Carlyle), was 
 then curate to Julius Hare. 
 
 It was nearly dark when he arrived, and ' Auntie ' had 
 been banished to bed by a violent headache. 
 
 'The house was just what I expected. The first thing 
 that I saw was the Roman senator and his wife, and, dinner 
 over, Julius showed me over the pictures. Looking at 
 them by day, I don't know that I should have observed 
 the Raphael Madonna particularly, but I should have 
 noticed the Vision of Ezekiel, where the figures all seem to 
 stand and spring out of the beasts and out of the picture 
 with such vivid strength, and I like it the best of all ; 
 indeed, I think it is the only one of which I of myself 
 understand the beauty. ... I have been looking about at 
 all the books, of course, and not begun anything regular. 
 The German part is quite astounding ; if they are so good, 
 and so much better than English books as to take up so 
 much more [room], what a gap there must be in all 
 Englishmen's minds. I was looking at them in the drawing- 
 room when Auntie came in. I was startled at first, for I 
 had not imagined her to myself in her widow's weeds. 
 She sate down before me and cried very much for some 
 time, but she soon recovered herself, and now she talks 
 as calmly and as cheerfully as usual. . . . After lunch,
 
 CHAP. V HURSTMONCEUX IO9 
 
 Mr. Sterling came in with an extract from the " Quarterly "- 
 on Coleridge's conversations, which he says is a very good 
 account of it, and by Lockhart. . . . Auntie tells me to 
 tell Mamma — what she has always forgotten to do — that 
 the day before Coleridge died, he said he felt his head 
 was full of wit, but he had not strength to give it utterance. 
 The " Letters on Inspiration " are being transcribed, and 
 are to be sent to Dr. Arnold.' 
 
 The following Sunday brought his first experience of 
 two preachers, both new to him. 
 
 'Mr. Sterling preached in the morning on i John iv. 19, 
 being one in a succession on the Atonement. Julius .said 
 it was not quite as good as the one Mamma heard, but 
 it was very fine — the next best after Arnold I have ever 
 heard, and like him in several things. He has the same 
 evident and positive conviction of perception of truth, the 
 same undercurrent of a great .system, and to-day he had 
 nearly (except in one flowery sentence) the same beautiful 
 language that Arnold's later sermons have. However,, 
 there were differences that did not make me forget that 
 to-day he [Arnold] has begun preaching again at Rugby. 
 Julius preached in the afternoon — veiy well, I think, with 
 
 a good many of his thoroughly worked-out, odd images 
 
 Auntie has not yet spoken to me of Uncle Augustus. I 
 read a little to her last night. I do not see that she is. 
 altered, but that, with my want of perception in such things,, 
 is not much.' 
 
 A few days later his pen is at work sending full pic- 
 tures of his new home. To his sister, after tender messages 
 * to dear little Emmy (Penrhyn) ! kiss her much for me,' he 
 gives the routine of daily life. 
 
 ' I get up between 7 and 8. Julius comes down at 9, 
 having always sat up till 2 A.M. Then prayers in the dining- 
 room and breakfast ; my home reading of the " Quarterly" 
 in the interval is supplied by a French book (the only 
 
 - The article referred to appeared in August 1834. There is a note at 
 the end of the number recording Coleridge's death on July 25th, and his 
 burial on August 2nd
 
 no LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1834 
 
 language in the room I understand) on Names. . . . Auntie 
 comes down about 10.30, and I learn my work in the 
 drawing-room, where she sits and writes or lies down. 
 On Monday Julius and I began with the "Antigone" (of 
 Sophocles), which I had not read, and this we shall do till 
 we finish it. whi-:h will be some day next week. I learn 
 it before with a German-Greek lexicon, which teaches me 
 both languages at once, and then about i 1.30 do it with 
 him, which takes till (luncheon intervening) 2 P.M. He does 
 it very thoroughly and with all his books about it. You 
 would be amused to see how we begin by having four books 
 (i.e. four editions), and end by having twenty, on the table. 
 He is very fond of the play, and enters into it with such 
 spirit and earnestness it is quite delightful, much in the 
 style of Arnold ; only that, taking more time and having 
 more books for it, he does it, of course, more thoroughly. 
 I also do Aristotle's " Poetics " to myself, asking him in case 
 of difficulty. ... At 2.30 Mr. Sterling comes, and so far 
 all days are alike. On Monday he came and had some talk 
 about Prometheus and Job, as he was reading Job, and 
 then took me out.' 
 
 He describes his walks and conversations with Sterling. 
 
 ' I went out with ]\Ir. Sterling again. He talked about 
 the various systems of mythology, and we went to the poor- 
 house, where he reads the Bible once a week, taking any 
 chapter, sometimes whichever the old women ask for. It 
 was the same sort of exposition as Arnold gives in Rugby 
 Church, though not nearly so good, as it was more general, 
 and bringing in too much of his peculiar system, and not 
 so clear as his sermons. However, it was very good, and 
 listened to very attentively. . . . Then he took me to his 
 house, and .showed me his books, chiefly of odd theology 
 and philosophy, among them twelve volumes of Puritan 
 divines, St. Augustine, Spino/.a (which he said was the pro- 
 foundest book there was). He lent me a German-Latin 
 book on the Revelation, and a paper with Coleridge's 
 view of the Atonement (of which I like and understand the 
 first part, but not the last). In the evening Julius read us 
 some of Milton's .speeches, of Shakespeare's sonnets, and 
 of Wordsworth's prose (in the " F"riend"). Wednesday, Mr. 
 S. came to look for books for a sermon he was going to 
 write on Abraham, and carried away five German ones,
 
 CHAP. V HURSTMONCEUX 1 1 i 
 
 saying he should never be able to do it unless he knew what 
 country Abraham came from, &c. &c. Julius and Auntie 
 both laughed at him very much, but he persisted it was the 
 right way. It struck me so, when he was asking me what 
 Arnold's view of the Atonement was, what an exactly 
 opposite way they took- — Arnold saying, " Ask for the lesson 
 first, and the abstract truth afterwards " ; Mr. S., " the abstract 
 truth first, and then the lesson." I quite agree with what 
 Auntie says, that the " metaphysical part of his nature has 
 got the better of him." 
 
 ' Mr. S. brought me the " Letters on Inspiration " (Cole- 
 ridge's) to read before they are sent to Dr. Arnold. On 
 the whole, I like them very much (this for Mamma). The 
 spirit is beautiful, and some of the passages, that especially 
 about Deborah, that too about the Psalms, and some of the 
 outbursts of indignation, are quite magnificent. I think, 
 however, as I thought I should, that in some Dr. A. will 
 not agree. Indeed, I don't think the argument throughout 
 is clear. As far as I can judge, he, Dr. h., will not like 
 the placing the whole Bible (except the Prophets and 
 delivery of the Law) on a footing with all good books, but 
 will require (what Coleridge seems himself to require in one 
 place, and must require for his argument's sake in all) a 
 providential care at least. Then he would make much 
 more use of the Old Testament than Coleridge does, as in 
 the murder of Sisera ; which Coleridge declares unquali- 
 fiedly inhospitable, perfidious, and treacherous, but on which 
 Arnold has preached a most useful sermon.'^ Then, again, 
 Coleridge brings forward, among the difficulties, which his 
 view gets over, but which are so great according to the 
 present view, the z/;/-genuineness of the beginning of Daniel, 
 which seems to me not in the least to affect the inspiration 
 of the Bible, but only the arrangements of the Canon, 
 which is quite a different question. Nor would he like to 
 give up the Bible as the great authority for Christendom, 
 and go instead to creeds and councils. However, he will 
 delight in the comprehensive spirit of not making it an 
 article of the Christian faith to believe every word, or 
 receive every book. ... It struck me, on thinking over the 
 letters, what a thoroughly Catholic essay "^ Arnold's is, its 
 
 ■* Preached June 8, 1834, forming .Sermon VIII, in the vohnnc of sermons 
 on ' Interpretation of Scripture. ' 
 
 ■* That on the ' Interpretation of Scripture,' in Sermons, Vol. II.
 
 112 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1834 
 
 only objects being to get as niuch good out of the Bible as 
 possible, and remove stumbling-blocks without making 
 any new ones. . . . 
 
 ' I was not sorry, but quite otherwise, iox .Arnold's 
 own sake, to hear that Newman's sermons are so good. 
 It is only what he has always .said, that difference of 
 opinion, on all but one point, in a good man, can never be 
 a cause for disagreement. I should think a more striking 
 proof of this could hardly be brought forward ; two men 
 differing to the last degree on points which one of them 
 thinks of the greatest importance, and yet in all that is 
 really valuable not only agreeing with, but like, each 
 other.' 
 
 Before he ends this letter, which extends over every 
 available space in two large sheets of old-fashioned letter- 
 paper, he mentions that he is ' beginning to feel more at 
 home with Julius, having even ventured to discuss with 
 him the lawfulness of war.' He has been ' reading a good 
 deal more of Coleridge, and I feel as if I had got a 
 new element into my mind.' How many young men, now 
 old, said the same in those days ! And he cannot close 
 without a word which shows that his capacity for hero- 
 worship had not been exhausted at Rugb}-. 
 
 ' I had ne\'cr been in a place so intellectual before ; 
 everything seems to breathe with learning and deep 
 thought ; and, hearing no conversation of an ordinary sort, 
 I feel quite as if it was a dream when I go to bed at night. 
 Julius so poetical, and Mr. Sterling so philosophical, and 
 Auntie so heavenly — at once so evidently above the earth, 
 and yet interesting herself so in all that is beautiful and 
 good on earth.' 
 
 The Rector)- and its inmates must indeed have presented 
 a singular specimen of a rural parsonage, even to one nursed 
 in the refinement and cultivation of Alderley. And the 
 impression which the\- made was no passing one. More
 
 CHAP. V HURSTMONCEUX 
 
 113 
 
 than twenty years later, in an article that appeared in the 
 ' Quarterly ' in the summer after Julius Hare's death in 
 January 1855, Stanley drew a charming picture, not only 
 of the Rector of Hurstmonceux, but of the rectory, 
 ' peculiar even amongst English parsonages,' of the library, 
 ' unequalled in the combined excellence of quality and 
 quantit}',' and of ' the noble pictures which he had brought 
 from Italy,' which to him ' were more than mere works of 
 art, they were companions and friends.' ^ 
 
 The above are mere extracts from a single letter, 
 one of many written to his sister from Hurstmonceux. 
 To his friends he also describes his daily life — his long 
 afternoon walks, generally at first with Sterling, ' who 
 idolises Coleridge as I do Arnold, having known him inti- 
 mately.' 
 
 ' He is very kind to me, and very agreeable, and 
 most communicative of his thoughts. My pseudo-uncle 
 himself is very kind, enthusiastic in the " Antigone," as in 
 all poetry, very fond of, and agreeing with, Arnold. I am 
 more at ease with him, and enjoy the place more from 
 my aunt being here. He generally reads to us in the 
 evening, things which I should not be likely to read — 
 Wordsworth, Charles Lamb, Coleridge, Milton's prose, &c., 
 and (Oh ! tell it not in the streets of Gath ! ) Alfred Tenny- 
 son.'*^ 
 
 He bids his friend 'borrow the volume and read "The 
 Lady of Shallot," " The Sisters," and the two on the " May 
 Queen," which he (J. H.) thinks very fine.' He goes on to 
 speak of the amount of Coleridge which he is reading, ' his 
 prose I mean, which I like very much, except the style, 
 generally, and particularly certain points. ... I think of 
 
 * Quarterly Review, July 1855. 
 
 " The reference is obviously to the article in the April number of the 
 Quarterly, 1833, in which the volume of poems by the late Poet-Laureate, 
 published early in that year, was reviewed with strangely contemptuous and 
 undiscriminating severity, 
 
 VOL. L I
 
 114 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1834 
 
 Arnold in the chapel every Sunday, but I have as good 
 sermons as I could have short of him.' 
 
 Two special influences are seething in his brain : one, 
 his study of S. T. Coleridge ; the other, the sermons and 
 conversation of John Sterling. Speaking of Coleridge, he 
 says that parts of his writings — 
 
 * I wish you would read him, if you could^secm to me 
 to have more beauty and wisdom than I ever saw in any 
 work before. If he had but been able to write like Arnold, 
 what a man he would have been ! ' 
 
 And again : 
 
 'Coleridge's "Letters on Inspiration "contain passages 
 of exceeding beaut}^, though the argument seems to me at 
 times confused bc}'ond all power of unravelment. . . . The 
 general impression left on the mind is the exceeding 
 value and beauty of the Bible, and the exceeding evil of 
 Bibliolatry. Perhaps' the very confusion of his attack may 
 be the more suited to the great confusion of the thing 
 attacked ' (the popular idea of verbal inspiration). 
 
 Of Sterling's sermons, the effect on him was such that 
 ' parts,' he says, ' almost moved me to tears when I heard 
 them, and made an impression on me more like that 
 of those I have heard from Arnold than any other ' ; and 
 he sends, 'as I am sure they will be quite safe in your 
 hands,' long and interesting extracts copied from the 
 manuscript of one on the " World before the Flood." He 
 feels bound to add, ' the whole was unsuitcd to the congre- 
 gation, of course, at least so they say.' 
 
 But neither his study of Coleridge, nor his conversa- 
 tions with Sterling, nor his classical work with Julius Hare, 
 nor his voluminous letters home on every detail of his life 
 and work, nor his long daily walks, nor occasional excursions 
 to scenes of interest, could prevent his pouring out to his 
 old schoolfellow the thoughts as to the need for some larger 
 framework for the Church of Christ, which already haunted
 
 CHAP. V HURSTMONCEUX II5 
 
 him in youth, and which remained, to his last conscious 
 moment, the cherished and dominating idea of his Hfe. 
 At first he is content to describe his new home and friends 
 to speak, much as he speaks in his other letters, of the enor- 
 mous abundance of books about him, and the intellectual 
 atmosphere which he is breathing — 'all the talk and all 
 the books being so high, that I feel, at times, in a sort of 
 seventh heaven, at others, rather depressed, all my facul- 
 ties exhausted, depressed also at my own slowness of com- 
 prehension and want of memory.' 
 
 But, by degrees, his thoughts centre more and more 
 round his hopes of a wider union among Christians, to be 
 effected in England by such changes as would admit Non- 
 conformists within the pale of the National Church. 
 
 ' Conceive my delight,' he writes, ' on finding that both 
 J. H. and Mr. Sterling agree with, or rather believe in, most 
 fully, the advantage of comprehending all but Unitarians ; 
 indeed J. H. would make the Divinity of Christ the only 
 Article.' 
 
 And a few days later, fresh from ' that beautiful service, 
 of the Sacrament of yesterday,' he pours out his soul in a 
 long and earnest letter to his friend and confidant, C. J. 
 Vaughan, on the text : 
 
 ' Alas that a Church that has so divine a service should 
 keep its long list of Articles ! I am strengthened more 
 than ever in my opinion, that there is only needed, that there 
 only should be, one, viz. " I believe that Christ is both God 
 and man." ' 
 
 He writes at great length, and with unusual fire and 
 real eloquence, on 
 
 ' the constraining and ennobling power of the Love of 
 Christ, as the one force that can . . . alone supply the 
 place of an imperative law, and destroy the merit of our 
 own goodness, . . . that alone can turn earth into Para- 
 disc ; that is, in short, the subject of the two most glorious
 
 Il6 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1834 
 
 passages that were ever written, tlie 8th of Romans and 
 the 13th of I Corinthians. . . . This surely is enough, 
 and all this, I am sure, is contained in that one Article as 
 much as in fift).' 
 
 Even the exclusion of Unitarians troubles him ; — 
 
 'They are, I think, excluded from the outward Catholic 
 Church as a body, but their individual members are not 
 so from the Communion of Saints, . . . which I take to be 
 the communion of all good men, in all ages and countries, 
 of all who have loved God and served man ; including, 
 therefore, chiefly real Christians, but also the Jewish saints, 
 who lived before Christ, and all those, such as Socrates, &c., 
 whom we value among the pagans, or those whom we 
 might have to value among Unitarians or Deists.' 
 
 He dwells on this theme as * some of the results of my 
 late solitary walks,' and expresses his strong conviction 
 that, while the avowed belief in the Godhead and Manhood 
 of Christ is essential to the idea of a Christian Church, it is 
 not essential in all cases to individual salvation, or 'to the 
 admission of hearts that have an earnest longing for good 
 to the communion of saints.' 
 
 On such a subject some apology might be required for 
 giving even a summary of the views of the most active- 
 minded boy of eighteen, as conveyed to another of the same 
 age. The reader, however, will probably notice with interest, 
 how early the religious and theological and intellectual ten- 
 dencies and ideas of mature life were taking definite shape 
 and substance, and how keen and genuine was the interest 
 felt in such subjects by one whose schoolboy days were 
 barely ended. It is touching, too, to note the care that he 
 takes to warn his friend ' against thinking that all I said 
 in my last letter of the love of Christ came from my own 
 experience. Quite the contrary ! ' 
 
 It was no wonder that, with his brain bu.sy on such 
 subjects, he envies the steady progress which his old school-
 
 CHAP. V HURSTMONCEUX 
 
 117 
 
 fellow was making in his classical reading. ' I can't 
 think how you can get through so much.' Yet his own 
 record of work — the Antigone and Agamemnon, with 
 the Poetics of Aristotle — was not an unsatisfactory result 
 for a six weeks' stay in so stimulating a circle. His ' un- 
 classical hours ' were fully occupied with such books as 
 Digby's Mores Catholici, Thirlwall's Preface to Schleier- 
 macher, De Quincey's Confessions of an Opium Eater, 
 and other articles in the London Magazine, Lamb's 
 Essays of Elia, and some of Southey's prose works. Nor 
 was the surrounding country neglected. He describes, 
 with more or less minuteness, the ruined castles of the 
 Monceux and the Dacres, his ride through Ashburnham 
 Park to Battle, his drive to ' East Bourne,' and walk to 
 Beachy Head and Pevensey Level. As he rode home from 
 Ashburnham, he records a sight that must have been rare 
 in village life fifty years ago — ' a little ragged cottage girl, 
 perched up on the hedge-bank, with a dirty doll stuck in a 
 hollow tree, herself busy with a book, — a sight I never 
 saw before.' He dines frequently with Mr. Wagner of 
 Hurstmonceux Place, and even goes ' out shooting, or 
 rather standing under the hedges, for there was no shoot- 
 ing, it rained all the time, and I was wet through. Poor 
 Mr. W. was much distressed at my having had no sport, not 
 guessing how very little difference it made to me.' 
 
 He discovers with great delight a manuscript hymn of 
 Dr. Arnold, which he copies out, and sends, with charac- 
 teristic notes and warm admiration, mixed in parts with 
 keen criticism, in a long letter to his friend Greenhill. He 
 draws up an annotated genealogy of the Hare family, 
 * beginning with Bp. Hare, an old friend of mine of three 
 years' standing from Smollett, being Marlborough's Whig 
 chaplain, who by marrying two heiresses amassed the 
 fortune which his children squandered, and of whose sons
 
 IlS LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1834. 
 
 the younger pulled down the castle. What a grandfather 
 to have two such grandsons ! ' as Augustus and Julius. 
 He is ' touched to find in a note to one of Landor's Con- 
 versations (Leofric and Godiva) some verses which he 
 made — the first Landor ever wrote — "sitting by the side of 
 the sqjiare pool at Rugby',' and ending, " may the pepper- 
 mint still be growing on that bank ! " The only affec- 
 tionate remembrance I have ever seen of Rugby, in a 
 book.' He writes to Lake also, telling him the whole story, 
 as told by Landor,^ and begging him ' to look whether 
 (query, at the Bilton Pond?) the prayer is fulfilled'; and 
 reminds him of the contemptuous language in which, at the 
 beginning of ' a novel called " Vivian Grey," ' Rugby is 
 spoken of as compared to Eton and Harrow. 
 
 Before his stay at Hurstmonceux drew to a close he 
 writes, not to his sister, but to his mother, hoping that 
 she will not be alarmed by so unusual a step, which he 
 explains by his wish to consult her as to a visit to Rugby 
 on his way to Oxford. ' It will enable me to meet Vaughan 
 and Lake, to see Dr. A. and have some talk with him 
 before I go to Oxford, and to hear him preach once more. 
 It would do me good too, I think, to have a little ordinary 
 conversation with my equals, and loose the strings of my 
 tongue for Oxford.' Indefatigable, as ahvays, in travelling, 
 he proposes on his way to ' go down to Sheen, and see the 
 little girls,' who will ' like to hear " Khubla Khan " (if not 
 too like their own nonsense), and certainly the "Ancient 
 Mariner." ' The plan was fully approved, and eager anti- 
 cipation is combined with his enjoyment of the present. 
 
 * What a number of places,' he ejaculates, ' I have in 
 the world to be happy in ! . . . Such an enlargement of 
 my mind's horizon I seem to have had in these six weeks, 
 
 ' See W. S. Landor, Works and Life (Chapman & Hall), vol. v. p. 219.
 
 CHAP. V HURSTMONCEUX 119 
 
 and now I seem as if I were going to pass through trans- 
 migrations this week, and as if I should never get safely 
 to the end. . . It will give the consummation to my 
 heterodoxical teaching, before I go to the place of supreme 
 orthodoxy.' 
 
 The sense of his debt to Hurstmonceux mingles with 
 the delights of his approaching visit to Rugby, where his 
 * one fear is — what would break my heart — being there on 
 the unlucky Sunday when Arnold does not preach.' ' I 
 have learned here,' he thinks, ' more reverence for antiquity, 
 but am strengthened considerably in my opinion as to the 
 reduction of the number of the 39 Articles.' ' One good 
 (morally) I shall get here, I think, that is, a diminution 
 of my gossiping tendency.' He has ' grown quite fond of 
 Mr. Sterling,' with whom he dined two days before his de- 
 parture, and who ' puts Coleridge's poetry far above Words- 
 worth's, Julius dissenting.' He has even a word of sorrow 
 for parting with his class in the Sunday-school. On his 
 last day he found time, besides packing up, and saying 
 good-bye to the Wagners, ' to read through a manuscript 
 book of Coleridge on the " Prometheus," and on " State and 
 Church," ' before he left ' with a heavy heart ; all my sins 
 of omission as usual coming up at the last moment' 
 
 He crossed the border into Kent on a visit to friends 
 at Scotney Castle, and, starting the next morning (October 
 10, 1834), reached Sheen late in the evening. 
 
 ' . . . I rang the door-bell most seasonably, just as Uncle 
 P. was on the point of revealing a secret of Mamie's to Aunt 
 P. Such a joy, as I stood outside, to hear the jumping 
 and screaming within, and then their bright faces and kisses ! 
 The little girls looked more beautiful than ever. I had a 
 little dinner, and then saw no more of the children, who had 
 to go to bed, which much grieved me, as I had a capital 
 story to tell them, which a Polish count had told his host 
 at Scotnev.'
 
 I20 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1834 
 
 The next morn.iiiLj, after some difficulties and perplexi- 
 ties, he reached the ' Swan with Two Necks ' in time for 
 the coach to Dunchurch. 
 
 ' The morning sun shone red and copper through the 
 yellow mist over the houses, and St. Paul's looked finer than 
 I have yet seen it, so cloudlike over the city. The people 
 on the coach were dull, so was the road ; but St. Albans I 
 saw, and its Abbey, . . . and reached Dunchurch at five. Such 
 a joy to be with my face towards Rugby ! I ran over as fast 
 as I could, found at Lake's house that Mrs. A. was expecting 
 me at the Prjetorium' (as he often calls the ' Schoolhouse ' in 
 his letters), ' so ran on, and came in just as Dr. and Mrs. 
 A., and Vaughan and Lake, were going in to dinner. They 
 welcomed me most cordially. Dr. A. took me up to my 
 room, where I washed my hands and face, and then dined. 
 Talked about Coleridge and the "Letters on Inspiration," the 
 publication of which he approves, only that it much wants 
 an editor ; he will gladly help Julius if Julius undertakes it ; 
 talked about Coleridge, and Wordsworth also ; very excel- 
 lent he was about them ; then about old times at Rugby.' 
 
 His visit to Rugby, 'this seventh heaven, where I now 
 am,' he speaks of as 
 
 * the time of the most luxurious happiness I hav^e ever had — 
 so unbrokenly delightful. . . . Woke in such joy on Sunday 
 that I was at Rugby, with all the pleasures of it, none of 
 the annoyances, though Vaughan's going on Tuesday was 
 a little diminution of my Paradise. Such pleasure going 
 into chapel again. He (Dr. A.) preached very well, 
 though his voice struck me as being too low, and rather 
 monotonous. I believe it was partly accident, but a little, 
 I suppose, from being accustomed to Julius's great variety of 
 tones. It called back, however, all my setting up of him 
 again, and I enjoyed it very, very much. Then in the even- 
 ing we had a talk about Eton. He had written to Hawtrey 
 to congratulate him, and ask him to help in a grammar 
 reform. . . . Such a real greatness he shows in the utter 
 absence of any petty jealou.sy of Eton being reformed, and 
 sympathising so fully with the immense difficulties, and 
 refusing to join in the least in the cry against its abuses, 
 knowing how hard it is to manage, and considering it as of
 
 CHAP. V FIRST TERM A T BALLIOL \ 2 I 
 
 great interest to everyone. Then we went on through in- 
 spiration, prophecy, and many of the hard questions which 
 I wanted to ask, which he answered so kindly.' 
 
 One practical result of the visit to Rugby was the 
 warning which he received from ' Dr. A.'s nephew, John 
 Penrose,' then on his way back to Balliol, of some of the 
 necessities of Oxford life ; 
 
 ^ among others, that of having sheets to one's bed ; this 
 had never struck me, and the necessity, moreover, was urgent, 
 for without sheets I cannot go to bed at Balliol, so I be- 
 wailed myself to Lake, whose mother kindly provided all 
 that was necessary, adding even written directions as to how 
 and when they were to be aired ; while Miss Price hemmed 
 for me a table-cloth and dusters, and people are all so kind 
 that it is just like being at a great home.' 
 
 No reader who knew Stanley would wish to lose this 
 record, not only of his lifelong helplessness in such matters, 
 but of the delight in aiding him which he contrived every- 
 where and always to evoke. After an affectionate parting 
 from the Arnolds, and ' with two very pleasant accessions 
 to my library, one from Lake of Coleridge's Poems, and 
 one from Mr. Price of a Wordsworth,' he faced the coach 
 journey to Oxford — ' very pleasant morally, for I had two 
 Rugbaeo-Oxonians as companions ; but very unpleasant 
 physically, for there was much wind and rain, and " the 
 Pig " ^ was full to imminent danger of upsetting.' He 
 reached Oxford ' at about seven in fine moonlight,' and as 
 he stood — bewildered and helpless — 
 
 '■ watching the debarkation of my multifarious luggage, 
 up came Penrose, who very kindly appeared, to take charge 
 ■of me, guided me to the " Mitre," where I engaged a bed, 
 and then to his rooms, where I took tea in company with 
 some of his friends, apparently clever and gentlemanly, but 
 who, being utterly unknown to me and intimate with each 
 other, only served to make my solitude and desolation 
 more visible.' 
 
 ^ The name given to the Oxford coach.
 
 122 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1834 
 
 So he confesses in a letter to Vaughan, headed ' Oct. 20, 
 Lawrence Sheriffs, alas!' and dated on the first 'Founder's 
 da)-' on which he had been absent from Rugby since he 
 entered the school. 
 
 On the first morning after Arthur Stanley's arrival at 
 Oxford he was at ' Balliol by 7.30, to look at my new 
 rooms before going to chapel. My sitting-room is about 
 twice as large as my father's little room, square, with two 
 windows, looking out on a street and churchyard, which is 
 the worst part of them, owing to the noise of carts and 
 tolling of the bells. This, however, must teach me ab- 
 straction.' The rooms were on the west side of Balliol, 
 looking out towards the church of St. Mary Magdalen, in 
 a part of the College which has since been reconstructed. 
 He adds a full plan, as he had done years ago of his Rugby 
 study, so as to place the position of every item of furniture 
 before the eyes of those at home. Instructed by the 
 porter, the freshman, ' after finding my cap and gown,' 
 takes his right place in chapel, but learns too late ' that, it 
 being a saint's day (St. Luke's), I ought, as a scholar, to 
 have worn a surplice.' Those who knew him in later 
 days will scarcely be surprised to find that he ' had to 
 wait long for breakfast, as I was for some time perplexed 
 as to whence tea and sugar were to come, nor did I get 
 m)- tea good when it did come, as I had imprudently 
 taken the kettle off the fire meantime.' 
 
 Chapel and breakfast over, he paid the necessary calls 
 upon the Master, the well-known Dr. Jcnkyns, and upon his 
 tutor and late examiner, Mr. Moberly, and returned to his 
 rooms ' feeling very desolate, the more so by contrast with 
 the past week, the happiest week that ever I remember.' 
 ' Craving for something more sympathetic,' he sets out for 
 Christ Church in search of a Cheshire friend, E. Egerton. 
 On the way he meets a Rugby acquaintance, with whom.
 
 CHAP. V FIRST TERM AT BALLIOL 123. 
 
 he ' lunched homeHly on bread and butter ' ; then, after 
 leaving letters, of which he brought a large packet from 
 Rugby, at various colleges (in days before the penny post), 
 and making some calls, he again came home, arranged a 
 few of his books, ' threw into the fire, one after the other,, 
 about " fifty programs " of tradesmen,' and dined at the 
 scholars' table in Hall, where 
 
 ' there is one who rather makes me wish to know him,, 
 but I have felt very desolate on the whole. I have as yet 
 received no strong impressions of liking or disliking the 
 place, and I can hardly yet beheve that the shadow of the 
 cap on the wall belongs to my head.' 
 
 So ends the first day of a Balliol freshman sixty years 
 since. The next day, Sunday, brought new experiences. 
 The preacher of the University sermon was Pusey ; his 
 subject, the ' Song of Solomon.' The first sermon which 
 Stanley heard from the great Oxford theologian and party- 
 leader, with whom he was in after years brought into such 
 frequent contact, impressed him as 
 
 ' very long and disproportioned, most of it learned and 
 clever. The general argument, which I thought very 
 weak, was singularly anti-rationalistic ; while the digres- 
 sions, which were very long, were rationalistic, and against 
 the spirit of the rest. There were slight attacks on the 
 spirit of the age, and on the German neology, which rather 
 amused me as coming from him.' 
 
 The feeling of desolation soon wore off. At the end of 
 a week he says, ' I have had numberless calls, and been out 
 to breakfast or wine daily.' Among those whose hospi- 
 tality he accepted were * R. Palmer of Magdalen,' the 
 present Lord Selborne, ' Frederick Faber, nephew of the 
 anti-Catholic and prophecy man,' and 
 
 ' Mr. Churton, an evangelical Fellow of Brazenose, where 
 I met C. Marriott, a Fellow and Tutor of Oriel, a friend 
 both of Price and Newman, who therefore must be a
 
 124 ^^^^ ^^ DEAN STANLEY 1834 
 
 curious person to know. They discussed Pusey's sermon, 
 and also Newman's. About the first they both agreed, 
 admiring it very much, and were rather scandaHsed at my 
 humble and partial dissent from it. Poor Mr. Sterling, 
 what would he have said of the sermon, or, still more, of 
 these comments on it ! Marriott said that the sermon was 
 quite an era in their history, and supposed that I had not 
 been in the way of hearing the errors against which it was 
 directed, the errors being the whole system of Mr. Sterling's 
 sermons ! About Newman they split, and then, too, I had 
 to keep my mouth fast. Marriott looked on Newman's 
 sermons much as I do on Arnold's, and I agreed mostly 
 with what he said.' 
 
 The next day Mr. Marriott called on the young fresh- 
 man ; ' very kind, and well-informed, and good, though he 
 seemed singularly bashful ; ' he expressed, however, ' his 
 deep veneration for Newman, which grew the more he 
 knew of him. . . . On Wednesday, while I was calling on 
 the younger Churton, Newman came to the door to speak 
 to him. I ran to the window, and just caught a glimpse 
 of him. ... I feel a great interest about him, both from 
 his relation to Arnold and in himself 
 
 At Rugby Stanley had lived much aloof from the mass 
 of his schoolfellows, and confined himself to the society of 
 two or three chosen friends. At Oxford he found himself 
 surrounded by a throng of fresh associates, whose society 
 by degrees largely broke down the reserve and shyness 
 which had long stifled, and still kept in check, his naturally 
 social and expansive nature. He has hardly been ten days 
 in residence when he sends his friend at Cambridge a 
 description of the five different sets into which his observant 
 eye has already divided the College. He classifies them as 
 
 ' the most disreputable ; ' ' the idle, though respectable, 
 if it exists at Balliol ; ' ' those who read much, but are not 
 over-gentlemanly ; ' ' then a class of literary, but rather dull 
 men, who profess not to know classics, second-rate speakers
 
 CHAP. V FIRST TERM AT BALLIOL 125 
 
 at the Union, &c., but very respectable and gentlemanly ; 
 these border on the next and highest class, men who 
 are both clever and gentlemanly, among whom I may 
 mention Cardwell, Tickell, Wickens {the cleverest of all, 
 clothed with information and talent), Erskine, Faber, &c. 
 I tell you all this,' he adds, ' because then you will under- 
 stand the sort of people. ... Of Rugby men I see some 
 often, and am anxious to keep up a connection with all 
 who are respectable. It is pleasant to keep up a union 
 which was once so real and delightful, and may always be 
 turned to good purposes.' 
 
 After a little longer experience, he continues to 
 
 * like general society as much as ever ; but in individuals, 
 when I go out walking with them, I am disappointed. 
 They all dogmatise very much. When they are together, 
 this is softened down, so as to be amusing and lively, but 
 when I am alone with them, I find it tedious and unsatis- 
 factory, and when to this is added constant exaggeration, 
 which also is only amusing in general society, the matter 
 is worse still.' 
 
 His outward life soon fell into the ordinary routine of 
 the ' reading ' undergraduate. He speaks of himself as 
 breakfasting out often, though of course less often as ' the 
 tide of invitations subsided.' His attendance at morning 
 chapel will, among other things, he tells Mary, ' help me to 
 my dates,' in writing home ; but he owns, later on, that at 
 ' Collections ' he was rebuked for some irregularity on this 
 head, and the effect on his letters is too often quite imper- 
 ceptible. His mornings are given to his lectures and to 
 reading Herodotus and Juvenal. He ceases, as he con- 
 fessed, to prepare his other lectures, ' the amount expected 
 being too large.' In the afternoons he always walks, at first 
 with his old friend Greenhill, but very soon with other as- 
 sociates. Among the latter he names especially F. Faber, 
 his fellow-scholar, Lonsdale, and others. He does full 
 justice to the scenery of Oxford. * The country is bleak.
 
 126 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1834 
 
 certainly, but the hills make a strong feature, and the 
 rivers and quantity of streams and canals come in very 
 well. But the great thing of beauty in every walk is 
 Oxford itself, rising with all its towers out of its solemn 
 grove of trees.' He has been to Ififley, and owns that he 
 has still to learn ' the difference between, and the origin of, 
 Saxon and Norman arches.' Before the end of November 
 he has ' been at last to Cumnor, grossly exaggerated as 
 described in " Kenilworth." ' 
 
 ' Alas for my reading ! ' is a frequent ejaculation, and 
 at the end of the term is still more emphasised. ' Alas ! for 
 the splendid visions which I had conceived of reading, he 
 writes, ' and this is the only alas ! (though it is a great one) 
 that I must utter, for otherwise I have enjoyed Oxford 
 much.' 
 
 He received but little assistance in his work. It is diffi- 
 cult for the undergraduate of to-day, surrounded by facilities 
 for attending stimulating lectures, and met on every side 
 by almost a superabundance of educational aid, to realise 
 the contrast — a contrast which was sometimes bitterly 
 felt in the days of unrcformed Oxford — between the 
 ordinary tutorial lecture of many colleges, and the sixth- 
 form lessons at the best public schools. ' Alas ! ' writes 
 Stanley after a month at Balliol, ' alas ! most truly was 
 it said that the last year of school surpassed a hundred- 
 fold the first year of college.' Like other freshmen of 
 those days, he had to learn the value of self-reliance, often 
 a repulsive lesson. ' Even at Balliol,' in summing up 
 and lamenting the amount of time which he has lost, 
 and the little reading done, 'the lectures are the worst 
 part.' He returns disconsolate from his first lecture on 
 Livy I., at which he has been told ' that it has been sup- 
 posed that the first book is not quite authentic, and that 
 the best dissertation on the subject is to be found in
 
 CHAP. V FIRST TERM A T BALLIOL i 2 7 
 
 Hook ! ' 'I suppose,' he cries indignantly, ' that he has 
 never heard of Niebuhr. However, I won't quarrel with 
 them yet,' he adds, ' till I see more.' Again, ' We con- 
 strued,' he says, ' in the old way, word for word by turns, 
 with one or two unimportant remarks from him.' Of his 
 first lectures on St. Mark and Herodotus he reports, 'In 
 St. Mark a few commonplace, though perhaps useful, obser- 
 vations from the lecturer, and remarkable ignorance from 
 
 the men, even ' (a future First Class man and Fellow) 
 
 * asserting that St. Mark was written under the direction of 
 St. Luke : in Herodotus no observations at all' Two out 
 of the three classical lectures that he was attending, those 
 on Livy and Pindar, he soon finds ' absolutely useless.' 
 But he speaks of 'Moberly's on Herodotus' as being 'from 
 time to time really excellent,' and names him with ' Johnson 
 at Queen's, and Sewell at Exeter,' as being * spoken of as 
 the three best college tutors at Oxford.' Still, even of 
 Moberly he sometimes laments that ' he makes no observa- 
 tions whatever, except occasionally a joke on some of 
 the men, or even on Herodotus himself 
 
 With the loss of his teacher's presence, and the change 
 to the less inspiring influence of college lectures, his 
 interest in his daily work greatly flagged. The series of 
 youthful competitions, the eager delight in the acquisition 
 of fresh knowledge, the absorbing interest in each weekly 
 subject for composition in prose or verse — topics which had 
 formed so large a feature in his Rugby correspondence — 
 leave no trace on these first Oxford letters. 
 
 Tike other freshmen, before and since, he uttered vain 
 lamentations over ' lost time and little progress in my read- 
 ing.' But the time was not wasted — for himself or for 
 others. His thoughts and interests turned for a while into 
 other channels — to things and men outside himself He 
 had landed on a new shore, rich in novel sights and un-
 
 128 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1834 
 
 familiar sounds ; and he had set foot there at a moment 
 full of interest. Calm as the air seemed, a time of storm 
 and tempest was not far off, destined to shake to its founda- 
 tions the whole fabric of academical life. Day by day he 
 came, directly or indirectly, into contact with the present 
 or the future leaders of that movement, the effect of which 
 on the religious life of the English-speaking race was to 
 exceed the anticipations of cither its champions or its 
 opponents. There were whispers also — at present not more 
 than whispers, but audible to the observant listener — of 
 other questions of hardly less enduring interest and moment 
 even than those of ecclesiastical organisation and Christian, 
 ordinances. The germs of stormy controversies, academical 
 or wider, in which Stanley was one day to bear so large a 
 part already lay thick in the soil around him. Scarcely 
 a day passed without bringing some fresh incident, or idea, 
 or person, before his eyes. And, week after week, his facile 
 pen pictured the impressions made by each successive 
 feature in his new life, with entire unreserve and open- 
 hearted simplicity. So vivid were the pictures, that they 
 were set aside and carefully preserved by those who 
 received them, with a prescient sense of their future value. 
 Scarcely a letter written during that October term is 
 missing, and the difficulty has not been to select that 
 which will interest the educated reader of to-day, but to 
 make those extracts which give the most faithful repre- 
 sentation of the writer as he passed, in so stirring and 
 eventful a period, from boyhood to opening manhood. 
 
 While shocked at the bad side of undergraduate life, 
 and speaking to his closest friend of ' wickedness ' as 
 ' abounding,' and of his sometimes ' fearing that my own 
 love may wax cold,' he yet says that ' there is much more 
 good at work among the men than I could have believed.' 
 It need hardly be said that the current of thought, whether
 
 CHAP. V FIRST TERM AT BALLIOL 129 
 
 political or theological, which he encountered at Oxford was 
 strongly in opposition to that with which he was familiar. 
 ' The other morning, when breakfasting with Cheshire 
 friends at P. Claughton's, I was quite driven up into a 
 corner and pummelled as the only Whig in the room.' 
 He tells his friend Lake of an acquaintance among the 
 freshmen, — 
 
 ' a good type of his class apparently, who quotes the 
 Articles as Scripture, the Church as infallible. I went out 
 a walk with him the other day — suddenly a look of horror 
 appeared on his face. " I did not know that such a thing 
 was tolerated in Oxford," pointing to a notice on the wall. 
 I imagined it to be " something dreadful " ; it was an 
 innocent To the chape/. "Oh!" said I, "you mean the 
 Dissenting chapel .' " " Yes, how could it have been built 
 here? I wonder the)' did not pull it down long ago." ' 
 
 Still more instructive is the language in which, with a 
 boy's intemperance, he speaks of the doctrine of the Apos- 
 tolical Succession as essential to the Christian clergy. ' I 
 heard for the first time the other day the monstrous doctrine 
 of the Succession come orally from anyone.' It was from 
 the lips of a future Lord Chancellor, certainly not a fanati- 
 cal sacerdotalist. ' I own I was quite thunderstruck for a 
 moment,' says the }-oung Arnoldian, strangely unversed 
 as yet in the one absorbing subject of the earlier Tracts 
 for the Times. ' On most subjects, however, I can find 
 people to agree with me. Ward and Faber chiefly.' It is 
 interesting to notice that the two new acquaintances to 
 whom he was most attracted in his first term, men so 
 absolutely unlike each other and himself, should have been 
 destined to follow such different paths in life to his own, 
 each to end his days as a conspicuous champion and 
 member of the Church of Rome — one as the leader of 
 English ultramontane laymen, the other as a much-revered 
 ' Priest and Father.' In each the first ground of sympathy 
 VOL. I. K
 
 I^O LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1834 
 
 was an appreciation, very rare at that time at Oxford, of 
 Dr. Arnold. 
 
 It was under Fabcr's guidance — with whom he shared 
 ' a more than admiration for, and knowledge of, Southey 
 and Wordsworth, and also of Ilcnr}' Taylor's Philip van 
 Artevelde,' and a keen interest in such questions as 
 the relation of the Book of Genesis to geology — that he 
 went to hear Keble's terminal lecture on poetry, ' more for 
 the sake of the man than the lecture,' he tells his sister. 
 
 ' But you will quarrel with me still more about my 
 not having an eye-glass, when I tell you that his fea- 
 tures were invisible. But he is a middle-sized, rather 
 sharp-faced man, and (says Faber) with very twinkling 
 eyes. His lecture was in Latin, and I am ashamed to 
 say that 1 so tired myself with trying to see his face 
 that I was distracted from what Faber says was the 
 finest part of it (on the "Odyssey" it was), and I only 
 heard a long argument, in part rather fine and true, but in 
 part certainly most curious, to show that Homer was a 
 Tory — not a poetical Tory, but a throughly downright 
 political Tory — in words as plain as Latin can express it.^ 
 Newman, by the way. Lake tells me — who went to church 
 with me last Sunday — is ratJier like the picture of Louis 
 XI. in the red edition of " Quentin Durward."' 
 
 It was in Faber's rooms also that he made the 
 acquaintance of his future friend and companion, William 
 G. Ward, whom he describes as ' one of the most candid 
 men in argument I ever saw.' 
 
 ' There bounced in on Sunday a huge moon-faced man. 
 Ward, once of Christ Church, now of Lincoln. The first 
 words almost that he spoke, having just come up from 
 town, were that Arnold's " Sermons " (vol. iii.) were on the 
 point of coming out. It seems that he idolises Whately, 
 and Arnold almost, though not quite, as much, purely from 
 their books, without any knowledge of them. I have seen 
 
 ^ The reader may be reminded that in those days the Professor of Poetry 
 was bound to lecture in Latin.
 
 CHAP. V FIRST TERM AT BALLIOL 131 
 
 a good deal of him since. It would have done your heart 
 good to have seen the unfeigned envy with which he 
 regarded me as the depositary of so much vo^os aypacpos ; 
 as having actually lived with the great man. He is just 
 takiug his degree, probabh- a first and second, and will 
 perhaps be a Fellow of this College. 
 
 Before the end of term Faber, ' v/hom,' he repeatedly 
 says, ' I continue to like in spite of all drawbacks,' had left 
 Balliol to become a Scholar of University, and Ward had 
 been elected Fellow and appointed Mathematical Lecturer 
 of Balliol. 
 
 He dined with the Warden of New College (Dr. 
 Shuttleworth, afterwards Bishop of Chichester), the college 
 of which ' Uncle Augustus ' Hare had been a Fellow and 
 Tutor. His first dinner with a Head of a Collesfe is 
 noticeable on more grounds than one. There he met his 
 future tutor and lifelong friend, A. C. Tait, then a Junior 
 Fellow of Balliol. 
 
 ' Tait told me that Moberly came back convinced that 
 Rugby was the first school in England. Palmer too, I 
 hear, came back delighted with Arnold. I don't know 
 anything that gives me more hope for the future than these 
 strong praises from men who know him so very imperfectly. 
 It makes me feel, perhaps rather superstitiously, that he 
 cannot have all these extraordinary qualities given him for 
 nothing, and that he is, or will be, the great Elijah of the 
 present evil crisis.' 
 
 There, too, he heard that 
 
 * the Duke "^ takes a very active part as Chancellor ; cor- 
 responds with the Vice-Chancellor, and (I don't know how 
 far this may be divulged, as it was not told to me myself) 
 has recommended him to remove the subscription to the 
 Articles at Matriculation. This, I understood the Warden 
 to say, would take place by Act of Convocation within 
 three weeks. I feel most sincerely obliged to the Duke 
 
 '" The Duke of Wellincrton.
 
 132 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1834 
 
 for it. He seemed to speak of it as nearly certain. I 
 rubbed my hands for joy when I heard it.' 
 
 The sanguine hopes raised in the young reformer's 
 breast as to University legislation, and the triumph of 
 what he calls ' the cause of truth and charity,' were soon 
 dashed. Writing to his sister on November 24th, he says : 
 
 ' As for the proceedings in Golgotha {i.e. the Heads of 
 Houses who have the initiative in everything), it is said 
 that they cannot agree what to do about the Articles ; that 
 Shuttleworth is the only one who wishes to admit Dis- 
 senters, the rest only wanting to substitute some declara- 
 tion equivalent to, but not the same as, signing the Articles. 
 The Convocation,/.^, the M.A.'s who have the rati- 
 fying power, are opposed to all alteration whatever, unless 
 the lawyers are brought up from London, which would 
 o-ive the reformers a clear majority. The Duke's reported 
 recommendation carries great weight with the under- 
 graduates apparently— those, I mean, who are of course a 
 great part, who signed the old declaration (against it) with- 
 out reason, and Julius, I suppose, will be exulting in the 
 greatness of his hero.' 
 
 The picture of Stanley's life during his first term would 
 be incomplete without some extracts from letters on two 
 very different subjects ; namely, the debates at the Union, 
 and the effect produced upon him by the preaching of the 
 great leader of ' the Oxford Movement.' 
 
 Stanley, though not yet a member of the Union, 
 was a regular attendant at the debates, which he at 
 first describes as ' dull.' But the atmosphere was soon 
 troubled, and he confesses his enjoyment in witnessing the 
 storm. The subject of discussion was a measure of in- 
 creased stringency in Sunday observance. ' Marriott,' he 
 writes, 
 
 'the Fellow of Oriel, who worships Newman, has brought 
 forward a motion at the Union for closing the Union on
 
 CHAP. V FIRST TERM AT BALLIOL 133 
 
 Sundays. The motion comes on on Thursday next, and 
 will probably be lost.' 
 
 Himself destined, in after years, to be the advocate of 
 large relaxations in ordinary Sunday observance, he entered 
 as a spectator with zest into the struggle. He gave his 
 undivided sympathies to the advocates of increased strin- 
 gency. But the tone in which he writes of the ultimate 
 fate of the motion shows that his choice of sides was 
 greatly determined by what seemed to him the character 
 of the two parties. 
 
 ' Suffice it to say that Marriott brought it forward 
 with Balliol and Oriel at his back last Thursday ; that 
 the Sunday men behaved as nobly and quietly as their 
 
 adversaries did shamelessly and turbulently ; that made 
 
 a clever but degraded speech against, Massie a fine speech 
 for, it ; that it was carried by 84 against 80, never to be 
 repealed ; that in vengeance the windows of Capes and 
 Faber were smashed at half after twelve that night, and 
 Faber nearly killed by a bottle thrown at him through the 
 window. It was the finest thing I have seen, since the 
 great Brownsover row.' 
 
 Of more general interest than this episode in the 
 history of University life are the extracts which de- 
 scribe the impression made on the young Stanley — not 
 yet, it must be remembered, nineteen years old, and fresh 
 from the influence of Arnold, the Hares, and his home — by 
 the actual preaching of J. H. Newman. 
 
 Newman returned from the South of Europe to his 
 post as Fellow of Oriel and Vicar of St. Mary's in July 
 1833. He came back to Oxford impressed with the con- 
 viction that he, and the group of friends of whom he was 
 the centre, ' had a work to do in England ' ; and he states 
 that he always looked on Mr. Keble's assize sermon, on 
 •* National Apostasy,' preached on July 14th from the Uni- 
 versity pulpit, as ' the start of the religious movement of
 
 134 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1834. 
 
 1833.' The publication of 'Tracts for the Times' began 
 in September of that year. 
 
 ' The point that most occupies my mind just now is 
 Newman. I heard him preach in the parish church on 
 Sunday. There were things that reminded me that he 
 was the High Churchman. But the general tone, the 
 manner, the simple language, reminded me of no other 
 than Arnold. There was the same overpowering con- 
 viction conveyed that he was a thorough Christian — I had 
 almost said, a man of the purest charity. ... I have also 
 had a long talk to-day about him with Faber, who with 
 Marriott worships him as we do Arnold, and, from what 
 he says of him, I think rightly. He does appear to be 
 a man of the most sclf-den}'ing goodness that can well 
 be conceived, and to do good to a very great extent. I 
 have spoken (written) to Price about his sermon as strongly 
 as I well could, for I dread more and more a collision be- 
 tween Arnold and the High Church. At present he and 
 Newman seem to be almost antagonist powers, whereas 
 really they are of the very same essence, so to speak.' 
 
 The language is strong, and may seem to savour of 
 the hyperbole which the writer freely criticised in himself 
 and others. Yet to suppress it would be to set aside the 
 striking testimony which it bears, alike to the magical effect 
 of the preacher's eloquence, and to the appreciative and 
 open-minded nature of his listener. Further extracts will 
 show that the warmth of his language indicated no real 
 abandonment of the fundamental principles on which his 
 views then, and in mature life, differed from those set forth 
 by the leader of the Oxford Movement. Those who 
 thought otherwise formed a hasty estimate of the tenacity 
 and depth of Stanley's convictions. Only a week later he 
 begs his Rugby correspondent to assure Mr. Bonamy 
 Price, ' in language the strongest that can be used,' that 
 there is no fear of his forsaking Arnold for Newman. 
 ' Newman himself,' he says, ' is the greatest preservative 
 against so terrible a catastrophe.'
 
 CHAP. V FIRST TERM AT BALLIOL 135 
 
 A second sermon confirmed the impression which the 
 character of the preacher had produced. It left his 
 hearer's views exactly where they were before. 
 
 ' x\s for Newman, I have heard him twice since I wrote, 
 both sermons strongly High Church. One against the " evil- 
 natured arguments " which had been raised against the 
 Christian ordinances ; the other on regeneration in baptism. 
 As you may suppose, I disagreed ; but still there was 
 the same thoroughly Christian earnestness in all he said 
 that makes him very impressive. You forget that I can- 
 not see his face with my poor eyes. His delivery is simple 
 and earnest, though rather monotonous. I have not read 
 his published sermons yet, but Faber tells me they are 
 much better than those he preaches just now. I have been 
 reading a book of his on the Arians ; most of it clever and 
 interesting, and a good deal of it with which I agree, the 
 more as it seems often so contradictory to himself 
 
 At the close of the October term he paid a visit to 
 Vaughan at Cambridge. The effect on the young Oxonian 
 of the external aspect of the Cambridge of sixty years ago 
 is conveyed in language that has caught something of 
 the hyperbolical tone already noticed. But it is quoted as 
 marking his genuine sensitiveness, at this and all periods of 
 his life, to impressions of the kind. ' The change,' he says 
 ' from the great sweep of High Street and Broad Street 
 to the wretched narrow, winding, collegeless streets of Cam- 
 bridge, was at first quite overwhelming. . . . I could hardly 
 conceive it possible for a university to exist with any 
 degree of grandeur in a place so vile ! ' 'In spite of all 
 my wish to be pleased, and even a prejudice in favour of 
 Cambridge, I long,' he writes, ' to blow up all the houses 
 ... in these unsightly, undignified streets. I must vent 
 my grief, for it is great ! ' Those who knew the writer will 
 feel that the language, however strong, is too characteristic 
 to be suppressed or softened. He does, however, full justice 
 to the architectural merits of collegiate Cambridge. He
 
 136 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1834 
 
 pronounces Trinity ' somewhat finer than Christ Church, as 
 being larger and more diversified. . . . The view of the colleges 
 from the gardens, through which flows the Cam, is finer than 
 Ch. Ch. meadows, and King's Chapel is not to be spoken of 
 in the same breath as any of the Oxford chapels, . . . being 
 superior inside and outside beyond comparison.' 
 
 He was fortunate in his guides to the sights of Cam- 
 bridge. After sleeping ' in a room over Vaughan's,' he break- 
 fasted the next morning with Julius Hare, who was attend- 
 ing a meeting at Trinity. By Hare he was introduced to 
 Thirlwall," whom he describes as ' rather like Moberly, only 
 ten times more reserved,' ' melancholy looking beyond what 
 can be told, and satirical, and seldom speaking,' but ' dis- 
 playing more feeling over a huge dog, folding his arms 
 round its neck and almost kissing it ' ; ' to Kemble, a Union 
 speaker and vast Anglo-Saxonist ' ; and to Whewell, the 
 future Master of Trinity, of whom he says : ' his face, after 
 Holden's (a fellow-scholar at Balliol), is the most good- 
 humoured and good-natured that can be conceived.' 
 
 At a party at Downing he met ' the concentrated in- 
 tellect of Cambridge,' including, besides the lights already 
 mentioned, ' Blakeslcy, Thirlwall's successor, Lodge the 
 librarian, Romilly, and, not least, Ch. Wordsworth, whom 
 I had never seen before — quippe qui aberat' {sic). Of his 
 former examiner and future neighbour at Westminster, he 
 says that he ' overflowed with kindness ; he is, I think, 
 extremely handsome,' and he was as much struck by his 
 manners as by his countenance. He listened to ' a con- 
 versation on etymology, in which Kemble was, and knew 
 himself to be, the most skilled of anyone there ; also on 
 
 " Connop Thirlwall, who had ceased to be Assistant Tutor of Trinity, was 
 aljout to enter on his duties as Rector of Kirby-Underdale, in Yorkshire, where 
 he wrote the greater part of his History of Greece, and whence he was raised 
 to the See of St. David's by Lord Melbourne in 1840.
 
 -CHAP. V FJRSr TERM AT BALLIOL 137 
 
 the shutting of the Union on Sundays, in which Whewcll 
 strongly, and all more or less, advocated its being kept 
 open.' ' Thirlvvall was very silent, and fell asleep over 
 a book ; Whewell talked a great deal.' ' They seem very 
 happy all of them together,' he says of his Cambridge 
 seniors, ' and with much less restraint among them than I 
 should think there was among men of the same standing 
 at Oxford. I bade them all farewell there, and they all 
 overflowed with kindness, Whewell and Thirlwall particu- 
 larly ; the latter is coming to Oxford next term. 1 wonder 
 how I am to treat him,' he adds, as, naturally enough, the 
 relative position of a junior undergraduate and an ex-tutor 
 «of Trinity rises to his mind. His general verdict on the 
 older society of eminent men at Cambridge, ' all of whom,' 
 he says, ' I saw except Sedgwick, who had gone down,' 
 was that he was ' rather disappointed with their talking,' 
 but 'delighted with their kindness and jovialit}' ' ; and he 
 ventures to add that, ' with the exception of Wordsworth, I 
 thought them less polished than our Dons.' ' On the whole, 
 I don't repent being at Oxford, though the lectures here 
 are as good as those at Oxford are bad.' Undergraduate 
 society he reports as differing from that at Oxford, ' the 
 inevitable result of the much greater numbers at Trinity, 
 the ignorance in which each man lives of his neighbour, and 
 the absence of any one predominating or " elect " company.' 
 He speaks also of ' their manners being more barbarous 
 than with us,' though the points which he mentions could 
 scarcely be called absolutely distinctive of the sister uni- 
 versity. It need hardly be added that he did not fail to 
 visit 'the mulberry planted by Milton at Christ's,' and 
 ''Cromwell's picture taken from the living man at Sidney.'
 
 138 ^^^'^ O^ DEAN STANLEY 1834-37 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 1S34-37 
 
 CALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 
 The period from 1834 to 1838, during which Arthur 
 Stanley was an undergraduate at Balliol, formed an eventful 
 crisis in the history of England and of Oxford. Those who 
 were eager to remove all disabilities that seemed to press 
 unfairly on any one section of the nation were arrayed in 
 opposition to those who were animated by vague but grow- 
 ing fears for all that they valued as most precious in the 
 national institutions. The Reform Bill of 1832 had brought 
 the two parties into collision, and the shock was felt along 
 the whole line of politics and religion. New parties were 
 formed under new watchwords in Church and State. All 
 the grave issues which rose in succession to the troubled 
 surface are illustrated in Stanley's letters. He notices the 
 growth of the new Conservative party under Sir Robert 
 Peel ; he watches with keen attention the progress of such 
 questions as the appropriation of the revenues of the Irish 
 Church or the admission of Nonconformists to degrees ; he 
 discusses the teaching embodied in 'Apostolical Succession ' 
 or ' Church Authority ' as it fell, in tracts, sermons, and 
 conversation, from the most persuasive of lips or was 
 preached by the purest of lives. And the part which he 
 himself, while still a boy, played in the momentous dis- 
 cussions of the day was remarkable. It is no common 
 detail in the life of an undergraduate to have been the
 
 CHAP. VI HIS ANXIETY FOR ARNOLD 1 39 
 
 author of the most telHng portion of a pamphlet of excep- 
 tional importance, to have been consulted by those re- 
 sponsible for the appointment of a Regius Professor, and 
 to have written pages in an episcopal sermon which was 
 delivered under circumstances of unusual interest, and pro- 
 voked an almost unprecedented controversy. 
 
 At first, indeed, Stanley was not more interested in 
 watching the threatening aspect of the religious and political 
 atmosphere than anxious as to the effect which the storm 
 might produce on the position of Arnold, whose uncompro- 
 mising attitude exasperated his opponents and alarmed his 
 friends. Regarding as a national calamity the possible 
 severance of Arnold from Rugby, he dreaded lest the Head 
 Master should be forced to resign b}- the outcry that was 
 raised against him. His mind was filled with the thought 
 of how he could best aid the man who at Rugby had been 
 his ' oracle and idol both in one,' and who, while ceasing 
 to be his pupil's oracle, retained his ' reverence wholly 
 to the end.' This was the feeling which stimulated his 
 laborious efforts to win the Ireland Scholarship, induced him 
 to support against his judgment the ' Rugby Magazine,' ' 
 
 ' The idea of following the example of Eton by starting a literary periodi- 
 cal at Rugby originated with the school generation which succeeded that 
 of which Stanley and Vaughan were the most conspicuous figures. The 
 scheme was first brought to Stanley's notice in November 1834, and was at 
 once spoken of by him in a letter to Vaughan as ' singularly audacious, so 
 much so that I would rather not have it tried. But if it is tried, I agree 
 with you that we ought to support it.' After this the matter was repeatedly 
 and anxiously discussed in his letters, especially those to Vaughan. His 
 tone is in general deprecatory of the experiment. Arnold's opinion, that 
 ' if it was in good hands, and could be kept up well, it might be of use and 
 credit to the school,' he justly characterised as ' problematical.' In time, how- 
 ever, he so far modified his objections, though he never entirely withdrew 
 them, as to become a frequent contributor, and to take the deepest interest in 
 its character and success. The first number appeared in July 1835. It con- 
 tinued to appear at intervals of about three months till it reached its eighth 
 number in November 1837. Stanley's contributions included ' School a Little 
 World ' in No. 2, 'Thoughts on Horace' in No. 3, 'The Rugby Debating 
 Society' in No. 5, and 'A Few Last Words' in No. 7. Of all of these
 
 140 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1834 
 
 roused the enthusiasm with which lie welcomed every 
 success gained by his old school, inspired his outspoken 
 defence of his hero in the face of political and reli<jious 
 influences which at Oxford were becoming every year more 
 dominant and more antagonistic. Speaking at Baltimore 
 in 1878, he said : 
 
 ' The lapse of years has only served to deepen in me 
 the conviction that no gift can be more valuable than the 
 recollection and the inspiration of a great character working 
 on our own. I hope that you may all experience this at 
 some time of your life, as I have done.' 
 
 Yet, at the moment when the influence of Arnold was 
 still in full force, Stanley showed an individuality and inde- 
 pendence not inferior to his master. If, on the one side, his 
 letters and undergraduate career illustrate his capacity for 
 hero-worship, they, on the other hand, equally illustrate no 
 less essential parts of his character — his complete detach- 
 ment from party ties, and his power of freely criticising the 
 conduct even of those whom he most revered. 
 
 In the first few months of Stanley's undergraduate 
 life the mutterings of gathering storms were distinctly 
 heard. In the winter of 1834 Lord Melbourne's first 
 Ministry had been dismissed, and Sir Robert Peel, suddenly 
 recalled to the Premiership, dissolved Parliament. Politics 
 ran high, and much irritation was caused by the Head 
 
 it may be said that, were there no other evidence, the authorship would 
 be unmistakable. Besides thc^e prose essays, some remarkable verses which 
 he had written as a fifth-form exercise on 'Jacob's Ladder' were, with 
 his consent, though without his name, printed in No. 5. The two octavo 
 volumes, in which the eight numbers were usually bound, are now extremely 
 rare. In addition to papers in prose by C. J. Vaughan, signed F. C, are 
 some (unsigned) in verse — one a hymn, reprinted elsewhere, and still in use, 
 on the Dedication of a Church ; another, ' Lines on my Birthday,' the closing 
 portion of which is a tribute of warm affection to his unnamed friend, Arthur 
 
 Stanley — 
 
 ' To whom each year brings larger store 
 Of heavenly grace and human lore.'
 
 CHAP. VI HIS ANXIETY FOR ARNOID 141 
 
 Master of Rugby having travelled the whole way from the 
 Lakes to vote against Mr. Dugdale, one of the Rugby 
 tru.stees, in favour of a 'Radical 'candidate. Stanley him- 
 self expresses some vexation and doubt. ' I am always 
 afraid about him, that his abhorrence of opinions and men 
 on one side will throw him into the arms of those whom 
 he ought to abhor — some very nearly, some quite as much ; ' 
 ' those,' as he says some days later to his mother, ' whose 
 utterly Radical opinions, e.g. wishing for the disunion of 
 Church and State, he must abhor quite as much as the old, 
 and more than the present, Tory principles.' On his return 
 to the University he reports that ' at Oxford the scandal is 
 great ; of the Tories here who knew of it, the ill-disposed 
 rejoice, the good grieve ; and so do I, for though I can fully 
 appreciate and reverence the nobleness of his motives, I 
 much doubt v/hether his principles will bear him out.' 
 
 Soon after, hearing that Dr. Arnold is expected at 
 Alderley, he writes a very long and very earnest letter to 
 the home circle (Jan. 31st, 1835) : 
 
 ' . . . I think you at the Rectory are just the people to 
 do him good just now in the political way, and you might 
 impress on Mrs. Arnold how it is of the very utmost import- 
 ance that he should not be considered a party man or a 
 Radical, for he is certainly really not in the least one or 
 the other. . . . People seem here to be quite unconscious 
 of the great proportion of his nature which is Tory — all 
 his reverence for law, and for antiquity, and for the 
 Establishment.' 
 
 Nor was it only in political opinions that Arnold came 
 into collision with the influences then dominant at Oxford. 
 Few points are more characteristic of the period than the 
 incessant recurrence in Stanley's letters of the phrase 
 ' Apostolical Succession.' It was the centre on which all 
 religious controversy was then turning, the standard under 
 which ' the Movement ' was advancing. A glance at the
 
 142 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1835 
 
 first few numbers of the ' Tracts for the Times ' explains the 
 deep feeling which was roused by the appendix to Sermon 
 XI. in Arnold's third volume, in which he speaks of ' the 
 Divine right of the clergy, if grounded on their Apostoli- 
 cal succession, as a mischievous superstition,' and argues 
 throughout against ' the view, as little less than a positive 
 blasphemy, that requires the mediation of an earthly priest 
 between the Christian and his true Divine Mediator.' 
 
 Similar language is used by his pupil. Writing in 
 January 1835, Stanley says : 'More and more am I con- 
 vinced of the unchristian, un-anglican tendency of the 
 Apostolical Succession.' And as the summer advances he 
 speaks more than once of himself as ' working at the 
 question of the Priesthood,' 'turning over books at Parker's 
 and Talboys' in search of authorities on the question, 
 partly because it is assuming a more decided character 
 than ever up here,' and partly ' because it, and not politics, 
 is the point on which Arnold is now (nominally) attacked 
 exclusively.' 
 
 The summer term of 1835, when these last-quoted words 
 were written, was, however, disturbed by a more violent 
 explosion than any which doctrinal controversy then seemed 
 likely to generate, and one which formed the first stage in 
 a series of changes that have profoundly altered the whole 
 conditions of academical life in Oxford. 
 
 It was impossible that the universities should escape 
 untouched by the movement which was dominant in the 
 political world. In March 1834 a petition, signed by sixty- 
 three resident members of the University of Cambridge, was 
 presented in the House of Lords by Earl Grey, then Prime 
 Minister, praying for the admission of Dissenters to degrees 
 in Arts, Law, and Physic. 
 
 The second reading of a Bill founded on this petition 
 was carried in the Lower House in the following June by
 
 CHAP. VI THE QUESTION OF TESTS 143 
 
 321 votes to 174. The excitement and alarm in Oxford 
 and Cambridge ^ may be conceived. Showers of pamphlets 
 loaded the tables of the University booksellers — some, as 
 Stanley characterises them, ' extrav'agantly foolish ' ; others, 
 and notably those of Thirlwall, Hampden, Whewell, Sewell, 
 and F. D. Maurice, of permanent importance and interest. 
 
 The Bill was lost in the Upper House in August 1834. 
 The victory, however, did not bring a final end to the 
 controversy. It was obviously difficult to reconcile the 
 general feeling of either House with the enforcement of 
 such a test as the signature of the Thirty-nine Articles on 
 boys fresh from school. The Heads of Houses, who with 
 the two Proctors then formed the Hebdomadal Board 
 at Oxford, a body to whose hands the initiative in Uni- 
 versity legislation was exclusively confided, received, as has 
 been already noted, a hint from their sagacious Chancellor 
 to propose some modification of the existing arrangement. 
 
 Accordingly, in May 1835 a statute was framed by the 
 Heads of Houses. Without opening the door of the Uni- 
 versity to a single Nonconformist, it removed the invidious 
 feature of appearing to tamper with the conscience of youth 
 by a premature imposition of compulsory assent to a mass 
 of propositions on the most important subjects. The pro- 
 
 - The attitude of the two Universities towards Nonconformists of all 
 classes was by no means identical. At Oxford, every undergraduate was 
 at matriculation called upon to sign the Thirty-nine Articles and take the 
 oath of abjuration. The door of entrance was thus effectually closed against 
 all non-members of the Church of England. At Cambridge, no test whatever 
 was imposed at entrance. A Dissenter, a Roman Catholic, a Jew, might, so 
 long as he conformed to college regulations, keep the necessary number of 
 terms, enjoy all the advantages of college and university teaching, and obtain 
 the highest honours to which he could prove himself entitled. It was only 
 when he wished to proceed to a degree that the w ay was barred. No degree 
 of any kind could be obtained without a subscription to the 36th Canon, which 
 involved a declaration of bona Jide membership of the Church of England. 
 The difference between the two systems was therefore considerable, and it 
 was a difference which was greater, perhaps, in its practical results than even 
 in its formal statement.
 
 144 ^^^^ ^^ DEAN STANLEY 1835 
 
 posed substitute took the form of a ' Declaration ' to be 
 made at matriculatiou. The proposal, however, while it 
 did nothing to win the support of those who pressed for 
 the admission of Nonconformists, provoked a storm of 
 opposition for which its framers were little prepared. No 
 better resume can be given of the earliest attempt to 
 modify the terms of admission to membership of the 
 University of Oxford than the following, drawn up by 
 Arthur Stanley for his mother's eye in May 1835 : — 
 
 ' The only thing of importance that has happened since 
 you were here, is the rejection of the Declaration by a 
 majority of 459 against 57 last Wednesday. The old form 
 was that at matriculation everyone signed his name in a 
 book to the Articles. Of this everyone gives a different 
 interpretation. The natural one, of course, is that the sub- 
 scriber agrees with every word of what he signs ; but this 
 being too absurd to be upheld, when the subscribers are 
 boys, of whom not one-third have read, and not one out of 
 fifty have thought about, the Articles, other explanations 
 are given : that it expresses your submission to the Church's 
 authority ; that it means that you are a member of the 
 Church of England (both of which explanations in them- 
 selves admit of many various explanations; ; that it means 
 a denial of heresy— an exclusion of heresy, an exclusion 
 of Dissenters — a profession of your parents' belief — a 
 belief on authority of what you are to understand after- 
 wards ; that they are conditions of thought to be borne 
 in mind while engaged in the University studies, &c., &c. 
 All these interpretations make it impossible for anyone in 
 authority here, or anyone who comes to matriculate, 
 and much more any one out of Oxford, to know what the 
 subscription means. Accordingly, it was proposed to sub- 
 stitute a Declaration quite as exclusive, but with the great 
 advantage of being intelligible : 
 
 '" I, A. B., declare that I do, so far as my knowledge 
 extends, assent to the doctrines of the United Church of 
 England and Ireland, as set forth in her Thirty-nine Arti- 
 cles ; that I will conform to her liturgy and discipline ; and 
 that I am ready and willing to be instructed in her Articles 
 of Religion, as required by the statutes of the University." '
 
 CHAP. VI THE REJECTION OF THE DECLARATION 145 
 
 He goes on to describe, in this and other letters, the 
 fate of the Declaration in May 1835 : 
 
 ' At two o'clock, after a fruitless attempt to vote in the 
 Convocation House, the Theatre was thrown open, and we 
 (about 200 undergraduates) rushed into the gallery. We 
 had been standing in a thick crowd, seeing the people 
 pass between us and the Convocation House, and certainly 
 nothing could be more general than the wish to see 
 
 Arnold. Even was quite anxious to catch a glimpse 
 
 as he passed by. However, it was all in vain. I went 
 into the Theatre with Ward, and we anxiously watched the 
 door for the appearance of the great man in his full 
 canonicals. The place below was filled with M.A.'s. The 
 doctors of divinity sat clothed in scarlet, and among them 
 a bishop, variously reported to have been the Bishop of 
 Exeter, of Rochester, of North Carolina, of Owhyho, but 
 more probably the first-named. . . . Then came the twenty- 
 four heads — Hawkins and Hampden were hissed by the 
 undergraduates. The Declaration was read, received with 
 a scornful laugh, and proposed, " Placetne vobis, domini doc- 
 tores?" " Non placet " ejaculated the bishop and various 
 others. " Placetne vobis, magistri ? " " Non placet " roared 
 the Masters, and thereupon they waved their hats and caps, 
 and gesticulated and yelled, the undergraduates responding 
 from above. 
 
 ' They, the majority, behaved themselves more like 
 schoolboys in rebellion than clergymen employed in de- 
 fending what they call the last barrier of orthodoxy. 
 
 ' There is a song published here of which the burden is 
 non placet; the last two lines are beautifully descriptive of 
 the conduct and spirit of the party : 
 
 " This vile Declaration, we'll never embrace it, 
 We'll die ere we yield — die shouting ^Noti placet.^ " ' 
 
 Yet, while condemning the rejection of the Declaration, 
 he is anxious to discriminate between the motives by which 
 the votes of the majority were actuated. The ' Declaration,." 
 he says, 
 
 ' in itself would make no practical change, except so 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1835 
 
 far as it would c^ct rid of a palpable absurdity. I have 
 no doubt that Newman, jVIaurice, Mobcrly, Keble, Pusey, 
 and their party voted against it on real grounds. But I 
 suppose there is no doubt, on the other hand, that at least 
 250 of the majority had no grounds whatever, except horror 
 of innovation, which would equally induce them to vote 
 against any improvement in our system whatsoever ; so 
 that the very unimportance of the change makes its re- 
 jection very important. In the minority were Hawkins, 
 Hampden, Routh, Symons, Burton, Ormerod, Hamilton ; 
 indeed, except Moberly, and Maurice, and Newman's party, 
 I don't know of any eminent men in the majority.' 
 
 Part of Stanley's first Long Vacation (1835) was spent 
 in a visit to Dublin, where he joined his father at a meeting 
 of the British Association. Though unable, as he confesses, 
 ' to enter into the scientific business from my ignorance of 
 the subject,' he was keenly interested in seeing the eminent 
 men who were assembled at the meeting, and in hearing 
 the debates on social questions. 
 
 His stay in Dublin was diversified by a visit to Glenda- 
 lough and the Seven Churches, in company with his uncle 
 Penrhyn and Mr. Lear.^ 
 
 ' Luggelaugh had been very beautiful, but Glendalough 
 was perfect. You come down between woody hills on a 
 narrow valley, with two lakes glittering in the sunset, 
 closed at the end by the cliffs of Lugduff, and with finely- 
 shaped hills and woody rocks jutting into it. At the 
 entrance of the valley is the Round Tower, and three (?) of 
 the Seven Churches, small and in ruins, but the most in- 
 teresting ruins I ever saw. The greatest trace of this 
 former fane is preserved in the title of the Archbishop of 
 Dublin, which is Dublin and Glendalough, as the latter 
 was once the Episcopal See. The guide was, however, 
 sufficient to drive away all sentiment. He began by 
 shouting Moore's poem on Glendalough at the top of 
 his voice, and then went on with a profusion of legends, 
 in one of which P'in McCoul, the Irish giant, cuts a hole 
 
 ^ Afterwards well known as the trifted artist of that name.
 
 CHAP. VI VISIT TO IRELAND 147 
 
 in the rock with a sword forged by Vulcan and taken 
 from the anvil by the great huntsman Ramrod (Nimrod), 
 McCoul having previously been at school with the 
 Prophet Jeremiah. He nearly broke my legs by trying to 
 make them meet round a stone cross, which is necessary 
 to secure a beautiful wife and a good fortune.' 
 
 He adds a string of similar stories, ending with a de- 
 scription of his 
 
 * ascending shoeless with Mr. Lear along a narrow ledge — 
 a inauvais pas on a small scale — and helped round the 
 corner by an old woman surnamed Kathleen, who popped 
 us into the hole (St. Kevin's bed) just like a bathing-woman, 
 saying all the time, " Don't be fearful, my dear." We drove 
 on to sleep at Belleview, Mrs. Latouche's place, but owing 
 to the horse being knocked up, and the gradual expansion 
 of miles from six to twelve, did not reach it till 9.30. We 
 met with no sign in our nightly journey that we were 
 travelling through a land of fire and blood, except that, at 
 all houses where the driver knocked to ask the way, he had 
 to say " A friend " before the door was opened, and that we 
 were repeatedly told " that there was no danger in the way." ' 
 
 It is abundantly clear that the vehement denunciations 
 of the Roman Church, with which many parts of England 
 had been lately ringing, had produced a strong reaction 
 in the minds both of Edward Stanley and his son. ' I 
 came back,' confesses the latter, 
 
 'with my impressions against Orangemen increased, and 
 against the Kelts diminished. I went to two Roman 
 Catholic chapels, where I saw the worst of Popery, as it was 
 on the Day of the Assumption of the Virgin. There was 
 much that I disagreed in, but I can bear testimony that 
 they kept throughout within the limits of veneration with- 
 out idolatry.' 
 
 The result of his father's observations were soon after 
 embodied in a pamphlet entitled ' A Few Observations on 
 Religion and Education in Ireland.' Its main object was 
 
 L 2
 
 148 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1835 
 
 to enter a timely protest against ' the coarse invective and 
 gross ribaldry ' with which every Roman Catholic tenet 
 was at the time assailed by those who wished to advance 
 the cause of Protestantism in Ireland. But the passage 
 that is of the most especial interest contains an elaborate 
 argument, based on quotations from the ' Tracts for the 
 Times ' and Newman's Sermons. Its aim is to show that, 
 
 ' of the most essential doctrines of the Romish creed, 
 the principle of some is directly sanctioned by the formu- 
 laries of the Church of England, while there are others 
 which its comprehensive spirit allows its members to enter- 
 tain ; and that a doctrine which lies at the basis of the 
 whole claims of the Church of Rome ... is entertained 
 by a numerous and active body of our own clergy, men of 
 unimpeachable character and eminent for their talents 
 and piety.' 
 
 For these pages the future Bishop of Norwich was, to 
 say the least, largely indebted to the assistance of his 
 undergraduate son. 
 
 Immediately after his return from Dublin he paid his 
 first visit to Sir Stephen Glynne at Hawarden Castle. 
 Part of a letter written to his brother at the end of August 
 shows that he was then, as at all times subsequently, de- 
 lighted to enter into quite other subjects than the grave 
 social and religious questions in which he took so keen an 
 interest. 
 
 ' . . . I had never been at Hawarden before, and it quite 
 answered my expectation, both in the beauty of the place 
 and of Mary Glynne (the future Lady Lyttelton). The 
 party was very young and gay, but did not break out into 
 games as when you were there, being fully occupied by the 
 bazaar. I betook myself to my usual work at bazaars, viz. 
 — getting up raffles. Money was made in various ways : 
 by a telescope at the top of the tower, by a recitation, exe- 
 crably bad, in the keep, by auction, by lotteries, by puffs, &c. 
 &c. You will think I must have become very audacious
 
 CHAP. VI CONFLICT OF SCIENCE WITH SCRIPTURE 149 
 
 when I tell you that I actually talked a great deal to Miss 
 Brooke (afterwards Lady Meath). Mr. Phillimore was the 
 most amusing person there, very handsome and very clever, 
 but too much given to talk nonsense to the young ladies. 
 Sir Stephen let things take their own course very much. . . . 
 The greatest misfortune that happened to me was having 
 to sit opposite two chickens at a rather scanty dinner, and 
 so having to help everyone ; luckily they were not en- 
 veloped in sauce, and I believe I committed no greater 
 error than sending Mr. Phillimore a leg and a carcase. I 
 made acquaintance with a very pleasant young Oxonian, 
 Courtenay, with whom I made an agreement to come to 
 Tatton and keep him in countenance on September i by 
 not shooting, and whom we frightened so by our account 
 of Tatton, where he was going for the first time, that he 
 dreamt all night of the red-satin drawnng-room. In short, 
 I enjoyed myself very much, more so than on any Cheshire 
 visit I have made for a long time.' 
 
 Fresh from his impressions of the meeting of the 
 British Association at Dublin, he wrote out, for his sister's 
 benefit, a long statement of his views as to the apparent 
 conflict of geological science with the Scripture record. 
 It is, of course, only necessary to notice this so far as it 
 shows at what a singularly early date he had formed 
 definite conclusions on such important subjects, and then, 
 in his own words, ' laid the question on the shelf One or 
 two sentences only need be quoted from the closely- written 
 sheets which embody his views. He begins with the 
 remark that 
 
 * the first thing to be observed is, that the truth of 
 Christianity is not affected by any questions about the first 
 chapter of Genesis.' 
 
 After discussing the ' true limits and true grounds of 
 Christian faith, as centred in Christ Himself,' he asks the 
 question, ^ Does geology in any way prove Genesis not to 
 have come from God ? ' In his reply he gives some of the
 
 J50 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1835 
 
 various interpretations by which ' the record of science 
 and the account of Genesis ma}- be reconciled ' ; but lays 
 especial stress on the answer that 
 
 ' God did not intend Genesis to be a revelation of 
 geology, and that therefore we are no more likely to find 
 geological accuracy in the account of the Creation than 
 astronomical accuracy in the account of the stars, &c , in 
 Joshua, Psalms, or Job. If Genesis be in its first chapter 
 a revelation of geological truth, it is an exception to the 
 general rule of Scripture revelation ; . . . what we ought 
 to look for there is our relation to God as our Creator, . . . 
 that we and all the world were created by God, and not by 
 chance, and all that we enjoy comes from God, and God 
 only.' 
 
 He enters also into the question of verbal inspiration : 
 
 ' The Holy Spirit does not seem elsewhere to have exer- 
 cised an especial influence over the style of the inspired 
 writer. Isaiah's style is different from Jeremiah's, both 
 entirely different from St. Paul's. I do not see why Moses 
 should not have been left to convey the great truth of our 
 creation to the Jews in such language as was most familiar 
 and most intelligible to them as an early P^astern nation ; 
 why he should not have taught them their relations to God 
 as their Creator, without teaching them the history of 
 ichthyosauri, with which they had no relations whatever.' 
 
 He ends with — 
 
 ' this is the great point to bear in mind, that, even though 
 Genesis be proved altogether fabulous (which God forbid), 
 yet your faith and the faith of every poor Christian in 
 this world remains unshaken ; your rule of life, your object 
 of worship, your fear of judgment, and your hope of hap- 
 piness, remain the same.' 
 
 Another result of his Irish tour was the assistance 
 which he rendered his father in the pamphlet already 
 mentioned. Here, too, his opinions are remarkably in 
 accordance with those which he held throughout his life
 
 CHAP VI OPINION ON THE IRISH CHURCH 151 
 
 and the words in which they are conveyed might have 
 been used forty years later. 
 
 To Vaughan he expresses himself strongly in favour of 
 an opinion, which he maintained up to the final disestablish- 
 ment of the Irish Church, that any ' appropriation ' of the 
 revenues of the Established Church ought to go to ' the 
 whole Christian Church in Ireland,' and that ' Ministers 
 would be quite justified in forcing an Appropriation Bill 
 down the mouths of the Tories, if they would only say, 
 " We will consider both portions of the Irish Church at 
 once." ' He tells him : ' I have been reading many Roman 
 Catholic books lately, and learned their doctrines much 
 better than I knew them before. I am convinced that Pro- 
 testants in general treat them with shameful ignorance 
 and unfairness.' Somewhat later he writes : 
 
 ' If you are at Cambridge, look, if you have the curiosity, 
 for an answer on the suppression of Dens's " Dedications " 
 in the " Globe " of last Tuesday, sent by my father, signed 
 " E. S.," and — -I suppose there can be no harm in telling you 
 — drawn up by me, as he was very busy, and I knew the case 
 well. He is writing a pamphlet on the state of religion in 
 Ireland, which has led mc, more than I should otherwise 
 have done, to examine the doctrines of popery. I have 
 experienced this vacation in very great abundance the 
 benefits of staying at home, as Arnold recommends, having 
 become much more at ease with my father, and talked 
 more with him than I ever did before. From his having 
 had so very different an education, and having such totally 
 different pursuits and feelings, we have very little in 
 common with each other, so that I am very glad of any- 
 thing which we can have in CDmmon, as this pamphlet. I 
 shall not agree with all of it ; but I hope it will do some 
 good, for really the violence of the No-popery party is 
 quite appalling.' 
 
 And again : 
 
 '. . . I think I shall go to Rugby, but only for three 
 days, and will most surch' think of you. I could not help
 
 152 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1835 
 
 alluding to the happy days of reunion there in my article."* 
 I long to have a good talk with you about all the things 
 which fill m)' mind. I am afraid you must think I wander 
 sadly from my own proper studies ; but most thankful as I 
 am that God has given us youth to form our opinions in 
 before we have publicly to act upon and express them, it 
 is for that very reason so great a comfort to have settled 
 any one opinion so as to be able to lay it on the shelf 
 quietly, that I cannot help thinking over those which come 
 .so frequently before me now in politics and theology. In 
 the latter, the more I consider, the more I can find no rest- 
 ing-place, except to believe that, whatever may be the 
 superstructure, gold, hay, or stubble, there is but one 
 foundation — even Christ crucified and risen — and that in 
 that one foundation all Christians are united, except in 
 countries where, as Arnold says, it is not Christianity, but 
 idolatry and superstition bearing the name of Christianity. 
 It is most painful and perplexing to suppose that, when 
 Christ promised that His Church should be one, even as 
 He and His Father are one. He meant that they ought to 
 be one in all the thousand points of Christian doctrine and 
 discipline, a thing which the laws of God himself in Nature 
 seem to forbid ; and, once granting this, that on the corner- 
 stone of the Gospel we and the Roman Catholics are 
 united, I know not what more to be assured of, in order to 
 look upon them as fellow-workers with all good Protestants 
 against our common enemy. . . . 
 
 ' They (the points for which the Reformers died) were 
 important points certainly — points which, 1 think, must for 
 ever preclude us and Papists from becoming members of 
 one national, or, at any rate, one uniform, Church, but not 
 from being members of one Christian Church. The im- 
 portant points which form our differences, viz. the priest- 
 hood, the infallibility of the Church, the indispensable 
 nature of ceremonies, the Apostolical Succession, and the 
 Real Presence in the P2ucharist, are all virtually held by 
 Newman and his followers ; in them, therefore, we have 
 an image of the errors of Popery without their abuses or 
 the mischief of their practical details. Very objectionable, 
 certainly, but still not such as ought to be denounced in 
 the language we commonly hear. I do not see any more 
 
 4 A paper on ' School a Little World ' in No. 2 of the Kitgby Mas^azine.
 
 CHAP. VI BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD 1 53 
 
 reason for sayin<^ that Roman Catholics arc of a chffcrcnt 
 rchgion from ourselves, than for saying that the High 
 Churchmen are. So much for Popery, of which, since I have 
 thought much, I find that its Articles are better than I 
 had expected, its practice (considering the comparative 
 excellence of its theory, as exhibited in those Articles) 
 worse. This is all very rambling. ... I am reading Niebuhr 
 now, and am wrapt up in amazement at the wonderful 
 greatness of the work. Every portion of his mind seems 
 powerful enough to have turned all the other faculties into 
 idiotcy.' 
 
 A few days after the appearance of the pamphlet 
 (October 1835) he writes a very private letter to cheer his 
 sister, who thought that her father, in his anxiety to do 
 justice to the Roman Church, was doing less than justice 
 to the Evangelical party. He speaks of ' its having been a 
 great source of happiness to me during this vacation to 
 have been drawn so much closer to my father than ever 
 before,' and laments what seems ' the curse of every man, 
 that he cannot be liberal on one point without being 
 illiberal on another.' He then, with a width of view of 
 which few grown men are capable, and which in one not 
 yet twenty years old is remarkable, suggests to her points 
 which she might urge in any possible discussion with her 
 father. 
 
 ' Ask him,' he says, ' to consider whether it is not as pos- 
 sible to abstain from balls and plays with sincerity as to fast 
 with sincerity, not to say that to abstain from the former 
 is, in most cases, a much greater self-denial ; whether an 
 over-reverence for the Bible, shown by interpreting it 
 absurdly, and supposing its inspiration to extend to every 
 word of it, is not much more harmless than an over rever- 
 ence for the Councils of the Church, shown by supposing 
 their decrees to be infallible, and to have a claim on every 
 Christian's obedience ; whether Evangelicism does not admit 
 of men quite as good as are admitted by Catholicism, and 
 whether it can ever run by any conceivable possibility into 
 abuses at all comparable with those produced by popery.'
 
 154 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1855 
 
 On the other hand, he reminds his sister that — 
 
 ' Vou must remember that the great point in the general 
 question about Cathohcs is, that they are Christians, and 
 therefore may be, and sometimes are, fellow-workers with 
 Protestants against their common enemies, the world, the 
 flesh, and the devil ; and that the point on the other hand 
 is, that the Exeter Hall Evangelicals deny the Catholics 
 to be Christians, and so divide Christ's servants at a time 
 when their united efforts are so especially required. And 
 finally, about controversy, it is no more a part of the 
 essence of Christianity than is a dispute about the Comet. 
 If we have good reason to hope that we are made the 
 children of God by the blood of Christ, so that He will by 
 His example and His aid help us to be good in this life, 
 and that He has saved us from death, this is all that we 
 want. . . . Controversy may be necessary or not, accord- 
 ing to circumstances, but it is almost always about things 
 not in themselves essential. . . . But by this time I hope you 
 are more at ease. I suppose you have to thank Arnold 
 that I am not illiberal towards the Evangelicals from being 
 liberal towards the Catholics. God bless you, my dearest 
 Mary, and ever beheve me to be most thankful to be able 
 in any way to help you.' 
 
 The success of his father's pamphlet was immediate. 
 It 'seems now,' he writes a few days after its publication, 
 ' to be going on most swimmingly ; it has just come out 
 at the very nick of time, when the " No-popery " cry has 
 reached its full climax and absurdity.' 
 
 He had scarceh' returned from these theological studies 
 to his necessary reading for the University examinations, 
 when his attention was once more disturbed by an explosion 
 that shook Oxford to its very foundations. A few weeks 
 before he had written regretting his inability to take part in 
 the reception given to the Duke of Wellington and Queen 
 Adelaide. * There was,' he says, ' the usual display of rank 
 Toryism, which perhaps offends me more because I am so 
 fond of a tumult that I am greatl)' grieved b}- any in which
 
 CHAP. VI DR. HAMPDEN'S CASE 155 
 
 it is unlawful to take part.' But in the tumult caused by the 
 selection of Dr. Hampden as Regius Professor of Divinity 
 he was able to gratify to the full the combative element of 
 his nature, and was even called upon to play for a moment 
 an unprecedented part. 
 
 In January 1836 the Regius Professorship of Divinity 
 fell vacant by the death of Dr. Burton. The appointment 
 was vested in the Crown, and after considerable delay Lord 
 Melbourne selected Dr. Hampden, Principal of St. Mary's 
 Hall, and Professor of Moral Philosophy, to fill the vacant 
 chair. In 1832 Dr. Hampden had delivered his Bampton 
 Lectures on ' The Scholastic Philosophy considered in its 
 Relations to Christian Theology.' At first the lectures 
 aroused no protest and excited no special hostile criti- 
 cism. The real views of the writer were, it need scarcely 
 be said, in no sense anti-Christian ; but the language which 
 he used exposed his thoughts to frequent misinterpreta- 
 tions. For the time, however, the alleged Socinian or 
 Sabellian tendencies escaped detection, veiled in obscurities 
 of style which were often their true parent. 
 
 Dr. Hampden was subsequently conspicuous in his 
 support of the full admission of Nonconformists to the 
 benefits of University education and degrees. His ' Observa- 
 tions on Religious Dissent' (1834), and his 'Postscript' 
 (1835), advocated measures which, to the majority of 
 Oxford residents, appeared disastrous and revolutionary. 
 The application of the principles of the Bampton Lectures 
 to a living question of practical politics provoked a criticism 
 which the lectures themselves had escaped. Cardinal 
 Newman records ' the fact of his having at once, in a 
 private letter to the author, spoken of the principles of 
 the pamphlet as 'tending, in my opinion, altogether to 
 make shipwreck of Christian faith.' And among many of 
 
 ^ Apologia, 1st edition, p. 132.
 
 156 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1836 
 
 those who were best acquainted with Dr. Hampden's works 
 there existed a deep distrust of his theological \-icws, and 
 a strong feeling against his occup)-ing a chair which made 
 him the authorised teacher of all Oxford candidates for 
 Holy Orders. 
 
 As soon as the intended appointment was announced 
 the storm broke. Lord Melbourne fully realised the im- 
 portance of the post, and it was with the entire concurrence 
 of Archbishop Whately and Bishop Copleston that he 
 selected Dr. Hampden as, in his judgment, the man best 
 qualified for the Professorship. ' I was never,' he avows in 
 a letter to Whately, ' more puzzled with any decision that 
 I had to make.' There is still extant a private letter, 
 signed E. J. Stanley, written from Downing Street by the 
 Secretary to the Treasury on February 8th to Arthur Stanley, 
 asking him to state * what the opinion is respecting the 
 supposed competitors .'' how Hampden stands as a scholar 
 and a divine ? who is generally considered as most fitted 
 for the situation ? what names are mentioned ? ' asking 
 further for ' your own opinion of comparative merits, and 
 also of the feeling of the place.' It is not often that an 
 undergraduate has been consulted, even indirectly, on such 
 a question by a Prime Minister ! The substance of his 
 answer can be gathered from the extracts from his letters 
 which follow. It is said to have elicited a concise eulogy 
 from Dord Melbourne. It arrived, however, too late to have 
 any practical effect. On the evening of February loth the 
 intended appointment of Dr. Hampden, to which the King 
 had on that day signified his assent in a letter to his Prime 
 Minister, was mentioned in the ' Standard.' 
 
 Without a day's delay, a meeting was held at Oxford to 
 protest against the appointment, and a remonstrance, signed 
 by over seventy residents, reached King William IV. at 
 Brighton by February 13th or 14th, 1836. The memorial.
 
 CHAP. VI DR. HAMPDEN'S CASE 157 
 
 supported, as its representations appear to have been, by the 
 Archbishops both of Canterbury and York, made a serious 
 impression on the King. But Lord Melbourne remained 
 unshaken, and urged " the injustice of withdrawal, in defer- 
 ence to ' the clamour and outcry ' of ' an unreasonable 
 agitation,' from a judgment formed ' upon the soundest 
 and most certain grounds.' " His arguments prevailed. 
 The actual appointment \\as notified in the ' Gazette' of 
 the 19th, with the date of the 17th. At this point some 
 few, who had joined in the previous remonstrance, with- 
 drew from further opposition. Others, who had regarded 
 the appointment as ' most ill-advised and unhappy ' from 
 the disturbance which they were aware that it would create, 
 yet voted against the measures which were subsequentl}' 
 brought forward by Dr. Hampden's opponents. 
 
 But the great majority of remonstrants took a different 
 course. A committee met daily in the Corpus Common 
 Room, and from the centre of this ' Corpus Parliament ' there 
 flowed, during the spring of 1836, a stream of controversial 
 literature unparalleled in the history of Oxford. Among 
 the pamphlets the two most important were, one by Dr. 
 Pusey, entitled ' Dr. Hampden's Theological Statements 
 and the Thirty-nine Articles Compared,' and another — of 
 which J. H. Newman was willing to acknowledge the 
 authorship — called ' Elucidations of Dr. Hampden's Theo- 
 logical Statements.' The agitation grew with every day ; 
 the clergy in all parts of P2ngland received specimens, as 
 they were supposed to be, of the new Professor's teaching ; 
 the public was informed of every stage of the controversy 
 by letters and articles in the London and provincial press. 
 
 •^ These letters (to the Archbishop and to the King) will be found on 
 pp. 496-500 of Lord Melbourne's Papers, edited by Mr. Lloyd C. Sanders. 
 
 ' See Memorials of Bishop Hampden, where the letter is given at length, 
 but undated, on p. 49. The original letter, still in Miss Hampden's possession, 
 is dated South Street, Feb 7lh.
 
 i:;8 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1836 
 
 Widespread alarm and extraordinary interest were aroused 
 in the coming contest. 
 
 The first practical step was to send memorials to the 
 Heads of Houses, with whom lay the initiative in all legis- 
 lation, calling upon them to submit various statutes in\-olv- 
 ing a censure of Dr. Hampden's 'principles and opinions ' 
 to Convocation, i.e. to the general body of resident and 
 non-resident M. A. 's and higher degrees. These requisitions, 
 however, were for a while resisted, and formally rejected on 
 February 28th. 15ut the agitation grew with every week, and 
 on March nth ' the Heads,' by a majority of one, consented 
 to submit to Convocation a statute which deprived the new 
 Regius Professor of two of the functions attached to his 
 office, viz. of his place on the board for the nomination of 
 Select Preachers, and also on that for taking cognisance of 
 heretical preaching at Oxford, on the ground that^ ' in 
 consequence of his public writings, the University had no 
 confidence in the present Professor.' The day fixed for the 
 Convocation was March 22nd. Dr. Hampden's inaugural 
 lecture was delivered on March 17th, and was followed by a 
 second pamphlet from Dr. Pusey — ' Dr. Hampden's Past 
 and Present Statements Compared.' 
 
 When the decisive day arrived the Sheldonian Theatre 
 was crowded with an excited throng of graduates and 
 undergraduates. But the two Proctors ^ brought the pro- 
 ceedings to an abrupt close by exercising their right of veto, 
 and the assembly broke up, to use the words of a letter from 
 Mr. Nassau Senior to the 'Globe' of March 23rd, 'amidst 
 shouts, groans, and shrieks from galleries and area such 
 as no deliberative assembly probably ever heard.' 
 
 The Piaster vacation only embittered the contest. New 
 Proctors came into office in the following term ; the war of 
 pamphlets grew hotter, and fresh vehemence was added to 
 
 " The Rev. G. G. Bayley of Peml)roke, and Rev. H. Reynolds of Jesus.
 
 CHAP. VI DR. HAMPDEN'S CASE 
 
 159 
 
 the strife by the appearance in the April number of the 
 *■ Edinburgh Review ' of a fierce article from Dr. Arnold's 
 pen, with the heading — for which the editor was solely 
 responsible — ' The Oxford Malignants and Dr. Hampden.' 
 The remonstrants, however, persevered, and prevailed on 
 the Heads of Houses to bring forward once more the pro- 
 posed statute. The second Convocation was held on May 
 5th. After much disturbance had been caused by the ex- 
 clusion of undergraduates, who asserted their claim to be 
 present by breaking windows and raising loud outcries, 
 the question was at length put. The opponents of Dr. 
 Hampden obtained a signal victory. The disqualifying 
 statute was carried by a vote of 474 against 94. 
 
 This brief sketch of the Hampden controversy explains 
 the following extracts from Stanley's letters. Writing early 
 in February 1836, he says : 
 
 ' The great event in Oxford for the last week, which has 
 engrossed everything else, has been the appointment of 
 Hampden to the Regius Professorship. Every possible 
 person had been named previously, insomuch that there 
 was not a bad caricature of the various reports in the cir- 
 culation of a story that Lord Brougham was to take Orders 
 that he might accept the office. Hampden's appointment, 
 which was announced on Monday, has been a very serious 
 thing. He is a man of excellent private character and great 
 learning, but with the most extraordinary faculty of writing 
 obscurely that any man ever had. Having written on the 
 subject of the inexpediency of Articles, he has expressed 
 himself in such a way on several important subjects as to 
 give all ill-disposed and many well-disposed people the idea 
 that he is a Socinian. 
 
 ' This idea I believe to be wholly and totally false ; but 
 the very fact of his writing .so obscurely as to convey the 
 impression to any honest person ought to have been a 
 decisive obstacle to his appointment ; not to mention that 
 it is particularly desirable that the Professor should be a 
 man of no party, and a man in whom the generality of the 
 men who are to attend his lectures will place confidence.
 
 l6o LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1836 
 
 The feeling here has been very strong. Strong people on the 
 one side say that Arnold would have been worse. Strong 
 people on the other, that Newman would have been worse. 
 Professedly moderate men (like Shuttleworth) say that both 
 Arnold and Newman would have been worse. Pusey, how- 
 ever, says that Arnold would be better. ... It seems quite 
 agreed by all that no such steps could have been taken 
 against him as have been taken against Hampden, viz. peti- 
 tioning the King against his appointment on the ground that, 
 judging from the statement of his opinions, his instructions 
 as Professor would be attended with most disastrous results. 
 The petition is not yet gone, I believe, in hopes that Hamp- 
 den will resign ; but it has certainly not been drawn up or 
 managed with due delicacy, or indeed justice, to Hampden, 
 who is a man of a most peaceful and shy nature, and 
 whose chief fault really appears to be his uncommon ob- 
 scurity of style. I am very sorry for him indeed, though 
 I heartily wish that he had never been made, and that he 
 will not now continue to be. Professor.' 
 
 It was probably in the spirit of this letter that he had 
 answered the communication from Downing Street, to 
 which he alludes on February 21st : 
 
 ' I am much relieved to hear that my answer to Ed- 
 Avard John was approved. You may imagine my astonish- 
 ment on opening the letter, which was marked private. 
 ... I never felt in so important a situation before, and 
 my answer was one of the most nervous jobs I have ever 
 had. , . . The contest about the Regius Professor has ended 
 in the confirmation of Hampden's appointment — so Owen 
 has no chance ! ' 
 
 In spite of the intense interest with which he entered 
 into the embittered conflict, he is anxious to do justice on 
 all sides. Speaking of Hampden's appointment, he says : 
 
 ' It is a most complicated and difficult subject. I think 
 it was a bad appointment on account of his great obscurity 
 (of style), but I think all the petitions and proceedings 
 against him (except, perhaps, the first, before his appoint- 
 ment was definitely confirmed) have been still worse. He is,
 
 CHAP. VI DR. HAMPDEN'S CASE i6l 
 
 I believe, really orthodox, though from this said obscurity, 
 apparently heterodox.' 
 
 He describes the scene at Hampden's inaugural lecture 
 as 
 
 'one of the most pathetic and impressive sights I ever 
 saw — the Regius Professor defending himself before the 
 whole University against the charge of heresy in the old 
 magnificent school of divinity — especially when he ap- 
 pealed to God that he had never for a moment swerved 
 from the true faith of Trinity in Unity and Unity in 
 Trinity. I believe him to have been entirely sincere, except, 
 perhaps, that he may have purposely used the ambiguous 
 phrases of " the real vital Presence " in the Communion, and 
 " the bearers of the Apostolical Commission." . . . Yester- 
 day it was settled in Convocation whether he was or was 
 not to enjoy the Professorship without a censure from the 
 University. The Proctors, it was said, were going to put 
 their veto on the statute. I had to leave Oxford on 
 Monday ; otherwise I should have been most anxious to 
 see the scene in Convocation, as this veto is quite a re- 
 volutionary measure.' 
 
 He used characteristically to speak, years later, of the 
 occasion as one of the few great sights which he had allowed 
 himself to miss. 
 
 Not content to take his opinions from the leaders of 
 either side, he studied Hampden's writings for himself. 
 
 ' I have read a good part of the " Philosophical Evi- 
 dences" (Hampden's), which I rather like; though it is now 
 impossible to give an abstract opinion on any of Hampden's 
 works, when one is so constantly on the watch to detect 
 orthodoxies and heterodoxies. It contains all, and more than 
 all, the orthodoxy of the " Parochial Sermons," and vindi- 
 cates the honesty of some of the doubtful passages of the 
 Inaugural Lecture ; moreover, it contains some of the hetero- 
 doxy (viz. the Tritheism) of the Bampton Lectures, which 
 is also important, as showing that the frame of his mind 
 has not materially changed. The " Moral Philosophy " is 
 better than one would have expected from the extracts^ 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 1 62 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1836 
 
 but he certainly carries out the moral sense to a prodigious 
 extent, and must, I think, have a very inadequate sense of 
 the superiority of Christian to Deistical and heathen 
 morality. . . .' 
 
 Whatever may be thought of the success of the effort, 
 it is plain that he tried to do justice to men whose deepest 
 principles were diametrically opposed to those on which 
 his own most cherished beliefs had been moulded. He 
 speaks with respect of the ' high, and unearthly, and con- 
 sistent, and enthusiastic fanaticism ' of Newman and his 
 friends. He meets the accusation of ' Newmanite exclusive- 
 ness ' by quoting one of Newman's sermons,^ in which he 
 had expressly declared his preference of ' a Christian 
 Radical and a Christian Dissenter to a worldly Tory or a 
 worldly Churchman.' While he condemns the course pur- 
 sued by Dr. Pusey, he is surprised that it should have been 
 adopted by ' a man often so wise and always so good.' 
 He defends both Newman and Pusey against the charge 
 of wilful dishonesty in making extracts from Hampden's 
 works, which often give ' a passage a meaning directly the 
 reverse of what it really bears,' and attributes their ^ garble- 
 nicnts ' to ' their incapacity of judging the work of a mind 
 wholly different from their own, the same incapacity that 
 Arnold has with regard to Newman.' Nor was he a blind 
 follower of his own beloved teacher. He laments what he 
 ' must think Arnold's somewhat uncharitable spirit towards 
 two such generally good men as Newman and Pusey.' And 
 the commencement of the following letter shows how deeply 
 he regretted the intemperate vehemence of Arnold's famous 
 article in the ' Edinburgh Review.' 
 
 ' I am glad, and at the same time sorry, that you agree 
 with me about the article in the " Edinburgh." It is a most 
 sad thing, and will, I fear, make the breach . . . irreparable. 
 
 " The reference is obviously to vol. iii. Sermon X\'., p. 234,
 
 CHAP. VI DR. HAMPDEN'S CASE 163 
 
 The most objectionable thing is " pretended holiness," and 
 the general contempt with which he speaks of them, as 
 well as the imputation of deliberate dishonesty. At the 
 same time, no one who has not compared Newman and 
 Puscy's extracts with the original writings of Hampden, 
 and who has not had experience, in himself or others, of 
 the fearfully erroneous impression that those extracts con- 
 vey, can duly appreciate the appearance that must have 
 presented itself to Arnold's mind of shameless and wilful 
 fabrication. If they (the extracts) had been made by any- 
 one else than Newman and Pusey, I should not have hesi- 
 tated to attribute them to wilful dishonesty ; as it is, I 
 must call it culpable carelessness, blindness, and reckless- 
 ness, in matters of the most vital importance to the Church 
 and nation, and to the peace of a good man. They have 
 applied to doctrines what Hampden says of phraseology, 
 to the Atonement what he has said of penance, to denial of 
 sacramental grace, and original sin, and regeneration, and 
 Trinitarianism, what he has said in confirmation and 
 approval of all these truths. They have, till they were 
 compelled by counter-pamphlets to notice that there were 
 such books, kept out of sight his " Parochial Sermons " and 
 " Philosophical Evidences," which contain the very essence 
 of orthodoxy ; they have attacked him because he has im- 
 pugned their own peculiar theory of Church authority, and 
 the submission of human reason, and have enlisted in their 
 ranks persons who differ as entirely from that theory as 
 does Hampden himself; and all this while they themselves 
 hold tenets barely compatible with their remaining in the 
 English Church. However, the end of all things has been 
 that the final Convocation was held to-day ; the result you 
 will see in the papers — 480 against, 97 for, Hampden. 
 Arnold, Price, Grenfell, and Buckoll came up, and Mrs. A. 
 They were here from eleven till half-past six. But as the 
 greater part of the time was taken up in Convocation, I 
 saw very little of them. It is certainly a deep disgrace 
 upon Oxford, but it shows what can be done by men of 
 commanding influence and undaunted energy like Newman 
 and Pusey. . . .' 
 
 The Hampden controversy may be appropriately closed 
 with the two following extracts from letters written in 
 May 1836. The first is from a letter to his sister :
 
 1 64 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1836 
 
 ' I had a beautiful letter from Arnold the other day 
 about Newman and his party. I had written to him much 
 more openly than I had yet done, telling him how much 
 his article was regretted at Oxford, and saying that I did 
 not see why the general principles of the Newmanists, or 
 the particular act of persecution of which they had lately 
 been guilty, should necessarily involve their whole moral 
 character, or shake my belief in the very strong evidence 
 I had for their being good men. He wrote back much 
 more moderately than he has yet done, and thanking me 
 for speaking openly to him what I really thought.' 
 
 The second is from a letter to Vaughan : 
 
 ' I was looking over my old MS. notes of Arnold's ser- 
 mons the other day, and they called back old times most 
 painfully— at least I believe I must say painfully, though 
 there is no great reason why it should be so. But the change 
 is great from the time when I used to go on from day to 
 day in a state of such undoubting trust and confidence, and 
 conscious of gaining day by day improvement in all my 
 powers, and looking forward to furthering the interests of 
 the great man to whom I owed so much by my own exer- 
 tions at Oxford, and passing once a week twenty minutes 
 in the evening chapel on Sundays. Now there is doubt 
 and controversy, and rival men and principles to demand 
 my attention, and perpetual fear lest I am going backward 
 instead of advancing, and want of anyone on whom I may 
 repose with confidence, or from whom I may gain any 
 moral or intellectual food such as I can be sure will endure. 
 And then, altogether, the mixture of two worlds — looking 
 back to Rugby, and looking forward to Oxford and feeling 
 that as yet I have done nothing to promote Arnold's fame 
 here. But so I suppose it must be, and it would be most 
 ungrateful — when God has so mercifully preserved to me 
 my health and eyesight, and given me new friends here, as 
 well as preserved to me my old friends — to murmur at 
 what seems to be the natural lot of everyone. Probably 
 you will not feel the difference so much as I do, as you do 
 not seem to have so many distractions, so to speak. My 
 interest in public affairs — i.e. the public affairs of Oxford — ■ 
 is as great as ever, and I have perpetually to be on my guard 
 asrainst its en^rossino; mc too much.'
 
 CHAP. VI VISIT TO BADEN-BADEN 1 65 
 
 The Long Vacation of 1836 was partly spent in a tour 
 abroad with his mother and two sisters. Nearly a month 
 was passed at Baden-Baden. Stanley was not unobser- 
 vant of points to which Thackeray has given permanent 
 form. He says : 
 
 ' It is a very amusing place, and would form the most 
 excellent scene for a novel that I can conceive, all the 
 characters — being such as have floated up to, and are 
 now floating upon, the surface of society — are so ex- 
 tremely sharply marked out that they would be most 
 readily described. The needy Scotch baronets, the newly- 
 married couples, the vulgar people trying to scrape them- 
 selves into good society, the gossips, the princes, the wicked 
 ex-Elector of Hesse, and the noble ex-Duchess of Baden, 
 are all very curious.' 
 
 He speaks in the highest terms of the Grand Duchess, 
 
 ' whose history is too long to tell you in a letter, and 
 whose conversation (unless I am grievously dazzled by a 
 royal name) is superior to anyone's that I ever heard, ex- 
 cept Arnold in his best moments.' 
 
 But the fullest account of this remarkable woman is 
 contained in the letters from Mrs. Stanley to Mrs. Augustus 
 Hare.'° Space permits of only one extract ; but the pas- 
 sage deserves quotation alike from its intrinsic interest, 
 and as a specimen of the descriptive powers of the mother, 
 to whom the son owed so large a portion of his singular 
 gifts. 
 
 Mayence, Aug. 28. — ' I don't think I have written since 
 I have really made acquaintance with the Grand Duchess. 
 She found out I lived near the Chateau, so asked me to 
 come there to a much smaller and pleasanter party, and 
 then she asked me to show her my drawings. I hung back, 
 was told it was contrary to etiquette to refuse anything, so 
 desired Madame Walsch, the grande-maitresse, to say I 
 
 '" These letters have been placed at the disposal of the biographers by 
 Mr. Augustus J. C. Hare.
 
 I 66 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1836 
 
 was ready either to bring or send them as she proposed. 
 I did not much Hke it, thinking it unhkely that my daubs 
 would suit a foreign taste ; but I shall always be grateful 
 to them for thus procuring me the opportunity of seeing one 
 of the most interesting women I ever did see. The moment 
 I went in the dames d'honneur went out — and with them also 
 all traces of the Grand Duchess. Her manner changed in- 
 stantly ; she took up the books, and at the first word I 
 perceived she was perfectly mistress of the subject. She 
 looked them over with great interest, said that if I could 
 finish as well as I began I should have lui grand talent. She 
 spoke with great frankness of what she did not like, as well 
 as of what she liked, and then went on to compare Itah- 
 with the country about Baden ; complained how Rome had 
 at first disappointed her, how most things did disappoint 
 her, why it was, described the scenes that had most struck 
 her with an eloquence, feeling, and spirit that brought 
 Corinne to my mind — in short, there came out all that I 
 felt sure, the first time I saw her, must be behind that fine 
 brow and eyes. Our tcte-a-tcte lasted nearly an hour and a 
 half without interruption of talking. I was so glad it was 
 her business to end it, not mine, or I should not have dared 
 to prolong it so far. . . . Afterwards I received a message 
 through Madame Walsch that the Grand Duchess would 
 show me a sketch-book of her own that she had found, if I 
 would call again. They were fine spirited outlines, which 
 she talked over just as frankly as she had done mine, 
 describing the inconvenient circumstances under which she 
 had done them, &c. She was going out in her carriage, so 
 begged me to come again. The next time her conversation 
 was still more interesting. She spoke of the comfort her 
 taste for beauty and for the picturesque had been to her ; 
 of the rare pleasure of finding anybody who could under- 
 stand her ; of how she had often longed to be a poet to 
 express what she felt. She asked me of England, of its 
 education and civilisation, showing by the few words that 
 dropped now and then her large and deep views and 
 knowledge. I got aground in my French now and then, 
 but her rapid comprehension helped me on. Arthur has 
 written down the conversations just as I repeated them to 
 him every day when I came home, so I will not spoil therai 
 now, only to say that I took leave of her on Wednesday 
 with the painful feeling that I should never see her again —
 
 CHAP. VI THE GRAND DUCHESS OF BADEN 167 
 
 both ways, for her health is sinking, even if I were hkely 
 to return Our last interview was very touching. Perhaps 
 you know more of her history than I did — that she was a 
 Beauharnais, married by Bonaparte to the Grand Duke of 
 Baden against his will, bringing with her as dowry the 
 southern part of the Duchy. He was in love with someone 
 else, and left her in all her beauty and talents and youth — 
 she was sixteen — alone at Schwetzingen. The Germans 
 hated and persecuted her, and tried to seduce her into what 
 would have authorised a divorce ; she was immovable. 
 Bonaparte heard she was ill-used, came to see her, and 
 asked her, but she would make no complaint. When 
 Bonaparte declined, the Grand Duke was reminded that he 
 might then divorce her safely ; but he answered, " No ; 
 when she might have ruined me w^ith a word she was silent, 
 and I will not forsake her now," and he became strongly 
 attached to her, and left her the castle at Baden. Her two 
 sons, it is suspected, were poisoned (one of them, all the 
 people of Baden are persuaded, was Gaspar Hauser) by the 
 uncle who succeeded to the Duchy. She took me out to 
 show me a view I had not remarked : " Yet a step further," 
 she said — she never liked to go back without having seen 
 the Vosges, and the people about her say she cannot bear 
 to live out of sight of France. There is a mixture of 
 melancholy, sweetness, dignity, and liveliness in her coun- 
 tenance and manner that is most attractive, but it gave me 
 a lively notion of the inconvenience and suffering of be- 
 coming attached to a person in that situation — the neces- 
 sity of restraint, etiquette, &c., besides the disadvantageous 
 effect upon the finest character. The interest of her ac- 
 quaintance, and of making out all we could of her character 
 and history from different people, put a finishing stroke to 
 our enjoyment of Baden.' 
 
 Stanley greatly needed the rest which this foreign tour 
 afforded. For months he had been working with almost 
 feverish energy for the Ireland Scholarship. The strain, 
 followed, as it was, by the great excitement of the Hamp- 
 den controversy, told upon his health. Their combined 
 effect had been, he confesses, ' wholly to incapacitate me for 
 writing.' Yet, in another sense, the Hampden controversy
 
 1 68 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1836 
 
 proved a salutary distraction from his disappointment at 
 his failure to win the Scholarship. ' I cannot,' he says, 
 
 * be too thankful that the great (Hampden) controversy 
 broke in at the close, when all my hopes and employ- 
 ments, for which and in which I had lived as with living 
 creatures for those long two months, vanished and left 
 me desolate. As it was, the atmosphere of intense in- 
 terest, the deep solemnity of the Inaugural Lecture, and 
 the everlasting torrent of pamphlets, filled up the vacant 
 space, and it was not till some weeks after that I was con- 
 scious of my (so to call it) solitude. I feel that my coming 
 abroad has been very good for me, in so far as it has broken 
 the unnaturally close connection I had formed with the 
 great subjects of controversy.' 
 
 Stanley had thrown himself into University life with 
 characteristic enthusiasm. So many of his interests were 
 centred at Oxford, that he was glad to turn his face home- 
 wards, even though 
 
 ' I feel as if I was returning to a boiling cauldron when 
 I think of coming back to Oxford and England — the whirl- 
 pool and seething, the ocean of books to be read, and college 
 annoyances, and knotty questions to be decided.' 
 
 ' Here I am at Oxford,' he writes immediately after his 
 return ; 
 
 ' what a contrast to Bonn and Heidelberg ! I don't wonder 
 that, amidst these massy grey colleges, Newman delights 
 in thinking that he is clinging to the only fragment left us 
 of the ancient Catholic Church.' 
 
 His circle of Oxford friends had widened, although his 
 shyness continues to be noticed. W. G. Ward, now a 
 Fellow of Balliol, was his most intimate friend. ' I see,' he 
 says to Vaughan, 
 
 ' more of him than of anyone else, and like him ex- 
 ceedingly. I hardly know how you would like him. I 
 am afraid that at first you would not. He is very uncouth 
 in appearance, as you know, and also uncouth in his
 
 CHAP. VI IV. G. WARD 1 69 
 
 tastes ; at least, he has no taste for beauty of scenery," 
 and not much for beauty of poetry. On the other hand, 
 he is passionately fond of music, and I should think that 
 his taste in that line is very good. On these points, there- 
 fore, we have not much in common. But what I do like 
 very much in him is his great honesty, and fearless and 
 intense love of truth, and his deep interest in all that 
 concerns the happiness of the human race. These I never 
 saw so strongly developed in anybody. We first became 
 acquainted from his expressing, in my presence^ his great 
 admiration of Arnold, merely from a knowledge of his 
 writings ; and this, not having been diminished by our further 
 intercourse, has, of course, proved a great point of union. 
 He is the best arguer and the most clear-headed man that 
 I ever saw ; though, in one way, his logical faculty is one of 
 his defects, for it has attained such gigantic heights as 
 rather to overshadow some of the other parts of his mind. 
 He is also enthusiastically fond of mathematics, and, I 
 believe, a very good mathematician. He is very fond of 
 me, and, added to these points, he is a very good man, 
 very humble, very devout, very affectionate, and has done 
 a great deal to improve himself since I knew him. He 
 has been badly educated, and therefore, though very well 
 informed on many points, is on many others, such as 
 modern history and geography, excessively ignorant. I 
 have said so much about him because I am afraid that, 
 from what you have seen of him or heard of him, you 
 might very naturally, but very seriously, underrate him. 
 Almost all his worst points, his shyness, awkwardness, 
 love of arguing, and want of love for physical beauty, come 
 out at first very often, and give people an erroneous im- 
 pression. Among others, I should think your cousin did 
 not nearly do him justice, and therefore I am anxious that 
 you should know what is really good about him, and why 
 it is that I like him so much.' 
 
 He speaks also of Brodie '-as 'a very clever and very 
 
 " But see Mr. Wilfrid Ward's words {IV. G. Ward s Life) : ' Ward loved 
 natural scenery almost as he loved music, though his eye was not accurate, 
 and he could not explain the features which struck him,' &c. (p. 106). 
 
 '^ C. B. Brodie, the future Waynflete Professor, son of Sir Benjamin Brodie, 
 the famous surgeon and President of the Royal Society, whom he succeeded in 
 the baronetcy.
 
 170 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1836 
 
 good little man indeed ; I am sure you would like him ; I 
 wish I knew more of him than I do' ;— of E. M. Goulburn, 
 ' a most excellently good man, elected scholar with Lake ' ; 
 of James Lonsdile, on whose 'genuine simplicity and rare 
 modesty ' he frequently dwells ; of the future Archbishop — 
 ' Tait, whom I like vcr}- much, but have seen lately but 
 little of 
 
 ' Among senior men, Cardwell, and Tait, and Marriott 
 (C. Marriott, of Oriel), have been exceedingly kind to me, 
 and I admire and like them much. Faber, when I first 
 knew him, I liked exceedingly ; but since he left Balliol we 
 have seen each other and walked together, but no more.' 
 
 It was a hard task for Stanlc}- to turn from questions 
 in which la\- his chief interest, or from the society of his 
 friends, to the solitude of his rooms and to the distasteful 
 reading which was necessary for University distinctions. 
 His eyesight was weak, and limited his hours of study. He 
 was frequenth' prostrated by bilious headaches. Much of 
 the work required for scholarships, or even for a degree, 
 was uncongenial and distasteful. He had no special 
 aptitude for Greek or Latin composition, or for the more 
 abstract branches of mental philosophy. During term 
 time his attention had been perpetually distracted, not onh* 
 by the claims of society, or what he calls his jroXv^cXia, 
 but also by his keen enjoyment of the storms which were 
 raging round him. His vacations were occupied with 
 other interests than those of ' cram and composition.' 
 With all these drawbacks his total failure in University 
 examinations would not have been surprising ; in the face 
 of them, his success was remarkable. In 1837 he won the 
 Ireland Scholarship — the highest distinction offered by the 
 University for proficiency in Greek and Latin scholarship — • 
 and also the Newdigate Prize for English Verse with a poem 
 on ' The Gipsies.' To these distinctions he added a first
 
 CHAP. VI UNIVERSITY DISTINCTIONS 1 7 1 
 
 class in the Final Classical Schools, and, in the followini;- 
 year, a Fellowship at University College. 
 
 His Universit}- career affords a striking proof of tenacity 
 of purpose. His aversion to mathematics has been alread}' 
 noticed. Yet he determined once more to take up the 
 subject, and to tr}-, with the aid of W. G. Ward, whether 
 mathematics ' are, as they at present seem, quite impracti- 
 cable, or whether the}' will not be of some good to me, if 
 not for honours, at least for education.' The result of the 
 effort was the final abandonment of the 'intolerably irk- 
 some ' subject. ' I have left off mathematics for good,' he 
 writes in May 1835 ; 'I found it quite hopeless.' That so 
 distasteful an effort should have been made at all indicates 
 no slight degree of determination. Still stronger evidence 
 of his perseverance is afforded by his success in winning the 
 Ireland Scholarship at the third attempt, and after a 
 laborious and irksome struggle to improve his Latin verse 
 composition. 
 
 For one whose powers of expression were in his own 
 language so great, his incapacity to write Latin verse was 
 remarkable, and this defect in his scholarship threatened to 
 baulk his ambition. His aversion for this essential portion 
 of his reading was scarcely less strong than his repugnance 
 for mathematics ; it stirred him to outcries and lamentations 
 which he finds it impossible to repress. He characterises 
 verse-composition as ' odious work,' ' so useless and dis- 
 agreeable,' ' of all classical proficiencies the most utterly 
 useless.' But he had set his heart on obtaining the Ireland, 
 and he struggled manfully to conquer his deficiencies, 
 though it was only after two bitter disappointments that his 
 efforts were rewarded. 
 
 In the beginning of 1835 he speaks of himself as putting 
 away all minor things ' before the appalling phantom ' of 
 the Ireland, for which he is ' reading from 9 to 2, and from
 
 172 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1836 
 
 7 to 1 1 daily, seldom or never less, and mean to increase it 
 by gettinj^ up early. I walk from 2 to 5 ; I practise com- 
 position much, alas ! alas ! ' 
 
 The examination came, and was followed by 'the awful 
 interval' between the termination of ' odious work ' and the 
 declaration of the result. He watched in vain from the 
 windows of Ward's rooms at Balliol for ' the Vice-Chan- 
 cellor's officer, otherwise called "the Poker"' ; the scholar- 
 ship was gained by ' Gordon of Ch. Ch. (of whom I had 
 never heard before.) ' Some few readers may have met with 
 the beautiful Greek elegiac lines on Chantrey's Sleeping 
 Children in Lichfield Cathedral, by which the late Mr. 
 Osborne Gordon's claim to his success was amply vindi- 
 cated. 
 
 His first defeat only nerved him to a stronger effort. 
 In December 1835 he tells his sister : 
 
 ' I have made up my mind to make a desperate push 
 at the Ireland ; have engaged C laugh ton ' '^ (then a Fellow of 
 Trinity, the future Rector of Kidderminster, and Bishop of 
 St. Alban's) for next term as a tutor to poli.sh up, or rather 
 to create, some Latin verse spirit within me, and have al.so 
 settled to stay up here part of the vacation ; so you must 
 make up your minds to do without me as much as you 
 can. ... I feel that this is the greatest push I shall ever 
 have to make, as I certainly will not go in again. It is just 
 possible that by making a grand attack I might take it by 
 storm this time.' 
 
 He was back at Oxford before the commencement of 
 the Hilary Term, 1836, and 
 
 'reading on an average eleven hours a day, devoting my 
 mornings to "De Oratore " first, and then to Aristophanes. 
 I have now read thoroughly the Wasps, Acharnians, 
 
 " Many years have passed since a friend composed a future epitaph for the 
 future Bishop, as one who ' opus longe omnium difficillimum Arthurum 
 Penrhyn Stanley versus satis latine scribere edocuit.'
 
 CHAP. VI THE IRELAND SCHOLARSHIP 17; 
 
 Knights, Clouds, and Birds ; the two last the most beautiful, 
 I think ; I have hardly ever, if ever, read any ancient book 
 with so much interest and pleasure. . . . My evenings are 
 given to composition. I have improved much in lyrics, and 
 tolerably, I think, in hexameters. Greek iambics I find I 
 can get up fast' 
 
 Once more his hopes were disappointed. On March 
 15th, 1836, he communicated the news of his defeat to 
 Vaughan, who had just obtained the Craven Scholarship 
 at Cambridge : 
 
 ' You will be sorry to hear that your triumph has not 
 been followed up. The examination was as much against 
 me as possible. I was so fully prepared by the whole 
 week for the final result, that the disappointment has been 
 spread over the whole seven days, and not concentrated 
 in one pang. I am even in better spirits than last year. 
 However great would have been my joy if we had both 
 succeeded, it is a most exceeding happiness that we have 
 not both failed. In short, I owe to you the good spirits I 
 at present enjoy. The successful hero was not Holden 
 (his Shrewsbury rival), but Linwood, a freshman '^ hitherto 
 unknown, who beat Lake for the Latin scholarship. It 
 is a dreadful blow to poor Holden, who has behaved 
 extremely well through it all, very kindly and warmly to 
 me, and very cheerfully under his defeat. ... I am most 
 thankful that for the great object, viz. my First Class, I shall 
 have none of this misery of competition. Claughton has 
 been very kind, and, indeed, so has everyone. Your cousin 
 came most kindly to condole with me to-night. I wish 
 it was as much the custom to condole as to congratulate. 
 I believe really that the consciousness of awakened sym- 
 pathy is, after all, one of the chief pleasures of success. I 
 have the satisfaction of having worked as hard as I could 
 have done. A violent bilious attack in my last week shows 
 that all had been done which flesh and blood could bear. 
 The term has also been a useful one. I quite rejoice in 
 having become familiar with Aristophanes. 
 
 ' My greatest sorrow is the very great disappointment 
 
 '^ William Linwood, Student of Christ Church, who maintained in after-life 
 the reputation which he won by his election in 1S36 to three University 
 Scholarships, the Hertford, Ireland, and Craven.
 
 174 ^^^^ ^^ DEAN STANLEY 1837 
 
 which I know it will be to you and all my friends. I 
 was unduly hopeful myself, and therefore I am afraid you 
 will all have been so. Arnold sent me a most kind and 
 thoughtful message by Lake, begging me not to worry 
 myself about having the responsibility of the school on my 
 shoulders, as I had quite enough from my own anxiety 
 without their unreasonable expectations. I have no doubt 
 it has been thus ordered for the best.' 
 
 At the beginning of 1837, as the time for the Ireland 
 again approached, he passed a fortnight in one of those 'crises 
 of indecision ' of which lie often spoke, then and later, as a 
 serious disqualification for active life. He was poised be- 
 tween 
 
 ' the dreadful alternatives — on the one hand perpetual 
 stings of remorse and self-accusation at having sacrificed 
 duty to ease, on the other, four or five weeks of hopeless 
 and gloomy and most uninteresting work, to be crowned 
 probably by defeat, and pushing all my degree-work into 
 the summer term and vacation. ... If I had only to 
 read poets and criticism, I would do it most willingly, 
 but it is in Latin verses and Greek iambics that I fail, 
 and these will entirely divert me from my degree work, 
 inflict upon me the greatest misery, and will all most em- 
 phatically, as you say, perish in the using. Everyone 
 advises me in different v/ays — Ward and Tait strongly, 
 Lake and Brodie doubtfully, urge my not going in ; 
 everyone else urges it . . . and my own original indecision, 
 with which, as you well know, I am cursed to an uncommon 
 degree, comes in to crown the whole. . . .' 
 
 Ultimately the opinion of Claughton prevailed, and he 
 determined once more to compete for the scholarship. He 
 set to work reading with Edward Massie, Fellow of Wad- 
 ham, Ireland Scholar in 1828, and a distinguished pupil of 
 Dr. Butler, of Shrewsbury. But his old distaste for much 
 of the work gradually returned In its full force. 
 
 ' The time of my deliverance is drawing near. Words 
 cannot express the delight I shall feel when I wake to-
 
 CHAP. VI ■ IRELAND SCHOLAR 1 7 5' 
 
 morrow three weeks, with the absolute certainty that I 
 shall never do a Greek or Latin verse again. . . . Will 
 you, by the next opportunity, send me any old paint-box 
 that you have, for me to paint tables and maps with, when 
 once this Ireland business is over?' 
 
 He went into the examination with ' a heavy heart as 
 to certain defeat.' But at the end of the first day he sends 
 a line to say that, so far, he has ' done very well,' and that 
 ' the satisfaction of having begun the end of my labours 
 has taken a load off my mind.' On March 6 he writes, 
 *■ I have got the Ireland. I go home next week.' 
 
 His winning the Ireland Scholarship was marked by a 
 curious incident, of which the memory long lived in Oxford. 
 The Examiners were Dr. Wynter, Head of St. John's, Dr. 
 Russell, Head Master of Charterhouse, and Dr. Denison, 
 who a few days later was appointed Bishop of Salisbury. 
 They were so astonished by the excellence of Stanley's 
 English essay and translations in the work of the first 
 day, that they conceived the idea that he must, in some 
 accidental way, have had access to the papers. They 
 appear also to have heard some rumour that one of the 
 first day's papers had been seen either by some candidate 
 or by his tutor. It is the practice at Oxford that all 
 work done for this examination is done anonymously, 
 the papers being marked, not by a name, but by a motto 
 chosen by the candidate. Instead of inquiring into the 
 matter, the Examiners decided to cancel the first day's 
 papers, and determine the result by the remaining work 
 — in which, however, the same candidate fully maintained 
 his position. They also very unadvisedly allowed the 
 matter to be spoken of before communicating to Mr. Scott, 
 the Tutor of Balliol, the rumour which they had heard, 
 that Stanley ' had had an unfair advantage in one of 
 the first day's papers.' The effect of such a communi-
 
 176 UFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1837 
 
 cation on Stanley, and on all who knew him, may be 
 conceived. The following narrative is given in his own 
 words : 
 
 ' On the I'^iday evening, when the examination was 
 over, 1 was calming m}-self in the long-forbidden pleasures 
 of a debating societ)- when I heard it. In five minutes I was 
 with Scott, in two more with the Master, who wrote at once 
 to the Examiners to demand their grounds for listening to 
 such a rumour. The next morning the seven Fellows of 
 the College, with the Master's sanction, sent in a protest to 
 the Vice-Chancellor ; and by his recommendation I appealed 
 to him, demanding immediate inquiry into a rumour thus 
 (in some degree) sanctioned by the Examiners ; while the 
 Fellows presented a memorial to the Examiners, calling 
 upon them to suspend the adjudication of the Scholarship 
 till the inquiry which I had demanded had been made. 
 Nothing could be more gratif>'ing than the — I may quite 
 say — fur)' with which it was taken up by the whole College 
 — Master, Fellows, and undergraduates. The Fellows, in 
 particular, were perfecth' raging with indignation. Scott, 
 with \\ horn I was personally very little acquainted, took it 
 up as if I had been his brother. I cannot describe the 
 preternatural fury of Massie, who wrote to the Examiners, 
 demanding his own exculpation. The Examiners having 
 sent no answer to the memorial from the Fellows, I went 
 again at i o'clock to the V.-C, with the Senior Tutor and 
 Scott, to demand a time to be fixed for an investigation. 
 The Examiners were already there to give out the election 
 of the successful candidate — which was myself So it 
 appeared the}- had declined answering from the feeling 
 that I should thus come off more triumphantly as being 
 elected without the two papers which had been most 
 favourable to me. They all declared that they had never 
 for one moment believed that I had acted with the least 
 unfairness ; but, ha\ing heard the rumour, they thought it 
 a kindness to me to cancel these papers, that no one might 
 hereafter say that I had gained the Ireland by some unfair 
 means ; not seeing (by some strange perversity) that it 
 would not have helped my moral character if it was shown, 
 not that 1 had used no dishonest means, but that I had not 
 profited b\- them. There was but one feeling as to the
 
 CHAP. VI IRELAND SCHOLAR 1 77 
 
 injudiciousness of their proceedings, from the Vice-Chan- 
 cellor down to the undergraduates. 
 
 ' However, it was necessary to have a formal document, 
 in case any ill-natured person should ever revive the report. 
 So the investigation was held, and the certificate '•'' made out, 
 and signed by the Vice-Chancellor and three Examiners, 
 that the rumour of unfairness was proved to be entirely 
 groundless. The Master, each of the Fellows, Massie, and 
 myself, each had a copy, but we made a compact with the 
 Vice-Chancellor that no copies should be made, as he was 
 anxious that the affair should not get into print. ... I could 
 not possibly have wished for more universal sympathy. 
 There was shouting from one end of Balliol to the other. 
 The Master so far forgot himself as to exclaim, " Oh ! 
 Stanley," dropping the " Mr." Holden's [his Shrewsbury 
 rival] kindness — tho' kindness does not express it — was 
 the most touching thing of all — it was really noble. Nothing 
 can exceed the kindness and sympathy of everyone. All 
 that I now enjoy repays me tenfold for all that I suffered 
 before. . . . The Examiners have done everything in their 
 power to atone for their mistake, and Denison (who the 
 day after was made Bishop of Salisbury) called on me very 
 kindly, and did all in his power to make reparation for the 
 mistake into which he was betrayed.' 
 
 But the most interesting of his University successes 
 was the Newdigate Prize Poem — ' The Gipsies ' — which he 
 
 '■■ The original is laid up in Balliol Library : 
 
 ' Brasenose College : March 4, 1837. 
 • A rumour having been spread in the University that an undue advantage 
 had been obtained by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, of Balliol College, in the recent 
 examination for the Ireland Scholarship, by a communication previously made 
 to him with respect to an intended subject of that examination, Mr. Stanley 
 this day demanded an inquiry before the Vice-Chancellor, which was accord- 
 ingly granted, and in the course thereof the fact was established that neither 
 in the selection of the passages and subjects, nor in any other way whatsoever, 
 had any reference been had to Mr. Stanley, or communication made to him ; 
 that consequently he had enjoyed no undue advantage, and that the said 
 rumour was and is entirely without foundation. 
 
 (Signed) 'A. T. Gilbert, Vice-Chancellor. 
 ' J. Russell. 
 ' P. Wynter. 
 ' E, Denison.' 
 
 VOL. L N
 
 178 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1837 
 
 completed a month after the award of the Ireland. Anxious 
 to revive Rugby memories by sending in his verses in his 
 friend's handwriting, he tells Vaughan that he ' got Tickell 
 to write them out, as having a hand like yours.' A {(i\\f 
 weeks later came the adjudication of the prize. The letters 
 announcing his success have not been preserved, but in one 
 written to Mary on May 29, 1837, he speaks of the 
 Master's (Dr. Jenkyns) invitation to the whole family to 
 stay at Balliol for the Commemoration, which fell unusually 
 early that year, so as to be present at its recitation. 
 
 ' He ' (the Master) ' was not aware of the existence of you 
 and Catherine, but on my telling him, promised to accom- 
 modate you all. He is, of course, beside himself with joy. 
 I am now hard at work, correcting, learning, and rehears- 
 ing. It reminds me of old days at Rugby. I see Keble 
 to-morrow. It is, indeed, delightful to think of the happiness 
 and comfort it will be to my father.' 
 
 Stanley's account of his interview with Keble is preserved 
 in a paper which appeared in ' Macmillan's Magazine ' in 
 1866. He there tells his readers how one of 'the 
 young authors who had obtained the Newdigate Prize ' 
 ' still recalls, after the lapse of more than thirty years, the 
 quiet kindness of manner, the bright twinkling eye, illumi- 
 nating that otherwise inexpressive countenance, which 
 greeted the bashful student on his entrance into the Pro- 
 fessor's presence. One touch after another was given to 
 the juvenile verses, substituting for this or that awkward 
 phrase graceful turns of expression, all his own.' After 
 giving several instances of singularly happy emendations 
 suggested by the author of ' The Christian Year,' he ends 
 his reminiscences of the interview by recording the ' delight 
 of his youthful hearer at the sympathetic warmth ' with 
 which the Professo referred to one of Dr. Arnold's sermons,
 
 CHAP. VI THE NEWDIGATE PRIZE 179 
 
 ' as showing the recollection of the friend from whom, at 
 that time, he was so strangely alienated.' 
 
 Father, mother, and sisters, were present at the Com- 
 memoration, and witnessed the enthusiastic greeting with 
 which the recital of ' The Gipsies ' was received. The 
 poem '" was no doubt one of unusual — it is perhaps not too 
 much to say, of extraordinary — merit ; and from the first 
 line to the last there is scarcely a thought or a passage that 
 is not eminently characteristic of the writer. But apart 
 from this there was something in the almost boyish appear- 
 ance and high-bred countenance of the young speaker 
 that went at once to the heart of the assembly that filled 
 the Sheldonian Theatre. There were many also among 
 the ' gownsmen,' young and old, who were eager to 
 welcome one who had so recently gained another high 
 distinction, and who had acted with such decision and 
 courage in a trying moment. The rounds of applause, not 
 confined to undergraduates only, so touched the father, that 
 he was unable to conceal his emotion, and hid his face in 
 his hands. It is interesting also to notice that his friend 
 Vaughan, who had been winning distinction after distinction 
 at the sister University, and earning at his old school the 
 title of ' half-holiday Vaughan,' ''^ from the number of such 
 welcome benefits which he had secured for Rugby boys, 
 was present, and acted as his ' prompter.' 
 
 The Ireland Scholarship was Stanley's first success in 
 
 '^ It has often been reprinted, and is still on sale at Vincent's, High Street, 
 Oxford. 
 
 " C. J. Vaughan, who in the previous year had obtained the Craven 
 Scholarship and the Person Prize, in 1837 won both the Porson Prize, the 
 Greek Ode, the Latin and Greek Epigrams, and the Members' Prize for the 
 I-atin Essay, besides carrying off the Trinity College ' First Declamation Prizes,' 
 both for English and Latin. Perhaps what the present Dean of Llandaff and 
 Master of the Temple valued no less highly was a present of books voted 
 him by the Rugby Trustees in recognition of the successes of 1S36, with an 
 inscription in Dr. Arnold's handwriting. 
 
 N 2
 
 I So LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1837 
 
 University examinations. He writes to thank Vaughan 
 for his congratulations : 
 
 ' It has been a great pleasure to me — far more than I 
 could ever have anticipated— for it was so long since I had 
 gained any honour, or received any congratulations, that 
 I had almost forgotten what it was. And it has been 
 doubly (or rather, I should say, tenfold) delightful to be 
 reminded in almost every letter that I have had on the 
 subject that it is not my own fame only or chiefly which is 
 advanced by my success, but the fame of Arnold, to whom 
 I do most sincerely feel that I am indebted for my present 
 happiness, and for whose sake it was always my chief aim, 
 and is now my chief joy, to gain the Ireland.' 
 
 Before he settled down to work for his degree, his 
 father had been unexpectedly appointed to the Bishopric of 
 Norwich. He announces the appointment in a letter dated 
 'Charles Street, Grosvenor Square, April 14.' 
 
 ' I came up to town to-da}' for two days to have a tooth 
 out, and here I found my father just in the agonies of de- 
 ciding on the Bishopric of Norwich. It is all over, and he 
 is appointed. I had not the least expected it ; no more, I 
 imagine, has the world at large. I have hardly figured yet 
 to myself the change that it will be. To me the parting 
 from Alderley will be far less painful than to the rest. In- 
 deed, I shall not care much about it. But the remaining 
 part will be worse to me than to the rest. Of course he is 
 a fit man in many respects, but my heart groans at the ex- 
 clusion of Arnold, or even of Baptist Noel. For his own 
 sake I believe it will be better in many respects than 
 Alderley. . . . Of course, too, I shall be able to be of great 
 use to him when I am older, and I feel my duties already 
 thickening upon me. It has been a most painful struggle 
 to him, and he was very much borne down by it. But 
 every one of his friends in London most vehemently urged 
 him to take it, and he most sincerely thought it his duty. 
 God grant that it may end well ! God grant him strength 
 to do his work and all of us strength to help him ! . . . The 
 king is pleased by the appointment ; the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury not angry. Only think that the next time you
 
 CHAP. VI INTERRUPTIONS TO HIS READING i 8 I 
 
 come to see us will be not at Alderley, but at the Palace 
 at Norwich. I shall be back at Oxford on Sunday.' 
 
 His father's consecration took place on June nth, 1837. 
 Towards the end of the month Stanley returned to Oxford 
 with the intention of spending the whole vacation there. 
 He came back out of spirits at the heavy amount of work 
 which lay before him, ' tired, bilious, and feverish, and un- 
 able to work steadily ; knocked up instead of refreshed by 
 my fortnight in London.' His final examination was now 
 only five months distant. 
 
 The work proved heavier than he had expected, and he 
 finds his ' memory so bad that nothing can compensate 
 for it' Writing from Oxford during the Long Vacation, he 
 says : 
 
 ' I should think few people have been more behind- 
 hand than I am. My Ireland and my poem have wrought 
 their perfect work in cutting up all my precious time I 
 struggle on as well as I can, however.' 
 
 Yet, precious as were his few remaining weeks, his 
 reading was once more interrupted. The new Bishop of 
 Norwich preached his installation sermon on August 17th, 
 1837. He urged upon his assembled clergy the import- 
 ance of taking an active part in disseminating secular, as 
 well as religious, knowledge. While stating his own con- 
 viction as to 'the importance of all education being based 
 on religion,' he added that he felt bound ' to hail as a 
 national blessing every attempt, in whatsoever form or 
 shape, towards the mental advancement of the great body 
 of the people.' At the present day such a statement would 
 hardly, perhaps, provoke much comment, even in an 
 inaugural address from a new bishop. But at a time when 
 a Whig Ministry was loudly accused of wishing to intro- 
 duce a system of national education entirely divorced
 
 I 82 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1837 
 
 from all religious teaching, it was profoundly distasteful to 
 a large portion of his audience. Still more so were other 
 passages in the sermon, in which, in his desire to pro- 
 mote a spirit of friendly co-operation between all denomi- 
 nations of Christians, he had used the following language 
 on the true meaning of the sin of schism : 
 
 ' No one who has read the New Testament can doubt 
 that the division of the unity of Christ's Church is a fearful 
 sin ; but it were well to consider what it really is. Surely, 
 when our Lord declared of the man who cast out devils in 
 Christ's name, yet followed not with the Apostles, that " he 
 who was not against Him was on His part," He told us 
 clearly that there might be outward divisions of form, 
 which were compatible with the truest unity of spirit. 
 And when He declared, " He that is not with Me is against 
 Me," and again, " Not everyone that saith unto Me, Lord, 
 Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven," He told us 
 clearly that there might be a perfect unity of form, with 
 the most utter division of spirit. It is, then, against the 
 spirit, and not the form of division, that the denunciations 
 against schism are directed. If the heart of a man be full 
 of love and peace, whatsoever be his outward act of 
 division, he is not guilty of schism. Let no man, then, 
 think himself free from schism because he is in outward 
 conformity with this or any other Church. He is a 
 schismatic, and he only, who creates feuds and scandals 
 and divisions in the Church of Christ' 
 
 The effect of such advtce on the minds of a large portion 
 of the clergy who were present was to produce a stormy 
 scene at the installation dinner, and to give a somewhat 
 inauspicious character to the commencement of the 
 preacher's episcopal work. No one in the congregation 
 would have suspected that the remarks on the meaning 
 of the word ' schism ' were the production of an Oxford 
 undergraduate steeped in the engrossing work of reading 
 for his degree. The whole passage formed part of two 
 confidential letters written to his mother from Oxford, and
 
 CHAP. VI HIS FATHER'S INSTALLATION SERMON 183 
 
 was introduced in one of those letters by the words, ' I 
 do not quite like the sentence about schism, as you giv^e it. 
 If I had it to do, I should put it rather in this way ' — 
 and then follows the passage, of which only the first por- 
 tion is quoted above, and which his father at once substi- 
 tuted for his own. It is a passage which might have formed 
 a part of any of the real author's utterances, in the pulpit 
 or elsewhere, from that day to his last on earth. 
 
 He also, in the same letter, expressed an earnest hope 
 that the sermon would contain a protest against 
 
 ' the evil of limiting the term " the Church " to the 
 clergy, as making the laity forget their responsibilities, and 
 the clergy forget their fellowship with the laymen. It is a 
 thing so perfectly undeniable when stated, so very impor- 
 tant to be stated, yet so often omitted, forgotten, or con- 
 tradicted, that, if there is any place where it would come 
 in, I would have it' 
 
 The suggestion was followed, and the protest made. 
 
 The other letter, dated August 1 3th, four days before the 
 delivery of the sermon, contains a number of hints, full of 
 wisdom and thoughtfulness, for his mother's eye, and is a 
 proof both of filial anxiety, and of an interest in public 
 matters which was capable of calling him away, even at so 
 critical a time, from his own pressing occupations. 
 
 ' Look out for any inaccuracies in quotation — that there 
 be nothing like Sydney Smith's calling Zechariah " the 
 Psalmist." ... I am always afraid of anything about the 
 Roman Catholics ; the relations of the Church of England 
 to them are so very complicated, that it requires more 
 subtlety and accuracy of expression than almost any other 
 question.' 
 
 The following warning is doubly interesting, as coming 
 from his pen, against what may be called ultra-latitudina- 
 rian statements :
 
 1 84 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1837 
 
 ' Again, with regard to toleration, great care must be 
 taken lest there be anything Hke indifference to variety of 
 creeds, or to the necessity of Christian motives. Such 
 phrases as " Religion is between God and a man's conscience 
 only," " A man's opinions are not to prevent his obtaining 
 all civil privileges, &c. &c.," " A man's creed is of no im- 
 portance if he is sincere," 
 
 For forms of faith let senseless bigots fight : 
 He can't be wrong whose life is in the right, 
 
 *' Politics have nothing to do with religion," " Why cannot 
 we be convinced that we are right, without being convinced 
 that all others are wrong?" — each of them may, perhaps, 
 express some truth ; but the general doctrine which they 
 are used to inculcate is that " one way of serving God," or, 
 indeed, that " one course of doing what a man thinks his 
 duty, is as good as another " ; whereas it is, of course, clear 
 as soon as stated, that if Christianity (claiming, as it does, 
 to be a sovereign rule of life — a revelation of God, under 
 new relations, and consequently involving new moral feel- 
 ings, and a new character) be true at all, it does instantly 
 and of course interfere with and influence all a man's 
 relations in life — all his opinions. The absurdity of the 
 other view appears, of course, in the difference between a 
 Christian and a Thug. And so the very expression of 
 " being convinced that we are right " must involve a con- 
 viction that "all others are wrong," exactly in proportion as 
 we are convinced that we are right. The real point is that 
 there are differences of opinion within the pale of Chris- 
 tianity which are not essential, and which, therefore, should 
 not divide the Church ; that sincerity is a great virtue, but 
 not the only one, or the most important ; that, though we 
 must be convinced on important points, yet there are 
 unimportant points on which we cannot be sure that we 
 are right, and so not sure that others are wrong ; that there 
 are points in common and political life with which Chris- 
 tianity is not in the least concerned, as cooking, &c., but 
 that with the greatest points it is ; and, lastly, even when 
 we are most zealous in defence of truth, and most sure 
 that we have got it ourselves, we must be most charitable 
 towards those who, we think, have not got it, making all 
 the excuse that the case admits of — bad education, small 
 opportunities, &:c. Again, Libera/ principles are not identical
 
 ^HAP. VI HIS FATHER'S INSTALLATION SERMON 185 
 
 with popular principles. Extension of the franchise and 
 reference to vox popiili is quite distinct in itself from, 
 although in practice usually joined with, real desire to 
 ■reform real abuses.' 
 
 The sermon excited almost as virulent a controversy in 
 the press and elsewhere as the Hampden appointment of 
 the preceding year. Stanley at once urged the immediate 
 publication of the sermon as the best answer to the ex- 
 aggerated accounts of its contents. He also promises 
 * Church of England authorities by wholesale for all about 
 schism, dissent, and education, if they are wanted.' His 
 advice was followed. The sermon was printed, and a long 
 note in defence of the distinction drawn between dissent 
 and schism shows the value of the son's suggestions and 
 the fulfilment of his promise. Unable to remain at a 
 distance with comfort, he left Oxford, and himself arrived 
 at Norwich before the end of August. The following letter 
 describes the impression made upon him by his new home. 
 It was written, after his return to Oxford, to his brother 
 Owen. 
 
 ' I have just had your letter sent me from Norwich, 
 and forthwith make haste to send my opinion of the 
 events of the year, to cheer, 1 will not say your solitude, 
 for such it does not seem to be, but your dearth of 
 news at Lough Swilly. To begin backwards, and with 
 myself, as you must know all the general outline of the 
 family history, here am I at Oxford, in the last agonies 
 before my final examination in November, when I shall 
 be at once and for ever freed from the great burden that 
 has been hanging over me for the last three years. I 
 came back a week ago from my first visit to Norwich, 
 where I was, on hearing the first news of your arrival, and 
 where I stayed for (nearly) three weeks, and though a good 
 part of that time was spent in bed, owing to a fall which I 
 got the day after my arrival, from the new episcopal pony 
 hy name Gipsy, I liked the whole place — I may say, the 
 whole change — very much. I was the first who saw the
 
 I 86 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1837 
 
 Palace stript of the remnants of the old Bishop's furniture, 
 and, to a certain degree, made comfortable, so that my first 
 impressions are the most favourable ; and as I entered the 
 gate for the first time, I was more struck with the size 
 than the ugliness of the Palace, and with the surpassing 
 beauty of the Cathedral, which overshadows it, more than 
 with anything else. The outside is a bad edition of Withen- 
 shaw ; the inside I do not object to, but I cannot compare 
 it to anything, for I never saw any house like it ; it is 
 among houses, I should think, what Moscow is among 
 towns — rooms which we may really call very fine side by 
 side with the meanest of passages and staircases ; and the 
 garden is an improved edition of the lawn at Sheen. Then, 
 as to the living attractions of the place, it is more in my 
 way than Alderley was. I find it exceedingly interesting 
 to see so many clergy passing constantly before one's eyes 
 and ears ; such letters at breakfast — complimentary, abu- 
 sive, sermons in verse ; such faces at dinner — all overcast, 
 as soon as they come into the dining-room, by the remem- 
 brance that it was the scene of their examination for Ordi- 
 nation in past times. That, by the way, together with an 
 enormous ball, is all that people seem to remember of the 
 Palace. Then, I think the Bishop of Norwich seems to be 
 an unusually important bishop in his diocese, whether from 
 the old one having been so much out of the way for so 
 long, or from the country being so much at the world's 
 end. By the riverside is a sign where a bishop once killed 
 a wolf; over the river a road, down which Bishop Turbo 
 marched, with 6,000 men-at-arms. I, as well as you, was 
 first reconciled to it by the house in town, which I still 
 rejoice in, though that served me not much better than the 
 pony at Norwich, for a fortnight's holiday in London 
 knocked me up with dissipation. ... I do not repent of 
 my father's decision now. He seems much freer and 
 happier than he ever did before, and, I think, likes the 
 work better. I am most heartily amused, and, I assure 
 you, most highly flattered, by your having carried your 
 remembrance of Hampden with you all through the winter. 
 The storm has subsided, and he is left in peaceable posses- 
 sion of his theological chair — in fact, his place in the 
 newspapers, as you may perhaps have seen, has been 
 occupied by the installation sermon of the Bishop of Nor- 
 wich.
 
 CHAP. VI HIS FINAL EXAMINATION 187 
 
 ' I went to church the other Sunday at Norwich, to 
 hear my father preach. You would have been amused to 
 see the way in which the people gazed their eyes out with 
 looking at him. A little boy in the pew with me ex- 
 claimed, " Mamma, the bishop has got his mitre in his 
 hand," taking his spectacles to be the mitre. 
 
 ' I am afraid this letter will have given you the idea 
 (which they say at home is the case) that I am the only 
 one puffed up by the accession of dignity. Excuse this 
 rambling letter.' 
 
 Meanwhile the examination was rapidly approaching. 
 In spite of the interruption of his work by the installation 
 sermon, he had found time to continue, with but little 
 diminution, the full stream of his correspondence, to write 
 to a cousin an elaborate paper on 'Christian Unity and un- 
 christian Schism,' and, even after the examination had 
 actually commenced, to send to his friend Vaughan a 
 number of hints for an essay '^ which he was then writing 
 at Cambridge. The ordeal, for which he refreshed himself 
 by a visit to Rugby, acted on him as a tonic. On 
 November 13th he writes to Vaughan : 
 
 ' Here I am actually in the second day of paper work, 
 neither having been upset on the Pig, crushed in a 
 shower-bath, nor annihilated by black doses. I am quite 
 surprised at my health and success. Logic, Aristotle, 
 history questions, English prose into Greek and Latin, 
 Greek and Latin poetry into English, are now past, all 
 quite to my satisfaction. The examination acted upon 
 
 '* This was an 'oration ' which the winner of the first Declamation Prize at 
 Trinity College was called on to compose, choosing his own subject, and 
 deliver, in those days, in the College Chapel at the annual College Commemo- 
 ration. Vaughan's subject was ' The Difference between a Hearing and a Read- 
 ing Age.' One page, on the true character of the ancient Christian creeds, 
 is described in a note as a quotation ' from the language of a distinguished 
 friend and schoolfellow. ' It is interesting to add that the subject had been 
 suggested to Stanley by W. G. Ward for an article in the Rugby Magazine, 
 a fact mentioned in a letter to Vaughan written from Hawarden Castle, 
 and franked by the autograph of Stephen R. Glynne, August 25th, 1835.'
 
 1 88 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1837 
 
 me like magic, dispelled all my headaches, and I only 
 break down in the intervals.' 
 
 He even finds time and spirits to criticise his examiners : 
 
 ' Some of the questions involved prodigious mistakes, 
 and those in Greek history were quite disgraceful ; and, to 
 end with, I have made several impudent answers, and so 
 shall perhaps be plucked.' 
 
 A few days more, and he writes to his sister in a note 
 bearing, as usual, no date beyond that of Oxford, Monday ' : 
 
 ' All is over. I am very well. I passed my viva voce 
 examination to-day. Nothing could be better ; in Divinity 
 especially, I proved, I hope, quite sufficiently that the son 
 of a Whig bishop and a pupil of Arnold knew as much as 
 other people. I have so much to do in finishing off, that I 
 cannot get off before Wednesday night, on which, or on 
 Thursday morning, I shall come.' 
 
 Shortly after his return to Norwich came the publication 
 of the class list, in which not only his own name and that 
 of his schoolfellow, H, Highton, appeared in an unusually 
 large first-class, but the names of two other pupils of 
 Arnold, H. Balston of Magdalen, and W. Lonsdale of 
 Oriel, who obtained the same distinction in classics and 
 mathematics respectively.
 
 i89 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 1837-39 
 
 OXFORD — BONN — ORDINATION 
 
 The pressure of reading for his degree, and the necessity of 
 toiling at uncongenial studies in order to attain University- 
 distinctions, were at an end. But the stage in life to which, 
 in early days at Balliol, Stanley had looked forward sO' 
 hopefully, failed to fulfil its promise. His bodily health 
 was weakened by the constant tension and excitement of 
 his boyish and undergraduate career. Denied his ambition 
 of a Fellowship at Balliol, it was long before he could re- 
 concile himself to another college. The divergence of 
 theological views between himself and his intimate com- 
 panion, W. G. Ward, must have sorely tried even the 
 largest-hearted of friends. He was disturbed by the attrac- 
 tions which ' Newmanism ' offered to his mind. He was 
 disquieted by the extent and character of the engagements 
 to which he would be called upon to subscribe at his 
 approaching ordination. Even when he became more settled 
 at University College as a Probationary Fellow, he was 
 still unqualified to take part in either collegiate or aca- 
 demical administration, and found little field for active 
 employment, except in competition for those University dis- 
 tinctions which still remained open to him. The very free- 
 dom to form his own plans for the disposal of his vacations, 
 which the natural relaxation of domestic bonds brouerht to 
 him in early manhood, had its drawbacks for one so ac-
 
 I90 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1837 
 
 customed to rely on advice from the home circle in all such 
 matters. Such were some of the causes that combined to 
 render the period which closes with his ordination in 1839 
 ' the flattest and least happy portion ' of his life at Oxford. 
 His brilliant successes, high character, and almost 
 unequalled reputation at Oxford seemed to promise him a 
 Fellowship at Balliol almost as a matter of course. But a 
 cloud had risen on the horizon which threatened to over- 
 shadow his life at the University with unexpected darkness. 
 Two years before he took his degree he had written, on the 
 29th of November, 1835 : 
 
 ' I look forward with trembling to this day and this 
 hour two years hence, when I trust that I shall be waiting, 
 in all the agony of suspense, till the statutes of the College 
 are read over with all due formality, and the sentence issues 
 from the Common Room which wnW declare whether I am 
 to be a Fellow of Balliol.' 
 
 Amidst all the uncertainties of the future he had formed 
 very definite views of his own prospects and aims. A 
 Fellowship at Balliol was to be the first stage of his life at 
 Oxford, and he had already planned the use that he would 
 there make of his position and opportunities. ' I forget,' he 
 whites to Vaughan, while still reading for the Final Schools, 
 
 'whether I told you what would be one of the great 
 objects of my ambition in staying up at Oxford — viz. to 
 set systematically and deliberately at work to effect its 
 reformation. If it is possible, there is nothing which I 
 should seek further. As Augustus Hare has said in a poem 
 of his on Italy : 
 
 Then let me die. 
 Die how well satisfied, 
 
 Conscious that I have seen the second birth 
 Of the most beauteous being upon earth. 
 
 There is another thing which has at times floated before 
 my eyes, perhaps still more imaginary ; but it has been 
 brought up again lately by the thought of how delightful
 
 CHAP. VII PARTY FEELING AT OXFORD 191 
 
 it would be if we could both work together at it — viz. if at 
 any time a weekly newspaper could be set up at one of the 
 two Universities, at once Christian and Liberal, like the 
 ^' Englishman's Register." But of course this is merely a 
 castle in the air, and I have not time or space to speak of 
 the various things which have from time to time contri- 
 buted to put it into my head. However, sufficient for the 
 day is both the good and the evil thereof. To some 
 people, I suppose, the great difficulty is that the vision of 
 the Present excludes all view of the Future. To me it is 
 that the vision of the Future is for ever drawing me away 
 from the view of the Present' 
 
 But the years which followed the publication of the 
 first ' Tracts for the Times,' and the appearance of Arnold's 
 Sermons and pamphlet on Church Reform, were years of 
 extreme political and theological tension. Party feeling 
 ran unprecedentedly high. It was the obvious intention of 
 some of the Fellows of Balliol to oppose Stanley's election, 
 on the ground of his sympathy with Dr. Arnold's religious 
 and political views. Before he returned to Oxford, after 
 obtaining his First Class, he had received hints that his 
 hopes of obtaining a Fellowship at Balliol were not likely to 
 be fulfilled. ' Listen,' he writes to Vaughan at the end of 
 December 1837 — 'listen to what will make your Cam- 
 bridge hair stand on end with astonishment.' He then 
 tells him that he has reason to believe that one after 
 another of the members of the society 
 
 * has given in to the overwhelming terror of the outcry 
 against Balliol as an heretical and Arnoldian college, and 
 declared that they had rather not elect me in November. 
 Accordingly, there is now no manner of doubt, unless the 
 Oxford revolutions take a new turn within the next two 
 months, that I must stand at Oriel, unless I find their gates 
 also closed against me.' 
 
 Disturbed by the obvious intention of some of the 
 Fellows to oppose his election, and knowing that his repulse
 
 192 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1837 
 
 from Oriel was almost equally likely, he suffered acutely 
 for the next few months from an indecision which was 
 in this instance more than excusable. It was now,, 
 moreover, for the first and last time, that the great 
 movement, which was making itself felt through every 
 nerve and tissue of Oxford life, threw its spell, for a limited 
 period and to a limited extent, over his mind. His im- 
 pressible and imaginative nature felt the strong ' attraction 
 of Newmanism,' to use his own phrase, and the power of a 
 system that claimed to rest, not on the fluctuating inter- 
 pretation of the New Testament Scriptures, but on the 
 solid ground of primitive and apostolic authority. The 
 interval of suspense was short. No one conversant with 
 the workings of his mind up to that point would have 
 looked for so entire a subversion of his whole religious,, 
 moral, and intellectual attitude as the final change of Arthur 
 Stanley into a member of the party of which Newman was 
 the leader. Yet, for the moment, the movement told upon 
 him as a real force. The compass by which he had hitherto 
 steered his course trembled and wavered, and seemed to 
 give signs of pointing in an entirely opposite direction. 
 Throughout the references in his undergraduate letters to 
 the opinions of Newman there ran an express, or implied, 
 comparison between the leader of the Oxford Movement 
 and Arnold, and always in favour of the latter. His own 
 views remained practically unaltered since they were first 
 formed at Rugby. ' I certainly believe,' he writes in 1837,, 
 
 ' that, had it not been for Arnold, I should have been 
 more radical than I am. So far as I see, his views just 
 afford a resting-place between Newmanism or Popery on 
 the one hand and mere Low Church Liberalism on the 
 other. As it is not likely that I should have run into the 
 former, I think it probable that I should have fallen into 
 the latter. " All things are double one against another," 
 and Arnold seems to have been created at this crisis tO'
 
 CHAP. VII THE INFLUENCE OF NEWMAN 193 
 
 form an antagonist principle to the Cerberus of the Christian 
 Church in England, Newmanism, Evangelicism, and Low 
 Church Liberalism.' 
 
 Impressed though he was by the preaching of Mr. 
 Newman and by the general tone of Oxford, his convictions 
 on such questions of Church organisation as were most 
 prominent in the distinctive teaching of the leaders of the 
 movement were at first essentially unaffected by the 
 atmosphere in which he was living, and continued identical 
 with those he upheld to the close of his life. The following 
 extract is from a letter written to a young cousin when he 
 was absorbed in the final struggle for his University degree ; 
 it might have been taken from some address to an English 
 or American audience towards the close of his work at 
 Westminster. He begins with a sketch of what the ' Holy 
 Catholic Church might have been but for the miserable 
 sectarianism' which had 'deformed it for 1,700 years.' He 
 allows that 
 
 'few outward things so contribute to the destruction of true 
 unity as this vast multiplicity of discordant sects, drowning 
 in the jar of their irreverent and loud disputes the still small 
 voice of true sympathy between all good men.' 
 
 And then he proceeds thus : 
 
 ' For all this I cannot but think that the true evil, on which 
 we ought to fix our eyes and direct our attacks, is that of 
 party spirit and uncharitableness, the sin of violent news- 
 papers and fierce controversialists, and haughty aristocratic 
 scorn despising and trampling on the Christian poor of 
 England, not the sin of Baxter and of Wesley, of Milton and 
 of Luther ; and that the good on which we ought to fix our 
 praise is surely not the good of adhering to the forms of our 
 fathers, the characteristic mark of Romanism and heathen- 
 ism, butrather thegoodof those who look on all Christians as 
 working in the same great cause — the good of Howard, and 
 John Bunyan, and Pope Gregory VH., and Felix Neff ' 
 
 VOL. I. O
 
 194 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1837 
 
 Even when at the furthest point from sympathising in 
 the fundamental change which had come over the views of 
 his friend Ward, he never fails to do justice to what he 
 considers best in the Tractarian leaders and their teaching. 
 In every line his letters show how natural to him had 
 already become the attitude towards opposing currents of 
 religious feeling which he maintained throughout life. To 
 his temperament it was congenial to interpret, in its best 
 sense, language which those to whom he spoke or wrote 
 regarded with aversion. One instance must suffice. A 
 sermon had been preached at Norwich on the power ot 
 inflicting penance, which was severely criticised by the 
 home circle. His answer to his sister's criticism is character- 
 istic. He points out that penance is but another name for 
 Christian punishment, and that this ' godly discipline ot 
 penance ' is an example and a symbol of the true Christian 
 feeling towards sin. At the same time the concluding 
 words of the letter show how wide a gulf separated him 
 from those who desired to give more extended force to the 
 controverted doctrine : 
 
 ' It is only when it is asserted that this penance is to be 
 imposed (not by the Church and its duly constituted 
 officers, but) by a clergy claiming it as their divine right, 
 and themselves claiming a divine right of government, that 
 
 this becomes Romish or Newmanist ; and if Mr. 
 
 meant tJiis, then his sermon was Romish and Newmanist.' 
 
 But, at the beginning of 1838, Stanley showed decided 
 symptoms of passing from impartial appreciation into 
 active personal sympathy with the Tractarian movement. 
 A real, though transitory, change passed over his mind. 
 He paused to review his whole position. His disquietude, 
 both from the uncertainty of his academical future and 
 from the religious influences by which he was surrounded, 
 is best disclosed in the following extracts from his letters.
 
 CHAP. VII THE INFLUENCE OF NEWMAN 195 
 
 Shortly after his return to Oxford, he describes an 
 interview with one of the Fellows, and with the Master of 
 Balliol. The former ' was more decided than anyone that 
 I have seen, besides Oakeley, as to voting against me on 
 the ground of my supposed theological opinions.' The 
 Master ' spoke so oracularly and ambiguously, that I found 
 it impossible to bring him to a point' ' I find it,' he adds, 
 
 'hard to express myself to them (the Fellows) exactly 
 about my opinions ; neither to understate my present 
 conviction of their truth, nor, on the other hand, the doubt 
 which must hang over them till I have read the Fathers. 
 I am becoming more and more convinced that I am not 
 warranted in having a decided opinion about the great 
 questions at issue till I have done so, and I am afraid I 
 shall have rather a painful inquiry and struggle before I 
 have definitely settled down.' 
 
 A few weeks later (February 1838) he speaks of another 
 of the Fellows, whom he had before considered doubtful, as 
 having ' quite come round,' and he feels 
 
 * no doubt that at this moment I should be elected, if 
 it came to the point. The question, therefore, now is, 
 whether it is prudent to run the risk, and bring the 
 whole question to an issue, as, I think, I might in 
 November, before the University and the public (if 
 they persevere in rejecting me on those grounds), or 
 whether this would be rash, and whether the advantages 
 of Oriel coming first are a counterpoise.' 
 
 Then he passes to the other subject of his mental 
 disquietude : 
 
 ' Your letter about my turning Newmanist came strangely 
 in accordance with my own state of mind about it now. Not 
 that I am turned, or am turning, Newmanist, but I do 
 feel that the crisis in my opinions is coming on, and that the 
 difficulties which I find in my present views are greater than 
 I thought they were, and that here (at Oxford) I am in the 
 presence of a magnificent and consistent system, shooting 
 up on every side, whilst all that I see here against it is weak
 
 196 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 183^ 
 
 and grovelling. At the same time, my impression that the 
 voice of St. Paul's Epistles is strongly against it remains 
 very deep ; and I feel that to become a Newmanist would 
 be a shock to my whole existence, that it would sub- 
 vert every relati :)n of life in which I have stood or hope to 
 stand hereafter. I dread to think of it even as a possi- 
 bilit)', while I dread also the possibility of a long and dreary 
 halting between two opinions, which will mar the pleasure 
 of ever}' opinion that I hold for an indefinite period.' 
 
 With this feeling he assures his friend that he 'will not 
 act without a most serious fight, and will leave no stone 
 unturned.' 
 
 ' I know no system to which I can hold except Ar- 
 nold's. If that breaks down under me, I know not where I 
 can look. But, whatever happens, 1 trust that God will help 
 me to make up my mind for the best. I will not trouble you 
 with my special perplexities till you have got through your 
 work ; and meantime do not be unnecessarily alarmed about 
 me.' ' Pray for me,' he ends, ' that I may come into the truth.' 
 
 A subsequent letter (March 1838), following shortly on 
 the former, shows that his. mind is more at ease on his reli- 
 gious difficulties : 
 
 ' I am much more at peace about Newmanism than 
 when I last wrote. The opposition which it seems to 
 meet from the Canonical Scriptures seems so very 
 strong that I am content to lay the question on the shelf 
 for a time, and not to read the Fathers till I have possessed 
 myself as much as possible with the spirit of the New 
 Testament' 
 
 A visit to his family in London came as a timely dis- 
 traction to his unquiet thoughts. On May 2nd, 1838, he 
 writes to Vaughan from his father's house in Lower Brook 
 Street : 
 
 ... I have been twice to the House of Lords, where 
 (as being eldest son pro tcm. to my father) I stand on the 
 steps of the throne, and hear very well all that goes on. 
 I have heard no long speeches, but short and somewhat
 
 CHAP. VII A DEBATE IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS 197 
 
 sharp ones from Lords Lyndhurst, Winchilsea, London- 
 derry, Melbourne. Lord Melbourne is a most pleasant 
 speaker, and a most agreeable-looking man. ... I expect 
 to enjoy going there very much, though Lord Brougham, 
 I am afraid, will not be there. On one of the days 
 I went with my father into the Bishops' robing-room, 
 when the Bishop of Exeter was there. He, as if by acci- 
 dent, after discoursing on two or three indifferent topics, 
 said, " I was delighted, my Lord, to hear of your son's great 
 success at Oxford." Whereupon m}' father introduced me 
 to him ; and he, starting as if in surprise, exclaimed, " Is it 
 indeed he ? I had entertained a faint hope of it. Allow 
 me to congratulate you, sir, and you, my Lord, on this 
 wonderful " &c. ... I think it was as characteristic a trait 
 of him as could well be enacted ! To-morrow night I hope 
 to hear him speak. . . . I have been a good deal about Lin- 
 coln's Inn Fields and the Temple, and feel much reconciled 
 to the life of a lawyer ; so that, if I should feel invincible 
 obstacles to the Articles or Liturgy, I should not feel 
 utterly incapable of taking to another line of life, although 
 it would certainly be still very much against the grain. 
 Have you read Carlyle's " Revolution " ? I went to hear 
 the first of a course of lectures by him on general literature, 
 which I liked extremely ; also to one of Chalmers', which 
 I did not like so much. . . . My respect for the Whig 
 Ministry in itself, and as such, does not increase. As 
 a committee of public safety under the circumstances, 
 I think they may be very likely the best and safest 
 alternative ; but my sympathy is more with the Christianity 
 of the Tories and the great views of the Radicals ; and 
 if the latter could become Christianised, my sympathy 
 would be wholly with them. However, as I say, con- 
 sidering the momentous danger of a stoppage in things 
 from Toryism, or of a general overthrow of Christianity by 
 Radicalism, I should be well content to prop up the medio- 
 crity of the Whigs. . . . Oh for a man like Wilberforce ! ' 
 
 The language at the close of this letter shows that 
 Stanley was no champion of indifference as regards the 
 presence or the absence of religious principle in public men. 
 The same point is illustrated in another letter written at 
 the same time to W. C. Lake. In it he insists on the
 
 198 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1835 
 
 importance of Christianity as a factor in the determination 
 of political preferences : 
 
 ' If Christianity be true at all — nay, more, if it be im- 
 portant at all in influencing a man's character — it seems to 
 me as impossible to omit it in one's political preferences 
 as it would be to omit honesty. And, if it is said that one 
 must go on in faith that Christianity will flourish (although 
 one takes no means to make it flourish), and that Chris- 
 tianity will influence the nation (although one takes no 
 means to promote its influence), much more might it be said 
 oy those who think that the truths of morality are less 
 liable to doubt than those of Christianity, and whose faith 
 in them is consequently stronger, that honesty will flourish, 
 though we promote thieves to be judges, and charity, 
 tliough we promote Shylocks to be governors of colonies.' 
 
 Meantime, as the summer drew on, the Fellowship diffi- 
 culty assumed a shape that required a positive answer. 
 A vacancy had occurred at University College on a 
 foundation which it had been the custom to fill exclu- 
 sively from candidates born in ' parts nearest to Durham.' 
 This interpretation, however, of the statutes had been 
 authoritatively decided to be erroneous ; and on the present 
 occasion the Master and Fellows determined to set aside any 
 such limitation. Overtures were accordingly made to Arthur 
 Stanley, who^ finally, though most reluctantly, resolved not 
 to expose himself to the possibility of a repulse at Balliol,, 
 but to accept the haven which seemed ofiered to him. A 
 scanty notice of his half-formed intention to offer himself as 
 a candidate appears at the end of a note to his sister on 
 June 20th. ' I am rather doubting whether I shall stand for 
 a Fellowship in University College (Oxford, not London) 
 on July 4, where I should be sure of getting in ; but not a 
 very agreeable college.' 
 
 In the midst of his doubts he came to London to be 
 present at the Coronation of the Queen on June 28th. The
 
 CHAP. VII THE QUEEN'S CORONATION 199 
 
 following description of the scene in Westminster Abbey 
 needs no comment or introduction : 
 
 ' Now for the Coronation. At half-past 5 we started ; 
 London all awake ; the streets crowded. At 7 we reached 
 the Abbey. My mother and sister were deposited be- 
 hind the peeresses, and I was taken up to the vaultings 
 to my brother and sister. This was the first view of the 
 Abbey I had — most glorious, the dazzling splendour of the 
 prodigious crowd all in their full dress, and literally " living 
 out " upon the walls. I was here, as it were : 
 
 Altar 
 
 Throne 
 
 Transepts 
 
 Here was I 
 
 Me 
 
 And thus saw everything but the nave ^ and peeresses, being 
 very high up, but with the widest possible view. It was 
 perfectly easy to walk about in the hinder and therefore 
 unoccupied parts of the gallery, where were refreshments 
 &c. prepared, with the most perfect convenience. At g 
 the guns announced that the Queen had left the Palace ; 
 an electric shock ran visibly through the whole Abbey, 
 and from that time till the end of all, at 3^ P.M., the 
 interest was so intense that I did not feel exhausted for a 
 moment. At 10^ another gun announced that she was 
 at the Abbey door, and in about a quarter of an hour the 
 procession appeared from under the organ, advancing up 
 the purple approach to the chancel — everyone leaning 
 over — and in they came : first the great dukes, struggling 
 with their enormous trains ; then bishops &c. ; and then 
 the Queen with her vast crimson train, outspread by eight 
 ladies all in white, followed by the great ladies of her Court 
 in enormous crimson trains, and the smaller ladies, with 
 delicate sky-blue trains, trailing along the dark floor. When 
 she came within the full view of the gorgeous Abbey, she 
 
 ' Through inadvertence the word ' nave ' is obviously used here for 
 'transepts.'
 
 200 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1838 
 
 paused, as if for breath, and clasped her hands. The 
 orchestra broke out into the most tremendous crash of 
 music I ever heard. " I was glad when they said unto me, 
 Let us go into the house of the Lord." Everyone literally 
 gasped for breath from the intense interest, and the rails 
 of the gallery visibly trembled in one's hands from the 
 trembling of the spectators. I never saw anything like it ; 
 tears would have been a relief ; one felt that the Queen 
 must sink into the earth under the tremendous awe. But 
 at last she moved on to her place by the altar, and (as I heard 
 from one of my cousins who had a place close by) threw 
 herself on her knees, buried her face in her hands, and evi- 
 dently prayed fervently. For the first part the silence was 
 so great that at my extreme point I could hear quite dis- 
 tinctly the tremulous but articulate voice of the Archbishop : 
 afterwards it was quite inaudible ; the great drawbacks 
 were the feeble responses to the service, and the feebleness 
 of the acclamations— hardly any at all at the Recognition, 
 and only tolerable at the Coronation. That was the crisis 
 of the ceremony, and the most striking part. The very 
 moment the crown touched her head the guns went off — 
 the trumpets began, and the shouts ; she was perfectly 
 immovable, like a statue. The Duchess of Kent burst 
 into tears, and her lady had to put on her coronet for 
 her. The Anointing was very beautiful from the cloth of 
 gold ; the Homage also, from the magnificent cluster in the 
 very centre. It was a take off, though a necessary one, I 
 suppose, that, throughout, her face was turned away from 
 the spectators, towards the altar. All the movements were 
 beautiful. She was always accompanied by her eight ladies, 
 floating about her like a silvery cloud. It was over at 
 3-1, i.e. she went out then with her crown, her orb, and her 
 sceptre. I walked home ; the rest had to wait till 8 for their 
 carriage, which was forced back by the length of the line to 
 Kennington Common ; the crowd in the streets to see the 
 return of the procession was stupendous. It was all more 
 like a dream than a reality — more beautiful than I could 
 have conceived possible. I should wish almost never to 
 see her again ; that, as this was the first image I have ever 
 had of her, so it should be the last.' 
 
 This full account of the Coronation ceremony was 
 written to Vaughan on the morning of July 4, 1838,
 
 CHAP. VII FELLOW OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE 20I 
 
 while waiting for the formal announcement of his election at 
 University College — a characteristic diversion from his sus- 
 pense. Averse as he always was to sever the ties of home- 
 like habits and associations, the wrench which the change 
 from Balliol involved was extremely painful. To him it 
 was * the Bishopric of Man, instead of the Archbishopric of 
 Canterbury.' Even during the examination he was visited 
 by one of those paroxysms of indecision to which he was, 
 at least in early life, constantly liable. So great was his 
 distress, that his former tutor, Mr. Johnson - of Queen's, 
 suggested his retiring from the candidature. But he per- 
 severed, and readers of the ' Reminiscences of Mark Patti- 
 son,' late Rector of Lincoln, will remember a description 
 of the consternation caused among the assembled candi- 
 dates by the ' appearance of the well-known face and figure 
 of A. P. Stanley of Balliol' The result was, in fact, almost 
 a foregone conclusion. On July 4th he wrote the following 
 letter to his father : 
 
 ' My dear Father, — I am Fellow of University. I hope 
 it will be for the best, though it is impossible not to feel 
 that it is a change which nothing but the certainty of this 
 election, contrasted with the uncertainty of the other, could 
 justify. Will you send an affirmation that I was born on 
 December 13, 1815, signed by yourself, to the Master of 
 University College, Oxford, as soon as possible ? I go to 
 Hurstmonceux to-morrow. 
 
 * Believe me, 
 
 ' Ever yours, 
 
 ' A. P. Stanley.' 
 
 Stanley's position at Oxford henceforth began to 
 take another and more settled form. His election as a 
 Fellow, even a probationary Fellow, admitted him to at 
 least the outer circle of those in whose hands was placed 
 the education and government of the University. It 
 
 - Afterwards Dean of Wells.
 
 202 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1838 
 
 secured for him also a settled home at Oxford, with every 
 prospect of definite work and fixed duties. But the cir- 
 cumstances of his entrance on his new life were so peculiar 
 that his place in his new sphere was not yet definitely and 
 permanently settled. As regards the validity of his elec- 
 tion, no legal or practical difficulty arose. But the un- 
 easiness caused to the new Fellow himself by what he for 
 some months regarded as a hast}' step was such that, as 
 will be seen, he seriously contemplated resigning the post 
 which he had won, and presenting himself as a candidate 
 at his old College in the following November. 
 
 The event of the vacation which followed his election 
 at University was his short visit to Newcastle to attend the 
 meeting of the British Association. His long, detailed 
 letters show that he was able to step forth from the atmo- 
 sphere of shy reserve which still hung round him at home, to 
 throw off the depression caused by recent events at Oxford, 
 and to enter with his usual enjoyment into such a gather- 
 ing. 
 
 He embarked at Great Yarmouth on board a steamer 
 crowded with visitors bound like himself for Newcastle. 
 Among them were : 
 
 ' Mr. Hall of Bristol, agricultural and dog-destroying^ 
 gentlemanly, and speaking in the highest terms of the 
 Bishop ; Dr. Bowring, Dr. Granville (Oriental traveller), a 
 Black clothed in flowing white robes and a red skull cap, 
 Miss Martincau, and a Air. Robertson, from whom I will 
 draw up the veil hereafter. On passing by Whitby (which 
 reminded me that we were performing the voyage of Clare in 
 " Marmion ") people brightened up a little ; vehement dis- 
 putes in Arabic took place with the Black, and a yet more 
 vehement one between Dr. Bowring and the rest of the pas- 
 sengers on the contagiousness of the plague — he denying, 
 they affirming. I also introduced myself to Miss Martineau, 
 ^^'ho behaved very well all the voyage — perhaps because 
 she was sick.'
 
 CHAP. VII VISIT TO NEWCASTLE 20' 
 
 Arrived at Newcastle, the Bishop's son, in spite of all the 
 precautions taken by his family, found himself the guest of 
 an Unitarian household. 
 
 ' In the street, on going to the committee of lodgings, 
 met Miss Martineau and suite, who offered me a bed in 
 her brother-in-law's house, Mr. Greenhow, a surgeon. 1 
 accepted, thinking that a Unitarian family with her in 
 it was worth seeing, especially as a surgeon did not appear 
 to present so offensive an appearance to the public as a 
 minister — as her literary not her theological opinions form 
 her chief characteristics — as m.y connection with her was 
 not through the Bishop — and as, lastly, I shall have to 
 subscribe the Athanasian Creed next summer. ... At 5 I 
 dined with Mr. Greenhow (which prevented me writing 
 last night), meeting him and his wife (a sister of Miss 
 M., pretty and pleasing, and unlike her in every other 
 respect), Mr. Turner, with a son and nephew. Unitarian 
 ministers resembling Roman Catholic priests, Mr. Taylor, 
 and the mysterious Mr. Robertson. Towards the last- 
 named gentleman my heart warmed the moment he 
 entered the room, at his beginning to criticise the appro- 
 priation of the name of "science" by physical philosophers, 
 wherein I cordially joined, and managed to sit by him at 
 dinner. He then asked me many rational questions con- 
 cerning New^manism, and I, after having satisfied himi on that 
 point, began to open a new line by asking whether he had 
 seen the last number of the " London and Westminster 
 Review." " Why, don't you know that I am the editor ? " 
 I confess I felt a sort of awe at being unexpectedly pushed 
 into the presence of a man who is holding one of the most 
 important positions in the journalism of England. It seemed 
 like standing at the very fountain-head of Radicalism. How- 
 ever, after apologies, I expressed to him freely my opinion 
 of his Review: that I wished it rather more Christian than it 
 was, &c., but thought some of the articles the best I had 
 ever seen in any Review. He said, " I am not an infidel 
 myself, and I am determined that the Review shall be 
 Christian, and shall not be infidel," with a good deal more 
 of interesting information about it. He does not come up 
 to my beau-ideal of a Radical, . . . but still he is a remark- 
 able man, very clever, very zealous. Before the discovery, 
 he said, while talking of Bacon, " Study the New Testa-
 
 204 
 
 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1838 
 
 mcnt and the ' Novum Origanum.' The}- arc tlic only- 
 two books 1 thorouL,dily know m)'seir: the first i,nves you 
 the subhmcst morals, the second the best training- of 
 intellect." 
 
 ' We (Mr. R. and I) went to St. Nicholas, a beautiful 
 church, nearly as large as the Cathedral, with nave, choir, 
 monuments, «S:c., to hear the Bishop of Durham jjreach. 
 On our way to church, whom, of all men in the world, should 
 I — at Newcastle and in such company — meet but Plumptre, 
 Master of University ? — who is here for the occasion — reviv- 
 ing the odious vision of Wednesday, the 4th of July. I ex- 
 pressed as much joy as I could screw out at seeing him, and 
 did not reveal my companion's capacity. Dined at 3 ; a 
 family and amiable dinner, during which Miss Martineau 
 talked, in as quiet and rational a manner as the subject 
 allowed, concerning the oppression of women, and gave a 
 good account of her adventures at the Coronation (E. J. 
 Stanley had kindly sent her two tickets). 
 
 ' As far as religion goes. Miss M. appears to me the 
 best of the Unitarian race that I have seen here — recom- 
 mending me to read certain books, especially on the ground 
 of their exemplifying so strongly the force of religion, 
 &c. ; rejoicing so heartily that the New Testament is one 
 of the books chosen for the blind children of America to 
 read ; coming into the room with great pictorial Bibles 
 to-day under her arm. But on the whole they seem to 
 have the intolerant bigotry and uncharitableness that I 
 have generally seen in their w^ritings. I see I shall 
 be troubled with overmany rather than with o\-erfew 
 acquaintances, and these Radicals (male and female), 
 though exceedingly interesting, are rather distressing. I 
 fear I have no excuse for deserting this infected roof 
 
 A second letter was written on the following day : 
 
 ' Went to church ; heard a second attack on Unitarian- 
 ■ism ; returned at 8^ P.M., found Miss M. playing on the 
 pianoforte ; she left off, saying that, though exceedingly 
 fond of it, she never played in presence of people, because, 
 "being deaf, she could not tell how badly she played and 
 how disagreeable it might therefore be. Gave me a 
 letter to the deaf by her. Something led to talk of the stage. 
 ■She appeared to be very intimate with Macready and his 
 family, so I asked her about how far what I had heard of
 
 CHAP. VII MA CREAD V 
 
 205: 
 
 his reformation of Covent Garden was true. She imme- 
 diately \\armcd up out of her coldness ; said that no one 
 could tell how much good he had done and meant to do 
 and, " what would I give if the Bishops could know of it — 
 did I know whether they did ? " I thought it right, both 
 for the honour of Episcopacy and for Macready's sake, to 
 say at once how much my father had wished to be intro- 
 duced to him. She was very much pleased ; said that 
 Macread}' had a very high opinion of my father, and on 
 my asking for more particulars, offered to write a state- 
 ment of what he had really done ; saying, in answer to my 
 question whether the difference was such that a person 
 thinking it wrong to go to other theatres would think it 
 right to go to Covent Garden, that it certainly was so. 
 
 ' Of Macready himself she gave a sketch to this effect. 
 His father was a manager of a theatre, — very bad, so as to 
 inspire his son with a hatred of acting ; and he was to go 
 to the Bar. When at Oxford, his father by extravagance 
 ruined himself ; asked his son to help him by acting, which 
 he, with great reluctance but from obedience, did. . . . 
 After his father's death, which, to his astonishment, he felt 
 very deeply, supported all his father's family, paid his 
 debts ; then, falling in love with his present wife, who was 
 an actress, took her off the stage, where she was to support 
 her family ; supported them, put her to school for four 
 years to unlearn and learn, and then married her. His 
 great defect a violent temper — of which he is quite aware, 
 and so much grieved about it as to be in paroxysms of 
 penitence when he has indulged it, and, with reference to it 
 especially, keeps a diary — to be seen by no one, not even 
 his wife — for the use of his children, that they may learn 
 to guard against what he thinks may be hereditary faults. 
 His wife told Miss M. that, however late or exhausted he 
 returned at night, he never omitted writing this diary, or 
 his devotions ; he educates his children entirely. Her 
 account of his Sunday evenings with them was more like 
 Arnold's with his children than anything else I have ever 
 heard of; teaches them especially notions of Christian 
 honour, as opposed to worldly and duelling honour ; 
 prayers of his own making for them, &c. ; so thoughtful 
 and kind to all people about him ; fatherly care of all the 
 actors and actresses. Once, walking in Edinburgh, a house 
 on fire ; a woman in the street called out, " My bairn ! my
 
 2o6 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1838 
 
 bairn ! " which was in one of the highest windows : he saw 
 it, rushed up the ladder ; people trying to hold him back ; 
 his hat fell off; caught the child, came down, and instantly 
 ran off, so that it would never have been known but for his 
 name in the hat. If all this and more is true, and I believe 
 she is a truth-telling person, he certainly is entitled to 
 everyone's support ; and I should be delighted to think it 
 was so, as it would solve for me the problem of the lawful- 
 ness of going to plays, by making a point of going to 
 Covent Garden only. 
 
 ' Wandered from eleven to two from section to section ; 
 went to the lodgings of the Bishop of Durham. Just 
 as the coach drove up and he got out, presented myself, 
 together with an Italian leading, not a monkey, but, 
 as a monkey, a mathematical boy to be exhibited ; in- 
 troduced by Brougham and " the Due de Suxes." The 
 Bishop, not having the least conception who I was, but 
 confounding me with the boy and the boy leader, drove us 
 all — or made his chaplain drive us — into a room upstairs ; 
 talked wretched French, which had to be interpreted 
 through a somewhat dull chaplain, to these Italians, who 
 Avere very urgent for him to exhibit them as soon as pos- 
 sible ; then, having despatched them, he opened my father's 
 letter ; introduced me to his chaplain as son of the Bishop 
 of Oxford (an error which he afterwards corrected), and 
 afterwards to a man in the geological section (whither he 
 hurried me as bodkin in his coach) as having come " to 
 represent my father " ; he putting in this formal and legal 
 manner what my father had put jocosely ; which I in vain 
 endeavoured to correct, and consequently expect to lead 
 me into all sorts of anomalous positions, as he evidently 
 thinks that I am to officiate as a bond fide deputy. This 
 has determined me to break the illusion, as far as in me 
 lies, to-night, by going to the ball instead of the meeting, 
 where, at any rate, I cannot be supposed to act as vice- 
 gerent for a bishop.' 
 
 The letter of August 22nd is principally devoted to an 
 account of 
 
 ' a most amusing discussion in the medical section on 
 Eugene Aram's skull, the opener of which was intent on 
 proving from it phrenologically Aram's innocence — his
 
 CHAP. VII EUGENE ARAM 207 
 
 amativeness was so great that he could never have murdered 
 a man. Then the identity had to be proved. Dr. H. had 
 taken it down from the gibbet. . . . On this ensued the 
 most vehement debate I e\cr heard. Three or four on 
 their legs at once — calls to order, &c. ; not a single person 
 agreeing with another both in premises and conclusion. 
 Mr. took the opportunity to make a vehement invec- 
 tive against capital punishments and the House of Lords. 
 Some thought there was no proof of the skull's identit}\ . . 
 Dr. G. would be satisfied with nothing short of the attesta- 
 tion upon oath then and there of Dr. H., Mrs. H., and 
 others . . . the sutures were those of a younger man. . . . 
 Some thought it identical, but denied phrenology ; others 
 afifirmed phrenology, but denied identity ; some thought 
 its identity proved phrenology — others that phrenology 
 proved its identity ; some, believing both, yet thought it 
 proved Eugene Aram's guilt— others that he was mad ; 
 some thought the discussion " a noble and amiable attempt 
 to vindicate the memory of the dead " — others loudly called 
 on the President to suppress it at once. I felt quite inclined 
 to speak myself, and, absurd as it was, it gave me a very 
 pleasant idea of the energy and earnestness of medical men. 
 
 * The next day (August 23), instead of going to the 
 evening meeting, I stayed with Miss M. and Mr. R.,arid lis- 
 tened to them unfolding their schemes. From what dropped 
 in the conversation, I gathered a strange, almost romantic, 
 picture of the Radical chiefs — of the great struggle between 
 the old Unitarian section of them against Mr. R..as imagina- 
 tive and conservative of many things ; Mill, the greatest of 
 all, deeply imbued with old Benthamite connections, and 
 gradually beginning to understand the strong personal 
 devotion and friendship of Mr. R. as a Highlander, which 
 he is, morally, as well as physically. All that I see gives 
 me a painful impression of how little we, in our circle, know 
 of all the hard realities and roots of bitterness which lie at 
 the bottom of society ; but it gives me also a most encourag- 
 ing view of the future — that these are the men at the very 
 head of the movement, who, zealous and destructive though 
 they are in the reformation of earth, will never allow it to 
 go on to the reformation of heaven. There are fearful 
 rumours afloat of a grand split in the Association. . . . 
 
 ' One hardly knows what to make of Miss M. : a 
 woman so entirely in a man's position, and yet not \\ithout
 
 208 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 183^ 
 
 the quiet of a woman. It is like a thaumatropc. Carlyle, 
 I perceive, has great influence behind the scenes, uncon- 
 sciously. Mr. R.'s opinions are much more like his than 
 anyone's \-ou ever saw.' 
 
 In his Saturday's letter (August 25) he sends, among 
 other details, an account, recorded with that ' love for 
 a fracas ' to which he would sometimes plead guilty, of a 
 serious misunderstanding between the leaders of natural 
 science. The letter ends with probably the last reminis- 
 cence of his ever taking part in a ball. 
 
 ' One of the partners to whom I was engaged to dance 
 at the ball was a daughter of , a well-known Scotch- 
 man. " A very fine town," said I. " Not half so fine as 
 Edinburgh— if you like this, you would be delighted with 
 Edinburgh." " Very fine rooms." " Oh, nothing like the 
 rooms at Edinburgh ; tJiey are vastly superior." " Very 
 large." " Oh, those at Edinburgh are so much better 
 lighted." As the rooms are really very fine, I said no 
 more, but she seemed quite put out by the mere notion of 
 the comparison, and as a climax wound up with, " The 
 floor is so gritty, I never saw anything like it." ' 
 
 Before leaving Newcastle, he paid a visit on the Sunday 
 to Ravensworth. He tells a characteristic story of his diffi- 
 culties at luncheon. 
 
 ' Having with infinite labour and dexterity dragged two 
 ladies through the crowd in to lunch, and being asked to help 
 them to some venison — nothing else would satisfy them — I 
 saw there was nothing for it but to cut the Gordian knot, so 
 I seized the knife and fixed it at random in the back of the 
 haunch. The effect was all that could have been desired. 
 I was immediately stopped by a piercing shriek from 
 an old lad}' further down, three or four gentlemen rushed 
 to the rescue, and I delivered the haunch unmutilated into 
 their hands.' 
 
 His account of his Sunday ends with a description of 
 the Bishop of Durham's sermon on schools, and an anec- 
 dote suggested by the subject :
 
 CHAP. VII VISIT TO RUGBY 209 
 
 ' Lest I forget, here is a story about schools : A lady, 
 examining a Sunday-school about Dives and Lazarus, asked 
 whether it was not very bad of Dives not to give the crumbs 
 to Lazarus. Of course they all said " Yes " ; but one little 
 girl demurred : " Perhaps, ma'am, he kept chickens." A 
 very pretty story, I think.' 
 
 Some of the impressions made on him by his visit are 
 sufficiently illustrated by these extracts from his letters. For 
 the first time he encountered the undefined, yet growing, 
 power of ' the press ' — using the term in its widest sense — 
 as embodied in his new acquaintance, Mr. Robertson. He 
 speaks of ' the aristocracy at the top, the philosophers a little 
 deeper in the workings of things, and in the dark back- 
 ground the Radical reviewer, unknown and unregarded, 
 but enthroned in the very heart of society.' There can be 
 no doubt, also, that his social and friendly intercourse with 
 Unitarians of the type of Miss Martineau and Mr. Robert- 
 son, without affecting his views as to the fundamental 
 issues of the Trinitarian controversy, intensified the diffi- 
 culty which he had already felt in regarding such persons 
 as doomed * without doubt to perish everlastingly.' The 
 natural result of such intercourse was to bring forcibly 
 before him the question of the subscription required at 
 Ordination to formularies which included the damnatory 
 clauses of the Athanasian Creed. In this sense the few 
 days spent at Newcastle may have affected his whole life. 
 
 The interval which elapsed between his departure from 
 Newcastle and his return to Oxford was marked by a visit 
 to Rugby. Before going himself to Rugby, he describes 
 to Vaughan a visit which had been paid to the school 
 by Ward, who desired to discuss with Arnold and Bonamy 
 Price the reasons that were leading him to join the ranks 
 of the Oxford Movement. The letter affords the strongest 
 evidence of the freedom with which he already judged any 
 want of toleration towards dogmatic differences. He of 
 VOL. I. P
 
 2IO LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1838 
 
 whom he writes was, of all men living, the man he most pro- 
 foundly revered, and the words give, therefore, so striking 
 an illustration of his own independent attitude that they 
 cannot be omitted. It will be borne in mind that he was 
 still in frequent correspondence with Ward, from whom 
 the account is doubtless derived. 
 
 'Ward's visit to Rugby is overpast. Arnold was kind, 
 though not cordial, and used the most savage phrases about 
 Newmanism that he could invent. . . . Otherwise he talked 
 very ably, though not in a manner sufficient to stem the 
 tide or counteract the effects of such language. It really 
 is a sad thing that he should be under such a delusion 
 about the means of destroying, or converting from, heresies. 
 But the evil spirit is evidently upon him for a season, and 
 everyone who will be bold enough to act the part of David 
 is likely to be run through with a javelin.' 
 
 His account of his own visit to Rugby, where he was 
 ' delighted with Arnold and with Whately, who was there,' 
 shows that, though Newmanism might be ' laid on the shelf,' 
 it still occupied his thoughts. He enters at some length 
 into the opposite views of ' Christian mysteries ' held by 
 Newman and Arnold. He gives as one form of the con- 
 trast the following instance : 
 
 ' Newman, &c., assert that the iiiahi point, and one which 
 is to be dwelt upon and most earnestly embraced, is that 
 God is Three and yet One. Arnold, &c., that the inainpomt 
 is that God sent His Son to deliver us, His Spirit to sanctify 
 us, that accidentally this involves much that is unintelligible 
 and mysterious as to the relations of the Persons. The 
 Apostles' Creed is Arnold's view of Christianity, the Atha- 
 nasian, Newman's.' 
 
 He ends with a sentence singularly characteristic of the 
 theological attitude which he himself maintained to the 
 latest moments of his life : 
 
 ' The fault (of Newman's view) seems to me to consist, not 
 in requiring us to believe that such secrets and mysteries
 
 CHAP, vii DISTRESS AT LEAVING BALLIOL 211 
 
 exist, but in requiring us to make them (not their practical 
 side) the food of our rehgious beUef and feehngs, a fault 
 which will, if carried out fully, turn theology into meta- 
 physics, and religion into mysticism.' 
 
 The time had now come for his return to Oxford, 
 and his first plunge into what was to him the chilling air 
 of University College. The feeling of his new solitude which 
 hung over him as a new boy at Rugby, the sense of desola- 
 tion that depressed him as a freshman at Balliol, were 
 revived. In after-life every change of home or sphere of 
 work was acutely felt, and there is nothing surprising in 
 the agony — no other word will express his misery — which 
 the removal from Balliol cost him. The first consolation 
 came to him in the College chapel, where he heard, on the 
 Festival of St. Simon and St. Jude, ' the thanksgiving for 
 " Alfred the Great, first Founder of this House." ' But the 
 solace was short-lived. The change seemed in every way for 
 the worse. The ' utter impossibility even of procuring toast 
 for breakfast,' and the depressing silence of the Fellows' 
 Common Room, weighed upon his spirits. ' Worse than 
 all, it is declared semper, ubique, et ab omnibus, that retreat 
 is now impossible.' 
 
 Though ' the universal university,' as he says in another 
 letter, ' is against a move,' he seriously contemplated resign- 
 ing the Fellowship which he had won in July, and offering 
 himself as a candidate at Balliol, where no less than four 
 vacancies were to be filled up on November 29th, 1838. It 
 was not merely that he felt himself isolated and useless, 
 but his mental discomfort was aggravated by the condition 
 of taking Orders before admission from the probationary 
 stage to the status of an actual Fellow, which was attached 
 to his present Fellowship. He had from boyhood looked 
 forward to taking Orders. It was not till he realised 
 that his election involved his doing this at a fixed 
 
 p 2
 
 2 12 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 183S 
 
 date (the probationary period usually extended over twelve 
 months), and at the end of an interval that seemed to him 
 unduly short, that he began to be haunted by the feeling 
 that he was bci ig ' hurried into Orders,' and to shrink, with 
 all the backward movement of a sensitive conscience, from 
 allowing such a step to be at all mixed up with considera- 
 tions of pecuniary or social advantage. So strongly did 
 he feel on this subject, that one at least of the truest and 
 most sober-minded of his friends, A. C. Tait, the future 
 Archbishop, who had, ' on the whole, advised him to make 
 the most of his new situation,' gave it as his personal and 
 deliberate opinion that he would be justified in taking the 
 step indicated above. Happily for the College, which, in due 
 time, won his warm affection, the course was not adopted. 
 An arrangement was effected with the Master and Fellows 
 of University, by which he was allowed to defer his Ordina- 
 tion till the close of 1839. The relief to his feelings was 
 great. His reprieve was followed by the elections at Balliol, 
 where two of his intimate friends, Lake and Jowett, were 
 elected to two of the four vacancies. He knew that his lot 
 was now irrevocable. Yet, speaking of November 29th, he 
 says : 
 
 ' So much for the passing away of St. Andrew's Eve, 
 which was to me five years ago a night of such joy, which 
 might have been so now, which, considering Lake's election, 
 ought to be so still.' 
 
 The wound was deep, and it was only gradually that 
 time reconciled him to regard his new home as anything 
 but ' the cockboat,' in which he had taken refuge from a 
 storm that he had not cared to face. 
 
 Thus the year 1838 ended somewhat sadly. The dis- 
 illusionising, and often disappointing, process of life's experi- 
 ence was steadily doing its work on the sensitive young spirit. 
 The dream of passing from undergraduate life by an easy
 
 CHAP. VII CLOSE OF THE YEAR 1838 2 1 
 
 transition to a position of happy usefulness as a resident 
 Fellow of Balliol, there by degrees to find opportunities, 
 with the aid and sympathy of congenial friends, of working 
 ■out those reforms in the University which were already 
 taking shape and consistency in his active brain, had been 
 rudely dissipated. The most intimate, and the most valued, 
 of the new associates whom he had found at Balliol no 
 longer shared his views on the most important of all 
 subjects. The College, which, five years ago, had opened 
 its doors to the brilliant schoolboy, and had enabled him 
 to feel that the distinction which it conferred on himself 
 as the first-fruits of Arnold's teaching gave him the power 
 to repay something of his debt to his beloved master, had 
 now deliberately warned nim from its precincts, for no 
 other reason than that of his sympathy with the teacher 
 to whose fostering genius he attributed all his academical 
 success. Already here, too, he had felt the first warnings 
 of lessons, which were to impress upon him in due time 
 the conviction, that he must learn to stand alone, and 
 work out for himself his own position in the Church and 
 the world. Even the Arnold to whom he looked up with 
 such lifelong veneration had already forced him to realise 
 the fact that there were differences in character and diverg- 
 ences in view which, in some respects, parted the tutor 
 from the pupil. It was already becoming clear that Arnold 
 could not, without ceasing to be Arnold, share the wide 
 sympathies, the detachment from party, the impartial atti- 
 tude, the eager thirst for toleration and comprehension, 
 that marked his youthful friend ; that Stanley, without 
 ceasing to be Stanley, could not acquire the directness, the 
 force, the intense concentration, the passionate convictions 
 of his master. Even as regards the sacred profession 
 to which he had looked forward from boyhood, dififi- 
 culties already indicated had begun to shape themselves
 
 214 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1838 
 
 in his path, and the question of reconcih'nc,^ the voice of his 
 conscience with an assent to anathemas that seemed to him 
 to contradict the very- essence of Christian teaching was 
 be""inning to assume formidable dimensions. The }'car 
 therefore, in which he reached a position that, in one sense, 
 closed the period of his earlier youth, was not unclouded. 
 But the clouds were, after all, such as may overshadow for 
 a while the brightest day. The College, in which for a time 
 he felt himself an almost lonely stranger, became the scene 
 of happy years of fruitful work, endeared to him by the 
 growth within its walls of unlooked-for friendships, and of 
 devoted affection. The Church, whose ministry he entered 
 from within its walls, learned, in spite of stormy contro- 
 versies and intestine strife, to recognise the loss which it 
 would have incurred if a question which has tried so many 
 of its faithful servants had shut the gates against one of 
 such rare gifts as are recalled to thousands by the name 
 of Arthur Stanley. 
 
 The year 1839 brought v/ith it a return to congenial 
 tasks. In the early months he threw himself into the 
 work of writing for three prize essays with all the enthu- 
 siasm of his Rugby days. He only succeeded in obtain- 
 ing the Chancellor's Latin Essay, and failed both in 
 the English Essay and the Ellerton Theological Essay. 
 But the literary occupation was useful to him in many 
 ways. The interest of his work aided in healing the wound 
 of the ' transportation ' from Balliol, and reconciled him to 
 his new surroundings. It also kept at bay, for the time at 
 least, the question of subscription to the damnatory clauses 
 of the Athanasian Creed. Altogether his tone of mind had 
 o-rown more cheerful. He speaks of himself as falling into 
 ' a convulsion of laughter ' over an account of a sermon 
 * which rang, I have no doubt, from one end of Univ. Coll. 
 — being but a mass of lath and plaster — to the other.' He
 
 CHAP. VII THE QUESTION OF SUBSCRIPTION 215 
 
 had already begun his attempts to amuse and entertain 
 undergraduates. His first guest was a young friend of 
 C. J. Vaughan's, whom he invited to a soHtary breakfast. 
 
 ' I made myself,' he says, ' most fascinating ; told the 
 most jocose stories, interspersed with the most unobtrusive 
 morality ; all of which he appeared to swallow with great 
 delight ; which is more than I can say of the physical part 
 of the breakfast, that being a failure, owing to my not 
 being conversant with these matters in Univ. Coll., and 
 their being, like all else, much inferior to their corresponding 
 parts in Balliol. I consider myself rewarded by the know- 
 ledge of a singular fact, which I gained from him, viz. that, 
 from one end of the term to the other, he never heard the 
 name of Newman in Ch. Ch. : of his existence, however, he 
 had a dreamy notion.' 
 
 So pleased was the young guest with his host that he 
 invited him to breakfast on Sunday. 
 
 ' This,' adds Stanley, ' I declined, being engaged to my 
 rotatory breakfast with Lake and Ward. Whether he 
 selects Sunday as being in itself indifferent, or from excess 
 of work on other days, or as following the Newmanists in 
 having no parties in Lent except on Sundays, I leave you 
 to decide.' 
 
 On his return to Oxford, at the close of the Easter 
 Vacation, he found himself without definite work, and once 
 more confronted by the problem of subscription. His 
 difficulties weighed heavily upon him. He was for a time 
 attracted by a plan of exchanging his Fellowship, by the 
 consent of the College, for a lay Fellowship then held by 
 Faber, which would have left him free to choose his own 
 time for taking Orders, and relieved him from all possi- 
 bility of feeling that he had allowed motives of interest to 
 influence his decision. But the idea was soon deliberately 
 abandoned, and, with its abandonment, he regained his 
 cheerfulness. Though still living on terms of close intimacy 
 with Ward and others of his Balliol friends, there are signs
 
 2l6 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1839 
 
 that he was learning to appreciate his new associates. He 
 speaks of the kindness of Twiss, and of 'a fortnightly walk 
 and a daily interchange of dinner-table jokes with " a shy 
 and silent, but very gentlemanlike, and, I believe, very 
 clever Fellow,'" the future Professor W. F. Uonkin. It is 
 obvious, too, that he was mixing to some extent in the 
 general society of Oxford. He mentions incidentally to 
 his sister that he had been placed at dinner by the side of 
 Dr. Lepsius, in order to ' talk French and German to him. 
 I chose,' he adds, ' the latter.' 
 
 His letters home are full of interest in Carlyle's lec- 
 tures, of which his sister Catherine was sending him full 
 reports. 
 
 ' In spite,' he says, ' of the obscurity of Carlyle and the 
 blanks in your report, I assure you it was extremely useful 
 to me, as well as interesting. I could quite hear him 
 repeating various parts, especially when he observed that 
 neither king nor soldiers now would act like Clovis and 
 the Franks. Besides, it arrived just as I was going to give 
 a lecture to my pupil on the reign of Charlemagne, and 
 accordingly I procJie to him all the parts which I thought 
 he would understand.' 
 
 But his interest in the lectures was interrupted by the 
 news of the death of his 'cousin Bella,' the wife of the 
 hero of his boyhood. Sir Edward Parry. A story relating 
 to her death is told by Arthur Stanley to Vaughan : 
 
 ' E. J. Stanley, her brother, was so much affected by 
 the news of her danger on Monday morning that, on the 
 news of her death arriving in the evening, they did not tell 
 him, meaning to keep it from him till he returned from the 
 House of Commons, where they knew he must be. When 
 Lord John Russell rose to reply to Peel, E. J. S. observed 
 that his eyes were constantly fixed on him, and everybody 
 observed how confused he (Lord J. R.) seemed, and how 
 ill he spoke. As soon as the House was up. Lord J. R. 
 asked E. J. S. (they live near each other) to come back 
 with him in his carriage. As soon as the door was shut
 
 CHAP. VII THE LATIN ESSAY 21/ 
 
 he said, " I never spoke so ill in my life. Have you heard 
 the news ? " E. J. S. thought he meant some political 
 news. " Have you heard the sad news of your sister's 
 death ? " And, having so said, he burst into an uncon- 
 trollable agony of grief. Someone had told him of it just 
 before he rose to speak, and the circumstances of her death 
 recalled his own wife's death so strikingly before him that 
 he was overpowered.' 
 
 A few days later he announces to his sister the fate of 
 his two essays : 
 
 • If anything could be more singular and unexpected 
 than what has just taken place — viz. that I have lost the 
 English Essay — it is what has taken place at the same time 
 — viz. that I have gained the Latin Essay. I know you will 
 all exclaim — particularly Catherine — " How stupid : I don't 
 •care a bit for his getting the Latin Essay." ' 
 
 The subject of the Latin Essay was peculiarly appro- 
 priate to the studies and thoughts of the ardent University 
 reformer — Qncsnain sint Academics erga Rempublicam officia 
 — or ' The National Responsibilities and Duties of the Uni- 
 versity.' He was soon busy preparing for its recitation at the 
 approaching Commemoration. Arnold,' he tells his sister, 
 * is coming up, being unable to resist the triple temptation 
 of the honours to be conferred on Wordsworth, Bunsen, 
 and — me ! ' TJtc event of the Commemoration was the 
 reception of Wordsworth, who was welcomed with a burst 
 of ' enthusiastic cheering ' which ' threw all else into the 
 shade.' Nothing, says Stanley, could fall ' so flat as the 
 recitation of my essay, which was read when everyone was 
 quite exhausted by a most immensely long business of 
 •degrees, &c., amidst hardly any other sound than that of 
 departing footsteps.' His account of his own difficulty of 
 finding the Rostrum — and, when that was discovered, of 
 delivering his harangue, enveloped in a B.A. hood and a 
 cloud of swan's down — is chiefly noticeable from his being
 
 2l8 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1839 
 
 accompanied in his search by Hugh Pearson — the first 
 mention of one who was to be for forty years the closest of 
 his friends. 
 
 No sooner had the Long Vacation commenced than he 
 was hard at work writing for the Chancellor's English Essay 
 for 1840 on the subject, 'Do States, like Individuals, in- 
 evitably tend, after a certain period of maturity, to decay ? ^ 
 He writes from Hurstmonceux to C. J. Vaughan : ' I am 
 now in the birth-throes of my essay, but it comes with pangs 
 superinducing headaches.' Later on in July he was still 
 staying with Julius Hare, having ' prolonged my visit that 
 I might have some conversation with J. C. H. about dam- 
 natory formulae and subscriptions, questions which I have 
 not had the courage to propound to him ; but as he has 
 the gift of a tough conscience, I do not expect much con- 
 solation.' 
 
 It was while staying at Hurstmonceux that he received 
 *an ardent invitation from Tait of Balliol' to join him at 
 Bonn. The plan of a foreign tour was at first ' snubbed 
 by the Episcopate.' But eventually the invitation was ac- 
 cepted. ' I am off,' he writes on August i6th, ' to Bonn till 
 Sept. 16. I have not undertaken it without most agonis- 
 ing throes of indecision, but the demon, having rent me 
 sorely, is for the present cast out.' From the moment 
 that he embarked on the Ostend steamer till the day of his 
 return his letters flow homewards in full and unceasing 
 volume. 
 
 On board the Ostend boat he met two Oxford friends, 
 Faber of University, and Church of Oriel, the future Dean 
 of St. Paul's. With them he travelled by canal, ' in a sort 
 of oblong chaise drawn by two horses,' as far as Bruges. 
 He was delighted with the venerable city, the home of 
 princely merchants and of the Order of the Golden Fleece, 
 where yet lingers
 
 CHAP. VII BRUGES, GHENT, AND BONN 219 
 
 The Spirit of Antiquity enshrined 
 In sumptuous buildings. 
 
 Every detail of the scene is noted : the Palais de Justice, 
 with its wealth of historical associations ; the belfry and its 
 carillon ; the Procession of the Host, with the Bishop of 
 Bruges himself under a gilded canopy ; the moonlight walk 
 along the ramparts ; the Hospital of St. Jean, with ' its black- 
 dressed sisters moving about from bed to bed,' and ' its 
 beautiful ark of relics painted round about with compart- 
 ments of Ursula and the 1 1,000 Virgins ; the last represent- 
 ing their death, with the tremendous anachronism of the 
 Cathedral at Cologne, crane and all, in the background.' 
 By dtar a banc {i.e. a second-class carriage) he went on, 
 still with his two companions, to Ghent, which he found ' not 
 so striking as Bruges — an unequal town, streets of conveni- 
 ence, not of majesty ' — but which he enjoyed with the same 
 insatiable avidity for seeing every sight, and with the same 
 picturesque faculty of restoring past history to life. 
 
 ' The landlady of the Hotel de Flandres, where we were, 
 was most delightful, speaking English, almost embracing 
 her guests at every turn, and taking the most affectionate 
 farewell of me, and giving me a bundle of rusks, for which, 
 she said, I must pay when I came back next year. Faber 
 and Church thought it would be necessary to warn you of 
 the approaching union ! ' 
 
 From Ghent Stanley went on alone by Liege, Aix, and 
 Cologne, to Bonn. Tait, who was living at Professor 
 Bocking's, on the Coblentz road, had secured him a 
 ground-floor room in the same house — a new building, 
 ' consisting of two Siamese towers united by a fat body of 
 rooms in the interval,' commanding a splendid view of the 
 Seven Hills, and the great sweep of the Rhine. 
 
 ' On the third-floor is Tait ; the rooms looking out on 
 the Rhine and opening out on the leads, which, of course,
 
 2 20 LIFE OF DEAX STANLEY 1839 
 
 command the whole view to perfection. Mr. Bocking is gone 
 to Ostend — what a place to go to ! — but the two little boys 
 remain behind, Adolph and Max, dear little boys, but as 
 shy as fawns. The chief waiting-maid is Totty, probably 
 spelt Dothe, and a contraction of Dorothea, doubtless the 
 love of Hermann. At one we dined at the table d'hote at 
 the Trierscher Hof, as the Professor excludes us from that 
 meal, seeming to think that Englishmen would cause a 
 famine in his house.' 
 
 A full record of the three weeks at Bonn (from August 
 20th to September loth) is preserved in the closely- written 
 sheets which were despatched at intervals of three or four 
 days to his home at Norwich. It was a period of unresting, 
 but by no means purposeless, activity. From the early 
 ' brief but pleasant bath at 7 A.M. in the swimming-school 
 across the Rhine,' to the last waking moment, every hour 
 was devoted to gathering fresh stores of information and 
 experience. One main object was steadily pursued by the 
 two friends. Both set themselves to the task of gaining 
 such an insight into the working of a great German uni- 
 versity as would give definite shape to the reforms which 
 they hoped to advocate and promote at Oxford. The 
 elder was no visionary framer of Utopian schemes, but a 
 man whose solid practical sagacity was eventually proved 
 in many wider fields than that of a Balliol tutorship. He had 
 no such gift of prescience as to foresee that, twelve years 
 later, he would be officially charged, in conjunction with his 
 younger friend, with the duty of reviewing the whole system 
 of Oxford education. But his sound judgment had shown 
 him the value of the coadjutor whom he had invited to 
 join him in his task. He felt that he could obtain no 
 better lieutenant than the friend whose warm devotion to 
 the true interests of Oxford, capacity for the recognition of 
 all that was best elsewhere, ready pen and marvellous 
 power of expression, he fully appreciated, and whose latest
 
 CHAP. VII LIFE AT BONN 221 
 
 academical distinction had been won by an essay on the 
 national responsibilities of a university. 
 
 Of the hours spent in the elaboration of projects of 
 reform no hint is gi\-en in Stanley's letters to Norwich. On 
 the ulterior object of the visit to Bonn a discreet silence is 
 observed. But of all besides, things and persons, the pictures 
 are full, clear, and lifelike. Well provided with intro- 
 ductions as both the Oxonians were, they enjoyed ample 
 opportunities of friendly intercourse with the leading repre- 
 sentatives of the University. Few distant excursions were 
 made ; the living objects of interest were too many. The 
 occupations of the first day include a call upon a pro- 
 fessor and a walk with a German student. Each succeed- 
 ing day is similarly occupied. Lectures are attended, 
 sermons reported, social life observed, professors catechised, 
 students cross-examined, educational systems studied, 
 schools inspected, and the results embodied in lively 
 dramatic letters. A period passed in such ceaseless mental 
 and bodily activity left little room for misgivings as to the 
 future, and the close companionship of Tait could not 
 but exercise a calming and wholesome influence. Traces 
 occur from time to time of discussions with his friend, or 
 with German professors, on the vexed question of subscrip- 
 tion to Protestant formularies. But so absorbed was 
 Stanley in the novelty and interest of his surroundings, that 
 the tone of high spirits is maintained throughout, and there 
 is a most marked and unusual absence from his letters of 
 any references to domestic or public events in England. 
 
 Among the professors whose homes he visited at Bonn, 
 Nitzsch, Arndt, Bettman-Hollweg, Bleek, and Sack im- 
 pressed himi most favourably. Nitzsch was 
 
 ' sitting in his study, in a dirty old brown great-coat, with 
 a humble pastor. After a slight glance at English politics 
 in connection with Lord Stanley, he opened at once on the
 
 2 22 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1839 
 
 new party in Oxford, and poured forth a really magnificent 
 harangue upon it ; speaking with great respect of Pusey, 
 who had once been his friend and disciple — confident that 
 he would die in his earlier faith — " stark evangeliscJi, ganz 
 protestantisdi',' and then launching out against their doc- 
 trine of the priesthood, and of tradition.' 
 
 Of Arndt, then an old man of seventy, he speaks as 
 
 ' forbidden by the Government to lecture, many years ago, 
 on account of his enthusiasm in endeavouring to revive a 
 national spirit in Germany by songs, &c. He spoke first 
 in French, and then in German — with all the fire and vigour 
 of a young man of twenty — full of ardour about the pro- 
 spects of Germany and Protestantism for the future, although 
 despairing for the present ; also about the English love of 
 liberty, and the French love of equality, &c. He spoke 
 of the Stanleys being Kings of Man. Vous avez done un 
 royaume dans voire fainille^ 
 
 Of the students themselves, and their life, he is a minute 
 observer. One of his walking-companions he describes as 
 ' certainly as pleasing, handsome, and gentlemanlike, with 
 the exception of moustachios, as you would wish to see.' 
 Their duels, of which there had been 300 that term, strike 
 him as ' more childish than anything else.' Fighting in 
 one form or another appeared, to the German mind, so in- 
 evitable a condition of University life that he himself was 
 not to be exempted from the common lot. ' I had my hair 
 cut ; the barber said he supposed I had it cut so short to 
 prevent my antagonist catching me by it wJien I fought.' 
 With the general results of the University system upon the 
 students themselves he is unfavourably impressed. ' They 
 seem to have all the vices of schoolboys, with all the liberty 
 of men, and no one, I should think, could doubt that it was 
 a bad system.* 
 
 Rambles among the woods and vineyards on the slopes 
 of the Seven Hills, or supper-parties at the houses of the 
 professors, diversified the more serious studies in which
 
 CHAP. VII LIFE AT BONN 223 
 
 he was engaged. Other entertainments were not always 
 neglected. 
 
 ' On Thursday night, as a duty rather than a pleasure, 
 both of us being alike unmusical, we went to a concert, 
 partly to say that we had heard the greatest — (is it so ? 
 everyone here says so) pianoforte-player in the world, 
 Thalberg, perform — I especially for the sake of astonishing 
 the visitors on the i8th (the Norwich Festival), partly to 
 see the town of Bonn assembled. It was in the large room 
 attached to the Casino. As for the playing, the pianoforte 
 certainly emitted far louder and more various sounds than I 
 ever heard from one before, and the violin abandoned its own 
 nature as entirely as the Haarlem organ ; so that I should 
 not have recognised it. But still, it was painful to feel 
 one's heart so entirely cold and unmoved amidst the fiery 
 burst of enthusiasm — clapping, stamping, and shouting — 
 that followed every piece from the whole audience. As for the 
 company, it was sufficiently comprehensive, from the Rector 
 Magnificus of the University, down to the Town Barber.' 
 
 According to the arrangement made before leaving 
 England, Stanley rejoined the family circle at Norwich on 
 September i8th. A fortnight later he writes to Vaughan 
 upon a subject which for the next three months was to be 
 continually in his thoughts — his approaching Ordination, 
 and the subscription which it involved to the damnatory 
 clauses of the Athanasian Creed. 
 
 ' I enjoyed my Bonn visit much, and wish I had gone 
 before. I had enormous arguments with Tait, as well 
 as with all the Professors, about subscription. Tait takes 
 the line that you bind yourself to the living authorities, and 
 that, if they do not put on the clauses the offensive inter- 
 pretations, you need not. I hope to complete my Essay ' 
 (the Chancellor's English Essay) ' before returning to 
 Oxford on October 15 or 16.' 
 
 This latter hope was fulfilled. ' I wrote,' he tells his 
 sister, ' the last sentence of my Essay on the coach top.' 
 Though his letters from Oxford during the October term
 
 2 24 ^IP^ 0^ DEAN STANLEY 1S39. 
 
 touch on many topics, one subject only distracted his atten- 
 tion from his own Ordination. A pamphlet with the title, 
 ' Hints on the Formation of a Plan for the Safe and Effectual 
 Revival of the Professorial System at Oxford' was published 
 in November 1839. The author's name did not appear 
 For two or three weeks conjecture was rife ; but at last it 
 was understood that the ' Resident Member of Convoca- 
 tion ' who signed the pamphlet was A. C. Tait, of Balliol 
 The part which Stanley had taken in the preparation of the 
 manifesto — to which, as has been said, no reference was 
 made in the Bonn letters— is described to Vaughan in a 
 letter of November i8th : 
 
 ' My only share in Tait's pamphlet is, that the plan was 
 devised by him in walks at Bonn, and that he wrote it with 
 me sitting in the room, hearing, criticising, and perhaps 
 correcting, each sentence ; of course in some passages my 
 element preponderates.' 
 
 The leading idea put forward by the two future 
 members of the University Commission of 1852 was to 
 encourage students, after completing the three years' 
 academical course, and being released from the pressure 
 of the Examination in Arts, to reside in Oxford for a 
 fourth year in order to attend professorial lectures. Those 
 w^ho in 1 893 read the pages of the pamphlet will perhaps 
 both smile and sigh, as they see how much that the 
 reformers of 1839 desired has been fulfilled, how much 
 that they deprecated has come to pass, how some fears 
 have proved groundless, some hopes vain, some ideals 
 unattainable. But the carefully considered plan which 
 Tait and his friend suggested for the educational reform of 
 Oxford need scarcely be discussed here.^ 
 
 His Essay finished, and the pamphlet published, Stanley 
 was left face to face with his own perplexities. Though 
 
 =• See Appendix (i), at the end of this chapter (pp. 230-2).
 
 €HAP. VII THE ATHANASIAA CREED 225 
 
 he did not allow his personal difficulties to absorb his whole 
 attention, and though there is in his letters no abstention 
 from lighter topics, the difficulty of the Athanasian Creed 
 pressed more and more heavily on his mind. His own 
 position, both for the present and for the future, depended 
 upon the issue of the most trying of personal conflicts. 
 Throughout the struggle, his attitude towards the question 
 of ordination is laid bare in his letters, both to his home 
 and to his earliest and most intimate friend. 
 
 Stanley did not shrink from embracing the most sacred 
 of all professions on the ground of any doubts respecting 
 the central doctrines of the Christian creed. The whole 
 question of subscription, i.e. of calling upon any candidate 
 for Orders to pledge himself for life to the maintenance 
 of the vast variety of propositions covered by the formu- 
 laries of the English Church, was one which, then and 
 always, caused him much discomfort. But on this point 
 his anxiety proceeded from the inherent nature of any 
 obligatory pledge, and might have been shared by any 
 of those who differed most widely from him in opinions. 
 His real difficulty lay elsewhere. His painful shrinking 
 from the subscription exacted at ordination was due to 
 the language used in the 8th Article as to the so-called 
 Creed of Athanasius. Even on this point it was not the 
 theological statements of the Creed that caused his hesita- 
 tion, but the damnatory clauses by which they were 
 accompanied — the sentence ' without doubt shall perish 
 everlastingly ' pronounced on all who did not accept its 
 minutest definitions of the nature and relations of the 
 Three Persons in the Divine Trinit}^ Even in his most 
 confidential letters there is not the slightest trace of any 
 other cause of real doubt or of prolonged hesitation. But 
 the difficulty presented to him by these damnatory clauses 
 can hardly be exaggerated. It darkened with a shadow 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1839- 
 
 of exceeding gloom the most momentous period of his Hfe. 
 Its effect was never obHterated by time or by experience. 
 It exercised a marked influence on his views and actions 
 from the day of his ordination down to the last hour of 
 conscious life. Even those who have never felt the same 
 difficulties can scarcely refuse their sympathies to the mis- 
 "■ivino"s of one in whose eyes truth was precious and 
 worldly interests insignificant, and who dreaded lest he 
 should be called on to sacrifice that which he prized most 
 highly for that which he valued least of all. 
 
 It was only after prolonged hesitation that he decided 
 on giving in his name to the Bishop of Oxford (Dr. Bagot) 
 as a candidate for ordination at Christmas. Immediately 
 after he had made this decisive step, he wrote to his mother 
 — not as usual to his sister — a full account of the reasons 
 which had finally determined him to take the course 
 from which he had long held back. The letter is dated 
 November 13th, 1839. 
 
 ' All my friends had strongly advised my determining 
 at once to do so. They urged that I had considered the 
 question as fully as I could hope ever to consider it ; that 
 to indulge my personal scruples was only to encourage 
 my general indecision, already too great ; that every un- 
 necessary delay encouraged the indulgence of my present 
 scruples, and would give birth to future ones ; that my dif- 
 ficulties are such as are involved in the very nature of 
 subscription, and are not greater than such as stood at the 
 threshold of every active profession. Arnold, when I was 
 at Rugby, strongly advised it on these grounds ; Vaughan 
 has always done the same ; all the most honest and most 
 truth- seeking men among my Oxford friends also ; all 
 representing it as a case of conscience, quite as much if I 
 gave way to unnecessary scruples, as if I stifled necessary 
 ones . . . All these arguments determined me to-day, after 
 a full consideration also of all that you say in your letter^ 
 to present myself before the Archdeacon and ask leave to 
 put down my name for Christmas, which I have done with 
 the firm determination, first (also with the advice of all my
 
 CHAP. V 11 EXAMINATION FOR HOLY ORDERS 
 
 127 
 
 friends) to state in the fullest manner my opinions on every 
 subject which calls for them, and to go out of my way to 
 bring in my opinion of the damnatory clauses ; and secondly, 
 never to let go any opportunity of reducing the form of 
 subscription into conformity with its practice.' 
 
 It was not till the second day of the examination 
 (December 17th) that he found the opportunity to challenge 
 attention to his special difficulty. ' The deed,' he writes to 
 his sister, 
 
 ' is done. But as yet nothing definite has transpired. 
 The question to which I appended it was " WJiat are the 
 tenets of the Church on the sufficiency of Scripture ? " I 
 quoted Articles 6, 20, 21, and Article 8, and said, "In men- 
 tioning this Article the difficulty arises whether it refers to the 
 doctrines onlyof the Athanasian Creed, or also to \hQcensHres" 
 and so on. I went with it to the Archdeacon ; waited till 
 he said he should have great pleasure in presenting me to 
 the Bishop, and then said, " Might I ask you as a great 
 favour to look at the answer to question 9 ? ^ The 
 subject is one which has caused me a good deal of annoy- 
 ance." He said, " I will certainly pay attention to it," and 
 so we parted. . . . What will further take place, of course, 
 cannot be known ; but I have said my say.' 
 
 The final interview with Archdeacon Clarke is fully 
 described in the following letter, written on the 20th of 
 December to his sister : 
 
 * My dear Mary, — I am just returned from the Arch- 
 deacon. He sent for me this morning, and I went with a 
 palpitating heart. I record the conversation as a standing 
 memorial of the verdict of the authorities in the Diocese of 
 Oxford on the censures of the Athanasian Creed. 
 
 ' Archdeacon. Pray sit down, Mr. Stanley ; do you leave 
 Oxford immediately after the ordination ? 
 
 'A. P. S. Yes, sir. 
 
 ' Archdeacon. I thought you might wish to see me on the 
 point to which you adverted in your answers. You need be 
 under no apprehension about it ; zvhen several bishops have 
 
 * The answer itself will be found in Appendix (2) at the end of this 
 chapter. 
 
 Q 2
 
 2 28 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1839 
 
 expressed their opinion, tJiere can be tio doubt tJiat you may be 
 at ease on the point. You seem to have paid a good deal 
 of attention to it. 
 
 'A. P. S. Yes, it gave me a great deal of anxiety and 
 trouble, and I thought the fairest way was to state it at 
 once fully in my answers. 
 
 'Archdeacon. Oh! I am very glad that these points 
 should be entered into. My own view on the three clauses 
 is pretty much the same as yours. I don't think they ought 
 to be considered as part of the Creed, but merely as ana- 
 themas which were then always affixed to any statement of 
 doctrine. Was that interpretation which you affixed at the 
 end, your own, or did you find it elsewhere .-' 
 
 ^ A. P. S. I had seen similar interpretations elsewhere. 
 
 ^Archdeacon. Perhaps I should say that it is rather a 
 forced interpretation. 
 
 ' A. P. S. Yes, it is ; but as it was necessary to put some 
 interpretation, I thought that it met the difficulty better 
 than any other. 
 
 ^Archdeacon. I should think that it was never intended 
 by the framers of the Creed, or by those who have used it 
 in the Church, that the clauses should apply to any other 
 parts of the Creed than the first general statement of a 
 Trinity in Unity, and of the Incarnation. 
 
 ' A. P. S. That might have been perhaps tenable, but I 
 thought the more obvious interpretation would apply them 
 equally to every part, and in the controversy with the 
 Greek Church they were certainly applied to those who 
 denied the Procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son, 
 Avhich is a portion of the explanatory clauses. 
 
 'Archdeacon. Yes, that is true. The American Church 
 has omitted it altogether. 
 
 ' A. P. S. Yes, it has. {A pause.) 
 
 ' Archdeacon. You would not object to use the Creed in 
 reading the Church Service .-* 
 
 ' A. P. S. Not if I can be understood as using the clauses 
 ivith some such interpretation as that tvhich I expressed in 
 my anszver. 
 
 'Archdeacon. Yes, there is no need to be under any 
 further anxiety or apprehension about it ; and I hope, if you 
 have any other points on which you wish at any time to 
 have any conversation with me, you will not scruple to do 
 so.
 
 CHAP. V 1 1 ORDINA TION 229 
 
 ' A few ordinary remarks on my future plans, and on 
 Mr. Gibson, whom he had known in former times, and I 
 rose to take leave, saying, " I am very much obliged to you 
 for your kindness ; it has been a great relief to me." He 
 bowed acknowledgments, and so I withdrew. 
 
 ' Nothing could be kinder ; and it seems to me that the 
 question about the clauses is now settled, settled certainh- 
 for me. I should think also for the whole Diocese of 
 Oxford. You must not expect to see me in very good 
 spirits ; for the unpleasantness of the whole business has 
 pressed heavily upon me all this week. However, I promise 
 you that I will make the most vigorous efforts to look only 
 to the brighter side, if I am really ordained at last, which 
 even yet I can hardly bring myself to think will come to 
 pass. 
 
 ' Ever yours, 
 
 ' A. P. Stanley. 
 
 ' You will of course keep this.' 
 
 The parallel account of the interview given to Vaughan 
 ends with the words — 
 
 * and so we parted, and so the clauses are interpreted for 
 me and the Diocese of Oxford. And to-morrow I sign and 
 seal, and on Sunday am ordained, and on Monday travel 
 to town, and on Tuesday appear at Norwich, where I stay 
 till Feb. 8. Think of me on Sunday, and tell your brother 
 of this issue, which I hope you will both think satisfactory.' 
 
 The first letter written after his ordination was written 
 to his sister. It was penned from the roof of F. D. Maurice, 
 who had, for the last four years, held the post of Chaplain 
 to Guy's Hospital. 
 
 ' Having a quarter of an hour to spare, I just sit down 
 to tell you that all is over well and safely. The Bishop's 
 Charge was on Saturday, well delivered, and, as far as it went, 
 good, but an imperfect statement of the question, especially 
 as regarded the collegiate clergy. The ordination lasted 
 from 10 till 2 ; the great number of the candidates of both 
 orders (thirty I think of each) made it very imposing, and 
 nothing could be better arranged. It all floats before me 
 like a dream. There was very little in the service with which
 
 230 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1839 
 
 I could not heartily sympathise ; and the sermon was 
 happily such as hardly jarred with my own feelings on the 
 subject even once. One of the most pleasing recollections 
 I have throughout was hearing the voice of the Archdeacon 
 breaking in from time to time in the service — the same voice 
 which had in the conversation of Friday sanctioned my 
 protest against the clauses. I feel as if I was gradually 
 awaking into a new life ; the old one really seems, and I 
 hope I shall feel it to be, lying far behind, and separated 
 from me by an impassable barrier. If anything could have 
 added to the solemnity of the thing, or taken the sting out 
 of the troubles of making the irrevocable step, it would 
 have been the beautiful letter which I enclose to you from 
 Arnold.^ The last sentence alludes to a conversation we 
 had the last time I was at Rugby. I write from Guy's 
 Hospital : shall be down by the Telegraph (coach) to- 
 morrow.' 
 
 Appendix to Chapter VII 
 
 (0 
 
 Hints on the Fonnatioti of a Plan for the Safe and Effectual Revival 
 of the Professorial System at Oxford. By a Resident Member 
 of Convocation. Parker, Oxford. 1839. 
 
 A short notice of some points in a pamphlet which attracted 
 no small attention at the time may be of interest, as illustrative of 
 the views of University reformers at a distance of half a century 
 from the present time. 
 
 The main proposals were (i) that a full year shall intervene be- 
 tween the present Examination in Arts for the B.A. degree and 
 the act of proceeding to that degree ; (2) that at the end of his 
 fourth year of study, every candidate for a degree should be 
 obliged to show his acquaintance with some special and additional 
 branch of knowledge by the production of a written exercise or 
 thesis, and by passing an examination connected therewith to the 
 satisfaction of the Professors to whose department the subject of 
 his written essay belonged. 
 
 One or two short quotations will show how widely the views 
 
 ^ The letter from Dr. Arnold will be found in his Life, No. CXC. , ' To an 
 old Pupil,' dated Fox How, Dec. 20, 1839.
 
 •CHAP. VII. APR (I) UNIVERSITY REFORM 23 1 
 
 of reform entertained by those who were certainly not suspected 
 of erring on the side of Conservatism, differed from those of the 
 Liberal party at Oxford or elsewhere of a generation later. 
 
 (a) ' It appears scarcely desirable that young men should come 
 to reside at Oxford earlier than they do at present. . . . The object 
 of what is here suggested is much rather to give encouragement to 
 all to continue their University life a year later, than to lead any 
 to begin it a year earlier.' — P. 4, nofe. 
 
 (b) ' Of course in the nineteenth century few persons require to 
 be taught that a liberal education necessarily means a religious one.' 
 
 ' Even in the fourth year it would seem to be the duty of the 
 college authorities to secure as far as they could that all under- 
 graduates should still continue to pursue some theological 
 studies.' — P. 5. 
 
 {c) Great stress is laid on the importance ot maintaining and 
 developing the Tutorial, as distinct from the Professorial, system, 
 ' of relieving, that is. College Tutors from their present vain attempt 
 to fulfil the Professorial office in conjunction with their own, and 
 to enable them to devote much more time to the moral superin- 
 tendence of their pupils, and the development of their minds by 
 strictly Tutorial lectures, conducted, that is, by the aid of question 
 and answer, and thus causing the mind of the student to con- 
 tribute as much as his teacher to his own instruction.' — 
 Pp. 8, 10. 
 
 {d) At the same time an earnest protest is entered against 
 allowing any of these special subjects, such as physical science, 
 law, history, theology, to be exclusively studied, until the general 
 examination in litem humaniores and mathematics had been under- 
 gone — still more against granting honours in such subjects at 
 examinations ' held contemporaneously with the present examina- 
 tion in Arts. The permitting this, in the case of Physical Science, 
 would make it assume the position of a groundwork in liberal 
 education, for which it is totally unfitted, and it would open the 
 doors for a similar intrusion of tripos upon tripos in every con- 
 ceivable department of human knowledge. Such a scheme, fully 
 carried out, must end in the ruin of English education.' — 
 Pp. 18, 19. 
 
 {e) Importance is attached to promoting 'what is already suffi- 
 ciently discouraged in England, that love of learning for its own 
 sake which is the chief means of imparting life and energy to the
 
 2 32 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1839 
 
 German universities.' And a strong protest is raised against the 
 ' hazardous institution of fresh academical honours ' for these 
 fourth-year studies, as ' certain to increase among undergraduates 
 an excitement already too great both for health and for the calm 
 pursuit of acadenv'c studies.' — Pp. 16, 29, 
 
 The divergence is wide between many portions of the proposed 
 scheme and the measures which have been adopted in successive 
 stages of half a century of academical legislation. But the 
 pamphlet is still well worth the notice of all interested in 
 University education. Nor is it difficult to identify certain 
 passages, including quotations from Dr. Arnold and F. D. Maurice, 
 as unmistakably contributed by the younger of the two framers of 
 the scheme for the revival in Oxford of the Professorial system, 
 which was the fruit of their joint visit to Bonn. 
 
 (2) 
 
 The copy of the original answer, which Stanley sent home to 
 his sister in November 1839, is missing from the carefully-treasured 
 letters. Its absence is accounted for by the fact that it is printed 
 in an appendix to a pamphlet drawn up by the Rev. John Hull, 
 and published in 1840. The pamphlet is entitled, 'Observations 
 on a Petition for the Revision of the Liturgy of the United Church, 
 of England and Ireland, with a Report of the Discussion it caused 
 in the House of Lords on May 26th, 1840, as published in the 
 Mirror of Parliament.^ 
 
 Stanley's answer is thus introduced. The author of the pam- 
 phlet asks : 
 
 ' Is there any living prelate, priest, or deacon, who maintains, 
 or has maintained, the literal meaning of the damnatory clauses 
 of the Athanasian Creed ? Is there any prelate who would now 
 refuse to ordain a candidate, in other respects unexceptionable, 
 who could not believe that each member of the Greek Church 
 must perish everlastingly ? One of our present bishops has^ 
 within a year, ordained a candidate who had given in to the 
 examining chaplain a protest against the literal meaning of the 
 Athanasian Creed : this protest is printed in the Appendix No. 3.' 
 
 The so-called ' protest ' runs as follows : 
 
 'To ascertain the original meaning of the censures of the 
 Athanasian Creed is impossible, from the doubt which hangs over 
 the authorship of the Creed.
 
 CHAP. VII. APR (2) THE ATHANASIAN CREED 
 
 ' Their obvious meaning, and that which was afifixed to them at 
 the time of the general reception of the Creed into the Church,, 
 and of its reception into the Reformed Church of England, seems 
 to be, that every individual who denies any of the statements 
 therein contained will perish everlastingly. (This appears from 
 the practice and principles of the Middle Ages, which applied them 
 to the denial of the Double Procession in the Greek Church, and 
 from the English Articles of 1563, and other reformed Confessions, 
 1532 and 1536.) Such, however, judging from the practice and 
 writings of all subsequent Anglican divines, is not the opinion 
 required from members and ministers of the Anglican Church. 
 Not to mention the detailed modifications by which many great 
 divines, with Waterland, have forborne " to lay stress on every little 
 nicety of explanation," it is well known that the Bishops of 1689 
 prepared a rubric confining their meaning to such as obstinately 
 deny the substance of the Christian faith ; that Bishop Taylor 
 declared that they were " extrinsic and incidental to the Creed," and 
 that " he dare not" hold them (vii. 494); that Bishop Burnet 
 says (on Article 8), that " all the most eminent men of the English 
 Church, as far back as the memory of all that he knew could go 
 up, confined them to such as stifled their own convictions " ; that 
 Bishop Tomline " thought them presumptuous and unnecessary "' 
 (" Elements " 202) ; that Archbishop Seeker "thought it a pity they 
 had not been originally omitted " (vi. 227) ; that Archbishop Tillot- 
 son wished earnestly for their removal ; and that Dr. Burton, though 
 declaring that, rather than give up one jot or tittle of the doctrines 
 of the Creed, he would part with the hand which subscribed them,, 
 yet "thought the censures essentially different and unconnected 
 with the Creed, and that Christian charity and humility would wish 
 that they were not retained and read publicly ; and that the Church 
 of England excludes none from salvation who rejects any of her 
 confessions " (Sermon on Mark xvi. 16). Hence it seems clear 
 that the strict and obvious interpretation is not the one required. 
 Perhaps the interpretation which would best accord with the 
 original words, and with these several Anglican authorities, would 
 be to understand them as affirming that, though every error con- 
 cerning the nature of God or man may be in itself harmless, yet, 
 \i fully carried out into all its logical and moj'al co?isequences, it will 
 end in the subversion of the Christian faith in him who holds it.'
 
 2 34 ^^^^ ^^ DEAN STANLEY 1840-1 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 1 840 4 1 
 
 TOUR IN ITALY AND GREECE 
 
 Few men have left behind them a record of their thoughts, 
 interests, and feelings, from earliest childhood so complete 
 as that which is preserved in the copious correspondence 
 of Arthur Stanley. In a series of letters that are remark- 
 able, alike for their maturity of intellectual and moral tone, 
 as well as for their entire freedom from any touch of cant 
 or priggishness, he tells everything, because everything is 
 supposed to interest. Mere wealth of material would not 
 in itself justify the detail with which the first twenty-four 
 years of his life are treated. But this early period has also 
 supplied clues to the formation of his character, suggested 
 conditions that governed the development of his mental 
 gifts and habits of thought, and indicated influences that 
 moulded his most characteristic and permanent opinions. 
 
 To his father, as has been said, he owed his toughness 
 of fibre ; to his mother, his liveliness of mind and delicacy of 
 perception ; to his sister's sympathy, the rapidity and 
 freedom of his mental and moral expansion. Domestic 
 circumstances formed his quiet, frugal habits. The scenery 
 and surroundings of Alderley fostered his taste for the 
 romantic. Suffering from his eyes, and the victim of 
 frequent headache, his delicate health forced him at an early 
 age into intellectual pursuits, and encouraged him to live
 
 CHAP. VIII STANLEY'S EARLY LETTERS 235 
 
 in a world of his own, apart froni the ordinary pleasures of 
 boyhood. 
 
 His social position, his Celtic ancestry, and the his- 
 torical element of his imagination, combined to give a 
 high-pitched key to his character, to stimulate his eagerness 
 to know the best that was to be known in men and things, 
 to attract him to all that was distinguished, superior, and 
 superlative in its kind, to extend in every direction that 
 conception of the duty to love the highest which the 
 blessing of a training in a home where no low view of life 
 was ever uttered had first implanted. His social position 
 admitted him as of right to the best society, as well as gave 
 him access to the best sources of information. His Celtic 
 ancestry inclined him to make * all his geese swans,' and to 
 magnify the scenes in which he was himself moving ; 
 to admire, with what sometimes seemed exaggerated 
 fervour, those who possessed gifts with which he was not 
 himself endowed ; to see in every good trait that he found 
 in others the potentiality of the fullest development of that 
 good. In similar directions tended the historical element 
 in his mind and imagination. One illustration must 
 suffice. Though feeling tenderly for any grief, and keenly 
 alive to every pathetic situation, the effect upon him was 
 greatly increased by the scale of the action, the position of 
 the actors, the conspicuousness of the occurrence. ' Sunt 
 lacrimcB reruin^ et inentem mortalia tangunt ' was one of his 
 favourite lines ; but he rather resembled Virgil than Words- 
 worth in his conception of its meaning. Wordsworth, 
 dwelling on the moral relations established, or on the moral 
 sentiments evoked, found pathos in his Michaels and his 
 Betty Foys. To Stanley, as probably to the Roman poet, 
 mortalia meant primarily situations which attract the 
 attention of a large number of persons. This feeling 
 showed itself in divers ways : in his refusal to allow the
 
 2^6 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1840 i 
 
 character of Jcanie Deans to be of the highest order of 
 conception, because it was cast in a humble sphere ; in the 
 stress which he laid, in his sermon on Arnold's death, 
 on the conspicjousness of the occurrence ; in the solace 
 that he derived, when his mother died, from the fact that, 
 owing to his absence with the Prince of Wales, the event 
 was striking and impressiv^e ; in the consolation which the 
 public funeral and the presence of distinguished mourners 
 afforded him in the midst of his grief at the death of his 
 wife. 
 
 Such are some of the points in the formation of his 
 character which are illustrated in his early letters. The same 
 source throws a flood of light on the development of his 
 literary gifts and peculiar habits of thought. 
 
 From his childhood he was the spring of literary 
 activity in his home.- The poet-laureate of the family, he 
 celebrated every event in verse, and, if a pet died, an elegy 
 was found the next morning pinned to the pillow of the 
 bereaved owner. He was also the artist and the play- 
 wright. He not only composed plays, but drew, painted,, 
 and cut out figures which, pasted on cardboard, made the 
 actors. Every scene of which he read he made his own, 
 and every character a living being. The child of ten, who 
 was found marching down the passage at Alderley in a 
 coat that trailed behind him, holding a blotting-pad in front 
 of him, and saying, ' I am Mahomet reading the Koran,' 
 became the Schehezerade of his private school, and 
 delighted his companions with tales from romantic poetry 
 or Irish legend, from the Arabian Nights or the Waverley 
 Novels. In such amusements and pursuits he was acquiring, 
 or exercising, his literary gifts — the facility of expression,, 
 the imagination, the dramatic force, the picturesqueness,, 
 the faculty of narration, the power of realising for him- 
 self and others both scenes and actors, which distinguish
 
 •CHAP.viii LITERARY GIFTS AND MENTAL HABITS 237 
 
 his brilliant prose. Nor are these the only qualities of 
 his writing, though his descriptive and narrative powers 
 have often obscured the underl}'ing strata of sound judg- 
 ment, careful investigation, and general principles, which 
 bind all together. Even in these early years nothing 
 that he undertakes is done in a desultory manner. The 
 painstaking industry with which, in preparing for his prize 
 compositions, he ransacks all available stores of informa- 
 tion, the careful examination of the two sides to social or 
 theological questions, the independence of a judgment 
 which does not hesitate to criticise even Arnold, are 
 strongly, because incidentally, illustrated in these early 
 letters. 
 
 And in other respects the peculiar gifts and special 
 habits of his mind were already taking shape. As he grew 
 from childhood to manhood, his physical senses became 
 blunted, his taste, his smell, his sensitiveness to pain, his 
 ear for music, his eye for landscape in itself But these 
 physical defects were compensated by the growth of corre- 
 sponding mental qualities. His ear grew keen to catch 
 indications of that which was not yet in sight, and his eye 
 quick to detect similarities or differences beneath superficial 
 distinctions and resemblances. He felt and saw more than 
 others. His fineness and subtlety of mental perception 
 were manifested in many kindred ways. They gave the 
 colour to that style, which was often criticised as high- 
 pitched, but which gave the impression of exaggeration by 
 the wealth of historical analogies naturally suggested by 
 contemporary incidents, situations, or characters. It was 
 an echo, or corruption, of this same keenness of perception 
 that led him to delight in applying to his friends historical, 
 Scriptural, or classical names. At work in a higher range 
 of thought, the same mental gift urged him to the pursuit 
 of types, to the perpetual blending of the ideal with the
 
 238 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1840 i 
 
 actual, to the discovery in every scene or idea of an image 
 to illustrate some eternal spiritual truth. It supplied the 
 basis of the fundamental conception of his religious 
 theories — the presence of God, of Christ, of the highest 
 interests, everywhere and in everything. The exercise of 
 the gift might sometimes, to a different class of mind, 
 appear profane, as when he works out a parallel between 
 the death of Arnold and the Crucifixion. But to him it 
 always afforded help, because it gave him solid ground on 
 which to stand, united the concrete and the abstract, and 
 clothed with flesh and blood ideas which often tend to 
 become vague and visionary. 
 
 It was also in this early period that Stanley fell under 
 the strongest moral and intellectual influence of his life. 
 Within a few months after his arrival at Rugby the great- 
 ness of Arnold's character dawned upon him, permeating 
 his mind, remodelling his ideas, inspiring him with manly 
 interests, earnest feelings, and large thoughts, which grew 
 with his growth. Nor did this influence of his head-master 
 lose its hold when Stanley passed from Rugby to Oxford. 
 Though the atmosphere of his college and of his university, 
 and of the wider world beyond their walls, was stimulating 
 to a degree rarely before experienced, Arnold remained 
 the lodestar of his early life. He entered upon his under- 
 graduate career ambitious of distinction, as much for the 
 credit of his head-master as for his own, full of his teaching, 
 yet eager to learn for himself about Newman, and about 
 the social, political, or theological questions which filled 
 the air. It was a time when young men were driven to 
 take sides, forced to form decisions on important issues 
 which, at less critical moments, may be more safely post- 
 poned for maturer judgment. In the concrete application 
 of general principles Stanley found many details, both 
 personal and practical, in which he differed from his oracle..
 
 CHAP. VIII RUGBY INFLUENCES 239 
 
 But the ideal influence which the head-master had obtained 
 over him permeated and controlled his character with all 
 its former strength. Without using Arnold's ideas as a 
 charm to conjure with, he made them his own in his own 
 way, and so vitalised and personalised them. He became 
 the EHsha to the other's Elijah. When the strong, rugged, 
 stern man, the embodiment of truth and power, was re- 
 moved, the same spirit worked through Stanley to the same 
 ends, but by different means — by gentle persuasiveness, by 
 personal charm, by the numberless tentacles with which he 
 united men to himself, and through the great variety of 
 points In which he brought himself into contact with others, 
 excited their interest, and won their affection. 
 
 If it was at Rugby that he received the most powerful 
 impression of his life, it was at Oxford that he first 
 developed his remarkable capacity for making friends. At 
 home he had been accustomed to be the centre of interest, 
 to find everything done for him, to have his wishes always 
 consulted. Not only did this dependence on the domestic 
 circle impair his power of impressing himself on other 
 society, but it also encouraged a curious vein of selfishness 
 and inconsiderateness, which seemed at variance with every 
 other side of his character. It also fostered a quaint, 
 pathetic helplessness in practical matters, that proved at 
 once attractive and endearing. At Oxford, however, the 
 barriers of reserve, which had at Rugby narrowly limited 
 the circle of his intimates, began to dissolve. It was now 
 that he grappled to himself by bonds of steel the men who, 
 like Tait or Ward, Pearson or Jowett, became the friends 
 of his life. He even seemed to pass into the opposite 
 extreme from, uncompanionable aloofness, and to incur the 
 charge of fickleness by his interest in making new ac- 
 quaintances, and his enjoyment in striking new strata of 
 society.
 
 240 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1S40 i 
 
 His warm sympathy was freely offered, and what he 
 <Tavc to others he asked, and commanded, for himself 
 The interest which he took in everything he also inspired. 
 A fulness of active life throbbed through all his thoughts 
 and feelings. His instinctive sympathetic tact taught him 
 always to avoid, as in telling a story, anything that could 
 be disagreeable to any one of his hearers. He became, in 
 the best sense of the word, an influence, a source from 
 which flowed something that attracted, elevated, and 
 purified, if it did not necessarily convince. His chivalrous 
 partisanship, his admiration for the display of gifts in 
 which he was himself deficient, his reverence for those who 
 were oracles in their several departments of learning, were 
 irresistibly attractive from the simplicity and humility that 
 they revealed in himself His habit of dwelling on the 
 good side in a man or his opinions, his perception of 
 common points in the midst of discord, and his disposition 
 to see the best in all persons, to find merit in all systems, 
 or discover truth in all propositions, made it almost a mania 
 with him to bring into harmony men of divergent tenets 
 and characters. At the same time, his susceptible tempera- 
 ment was combined with such transparent sincerity, that to 
 quarrel with him was impossible. Thus he became, not 
 only an influence among his associates, but a centre round 
 Avhich gathered men of the most opposite views, who 
 found no other point of contact with one another except 
 their friendship with Stanley. 
 
 Sympathy was the bond by which he united to himself 
 so many friends. He had also the dcfauts de sa qualite. 
 Closely allied to his sympathy, and, perhaps, another 
 phase of it, was his irresolution. The rapidity and keen- 
 ness with which he saw the/wj- and co7is of any course of 
 action made the task of making up his mind both dis- 
 agreeable and difficult. While engaged in the effort of
 
 CHAP. VIII HIS MOODS OF INDECISION 24 1 
 
 decision he was miserable. All his life he was painfully 
 aware of the defect. In 183 1, when he was only fifteen 
 years of age, he wrote reflections upon his irresolution. 
 Once he speaks of having pursued Ward's advice, to perse- 
 vere in first intentions, how^cver foolish they might sub- 
 sequently appear. But he never succeeded in slaying ' the 
 hydra.' Towards the end of his career Pearson, half-play- 
 fully, alluded to the time ' when your life is written.' A 
 shade passed over his face ; he turned away, and said, as 
 he paced the room, ' No ; my life never will be written. 
 My fatal irresolution will prevent that' But at least the 
 evils of the weakness were confined to himself and to those 
 nearest to him or most dependent on him. For practical 
 work affecting others he threw it off Once committed to 
 a course of action, the course assumed the shape of duty, 
 and henceforth no one could be more resolute, even to 
 obstinacy. 
 
 The same mental conditions, to which he owed his 
 power of sympathy and his irresolution, hampered him as 
 a thinker, and gave an unscientific turn to his mind. In 
 his imaginative, apprehensive intellect, the fluctuation of 
 motives kept the solution perpetually in abeyance, and it 
 may be doubted whether the qualities of a poet, which he 
 possessed to an eminent degree, are compatible with the gifts 
 indispensable to leaders in sustained speculative thought. 
 And yet, again, the same mental conditions saved him 
 from the intolerance either of orthodoxy or of agnosticism. 
 His tolerance was not the pseudo-tolerance of those who 
 pardon others for believing less or more than themselves. 
 It proceeded from genuine fellow-feeling. Thus, to the 
 same source from which flowed some of his most cha- 
 racteristic gifts and defects may be traced some of his 
 most characteristic opinions. The form which his hesita- 
 tion to take Orders assumed was determined by his appre- 
 VOL. I. R
 
 242 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1 840-1 
 
 ciation of the motives that actuated men who differed from 
 himself, and his strong perception of the diversity of ways 
 in which God might be served and honoured. The 
 Athanasian Cieed, to which he was invited to subscribe, 
 was diametrically opposed to his own spirit of toleration 
 and breadth of theological thought. 
 
 Some persons are tolerant from indifference, by nature, 
 disposition, and habit of mind. Stanley was tolerant on 
 principle. His toleration was rather positive than negative. 
 He did not strive to reduce to a minimum the amount of 
 dogma to be believed, but to include the maximum number 
 of believers. He made himself ' all things to all men,' not 
 to gain something from others, but to convince all that 
 they had something in common. He ' received ' all, not in 
 the spirit of worldly compromise, but in the fulness of their 
 holy fellowship in Christ. This was the shape in which 
 had already come to him the command to love one another. 
 This was already to him the sum and substance of all the 
 Beatitudes, the vision of the white snowy chain which accom- 
 panied him throughout life, at times unseen, but ever near. 
 
 Already he gloried in that breadth of view which at 
 the close of his career he desired to be commemorated in 
 the text selected for his tomb. But his idea of breadth 
 was, not that it matters nothing what a man thinks, says, 
 or does ; rather it was, that Christ's religion was designed 
 to meet the infinitely varying needs of man, to embrace 
 the East and the West, to afford full scope for the play of 
 human faculties. Already also there was conspicuous in 
 him that mental caution which suggested to many minds a 
 false impression of the nature and extent of his own per- 
 sonal creed. He wholly passed over a variety of points 
 which were open to doubt or dispute ; if he alluded to them 
 at all, he handled them with the utmost reserve. But 
 neither his silence nor his reticence afforded any valid test
 
 CHAP. VIII HIS FIRST SERMON 243 
 
 of his own belief. On subjects that any number of men 
 regarded as open, he spoke cautiously, in order that he 
 might be able to speak the more positively upon points 
 which were incapable of doubt or dispute. 
 
 To return to the narrative of his life. Stanley spent 
 the first six weeks after his Ordination at Norwich. Writ- 
 ing on January 12th, 1840, to C. J. Vaughan, he says : 
 
 ' Since I came here I have performed every service 
 belonging to the Diaconate except that of marrying. I 
 have read prayers, administered the Communion, preached,, 
 and buried. The preaching is supposed to have been 
 better than could have been expected. It seemed very 
 unnatural and strange — a sort of being oneself and not 
 oneself 
 
 His first sermon was preached, it may be added, at 
 Bergh Apton, a village near Norwich, of which the late 
 Bishop of the diocese was then rector. The sermon 
 itself, which was on the words, ' He loveth our nation, and 
 hath built us a synagogue' (Luke vii. 5), has disappeared, 
 but a record of its effect upon the audience has been pre- 
 served. After the service, two old women of the parish 
 were overheard discussing the sermon and the preacher. 
 The first old woman observed to her friend, ' Well, I do 
 feel empty-like ! ' ' And so do I,' returned the other ; ' that 
 young man didn't give us much to feed on.' 
 
 To the first six weeks of his Diaconate also belongs a 
 curious testimony to the systematic perseverance with 
 which, even at a crisis of much mental anxiety, he carried 
 on his theological studies. It is an undated letter of more 
 than five closely-written quarto pages, directed to the ' Rev. 
 A. C. Tait, at Sir G. Sitv/ell's, Renishaw, near Chesterfield.' 
 The letter is almost entirely devoted to an essay on the 
 meaning of 'Justification by Faith,' on which he and his 
 friend had obviously held some previous discussion. The
 
 244 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1840 i 
 
 substance of his statement is drawn, as he tells Tait, from 
 Olshauscn on the Romans, 'which will reconcile you to 
 much of it. Preserve the document, that I may correct it 
 hereafter ; forgi\ e heresies ; forgive also impertinences. Read 
 Carlyle's " Chartism," and be kind to me when I return ! ' 
 
 For months after his Ordination his mind was almost 
 exclusively absorbed in the question of clerical subscription 
 to the Church's formularies. His own difficulties on the 
 subject had been removed by Archdeacon Clarke ; but he 
 was still desirous of relieving others from the sense of the 
 burden, and the desire was strengthened by his intimacy 
 with Canon Wodehouse, his father's trusted friend and 
 chaplain, who had for years expressed his unwillingness to 
 accept the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed. On 
 this question of subscription, which, twelve months later, 
 and under another form, derived such importance from the 
 publication of ' Tract 90,' his interests were concentrated. 
 The subject occupies a substantial part of a letter written 
 to C. J. Vaughan in January 1840 ; it crops up in a letter 
 sent to his aunt, Mrs. Augustus Hare, in the following 
 February ; he discusses it at Hodnet ; he talks it over at 
 Rugby with Cotton, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta ; twenty- 
 four hours had not elapsed after his return to Oxford 
 before he had elicited from Ward ' the Newmanite feeling 
 about subscription.' Before this engrossing question all the 
 topics on which he had from childhood written home so 
 freely — the details of his daily life, his reading, his friends, 
 events of public importance — recede into the remote back- 
 <yround. There is scarcely even a reference to the prize 
 compositions on which he was engaged, and in both of 
 which, after two previous failures, he proved successful — 
 the Chancellor's English Essay, and the Ellerton Theological 
 Essay. 
 
 Canon Wodehouse was, at this very moment, actively
 
 CHAP. VIII PETITION FOR LITURGICAL REVISION 245 
 
 engaged in the preparation of a petition to the House of 
 Lords, calling the attention both of the Bishops and the 
 Legislature to the grave discrepancy between the terms to 
 which all the clergy of the English Church were bound to 
 subscribe at Ordination, and the practice and feeling of the 
 vast majority of Churchmen. The petition finally took the 
 shape of a prayer ' that the letter of the Prayer Book and 
 the subscription to the Articles and Liturgy might be ren- 
 dered consistent with the practice of the clergy and the 
 acknowledged meaning of the Church.' To the form of 
 this petition Stanley strongly objected. He desired to 
 leave the letter of the Articles and of the Prayer Book un- 
 touched. He wished for no modification of the Liturgy or 
 of the formularies of the Church. He feared lest any 
 legislation might ' make the subscription more stringent 
 than the present form actually is.' He hoped that the dis- 
 cussion of the subject might elicit from the Bishops some 
 official declaration that they did not regard subscription as 
 binding the conscience of the clergy to a literal agreement 
 with every line or letter of the services or the formularies. 
 If such an authoritative statement were withheld, and any 
 change were considered necessary, he wished that the 
 alteration should take the form of some modification in the 
 terms of subscription. This was, in his view, the only 
 practicable, and the only desirable, object. 
 
 Events showed that Stanley was right in his opinion. 
 The cause in which he was so deeply interested was wrecked 
 by the wide terms of the petition. No subject, however, 
 lay nearer to his heart than that of relieving the clergy from 
 binding themselves, at the most solemn moment of their lives, 
 to a literal adherence to ' all and every proposition in so large 
 a range of statements as those comprised in formularies 
 which were fully intended by those who originally framed 
 them to be accepted by persons of very divergent senti-
 
 246 LIFE OF DEAN STAXLEY ICS40 i 
 
 ments and opinions.' He left, therefore, no stone unturned, 
 from the time he left Norwich till the final debate in the 
 House of Lords on May 26th, 1840, to awaken interest in 
 the subject throughout the country, and especially at Oxford. 
 But the majority of those whom he addressed were apa- 
 thetic ; the few, who, like Newman and his friends, felt the 
 importance of the question, were afraid that, if one stone of 
 the original edifice were touched, the whole building would 
 fall to pieces. His own dislike to the terms of the petition 
 was confirmed by his knowledge of the feelings of the ad- 
 vanced section of the Oxford Movement, for whose satis- 
 faction 'Tract 90' was ultimately written. He therefore 
 strained every nerve to prevail upon Canon Wodehouse, 
 and those who acted with him, to concentrate their efforts 
 on the relaxation of the terms of subscription, or on procuring 
 some authoritative statement from the Bishops, and to leave 
 untouched the letter of the Articles and of the Prayer Book. 
 It was only in the House of Lords itself, and with a reluc- 
 tance which was followed immediately afterwards by keen 
 regret, that he added his name to those of the 'sixty 
 members of the Church of England ' on whose behalf the 
 petition was finally presented to the Upper House by 
 Archbishop Whately at the end of May. ' Were it possible,' 
 he says, ' that any alterations in the Liturgy were to be 
 effected in consequence of it, I should never forgive myself.' 
 He only added his name to it in the hope, as he tells Canon 
 Wodehouse, that ' it might tend to open discussion and call 
 attention to the whole subject,' and that it might draw from 
 the bench of Bishops some explanation of the meaning 
 which they attached to subscription. 
 
 The course of the debate, which followed on Archbishop 
 Whately's introduction of the petition, illustrated the practical 
 wisdom of Stanley's warnings and the impolicy of uniting 
 Liturgical revision with the demand for relaxation of sub-
 
 CHAP. VIII DEBATE ON THE PETITION 247 
 
 scription. More than one of the speakers insisted on the 
 incompetence of Parliament to deal with changes in the 
 Liturgy. The Bishop of Norwich alone kept the two points 
 entirely distinct. While he admitted the ' insuperable diffi- 
 culties ' which stood in the way of any alteration of the ser- 
 vices, he insisted on the heavy burden that was imposed by 
 the existing terms of subscription on tender and scrupulous 
 consciences. He was answered by the Bishop of London, 
 whose ' speech, admirably delivered and with withering fero- 
 city, struck a visible panic through the House, so that on 
 his subsiding it instantly adjourned,' The tone and manner 
 of the reply struck a chill into the heart of Stanley, who was 
 present in the House during what he describes as an * awful ' 
 debate. He had hoped that the petition would elicit some 
 authoritative interpretation of the terms of subscription ; he 
 found instead, that Bishop Blomfield regarded it as a thing 
 which it was pollution even to touch. 'For myself,' said that 
 prelate, ' I should believe that / ivas eating the bread of the 
 CJiurcJi umvorthily by subscribing to any Article which I did 
 not implicitly believe ! ' The only immediate result of the 
 petition seemed to be an uncompromising and almost con- 
 tumelious rejection of its prayer. But Stanley clung to his 
 point. ' I am only anxious,' he writes to his sister, 
 
 ' to return to the course which I should have preferred 
 from the beginning ; and therefore beg for the future to 
 have nothing to do with legislative bodies for the Church, 
 or alterations of Liturgy. About subscription I still feel as 
 before ; but the mischief hitherto has so evidently been 
 the confusion of two distinct things, that I hope they will 
 now be kept apart, and that the line chiefly pursued will 
 not be alteration of formularies, but of subscription. Any- 
 thing else but this would, in my judgment, ruin the cause 
 completely.' 
 
 To this point he adhered with his usual tenacity, and 
 on these lines he never ceased to agitate. In the ultimate
 
 248 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1840-1 
 
 change he played an important part. More than twenty 
 years later the subject was again discussed in Parliament. 
 Lord Ebury in 1862, and again in 1863, introduced a Bill 
 into the House of Lords for the modification of the form 
 of clerical subscription. On the iQth of May, 1863, the 
 Bill came up for second reading. Its rejection was moved 
 by Archbishop Longley, and unsuccessfully opposed by 
 Bishop Tait. In the pamphlet war which followed the 
 defeat of the proposed measure, Stanley's brilliant ' Letter 
 to the Bishop of London ' gave most effective support to 
 the advocates of relaxation in the terms of clerical declara- 
 tions. Though the Bill was lost, a Royal Commission was 
 appointed to consider the subject, and the twenty-seven 
 members unanimously reported in favour of the reduction 
 of subscription to a less stringent form. Legislative effect 
 was given to their recommendations in 1865 by an Act of 
 Parliament (28 & 29 Vict. c. 122), and by the requisite 
 alterations which Convocation formulated in the canons. 
 
 The debate of May 1840 produced two publications 
 which deserve notice, because in both Stanley had a share. 
 The Bishop of Norwich thought it right to publish the 
 speech which he had delivered in the House of Lords, and 
 which had subjected him to keen censure, not only from 
 the Bishop of London, but in the public press. He added, 
 in an appendix, a catena of quotations from divines of the 
 English Church from Cranmer downwards supporting his 
 positions, that the Articles were intentionally framed to 
 admit persons who differed widely on important points, 
 and that subscription was not, and could not be, understood 
 to enforce agreement with every proposition and expres- 
 sion in their full, obvious, and literal meaning.^ The 
 
 ' The reply which the Bishop of London prepared and printed was never 
 published, doubtless from a feeling that the controversy between two Bishops 
 should not be carried further [Memoir of Bishop Blomfield, ii. 18).
 
 CHAP. VIII PAMPHLET ON THE PETITION 249 
 
 quotations were largely furnished by his son, whose hand 
 is plainly visible in almost every page. The other publi- 
 cation was a pamphlet prepared by the Rev. John Hull, 
 and entitled ' Observations on a Petition for the Revision 
 of the Liturgy of the United Church of England and 
 Ireland, with a Report of the Discussion it caused in the 
 House of Lords on May 26, 1840, as published in 
 the Mirror of Parliament' The appendix to the pamphlet 
 contains two anonymous papers by Arthur Stanley. The 
 first is the printed copy of the actual answer on the damna- 
 tory clauses of the Athanasian Creed which he handed 
 in at his examination for Holy Orders.^ The second is a 
 letter of seven pages, under the title of 'A Petitioner's 
 Letter on Subscription,' in which he expressly excludes 
 from his argument the revision of the formularies, and 
 urges the necessity for some relaxation in the stringent 
 terms of subscription then in force. 
 
 Thus ends the story of Stanley's first active participa- 
 tion in any joint action in the sphere of Church politics,, 
 his first attempt to relieve the English clergy from a 
 burden which he and others felt to be needlessly heavy. 
 His mind had been so absorbed in the struggle that, since 
 his Ordination, all personal topics are conspicuously absent 
 from his correspondence. The efforts that he had made 
 told severely upon a physical strength which was already 
 overtaxed. His letters during the first six months of 1840 
 show that some period of rest was sorely needed. His 
 brain and sensitive temperament were overwrought ; the 
 continuous strain impaired both his health and spirits ; his 
 elasticity of mind seemed deadened, his keen sense of 
 humour dulled ; and he speaks frequently of paroxysms of 
 headache. No more potent remedy for his condition of 
 mind and body could be devised than the Continental 
 - See Appendix to Chapter vii. (2), p. 232.
 
 250 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1840 1 
 
 tour which, when once the question of subscription was 
 for the time settled, engaged all his attention. For a 
 moment, indeed, he turns aside from his preparations to 
 announce that he had gained both the English Essay and 
 the Ellerton Theological Prize, or to draw up for the Bishop 
 and his family, who had been invited to Commemoration, 
 a curious little sheet, filled with hints on the best subjects 
 of conversation with the Master and Fellows of University 
 College. Though the boyish delight with which he had 
 communicated similar successes to his family had disap- 
 peared, he could not but feel gratified at such a conclusion 
 to his University career. With the exception of the Latin 
 Verse Prize, he had gained every distinction which in those 
 days was open to one who was neither a mathematician nor 
 a Hebraist. 
 
 Such topics as prizes or Commemoration scarcely inter- 
 rupt the inquiries which, as his plans assumed definite 
 shape, flowed homewards respecting preparations for his 
 tour. He proposed to leave England on the loth of July 
 for a visit to the Bunsens at Berne, and a tour in Switzer- 
 land, which was to last till the end of August. At Geneva 
 he was to be joined by E. M. Goulburn, the future Head 
 Master of Rugby and Dean of Norwich. ' My present 
 design,' he says, 
 
 ' is to leave Geneva about August 28 ; go straight 
 by Milan, &c., to Venice and Trieste, and to take Florence, 
 Pisa, Genoa, Nice, and France on my way back in the 
 spring ; Greece and Rome occupying the interval. But 
 how long I stay in Greece, or how I return to Italy, de- 
 pends on what I hear there. I am recommended to go 
 from Corfu to Patras, thence to Delphi, and overland to 
 Athens ; thence to Malta, and thence to Naples, so as to 
 come into Rome by the Campagna. But the accounts of 
 Greek travelling rather alarm me.' 
 
 The foreign tour of 1840 proved an important crisis in
 
 CHAP. VIII LIFE AT NORWICH 25 1 
 
 Stanley's life. In the first place, it forced him to think 
 and act for himself, and thus helped to dissipate that con- 
 stitutional shyness which did injustice to his abilities, both 
 at home and abroad. Partially, at least, it made him 
 known to his family and friends as what he really was. 
 His sister's account of his mode of life at Norwich shows 
 in what heavy folds the mantle of shyness hung about 
 him, even in the domestic circle, and how valuable was 
 any event which compelled him, for the time, to lay it 
 aside. 
 
 Much of the Palace at Norwich has been demolished, 
 rebuilt, or otherwise changed since 1840. But the upstairs 
 passage, at the end of which was the room that he always 
 occupied, still remains. There, day by day, year after 
 year, he used to stand at his desk by the fireplace (as years 
 later in his library at Westminster), with his books and 
 papers before him, wrapped in those days in a blue dressing- 
 gown, from ten to one every morning ; often with his 
 younger sister at her studies, or assisting him, in the same 
 room. At one he came down to luncheon, which he gene- 
 rally ate standing with his back to the fire. In the after- 
 noon his walk was almost always in the same direction — 
 across the ferry and over Mousehold. In these walks the 
 same sister was his most frequent companion. Often she 
 would undertake to read the history of some person, or 
 reign, or century. This would be made the subject of 
 examination and discussion, as with quick, short steps he 
 walked over the heathery moorland, looking down upon the 
 forest of spires and on the old castle that lay bathed in the 
 sunset glow beneath them. Then came another hour of 
 study in his remote corner ; then the dinner at 6.30, and 
 the long evening spent in the family-circle. No weather 
 would keep him in the house from two till four ; on rainy 
 days he might be seen pacing industriously round and
 
 252 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 
 
 round the Cathedral Cloisters, as afterwards he took his 
 exercise in those of Queen's or Magdalen, at Oxford 
 
 It was at Norwich that he became attached to Canon 
 VVodehouse, and to his colleague, Canon Sedgwick, of both 
 of whom he always spoke with the warmest affection. It 
 was at Norwich also that he laid the foundation of a friend- 
 ship with Joseph John Gurney, ' the Quaker-Pope,' as he 
 used to style him, at whose house at Earlham he met 
 Elizabeth Fry and other leading members of a society 
 whose activity in good work won from him lifelong homage. 
 Yet it is impossible to resist the evidence that the brilliant 
 story-teller, the delightful companion, the gifted conversa- 
 tionalist, developed all his social talents in other circles 
 than that of his own family. At home he seldom talked 
 much or with expansion. In his father's work he took 
 small interest, except when the Bishop consulted him on 
 theological points. Even his mother had then little in 
 common with him. None of his family thought him 
 likely to be distinguished in practical or public life, but 
 looked upon him in the light of the poetic dreamer, 
 the scholar, or the bookworm. If visitors were suddenly 
 announced, he would hide in the deep bay of the drawing- 
 room windows. Those whom he could not escape found 
 him, as a rule, silent, reserved, and shy ; while for some 
 years it seemed to candidates for Ordination impossible 
 that the boyish figure moving silently among them was 
 that of the Bishop's son and chaplain, and their own 
 examiner. 
 
 Nor was the foreign tour only memorable because it 
 helped, so to speak, to break his shell. It strengthened 
 and confirmed his love of foreign travel ; it revealed to 
 himself and to his friends his descriptive powers ; it 
 determined the character of the enjoyment which he hence- 
 forward derived from travelling ; it brought into relief
 
 •CHAP. VIII HIS LOVE OF TRAVELLING 253 
 
 many of the peculiarities which distinguished him as a 
 traveller or a sightseer. 
 
 For pictures in themselves, or for architecture for its 
 own sake, he had no taste. He could not lie on a hillside 
 and drink in enjoyment. He could not lounge through a 
 city, and simply observe and photograph objectively. Ex- 
 ternal Nature seldom seized hold upon him, except as the 
 symbol of some idea, the background of history, or the 
 framework of human interest. It was not that he had no 
 eye for beauty. Lines in his poetry and phrases in his 
 prose show that he had a painter's perception and a poet's 
 pen ; but he was intent on other things. As Napoleon 
 would not visit Jerusalem because it did not enter into his 
 field of operations (a favourite story of the late Dean's), so 
 Stanley was too absorbed in what to him was the soul of 
 natural beauty to care for its body. Scenery, apart from its 
 associations, and viewed in its own light, possessed little 
 attraction for him. ' I do not,' he says, ' describe scenery 
 for its own sake in my letters.' The Alps strike him as 
 ' unformed, unmeaning lumps ' ; confronted by the Matter- 
 horn, he wishes that it were connected with history, with 
 legend, or with worship. On the Lake of Lucerne he cared 
 only for the spots identified with the story of Tell. 
 Among the Carpathians, or in Saxon Switzerland, he 
 could scarcely be induced to raise his eyes from his book 
 to see the most beautiful views that were visible from the 
 window of the carriage. He was unmoved by the splendour 
 of a Northern sunset on the Baltic, or by the beauty of the 
 wooded islands with which that sea is studded. The ash- 
 trees near Odin's Grove, the possible descendants of the 
 Ygdrasil of Scandinavian mythology, charmed him more 
 than all the lakes and woods of Dalecarlia. Places rarely 
 interested him in themselves, unless they were distinguished 
 above all other spots by some superlative characteristic,
 
 254 ^^^^ <^^ DEAN STANLEY 1840-1 
 
 even if that special feature were only dirt. But no man 
 ever experienced so eager a delight in seeing spots which 
 were connected with famous people, striking events, im- 
 portant legends, or scenes in the works of great masters of 
 poetry or fiction. Where man had set his mark upon a 
 place, there his interest was keen and his memory unerring. 
 He at once detected any departure from faithful represen- 
 tation of such a spot. That tree, he would say, could 
 not have been seen, or that rock was more to the right. 
 The page of History, ancient, modern, or sacred, was to him 
 ' rich with the spoils of Time,' and he brought its treasures 
 with him wherever he journeyed. He enjoyed striking 
 scenes with a healthy, natural appetite, without reflecting 
 what new elements they contributed to his culture. His 
 delight was never marred by the conflicting claims of a 
 double consciousness-, or by the eflbrt to hold the balance 
 evenly between the actual and the ideal. No doubt dis- 
 turbed his pleasure, whether he was not enjoying the actual 
 vision too much, or whether he was not neglecting the 
 details before him for the reproduction of the scene by the 
 exercise of his imagination. His perceptive faculties were 
 wrought up into intensely energetic action, and his mind 
 and nature were enriched to the highest possible degree 
 by what he saw. 
 
 To every historic spot he came with full and exact 
 knowledge of the points of view from which to look, and 
 the special features to be noted. He would make straight 
 for those points, hardly looking round him as he went, put 
 up his glasses, fix an eager gaze on the view for a few 
 intense moments, then shut them up and walk away. In 
 that brief interval the whole had been taken in, not only 
 with the eye, but with the historical imagination. And it 
 was very rarely that he cared to visit the same spot a 
 second time. ' When once,' he said,
 
 CHAP. VIII HIS GIFTS AS A TRAVELLER 255^ 
 
 * I have seen a remarkable sight I do not care to see it 
 again, unless it is one with which fond or happy associations 
 are connected. . . . The second sight of Prague quite- 
 revolted me, and though I saw Marathon on a rainy day,, 
 yet I refused three or four opportunities of seeing it again. 
 On the first sight of scenes of this sort a whole new world 
 opens before me ; floods of thought come in which are 
 indelible, and there is nothing new in a second visit.' 
 
 His journeys constituted a perpetual triumph of mind 
 over matter, for his desire to see conquered every difficulty 
 of sickness, discomfort, or weather. The mind dragged 
 about the body, allowing it neither rest nor food till every- 
 thing was finished. Even then he would barely allow 
 himself time to eat, in his eagerness to write down in his 
 note-books all that he had seen. In the practical arrange- 
 ments of a journey he was absolutely dependent on others. 
 Mainly for this reason he disliked travelling alone The 
 debt that he owed to his friendly couriers was richly repaid. 
 He was a delightful fellow-traveller. Nothing wearied 
 him. No fatigue exhausted the almost childish gaiety of 
 his spirits. He endured every discomfort with equanimity, 
 except that of dining early or of walking after dinner. He 
 possessed the happy art of extracting amusement from the 
 smallest incident of a journey, even from a contretemps or 
 an accident to himself. He cared for everything. He 
 knew, or got to know, everything. He had introductions 
 to, or made acquaintance with, the persons best worth 
 knowing in foreign countries. And, when not engaged in 
 studying the books which were to reveal to him the secrets 
 of the new land, he overflowed with a ceaseless stream of 
 anecdote. Above all, he communicated his own enthusiasm 
 to those about him : peopling every spot with living forms, 
 seizing with keen directness of vision the special character- 
 istic which gave its peculiar local colouring to every occur- 
 rence, marking the exact points where Nature and history
 
 256 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1840-1 
 
 blended, tracing the topographical features which directed 
 the course of events, he made his fulness of information as 
 fresh and vivid to others as it was to himself 
 
 Professor Johnson and Tait travelled with him by 
 Ostend, Bruges, and Cologne, to Bonn. Every incident of 
 the journey that can interest or amuse the home-circle is 
 noted. No sight escapes him ; he visits alike the tomb of 
 Charles the Bold at Bruges, or ' the bones of Charlemagne, 
 and other more ordinary things, such as the fingers of St. 
 Boniface ' at Aix. The comments suggested by his youthful 
 appearance are recorded with especial glee. At Bruges, 
 
 'Johnson, coming down early in the morning, breakfasted 
 with an Englishman who had seen us the night before, and 
 being asked where we were going, said that they two stopped 
 short, but that the youngest of the party was going on to 
 Italy and Greece ; on which the man said, " I quite disap- 
 prove of that ; boys should not go to those parts till they 
 get older, and acquire a fund of historical knowledge." ' 
 
 So again at Bingen ' I reminded our friend, the land- 
 lord, of my having been there before, but he had no remem- 
 brance of it, as he professed to have seen me a foot shorter 
 than my present height' 
 
 At Bonn, Tait and he were received ' with an enthusiasm 
 which baffles all description, from the Professor to the 
 kitchenmaid.' 
 
 ' All the waiters at the Trierischer Hof, Ferdinand, 
 Wilhelm, &c., rushed out to receive us with exclamations 
 of delight. We then sallied forth ; visited all our friends : 
 Backing, who kissed us each tenderly on each cheek, and when 
 we went to see our old rooms, still beautiful as ever, and 
 every window teeming with associations of the joint pam- 
 phlet, we covertly wrote our names behind a shutter ; Arndt, 
 who is full of excitement, tho' now above seventy, at the 
 prospects of Prussia, and is to give me a letter for Bunsen, 
 which he does not think it safe to trust to the post — full of 
 hope of keeping down " the Muscovites, those enemies to
 
 ■CHAP. VIII BONN TO BERNE 257 
 
 Europe and mankind " ; Bkekdind his wife, who asked with 
 great interest after Prince Albert, whom they had known 
 at Bonn, and of whom they spoke most highly ; Brandis, 
 tutor of the King of Greece, just returned from Athens, who 
 says that October is the very best month for it in the whole 
 year ; Sack, who wished most hearty wishes of good in 
 Greece, and in Rome " as much as possible." ' 
 
 From Bonn Stanley went on alone by Mayence, 
 Mannheim, Freiburg, and Basle, to Berne. His troubles at 
 once began. He embarked at Bonn on board the Rhine 
 steamer. 
 
 ' Tait and Johnson went with me as far as the Drachen- 
 fels ; they presented me with a bottle of brandy, which I 
 let fall on the pavement as I was going to pack it up, and 
 broke to pieces — the only thing that has yet been lost or 
 destroyed.' 
 
 At Mayence he left his luggage standing on the bridge, 
 while he himself proceeded on his way to Mannheim. ' I 
 have, however,' he says, 
 
 ' every hope of recovering it to-night before I leave Mann- 
 heim, and shall not disquiet myself about it. Fortunately 
 I have all the necessaries of life with me, and my pockets 
 are filled with books.' 
 
 On board the boat he speaks of the pleasure which he 
 derived from the society of ' Mr. James (whose first wife 
 was a Wilberforce) and his family, consisting of a second 
 wife, a little girl named Barbara, and a baby.' He won the 
 heart of Barbara, who, he tells Pearson, ' occupies a place 
 in my affections, but is very small as yet,' and who ' waited 
 upon me most benevolently, waking me when it was time 
 to dine,' &c., and who, on their subsequent meeting among 
 the Alps, confided to him that ' to-day is Baby's birthday.' 
 During his voyage he employed himself in learning Italian. 
 He ' read three chapters of the " Promessi Sposi " with great 
 VOL. I. S
 
 258 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1840-1 
 
 difficult)-,' but he found Dante, lent him by Mr. James, * far 
 easier, and read through five cantos with great satisfaction.' 
 With a few hours to spare at Mannheim, he ' conceived the 
 brilliant idea of going to Heidelberg, partly for a glance at 
 the castle, but chiefly to see Rothe, the great German writer 
 on Church and State, under pretext of asking him if he had 
 anything to send to Bunsen.' Arrived at Freiburg, he found 
 that the Grand Duchess Stephanie, who had made such an 
 impression on his mother and himself at Baden, was 
 residing a few miles off, at her Schloss at Umkirch. ' In a 
 few minutes I made up my mind. I might never see her 
 again, and it was possible now.' He hired a carriage and 
 set off to the Schloss. 
 
 ' On the steps of the chief building appeared Stephanie 
 herself, with her Court round about her. It seemed like a 
 dream. There she was, bowing first to one, and then to 
 another, as graceful as ever, only rather more aged in face, 
 except when animated. She immediately descended, and the 
 meeting was as cordial as it could be without a shake of 
 hands. " Vous etes devenu chrgyniMi ? Je me souviens 
 que Mme. votre mere me I'a dit. Et comment se porte-elle } 
 Est-ce qu'elle ne dessine plus } " Soon a message came 
 through Mme. Walsch that I was to stay there that night. 
 This was impossible from diligence engagements. But I 
 consented till nine. The Grand Duchess asked a good 
 deal about Norwich — " une ville de decadence. Ah ! que 
 cela me semble toujours triste ! " begged that you, mamma, 
 would come and see her at Umkirch ; made me give her 
 your direction. In a debate about the years of youth pass- 
 ing quickly, " dans la jeunesse c'est les annees qui sont 
 longues, et les moments qui sont courts ; dans la vieillesse 
 les moments sont longs, les annees sont courtes." ' 
 
 From Freiburg he proceeded by diligence to Basle, ' a 
 beautiful town, with the Rhine running through it with a 
 freshness and bright, free current, as if it were carrying 
 spring and life into all the countries of Europe.' Thence 
 he made his way by ' Bienne, Rousseau's lake,' to Berne,
 
 CHAP. VIII BUNSEN AT BERNE 259 
 
 where he found F. D. Maurice and his wife staying at the 
 hotel. The next day (July 22nd) he was transferred to 
 Bunsen's house, where he remained as a guest for a week, 
 sending home detailed reports of his host's daily life and 
 conversation. 
 
 Bunsen ' flowed,' as Stanley says, ' like a fountain.' 
 His conversation covered a vast range of subjects — scenes 
 of Swiss national life, the condition of Italy and of Rome, 
 the conscience clause in English national education, the 
 prospects of Prussia under her new ruler, and ' religious 
 and learned matters all over the world.' All is reproduced 
 in Stanley's letters to his family. In the evening Bunsen 
 
 * generally reads some German book to the strangers and 
 his family. He talked last night a good deal about Church 
 and State, and English national education. Of the latter, 
 he said that he thought the great flaw in the original Whig 
 plan was the mixture of sects in teaching, which had been 
 tried and failed in Germany ; and the great flaw on the 
 other side, their obstinacy in not allowing any relaxation 
 about the Catechism. His own plan, he said, would have 
 been to leave those sects which could not advance any 
 money for themselves to voluntary contributions, as their 
 not being able to do so would be a sign of their not being 
 of sufficient importance to make necessary a deviation 
 from a general rule ; to pay and to send inspectors to those 
 schools which did advance money ; and to suffer the 
 children to go out when the Catechism was taught, and to 
 go to their own chapels, if they brought a certificate of 
 their having so gone to the schoolmaster or clergyman.' 
 
 Guests of every nationality were welcomed at Bunsen's 
 table. On one occasion a French clergyman told anecdotes 
 of Talleyrand. 
 
 ' He (the French clergyman) was sitting by him when 
 dining with the King of the French, who sat a few yards 
 from them. A sentence of Mignet's was discussed, in 
 which he said that Napoleon's great art was " qu'apres 
 avoir monte le trone, il faisait oublier qu'il y avait monte.'*
 
 26o LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1840-T 
 
 " Oui," said Talleyrand, " c'est bien vrai, c'ctait une grande 
 hallucination, nous avions tout oublie." And then, suddenly 
 changing his countenance and sinking his voice, in a man- 
 ner which I suppose those who knew him can appreciate, 
 and which the narrator imitated admirably, " Voila une 
 chose bien difficile ; d'avoir monte " (and turning his thumb 
 backwards towards Louis Philippe), " d'avoir monte, et de 
 faire oublier qu'on y a monte " ; and then immediately 
 began eating his dinner again, as if he was wholly intent 
 upon it, and had said nothing. 
 
 ' Also his judgment on Thiers and Guizot. On being 
 asked his opinion of Guizot, with a good deal of prefatory 
 evasion, which I cannot give, " Guizot — oui, c'est un homme 
 des principes, des idees generales, mais celles-ci ne valent 
 rien dans la pratique. Guizot a I'inflexibilite que donnent 
 les principes, Thiers la flexibilite que donne I'esprit." 
 Also, Madame de Stael having asked him," Mais dites-moi, 
 lequel a plus d'esprit, le General Buonaparte ou moi " 
 (Buonaparte being then General), he crossed his knife and 
 fork on the plate, then looked up, and said : " Madame, le 
 General a plus d'esprit, mais vous avez plus de courage." ' 
 
 As his final departure drew near 
 
 my conversations with Bunsen grew more frequent and more 
 interesting, and they were also facilitated, as mine always 
 are, by the presence of a third person (Tait). One in par- 
 ticular, on Church and State, in which he unfolded his 
 plans for the renovation of Prussia in the shed of his 
 coach-house, where we were detained by a sudden thunder- 
 storm. 
 
 ' " Conceive," said Tait, when he went away, " walking 
 in Whitehall Gardens with Sir R. Peel, on the eve of Lord 
 Melbourne's resignation, and hearing him discuss all his 
 plans for the next session." The interest which it gives to 
 the present prospects of Prussia is, of course, immense ; it 
 was impossible not to feel " Visions of glory spare my 
 aching sight ! " They plainly think their move not impro- 
 bable, though he himself greatly deprecates it, saying that 
 he should be entirely baffled by the tremendous difficulties 
 ot altering the present system ; and though he says that 
 there is great opposition to his appointment, " because they 
 ^ay, first, I am a schoolmaster, and secondly, a Pietist."
 
 CHAP. VIII BUNSEN AT BERNE 261 
 
 His great notion is plainly a filling-up of the deficiencies of 
 Germany from England, and a conversion of all its floating 
 elements of good into national institutions.' 
 
 Bunsen showed him his 
 
 ' extinguisher. It was a hollow figure of a Jesuit with his 
 arms folded, and Bunsen's delight is to put him on the 
 candlestick, and imagine him to say, as the smoke rises 
 round him, " Thank Heaven, I have extinguished a light." 
 He read us one night Petrarch's famous sonnets against 
 Rome, and described how, on the last night before he (B.) 
 left his house on the Capitol, he took out his two eldest 
 boys on the balcony, and, like Hannibal, made them look 
 towards St. Peter's, and swear eternal enmity, and learn by 
 heart these two sonnets.' 
 
 Only once does he interrupt his accounts of Bunsen 
 and his friends to give his impressions of the scenery. The 
 clouds had lifted and the mountains were visible. 
 
 ' They were quite different to what I had expected. 
 Being against a bright morning sky, and with deep shadows 
 resting upon them, there was nothing of dazzling whiteness ; 
 and the apparent nearness of them took off from the 
 impression of height. But then there was a startling life- 
 like look about them, like huge unearthly monsters brood- 
 ing over the black range immediately below them. Their 
 names are singularly appropriate : the Wetterhorn (Storm 
 Peak), large and vast ; then by himself, darting straight up 
 into the sky, as if with his hair on end, the Schreck-horn 
 (Terror Peak) ; then a gigantic cluster of the Monch 
 (Monk) and Jungfrau (Virgin), but not conveying any 
 notion of virgin purity or beauty, but of a " grim white 
 woman " shrouded in her own shadows ; and, behind them, 
 peeping out, the Finster-aar-horn (Dark Peak of the Aar), 
 the highest and most mysterious-looking of all. They are 
 gone again now ; but they seemed so little a part of this 
 earth that their absence seems quite natural. They " come 
 like shadows, and so depart." ' 
 
 After a week at Berne he started on an expedition with 
 F. D. Maurice to the Bernese Oberland. Even in the
 
 2 62 LIFE OF DEAN STAXLEY 1840 i 
 
 heart of the mountains the scenery moved him to httle 
 enthusiasm. Once, indeed, on the Wcngern Alp, he sees 
 ' a majestic vision ' of the Jungfrau. 
 
 ' Peak after peak emerged from the dense mass of mist, 
 which still hung in wreaths about the summit, and in a 
 heavy girdle round the lower parts, which became blacker 
 and blacker as the sun went down, whilst the heights above 
 shone out stronger and stronger with the last rays of the 
 sun, like the peak at Eaux Bonnes, except that it was a 
 long, continuous range of broken peaks of snow. This is 
 the most beautiful sight I have seen here. It gave me 
 more the notion of a vision than anything I have ever 
 seen ; it was like a golden city hanging midway between 
 heaven and earth, part after part revealing itself, and 
 standing out in such brilliant contrast against the dull fog 
 and the blackness of darkness below ; then suddenly the 
 veil was drawn over it, and it vanished.' 
 
 And on another occasion he caught a glimpse from the 
 Faulhorn of the whole line of the mountains from the 
 Wetterhorn to the Jungfrau, appearing in mid-air. 
 
 ' It was a most striking sight, though perfectly different 
 from that on the Wengern Alp. They were perfectly 
 colourless and dull, but there was a silent, ghastly, appa- 
 rition-like appearance about them, like the council of devils 
 in " Paradise Regained." They gazed upon us for a few 
 minutes, and then retired into the misty sky.' 
 
 But his prevailing impression of Alpine scenery is that 
 it is ' unmeaning,' and that its ' beauty is as fictitious as the 
 Rhine, and depends more upon clouds and sunset than 
 on the mountains themselves .-' ' ' Do you ask my opinion 
 of Switzerland ? ' he writes to Pearson ; — 
 
 ' Your illustrious fellow-traveller, as I hope ' (Donkin) 
 * being once asked his opinion on certain celebrated pro- 
 positions of theology, is said to have replied, that in one 
 sense they were so perfectly false, and in another so per- 
 fectly true, that no difficulty need arise about them. This 
 formula I have since been in the habit of applying to all
 
 CHAP. VIII SWISS MOUNTAINS 263 
 
 moral propositions, and found it to be universally true, and 
 not least in the investigation of the assertion that the 
 Swiss mountains are beautiful. With a certain amount of 
 clouds, a sunset, a cheerful companion, a contented stomach, 
 I think it perfectly true ; but with too many clouds, or 
 none at all, with a glaring noonday sun, alone, or tearing 
 up a hill after dinner, I think it perfectly false. The only 
 places which have come up to my ideal of what they ought 
 to be are Lucerne and Geneva ; and of them, the last is 
 the only place I should like to live at, and there is no place, 
 except Lucerne, which I ever wish to see again.' 
 
 But if Swiss mountains afforded him small satisfaction, 
 he was delighted with his companion. ' Maurice,' he says, 
 
 ' is a most enthusiastic traveller. I suppose it was from 
 our being tired that we had not so much conversation as I 
 had expected ; still, we had a good deal, and the last day, 
 evidently with a most painful effort, M. opened on 
 subscription and the Athanasian Creed. We did not 
 enter into the personalities of the case, but confined our- 
 selves to abstract argument. He talked upon it most 
 admirably, with great candour, and all but satisfactorily. 
 He was, of course, strongly opposed to any alteration, 
 either of subscription or of Liturgy. My opinion of him 
 is even higher than it was ; I have been more struck by his 
 fairness than heretofore.' 
 
 E. M. Goulburn, who was to be his companion in Italy 
 and Greece, had now arrived at Geneva. But his rapid 
 journey from Paris in three days had thrown him into a 
 fever, which delayed the departure. The interval was spent 
 by Stanley in 
 
 ' inquiring about the means of proceeding to Italy. For 
 two days I had all the vetturinos of Geneva at my feet ; 
 but at last, after infinite consultations with Sir T. Boileau 
 and others, came to the hazardous resolution, which it 
 would take too long to justify, of buying a carriage for 
 15/. . . . On Thursday, September 3, we started in the 
 celebrated britschka, our two selves in the hind seat, 
 our two bags on the fore seat, and our two trunks side by
 
 264 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1840-1 
 
 side in front, so that we commanded a complete view of 
 all our effects, except the loose cloaks, books, &c., which 
 were luxuriously bestowed among the cushions and 
 
 pockets.' 
 
 The travellers proceeded over the Simplon to Milan, 
 and spent five weeks among the lakes and towns of 
 Northern Italy. They intended to embark at Ancona for 
 Corfu, and, as they approached the sea-coast, Stanley 
 looked forward with ever-increasing delight to the prospect 
 of seeing Venice. The reality did not disappoint his 
 anticipations. With every mile of the journey from Padua 
 his excitement grew in intensity. 
 
 ' The green vine-clad plain rapidly vanished into a 
 country whose thin, bent trees and bleak aspect gave signs 
 of the approaching sea, and whose appearance, with canals 
 and villas, reminded rae most completely of Holland. But 
 in the villas themselves there was something far beyond 
 all Dutch interest — the lions of St. Mark at almost every 
 other gate, and, above all, a sort of melancholy gloom, with 
 weeping willows, and statues all stamped with a most 
 peculiarly melancholy look and attitude, with arms crossed 
 and heads hanging down, well in accordance with the 
 approach to the fallen Republic. At last, just as the 
 shades of evening fell in, we came in sight of the sea, and 
 the city rising out of it like clouds. The " britschka " w^as 
 left at Fusina, and we embarked in a gondola. It was 
 quite dark by the time we reached the town, and though I 
 was sorry at the time that we did not enter it by daylight, 
 yet I think we lost nothing. There was something so 
 striking in advancing silently in the hearse-like gondola, 
 through the dark sea, to the lights that glimmered upon it 
 in the distance. 
 
 ' I never before was so much impressed with the futility 
 of pictures. People had said, " Venice is just the place of 
 which you can gather a good idea from pictures." Now, 
 certainly it is true that I should have known myself 
 instantly to be at Venice from the likeness of the Rialto, 
 the Piazza, and Bridge of Sighs to the pictures of them, 
 but at the same time, I cannot better describe my feeling
 
 CHAP. VIII VENICE 265, 
 
 about the whole place, and especially these very places,, 
 than by saying how different in spirit and reality they are 
 from anything I had ever seen or conceived of Venice. 
 No picture can give you the way in which the Piazza of 
 St. Mark stands quite alone of its kind in Venice ; the rest 
 of the town is striking from its palaces coming down to 
 the water's edge, from the black gondolas, and from any 
 place where you meet with a confluence of canals, and 
 from the islands. But still, I think the general strangeness 
 and beauty have been exaggerated. A city on the sea or 
 on a river may always, more or less, be like it. 
 
 ' But the Piazza is quite unrivalled. I shall never 
 forget the first view, when we issued into it from a dark 
 lane on a glorious day of Italian sunshine. It seemed as 
 if, at one glance, the whole of Venetian history was un- 
 rolled before us. It was not beauty, nor magnificence 
 alone, nor grotesqueness. We have been vainly searching 
 after words to describe the peculiar effect. It is a sort of 
 sublime quaintness — the work of a mighty child, with all 
 the strange and lively fancies, and yet with none of the 
 weakness or innocence of a child. The clock-tower with 
 its two gigantic figures, the sea opposite with the ventures 
 of Antonio, and the two granite columns from Tyre, sur- 
 mounted by the winged lion, his wings and tail standing 
 out in the clear blue sky, and by St. Theodore, the earliest 
 patron-saint, with his right-handed shield and left-handed 
 sword, standing on the amphibious crocodile ; the long 
 array of the ancient library, procuratory, and Ducal 
 Palace, carved as if with a fantastic network, fretted with 
 innumerable pinnacles, and shining through innumerable 
 windows ; the three red flagstaffs of the three subject 
 kingdoms of Candia, Cyprus, and Morea ; the red porphyry 
 stone on which a banished man stood for two days in the 
 presence of the people ; the two marble columns from St. 
 Jean d'Acre ; the supposed statues of Harmodius and Aristo- 
 geiton ; the pigeons, which are to Venice what the bears are 
 to Berne, feeding by hundreds on the chequered pavement \ 
 the tall tower of the Campanile, and, above all, the gorgeous 
 Church of St. Mark, with its six domes, its bright painted 
 front, its four horses of Lysippus, its porphyry columns and 
 brazen gates and winged lions — every one of these objects 
 tends to make up the whole. One feels that every one of 
 them would be missed ; that one does miss the three flags
 
 266 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1 840-1 
 
 at the top of the flagstaff, and that the only part of the 
 scene which is like any ordinary town is the arcade, built 
 by the French, at the end of the Piazza, instead of the 
 ancient Church of St. Germinian. Every one of them has 
 a story of its own, and tells of the strange, great, fantastic 
 fortunes of the proud young State. 
 
 ' The inside of St. Mark's quite prolongs the wonderful 
 dream : no beauty, nor attempt at it, but its whole pave- 
 ment rough with mosaics, every arch and wall painted, or 
 gilded, or carved with the most grotesque and lively 
 imagery, rich with the columns and altars and baptisteries 
 of Tyre, Constantinople, and Jerusalem. The Ducal 
 Palace is not so striking, but it is even more interesting. 
 From the moment we set foot on the Giant's Staircase, 
 where the Doges were elected and Faliero was beheaded, 
 every step was full of history. The Golden Staircase, the 
 halls of the Great Council, of the Ten, of the Balloting, of 
 the Audience, of the Senate, and then the subterranean 
 prisons, put the whole thing before one's eyes at once. In 
 fact, one of the most striking things about it was the com- 
 plete preservation of everything — the seats of the senators, 
 the pulpit for speaking, the historical pictures, the portraits 
 of the Doges, going on to the \cry last and then stopping 
 abruptly, leaving thirteen vacant places yet to be filled up. 
 It was like the story of the Sleeping Beauty. Here alone, 
 of all the Italian towns I have seen, one felt that, if it was 
 not for the terrible wickedness of the old aristocracy, one 
 might expect to see those seats and places again filled with 
 descendants of their ancient occupants. I fortunately remem- 
 bered just enough of the Venetian history to follow the 
 thread of these most (and to me only) interesting pictures, 
 but they will give tenfold life to it if ever I read it again. 
 
 ' Certainly, if Switzerland teaches one the evils of 
 democracy, Venice is not less useful in teaching the evils 
 of an aristocracy. Even in the very gorgeousness of the 
 Piazza there is a look of resolute, hardened pride, that 
 seems to call for the vengeance that has visited it. 
 
 ' The view of the whole town from the Campanile (to 
 which you ascend, with a strangeness exactly in character 
 with the whole place, by an inclined plane) is very striking. 
 You there see the Grand Canal marked by the line of 
 white palaces ; the manner in which the Church of St. Mark 
 with its six domes is in fact only the chapel of the Ducal
 
 CHAP. VIII CORFU 267 
 
 Palace ; the Julian Alps, and the beautiful range of the 
 blue hills of Arqua. The churches and palaces take a long 
 time to see, but have not left enough impression to recall, 
 except that of St. John and St. Paul — the Westminster 
 Abbey of the Doges and Generals. The only picture, not 
 historical, of which I carry away a distinct image is that 
 of " The Glory of Paradise," by Tintoretto ; there is some- 
 thing fine in the vast multitude from the east and from the 
 west, from the north and from the south.' 
 
 From Venice the travellers drove to Ancona, where 
 they parted with a pang from the ' yellow britschka,' in 
 order to embark on board the Austrian steamer for Corfu. 
 Arriving at Corfu, Stanley met his brother Charles, who 
 was to accompany them to Greece. He was detained 
 on the island a fortnight (October 7th-2ist), in what he de- 
 scribes to Pearson ' as worse than Ulyssean or Ptychian 
 bondage.' But his enforced stay was not without compen- 
 sation. In Corcyra he found ' the first Grecian place ' he 
 had ever seen, and ' the scene of one of the most famous 
 parts of Thucydides, which we read on the spot, and 
 which was not the less interesting from the difficulty in 
 identifying all the places.' The scenery also impressed 
 him with the strangeness of ' a wholly new country.' 
 
 ' One looks over a bason of hills beautifully shaped, 
 covered with a sea of olives (I hardly like using the word, 
 because olives to me conveyed hitherto so totally different 
 a notion), which seemed to overspread the island as if with 
 a veil of grey haze, broken by the tall, spiral cypresses. 
 They form park-like glades, not unlike English parks, if 
 you can conceive them seen in a mysterious, magical mist. 
 There is something singularly appropriate in the aged look 
 they give to the country, carrying one back to the gardens 
 of Alcinous, or Ulysses ; even though it may only be an 
 imaginary Phseacia which was spoken of 
 
 On board the steamer from Corfu to Patras Stanley 
 donned the ' new garment ' which he had had made at 
 Corfu for his Greek travels. It consisted of
 
 268 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 
 
 I54C-t 
 
 * a Scotch plaid shawl given me by Tait, turned into a coat 
 merely by the addition of sleeves, which the tailor made 
 more ridiculous by having them made of a different colour. 
 All eyes were gradually turned upon this, and I could not 
 enter or go oui of the cabin without exciting shouts of 
 laughter. Goulburn and 1 endeavoured to while away the 
 time by sharpening our modern Greek upon the anvil of a 
 Transylvanian boy. From modern we passed to ancient 
 Greek, and from that to Latin, and in Latin the boy fairly 
 put us to shame, not only from the fluency which his use 
 of his own pronunciation gave him, but from the really 
 idiomatic and almost classical way in which he expressed 
 himself ; and he was so proud of his victory that he laughed 
 to scorn the very notion of our being teachers in the 
 " University of Oxford." " You teachers, when you can't 
 talk it yourselves ! In some obscure school, I suppose .'* 
 Well, at any rate, you can only teach little boys ! " — and at 
 last ended by saying, with a look of the most supreme 
 contempt, " Discamus melius et tunc loquamur."' 
 
 The feelings with which Arthur Stanley approached the 
 coast of Greece, and caught his first glimpse of the mouth 
 of the Acheron, the outline of the Bay of Actium, Sappho's 
 leap, and Ithaca, were those of unmixed delight. * It seems,' 
 he cried, ' too good to be true that I shall really see Athens.' 
 He was about to land upon the shores of a country whose 
 scenery was permeated by early and solemn associations, 
 and in which all was distance, and nothing foreground ; in. 
 which the actual scenery exactly corresponded with its 
 ideal character ; in which the beauty and romance of 
 Nature were absolutely heaving with the life of ancient 
 creeds and ideas, that at every turn found an explanation 
 in their natural surroundings. And mingled with scenes 
 which revealed to him the spirit of Greek heathenism, 
 poetry, and patriotism, arose a wealth of modern associa- 
 tions. 
 
 ' Not only did almost every mile recall an ancient hero 
 or poet, but it called up with me the more substantial form
 
 CHAP. VIII THE CHARM OF GREECE 269 
 
 of a modern friend from England. The visions of the 
 Hbrary at Rugby, and of the lecture-room at Balliol, were 
 constantly blending themselves with the visions of battles, 
 and temples, and oracles.' 
 
 For him, now and always, Greece possessed an interest 
 and a charm which were only equalled by those of Palestine. 
 With that single exception, no other country so strongly 
 -appealed to his imagination, or so richly satisfied those 
 special tastes that found in foreign travel their chief 
 pleasure. 
 
 His voluminous letters show the enthusiastic sympathy 
 which the varied charms of Greece elicited on every side. 
 He revelled in the consciousness that the physical features 
 of the country are unaltered, and even found some com- 
 pensation for the destruction of glorious buildings in the 
 fact that the restoration of sacred spots to their primeval 
 desolation often suggested the original connection between 
 their outward aspect and their local worship, or that, as at 
 Athens, the natural configuration was thereby revealed in 
 something like its pristine bareness. Though rivers had 
 diminished in volume and woods dwindled in extent, 
 though Ilissus flowed in fuller stream when it was still 
 shaded by plane-trees, though at Thermopylae it was hard 
 to recognise the oak-forest the trampling of whose leaves 
 by the Persian host first aroused the Greeks, yet the same 
 general outline of the landscape was seen by Pericles and 
 Plato. He delighted to trace the connection between its 
 topographical character and the character and fortunes of 
 its inhabitants. Nowhere else was the outward habitation 
 more strikingly adapted to the inward soul of a nation, or 
 -the association more intimate between its history and its 
 geography. Nowhere else was the fact of an order and 
 plan of moral government in the destiny of States more 
 -completely and strikingly exemplified. Greece is empha-
 
 2 70 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1840- 1 
 
 tically made for the men, and not the men for Greece, No 
 other country combines to the same extent the variety, the 
 romance, the beauty, the compactness, and the proportion of 
 Nature. 
 
 And Stanley is keen to note how appropriate were the 
 surroundings to the destiny — how fitting it was that a 
 people who have fixed the standard of art for all sub- 
 sequent ages should be placed in a country where the 
 greatest number of images that could most conduce to 
 this result were suggested, and where the largest possible 
 share of natural influences was imbibed. Or, again, he 
 follows out the peculiar influence exercised over the cha- 
 racter of the Greek States by the local features of their re- 
 spective abodes, and observes the indigenoiisness which 
 repels every foreign, and receives every native, impression, 
 and which shapes and colours ideas and institutions from 
 the surrounding atmosphere and home-grown resources. 
 And, from this point of view, the exquisite outline of its 
 * old poetic mountains,' which form the real life and genius 
 of the landscape, derived a meaning which he failed to find 
 in the Alps. He saw in them the obstacles to internal 
 communication which developed within the narrowest 
 limits the widest variety of character, the bounds which 
 fixed the genius of each State, the barriers, first physical, 
 and then moral, behind which were formed peculiarities of 
 tastes and customs. 
 
 And, steeped as he was in the history and literature of 
 Greece, he followed with imaginative insight the traces 
 which time had left of the chief glories of her earliest ages, 
 or gathered up in his mind the minutest objects of interest 
 that are preserved, like the ruts of the wheels worn by the 
 Pan-Athenaic procession in the Acropolis, or the pillars 
 of the Doric temple embedded in its walls, as a standing 
 testimony to the Persian invasion, or to the haste with
 
 CHAP. VIII THE CHARM OF GREECE 27 1 
 
 which Themistocles repaired its defences. It may be 
 imagined with what dramatic force he reahsed Mycenae, 
 the central scene of Greek tragedy ; how, with Perseus, he 
 would draw back from the home of the murdered parent to 
 the very extremity of the plain of Argos ; or, standing in 
 the ancient gateway, and among the vestiges of the primeval 
 citadel, behold the plots of the Orestean trilogies unfold 
 themselves ; or, looking upon the black, frowning hill that 
 rose above the ruins, dark, sterile, precipitous, hear the 
 curse of the Pelopidae fall upon the spot. It may be 
 imagined, again, with what solemn emotions he would visit 
 the central scene of Greek religion, traverse the silent 
 plain of Crissa, scale the rocky barrier that closes its 
 northern end, and gaze upon the naked amphitheatre of the 
 rocks of Delphi, where every natural feature suggests Earth 
 speaking in oracles from her remotest heart ; or with what 
 awe he would stand at the grave of an extinct religion, 
 and, in the silence and desolation of the spot, realise the 
 words of Milton : — 
 
 The oracles are dumb — 
 
 No voice or hideous hum 
 Rings through the arched roof, with words deceiving. 
 
 Apollo from his shrine 
 
 Can now no more divine, 
 With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. 
 
 And, in two other respects, the eminently poetical,, 
 rather than prodigally beautiful, scenery of Greece possessed 
 for his tastes peculiar fascinations. Stanley felt, not only 
 how poetical had been the mind of the Greek nation, but 
 how deeply it was impregnated with the general spirit of the 
 scenery ; how, with the exception of Homer, whose epithets 
 are accurate and happy concentrations of description, the 
 Greek poets regarded the landscape through the medium 
 of the imagination ; how they were indifferent to its details,.
 
 272 
 
 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1840-1 
 
 and ready to sacrifice particular facts to the idea they 
 wished to represent. Nor was this all. He delighted to 
 trace its mythology in the action and reaction which 
 existed between the scenery and the imagination of Greece. 
 He felt that natural objects determined the national belief : 
 that to traverse the nymph-like, muse-like uplands of 
 •Greece, or to see its grotesque white rocks, Pan-like and 
 Faun-like, peeping through the green pines and dark firs, 
 was to hold the key to the rise and growth of Paganism ; 
 that its thousand coverts, from which Diana and her 
 nymphs might still start, clean-limbed, light-sandalled 
 short-kilted, with red-deer leaping all around them, were 
 the natural haunts for such divinities, their human passions, 
 loves, and sport, and that to visit the country was to suggest 
 the face which 
 
 Solitude might wear 
 To the unenlightened swains of Pagan Greece. 
 
 On the 22nd of October Stanley reached the Gulf of 
 Patras. * Just as we were on the point of disembarkation 
 Goulburn fell into the hold and severely bruised his leg.' 
 The accident proved serious enough to alter many of the 
 plans which the travellers had formed, and ultimately 
 caused the return of Goulburn. But, for the moment, it 
 did not prevent their starting the next day by boat for 
 Delphi. The accounts of this expedition, of Athens, of 
 the battlefield of Marathon, and of the Olympian Vale, are 
 the only extracts that space permits to be made from the 
 number of interesting letters in which the tour in Greece is 
 described. 
 
 The letter which contains tlie description of Delphi was 
 finished in a boat off Salamis. 
 
 ' I will give you at once my impressions of the journey 
 to Delphi, while it is still fresh before me, as the most
 
 CHAP. VIII DELPHI 
 
 ^n 
 
 interesting place I ever saw, and which I can hardl\- believe 
 that I have seen. From the moment that we turned from 
 the somewhat monotonous scenery of the Gulf of Corinth 
 up that shallow gulf, where the Cretan ship, 3,000 years ago, 
 sailed in, led by the Dolphin, to establish the worship of 
 Apollo, the character of the scene entirely changed, and we 
 passed among low hills of encrusted rock, tufted with spots 
 of brushwood, but otherwise stamped as with a preternatural 
 sterility ; little islands rising from time to time in the blue 
 bay ; till we reached the end of it at Scala. There, under 
 the shade of a rock, stood two solitary houses ; along the 
 shore lay at least forty gigantic oil-jars, well fitted for the 
 Forty Thieves ; up the road went a troop of donkeys, with 
 goatskins of wine on each side, and on the very top of the 
 beach two camels, one kneeling, one standing. A few 
 minutes' ride brought us through a rocky cleft into a wide 
 plain, fenced in on three sides by mountains, and on the 
 south by the sea ; on the north by Parnassus, enveloped in 
 cloud. Two rivers, marked by two dark clouds of olives, 
 poured in from the two corners, and the road was fringed 
 with shrubs of what is still called " Daphne." At the end 
 of the plain was a red, rocky barrier, halfway up which is 
 Crissa ; and at the top, sepulchral caves hewn in the rock, 
 with niches and sarcophagi, all perfect. 
 
 ' This was, as you may imagine, a most striking entrance 
 to Delphi. A turn round the corner of the hill, by a road 
 still retaining the ancient pavement, worn by the feet of 
 pilgrims and marked with the rut of wheels, brought us 
 suddenly in sight of the two venerable crags, the celebrated 
 twin peaks of Parnassus, towering over the valley, like 
 those which one sees in pictures of Spanish convents ; and 
 close below them, as if shooting downward from their 
 roots like a glacier, the sloping terraces which once were 
 covered with the temples of Delphi, and in the middle of 
 which are the mud cottages of the present village. These 
 terraces, which as clearly mark out the site of the old 
 town as if it were still there, descend almost to the bottom 
 of the valley, along which flows, through a covering of 
 olives, the silver stream of the Pleistus. The two crags 
 are divided by a tremendous cleft, down which falls the 
 Castalian Spring. These are the two great features ; the 
 most remarkable, on a nearer view, is the Spring. Of the 
 ancient buildings not a vestige remains standing, though 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 2 74 L^PE OF DEAN STANLEY 1 840-1 
 
 you cannot go a step without seeing fragments of wall 
 or columns embedded in the earth or lodged in the 
 modern houses. It is as if the whole city had been 
 carried bodily away, only leaving such parts as clung to 
 their native rocks when the rest was torn off. But the 
 Castalian Spring is startlingly the same as ever : a cleft like 
 the waterfall in the Clock-house woods on a gigantic scale, 
 the waterfall dry at the top, but at the bottom two perpetual 
 springs, one of which flows into a basin, certainly, I believe, 
 the Pythias' bath, and thence, under an aged plane-tree on 
 the site of a plane-tree to which Latona first brought the 
 child Apollo, through a glen of laurels (bay-trees) to the 
 Pleistus. 
 
 ' My first impression on seeing this view was that 
 it was inadequate to the greatness of its associations, but 
 every hour's stay removed it, and there is something, not 
 beautiful, nor grand, but striking and impressive beyond 
 any place I ever saw. One felt that it was just the place to 
 have arrested men by its natural features at first ; that, 
 when all these vacant terraces were filled with splendid 
 temples, it must have been the most magnificent scene in 
 the world, and that now it exactly corresponds to the famous 
 lines of Milton about the silencing of the oracles. Read 
 Thirhvall's account of the repulse of the Persians at Delphi ; 
 this, as far as I can remember, gave me the best notion of 
 it. The only thing one regrets is the total uncertainty 
 about the site of the Temple of Apollo and the Oracular 
 Chasm ; no certain trace of either remains.' 
 
 ' Never did Athenians,' says Stanley, 
 
 ' approach with greater pleasure the Piraeus from Salamis 
 than we when a fresh breeze rose, half an hour after my 
 letter was finished, which drove us straight into the harbour 
 about 4 P.M. The delight of getting to Athens was in itself 
 sufficient, but it was considerably sharpened by our famine 
 and JDy the increasing pain of Goulburn's leg. 
 
 ' The next day we began our rounds, and in the course 
 of it saw everything in the town except the Acropolis, and 
 we might have seen that, but reserved it for Saturday. It 
 is needless to enter into details. The first day was like a 
 strange dream, every single step being so perfectly familiar, 
 both from pictures and associations — more familiar, I
 
 CHAP. VIII ATHENS 275 
 
 suppose, to me than any other single place in the world 
 except the neighbourhood of Alderley. Scene after scene 
 passed by as in a magic-lantern, and it was not till I went 
 to bed, and lay awake for two hours in a fever of excitement, 
 that I could believe I had seen the realities. 
 
 ' The next day I surveyed things more at leisure, and 
 then the greatness of the place did flash upon me in all its 
 power. What shall I say ? First, the pictures in Wordsworth's 
 Athens are most accurate, and give a most perfect notion 
 of each particular spot, but not of the whole, or of the effect 
 of the atmosphere. It is even more beautiful than Corfu : 
 the long, ivy-leaf shape of the blue mountain-range, the 
 silver sea of Salamis, the hills of Pentelicus and Hymettus 
 glowing like hot furnaces in the setting sun, the columns of 
 the Parthenon and the Olympeium, with their delicate red 
 interwoven with the deep blue sky, giving the appearance 
 of gorgeous painting. 
 
 ' The most beautiful thing, after all, is the Propylaea, as 
 you look through the colonnade of white pillars on the plain 
 and sea below ; though far less perfect than either the Par- 
 thenon or the Temple of Theseus, it gives you a far greater 
 impression of what must have been the surpassing beauty 
 of the whole when complete. Perhaps the most striking 
 thing of all is the entire authenticity of all the most in- 
 teresting places. You see at once that they were there, and 
 could be nowhere else ; and this often results from their 
 extreme antiquity, because, being cut out of the rock itself, 
 the vestiges remain after every building has disappeared, 
 and one sees Athens as it was in the very earliest times. 
 To give one instance out of many, the Areopagus is a long 
 mass of rock crawling up the hill of the Acropolis like a 
 huge crocodile. On the extreme eastern edge was the en- 
 campment of the Persians when they destroyed Athens. 
 Under the dark shade of the northern side is a tremendous 
 cleft in the rock, opening into a dark cavern, testifying 
 almost as clearly as the Corycian Cave does to the dedica- 
 tion to Pan, how it was the cave of the Furies who presided 
 over the Areopagus, and the chasm through which CEdipus, 
 according to the famous description of Sophocles, descended 
 into his mysterious grave. And on the southern side are the 
 seats of the Court, still hewn in the rock, and the very steps 
 up which St. Paul must have been brought to make in that 
 Court his famous speech.
 
 276 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1840-r 
 
 No picture had given him * any true notion of the ever- 
 lasting beauty ' of the whole view of the town, ' the dramatic- 
 like assemblage of all the objects of interest round the golden 
 gem of the Acropolis, the distinct colours of the surrounding 
 mountains, and the transparent brightness of the evening sky.' 
 
 Again and again he recurs, with increasing enthusiasm^ 
 to the atmospheric effects for which Athens has ever been 
 famous. In his attempts to paint them he exhausts his most 
 glowing colours. At one time he describes the Acropolis 
 as ' blazing like a topaz embraced in the violet folds of 
 Hymettus.' At another he speaks of * the queen-like head 
 of the Acropolis,' which ' stands out in the midst of its 
 painted sky, with Lycabettus glowing like a furnace in 
 front of it, Hymettus deepening into the most living purple, 
 and the long line of the Corinthian and Argolic mountains,, 
 with the belt of silver sea, bending round it as if in adora- 
 tion.' ' Nothing,' he says in another letter, 
 
 ' but Greek poetry gives one the slightest hint of the reality,, 
 that is, the beauty, of the atmosphere. Take each of the 
 expressions separately, and dwell upon it to the uttermost, 
 and you will then have something like a vision of an 
 Athenian evening sky, glowing as if with liquid fire through 
 every part, exercising supreme control over the sea, the 
 plain, the mountains, which shift their colours as if at its 
 bidding, and seeming to centre its full force in that " eye of 
 Greece," the Acropolis of Athens, which always glitters in 
 the midst of its surrounding hills.' 
 
 The expedition to Marathon (the MaratJionion halsos of 
 ^schylus), whose ' solemn aspect ranks it among the sanc- 
 tuaries of Greece,' was made under depressing circumstances. 
 But, 'like the two days ' voyage in a wretched open boat, full 
 of cockroaches,' from Salamis to ^gina, or like the subse- 
 quent pilgrimage to Olympia, it serves to illustrate Stanley's 
 capacity of enduring fatigue, and his disregard of any dis- 
 comfort where some cherished object was to be attained.
 
 CHAP. VIII OL YMPIA 277 
 
 * A solitary fine day in December tempted us to trust 
 the next day, and we {i.e. Mr. Daniell and a Mr. Lyttelton) 
 sent on horses halfway the night before, and ourselves 
 started at 8 A.M. The day was drizzly, but we were now in 
 for it ; the drizzle soon thickened into rain, and by the time 
 we reached our relay we were enveloped in torrents, which 
 lasted nearly till our arrival at the village of Marathon. Here 
 we lunched, having ridden twenty-two miles in four hours, 
 and fortunately, just for the time that we were on the plain 
 the clouds broke away and the rain ceased. Of course, no 
 field of battle can possess more than a certain degree of 
 interest, but, of all I have ever yet seen, none is comparable 
 to Marathon ; there is a sort of sacred character about it, 
 as you look upon its yellow plain, perfectly embosomed in 
 mountains, and the blue wall of sea, backed by the hills of 
 Eubcea closing in the view to the east, whilst the solitary 
 tumulus of the 299 Athenians just gives that life and reality 
 which redeem it from a mere empty scene. As we 
 ascended the hills again the clouds rolled over it, and it 
 vanished. I almost hope I shall not see it again ; it remains 
 before me like a bright vision seen through a veil of clouds.' 
 
 The last spot of interest which he saw in Greece was 
 Olympia. His friends had returned home, and he was 
 now (January 1841) dependent on his own resources. His 
 account is written ' off Etna ' on the 28th of January, 1841. 
 
 ' How fallen from the pomp of Mr. Daniell's apparatus ! — 
 no canteen, no knives, no eating or drinking utensil whatever, 
 but a teapot and a bag of bread. No books but Murray's 
 Handbook and Pausanias, no bed but a cushion and Zante 
 quilt, borrowed from the Patras Hotel. But it was really 
 worth while making the expedition to see how, with a little 
 management, one may dispense with everything but eating 
 and sleeping, and both of these I found without difficulty. 
 
 ' First, as to the general journey, it was quite essential, 
 in order to have a complete notion of Greece, being so wholly 
 different to everything I had yet seen. Vast plains, 
 bounded on one side by the sea, and beautiful mountains 
 on the other — snow mountains — of milk-white snow, rising 
 abruptly from banks of emerald-green grass and myrtles, 
 and seen at times, through the withered foliage of oak-
 
 278 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1840-1 
 
 forests, spreading out into park-like gkides. The only- 
 inconvenience was having to pass really very formidable 
 torrents, which the least additional water would have made 
 impassable, while the plains in many places were really 
 like one continued dunghill of mud, a most lively illustra- 
 tion of the truth of the common interpretation of Hercules 
 and the stables of Auga^as, King of Elis. From time 
 to time beautiful villages appeared, embosomed in mul- 
 berry-trees and cypresses. 
 
 'The third day we reached Olympia. It was fitting 
 that this place, where the national and religious feelings of 
 Greece lingered after Rome and Christianity had extin- 
 guished them everywhere else, should be the last that I 
 saw in Greece. It reminded me of a remark of Maurice's^ 
 made to me in Switzerland, that English history would be 
 the best representation of European States in general, pre- 
 cisely because its position prevented it from having any- 
 thing directly in common with any of them. So Olympia, 
 where the Greek race met to celebrate their common bond 
 of union, is wholly unlike anything else I had seen in 
 Greece : there was nothing to remind them of their own 
 especial countries, everything to fix their minds on what 
 was peaceful and beautiful in itself The Olympian Vale, 
 still called the " Olympian games," is the last of three 
 plains through which flows the Alpheus, a magnificent river 
 — the only river, strictly speaking, that I have seen in 
 Greece — and the last plain, into which it issues from the 
 Arcadian mountains, is formed by an assemblage of fan- 
 tastic hills of green grass, clothed w^ith pines and wuld 
 olives. The plain itself of soft green turf, interspersed with 
 shrubs of Agnus castus and towering plane-trees, now 
 withered and grey, but which in summer and autumn must 
 be beautiful. The remains are few, but enough to enable 
 one again to re-people the solitary Vale with the vast 
 assemblage of temples, which it takes two books of Pau- 
 sanias to describe. . . .' 
 
 When this letter was written Stanley was already on 
 his way to Malta. There he was detained five tedious 
 days in quarantine. 
 
 ' The history of one day will describe all. I rise at 8,
 
 p 
 
 CHAP. VIII QUARANTINE AT MALTA 279 
 
 breakfast sometimes in company, sometimes before the 
 others appear, return to my room to write letters or 
 sermon, and the others hang over the sole fire of the esta- 
 blishment in the sitting-room. I continue at work till my 
 feet become so cold from the stone floor that I can sit no 
 more. 1 rush down to a stone parapet between the prison 
 and the sea, about ten feet broad and thirty long, diversified 
 only by two leafless fig-trees ; there I rush hastily to and 
 fro, under the eye of the Guardianos, whom to touch in- 
 volves twenty days more. But thence I am soon driven 
 by the intolerable glare of the Maltese sun, reflected from 
 white walls to blue sea, and betake myself to the same 
 furious movement in a narrow gallery abovestairs, till my 
 feet have attained some degree of warmth and my stomach 
 some appetite for dinner, which appears on an extensive 
 scale at 4.30 P.M., and reunites the party for the rest 
 of the evening — one or two of them generally sickening 
 for want of exercise, but afraid to send into the town for 
 medicine, lest they should be suspected of the plague. Then 
 ensues a desultory conversation, some not without interest, 
 especially as the Zantiote is something of a wit ; but most 
 of it turning on the dinner, and a good deal of it such as I 
 am obliged to reprove, at least by absolute silence and 
 unnatural gravity, and which at last drives me early to bed. 
 The others, after prolonging their potations sometimes rather 
 too long, retire also in time, and the night passes away, only 
 broken by the footsteps of gigantic rats stalking over the 
 stone floors. . . . 
 
 ' Nothing could exceed my delight on the morning of 
 our deliverance. I absolutely shouted and danced for joy 
 up the streets of Valetta, and have been expatiating all day 
 in the town. Doubtless, if I had to stay a month, or even 
 perhaps a week, the town, and even the island of Malta^ 
 with its tremendous glare and everlasting walls, would seem 
 only an enlarged Lazaretto ; but at present it seems as if 
 I had the world before me where to choose, and I am not 
 at all sorry to have three days to see a place endeared to 
 me by the labour of one Latin, and half an English, poem, 
 and striking in itself from the magnificence of its streets 
 and ramparts ; it is really not a city, but a fortress of 
 palaces.' 
 
 He occupied his enforced leisure in writing long accounts
 
 2 8o LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1840-r 
 
 of his Greek tour to Dr. Arnold, to Lake, and to other 
 friends. The miseries of the quarantine seemed to be the 
 rude awakening from a glorious dream. Yet 
 
 * to have seen the fatal vineyards of Corcyra, to have drunk 
 of the fountains of Castalia and Pirene, to have been 
 drenched in the stream of Lethe at Lebadea, to have 
 bathed in the Bay of Salamis, to have seen the frogs 
 leaping from the Limnae into Callirrhoe at Athens, and have 
 been kept awake at night by the ^psicsKs^ in the plains of 
 Elis, to have followed the track of a wolf into Argolis, to 
 have trembled at the approach of an Athenian wasp, and 
 watched the descent of the clouds from Parnes, to have seen 
 the daphne waving on the plains of Crissa, the olives in the 
 garden of the Academy, the wild olives at Olympia, to 
 have bathed your feet in the waters of the Ilissus, and to 
 have shivered in the shade of the northern wall of the 
 Acropolis,' 
 
 was an experience, the delight of which no rude awakening 
 to painful realities could dissipate. After five days the 
 quarantine ended, and he left Malta for Naples, where he 
 arrived early in February. He expected to find that Hugh 
 Pearson, ' qu'on appelle ordinairement " burly Hugh," ' and 
 *■ who would in good-humour and kindness have been the 
 ideal of a fellow-traveller,' would be unable to join him. 
 ' Heavy with the prospect of a solitary lionising of Naples, 
 that being, in my opinion, the kind of travelling which most 
 especially needs a companion,' he drove to the Museum. 
 He had made a rapid progress through two rooms, 
 
 * when a sudden stop was put to all further placid in- 
 vestigations by — what do you think } — the most unexpected 
 sight of one of the Farrers, being one of the very party 
 whom I was so anxious to have met at Rome, and w^hom 
 I was hurrying on to meet before they left it, as I supposed, 
 after the Carnival. The next moment appeared Pearson 
 himself Imagine the delight of the meeting ! Even under 
 the shadow of the Farnese Hercules I shouted for joy, till 
 the antiquaries started from their researches, and the
 
 -CHAP. VIII GREECE AND ITALY COMPARED 28 1 
 
 " custodes " of the museum trembled with astonishment 
 They had just arrived, so that everything was unseen by 
 them, and to be seen together. 
 
 ' That afternoon I went, according to engagement, to 
 Herculaneum (which, being entirely choked up with lava, is 
 not worth seeing) and to dine with the Adcanes, and the 
 next day moved to the same inn with my friends, and 
 started for Pompeii. What would have been a painful duty 
 now became a most delightful enjoyment. The Museum, I 
 think, with its innumerable curiosities of kitchen utensils, 
 &c., although very interesting for a minute antiquarian, 
 rather lowers one's notions of Pompeii, and gives a sort of 
 Pickwickian character to one's expectations. But this is 
 quite dispelled by seeing the place itself Nothing that has 
 been said can exaggerate the exceeding strangeness of 
 walking through the streets of an ancient Roman city with- 
 out a vestige of modern times. . . .' 
 
 At Naples the two Farrers, fired by his descriptions, 
 embarked for Greece, leaving Stanley to pursue his home- 
 ward journey, with Pearson, through Sicily and Italy. 
 
 His letters are filled with comparisons, express or 
 implied, between the differences and resemblances which 
 he detected in the general spirit of Greece and Italy. 
 
 'The mere enjoyment of travelling was greater in Italy, 
 but the enjoyment of travelling for the sake of seeing I 
 never experienced till I came to Greece. Never since I 
 took my degree, hardly since I got the Balliol scholarship, 
 have I had such a thrill of exquisite delight as the first 
 morning I woke at Delphi.' 
 
 His stay in Greece had made him more anxious to see 
 Rome. He had met here and there the footsteps of Hadrian, 
 and the feeling of antiquity, which still formed part of the 
 national feeling of Greece, linked it to Rome, for it was 
 rather the antiquity of the Byzantine Empire than of the 
 Greek Republic. He contrasts the profound ignorance of 
 the Greek peasantry with the liveliness and energy with 
 which the Italian postboys pointed out famous sites. As
 
 282 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1840-1 
 
 Athens could have been nowhere but at Athens, or the home 
 of the Oracle nowhere but at Delphi, so at Rome he was 
 impressed by the seeming anticipations of future greatness 
 in the peculiarities of its situation. But in Italy he finds 
 no parallel to the indigenous instinct of the Greek. The 
 Romans courted rather than repelled foreign impressions ; 
 they imported art, manners, worship, from every quarter ; 
 they incorporated in their Empire province after province, 
 with all its peculiarities and usages. He is struck by the 
 contrast which is afforded, for instance, by the influence of 
 Egypt. In Greece, he found no indisputable trace except 
 the remnant of a pyramid on the plain of Argos ; in Italy, 
 the most remarkable feature of Pompeii is the Temple of 
 Isis, and the city of the Csesars and the Popes is enriched 
 with the obelisks of Amenophis and Sesostris. 
 
 In the relics of antiquity, which time has preserved in 
 the respective countries, he gave Greece the palm. In 
 Greece, the remains are those which the traveller most 
 desires to see ; they belong to the period of the acme of 
 her fame ; they are the chief glories of her most glorious 
 age. But in Italy there existed, when Stanley wrote, few 
 memorials which were connected with the events of the 
 Roman monarchy or republic, and the more complete 
 specimens of Roman architecture belong to the relatively 
 uninteresting period of the Empire. In Greek scenery he 
 found a life and character which he missed in Italy. It 
 breathed the atmosphere of a country grown old in years 
 and glory. Even the outward dress of the hoary thyme 
 and the grey olive seemed the natural vesture of a great 
 and ancient country. The dramatic propriety with which, 
 in Greece, each feature tells upon the landscape impressed 
 Stanley more strongly than the riotous prodigality of life 
 in Italian scener}-. In Italy he could feel no consciousness^ 
 as he had felt in Greece, that he was beholding the exact
 
 CHAP. VIII AMALFl 283 
 
 scene which had met the eyes of Pericles or Plato. The 
 nature of the soil and the genius of the people were 
 opposed to such a continuity. At Athens, for instance, the 
 rocky character of the soil fixed the most interesting points 
 with a certainty to which at Rome, in 1 841, the obscurities 
 that hung over the position of the Forum offered a striking 
 contrast. In Greece, the sentiment of Aristotle, ' iravra ods 
 KciWiara irscfyvKSv,' found an echo in every heart ; to the 
 Roman it was meaningless. What Nature dictated, the 
 Greek obeyed ; where she forbade, the Roman persisted. 
 To conquer natural obstacles was to the Greek impiety, to 
 the Roman a praiseworthy triumph. 
 
 Here, again, in selecting extracts from the letters the dif- 
 ficulty is what to omit. The description of Amalfi, of Palermo, 
 and of the impressions created by Rome, will, perhaps, best 
 indicate the general character of the correspondence. 
 
 ' The difficulty of getting to Amalfi certainly enhanced 
 our interest in it, and its situation is in its way as peculiar 
 as that of Venice. It lies in a recess of the hills, so as to 
 be really all but inaccessible by land ; and, if I were asked 
 what other place it is most like, I should say (taking away 
 the sea view) Delphi. There is just the same kind of 
 amphitheatrical slope under precipitous ways, the terraces 
 of the now leafless vineyards reminding me exactly of the 
 terraces of the ancient city, and the clefts made by the 
 mountain streams not at all unlike the cleft of the Castalian 
 Spring — the whole being on a more varied and extended 
 scale, less solemn, and more split up into fragments of 
 beauty, but still very much an Italimiised Delphi. And 
 the town itself, small and poor as it now is, reminded us 
 both of Venice, with its fishermen moving to and fro on 
 the piazza, with that wild, musical chime of voices so 
 peculiar to the cries of Venice ; the stately flight of steps 
 up to the door of the Cathedral ; the Cathedral itself, with 
 porphyry pillars and front and arabesque ornaments, and 
 Greek pictures and gilded ceiling ; and the pride with 
 which the guide spoke of the times of the Republic and of 
 its reign of 2,000 years. This is the great lion of the tour.'
 
 284 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1840-1 
 
 Still lingering in Naples and its neighbourhood, he con- 
 ceived the idea of visiting Sicily, and especially Palermo. 
 The expedition completed, as it were, his study of the 
 Greek mind. It illustrated the Greek's imperfect know- 
 ledge of all beyond his immediate home, his notions of 
 foreign countries, and of his relations with them. It 
 afforded an instance of the erection of his fabric of geo- 
 graphical mythology on imperfect glimpses of a distant 
 country, just as the familiar features of his home, or facts 
 in the early period of his national existence, formed the 
 basis of his local and historical mythology. Thus, Stanley's 
 visit made the Odyssey to him what the same tour had 
 made it to Goethe, ' a living word.' He heard in the 
 thunder of Etna the voice of Polyphemus, and saw in the 
 lava the rocks that the gigantic shepherd hurled at 
 Ulysses, or his rival Acis. But, apart from this aspect of 
 the visit, he would, he writes, have felt himself 
 
 * well repaid by having seen Palermo alone. It is a Sara- 
 cenic city, strangely blended with Greece and Italy. The 
 fountains, the streets, the balconies, the actual remains of 
 Saracenic palaces, are exactly like my notions of the 
 Alhambra, and will quite save me the trouble of going to 
 Spain. . . . The churches are Greek churches carried to 
 the highest pitch of glory of which Greek churches are 
 capable — of which the churches in Greece are wholly devoid 
 from their extreme meanness. . . . The scenery is exactly 
 what Sicilian scenery should be — a Greek plain surrounded 
 by Italian hills. And the flood of light which the Cathe- 
 dral pours upon the dark and complicated Sicilian history 
 is in itself worth the trouble of coming : strange customs, 
 inscriptions, and tombs, which one can never forget. The 
 Sicilian language also seems to me very interesting, if one 
 had time to investigate it — so very different from Italian, 
 and so .strangely mixed with Greek. . . .' 
 
 On the 15th of March, 1841, he writes home, speaking 
 of his ' increasing distaste to Italian churches, to pictures
 
 CHAP, VIII FIRST SIGHT OF ROME 285 
 
 and to seeing things twice over,' and announcing that the 
 next morning he was to set out for Rome. Two days 
 later he begins a letter with ' The Ides of March are 
 happily past, and we are safe in Rome.' He goes on tO' 
 give his first impressions of ' the Eternal City.' 
 
 ' The sun rose at the stage before Albano, and I then 
 went outside, and sat by the conductor — I need not say in 
 how great expectation. The hills were wild, crowned with 
 small towns ; and the ancient tombs, which had more or 
 less lined the road from Capua, began to multiply. At 
 last, on descending the hill from Albano, the conductor 
 called out " Roma." Far down in the plain, rising out of 
 the desolate Campagna, which lay spread like the sea 
 below us, rose the Eternal City, with St. Peter's dome 
 towering above the rest. From that moment the approach 
 became the most interesting three hours of my travels. 
 Even Greece itself for the time waxed faint in my recollec- 
 tion ; though, indeed, it is impossible to compare the two 
 things. There is something in the prolonged excitement 
 of traversing that desert plain, in the sight of a great city 
 in the distance, without any of the usual preludes in the 
 neighbourhood ; in the only buildings being the long succes- 
 sion of gigantic tombs lining the green causeway of the 
 Appian road ; and, as you approach nearer, the ruins of 
 immense aqueducts, advancing as if in melancholy caval- 
 cades towards the. city, which they never reach — which 
 makes it more impressive than I had ever anticipated. In 
 Greece you see the ruins of States ; but this is certainly 
 the ruin of an Empire. And then, all round the plain are 
 the clusters of those famous hills, Soracte, Tivoli, Tusculum, 
 and Albano. 
 
 ' Up to the very gate of St. John nothing can be finer, 
 but I must confess the bathos is most tremendous. The 
 first object you meet on entering is the Church of St. 
 John Lateran, the church where Constantine was baptized, 
 and where St. John was thrown into the boiling cauldron ; 
 whose Canons are the kings of Europe ; which is the scene 
 of the consecration of the Popes, and which is called 
 Mother and Mistress of the churches of Christendom. If 
 you imagine what such a church ought to be, and then 
 imagine what would be most entirely unlike it, you may
 
 2 86 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1840-1 
 
 have some notion of my disappointment at the outside of 
 St. John Lateran [I give you my first impression] — as 
 modern-looking, insignificant a building as ever I saw, not 
 in size, perhap'^, although even that is not impressive, but 
 in its whole appearance. Had I not known, I should have 
 passed it by without a moment's notice. 
 
 ' Then another dreadful bathos is the modern town. 
 The Corso is a handsome street, but all so wholly devoid 
 of character ; it might be, I was going to say, Norwich, but 
 that is too old-looking. . . . Deeply interesting as the 
 Forum and Capitol are, and much as you feel the wonder 
 of everything, even of the outline of the hills themselves 
 surviving through such eventful centuries, Athens has the 
 advantage, first, in the certainty of its remains, and secondly, 
 in the consciousness that, as far as general features go, you 
 are looking at the very same view which was looked upon 
 by Pericles and Demosthenes ; whereas at Rome much is 
 uncertain, and everything is altered. . . .' 
 
 At first his whole interest had been absorbed in heathen 
 Rome. 'There is something in feeling the hill of the 
 Capitol rise under one's feet which is quite unrivalled.' 
 But gradually other interests broke upon him. 
 
 ' The first thing which awakened me from an interest 
 in Pagan, to an interest in Christian, Rome, were the Cata- 
 combs ; the first which awakened me from an interest in 
 Imperial, to an interest in Papal, Rome, was the Pope. My 
 first sight of the Pope was at S. Maria, on the Feast of the 
 Annunciation, when he goes there in state to give dowries 
 to poor girls. There was nothing much in the prelude to 
 .his appearance, except the strangeness of seeing the whole 
 church lined with the Papal guards, with their caps and 
 plumes, and their lines only broken by the priests and monks 
 running about to make preparations. At last, through this 
 file, the procession began : cardinals, &c., &c., and, last of 
 all, high in the air I saw the waving of enormous fans of 
 white peacock feathers, which announced the coming of the 
 great sight. Under these fans, raised on a chair on the 
 shoulders of men, high above the heads of the people, wear- 
 ing the triple crown, motionless as a corpse, except when 
 his two fingers moved in blessing, his whole figure visible
 
 CHAP. VIII THE POPE 287 
 
 from head to foot, sate the Pope. The moment he appeared 
 the whole congregation, guards, and people, fell on their 
 knees, calling out, " Benedice, Santo Padre." It was a most 
 impressive, almost an awful, sight to see the old man so 
 very near, in such a tremendous position — the prostration 
 of the people making his own exaltation more striking. I 
 could see every feature quite distinctly — not unlike Uncle 
 Stanley, but very corpse-like. On he moved, like a statue, 
 under the waving of the peacock fans, and I saw no more 
 of him. The rest of the sight was pretty and gorgeous, 
 but nothing more — the procession of the girls in white with 
 silver crowns, the regal magnificence of the driving off of 
 the gilt and scarlet coaches of the Pope and Cardinals ; 
 but the sight was the Pope himself — the seeing one man 
 made so very much of, seeing him so near and so perfectly, 
 seeing the representative of such a famous system, and the 
 strange, half-Oriental aspect of the whole thing, haunted me 
 all the rest of the day.' 
 
 He had reached Rome at Easter, and he gives his 
 * conclusions as to the Holy Week.' They are : 
 
 '(1) That I should like to be here again for it, when I 
 might choose the ceremonies I liked, and go to them 
 quietly ; (2) That I should advise anyone to make up his 
 mind, before he sets foot in Rome, to go to the Benediction 
 on Easter Day, without thinking or saying anything about 
 it ; (3) In answer to the question put by everyone, " Do the 
 ceremonies tend to convert you.-*" I say, "To Romanism 
 or Catholicism, certainly not " ; but as certainly, I think, 
 if I were already inclined to Roman Catholicism, they 
 would tend to make me a Papist ; once granting that the 
 general thing is desirable, they most forcibly impress one 
 with the great convenience of having one man and one city 
 and one CJiurch, which shall be able to play with the utmost 
 possible solemnity the chief part of this great religious ser- 
 vice. All that is purely Papal in it seems to me as grand 
 as possible ; and hence, (4) That all the sights in St. 
 Peter's, and those only, are worth seeing ; (5) That the 
 Pope's manner is particularly devout and good ; (6) That 
 the behaviour of the Roman Catholics in general is at least 
 as irreverent as that of the Protestants, though I think that 
 that has been rather exaggerated.'
 
 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1840 i 
 
 On the 19th of April he bade farewell to Rome, ' a 
 place which I enjoyed with the least admixture of pain, 
 and with by far the greatest profit, of any place I have yet 
 seen.' Besides sight-seeing, he had found time to read 
 with an Italian master ten cantos of Dante, and ' conceived 
 for him so great an admiration that I have bought all his 
 works, and mean, w^ienever I have time, to stud)' them 
 deeply.' He left Rome for Florence in a carriage, in which 
 he ultimately journeyed to Paris. It was 
 
 ' larger than the britschka, containing Pearson, myself, and 
 Rogers, a Fellow of Oriel, a very excellent and able man, 
 being, in fact, Newman's greatest friend. For the first 
 time, my confidence in the advantages of travelling in 
 company was shaken. Had I chosen anyone on leaving 
 England, I don't know whether I should not have jumped 
 at Rogers, as the greatest fortune I could have had. But 
 now came in that great difficulty, which I had hardly yet 
 encountered — the difference of tastes, so far more import- 
 ant in Italy than elsewhere. The great point was the 
 fancy for pictures, which Pearson also has, though at Rome 
 we managed very well, because he had seen them all 
 before. But whilst it made me quite determined never ta 
 travel in Italy with anyone who does go after pictures, it 
 gave me great confidence in the wisdom of my own posi- 
 tion, not to go after pictures myself. It is quite clear, from 
 actually comparing on the spot my sensations with theirs, 
 that it is a chasm, which nothing short of a patience that 
 I should not think it worth while to acquire could ever 
 enable me to overcome. The difference breaks out in the 
 very first questions we respectively ask. They : " Who is 
 the painter ? " / : " What is the subject ? " ' 
 
 By Florence, Pisa, and Genoa, he drove slowly north- 
 wards. He had intended to enter France from Nice, and 
 proceed by Avignon and Nismes. But the strict interpre- 
 tation of the Custom House regulations repelled him at 
 the frontier, and he ultimately reached Lyons from Turin 
 by the Mont Cenis Pass. It was not till the 17th of May 
 that he reached Paris.
 
 CHAP. VIII RETURN TO ENGLAND 289 
 
 ' Once for all, it is something to have traversed the 
 whole length of those everlasting sealike plains of France, 
 a ludicrous contrast to the endless richness and variety of 
 Italy, but still more agreeable to me than much that I 
 have seen, and reminding me pleasantly of Toulouse. It 
 was a relief to see something of real historical interest 
 again in Fontainebleau, and I look forward with great 
 pleasure to my stay here. One great event took place, on 
 the loth or nth of May; the immense length of our 
 journeys unfortunately prevents us from ascertaining the 
 exact date. I ate for the first time in my life, since my 
 celebrated failure, an &^^, a hard-boiled o.^^, and liked it 
 very much. I next advanced to a poached egg, which I 
 also overcame, and there now only remains the victory over 
 an ordinary boiled ^g^, which I have not yet achieved.' 
 
 On the evening of the 26th of May, 1841, he reached 
 his father's house in Lower Brook Street, after an absence 
 from England of ten months. 
 
 VOL. I. U
 
 290 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 ti-44 
 
 TRACT NO. 90 — DR. ARNOLD'S DEATH — 
 THE 'LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE' 
 
 Stanley arrived in England at a crisis of great political 
 and religious excitement. 
 
 On the very evening on which he reached his father's 
 house Sir Robert Peel gave notice in the House of 
 Commons of a Resolution declaring ' want of confidence ' 
 in Lord Melbourne's Government. The debate ended in 
 favour of the Resolution by a majority of one. A Dissolu- 
 tion was announced, and on June 22nd Parliament was 
 prorogued by the Queen in person. Stanley was present 
 at the ceremony, which, 
 
 ' I confess, reawakened in some measure my interest in 
 English sights. The blowing of the trumpets at the Royal 
 approach, the firing of the guns, the gorgeous sight of the 
 Peers in their scarlet robes, the majestic form and face of 
 the Bishop of St. David's ' towering above them all, the 
 black cloud of the Commons behind, the Norman forms, 
 the silver tones of the Queen's voice, run hard upon St. 
 Peter's, and the reality of the scene goes far to compensate 
 for the magnificence of the Papal fable.' 
 
 By the end of July the new Parliament was elected. 
 The session opened on the 19th of August with a vote of 
 •' want of confidence,' which took the form of an amend- 
 
 ' Connop Thirlwall, appointed in 1840.
 
 CHAP. IX TRACT NO. 90 291 
 
 ment to the Address, and was carried by large majorities. 
 On the 30th the resignation of Ministers was announced, 
 and on the 3rd of September Sir Robert Peel accepted 
 office. 
 
 Still more momentous was the religious crisis. The 
 late Cardinal Newman attached some ' Chronological 
 Notes ' to a packet of letters which usher in the notable 
 incidents of the Oxford Movement from 1836 to 1841. 
 Newman closes with the words : 
 
 ' The affair of No. 90 was a far greater crisis than March 
 1836, and opened an entirely different scene.' 
 
 The appearance of this famous Tract produced a storm 
 which the author had never anticipated. Though dated 
 ' Oxford, The Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, 1841,' it 
 was not published till Saturday, the 27th of February. It 
 was written, as Newman has stated in his Apologia, to allay 
 
 ' the restlessness, actual and prospective, of those who 
 neither liked the via viedm, nor my strong judgment 
 against Rome. I had been enjoined, I think by my Bishop,, 
 to keep these men straight, and I wished to do so. But their 
 tangible difficulty was subscription to the Articles, and 
 thus the question of the Articles came before me.' 
 
 The object of the Tract was to show 
 
 ' how patient the Articles are of a Catholic interpretation 
 on certain points, where they have been usually taken to 
 pronounce an unqualified condemnation of Catholic doc- 
 trines and opinions, or to maintain Protestant ones.' ^ 
 
 Ward had from the first prophesied that the pamphlet 
 would be hotly received ; and so it proved. Men who had 
 long regarded the Articles as a bulwark of Protestantism, 
 and as a barrier against the Romeward tendencies of the 
 
 - See letter from R. W. Church to F. Rogers {Letters ami Correspondence 
 of J. H. Newman, vol. i. p. 329). 
 
 U 2
 
 192 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1841 
 
 Movement, found their entrenchments turned. On the 
 morning of the 27th of February, Ward burst excitedly 
 into Tait's roons. ' Here,' he cried, ' is something worth 
 reading,' and threw No. 90 on the table. Tait described to 
 Stanley how he ' sate, half-asleep,' over the pamphlet, ' rather 
 disturbed from time to time by sentences about ' working in 
 chains,' and ' stammering lips,' till, on turning over the pages, 
 he was suddenly awakened by lighting on the commentary 
 on the Twenty-second Article.^ He immediately rushed to 
 Ward's rooms to know whether he had rightly understood 
 it ; and from that moment the sensation began. He 
 showed No. 90 to one person after another ; the excitement 
 increased, but still unknown to Newman ; and, on the second 
 Sunday after the Tract had appeared, Ward, who had pre- 
 dicted that it would rouse a tumult, was dining with New- 
 man, and Newman said, ' You see, Ward, you are a false 
 prophet.' When Ward returned that night to Balliol, he 
 found that the Protest of the Four Tutors was already pre- 
 pared. It appeared the next day ; by the end of the week 
 came down, like a clap of thunder, the Protest of the Heads, 
 and instantly the silence was broken by its being reverbe- 
 rated through every paper in the country. 
 
 The Protest of the Four Tutors ^ (Churton of Brasenose, 
 Wilson of St. John's, Griffiths of Wadham, Tait of Balliol) 
 appeared in the ' Times ' ten days after the publication of 
 the Tract. A few days later the Hebdomadal Board took 
 up the subject. Without waiting for the letter in which 
 they knew Newman was preparing to vindicate the object 
 and statements of No. 90, they censured the Tract, as sug- 
 gesting modes of interpretation which evaded the sense of 
 the Thirty-nine Articles. Soon after the censure of the 
 Board was promulgated Newman's vindication appeared : 
 
 3 On Purgatory. 
 
 ^ See Life of A7-chhishop Tait, i. Si-2.
 
 CHAP. IX TRACT NO. 90 293, 
 
 ' The Tract is grounded on the belief that the Articles 
 need not be so closed as the received method of teaching 
 closes them, and ouglit not to be, for the sake of many per- 
 sons. If we so close them, we run the risk of subjecting 
 persons, whom we should least like to lose or distress, to the 
 temptation of joining the Church of Rome, or to the neces- 
 sity of withdrawing from the Church as established, or to 
 the misery of subscribing with doubt and hesitation.' '' 
 
 At this crisis the Bishop of Oxford (Dr. Bagot) 
 intervened, and while entirely repudiating the charge of 
 evasion brought by the Heads of Houses, expressed a wish 
 that the Tracts should be discontinued. Newman at once 
 acceded to the Bishop's request ; no more Tracts were 
 issued, and Newman published (31st of March) 'A Letter 
 to the Lord Bishop of Oxford on the Occasion of No. 90,' 
 in which he made a 'joyful and unreserved submission ' to 
 the authority of his Diocesan.'' But the controversy was by 
 no means ended. It spread from Oxford to every diocese 
 of the kingdom ; fresh combatants daily entered the lists ; 
 pamphlet after pamphlet was issued in rapid succession ; 
 the attack and defence of the controverted Tract became 
 more and more vehement. Prominent among the defenders 
 of No. 90 was Ward, who restated in the most uncompro- 
 mising terms, and pushed home to their logical extremes, 
 the cautious arguments of Newman. 
 
 Intelligence of the excitement caused by Tract 90, and 
 of the Protest of the Tutors, reached Stanley at Rome. He 
 at once wrote a letter to Tait, asking for fuller information. 
 
 * O, my dear Belvedere," what have you been doing ? 
 Rome is only in a less state of excitement than Oxford. 
 The Pope has just issued a Bull defending the Decrees of 
 Trent, on the ground that they are not contradictory to the 
 
 ^ Letter to Dr. Jelf, pp. 28-9. 
 
 ^ The letter is printed in the Via Media, vol. ii. p. 416. 
 
 ' A familiar name by which Tait was known among his Oxford friends.
 
 294 ^^^^^ ^^ DEAN STANLEY 1841 
 
 Thirty-nine Articles ; and the Cardinals have just sate in 
 conclave on him, and determined that he is against the 
 usages of the Vatican. But to speak seriously : What has 
 happened? First comes a letter from London to Pearson, 
 intimating that a Tract on such a subject has appeared, and 
 that you are in a state of frenzy. Next, an intelligence from 
 papers that a Protest of five Tutors, Belvedere being one, 
 has appeared in the ' Times.' Next, the great manifesto from 
 the Heads themselves, accompanied by a private letter from 
 Twiss to me, announcing that a " convulsive moment " will 
 " not improbably take place, only equal to a moral Niagara 
 ceasing to flow." Pearson and I are in a state of ferment 
 beyond bounds. Seriously, my dear Greis,** do not draw 
 these Articles too tight, or they will strangle more parties 
 than one. I assure you, when I read the monition of the 
 Heads I felt the halter at my own throat. Of course, I speak 
 on the hypothesis that J. H. N. has maintained the patience, 
 not the ambition, of the Articles. If he maintains the latter, 
 then certainly it does become time to throw away the scab- 
 bard ; but if the former — ah ! my dear Greis, consider the 
 great train of consequences which a resistance to such a 
 theory involves. One consolation dawns upon me, and 
 that is, that this convulsion will, directly or indirectly, lead 
 to the subversion of the Heads and establishment of the 
 Professors on their ruins ; in what way I have not now time 
 to explain, but I see it clearly in the distance. But my 
 chief object in writing to you was not to give bad advice 
 on imperfect data, but to implore a letter by return of post 
 to Poste Restante, Genoa. ... A letter from Ward, or from 
 some defendant of No. 90, would also be in the highest 
 degree acceptable.' ^ 
 
 Tait, in reply, explains the circumstances under which 
 he and his tutorial colleagues had protested against ' Tract 
 90.' 'I rejoiced,' he says, 
 
 ' that you were not in Oxford, lest you should have died of 
 excitement ; but I could not help thinking that, if your 
 nerves had allowed you to think, you would have approved 
 
 "^ A familiar name by which Tait was knuwn among his Oxford friends. 
 •' The remainder of this letter, and Tait's reply, are printed in the Life oj 
 
 Anhhishop Tait, vol. i. pp. 92-97.
 
 CHAP. IX TRACT NO. 90 295 
 
 of my act. The result of the whole matter up to the present 
 moment may be shortly summed up. First — as the most 
 interesting to you — the Bishop of London's theory of a 
 literal adherence to every iota of the formularies is blown 
 to the winds of heaven. Secondly, the consciences of Ward 
 and one or two others are much satisfied by having had an 
 opportunity of utterly throwing away the false colours of 
 Church-of-Englandism which Pusey mounted last year in 
 
 his letter to the Bishop of Oxford. Thirdly, has 
 
 safely disengaged himself from the sinking vessel. Fourthly, 
 Newmanism has been proclaimed from one end of the 
 kingdom to the other, by the mouth of its own prophet, to 
 be twin-sister of Popery.' 
 
 To this reply, which is printed in extenso in the ' Life of 
 Archbishop Tait ' (vol. i. pp. 97-8), Stanley refers in his cor- 
 respondence with his sister. He speaks of Tait's 
 
 * excellent account of the Oxford affairs, mentioning, what 
 I had hoped would be the case, and what I believe would 
 have happened nowhere else but at Oxford — that, during 
 the whole of the controversy, he had continued on the most 
 perfect good terms with the most extreme of the opposite 
 party.' 
 
 Stanley answered Tait's letter from Genoa on the 2nd 
 of May, 1841 : 
 
 ' My dear Greis, — Although I have but little time to 
 write, and shall be in England so soon after my letter, I 
 cannot help thanking you for your account of Oxford and 
 yourself, which I found here yesterday. I hope there was 
 nothing in my foolish letter from Rome at all tending to 
 annoy you, as, of course, not knowing facts, neither having 
 read No. 90 nor the Tutors' Protest, I had no business to 
 say anything. From what you say I cannot be surprised at 
 anyone using any measures against the Tract who thinks 
 it unadvisable, per se, that Roman Catholics should be 
 members of the Church of England ; still less at anyone 
 being angry at the tone which you describe as pervading 
 No. 90 ; though, perhaps, as I myself see no reason against 
 Roman Catholics being Anglicans, except the impractica-
 
 296 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 
 
 bility of it, I should not have objected to any mode of 
 rendering it practicable which was not on other grounds 
 objectionable. 1 shall be very glad to see Ward's pamphlet, 
 of which your le'_ter gives the first intimation. What, how- 
 ever, gave me most pleasure was your announcement of the 
 good-will preserved through all this storm. I had hoped it 
 would be so, and I believe it would have happened nowhere 
 ia this intolerant world except at Oxford.' 
 
 Within three days from Stanley's arrival in England 
 he writes to Pearson (May 27th) : — 
 
 * I have read No. 90 and almost all its consequences. 
 The result clearly is, that Roman Catholics may become 
 members of the Church and universities of England, which 
 I for one cannot deplore,' 
 
 On the last day of May he writes from Rugby a second 
 letter to Pearson : 
 
 ' I have read Ward's second pamphlet with much 
 satisfaction, although doubtless the 21st Article '° has had 
 a coach-and-twenty-four driven through it' 
 
 In this letter he also tells his friend that his ' passion 
 for England, and in particular for Oxford,' is reawakened, 
 and that he perfectly longs to be there. He reached Oxford 
 on the 6th of June, to find the University convulsed with 
 the controversy and its consequences. He was himself 
 surprised to find how much he was struck with the beauty 
 of the city, even after all the beautiful places which he had 
 seen ; and ' how vast and dear ' was his Oxford acquaintance. 
 The first evening of his return to University College 
 seemed like ' being let loose in an endless gallery of friends.' 
 * I arrived here,' he writes to Pearson the next morning, 
 
 ' at 6 P.M. last night, proceeded instantly, even before enter- 
 ing my own rooms, to the Common-room, and at one glance 
 
 '" ' Of the Authority of General Councils.'
 
 CHAP. IX RETURN rO OXFORD 297 
 
 surveyed the Master, Twiss, Donkin, and others. A note 
 from Ward in the course of about ten minutes called me 
 away. I rushed into my room, and threw myself into his 
 arms. Fast and furious conversation advanced, till it was 
 interrupted by the door flying open and a long procession 
 entering — consisting of Tait, Lake, Woolcombe, Walde- 
 grave, Goulburn, — which, after I had pressed 
 
 with salutations meet 
 And reverent love to kiss their honoured feet, 
 
 passed away, leaving me again alone with Ward, with whom 
 I had a long walk and tea — then a long dialogue with Tait, 
 — lastly, with our dear Donkin — and so to bed.' 
 
 Having a traveller's love of recounting his adventures, 
 or, as he himself describes it, ' a childish delight in talking 
 over my tour with those who will listen,' he would have 
 been perfectly happy in Oxford, if he could have shut his 
 eyes to the troubles which threatened the University and 
 the Church. But Ward had already resigned his two 
 lectureships at Balliol on account of his defence of No. 90 ; 
 a war of reprisals seemed imminent ; and Stanley, for the 
 first time, almost despairs of Oxford. 
 
 Every hour convinces me how great a calamity Ward's 
 misfortune is ; not so much in itself, or as affecting him, but, 
 in its remote and probable consequences, striking far and deep 
 at the foundations of the welfare of the University. There 
 is no blame attaching to anyone, except such as attaches to 
 an error of judgment. Tait was the great mover against 
 Ward, and they are still on perfectly good terms with each 
 other. The Master shed tears in the final interview, and is 
 very much disturbed about it; it is said that he is overheard 
 grumbling to himself, " I wish Mrs. Jenkyns would take care 
 of the flowers instead of the cabbages," . . . and then in the 
 next breath, " I wish Mr. Ward would not write such 
 pamphlets." He and everyone says that no one could 
 have behaved better than Ward about it, as he might have 
 given them a good deal of trouble by resisting them in 
 details ; instead of which, he gave in at once with a good
 
 298 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1841 
 
 grace, which quite won the Master's heart. He loses 250/. 
 a year by it. I dread the result, because I think it is the 
 proclamation of war to the knife, which will advance from 
 turning out of tutorships to keeping out of fellowships ; and 
 then will come the terrible evils of each particular party, or 
 college, setting up a test, at its own discretion, besides the 
 University test, and it will become of such practical import- 
 ance, that young men will be driven to hasty decisions 
 about Newmanism before they have time properly to make 
 up their minds. For the first time I begin to despair of 
 Oxford.' 
 
 It is only when he had escaped to London from the 
 sultry atmosphere of embittered controversy which over- 
 hung the University that he recovered his elasticity. A 
 description of a breakfast-party with the poet Rogers, where 
 he met, among other guests, Wordsworth, ' Philip van 
 Artevelde,' Spedding, and ' three mutes,' is written with the 
 gaiety of spirit which his foreign tour had restored. 
 
 ' The great feature of the breakfast was the lively and 
 protracted dialogue of the two poets. Whenever I had 
 seen Wordsworth before, he was stiff or prosy ; but on 
 this occasion he not only gave birth to several wise 
 remarks on words and metre, but it was beautiful to see the 
 playful way in which he and his brother-poet sported together, 
 and bantered each other on their respective habits. It was 
 exactly the tozvn and coicntry mouse : the town-mouse a 
 sleek, well-fed, sly, zvhzte mouse, and the country-mouse 
 with its rough, weather-worn face and grey hairs ; the town- 
 mouse displaying its delicate little rolls and pyramids of 
 glistening strawberries, the country-mouse exulting in its 
 hollow tree, its crust of bread and liberty, and rallying its 
 brother on his late hours and frequent dinners. There was a 
 great complaint of the country-mouse about the dangers he 
 ran by going in cabs ; . . • and there was a most amusing 
 account of their going together to Hampton Court, and how 
 the country-mouse had fixed on the only day, and the town- 
 mouse on the only hour, when it could not be seen, and 
 how they were beset by fashionable acquaintances of the 
 town-mouse, and how the country-mouse would have stayed 
 to look at some beautiful trees in the park had not the town-
 
 CHAP. IX STUDY OF DANTE 299 
 
 mouse been engaged, of course, to a dinner in London. . . . 
 And then, by a few rapid leaps, one of which was the defi- 
 nition of a poor man by Taylor as " a person whose conver- 
 sation is tiresome," they entered on the subject of beggars, 
 and Wordsworth gave a Wordsworthian account of how he 
 and Talfourd had been standing under a projection in 
 Regent Street for shelter from the rain, and Talfourd gave 
 a shilling to a poor boy, and how the boy said nothing, but 
 his face was lighted up with the most glorious radiance, and 
 he ran with it to his mother, who stood at a little distance 
 and bowed her thanks to them with the most inimitable grace- 
 fulness ; and then Artevelde, the statesman overpowering 
 the poet, exclaimed, " You have ruined that boy for life. 
 He will now, at every shower of rain, run to the same place 
 and look out for shillings." ' 
 
 In scenes like these, and in congenial studies, Stanley 
 was for the moment able to forget ' Newmanism ' and the 
 animosities by which it was assailed at Oxford. His letters 
 to Pearson during the Long Vacation are filled with observa- 
 tions on Dante. The study of the Inferno with his Italian 
 master at Rome had fired him to devote to Dante and the 
 Divina Commedia the first spare moments at his disposal. 
 He has skimmed through the Vita Nuova, which 
 
 ' seems remarkable as showing his turn for elaborate alle- 
 gory, mystical arithmetic, and also that inimitable simpli- 
 city of self-dialogue, half talking to himself and half to 
 others, which so distinguishes the Inferno.' 
 
 The effect of the Purgatorio upon him is ' perfectly start- 
 ling.' ' In the general structure, which is, indeed, of sur- 
 passing beauty, it far exceeds the Inferno.' The only 
 drawback to its sublimity and pathos is ' a perpetual 
 recurrence to a fantastic geography and astronomy, which 
 bothers without instructing you.' 
 
 Again and again he recurs to the Divina Commedia. 
 * I am amazed that there should be such doubt as to
 
 >00 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1841 
 
 whether the D. C. is an allegory, or as to what the allegory 
 is. This only shows how miserably unworthy of him his 
 countrymen have been, and torments me by thrusting upon 
 me the only drawback, viz., that he was an Italian. That it 
 is a great poem, independently of the allegory, 1 do not deny ; 
 the reality, the vividness, the personality of the story — equal 
 to Defoe and Shakspeare — are enough to prove this, and in 
 his Hero Lectures this is admirably brought out by Carlyle. 
 But to deny, as C. seems to do, that there is any more 
 than this, is only equalled by the folly of those who say 
 that there is only one allegory in it. It throws more light 
 on the principle of the Old Testament prophets than any 
 book I have ever seen ; there is the grand poetical vision 
 of the unseen world, peopled with the faces and names 
 which were most familiar to him, teeming with warnings 
 worthy of Ezekiel and sorrow worthy of Jeremiah over the 
 vices of his age, but every scene and every person embod}'- 
 ing the great principles of the struggles of man, individual 
 and social, not the less universally true though clothed in 
 the forms of the fourteenth century.' 
 
 Later on in the year he writes to Pearson : 
 
 ' I have now finished D. C. altogether, having re-read 
 the Inferno, the first eight cantos with what unutterable 
 pangs, or rather pleasures, of regret ! The dear rooms in 
 the Via Condottieri (forgive me for my sullenness on the 
 Capitol), the delightful tones of the Dillo's " voice, the radi- 
 ant face of Joanna, the murmur of Hugo Anadyomenos 
 from within. I still retain my preference of the Purga- 
 torio ; every canto suggests innumerable topics of conver- 
 sation. When your present reading is finished, and if 
 you have any leisure, I have no .scruple in recommending 
 the Purgatorio to you. It is the most religious work I 
 have ever read.' 
 
 Pearson, who was at this time preparing for Holy Orders, 
 proposed after Ordination to take a country curacy at 
 Withyham, near Tunbridge Wells. On some points of 
 difference between himself and his future rector (the Hon. 
 
 " His nickname for his Italian master at Rome.
 
 CHAP. IX PEARSON'S ORDINATION ^oi 
 
 Reginald West) he had evidently consulted Stanley, who 
 replies as follows : 
 
 ' I suppose you will not perfectly agree ; but as he is 
 head, and not you, and as I really believe Newmanism is 
 the great religious movement of this, as Evangelicalism was 
 of the last, generation, to be sympathised with by everyone 
 to the extremest point that his and its peculiarities do not 
 forbid ; and as I still retain a strong belief in the feasibility 
 of preaching and doing much independently of any belief, 
 or disbelief, on this side Popery and Socinianism, I don't 
 think this is important' 
 
 On the 2ist of September, 1841, he writes a long letter 
 to Pearson on the subject of his Ordination, from which 
 the following passages are extracts. When the letter was 
 written, the life of his younger sister seemed to have been 
 snatched back from the other side of the grave. 
 
 ' She and we thought that she was dying from hour to 
 hour. But last night she rallied from the lowest stage of 
 exhaustion, and I believe that we may now thank God for 
 her recovery. It is the first time that I ever was in a house 
 with serious illness, the first domestic sorrow we have ever 
 had in our family. I write noiv, partly because I cannot help 
 feeling that any words I may say about your Ordination 
 may be better said whilst I am fresh from the thoughts of 
 last week than they would be a week hence. I told you 
 on Mont Cenis that I had ceased to give advice, and per- 
 haps it would be better if I did ; but some things do su"-- 
 gest themselves which those many happy hours seem to 
 demand to be spoken. I only desire that you will not 
 think it necessary to allude to anything again, but to bury 
 it in that vast gulf of oblivion into which we have cast so 
 much. 
 
 ' First (whether you do it or not, of course, I cannot 
 tell, and, perhaps, there being daily service, it may be wholly 
 unnecessary at West's), I believe that every clergyman 
 would find it better to say evoy day by himself, when not 
 able to do it in church or chapel, the daily prayers. The 
 Psalms and Lessons it may often be impossible to read • 
 but I have always found it possible (except when abso-
 
 '02 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1841 
 
 lutely ill), and perhaps might still oftcncr have done so, to 
 say the prayers. I would not urge it, except to people 
 who arc troubled by such matters, as a compliance with the 
 Rubric, or with any law ; but I cannot help thinking that 
 it is a safeguard against too little thought or prayer, that 
 they are obviously the best, all circumstances considered, 
 that can be used by Englishmen of a peaceable turn, and 
 that it gives one an interest in them, as used in church, 
 which nothing else can give. When I say a clergyman 
 ought to do this, do not understand me for a moment as 
 saying that a layman need not. 
 
 * Secondly, I believe that the besetting sin of the clerical 
 profession — that to which its peculiar temptations most 
 lead — is indifference to strict truth. I know that there is 
 a desire of truth which leads only to scepticism ; but there 
 is also a habit of using words without meaning, or with only 
 a half-belief, or for the sake of a convenient argument and 
 of filling up an awkward gap, or with a love of things 
 established — and all these motives abound in our profession 
 — which leads in part, I am convinced, to that deep-rooted 
 indifference to sermons, and that vast separation between 
 faith and outward belief, and that distrust of all that the 
 clergy say, and that intolerable arrogance which so many 
 of them feel towards lay people which, with many like 
 evils, afflict the Church. 
 
 ' Thirdly, no I will not repeat it ; but I will remind 
 
 you of the celebrated talk about friends on Mont Cenis. I 
 still think there is some truth in what I then said. I leave 
 you to find out how much. 
 
 ' Fourthly, I still hold to my opinion, that there are 
 certain positions which may be taken up wholly indepen- 
 dent of the debatable points of Nev/manism and Evangeli- 
 calism, and that, if these can be maintained, there may be 
 a great saving both of strife and perplexity. Much has 
 been said about love, but not too much. I seem to see 
 whole wastes of ecclesiastical and political evil which it has 
 never touched. Faith founded the Church ; Hope has 
 sustained it. I cannot help thinking that it is reserved for 
 Love to reform it. 
 
 ' Fifthly — though about this you must consult your own 
 feelings — I cannot but believe that one may be saved from 
 a great deal of humbug by remembering that, however much 
 the Ordination pledges us to a particular profession, it im-
 
 CHAP. IX CHAIR OF MODERN HISTORY 
 
 503; 
 
 poses upon us no additional obligation to holiness. " It is- 
 a great privilege to be a minister of the Church, but it is a 
 far greater privilege to be a member of it ; he who most 
 magnifies the solemnity of Baptism will most rightly value 
 the far inferior solemnity of Ordination." So it was said 
 to me on the eve of my Ordination, and so I believe it to- 
 be.' 
 
 After giving a list of books which he recommends, he 
 concludes with this characteristic warning : 
 
 ' Do not think, because there are many things which I 
 do not sa}^ that I do not think them. But I know that it 
 is for others, and not for me, to speak upon them. I trust 
 that the insight of a fellow-traveller, greater even than the 
 proverbial insight of a valet de chavtbre, is enough to prevent 
 you from making me (if there were, otherwise, danger) in 
 such matters an authority.' 
 
 Holding the opinions which he here expresses on 
 religious questions, it may be imagined how repugnant to 
 him was the condition of Oxford at the moment. The 
 University was, to use his own phrase, a waste of ecclesi- 
 astical evil, which love seemed unable to touch. To create 
 within its walls, both for himself and others, some counter- 
 acting interest to that of theological strife was his ardent 
 desire. It was chiefly in this hope that he was anxious to 
 secure a position which would command for his voice a 
 hearing. In many respects the Chair of Modern History 
 would have supplied the desired position. But Lord 
 Melbourne's Ministry, from which alone he could expect 
 preferment, was already tottering to its fall, and seemed 
 unlikely to survive the actual incumbent of the Chair. 
 Suddenly Professor Nares died, while Lord Melbourne was 
 still in office. So little had such a possibility entered into 
 Stanley's calculations, that, in the event of the vacancy oc- 
 curring, he had promised to support another candidate. At 
 first he was annoyed at ' finding one of my most favourite
 
 504 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1841 
 
 castles thus vanish into air.' But his next fcehng was one 
 of relief, and he wrote, 
 
 'not merely in sham resignation, but in real exultation at 
 the deliverance from a burden of labour and responsibility 
 greater than I could have borne.' 
 
 His negative pleasure at his own deliverance was changed 
 into positive ecstasy 
 
 ' at the astonishing close of the Naresian drama. Un- 
 expected, and wholly unsolicited by anyone, came the offer 
 of the Chair to Arnold, who has accepted it, retaining for 
 the present Rugby. On all grounds, except fear of over- 
 work for him and of slight tumults at Oxford, I rejoice 
 extremely.' 
 
 Arnold's appointment was the one bright spot which 
 the outlook at Oxford afforded him. The University, 
 where he was for the next ten years to reside almost con- 
 tinuously, was divided into hostile camps, to neither of 
 which he was wholly able to attach himself Not yet 
 appointed a Lecturer in his College, he found no refuge 
 from party strife in tutorial work. His attempt to create 
 fresh interests by founding a philosophical and classical 
 journal proved unsuccessful. And although he had resumed 
 his theological studies by 'finishing Tertullian, beginning 
 where I left off when my tranquil reading was suddenly 
 broken off by my Ordination,' he was evidently ill at ease. 
 ' All here,' he says, ' is confusion.' 
 
 When men on all sides threw themselves into the 
 struggle, and became vehement partisans, his own attitude 
 was as difficult to maintain as it was apt to be misunder- 
 stood. And, unfortunately, opportunities perpetually arose 
 for the display of party feeling. Two such occasions 
 occurred in the autumn of 1841 — the Jerusalem Bishopric,''^ 
 
 '-' The King of Prussia and the Crown of England were to nominate alter- 
 nately to the newly-founded Bishopric of Jerusalem, where there was already
 
 CHAP. IX THE BISHOPRIC OF JERUSALEM 305 
 
 and the election to the Professorship of Poetry.'^ 'The 
 objection to the Bishopric of Jerusalem,' he writes to his 
 sister in October, 
 
 ' is that it comes very inopportunely, as an attempt to unite 
 the Church of England with the Protestants of Germany, 
 just at the time when Newman, &c., are making such efforts 
 to unite with Rome. Obviously, on these grounds they are 
 quite right to object. It may be desirable to effect an 
 union with Germany, or with Rome ; but at present, 
 unfortunately, every attempt to unite with one draws off 
 more irreconcilably from the other, and, as they have set 
 their hearts on union with the latter, as best and most im- 
 portant, they are naturally much annoyed at the prospect 
 of union with the former. Things here are in a very strange 
 position, hanging on a thread. I should not be surprised 
 either at an almost immediate revolution or at a protracted 
 struggle.' 
 
 So uncongenial was the atmosphere that, for a time at 
 least, Stanley contemplated removing from Oxford. He 
 asked the advice of his sister, who urged him to remain 
 where he was. To this he replied : 
 
 ' Your letter was very consolatory to me ; in fact, it A\'as 
 just such a confirmation of my own view of the case as I 
 wished to have, and the want of which made me vent my 
 complaints. I knew that there had been from time to time 
 a family objection to Oxford, from the notion of the pre- 
 judicial influence of the place, which, till this term, was, I 
 think, groundless ; and therefore, when I came to think 
 myself that there was some ground in it, I wished to give 
 
 located a Bishop of the Greek Church. The Rev. Michael Solomon Alexander 
 was subsequently consecrated first Bishop by the Archbishop of Canterlmry 
 and other prelates of the English Church. For the effect on Newman of this 
 union with the Lutheran communion of Prussia, see Apologia, p. 146. 
 
 '* The contest between the Rev. J. Garbett, an ex-Fellow of Brasenose, and 
 the Rev. Isaac Williams, Fellow of Trinity, for the Professorial Chair vacated 
 by the expiration of the term of office of the Rev. J. Keble. An actual contest 
 was avoided by the committees of the two candidates agreeing to abide by the 
 promises made, the number of which was found to be 921 for Garbett and. 
 623 for Williams. 
 
 VOL. L X
 
 306 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 
 
 the chance of its being considered, that, whatever might be 
 the result, I might not be thought to have acted unadvisedly. 
 I quite agree with you that it is hopeless to escape, and 
 Oxford certainly seems the appointed place for me. The 
 attraction which had offered itself to me was Durham, 
 where I might go if I chose. Several circumstances had 
 brought the state of things more vividly before me. This 
 business of the ' Philological Museum ' '■* brought home to 
 me the miserably unsatisfactory character of the so-called 
 Liberals here, and the impossibility of acting with the 
 Newmanites, in whose moral feelings I should so much 
 more sympathise. And there was also a most unhappy 
 repetition of my case at Balliol over again in the case of 
 poor Clough, except that it was more distressing, as he was 
 more deserving and more in want of the F'ellowship, and is 
 less likely to get another ; and we are therefore to lose from 
 Oxford altogether one who was likely to have been the 
 ablest of all the rising generation.' ^^ 
 
 In the midst of such depressing surroundings, Stanley 
 had hailed the appointment of Arnold to the Professorship 
 of Modern History with more than his usual enthusiasm. 
 He saw in the commencement of Arnold's direct connection 
 with the University more than a tardy tribute of respect 
 after years of obloquy and misapprehension, and more than 
 a revival of Rugby days and a renewal of old relations of 
 teacher and pupil. He looked forward to his lectures as 
 the advent of a fresh invigorating breeze across a parched 
 and sultry plain, as the counterpoise to what he considered 
 the evil tendencies of the Oxford Movement, as the infusion 
 of new life into the decaying professorial system. He 
 trusted that Arnold would break down the conventional 
 barriers which divided religious from secular learning, that 
 he would dissipate the exclusive adoration of the Fathers 
 and Schoolmen among the dead, or Bishops and Pastors 
 among the living, and that he would communicate to others 
 
 '^ The journal which he was unsuccessful in founding. 
 
 '* A. H. Clough was subsequently elected to a Fellowship at Oriel.
 
 CHAP. IX ARNOLDS INAUGURAL LECTURE 307 
 
 the power and the charm which the great writers of 
 antiquity, the poets and philosophers of modern times, the 
 sailors and soldiers and statesmen of the world of action, 
 possessed as auxiliaries in the cause of religion. His 
 anticipations were not, indeed, unmixed with forebodings 
 for the possible results of an event which filled his thoughts 
 waking and sleeping. In October he had dreamed, as he 
 tells Pearson, ' of Arnold making a dreadful failure in his 
 inaugural lecture.' His fears proved groundless ; the new 
 Professor's triumph surpassed even his pupil's hopes. 
 
 On December 2nd, 1841, Arnold entered on his profes- 
 sorial duties by delivering his inaugural lecture. On the 
 evening of the same day Stanley wrote home to ' give an 
 account of one of the most glorious days I ever enjoyed here.' 
 
 ' The proper place to deliver lectures is a small room in 
 the Clarendon — a fit measure of the professorial lectures 
 as usually attended ; but fortunately, having anticipated 
 a larger audience than could be contained there, we had 
 applied for the Theatre. No one who has not witnessed 
 the very thin attendance upon the usual lectures of pro- 
 fessors can fully appreciate my delight at seeing the crowds 
 of men standing till the theatre-doors were open. There 
 was a regular rush — you know the inside of the theatre ; the 
 whole of the area and the lower gallery were completely 
 filled — such an audience as no professor ever lectured to 
 before, larger even than to hear the famous inaugural 
 lecture by Hampden. . . . 
 
 ' In the Vice-Chancellor came at last in state, and behind 
 him Arnold in his full doctorial robes, and took his place 
 amidst a burst of applause. It was most striking, and to 
 all who had been at Rugby most affecting, to see him at 
 last standing there in his proper place, receiving the homage 
 of the assembled University, and hear him addressing them 
 in that clear, manly voice which one has known and loved 
 so well. It lasted for an hour, was listened to with the 
 deepest attention, and closed, as it had begun, with universal 
 applause. It was on history, and modern history generally, 
 necessarily touching only cursorily on many points, giving 
 no offence, yet with an evident intention to dwell on points
 
 3o8 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1842 
 
 neglected here, and to pass over those which are obvious 
 to Oxford minds, and ending with a most touching ex- 
 pression of his own inadequacy to fulfil all the duties of the 
 office, and of his delight at being allowed to hold a Pro- 
 fessorship at the University, which one felt the more from 
 knowing how entirely he felt them both.' 
 
 With the same loyal eagerness to see Arnold appreciated 
 at his true value Stanley writes of the subsequent lectures, 
 upon the subject of which he had himself been consulted. 
 Yet, mingled with delight in his Head-master's success, 
 comes a feeling of disappointment that circumstances 
 seemed to hinder Arnold from obtaining a juster percep- 
 tion of the high motives and personal character of * the 
 Oxford Malignants.' ' Arnold's lectures,' he writes in 
 February, 1842, 
 
 'go on drawing audiences of 300 or 400 every time. In 
 one he gave a most striking account of the horrors of the 
 blockade of Genoa, at which the Master of BalHol is said 
 to have wept. At a great feast-day at Oriel Arnold sate 
 by Newman for the first time in his life. They talked on 
 indifferent matters, and got on very well together. ^*^ Other- 
 wise he has not been able to see so much of the opposite, 
 and now persecuted, party as I should have wished. It is 
 curious, though rather uncomfortable to me, to see how 
 completely the reaction against Newmanism here has 
 placed him in the ascendant — uncomfortable, I mean, 
 because it tends to throw him into bad company. Inde- 
 pendently, however, of this, his lectures have undoubtedly 
 produced a deep, and I believe a lasting, impression in his 
 favour, and dispelled for ever misunderstandings which 
 nothing else but his own personal presence could have 
 dispelled. No other professor has produced such an effect, 
 I should think, for centuries.' 
 
 Happy in Arnold's triumph and in the calm which 
 seemed for the moment to have settled upon Oxford, 
 
 '« Newman's account of the meeting will be found in his Letters and Corre- 
 spondence, vol. ii. pp. 440-4.
 
 CHAP. IX WOJi/C AS COLLEGE LECTURER 309 
 
 Stanley had now found fresh interests for himself in the 
 commencement of his own work as a college lecturer. On 
 April 14th, 1842, he writes : 
 
 ' I began my lectures to-day as public tutor, which I 
 consider a great event, and I got on as well as I could 
 expect. I conclude that all public lectures {i.e. audiences) 
 preserve the same immutable gravity. It is what unpleas- 
 antly distinguishes them from private pupils. But perhaps 
 it is quite as well, for anything which broke the spell, and let 
 loose twelve wild undergraduates upon you, would be fatal. 
 
 Always open to receive hints, and courting useful criti- 
 cism> he had already written to Pearson to ask him to play 
 the part of Devil's Advocate. 
 
 ' The situation of and , as filling places which 
 
 they are incapable of filling, has forcibly impressed itself 
 upon me this term as one of the most horrible that can be 
 conceived ; and chiefly because there seems no possibility of 
 their ever learning from anyone their own incapacity. Lest, 
 therefore, a similar fate should ever be mine, I beg that, if 
 ever I am in a like situation, and you hear, through under- 
 graduates, or Donkin, or anyone else, any point essentially 
 vicious, or, if not essentially vicious, yet remediable, you 
 will communicate the same to me. Things irremediable, 
 yet not essential, I do not wish to know, but all else, cer- 
 tainly.' 
 
 For the first month of the summer term of 1842 his 
 letters are filled with references to his pupils and to the 
 furniture of his new rooms. The apparent apathy of his 
 audience distressed him. * The only unpleasant part I find 
 in my lectures is the total absence of any expression of 
 feeling in the faces of my twelve auditors. Not a shadow 
 of joy or sorrow ever passes over their immovable features.' 
 Ten days later he writes : 
 
 ' If any other colour is to be mixed with my carpet 
 than brown, let it be blue^ so that, if needful, I may plant
 
 ■IIO LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1842 
 
 upon it a blue sofa which I now have. Is it worth while 
 importing twelve cane-bottomed chairs from London ? 1 
 should have thought not, but some people recommend it. 
 How very expensive chairs are, when one might sit upon 
 benches ! You will be glad to hear that my audience has 
 at last given signs of human feeling by a burst of laughter 
 at a ludicrous story. I was quite alarmed at the effect of 
 my own wit. I have also succeeded in discovering all their 
 names at length. On looking again at the cane-bottomed 
 chairs, it is thought that fat undergraduates would either 
 crush, or, if irritated during lecture, tear, them to bits, 
 so that possibly I may, after all, require some from 
 London.' 
 
 But Oxford was not long destined to remain tranquil. 
 The lull in party strife proved treacherous. In May 1842 
 the storm of religious animosity burst out afresh. 
 
 ' The Heads of Houses have broken the spell which kept 
 Oxford quiet, and for the next ten days the University will 
 be shaken to its foundations again. They have proposed 
 to Convocation the repeal of the Statute affixing the stigma 
 upon Hampden.'' It is an honest confession on their parts, 
 either that they were wrong before, or that he has so 
 behaved himself since as to take away cause for suspicion. 
 But, of course, to the original movers of the great feud in 
 1836 he is as obnoxious as ever, and they are preparing for 
 war. The chief assailants will be Tractarians, and it will be 
 curious to see how far the large body who vote against 
 all innovations will be able to move their fury from New- 
 man to Hampden. I shall almost certainly vote for the 
 repeal. ... I hear that Hampden himself did not wish to 
 have the question stirred again.' 
 
 In the interval between the announcement of the pro- 
 posed repeal and the vote of Convocation Dr. Hampden 
 delivered a lecture which Stanley strongly condemned. 
 
 '" In 1836 Dr. Hampden had been deprived of the place, which belonged 
 to him as Regius Professor of Divinity, on the Boards for the nomination of 
 .Select Preachers and for taking cognisance of heretical preaching at Oxford 
 University. See p. 158.
 
 CHAP. IX DEATH OF DR. ARNOLD ^n 
 
 'But,' he adds, 'I suppose I must not take it into account, 
 and so I still vote for him.' On June 7th the proposed 
 repeal was rejected by 334 votes to 214. 
 
 Five days later occurred the event which Stanley cha- 
 racterises, in a letter to Pearson written from Rugby, as 
 ' this dreadful calamity, the greatest that ever has happened 
 to me, almost the greatest that ever can befall me.' On the 
 1 2th of June, 1842, Arnold, apparently in full vigour, and 
 still in the prime of life, died suddenly from angina pectoris. 
 Forty years later Stanley wrote to a friend : — ' Always on 
 that 1 2th of June I have written, first to Mrs. Arnold, and 
 then to Fan. And " the eye " of that anniversary recollection 
 " is not dim, nor is its natural force abated." ' The shock so 
 completely overwhelmed Stanley that he was obliged to 
 take to his bed for some hours. On his recovery, he at 
 once hastened to Rugb}\ 
 
 The account of the scenes enacted there, as given in his 
 own narrative, is in everyone's hands, and need not be 
 repeated here, except so far as he was himself an actor in 
 them. It is not necessary to dwell in detail on the passionate 
 burst of his grief ' at waking to the sight of that familiar 
 place with the thought that he who was its light and life 
 was gone'; nor on his 'grievous disappointment' of finding 
 that he was too late to see, as he had fondly hoped, ' the 
 last remains of that dear face ' ; nor on the insatiable avidity 
 with which he set himself to collect every particular, not 
 only of the last hours, but of the preceding days and weeks ; 
 nor on the intense sympathy which seemed to identify him 
 with the desolation of the bereaved family. From the first 
 he was received by the mourners as one of themselves, and 
 from the first he was struck by the unsuspected strength 
 with which the widow rose to meet her loss. He helped 
 in the selection of the spot where the great Head-master 
 should be buried :
 
 312 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1842 
 
 ' I went with Mr. Hull and Matt to fix upon the place 
 in the Chapel for the burial. It is to be within the rails, 
 immediately before the Communion-table, that being the 
 place usually allotted to the body of the Founder ; and as 
 the real Founder is buried elsewhere, I think one may 
 safely predict that there will never arise another who can 
 dispute his claim to it.' 
 
 The night before the funeral 
 
 ' I went up to his room — the room where he died — with 
 Matt. The coffin was on the floor — otherwise, all as it 
 was when he died, as it was the last time but one that I 
 saw him. I went up then with Mrs. A. to wish him good- 
 night when the feverish attack was upon him. The window 
 opens to the school-field, commanding a glimpse of the 
 Shuckburgh Hills over the trees — the only distant view 
 about Rugby, and one, therefore, in which he especially 
 delighted. . . . Matt and I knelt down by the coffin, and I 
 said a short prayer for us both. . . . ' 
 
 On the Sunday after the funeral he read the service to 
 the family in the Chapel, and, with Mr. Penrose (Mrs. 
 Arnold's brother), administered the Communion. 
 
 ' They, the Prices, the immediate relations, and the 
 servants, were all present. How inexpressibly solemn the 
 P'irst Lesson '^ was ! " Behold, my sons are with you ! They 
 said, Thou hast not defrauded us, nor oppressed us." And 
 the stern simplicity of John the Baptist, too, in the Second 
 Lesson ; '^ and the Epistle -° and the Gospel.''^" The only 
 parts where I at all wavered were the prayer for the father- 
 less widow and children, and in administering the wine to 
 Matt and Tom and the Prices actually on his grave. I 
 saw Mrs. Arnold directly afterwards, for the first time since 
 her widow's cap had been put on. She talked just as before, 
 but with greater calmness. She spoke of the service as 
 having been so very soothing to her, and quoted the last 
 verse of Keble on the Burial Service : " Over the grave their 
 Lord have met." Only think what a delightful recollection 
 
 '" I Samuel xii. '" Luke iii. "" For the 4th Sunday after Trinity.
 
 CHAP. IX FUNERAL OF DR. ARNOLD 3 1 3 
 
 for me ! '^' In the afternoon I read the service again, and 
 chose one of his unpublished sermons, the last I ever heard 
 him preach, on Hebrew xi. 13 : " These all died in faith." 
 I knew it was very applicable, but when I came to read it 
 aloud in the Chapel it was quite startling. ... I hear that 
 at the end of it Mrs. Arnold looked up with a gleam on 
 her face, not of comfort, but of happiness — the first that 
 they have seen.' 
 
 On the 22nd of June came the painful parting, when Mrs. 
 Arnold and her family quitted for ever their Rugby home. 
 ' We all,' he writes, ' went down with them to the station. 
 There was no formal leave-taking ; but I felt when the bell 
 rang for their departure, and the train whizzed off, that the 
 last act of this sad week was over.' 
 
 The week was over, but it left upon him an impression 
 which was never effaced, ' 1 feel,' he says, ' as if I had lived 
 years of manifold experience.' The history of the Gospel 
 and of the Acts on the one side, and on the other the per- 
 plexities of human life, acquired a reality for him that they 
 never lost. It was the habit of his mind to pass rapidly 
 from any facts or situations brought before him to the 
 highest and greatest facts or situations of the same class — 
 from the real life to the ideal, from the human to the divine. 
 And thus, in the death of this true servant of God, with all 
 its concomitant circumstances — the desolation of those who 
 were left, the sense of his continual, though invisible, 
 presence, the spirit which he left behind him, caught in 
 various degrees by different disciples, like the broken lights 
 from a shattered mirror — he seemed to realise, with a vivid- 
 ness never known before, but never afterwards exhausted, 
 the death of his Divine Master. 
 
 21 I xhen cheerly to your work again, 
 
 With hearts new-brac'd and set 
 To run, untir'd, Love's blessed race, 
 As meet for those who, face to face, 
 
 Over the grave their Lord have met.'
 
 14- LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 
 
 * I am afraid,' he adds, after expressing this train of 
 thought, 
 
 ' that I may be thought to take too deep an interest, or to 
 attach exaggerated importance to what has passed ; and 
 therefore I do not speak of it to those who think so, or seem 
 to think so. But when I reflect that to me no other event 
 of the same awful kind can ever happen again, and that 
 " if he was not an apostle to others, he was an apostle to 
 me," I cannot think that all this has been allowed to pass 
 before me without calling upon me to consider it most 
 deeply in all its bearings.' 
 
 In a previous letter he had written : 
 
 ' I cannot help feeling what you suggest in your letter — 
 that I revered him too much, and that it is both just as to 
 the past, and good as to the future, that he should be taken 
 away from me. The exclusiveness and vehemence of my 
 veneration had naturally been abated by years ; but I feel 
 that I never saw, or shall see, his like again. Others abler 
 and better and wiser I may, but none who can stand in the 
 same relation to me.' 
 
 Even before the week of the funeral was ended his 
 thoughts had begun, ' painfull}^' as he says, ' but inevitably,' 
 to turn to the question how the vacant places of Professor 
 of Modern History and Head-master of Rugby were to be 
 filled. For the former he was induced to offer himself as a 
 candidate chiefly by hearing that Arnold had expressed a 
 wish that he should occupy it, if he himself were compelled 
 to resign the Chair. ' I shall stand,' he writes to Pearson, 
 
 ' for the vacant Professorship now, rather from a duty to 
 our departed father than from any love of the office itself 
 My tangible claims are my Honours and my English Essay, 
 and I suppose that having been a pupil of Arnold's will now 
 be a recommendation rather than otherwise, even with Peel.' 
 
 He took, however, no steps to push his candidature,
 
 CHAP. IX THE HEAD-MASTERSHIP OF RUGBY 315 
 
 beyond mentioning his wish to a few influential friends, 
 and, before Dr. Cramer was appointed to the Professorship, 
 other interests had completely absorbed his thoughts. 
 
 But the succession to the Mastership filled him with 
 anxiety. Among the many classes of mourners, the lot of 
 the ' unfortunate Assistant Masters ' appeared to him to be, 
 after that of the family, the ' most deserving of pity, though, 
 perhaps, least likely to meet with it' They had before 
 them the apparent impossibility of seeing the place filled 
 by any congenial spirit, and the misery of seeing it occu- 
 pied by someone who was incompetent, or unwilling, to 
 follow in the footsteps of Arnold. To his great surprise, 
 some of the most prominent, both among the masters 
 and among the old Rugbeians who had gathered for the 
 funeral, conceived the idea that he would be the fittest 
 successor. 
 
 ' I suppose ' (he wrote to his family) ' you have heard 
 nothing of what came like a thunderclap upon me when it 
 was first mentioned, viz., the notion that I should stand for 
 the Head-mastership here. I endeavour to put it down at 
 once, as utterly hopeless, saying that I believe you would 
 put an absolute veto upon it, and that I feel myself in every 
 way unfit for it. Nor would 1 have mentioned it to you 
 now but that so many people here, both among the masters 
 and old pupils, have taken it into their heads that it would 
 call forth dormant faculties of decision, energy, &c. But I 
 maintain that to undertake it would be, with my conscious- 
 ness of tremendous deficiencies, a greater hazard than I 
 could possibly be justified in making.' 
 
 Unfortunately, though he could decline to let himself 
 be put forward, he could not, as the most distinguished, 
 academically, of living Rugbeians, the most intimate friend 
 among Arnold's pupils, the trusted adviser of the family, 
 avoid being consulted by influential persons on the merits of 
 the respective candidates. And he gave his opinion with a
 
 3i6 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1842 
 
 frankness which would have caused less embarrassment 
 had it less faithfully represented his habitual irresolution. 
 This placed him in a false position towards the candidates, 
 three of whom — Vaughan, Tait, and Bonamy Price — were 
 his personal friends. On the whole, his voice was for Tait. 
 But he could not disguise that, in some points, which at 
 times he was disposed to regard as of paramount import- 
 ance, he thought him unquestionably inferior to either 
 Vaughan or Price. The eve of the election found him in 
 one of his fits of despondency as to Tait's qualifications in 
 the matter of scholarship. In a fever of excitement he 
 wrote hither and thither, endeavouring to procure Tait's 
 withdrawal. The announcement of the result of the elec- 
 tion threw him into an agony of self-reproach ; and with 
 the first congratulations which greeted the new Head- 
 master, came a wail of despair at the ' awful intelligence ' 
 from the friend who had contributed most to his success.-''^ 
 Throughout the whole transaction, his transparent sincerity, 
 and their own generosity, prevented any breach \\'ith the 
 candidates, successful or unsuccessful. But he never forgot 
 the ' mess of misunderstanding ' in which, with the best 
 intentions, he had become involved. Rarely again could he 
 be induced to do anything, in similar cases, beyond what 
 was absolutely necessary, or to pass outside the safe region 
 of written testimonials. 
 
 The end of July 1842 found him staying at Hurst- 
 monceux with Archdeacon Hare, assisting in preparing 
 for the press the posthumous volume of Arnold's * History 
 of Rome.' It was, as he wrote to his sister, the happiest 
 visit he had ever had there : 
 
 ' Constant employment, great sympathy, and the most 
 delightful companionship in Simpkinson, with the most 
 
 " The letter is printed in the Life of Archbishop Tait, vol. i. pp. 113-14.
 
 CHAP. IX THE NEW HEAD-MASTER 
 
 317 
 
 beautiful weather, all conduced to this ; and the arrival of 
 Bunsen completed it. I never saw him in such force, so full 
 of fun and knowledge, knocking Julius about like a little 
 boy, and settling himself to work among the books with 
 such thorough enjoyment. Julius has been exceedingly 
 kind ; and, of course, I now feel additional interest in hear- 
 ing what he says, in having still a living instructor to listen 
 to.' 
 
 As soon as the work was completed he returned to 
 Rugby, where the School was now reassembling under the 
 new Head-master. ' You will be anxious,' he writes to his 
 sister, 
 
 ' to hear of my visit to the unsuccessful and successful candi- 
 dates. I spent a day with the first ^^ at Leicester, and found 
 him as kind and satisfied as possible ; and I much regretted 
 his failure until I came here to day. 
 
 ' The first moment of seeing Tait in the study was 
 overpowering ; but then all seemed to me natural. It was 
 true that the rightful master of the house was gone ; but I 
 rejoiced to think that his labours were over, that the School 
 would now meet, and he would feel no more vexation or 
 anxiety about it from this time forward for ever. And 
 then, when I turned to look at his successor, I really felt 
 that there was a 'moral dignity about him, and a conscious- 
 ness of the shadow of the past, which in itself fitted him for 
 his great position, and held out the happiest prospect for 
 the future.' 
 
 On the 14th of August, 1842, the first Sunday after the 
 reassembling of the School, he wrote again : 
 
 ' All has gone very smoothly here, and I live, half with 
 the Prices, half with Tait. I am more and more satisfied 
 with him, and so is everybody. . , . 
 
 ' There being a difficulty as to the sermon to-day, Tait 
 not having known Arnold enough to preach entirely about 
 him, it was settled that I should ; which, with a good deal 
 of pain, I at last did. It was very difficult to get through 
 with it ; indeed, the whole service of the Chapel was most 
 
 -^ C. J. Vaughan.
 
 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1842 
 
 awful. Tait sittini:^ in the old place, all the boys assembled, 
 and the pulpit and desks hung with black-, made a confu- 
 sion of past and present that one could not understand. 
 
 * I was not satisfied with the sermon, still less with the 
 delivery of it ; but the boys seemed attentive.' 
 
 Although he sincerely felt that his words were in- 
 adequate to the occasion and the subject, the effect which 
 they produced upon his audience was very great : -^ 
 
 ' You will be glad to hear how deeply impressed the 
 boys were by the service yesterday. I am told that, when 
 the sermon began, there was a burst of sobs from some, 
 and that the Sixth were in tears almost all the whole time, 
 and that many more, who had always kept their eyes fixed 
 upon him, held their heads down, unable to look up. And 
 some of the Sixth have since expressed their pleasure in 
 the sermon, and also at my preaching it ; all which pleases 
 me, because it shows that to those who were most con- 
 cerned it could have done at least no harm.' 
 
 So closed the last public tribute of sorrow offered by 
 the assembled School to their departed Master. The sermon 
 was subsequently printed, Stanley yielding to the unani- 
 mous wish of those who heard it.-'^ ' It has been ultimately 
 published,' he wrote to Pearson, 
 
 * almost against my will, and, by a foolish mistake, without 
 my being able to revise the proof-sheets, so that many things 
 which I should have altered, and which to the public seem 
 absurd, remain — some of more, others of less, moment, e.g. 
 superlatives for positives, and all the italics. I would not 
 have sent it to you, but that I thought you would be 
 enraged if I did not. I hate the sight of it, and it has been 
 a horrible mess altogether, bred out of the confusion of the 
 last dreadful two months.' 
 
 Before leaving Rugby Mrs. Arnold had expressed her 
 
 -' In his Diary for .Sunday, August 14th, Tait makes the following entry : 
 ' May the words which Stanley spoke be fixed deeply in my heart and in the 
 hearts of all who heard them ' {^Life of Archbishop Tait, vol. i. p. 114). 
 
 -^ Serinoii on the Death of Dr. Arnold, preached in Rugby Chapel. Rugby, 
 1842. 8vo.
 
 CHAP. IX MEMOIR OF DR. ARNOLD 3 1 9 
 
 wish that Stanley should ' collect all he could of his own or 
 others' recollections of her husband's Rugby life.' The 
 wish soon expanded into a request that he would draw up 
 a complete Memoir. He eagerly undertook the task, 
 which had, indeed, been a dream of his boyhood. With a 
 view to its execution he repaired to Ambleside, where, 
 with his friend Lake, he took lodgings at an easy distance 
 from Fox How. He found Mrs. Arnold 'as usual, only 
 something more stately about her : her general manner not 
 only calm, but absolutely cheerful, at times quite gay and 
 lively.' During his first interview with her at Rugby after 
 Arnold's death he had told her of the way in which, among 
 his own family, his uncle, Augustus Hare, had always been 
 spoken of as if yet alive. She had eagerly caught at the 
 idea, which he now found was practised among them : 
 
 ' He is never out of their minds. They talk of him 
 incessantly, but always exactly as if he was alive. The 
 store of papers he has left, and the indestructible energy 
 of his life, and the inexhaustible associations of the place, 
 tend to keep up a sense of his presence in such a living 
 form that they cannot fully realise the sadness of death.' 
 
 The store of papers of which he speaks was quite a 
 revelation to him. Even his intense admiration for Arnold 
 had not prepared him for the wealth of matter which they 
 contained. On the first evening he wrote : 
 
 ' What Mrs. Arnold read me of his journals and letters 
 has been most striking. If I am not able to make out of 
 them one of the most remarkable biographies that has 
 appeared for a long time, it will be my fault, not theirs.' 
 
 And again, a few days later : — 
 
 ' It has been a most interesting, almost an awful, sight 
 to see the mind of so remarkable a man unfolding itself 
 before me so completely as it does in these letters ; 
 some phases wholly new have been opened to me.'
 
 320 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1843 
 
 From this time he threw himself heart and soul into 
 the preparation of the Memoir. Any lingering fear of 
 exaggeration of feeling disappeared, leaving only the fear 
 lest he should wrong his hero by exaggeration of language. 
 The result was a glow of repressed enthusiasm, which gives 
 to the work one of its greatest charms. For nearly two 
 years he abandoned for it every other occupation that was 
 not an absolute duty. His vacations, happily extending to 
 at least half the year, were chiefly spent at Fox How, where 
 he could always rely, not only on ready information, but on 
 the wisest, most cordial, and most generous criticism. A 
 letter written in October 1843 gives a pleasing picture of 
 one of these visits : 
 
 ' My visit to Fox How was most delightful. I left it 
 with the melancholy feeling that this was the last time that 
 I should be obliged to go there ; and, amidst all one's other 
 engagements, one feels that it may be a long time before 
 I shall go there again. Mrs. Arnold was more than ever 
 to me. I never before thought so highly of her mere 
 ability : her actual suggestions were so useful and good 
 that, even in this respect, I feel that my visit has been 
 invaluable to the progress of the Memoir. And then they 
 are all so happy together that it was a constant pleasure 
 and refreshment to play at games with them in the even- 
 ings, between dinner and work, and to go out walking with 
 them in that beautiful country, more beautiful than ever — at 
 once so wild and so like home. On the Friday before I 
 came away Whately suddenly arrived to fetch back his 
 daughter, and stayed till Monday. I never saw him to 
 such advantage. Though he talked incessantly, I did not 
 hear a single thing which I had ever heard him say before ; 
 and then his kindness to Mrs. Arnold and the children was 
 beautiful. The two youngest children jumped about him 
 just as they used to do about their father ; and it was quite 
 pretty to see Fan's little figure standing on his shoulders, 
 as he walked about the room with her, like a fairy on a 
 giant. 
 
 ' On Saturday evening I read some of the Memoir, about 
 his political opinions and vehement language. I was more
 
 CHAP. IX AT WORK ON ARNOLD'S LIFE 32 1 
 
 uncomfortable in doing so than I ever have been, feeling 
 how very uncongenial my style must be to him. But he 
 completely approved, and was as kind and considerate as 
 possible in all he said. He was also consulted about Cell's 
 letter,'-'^ Mrs. Arnold having thought that he would be one 
 who would most object to it. I do not know when I have 
 been more affected than by seeing that rough, unimagina- 
 tive man, who had been declaiming half dinner against 
 " Christabel " and Alfred Tennyson, gradually give way, and 
 at last take off his spectacles, and take out his handker- 
 chief, and cry like a child over it. " Yes," he said, " it must 
 come in."' 
 
 Even during the Oxford terms, though the burden of 
 college work greatly hindered his writing, he was constantly 
 employed in collecting facts, opinions, or suggestions for 
 the improvement of his book. He spared neither time nor 
 trouble, animated by the sole desire to produce a true 
 picture of his hero, to paint a faithful portrait of Arnold, 
 which should reveal him to the world as he really was, and 
 displace the distorted image that many had formed of his 
 character. The labour was great — by far the hardest, he 
 used to say, that he ever went through in his life. At 
 times it hung, as he told Pearson, ' like a millstone round 
 my neck.' Yet it was truly a labour of love ; and when, 
 on the last day of May 1 844, the ' Life and Correspondence 
 of Dr. Arnold ' appeared, and when he found that it was 
 everywhere greedily devoured and everywhere awakening, 
 or intensifying, a feeling of profound admiration for Arnold, 
 he had his reward. 
 
 The two years from June 1842 to June 1844 were so 
 completely absorbed in his one object that, outside the 
 progress of the Memoir, there is little to be told. The 
 one break in his labours was when his friend Vaughan, with 
 wise thoughtfulness, enticed him to go for a week to Paris 
 
 "' Letter of the Rev. John Philip Gell, then principal of the college at 
 Hobart Town, Van Diemen's Land. See Life of Dr. Ai-nold, vol. ii. pp. 290-3. 
 
 VOL. \. Y
 
 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1845 
 
 in July, 1843. 'I have seen Versailles,' he writes to 
 Pearson. 
 
 ' I pronounce it to be the glory of Cisalpine Europe, the 
 most interestini^ spot north of Italy, in the mere awfulness 
 of historical interest rivalling, if not equalling, the sublime 
 view from the steps of St. John Lateran. That great view 
 over the Cour de Marbre, with the statues of French heroes 
 encircling Louis XIV., and the long Paris avenue beyond, 
 which Louis XVI. must have seen over the heads of the 
 raging mob, whilst behind him stood the royal deathbed of 
 Louis XIV. — that view ranks, in my mind, close behind 
 Rome, Greece, or the great Piazza, and gives me a thrill like 
 that with which I woke at Delphi, or felt the CapitoHne Hill 
 rise under my feet. Never, before my sight of that gigantic 
 palace, filled with the one only thought of royal pride and 
 selfishness, the farthest horizon co-extensive only with the 
 royal park, and so excluding every idea except that of the 
 king's own grandeur, the whole place unredeemed by one 
 single association of heroism or holiness, did I feel how 
 inevitably doomed to destruction was the monarchy of 
 Louis XVI. Never, before my sight of that long Paris 
 avenue, and of that marble court, of the marble staircase, 
 and of the hall of the guards, and of the Queen's bedroom, 
 with the remembrance of their occupation by the Parisian 
 populace, did I feel how truly awful must have been the 
 shock of that Revolution which could carry such guests 
 into the sanctuary of such a palace. That balcony is, I am 
 convinced, tJie scene of the Revolution to see. Words fail 
 to express the Babylon-like, Titanian, Jeremiah-like 
 interest which invests it.' 
 
 His visit to Paris was the only interruption of his 
 labours on Arnold's ' Life,' and even the letter from which 
 the above description of Versailles is extracted concludes 
 with questions asked with a view to comparing the 
 character and extent of Longley's influence over the boys 
 at Harrow. When the work" at last appeared ' the effect ' 
 was, as he himself says — 
 
 -' Hie Life mid Correspondence of Thomas Arnold. 2 vols. London, 
 1844. 8vo.
 
 CHAP. IX THE LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD 323 
 
 'startling on those who had not known Arnold. I find 
 that the impression in everyone's mind is exactly what I 
 had intended— entirely and exclusively of /;/;//, and not of 
 me. You may imagine how amply overpaid I now feel 
 for all the anxiety I have had, and how thankful for having 
 been able to bring it to this end.' 
 
 The reviews were uniformly favourable. He searched 
 them eagerly, but less to see what was said of himself, than 
 to see whether the facts which he had sought to portray 
 were correctly apprehended. It was an especial pleasure 
 to him to learn that some of the leaders of the Tractarian 
 party, who had most disliked and distrusted Arnold, as 
 they conceived him, were completely won over by the piety 
 and humility of the real man. If the facts as stated by his 
 biographer were misunderstood, his comment was that such 
 misapprehensions 
 
 ' only proved how difficult it is so to describe a man to 
 those who did not know him that they shall really under- 
 stand him.' 
 
 ' Two things ' he finds 
 
 ' objected to on my part. One, that the sentences are too 
 long — the Master of Balliol, who otherwise highly approves, 
 got out of breath in reading it aloud to Mrs. Jenkyns. 
 The other, a want of more facts and anecdotes.' 
 
 ' Your approval,' he wrote to Pearson, 
 
 ' was very delightful to me. I confess to having an almost 
 restless desire to hear what is said about the book, not, I 
 really believe, from vanity, but because it does give me 
 such intense pleasure, as it always did, to find that dear 
 Arnold is known and loved, and that the great labour, I 
 might almost say agony, of the last two years has not been 
 thrown away.' 
 
 It has been necessary to dwell at some length upon the 
 Memoir owing to its importance, both to the reader and
 
 324 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1844 
 
 the writer of the ' Life of Dr. Arnold.' In some respects it 
 was, as he himself anticipated when composing it, the work 
 of his life, the book by which he most affected for good the 
 largest number of persons. It idealised a profession which 
 is every year recognised to be of wider and deeper import- 
 ance. At the same time, it produced on his own mind and 
 character the consolidating effect of an arduous and sus- 
 tained effort, especially as, in depicting the sentiments and 
 opinions of another, he was taking stock, so to speak, of his 
 own. And yet again, the great and deserved success of 
 the ' Life,' which at Christmas, 1 844, had reached its fourth 
 edition, gave him an assured position, and made him a 
 power, not in Oxford only, nor merely in the world of 
 letters. From this time forward his movements seem more 
 free, his step more firm, his carriage more erect.
 
 325 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 1844-48 
 
 OXFORD — DEGRADATION OF MR. WARD— WORK 
 AS COLLEGE TUTOR 
 
 In the same letter which announced the arrival of the first 
 copies of his book, Stanley assured his mother that, as * a 
 pledge of turning immediately to something else,' he had 
 that day resumed the study of Hebrew, and prospectively 
 entered the field as a candidate for the Chair of Exegetical 
 Theology, which was to fall vacant in three years' time. 
 He adds that he had again, after the two years' interval 
 of seclusion, 
 
 ' begun to frequent dinner-parties, debating societies, &c., 
 to my great enjoyment. I also preached the other day 
 a Latin sermon, in which I took the opportunity of the 
 " decent obscurity of a learned language " to deliver myself 
 of several offensive truths with which I was labouring.' 
 
 A few days later he writes to explain the drift of his 
 sermon. 
 
 ' The offensive truths are as follows : — 
 
 * I. That we ought to admire the nineteenth century as 
 well as the first. 
 
 ' 2. That we ought to study German as well as English 
 theology. 
 
 ' 3. That the University must not follow, but lead, in all 
 matters of knowledge. 
 
 ' 4. That no good could come to the place until the 
 scandalous plan of voting on college or personal feelings 
 was abandoned.
 
 o 
 
 26 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1844 
 
 ' 5. That no reforms were so safe or effectual as those 
 which were forced upon the reluctant Dons by the indignant 
 undergraduates.' 
 
 The first four of these heads represent the dominant 
 current of his thoughts and aims in connection with the 
 Church and the University ; the fifth reflects the results of 
 his recent experiences as a college tutor. Collectively they 
 define the range of ideas within which, for the next seven 
 years, his practical energies were mainly concentrated. 
 Though Church life, tutorial duties, and University reform 
 could not absorb all his active interests, they naturally 
 occupied the largest share in his attention as the business 
 of his professional life in Oxford. 
 
 After two years of incessant and anxious work upon 
 the Memoir of Arnold, some relaxation was sorely needed, 
 and Stanley sought the necessary change of thought and 
 scene in foreign travel. In August 1844 he started with 
 Benjamin Jowett (the present Master of Balliol) for a six 
 weeks' tour in Germany. Travelling for the most part by 
 ' hateful diligences,' they reached Rheims, ' the Canterbury 
 of France,' and thence made their way to Treves, where the 
 Holy Coat was being exhibited for the first time since 1810. 
 In his account of the relic of the seamless vesture, of the 
 procession of the pilgrims, and of the miraculous cures 
 alleged to have been performed at the shrine, Stanley passes 
 away from the region of doubt or denial to that which is 
 beyond dispute. He insists on the historical interest un- 
 deniably possessed by an object which has been for many 
 centuries so intensely and so widely venerated. 
 
 ' I cannot help suspecting that it has been considered in 
 some way as the Palladium of the German race. Various 
 expressions in the first authentic mention of it, its natural 
 adaptation to be the symbol of what Dante calls the seam- 
 less vesture of the German Empire, its being carried off into
 
 CHAP. X PRAGUE 327 
 
 the heart of Germany, and the difficulty of recovering it, 
 all point in the same direction.' 
 
 ' Supporting our wearied bodies by cups of coffee (which 
 you will be glad to hear that I have learned to drink) and 
 rolls of bread, and our wearied minds by alternate reading, 
 analysing, and catechising on Kant's " Pure Reason," ' the 
 travellers reached Bingen, and thence made their way to 
 Nuremberg. The city enchanted Stanley as a mediaeval 
 town, and as the birthplace of German art. ' It is not,' he 
 says, 
 
 ' a Pompeii of the Middle Ages, for its national spirit 
 still hangs about it, and gives it the appearance, not of 
 death, but of sleep. It is exactly a German Venice, a very 
 German Venice indeed, as Coleridge said of Klopstock 
 when he heard him called a German Milton, yet still more 
 corresponding to Venice than any other place I ever saw.* 
 
 Steaming for three days down the Danube, ' a wild, 
 straggling river, turbid as if carrying off the dregs of Europe,' 
 they arrived at Vienna. The city seemed to him un- 
 interesting, except as ' the last great European city on the 
 confines of Christendom.' The picture-galleries he, as usual, 
 avoided. If he entered them at all, it was for the sake of 
 the portraits. Prague was the farthest point which the 
 travellers reached : 
 
 ' It fully equalled my expectations ; whilst the influx of 
 new ideas was so great that I could hardly sleep from them 
 the first of the two nights we passed there. I have not yet 
 disentangled them clearly enough to see distinctly what 
 Prague was, and is, and yet may be, or what are the various 
 ways in which it strikes one as different from all other 
 cities I have yet seen. It is not, to my mind, strictly 
 Oriental, nor even Sclavonic purely ; it is, I think, what one 
 would expect from a city of a barbarian race struggling in 
 the arms of a civilised world. 
 
 ' Undoubtedly, the great and characteristic feature and
 
 o 
 
 28 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1844 
 
 one not nearly enough dwelt upon, is the bridge over the 
 Moldau, which divides the mass of the town from the 
 Hradschin {i.e. the citadel, palace, cathedral, in short the 
 Kremlin of Prague). You suddenly emerge from the streets 
 of the town oiit of the huge buildings of the University 
 (the university of John Huss, and the oldest of all the 
 German universities, now so famous) and of the Seminary 
 of the Jesuits, and you come at once in sight of this mag- 
 nificent bridge, incomparably the finest I ever saw, stretch- 
 ing over the Moldau, arch after arch, statue after statue, till 
 it ends at the foot of the Hradschin, which rises immedi- 
 ately above it, one mass of palaces and churches, with the 
 cathedral towering out of them. 
 
 ' The entrance of the bridge is guarded by a watch-tower, 
 at the gate of which took place one of the most striking 
 and significant scenes I ever heard of It was here that, in 
 the Thirty Years' War, the Swedish army, under Gustavus 
 Adolphus, was on the point of taking the city by surprise, 
 when a Jesuit rushed out of the adjoining college, let down 
 the portcullis, and, like a second Codes, defended the gate, 
 with three students, till assistance came, and thereby 
 secured the cause of the counter-Reformation in Prague, 
 in Germany, perhaps in Europe. The whole scene bursts 
 upon one with such vividness that I can hardly help 
 dreaming of it all night ; and in the mocking sculptures of 
 Luther and his wife under the gateway, and the long line 
 of statues on the bridge erected since the war to Roman 
 Catholic saints, you see the visible triumph of the Jesuit's 
 cause.' 
 
 Turning homewards, and embarking on the Elbe, the 
 two friends arrived at Dresden, ' one of the most uninterest- 
 ing places,' says Stanley, ' I ever saw.' 
 
 ' Its redeeming feature is a fine terrace upon, and bridge 
 over, the river, and the great picture-gallery, which to me had 
 no charms except just to see the famous picture of the Virgin, 
 and two portraits — again of Luther and Melanchthon ; 
 they were of the same date evidently as those at Nuremberg, 
 but taken at a less happy moment. . . . Such being our 
 impressions of Dresden, we were deliberating how we could 
 most rapidly pass on to Berlin when, owing to a letter of 
 introduction which I had brought to a Professor here, we
 
 CHAP. X DRESDEN 329 
 
 suddenly discovered that we had arrived on the day of a 
 great assemblage of German scholars and schoolmasters and 
 professors exactly answering to the British Association, only 
 for the advancement, not of physical, but of philological 
 science. We determined accordingly to delay our departure 
 till the evening, in the hope of hearing from several of them 
 whether anyone whom we wanted to see at Berlin was 
 likely to be there. 
 
 ' There was a great meeting of them in the evening, and 
 there we went. Almost the first person we saw was our 
 old friend Professor Bocking, my host at Bonn. With him 
 I immediately made acquaintance again ; and from that 
 moment we went a regular round of introductions, till we 
 finally reached the President of the Association, Hermann, 
 the father of German philologers, a very old man, but still 
 strong and vigorous. It was very curious to have such a 
 constant succession of persons, whom we had only known 
 from the backs of books, passing before you — such a sudden 
 transformation of names into men of flesh and blood. 
 There was Lachmann, with long, streaming yellow hair, the 
 editor of the Greek Testament which you have often seen 
 in my rooms. There was Bekker, and others whose names 
 would not interest you, whom I was very glad to see. One 
 was Forchhammer, whose works on Greek topography I 
 had read in Greece with great admiration, and quoted in 
 my article in the " Classical Museum." ' He immediately 
 asked, on hearing my name, whether I was the author of 
 the article, and also whether I had not a brother in the 
 Navy ; he had met Owen in the Gulf of Corinth. . . . 
 
 ' Another was the head of one of the schools here — 
 Bottcher. I was asking one of the others whether they had 
 ever heard of Arnold, and he immediately mentioned this 
 man as knowing him ; and I at once remembered that it 
 was the man for whom Arnold had taken so much trouble 
 in getting a map of Syracuse copied out from the Ord- 
 nance Office, which I lost, and about which I received the 
 only angry letter I ever had from him. I was accordingly 
 introduced to him ; he had kept all his letters, which were 
 written to him in Latin. 
 
 ' A third was Ewald, writer of the books on the Psalms 
 and Prophets which have interested me so much lately. We 
 
 ' The Classical Museum, vol. i. part i, 'Greek Topography,' by the Rev, 
 A. P. Stanley, A.M., p. 65.
 
 JO 
 
 O LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1844 
 
 were both more anxious to see him than almost anyone else 
 in Germany, ... so that you may imagine our delight at 
 findin"^ him here. We went to his hotel and introduced 
 ourselves (on the plea of asking whether he had received 
 Arnold's two se'mons on Prophecy, which I had delivered 
 to an Oxford man to give him). ... It was in the evening, 
 and we found him alone, with nothing but his Greek Testa- 
 ment on the table, and our interview was very satisfactory. 
 He is one of the most striking Germans I have met with ; 
 and there is in his conversation a great deal of real religion 
 and a Christian element, which his books are rather without. 
 He spoke with great feeling of his own history, of his 
 gradually advancing more and more into a recognition of 
 the truth and greatness of Christianity ; how he had begun 
 less as a mere philosopher than become through it a philo- 
 sopher, and ended by being a theologian. We parted very 
 good friends, and I promised to send him Arnold's " Life." ' 
 
 From Dresden Stanley went on to Berlin, halting at 
 Wittemberg, 
 
 ' a place which no Protestant should fail to visit. There is 
 something, even in its totalh/ featureless position in the 
 midst of the great plain of sand which stretches from 
 Dresden to the sea, that makes it not unfit to be the birth- 
 place of principles, whose pride it is to be independent of 
 all local and outward circumstances.' 
 
 With Charles Bunsen as his guide, Stanley completed 
 his ' tour through the whole German world by seeing its 
 real capital,' Berlin. 
 
 ' By seeing many places I find I have got instinctive 
 feelings peculiar to different kinds of cities, which I recog- 
 nise as certainly as, when I got upon the runaway horse at 
 Malta, I felt the paces and movement of my friend at 
 Norwich. There is one kind of feeling suggested by places 
 which at times exhibit themselves as scenes of great Revo- 
 lutions, such as came on me when I ran up the steps of 
 the Capitol, or stood in the central chamber of Versailles ; 
 another, when the whole history of a place is suddenly un- 
 rolled, as at Prague, or Nuremberg ; and another, when I
 
 CHAP. X COLLEGE TUTORSHIP 331 
 
 feel that the place is not dead, but living, full of influence, 
 not only for the past, but for the future. This I felt at 
 Paris, and I had not felt it again till I reached Berlin, when 
 it came over me irresistibly, at once investing it with an 
 interest before which Vienna and Dresden faded into 
 nothing. You feel that it is teeming with intellectual 
 energy — with purely intellectual energy, beyond any place 
 I ever saw ; that in it, humanly speaking, all the future 
 hopes of Germany are concentrated. 
 
 ' With the exception of the King and Schelling — two 
 great exceptions, certainly — I saw everyone that I wished 
 to see — Von Humboldt, Ranke, Neander, &c., &c. ... I 
 am very glad to have seen them ; eminent men are always 
 a pleasing recollection to me. But otherwise it was a 
 failure. I am never good at drawing-out people, especially 
 when alone. And also, whether from this or from some 
 other cause, I was somewhat disappointed with them. 
 None of them struck me so much as Ewald. 
 
 ' Of the whole set, I was, I think, most impressed by 
 Humboldt and Neander — Humboldt, as being so perfect a 
 gentleman ; Neander, as being such a thorough Jew in 
 physiognomy. He was one by religion originally, and 
 assumed his present name on his conversion. I think I 
 never saw the Hebrew features so strongly marked : the 
 fierce black eyes (or rather eye, as he has only one), deep 
 set under two great moustaches of overhanging eyebrows. 
 I talked to Ranke a little about the Hussites and the 
 Reformation, and got a little, but not much, out of him. I 
 was glad to find that he agreed with me in thinking that 
 Henry Vni.'s natural greatness had been under-estimated.' 
 
 The tour completely * answered its purpose of pouring 
 through my mind such a flood of new ideas as will keep it 
 from rusting for a long to come.' At the end of 1843 he 
 had been ordained priest, and appointed a college tutor. 
 With fresh energy and renewed ardour he now threw him- 
 self into the duties and responsibilities of his position. His 
 immediate work was the preparation of his lectures, and in 
 the first letter written home after his return from Germany 
 he speaks of himself as ' getting up " Herodotus," not having 
 read it for seven years ; it is curious to find what a world
 
 332 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1845 
 
 of thought has passed through one's head in the interval.* 
 * How well,' writes one of his pupils (the present Dean of 
 Westminster), 
 
 ' two or three of us remember that well-marked " Herodotus," 
 which he freely lent us. It had its special marks in coloured 
 lines, to indicate, first, passages noteworthy for the Greek ; 
 secondly, passages bearing on Greek history or on the time 
 of Herodotus ; thirdly, passages containing truths for all 
 time.' 
 
 But the peace of the University was already disturbed 
 by the first mutterings of coming war, which heralded the 
 contest over Ward's ' Ideal Church,' and which verified by 
 experience one, at least, of the ' offensive truths ' contained 
 in Stanley's Latin sermon. First came the opposition to 
 the election as Vice-Chancellor of Dr. Symons, who had 
 been one of the six doctors by whom Dr. Pusey was sus- 
 pended, and who was one of the most active opponents of 
 the Tractarian Movement. It was followed by rumours, 
 which proved to be for the present premature, of the seces- 
 sion of Newman, who, in September 1843, had resigned 
 St. Mary's and retired to Littlemore. ' It would be impos- 
 sible,' writes Stanley, 
 
 ' to exaggerate the effect produced by this rumour (which 
 at first seemed to have more authenticity than it has since 
 had) on, at least, all the thinking and feeling part of Oxford. 
 There has always, and especially for the last year, been 
 something so mysterious about Newman's movements, 
 that now that it seemed that he was about to take the 
 final step, one felt the long range of causes before, and the 
 still longer train of consequences behind, throwing every 
 previous secession and every previous move into the re- 
 motest distance in comparison. It really reminded me of 
 that one grand scene that I saw in the " Medea," ^ when the 
 murder takes place within the palace, and the terrified slaves 
 fly backwards and forwards between the Chorus and the 
 
 ^ The Medea had been acted during the meeting of the German philologists 
 at Dresden.
 
 CHAP. X WARD'S IDEAL CHURCH 
 
 Z^Z 
 
 closed gates, and the Chorus mounts the steps of the altar 
 and invokes the sun to hide its rays, and darkness rapidly 
 falls over the stage. No one asked about it in public, but 
 everyone rushed to and fro to ask in private, and recalled 
 the last time that Newman had been seen walking in the 
 streets, how he looked, and what he had said. At last 
 some reassurance was brought by the news that he was, at 
 any rate, still at Littlemore, and it does not appear that 
 there is any ground for anticipating an immediate move. 
 Still, the shock has been given, and I think the public mind 
 is prepared for it. My impression from the kind of sensa- 
 tion produced by this rumour is, that the effect would be 
 very great ; deep, but within a narrow circle, at first, and 
 then gradually widening, till a great crash came. To any 
 one who has been accustomed to look upon Arnold and 
 Newman as the two great men of the Church of England, 
 the death of one and the secession of the other could not 
 but look ominous, like the rattle of departing chariots that 
 was heard on the eve of the downfall of the Temple of 
 Jerusalem.' 
 
 To the rumours of Newman's secession succeeded the 
 growing excitement which was aroused by the publication 
 of Ward's ' Ideal of a Christian Church considered.' 
 Among many similar passages in that bulky volume 
 occurred the following sentences : 
 
 ' We find — oh, most joyful, most wonderful, most un- 
 expected sight ! — we find the whole cycle of Roman doc- 
 trine gradually possessing numbers of English Churchmen. 
 . . . Three years have passed since I said plainly that in 
 subscribing the Articles I renounce no one Roman doc- 
 trine.' 
 
 The challenge was bold, and it was accepted by the 
 University. Notice was given that three resolutions would 
 be proposed at a Convocation which was summoned for 
 February 13, 1845. The first resolution condemned selected 
 passages from the ' Ideal Church ' as ' utterly inconsistent ' 
 with the Thirty-nine Articles, and with Ward's good-faith 
 in assenting to and subscribing the same ; the second
 
 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1845 
 
 annulled the degrees of B.A. and M.A., formerly con- 
 ferred upon him on the strength of such assent and sub- 
 scription ; the third imposed for the future on all graduates 
 a new form of subscription ^ to the Articles, so framed as 
 to exclude the possibility of any such interpretation as had 
 been placed upon them by Ward and in ' Tract 90.' 
 
 No sooner were the three resolutions announced than 
 Stanley threw himself with characteristic energy into the 
 opposition. Ward's case was in itself comparatively insig- 
 nificant and very unpopular. Rut the principle raised by 
 the proposal to impose a new test was of the utmost im- 
 portance. He wrote at once to many of his old college 
 friends, urging some to canvass against the test, others to 
 vote against it when it came up for discussion in the fol- 
 lowing February. His own feelings towards the three 
 resolutions are shortly expressed in a note to Pearson : 
 
 ' About I and 2, I think you may fairly stay away ; but 
 about 3, I think you are called upon to vote. / could not 
 take the new test, and I therefore feel that a direct injury 
 is inflicted on me if it is carried, i and 2 I oppose solely 
 on the ground of the incompetence of Convocation to try 
 such questions.' 
 
 A longer letter to his sister at Norwich explains his 
 view of the effect of the proposed Statute at greater 
 length : 
 
 ' It is likely to produce a great ferment, and to bring 
 on the whole question of subscription beyond any previous 
 step. In my judgment, the whole thing is most objection- 
 able ; exactly the Hampden case over again, with the 
 tables turned — a large work judged by extracts before a 
 mob of clergy, who can, after all, never decide on the real 
 
 * The new test contained the following words : — ' Ego, A.B., profiteor me 
 Articulis istis omnibus et singulis eo sensu subscripturura in quo eos ex animo 
 credo et primitus editos esse, et nunc mihi ab Universitate propositos tanquam 
 opinionum mearum certum ac indubitatum signum.'
 
 CHAP. X DEGRADATION OF W. G. WARD 335. 
 
 questions at issue. And the last part, which attempts to 
 impose a new test, is quite a new feature. I trust and think 
 that the Liberal Party will rise all through the country. 
 Some indeed here, such as Hampden, are most provokingly 
 forgetful of all the arguments they used in their own 
 defence ten years ago, and urge on the measure as if they 
 had never suffered themselves, either from perplexed con- 
 sciences or arbitrary power.' 
 
 As the Black Thursday of St. Valentine's Eve (Feb- 
 ruary 13, 1845) approached, the excitement grew in in- 
 tensity. Every day was big with flyleaves and protests 
 and articles. The atmosphere of Oxford became more and 
 more ' suffocating,' and breathed and burned ' with nothing 
 but pamphlets and false arguments and indignant, half- 
 suppressed remonstrances.' Stanley himself drew up an 
 elaborate pamphlet against the Statute ; but his friends 
 opposed its publication, and, with the exception of a letter 
 to the Times, signed ' An M.A. who abhors Convocation ' 
 (Februaiy 12, 1845), and an address to the voters upon 
 the situation, he took no public part in the conflict. But 
 by his advice the opinion of two eminent lawyers against 
 the legality of the test and degradation was obtained upon 
 a Case which he was chiefly instrumental in drafting. 
 
 In deference to popular and legal opinion, the suggested 
 test was withdrawn by its proposers before the meeting of 
 Convocation. But another resolution was substituted for 
 it, formally condemning the principles of interpretation 
 adopted in ' Tract 90.' 
 
 ' The Heads have actually ventured to add this to the 
 existing Statute, so as to leave only six days for answer, 
 deliberation, notices, and all those other honest acts, which 
 were so successful against the test, but without which the 
 test would probably have triumphed. The measure is not, 
 indeed, in itself so bad as either of those that have gone 
 before, as far as I can as yet see. No. 90 is shorter than 
 Ward's book, and so may perhaps be read by those who
 
 ^y 
 
 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1845 
 
 condemn it, and no pains and penalties arc immediately 
 attached to it. But still, its condemnation involves the 
 whole question of subscription, of which Convocation are 
 just as fit to judge as the boys at the workhouse, and may 
 possibly be made the ground of proceedings against New- 
 man, which would lead to the culmination of catastrophes 
 in his retirement from the University ; and the indecency 
 and injustice of bringing it forward at a week's notice are 
 without excuse. However, here the University Constitution, 
 with all its anomalies, offers a temporary remedy. Now, 
 as in the case of the Hampden feud, we have two Proctors 
 who are opposed to the whole thing, and it is thought that 
 this is a case for the exercise of their joint veto, which, 
 though it can only postpone the calamity till next term, 
 yet gives time for discussing, and, if so be, suppressing it. 
 They are now making up their minds whether they will do 
 so, and I hope there is no doubt of their proceeding to it. . . . 
 In that case the censure and degradation of Ward will go 
 on as before. ... I feel so full of arguments against the 
 whole thing that I long for a hundred voices and throats 
 of brass.' 
 
 ' It is very remarkable to observe,' says Stanley, speak- 
 ing of the proposed censure on ' Tract 90,' 
 
 * how peculiar a feeling is excited the moment that the 
 slightest attempt is made to eject Newman, as if men had 
 an instinctive fear of touching even a hair of his head. 
 Men who had been prepared to sacrifice Ward without a 
 struggle recoiled in horror when they found that they were 
 called upon to sacrifice Newman too.' 
 
 The new resolution forced Stanley to act. On Feb- 
 ruary loth an Address to the Voters at Convocation was 
 circulated, under the title of ' Nemesis.' The address "* was 
 anonymous, but it created a considerable sensation, and its 
 authorship soon transpired. It expresses in a succinct 
 form Stanley's conviction of the absurdity of the con- 
 
 * It is here printed from the draft found among his papers.
 
 CHAP. X NEMESIS 2)?,7 
 
 dcmnation, both of Hampden's ' Bampton Lectures ' and of 
 the ' Ideal Church ' and ' Tract 90.' 
 
 'Oxford, February lo, 1845. 
 
 ' I. In 1836, Dr. Hampden was censured by Convocation 
 on an undefined charge of want of confidence. In 1845, 
 Mr. Newman and Mr. Ward are to be censured by the 
 same body. 
 
 ' 2. In 1836, the country was panic-stricken with a fear 
 of LiberaHsm. In 1845, the country is panic-stricken with 
 a fear of Popery. 
 
 ' 3. 474 was the majority that condemned Dr. Hampden ; 
 474 is the number of requisitionists that induced the censure 
 on Mr. Newman. 
 
 ' 4. The censure on Dr. Hampden was brought forward 
 at ten days' notice. The censure on Mr. Newman was 
 brought forward at ten days' notice. 
 
 ' 5. Two Proctors of decided character, and of supposed 
 leaning to the side of Dr. Hampden, filled the Proctor's 
 office in 1836. Two Proctors of decided character, and of 
 supposed leaning to the side of Mr. Newman, fill the 
 Proctor's office in 1845. 
 
 ' 6. The " Standard " newspaper headed the attack on Dr. 
 Hampden. The " Standard " newspaper heads the attack 
 on Mr. Ward and Mr. Newman. 
 
 ' 7. The " Globe " and " Morning Chronicle " defended 
 Dr. Hampden. The " Globe " and " Morning Chronicle " 
 defend Mr. Ward. 
 
 ' 8. The Thirty-nine Articles were elaborately contrasted 
 with the writings of Dr. Hampden as the ground of his 
 condemnation. The Thirty-nine Articles are made the 
 ground of the condemnation of Mr. Ward and Mr. 
 Newman. 
 
 ' 9. The " Bampton Lectures " were preached four years 
 before they were censured. The 90th " Tract for the Times " 
 was written four years before it is now proposed to be 
 censured. 
 
 ' 10. Two eminent lawyers pronounced the censure on 
 Dr. Hampden illegal. Two eminent lawyers pronounce 
 the degradation of Mr. Ward illegal. 
 
 ' The wheel is come full circle round. The victors of 
 1836 are the victims of 1845. The victims of 1836 are the 
 victors of 1845. The assailants are the assailed, the 
 
 VOL. I. Z
 
 338 LIFE OF DEAN STAXLEY 1845 
 
 assailed are the assailants. The condemned are the con- 
 demners, the condemners the condemned. 
 
 ' The wheel is come full circle round. How soon may it 
 come round again .'' Voters of the 13th, deal to your oppo- 
 nents that justice which, perhaps, you may not expect to 
 receive from them. But the truest hope of obtaining mercy 
 or justice then is by showing mercy and justice now. 
 Judge, therefore, by 1836 what should be your conduct in 
 1845, and by your conduct in 1845 what should be your 
 opponents' conduct in 1856, when Puseyism may be as 
 triumphant as it is now depressed, when none can with any 
 face protest against a mob tribunal then, if they have ap- 
 pealed to it now, or deprecate the madness of a popular 
 clamour then, if they have kindled or added to it now.' 
 
 For some days past the tide of country voters had rolled 
 into Oxford. Clergy and laity of all opinions and classes 
 crowded the Colleges and Inns. On the evening of the 12th 
 of February, Stanley had occasion to go on business to the 
 rooms of one of the Fellows of Oriel. While waiting for 
 his friend, who happened to be out, he fell into conversa- 
 tion with two unknown clergymen, who were also expecting 
 the absent host, on the subject of the day. 
 
 ' They — both apparently hot Puseyites — naturally con- 
 demned the measure (and I expressed my full concurrence), 
 on the ground of its precipitancy, injustice, &c., and they 
 warmed on finding such cordial sympathy. At last they 
 began to speculate on the motives which had induced the 
 Heads to bring it forward. " I firmly believe," said the 
 more vehement of the two, " that they are only excited to 
 it by their hatred of Newman's superior goodness." " No," 
 I said, " I cannot quite agree with you there ; I firmly believe 
 that they are actuated by exactly the same motives that 
 induced them to bring forward the censure on Hampden 
 — popular clamour, external pressure, and the wish to 
 sacrifice an unpopular author." You would have laughed 
 to have seen the deep silence which ensued. If I had 
 thrown a bucket of cold water over my friend, he could not 
 have been more completely checked in his advances ; and 
 so he remained transfixed till our host returned and re- 
 leased us.'
 
 CHAP. X DEGRADATION OF VV. G. WARD 339 
 
 At last the morning came of ' the memorable day, which 
 must be regarded as the closing scene of the conflict of the 
 first Oxford Movement.' Weeks afterwards, the scene 
 haunted Stanley, growing more vivid as it grew more dis- 
 tant — the wild hurrying to and fro of black gowns and 
 flying red hoods, the driving snow and sleet, the excited 
 mob of 1,100 voters crowded in the Sheldonian Theatre, 
 and every stage of the progress of ' the great battle of 
 Armageddon.'-' ' All is over,' he writes to his sister in the 
 •evening : 
 
 ' I did not know how much I loved Oxford, or how sad 
 it would be to feel the deep disgrace of which this day is the 
 beginning. But to return. At 12^ I went to Jowett, 
 lunched there, and then sallied forth through the driving 
 storm and sleet, congenial to the events of the day, to the 
 Theatre. At i the proceedings began. . . . Ward sate in the 
 rostrum from which the English verse is spoken, and the 
 Heads and Vice-Chancellor where they sit at the Com- 
 memoration, so that you can figure the scene to yourself. 
 . . . First, then, came the reading over the decree. . . . Then 
 two or three abortive attempts at amendments. . . . Then 
 the Vice-Chancellor called on Ward in Latin, and Ward 
 answered, also in Latin, asking for permission to speak in 
 English, all this having been pre-arranged. Then came 
 the speech, which, as you will see in the papers, I need not 
 describe. It lasted an hour. . , . You do not know Ward 
 well enough to see how eminently characteristic it was. He 
 was rather nervous at first, but recovered his self-possession 
 almost immediately, and never lost it. . . . It was very 
 striking in parts, and the force with which he described the 
 total incapacity of the Convocation to exercise judicial 
 functions was very effective, and the end was really grand. 
 Although most of his hearers were standing the whole time, 
 they were wonderfully patient, and some were evidently 
 much impressed — one or two at least were changed, or de- 
 terred from voting. 
 
 ' ... At the end of his speech (after a short Latin 
 speech from someone else), it was put to the vote, first 
 
 * See Stanley's article in the Edinburgh Review, vol. cliii. p. 322. 
 
 z 2
 
 ;40 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1845 
 
 by voices, and then, as is the custom, by every M.A. pass- 
 ing out at the door, and having his vote pricked on a 
 paper by one of the Proctors. Jowett and I, -being near 
 the door, got out soon . . . out of the atmosphere of the 
 theatre, heated even on that wintry day, into the more 
 merciful and healthy fury of the elements. When we came 
 back the censure was carried — JJ^ to 368. Then came the 
 degradation, a very few words from Ward, and then the 
 votine aeain. I had at least thought that this would be 
 lost. But no — 568 to 5 1 1. Loud shouts were heard outside 
 shortly afterwards ; it was the undergraduates outside 
 cheering Ward home. So soon has Maurice's prediction 
 been fulfilled, that this persecution would make him the 
 idol of the rising generation. Then came the proposal of 
 the No. 90 Statute, on which the two Proctors "^ instantly 
 rose, and, amidst a mingled tempest of cheers and groans, 
 put their veto, whilst agitators from the gallery simul- 
 taneously discharged (like the indulgence papers at the 
 Pope's Benediction) a shower of requisitions for a revival of 
 the statute next term. The Heads, Proctors, &c., then rose, 
 and left the place amidst cries of " No Popery " and similar 
 demonstrations.' 
 
 Two da}-s later he recurs to the same subject : 
 
 ' The more I reflect upon it, the more simply shocking 
 is the impression left. A mob of 1,200 persons assuming 
 judicial functions, after the most solemn warnings of their 
 incompetency, on a question which it is quite impossible 
 they can have studied, and then proceeding to inflict a sen- 
 tence such as, in its present form, has never been inflicted 
 on anyone in the whole history of the University. . . . The 
 great mass, I suppose, voted on both sides with their party, 
 the Puseyite side voting for Ward, as they would vote against 
 Whately, or had voted against Hampden ; the others, as they 
 had voted, and will vote, against anyone who breaks in on 
 the established usage. ..." What are you going to do ? " 
 one old clergyman was heard to say to another. " Oh, I do 
 not know — vote for the old Church, I suppose ; come and 
 have a rubber afterwards." The Doctors gave their votes 
 as they sat aloft in the semicircle. A flush, it is said, passed 
 over the pallid face of the Provost of Oriel as he voted for 
 
 "* H. P. Guillemard of Trinity and R. \V. Church of Oriel.
 
 •CHAP. X DEGRADATION OF IV. G. WARD 341 
 
 the degradation ; the others filed out at the two doors, by 
 each of which stood one of the two Proctors. It must have 
 been a trying thing for Church, the Junior Proctor, friend of 
 Newman and Ward, to see the tide rolhng by, his blood 
 boiling, as he said, from time to time, as, one after the 
 other, men notorious for utter worldliness gave their 
 " placets " for the degradation.' 
 
 ' What impressed me so deeply in the whole scene,' he 
 adds in another letter, 
 
 ' was the feeling that, had it been in the sixteenth, in- 
 stead of the nineteenth, century, just the same men, with just 
 the same arguments, would have been voting, not for 
 degradation, but for burning.' 
 
 Stanley's sense of the gravity of the occasion is illus- 
 trated by the tone of his letters. Different evidence of his 
 feelings is afforded by the following anecdote, which shall 
 be told in the words of Bishop Hobhouse, who witnessed 
 the scene : 
 
 ' Whilst A. P. S. was living as a tutor of University 
 College within the borders of my parish (St. Peter's-in-the- 
 East), he asked me to introduce him to some few houses of 
 the lower class which he could enter for pastoral visitation. 
 
 ' He was a deacon, but being absorbed in tutorial and 
 literary work, he felt the want of a pastoral touching-point 
 with the less educated mind, and wished to study the modes 
 of thought of the cottager, and to exercise himself in the 
 task of adapting his mind and speech to their sentiments 
 and needs. 
 
 ' I selected a few of the more cultivated of the cottager 
 class, doubting his capacity for reaching the lowest. There 
 \vas only one who was cultivated enough to understand him 
 fully — an old College servant, whose health had broken in 
 mid-life, and driven him to reading and meditation to an 
 extent quite unusual in his rank of life. 
 
 ' This man died just at the time of the movement in the 
 Oxford Convocation for the condemnation of Mr. Ward's 
 " Ideal of a Christian Church." On my way to the stormy 
 meeting, I called on his \\'idow to make arrangements for
 
 342 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1845 
 
 the funeral. The widow said, " Mr. Stanley is upstairs." 
 There I found him, cap, gown, and hood, ready for voting 
 in the Convocation, and just rising from his knees. I said^ 
 " Do not I know why you are here .-• " " Yes," he replied^ 
 " I thought this chamber of death would be the best train- 
 ing for the spirit, to calm it for the coming Convocation." ' 
 
 Yet, deeply impressed though Stanley was with the 
 gravity of the crisis, he did not lose his sense of the ridicu- 
 lous. Absurd episodes mingled theircomedy with the tragedy 
 of ' the fatal Thursday,' and relieved the almost exaggerated 
 solemnity of the occasion. With these lighter sketches he 
 dismisses the subject from his correspondence. One, at 
 least, can scarcely be omitted here : 
 
 ' Some undergraduates, posted at an adjacent window, 
 saw Ward rush out from the Theatre after his second 
 speech, " proturbed," as they imagined, by the Bedell ; and 
 in rushing out, down he fell on his face in the snow, pam- 
 phlets, papers, &c., flying in all directions. Recovering 
 them, he descended into the street, where stood a crowd of 
 sixty or seventy undergraduates, who loudly cheered him, 
 and followed him home to Balliol.' 
 
 The veto of the Proctors upon the proposed censure of 
 ' Tract 90 ' gave the opponents of the Tractarian movement 
 time to reflect upon the war of extermination, in which the 
 revival of the proposed resolution threatened to involve the 
 University. Ward's punishment had evoked an unexpected 
 display of feeling among the undergraduates ; Oxford had 
 vindicated its Protestant orthodoxy ; and it was decided to 
 proceed no further against Newman. ' Peace ! No. 90 to 
 be left alone ! ' cries Stanley. 
 
 ' Everything looks like the beginning of halcyon days. 
 I have not felt such a load off my mind and time since I 
 finished the " Life." Such being the case, I am inclined to 
 look to seizing the opportunity of this calm to agitate for 
 academical reforms. The contrast makes me feel how very 
 mischievous all the excitement of the last two months must
 
 CHAP. X SECESSION OF NEWMAN 343 
 
 be, both to me and to the place, and if it were to continue 
 without my being able to check it more than I was in the 
 last instance, I should think it high time to take some 
 means of shutting myself out from it altogether.' 
 
 For the moment the final act in the Tractarian drama 
 was deferred ; but when Stanley arrived at the Oxford 
 Station in the following October, he was met by the report^ 
 still vague and unauthenticated, of Newman's secession. 
 The following letter gives his first impression on hearing 
 the tidings of an event which actually took place on October 
 9th, 1845: 7 
 
 ' All that is known, if indeed it be true, is this : That 
 he resigned his Fellowship a fortnight ago, but that nothing 
 transpired till, on the (accidental .-*) visit of a Dominican 
 monk to one of the young men in the Littlemore establish- 
 ment, he determined, sooner, it is said, than he had originally 
 intended, to be admitted by him in the Roman Catholic 
 chapel in the suburbs of Oxford. And accordingly the 
 ceremony took place, quite privately and unexpectedly, 
 last Thursday, and became known on Friday morning. 
 The other inmates of Littlemore have seceded with him ; 
 and it is said that he now purposes to continue there, and 
 from thence to lay siege to the University. If this be so, 
 I suspect the Oxford authorities will regret that they did 
 not do their best to keep him as a quiet enemy within, 
 instead of having him as an active enemy at, their gates. . . . 
 The sensation, of course, is incomparably less than it would 
 have been a year ago, partly from the long expectation of 
 it, partly from the complete disorganisation of Puseyism by 
 Ward's marriage. Still, it is felt to be a melancholy fact, 
 of which the ultimate consequences are incalculable. After 
 an Anglican Newman has done so much, there is no saying, 
 if he lives, what a Roman Newman may not do, both to the 
 Roman Catholics and to us.' 
 
 The secession of Newman produced a temporary lull in 
 the party strife at Oxford. What did the secessions portend 
 
 ' Letters and Covj-espondence of John Henry Nezvinan, ii. 468.
 
 344 ^^^^ ^^ DEAN STANLEY 1846 
 
 for the Church of England ? Were such defections to multi- 
 ph', till they drained its strength ? Were they the excesses 
 of an irregularly-returning vigour, or were the)' the signs of 
 coming inanition ? Newman and his followers had created 
 for themselves an Ideal Church, and upon it, thus idealised 
 to the imagination, they had concentrated the ardour of 
 their affections. But the attempt to fit the ideal to the 
 actual had produced a revulsion, which only the circum- 
 spect or the well-advised could endure. And now Newman 
 himself, whom his part}- had hitherto followed, and almost 
 adored, found the groundwork of his convictions swept 
 away, and him.self standing in the position of an involun- 
 tary traitor. What course would be pursued by his followers, 
 who, from within their homely church, were looking, with a 
 sense of uneasy longing for something undefined, upon the 
 historic magnificence of the Roman Church } The hush 
 of expectation silenced controversy. 
 
 It was at this moment that the period expired during 
 which Dr. Pusey had been suspended from preaching in 
 the University. At the beginning of Hilary Term, 1846, 
 he resumed preaching. The scene in Christ Church Cathe- 
 dral demonstrates the general sense of the gravity of the 
 crisis, and of the importance that attached to his action. 
 ' Nothing like the crowd,' says Stanley, 
 
 ' had been seen since the Archbishop of Amalfi was trodden 
 to death at Innocent III.'s sermon on the opening of the 
 fourth Lateran Council. Every seat, every transept, every 
 aisle thronged to bursting ; spectators or hearers wandering 
 about the clerestories ; Pusey carried up into the pulpit by 
 a by-passage. So much for the benefits of suspension. 
 To me, I confess, the mere sight of a vast crowd hanging 
 on the lips of a good man is so pathetic that I would go a 
 good way to hear it. The sermon — alas ! I shuddered as I 
 heard the text (John xx. 21) and foresaw the subject — Abso- 
 lution. However, it evidently only came because it was part 
 of his own course ; the more offensive topics of which it was
 
 CHAP. X PUSEY RESUMES PREACHING 345 
 
 capable were not dwelt upon, and merely the old common- 
 places and quotations reproduced in Pusey's usual confusion 
 of style. And so, on the whole, it was like most of his 
 sermons, a divine soul clothed in a very earthly body. The 
 beginning very pathetic and dignified — " It will be in the 
 memory of some that three years since," &c. — and the end, 
 on the needs of the manufacturing towns, very earnest and 
 solemn. I do sincerely say, " God bless him, and keep him 
 amongst us." ' 
 
 A fortnight later Stanley returns to the subject : 
 
 ' Pusey's sermon is not yet published, and has not, as 
 far as I know, produced any great excitement. One under- 
 graduate asked me to explain the text on which he preached 
 (John XX.), but otherwise I have heard of no discussion 
 engendered by it anywhere. Nor did it, in fact, furnish 
 matter enough. The really striking part was the reappear- 
 ance of the man ; but otherwise it was characteristic of 
 Pusey that the whole tenor of the sermon was so much less 
 impressive than it might have been — than, in Newman's 
 hands, for example, it would have been. He was still dwell- 
 ing on the same topics, and in the same tone, that had a 
 great hold on the Oxford mind when he ceased preaching, 
 but which have now been left behind, and it was to me a 
 strong proof of the rapid progress of events, how dead a 
 great part of the sermon fell upon one's ears, in comparison 
 with his earlier ones, merely from the consciousness that 
 there was so much less response to it from the great congre- 
 gation before him. What an effect might have been pro- 
 duced on such an occasion by a man who had kept pace 
 with the march of events ! He has now begun his lectures 
 again, with the mixture, as before, of his Patristic fanciful- 
 ness, and his German learning, and his own kindness and 
 gentleness.' 
 
 As the year 1846 advanced, the extreme tension, which 
 had strained to the utmost limits the relations of University 
 life, gradually relaxed. The publication of Newman's essay 
 * On the Development of Christian Doctrine,' the last page of 
 which struck Stanley as ' one of the most affecting passages 
 €ver written by an uninspired pen,' passed almost unheeded.
 
 ;46 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1846 
 
 Nor did the political changes of 1846 ruffle the tranquillity 
 of the atmosphere. Yet the fall of Sir Robert Peel's 
 Ministry in the summer of 1846 was a dramatic event which 
 vividly impressed the imagination of Stanle}-. On that 
 occasion he writes : 
 
 ' Peel's speech is, to me, the most affecting public event 
 which I ever remember ; no return of Cicero from exile, no 
 triumphal procession up to the temple of Capitolinc Jove, 
 no Appius Claudius in the Roman Senate, no Chatham 
 dying in the House of Lords, could have been a truly 
 grander sight than that great Minister retiring from office, 
 giving to the whole world Free Trade with one hand, and 
 universal peace with the other, and casting under foot the 
 miserable factions which had dethroned him. 
 
 E'en at the base of Pompey's statue, 
 
 Which all the while ran blood, great Caesar fell. 
 
 So I write, the metaphor being suggested by an eyewitness, 
 who told me that it was Mark Antony's speech over Caesar's 
 body, but spoken by (Caesar) himself.' 
 
 From the beginning of 1846 to the end of 1847 no 
 academical excitements broke the peace of the University, 
 The first Rugby Dinner at Oxford, the vacant Exegetical 
 Professorship, which was filled up by the appointment of 
 the Provost of Oriel, the visit of Jenny Lind, were almost 
 the only events that interrupted the even course of Stanley's 
 life at Oxford. During the terms, his time was fully occu- 
 pied in tutorial work, in the preparation of his University 
 Sermons for the press, and in his theological studies. ' I 
 have nothing to tell you here,' he writes to his sister, ' except 
 that I am attending Pusey's Hebrew lectures, and that 
 Jowett and I read Hebrew together once a week.' His 
 vacations were generally spent in foreign travel. In 1845 
 he travelled in Germany and Tyrol with his two sisters and 
 Professor Jowett. In 1 846 he visited Scotland, partly with
 
 CHAP. X THIRD HAMPDEN AGITATION 347 
 
 three pupils, partly with J. C. Shairp and Tait. In 1847 
 he spent a month in Spain and Portugal, and later in the 
 same year made a tour with Pearson through the West of 
 England. It is difficult to turn aside from his vivid de- 
 scriptions of Bastei, or Edinburgh, or the Alhambra, or 
 Wells and Glastonbury, to plunge once more into the third 
 Hampden agitation, which, from November 1847 to March 
 1848, convulsed Oxford and the country generally. 
 
 In November 1847 Dr. Hampden was offered and 
 accepted the Bishopric of Hereford. Though Stanley 
 prided himself on his sagacity as an ecclesiastical weather- 
 prophet, he was wholly unprepared for the violent tempest 
 which was at once aroused. An urgent protest, extensively 
 signed by the clergy, with the Bishops of London, Win- 
 chester, and Oxford at their head, was forwarded to Lord 
 John Russell. Archbishop Howley was known to have 
 remonstrated with the advisers of the Crown against the 
 appointment, and pressure was brought to bear upon him 
 to refuse the confirmation and consecration of the new 
 Bishop, The Dean of Hereford was incited to decline to 
 elect the person nominated in the letter-missive which 
 accompanied the conge d'clire, and only escaped the 
 penalties of a prccmunire, which attached to his resistance, 
 by being outvoted in the Chapter. Objections against the 
 confirmation were raised before the Vicar-General and the 
 two civilians united with him in his Commission, but they 
 refused to hear the objector. An application was then 
 made to the Queen's Bench for a mandamus to compel the 
 Vicar-General to hear the objections, but this application 
 was also refused, and the Court declined to allow the matter 
 to proceed further. 
 
 Stanley's personal enthusiasm was not excited by Dr. 
 Hampden or by his case. ' Oh that it had been an Arnold ! ' 
 he cries, ' and how I would have moved heaven and earth
 
 348 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1847 
 
 in his cause ! ' But he str()n<;ly condemned the agitation. 
 It was, in his opinion, unjust, because it was directed against 
 a book which had been pubhshed fifteen years before, and 
 which nine-tenths of the agitators had never studied. It 
 was also injudicious, because it threatened to provoke an 
 internecine war between contending parties in the Church, 
 to muhiply secessions to Rome, and to end in ignominious 
 defeat. But though he strongly believed that the agitation 
 was both unjust and injudicious, he at first held aloof from 
 a contest in which his personal sympathies were not enlisted. 
 ' You will see,' he writes, 
 
 ' that what complicates, and has always complicated, the 
 Hampden case, is that what the Puseyites really object to 
 is his theory of the evils of a systematic technical theology. 
 But on tJiat they cannot move the country. So the plan 
 has been to get up an outcry about his not believing in the 
 Atonement, the Trinity, &c. — which he believes, only ob- 
 jecting to the language in which they have been stated. 
 And all this has been doubly embroiled by Hampden's own 
 obscurity and shuffling.' 
 
 As the agitation increased in violence, he felt himself 
 irresistibly impelled to defend a man who, as he thought, 
 was unjustly and ignorantly assailed. One of his most 
 intimate friends wrote to him, speaking of Hampden as a 
 ' Janus Bifrons' who had in his Bampton Lectures maintained 
 a liberal interpretation of the Thirty-nine Articles, and now 
 had adopted them as conditions of thought and as capable 
 of only one honest meaning. Stanley's reply shows his 
 anxiety to maintain an impartial attitude towards the 
 question : 
 
 ' No one can dislike Hampden's conduct ever since 1836 
 more than I do, or can think it more inconsistent with the 
 spirit of his " Bampton Lectures." But I think you treat 
 him unfairly, if you think that his assertion of belief in 
 the substance of the Articles is inconsistent with his specu-
 
 CHAP. X THIRD HAMPDEN AGITATION 349 
 
 lations about their language. However much one may lead 
 
 to the other, I do not see why in his case it need be assumed.' 
 
 As in the agitation against Ward, he was especially 
 struck by the injustice of condemning a man for writings 
 which his accusers had probably not read, and certainly 
 had not studied. 
 
 'The Dean of Norwich told me to-day that Murray 
 had told him that not one copy of H.'s "Bampton Lectures" 
 had been sold since these disturbances had begun. " Not 
 one copy ! " I exclaimed, perfectly boiling with indigna- 
 tion. " What ! not one amongst the thousands of the clergy 
 who are petitioning or clamouring against his appointment 
 has had the conscience to buy his book ? I never heard 
 anything so disgraceful." ' 
 
 At length he determined to write to Bishop Thirlwall, 
 and ask him whether nothing could be done to raise a 
 protest against the agitation. The sequel must be told 
 in the two letters which he wrote to his sister in December,. 
 1847. 
 
 ' 1 was telling you how on Thursday night I wrote two 
 letters, one to E. J. S., the other to Thirlwall ; the latter 
 short, and, as Jowett was pleased to term it, " admirably 
 appropriate," assuming, of course, his perfect agreement with 
 m}'self in deprecating this unjust clamour, speaking of the 
 difficulty of the questions in the " Bampton Lectures," and 
 excusing myself for addressing him by the recollections of 
 the great service he had rendered to the cause of justice in 
 his great Charge of 1842, begging to know whether he could 
 do anything, or could suggest anything to be done, to stop 
 the present agitation. To these two letters I received no 
 answer till j^esterday morning, when I found two letters on 
 my table, one — the enclosed — from Edward, the other from 
 Cuddesdon. I opened it, and I could hardly believe my 
 eyes, till the truth flashed upon me that the letter designed 
 for St. David's had gone to S. Oxon. How I cannot 
 conceive ; I suppose that by a slip of the pen the word 
 " Oxford " had got into the direction instead of into the 
 date, and this was the result. The immediate effect upon
 
 ;50 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1847 
 
 me was to fall into successive convulsions of laughter, from 
 which I have hardly yet recovered ; the absurdity of a 
 letter designed for one Bishop going exactly to the anti- 
 podes, and that other Bishop so innocently assuming it all 
 as addressed to himself. However, he must have thought 
 it so impertinent that I must go over to Cuddesdon to ex- 
 plain it to him, and you shall hear the result. The Heads 
 of Houses are going to sign an address to Hampden.' 
 
 The following is the letter which he encloses from the 
 
 Bishop of Oxford : 
 
 ' Cuddesdon Palace, Dec. 4, 1847. 
 
 ' My dear Sir, — It would be a matter of the greatest 
 personal gratification to me if I could honestly take the 
 course you suggest. But I cannot do so. I have refused 
 in every case to advise such agitation amongst the clergy 
 of this diocese ; but I cannot cJieck the expression of their 
 opinions. Had Dr. Hampden been left where he was, I 
 would have done all in my power to heal matters. But I 
 do so deeply disapprove of the wanton attempt to thrust 
 him, by an arbitrary stretch of the Royal prerogative in 
 one of its most delicate branches, upon a reluctant Church 
 and diocese, as one of the sworn guardians of the purity of 
 the Faith (he lying under what I cannot consider an unjust 
 censure), that I can say nothing to check the expression of 
 counter-opinion which is rising so universally through the 
 land. Of course, I feel the great evil of such an agitation. 
 It is one of the necessary evils of this foolish act of nomi- 
 nation. But I can do nothing to check it, unless the 
 nomination is withdrawn. 
 
 ' In common with the majority of the Bishops and the 
 venerable Archbishop, I have myself felt it my painful duty 
 to protest to Lord John Russell against such an appoint- 
 ment. 
 
 ' I had read the anonymous letter you enclose. I do 
 not think it helps Dr. Hampden, and it is difficult to trust 
 a writer who states that lie was present at a conference 
 which had a certain issue, when one knows that its issue 
 was the direct opposite of that asserted. 
 
 ' I am, my dear Sir, most truly yours, 
 
 ' S. OxON. 
 
 ' Your letter, though dated Dec. 2, only reached me to- 
 day.'
 
 CHAP. X VISIT TO CUDDESDON PALACE 351 
 
 The result of his visit to Cuddesdon was reported the 
 
 next day to his sister : 
 
 ' At 2.30 I, accompanied by Jowett, started for Cuddes- 
 don. It was a most tempestuous day, rain and wind 
 driving over the heights of Shotover. However, at 4 we 
 arrived at the Palace gates, where, whilst Jowett went 
 to the curates, I was ushered by the servant through a 
 succession of apartments, till we at last reached a door 
 locked on the inside. After various ineffectual attempts to 
 open it, the servant vanished, with an injunction to remain 
 in the corridor, and in a few minutes the door was thrown 
 open, and through another suite I was introduced into a 
 room with the curtains drawn and candles lighted, and 
 S. Oxon standing by the table in the characteristic atti- 
 tude of sealing letters. 
 
 ' A. P. S. : " Pray do not let me interrupt you, my Lord. 
 I will wait till you have finished your letters." S. O. 
 (blandly) : " You will have to wait a long time then ; 
 pray sit down," A. P. S. (seating himself) : " I came, my 
 Lord, to apologise for a very unnecessary piece of trouble 
 I gave you yesterday." S. O. (interrupting) : " Oh ! don't 
 speak of it. I am only too happy." A. P. S. ; " But, my 
 
 Lord " S. O.: "Oh! I assure you I " A. P. S.: 
 
 "But, my Lord, I hope you will not laugh very much when 
 
 you hear " S. O. : " Oh ! I can assure you I regarded 
 
 it as a very natural manifestation of feeling " A. P. S. : 
 
 " I am really sorry to interrupt you, but you are under a 
 mistake — that letter was never meant for you." S. O. (a 
 blank coming over his countenance) : " Why, it was properly 
 addressed to me inside." A. P. S. : " Yes — but it was to 
 another person — to another Bishop, in fact." S. O. : "Where, 
 then, is the letter for me t " A. P. S : " There was none. I 
 knew that you had taken an opposite course, and therefore 
 I should not have thought of writing to you." S. O. (with 
 a smile, blended with severity) : " To whom, then, was the 
 letter addressed ? Have I not a right to ask ? " A. P. S. : 
 " You will laugh still more when I tell you — to the Bishop 
 of St. David's." S. O. : " Oh ! now I understand the allu- 
 sion to the Charge of 1842 ; it was, no doubt, much more 
 apposite than to mine. I referred to my Charges, and con- 
 cluded you had referred to one of that year containing a 
 severe denunciation of Tractarianism ; " then, after a pause
 
 352 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY iS.}7 
 
 " But the Bishop of St. David's would not have helped you, 
 for I may tell you (in confidence) that he would have 
 si'^ned our Memorial but for two words — ' deep and general 
 feeling amongst our clergy ' — he, seeing no such amongst his 
 clergy, said he could not sign it on that account alone." 
 A. P. S. (after a pause) : " You will understand, I hope, that 
 I wrote to the Bishop of St. David's as knowing him, and 
 thinking that he would probably agree with me on the 
 subject. But I was anxious to explain it to you, lest you 
 should think me impertinent. I should not have written 
 to you, because I knew that you had taken an opposite 
 course, and, had I done so, I hope I should have addressed 
 you much less abruptly." S. O. (with a slight deprecation) : 
 " I have taken a neutral course ; I have only advised my 
 clergy what to do — not to address the Chapter or the 
 Queen, but the Archbishop and the Premier." 
 
 ' Thus ended the personal altercation, which he took good - 
 humouredly, though I think not quite pleased at finding 
 that he had not been written to at all ; also, that he had 
 not discovered the mistake. We then talked of the matter 
 generally— that it was not by any means over ; that it would 
 be brought into the courts of law, which was the only proper 
 tribunal (in which I agreed with him) ; that Bishops were 
 to be above suspicion ; that Hampden was a poor creature 
 (in which I agreed). A lame defence followed of the cen- 
 sure of 1836, and a somewhat indignant assertion that he 
 had read and studied the " Bampton Lectures " before he 
 had voted in 1836. I merely remonstrated against the 
 notion that the censure of 1836 was binding, and no more. 
 He said he had been going to invite me to meet Church 
 next day, an invitation which I accepted conditionally ; and 
 so we parted, and joining Jowett, I made my way home.' 
 
 The result to Stanley himself of his misdirected . letter 
 was, that he made no further eFort to protest against any 
 of the proceedings by which it was sought to prevent Dr. 
 Hampden's elevation to the Bench of Bishops. But he 
 was profoundly struck by the disinterested course which, in 
 his opinion, the Bishop of Oxford had pursued. In alettei 
 to his sister he praises his conduct warmly : 
 
 ' I do not see any interested motive which he could
 
 CHAP. X STANLEYS CROWING INFLUENCE 353 
 
 have. Statesmen of all parties much dislike him for it. 
 It raises against him the dormant charge of Puseyism. I 
 see nothing which can account for it, except sincere (as I 
 think, misguided) zeal for the rights of the clergy and the 
 purity of the Faith. He had not/nng to gain by it, any more 
 than he had when he jumped out of the carriage to pick up 
 geological specimens, and so I cannot but think it is equally 
 sincere ; and any act of undoubted sincerity in him is worth 
 ten times as much as it would have been in another person.' 
 
 It was not till March 26th, 1848, that the protracted 
 agitation was concluded by the consecration of Dr. Hamp- 
 den. ' So Hampden is over at last,' writes Stanley. 
 
 ' He called very civilly on me before he went ; and I met 
 Mrs. H. in the street, and told her that, in the words of 
 George IV. to Louis XVIII., I hoped never to see her in 
 Oxford again.' 
 
 In the midst of literary labours, of academical excite- 
 ments, ecclesiastical crises, and religious movements, Stanley 
 was rapidly gaining within the walls of his College an in- 
 fluence which was at that time unexampled in the Univer- 
 sity. Nor was his influence confined only to his College. His 
 appointment as Select Preacher in October, 1 845, is evidence 
 of the position which he had acquired, and the delivery 
 and subsequent publication of his University sermons en- 
 hanced his reputation, even while, in some circles, they 
 compromised his character for orthodoxy. In his tutorial 
 career were spent some of the most vigorous years of his 
 life. The interest of his work grew upon him till it absorbed 
 him in an unusual degree. He speaks of himself in 1846 
 as ' disinclined to any work which is not connected with 
 my College work, which is at present so much the staff of 
 my life, that I cannot bring myself to regard with enthu- 
 siasm anything which infringes upon it' Content with his 
 ' Paradise,' or, as he elsewhere calls it, his ' Eden,' he re- 
 VOL. I. A A
 
 354 ^^^^^ OF DEAN STANLEY 
 
 fused the offer of Alderley Rectory, and, in 1849, of the 
 Deanery of Carlisle. His ambition aimed at a Professor- 
 ship, and, till that came within his grasp, he was happy in 
 his position. Even when the Chair of Modern History fell 
 vacant, and was given to H. H. Vaughan, he accepted the 
 •decision with equanimity, ' finding the tutorship very 
 agreeable, and hoping that it may be useful to some men 
 here and there. I should have been very sorry to bid 
 them a final farewell' 
 
 His efforts as a tutor to raise the character of his College 
 were crowned with unprecedented success. University, in 
 the year 1838, when Stanley first became a Fellow of the 
 Society, was half its present size. The number of scholars 
 was small ; the proportion of undergraduates in easy 
 circumstances was large ; athletic interests predominated ; 
 scanty attention was paid to reading, and little private work 
 was done. The standard of teaching and of learning was 
 low. Neither tutors nor undergraduates looked beyond the 
 immediate requirements of the necessary examinations ; 
 both were satisfied if the conditions of attendance at lectures 
 were fulfilled with some approach to regularity. Stanley's 
 election as a Fellow introduced a new epoch in the College 
 history. 
 
 Some men take things as they find them ; it was not 
 so with Stanley. Whether he was merely forming plans 
 for a tour, or framing his conception of the duties of a new 
 position at Canterbury or Westminster, he was always 
 guided by an ideal of what had to be done, and always 
 devoted his best self to the fullest use of his new oppor- 
 tunities. Attracted by the rising fame and drawn by the 
 magnetic influence of the young Fellow, an unusually large 
 portion of the very elite of the best schools was sent to 
 University. Throwing himself heart and soul into his work, 
 he felt the successes of his pupils as personal triumphs, and
 
 ■CHAP. X HIS WORK AS COLLEGE TUTOR 355 
 
 their failures as personal calamities. ' I feel,' he writes of 
 a pupil who had been plucked, ' as if I had been plucked 
 myself, and as if I might and ought to have prevented it.' 
 Something of the teacher's enthusiasm was infused into 
 the pupils ; the tone and temper of College society were 
 profoundly altered ; and a glance at the class lists in the 
 ten years that follow 1844 — two years after he became 
 Junior Lecturer — reveals the position to which University 
 rose with startling rapidity. 
 
 Among the very first of those who were thus sent to 
 University College on the one ground of the addition of 
 Stanley to its teaching-staff was George Granville Bradley, 
 the present Dean of Westminster. Years ago, he described 
 the impression which Stanley produced upon his pupils, the 
 work which he achieved, the influence that he exercised : 
 
 ' Stanley had, no doubt, some drawbacks as a tutor. 
 "" I am no moral philosopher or metaphysician," he said 
 of himself later. His interest in the minuter shades of 
 philological scholarship was never very keen. No man 
 knew better his own weak points. But the page of History, 
 ancient, modern, or sacred, was to him, in the truest sense 
 of the words, " rich with the spoils of time " ; and he knew 
 how to make that page glow with the light of wisdom and 
 of poetry, and to aid his pupils to regard those spoils as 
 very treasures. He was already giving himself to the study 
 of the Old and New Testaments with an enthusiasm which 
 never left him, and which he was able to communicate to 
 one after another of those who came under his influence. 
 Even now there are those who, in East-end parishes, in 
 country villages, in far-off missionary stations, as well as in 
 what are called the high places of the Church, feel the 
 impulse which they then received from him. So keen was 
 the interest inspired by his Divinity lectures, that not only 
 did we, his pupils, continue to attend them in the very crisis 
 and agony of our final work for our degrees, but little by 
 little we obtained permission to introduce our friends, and 
 the first germ of those inter-collegiate lectures which have 
 revolutionised Oxford teaching is to be found in those
 
 356 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 184S 
 
 close-packed chairs that crowded the still damp ground- 
 floor rooms in the then New Buildings, as they are still 
 called, on the topmost story of which our lecturer had his 
 rooms. 
 
 ' He was — need I say it ? — a singularly attractive and 
 inspiring teacher ; but in saying this I feel that I have said 
 little. It is impossible for me to describe to you — it is 
 difficult for me to analyse to myself — the feelings which he 
 inspired in a circle, small at first, but with every fresh term 
 widening and extending. The fascination, the charm, the 
 spell, were simply irresistible ; the face, the voice, the 
 manner ; the ready sympathy, the geniality, the freshness, 
 the warmth, the poetry, the refinement, the humour, the 
 mirthfulness and merriment, the fund of knowledge, the 
 inexhaustible store of anecdotes and stories, told so vividly, 
 so dramatically — I shall not easily enumerate the gifts 
 which drew us to him with a singular, some of us with 
 quite a passionate, devotion. That sympathetic touch, 
 which won him to the end of his life fresh friends at every 
 breath he drew, had already come to a teacher who, as a 
 child, had lived much alone, uncompanionable and unde- 
 monstrative to a fault, writing his boyish poems, and hidden 
 in the light of ideas and knowledge which he was hourly 
 absorbing. It is felt by some of us as a thing that coloured 
 our whole lives from that day to this. We walked with him, 
 sometimes took our meals with him — frugal meals, for he 
 was at the mercy of an unappreciative college " scout," who 
 was not above taking advantage of his master's helplessness 
 in arranging for a meal, and his indifference to any article 
 of diet other than brown bread and butter. We talked with 
 him over that bread-and-butter with entire freedom, opened 
 our hearts to him ; while his perfect simplicity, no less than 
 his high-bred refinement, made it impossible to dream that 
 anyone in his sober senses could presume upon his kind- 
 ness.' 
 
 His tutorial occupations, his literary work, the prepara- 
 tion of his University and other sermons, his varied interests, 
 grew more and more exacting in their demands upon his 
 time. The circle of his friends and the range of his corre- 
 spondence were ever widening. He entered with increasing 
 keenness into the theological and other controversies of the
 
 CHAP. X HIS WORK AS COLLEGE TUTOR 357 
 
 next few years. He was, as has been seen, absorbingly 
 interested in the crisis which the Tractarian Movement had 
 •created in Oxford and in the Church ; he was full of 
 schemes for the reorganisation and enlargement of the 
 University. Yet, in spite of all his employments, ' the 
 Amount of time,' continues Dean Bradley, 
 
 ' and of his best self which he gave to his younger friends 
 was something almost incredible. Some of us can recall 
 the half-amusing, half-touching efforts which he made to 
 become acquainted with, and win the confidence of, a class 
 <of men least likely to be impressible to one like himself; 
 the missionary spirit, if I may use the phrase, in which he 
 regarded his relation to the undergraduates of his College. 
 Many must still remember his introducing what had long 
 been abandoned in that ancient College — I am not sure 
 that he had not to go back as far as the times of the 
 Commonwealth for a precedent — the preaching of occa- 
 sional sermons in the College chapel. They will recall his 
 very voice, and accent, and look, and manner, and gesture. 
 But it was not his preaching nor his teaching, it was him- 
 self most of all which impressed us. We always knew — 
 and it was the secret of his winning to the end of his days 
 the hearts of the young, and, let me add, of the humble and 
 working classes of his countrymen — we always knew that 
 lie treated us and felt to us as a friend ; cared for us, sym- 
 pathised with us, gave us his heart, and not his heart only, 
 but his best gifts ; that we did not sit below the salt, but 
 partook with him of all that he had to give ; and what he 
 gave us was just that which was most calculated to win and 
 attract, as well as to inspire and stimulate.' 
 
 The first Scholarship Examination in which Stanley 
 took part at University resulted in the election of G. G. 
 Bradley, then a Rugby schoolboy. Four years later came 
 the day to which, as Stanley writes, ' I look forward as the 
 happiest of my academical life, when Bradley will be elected 
 a Fellow of this Society.' Dean Bradley's undergraduate 
 experience of Stanley's influence was, therefore, restricted 
 to the first portion of his tutorial career. But the ardour
 
 258 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 
 
 with which, as a lecturer, he had at first thrown himself into- 
 the duties of his position never cooled, nor was his keen 
 sense of the responsibilities and opportunities of his official 
 position ever dulled by time ; his interest in the under- 
 LJ-raduates who came under his care remained as fresh as if 
 
 o 
 
 each successive pupil was his first. His rare gift of in- 
 fluencing the young was rather enriched by experience than 
 impaired by use. The reminiscences of another pupil, the 
 Rev. A. G. Butler, relate to the last years of his life as an 
 Oxford tutor, when the Lecturer of 1 842 had become Senior 
 Tutor and Dean of the College : 
 
 ' My first acquaintance with Dean Stanley was in 1849, 
 when I went up to Oxford as a scholar of University 
 College, and had to apply to him, as Dean of College, for 
 " rooms." Well do I remember the small spare figure that 
 darted forth to meet me at the door of his somewhat dark 
 room, with the wondrous eyes, not so bright as marvellously 
 expressive, that seemed to fasten upon you and to read 
 your thoughts, while the eager words darted to his lips, full 
 of sympathy and anticipation of your various wishes. 
 And then, preliminaries being over, we began our round. 
 Many sets of rooms were vacant, of which, as scholar, I was 
 to have my choice. But there was one set of rooms which 
 he had destined me to have, and which, with a showman's 
 art, he kept for last. Accordingly, this set was. too small 
 for me, that too expensive, another was somewhat noisy, 
 a fourth was rather far from Hall and Chapel. And so we 
 passed on through the whole list, till we came to a room in 
 the south-western corner of the Quadrangle, on the ground- 
 floor, which I was preparing to hear disparaged like the 
 rest. " And these," he said, " were under Shelley's rooms," 
 turning upon me a bright, wistful glance, which sealed my 
 fate at once, I cannot say the rooms were as good as 
 others we had visited — they were rather dark, and, as I 
 soon found, too public for my taste ; but who could resist 
 the mute appeal of that look, or the feeling that well 
 became the future guardian of the Abbey, that genius 
 hallowed all the precincts near to which it had ever trod? 
 So I took the rooms without a question, and became
 
 CHAP. X HIS COLLEGE LECTURES 359 
 
 the Dean's devoted pupil and admirer from that time 
 forth.' 
 
 As a lecturer, he was a master of the art of interesting- 
 his audience. Every character or incident that he touched, 
 whether in ancient history or the Bible, became living to 
 his hearers : 
 
 ' In treating a difficult and complex book like the 
 " Politics " of Aristotle, he would recommend us carefully to 
 note peculiarities with three varieties of coloured pencils 
 under the following heads : truths for all time, red ; truths 
 for the time of Aristotle, blue ; and then, with a humorous 
 twinkle of his eye, truths for the schools, black. 
 
 ' I may here remark that this mode of mapping out 
 and previously arranging a new field of knowledge which 
 he was about to occupy was thoroughly characteristic of 
 Dean Stanley. Excellent as was his memory, he neglected 
 no means by which to strengthen it : marks in books, com- 
 monplace books, carefully-kept note-books, made up every 
 evening of his travels, all showed the pains he took to cul- 
 tivate a faculty whose feats seemed to many who knew him 
 so marvellous. He has even been known to say that he 
 had not a good memory. It was only by repeating a 
 story many times after he first heard it that he got 
 perfectly to remember it. Then it became a part of him. 
 
 ' In his private relations to his pupils he was delightful. 
 There was, first, the breakfast-party, with the amused wonder 
 as to whom you would meet, and what you would find to 
 eat. For his choice of guests was peculiar. As in after- 
 life he delighted to bring extremes together at his table — 
 the High Church and Evangelical, the orthodox professor 
 and the Essayist and Reviewer — so in these College days 
 he would invite the steady hard-working scholar to meet 
 the somewhat irregular athletic commoner, whose talk was 
 of sport and games. Not that he did not know them to be 
 extremes ! He knew it well, for he had a fine sense of 
 humour ; but he thought it well for all men to be acquainted. 
 And generally his geniality and resource made things go 
 well. There were, however, times when the incongruous 
 elements refused to amalgamate, and when even his spirits 
 would flag. It was on one of these occasions that he sud-
 
 360 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1848 
 
 dcnly remembered it was the anniversary of (I think) the 
 Battle of Marathon, which he prochiimcd to us with a flash 
 of delight ; and then began a stream of anecdote and narra- 
 tion which turned the dull beginning into a brilliant 
 success. 
 
 ' The question of the food was sometimes less satisfac- 
 torily settled. So long as there was a pile of teacakes 
 before him, which, as .soft food, entailing no trouble, he pre- 
 ferred to everything else, he did not always consider the 
 larger and healthier appetites of his guests. But this was 
 a small matter. The " Dean " was the pride of the College, 
 and even the deficiency of the entertainment had its charm. 
 
 ' Then, again, there was the essay. Under this head I 
 remember little of him, save that he seldom criticised, and 
 still more seldom praised. But on one occasion, when he 
 was looking over a prize poem I had written on the Druids, 
 with the usual platitudes about Nature-worship, and the 
 great inferiority of cathedrals generally to Stonehenge, he 
 rebuked me (as was right) sharply. Nature simply as 
 Nature had small attractions for him. 
 
 ' And lastly, there was the walk, sometimes for friend- 
 ship, sometimes for in.struction, to " coach " a man in those 
 "truths for the schools" which were needed for an approach- 
 ing examination. On these occasions it was well always 
 to be on the road side. His sympathy with his pupil and 
 absorption in his subject were so great that, otherwise, he 
 would keep drawing nearer and nearer to his companion, 
 until he drove the inside member of the party into the 
 ditch.' 
 
 The walk was one of Stanley's favourite opportunities 
 of bringing himself into friendly relations with his pupils. 
 Those who joined him in his rooms at two o'clock for such 
 an expedition generally found him finishing some writing 
 at his stand-up desk, and at the same time eating his 
 luncheon ; that is to say, they found him nipping off bits 
 of dry bread with his left hand from an irregular cube 
 which lay beside him, while he wrote busily with his right 
 hand. An undergraduate who, though a member of another 
 College, was frequently his companion in rambles round
 
 ■CHAP. X HIS WALKS ROUND OXFORD :>6l 
 
 Oxford and elsewhere, and whose arrival in Oxford he 
 hails as a ' very agreeable accession ' (W. B. Philpot, an 
 •old Rugbeian, and Scholar of Worcester College), noted in 
 his private journals, during the years 1845-6, the substance 
 of many of his conversations on these occasions. These 
 rough jottings disclose one great secret of the influence 
 ■which Stanley acquired over younger men. His uncon- 
 sciousness of any disparity in years, in learning, or in aca- 
 demical position, broke down all the barriers that naturally 
 exist between tutor and pupil, between a man of thirty and 
 a lad of eighteen. The intercourse was perfectly free, as 
 between familiar friends. Whatever subject was upper- 
 most in Stanley's mind he discussed with transparent sim- 
 plicity. Now it was some criticism upon his own writings, 
 now some injustice which in thought or speech he had 
 •done to a mutual friend, now some episode in his school 
 or undergraduate career, ending, perhaps, with an apology 
 for his egotism. History and topography, Greek plays, 
 English poetry. Church traditions, Mahomedan legends, 
 the latest books, contemporary politics at home and abroad, 
 reminiscences of foreign travel, recollections and anecdotes 
 of famous men, enthusiastic praise of friends, the revision 
 of the Bible version, comparisons between the style of the 
 Prophets and the New Testament writers, the portraits of 
 our Lord — such are some of the topics of his conversations. 
 The range was wide, and, as he passed from one 
 subject to the other, each was handled in characteristic 
 fashion. He worked into his talk, as he works into his 
 books or sermons, parallels, allusions, contemporary inci- 
 dents, impressions of character, observations of scenery. 
 He grouped events of history round certain great moving 
 spirits of the time, or gathered all minor ideas round one 
 central idea, and surrounded both men and things with the 
 special geographical features which shaped their character
 
 362 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1848 
 
 or controlled their fortunes. Even his own course of read- 
 ing, he tells his companion, is controlled by this theory of 
 representative men : thus, he read Bishop Pearson as a 
 safe guide to the tenets of that school of seventeenth- 
 century divines ; Chrysostom, because whatever lie held 
 could not be denied to be the doctrine of the Greek 
 Fathers ; Thomas Aquinas, as an authority on the faith of 
 Roman Catholics. Arnold's favourite question, ' What 
 does this remind you of? ' seems always present to his 
 mind, and he discovers parallels and draws distinctions, 
 impressing into the service minute facts, indications, and 
 details which would escape an eye less keen than his own 
 to detect similarities or differences. 
 
 Little can be added to these records of the impressions 
 which Stanley left upon undergraduates at the beginning, 
 middle, and end of his tutorial career. His active beneficence 
 and hospitality to present and former pupils were unfailing 
 and unbounded. He was always ready to write letters, long 
 or short, of sympathy in trouble, or of advice in doubt and 
 difficulty. He interested himself practically in the welfare 
 of his pupils, often in unexpected ways. It is surprising, 
 if not alarming, to find him prescribing for their ailments, 
 and with his own hand administering medicines. His 
 pecuniary aid was offered freely and delicately, whenever 
 he saw an opening to do so with good results. Many sons 
 of poor parents were helped by his purse in the struggle of 
 an University career ; many others were assisted to take a 
 holiday from which they were debarred by want of means. 
 Two such instances of friendly, unsolicited kindness must 
 suffice : 
 
 ' Once more for yourself, my dear . Would it 
 
 facilitate in any measure your flight were I to lend you 
 (as I can without difficult}-) 300/., to be repaid by driblets 
 for the rest of your long (as one hopes) life } '
 
 CHAP. X HIS INTEREST IN PUPILS 363 
 
 Or again, 
 
 ' One line to say that, supposing a prolonged expedi- 
 tion would not interfere with your reading, but is impeded 
 by want of supplies, you must not let that be an obstacle, 
 but (on the same conditions of silence, &c., as before) 
 regard me as " the Ural Mountains," and see Prague, or 
 whatever else it may be. I should lament your losing the 
 sight of it when it had been in my power to help you 
 to it' 
 
 The reduction of University expenses was a subject 
 which he had greatly at heart. ' Appalled by a sad revela- 
 tion of a pupil's debts,' he endeavoured to bring it into 
 practical shape by a letter to Mr. Gladstone, and by a 
 scheme for the establishment of a College in which the 
 advantages of Oxford might be offered to poor men at a 
 comparatively small cost. Over the expenditure of his 
 own pupils he tried to keep a careful eye. ' Is B.,' he asks 
 Pearson, ' endowed with such means as to hunt with 
 impunity? The question is suggested by a beautifully 
 polished pair of top-boots which I encountered the other 
 day outside his door.' 
 
 Throughout the whole of his tutorial career he en- 
 deavoured to inform himself of the criticism which under- 
 graduates passed upon his discharge of his duties. He 
 spared no pains to discover the points in which he was 
 supposed to fail, and to correct such faults as were remedi- 
 able. His friends on all sides were charged to make known 
 to him the opinions of the undergraduates. The following 
 letter, written in 1843 to Pearson, who had then just taken 
 his B.A. degree, illustrates the spirit with which he com- 
 menced his work, as well as that openness to receive hints 
 from younger men, which remained to the end of his life 
 as a tutor, and which was one secret of his continued suc- 
 cess.
 
 ;64 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1848 
 
 ' It is supposed that H. hunts. He is regular in lecture, 
 and next term I hope to see more of him. Do you hear 
 anything of me from or through him .-' Next term I pro- 
 pose to give a lecture of a more exalted character than any 
 yet given, nominally on Livy, really on the rise and fall ot 
 the Roman State. There was some doubt whether H. was 
 to be put into it, and, for the sake of convenience, I re- 
 luctantly consented — reluctantly because, to those who do 
 not make good use of this lecture, it will be useless, and 
 their presence impedes the profit of others. You would 
 confer a service upon me if you could throw any light upon 
 the subject by ascertaining whether it would be possible 
 for me to appeal to H.'s better feelings, on the ground that 
 he is in this lecture because I presume him to be fit for it 
 (which he is, if he really cared about himself). I ask this, 
 partly with a directly practical view to H., but partly 
 because I look upon him as typical of others, and I wish 
 to know whether men of that class look upon lectures 
 (good, or intended to be good), such as that which I pro- 
 pose, as bores and humbug, or whether it is possible to 
 elevate their minds above that atmosphere of childishness 
 and frivolity which is the curse of our College. 
 
 ' Next term the men are divided amongst us as pupils, 
 as at Balliol. It will be an enormous gain to me, and I 
 hope it may be to them. Visions rise before me of an 
 ideal College, but I forbear,' 
 
 Nor was it only as a teacher, or as a friend, that Stanley 
 endeavoured to influence the undergraduates. The preach- 
 ing of occasional sermons in the College chapel formed 
 part of his ideal of tutorial opportunities, and as such he 
 regarded their introduction as a sacred duty. He never 
 failed to take part in the administration of the Holy 
 Communion, and generally preached a special sermon on 
 the preceding Sunday. It is difficult to decide whether as 
 a preacher in the College chapel he greatly impressed 
 his congregation. The evidence is divided. ' Indeed,' 
 says one of his former pupils, 
 
 ' I believe he shrank from preaching. Once he told me 
 that, when he became a clergyman, his great fear was how
 
 CHAP. X NTS COLLEGE SERMONS 365 
 
 he should ever find subjects on which to preach. He could 
 see his way to (I think) twelve sermons, and no more. 
 And he spoke with gratitude of Sir E. Lyons at Athens, 
 who, when Stanley had packed all his feelings into one 
 great sermon, asked him to preach the same sermon again.' 
 
 Perhaps the difference of opinion may be due to the 
 different impressions produced upon his boyish audience by 
 such an accident as that which he records in a letter tO' 
 his mother written in 1847 : 
 
 ' I preached again in chapel last night, but with the 
 
 unfortunate drawback of having a glove on my head ! 
 
 entirely unknown to me till I was told by an undergraduate 
 this morninsf.'
 
 ^66 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1846 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 SELECT PREACHER, 1846-47— SERMONS ON 'THE APOSTOLICAL 
 age' — PARIS IN 1848 
 
 In October, 1845, Stanley wrote to his sister at Norwich, 
 ' I am appointed Select Preacher in the place of Samuel of 
 Oxford, and so shall have to prepare a course of sermons.' 
 As Select Preacher he preached four sermons, one in each 
 term, beginning with February, 1846, and ending on 
 January 31, 1847. The general subject of the course was 
 ' The Apostolical Age,' and the characters selected as most 
 fully representative of the forms and stages through which 
 Christianity has passed were those of the three Apostles, 
 St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John. Two supplementary 
 sermons on St. James, and on the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
 were also preached before the University, but on special 
 occasions, and not as part of the course. 
 
 The preparation and delivery of these sermons, their 
 illustration by separate essays, and their revision for the 
 press, fully occupied Stanley during the two tranquil years 
 which intervened between the condemnation of Ward and 
 the outbreak of the third Hampden agitation. The advice 
 and criticism of his friends were pressed into the service on 
 all sides. Not only was each sermon read aloud in the 
 evenings to the home-circle at Norwich, but each was also 
 passed round among the friends whom he considered to
 
 CHAP. XI SELECT PREACHER, 1846-47 ■^d'j 
 
 be typical of different classes of minds. Above all, he 
 relied upon the assistance of Benjamin Jowett, the present 
 Master of Balliol, with whom he was in almost daily com- 
 munication on theological and other questions, and from 
 whom, as he writes at this time, * I have learned more than 
 from any living man.' 
 
 The sermons were preached at an important crisis in 
 Stanley's academical career. Already suspected of hetero- 
 •doxy as the enthusiastic champion of Arnold, he was, so 
 to speak, on his trial. His prospects of preferment within 
 the University, where he was at the present moment a 
 •candidate for the Professorship of Exegesis, in a great 
 measure depended upon the impression which he created 
 in the pulpit of St. Mary's. At the same time, his sense 
 of his own responsibility and of the value of his opportunity 
 impelled him to speak boldly and definitely upon a variety 
 of questions, which could not be handled without risk of 
 offence, and on which he differed from the majority of the 
 governing body of the University. The conflict of feeling 
 may be traced in the reports of the effect produced by the 
 sermons, which he sends home to his mother and sister. 
 
 The first, and introductory, sermon, on ' The Three 
 Apostles,' was preached in February, 1846. On the pre- 
 ceding Sunday Pusey had resumed preaching in the 
 Cathedral of Oxford, after the three years' silence to which 
 he had been condemned for his sermon on the Eucharist. 
 
 ' There seems no doubt that my sermon was highly 
 successful. On the one hand, the undergraduates were 
 much struck, and those of my own College came immedi- 
 ately and begged to have it to read, and one copied out all 
 the practical part at the end. . . . Our Master plumes 
 himself on having found a passage in some orthodox 
 divine which fully bears out my views ; the Master of 
 Balliol, who did not like my former sermon on Pilate, 
 expressed himself delighted with this; . . . my two colleagues
 
 368 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1846- 
 
 in College [one a stiff Anglican, the other an enthusiastic 
 Puseyite] expressed their almost unqualified approbation ; 
 Jowett brings grand tidings of admiration and pleasure, 
 and thinks that, on the whole, my character for orthodoxy 
 has rather gained than lost by it. He says that for the 
 first ten minutes he was in despair ; the long paragraph of 
 contrasts between the three Apostles was what Mr. Cun- 
 ningham would have called very " ineffective " ; but after 
 that it told extremely well, and was well heard and well 
 listened to. Many inquiries have been made when the 
 next is to come, which will not be, probably, till next term. 
 There have been some murmurs of alarm ; one in particular, 
 a tutor of Worcester, is reported to have pronounced it full 
 of error. Still, on the whole it is very encouraging, and 
 satisfactory in many ways, both as showing that such 
 sermons can be preached without offence, and that one can 
 get a real hold by them even on this impracticable place.' 
 
 The second sermon was delivered in May 1846. 
 
 '. . . My sermon on St. Peter was preached on Sunday — 
 I fear, unsuccessful ; so far a good lesson for the future, and 
 I shall try to efface the impression by the next. Since I 
 wrote this I have seen Jowett, who represents it to have 
 been very successful, as much so as the last; pronounced to 
 be " beautiful, fascinating, &c.," heard all over the Church. 
 The undergraduates, however, ! still think, hardly under- 
 stood it enough. What the effect on the Heads was has 
 not transpired.' 
 
 The sermon on ' The Epistle to the Hebrews,' the last 
 in the volume on ' The Apostolical Age,' was preached on 
 the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, the first day of the 
 Hilary Term, 1847. 
 
 ' You may suppose that my thoughts went back to 
 Norwich when I preached to-day, when I finished for good 
 with the sentences which we have so often pored over 
 together. . . . To make sure of " Apollos's name being en- 
 rolled in no calendar, however apocryphal," I wrote to Ward 
 from Norwich to ask, but got no answer till this morning, 
 forwarded from Norwich. Fortunately, it coincided with 
 what I had said ; he had put the question to the Roman 
 Catholic divines at Ware, and they had said that it had
 
 CHAP. XI SELECT PREACHER, 1846-7 369 
 
 never struck them before, but that certainly it was a re- 
 markable fact that Apollos was nowhere called Saint or 
 Doctor. I have hardly had time to hear any comments 
 yet ; in fact, the only one is from my half-Puseyite colleague, 
 from whom I always extract a detailed criticism after each 
 sermon. He approved of it more than of any of the others. 
 The question of the authorship he thought so delicately 
 handled, and also the applications of the Epistle ; and he 
 amused himself with thinking whether my rivals for the 
 Exegetical Chair would suppose themselves to be glanced 
 at among " the unlearned and unstable, who might resist 
 to their own destruction the things hard to be understood." * 
 
 A week later, on the 31st of January, 1847, the final 
 sermon of the course (on St. John) was delivered. ' Well ! ' 
 he writes to his mother : 
 
 ' Now the whole course is over ! The last revisions took place 
 last night, and the sermon was delivered, on the whole suc- 
 cessfully, to an immense congregation of undergraduates and 
 Masters, and to about fifteen Heads. It is reported not to 
 have been quite so audible as that on St. Paul, but to have 
 given as much satisfaction as any. Cotton, of Rugby, \\\\o 
 was here, called afterwards on his cousin, the Provost of 
 Worcester, to receive from him the judgment that it was 
 fanciful.' 
 
 ' Just a line ' is added 
 
 'to say that the sermon seems to have been highly successful. 
 Some of the undergraduates, and also of the elders, liked it 
 better than any of the others. The Master has just been 
 congratulating me, and says, or rather implies, that the im- 
 pression produced on the Heads was so favourable that it 
 may affect the election materially.' ' 
 
 It has been said that the sermons were preached at a 
 remarkable crisis in Stanley's academical career. The tone 
 of anxiety which runs through his letters, the care bestowed 
 upon the preparation of the course, the fulness with which 
 
 ' The Provost of Oriel, Dr. Hawkins, was, however, as already noticed, 
 elected to the Professorship of Exegesis. 
 
 VOL. I. B B
 
 ;70 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1846 
 
 the sermons were discussed with his friends, the criticism 
 that was in\'itcd on all sides before and after the delivery, 
 show that he fully appreciated the importance of the oc- 
 casion. At first sight it is difficult to understand why the 
 course should have increased the suspicions already enter- 
 tained of his theological opinions. ' The odour of my 
 heterodoxy,' he writes to Pearson, ' has penetrated not only 
 into the Board of Heads, but into the Cabinet of Whig 
 Ministers.' The explanation lies in the condition of the 
 University in 1 846, when the fresh influences were struggling 
 into existence which, within the next ten years, transformed 
 Oxford into a new world. 
 
 Between 1820 and 1S30 the finer minds of both 
 Universities were yielding to the thaw which broke up the 
 frost of the eighteenth century. Both in Oxford and in 
 Cambridge the same yearning was felt for a better union 
 between religion and philosophy, a juster harmony between 
 things sacred and things secular, a deeper concord between 
 human and divine truth. The intellectual movement of the 
 Oriel School, like the influence of Thirlwall, Sedgwick, and 
 Julius Hare, showed that men were growing eager to heal 
 the divorce between religious and secular learning which 
 Puritan austerity or an indolent narrow-mindedness had 
 effected, and to break down the conventional barriers that 
 forbade a clergyman, except for the sake of editing a Greek 
 play or a grammarian, to step beyond the limited circle of 
 ecclesiastical literature. But before the thaw had had time 
 to produce its full effect, the promise was destroyed by the 
 volcanic eruption of the Tractarian Movement. Once more 
 the educational life of Oxford was withered ; once more 
 science, humane letters, and the first stirrings of intellectual 
 freedom, were for an indefinite period suspended. 
 
 The ideal which inspired the followers of Newman was 
 noble ; their endeavour was lofty. They saw the need of
 
 CHAP. XI CONDITION OF OXFORD /A^ 1846 371 
 
 renovation, and they applied a remedy. But their reform 
 was based on a one-sided view of the situation. The loss 
 was more certain than the gain. The fruits of decrying 
 mere scientific, or mere literary, pursuits, as frivolous, if not 
 dangerous, were terribly apparent at Oxford. The fourth 
 century was revered as much as the immediate past and the 
 present were decried ; lecture-rooms, in which was imparted 
 knowledge outside the requirements of university discipline, 
 w^ere deserted ; the spirit for investigating any subject 
 except theology languished ; natural philosophy was dis- 
 countenanced ; historical study, in any province outside 
 that of ecclesiastical antiquities, was neglected ; classical 
 scholarship was declining ; the tone of Oxford society lost 
 its spring from the fear of giving mutual offence. And the 
 undergraduates necessarily suffered from the atmosphere by 
 which their elders were surrounded. A tutor, whose brain 
 was in a whirl from the religious excitements of Convocation, 
 could scarcely rouse his pupils to enthusiasm for their 
 requisite studies, and where his mind mechanically led 
 theirs naturally followed. 
 
 How bitterly Stanley deplored these conditions, how 
 confidently he had hoped that Arnold would restore a 
 healthier tone to the University, his letters have already 
 shown. He had himself experienced the evil effects of the 
 narrow limits within which intellectual life was confined. 
 Whatever capacity he might have developed for scientific 
 pursuits was destroyed by the proscription of science. He 
 was driven back upon himself in the pursuit of humane 
 letters by the divorce which had been pronounced between 
 religious and secular learning. He was forced to seek in 
 German thought that mental freedom which had' been 
 banished from Oxford. Now, however, in 1846 the seces- 
 sion of Newman and many of his most active followers 
 proclaimed the failure of their effort ; the exclusive domi-
 
 372 LIFE OF DEAX STANLEY 1846 
 
 nation of 'clericalism' was disturbed ; the leaders of the 
 University ceased to be mainly absorbed in religious 
 polemics. Pusey's quiet resumption of preaching seemed 
 to announce the gradual subsidence of the theological 
 flood ; and, with the return of the swollen stream to its 
 natural course, brighter prospects dawned for the educa- 
 tional life of Oxford. 
 
 The year 1846 was the point of transition between the 
 old world and the new. There was a dramatic fitness in 
 the sequence of events by which, at this crisis, Stanley, the 
 future Secretary of the University Commission and Pro- 
 fessor of Ecclesiastical History, commenced his course of 
 sermons in the pulpit of St. Mary's. In some respects he 
 was not only the most complete representative of the new 
 ideas, but also one of their most effective exponents. 
 
 Few men were better fitted to supply the stimulus to a 
 less exclusive culture, and to exercise a combining, trans- 
 forming, uniting influence over the studies of the University. 
 His wide range of knowledge, his infectious enthusiasms, 
 his powers of illustration, his habit of viewing the past 
 through the medium of the present, his art of rendering 
 attractive every subject that he touched, were all devoted 
 to the task. Even the deficiencies of his mind and the 
 defects of his literary manner combined to increase his 
 influence. A profounder analyst, a subtler metaphysician, 
 a deeper speculator, would have missed the mark which he 
 struck with certainty. His luxuriant discursiveness, his 
 exuberance of comparison, his over-eagerness to draw dis- 
 tinctions or establish parallels, added to the suggestiveness 
 of his matter, and for the temper of younger men were 
 rather charms than blemishes. 
 
 It was as the representative of a new world that Stanley 
 addressed a congregation, the elders of which regarded the 
 old as better and dreaded lest intellectual freedom should
 
 CHAP. XI DREAD OF GERMAN THEOLOGY 
 
 zn 
 
 degenerate into intellectual license. Their worst fears of 
 the results of free inquiry appeared to be realised when he 
 acknowledged his obligations to the teaching of Arnold 
 and of German theologians. It would be difficult to say 
 which of his two guides was most distasteful to the 
 audience that gathered in the University Church of St. Mary. 
 The reaction in favour of Arnold as a man did not extend 
 to his opinions, which his excessive self-confidence, his 
 occasional vehemence of invective, and his inability to 
 understand the views of others, had made peculiarly 
 offensive to his opponents. At the same time, the su.'^picion 
 with which the theological thought of Germany was regarded 
 almost amounted to a monomania. The panic was in- 
 creased by the general ignorance of the German language. 
 The irreligious spirit of Continental speculations was 
 assumed. No distinction was drawn between Paulus, who, 
 whatever may be thought of the wisdom of his defence, was 
 conscientiously bent on vindicating the truth of the New 
 Testament, and Strauss, who maintained the Evangelical 
 narratives to be inventions designed to exalt the Messianic 
 character of Jesus. The Natural School of Rationalists, 
 who regarded the Gospel as historical, but explained its 
 miraculous events by natural causes, was confounded with 
 the Mythic School, which denied their historical character, 
 and represented them as intrinsically fictitious. ' How 
 different might have been the course of the Church of 
 England,' Stanley used to say, ' if Newman had been able 
 to read German ! ' Pusey's answer to Rose's attack on 
 German rationalism had been the first cordial recognition 
 of the labours of foreign scholars. But the Professor of 
 Hebrew had almost forgotten the atmosphere of Bonn and 
 Halle in the study of Patristic and Anglican theology. 
 And the only man, with the exception, perhaps, of Bishop 
 Thirlwall, who at this time possessed a competent know-
 
 374 Z/Fi^ OF DEAN STANLEY 1846 
 
 ledge of German theological literature was Archdeacon 
 Hare, of whom Stanley speaks in 1842 as 'his living 
 instructor.' 
 
 As the champion of intellectual freedom and of its 
 particular application to the sphere in which its results were 
 most dreaded, Stanley could scarcely avoid offence without 
 the sacrifice of his true opinions. Both the sources from 
 which his sermons were admittedly derived were equally 
 tainted in the minds of an audience composed of High 
 Churchmen, Evangelicals, and followers of Newman or of 
 Pusey. His sense of the importance of the occasion, to- 
 gether with his anxiety, frequently expressed in his letters, 
 to remove needlessly offensive passages, acquit him from 
 any desire to irritate his hearers. In later life, and especi- 
 ally in Convocation, he was deliberately aggressive, and 
 even studious to conceal the orthodox side of his opinions. 
 On this occasion he was actuated by no such spirit. The 
 sermons on ' The Apostolical Age ' express the convictions 
 of a man who, knowing the probable cost of his words, is 
 impelled by a sense of duty to give them utterance. They 
 are, indeed, remarkably outspoken. But Stanley was fear- 
 less by nature, and could afford to be bold. His social 
 position, and pecuniary independence, relieved him from the 
 temptations which perplex poor and struggling men, and 
 which compel them to keep silence or to make concessions, 
 lest they should sacrifice prospects of future influence. 
 Their delivery, therefore, marked a crisis in his life. It 
 was the first public occasion on which he identified himself 
 with the new ideas that were struggling into existence at 
 Oxford. Henceforward he was regarded as one of the 
 leaders in the movement which culminated in the appoint- 
 ment of the University Commission, the foundation of the 
 Museum for the encouragement of scientific studies, and the 
 removal of restrictions, theological, local, and professional.
 
 CHAP. XI SUSPICIONS OF STANLEY'S ORTHODOXY 375 
 
 Nor was this all. To the suspicions of his orthodoxy 
 which had been aroused by his championship of Arnold 
 were now added suspicions of his leanings towards German 
 rationalism.. Henceforward he was regarded, theologically 
 speaking, with equal and increasing antipathy by each of 
 two rival parties in the English Church. If he enlisted 
 sympathy on the one side, he repelled it on the other. As 
 he had espoused the cause of Arnold, and opposed the 
 condemnation of Ward ; as he had laboured to defeat the 
 censure both on Dr. Hampden and on ' Tract 90' — so in 
 his sermons passages occur which must have jarred on the 
 feelings of both sections of his congregation. With the 
 attack on the inadequacy of the traditions and criticism 
 of the fourth century as substitutes for the New Testa- 
 ment is combined a vindication of the ' indefatigable 
 industry,' ' profound thought,' and ' conscientious love of 
 knowledge ' which characterised German theologians. The 
 tribute to the teaching of the author of ' Church Reform,' 
 and the declaration that the words ' Apostolical Office ' are 
 a late union of two discordant ideas are, as it were, 
 balanced by the application of the methods of historical 
 criticism to the characters of the Apostles. Partisans on 
 either side were rebuked by the insistence on the true 
 contrast between unity and uniformity, and by the assertion 
 of the comprehensiveness of the Church of England, which, 
 by the very conditions of its being, was ' not High, or Low, 
 but Broad.' 
 
 Such utterances as these proclaimed the divergence of 
 his views from those of Evangelicals and High Church- 
 men alike. Neither party was interested in upholding his 
 orthodoxy, because neither could claim him as its own 
 Partly from the wide catholicity of toleration which he 
 cultivated on principle, partly also from a fear that he 
 might become enamoured of his own deliverances and sink
 
 376 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1846 
 
 into an echo of himself, he shrank from dogmatising either 
 positively or negatively, and thereby gave more offence to 
 both sides than if he had pronounced definitively against 
 either. The detachment from system and from party 
 which his whole attitude expressed was already character- 
 istic of the man. He had before him, in the case of Arnold, 
 an example of the cost of belonging to no section of the 
 Church. But it is difficult to conceive the circumstances 
 under which Stanley could have belonged to any party. 
 His independence, his almost ov^er-refined sensitiveness 
 of conscience, his sympathies, his restiveness of disposition, 
 prevented him from assuming any badge. ' I cannot,' he 
 said in later life, ' go out to battle in Saul's armour ; I must 
 fight with my own sling and stone, or not at all. I have 
 never been able to reconcile myself to those unreasoning, 
 undiscriminating war-cries whatever power I have been 
 able to exert has been mainly derived from this absti- 
 nence.' 
 
 Not content to accept bundles of opinion as they are 
 generally connected together, he endeavoured to verify for 
 himself each separate branch of inquiry. Unable to 
 persuade himself that parties are even indifferent means to 
 useful ends, he felt that all, especially in religion, are 
 combined of truth and falsehood, and that to join any is to 
 accept the evil as well as the good. He believed that 'the 
 man who loves Christianity better than truth is on the high- 
 road to love his own sect better than Christianity, if not to 
 love himself better than either.' He detested the principle 
 of party, as the great rival in the minds of men to the love 
 and pursuit of that truth which was ' to be sought, above all 
 things, for itself, and not for any ulterior object.' Different 
 ideals float before the minds of different men, which repre- 
 sent to them the highest aspects of religious life. To some 
 it is the ideal of depth, or power, or height ; to Stanley it
 
 CHAP. XI HIS IDEAL OF RELIGION ^yy 
 
 was the ideal of width — of all-embracing breadth. Nor did 
 
 the pursuit of this ideal mean, in his case, the surrender of 
 
 point after point, which had been hitherto held sacred, for 
 
 the sake of superficial agreement. With him the attitude 
 
 was not negative, so much as positive. It meant the 
 
 enlargement of the Church by gaining, and embracing, new 
 
 truths, till nothing that was true was omitted. It was the 
 
 spirit of the prayer — 
 
 Open wide our narrow thought 
 To embrace Thee as we ought. 
 
 A dogmatist in his abhorrence of dogma, and a bigot 
 against intolerance, this attitude of detachment distinguished 
 his whole career. Similarly, the plan and details of the con- 
 struction of his University sermons and essays are character- 
 istic of the way in which he habitually approached any 
 subject of investigation. They illustrate, in the first place, the 
 concrete, historical, and practical bent of his mind. Never 
 a doctrinal theologian, without the capacity or the inclina- 
 tion for abstract speculation, he turns aside from the 
 deeper questions of theology involved in the Apostolic 
 teaching, and from the general principles of the interpreta- 
 tion of the truths contained in the Gospels and Epistles, 
 His aim is to present historical pictures of the characters 
 and circumstances which most truly exemplified the 
 Apostolic age. He attempts, in fact, to exhibit the out- 
 ward local image of that which is generally contemplated 
 in its inward spiritual essence. And he applies the results 
 to the actual facts of modern life and the actual duties 
 of the younger members of his congregation. It is often 
 alleged that his serm.ons were not positive enough. In a 
 sense, it would be fair to argue that the exact reverse is the 
 truth. While other men contended against errors of 
 doctrine, he, as here, preaches and enforces positive duties. 
 His protests in favour of breadth are directed not only
 
 ^78 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1846 
 
 against narrow ranges of belief, but against narrow limits of 
 practical application. He pleads that religion should not 
 be left alone, as something to be studied apart, but should 
 be connected with everything which can make it appeal 
 more strongly to the human heart, and which can extend 
 Christian principles to the whole range of practical duties. 
 And, in the second place, the sermons illustrate his 
 habitual method of searching for central ideas, leading 
 tendencies, or representative characters, round which he 
 groups the subsidiary circumstances of particular periods. 
 He treats the Apostolic age as an epitome of God's dealings 
 with mankind, and its principal characters as eternal centres 
 of recurring spheres of thought and action, and as perpetual 
 types of large classes of humanity. Round St. Peter, St. 
 Paul, and St. John, he gathers the circumstances, not only 
 of the past, but of the present, of subsequent history as well 
 as of their own age. In their individual but universal 
 character he finds the various forms and stages through 
 which Christianity has passed in the eighteen centuries of 
 its existence. 
 
 And, lastly, the sermons illustrate his sense of the 
 necessity of applying the methods of historical criticism to 
 Scriptural facts and figures, and the support which he derived 
 for his own faith from the results of free inquiry. 
 
 The scope and character of Christian evidences required 
 to be changed before they could meet new needs. The 
 early apologists had rather pleaded as advocates the cause 
 of believers against heathen opponents than calmly sifted 
 facts as investigators of abstract evidence. In the Middle 
 Ages, discussions of evidence became superfluous because 
 the voice of authority was recognised as final. At the 
 Reformation, the general truth of the Christian religion was 
 assumed both by Roman Catholics and Protestants, who 
 burned each other at the stake for differences of interpreta-
 
 CHAP. XI HIS PLEA FOR FREE INQUIRY 379 
 
 tion. In the eighteenth century, sceptical controversies 
 revolved round questions of metaphysics ; but now a new- 
 class of difficulties had arisen, against which the standard 
 authorities of Jackson and Stillingfleet, of Butler and Paley, 
 were inadequate. In examining the claims of Christianity 
 as a Divine revelation, the authenticity and authority of 
 the written records of the New Testament were legitimate 
 subjects of inquiry. It was, as Stanley felt, impossible to 
 avoid the discussion of such topics. For himself, at least, 
 the path of wisdom and of safety lay in facing them boldly, 
 and in appl}'ing to the Scriptures the same tests by which 
 all other writings of antiquity are tried. He resented the 
 disposition to overstate the testimony ; he accepted the 
 evidence as he found it ; and only when he was guided by 
 its strict tenor did he feel himself to be standing on sub- 
 stantial ground. 
 
 Faith and inquiry, in his opinion, went hand in hand. 
 The spirit and the understanding, in any true sense of either, 
 seemed inseparable. He felt that it was his duty to apph- 
 to matters of religion that reason which was ' God's especial 
 gift to man.' He did, indeed, earnestly deprecate the da}- 
 of inevitable trial, ' when the works of German Biblical 
 criticism would be read indiscriminately by all the men, 
 women, and children of England.' To him, now and always, 
 it seemed that all freedom required restraint, lest it should 
 degenerate either into tyranny or license. But he believed 
 that the best restraint was the recognition of free specula- 
 tion as a Christian grace, and that the true limit to inquiry 
 is its absorption into a Christian atmosphere, where it maj' 
 find the Gospel to be, not its jealous enemy, but its cordial 
 ally. He spoke in no aggressive spirit when he vindicated 
 the results of modern criticism, which had disclosed to his 
 own generation scenes, characters, and institutions that 
 were comparatively unknown to the Christians of the fourth
 
 ogo LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1846 
 
 century, or when he pleaded that revelation was not resolved 
 into a mere human process because we are able to distin- 
 guish the natural agencies through which it was communi- 
 cated. It was not his object, or, indeed, his gift, to balance 
 probabilities, to increase the number of working hypotheses, 
 or to add a further guess to the conjectures of German 
 theologians. Among the shifting sands of modern specu- 
 lation he sought to find for himself and others a firm footing. 
 
 And for minds constituted on the same historical basis 
 as his own, though criticism destroyed much, it created more. 
 If it cut away some grounds of faith, it refilled the chasm 
 with more stable foundations. When criticism disclosed 
 the stages by which things were evolved into their present 
 shape, it rather strengthened than impaired his faith ; it 
 helped him to understand them, to accept them, or to endure 
 them. One distinct image vividly realised of any part of 
 the rise of Christianity, one plain matter of fact placed 
 beyond dispute, one lifelike impression clearly conceived 
 of the real existence of an Apostle, confirmed for him the 
 historical truth of the whole narrative, and developed in 
 palpable form the strength of the human side of Christian 
 evidences. This was the use which he made of modern 
 criticism, and thus he interpreted its results to others. It 
 was the same feeling which prompted his desire to see 
 Palestine, and which gives such nervous reality to his de- 
 scriptions of the country. Geographical details not only 
 add point to the images and vividness to the pictures of 
 the sacred writings : they also give a solid basis of fact, 
 which, being embedded in the narratives, shows that the 
 histories they relate do not merely represent ' a past which 
 was never present' 
 
 So much has been said on kindred topics, that something 
 must be added on Stanley's religious convictions and 
 theological views. His reluctance to dogmatise, his habitual
 
 CHAP. XI ARNOLDS INFLUENCE ON HIS VIEWS 38 I 
 
 reticence on doctrinal questions, his avoidance of the terms 
 of technical theology, render it difficult to formulate his 
 views. Neither is this the place for any detailed examina- 
 tion of his theological position. It will be sufficient to 
 indicate the influences under which he was now living, to 
 express what throughout his life continued to be the 
 substance of his religion and the keynote of all his ser- 
 mons. 
 
 In Arnold he encountered, at the most impressionable 
 period of his life, the man who was exactly fitted to exercise 
 over him a powerful and permanent influence. In him he 
 found strong and deep religious feelings, which were united 
 with free, trustful views on Scriptural criticism and inter- 
 pretation, and which, projecting themselves into the world, 
 sought to Christianise, not only society, but the individual. 
 To Newman he had been attracted by the force of spiritual 
 genius ; to Pusey, by the magnetic influence of genuine 
 goodness. Ward's pitiless logic had driven him to face in 
 early manhood a variety of moral and theological problems. 
 German theologians, corrected by the criticism of Hare and 
 Jowett, and modified by dealings with his own pupils, had 
 introduced him to other phases of religious thought and 
 feeling. But still, the first impressions preserved their hold, 
 and Stanley in 1846 was still what he had been at the time 
 of his Ordination — a follower of Arnold. 
 
 Arnold, filled with the thought of Christ Himself, feeling 
 deeply his personal connection with his Lord and Saviour, 
 animated by a constant sense of His companionship, dwelt 
 habitually upon His words and works with affectionate, 
 yet reverent, reality. He never seemed to have studied 
 Christianity out of books, or to have attempted to reconcile 
 by metaphysical speculation the will of God and the will 
 of man ; he made no effort to reduce Christ's precepts to 
 system, or to formulate His teaching or doctrine. But he
 
 o 
 
 82 LIFF OF DEAN STANLEY 1846 
 
 kept before himself, as a perpetual example, the life of 
 Christ, and made it at once the spring and the standard of 
 his moral growth. 
 
 Stanley followed in the steps of Arnold. His piety was 
 practical and personal, not doctrinal nor speculative. He 
 set before his eyes the Person of Christ — not His Church, 
 not His sacraments, not His teaching, not even the truths 
 about Him, but Christ Himself — as the one Being Who 
 combines all ideas of perfection in their just harmony, for- 
 bidding idolatry and fanaticism on the one side, and on the 
 other giving life and strength to all morality. He looked 
 upon Him as the medium through which we know the 
 mind of God, as the pattern of what God is and what men 
 should strive to be, as the object of a love which can raise 
 us above ourselves and remove the barriers between us and 
 God. In the study and imitation of that Divine life lay 
 the truest wisdom and the highest happiness. To have 
 his character was to be a Christian. It is, in its purely 
 practical aspect, the view of Amiel : ' La perfection pour 
 but ; un exemple pour soutien ; le divin prouve par sa seule 
 excellence ; tout le christianisme, n'est-il pas la en re- 
 sume? Dieu tout en nous, n'est-il pas sa consommation.-'' 
 
 The spiritual relations of Jesus Christ to God on the 
 one side, and to man on the other, can only be expressed 
 by metaphors. And the bent of each man's spiritual con- 
 ceptions is shown by the metaphors which he chooses. for 
 himself, if he chooses any at all. Stanley, with habitual 
 avoidance of terms that might mislead, preferred to express 
 those relations by our Lord's own words — ' the Way, the 
 Truth, the Life.' With these words he closes his Jewish 
 History, where he takes a solemn Pisgah view of that Life 
 on which he knew that he should never be able to enter. 
 
 Feeling the nothingness of verbal disputes, as compared 
 with the livinfT and stirring interest.! of national and indi-
 
 CHAP. XI ARNOLDS INFLUENCE ON HIS VIEWS 383 
 
 vidual welfare, he turned from doctrinal questions almost 
 with contempt, ignoring, like Arnold, their true relations 
 to the spiritual life of mankind. His religious temper is 
 summed up, as it were, in the verses of Charles Wesley on 
 Catholic love : — 
 
 Weary of all this wordy strife, 
 These notions, forms, and modes, and names, 
 
 To Thee, the Way, the Truth, the Life, 
 Whose love my simple heart inflames — 
 
 Divinely taught, at last I fly. 
 With Thee and Thine to live and die. 
 
 The same vision of a visible and living Church closed 
 the vista of all the religious speculations of both Arnold 
 and Stanley. To both men the freedom, practical energy, 
 and simplicity of Christianity were especially present. Both 
 desired to see its laws the laws of a Christian common- 
 wealth, and both looked upon it as the one supreme moral 
 force, the only remedy which could pierce to the roots of 
 intellectual and physical and social evil. In the eyes of 
 both it stood above all other religions as the religion of the 
 world, because it rested on ' a Divine head, a life that was 
 the image of God, because He who lived it was all purity 
 and goodness.' Both held that ' its essential object was to 
 produce characters which in truthfulness, in independence, 
 in mercy, in purity, in charity, may recall something of the 
 mind that was in Christ.' Both felt that in Christ they had 
 ' a Master worth living for, worth dying for. Whose spirit 
 was to be the regenerating power of the whole world.' 
 Both were men of strong religious convictions and of deep 
 personal piety ; both had conscientiously mastered the 
 difficulties which hindered their Ordination ; both fervently 
 believed in the splendid mission which might await the 
 Church of England — of including within its fold all Christian 
 citizens, of ministering the true food of national life, of 
 animating laws and institutions, of inspiring the conduct,
 
 ^84 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1846 
 
 guiding the thoughts, attracting the love of the English 
 nation. But so much was, in their opinion, needed to fit 
 the actual Church for its vocation, that, in the eyes of many 
 of their clerical brethren, their membership placed them in 
 as false a position as if they had disbelieved half its Articles. 
 
 With some qualifications, Stanley practically accepted 
 Arnold's theory of the relations of Church and State, and 
 the consequences which naturally flowed from it. He held, 
 like Arnold, that the founders of the Protestant Church of 
 England considered Church and State as identical ; that the 
 Christian nation of England was, and might be again, the 
 Church of England ; that the head of the nation was the 
 head of the Church ; that the affairs of the nation, both 
 civil and ecclesiastical, were the affairs of the Church. He 
 did, indeed, recognise the objections to this theory. 
 
 * The concreteness - of Arnold's theory,' he writes in 
 
 1846, 
 
 I do consider as a great and fatal objection to it ; but, on 
 the other hand, as the only one. If people will have the 
 matter expressed in an outward shape before them, this is 
 the only one which can stand. It is not so much that 
 Church and State are one as that the Church, in its highest 
 sense, is equally above both Church and State — represented 
 in different ages, sometimes more by the one, sometimes more 
 by the other, and its true relations to both best preserved 
 by the subjection of the organisation of either to that part 
 which stands at the highest point, for the time being, of 
 European morals and civilisation, and ultimately, I dare 
 say, by the removal of any such dualism of institutions 
 altogether — the higher dualism of the ideal Church and any 
 outward organisation whatever enduring, no doubt, to the 
 end of all things.' 
 
 In Stanley's mind the theory was probably only the 
 ideal mode of expressing the great object of his life — to 
 show that Christianity is at once real and universal ; that it 
 does not belong to one set of persons, or to one institution.
 
 CHAP. XI CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 \^5 
 
 but to all ; that not only religious, but secular, occupations 
 fall within its sphere ; that it ought to raise its voice, not only 
 in the pulpit, but in education, in literature, in Parliament, 
 in legislation, and in every question where there is a right 
 and a wrong. But the consequences of its acceptance 
 brought Stanley into perpetual collision with his brethren 
 along the whole line of ecclesiastical politics. He claimed no 
 supernatural powers for the Church or its ministers, but 
 valued both mainly as channels for communicating religious 
 knowledge, and as instruments of extensive good, which 
 might become inestimably precious in proportion as they 
 were subordinated to, and identified with, the State. He 
 regarded the supremacy of the Crown, and, as its only intelli- 
 gible translation, the supremacy of the law, as ' a rare bless- 
 ing of God.' He looked to the civil power to restrain the 
 clergy in legislation as well as litigation. He upheld the deci- 
 sion of spiritual causes by lay tribunals as the guarantee 
 of moderation and as the protection against ecclesi- 
 astical intolerance. The Church of his vision and of his 
 historical studies was essentially unexclusive and compre- 
 hensive, an ample fold in which all citizens of every shade 
 of Christian belief might worship together. If he had not 
 Arnold's vehement abhorrence of ' priestcraft,' he was a 
 zealous champion of the rights of the laity, and a strong 
 opponent of all sacerdotal claims on the part of the Anglican 
 clergy. So far did he go in this direction, that he looked 
 upon Ordination as the solemn appointment of important 
 public officers. And, feeling thus, he speaks in 1846 of an 
 Ordination in which he had taken part in Norwich as a 
 
 ' heartrending sight, half-prose, half-poetry, half-Protestant^ 
 half-Catholic — an impressive ceremony with its meaning 
 torn away, a profession, really of some importance, and 
 claiming to be of the highest, dislocated from its place in 
 society.' 
 
 VOL. I. C C
 
 386 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1S46 
 
 The frank and fearless expression of his opinions 
 separated Stanlc)^ thus early in life from both the rival 
 parties in the Church. In his course of sermons as Select 
 Preacher he gave himself no opportunity of urging his 
 views on the relations of Church and State, although their 
 general tendencies are here and there suggested by his 
 language. But three years later, in the very midst of the 
 heat and excitement of the Gorham controversy, he spoke 
 out upon the subject in a brilliant article which appeared 
 in the Edinburgh Review.- Stripped of its accessories, the 
 issue seemed to him nothing less than the question whether 
 the Church of England was then, and was to continue to be, 
 a national institution. It was involved in both the points 
 in dispute — the constitution of the court of appeal, and the 
 judgment which that court pronounced. The first raised 
 the question of the ' relations of Church and State ; the 
 second raised the question of the breadth and compre- 
 hensiveness of our ecclesiastical institutions. On historical 
 grounds he vindicated not only the supremacy of the law 
 as asserted in the decision of ecclesiastical controversies by 
 a lay tribunal, but also the justice of the judgment of the 
 Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The decision, 
 which was regarded by the Evangelicals as the Magna 
 Charta of their continued existence in the Church, was warmly 
 welcomed by Stanley, on the grounds that ' it retained within 
 the pale of the Establishment both the rival schools of 
 theology,' and that ' the Church of England was meant to 
 include, and always had included, opposite and contradic- 
 tory opinions, not only on the point now in dispute, but 
 
 - No. clxxxv., July 1850. It will be remembered that the Bishop of Exeter 
 refused to induct Mr. Gorham into the living of Brampford Speke, on the 
 ground of his hesitation to affirm the spiritual regeneration of every baptised 
 child. The Judicial Connnittee of the Privy Council pronounced on March 8, 
 1850, that there was no sufficient cause for refusal. After some further pro- 
 ceedings, Mr. Gorham was inducted on August 10, 1850.
 
 CHAP. XI PUBLICATION OF HIS SERMONS ^y^^ 
 
 on other points as important, or more important, than 
 this.' 
 
 It would not have conciliated the Evangelical leaders to 
 know — though the fact affords no slight proof of Stanley's 
 consistent attitude on ecclesiastical controversies — that the 
 substance of the article had been written several years 
 earlier, ' in the hope of averting the catastrophe which drove 
 out from the Church of England such men as Dr. Newman 
 and his friends.' 
 
 Even without the assistance of the article on the Gorham 
 controversy, the sermons on the Apostolical x'\ge contained 
 matter enough to excite something more than suspicion of 
 Stanley's attitude on theological and ecclesiastical questions. 
 Several of his friends advised him not to print the sermons, 
 which had been condemned as 'profane' and 'fanciful.' 
 But he determined, for the reasons given in the following 
 letter to B. Jowett, to publish the whole course, illustrated 
 and explained by essays. As will be seen from his letter, 
 it was originally intended, though the plan was afterwards 
 abandoned, that the supplementary essays should be the 
 joint work of the two friends. 
 
 ' One word about your essays. There were, besides 
 St. Peter, one on St. Paul's Speeches, on St. Paul's Conver- 
 sion, on St. John as the Friend. And with regard to all, 
 but especially the two in italics, it strikes me that this 
 poor work to be complete should have something said on 
 the subject ; and yet, having read your MSS., and there- 
 fore feeling that I have nothing to say further, I have a 
 total incapacity to write anything on the subject. How- 
 ever, the chief point, which, with all deference, I wish to urge 
 on behalf of it, was this. Do not you think that it would 
 be worth while to have an opportunity of giving people 
 some kind of notion of what your views really are ? This 
 is one reason which weighs with me about publishing them, 
 especially in my case, after running my head into the nest 
 by preaching them, and so giving occasion to various
 
 388 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1847 
 
 charr^cs which, I think, would be dispelled by their publi- 
 cation. 
 
 ' This docs not, of course, apply to you. But when I 
 was at York I had a lonj^ discourse on your behalf with 
 
 , whose mind had been poisoned on the subject by 
 
 a fellow-barrister. The effects produced by the imagina- 
 tion working on the unimaginative are very mischievous. 
 I anticipate your answer, viz., that your, I may say our, 
 views are such as cannot be disclosed without these objec- 
 tions — in part, at least, deserved. Still, I think there is a 
 limit, and, when one is tutor of a college, I think self-defence 
 is to a certain point not only justifiable but a duty.' 
 
 When once the publication of the sermons was re- 
 garded as a duty, their appearance became only a question 
 of time. For many reasons Stanley found it desirable to 
 postpone their reappearance. ' I find,' he says, ' that the 
 Heads, and my senior friends, are dreadfully alarmed at the 
 notion of precipitate publication — a feeling which there 
 could be no harm in allaying.' More than once he com- 
 plains of ' the burden of the poor sermons.' ' Were it not,' 
 he writes to Pearson, ' that I look upon it as a kind of duty 
 to go on, I would gladly put them into the fire.' But when 
 the Professorship of Divinity fell vacant by the elevation of 
 Hampden to the Bishopric of Hereford, and when he 
 himself became a candidate for the Chair, he could no longer 
 delay the publication. 
 
 ' People had got the notion that I was withholding them 
 on purpose, which rendered their immediate publication 
 necessary. I believe that they will turn out a failure as 
 signal as the success of Arnold's Life.' 
 
 His forebodings were verified. The 'Sermons and 
 Essays on the Apostolic Age,' which were published in 
 November, 1847, received but little notice from critics, and 
 little attention from the public. 
 
 The volume appeared at an unfavourable moment. The 
 Hampden controversy was raging, and it was still at the
 
 CHAP. XI PUBLICATION OF HIS SERMONS 389 
 
 height of its terrors, when it withered and died in a moment 
 before the blaze of the Revolution of February, 1848. But 
 though the sermons never gained the ear of the public, they 
 made him a marked man. They destroyed whatever 
 chance he might have had of obtaining the Regius Pro- 
 fessorship of Divinity. The Ministry could scarcely venture 
 to raise a fresh ecclesiastical tempest by the appointment of 
 another professor whose orthodoxy was suspected. The 
 Chair was conferred on Jacobson (afterwards Bishop of 
 Chester). Stanley announces the success of his rival in the 
 letter to his sister from which the following passage is 
 extracted : 
 
 * I regard the appointment of Jacobson with almost 
 universal satisfaction, partly as setting the question at rest, 
 and partly from the great pleasure which it gives me to 
 see him there, both on his own account and because, 
 though not brilliant, he is such a thoroughly honest, straight- 
 forward, sensible man, who will do his duty without inter- 
 fering with other people, and will thoroughly enjoy the two 
 great Houses and the mixture of parish and professorship. 
 He has always been the kindest of friends to me, so that, 
 even in that respect, his appointment will be really service- 
 able. Up to this time he has been living cooped up in a 
 small house, with hardly space to turn in, so that it is quite 
 a pleasure to wake in the morning, and think of the six 
 children disporting themselves in the halls of Christ Church 
 and the gardens of Ewelme. And he is so safe a man that 
 the Government will almost cover their appointment of 
 Hampden by it.' 
 
 And, as results proved, the selection of Jacobson as 
 Regius Professor did something to allay the Hampden agita- 
 tion in Oxford. But its sudden and complete extinction was 
 mainly due to the downfall of Louis Philippe. The year 
 1848 was a year of political convulsion. The P>ench 
 Revolution of February set Europe in a blaze. The spirit 
 of revolt spread like wildfire. In Sicily, at Naples, in the 
 Tuscan and Roman States, at Milan and Venice, throughout
 
 )90 
 
 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 
 
 Austria and Germany, it leaped into a flame. Even in 
 Great Britain there was grave cause for anxiety : a serious 
 riot at Glasgow, the turbulence of a noisy mob in London, 
 disturbances at Edinburgh, Manchester, and Newcastle, 
 seemed to indicate that the same spirit was spreading to 
 this country. Nor was anxiety allayed till April loth was 
 passed, and the Monster Petition of the Chartists was con- 
 veyed to the House of Commons in two four-wheeled cab.s. 
 The news of the French Revolution threw Stanley into 
 a fever of excitement. The intelligence reached Oxford 
 on February 26th. ' I had,' he writes to his mother, 
 
 * come back late from a dinner at Cuddesdon the night 
 before, and overslept myself, so that I did not hear it till 
 just before my lecture at ten. " The Abdication of Louis 
 Philippe " ; " The Palais Royal Stormed " ; " The Tuileries 
 Sacked " ; " The King on his Way to England." I could 
 hardly get through my lectures. The first was on the 
 revolution of Jehu, and you may imagine how Paris rose 
 before me instead of Jezreel. Then came the excitement 
 of the evening papers, and we were met as we came out of 
 chapel by undergraduates shouting that the Republic was 
 proclaimed.' 
 
 As the term drew to a close, his excitement culminated 
 
 in the determination to visit the scenes of the Revolution 
 
 during the Easter vacation. On March 27th he announced 
 
 the plan to his sister, and asked for advice. 
 
 'Jowett, by meditating on the papers, had seriously 
 come to the conclusion that this Diust be done in the Easter 
 vacation. You can imagine how he would dilate on the 
 perfect practicability of the scheme : no danger anywhere 
 except at Paris ; railroad almost the whole way ; no night 
 journeys ; the effects of the Revolution on all the countries 
 and races of Europe ; the interest never to be forgotten ; 
 a work to be written immediately on return, entitled " The 
 Capitals of Europe in 1848." At first I was thunderstruck 
 at the greatness of the enterprise, and still decidedly object 
 to the Italian part, so remote and precarious. But what 
 do you say to the rest ? '
 
 CHAP. XI PARIS IN 
 
 ;9i 
 
 At first the project was strongly opposed at Norwich, 
 and the more distant part of the plan was abandoned. It 
 was finally decided to go no farther than the French capital. 
 Bunsen and Bancroft (whose advice was asked) declared 
 that no danger would be incurred by a visit to Paris. ' Is 
 Paris dangerous ? ' Stanley asked Bunsen. ' Yes,' was the 
 reply, ' Paris is dangerous, and so is Kennington Common, 
 and London ; but one not more so than the other.' In 
 case of danger Bancroft gave him a letter to the American 
 Embassy, where he would be sure of finding protection. 
 He also carried with him an introduction from R. M. Milnes 
 to Mr. Clarke, an attache dl the English Embassy, ' the very 
 best man in all Paris for instructions' ; another from Professor 
 Sedgwick to Arago ; a third to Michelet from Matthew 
 Arnold, describing in eloquent French the Sermons on the 
 Apostolical Age ; a fourth from Nassau Senior to George 
 Sumner, ' a distinguished American lawyer, who is ac- 
 quainted with several members of the Provisional Govern- 
 ment.' 
 
 On Saturday, April 8th, the party, consisting of Stanley, 
 Jowett, F. Palgrave, and Morier, described as 'a Balliol 
 undergraduate of gigantic size, who talks French better than 
 English, is to wear a blouse, and go about disguised in the 
 clubs ' — left Folkestone for Boulogne. The first object which 
 met their eyes on landing was a huge placard announcirig 
 the plantation and benediction of a Tree of Liberty. Other 
 signs of the Republic were visible. New tricolour flags 
 floated in every direction ; on their passports ' Royaume ' 
 was erased, and ' Republique ' substituted ; at the railway- 
 stations the ' Ordonnances du ' were followed by a blank, 
 where the word ' Roi ' had been cut out ; in the streets the 
 children, as they played, hailed the passers-by as ' citoyens,' 
 and shouted ' Guizot ! ' 'Guizot!'^ at the little group of 
 
 ^ Guizot's supposed subserviency to English interests was a war-cry against
 
 392 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1848 
 
 Englishmen. But the night journey to Paris was accom- 
 pHshed without interruption or difficulty, and the travellers 
 arrived at 5 A.M. on the morning of Sunday, April 9. As 
 they drove to the Hotel Meurice the streets were empty. 
 Nothing but the Trees of Liberty reminded them of the 
 Revolution till they came in sight of the Tuileries. ' Not 
 one of us spoke ; but it was truly awful to see the vast grey 
 mass standing as before, with the consciousness of all within 
 gone, or dead for ever.' 
 
 The splendour and gaiety of the French capital were 
 extinct. The fountains played, and the columns glittered 
 in the clear air as before ; but the brilliant throng of well- 
 dressed people had vanished from the empty streets, the 
 regular soldiers had been altogether removed, the National 
 Guard were rarely seen. The placards on the walls con- 
 taining the decree of the Provisional Government, the 
 notices of clubs, the tricolours flying over every public 
 building, the caricatures 'in numbers numberless,' the three 
 words ' Liberte,' ' Egalite,' ' Fraternite,' painted over the 
 walls, the white shot-marks on the Chateau d'Eu, were 
 almost the only outward signs of the political earthquake. 
 ' C'est plus tot ou plus tard,' said Michelet ; 'a present 
 c'est I'entr'acte.' 
 
 ' The only sign of coming or past revolution is con- 
 stantly before you. Everywhere — at the entrance of public 
 buildings, walking round the Trees of Liberty, parading in 
 half-formed regiments through the streets, are the Garde 
 Mobile, all in blouses or in common ragged coats or cloaks, 
 mostly boys, almost reeling under the weight of their 
 muskets and bayonets ; and in them you certainly do feel 
 that you see the representatives of the sovereign people in 
 a very alarming shape.' 
 
 the Minister iin the Chamber and at the elections. He was designated ' Sir 
 Guizot' and 'Milord Guizot'; his Ministry was called ' Anglo-Guizot,' his 
 friends were called ' Pritchardistes,' an allusion to his consent to compensate 
 Mr. Pritchard, the British Consul at Otaheite, for the personal losses which 
 he had suffered at the hands of the commander of a French frigate.
 
 -CHAP. XI PARIS IN '48 393 
 
 From the narratives given by Clarke and Sumner, who 
 had been in Paris at the time, and from Morier's ' interviews 
 with the Gardes JUobiles^ Stanley gathered the following 
 account of the night of February 23rd ^ : 
 
 ' The Republican clubs were all sitting in suspense, 
 abiding their time, but apparently with no pretext for 
 moving. They had been so often disappointed and defeated 
 that they were determined now not to move without a good 
 chance of success. To one of them a half-madman, Lagrange, 
 ■entered, and said, " What is to be done to rouse the people .-' " 
 They said, " Nous n'avons pas de moyens." He replied, 
 " Oui ! il y a tm moyen." He went out, and came up the 
 Boulevards— the whole town brilliantly illuminated for 
 Guizot's resignation, all in a ferment of loyalty. A troop 
 of boys and others were standing before Guizot's house, 
 ■demanding that it should be illuminated. He went silently 
 up to the house and fired two shots in the air. Then fol- 
 lowed the murderous discharge ; and then, at the same 
 instant, men burst into all the Clubs : " On assassine le 
 peuple ! " The bells in all the churches began to ring the 
 tocsin. " Trahison ! Trahison ! " was heard in every quarter. 
 " What is the meaning of those fatal bells .-" " was in every- 
 one's mouth, as they were heard through the dead of night, 
 far above the Rappel and the beating of the drums ; but 
 they rushed to arms — even the better classes thought that 
 Louis Philippe was playing them false — and by 3 A.M. the 
 whole city was barricaded.' 
 
 A letter written from Paris on April 13th begins,' Now 
 for Rachel and the Clubs ' ; — 
 
 'The play was a modern one- — " Lucrece " — the story 
 of Lucretia and the flight of Tarquin. Rachel was Lucrece. 
 
 * The two principal reforms which were demanded were the extension of 
 the suffrage and the limitation of the number of placemen in the Chamber. 
 To these measures M. Guizot was opposed. On Wednesday, February 23, 
 Louis Philippe, who clung to the belief that the disaffection was to the 
 Ministry, and not to the Crown, dismissed M. Guizot, and sent for M. Mole 
 to form a new Ministry. On the evening of the same day, opposite 
 M. Guizot's official residence, occurred a serious collision between the mob 
 and the troops, who fired a volley on their assailants, by which several persons 
 were killed. It is to this incident that Stanley's letter refers.
 
 ;94 
 
 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 
 
 The chief thing tliat struck me was her great simplicity, 
 and the total absence of rant. The two great scenes were — 
 one, when she described a dreadful dream till your blood 
 ran cold ; the other, when she came in, after the catastrophe, 
 to kill herself, and then it was extraordinary to see the 
 complete transformation which she had undergone. You 
 could hardly have recognised her. A world seemed to 
 have passed over her head since she last came on the stage. 
 The play closed by a mob rushing in to announce the 
 Republic. 
 
 ' Then a pause, and she came forward for the " Marseil- 
 laise" in white, as before. It is difficult to describe it. She 
 had seemed to be a woman — she became a " behig'' — sublime 
 irony, prophetic enthusiasm, demoniacal fierceness, suc- 
 ceeded each other like flashes of lightning. And then, 
 with a solemn march, she advanced at the last stanza to 
 the tricolour standard and knelt, folding it in her embrace, 
 as if with a determination that nothing should ever part her 
 from it — a love, an adoration as if it were an animated 
 creature. It was very grand — Morier declared that it was 
 itself enough to annihilate a monarchy. Madame de M. 
 thought it the " most shocking sight she had ever seen." 
 Certainly it did seem as if the expression of such feelings 
 was beyond what the occasion called for. Had Nero fallen 
 instead of Louis Philippe, the impression conveyed could 
 not have been more ferocious. They say that Rachel enters 
 into it herself heart and soul, and is so wrought up by it 
 that she usually faints away when it is over. 
 
 ' Now for the Clubs. They sit, you know, in every part 
 of Paris, and at night, that the lower classes may attend. 
 The first we went to was the Club de la Sorbonne, in the 
 great amphitheatre of the ancient College of Divinity, now 
 used for the distribution of prizes, &c., in the University of 
 France — corresponding, in fact, to the Theatre at Oxford. 
 There we found, ranged in the semicircular tier of seats 
 opposite the president's desk, an assembly of 1,500 people, 
 promiscuous, but chiefly of the common people, in blouses, 
 beards, long flowing hair, women, &c. Each speaker 
 ascended a tribune in front of the desk, and the question 
 for debate was the law regulating the elections. The 
 speeches, so far as I could follow them, seemed extremely 
 fluent and clear — nothing of a revolutionary character ; and 
 the most remarkable feature of the whole was that, though
 
 CHAP. XI THE CLUBS IN PARIS 395 
 
 there were vehement applmidissentents, the most perfect 
 order was preserved. Speeches, if not hked, were heard in 
 silence ; the ringing of the president's bell was instantly 
 attended to ; in short, the House of Commons could not 
 have been under better control. 
 
 'The next night we went to another — the Club des 
 Interets du Peuple — in hopes of hearing the Abbe 
 Lacordaire, a celebrated Parisian preacher, who has 
 offered himself as a candidate for the Assembly. He did 
 not appear ; but his pretensions and character were passion- 
 ately discussed, the more so from anger at his non-appear- 
 ance. And this, added to a dispute betv/een the secretary 
 and president, led to a scene of confusion quite unlike the 
 order of the Sorbonne. For two hours it was not a debate 
 interrupted by exclamations, but one continued uproar, 
 interrupted by a few snatches of oratory — of men gaining a 
 hearing for a few minutes, and then being put down. 
 
 ' What would you have given if you could have been 
 mesmerically transported there, and seen the hall, dimly 
 lighted with tallow candles, a French mob of 1,000 persons, 
 shouting and yelling at the tops of their voices — amongst 
 other cries, the one that I so wanted to hear, a bas ! a bas ! — 
 and the Poppet's'^ head enclosed within the embrace of two 
 huge arms of a rough-bearded and bloused man, who was 
 leaning over me, and every now and then pouring his 
 complaints into my fraternising ears .-' Yet with all this 
 the most perfect good-humour prevailed. 
 
 'The scene was the more curious from the debate turning 
 in a great measure on Lacordaire's theological works, and 
 how far he had been always a Republican, or had been 
 subitement illumine on February 24th.' 
 
 During Stanley's visit to Paris the formidable crisis 
 occurred which made Sunday, April 16, one of the most 
 important days of the Revolution. The Provisional 
 Government had soon split up into factions.*" Louis Blanc, 
 Cremieux, and Albert wished for Communism ; Flocon 
 and Ledru-Rollin desired the Red Republic and Terror ; 
 Arago, Marie, Garnier-Pages, and Marrast represented the 
 
 * Stanley's pet name in the home-circle. 
 
 ^ Histoire des Ateliers Nationaux, par E. Thomas, p. 98. Eiiquete sur 
 r Insurrection du l^Juin et 1^ mat, tome i. pp. 224-247.
 
 396 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1848 
 
 moderate party ; I.amartine hoped to conciliate everybody 
 by his eloquence ; the aged Dupont de I'Eure held aloof 
 from the struggle. The demonstration of March 17th had 
 enormously increased the influence of the more violent 
 party. Day by day the dissensions of the Provisional 
 Government grew more fierce. Ledru-Rollin ceased to 
 attend its councils. Louis Blanc and Albert, masters of 
 an army of 30,000 workmen, whose delegates met at the 
 Luxembourg, reported to their colleagues at the Hotel de 
 Ville the demands of their followers. On April 14th they 
 confessed that another manifestation like that of March 17th 
 was to take place on Sunday, the i6th, in order to obtain a 
 further postponement of the elections to the Assembly and 
 the redress of other popular grievances. Lamartine was in 
 despair. The i6th of April came, and already the insur- 
 gents were marching upon the Hotel de Ville, thirty 
 thousand strong, headed b)'- some of the fiercest leaders ot 
 the Socialists and the Clubs. General Changarnier" and 
 Marrast ordered the Rappel general to be beaten, and the 
 National Guard was called out. Under the pressure of 
 superior numbers the insurgents dispersed. The crisis was 
 averted. The democratic party received their first check. 
 Four days later the regular army was brought back to 
 Paris ; on April 27 the elections were held, and on May 4 
 the Assembly met. 
 
 On April i6th Stanley writes : 
 
 'The Presse has announced, and I suppose the 
 Times will have re-echoed it to you, that the date of this 
 letter will remain in history as " the most eventful day of 
 the Revolution since February 24." I am afraid you will 
 be sadly disappointed at my account of it. 
 
 ' At 1 1.30 we set off to Notre Dame, being told that vv^e 
 must go at that time to have any chance of places, though 
 the service did not begin till 1.30. Indeed, an English 
 ' Ejiquete, tome i. j). 260.
 
 CHAP. XI LACORDAIRE IN NOTRE DAME 
 
 397 
 
 lady had informed me that the only way for gentlemen 
 was to send a " tall servant " before them at 8 A.M., and 
 for ladies at 4 A.M. Whether such ample precautions were 
 really needed did not quite appear. We were severed from 
 each other in the crowd. Jowett and I got tolerably good 
 places ; Palgrave heard nothing ; Morier heard little, but 
 saw much. 
 
 ' It was Palm Sunday — the third Palm Sunday that I 
 have passed abroad — and the dense mass of human heads 
 was relieved here and there by the waving branches of box- 
 tree, which here supplied the place of the genuine palms. 
 The throng became closer and closer, and at last, at 1.30, 
 the Archbishop of Paris, a red-faced, heavy-looking man 
 (who, by the way, is said to be about to stand for the 
 Assembly), passed through to his seat in front of the pulpit, 
 and in the pulpit appeared Lacordaire in his Dominican 
 costume. I never saw such a congregation : the whole 
 nave of Notre Dame was absolutely filled from end to end, 
 chiefly men, and all listenmg with the most rapt attention. 
 The sermon lasted till 3 P.M., and was on Labour, an 
 attack on Louis Blanc's Orgmiisation dii Travail, but, at 
 the same time, in full sympathy with the Revolution, to 
 which he alluded more than once. It was extremely forcible, 
 and evidently told immensely on the audience ; not the 
 least the jokes, which from time to time caused an audible 
 titter all through the church. At other times there were 
 murmurs of dissent and of approbation. I will give you a 
 fuller account of it afterwards, but I here confine myself to 
 the externals. Towards the close of the sermon, in the 
 midst of a violent invective against the master-manufacturers 
 for not leaving their workmen free on Sundays, a loud cry 
 was suddenly heard from the west end of the church, which 
 I took to be an expression of dissent from what he was 
 saying. The whole congregation rose ; there was no uproar 
 or confusion, excepting a murmur all through the place ; 
 the preacher paused for a moment, said something to the 
 quarter from whence the interruption came, and proceeded 
 to the end, and the congregation broke up singing the 
 Marseillaise. 
 
 ' Having missed Jowett and the others in the crowd, I 
 came out alone, and was going straight back to the hotel, 
 when 1 saw, on the other side of the river, an immense 
 procession, extending the whole way from the Tuileries to
 
 398 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1848 
 
 the Hotel de Ville, along the quay. I had heard the drums 
 beat several times during the sermon, and thought, there- 
 fore, that it was a parade of guards, or something of the 
 kind, and so went across and moved along the trotioir by 
 the side of the piocession till I came to a dead-lock from 
 the confluence of the crowds at the Pont d'Arcole. The 
 procession consisted of two lines — one of workmen in blouses 
 with flags about Organisation die Travail, the other of 
 National Guards, both lines equally armed with muskets 
 and bayonets, which went glittering away in the distance 
 as far back as you could see, and lost themselves, in fact, 
 in a sea of steel before the Hotel de Ville. There were no 
 cries nor any appearance of disorder, except that at one 
 moment, just as I was escaping from the crowd, someone 
 appeared at the windows of the Hotel de Ville, and there 
 were cheers, and hats and caps waved on the ends of bayonets. 
 I thought it was merely fraternisation of some kind between 
 the Gardes Mobiles and Nationaux, and ran back as fast as 
 I could to the English Church at 4, meeting on the way 
 some troops of the line.- 
 
 ' Jowett and I had to dine with Lord Russell at 6.30. 
 I had only just time to dress and go there, and then, for 
 the first time (except for a frantic exclamation of the 
 porter's wife at Meurice's that the troops were said to be 
 going to massacre the people), we heard that a formidable 
 movement had taken place, but that the Provisional Govern- 
 ment had triumphed. 
 
 ' And so you must understand that the drums I heard 
 in Notre Dame were the celebrated rappel of the National 
 Guard ; that the loud cry was a man rushing in and calling 
 out On se hat, believing that the collision was about to 
 take place instantly; and that the procession which I saw 
 was the great demonstration of the workmen (as great, it is 
 said, as that of March 17), with the still greater demonstra- 
 tion of the National Guard, which carried the day. If one 
 had happened to be there at the exact moment of the 
 appearance of Lamartine at the window (which I cannot 
 be sure that I was not), one would have seen more. 
 Otherwise, the only observation that I have to make upon 
 it is, that there was so little to see that, had one not been 
 told, I should have thought it was only a fete or parade. 
 The papers will tell you as much as I know at present 
 about it. All our friends congratulate us on having seen
 
 CHAP. XI THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT 
 
 399 
 
 an iU}ieute. It is spoken of as being, in its result, an ex- 
 cellent guarantee for future tranquillity.' 
 
 ' The enthusiasm,' he adds in another letter, 
 
 * displayed by the National Guards was very great. They 
 responded far more readily than was expected to the Rappel 
 through all their ranks. Tocqueville (the writer on America) 
 was discussing the Constitution of the United States with 
 Mr. Rust when they heard the drum, and he immediately 
 dashed out to the head of his legion.' 
 
 On April 20th the regular troops were brought back to 
 Paris. Writing on the same day, Stanley thus describes 
 the scene : 
 
 ' It was a sign of the anxiety felt about it that all 
 the preparations were kept secret till yesterday. The 
 professed object was to fraternise the National and Mobile 
 Guards with the Army, which had not been in Paris since the 
 Revolution. The real object was to get the troops back 
 again into Paris without exciting a disturbance, and to keep 
 the Anarchical party in order. It was an ingenious plan, 
 and hitherto seems to have been entirely successful. 
 
 ' We had to be at the Triumphal Arch at 7.30, 
 much against the grain, as it was a drizzly morning. 
 Here we had to wait for an hour and a half before the 
 Government came. The rain, however, kept off the mob till 
 we were safely lodged in the platform immediately under 
 the Arch, whither we were transplanted by sundry dexterous 
 movements unnecessary to repeat. The Provisional Govern- 
 ment arrived in carriages — truly the eleven kings of France — 
 and saluted by a royal salute of twenty-one guns (to pro- 
 tect ourselves against the report of which Jowett and I had 
 provided cotton-wool to stuff our ears). 
 
 ' Cremieux and Marrast were the only two that we could 
 catch distinctly as they drove up ; but, after we were finally 
 on the platform, they showed themselves from time to time 
 by passing in and out amongst the spectators ; and in this 
 way I had a perfect view of Arago, Ledru-Rollin, Dupont 
 de I'Eure, Louis Blanc, Flocon, and Albert. The two last 
 were nothing remarkable to me ; but the others were all 
 very characteristic. Arago, with certainly the greatest 
 appearance of ability ; Cremieux, a clever Jewish face,
 
 400 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 184S 
 
 animated and quick ; Ledru-Rollin and Louis Blanc, the 
 two antipodes — no portraits that I have seen do justice to 
 the great bulk of the nrst or the extreme smallness of the 
 second. Ledru-Rollin has a large coarse figure, and face 
 — not ferocious, but extremely repulsive ; Louis Blanc, one 
 of the least men I ever saw, almost fairy-like in appearance, 
 and with a light, easy, aerial movement and a per- 
 petual smile upon his little features. These two, I think, 
 were the most interesting to have looked at. Dupont de 
 I'Eure, an old man bowed down with years, and fat, and 
 with the dreary, vacant look which you might expect in a 
 man who has seen three revolutions. 
 
 ' But, how provoking ! Lamartine only came out once, 
 when I was not by. I flew to the spot on hearing the 
 cry of * Vive Lamartine ! ' but he was gone. He had paused 
 for a minute as a countryman had presented him with a 
 rosebud, and Palgrave saw him well. What was to be 
 done .'' I waited for hours, in hopes he would again pass 
 that way. At last, however, I did contrive by three im- 
 perfect glimpses to get some notion of him. The first was 
 by climbing up on Morier's back, by which means I was 
 enabled to look down into the tribune, the two others 
 giving me the opera-glass — the celebrated opera-glass — the 
 moment I was fairly on the shoulders of the good-natured 
 giant, and telling me where and what to look for. The 
 second was by another glimpse afforded me for a minute by 
 the kindness of an officer. The third was by attaching 
 myself, in company with Jowett and Palgrave, to one of 
 the advancing legions, and actually walking bareheaded, 
 amidst the shouts of the people, as one of the troop 
 underneath the platform, and so looking up to the great 
 eleven as they sat on their thrones alone. He was motion- 
 less when I saw him, and therefore I did not recognise the 
 fire and genius which you usually see in his portraits. The 
 one thing which struck me in him, as contrasted with his 
 colleagues, was his very aristocratic appearance — a perfect 
 gentleman, the one gentleman of the set. Another person 
 that one saw was Lamoriciere, much older-looking than I 
 had expected. 
 
 ' All this I mention first, as what was really most 
 interesting to me. But the spectacle itself was of its 
 kind as grand as can well be conceived. From the platform 
 raised halfway up the height of the Arc de I'Etoile,
 
 CHAP. XI THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT 40 1 
 
 immediately under the colossal statues of Napoleon and 
 France, whose huge limbs supported and sheltered the 
 pigmy forms of living men, you looked down the Champs 
 Elysees to the Tuileries ; and the whole avenue, down to the 
 Obelisk which rose at the end above the whole, was one 
 continuous stream of bayonets, first grey in the dull morn- 
 ing, then, as the sun came out, glittering like silver waves, 
 wave upon wave flowing steadily onwards between the 
 dark banks of the crowd which lined it on either side. It 
 began at ten, and I believe is still going on now (9 p.m.). 
 
 ' Of course it is by far the greatest military spectacle 
 that I ever saw ; and there was also the sense of its great 
 political importance, for every legion which defiled before 
 the Arch and passed into Paris was an additional guarantee 
 for the security of France. 
 
 ' There was no actual fraternisation visible, except the 
 interweaving of the military and civil troops, either in 
 succession or side by side. Besides the endless forest of 
 bayonets, with the flood of human heads or umbrellas on 
 either side, as the case might be (I see I have inverted my 
 former metaphor, but each is expressive in its way), there 
 were the additional splendours of festoons and masses of 
 flags, and, towering above the rest, the flags of the three 
 days of February ; cannonades at the advance of every 
 regiment, and bands playing and choruses singing the 
 Marseillaise and Mourir pour la Patrie. In a humbler 
 sphere, must not be forgotten a huge clay face of Louis 
 Philippe by the roadside, with a dog (the emblem of Guizot) 
 beneath. 
 
 ' Two general impressions were conveyed, besides the 
 extraordinary grandeur of the scene — one, that considering 
 the sight, and the vast masses of people congregated, there 
 was very little display of enthusiasm. Whether it is that 
 French mobs are incapable of cheering like English mobs, 
 or that they really do not care about the Revolution, I do 
 not know ; but the feebleness and formality of the cries, 
 Vive la Ligne I Vive la RepubliqueX were unmistakable, 
 except now and then, when a popular regiment happened 
 to pass by. The other was the complete democracy of the 
 scene. On that splendid platform round the Ministers of 
 state, with the judges and generals on each side, there were 
 ranged, instead of the brilliant aristocracy which might 
 have been expected, the commonest working-people, in 
 
 VOL. I. D D
 
 402 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1848 
 
 mud-bespattered clothes, blouses, and even rags. And the 
 whole was kept in order, not by soldiers, but by the Gardes 
 Mobiles, in their blouses as elsewhere, with excellent 
 good-humour it must be acknowledged. There too, more 
 than anywhere else, I have heard the address of Citoyen. 
 Lamartine and Louis Blanc were cheered — no one else. 
 When some attempt at a cheer was got up for Dupont 
 de I'Eure, a bystander observed, " Vive la Republique, pas 
 Ics individus ! " ' 
 
 A second visit was paid to Paris in the first week of 
 October, and on this occasion Stanley was accompanied by 
 Pearson. In the interval great changes had taken place. 
 The events of May 1 5th, the scene of violence in the National 
 Assembly, and the attempt to form a new Provisional 
 Government, had strengthened the hands of the moderate 
 party. At the same time, the leaders of the extreme 
 Republicans felt that no time was to be lost. On June 23rd 
 the barricades were once more formed, and a sanguinary 
 struggle commenced, which lasted for four days, in the 
 streets of Paris. The vigorous measures of General 
 Cavaignac, who had been made provisional dictator, at last 
 restored order, military rule triumphed over mob law, 
 and the Assembly, in which Louis Napoleon had taken his 
 seat, were discussing the new Constitution and the mode 
 of electing the President. Detained for a few hours in 
 Boulogne, the two friends visited all the sights of the town 
 — Caligula's tower, Napoleon's column, the cathedral and 
 the crypt, and 'lastly, the Abattoir.' 'Do you know,' 
 Stanley asks his sister, 
 
 ' what that is .'' We had not the dimmest notion ; but, 
 being told by the waiter that Prince Louis Napoleon's live 
 eagle, with which he made the descent upon Boulogne, was 
 still kept at the Abattoir, we thought it would be quite in 
 keeping with the state of affairs to go and see it. So, 
 asking at every turn in the street for the Abattoir, which 
 Pearson took to be a menagerie of wild beasts, and I, a
 
 CHAP. XI PARIS IN OCTOBER '48 403 
 
 zoological garden formed out of the ruins of an abbey, we 
 at last arrived at a large edifice, where the streams of blood 
 and hanging carcases announced to us, amidst shouts of 
 self-derision, that we had been inquiring all day for the 
 slaugJiter-Jiouse. Alas ! the poor eagle died last year. Its 
 occupation during its imprisonment was the very unimperial 
 labour of killing rats.' 
 
 Arrived in Paris, Stanley's first interests were to observe 
 the general changes which had taken place since April, 
 and the signs of the sanguinary struggle of June 23rd. 
 
 If the first visit had given him insight into a revolution, 
 the second afforded him insight into a reaction. The 
 soldiers, before so conspicuously absent, were everywhere, 
 and their tents whitened the Champs EJysees. The Garde 
 Mobile, in April an undisciplined motley force of ragged 
 lads, were now subordinated to military rule, and clothed in 
 neat uniforms like ' military midshipmen.' The Clubs had 
 been broken up ; the blouses were banished from the 
 streets. The Trees of Liberty were withered, and shorn of 
 half their decorations ; the tricolours were faded ; the rain- 
 bow-coloured placards had disappeared from the walls; the 
 colossal bulletins of Ledru-Rollin were no longer seen ; the 
 caricatures were few in number, and confined chiefly to 
 ridiculous pictures of the leading Socialists ; the portraits- 
 of the Provisional Government were superseded by those 
 of Louis Napoleon, the murdered Archbishop of Paris, or 
 of General Cavaignac. ' Captain Chamier, the novelist, 
 whose acquaintance we have made here, told us that if you 
 ask a National Guard to say " Vive la Republique ! " he 
 will reply, " Ecrasez la Republique ! " ' 
 
 The traces of the insurrection of June 23rd, though all 
 but obliterated, were very great as compared with those of 
 February. In the Pantheon, a statue of Immortality with- 
 out her head, and a colossal figure of Liberty shattered to- 
 atoms, bore witness to a cannonade. In the Faubourg St. 
 
 D D 2
 
 404 
 
 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 
 
 Antoine, where the Archbishop of Paris was murdered, and 
 where the insurgents held out for four days, the uneven 
 pavements marked where the stones had been hastily re- 
 placed which were torn up for the barricades ; many of the 
 houses were spotted with the white marks of the shot, others 
 honeycombed by the large circular traces of the cannon-balls, 
 others lying in ruins, from which new buildings were rising. 
 In the Clos S. Lazare freshly-plastered spots in the town 
 wall showed the holes which the insurgents had made to 
 fire upon the soldiers. Along the Boulevards the young, 
 freshly-planted trees suggested the destruction of those 
 that had occupied their place. 
 
 But the principal event of the second visit to Paris was 
 the speech of Lamartine in the Assembly. 
 
 ' The debate was on the mode of electing the President, so 
 that you will see it in the papers. The first three speakers, 
 although speaking fluently, appeared to be obscure characters, 
 and it was curious, especially during the two last, to observe 
 the total indifference, but, at the same time, patience, of the 
 deputies. No coughing, or stamping, or shuffling, but every 
 face turned away from the orator to talk to its neighbour, or 
 to look at a book, or to write. But for the interest, almost 
 like that of a puzzle, to make out the different men by 
 the numbers of the plan, it would have been tedious. 
 But with this it was not the least so. There you 
 saw, on the right, the old dynastic Opposition : Thiers, 
 with his clever little face and grey hair ; Odillon-Barrot ; 
 Jerome Bonaparte, the likeness of the Emperor ; Mole, a 
 very pleasing old man, the two hours' Minister of February 
 23 ; Fayet, Bishop of Orleans, and the two or three clergy 
 in their black gowns. On the left, Arago, Lamartine, 
 Garnier-Pages ; on the lowest benches, Ledru-Rollin ; and 
 high up on the mountain the two Socialists — Proudhon, 
 very disagreeable, and Leroux, a wild, half-savage, long- 
 haired, but not unpleasing countenance ; Changarnier a 
 little lower down ; and, close by the President's chair, 
 Cavaignac, with General Bedeau, halting from his wounds 
 of June, and leaning over to speak to him. Cavaignac is 
 very like his pictures : long, thin face, with a very high
 
 CHAP. XI LAMARTINE IN THE ASSEMBLY 405 
 
 forehead, and immovable in his place, his head thrown back 
 the whole time over the back of his seat. Everyone of 
 eminence was there, I think, except Louis Napoleon. 
 
 ' About 4 P.M., to our unspeakable delight, the tribune 
 was ascended by Lamartine. It was at the moment of a 
 temporary suspension, and many of the deputies were absent; 
 but in five minutes they were streaming in from every door, 
 and for some time there was nothing to be heard but the 
 trampling of feet and the cries, " En place, En place," he the 
 while standing erect, with his arms folded. 
 
 ' The change of scene was extraordinary. From the 
 utter apathy and vacancy of the House before, with its in- 
 different listeners and lifeless speakers, the whole was trans- 
 formed into a beautiful picture. All the faces turned in 
 one direction to the central tribune, and the tribune occu- 
 pied by that noble figure, in himself so well suited to be 
 the central object, with his graceful gestures, gradually 
 becoming more and more impassioned as his voice grew 
 louder and his countenance more animated. And so 
 we have had a faint image of the famous speeches of 
 February 25. 
 
 ' It was to me very difficult to catch the argument and 
 the words ; but it was evidently a very brilliant speech, a 
 succession of vivid imagery, and producing a great effect ; 
 chiefly cheers from the right, but closing apparently amidst 
 disapprobation. The voice was very distinct, with great 
 variety of inflection, but with a certain thinness, as if it 
 would come to an end, and required effort. The action was 
 incessant and theatrical, but always striking — folded arms, 
 hands raised up, but chiefly a pointing upwards or horizontal 
 cleaving of the air, as if at the passage of visions before 
 him. On the whole, the impression was of consummate 
 art, and coolness, and elevation of feeling and expression, 
 but of too much aiming at effect to be quite agreeable ; 
 still a sight never to be forgotten, and standing out in a 
 relief against the other speakers, which made their tame 
 speeches valuable as the background to his. 
 
 ' I have not seen the report yet, and still, therefore, 
 suspend my account of its substance. It ended at 6 P.M. , 
 and with it the seance. 
 
 ' Octobe}' 6. — How curious it is to read the report of a 
 half-understood speech! On the whole, I had followed it 
 tolerably well, but with some ridiculous mistakes. The
 
 406 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 
 
 report in " Galignani," which is given at great length, gives 
 some notion, though evidently a very inadequate one, of 
 the eloquence : the pictures are all shrunk up into simple 
 outlines, and the action and manner, of course, lost. It is 
 spoken of as a most important speech, and likely to settle 
 the question of the Presidency ; though, on the other hand, 
 with that versatility which has altered all political emer- 
 gencies here, the question itself seems likely to be of no im- 
 portance at all, because they talk of postponing the elections 
 for eighteen months, before which time, of course, the whole 
 aspect of affairs will be changed. Thiers told Dr. Holland 
 last night that he should not speak at all on the debate, 
 because he was sure that whatever was done in it was certain 
 to be undone. He spoke of Lamartine's speech very dis- 
 paragingly — as, of course, from one point of view, everyone 
 must, the apparent and the real question at issue being so 
 different, and its excellence being so much more rhetorical 
 than moral. He spoke of him also with great bitterness 
 generally, as the man who had done the country more 
 harm than anyone. The utmost gloom prevailed in Thiers's 
 party, though no apprehension of immediate danger. To 
 return to the speech. The striking parts were the descrip- 
 tion of the several Presidents of old, including the Pope ; 
 the horrible abyss into which the country would fall if the 
 Government had no hold upon the people except through 
 the Assembly ; the fall of the Orleans dynasty ; and the 
 prospects of the Bonaparte family ; also the true theory of 
 the President, as the personification of each elector. No- 
 thing could be more brilliant than these points, if one had 
 been able to follow them, and there was the vivid concen- 
 tration of thought in single images, which always reminds 
 me of Pericles.' 
 
 During this second visit to revolutionary Paris the 
 Professorship of Modern History fell vacant at Oxford. So 
 strong were the suspicions with which Stanley's religious 
 opinions were regarded, that a storm was plainly imminent if 
 he were appointed to a theological professorship. His 
 friends were therefore urgent that he should offer himself 
 as a candidate for the vacant Chair of Modern History. If 
 successful, he would commence his professorial career in
 
 CHAP. XI THE CHAIR OF MODERN HISTORY 407 
 
 peace. His own feelings were divided. He was occupied 
 with the plan of a great work on the New Testament, to be 
 written in collaboration with Jowett. It was to consist of 
 two parts : (i) The Gospels, (2) The Acts and Epistles. 
 Each part was to be preceded by a long preface, ' the first 
 containing a hypothesis of the Gospel and a theory of 
 Inspiration deduced from it ; the second discussing the sub- 
 jective mind of the Apostolic Age.' The work was also 
 to include essays on various subjects which could not be 
 satisfactorily handled in notes. The Epistles were to be 
 brought out first ; the Gospels were to be delayed till the 
 two friends had paid a visit to Palestine at the end of 1849. 
 The History Professorship would have been a pleasure ; 
 the Commentary was regarded as a duty. In the conflict 
 of his feelings, he entered but half-heartedly into the candi- 
 dature for the History Professorship. Lord John Russell 
 was informed that 
 
 * I could not give myself wholly up to it, and therefore 
 should not apply for it ; but that I would take it. This 
 was chiefly at the instigation of Jowett and Temple, and 
 so now, I think, no one complains, least of all myself, what- 
 ever is the result' 
 
 As the time for the election approached, he feared that 
 he had made a mistake in not urging his claims upon the 
 Whig Ministry. But it was too late. Early in November 
 his uncertainty was dispelled by the appointment of Henry 
 Halford Vaughan to the vacant Professorship — 'a capital 
 appointment,' he writes, ' in every respect, except as far as 
 regards the immediate interests and pleasures of A. P. S.' 
 
 * My paradise,' he says to Pearson, ' is lost, but I hope to 
 regain it elsewhere. I believe it to be quoad the Uni- 
 versity, what my migration from Balliol was quoad the 
 College — great pain but ultimate good.' There is no doubt 
 that he felt very keenly the sacrifice of his favourite pursuit
 
 4o8 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1848 
 
 to the less congenial task of writing a commentary. ' Like 
 me,' he writes to his mother, 
 
 ' I daresay you will feel a momentary pang at the final 
 seclusion from a sphere which looks the more pleasant as 
 it recedes, and leaves me alone, battling with the rugged 
 sentences of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, and 
 with the prospect of storms and tempests for the rest of my 
 life. But I have little doubt that we shall find that our first, 
 and deliberate, conviction was the right one, from which it 
 would have been weak to depart. And I feel that if I had 
 gone out of my way to seek for this Chair, my enjoyment 
 of it would always have been dashed by the fear that 1 had 
 sacrificed a duty to a pleasure, or that I had taken upon 
 myself greater works than I had strength to bear and carry 
 through. I feel, too, that the Commentary ought to be the 
 better for having lost something to keep to it. " The course 
 of true love never did run smooth," and the Modern History 
 Chair is the greatest offering I could have made to it. 
 
 ' Now that this is fairly gone from me, and, in all human 
 probability, for ever, I shall still make it not less, but more, 
 my resolution to have history for my pastime ; and then, if 
 ever the Ancient History Chair, or the Ecclesiastical History, 
 or even this at some remote future, should fall vacant, I 
 should still be able to retire there, as to a haven, when I 
 am worn out by the troubles of theology. Meanwhile, 
 there are the delights, of which I spoke in my last letter, of 
 going on in my work uninterrupted, as I should have done 
 anyhow but for this unexpected vacancy. 
 
 ' On public grounds, I believe that H. H. Vaughan's 
 appointment is better than mine would have been. He is 
 a very able man, and but for this would have been lost to 
 the University, and perhaps to the world altogether, whilst 
 I should always have been here, and with the prospect of 
 the Theological Chairs, which he, being a layman, could 
 not have.'
 
 409 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 1849-52 
 
 THE DEATH OF THE BISHOP OF NORWICH — REFUSAL OF DEANERY 
 OF CARLISLE — THE GORHAM CONTROVERSY— SECRETARY TO 
 THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY COMMISSION — CANON OF CANTER- 
 BURY, 1851. 
 
 Throughout the early months of 1849 Stanley had been 
 busily engaged in preparations for a visit to Palestine. He 
 was especially anxious to make the expedition while his 
 father was in sufficient vigour of health to dispense with his 
 presence. His Commentary on the Epistles to the Corin- 
 thians was almost ready for the printers. His historical 
 article on the University of Oxford, which was to form part 
 of a volume of essays by various authors on University 
 Reform, was nearly completed. His place as tutor was 
 supplied by the election of Goldwin Smith as a Fellow of 
 the College. The start was to be made in November. 
 Nothing remained to be done except to pay the farewell 
 visits, and to prepare for his geographical survey by a careful 
 preliminary ' inquiry of living oracles and dead books.' 
 ' I have taken," he writes in July 1849, 
 
 * to reading through all the geographical parts of the Bible 
 in Hebrew, and have got as far as the Kings, with the in- 
 creasing conviction that there is no other ancient geography, 
 except Greece, which opens its arms so widely to receive,, 
 and to render up, the secrets of the past, as that of Palestine 
 and Arabia.'
 
 4IO LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1849 
 
 In the midst of his preparations an event occurred 
 which interrupted all his plans, suspended all his schemes, 
 and led eventually to the surrender of his Fellowship and 
 to his acceptance of ecclesiastical preferment outside the 
 University. 
 
 On August 5th, 1849, Stanley, his father, mother, and 
 two sisters received the Holy Communion together in 
 Norwich Cathedral, as it proved, for the last time. Shortly 
 afterwards they all started together for a tour in Scotland, 
 which, it was hoped, would restore the Bishop's health. 
 At Derby, Stanley turned aside to visit Alderley, and the 
 Arnolds and Jowett in the Lake District. His visits ended, 
 he set out to rejoin his family at Perth. But on reaching 
 Edinburgh he found a letter from his sister bidding him 
 
 * come on at once ' to Brahan Castle, near Dingwall. He 
 took a special train and hurried northwards. On the 
 evening of September 5th he arrived, to hear that his father 
 had not many hours to live. All hope was entirely gone. 
 Nor was any other end to be desired. The Bishop's partial 
 recovery would have meant the decay of his faculties. His 
 apparently trivial illness had turned to congestion of the 
 brain, and he was lying, when his son arrived, without colour 
 or expression, and without sign of life except the hard 
 breathings which were the last struggle of Nature to deliver 
 itself of its burden. The next evening the Bishop died. 
 
 The body was brought by sea to Yarmouth in a storm 
 which almost wrecked the steamer. The funeral had been 
 fixed for September 21st ; but it was not till the 19th that 
 the coffin arrived. The interval was ' one long funeral.' 
 Each member of the family had secretly dreaded that in 
 the gale the Bishop might have found his last resting-place 
 in the great waters, which he had so loved in his lifetime. 
 
 The scene at the funeral was, as an eyewitness observed, 
 
 * not so much mpressive as ^/pressive from the intensity of
 
 -CHAP. XII FUNERAL OF HIS FATHER 411 
 
 feeling displayed.' Between the Palace Gate and the 
 Erpingham Gate the procession moved through not less 
 than 20,000 spectators, yet not a sound could be heard 
 beyond the trampling of feet. Every part of the Cathedral 
 itself was thronged by thousands ; all were in mourning, 
 and many were deeply affected. ' The funeral,' writes 
 Stanley himself to a friend, ' was one of the most impressive 
 sights I ever saw, could I have looked upon it in that light' 
 The striking concourse of mourners, drawn together from 
 every class, and representing every shade of opinion, im- 
 pressed him keenly with the greatness of the Bishop's work. 
 * Nothing,' he writes, 
 
 * like that funeral has been seen in Norwich Cathedral 
 since the Reformation — I very much doubt whether in any 
 English cathedral. There may have been bishops who 
 have been equally lamented by their clergy, some who 
 have been equally lamented by the poor, or by society in 
 general, or by Dissenters, but I do not think that there has 
 been any who has been so sincerely mourned by all classes. 
 And what made it more remarkable in his case was, that 
 it was in spite of the great opposition which had been ex- 
 cited against him for so long, and also in spite of the dis- 
 advantages under which he laboured himself from his own 
 natural tastes and pursuits having lain in another direction. 
 And yet I believe that this very fact of his naturally uncleri- 
 <;al tastes gave a double value to all that he did, because it 
 made people feel that what he said to them, and did for 
 them, he said and did, not merely as a clergyman or a 
 T^ishop, but as a friend, as a man, and as a Christian. And 
 so I hope his example will still do good, here and elsewhere, 
 not only to the clergy, who often, I believe, complained in 
 his lifetime that he was not one of themselves, but to the 
 many in other classes and professions who felt, and felt 
 most truly, that he was one of themselves.' 
 
 The Bishop had been widely recognised as an accom- 
 plished, agreeable man, whose tastes and pursuits were 
 naturally scientific rather than clerical. Of his episcopal
 
 412 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 
 
 life, which had been one of works, and not of words, little 
 was known outside his own diocese. Even to his own son 
 many facts and features were only disclosed by the perusal 
 of his private papers or by the communications of his friends. 
 He had lived down the strong opposition which he had at 
 first encountered, and had won the esteem and affection of 
 men of all classes, ages, opinions, and professions. Clergy 
 and laity, Churchmen and Dissenters, mourned him 
 equally. He found his diocese 'a wilderness ' ; he left it 
 comparatively ' a cultivated field.' And this work had 
 been done by a man who was, by natural tastes, tempera- 
 ment, and early training, unfitted to be a bishop, but who, 
 finding himself in that unsought, undesired position, had 
 formed a loft}' ideal of the practical requirements of the 
 office, and carried it out consistently as his highest duty. In 
 preparing to write a short biography of his father, Stanley 
 had adopted the same plan which he pursued in writing 
 the Life of Arnold, and had circulated among the clergy of 
 the diocese a series of questions, inviting the fullest and 
 most candid information. As the answers came in, and as 
 day by day the most striking points in the Bishop's dis- 
 charge of his episcopal functions stood out in the fuller light 
 of ascertained facts, the son's enthusiasm was kindled. 
 His Memoir of his father' (published early in 185 1) is a 
 book which should be put in the hands of all men who 
 have, against their wills, entered professions for which they 
 feel themselves naturally unfitted. 
 
 ' The crash, the gloom, the uprooting, and the void,'' 
 writes Stanley between his father's death and burial, ' are at 
 times overwhelming.' He could not look forward : * all 
 seems so changed that I cannot tell yet how all the old 
 pleasures and duties will look when I come to them 
 
 ' Addresses and Charges of E. Stanley, Bishop of Norwich. With a 
 Memoir by A. P. Stanley. London, 1 851, 8vo.
 
 •CHAP. XII EFFECT OF HIS FATHER'S DEATH 413 
 
 again. London will be our abode, and I shall not go back 
 to Oxford till November.' 
 
 The death of the Bishop forced Stanley, as it were, into 
 the world of real life. It plunged him into practical busi- 
 ness — much of it business which he alone could transact. 
 The effect was not only immediate but permanent, and it 
 was heightened by the experience of the next two years. 
 In December 1849 he wrote to an old pupil a letter which 
 illustrates the effect that his father's life and death produced 
 upon his mind : 
 
 ' I hope you are going on happily, and not vexing 
 yourself overmuch with questions about books and 
 theories. Perhaps I am the more inclined to write in this 
 strain from the wholly practical life I have been leading for 
 the last three months. I left off in the middle of a sentence 
 ■of a Commentary on the Second of Corinthians on September 
 4, which has never been finished. But I do not regret it, 
 for I feel that it enables me to sympathise more than I 
 ever did before with the working part of the world in every- 
 day life, and it has sometimes made me doubt whether I 
 should not throw away my books altogether, and betake 
 myself to that pursuit after good which is accomplished, 
 not by the eyes, but by the hands of human society. This 
 inclination naturally breaks out when addressing a country 
 clergyman, and thinking of the happiness which his prac- 
 tical life has in store for him. When I spoke to you of 
 the dangers of philosophical views of Christianity and 
 morality, I was very far from wishing you, or anyone, to be 
 constantly on the watch for the faults of your profession, 
 still less of your Church. The profession seems to me 
 truly sacred, and is now doubly endeared to me by having 
 witnessed the vast amount of good which can be done in 
 it, as testified by the lamentations that burst forth in Sep- 
 tember over the grave of one whose claim to honour lay 
 in the single fact that he had been first a good clergyman, 
 and then a good Bishop.' 
 
 With the pang of self-reproach, so often felt by those 
 who have lost one dear to them, that he had done less 
 for his father than he might have done, came also ' the
 
 414 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1849^ 
 
 determination to realise what we owe to others before they 
 also are taken from us.' His mother and his sisters became 
 his first care. The Dean of Carlisle, Dr. Hinds, was 
 appointed to the See of Norwich, and the vacant deanery- 
 was immediately offered by Lord John Russell to Stanley^ 
 ' as due to your own merits, but also hoping that it would 
 be considered as a tribute of respect to the memory of the 
 late Bishop of Norwich ? ' On personal grounds Stanley 
 did not hesitate. He declined the offer in the following^ 
 letter, addressed to the Prime Minister : 
 
 Palace, Norwich : Sept. 26. 
 
 ' My Lord, — It was a matter of deep gratification to my 
 family and myself to receive such a testimony of respect 
 to my lamented father's memory as was conveyed in the 
 offer, under such circumstances, of the Deanery of Carlisle 
 to his son. For this mark of favour to them, as well as for 
 your Lordship's kind expression to myself, I beg respect- 
 fully to tender my most sincere thanks. 
 
 ' But I trust that I shall not be misinterpreted if I add 
 that I shall feel myself under still further obligation if Her 
 Majesty would permit me respectfully to decline a post for 
 which, however honourable in itself, I feel no peculiar 
 qualification. The Deanery of Carlisle is so remote, and 
 the necessary residence of eight months requires so long 
 an absence from those interests in the University of Oxford 
 to which I have long devoted myself, and from which, 
 unless for some grave cause, I should be unwilling altogether 
 to part, that to undertake the office would be in great 
 measure to sacrifice my prospects of permanent usefulness 
 to the immediate gratification — great as that gratification 
 would be — of exhibiting a public proof that the general 
 interest which has been shown to my father's memory is 
 shared in the highest quarters. 
 
 ' Trusting to your Lordship's kindness to excuse this ex- 
 planation of the motives which compel me to decline such 
 an appointment, and again repeating our grateful sense of 
 the feeling which dictated the offer, I beg to remain 
 ' Your Lordship's faithful and obliged servant, 
 
 'Arthur P. Stanley/
 
 CHAP. XII REFUSAL OF DEANERY OF CARLISLE 415 
 
 Stanley strongly felt that Oxford was his 'natural 
 sphere/ even when, as now, ' all old interests are gone to 
 rack, and I shrink from returning to the toils.' But as he 
 witnessed the grief of his mother and sisters at parting from 
 Norwich, and reflected upon the home which he might have 
 offered them at Carlisle, his confidence in his decision was 
 shaken, and at times he half- regretted his refusal. ' If it,' 
 he says, ' or anything similar were to come over again, I 
 should find it very difficult to refuse.' 
 
 The tie with Oxford was already loosened. Two other 
 events contributed to sever it altogether. Blow after blow 
 fell on the happy family circle, which hitherto had known 
 no loss. In December 1849 arrived the news that in 
 August his brother Charles, a captain in the Royal 
 Engineers, had died suddenly at Hobart Town, Van 
 Diemen's Land. In the February following, his eldest 
 brother, Owen, who was in command of H.M.S. Rattle- 
 snake, expired suddenly on board his ship in Sydney 
 Harbour. When the news reached Arthur Stanley in July 
 1850, he found himself the sole prop and stay of his family. 
 By the death of his father and eldest brother he succeeded 
 to a small landed estate, which rendered it impossible for 
 him, under the existing regulations, to retain his Fellow- 
 ship. Deprived of his own home at University College, 
 and desirous to provide one for his mother and sisters, he 
 was not likely to refuse another offer of an independent 
 post, even if it severed his connection with his beloved 
 Oxford. The offer was not long delayed. But before the 
 autumn of 185 1, when he kept his first residence as a Canon 
 of Canterbury, he had important work to do as Secretary 
 to the University Commission. 
 
 On Stanley's return to the University at the beginning 
 of 1850 he recoiled from the plunge into ' the vortex of its 
 controversies and personalities,' and found it hard to revive
 
 41 6 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1850 
 
 his academic interests. Some portion of his tutorial duties 
 had been transferred to the newly-appointed Fellow, Gold- 
 win Smith. With his weekly lectures reduced from sixteen 
 to six he was, for the first time in his Oxford career, the 
 master of a ' mass of leisure.' His hands were, however, 
 full of work. Not only was he engaged in writing the 
 memoir of his father, and preparing two articles on Grote's 
 History of Greece for the Quarterly Review ; ^ he was 
 also immersed in the Gorham controversy, and in schemes 
 for University Reform, which events were rapidly ripening 
 to maturity. 
 
 At this distance of time the extraordinary excitement 
 which was aroused by the Gorham controversy^ seems 
 almost incredible. But from January to August 1850 
 there was truth as well as humour in the remark of a 
 Frenchman, who congratulated Stanley on the fact that the 
 English Revolution had taken the shape of 'le pere Gorham.' 
 Stanley's letters to his friends, crowded as they are with 
 lengthy references to the contest, show the keen interest 
 with which he followed every stage in the controversy. 
 His attitude was throughout consistent. To his mind the 
 technical question of theology — whether the view put for- 
 ward by Mr. Gorham was true or false, whether at baptism 
 original sin is remitted in infants or not — was relatively 
 immaterial. The real issue was, whether the Bishop of 
 Exeter had the power to impose upon his clergy a new 
 test, which was sanctioned neither by the Scripture nor by 
 the Creeds, nor (except with an equally valid prohibition 
 of second marriages) by the Councils, nor by the Articles, 
 nor by the Liturgy. ' What right,' he asked, 
 
 ' have the anti-Gorhamites to assume it to be essential to 
 a true Church to define accurately even important points, 
 
 - Quarterly Review, March 1850 and December 1850. 
 3 See p. 386, and note.
 
 'CHAP. XII ARTICLE ON THE GORHAM CASE 417 
 
 when the ApostoHcal Church system was a mass of open 
 questions ? What right have they to regard that as a vital 
 question which is not so much as mentioned in any one of 
 the Creeds ? ' 
 
 ■ As the contest thickened, meetings were held on either 
 side, protests were answered by protests, petitions by 
 petitions. When the attempt was made to nullify the 
 decision of the Privy Council by a declaration of the Upper 
 or Lower House of Convocation, Stanley could no longer 
 keep silence. Believing, as he did, that the annals of eccle- 
 siastical history might be searched in vain for a more 
 dispassionate judgment than that recently delivered, he 
 wrote a strong letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 urging him to uphold the decision of the legal tribunal. In 
 July 1850 he followed up this private appeal by one of the 
 most brilliant and telling of his contributions to the 
 Edinburgh Review.'* Yet even in the heat of the struggle 
 he endeavoured to retain his moderation and charity. ' I 
 trust,' he writes to Pearson, 
 
 ' that I am not wrong in taking so great a part in this con- 
 troversy. You will, I know, desire and pray that I may 
 not be led into any uncharitable or unjust thoughts — far 
 worse than the heresies of either side— by the excitement 
 which it requires the utmost resolution to keep off " To 
 love the thing that Thou commandest, and desire that 
 which Thou dost promise," and " that our hearts may 
 surely there be fixed " — how different are these words from 
 the words without counsel which are darkening the know- 
 ledge of the Church.' 
 
 The brilliant success of his article only served to increase 
 his misgivings as to the active part which he had taken in 
 the contest. He found, from his own experience, that no 
 man ever threw himself into controversy without repenting 
 of the plunge. Writing shortly after the news of his 
 brother Owen's death reached England, he says : 
 
 ' July 1850. 
 VOL. I. E E
 
 4i8 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1850- 
 
 ' In proportion as the sad events of the last few months 
 have sunk into my thoughts, I have had some misgivings 
 about my article. I fear that St. John would hardly have 
 approved of it. At any rate, I will never write anything of 
 the kind again.' 
 
 In another letter, written to explain some points which 
 he had maintained in the same article, he says : 
 
 ' The immense accumulation of practical business which 
 various causes have brought upon me during the past two 
 years has somewhat indisposed me to reading and writing 
 with the same zest as before. But if I know myself, I have 
 the same desire — I wish I could add, the same hope — of 
 doing something to break the collision between the beliefs 
 and the doubts of this age, and to fix our gaze on " the 
 hills, from whence cometh our hope." I often think of the 
 strange fate which should have pushed me into the midst 
 of these theological and academical revolutions so very alien 
 to my natural taste and pursuits.' 
 
 Meanwhile the question of University Reform rapidly 
 assumed pressing importance. Eleven years before Stanley 
 had, as already explained, assisted Tait in his pamphlet on 
 ' The Revival of the Professorial System.' ^ Throughout 
 the interval the subject was continually before his mind. 
 For months past he had been engaged, in conjunction with 
 Towett and other friends, in preparing a volume of essays 
 on various topics connected with the reform of the Univer- 
 sity. His views extended beyond the enlargement of the 
 professorial system. No one recognised more clearly that a 
 university training consists, not merely in teaching or in 
 learning, but in a thousand undefined things — in the place, 
 the amusements, the society, the associations — and that it 
 was less a system of education, than a particular sphere of 
 English life, which might be raised to higher utility by the 
 introduction of more popular and more intellectual elements. 
 Above all he dreaded that the time for reform might be 
 ^ See pp. 230-32.
 
 CHAP, XII UNIVERSITY REFORM 4 1 9 
 
 allowed to slip, and that the consequence of neglecting the 
 present opportunity would be a drastic revolution, which 
 would sacrifice much that was of inestimable value. From 
 this point of view he desired generally to adapt the Univer- 
 sity to the changes which two centuries had witnessed in the 
 relation of classes and the subjects of knowledge — to make 
 it a national institution which should not merely train up 
 an intellectual aristocracy, but should extend the advantages 
 of its education to all ranks of society. And with these 
 objects he wished to provide endowments for neglected 
 branches of study, to attract poor students by reducing the 
 expenses of college life, to call the University into existence 
 as distinct from the Colleges, and, especially, to enlarge its 
 foundation by modifying clerical restrictions, by strengthen- 
 ing and enlarging the professorial system, and by removing 
 the limitations which confined Fellowships and scholarships 
 to particular families or counties. 
 
 When the subject of reform came before Parliament, on 
 the motion of Mr. Heywood ^ to inquire into the condition 
 of the universities, Stanley wrote a letter to Lord John 
 Russell, from which the following extract is taken as ex- 
 planatory of his views : 
 
 ' I venture to express a hope that, whatever course the 
 Government may adopt with regard to the motion, your 
 Lordship will not allow the discussion to pass without 
 holding out a prospect of such friendly assistance as would,. 
 I conceive, be ultimately necessary for carrying out those 
 changes which are essential to the real interests of the 
 University. I allude particularly to the opening of the Col- 
 
 * Mr. Heywood, M.P. for North Lancashire, moved (April 23, 1850) for 
 an Address to Her Majesty for a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the State 
 of the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin. In the course of the 
 debate Lord J. Russell announced, on behalf of the Government, that he 
 proposed to advise Her Majesty to issue a Commission to inquire into the state 
 of the two English Universities. Upon this announcement the debate was 
 adjourned, in order that the friends of Oxford and Cambridge might consider 
 the situation.
 
 420 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1850 
 
 lege Fellowships (nov\^ for the most part, closed by local or 
 family restrictions) and the strengthening and enlargement 
 of the professorial system. 
 
 ' These are objects which can only be obtained by help 
 from the Legislature, and, without such help, the efforts 
 which are now being made within the University must be 
 in great measure fruitless. 
 
 ' Any hope held out from such a quarter would give 
 great satisfaction and encouragement to those who, while 
 they wish to retain what is really valuable in our present 
 system, are anxious for the reform of the University, with a 
 view to its increased efficiency as a place of learning and 
 education, and are equally anxious to see that reform 
 effected in a temperate and considerate spirit, and by the 
 hands of its friends.' 
 
 The final debate, which decided the fate of the Univer- 
 sities, was held on July i8th, 1850. Stanley, who was 
 present in the House of Commons, thus reports its result 
 to Jowett : 
 
 ' I postponed writing till the debate of last night was 
 over. Marshall, the Proctor, and myself represented the 
 University in the Speaker's Gallery, and Liddell below the 
 Bar. The Ministerial speeches were very feeble, perhaps 
 purposely so, with a view of closing the debate. Gladstone's 
 was very powerful, and said, in the most effective manner, 
 anything which could be said against the Commission. 
 His allusion to Peel "^ was very touching, and the House 
 responded to it by profound and sympathetic silence, with 
 the exception of two M.P.'s, who, having been for some time 
 lying head to head in the Members' Gallery, were roused 
 from repose by the pause, and, on hearing what it was, 
 exclaimed one to another : "Balderdash!" "d d balder- 
 dash ! " and so to sleep again. Heywood's closing speech 
 was happily drowned in the roar of " Divide," so that 
 nothing could be heard except the name of " Cardinal 
 Wolsey " thrice repeated. 
 
 ' Altogether, I confess that I should have been relieved 
 had the majority been the other way. " Put not your trust 
 
 ' -Sir Robert Peel died on July 2nd, 1850. ' I cannot,' writes Stanley 
 from London en June 3cth, ' tear myself away from the scene of this horrible 
 ■catastrophe.'
 
 CHAP. XII OXFORD UNIVERSITY COMMISSION 42 1 
 
 in Prime Ministers " is the chief moral I derive from the 
 recent events. However, the Commission must issue now, 
 and must be carried through with the best heart that one 
 can muster. Henceforth, farewell to any such agitations. 
 Of its members, or of its birth-time, I have heard no more.' 
 
 A fortnight before the final debate on the Universities 
 Commission intelligence reached Stanley of the death of 
 his eldest and only surviving brother, Owen, Within the 
 space of a few months his mother had thus lost a husband and 
 two sons, transferred her home from Norwich to London, 
 and seen her youngest daughter, Catherine, married in the 
 spring of 1850 to C. J. Vaughan. The strain of the suc- 
 cessive shocks, the anxiety, and the excitement was severe. 
 For her sake, and that of his sister Mary, entire change of 
 scenery was necessary. In August Stanley, with his mother 
 and sister, started on an expedition to Como, going by 
 Strasburg and Constance, and returning by Milan, the Mont 
 Cenis, the Grande Chartreuse, and Bourges, to Paris. 
 
 During his six weeks' absence on the Continent the 
 Oxford University Commission was appointed. It con- 
 sisted of Dr. Hinds, Bishop of Norwich ; Dr. Jeune, Master 
 of Pembroke ; ^ Dr. Tait, Dean of Carlisle;^ the Rev. H. G. 
 Liddell, Head-Master of Westminster School ; '" Professor 
 Baden-Powell ; Mr. John Lucius Dampier ; and the Rev. 
 G. H. S. Johnson." The Commissioners were charged with 
 the duty of sifting the whole subject of reform, of exploring 
 the actual state and capabilities of the Universities, and of 
 collecting the materials on which sound legislation could 
 be based. Stanley was appointed ' the trusty and well- 
 beloved secretary.' Goldwin Smith was subsequently made 
 assistant-secretary. 
 
 * Afterwards Bishop of Peterborough. 
 " Afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 '" Afterwards Dean of Christ Church. 
 " Afterwards Dean of Wells.
 
 42 2 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1850 
 
 The first meeting of the Commission was held on 
 October 19th, 1850, the last on April 23rd, 1852. The 
 proceedings opened with a blunder, which Stanley not 
 unnaturally feared would be imputed to the new secretary. 
 Two letters were addressed, on October 21st, by the Com- 
 missioners, one to the Duke of Wellington as Chancellor, 
 another to the Master of University as Vice- Chancellor. 
 But they were placed in the wrong envelopes. As soon as 
 the mistake was discovered, Stanley wrote to Dr. Jeune 
 saying — as he told Hugh Pearson — 
 
 ' that as I was sure that all my enemies, and most of my 
 friends, would lay the mistake to my charge, I hoped that 
 he would make known (what was the fact) that it was the 
 Bishop who had written, covered, and sealed the letters, 
 and that I had only franked them.' 
 
 The Report of the Commission was not issued till May 
 1852, and its powers expired in the following August. For 
 nearly two years the work absorbed even Stanley's inde- 
 fatigable energies, and eighty-seven meetings required his 
 constant presence in London. At first Oxford remained 
 his headquarters ; but in July 1851 he accepted a Canonry 
 at Canterbury, which henceforward became his home. The 
 little leisure that he enjoyed from the work of the Com- 
 mission was chiefly spent in the final revision of his Com- 
 mentary on the Epistles to the Corinthians, and in his tutorial, 
 and subsequently in his canonical, duties. The strain of 
 the burden is evidenced by the striking diminution in the 
 number and length of his letters to his family and his friends. 
 
 Moments of relaxation intervened, when he was able to 
 throw off the weight and enjoy, with all his wonted zest, 
 some great spectacles, such as those of the opening and 
 close of the Great Exhibition. The following letter, dated 
 May 1st, 185 1, describes to his sister-in-law the opening 
 scene :
 
 CHAP. XII OPENING OF THE GREAT EXHIBITION 423 
 
 ' You must have a letter from me dated with this 
 memorable date, whether I am able to finish it or not. 
 There was one question, I am sure, in everyone's mouth this 
 morning as soon as they woke, from Victoria R. down to 
 the humblest workman in the Exhibition : " What kind of 
 a day is it?" And I can imagine the delight with which 
 Albert would answer, in the same words as Stephen 
 announced to me : " A beautiful morning, and quite dry." 
 At 6.30 P.M.'^ {sic) we were ready to start ; an unexpected 
 delay from John's " having," as he expressed it, *' overlaid 
 himself," kept us till 6.45 ; but we got into the Park five 
 minutes after the gates were opened, and with not more 
 than twenty carriages ahead of us, and a perpetually multi- 
 plying tail behind. 
 
 'At 8. 1 5 we all took our stand close to the door on the 
 south side of the Crystal Palace. At ten minutes before 
 9 the long-expected moment came, the gates flew back, 
 and in we rushed, the very first. One moment for showing 
 our tickets, another for receiving others, and then ensued 
 one of the most ridiculous scenes I ever saw. The Crystal 
 Palace with all its wonders was before us ; but no one 
 paused to look at a single object. The transept and the 
 royal platform was the one only object, and forward every- 
 one darted, first in a trot, then in full gallop, in every 
 direction. Meanwhile the same process had taken place 
 at all the other doors, so that the whole building was 
 simultaneously covered with this scattered race, and was 
 filling from all these several quarters. 
 
 ' It was not till we were fairly seated that we ventured 
 to look round. The transept, as the nearest part, was the 
 chief object. In the centre was the platform, covered with 
 red cloth, and a dais for the Chair of State, immediately in 
 front of which was the glass fountain, not yet playing. 
 On each side were statues ; in the north transept were the 
 great green trees, and underneath them palm-trees and the 
 like from the East India House, with another fountain, 
 playing ; and amongst these trees stood, statue-like, the 
 Beefeaters. Opposite was a clock, which pointed at 9 as 
 ■we finally settled ourselves, and wc had the interest of 
 watching the gradual advance upon 1 2. Three hours pent 
 
 '■- Stanley frequently made mistakes between /.m. and a.m., probably from 
 the same inattention which made him, from time to time, date his letters with 
 the wrong month, or even the wrong year.
 
 424 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1851 
 
 up in a small space might seem a long time, but it was not. 
 At last 1 1.30 A.M. came, when the doors were finally closed,, 
 and no more invasion of our seats was possible. Then the 
 clock reached 5 minutes to 12, the platform cleared, and 
 the flourish of trumpets announced the arrival of the 
 Queen. I have a very indistinct recollection of that moment : 
 a dim vision of a procession amidst the palm-trees, and 
 then the whole group gradually forming itself on the 
 platform, and " God save the Queen " bursting forth from 
 the north organ. I never had so good a view of the Queen 
 before, and never before saw her look so thoroughly regal. 
 She stood in front of the chair, turning round first to one 
 side and then to the other, with a look of power and pride, 
 flushed with a kind of excitement which I never witnessed 
 in any other human countenance. 
 
 ' The next act was the reading of the address and the 
 answer — both absolutely inaudible. Then the Archbishop's 
 prayer, he coming up the steps of the platform and stand- 
 ing by the side of the Queen, she turning attentively tO' 
 him. He must have made a great exertion, for his was the 
 only voice which made itself heard ; of course, even that 
 only to the neighbourhood of the platform, and in a few 
 sentences which I now recognise in the printed form. The 
 prayer was instantly followed by the " Hallelujah Chorus." 
 How admirably chosen for the occasion ! But grand as it 
 was, I must here observe that the sounds (with the single 
 exception of the flourish of trumpets) were quite inade- 
 quate to the sight, — lost in the greatness of the building.. 
 And this was still more apparent when the procession 
 moved away down the nave : the roar of the great organ 
 from the west end was only just audible ; the band in the 
 eastern nave was like the booming of distant cannon. 
 
 ' A beautiful sight began as soon as the platform was 
 cleared : the glass fountain for the first time commenced 
 to play, and the sun, which had broken out just before the 
 Queen's entrance, played upon it in turn. Meanwhile 
 you traced the procession down the nave by the shouts and 
 wavings of handkerchiefs, gradually dying away in the 
 distance on the northern side, and then beginning again on 
 the southern side, as it gradually reappeared, crossing the 
 corner of the platform into the south transept, each turning 
 round, as they passed, for a glance at the new beauty which 
 had come forth in the interval. You may judge of the;
 
 CHAP. XII OPENING OF THE GREAT EXHIBITION 425 
 
 length of the procession by being told that the heralds at 
 the head of it, with their fantastic coats, had reappeared on 
 the platform at the western corner of the south-west nave 
 before the final disappearance of its extremity from the last 
 corner of the platform. 
 
 ' The best view we had was, of course, as they returned 
 to the Chair of State down the northern side of the eastern 
 nave. It was very interesting to watch the different 
 persons ; there was a great look-out for Paxton in the 
 van. 
 
 ' One amusing incident I heard afterwards from the 
 Archbishop's chaplain. The Archbishop came immediately 
 before the Royal party, and was so much attracted by the 
 various objects, all new to him, that he could not help 
 stopping to look at them. The chaplains behind him 
 stopped, and the Lords-in-Waiting, who immediately suc- 
 ceeded them, walking backwards (Lord Edward Howard, 
 the hero of the Talbot tragedy, and Lord Westminster), 
 were consequently forced upon the chaplains so often that 
 their heels by the end of the day were quite sore with the 
 collisions. 
 
 ' The two children were charming to see, and it was 
 evidently a grand moment for the whole party when they 
 reached the platform again in triumph : the Queen's severe 
 look was melted into smiles, and everyone looked happy 
 and relieved, as if a victory had been won. Then the 
 trumpets, and out they went. 
 
 ' It was not till this moment that the immensity of the 
 multitude became apparent. There was a tremendous 
 struggle in the transept, people crowding, and clinging to 
 each other on the platform like shipwrecked men on a 
 rock escaping from the waves. At last Mary and I reached 
 a staircase, and to the galleries ; and then, though there 
 were still crowds, all was easy, and we looked down for the 
 first time on the magnificence of the Exhibition itself This 
 will continue in ever-increasing beauty, so that I shall say 
 no more about it. 
 
 ' I cannot say, with the " Times," that the pageant of 
 yesterday was the most magnificent I ever saw. In many 
 essential points the Coronation was finer, in some the 
 entrance of the Pope into St. Peter's on Easter Sunday. 
 Of all occasional festivals that I have ever seen, not forgetting 
 the Fete of Fraternisation at Paris in 1848, it was, however.
 
 426 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 185 1 
 
 the grandest ; and whatever flaws there may be in the moral 
 interest, it has at least that of being unparalleled. No one 
 knew beforehand what it would be like, or knows now what 
 will grow out of it. The Master of Pembroke said at the 
 Commission, what I suppose is true, " There were never 
 before gathered so many human beings under one roof 
 since the world began." ' 
 
 A letter written to Pearson on the same subject and at 
 the same date closes in a despondent mood : 
 
 ' I have, I think, quite determined to retire. What with 
 the burden of the Oxford University Commission, and the 
 perhaps diminished interest in the lectures, I feel that 
 Oxford is beginning " to come out at the nostrils," and I 
 rather incline to hail the opportunity of a complete sever- 
 ance for a time from a place to which I shall doubtless 
 return the better for the absence.' 
 
 A few weeks later, in July of the same year, he received, 
 and accepted, the offer of a canonry at Canterbury. Among 
 many congratulatory letters which were sent from friends 
 outside the University, was one from G. E. L. Cotton, then 
 a master at Rugby School, afterwards head-master of Marl- 
 borough College, and Bishop of Calcutta : 
 
 ' I must send a few lines expressing my earnest hope 
 that the Canterbury stall is really yours, and, if so, my 
 sincere congratulations. As affording a standing argument 
 for the retention of afezu honourable sinecures in the Church 
 (and I only wish for a few) — as making you independent 
 of the Chancellor and his praelectorship — as a tribute to 
 yourself, richly deserved — as affording some grounds for 
 believing that Arnold and Arnoldism are not wholly set at 
 naught, I rejoice greatly in the appointment.' 
 
 In the letters of his University friends regrets were 
 largely mingled with congratulations. Yet, however 
 strongly they might feel that Oxford without his presence 
 would lose a potent charm, they recognised that a college 
 life was not the best school of character, and that for him
 
 •CHAP. XII CANON OF CANTERBURY 427 
 
 the appointment was in every way a gain. * I still most 
 strongly feel,' writes one of his old Balliol friends, 
 
 ' as I always have, that for you it is the best thing. I am 
 sure no man is better for living his whole life here, and if 
 you come back (as I hope and believe you will), you will 
 then feel the full benefit of the break. And I do not think 
 that you could have gained the benefit of the change by 
 merely spending your vacations away. No ! depend upon 
 it that, though I shall indeed find Oxford very different 
 without you, and so will many others, and though you may 
 not " see your way " in your Canonry at present, Canterbury 
 will really be very good for you, and you will soon cease to 
 regret us.' 
 
 But no expression of feeling elicited by his approaching 
 departure gratified him so deeply as the following letter 
 from the Undergraduates of his College : 
 
 ' University College : October 23, 1851. 
 
 ' Dear Dr. Stanley, — It being the general wish of the 
 members of the College to express their deep sense of your 
 great kindness to them all during your residence among 
 them, and their regret at losing the advantages they have 
 so long enjoyed, we have been deputed by them to request 
 you to sit for your likeness, that the present members of 
 your family may have a- portrait which they, most of all, 
 will value, and that, at the same time, we may secure to 
 ourselves and your other friends a memorial which will 
 always be prized by us all, and to our College a recollection 
 of one whose name must long be associated with it. 
 
 ' With every hope that your future labours, whether here 
 or in a more extended sphere, may be as useful as we trust 
 they have been among us, we remain 
 
 ' Ever affectionately yours, 
 
 ' H. M. Hall. 
 ' C. S. Parker. 
 
 ' C. A. DiCKINS.' 
 
 The wrench of the final parting was painful in the 
 extreme, and the ideal of his new duties lay heavy upon 
 him. On a cold and dreary evening in November he sent
 
 428 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1851 
 
 for one of his pupils to say good-bye. ' I found him,' writes 
 the pupil (the Rev. A. G. Butler), ' in his rooms, literally 
 cowering over the fire. " Think of me," he said, " lost in 
 that huge Cathedral." ' ' I feel deeply,' he tells Pearson, 
 'that my calling was Jiere; and I feel as if I were passing 
 from a land of realities into a land of shadows. How 
 gladly would I lie down to rest under the threshold of this 
 beloved chapel ! ' 
 
 When once the first great flight from Oxford was 
 effected, the worst was over. ' Two advantages,' he writes 
 to Jowett from Canterbury on November i/th, 185 1, 
 
 ' this place certainly has over both Oxford and London, 
 and those are, rest and seclusion ; and in my present con- 
 dition both are greatly to be prized. . . . 
 
 ' I have not had time to explore much, but I discover 
 with satisfaction that the two most illustrious Canons of 
 Canterbury were, one a layman, the other a minister of the 
 Dutch Church — Casaubon and Savarin ; and that Arnold's 
 much-abused theory of having different sects worship in 
 the same church is here fulfilled even to exaggeration, in- 
 asmuch as a Presbyterian service is carried on in the Crypt 
 at the same hour as the Cathedral service above. Yester- 
 day, for the first time, I saw the French Protestant texts 
 written on the ancient Norman pillars. 
 
 ' Now that the farewell to my Oxford life is over I 
 wonder that I feel the change as little as I do. Visions of 
 familiar faces still pass, from time to time, thro' the waste 
 Cathedral, and the features of an old pupil, beaming thro' 
 the moustaches of an officer in the Lancers quartered here,, 
 make my heart leap. But I am more hopeful than I ever 
 thought I could be after my occupation was gone, and my 
 Commission work is too great to allow me to think much 
 of anything but of the present moment.' 
 
 The following letter, dated ' The Audit Room, Canter- 
 bury, November 26, 185 1,' sketches one aspect of his new 
 duties for which he felt himself to be wholly incompetent: 
 
 ' Behold the date ! Now the second day. A conversa- 
 tion in Chinese (as far as relates to me) going on between
 
 ■CHAP. XII THE CHARM OF CANTERBURY 429 
 
 the Dean, Dr. Spry, and the sexmillenarian C on leases 
 
 and tithes at one end of a long table. The aged M 
 
 wrapt in the " Times," the infirm D wrapt in vacancy ; 
 
 the auditor warming himself by the fire ; Archdeacon 
 Harrison really doing business ; Lord Charles Thynne 
 and A. P. S. writing letters as fast as the pen can carry us — 
 which possibility is the redeeming feature of the whole 
 affair, and really prevents it from being so intolerable as it 
 would otherwise be.' 
 
 The historical charms of Canterbury strongly impressed 
 him from the first moment that he commenced his residence. 
 Within a few days after his arrival he had begun to realise 
 for himself, as he afterwards realised for others with such 
 dramatic vividness, the great events which had been enacted 
 within or beneath the walls of the Cathedral. ' Becket's 
 murder,' he writes, ' is damning in all its details. Did you 
 ever realise that it was in the dark — by twilight?' Mingled 
 with regrets at leaving Oxford was his delight in the identi- 
 fication of his new home with Canterbury, ' the cradle of 
 English Christianity,' ' the seat of the English Primacy.' 
 Deeper even than the pain of severance from old ties was the 
 pleasure of making a home for his mother and sister. ' You 
 cannot think,' he says,' how much the dear mother and sister 
 enjoy the place. TJiis is to me the real attraction.' His 
 Canonry gave him rest, seclusion, and the tranquil opportu- 
 nity for independent research and studious leisure. It freed 
 him from academical controversy ; it liberated him from the 
 entanglements of party ; it removed him from an atmo- 
 sphere of metaphysical subtlety which he breathed with diffi- 
 culty ; it made him the master of a home which became a 
 centre of social life; it enabled him, to quote his own words, 
 to 'travel far and wide over the earth with nothing to check 
 the constant increase of knowledge which such experience 
 brings.' And the use that he made of his opportunities 
 abundantly justified his appointment. It was here that
 
 430 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 185 1 
 
 he completed his ' Commentary on the Epistle to the 
 Corinthians ' ; here that he preached the sermons contained 
 in the volume of ' Canterbury Sermons ' ; here that he pre- 
 pared and delivered the lectures collected in his 'Memorials 
 of Canterbury.' It was from Canterbury that he started on 
 his tour in the Holy Land, and it was in the cathedral' 
 city that he completed ' Sinai and Palestine.' 
 
 During the Crimean War he was walking in Hyde Park 
 with Thomas Carlyle, who, in bitter mood, was railing 
 against the institutions of the country. In answer to his 
 twice-repeated question, ' What is the advice which you 
 would give to a Canon of Canterbury } ' came a reply that 
 began in jest and ended in earnest: ' Dearly beloved Roger,'' 
 said Carlyle, ' Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with 
 all thy might! And with all his might he strove to find and 
 to do the right work. ' He knew that his gifts lay in other 
 directions than that of business details. His special work 
 consisted in using to the utmost his powers and opportunities 
 as a preacher ; in arousing his fellow-citizens to a keen ap- 
 preciation of their privilege of living beneath the shadow of a 
 great historic building ; in guarding, restoring, and preserving 
 the monuments of the illustrious dead who lay buried within 
 its precincts ; in imparting to its cold stones the living 
 warmth of human interests ; in transforming its bare walls 
 into glowing pages of national history. It was in these 
 directions that he strove to realise to himself the thought 
 which he so often expressed, that ' Every position in life, 
 great or small, can be made almost as great, or as little, 
 as we desire to make it' 
 
 His first residence as Canon of Canterbury began at 
 the end of November 1851. Preaching twice every Sun- 
 day, once in the Cathedral, and once in one of the parish 
 churches of the city, he soon attracted unusual congrega- 
 tions by the life and freshness of his sermons. ' My last
 
 CHAP. XII SECRETARY TO OXFORD COMMISSION 431 
 
 sermon,' he writes to Pearson on January 4th, 1852, at the 
 conclusion of his residence, 
 
 ' was preached to day. I am glad to say that I have at 
 last succeeded in making myself audible, and I am also told 
 that the sermons are beloved by the people. 
 
 ' I am so entirely absorbed in Commission work that I 
 have not read anything else whatever, except in the evenings 
 accounts of Becket and Canterbury. I now know the story 
 thoroughly, with many incidents quite new. I glanced 
 both at his murder and the coup d'etat of Louis Napoleon 
 Bonaparte in my sermon on the last Sunday of the year, 
 calling on the Cantuarians to be thankful that we were free 
 from both. 
 
 ' On December 29, the day of the murder, I went to the 
 spot at 5 P.M. — the fatal hour — with what results you shall 
 hear. The place absolutely teems with history and ghosts, 
 ancient and modern.' 
 
 For the moment, indeed, the work which lay nearest to 
 his hand was the work of the University Commission. So 
 great was the demand which it made on his time that he 
 had little leisure for anything beyond the bare discharge of 
 his canonical duties. ' Gladstone,' he writes, ' told some- 
 one the other day that he thought the Oxford Commission 
 would avoid giving any handle for attack, owing to the 
 " ingenuity " or " ingenuousness " (the person could not 
 remember which) " of the secretary." ' The testimony was 
 well deserved. Singularly free though he was from the 
 common vice of secretaries — the desire to manage every- 
 body—it was to his conciliatory tact that the Commission 
 owed no small measure of its success in dealing with the 
 opposition of the Oxford Colleges and their friends. * I 
 know,' wrote one of the Commissioners, ' no secretary who 
 could have brought to the work the same patience, good- 
 temper, and conciliation as Arthur Stanley.' But the con- 
 tinued strain, both on mind and body, was severe. In 
 December 185 1 he speaks of 'the increasing interest of the
 
 432 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1852 
 
 great work,' now nearing its completion, and of ' the 
 enormous labours of all concerned.' For a moment it 
 ;seemed as if the fall of Lord John Russell's Government 
 (February 23, 1852) would give the death-blow to the 
 Commission. But the danger was averted by the skill of 
 the Bishop of Norwich,'^ and the inquiry proceeded. As 
 it approached its termination, Stanley's spirits rose. ' I 
 am,' he writes in March 1852, 'almost transported by the 
 prospect of the close of the Commission. I hear the 
 breakers on the shore, and believe that we shall see land in 
 a fortnight.' Two months later he announces to Jowett 
 the publication of the Report : 
 
 ' The Report will explode, I presume, to-morrow (May 
 .22) in Oxford, when you will receive your copies. 
 
 ' When you consider the den of lions through which the 
 raw material had to be dragged, much will be excused. In 
 fact, the great work was to finish it at all. There is a harsh, 
 unfriendly tone about the whole which ought, under better 
 circumstances, to have been avoided, but which may, 
 perhaps, have the advantage of propitiating the Radicals.' 
 
 The Report produced an effect which surpassed Stanley's 
 ' most ardent expectations.' ' It has struck root,' he says, 
 ' in London, and therefore the University cannot ignore it.' 
 The Report is a remarkable document, which formed an 
 era in constitutional history, and furnished a precedent for 
 the course to be followed in dealing with the great institu- 
 tions of the nation. To Stanley personally its success was 
 peculiarly gratifying, because in its final shape, with the 
 exception of the recommendations of the Commissioners, it 
 was mainly his work. 
 
 The historical introduction is drawn from the materials 
 which Stanley had collected for his essay in the projected 
 volume on University Reform. In this investigation he 
 
 '' Life of Archbishop Tait, vol. i. p. 163.
 
 CHAP. XII THE REPORT OF THE COMMISSION 433 
 
 was a pioneer. Almost his only predecessor in the field 
 had been the German, Huber. The result showed the 
 complete revolution which had been accomplished in the 
 constitution and statutable form of the University and its 
 Colleges. It disclosed a startling conflict between solemn 
 obligations and daily conduct ; it revealed radical dis- 
 crepancies between sworn profession and present practice ; 
 it demonstrated direct contradictions between the legal and 
 the actual conditions of academical studies and educational 
 machinery. The changes were, in the main, the product 
 of natural and inevitable development. But they had been 
 effected rather by indirect than by open means, and the 
 liberal construction formerly put upon the statutes negatived 
 the arguments of those who, under new conditions, now 
 relied on their literal interpretation as an insurmountable 
 objection to reform. Always a strong antagonist of tests 
 and subscriptions, Stanley could not have devised a more 
 effective illustration of the danger of the imposition of 
 statutory oaths, or furnished a more powerful commentary 
 on the sophistries by which such sanctions are interpreted, 
 the casuistry that baffles the most peremptory dispositions,, 
 and the corrupting obligation of undertaking the perform- 
 ance of acts which it is never intended to perform. 
 
 With the actual recommendations of the Commissioners 
 Stanley, as secretary, had less direct concern. Most of the 
 proposed changes have been effected by subsequent legis- 
 lation. Lord Aberdeen's Government, in its second year 
 of office (April 1854), introduced a sweeping measure of 
 University Reform, based on the Report of the Commis- 
 sioners. The principal champion of the Bill was Mr. Glad- 
 stone. Stanley followed the debate with keen interest. He 
 was present in the House to hear 
 
 ' a superb speech from Gladstone, in which, for the first 
 
 time, all the arguments from our Report (without acknow- 
 
 VOL. I. . F F
 
 434 Z//"^ OF DEAN STANLEY 1852 
 
 ledgment, of course) were worked up in the most effective 
 manner. He vainly endeavoured to reconcile his present 
 with his former position. But, with this exception, I 
 listened to his speech with the greatest delight. To see 
 our labours of 185 1-2 brought at last to bear on the point, 
 to hear proclaimed on the housetop what we had an- 
 nounced in sheepskins and goatskins, to behold one's old 
 enemies slaughtered before one's face with the most irre- 
 sistible weapons, was quite intoxicating. One great charm 
 of his speaking is its exceeding good-humour. There is 
 great vehemence, but no bitterness.' 
 
 The measure was passed into law on August 7th, 1854. 
 Since that date other changes have been effected in the 
 direction indicated by the Commission. The number of 
 scholars has been increased at each College, and they are 
 selected by a trial of their attainments. The local or 
 hereditary restrictions which confined the choice of 520 out 
 of 542 College Fellows to particular localities or families 
 have been removed, and the elections purified. The pro- 
 fessorial system, whose decay stripped the University of 
 literary or scientific eminence, has been revived, and sup- 
 plemented with a staff of lecturers. The course of academic 
 education has been regulated by the institution of Boards 
 of Studies in each of the different branches. The monopoly 
 of the Colleges has been invaded by the permission granted 
 to undergraduates of residing in lodgings or as unattached 
 students. The obligation to take Orders has been removed 
 from all but a few Fellowships, and the large infusion of 
 the lay element has at once moderated the violence of eccle- 
 siastical agitation and counteracted professional narrowness. 
 One most important point— the removal of religious tests 
 — was necessarily omitted from the recommendations of the 
 Commissioners, because Lord J. Russell had pledged him- 
 self to exclude it from the scope of the Commission. But 
 the question was only postponed. No long time elapsed
 
 €HAP. XII THE REPORT OF THE COMMISSION 435 
 
 before Dissenters of all denominations were admitted to 
 the advantages of a university training and education. 
 
 Hitherto the University Commission had prevented 
 Stanley's realisation of his dream of devoting ' one year's 
 time and one year's income entirely to the cathedral and 
 city of Canterbury.' As long as this ideal remained un- 
 satisfied, he felt that his 'appointment, if it ended in 1852, 
 would be as fruitless and as unjust to the cathedral, to 
 Lord John Russell, and to myself, as the most wretched 
 job of the last century.' But there still remained one long- 
 cherished wish, which he was anxious first to accomplish. 
 The publication of the Report of the Commission in 1852 
 set him free to pay that visit to the Holy Land which his 
 father's death had postponed, a visit for which he had 
 during four years carefully prepared himself, and which he 
 felt to be of inestimable importance to his future studies. 
 
 F F 2
 
 436 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1852 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 1852-3 
 
 ROME IN 1852 — FUNERAL OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON — PRO- 
 CLAMATION OF THE FRENCH EMPIRE— TOUR IN EGYPT AND 
 THE HOLY LAND — CONSTANTINOPLE ON THE EVE OF THE 
 RUSSIAN WAR 
 
 In August 1852 Stanley left England with his mother, 
 his sister Mary, and his cousin, Miss Penrhyn. His in- 
 tention was to travel with them through Italy, and early in 
 November to start alone from Rome for Cairo, and thence 
 to travel through the Holy Land. In his first letter from 
 abroad he makes a characteristic request to Pearson. ' If 
 you pass by our house in London after having heard of us, 
 go and see our dear Sarah Burgess [his old nurse]. It was 
 a bitter pang to leave her, and she will always be so much 
 comforted to hear of us.' 
 
 Rome was reached on October 20th, 1852. ' You know,' 
 he writes, 
 
 ' that nothing can, to me, ever approach the first view of 
 these illustrious places. Were I to see Rome a thousand 
 times at the interval of thousands of years, the first dawn 
 of the Campagna and St. Peter's from the hills of Albano, 
 the first waving of the peacock fans in Santa Maria, the 
 first rise of the Capitoline steps under the thrilling feet, 
 would still live unrivalled, and all subsequent impressions 
 seem poor and tame in comparison.' 
 
 Yet, reluctant though he was to revisit places which he
 
 CHAP. XIII ROME AXl 
 
 had once seen, he still found that ' there is nothing in the 
 world to compare to Rome for local interest.' He was 
 especially struck with the renewed vitality and vigour of 
 the Papacy. In a letter to J. C. Shairp he says : 
 
 ' Not having come hither to debate theology, I have 
 not been much in the way of hearing anything. I confess, 
 however, that I receive a general impression that, in some 
 form or other, whether through the French Empire, or the 
 English conversions, or its own internal forces, there will 
 be yet once more one vigorous display of the Roman 
 Church on the face of Europe. One thing strikes me 
 forcibly as calculated to inspire it with confidence and 
 pride, to which there is no equal ; and that is, that the im- 
 mense traditional strength, descended from the Catacombs, 
 and Constantine, and Hildebrand, has not died away, but is 
 continued almost down to our own time in saints whose lives 
 and whose churches fill almost as prominent a place in the 
 thoughts and the views of men as those of the Apostles 
 and Martyrs. But oh ! with this inheritance of life and 
 glory, what a mass of impossible beliefs has come down, 
 accumulating with the course of ages ! The soil of the 
 place, morally as well as physically, seems actually to 
 have risen with the load of truths and fables, thrown in 
 together, till, I fear, nothing now can extricate them. 
 
 ' You will have heard of my visit to Loretto. One object 
 there made me think of you. There are tablets hung round 
 the church relating " the wondrous story of the House " ^ in 
 different languages, including Welsh, Gaelic, English, and 
 Lowland Scotch, such as James I. might have spoken. This 
 last I thought so curious, as a proof of the distinction be- 
 tween English and Scotch in the seventeenth century, 
 (when these were written), that I have copied it for you. 
 
 ' I must say I think all these questions might have been 
 brought to an issue sooner had the two bodies steadily 
 looked each other in the face, and asked what they meant 
 to do for, and with, each other in this troublesome world. 
 As it is, Protestants turn aside from any relic as beneath 
 even the trouble of examination, and Catholics acquiesce in, 
 or defend, them as a matter of course. Neither seems to 
 
 ' An account of the ' Santa Casa ' at Loretto is given in Stanley's Sinai 
 and Palestine, pp. 439-45.
 
 438 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1852 
 
 consider the feelings of the other as worth a moment's 
 thought ; and if, as one cannot doubt, the greater part 
 would explode at once under any fair investigation, is it 
 impossible that '^ome new change might take place, equal 
 to the Reformation in extent, but ending in understanding 
 and harmony, instead of in rents and convulsions ? . . .' 
 
 On the way to Rome (October 3rd, 1852) he had heard 
 the news of the death of the Duke of Wellington. ' Oh ! 
 what would I give to see the funeral ! Worth any sight 
 that this land can furnish.' The event did not at first affect 
 his plans. Later in the month he writes : 
 
 ' For myself, as I should never have come hither but for 
 others, I would but for them, with or without the Duke's 
 funeral, most gladly return and start afresh. But I see that 
 they would lose so much enjoyment at the very thought 
 that I do not mention it ; though, if any reasonable cause 
 were to occur, I should be off in a moment.' 
 
 Several causes did, however, combine to render his 
 return desirable. Domestic circumstances made it advisable 
 that his mother and sister should hasten their departure 
 from Rome. The threatened secession of a brother-Canon, 
 the urgent entreaty of Archdeacon Harrison that he should 
 come back for the Canterbury audit, and his own anxiety 
 about the appropriation of a portion of the capitular funds 
 for the preservation of the Cathedral monuments, determined 
 him to hurry back to England. * Lured on by a dim vision 
 of duty,' and feeling that he would ' start for Egypt with a 
 better conscience,' he left Rome on November 14th. ' I 
 was glad,' he writes to his mother and sister, whom he 
 left behind, 
 
 ' to go to bed last night and dream of dear, beautiful Rome, 
 and of the little room with the tea-things spread, alas ! no 
 more for me. Never, never again, dearest ones, will I 
 murmur, as I fear I have unthankfully done from time to 
 time, at travelling through twice-seen places with you. Oh
 
 CHAP. XIII FUNERAL OF DUKE OF WELLINGTON 439 
 
 the difference of travelling alone ! without you to share my 
 pleasure and soothe my bad spirits ! 
 
 ' The funeral, by the " Times " of November 6, appears 
 to be fixed for the i8th, so that I shall either be just in time 
 or just too late. But do not trouble yourselves about that. 
 It is not the funeral for which I am returning. One of the 
 American passengers is hurrying on to Paris and London 
 on business, but hopes that he may " strike " the Duke's 
 funeral, which he guesses will be a "very handsome display ! " 
 How often I think of you, or try not to think of you — for 
 I cannot do so with dry eyes —I need not say. Forgive 
 me, dearest mother, dearest sister, dearest cousin, all the 
 hastiness and indecision which have made our delightful 
 journey less delightful than it ought to have been. Believe 
 me, that now it is over I look back upon it as amongst the 
 happiest and best-spent periods of my happy life, though 
 how happy I knew not till it was finished. Let us make 
 the best of it in our recollections if we, or at least I, have 
 failed to make the best of it in its enjoyments.' 
 
 Travelling night and day, Stanley reached London on 
 the night of November 17th, 1852. The next morning, 
 soon after six, he was on his way to St. Paul's Cathedral. 
 
 ' It was still just daybreak. The streets were all astir as 
 on the morning of the Coronation, but so far different in 
 this respect, that the crowd was not confined to the pave- 
 ment, but swarmed up the houses and trees ; and this kept 
 increasing as we advanced, till, on turning down St. James's 
 Street and Pall Mall, the sight became magnificent — London 
 was turned into a vast amphitheatre. Grand as it was even 
 then, I imagine that it became much grander as the day 
 rolled on, and those who came in the procession, or who 
 saw the great thoroughfares afterwards, spoke of it as the 
 most striking part of the whole pageant. There was no 
 demonstration of feeling — I do not well see how there could 
 be ; perhaps it showed itself in the only natural way, by all 
 absence of levity. Lord Clanwilliam, who came in the 
 procession, told Vaughan that, as an indication of this, he 
 had observed that there was not a single cigar visible. 
 Many of the clubs were hung with black ; galleries were 
 erected along the whole of the Strand, and immense plat- 
 forms round the Strand churches. Temple Bar was covered
 
 440 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 
 
 with black velvet, and had silver vases at the top, burning 
 with gas as with incense. . . . We reached Charing Cross, 
 and here a dead-stand took place, which lasted till 8 A.M. 
 The Bishop of London was a little in advance. At last we 
 moved on, but so slowly that it was 8.30 before we reached 
 the Strand, and St. Paul's was to be closed at 9 A.M. We 
 were in despair, when on a sudden the whole line moved 
 on. We flew thro' Temple Bar ; Fleet Street was clear ; 
 and at 8.45 we reached St. Paul's Churchyard. Augustus 
 flew with his ticket to the N. Transept, I to the Deanery. . . . 
 
 ' They were all at breakfast — a long table spread, Mrs. 
 Milman at the head, with Lord J. Russell at her side. She 
 received me very kindly. . . . The little figure by her side 
 whispered a word, and at last, on that memorable morning, 
 the long-delayed introduction was effected. He asked a 
 few questions as to whence and whither, and I said I had 
 come back on Chapter business. ... I then showed my 
 ticket to H. Milman. He said in a moment : " Oh ! this 
 will never do. My father will give you another ticket, and 
 you must come with us." ... At ioA.M.,with no difficulty, 
 we crossed the street, mounted the spiral staircase, and 
 entered the great balcony overlooking Ludgate Hill. It 
 was entirely devoted to the party from the Deanery. 
 
 ' It was a beautiful day, bright and clear ; and, in order 
 to appreciate this, you must be aware that, for days and 
 weeks before, the rain has been descending in such torrents 
 that large parts of England are under water, and that the 
 next day the clouds again gathered, and have been falling 
 in floods ever since. ... If ever St. Paul's could bear 
 comparison with St. Peter's, it was on that day. The space, 
 from being entirely cleared, seemed far larger than usual ; 
 the crowds sate in numbers numberless on the roofs of the 
 houses, but the Churchyard, and Ludgate Hill, and Fleet 
 Street, between the avenues of troops on the pavement, was 
 as vacant as the nave of St. Peter's. 
 
 ' It was, I think, about 1 1 A.M. that the procession first 
 began to show itself I must confess that it was not im- 
 pressive. There were, it is true, many soldiers moving on 
 in succession, but they were in such broken detachments, 
 and the line was so often interrupted by coaches, and those 
 often private coaches of the meanest appearance, that all 
 sense of continuity was lost, and the pageant was neither 
 military nor stately. . . . Two or three striking points,
 
 ■CHAP. XIII FUNERAL OF DUKE OF WELLINGTON 441 
 
 however, there were — the successive banners of the Duke, 
 the standard, the banner of Wellesley, carried with all 
 heraldic pomp ; the eighty-three old Chelsea pensioners, 
 toiling up with all the stiffness and slowness of age ; and, 
 above all, what came very nearly at the close of the pro- 
 cession, the funeral car — not, indeed, the car itself, for that 
 was ungainly and extravagant, but the vast black mass 
 which preceded it in the shape, or rather shapelessness, of 
 the twelve black horses, so loaded with plumes and trap- 
 pings that they might have been elephants. You knew not 
 what. You saw only the vast pagoda towering high above, 
 and before it this awful mass advancing like a cloud of 
 Death, a living Grave. Alone, of all the parts of the pro- 
 cession, this mighty monster passed through the gates of 
 the Churchyard and stopped at the Cathedral doors. The 
 rest had all broken away to the eastern side. 
 
 ' We now left our post on the balcony for the church. 
 The horse, therefore, which most people describe as the 
 most touching part of the procession, I did not see. 
 We entered the church, and took up our position in the 
 western gallery, looking up the nave. Here again I confess 
 to a great disappointment. I had expected an awful vault 
 of black hangings, dimly lighted, and the day entirely 
 excluded. Nothing of the kind. It was all bright sun, 
 streaming thro' the windows on the bare white walls, 
 round the cornice of which ran a long line of gaslights. 
 The great and only grandeur of the spectacle consisted in 
 the masses of human things, piled tier above tier through 
 the whole nave, transepts, and dome, all in mourning, ex- 
 cept the red officers and soldiers. And now, circling round 
 the central platform, and then descending the nave, came 
 the long line of clergy, canons, minor canons, choristers, 
 headed by the bishop and dean. It was a beautiful sight, 
 and their white robes and black scarfs would have borne 
 any comparison with the splendour of the Cardinals. 
 Deeply striking, too, here, from the contrast with the sable 
 masses which they passed. Most impressive, too, by far 
 the most impressive figure that I saw in the whole day, 
 was the Dean of St. Paul's himself He wore a black skull- 
 cap, which gave a concentration to his features, and, as he 
 moved on, he looked truly venerable. . . . Then ensued a 
 long pause, whilst the coffin was lowered from the car. At 
 last the white procession of choristers, &c., some from every
 
 442 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1S52 
 
 cathedral in England, mo\ed eastwards again, singing the 
 funeral verses ; then came the coffin, Lord Douro, the 
 Dean, and a few others. 
 
 ' The centre of the Cathedral was a raised platform, 
 covered, as indeed was the whole nave, with black cloth, 
 and in the midst of this was the coffin. A few figures that I 
 could not distinguish, the Prince, Lord Douro, and officers, 
 stood near it, the Dean also ; otherwise there was a vast 
 space. The choir were under the organ. 
 
 ' The two Psalms struck me as magnificent. Every 
 word came distinct and audible, with the full thunder of 
 the human voice and organ combined, thro' every part 
 of that immense fabric. Then a short anthem (i Thess. iv. 
 14, 18). Then the Lesson, read by the Dean, of which, 
 wonderful to say, every word was heard, up to the highest 
 galleries. It was striking, too, to hear the rustling of the 
 thousands of leaves, as the vast congregation turned over 
 the pages of the service-books. Then the Nunc Dimittis. 
 Then the Dirge, which, like all the other additions to the 
 regular service, was selected by the Dean, and which I 
 must give myself the pleasure of transcribing. " The king 
 said to all the people that were with him, ' Rend your clothes 
 and mourn.' And the king himself followed the bier. 
 And they buried him, and the king lifted up his voice and 
 wept at the grave. And all the people wept. And the 
 king said unto his servants, ' Know ye not that there is a 
 Prince and a great man fallen this day in Israel? ' " It was 
 most imposing, and there was something very grand in the 
 abrupt termination of the last clause, which was closed 
 without any repetition. 
 
 ' And then instantly began the thunders of the Dead 
 March, whilst the coffin was imperceptibly, too imperceptibly 
 for remote spectators, lowered into the vault. Then the 
 burial verses were sung ; then again the Dean read the 
 words of burial, and it was a thrilling sound to hear of " our 
 dear brother departed." The whole congregation were 
 requested to join, and, I believe, did join in the Lord's 
 Prayer, and those below describe it as very striking. Then 
 the two prayers by the Dean ; then the reading of the titles. 
 by Garter King-at-Arms, hardly audible, except " Field 
 Marshal " and " Knight," a hundred times repeated ; and. 
 then a burst of triumphant music from Mendelssohn's 
 " St. Paul," " Sleepers, awake ! " intended, I presume, tO'
 
 CHAP. XIII FUNERAL OF DUKE OF WELLINGTON 443 
 
 convey, as it well did, the feeling, " go forth and do your 
 duty." Then the blessing by the Bishop ; instantly a sharp, 
 shrill bell, followed by the tremendous boom of the Tower 
 guns roaring, as if through the heart of the Cathedral. 
 
 ' The whole broke up almost immediately — a crowding 
 round the coffin, and then a general pouring out. In the 
 covered gallery I met the Oxford deputation. They had 
 said to each other in the Cathedral, " Oh ! how Stanley 
 would enjoy this sight ! " I came back with them in their 
 coach to their hotel, where I met the other Heads. The 
 Master of University of course received me as he would. 
 have done if I had come from Oxford with him the day 
 before, or descended from the stars in a flaming comet.' 
 
 Stanley had not returned to England 'for the funeral.' 
 But having returned, he felt that he would not have missed 
 it on any account, not so much for the sight itself, as for 
 the consciousness of having shared in a great national, 
 event. His mind at once began to dwell upon the great 
 funerals of history. In a letter to Pearson he enume- 
 rates, and comments on, historical scenes of a similar 
 character. 
 
 ' First, 
 
 Such honours IHum to her hero paid, 
 
 And peaceful slept the mighty Hector's shade. 
 
 Secondly, the funeral of Camillus, who, of all lives and 
 characters, seems to me most like the Duke {see Livy, 
 vi. l). Thirdly, that most august mourning for Alexander 
 the Great. FoiirtJdy, although deficient in solemnity, the 
 burial of Csesar, well described by Merivale (Vol. iii.). 
 Fifthly, the Black Prince. I have read over my account 
 of it since, and I find that I told the people that they would 
 see nothing like it till the funeral of the Duke. Like the 
 Duke's, it was postponed for four months till the opening 
 of Parliament, and — you will scream at the triviality of the 
 incident, yet, of all the points in the procession, it was to 
 me by far the most imposing — the hearse was drawn by 
 twelve black horses. The real mourning for the Black 
 Prince makes it more like Nelson's. 
 
 'After all, I return to the conclusion that, for grandeur,
 
 444 ^-^^^ ^^ DEAN STANLEY 1852 
 
 it perhaps surpassed all but that of Alexander ; in the 
 universal sympathy of millions of spectators, and in the 
 calm majesty of the ceremonial, it surpassed all ; but that 
 it was far less affecting than any of those I have mentioned, 
 except, perhaps, that of Camillus. 
 
 ' To me there was something awfully impressive in the 
 mere Protestantism of the service : grand hopes of immor- 
 tality, deep sense of irreparable loss, exhortations to duty, 
 but not a word of prayer, or thought, or wish for the dead 
 himself My reason acquiesced in the omission. But what 
 an abnegation of natural human feeling ! What a courage 
 in the Reformers who swept it away ! ' 
 
 Stanley delayed his final departure for the East till the 
 Canterbury audit was completed. Starting on December ist, 
 1852, he reached Paris in time to hear the Second Empire 
 proclaimed. A railway accident delayed his train, so that 
 he did not arrive till 2 A.M. on the morning of the 2nd. 
 
 ' I tumbled into bed, and was waked at 10 by the 
 cannons from the Hotel de Ville. This was the actual Pro- 
 clamation. The sight was the entrance of the Emperor 
 (oh marvellous, fateful, and heart-stirring word !) At i P.M. 
 I stood near enough to see him distinctly. The roar of 
 artillery and crash of martial music were wonderfully im- 
 pressive, and gave it all the appearance of a great event. 
 He bowed graciously to right and left, and looked pleased 
 and well. I then flew up to the highest room in this house 
 (the Hotel Wagram), and thence saw the cortege enter the 
 Tuileries, thus adding another chapter, another dynasty, 
 another splendour, and another fall to the history of that 
 most awful palace. 
 
 ' The streets were placarded with the Proclamation, and 
 with the " Reponse de I'Empereur " to the Senate. Little 
 boys paraded the pavement selling pictures of " Sa Majeste 
 Napoleon Trois " in coronation robes. Others offered little 
 tricolour flags surmounted with eagles. There were cheers 
 of " Vive I'Empereur " as he passed ; but they were drowned 
 and superseded by the deafening sound of cannon and 
 drum. Nor did I see any sign of enthusiasm. Altogether, 
 it was a great and instructive moment, though the pageant 
 was slight.
 
 CHAP. XIII THE SECOND FRENCH EMPIRE 445 
 
 ' I drove round Paris to-night to see the illuminations. 
 They were the best of their kind that I ever saw : the 
 Hotel de Ville, with flags hanging out of every window, 
 and every window flaming with lights ; the Luxembourg 
 with every outline marked in lamps ; the Chamber of 
 Deputies with the statues in front rising each out of a sea 
 of gas ; the Elysee Gardens all blue, red, and white. And 
 what added to the interest was that the political feeling 
 even now could, to a certain extent, be traced by the 
 greater or less amount of illumination. The city and 
 all the Government offices were in a blaze, the shops also 
 in the Boulevards. But the " aristos," as our coachman 
 called them, who dwell in the Faubourg St. Germain, were 
 all in sullen darkness. Great old houses, which for Henry 
 v., as the same sapient authority pointed out, would have 
 been lit up from head to foot, had not a candle to show.' 
 
 At Avignon Stanley met his mother and sister on their 
 way home. Thence he hurried on alone to Marseilles, and 
 embarked for Egypt. The Eastern tour, so long projected, 
 had fairly begun. One dark shadow alone clouded his 
 anticipations. His sister Mary contemplated joining the 
 Church of Rome, and his arguments only obtained from 
 her the promise that she would take no decisive step till 
 his return. * It makes me feel,' he writes to Jowett, 
 
 ' as if we were a doomed family. Is there some frightful 
 catastrophe involved in this tour ? But I must turn away 
 my thoughts and try to enjoy and to learn as if nothing 
 were impending. And that, I believe, will also be the best 
 thing for lier ! ' 
 
 Every point in the tour from Alexandria to Constan- 
 tinople is minutely described in a series of letters which 
 for descriptive vividness, unaffected simplicity, and fulness 
 of detail, can scarcely be surpassed. ' Sinai and Palestine,' 
 perhaps the most widely popular of his writings, is based 
 on this material. As Professor Goldwin Smith wrote 
 to him on his return, ' You have nothing to do but 
 to piece together your letters, cut off their heads and tails,.
 
 446 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 185: 
 
 and the book is done.' To quote largely from these letters 
 would be superfluous here. But it ma}' be possible to fill 
 up a few personal details, which, with characteristic con- 
 centration of purpose, and with a reserve rare in travellers, 
 have been rigorously excluded from the published book. 
 
 The Eastern tour falls into four parts : — (i) Egypt ; (2) 
 The Desert ; (3J Palestine, and northwards to Damascus ; 
 (4) Asia Minor and Constantinople. 
 
 And first of Egypt. At Alexandria the East burst 
 upon him instantaneously, ' like the rush of the Sicilian 
 spring, in its rapid race of glorious sights.' As he disem- 
 barked from the steamer in a small boat, 
 
 * a long line of turbaned men stood on the quay with 
 sticks. The moment we landed a rush was made at us and 
 at each other ; backwards and forwards flew the sticks to 
 keep off the rivals from us. Into the midst of this whirl 
 donkeys were suddenly precipitated. I jumped on one, 
 Fremantle on the other ; two boys, or men, without a 
 word of aught but Arabic in their mouths, flew after us as 
 we, urged by them, galloped at full speed through the 
 streets. No scene that I ever remember in my travels, 
 except, perhaps, the ascent of Vesuvius, was so inex- 
 pressibly diverting. I shook and shouted with laughter at 
 the mere comicality of the sensation. 
 
 ' Yet this was the least part of the scene. At every 
 turn pictures, thoughts, dreams of former days, leaped into 
 life and crossed our path for a moment, only to be suc- 
 ceeded by something equally strange and familiar. Houses 
 hardly looking like houses, so worn and crumbling, sud- 
 denly rushing out into a fragment of the well-known 
 Moorish arcade ; women walking like sheeted spectres in 
 long white garments, such as those worn by the penitents 
 in the Colosseum, concealing all but their eyes ; camels, 
 not one or two, but everywhere, stretching out their long, 
 snake-like necks ; palms, not an isolated tree here and 
 there, but towering in thick groves over the walls of 
 gardens. Breathless with laughter and delight, we arrived 
 at the hotel.' 
 
 Stanley arrived at Cairo in time to witness the ' Doseh,
 
 CHAP. XIII EGYPT AND THE NILE 447 
 
 or * treading ' of the Dervishes, with which the birthday of 
 the Prophet is celebrated. Two days later, on the after- 
 noon of Christinas Day, 1852, he embarked on board a 
 boat with the intention of proceeding up the Nile as far 
 as Ipsambul (Abu Simbel) and the Second Cataract. 
 Egypt was his starting-point, because it was the back- 
 ground of the history of Israel, the necessary prelude to 
 Sinai and Palestine. Without a sense of its customs, 
 habits, agricultural practices, and daily occupations, with- 
 out a vision of its temples, its monuments, and its narrow 
 strip of vivid verdure hemmed in by sandy wastes, he felt 
 that no impression of the Holy Land would be complete. 
 To saturate his mind with its unchanged aspects was to 
 prepare for the necessary contrast with the bare, silent, 
 solitary desert. Through all his senses he drank in 
 Egyptian life. But before the first week was ended the 
 voyage became intolerably tedious and monotonous. 
 With none of his father's love for natural history, he 
 found his great resource in books. ' Whatever other 
 advice,' he says, ' I should give to anyone coming up 
 the Nile, I should say, " spare no books." ' His three 
 companions were Theodore Walrond, Fremantle, and 
 Findlay, and he begins his first letter with a plan, as 
 he had done of his study at Rugby or of his rooms at 
 Balliol, of the arrangement of their cabins. Each had 
 their nicknames with the crew. Stanley was called ' The 
 -Sheykh ' ; Walrond, ' The Pacha,' from his practical leader- 
 ship of the party ; Fremantle, ' The Fez,' from his cap ; 
 Findlay, ' The Father of Guns,' from his love of sport. 
 
 A walk on the bank before breakfast, a lecture delivered 
 by himself on the Coptic Church, or on some kindred sub- 
 ject, a daily midday service, the study of all parts of the 
 Hebrew Bible that relate to Egypt, or of the Koran, Cham- 
 pollion, Bunsen, Wilkinson, or Lane, formed the serious
 
 448 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1852 
 
 business of his day. ' The Arabian Nights ' was read aloud 
 by the whole part}- in turn after dinner. When books began 
 to fail, he found in the conversation of his dragoman, 
 Mohamed-ibn-Hassan of Ghizeh, a never-failing amusement 
 and delight. Mohamed played too conspicuous a part in 
 the tour to be passed over with the bare mention of his 
 name. A Bedouin by birth, he was the son of an Arab 
 who ' lived in a blanket' As a boy he had driven his 
 father's sheep to pasture at the base of the Pyramids, where, 
 as Herodotus was told by the priests, the Shepherd King 
 himself fed his flocks. He was a Dervish, and had himself 
 offered his body to be trodden under the feet of the 
 Sheykh's horse at the ' Doseh.' Now he was a packer 
 of Dervishes, and hoped 'to be a Caliph, i.e. (according to 
 the literal use of the word) one of those from whom may 
 be chosen the successor to the Sheykh of the Saadyehs.' 
 Throughout the whole journey from Cairo to Jaffa he 
 accompanied Stanley, who felt the warmest affection for 
 his faithful servant. ' No one, except you at home, and 
 perhaps Mohamed, knows ' — so he writes in his last letter 
 from Palestine — 'how much I enjoyed all I saw, and till I 
 reach home I shall hardly know myself 
 
 Before the voyage was ended Stanley found himself 
 richly repaid for its weariness by the sight of Thebes, 
 Karnak, and Abu Simbel. Yet it was with unfeigned 
 delight that he again passed through Cairo to pursue the 
 main purpose of his journey. For Stanley, Egypt had no 
 history, in the dramatic sense of the word. Its primeval 
 world was to him, as to the Israelite, the starting-point in 
 the gradual unfolding of the sequences of a great drama 
 which, physically as well as morally, ascended by successive 
 stages, till it culminated at Jerusalem, the historical goal of 
 the Law and the Prophets, the local consummation of the 
 Gospel narrative. In the stillness and desolation of the
 
 CHAP. XIII THE SINAITIC DESERT 449 
 
 Sinaitic desert was the birthplace of history. As Stanley 
 set his face towards the wilderness, and knew that the 
 Pyramids were receding behind him, he felt the thrill of 
 entering upon the Holy Land, not only of Christian Europe, 
 but of three peoples who have powerfully affected the 
 destinies of the East. For the Egyptian, as the Sinaitic 
 inscriptions show, the Peninsula had possessed a religious 
 interest anterior to the exodus ; for the Jew, it was the 
 scene of all that was grandest and most awful in his sacred 
 history ; for the Moslem, it was consecrated by the frequent 
 allusions in the Koran, and by the visit of the Prophet 
 Mahomet. It may be imagined with what vividness — and 
 * Sinai and Palestine,' and still more the fresh impressions 
 of his letters, reveal the vigour of the realistic faculty — 
 Stanley would clothe the mountains once again with the 
 awe of a Mighty Presence, or people anew its wilds with 
 ' hungry seers or prophets vigil-blind,' or recall the days 
 when Elijah lodged in the caves of Mount Sinai, or behold 
 in the high-road of the pilgrims the track which St. Paul 
 followed when he went into Arabia for his mysterious 
 sojourn, or picture the young camel-driver of Mecca resting 
 on his toilsome march, without a thought of his destiny, 
 without an aspiration beyond a safe transit and a ready 
 market for his merchandise. 
 
 Stanley had come to Egypt unprepared for the ride 
 across the desert. Fearful of the consequences, he was 
 anxious to provide himself with riding-breeches ; but only 
 red leather could be obtained in Cairo, and ' the spectacle,' 
 as he wisely concluded, 'of red leather would have been not 
 only ludicrous but shocking.' Reassured by Mohamed as 
 to the adequacy of his garments, he mounted his camel, 
 
 ' Down the huge creature crumples itself I leap on its 
 hump, take hold of the two pegs on each side of the saddle, 
 first fall forwards, then backwards, as he successively rears 
 
 VOL. I. G G
 
 450 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1853 
 
 up his hind and his fore legs, and then find myself on a 
 mass of bags and carpets and bedding, on which I can 
 turn myself every way — forwards, backwards, sideways. 
 And now the monster straddles out its long neck, and forth 
 it goes, sometimes I holding the bridle, sometimes the 
 Bedouin, Selim. 
 
 ' It is literally like passing through the desert on a 
 mountain. You feel at once raised above all ordinary cares : 
 no fear of fleas, if there are any ; no glare or heat from the 
 sand ; a wide prospect, like what one used to enjoy from the 
 highest summit of coach or diligence, and a full enjoyment 
 of every breeze which blows through the desert. The 
 strangeness of the animal is inexhaustible. However much 
 you may forget it in the ordinary ride, the lengthened and 
 extraordinary process of the subsiding and upheaving 
 always recalls you to a sense of your situation ; and, as 
 you ride, it is a constant amusement to watch the windings 
 of that snake-like neck, now darting down to crop a solitary 
 tuft of grass, now upwards at a straw fluttering from the 
 back of my neighbour's camel, now turning its huge lips to 
 receive a loving kiss again and again repeated from Selim.' 
 
 As in the boat on the Nile, so now on the camel in 
 the desert, he carefully prepared himself for his survey of 
 the Holy Land by reading every word of Robinson's 
 elaborate volumes of ' Biblical Researches in Palestine.' ' I 
 read them,' he said, 
 
 ' now riding on the back of a camel in the desert, now 
 travelling on horseback through the hills of Palestine, now 
 under the shadow of my tent, when I came in weary from 
 the day's journey. They are among the very few books of 
 modern literature of which I may truly say that I have 
 read every word.' 
 
 At every step his interest grew — an interest which was 
 sustained, protracted, and deepened, till it culminated on 
 Calvary and on Olivet. In the desert no successive tides of 
 great recollections weakened the effect of each other. One 
 single wave of history has passed over that desolate, arid 
 plain, with its stunted vegetation, its wild passes, its deep
 
 CHAP. XIII MOUNT SINAI 45 1 
 
 stillnesses, its unclothed grandeur. But that one stream of 
 events had for its background the magnificence of Egypt, 
 and for its distant horizon the forms, as yet unborn, of 
 Judaism, of Mahometanism, of Christianity. Mount Sinai 
 was reached early in March. On the first Sunday in 
 the month (the Fourth Sunday in Lent) Stanley held a 
 service, at which all the trav^ellers in the Convent of 
 St. Catherine's were present. 
 
 ' I confess that it was with difficulty that, in that place, 
 I could read through the Ten Commandments. And it 
 was hardly less thrilling to read from the Epistle of the 
 day, " This Agar is Mount Sinai in Arabia." There is 
 something about the allusion that almost makes me think 
 that, during those " three years in Arabia," St. Paul, too, 
 had looked on this wonderful scene. At any rate, the 
 words, I am sure, shot through everyone's heart, and I was 
 glad to think that I had written a sermon upon them, which 
 lasted for about five minutes.' 
 
 Throughout the entire journey Stanley's health re- 
 mained excellent. Once only, on the voyage up the Nile, 
 he speaks of having ' had a common English cold, 
 ending in a common bilious attack, which made me feel 
 quite at home.' His spirits triumphed over fatigues that 
 exhausted younger men of more powerful physique than 
 himself Expeditions which, to his companions, became 
 burdensome, were to him a delight. An incident \\'hich 
 occurred at Mount Carmel was characteristic of the whole 
 tour. When the party arrived, after a fatiguing ride, at the 
 Carmelite convent, 
 
 '■ the monk proposed that we should go out and see the 
 curiosities. I had to put him off, because Walrond was 
 asleep. " Ah ! oui ! " he said, " vous etes jeune et fort, lui 
 il est vieux et fatigue ; il ne faut pas Teveiller." We all 
 laughed at it very much afterwards ; but it is the general 
 impression I have of the whole Syrian tour.'
 
 452 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1855 
 
 The delights of the desert were, to a <^reat extent, un- 
 expected. A letter written at Hebron, with the rest of 
 Palestine before him, shows how keenl)- the ride had been 
 enjoyed : 
 
 * And now the second stage of our tour is finished, with 
 absolutely no mischance of any kind whatever. That it 
 should be so finished is indeed a great blessing ; that it 
 should be finished at all is to me a matter of unfeigned 
 delight, because it brings me a month nearer to my journey's 
 end, and to my return to you. The more I see, the more 
 I enjo}^ the more I long to be at home again to make you 
 share it with me. 
 
 ' When the Nile was ended I confess I had a misgiving 
 that, after those speaking sculptures and monuments of 
 Egypt, my impatience at the tediousness of that voyage 
 would be avenged by a worse tedium and monotony of the 
 desert. On the contrary, not for a single day have I felt 
 otherwise than richly repaid. Every day brought with it 
 something new, something which made that day a period 
 in itself Every day also brought a new stock of health 
 and refreshment, such as I have not known since Greece. 
 And now that it is over I feel, from yesterday's journey, 
 that what I have seen is nothing to compare with what I 
 shall see.' 
 
 The wilderness had melted into the mountains, and 
 Stanley was entering Palestine. Apart from the sanctity 
 of its sacred associations, this third portion of the tour 
 possessed, for his mind, one special charm. In the desert, 
 the one drawback to his complete enjoyment had been the 
 uncertainty of the localities. His anxiety to be impartial, 
 to give due weight to each conflicting opinion, to estimate 
 the degree of importance which must be assigned to rival 
 theories, chilled his enthusiasms. Unable to dogmatise 
 with his predecessors, he sometimes contents himself with 
 a hypothetical decision, occasionally takes refuge in alter- 
 natives, and always is embarrassed by the consciousness 
 of hesitation. ' Oh for a word,' he cries, ' to tell me with
 
 CHAP. XIII PALESTINE 453 
 
 certainty where any of these spots are which are described 
 with such precision !' In Palestine this one drawback was 
 removed. 
 
 ' After all the uncertainty of desert topography — I may 
 also say of Roman topography, whether classical or sacred — 
 it was quite startling, though I knew it beforehand, to find 
 the localities so absolutely authentic, and to hear the names 
 of Carmel, Maon, Ziph, shouted out, in answer to my 
 •questions, from the Bedouin guides, or from the ploughmen 
 in the fields, who know no more of David's wanderings 
 than of those of Ulysses. And now I am in Hebron, 
 looking on the site of a sepulchre whose genuineness has 
 never yet been questioned — in the oldest existing city of 
 the world ; and to that, with equal certainty, is to succeed 
 Bethlehem, and to that, Jerusalem.' 
 
 Henceforward he was in the midst of certainties, passing 
 through places the names of which were the most familiar 
 sounds of childhood. And no traveller has ever realised 
 more forcibly, or imparted more vividly, this rich charm 
 of travelling through a classic land. In Palestine he was 
 enabled to transfer, with bold, yet reverent, hand, the 
 whole subject of Biblical archaeology to its true place in 
 the science of man. He exhibits, in their rich complexity, 
 the extraordinary confluence of associations which, in 
 magnitude, in antiquity, in variety, are unique. Neither 
 Greece nor Italy has ever provoked a Crusade. The dis- 
 putes of the learned over the localities in Athens or in 
 Rome never — as with Bethlehem or Jerusalem — aroused 
 religious controversy, dictated prophetic interpretations, 
 raised cases for diplomatic Missions, created foreign wars, 
 or involved the fall of nations. And as he unravels the 
 devious webs of history which, apart from higher and 
 holier interests, here converge, as it were, on the heart 
 ■of human destin}-, he converts into a reality of moral fact 
 the simple belief exhibited in the ' Mappa Mundi,' that 
 Jerusalem is, literally and physically, the centre of the earth.
 
 454 ^-^^^ OF DEAN STANLEY 1855 
 
 None of the relations of Palestine with ancient or 
 modern history — with Egypt, Assyria, Rome, Arabia, and 
 the West — arc overlooked. As formerly in Greece or Ital}-,. 
 so now in Palestine, he exhibits the singular fitness of the 
 country for the special part which it fills in history. He 
 sees in the physical surroundings a forecast of the nation's 
 destiny, and illustrates the national character from the 
 geographical framework in which it was enclosed, and by 
 which it was modified. He traces the local influences by 
 which its ideas, its literature, its forms of worship, were 
 affected. He shows how the narrow strip of tcrritor}-, which 
 isolated the Chosen People from dangerous contact with 
 heathendom, and fostered their conviction that they were 
 not always to be restrained within earthly barriers, stood in 
 the vanguard of Oriental civilisation, midway between the 
 two great seats of ancient power, and at the nearest point 
 of contact between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. 
 Hence it served as a highway between Egypt and Babylon \ 
 it offered itself at once as their prize and their battle-field ; 
 it afforded the most convenient scene of conflict between 
 the East and the West, between Rome and Asia, between 
 Christian and Saracen. 
 
 One characteristic of ' Sinai and Palestine ' is that 
 Stanley accumulates, with pictorial vividness, the wealth of 
 historical association, both sacred and profane, which 
 gathers round the Holy Eand ; another is, that, approaching 
 the well-worn subject from a novel point of view, he shows 
 the o-eneral history of the Chosen People to be a reflection 
 of the land in which they lived, or traces the special course 
 of particular events to the geographical features of the 
 spots where they occurred. In other respects it is rather 
 the manner than the form of treatment which marks the 
 individuality of the man. Other writers have shown, but 
 none with greater force, how much is gained by seeing the
 
 CHAP. XIII PALESTINE 
 
 455 
 
 country through the eyes of the Bible, and the Bible through 
 the eyes of the countr)-. It is Stanley's constant purpose to 
 trace those minute correspondences between scenes and inci- 
 dents, those constant and circumstantial agreements of 
 recorded history with natural geography which, so far, at 
 least, must convince the most sceptical that he is dealing, 
 not with fables of Eastern origin, but with realities of flesh 
 and blood. 
 
 Feeling, as Stanley did in every nerve and fibre of his 
 body, the charm of knowing the exact outline of landscape, 
 the precise colour of hills and fields, the special objects, 
 both far and near, which met the eyes of speakers or of 
 actors, he always endeavours to place himself in the actual 
 spot where acts were done or words were spoken. In the 
 identification of localities mentioned in the Old Testament 
 the traveller is aided by the minute particularity of the 
 descriptions, and by the use of the Hebrew phraseology, 
 which, in precision, abundance, and picturesqueness, is only 
 rivalled by a vocabulary of provincialisms. In the New 
 Testament the difficulty and the need are both greater. 
 The active, practical energy of the Christian religion converts 
 its earliest records into narratives of journeys by land and 
 sea, by lake and mountain. Sometimes the simple vividness 
 of the narrative marks the actual spot at once, beyond doubt 
 or dispute ; more often its identification must be a matter of 
 evidence. Whatever assistance could be gained from the 
 traditions which the historical consciousness of Palestine 
 had accumulated, is enlisted in the task, whether those 
 traditions are derived from contemporaries of the events in 
 question, or have proceeded from strangers, such as the Greek 
 or Latin clergy, the pilgrims, the Crusaders, the Arab or 
 Turkish settler. Stanley calls them all to aid or to correct 
 the judgment of his own e}'e and cultivated instinct. And 
 his graphic pictures were the rich reward of the constant
 
 456 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1853 
 
 anxiety to seek out the precise spot which had been the 
 scene of action or of speech. Writing before the multi- 
 plication of maps, plans, pictures, prints, and photographs, 
 Stanle\' may almost be said to have re-discovered Palestine 
 by the force and freshness, the local colour, the truth and 
 detail of the impressions which he realised for himself and 
 conveyed to his readers. 
 
 Jerusalem was reached on Easter Eve, and was made 
 the centre for expeditions northward to Damascus, and 
 eastward to Jericho and the Dead Sea. The following 
 extract from a letter commenced on the shores of Lake 
 Gennesareth is quoted to illustrate the spirit in which he 
 travelled through the scenes of our Lord's labours in 
 Galilee : , 
 
 ' And now, before we turn away over the mountains, I 
 will say briefly what has struck me in regard to the scenes 
 of our Lord's ministry, of which we shall now see no more, 
 with the exception of the glimpse of Tyre and Sidon and 
 the Plain of Jericho. 
 
 ' The chief point is, what everyone observes, the passing 
 of the Parables before your eyes. The vineyards with their 
 towers I noticed at Hebron and Bethlehem. On the hills 
 above Bethany, and still more in the Valley of Jehosaphat, 
 I saw the shepherds herding their flocks of sheep and 
 goats, white sheep and black sheep intermingled. In the 
 corn-fields of Shechem women and children were carefully 
 picking out the green tares from the wheat. There, too, 
 you saw the man ploughing with his yoke of oxen. In 
 the Plain of Gennesareth, sloping down to the very shore 
 where the Parable of the Sower was uttered, there is the 
 corn springing up from that " good " and " rich " soil ; there 
 is the deeply-trodden pathway running through the midst 
 of it ; there is the rocky ground of the hillside protruding 
 through the surface of the earth ; there are the large bushes 
 of thorn (growing abundantly all along the shores of the 
 Lake, and remarkable as being of that special kind of which 
 tradition says that the Crown of Thorns was woven), spring- 
 ing up, as all trees do in these parts, in the very midst of 
 the waving- corn. The boats have long since vanished from
 
 CHAP. XIII THE GREEK EASTER-EVE 457 
 
 the waters of the Lake, but there were two or three fisher- 
 men casting in nets from stones on the edge. Flowers 
 grow abundantly ; but the only lily (in our sense of the 
 word) which I have seen was in one of the streams halfway 
 between the Lake and Caesaraea Philippi. By the long arm 
 of the good-natured Findlay one was gathered, and I hope 
 I shall be able to bring it home safely for the little 
 F. Myers. 
 
 ' All these things are so obvious, so common, that but 
 for the Parables you would not notice them. But 1 think 
 it is this very fact — this universal matter-of-fact character 
 — that makes the allusions remarkable. And, on the other 
 hand, one is struck with the absence of allusions to the 
 local features of the country, however striking, especially 
 as contrasted with the old prophets. He must have been 
 familiar with that view from Nazareth. Yet none of its 
 grand objects come within the circle of His teaching. The 
 only one, perhaps — if it be so — is " the city set on a hill." ' 
 
 Returning to Jerusalem, Stanley was present at the 
 Church of the Holy Sepulchre on the Greek Easter Eve. To 
 secure a view of the ceremony of the Holy Fire, which com- 
 menced at 2 P.M., Stanley took up his place in the gallery 
 of the Latin Convent at 8 A.M. The following description 
 of the scene (which, in altered form, appears on pp. 460-64 
 of 'Sinai and Palestine') affords an example of the interest 
 with which he gathers scattered illustrations of the diversity 
 of ceremonial forms and usages that prevail among the 
 religious communities of Palestine : 
 
 ' The Chapel of the Sepulchre rose from a dense mass 
 of pilgrims, who sate or stood wedged round it, whilst round 
 them, and between another equally dense mass which went 
 round the walls of the church itself, ran two circles of 
 Turkish soldiers, stationed to keep order. 
 
 ' For the first two hours everything was tranquil. No- 
 thing indicated what was to follow, except that those two 
 or three pilgrims who, having got close to the aperture, 
 kept their hands fixed in it with a clench which they never 
 relaxed. 
 
 ' It seems to be the belief of the Arab Greeks, that
 
 458 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1853 
 
 unless they run round the Sepulchre a certain number of 
 times the fire will not come. Accordingly, from about 
 noon for two hours onwards there was a succession of 
 gambols, which I can only compare to a mixture of 
 prisoner's base, football, leap-frog, and " lifting," round and 
 round the Holy Sepulchre. First the tangled masses of 
 twenty, thirty, fifty men, starting in a run, catching hold of 
 each other, lifted one of themselves on their slioulders, 
 sometimes on their heads, and rushed on with him till he 
 leaped off, and another succeeded. Someof them were dressed 
 in sheepskins, some almost naked. One man usually pre- 
 ceded the rest as a sort of fugleman, clapping his hands ; to 
 which they responded in like manner, adding also wild 
 howls, of which we were told that the burden was, " This is 
 the Tomb of Jesus Christ," " God save the Sultan," " Jesus 
 Christ has redeemed us." What had begun, however, in the 
 lesser groups soon grew and grew, till at last the whole of 
 the circle between the troops was continuously occupied by 
 a race, a whirl, a torrent of these wild figures, like the 
 Witches' Sabbath in " Faust," wheeling round the Sepulchre. 
 Silent it stood in the centre. But what a sight for it to 
 witness ! Oh, Constantine ! Oh, Helena ! Oh, Cyril of 
 Jerusalem ! Oh, Godfrey, Tancred, and Raymond ! Was it 
 for this that you planned, and builded, and fought, and 
 suffered ? 
 
 ' But the worst was still to come. Gradually the frenzy 
 subsided or was checked. The racecourse was cleared, 
 and out of the Greek Church came a long procession with 
 banners, defiling round the Sepulchre. From this moment 
 the excitement, which had before been confined to the 
 runners and dancers, became universal. Hedged in by the 
 soldiers, the two huge masses of pilgrims remained in their 
 places ; but all joined in a wild succession of yells, through 
 which one caught, from time to time, strangely, almost 
 affectingly, the stately chants of the procession — the chants 
 of the Church of Basil and Chrysostom mingled with the 
 yells of savages. 
 
 ' Thrice the procession paced round. At the third time 
 the two lines of Turkish .soldiers joined, and fell in behind. 
 One great movement now swayed the multitude from side 
 to side. It is the belief that the fire will not come if the 
 Turks are present, and at this point it is that they are 
 driven, or consent to be driven, out of the church. Nothing
 
 CHAP. XIII THE GREEK EASTER-EVE 459 
 
 that I ever saw gave me so much the impression of a battle. 
 You saw the raging mob closing in upon them in every 
 direction, the soldiers pouring out of the church, the pro- 
 cession broken through, the banners stagger and waver. 
 They staggered and wavered and fell. Priests, bishops, and 
 standard-bearers fled hither and thither to escape the 
 tremendous rush. One small but compact band hurried 
 the Bishop of Petra (who is on this occasion the " Bishop 
 of the Fire," the representative of the Patriarch) to the 
 Chapel of the Sepulchre, and the door was closed behind him. 
 
 'The whole church was now one heaving mass of heads, 
 resounding with an uproar which I can compare to nothing 
 less than that of the Guildhall of London at an election. 
 One vacant space alone was left — a narrow lane from the 
 aperture on the north side of the chapel to the wall of the 
 church. By the aperture stood a priest, in black and yellow, 
 to catch the fire. On each side of the lane, and as far as 
 your eye could reach, were hundreds of bare arms, stretched 
 out like the branches of a leafless forest, like the branches 
 of a forest quivering in some violent tempest. Silent, 
 awfully silent, stood the Chapel of the Sepulchre. Could 
 I have felt certain of its genuineness, could I have expected 
 a miracle, I should have looked for its very stones to 
 cry out against this frightful union of profanity and super- 
 stition. 
 
 ' At last (and I could scarcely forbear from a cry of 
 horror as it burst forth) — at last the fire came. A bright 
 flame, as of burning wood, appeared inside the hole. The 
 priest lighted his taper, and everyone rushed forwards. I 
 have no distinct recollection of what followed. The fire 
 came but slowly, and it was some time before the light was 
 handed from taper to taper, till at last the whole church, 
 from galler)' to gallery, and through the whole area below, 
 was in a blaze with thousands of burning candles. Some, 
 perhaps many, ran here and there, rubbing their faces 
 against the fire, in the belief that it was harmless. But 
 after the light had been communicated there was no more 
 enthusiasm. All was over. The people ran out into the 
 streets to show their lights to their friends, and in half an 
 hour the church was cleared.' 
 
 At Beirut the Syrian tour ended, and Stanley parted 
 with Mohamed, the dragoman.
 
 460 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1853 
 
 ' He came on board the boat with us, and there I gave 
 him his character, and told him the substance of what 1 
 had written in it. Walrond then gave him a present of 
 additional mon:}-. But (we were on deck) Mohamed said, 
 " Do, master, come down stairs, and give it me there." We 
 came into the cabin, where we were alone. He then took 
 our hands and kissed them, and said, turning to each of us, 
 " Do not, do not forget poor Hamed." (This is the abbrevia- 
 tion by which he generally calls himself) I confess that 
 it was quite too much for me. It was the close of one of 
 the most interesting and delightful periods of my life, of 
 which the interest and delight had been doubled, and 
 trebled, by this faithful servant, whom, in all probability, I 
 was then leaving for the last time. " No, Mohamed, I shall 
 never forget you." He turned away, and burst into an 
 agony of tears, kissed our hands again and again, and 
 rushed out of the cabin, and I saw him no more.' ^ 
 
 - Stanley saw Mohamed again in 1862 (see vol. ii. chap, xviii. ). In 1879 
 Stanley asked his friend, Mr. Strachan Davidson, in case he met Mohamed in 
 Egj'pt, to give his old dragoman friendly messages. Mohamed had, it appeared, 
 frequently sent letters addressed to ' Sheykh Stanley, England ' ; but they had 
 not reached their destination, and he had therefore received no reply. The 
 following letter shows that the feeling which Stanley had inspired in Mo- 
 hamed survived the lapse of twenty-six years : 
 
 ' Thebes : March 7th, 1879. 
 
 ' Dear " Sheykh " Stanley, — I am so glad to hear from Mr. Davidson — who 
 met me here with my same party — that you have not forgot me, and so very, 
 very glad to find you have come back strong and happy from America. And 
 for me, I never forget you and your kindness in our journey to the Second 
 Cataract, and to the Red Sea, Mount Sinai, Petra, and all over Palestine. I 
 am always looking out to hear about you in the English newspaper, which my 
 friends read to me when your name is in it, so I hear in Egypt what you do 
 in London. 
 
 ' I am so pleased and happy to think you recollect to send me a message 
 by your friend, and I hope very much I may see you again in Egypt some 
 day, or in London if I should come there. I should be very glad. Anyhow, I 
 must try to see you again once more before I die, dear " Sheyk." And do 
 please give my " salaams " very much to Mr. Walrond, and to Mr. Fremantle, 
 and also Mr. Finlay — that was our party ; but most to Mr. Fremantle, 
 because the last journey to Aleppo was with him, and I never forget his 
 kindness. I hope he does not forget " Ghizowee." For me, I have lost two 
 daughters and the oldest son I had when you were with me— all dead ; now I 
 have only one little son and three daughters left. 
 
 ' My salaams to all your friends who are with you when you read my letter, 
 and God be with you always, my dear master, to give you long life. 
 ' Your servant for ever, 
 
 ' Poor Mohammed Hassein Ghizowee, Dragoman.'
 
 CHAP. XIII SMYRNA AND EPHESUS 46 1 
 
 Stanley's departure from the Hoi}- Land had been ac- 
 celerated in order that he might see Constantinople before 
 what he believed to be its impending fall. The ' glory/ 
 which had brightened in intensity from the desert to Jeru- 
 salem, was fast fading into the 'common day' of the 
 Western world ; but in the scenes of Apostolical labours 
 or of ancient Councils the coast of Asia Minor was still illu- 
 minated by gleams ' from that imperial palace ' whence he 
 came. 
 
 Christmas had been spent in Cairo, Easter at Jerusalem ; 
 Whitsunday was passed at Smyrna, in one of the Seven 
 Churches. ' Three such festivals I shall never keep again.' 
 After all that he had seen, even Constantinople seemed to 
 be 'somewhat a drug. The descent from the Bible to 
 Gibbon, from names known to the whole world to names 
 known only to the learned, is immeasurable.' 
 
 From Smyrna he visited Ephesus, and then, re-embark- 
 ing, steamed along the coast of the scenes of the ' Iliad.' 
 
 ' What a journey ! what a voyage ! when Troy is but 
 a speck, a cloud, in the rapid succession of interest. And 
 now I received, almost as with a shock, the intimation of 
 the beginning of the end. " What island is that ? " I asked, 
 pointing to a high land close to the ship, and opposite the 
 mainland, on which my attention had been fixed. " Island ! 
 Why, that is Europe ! " I started, and looked. Even so 
 it was. We had left the sea ; we were already in the mouth 
 of the Hellespont, and the green upland on the left.vvas 
 indeed the shore of our own, our once-familiar, but now 
 strange, continent ! ' 
 
 At Constantinople Stanley found that he would have 
 time to see Nicaea. ' I think,' he writes, ' that I must do 
 so. It would be such a satisfaction to have seen the seats 
 of all the four General Councils, that I think I can hardly 
 resist.' The temptation proved too strong. He decided 
 to go.
 
 462 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1853 
 
 * It was a long descent through wooded hills to the broad, 
 long lake of Nicaea. This is the one great feature of the 
 place, one of those large lakes, the receptacles of rain-water, 
 rather than of rivers, which are characteristic of the whole 
 geography of Asia Minor, and which occupy the length and 
 breadth of the vast oblong valleys of which I have before 
 spoken. The lake of Nicaja is about as large as Winder- 
 mere, but without any of the indentations and windings 
 which make Windermere beautiful ; and, indeed, the beauty 
 of Nicaea, or Isnik, as it is now called, is much exaggerated. 
 It has as little as a town at the head of a lake enclosed 
 between hills can have. Yet I could not help recurring to 
 Constance, the only other seat of a General Council held in 
 like manner on the shores of a vast lake. 
 
 ' The remains of the town consist of a wide enclosure of 
 double walls, something like those of Constantinople, and, 
 though in ruins, standing through all their circuit. Within 
 these is a desolation almost as complete as that within the 
 walls of Burgh Castle — fields, gardens, here and there a 
 ruined mosque with storks at the top, and at last, in the 
 centre of the enclosure, a few houses which form the modern 
 village. To this we turned, the sun just rising over the 
 eastern hills, and had the refreshment of a wash and a 
 breakfast in the parsonage of Maurice, not Frederick, but 
 " Mafpt/ctoy," the Greek Priest — I believe I may say tJie only 
 Greek priest of Nicaea, who received us hospitabI\', and 
 with his family of wife and daughters — unwonted and 
 almost English sight — waited upon us, and then took us to 
 see the vestiges of the one great event which has made the 
 name of Nicaea remarkable. 
 
 ' His church, adjoining to the house, claimed to be built 
 by Constantine, and, indeed, its exterior was very like that 
 of the Church of Placidia. It bore the singular name of 
 " The Death of the Mother of God," which was represented 
 in an ancient picture. Another picture represented the 
 Council itself You may think how it carried us back to 
 Trent, as the lake did to Constance. The Fathers were 
 sitting in a semicircle ; on the right side of the altar sat 
 Constantine in his imperial robes and crown ; on the left, 
 Alexander and Athanasius. In the centre, ominously 
 draped in black, and looking thoroughly disgusted, were 
 Arius and his followers. The scene of the Council itself 
 was a church, or hall — it did not appear which — of which
 
 CHAP. XIII CONSTANTINOPLE 463 
 
 the foundations were visible just outside the walls, and, as at 
 Constance, close to the pier of the lake. Up that pier, of 
 which the marble steps still remain, the Fathers must in 
 all probability have come, and within that ruined wall was 
 drawn up the one Creed used throughout the whole 
 Church. 
 
 ' I was very glad to have seen the spot, though I must 
 confess that I should not recommend anyone else to go ; 
 the event receives so very slight an illustration from the 
 locality that it is only the pleasure of having stood on the 
 ground, and seen the view which encompassed the utterance 
 of those famous words.' 
 
 Stanley re-entered Constantinople on May 28th, 1S53. 
 
 ' I came in, I dined, and slept as if I should never 
 wake again. I did wake, however, in time for church, and 
 again offered my services for reading, and asked what day 
 of the month it was. " The 29th ! " " The 29th ! " I 
 
 exclaimed; "why, that is the anniversary of !" "Oh!" 
 
 said the clergyman, interposing, "of the Restoration. Yes; 
 but we do not read that here." I laughed ; for once I had 
 forgotten our 29th of May and our anniversary in that far 
 greater anniversary which I was thinking of — the 400th 
 anniversary of the capture of Constantinople on May 29, 
 1453. The Turks, he said, did not know the day of the 
 month — their lunar calendar conceals it — but they knew 
 that this was the 400th year, and had awful forebodings. . . .' 
 
 The Eastern tour, which thus closed with a visit to 
 Constantinople on the eve of the Russian War, appropriately 
 terminated with an interview with Lord Stratford de 
 Redcliffe: 
 
 ' I made one more attempt on Lord Stratford, and at 
 length found him. Nothing could be more kind, more 
 gracious. .... Taking advantage of some opening afforded 
 by Palestine, I ventured to ask about the position of affairs. 
 He instantly went off on this, and stated with the utmost 
 clearness and (I should have said) frankness exactly his 
 view of the case. I cannot repeat all he said. Perhaps the 
 most remarkfible as well as the safest was : " I feel that it 
 is impossible to predict ; sometimes I think it will pass
 
 464 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1853 
 
 over ; sometimes I think that we are really on the verge of 
 that most important event to which all the world has been 
 looking for so many years, and that, after so many false 
 cries, the wolf is come at last." He spoke very strongly 
 of the injustice of the Russian claims, but at the same time 
 with the utmost calmness and moderation.'
 
 46: 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 1853-56 
 
 LIFE AT CANTERBURY, 1853-56— ' iMEMORIALS OF CANTERBURY,' 
 1854— 'COMxMENTARY ON THE EPISTLES TO THE CORINTHIANS,' 
 1855— 'SINAI AND PALESTINE,' 1 856— PROFESSOR OF ECCLE- 
 SIASTICAL HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, 1856 
 
 Stanley returned to England in June 1853 overflowing 
 with the recollections of ' those glorious days which can 
 never be taken away.' ' The journey,' he writes shortly 
 after his return, 
 
 ' to which I had looked forward as one of the great events 
 of my life, was even more magnificent in point of interest 
 and instruction to me than I could have hoped. Egypt 
 was the least enjoyable, but that only from the great dispro- 
 portion of time spent on the Nile in doing nothing. 
 Thebes I thought fully worthy of being ranked with Rome 
 and Athens — such a revelation of the primitive world, such 
 a display of regal and sacerdotal splendour, as no other 
 ruins in the world, Pagan or Christian, can show. But 
 from the moment that I entered the desert, every day was 
 one of varied and constant, and, I may almost say, increasing 
 delight and profit. It is not one of the least remarkable 
 points of that tour that its parts are so dramatically 
 arranged. From Egypt, through the Exodus to Sinai, and 
 from the Law on Sinai to the Gospel at Jerusalem, and from 
 the Gospel in Palestine to the Acts and Epistles at 
 Damascus, at Patmos, and at Ephesus ; and from the Acts 
 and Epistles to the first Fathers and Councils at Smyrna, 
 at Nicaia, and at Constantinople. Add to this the burst of 
 
 VOL. L H H
 
 466 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1853 
 
 knowledge through the acquaintance with the Oriental 
 atmosphere of thought and custom— to see the Bedouin 
 chiefs still representing Ishmael and Esau and Jethro ; to 
 see the God of Abraham still worshipped by his Arabian 
 descendants ; to see the illustration of Psalms and Parables 
 in house and field ; to see last, I can hardly say least, the 
 successor of the Csesars and Caliphs on the tottering throne 
 of Constantinople, has so settled my thoughts that I have 
 almost lost the wish to travel again.' 
 
 To sympathetic listeners he poured forth, with every 
 charm of voice and manner, the rich stores of dramatic 
 recollections and picturesque impressions which he brought 
 with him from the East. 'Those who then had the privilege 
 of visiting him at Canterbury,' says the Dean of West- 
 minster, himself among the first of his privileged friends, 
 ' will well understand his closing a letter of invitation to 
 Professor Max Miiller with the words, " I consider I was 
 never so well worth a visit." ' 
 
 Much as he had loved Oxford, his affections were now 
 completely concentrated on his new home. The labours 
 of the University Commission were ended ; he had accom- 
 plished the Eastern tour which had been the cherished wish 
 of years. Nothing now stood between him and Canterbury. 
 Into the duties of his Canonry and the interests of his 
 Cathedral he threw all the energies of his nature. Writing 
 from Oxford in the autumn of 1853, he says : 
 
 ' I am delving here in the Bodleian Library, which I 
 now find is my chief interest in this place, once so delightful, 
 but, now that I have no more duties in it, little more than 
 a desert, with a few green spots here and there, which every 
 year that passes withers up, in the shape of old faces rapidly 
 passing away. 
 
 ' It is, after all, a great happiness that our home and 
 our paradise are not fixed to any one locality, but follow 
 in the train of our occupations and duties wherever they 
 lead us.'
 
 CHAK XIV HIS BROTHER-CANONS 467 
 
 Most of his colleagues at Canterbury were much older 
 than himself. It was at first difficult for Stanley to under- 
 stand the feelings of men who were born in a previous 
 generation, and reared under conditions which no longer 
 existed, and who regarded their duties and responsibilities 
 from a totally different point of view. The change which, 
 in the last half-century, had passed over the atmosphere of 
 clerical life is curiously illustrated from the conversation of 
 Dr. Spry, Vicar of Marylebone, and one of the oldest canons 
 of Canterbury. ' When Dr. Spry,' writes Stanley, 
 
 *■ first came to Marylebone all the parishioners wore black 
 in Lent. The immediate prelude to his elevation to 
 Canterbury was that he was appointed — as a trick, appa- 
 rently — by Lord Liverpool to preach the sermon at Trinity 
 House on Trinity Sunday. With Lord Liverpool and 
 Lord Exmouth, he went down in the state barge to 
 Deptford, and, as the guns were fired from the Tower, Lord 
 Exmouth, with a view of trying Dr. Spry's courage, kept 
 bobbing his head as if to avoid the shots. Dr. Spry ex- 
 pressed such unfeigned astonishment and exhibited such 
 unmoved tranquillity, that Lord Exmouth confessed that 
 it was a joke, but that the year before he had so much 
 terrified the Dean of Winchester as to induce that great 
 dignitary to throw himself prostrate on the floor of the 
 barge, and there lie till the danger was past. 
 
 ' When they reached the church. Dr. Spry was presented 
 with an enormous nosegay ; and, on asking Lord Liverpool 
 what he was to do with it. Lord L. told him that he was 
 to carry it with him into the pulpit, place it on the 
 cushion, and then, after the sermon, bring it away with 
 him, and present it to the prettiest of a long avenue of 
 girls that he would find waiting for him outside the 
 church, each believing that she to whom it was given would 
 be sure of marriage that year. All of which came to pass. 
 He carried it into the pulpit, carried it out, and was then 
 so beset by " the young women " that he was glad to get rid 
 of it to the first-comer. 
 
 ' Perhaps, however, the most remarkable fact which he 
 stated was, that he had never, through his whole life, read 
 a single article in the " Edinburgh Review." He had once
 
 468 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1853 
 
 read the beginning of Sydney Smith's article on " Dr. Parr's 
 Wig," but had never finished it, so that the charm is un- 
 broken, and probably will remain so, and he will descend to 
 his grave unscathed.' 
 
 But however opposed might be the ideas of the older 
 canons to those of their \'ounger colleague, each soon learned 
 to value the good qualities of the other. After the audit 
 of July 1853 Stanley wrote : 
 
 ' On the whole, I end this audit with a better opinion of 
 my brethren than ever before. They look at everything in 
 a totally different light from what I should ; but I think they 
 show a real desire to do justice according to the views of 
 their own generation, and are certainly very good-humoured. 
 Harrison's ' powers of management, as well as entire dis- 
 interestedness, are quite surprising.' 
 
 Completely reconciled to the parting from Oxford, and 
 living on the most friendly footing with all his colleagues,. 
 Stanley entered with the keenest zest into all the charm.s 
 of his residence at Canterbury. The ' Canterbury Sermons ' 
 and the ' Memorials of Canterbury ' illustrate two sides of 
 his ideal of the duties and opportunities of a canon. A 
 third side is represented in the centre of social life which 
 his canonical residence became. Now, for the first time, he 
 exchanged his bachelor's rooms at Oxford for a house of his 
 own. The change was thoroughly enjoyed. At the close 
 of his Canterbury life he wrote to an old Oxford pupil^ 
 who had suddenly lost his young wife : 
 
 ' But yet, on the whole, 1 feel sure that, even with such 
 dreadful contingencies in store, it is better to have had a 
 home and a wife than never to have had either. To have 
 had even such a home as I have had at Canterbury has been, 
 I am convinced, an immense step in life — much more would 
 the other have been.' 
 
 At Canterbury he was able not only to offer a home to 
 ' The late Archdeacon of Maidstone.
 
 CHAP. XIV HIS HOME AT CANTERBURY 469 
 
 his mother and unmarried sister, but to gather guests from 
 all parts of England, belonging to all professions, and 
 holding every variety of opinion. It was there that he 
 developed those social gifts which changed the shy, self- 
 contained, retiring youth into one of the most fascinating 
 •of talkers and the most delightful of hosts. There, too, he 
 made the charm of his society felt by the entire absence 
 of self-display, and by the simplicity and kindliness with 
 which his powers were used. Under his roof at Canterbury 
 met, in free and social intercourse, men of such opposite 
 views and parties that they were accustomed to regard each 
 other as belonging to different worlds. And they met in 
 an atmosphere of ' peace and good-will,' which the most 
 acrimonious opponents found it impossible wholly to resist. 
 Another aspect of Stanley's life at Canterbury, never 
 spoken of, yet never disregarded, was his visiting of the 
 sick. Only by accident and from the lips of his humble 
 friends is it known how much of his time and money was 
 thus bestowed. At Oxford, at Canterbury, at Westminster, 
 he was never too busy or too pre-occupied to answer the 
 call of suffering. With the same unaffected simplicity 
 which, more than his vivacity, humour, and stores of anec- 
 dote, gave a charm to the use of' his social gifts, he em- 
 ployed all his powers to cheer, amuse, console, or strengthen 
 the sick and poor. The following passage in one of his 
 letters describes a visit to a sick parishioner of Pearson's, 
 for whom he had obtained admission into the infirmary at 
 Margate : 
 
 ' Ellen Allen at once, with beautiful smiles, recognised 
 me as having preached at Sonning, and administered the 
 Sacrament to her on Ascension Day. She was lying on a 
 bed, looking perfectly happy and cheerful, but said that 
 she felt no better — rather weaker. On the bed were many 
 books, in which she rejoiced. One was the thirty-eighth
 
 470 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1856- 
 
 edition of" The Christian Year," from which she was reading^ 
 when I came in, the leaf turned down at 
 
 " Wish not, dear friends, my pain away ; " 
 
 which she said was a great delight to her. I read aloud 
 two of the stanzas, and told her that it is much beloved by 
 our Sarah. ^ Happy he who can so write ! It justifies my 
 admiration of him. She spoke with the most beaming 
 intelligence of you and of Sonning, specially of the church,, 
 w^hich, since its restoration, she thought beautiful, and 
 longed on that account to return to it. Altogether " an 
 angel's visit " in the inverted sense ! ' 
 
 Happy as were the surroundings of his home life, the 
 time was associated with two great griefs. One was the 
 secession of his sister Mary from the Church of England- 
 Another was the death of his faithful nurse, Sarah Burgess. 
 At the end of January 1856 he writes to B. Jowett to 
 announce her death : 
 
 ' Early on Wednesday morning our old and dear friend^, 
 after whom you so kindly ask, passed away almost un- 
 consciously. She had been with us for thirty-eight years,, 
 and was certainly one of the best persons I have ever 
 known, " perfect in her generation," a constant refreshment 
 and support when the heavens have been black around us^ 
 and w^hen faithfulness has seemed to be ceasing out of the 
 earth. 
 
 ' It was always instructive to hear her talk. To us, to 
 the servants, to her own family, she was equally an oracle. 
 One thing struck me a good deal the last time w^e spoke 
 together about her end— the way in which she placed her 
 whole confidence, not in the mercy, but in the justice of 
 God. 
 
 ' Happily we were all together here, and she has escaped 
 much suffering. On Monday next I hope to follow her 
 remains to Cheshire, and lay them beside her father and 
 mother in Alderley Churchyard. 
 
 ' Forgive me for saying so much about a matter which 
 can have but little interest for you, and a grief which the 
 world does not recognise at all. But to us, no loss out of 
 
 ^ His nurse, Sarah Burgess.
 
 CHAP. XIV 'MEMORIALS OF CANTERBURY' 471 
 
 our own selves could be greater, and her place can never 
 be filled.' 
 
 Day by day the fascination of the historical associations 
 of Canterbury seized firmer hold upon his imagination. 
 To communicate to others some portion, at least, of the 
 enthusiasm with which the Cathedral and its neighbourhood 
 inspired him, to throw into its historic scenes and monu- 
 ments that fresh human interest which might reach even the 
 most unlettered of his hearers or readers, formed not the 
 least important side of his ideal of the duties of a canon. 
 And it was at Canterbury that were ripened to full maturity 
 his gifts of dramatic, pictorial narrative. Each of the three 
 great figures — the first Archbishop, the eminent ecclesiastic, 
 the ideal knight — who, at three important periods, brought 
 Canterbury into contact with the general history of Eng- 
 land, grew out of the shadowy past into living beings, as he 
 grouped round them the personal details and local acces- 
 sories which gave them roundness, colour, substance, and 
 vitality. With enthusiastic zeal he followed the steps of 
 Augustine from his first landing-place on the Isle of Thanet, 
 as he travelled by the Roman road past the spot below 
 the fortress of Richborough where Ethelbert received the 
 Roman missionary, till he descended the hill, crowned by 
 the rude British chapel of St. Martin, to the ' stable-gate ' 
 in Canterbury, where the first Archbishop of the Metro- 
 politan see was lodged. Every detail of the murder of 
 Becket was examined with patient industry, till the scene 
 itself is re-enacted on the very spot, with all the vividness 
 and movement of a dramatic representation. The same 
 pictorial imagination conjured up every feature in the 
 splendid funeral of the Black Prince, whose remains were 
 interred in the self-chosen spot of his burial, and whose tomb, 
 preserved by Cromwell from destruction, is one of the glories 
 of Canterbury Cathedral, Under his lively, graphic touch,
 
 472 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1854 
 
 the pilgrim roads were once more alive with companies of 
 pilgrims ; the ' Chequers of the Hope ' again received its 
 motley throng of guests ; the stately shrine of Becket was 
 restored to its former magnificence ; and the narrow lane 
 of the Merceries was thronged with eager sellers of objects 
 of devotion. 
 
 The four essays contained in the ' Memorials of Can- 
 terbury,'^ though all are characterised by the same freshness 
 and vigour, are of unequal merit. In historical value, the 
 ' Murder of Becket ' "* is superior to the three others, which 
 were originally composed to be delivered as popular lectures 
 for his fellow-citizens of Canterbury. The essay was, as 
 he told his mother, ' the first justification ' of his appoint- 
 ment as Canon of Canterbury, for ' it never would have 
 been written elsewhere, or under other circumstances.' It 
 remains a standard authority on the subject which it treats. 
 Both at home and abroad the essay excited deserved 
 attention. In Paris he was warmly complimented upon 
 it by Villemain, while Thierry declared that its publication 
 would necessitate his re-writing his chapter on the reign of 
 Henry II. But no evidence of the interest taken in his 
 book delighted him more than the proof to which he twice 
 refers in his letters. ' One of the officers quartered here 
 met me on the platform, and said that he had found my 
 Canterbury book on the table at ir.30 P.M., and had not 
 laid it down till he had finished it.' 
 
 The 'Memorials of Canterbury' were written, as Stanley 
 says in the Preface dedicating the volume to Archdeacon 
 Harrison, ' in intervals of leisure, taken from subjects of 
 greater importance.' The years 1853-55 were the period 
 of his greatest literar}^ activity. His hands were full of 
 
 3 The volume was published in December 1S54, and almost immediately 
 reached a second edition. 
 
 ■• The essay appeared in the Quarterly Revieiu for September 1853.
 
 CHAP. XIV COMMENTARY ON CORINTHIANS 473 
 
 work. In June 1855 was published his edition of 'The 
 Epistles to the Corinthians,' and in March 1856 appeared 
 ■' Sinai and Palestine.' 
 
 'The Commentary on the Epistles to the Corinthians'-^ 
 is a companion work to Professor Jowett's 'Commentary on 
 the Epistles to the Thessalonians, Galatians, and Romans.'*^ 
 The two books gave the first instalment of the plan which 
 the two friends had formed some years before, and at which, 
 before Stanley's departure from Oxford, they had worked 
 in close collaboration. The same text — that of Lachmann 
 — is accepted b}' both authors ; both employ the same 
 apparatus of introductions, critical notes, translation, and 
 essays ; both exclude direct reference to commentators 
 whose views they adopt or combat ; both shrink from the 
 danger of straining the text into harmony with preconceived 
 doctrinal systems. But here, with the exception of some 
 common sympathies, the resemblances between the two 
 works are ended. The contrasts are more marked and 
 more numerous than the similarities. The one is essenti- 
 ally historical, the other metaphysical; the one is 'external, 
 positive, definite to the verge of superficiality,' the other 
 * subjective, negative, profound at the risk of obscurity ' ; 
 the one multiplies, the other avoids, illustrations ; the one 
 delights in detecting unobtrusive resemblances, the other 
 in unmasking false analogies ; the one excels in painting 
 historical pictures, the other in portraying the phenomena 
 which individual minds present at different stages of their 
 growth ; the one delights in tracing the threads of con- 
 nection between different ages, the other points the contrasts 
 which divide one epoch from another. 
 
 '" The Epistles of St. Paul to the Corinthians, with Critical Notes and 
 Dissertations. By A. P. Stanley, ]\r.A. London : 1855. 
 
 •^ The Epistles of St. Paul to the Thessalonians, Galatians, and Romans, 
 ■with Critical Notes and Dissertations. By B. Jowett, M.A. London: 1855.
 
 474 ^^^^ OF DEAN STANLEY 1855 
 
 The portions selected by the two authors were well 
 adapted to be the fields of their respective gifts. The 
 Epistles to the Corinthians are the Jiistorical Epistles, the 
 most important chapters in the history of the Christian 
 Church and of the Apostle himself The Epistle to the 
 Romans, on the other hand, is a treatise neither occasional 
 nor personal, but philosophical and universal. Stanley felt 
 keenly that his travels through Greece and Asia Minor had 
 taught him to appreciate more fully the words and actions 
 of St. Paul, and to estimate more justly the effect that the 
 Epistles were calculated to produce upon the people to 
 whom they were addressed. To share with others the 
 increased knowledge which he had himself thus obtained 
 is the main purpose of his Commentary. On this object he 
 concentrates himself, without seeking to justify or attack 
 existing doctrinal systems from the language of the Apostle. 
 It was true that, in all probability, the romantic sensibility 
 to the beauties of scenery, which is so conspicuous a feature 
 of the present day, found little place in the mind of St. 
 Paul. Yet Stanley had proved, from his own personal 
 experience, that to place the Apostle in close contact with 
 outward surroundings, to paint the scenery through which 
 he travelled, or to describe the cities in which he preached, 
 was to give reality to his portraiture, and to recall men to 
 the sense that St. Paul, writing as an inspired writer, was 
 not a vague abstraction, but a real, living, acting, human 
 being. No less he believed that, in order to catch the 
 precise shade of meaning which particular passages, allu- 
 sions, illustrations, or epithets, conveyed to the Corinthians,, 
 it was necessary to understand those influences of external 
 life which moulded the internal character of the people. On 
 these points he lays his principal stress. 
 
 In all that relates to the form and colour of St. Paul's 
 thought, or to the vesture of the Apostolical age, in its
 
 CHAr. XIV COMMENTARY ON CORINTHIANS 475 
 
 freshness and enthusiasm, in its fehcitous illustrations, in 
 its historical pictures, in the quickness with which the 
 alternations of feeling in the Apostle's mind are caught and 
 noted down, and in that merit, so rare in a commentary, 
 its sustained interest, Stanley's edition of the Epistles is 
 of lasting value. But in other respects the Commentary 
 proved to be full of faults. It was deficient in scholarship 
 and accuracy. It had many self-contradictions and incon- 
 sistencies. It was also crowded with typographical errors. 
 For these last anyone acquainted with Stanley's hand- 
 writing might be fully prepared. One instance is quoted 
 by him in writing to Professor Jowett. ' " The Horn of the 
 Burning Beast." What Apocalyptic mystery do you con- 
 jecture is veiled beneath these words .-' " The thorn of the 
 burning Bush." ' 
 
 Both Commentaries provoked a storm of acrimonious, 
 controversy : that on the Corinthians for the absence of 
 doctrinal statements, that on the Romans for the mode in 
 which such topics as the Atonement were handled. Pro- 
 fessor Jowett's remarkable volumes, which were the first in 
 the field, bore the brunt of the attack. Many of the 
 criticisms were, as Stanley believed, dictated by party 
 animosity ; many seemed to him unjustifiable. Bitterly 
 as Stanley resented what were, in his opinion, partisan 
 attacks upon his friend, he frankly recognised the value 
 of fair criticism upon his own writings. In March 1856 a 
 severe review of his Commentary appeared in a Cambridge 
 periodical,^ from the pen of "J. B. Lightfoot." ^ Several 
 of Stanley's letters refer to this article. To his mother 
 he writes : 
 
 ' The Cambridge notice of our books is severe, but with- 
 out a spark of malignity, and so can be read without the 
 
 ' The Joit7-naI of Classical and Saa-cd Philology, vol. iii. pp. S1-121. 
 * Afterwards Bishop of Durham.
 
 476 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1S56 
 
 smallest displeasure. It does point out a f^ood many mis- 
 takes, mostly arising from the book having been written 
 at so many odd times.' 
 
 To Pearson he says : 
 
 ' In the Cambridge "Philological Journal" there is a 
 serious, and by wo means malevolent, attack on the scholar- 
 ship and accuracy of the unfortunate Commentary by a 
 certain Lightfoot. He says, and I think he is right, that in 
 undertaking to write critical notes I have completely mis- 
 taken my vocation,' 
 
 Finally, in writing to Professor Jowett, he says : 
 
 ' I had a very courteous note from Lightfoot, with the 
 review. He certainly has picked a number of deep holes. 
 I don't think that I am habitually inaccurate, but partly 
 the desire of giving an explanation of everything, and 
 partly an inexcusable impatience of details beyond a 
 certain point, make ' me not thoroughly trustworthy. I 
 never ought to write a book without a Grove ^ or Albert 
 Way to correct references and proofs. In some measure 
 these inaccuracies were caused by the irregular and long 
 intervals at which the book was written, and by the perhaps 
 needless minuticE into which I rashly entered. 
 
 ' I must say I was pleased — more pleased with the good 
 he said of you than with the evil he said of myself And 
 in a man of his turn of mind, I think it specially creditable 
 not to have been deterred from saying this much by the 
 popular clamour which has hounded on the Conybcares, 
 Goulburns, or Wilberforces, and has muzzled the " North 
 British," the " Edinburgh," and the " Times." I have written 
 to express something of this kind to him.' 
 
 In the second edition of the 'Commentary on the Epistles 
 to the Corinthians' (1857) Stanley gave a practical illustra- 
 tion of his readiness to profit by well-founded criticism. 
 Not only are the notes reduced and compressed, the disser- 
 tations made more prominent, the errors corrected, but 
 
 " The services of Mr. (now Sir George) Grove and of Albert Way are 
 acknowledged respectively in Sinai and Palestine and in the Memorials of 
 Canterbury.
 
 CHAP. XIV REVIEWS OF THE COMMENTARY 477 
 
 the form of the whole is recast. The critical part of the 
 work, in which he acknowledged his \veakness, is subordi- 
 nated to the historical elucidation of the Epistles as the most 
 important records of the early Christian Church. Another 
 proof of the same readiness to accept wise advice is found 
 in his abandonment of any further Commentaries. It was 
 proposed that he should undertake the Epistles to the 
 Philippians and to Philemon. But, mainly in consequence 
 of Dr. Lightfoot's criticism, he declined the task. Hence- 
 forward he devoted himself to those historical subjects in 
 which lay his true strength. 
 
 In a criticism of Professor Jowett's Commentary which 
 appeared in the ' Quarterly Review ' under the title of ' The 
 Neology of the Cloister,' ^^ the reviewer specially praises 
 Stanley's work for the very points in which he most severely 
 condemns the companion volumes. As Stanley writes to 
 Jowett, ' my mother and I amuse ourselves with the reflec- 
 tion that there are two persons now before the world, one 
 receiving excess of praise, the other excess of blame, each 
 with equal un-desert.' Already, perhaps, men felt towards 
 Stanley something of the feeling which was at a later period 
 expressed by Prof Maurice. ' Why,' asked a friend, ' are 
 things tolerated in Stanley which would not be pardoned 
 in anyone else "f ' ' Because,' was the reply, ' Stanley has 
 done more to make the Bible a reality in the homes of the 
 people than any living man.' Both by word of mouth and 
 by letter Stanley zealously fought the battle of his friend. 
 One of his numerous letters on the subject is addressed to 
 a lady of strong Evangelical leanings, who had condemned 
 Professor Jowett's Commentary unread. 
 
 ' I do not advise you to read it, because it is mixed up 
 with many phrases only intelligible to people well versed 
 in the Fathers and in the Germans. 
 
 '" Quarterly Revieiv for December 1S55, ?• JS'j "<"''''•
 
 478 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 185^ 
 
 ' But if you do read it, pray take my word for it that its 
 object is not to unsettle belief, but to settle it ; not to dis- 
 parage St. Paul, but to exalt him ; still less to set St. Paul, 
 or anyone else, above our Saviour, but to show that the 
 reason why we are not better, and wiser, and more agreed 
 among each other, is because we think too little of Christ ; 
 and because so many think more of the Epistles, or of a 
 very small portion of the Epistles, than they do of the 
 Gospels. 
 
 ' There are, doubtless, many things in Jowett's book 
 which might be better said, and have provoked less offence. 
 But if you take, not what he attacks, but what he defends, 
 there is much that anyone might find consoling and 
 edifying.' 
 
 In another letter he asks : 
 
 ' Why is it that clergymen are all in arms against a 
 brother-clergyman for saying the very same thing which 
 in a layman they admire as a testimony to true religion ? 
 I daresay our brother has in his day read, and loved, Cole- 
 ridge's " Aids to Reflection." I know that it is a book 
 beloved by the most orthodox of men. And yet his chap- 
 ter on the Atonement is identically the same as Jowett's. 
 
 ' My full belief is, that if Jowett (i) had been a layman, 
 (2) had abstained from the polemical pages at the beginning 
 of the essay, (3) had called it " The Doctrine of Reconcilia- 
 tion," it would have been regarded as a beautiful and 
 spiritual exposition of St. Paul's view. The proof of (i) is 
 contained in the above remarks on Coleridge. The proof 
 of (2) and (3) is contained in the fact that the similar views 
 expanded in my notes on 2 Cor. v. have perfectly satisfied 
 the most rapacious minds, and not provoked a single 
 attack.' 
 
 'Sinai and Palestine' appeared in March 1856. 'Nothing 
 I have ever written,' says Stanley, ' has so much interested 
 and instructed me in the writing.' The success of the book 
 was immediate and immense. Within a year from its 
 publication it had passed into a fourth edition, and it still 
 remains one of the most widely popular of Stanley's 
 writings. The work is a notable instance of Stanley's 
 power of giving fresh life and vividness to a well-worn
 
 CHAP. XIV 'SINAI AND PALESTINE' 479 
 
 theme, and of his gift of interesting alike the learned and 
 the unlearned. In its vivid descriptions, written on the 
 spot, it is a book to be devoured after the fashion of novel- 
 reading. In its wealth of varied learning, it is also a book 
 which deserves and repays close study. 
 
 Stanley has gathered into a compendious form the 
 results of the vast literature which has grown up round 
 sacred geography. The abundance of the material is pro- 
 portionate to the interest of the subject. The minute par- 
 ticularity of the Old Testament descriptions, and the active 
 practical energy of Christianity which is embodied in the 
 New Testament, make the Bible itself the most complete 
 and important authority. But side by side with it are 
 placed the early geographical notices of Josephus, Strabo, 
 Pliny, and Tacitus, and the topographical labours of the 
 three most learned Fathers of the early Church, Origen, 
 Eusebius, and Jerome. Stanley has marshalled to his aid 
 the itineraries of pilgrims who, beginning with the Empress 
 Helena, and ending with Zuallart, the Flemish pilgrim of 
 the sixteenth century, were solely attracted by the devotional 
 interest of the holy places. He has gathered together the 
 early travellers, like Sandys, Pococke, and Maundrell, who 
 are interested in the acquisition of knowledge as well as in 
 the sacredness of the localities, and who notice natural fea- 
 tures, discuss traditional sites, and report on geology and 
 botany. He has assembled the discoverers, such as the 
 Danish Niebuhr, or his successors, Burkhardt, Irby and 
 Mangles, whose primary aim was the enlargement of know- 
 ledge, and who leave the beaten tracks to see for themselves 
 without regard to Scripture or tradition. He has enlisted the 
 literary travellers, like Clarke, Laborde, Lindsay, Saulcy, 
 Williams, and Robinson, whose object is to verify Scriptural 
 sites, and who bring to bear upon the investigation the in- 
 telligence and the science of the nineteenth century. He has
 
 480 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1856- 
 
 enrolled descriptive travellers who, like Miss Martineau, or 
 the author of ' Eothen,' delineate scenery ; as well as masters 
 of fiction, like Disraeli in ' Tancred,' or Walter Scott in ' The 
 Talisman,' who detect with the instinct of genius the lights 
 and shades of Oriental character. He has embodied the 
 results achieved by the composers of learned works on the 
 geography of Palestine, such as Quaresimus, the Franciscan 
 friar of the Convent of Jerusalem, the Dutchman Reland, 
 who was the tutor of William III., or the great German 
 geographer, Ritter. Nor, finally, were living authorities 
 neglected. As in his ' Memorials of Canterbury ' he had 
 consulted Professor Willis on architectural questions, or 
 Albert Way on points of antiquarian research, so in his 
 ' Sinai and Palestine ' he had recourse to experts on those 
 special branches of learning which they had made their 
 own. From Professor Donkin, for instance, he received 
 scientific reports on the natural phenomena which might 
 explain the passage of the Red Sea or the prolongation of 
 daylight during Joshua's pursuit of the enemies of Israel ; 
 so, again, he obtained from Captain Washington accurate 
 charts of the soundings of the Red Sea ; so, lastly, he was 
 assisted by Mr. (now Sir George) Grove in the preparation 
 of the elaborate list of Hebrew geographical terms, which 
 so largely increased the permanent value of ' Sinai and 
 Palestine.' 
 
 It was a relief to Stanley, after the fault which was 
 justly found with his Commentary, to find the accuracy of 
 his statements in ' Sinai and Palestine ' confirmed by subse- 
 quent inquiry. ' Mr. Robbins,' he writes, 
 
 ' mentioned two inaccuracies in " Sinai and Palestine." I 
 asked whether there were any more. He said, "If you ask 
 me, I will tell you the exact truth. I read the book every 
 night after having seen the places, and these are the only 
 two that I ever found." '
 
 CHAP. XIV CORRESPONDEiVCE WITH KEBLE 48 1 
 
 One objection was, however, strongly urged against 
 * Sinai and Palestine ' which increased the suspicion already- 
 entertained of the negative character of Stanley's theo- 
 logical opinions. The point cannot be better stated than 
 in the following letter from the author of ' The Christian 
 Year ' : 
 
 ' Hursley Vicarage, Winchester : July S, 1856. 
 
 ' My dear Mr. Stanley, — I am ashamed to think how 
 long it is since you did me the great favour of sending me 
 your very interesting book on " Sinai and Palestine " ; )'et 
 I have felt it all along, and always shall feel it, as a very 
 peculiar kindness indeed, considering the circumstances 
 under which, many years ago, we were brought into com- 
 munication with each other. I am so far better qualified 
 to thank you for the book in that I have now (but only 
 very lately, such is my slowness in reading) finished it ; and 
 I find I have to thank you also for several instances of too 
 partial mention, and (what is better) of friendly correction. 
 I wish I could accept the compliment you pay me, or at 
 least imply, in one place for something like diligence in 
 topographical reading. I must confess, with some shame, 
 that where the touches you speak of are correct, it is more 
 by a happy chance than in any other way. 
 
 'Will you pardon me for telling you what, in all your 
 book, rich as it is in beauties, has delighted me most, and 
 also what has most pained and distressed me ? for I ought 
 not to hide from you that in one way it is a great pain and 
 distress to me. While I love it for the deep love which 
 it seems to me everywhere to breathe of Him whom we all 
 wish to serve, it fills me with regret more than I can ex- 
 press to see that in no part at all of your book is Ilis 
 Person spoken of as properly Divine ; rather, that the tone 
 and language of it seems, as by a kind of instinct, to avoid 
 any such assumption, and to shrink from setting Him forth 
 as more than a Perfect Man. . . . 
 
 ' I know, of course, that you cannot consciously intend 
 the notion to which some of your expressions seem to 
 point, and I accept very thankfully the sayings which point 
 the other way. But I cannot rid myself of the feeling that 
 the first is apparently the prevailing tone ; and I greatly 
 dread its effect on others, more especially as I observe that 
 
 VOL. I. I I
 
 4S2 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1856 
 
 you speak favourably of a doctrine of Development, in con- 
 tradiction to " Quod primum verum," by which doctrine 
 antiquity, as a witness to the Creed, is nullified. 
 
 ' I could find it in my heart to add something on the 
 idea of" local religion," concerning which, I own, it appears 
 to me, that in obedience to a theory you are perpetually 
 doing some violence to your own feelings. And, again, of 
 the extent to which we should avail ourselves of possible 
 natural phenomena to explain things spoken of in the 
 Bible simply as " signs and wonders and mighty deeds." 
 
 ' But it is high time for me to leave off, and apologise 
 for what I have written. You will, I know, forgive its 
 frankness, whatever you may think of its reasonableness. 
 And perhaps it may suggest here and there a correction, 
 as no doubt you will be called on to reprint over and over. 
 How glad I should be if you could put in something which 
 might effectually secure your book from making the im- 
 pression which I fear it may make on readers of various 
 descriptions. 
 
 ' Once again forgive me, and believe me always, my 
 dear Sir, 
 
 ' Your obliged and affectionate servant, 
 
 'J. Keble.' 
 
 To this letter Stanley replies as follows : 
 
 'Canterbury: July 10, 1S56. 
 
 ' Dear Mr. Keble, — I have to thank you for your very 
 kind letter, the more valuable because so long delayed, and 
 because of the interest it shows in one so nearly a stranger. 
 I should hardly have ventured to send you a copy of my 
 book, but that I could not forbear to testify my grateful 
 recognition of the fidelity of your local touches, which must 
 have rendered the Holy Land familiar to thousands besides 
 myself 
 
 ' I will not be so presumptuous as to enter on a vindica- 
 tion of the expressions to which you object. It has been 
 throughout my object to give as little contradiction to any 
 prevailing Christian sentiment or doctrine as was compati- 
 ble with my own conviction. In some instances I have 
 endeavoured (in a second edition) to soften the phraseology 
 which you find offensive. In others, I venture to hope that 
 the points of difference which you have noticed may be 
 rather of manner than of substance, though I am well
 
 CHAP. XIV CORRESPONDENCE WITH KEBLE 
 
 483 
 
 aware that there may be also divergences which I could 
 not reconcile. 
 
 ' With regard to the Gospel history, I have often felt the 
 difficulty of so expressing myself as to combine due 
 reverence to the sacredness of the subject with due regard 
 to a faithful representation of the evangelical narrator. 
 But may we not fairly ask the question (which I trust 
 you will allow me to put in old, familiar words), — 
 Was not our Lord a little child, 
 Taught by degrees to pray, 
 By father dear and mother mild 
 Instructed day by day ? 
 
 ' I confess that I cannot see the difference between these 
 expressions and those of suggestion, and the like, on which 
 you remark. Both alike appear to me necessary inferences, 
 almost synonyms, both of the Scriptural description of our 
 Lord's growth and teaching, and also of the Catholic 
 doctrine of His Perfect Humanity. You will not mis- 
 understand me as for a moment impugning the orthodoxy 
 of others who cannot accept such expressions ; but, for my- 
 self, the denial of the truth involved in them appears to me 
 a direct form of Eutychianism, Apollinarianism, or Patri- 
 passianism. 
 
 ' I believe that you have truly discerned a conflict, per- 
 haps an inconsistency, in the book between a natural attach- 
 ment to local associations and a fear of investing them 
 with too much religious importance. And here, again, 
 from the extreme delight and instruction I received, I felt 
 a difficulty in striking the balance. But if you will permit 
 me once more to quote the Christian Year, I remember 
 well on a Sunday when, out of the band of four of which 
 our party was composed, three unexpectedly produced the 
 same book ; how we were all struck by the appropriateness 
 of the poem on the Monday before Easter to the whole 
 journey before us ! That is the feeling which I have en- 
 deavoured to express. 
 
 ' But I did not intend to enter into a controversy. You 
 will, I trust, take what I have said only as an indication 
 that I have considered the objections you have so kindly 
 made, and as the expression of a hope that there is less 
 difference in our mode of conceiving the subject than you 
 imagine. 
 
 ' I suppose that the relation of natural causes to the
 
 484 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1856 
 
 miracles will always strike different minds differently. To 
 some it seems to give great pain ; to some it gives great 
 relief. On whichever side the " strength " or the " weakness " 
 may lie, it appears to me emphatically a case in which " the 
 strong " must " bear " as best they can with " the infirmities 
 of the weak." 
 
 ' Once more, with many thanks for your kindness, not 
 only now but before, on the occasion to which you allude, 
 and, what has probably escaped your recollection, but will 
 never escape mine, even in earlier times yet, 
 ' Believe me to be, my dear Sir, 
 
 ' Yours gratefully and respectfully, 
 
 ' A. P. Stanley.' 
 
 Against such a letter as that of Keble may be set the 
 very different impression which the book made on Bishop 
 Ewing. His letter speaks for itself : 
 
 ' Bishopston, Feb. 2Sth, 1858. 
 
 ' My dear Sir, — I do not know that any testimony such 
 as mine can be needed, nor do I know that any word of 
 sympathy such as mine can do any good ; but, as I see a 
 controversy going on as to whether your work on Sinai 
 and Palestine should be put on the list of the Christian 
 Knowledge Society, allow me, as one who has felt some- 
 times the bitterness of being misunderstood, to say that I 
 have read no work of any description which has so raised 
 and invigorated my faith and sight of the facts in the Old 
 Testament history as your work on Palestine. Since 
 reading it I stand on quite another and higher level. I 
 feel interested in those places which had become through 
 school-teaching and pedagogy irksome, and I have to 
 thank you for putting the Old Testament into my hands 
 as a new and more powerful weapon. You have conferred 
 a real boon on the household of God in that work : of this 
 I am well assured. I feel I should not do justice to my- 
 self nor to you did I not state this. May the Lord bless 
 and keep you ! 
 
 ' May I offer my respects to Mrs. Stanley (if she re- 
 members me), and believe me 
 
 ' Truly yours, 
 
 ' Alexr. Ewing, 
 
 ' Bishop of Argyll.'
 
 CHAP. XIV F. D. MAURICE AND KINGS COLLEGE 485 
 
 A theological storm was already gathering round 
 Stanley. The impression rapidly gained ground that the 
 cautious shrinking from definite statements on points of 
 theology proceeded from personal doubts, if not from 
 personal unbeliefs. Already his reticence on questions 
 which were, in his opinion, designedly left open by the 
 early Church, as well as by the Reformed Church, was 
 widely misunderstood. Already his disposition to insist 
 only on those points in which men were substantially agreed, 
 and to avoid the multiplication of divisions by dogmatising 
 where freedom of opinion was permissible, was largely mis- 
 interpreted. His lifelong aim was to do something towards 
 breaking the collision between the beliefs and the doubts of 
 the age, to bring out what is common, to overlook that which 
 is peculiar. ' I see,' he says, ' no other course of action open 
 for me, and " though it slay me, yet will I trust in it." ' 
 But his attitude was regarded as the attempt to construct 
 a halfway house at a point where movement backwards 
 or forwards was intellectually necessary — a house which 
 could only serve as a nursery of unbelief for future genera- 
 tions. The storm which had already broken over the 
 head of F. D. Maurice was a prelude to that which after- 
 wards centred round himself and his most intimate friend. 
 
 In 1853 Maurice, then a Professor at King's College, 
 London, published a volume of ' Theological Essays,' in 
 one of which he combated the received theory of eternal 
 punishment. In doing so he was prepared for the con- 
 sequences. ' I knew,' he says in a letter to Charles 
 Kingsley,^' ' when I wrote the sentences about eternal death 
 that I was writing my own sentence at King's College.' 
 His prevision proved correct. In November 1853 he was 
 dismissed from his Professorships of Theology and of Eng- 
 
 " Life of Ff-ederick Deiiison Maurice, edited by his son, Frederick Maurice, 
 vol. ii. chap. v. p. 168.
 
 486 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1853 
 
 lish Literature and Modern History, on the ground that 'the 
 opinions set forth, and the doubts expressed, as to certain 
 points of behef regarding the future punishment of the 
 wicked, and the final issues of the Day of Judgment, are of 
 dangerous tendency, and calculated to unsettle the minds of 
 the theological students of King's College.' '"^ Stanley was 
 deeply interested in the fate of the Professor. Not only was 
 he personally attached to Maurice, but he also believed that 
 there was 'no one of this age, since Arnold and Newman, 
 who has inspired such intense religious veneration amongst 
 so large a body of disciples.' The issue, moreover, involved 
 the principle which, to Stanley, seemed most vital to the 
 very existence of the Church. Apart from the point of 
 doctrine involved in the dispute, he was in entire sympath}- 
 with the accused, and in complete antagonism to the 
 accusers. Maurice was dismissed, not for dogmatising on 
 the question of the endless duration of future punishments, 
 but for protesting against all dogmatism on the subject. 
 The Articles were silent upon the point. It therefore was, 
 in Stanley's opinion, an open question, which no one had a 
 right to close. Where the formularies of the Church re- 
 fused to speak, the Council of King's College had attempted 
 to force upon their most distinguished professor a rigid 
 definition of the word eternal, and of the theory of punish- 
 ment. 
 
 Stanley was willing to sign a protest against closing 
 the question. But he refused to urge others to sign any 
 such document, because no Church decision was involved 
 in the decision of the Council. His own views on eternal 
 punishment are expressed in the following extract from 
 a letter to his mother : 
 
 ' Although on such an awful subject, yet I really think, 
 after all, there is a vast amount of waste of words and wrath. 
 
 '- Life of F. D. Majirice, vol. ii. chap. v. p. 191.
 
 CHAP. XIV OPINION ON ETERNAL PUNISHMENT 487 
 
 For, of course, Jclf '•' shrinks, except in the case of Voltaire, 
 from applying his view to individuals, and Maurice also 
 refuses to pronounce either way about them. And both 
 must, in the end, acknowledge that they know very little 
 about Time, and nothing at all about Eternity. 
 
 ' Two points, however, seem to me to emerge from the 
 Maurician mist : 
 
 ' First, that in the word Ete^^nal there is something 
 beyond duration, or future, or space, or time, and that 
 although we cannot form any notion of it, yet that anything 
 which lifts us out of the things which are seen, into the 
 things which are not seen, takes us from Time into Eternity ; 
 and that this must begin now, and therefore is as truly part 
 of the present life as of that which is to come, even sup- 
 posing it possible that man, earth, heaven, God Himself, 
 were to pass away. Anyone who has " known Thee, and 
 Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent," will have had the best 
 and most essential part of Eternity. 
 
 ' And I think that Maurice has really put, with great 
 force, that this limited though still, so far as it went, correct 
 idea of Eternal Life, was enjoyed by the Jewish Kings and 
 Prophets, who had no distinct knowledge of another life. 
 The practical conclusion from this is, that it is merely 
 another way of stating the old truth, that this life is a pre- 
 paration for the next, that Heaven and Hell can be begun 
 on earth, that the essence of the happiness of the saved and 
 of the misery of the lost, whatever else it may be, is the 
 presence or the absence of God. According to Augustine 
 and Dante this — the absence of God and of hope — was the 
 sole punishment of the first circle of the damned, the 
 children and the good heathens, who yet were in " the 
 Inferno " as truly as Judas and Ugolino. 
 
 'Secondly — and this is a much graver question — Maurice 
 starts the question whether there is a possibility of the fate 
 of the soul being changed after death — in other words, 
 whether this life is or is not the only time of trial. He 
 does not positively decide, but evidently leans to the hope 
 and belief that there is a possibility of recovery, another 
 sphere of redemption after the end of the trial here. 
 
 ' I do not think that he meets the general impression 
 left by the declarations in the Gospels. They certainly 
 
 '* Dr. Jelf, as Principal of King's College, had brought the matter before 
 the notice of the Council.
 
 488 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1853 
 
 seem to imply that there will be a final close of human 
 action and Divine Love. Yet there are glimpses of another 
 view in the Epistles — " God all-in-all," " the restitution of 
 all things " — and from the earliest times in the Christian 
 Church (Justin, Origen) ; and the whole doctrine of Purga- 
 tory is a struggle against the severer view. 
 
 ' For my own part, I take refuge in our ignorance of all 
 the details of the future. There the two conflicting views 
 of the finality of this life and the infinity of God's power 
 and love may be reconciled. But here and now I do not 
 see how we can get rid of the impression left, not only by 
 Scripture, but by conscience and common-sense, that on the 
 character formed in this life must depend the character and 
 state of that which is to come, and that all endeavours to 
 make this more intelligible or more reconcilable, whether 
 by Purgatory, or by detailed descriptions of Hell, or by 
 schemes of possible recovery, are like asking, " How are 
 the dead raised, and with what body do they come ? " and 
 the answer is, " Thou fool ! " 
 
 ' The advantage, meanwhile, of such a man as Maurice 
 is, I think, that as so many men do perplex themselves 
 with the details, and think that the endless punishment is 
 a fatal objection to Christianity, it is a clear gain to have a 
 man, evidently believing in Christianity with all his soul, 
 who yet can sincerely say that he does not find this 
 stumbling-block in the Bible.' 
 
 Whatever might be the efifect which Stanley's writings 
 were producing upon professed theologians, they greatly 
 increased his influence in the world at large. His growing 
 reputation gave him a power in society ; the rapid ripening 
 of his social gifts made him the coveted guest of every circle 
 in England. His letters, to a degree unknown before, 
 abound in allusions to the distinguished men with whom 
 he came in contact. Among many such references may 
 be quoted the following passage on the conversational 
 exuberance of Macaulay, for whose style and historical 
 writings, in spite of a want of ' the Promethean fire of moral 
 life,' he felt the warmest admiration : 
 
 * Surely it must be a great disadvantage to iMacaulay
 
 CHAP. XIV THE CRIMEAN WAR 489 
 
 never to acquire an}' information from conversation. For 
 I do not see how he ever can. A remarkable proof of this, I 
 thought, occurred this morning. Milnes was here, and was 
 speaking of the Mussuhnan tradition which I had men- 
 tioned to him as existing in Egypt, and which Layard had 
 confirmed as existing equally in Mesopotamia, that the fate 
 of Islam requires that it should be at last superseded by 
 Christianity. Macaulay, with great difficulty, was induced 
 to let Milnes state his case at all. The moment he had 
 done so, he burst forth into a torrent of reasons why it was 
 impossible to believe it. In a momentary cessation, I 
 ventured to say that Sir Charles Trevelyan had told me 
 that he also had never met a Mussulman in India who had 
 not the same conviction. " I never heard anything of the 
 kind the whole time I was in India." " No," thought I to 
 myself, " it is not likely that you ever should, if you talked 
 as much and heard as little in India as you do here." ' 
 
 Over Stanley's clerical duties in 1854 and 1855, over 
 his literary work and social relaxations, the Crimean War 
 threw its grim shadow. Few of his letters are without 
 allusions to the great national struggle in which the country 
 was engaged : — ' How portentously all turns upon the War ! ' 
 ' I think by day and night of that awful siege.' ' Poor 
 Granville Elliot, whom we met at Nazareth, fell at Inker- 
 mann. I see him now, coming into the room at the 
 Convent fresh from Tabor, his great brown neck all bare, 
 and looking as if he would live for ever.' ' The nurses have 
 arrived at Scutari.' ' Sarah is very anxious to catch the 
 Czar himself, and wants to know whether there is any 
 chance of finding him in Sebastopol.' ' I find that the Siege 
 of Jerusalem ended also on September 8.' '^ 
 
 Such are some of the allusions which are interspersed 
 among his letters, reviving, by the fitfulness of their occur- 
 rence, the strange effect of the broken, piecemeal mode in 
 which news was then communicated, and heightening, by 
 
 '■• The Malakoff was stormed on September 8th, 1S55. During the night 
 the south side of Sebastopol was evacuated and burned.
 
 490 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1855 
 
 their mixture with Hghter topics, the tragedies of a struggle 
 during which each Gazette was ' a record of lamentation, 
 mourning, and woe.' 
 
 Miss Stanley's organisation of a band of hospital nurses 
 and her mission to the Crimea gave him a deep personal 
 interest in the progress of the War. It was his sister's 
 expedition, it may be added, which first made Stanley 
 personally known to the Queen. A detachment of ladies 
 and nurses had already gone out under Miss Nightingale. 
 A second detachment of fifty was confided to the charge 
 of Miss Stanley. At first she attached herself to the naval 
 hospital at Therapia. Afterwards, under the generous help 
 and guidance of Lord and Lady Stratford de Redcliffe, she 
 assisted in establishing the military hospital at Koulalee, 
 in addition to the principal military hospital at Scutari. 
 Stanley himself met his sister in London, placed her on 
 board the boat at Folkestone, and then sat down to send 
 his mother the last news : 
 
 ' It was evidently an immense relief to Mary when we 
 were fairly off She said, " TJiis is rest',' and added that it 
 was like the cutting away of a balloon, leaving all the crowd 
 and earth below. ... She spoke but little, in fact slept a 
 good deal, which, of course, I encouraged. When she woke, 
 she said, with a feeling of satisfaction : " I always felt that 
 it would somehow or other end in my going ; " and I think it 
 seemed to her as if her destiny was fulfilling itself It struck 
 me very much on the journey, what an immense difficulty 
 it would have been to have terminated her work in London 
 in any other way. When we arrived at Folkestone, there, 
 as in London, there was no expectation. The Claytons 
 and Mary Stone were the only persons on the platform, 
 and so at once distinguishable. Mary Stone was immedi- 
 ately enlisted to carry a bundle of cloaks, and we went 
 instantly to the steamer. The Roman Catholic nuns 
 attracted so much attention that I think the others were 
 almost overlooked, nor did the bystanders clearly under- 
 stand where they were going. They only said, without 
 enthusiasm, but also without bitterness, " Sisters of Mercy."
 
 CHAP. XIV MISS STANLEY'S HOSPITAL NURSES 49 1 
 
 They were soon planted in their places. I had just time 
 to commend Mary to Angelo, and to tell Dr. Me}-er that the 
 only thing which she cared about in travelling (which struck 
 me from her being so much revived by the cold morning 
 breeze as we came by the train) was going with her face to 
 the horses, with a window open. The bell rang, and we 
 took leave of her, and came up to the parapet above. Just 
 at that moment Alice and Captain Fox appeared. I did 
 not see their meeting with Mary. ... I think, if you had 
 had any doubt of Mary being in her right place, you would 
 have had none had you seen her going round to each with 
 a word of cheerful encouragement, and something for the 
 sea-sickness, and each looking up to her with a face of 
 grateful reliance. I cannot but think that she will be com- 
 pletely " mistress of the whole situation," as the French 
 say, before they reach Boulogne. There was no confusion. 
 They seemed almost to fill the deck (tho' there were a few 
 other passengers — Lord somebody — I think no other ladies). 
 This gave a peculiar look to the steamer, and when it 
 darted off, which it seemed to do with unusual precision 
 and rapidity, it seemed almost conscious of its freight in 
 that direct, purpose-like course which someone has de- 
 scribed as so well illustrated in a steamer. From the 
 London station they had started with three cheers. From 
 Folkestone there was no one but myself who knew who or 
 what they were. I waved my hat as long as they were in 
 sight, and felt that, if I were never to see her again, it would 
 be as peaceful a last impression to bear away as it would 
 ever be possible to have. I cannot but think that it may 
 be the beginning of a new life to her, being the first com- 
 plete opportunity of developing all her best powers that 
 has occurred since she left Norwich, and the fulfilment in 
 so unexpected a manner of her endeavours of the last two 
 years. In short, I turned away thankful and happy for 
 her beyond what I have felt for months.' 
 
 To the disputes which eventually arose out of Miss 
 Stanley's mission to Scutari and Therapia it is unnecessary 
 to refer. But one circumstance connected with it produced 
 such lasting effects on Stanley's mind that it cannot be 
 wholly omitted. From the first the ' Record ' attacked 
 Miss Stanley, who at this time was still a Protestant, with
 
 492 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1854 
 
 a bitterness which deeply wounded her brother. At 
 Therapia itself ' the persecution ' was continued. 
 
 ' In this nu.-se business there is no question that the 
 rabid Protestant party have shown by far the greatest in- 
 capacity of tolerating anything beyond their own "infinitely 
 little minds." 
 
 ' My sister, whose exertions in the Naval Hospital at 
 Therapia have, I sincerely believe, been as free from any 
 sectarian bias, as truly national and Christian, and as 
 universally good in their effects as it was possible for those 
 of any human being to be, was stopped the other day by 
 the chaplain. He begged to have five minutes' conversation 
 with her. " He felt himself responsible for the publications 
 circulated in the hospital, and he had found one of a very 
 improper tendency; parts of it he highly disapproved, parts 
 of it he did not understand." She asked to see it. It was 
 a " Christian Year," left by one of the ladies with a sick 
 midshipman. In consequence of this, he preached against 
 them the next Sunday, in their presence, as " creeping in 
 unawares," &c. 
 
 'This is no secret, nor ought to be. I confess my blood 
 boils at such fiendish folly and stupidity. I know )'ou like 
 the lines in " Measure for Measure,' which rise almost 
 immediately to one's lips — 
 
 " I tell thee, Priest, 
 My sister shall a ministering angel be 
 When thou liest howling." ' 
 
 In another letter, after alluding to the same story, he 
 adds : 
 
 ' Let me conclude with two instances of " the letter 
 killing." 
 
 ' A regimental surgeon at Balaclava sends to head- 
 quarters for shirts for his sick people, the request written 
 on the only scrap of paper at hand, and countersigned by 
 the only colonel within reach. It is returned to him as 
 informal, because not written on foolscap and countersigned 
 by four persons. 
 
 ' Iron bedsteads were grievously wanted at Scutari for 
 the sake of raising the men above the damp floors. They 
 came, but the legs went on to Balaclava.'
 
 CHAP. XIV PARIS IN 1856 493 
 
 In March 1856 Miss Stanley joined the Church of 
 Rome, her long-delayed secession being, as her brother 
 believed, accelerated, if not finally caused, by Protestant 
 bigotry and intolerance. Anxious to be absent from 
 England when the event took place, Stanley and his mother 
 spent some weeks in Paris. It was the moment when the 
 plenipotentiaries of the various Powers were assembled to 
 negotiate the terms of peace with Russia. At the Embassy 
 Stanley ' saw Clarendon's grey head bowed low in confer- 
 ence with De Morny, Orloff deep in dialogue with the 
 Prussian Minister. Of all, Orloff was most conspicuous, a 
 Saul in head and shoulders.' In Paris, also, he met many of 
 the most distinguished men of letters. 'Villemain and De 
 Saulcy called on me, the one filled with admiration at 
 Becket, and the other at " Sinai and Palestine." Tocqueville 
 also crossed the scenes.' ' The great Guizot,' he adds, ' has 
 presented me with " Richard Cromwell.'" He breakfasted 
 with Saulcy, 
 
 ' I had a most instructive breakfast with De Saulcy on 
 Monday. From 1 1 A.M. to 2 p.m. we looked over 200 
 photographs of Jerusalem. He described that he had 
 started for the East " avectres peu de croyance ; j'ai pense 
 que Notre Seigneur, Jesus-Christ, etait un homme habile, 
 mais pas plus. Voila ma premiere confession ! J'ai pense 
 d'attaquer la chronologie et geographic biblique. Voila 
 ma seconde confession ! " He had meant merely to take 
 Jerusalem on his way to Asia Minor. But the interest 
 became so great that he remained, and he was turned b}^ 
 the coincidence between the history and geography into a 
 devout Christian. But he could only become a Christian 
 by making terms with Rome. " Si Rome ne fait pas des 
 concessions enormes, elle sera la ruinc du Christianisme." 
 And there he was, sure enough, in the midst of Lent, eatino- 
 an immense meat breakfast, enough to have turned my 
 stomach inside out for a month.' 
 
 The birth of the Prince Imperial was momentarily ex- 
 pected. 'All Paris,' writes Stanley, 'is in travail. The
 
 494 Z/F^" OF DEAN STANLEY 1856 
 
 Rue Vivienne was inaccessibly blocked with a crowd 
 extending the whole street's length to see the baby's clothes.' 
 On the 1 6th of March, 1856, the Prince was born, and 'the 
 burst of the cannonade on Palm Sunday morning was in 
 the highest degree effective.' 
 
 It was, it may be noticed, during this visit to Paris that 
 the first mention occurs in his letters of his future wife. 
 ' If you see Lady Augusta Bruce,' he writes to his mother 
 from England, ' will you tell her that she may calculate 
 on me for a dinner by Thursday at latest ? You will pro- 
 bably meet her at the Mohls'.' 
 
 During the few days' absence in England to which this 
 last letter refers the peace was proclaimed.'-' Stanley was 
 in London on the 31st of March, when a burst of cannon 
 announced the proclamation of the event. 
 
 ' I supped with the Buxtons, and at 10 P.M. had hardly 
 sate down when everyone started to their feet at the same 
 moment, with the same exclamation, " The Peace ! the 
 Peace ! " How it reminded me of the morning of the i6th. 
 They sounded magnificently in the still night. I entreated 
 them to wake the children, that the historical continuity of 
 the event might be carried on to the next generation. But 
 they slept too soundly, in spite of all the exertions of their 
 parents.' 
 
 Throughout the three years of European war which 
 followed the conclusion of his Eastern tour Stanley found his 
 chief relaxation from literary work or domestic anxieties 
 in expeditions to different parts of England, Wales, and 
 Scotland. Now he is at Ilfracombe exploring traditions of 
 William de Tracy, one of the murderers of Becket ; now in 
 Cumberland, investigating the genuineness of the sword of 
 Hugh de Morville, another of the four Knights ; now at 
 Caernarvon Castle and Rhuddlan, following the fortunes of 
 
 '^ The peace was concluded at Paris on March 30, 1856.
 
 CHAP. XIV TOUR IN SCOTLAND 495 
 
 Edward I. and his son. Now, again, he is at Berkeley 
 
 Castle. ' I have seen,' he writes, 
 
 'the poor Edward first trying to escape to Lundy Island ; 
 then sleeping in his damask bed in the Castle ; then in the 
 dark dungeon ; then brought up into the room, almost as 
 dark, over the gateway, one small portal window alone ad- 
 mitting the light, a little pallet in the corner, richly decorated, 
 on which the unhappy King slept quietly for two nights. 
 Then, on the third night, I have heard " the shrieks of death ; 
 shrieks of an agonising King " ; and all was silent. At the 
 end of a while I look up and see a black band of Benedic- 
 tine monks come over from Gloucester Cathedral (just 
 burnt down), take the body, and, for want of horses, fasten 
 stags out of the Castle park to the bier (I am afraid you 
 will think me as bad as the boy who saw the cats, but I 
 assure you it is so, and the stags are painted round the 
 tomb in Gloucester to indicate the tradition) ; and in the 
 ruins of the Cathedral he was laid ; and out of the fame of 
 the dead man's son, and out of the crowds of pilgrims who 
 came to worship the dead King, arose the magnificent 
 Cathedral as it now stands.' 
 
 In August 1856 he is at Dumfries, moving through a 
 world of Bruce and Red Comyn, Burns and the Covenanters, 
 and possessed by the spirit of Old Mortality. Now he is 
 at Glencoe, realising the scene of the massacre, correcting 
 the description of Macaulay, and lighting upon a story 
 which he ' had never heard before.' 
 
 ' A solitary tree in the lower part of the valley marks 
 the place where one of the soldiers, anxious to save his 
 hosts, but fearing to break his oath of secrecy, said aloud 
 to a stone, " If I were this stone, I should not stay here to- 
 night ? " 
 
 ' If I were a Scotchman, what a beautiful subject the 
 history of Scotland would be ! ' 
 
 At Glasgow he met Campbell "'* and Norman M'Leod. 
 
 ' Campbell was almost a ghost, both in body and 
 mind, " the stars shining through him." But M'Leod was all 
 
 '" Author of the well-known volume on the Nature of the Atonement.
 
 496 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1856 
 
 vigorous flesh and blood, and preached an admirable sermon, 
 a little too rhetorical in style and manner, but not a word 
 of untruth or extravagance in substance, on the loneliness 
 of the selfish man, with immense illustrations from scenery, 
 history, Shakespeare, Old Testament, New Testament. 
 
 ' I went to him (by appointment) in the vestry after- 
 wards, and found him delightful. He came in the morning 
 here, and talked for a hour or more. He is far the best 
 specimen of the Scotch Church I have seen. Indeed, I 
 know no one like him in the English Church. He ran over 
 every subject. He was evidently delighted to see me, and 
 said, " I have given my congregation every scrap of your 
 book on the Corinthians that they were able to bear ; and 
 as to your book on ' Sinai and Palestine,' it is simply inex- 
 haustible." I would gladly have made him a Bishop in 
 England.' 
 
 During Stanley's visit to Scotland the report was circu- 
 lated in the North that he was to be appointed to the vacant 
 See of London. One of his friends, writing from Dundee, 
 urged him not to hesitate if the report was really true. 
 
 * " Now or never " is the right view. Either accept or 
 give up for ever. Nothing can be worse than to keep the 
 thing hanging over you for a few years longer. 
 
 ' Think of the position in which your father was in 
 1837-38 at Norwich, and then think of the funeral. Is 
 there anything you may not accomplish in twenty years ? 
 
 ' Honesty, simplicity, general ability, and knowledge of 
 the world, a good fortune and position, seem to me the best 
 materials for a Bishop. All these you have ; therefore do 
 not hesitate, whether London or any other is offered.' 
 
 The report was, however, without foundation. Di. 
 Tait, his former tutor at Balliol, his companion at Bonn, 
 Arnold's successor at Rugby, and his own colleague on the 
 Oxford University Commission, was promoted from the 
 Deanery of Carlisle to the See of London. ' He will,' writes 
 Stanley, ' in my humble judgment, give the Church of 
 England a great lift. Scotland, as you may suppose, claps 
 her hands and sings for joy at his elevation.' Stanley
 
 CHAP. XIV CONSECRATION OF DR. TAIT 497 
 
 heard the new Bishop's farewell sermon in Carlisle Cathedral, 
 and a fortnight later (October 1856) announces that he 
 has consented to become his examining-chaplain. 
 
 There was at first some idea of Stanley preaching 
 the consecration sermon. Ultimately, however, the Rev. 
 G. E. L. Cotton, then head-master of Marlborough, and 
 afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, was chosen. The following 
 extract from one of Stanley's letters expresses his delight 
 at the success of the preacher : 
 
 ' At last a rose has blossomed almost without a thorn. 
 I cannot describe to you the satisfaction at the success of 
 Cotton's sermon. Even had I preached the same, it was 
 much better that it should come from him than from me, 
 and I am perfectly convinced that I should not have 
 preached anything nearly so good. The one thorn, if 
 there be one, was that I was not there to hear it.' 
 
 In the interval between the appointment of Dr. Tait 
 to the See of London and the first examination of candi- 
 dates for Holy Orders within his diocese, Stanley was offered, 
 and had accepted, the Professorship of Ecclesiastical History 
 in the University of Oxford. Though he did not at once 
 resign his Canonry at Canterbury, and though he did not 
 enter upon his new duties till the summer of 1857, the ap- 
 pointment began a new stage in his career. 
 
 VOL. I K K
 
 498 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1856-58 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 1856-8 
 
 INTRODUCTORY LECTURES AS PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL 
 HISTORY, FEBRUARY 1 857 — TOUR IN SWEDEN AND RUSSIA, 
 JULY-SEPTEMBER, 1857 — INSTALLED AS CANON OF CHRIST 
 CHURCH, OXFORD, MARCH 1858 
 
 On December 2nd, 1856, the Regius Professor of Ecclesi- 
 astical History, the Rev. Robert Hussey, died suddenly 
 from heart-disease; Stanley's friends at Oxford, and es- 
 pecially the Dean of Christ Church (Dr. Liddell) and the 
 Master of Pembroke (Dr. Jeune), at once urged upon Lord 
 Palmerston Stanley's strong claims to the . vacant chair. 
 Their efforts were successful. On December loth, 1856, 
 Stanley received the following letter from Lord Palmer- 
 ston : 
 
 ' Downing Street : December 9, 1856. 
 
 ' Sir, — I have been authorised by The Queen to offer 
 to you the Professorship of Ecclesiastical History vacant 
 by the death of the late Mr. Hussey, and I shall be glad 
 to hear from you that it will be agreeable to you to under- 
 take the duties of that office. 
 
 ' I am, Sir, 
 
 ' Yours faithfully, 
 
 ' Palmerston. 
 ' The Rev. A. Stanley.' 
 
 In the last seven years Stanley had taken firm root at 
 Canterbury. His life there had been so busy, useful, and 
 happy, that he dreaded the return to Oxford, with its in- 
 evitable plunge into theological controversy. It was, there-
 
 CHAP. XV RECEPTION AT OXFORD 499 
 
 fore, not without reluctance and misgiving that he accepted 
 the Professorship of Ecclesiastical History. Fortunately, 
 the pang of severance was softened by a long respite, 
 which gradually reconciled him to the final change. A 
 Canonry at Christ Church was attached to the Professor- 
 ship ; but it was not till March 1858 that a stall fell 
 vacant. Till that date Stanley retained his Canonry and 
 home at Canterbury, only residing at Oxford during the 
 discharge of his professorial duties. 
 
 ' Oh ! this Professorship ! ' he writes to Pearson : 
 
 ' I do not well see how I could have declined it, certainly 
 not after the efforts made to procure it. But at times my 
 heart quite sinks at the prospect both of the work and of 
 the place. I keep Canterbury till Christ Church becomes 
 vacant.' 
 
 Stanley had good grounds for his misgivings. His 
 intellectual fitness for the Professorship could not be 
 questioned. ' Of all offices,' wrote the Dean of Christ 
 Church, who was active on his behalf, ' this is the office for 
 him ; and of all men, he is the man for the office.' A 
 few of the resident members of the University, including 
 the Warden of New College and the Master of Pembroke, 
 agreed with the Dean in thinking that his return to 
 Oxford was ' a real blessing ' and ' a public good,' and 
 that he might ' save the cause of the Divinity Professors ' 
 in the University. But the majority of the older residents 
 undoubtedly held a contrary opinion. Both on political 
 and ecclesiastical grounds the appointment was unwelcome. 
 As an ardent advocate of University Reform, and as Secre- 
 tary of the late Commission, he had run counter to the 
 conservatism of Oxford. At the same time, the tone of 
 his theological writings was distasteful to both of the two 
 great ecclesiastical parties — alike to the followers of Dr. 
 Macbride and to those of Dr. Pusey. Some of Stanley's
 
 500 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1856-58 
 
 theological opponents were, undoubtedly, men who mag- 
 nified minute points of difference into exaggerated im- 
 portance. Others, equally beyond question, seriously 
 dreaded the probable results of any reaction from the dog- 
 matism of the Creeds, feared that the residuum of belief, 
 which might survive the eclectic process, would prove ' a 
 reed of Egypt,' and deprecated the search for any common 
 ground which was not firm and definite. 
 
 These feelings among resident members of the Uni- 
 versity found, at first, no outward expression beyond a cold 
 reception of the new Professor. ' How many letters of 
 congratulation,' he asks Pearson, ' do you suppose I have 
 received from residents in Oxford ? One from Jowett, and 
 • — 7iot one besides! Nor could the warmth of the solitary 
 letter of congratulation entirely compensate the absence of 
 others. ' I am delighted,' writes Professor Jowett, 
 
 ' more than I can express. As children go about saying 
 to themselves, " This is Christmas Day," or " This is 
 Easter Sunday," so I go about saying to myself that one 
 of my oldest and best friends is Professor of Ecclesiastical 
 History.' 
 
 If it is difficult to decide whether the fears of Stanley's 
 opponents were at all justified by results, it is impossible 
 to deny that the hopes of his friends were largely realised. 
 Outside the University the appointment was received with 
 general satisfaction. Some of his friends thought that the 
 Professorship was, as a matter of preferment, not a subject 
 of congratulation ; others, that the pain of leaving Canter- 
 bury must outweigh the pleasure of returning to Oxford. 
 Some regretted his exchange of ' a freer air ' for ' the numb- 
 ness of life ' which, except among the younger men, they 
 detected in the University ; others dreaded his probable 
 entanglement with theological polemics ; others lamented 
 the intrusion of educational details upon more congenial
 
 CHAP. XV HIS OPPORTUNITIES OF INFLUENCE 50 1 
 
 work. But all were agreed in recognising that the Pro- 
 fessorship, though stripped of some of the accidents of 
 ecclesiastical greatness, afforded the opportunity of ac- 
 quiring an influence in the Church which no Bishop had 
 exercised, or could hope to exercise. They were convinced 
 that, though Stanley might be caught tripping by scholars, 
 the field was one for which his studies and historical instincts 
 gave him exceptional qualifications. They hoped that he 
 was exchanging the romantic, poetical, imaginative, anti- 
 quarian interests of Canterbury for a sphere which added 
 to those interests others of a more widely useful character. 
 There was much in the preparation for Holy Orders at 
 Oxford which was dull, tasteless, and even lowering. 
 Stanley's friends felt assured that his never-failing sym- 
 pathy with young minds would impart to his own work, 
 and to that of his hearers, perpetual freshness, and that 
 his enthusiasm would inspire theological study with a life 
 and interest which were before felt only by the few and 
 studious. Nor did they despair of his finding in ecclesi- 
 astical history a subject on which he might expatiate 
 without encountering the unhappy pitfalls of theological 
 controversy. 
 
 The first difficulty with which the new Professor was 
 confronted was the choice of his subject. So early as 
 February 1856 Stanley had written to Hugh Pearson a 
 letter, from which the following passage is extracted : 
 
 ' I have been turning over in my mind, and formed 
 this conclusion about, the remaining work of my life. 
 Either: (i) The History of the Chosen People (as you 
 propose), or (2) The History of English Christianity 
 (beginning from the earliest times, and going on as late 
 as I could). Each has its advantages, and I shall not 
 determine positively on the one or the other for this year.' 
 
 Before the year was ended he had been offered the Pre-
 
 502 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1856-58 
 
 fessorship of Ecclesiastical History, and was obliged to 
 decide upon ihc subject of his course of lectures. Early 
 in December 1856, on the morning after he had accepted 
 the appointment, he burst into his mother's room before 
 she was dressed. ' I have settled my first course. I shall 
 begin with Abraham. He is the true beginning of ecclesi- 
 astical history.' A few days later he writes again to the 
 ' wise Hugh ' Pearson, who was throughout his life his 
 most trusted counsellor : 
 
 ' The lectures are beginning to dawn upon me. Will 
 you turn over in your mind whether the Council of Nicaea, 
 described after the manner of the Becket murder, and 
 backed by a set of lectures (after, as I hope, our summer 
 visit to Russia) on the Greek Church, on Constantine, Con- 
 stantinople, and Athanasius, would be a fitting course ? 
 You will perceive one great danger — the fear lest I should 
 appear to disparage the Homoiousion. Perhaps it may be 
 avoided by an appearance of total neutralit}'. Consider 
 secretly this matter. It has in many ways great advan- 
 tages.' 
 
 The final result of long deliberations was that Stanley 
 decided to deliver three Introductory Lectures on the 
 Province, the Study, and the Advantages of Ecclesiastical 
 History, and to follow these with the courses which were 
 afterwards embodied in his Lectures on the History of the 
 Eastern Church, and, at greater length, in his Lectures on 
 the Jewish Church. When these were completed, he pro- 
 posed to ' withdraw gradually into the Church of England.' 
 
 Before commencing his professorial duties, he conducted 
 his first examination as Examining Chaplain to the new 
 Bishop of London. He found the work ' exceedingly in- 
 teresting and instructive,' and the Bishop ' as good as gold.' 
 ' The Bishop's addresses,' he writes, 
 
 ' were admirable. He delivered two to the first set, three 
 to the second, and one to the whole. The last, which was,
 
 CHAP. XV THE EXAMINING CHAPLAINCY 503 
 
 perhaps, the most open to objections in itself, though still 
 most excellent, was one of the most powerful exhortations 
 I ever heard — quite surprising : such tremendous energy, 
 such great simplicity, and, on the whole, such remarkable 
 strength and soundness of mind. The whole was extempore. 
 It has very much raised my opinion of his abilities.' 
 
 His first impression of the interest of the work, and of 
 the inspiring force of the Bishop's addresses, was confirmed 
 by successive examinations. ' I am still of the belief,' he 
 wrote in June 1857, 'that in point of influence and power 
 the Chaplaincy is a more valuable post than my Professor- 
 ship.' In 1859 he expressed himself in similar language : 
 
 ' The most interesting weeks I spend in the year (as far 
 as Church matters and theology are concerned) I reckon to 
 be those I spend at Fulham examining the candidates for 
 Ordination. It is all hurry and scurry, and often unsatis- 
 factory in men and things ; but still there is a real response 
 awakened, and a sense of give and take, which I highly 
 value.' 
 
 The insight which the position gave him into the needs 
 of young men preparing for Holy Orders at Oxford was 
 also of practical use to him as an Ecclesiastical Professor. 
 When, in i860, a friend remonstrated with him upon over- 
 taxing his strength with the work of Ordination examina- 
 tions, he replied : ' I value my Examining Chaplaincy more 
 than any of my present posts ' ; and he retained the office 
 till his appointment to the Deanery of Westminster in 
 1863. 
 
 In February 1857 Stanley delivered his three Intro- 
 ductory Lectures on Ecclesiastical History.^ ' They were,' 
 he writes to Pearson, ' evidently quite successful. Oxford 
 is dry as dust. I think that the most triumphant part was 
 the eulogy on Hussey.- The third lecture was immensely 
 
 ' Three hitrodnctory Lectures on the Study of Ecclesiastical History. 
 Oxford, 1857. 
 
 - The reference to the late Professor Hussey conchides the first lecture.
 
 504 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1856-58 
 
 applauded, and terminated with the Delectable Mountains. 
 * I think,' he adds in a second letter, ' that they may be 
 thought too rhetorical.' The first lecture begins, the 
 third ends, with a quotation from the devout Noncon- 
 formist tinker whom Stanley himself called the ' Robert 
 Burns of England.' Years before he had been struck by the 
 passage in the ' Pilgrim's Progress ' describing the treasures 
 of the House Beautiful, which were shown to solace and 
 cheer Christian on his pilgrimage. At the time he had 
 promised himself that, if he were ever called upon to 
 address an Oxford audience on ecclesiastical history, he 
 would begin his lecture with the quotation. Now he kept 
 his promise. 
 
 In this choice of a quotation from John Bunyan to be 
 his first words as Professor of Ecclesiastical History there 
 lies something more than the fulfilment of a self-made 
 promise. The choice was eminently characteristic of the 
 spirit of lectures into which is condensed the very essence 
 of Stanley's later sermons and writings. The three Intro- 
 ductory Lectures embody his inmost heart and mind and 
 life. They give the key to his beliefs, his hopes, his aspi- 
 rations. They explain his reading of the past, his attitude 
 towards the present, his faith in the future. 
 
 Stanley refuses to accept the boundaries within which 
 his subject was generally restricted. He pushes back the 
 horizon of ecclesiastical history into the dim distance of 
 primeval ages, and includes within its vast circumference not 
 only the religious, but the moral, social, and political influ- 
 ences which have affected the growth of the Christian com- 
 munity. In range, both of time and interests, he claims for 
 his subject a wide extension. He seeks his starting-point 
 neither in the sixteenth century, nor in the fifth, nor yet in 
 the second. He ascends the stream of time beyond the 
 Reformers, the Popes, or the Fathers, to the first of the
 
 CHAP. XV THE SPIRIT OF HIS LECTURES 505 
 
 Patriarchs. In the call of Abraham he sees the first 
 beginning of continuous growth. In the patriarchal 
 chief, as he moves westwards from Ur of the Chaldees, he 
 discerns the first figure in an unbroken succession, the 
 founder of the Chosen People, the first Father of the Uni- 
 versal Church. As with the date, so with the interests of 
 ecclesiastical history. ' If the Christian Church be not a 
 priestly caste, or a monastic order, or a little sect, or a 
 handful of opinions, but " the whole congregation " of 
 " faithful men " " dispersed throughout the world," ' then it 
 is impossible to understand the history of the Church apart 
 from the history of the world ; secular and religious, civil and 
 ecclesiastical, are inextricably commingled. He demands 
 for the history of the Church of God a range as wide as that 
 of the world which it was designed to penetrate. He pro- 
 tests against the narrowing processes by which theological 
 terms are clipped, marred, and debased, until a word like 
 
 ecclesiastical ' carries no further value in the currency of 
 language than that of contests for the retention or abolition 
 of vestments, or the accidental, outward, ceremonial 
 machinery of a Christian society. 
 
 The history of the world, he maintains, cannot be 
 severed from the history of the Church ; much more is it 
 impossible to separate the interests of the clergy from the 
 interests of the laity. The combination of secular and 
 religious elements is effected in various ways — sometimes 
 by the intellectual or political influence of the clergy, some- 
 times by the transfer of the spiritual guidance of mankind 
 to laymen. There are periods in the thirteenth or in the 
 fourteenth centuries when it was not to a priest, an ' Angelic 
 Doctor,' or a Bishop — not even to a Pope — that men looked 
 for the true interpretation of the feelings of mediaeval Chris- 
 tendom. It is, rather, to a high-minded ruler like St. Louis, 
 or a gifted writer like the poet Dante. At every stage in
 
 506 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1856-58 
 
 the history of the Enghsli Reformation is impressed the 
 iron will of Henry VIII. or Elizabeth, and above the 
 theological influence of the most gifted divine of the 
 seventeenth century stands that which was exercised by 
 the 'half-heretic, half-Puritan layman, the author of Para- 
 dise Lost.' 
 
 When Stanley, passing from the province of ecclesiastical 
 history to its study, asks how life may be restored to the 
 most withered forms and sapless institutions, he answers the 
 question with his own experience. Doctrines and opinions, 
 viewed through the medium of the lives and characters of 
 those who received and taught them, cease to be phantoms, 
 and speak as men. The practical justice and moderation of 
 creeds and confessions are best understood when students 
 figure to themselves the lips by which they were first uttered, 
 the hands by which they were first written. And in the 
 historical methods which he thus urged upon his hearers 
 he had himself found the best safeguard against the level- 
 ling tendencies of ecclesiastical study, which confound 
 things essential and unessential ; the strongest protection 
 against partiality or exclusiveness ; the fullest enjoyment of 
 the special privileges conferred by membership of a Church 
 which, in its constitution, origin, and formularies, touches 
 all the religious elements that have divided Christendom. 
 That man, adds Stanley, is the truest son of the Church of 
 England — 
 
 ' who, in the spirit of this union, feels himself free to sym- 
 pathise with the several elements and principles of good 
 which are thus combined — who knows that the strength of 
 a National Church, especially of the Church of a nation 
 like ours, lies in the fact that it has never been surrendered 
 exclusively to any one theological influence, and that the 
 Christian faith which it has inherited from all is greater 
 than the differences which it has inherited from each.' 
 
 From the province and the study of ecclesiastical
 
 CHAP. XV THE SPIRIT OF HIS LECTURES 507 
 
 history Stanley proceeds to its advantages. The first 
 advantage on which he seizes, and the illustration by which 
 it is enforced, are at once the fruit of his own experience 
 in the past and the promise of his personal influence in 
 the future. Ecclesiastical history teaches facts — the most 
 stubborn guides in the mazes of casuistry, ' the most con- 
 vincing ' and ' the least irritating modes of persuasion.' 
 
 ' The wrath which is kindled by an anathema, by an 
 opinion, by an argument, is often turned away by a homely 
 fact. It is like suddenly meeting an enemy face to face of 
 whom we have known only by report : he is different to 
 what we expected ; we cannot resist the pressure of his 
 hand and the glance of his eye ; he has ceased to be an 
 abstraction, he has become a person. How many elaborate 
 arguments respecting terms of salvation and terms of com- 
 munion are shivered to pieces, yet without offence, almost 
 without resistance, as they are " walked through " (if I may 
 use the expression) by such heathens as Socrates, such 
 Nonconformists as Howard, such Quakers as Elizabeth 
 Fry.' 
 
 One by one Stanley enumerates the advantages of the 
 study, till he reaches at last the comparison which eccle- 
 siastical history suggests between what the Church is and 
 what in the Scriptures it was intended to be — ' between what 
 it has been, and what from the same source we trust that 
 it maybe.' It is the fire of intense conviction which burns 
 beneath his words on the ' endless vigour and vitality ' of 
 the Scriptures. It is the force of an unquestioning faith, 
 based upon the warrant of those same Scriptures, which 
 inspires his trust in a new and greater future for the Church 
 of Christ. This prospect was the vision of the Delectable 
 Mountains, which, now clear, now clouded, but never wholly 
 obscured, encouraged all his efforts. ' Each age of the 
 Church has, as it were, turned over a new page in the Bible 
 and found a response to its own wants.' The hope that ' we 
 have still a leaf to turn, a leaf not the less new because it
 
 5o8 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1856-58 
 
 is so old,' was the mainstay of his life and the solace of 
 his death. Stanley lived and died in the conviction that 
 
 ' there were stores of spiritual strength yet unexplored in 
 the forces of the Christian Church ; that the existing mate- 
 rials, principles, and doctrines of the Christian religion 
 are far greater than have ever yet been employed ; that the 
 Christian Church, if it ever be permitted or enabled to use 
 them, has a long lease of new life, and new hope before it, 
 such as has never yet been enjoyed. When we look on 
 the Bible on the one hand, and history on the other — 
 when we see what are the points on which the Scriptures 
 lay most emphatic stress — when we remember how con- 
 stant is the protest of Scripture, and, we may add, of the 
 best spirits of Christendom also, against preferring any 
 cause, or opinion, or ceremony, to justice, holiness, truth, 
 and love — how constantly and steadily all these same in- 
 timations point to One Divine Object, and One only, as 
 the life and essence of Christianity — can we hesitate to 
 say that, if the Christian Church be drawing to its end, 
 or if it continue to its end with no other objects than those 
 which it has hitherto sought, it will end with its acknow- 
 ledged resources confessedly undeveloped, its finest hopes 
 of usefulness almost untried and undeveloped ? ' 
 
 Constituted as the University then was, Stanley's views 
 were certain to provoke opposition. The following letter ^ 
 from Dr. Pusey shows the light in which his opinions 
 were regarded by an influential party in Oxford : 
 
 ' My dear Stanley, — Now that you are coming among 
 us, I must say what I have not hitherto said. 
 
 ' Loving you personally, I was grieved not to be able 
 to congratulate you on your appointment. But I viewed 
 it with sorrow and fear. 
 
 ' I am sure that, whatever ground your and Professor 
 Jovvett's pupils occupy, it will not be yours. It must be 
 onward or backward. I have said to Professor Jowett that 
 I could not hold his faith for an hour. Intellectually it is, 
 I am sure, inconsistent, and although in some way his 
 
 ^ The letter and the answer are both undated. Both were probably 
 written in February 1S58, after the stall at Christ Church, which was 
 attached to the Professorship, had fallen vacant.
 
 CHAP. XV. CORRESPONDENCE WITH PUSEY 509 
 
 religious feeling enables him, I suppose, not to push things 
 to their results, with his pupils it must be different. 
 Pupils see the inconsistency, and either follow out theories 
 to their consequence, or give up the theory. But actual 
 unbelief has made frightful inroads already. 
 
 ' Of your later works I have read less. Only in the 
 " Sinai and Palestine " I see the shrinking from the mention 
 of miracles which, in the next generation, develops into 
 the unbelief of them. The reports which I have heard of 
 your lecture on Abraham were very distressing to me. 
 
 ' I do not care to involve you in needless controversy. 
 I only wished you to know that what might seem to you 
 coldness was not such, but simple distress. 
 
 ' Yours affectionately, 
 
 ' E. B. PuSEY.' 
 
 Stanley replied as follows : 
 
 'My dear Dr. Pusey, — I am much obliged to you for 
 your kind note and cordial welcome. I will not enter into 
 any controversy on the points you mention. You will, 
 however, perhaps permit me to say this much, I trust with 
 all due respect: — 
 
 ' First, as I know that you have greatly misunderstood 
 what my friend Professor Jowett has said on one class of 
 subjects, so I trust that you may also have misunderstood 
 what I may have said, or have been reported to have said, 
 on a different class of subjects. 
 
 ' Secondly, I would beg respectfully, but seriously, to 
 suggest to you that the fears which you express respecting 
 the tendency of the teaching of those from whom you differ 
 are the very same which are entertained by many excellent 
 persons respecting the tendency of the teaching of those 
 with whom you agree. 
 
 * I do not doubt that your teaching, which by many is 
 thought so dangerous, and necessarily conducing to results 
 that you would greatly deprecate, is to some amongst us 
 the best stay of their faith. But I am no less sure that 
 the teaching of those whom you dread may be, and is, the 
 best stay of the faith of others who, if your teaching were 
 their sole alternative, would be driven into utter unbelief 
 
 ' Forgive me if I have spoken more openly than our 
 respective positions would justify, and believe me that I 
 shall only be too anxious to believe that we have always
 
 5IO LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1856 58 
 
 the same object in view, namely, that of building up the 
 faith of the rising generation on a foundation which cannot 
 be shaken, and leaving the unknown results to God. 
 
 ' I remain, my dear Dr. Pusey, with many thanks for 
 former kindness, still gratefully remembered, 
 
 ' Yours very faithfully, 
 
 *A. P. Stanley.' 
 
 These two letters strike the keynote to the almost 
 perpetual discord of controversy in which, both at Oxford 
 and Westminster, Stanley was destined to live. For the 
 present, however, all was peace. The disappointment at 
 his cold reception in the University, and the pain of leaving 
 Canterbury, gradually passed away in the growing interest 
 of his new work. In May 1857 he began his continuous 
 course of professorial lectures at Oxford. But until a 
 canonical stall fell vacant at Christ Church he had no 
 settled house in the' University. He lodged at 1 15 High 
 Street, ' the same lodgings,' as he tells his mother, ' which 
 Arnold occupied before his marriage, as Fellow of Oriel' 
 In his letters throughout the term he speaks with increasing 
 pleasure of the numbers that attended his lectures ; of the 
 interest that he felt in the eighty ' pupils, hearers, learners, 
 disciples — suggest a name — ' who came to him for private 
 instruction ; and of the efforts which he was making to gain 
 the friendship of undergraduates in the freedom of social 
 intercourse. Before the summer term was over the charms 
 of Oxford had regained some of their former power : he 
 appreciated the influence which his new position enabled 
 him to exercise ; he grew reconciled to the thought of his 
 impending departure from Canterbury. 
 
 In July 1857 he started on a tour tlirough Russia, 
 taking with him a courier named Djarlieb and two com- 
 panions, one of whom was ' young Arthur Butler, the son of 
 the late Dean of Peterborough.' His principal object was 
 to study the history of the Greek Church.
 
 CHAP. XV FOREIGN TOUR OF 1^7 511 
 
 Sweden, which he visited on his way to St. Petersburg, 
 possessed for his mind four principal points of interest : 
 the old Scandinavian worship, the pure Saxon type pre- 
 sented by the inhabitants of Dalecarlia, the Lutheran 
 Church, and the fortunes of the Vasa family. But at 
 Stockholm, the Swedish Diet, and even the tombs and 
 relics of Gustavus Adolphus and of Charles XII., absorbed 
 him less than the search for the traditional stock, or log, 
 which, floating up the Malar Lake from Sigtuma, the 
 ancient capital of Sweden, guided the traditional settler 
 to the granite rocks on which Stockholm is built. The 
 venerable stock was nowhere to be found ; guide-books 
 gave no clue ; Swedish friends either had not heard of it, 
 or disbelieved its existence ; Djarlieb, the courier, sug- 
 gested that it had been burnt. Still Stanley persevered. 
 One morning he disappeared. His travelling-companion 
 was anxiously searching for him, when he was directed by 
 a friend to the vaults under a tower which had been turned 
 into a Government pawnshop. ' He has found his stock,' 
 added the informant. ' There sate Stanley,' writes the Rev. 
 A. G. Butler, ' in triumph, amid a small crowd of wonder- 
 ing Swedes, patting the log affectionately.' 
 
 The Swedish scenery, with its silence and its stillness, 
 its lakes and rivers, its long stretches of fir and birch woods, 
 alternating with open spaces dotted with red, wooden, to}'- 
 like cottages, made comparatively little impression. The 
 distances were often enormous, and the roads, to him, un- 
 interesting. But one proverb which he learned from the 
 courier on one of these journeys rewarded him for much 
 fatigue. In after-life it was often on his lips as a plea for 
 toleration. Djarlieb, unable to procure horses, was de- 
 nouncing the Swedish postmasters. ' They are,' he said, 
 ' as stupid as brute beasts, as stupid as the day they were 
 born. But then,' he added, resignedly, ' You cannot get
 
 512 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1857 
 
 '>nore out of an ox than beef! Stanley's enthusiasms were 
 reserved for other scenes than those of Nature. When 
 such an object lay before him as the graves of Thor, Freya, 
 and Odin, nothing exhausted his energy. At Upsala he 
 outlasted the strength of his youthful companions. Several 
 hours had been spent on reaching the place, several more 
 in seeing the sights of the old and new town. But seven 
 o'clock in the evening found him able to drive on alone, for 
 seven miles, across a wild moor, to see the ' Moor Stone,' 
 where the ancient kings of Sweden were crowned. 
 
 Prepared to find the Lutheran ritual puritanically plain 
 and bald, he was surprised at the gorgeousness of the 
 priestly vestments. In the Sacristy at Upsala he was 
 astonished at the splendour of the Archbishop's cope and 
 mitre. At a service at Stockholm ' the officiating priest 
 wore the most splendid vestment I have ever seen in any 
 church ; and who would have thought of meeting it in 
 Sweden ! ' For other reasons than those of ritual the Sunday 
 service at Lecksand, on the southern shores of Lake Silojan, 
 in the heart of Dalecarlia, impressed him vividly, more 
 strongly even than the Troll-hatten Falls and Old Upsala. 
 
 ' The church may be taken as a general type of the 
 Dalecarlian, or, indeed, the Swedish churches : a large white- 
 washed building, surmounted by a copper roof and dome ; 
 ladders leaning against the wall (as against the walls of all 
 the houses) in case of fire, and to roll off the winter snow ; 
 a belfry of wood, painted red ; a wide, straggling church- 
 yard. This is the parish church of one of the three great 
 parishes along the shores of the lake. The rector, to 
 whom I had a general commendation from the bishop of 
 the diocese, is the Dean of Westerol, and lives in a com- 
 fortable hou.se close by. ... He gave us due notice of the 
 time and mode of seeing the congregation arrive. We 
 went down to the lake, about half a mile from the village, 
 where the steep banks retire from a shady nook, and the 
 fir forests have left a small vacant space. Already when 
 we reached the spot at 7.30 A.M., they had begun to come.
 
 CHAP XV SWEDEN AND DALECARLA 
 
 513 
 
 Six boats were on the beach landing their crews, men and 
 women, all in their highest costume. 
 
 ' And on the broad waters of the lake six more were 
 seen approaching from various directions, each from its 
 own village on the opposite shore, where every slope and 
 promontory was sprinkled with the red cottages of the 
 populous region. Like birds with outstretched wings, the 
 white spots, with their outspread oars, came soaring to- 
 wards us, and all at last drove into the little creek. 
 
 ' It was such a spot as is given in pictures of Robinson 
 Crusoe's or Cook's voyages for the landing of the savages, 
 — perfectly silent and solitary ; the wild woods waving 
 above, the blue waters and yellow sand below. Silently, 
 and with the utmost composure, each party, usually thirty 
 from each boat, was disembarked, the men stepping out 
 first, and finding on the shore a pole or plank, which was 
 put against the boat, and down which the women walked, 
 shaking out their finery as they leaped on the shore. The 
 men were mostly dressed — as, indeed, in a lesser degree, 
 they are on work-days — in knee-breeches, white or yellow, 
 tied at the knees with parti-coloured strings, and long blue 
 cloth coats, embroidered at the shoulders ; the women in 
 white or red caps, and red and yellow gowns, and high- 
 heeled shoes. Some had brought their babies ; some, too, 
 were very little girls ; but all were dressed exactly the 
 same ; the youngest was a precise copy of the oldest. All 
 had light hair and blue eyes ; the men and boys had long 
 hair, cut round behind. Each carried his or her " Psalm- 
 book " (it is what in the Swedish Church answers to the 
 Prayer-book), carefully wrapped up, and in the other hand 
 a nosegay or a large bunch of onions, the latter for their 
 breakfast or luncheon. 
 
 ' As each party landed they wound through the path- 
 ways up the steep, sandy bank, through the dark fir-wood, 
 the men taking one path, the women another — paths worn, 
 doubtless, by the footsteps of centuries, for at this spot 
 who can say how many generations have, Sunday after 
 Sunday, disembarked, in the same boats, in the same order, 
 almost in the same dress, as now } They then gradually 
 spread over the village of Lecksand, and into the church- 
 yard. It was a bright sun, and scattered about they looked 
 like clusters of yellow flowers. Presently three coffins, 
 which had been brought in the boats, were lifted up and 
 
 VOL. I. L L
 
 514 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1857 
 
 carried to the churchyard, and then, high above the grave 
 on the slope of the hill, were piled the white caps, like a 
 pyramid of snow. All joined in the funeral Psalms. 
 
 ' This over, they streamed into the great church. The 
 pastor reckoned them at 5,000. Perhaps this was over the 
 mark ; but the church was quite full. The women were 
 .about double the number of men, and they sate apart. . . . 
 And then began the usual service — Psalms, prayers, and 
 sermon. It being Sacrament Sunday (indeed, there is a 
 Sacrament every Sunday), the pastor (the curate of the 
 Dean) read in his crimson cope, a huge crucifix standing 
 over one of the transepts. Strangely combined with it 
 are pictures of Gustavus Adolphus, Charles XII., and 
 Bernadotte. The men hung their hats on the many- 
 branched chandeliers, or on horned antlers of wood rising 
 out of the pews. 
 
 ' The Dean preached, as usual, on the Gospel of the 
 day, which happened to be the Transfiguration, which the 
 Swedish Church observes, though we do not. He had not 
 even a gown, but preached simply in his black coat, waving 
 a white handkerchief, which seems an inseparable part of 
 the costume. They were, with some occasional exceptions 
 of talking, very devout. We went out after the beginning 
 of the sermon, and I came in again as the sacramental part 
 of the service was ending and the elements carried off. 
 They administer with wafers. Then, gradually, the con- 
 gregation broke up in large masses, and finally dispersed 
 and disappeared. 
 
 ' .... It was a sight well worth the journey. There 
 was a comeliness in their faces, and brilliancy in their 
 dresses, a mixture of solemnity and festivity in their 
 whole manner, which made it most striking. As one saw 
 the dull, heavy face of the pastor, and contrasted it with 
 the beaming fervour of the flock, one could not help 
 thinking how independent and stable the religion of these 
 people must be, and how little it stands in need of any 
 modern revival. Long may the Sundays of the Dalecarlian 
 Lake flourish and abound !....' 
 
 On August 1st, 1857, Stanley left Stockholm by steamer 
 for Helsingfors and St. Petersburg. The sunrises and 
 sunsets of the Baltic passed almost unnoticed before his 
 eyes ; the innumerable fir-crowned islands provoked nothing
 
 CHAP. XV ST. PETERSBURG 515 
 
 but the remark, ' I feel as if I never wished to see an island 
 again as long as I live.' His Swedish interests had van- 
 ished ; the Russian interests lay in the future. The in- 
 termediate voyage, ' the blank part of the journey,' as he 
 calls it, was devoted to reading. He worked like a 
 general preparing for his campaign. ' And now,' he said 
 to A. G. Butler as they landed at St. Petersburg, ' for 
 Peter the Great and Ivan the Terrible.' The results of 
 the Russian tour are so fully embodied in his ' Lectures 
 on the Eastern Church ' that only a few extracts can be 
 given from his numerous and graphic letters. 
 
 To his cousin, the Hon. Louisa Stanley, he describes 
 his first drive through St. Petersburg : 
 
 ' Amidst a clatter and confusion almost equal to that 
 of the Cairo donkey-boys, we leap into the first empty 
 droshky that we find, and off we fly. 
 
 ' Do you know what a droshky is ? You and I have 
 imagined to ourselves, from our earliest years, though little 
 thinking that we should see with our mortal eyes an ancient 
 car and charioteer. But this is exactly what a droshky is 
 — a small light vehicle, which only wants scythes to make 
 it perfectly savage ; a light seat in front, on which sits a 
 charioteer, draped in a long robe, holding in both his hands 
 the reins of a fiery steed, which flies through the streets, 
 trampling all before him. You almost expect, as you look 
 back, to see Hector's body dragged behind. 
 
 ' You hold your breath at first, and think that man, 
 woman, and child will be swept before you, or that you 
 will be dashed to pieces against this or that droshky from 
 opposite quarters racing against you, or this splendid 
 carriage, four horses abreast, rushing by you like a whirl- 
 wind. Not so. Turning the sharpest corners, grazing 
 wheels and heels, but never with collision or confusion, 
 these charioteers pick their way. See ! we are passing 
 another droshky. Our driver gives the horse of his rival 
 a slash as he passes. The other driver wheels furiously 
 round, pursues us, overtakes us, catches, not our man, but 
 our horse, by the mane, slashes him violently, and vanishes 
 away.
 
 5l6 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1857 
 
 * But I have said nothing of what we have seen in the 
 streets. Wide thoroughfares, granite quays, storehouses, 
 barracks, offices, offices, barracks, storehouses — this is 
 Petersburg. Yet it, too, has its glories. Look at the broad, 
 majestic Neva, which, ages before Peter, gave its name to 
 the old Russian warrior-saint, Alexander of the Neva, 
 who now lies in a splendid tomb on its banks. Look at 
 the long line of palaces facing the quays. Look at the 
 gilded domes and spires, flashing like meteors, both by 
 sunlight and moonlight, above the churches. Yes ! with 
 all its faults, it is a truly imperial city, though the youngest 
 of all the European capitals. 
 
 ' Do you see those countless pigeons, everywhere, in 
 streets, and churches, and palaces ? They multiply and 
 multiply, because no Russian will kill what he believes to 
 be a likeness (curious and primitive belief) of the Holy 
 Spirit ! 
 
 ' Do you see that corner of the Imperial Palace on the 
 ground-floor.'' In, the little room which that corner con- 
 tains, on a little straw mattress, and bed without curtains, 
 Nicholas breathed his last. 
 
 ' Do you see that immense structure, covering an acre 
 of ground, like a second palace } It is the Imperial laundry. 
 This is the scale on which the Emperor lives.' 
 
 More durable than such general views of the imperial 
 city was the impression made on Stanley's mind by Peter 
 the Great. The man himself — with his gigantic stature, his 
 long black hair falling back from his fine forehead, his 
 fierce eyes, his mouth clothed with indomitable power — 
 became once more to the traveller's vivid imagination a 
 living being. Everywhere he marked the monuments of 
 Peter's herculean vigour : 
 
 ' The more one looks at this immense city, and thinks 
 of this mighty Emperor, the more one is struck by the 
 singular greatness of the man, who, with all his barbarism, 
 and all his weaknesses, and all his sins, conceived, and, by 
 one tremendous wrench, almost, you may say, by his own 
 manual labour and by his own sole gigantic strength, exe- 
 cuted the prodigious idea of dragging the nation into the
 
 CHAP. XV PETER THE GREA T 5 1 7 
 
 light of Europe, and erecting a new capital and a new 
 empire amongst the cities and the kingdoms of the world.' 
 
 And as Stanley travels through Russia to Moscow the 
 immensity of Peter's task grew upon his mind. ' If you 
 wish,' he writes to his friend, Mr. (now Sir) George Grove, 
 
 ' to bring out the dramatic effect of Russian history, it 
 could not be better done than by the contrast between 
 Moscow and Petersburg — the great Eastern nation striv- 
 ing to become Western, or, rather, the nation, half-Eastern, 
 half- Western, dragged against its will by one gigantic genius, 
 literally dragged by the heels and kicked by the boots of 
 the Giant Peter into contact with the European world.' 
 
 But even Peter the Great yielded to the fascinations of 
 the subject which Stanley had come to study — the history 
 of the Greek Church. The task was one of extreme diffi- 
 culty. Without knowing a word of the language, it was 
 not easy to penetrate the meaning of symbols, sacred 
 pictures, ritual, and ceremonial observances. Djarlieb, the 
 courier, not only spoke Russian imperfectly, but despised 
 ' ecclesiastical trifles,' and therefore proved an inefficient 
 interpreter. When Stanley, with eager look and half- 
 parted lips, poured forth a string of questions to the 
 bearded, solemn, semi-Oriental priest who acted as his 
 guide through the Church of the Assumption at Moscow, 
 the answers received no other explanation from the courier 
 than ' Ce n'est rien ! ce n'est qu'une idee ! ' Day after day 
 he returned, full of a disappointment that bordered on despair, 
 from a building which, from cupola to pavement, was burst- 
 ing with tombs, pictures, inscriptions, and symbolism. ' One 
 moves about,' as he wrote to Professor Jowett, ' like a 
 Homeric hero in thick darkness, protected sometimes by a 
 god or goddess, sometimes by a very inadequate Hermes, 
 and has to guess at the world as it passes before one.' 
 
 His Russian friends eagerly lent themselves to the task
 
 5l8 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1857 
 
 of helping him. Memories of the Crimean War were still 
 so recent that an Englishman at first met with a cold 
 reception. But few Russians could resist Stanley's enthu- 
 siasm and interest in all that they most valued. Astonished, 
 flattered, charmed, they became his devoted allies. Only 
 once did he give offence to his hosts. General Mouravieff 
 had taken special pains to procure him from England some 
 English porter. Stanley drank it without comment or 
 remark. When the General asked him how he liked his 
 porter, he was obliged to confess that he had not known 
 what he was drinking. Everywhere his friends helped 
 him in every way they could. But their knowledge was 
 not proportioned to their kindness. Stanley seemed as 
 far as ever from getting to the heart of things. Suddenly 
 light dawned. A fortunate introduction made him ac- 
 quainted with Michael Sukatin, a judge in the Court of 
 Justice, 'a patriot to the backbone, orthodox to the heart's 
 core, with an answer ready for every question.' Sukatin 
 became at once ' I'homme precieux,' the interpreter, the 
 expounder, whom Stanley and his friends had anxiously 
 sought. 
 
 Absorbed in his ecclesiastical inquiries, he took little 
 interest in the traces of Napoleon's occupation of Moscow. 
 So, too, at Novgorod he was comparatively indifferent to 
 the picturesque crowds of Persians, Tartars, and Russians, 
 who thronged the world-famous fair ; the sight which chiefly 
 excited him was a puppet-show of the Coronation of the 
 Emperor. His imagination, essentially human and his- 
 torical, allowed but a passing glance at the celebrated view 
 of the junction of the Oka with the Volga, or at the vast, 
 sweeping, illimitable plains, which stretched far away to the 
 regions of the frozen North. But where ecclesiastical 
 history was concerned nothing escaped his eye. Eager 
 to reach the ultimate sources of knowledge, and always
 
 CHAP. XV INTEREST IN THE RUSSIAN CHURCH 519 
 
 ready with questions for particular persons, which they 
 alone could best answer, he spared no pains to secure trust- 
 worthy information, by personal interviews with the highest 
 living authorities, such as Philaret, the venerable Metropo- 
 litan of Moscow. Day after day, with unflagging interest, 
 he watched the crowds of worshippers and penitents going 
 through their prostrations and genuflexions with the fervour 
 and intensity of absolute faith. ' Their ritual,' he would 
 say to A. G. Butler, ' means more to them, and does more 
 for them, than our ritual has ever done, or can ever do, for 
 us.' No Russian peasant excelled Stanley in the reve- 
 rential pleasure with which he passed bareheaded through 
 the Gate of the Redeemer, or in the delight with which he 
 observed all ceremonies that were neither corrupted nor 
 unmeaning. No Russian patriot surpassed him in the 
 enthusiasm with which he looked upon some painting that 
 was known to have inspired the courage of a Demetrius of 
 the Don, a Peter the Great, or an Alexander at the Beresina. 
 And, before he left Russia, few natives had more vividly 
 realised the lives and characters of the national saints, and 
 the incidents in their history which entitled them to vene- 
 ration. 
 
 Gradually, as Stanley grasped the central features of 
 the history of the Russian Church, events grouped them- 
 selves round three cities, parted into periods, and centred 
 round representative men. The first, or ancient, period is 
 identified with the conversion of the Sclavonic races, 
 associated with Kieff, linked with the name of Vladimir, 
 who was baptised in 980. The enormous distance and the 
 disturbed state of the country prevented the travellers from 
 reaching Kieff, by tradition the Glastonbury, and in fact 
 the Canterbury, of Russia. The early period was, therefore, 
 studied only from books, and is scarcely touched upon in 
 his letters. The mediaeval and the transition periods,
 
 520- LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1857 
 
 dating from the fourteenth century, and ending with the 
 close of the seventeenth, have Moscow for their centre : 
 their history gathers round the Troitzka Monastery, or the 
 Kremlin, and is associated with St. Sergius, with Ivan the 
 Terrible, and the Patriarch Nicon. The fourth period, 
 beginning with the eighteenth century, and continuing to 
 the present day, is in its commencement identified with 
 Peter the Great and the foundation of St. Petersburg, and 
 in its more modern aspect may be represented by the 
 Metropolitan, Philaret. 
 
 Moscow, the sacred city of the second and third periods, 
 forms the point of contact with the fourth, or Reformation, 
 era. Stanley thus describes his first view of the city : 
 
 ' As soon as we had turned ourselves round, we threw 
 ourselves into a carriage, and drove straight to the Kremlin. 
 How strange is the sensation — now familiar by repetition, 
 yet not the less thrilling for that — to rush forward to a 
 sight long imagined, but beheld for the first time ! How 
 delightful, I must confess, to feel that even after Athens, 
 Rome, Thebes, Jerusalem, there is a flood of enthusiasm 
 still to be let forth at one more glorious view ! In one 
 instant it breaks upon you, looking down from the terrace 
 of the Kremlin — the whole vast expanse of the sacred city. 
 No panorama had given me the impression of its vast 
 extent. It is like a boundless plain of green, the green 
 roofs diversified with innumerable islands of forest and 
 garden, out of which spring up, like weeds and flowers, blue, 
 red, green, yellow, silver, golden, the domes of hundreds of 
 churches and convent-towers. The river flows beneath. 
 Beyond, on the horizon, is the long line of the Sparrow Hills, 
 crowned with firs. Behind is the Kremlin. . . . such a 
 collection of historical and architectural marvels as I have 
 not seen in one place out of the great Piazza of S. Mark's.' 
 
 Sixty miles from Moscow lies the great monastery of 
 Sergius, the Monastery oi the Troitzka,'* or Trinity. 
 
 ^ See Lectw-es on the Eastern Church, Lecture x.
 
 CHAP. XV THE TROITZKA MONASTERY 52 1 
 
 Stanley visited the place in the company of Prince Urusoff 
 and Michael Sukatin. 
 
 '. . . Nothing can be more truly Russian than the whole 
 history and appearance of the convent. Sergius was a 
 hermit in the fourteenth century, lived in the forest with 
 the bears, and finally acquired the same kind of influence 
 that the old Anchorites had in Syria and Egypt. When 
 the heart of Demetrius failed him in his advance against 
 the Tartars, it was the remonstrance of Sergius that pre- 
 vailed. From this time he has acquired the character of 
 a champion of Russia against all her enemies. The first 
 time that I ever heard his name (unless, indeed — which is 
 just possible — serge cloth is derived from him) was seeing 
 that the present Emperor named his last-born son after 
 " Sergius, the holy mediator of Russia." 
 
 '. . . The monasteries, at different periods of Russian 
 history, became the sole refuge of the hopes of the nation. 
 Besides the deliverance from the Tartars, there was a calami- 
 tous period in Russian history, when Czar, and Patriarch, and 
 Moscow itself were swallowed up in the Polish invasion, 
 and there was every chance that Russia would have become 
 a province of Poland. Then this monastery, by the as- 
 tonishing energy of its prior and bursar, resisted a long 
 siege, maintained the patriotic spirit alive, and thus became 
 the centre of all the national feelings of the Empire. The 
 result is, that not only are the pilgrimages of the lower 
 classes here constant, but no Emperor ever comes to 
 Moscow without going there. The terrible Ivan built half 
 the present edifices. The wicked Catherine used to go 
 there on foot from Moscow — by easy stages, five miles a 
 day. My two companions had both made their first journey 
 there on foot, and the Prince said that all his family would 
 expect him, on his return, to bring back with him memorials 
 of the place. . . . 
 
 ' We rose at 7, and went at once to see the Prior. He is 
 a tall, handsome man of about 60, Antony by name. . . . 
 He took us all over the Monastery himself ; then announced 
 that a carriage and horses were prepared to take us to the 
 more distant establishments, in which we drove for about 
 four miles. He loaded me with presents — books, pictures, 
 &c. — and when I thanked him, and said that I was afraid I 
 should be plundering the convent, as if I had been a Pole,
 
 522 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1857 
 
 he caught me in his arms and embraced me with such enthu- 
 siasm that my companions thought I should be smothered. 
 .... The monastery is, like all Russian monasteries, a vast 
 fortress ; indeed, it is much the same kind of place as the 
 Kremlin — nine churches of all colours and sizes, piles of 
 buildings for prior, monks, painters of sacred pictures, bakers 
 of holy bread ; a palace, once used for the Emperors, now 
 for an academy, almost a university. . . . 
 
 ' In the Treasury there was to be seen the gradual change 
 from the rough vestment in which Sergius officiated, up to 
 the magnificent robes, loaded with jewels and gilding, which 
 his successors have received. In like manner, his wooden 
 chalice transforms itself into a mass of wealth — gifts from 
 every Czar. 
 
 ' In the Church, where Sergius himself is buried, you see 
 the exact spot, behind the altar, where Peter and his mother 
 took refuge when they were pursued by the Strelitzes. The 
 murderers rushed into the Church, and nothing but the 
 altar and its sanctity stood between them and the extra- 
 ordinary boy who was to change the fate of Russia. A 
 tower is still shown from which he used to shoot ducks, 
 and an ivory box which he turned whilst he was in refuge 
 in the convent. 
 
 ' Another curious sight and custom in the Convent of 
 the Troitzka is the bakehouse of the sacred bread. There 
 are two vestiges of ancient practice for which this is neces- 
 sary. As in primitive times the Christians made their 
 meal of the food which each brought for the Communion, 
 so now the bread from which Eucharistic elements are 
 taken is bought in the churches by the people, given by 
 them to the priest, and what is not used is given back — or 
 even it may be taken before it is used at all. (Such a roll 
 they gave to me, which I shall keep as an instructive, relic.) 
 The other is, that after vespers rolls were given to support 
 the worshippers through the night. This, too, is still con- 
 tinued, though vespers and matins arc now merged in one. 
 This also I have as a parting gift from the Prior. 
 
 ' After the evening service at 7 I'.M. we went to the 
 Academy, and there, by appointment, met the Head of the 
 Academy and the two (lay) Professors — of General and of 
 Ecclesiastical History. Here it was that my two Russian 
 friends were indispensable. None of the three dignitaries 
 could speak anything but Russ ; but the two interpreters
 
 CHAP. XV THE TROITZKA MONASTERY 
 
 52. 
 
 plied their task with such quickness and energy that I 
 think it rather increased than diminished the interest of 
 the conversation. For three hours there was one incessant 
 fire of questions and answers. First they began upon me, 
 and begged me to explain the constitution of the University 
 of Oxford. I did it partly by taking the Troitzka as a 
 parallel. They were perfectly attentive. Then I had my 
 turn. I made the Professor expound his course of Eccle- 
 siastical History, and the Head his course of Pastoral 
 Theology. This led to a long discussion on confession and 
 pictures ; then questions from him about the P^nglish 
 Church, and about the Fast-day services, which gave me 
 an opportunity of telling him about Woodall's commenda- 
 tion of the Imperial Family to the prayers of the congrega- 
 tion. It was hard work, as you may suppose, in French. 
 But there was something so stimulating, almost touching, 
 in their extreme pleasure and eagerness (they had never 
 been out of Russia, probably not even to Petersburg) in 
 making the most of this novel opportunity, that it was 
 impossible not to be warmed by it in return. And I think 
 that the Prince and Michael enjoyed it as much as any- 
 one. We were tenderly kissed on our departure, and had 
 a not unpleasant journey home. I still went on talking 
 to Michael till i A.M. At 6 a.m. we called on Mouravieff,' 
 to give an account of our proceedings. I am to have one 
 more turn in the Kremlin with him on Saturday.' 
 
 At Moscow itself Stanley found ' hardly anything else 
 to be seen except the Kremlin ; but the Kremlin is inex- 
 haustible. It is the Tower, Westminster Abbey, Canterbury 
 Cathedral, Windsor Castle, Lambeth, all crammed to- 
 gether within the space of a quarter of an hour's circuit.' 
 The vast extent, the irregularity, and the multiplicity of the 
 buildings, the coloured domes, the girdle of crusted green 
 towers, the view of the city which it commanded, made it 
 ' irresistible.' Palaces and public buildings, erected at 
 every conceivable angle, formed an architectural labyrinth, 
 in which the churches were the only landmarks : and yet 
 
 ^ Andrew Mouravieff, the historian of the Russian Church, and brother of 
 the Conqueror of Kars.
 
 524 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1857 
 
 these were only separated and distinguished from each 
 other by the variety in the number and colour of their 
 cupolas. Round the three Cathedrals of the Annunciation, 
 the Archangel, and the Assumption, hang the fortunes of 
 the Russian Empire. In the first were celebrated all Im- 
 perial marriages, in the second were buried all the Czars 
 down to the time of Peter the Great, in the third the 
 Patriarchs are buried and the Emperors crowned. 
 
 ' The Kremlin is surrounded by a vast wall, exactly like 
 that of the Alhambra (only white instead of red), even to 
 the flame-shaped parapets, the wall itselfgirdled by gateway- 
 towers, mostly of crusted green. Each of the gateway- 
 towers contains a gate of some peculiar name ; the gateway 
 at the corner the Holy Gate, through which you may 
 imagine how I pass with an undiminished delight each time, 
 hat in hand, every human being who passes through it, 
 though it were the Emperor himself, doing the same. This 
 is the approach. 
 
 ' Immediately outside the Holy Gateway stands the 
 Church of St. Basil, built by the mysterious, monstrous, 
 marvellous Czar, Ivan the Terrible, the son of Basil. 
 Pagoda on pagoda, pinnacle on pinnacle, chapel within 
 chapel, cupola clustering on cupola, dome upon dome, 
 it is senseless, useless, pointless, but most characteristic of 
 the man, the place, and the time. Hundreds of artists 
 and architects were kidnapped in Lubeck to build it ; the 
 architect had his eyes put out, that he might never build 
 another. 
 
 ' You enter the Kremlin, and then come, jostled together 
 in the wildest confusion, four palaces, two monasteries, four 
 cathedrals, seven churches, and I know not what besides. 
 The three Imperial palaces are all attached together. 
 They represent the three elements of the Empire : — the old 
 barbaric grotesqueness, the modern magnificence of the 
 Emperor's state, and the unadorned simplicity of his private 
 life. The last speaks for itself ; the second is represented in 
 the three halls of St. George, St. Vladimir, and St. Andrew, 
 each opening into the other, till at the end of St. Andrew's 
 Hall you come upon the Throne of the Czar, blazing with 
 the emblems of all the Russian provinces, as each Hall
 
 CHAP. XV THE KREMLIN 525 
 
 blazes with the emblems of the three superior Orders. 
 Nothing in any other palace, ancient or modern, Eastern or 
 Western, can be named with this suite of gorgeous 
 grandeur. 
 
 ' Yet, far more interesting was the first which I named, 
 the Ancient Palace of the Czars, in part remaining, in part 
 restored, as it was left by the last of the Moscow sovereigns, 
 Alexis, father of Peter. ... In the centre of all these 
 palaces stands the oldest church in Moscow, of " the Saviour 
 in the Forest," built wdiilst the virgin forest, of which large 
 parts still remain in the neighbourhood of Moscow, still 
 covered the site of the Kremlin.' 
 
 Again and again Stanley returns to the Kremlin ; and 
 each time, as he enters, he is, as it were, fascinated by the 
 Cathedral of St. Basil, the petrifaction, the personification 
 in stone of Ivan the Terrible, looking like the dream of a 
 diseased imagination, in shape, colour, and arrangement 'the 
 monstrous creation of a monster in human form.' 
 
 Of all the three cathedrals, the Cathedral of the As- 
 sumption,^ or of the Repose, or Last Sleep of the Virgin, 
 impressed him most deeply. 
 
 ' There is nothing on the outside to distinguish it from 
 the other two. ... It has no merit of size, for it is not 
 larger than a college chapel ; nor of architecture, for there is 
 hardly an attempt at architectural ornament. But it is a 
 Russian church, full-blown in all its details, with no admix- 
 ture whatever of any of the modern innovations which, 
 since Peter's time, have been slowly dragging the Russians 
 into the imitation of Western usages. . . . 
 
 ' Shall I confess that the only building of which it in the 
 least reminded me was the great Hall of Karnac, at Thebes ? 
 In one sense, of course, the resemblance to Egypt is quite 
 accidental. Neither Ivan the Great, nor Sophia, his Greek 
 wife, nor Aristotle, his Italian architect, nor the architects 
 of the old Cathedral of Vladimir, whence this was faithfully 
 copied, could ever have seen or dreamed of Thebes. Yet, 
 in another sense, it is most national. So far as I know. 
 
 ^ For a plan of Ihe Church, see Stanley's Eastern Chinr/i.
 
 526 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1857 
 
 Egypt and Russia are the only two countries in which pic- 
 tures have played so sacred and essential a part in the 
 religious feeling and instruction of the people. . . . One 
 reason for this is the fact that Vladimir the Great, the first 
 Christian prince of Russia, was converted by the sight 
 of a Greek picture of the Last Judgment ; and thus the 
 reminiscence of the first introduction of Christianity seems 
 to have become inseparably mixed with its later growth. 
 . . . Round the walls of the Cathedral lie, in coffins 
 ranged along its sides, the long line of the Metropolitans 
 and Patriarchs. It is the Patriarchal Cathedral. Four 
 of them are canonised. ... It was in the centre of this 
 church, high on a platform rising halfway to the roof, that 
 the Coronation took place — as it has done in every case 
 from the foundation of the Russian Empire. . . . This was 
 not a mere show or ceremony, but a serious act, an awful 
 consecration of himself by himself to that tremendous 
 eminence. I fancy I see him standing there aloft, where 
 Ivan and Michael and Peter and Nicholas have stood 
 before. Will Nicholas, the son of Alexander, be crowned 
 there also t Or will Petersburg be too strong for Moscow, 
 and will the next Emperor desert the Kremlin Cathedral 
 for the Isaak Church beside the Neva .^ ' 
 
 In this cathedral Stanley witnessed the Festival of the 
 Assumption : 
 
 ' I shall describe the ceremony of to-day. From the 
 moment I left England I foresaw that this must be the day 
 for which I must aim — the day of the Assumption in the 
 Cathedral of the Assumption, or, as I said, of the Repose 
 in the Cathedral of the Repose. I put myself under the 
 charge of M. Sukatin, and at 9.30 A.M. went with him to 
 the church, which was thronged ; all standing from first to 
 last, and the service was three hours. I need not describe 
 it in detail. It was, in fact, what I had already seen at 
 St. Petersburg, but far more interesting, both from the 
 place and the man ; for at the head of that gorgeous pro- 
 cession — copes, and dalmatics, and crowns, and mitres, that 
 might have roused envy, not only in the minds of poor 
 craving Puseyites, but of any Pope or cardinal in the West 
 — came tottering between his two enormous archdeacons,
 
 CHAP. XV CATHEDRAL OF THE ASSUMPTION 527 
 
 wan as a shadow, his h"ps moving, but his gentle whisper 
 itself inaudible, our good old friend Philaret." 
 
 ' His transparent, aged features looked as if they were 
 far above any outward thing ; even when the comb of two 
 inches broad was presented to him to draw through the 
 outstanding flakes of his hair and beard there was such a 
 simplicity that it was impossible to take offence. Some 
 parts of the Sacramental Service were, I thought, exceed- 
 ingly curious and instructive in special points of view. 
 There were also some points of general interest. One 
 striking circumstance was, that whenever the Metropolitan 
 advanced from the altar to give his blessing, which he did 
 many times over, there was always thrown under his feet a 
 carpet embroidered with the eagle of old Pagan Rome, 
 to indicate that the Christian Church and Empire of Con- 
 stantinople had succeeded and triumphed over it. Another 
 moment was the appearance of three choristers before the 
 altar, to represent the Three Children of the Furnace. On 
 this day, too, alone in the year, was brought out the Book 
 of the Gospel presented by Peter's mother, so huge in size, 
 so loaded with ornaments, that two strong minor canons 
 could hardly carry it for Philaret to read from it. . . . The 
 singing struck me as beautiful, and, even more than the 
 singing, the solemn and death-like silences. But the read- 
 ing, the repetition, was intolerable. If I were to say that 
 the Russian words for " Lord, have mercy upon us " were, 
 with inconceivable rapidity, uttered 300 times, I should be 
 under the mark ; and the prayers for the Imperial Family 
 were given over and over again in like manner. . . .' 
 
 In the same cathedral Stanley attended the service to- 
 commemorate the Coronation of the previous year : 
 
 ' Prince Urusoff came in full uniform to fetch me, and 
 I, for my part, went in black-and-white. All the official 
 persons were there in full costume. After the close of the 
 usual service the peculiar part of the ceremony began. 
 Considerable excitement prevailed when a desk was erected 
 on the platform in front of the screen, and Philaret himself 
 advanced to preach. There was not the slightest intima- 
 tion of discontent at this unexpected prolongation of a 
 
 ' See Lecture xii. of the Eastern Church, and Stanley's article on 
 * Philaret ' in Maanillan's Magazine for February 1868.
 
 528 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1857 
 
 service already sufficiently long. On the contrary, a uni- 
 versal murmur ran round the official circle : " Le Metro- 
 politain va prccher lui-meme." All the high personages 
 pressed round and bent forward, hand above ear, to catch 
 every word, and a death-like silence pervaded the whole 
 church. 
 
 ' There stood the old man in his long white cowl. The 
 paper was spread out before him, and he turned over the 
 leaves, but he scarcely looked at them. At first his voice 
 hardly rose above a whisper, but gradually rose sufficiently 
 distinct for a few words to reach even my ears. It was a 
 very fine sight certainly, and one of which the Russian 
 Church might well be proud — Philaret himself, at the age 
 of seventy-six, commanding this breathless attention and 
 admiration from a congregation chiefly consisting of men. 
 Behind him stood another archbishop (a simple, plain, 
 vigorous man). Archbishop of Kamtschatka, or Russian 
 North America, who is here for the first time for seventeen 
 years, which he has spent in driving about his immense 
 diocese in a sledge drawn by reindeer, converting the 
 heathen subjects of the Empire. Leaning against the wall 
 was the third archbishop, the blind old Eugenius, of whom 
 I have spoken before ; he has resigned the See of Siberia, 
 to pass the rest of his days in retirement in the Monastery 
 of Dackoi. 
 
 ' The sermon lasted for about a quarter of an hour. I 
 could see by the faces of those round me and by the 
 gestures of old Philaret himself how striking it was. He 
 described the scene of this day last year — the magnificent 
 assemblage, the splendour, the summer sun pouring his 
 rays through the Cathedral windows, the Emperor and 
 Empress high on their exalted throne, full of grandeur, yet 
 full also of humility, for the whole service was nothing else 
 but a prostration of the highest earthly power before the 
 God of Gods— the consecration, the Communion. Then, 
 suddenly changing his tone : " But do not suppose that the 
 grace of the coronation, however great, is sufficient to 
 enable a sovereign to make his people happy and holy 
 without their concurrence. It is for you to follow out this 
 ceremony, to co-operate with this grace ; I need not argue 
 it by text of Scripture, I appeal to your reason and com- 
 mon-sense whether it is not so." So Urusoff and Sukatin 
 explained to me afterwards.
 
 CHAP. XV CATHEDRAL OF THE ASSUMPTION 529 
 
 ' Then, the three archbishops being seated on three 
 thrones in the centre of the church, the old Archdeacon 
 read the usual prayers for the Emperor and family, and 
 appropriate passages from the Psalms : " Give him the 
 valour of David and the wisdom of Solomon." Then came 
 the Epistle, from Rom. xiii., read by a younger deacon, 
 whose voice even surpassed that of his elder brother. . . . 
 I never heard anything like it . . . the sound rising at the 
 close with each successive word — 
 
 ' " Tribute to ivhovi Tribute is due ; 
 Custom to whom Custom ; 
 Fear to whom fear ; 
 HONOUR TO WHOM HONOUR." 
 
 ' Nothing else can represent to you the kind of triumph 
 with which he looked round as the last word resounded 
 through the Cathedral. 
 
 ' With a contrast most remarkable did this volume of 
 sound compare itself with the silver, trickling rill of the 
 Metropolitan's voice as he read the Gospel : " Render unto 
 Caisar the things that be Caesar's, and unto God the things 
 that be God's." 
 
 'Then Philaret began in the same gentle voice a prayer 
 of humiliation, preceding the Te Deum, which was to be 
 the climax of the service ; and for this prayer — a circum- 
 stance most unusual in the Russian Church, and only 
 occurring on this and a few like occasions — the whole con- 
 gregation from their standing position fell upon their knees. 
 . . . From the extreme awkwardness with which the officers 
 did it, it was evident how unaccustomed an attitude it was. 
 The prayer ended, the congregation rose, and instantly 
 the choir broke out in the Russian tones of the Te Deum, 
 the bells of the Cathedral chiming in at the same moment. 
 It sang on in a joyful strain till it reached the verse, "We 
 pray Thee to help Thy servants," when it sank into a low, 
 gentle supplication, and then again rose with the words : 
 " O Lord, save Thy people, and help Thine heritage " ; the 
 Imperial Anthem ; and so the service .ended. Loud and 
 long sounded the great bell of Ivan the Great, a sound 
 enough to make the ghosts of Czars and Patriarchs rise from 
 their graves. If this mere shadow of the Coronation was 
 so magnificent, what must have been the reality ? 
 
 ' Before the Coronation Service yesterday I went with 
 VOL. I. MM
 
 530 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1857 
 
 the English Chaplain to see the departure of the Siberian 
 exiles. They had already started, and were halting by 
 the roadside for the first of the many halts of their long 
 journey. There were about twenty. All were on foot 
 except the sick, who were in carts. A guard of mounted 
 Cossacks surrounded them, and groups of bystanders were 
 giving them alms. One woman was weeping bitterly as 
 her daughter parted from her — I suppose for ever. It 
 is difficult to remember that they are merely convicts 
 sentenced to transportation. " The sentence was pro- 
 nounced by us," said the gentle Michael when I told him 
 what I had been to see.' 
 
 After Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great, Stanley 
 found the most picturesque figure in Russian history to 
 be the Patriarch Nicon, ' a mixture of Becket and Luther, 
 a great reformer.' As the character of the first is embodied 
 in the Church of. St. Basil, and that of the second in 
 St. Petersburg, so the character of the Patriarch is repre- 
 sented in ' The New Jerusalem.' 
 
 ' In the seventeenth century, contemporary with Crom- 
 ^\■ell, lived the Patriarch Nicon. . . . He ruled clergy and 
 laity alike with what is still remembered as such " a hedge- 
 hog hand " that both combined for his destruction. One 
 man only stood by him, and that was the Czar Alexis, 
 father of Peter. He at last gave way, and then, through 
 a succession of extraordinary scenes, Nicon fell. It was 
 in the day of his power that Alexis and he were standing 
 on a small hill on a part of the Patriarchal estates more 
 broken and picturesque than is usual, when Alexis, who 
 had, in a wonderful degree, the Russian frenzy for imita- 
 tion, said : " What a beautiful place for a New Jerusalem!" 
 " So be it," said Nicon. " Here .shall be the church, built 
 exactly after the model of the Church of the Holy 
 Sepulchre. This shall be the Mount of Olives ; that little 
 stream shall be the Kedron ; that river, the Jordan ; that 
 wooded hill, Mount Tabor." Neither Nicon nor Alexis 
 could produce the slightest similarity between the natural 
 features of Russia and of Palestine, any more than Bernar- 
 dino Calot at Varallo. But he did what he could for the 
 church. He had agents at that time in the East collecting
 
 CHAP. XV THE PATRIARCH NICON 531 
 
 MSS. for his j^reat revision of the Russian Hturgies, which 
 gave birth to the vast disruption of the Russian Church 
 when it came to a head in the reign of Peter. These agents 
 he charged to bring an exact model of the Church of the 
 Holy Sepulchre. The result was the present Church of 
 " the New Jerusalem," which, though extremely like an 
 ordinar}' Russian cathedral, with gilded domes, &c., and 
 further altered by the addition of successive chapels by 
 each member of the Imperial Family, is internally so pre- 
 cisely of the same dimensions and form as that at Jerusa- 
 lem that, intricate as it is, I could immediately find my 
 way through every part. It was more than interesting — it 
 was affecting, to find myself once again amidst those 
 winding passages and crooked stairs and dark chambers ; 
 and I was pleased to find that five years had in no way 
 impaired my recollection of any spot. What makes this 
 church of permanent value is, that having been copied 
 from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre before the great 
 fire of 1830, it is more like, in some respects, to what the 
 old church was than is the church itself now. This, then, 
 was the first interest of the place. We went in a body, 
 with the Patriarch,*^ towering high above us, at our heels ; 
 he also had been at the Old Jerusalem, and was thus an 
 excellent guide, and performed his task admirably. The 
 other pilgrims, who were in great numbers, gathered round, 
 so that partly in French and partly in Russ he had a large 
 moving congregation to address. . . .' 
 
 It was with an effort that Stanley tore himself awa}' 
 from Moscow. His letters end with a description of his 
 last conversation with Michael Sukatin, the man who more 
 than any other had contributed to the pleasure and profit 
 of his expedition : 
 
 ' How wonderfully instructive my stay at Moscow has 
 been you wiU by this time have seen — instructive in all 
 ways ; yet I do not know whether, after all, the most 
 beautiful and delightful recollection that I shall carry away 
 will not be Michael Sukatin. . . . Not beautiful in outward 
 aspect, for he has nothing to commend him ; and I am 
 almost afraid of seeing him, or of others seeing him, out 
 
 •* Stanley's nickname for Andrew JMouravieff, the historian.
 
 53- LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 185? 
 
 of his own country, so extremely plain and unprepossess- 
 ing is his whole appearance and manner. lUit there is a 
 transparent goodness and candour, united with an innocent 
 playfulness and perfect intelligence and knowledge, that is 
 quite captivating. Yesterday we took a long drive to a 
 wood in the neighbourhood, on the broken banks of the 
 Moskva, a spot which with ease might be made truly 
 beautiful. As it is, it is a shaggy thicket of birch and 
 pine, in which he and I wandered to and fro, discussing 
 and questioning, till you might have thought we must have 
 exhausted everything. On coming home we had still one 
 long talk. I put to him this question : " What is your 
 idea of the future of the Eastern Church in its relations 
 to the West ? What are we to learn from you ? and how 
 will you deal with us in closer contact }" . . . His answer 
 would take sheets to write. The substance of it was : 
 " What I chiefly expect, and hope for, is the pacifying 
 effect which will be produced on the controversies of the 
 West when they come to a knowledge of a Church which 
 has never entered into those controversies, which has stood 
 firm on the basis of the early centuries before they rose, 
 which has the deeply-rooted idea of the fixed and stable 
 character of the ancient traditions, without the slightest 
 tendency to proselytise. ..." I spoke of the great im- 
 pression which was made upon me by the religious devo- 
 tions of the laymen. He said : " You must not take those 
 you have seen for an average specimen. It would not be 
 so at Petersburg. . . . Yet there is a truth also, thank 
 God, in what you have seen." " There are those amongst 
 us who believe " (and his eyes glistened, and his cheeks 
 glowed, and his hands were clasped as he said it) — " who 
 believe that Russia has received a precious treasure in the 
 religious Faith which has been given to her. . . . God 
 grant that she may keep it. . . . Yet I often doubt and 
 fear whether we shall not rather be shipwrecked on the 
 wrath of God. . . . And I think, with fear, whether there 
 will be found the ten righteous men." ... I asked whether 
 he was not afraid of the questions and speculations of 
 Germany, &c. " Not in the least," he said, " if we are but 
 true to ourselves. We have no difficulty in entering into 
 the thoughts and feelings of others. We are only too able 
 and ready to do it. But it is no new thing to us, and 
 though the clergy may be unequal, in their present state,
 
 CHAP. XV IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 533 
 
 to meet the case, the laity are not ; and the Eastern Church, 
 thanks be to God, has never ruled that the clergy alone 
 have the right to teach." Another long talk to-night. It 
 is the kind of conversation which is interminable ; it is the 
 kind of acquaintance which is indissoluble.' 
 
 In a letter to M. dc Circourt he thus sums up the im- 
 pressions which he had derived from his stay at Moscow : 
 
 'Three points specially struck me : (i) The sight of a 
 nation, Asiatic in customs and ideas, even in the upper 
 classes, yet European — almost more than European in the 
 quickness and intelligence with which they communicated 
 their own thoughts and received the thoughts of others ; 
 (2) The union of a religious fervour, unparalleled in 
 Europe, with so complete a tolerance of the faith of others, 
 and so ready a recognition of our point of view ; (3) The 
 advantage which must accrue to any Western Christian, 
 Protestant or Catholic, in approaching a Church which stands 
 on ground to us so untrodden, and alternately cuts across 
 the narrow prejudices both of Protestantism and of Catholic- 
 ism. Truly it is an Imperial Church, and contains the 
 seeds of a great future. The two points which appeared 
 to me most doubtful, and on the happy solution of which 
 the success of that future must yet depend, seemed to me 
 these: i. Will the Church and the ancient national health 
 of Russia be able to maintain its originality and its hold 
 on the higher classes of the lait}^ in the face of the Western 
 influences constantly streaming in from Europe ? 2. Will 
 the Russian fervour and zeal, which now manifests itself 
 chiefly in the tenacity of ancient forms and the veneration 
 of sacred pictures, places, and persons, ever turn with full 
 force into a moral channel ? This seems to be the most 
 important question for the Russian Church to consider — 
 important everywhere, but most important there, where 
 the religious principle is so strong and so simple, and yet, 
 for the most part, so little directed against the moral evils 
 of the country. You have had a Louis XL, and we have 
 had hypocritical Puritans and worldly Churchmen ; but 
 neither of us have had any dissociation of morals and 
 religion equal to the character of Ivan the Terrible. . . .' 
 
 To return from Moscow to St. Petersburg was to dc-
 
 534 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1857 
 
 scend from jjoetry to prose. Yet, apart from Peter the 
 Great, the capital possessed for him one special interest in 
 its associations with the late Emperor Nicholas. Within the 
 Church of SS. Peter and Paul, hung round with flags of 
 conquered Swedes and Turks, lay the succession of Czars 
 who began with Peter the Great. 
 
 ' Last of the series— still covered with wreaths of flowers 
 and " iiiniiorteilcs" — candles burning beside iiim, the coffin of 
 Nicholas. P'orgive me, Peter ! forgive me, my countr}' ! if 
 for the moment this grave seemed the most touching and 
 solemn of all. Here, so near, almost within one's grasp, 
 lie the last remains of the man who for two long years 
 darkened the hearths of England, whose death was known 
 as no other death has been, with such thrilling thoughts, 
 within so brief a time, to every country in Europe. The 
 series has now included the princes and princesses, and will 
 soon rapidly fill the, church.' 
 
 It was now the latter end of September 1857, and the 
 winter was setting in. Stanley hastened his departure. 
 
 ' . . . . It is av/fully cold — quite unlike English cold. 
 There is an activity about it, a biting, penetrating, devour- 
 ing energy, that seems to be omnipotent and omnivorous. 
 The air feels as if it were charged with snow, with accumu- 
 lated snow, clouds full of ' Sarsar,' which yet never touch, 
 but go roving to and fro in a clear sky — a clear, chill, heart- 
 less sky. You will judge of what it is when you see 
 my sheepskin coat, which I will present to any poor rela- 
 tion who is in want of winter covering. One more day, 
 and then I trust to move southward, westward, home- 
 ward ' 
 
 Stanley reached Oxford in the second week of October 
 1857. As soon as he had delivered his lectures for the 
 term, he returned to Canterbury, to be present at the 
 Cathedral audit, and to keep what proved to be his last re- 
 sidence as Canon of Canterbury. His time was fully 
 occupied. Every Sunday he preached once in the Cathe- 
 dral, and generally twice in different parish churches,
 
 CHAP. XV LAST RESIDENCE AT CANTERBURY 535 
 
 Week-days find him, now representing the Chapter at the 
 Mayor's banquet ; now examining the boys at the King's 
 School ; now entertaining fifty soldiers fi-om the barracks 
 to breakfast and conducting them over the Cathedral ; now 
 lecturing to different classes of his fellow-citizens on Can- 
 terbury, or on the East, or on Russia. His house at the 
 north-east side of the precincts was rarely empty. It was 
 his delight to lionise his visitors over the antiquities of the 
 city, and he prided himself on selecting from the society of 
 the place the right persons to meet such guests as Hallam, 
 or Whewell, or Hcrschell. Within his garden stood a 
 mulberry-tree, the old trunk of which lay prostrate. Ikit 
 from the dead stem a young branch had taken root, and 
 become a vigorous tree. ' Here,' he used to say, ' you have 
 the faithful likeness of the old Church of this countr}-, and 
 of the thriving Church which has sprung out of its dead 
 body.' In the financial business of the audit he took no 
 interest, and paid it no attention. At the close of a long 
 ' audit ' meeting of the Chapter, at which the main topic 
 was the substitution of rents for fines and beneficial leases. 
 Archdeacon Harrison said, as they came away together,' 
 ' I wonder, Stanley, whether you quite understand the 
 meaning of fines.' * I have not the remotest idea,' was the 
 prompt rcpl}^ But in other questions that came before 
 the Chapter he took an active part. It was mainly through 
 his influence and perseverance that the Cathedral was 
 thrown open to the public after the hours of Divine service, 
 and that the old state services were discontinued. 
 
 On February 20th, 1858, Dr. Bull, Canon of Christ 
 Church, died. The vacant stall belonged to Stanley as 
 Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History. He at once 
 prepared to leave Canterbury. His departure was widely and 
 deeply regretted. By one friend it was regarded as ' a public 
 calamity ' : to another it seemed 'as if a cloud had sud-
 
 536 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1S58 
 
 deiily passed over the sunniest spots of my life' To him- 
 self, though he had long known the blow to be inevitable, 
 the final severance was painful in the extreme. His years at 
 Canterbury had been years of almost uninterrupted peace 
 and happiness. ' Well,' h'e writes, ' it will be a satisfaction 
 that Canterbury will nou- remain a spot of existence bright, 
 happy, and useful to the end. God grant that this new 
 stage may come anywhere near it in proportion ! ' 
 
 Stanley was installed at Christ Church on March 13th, 
 1858. ' The bells,' he says, 
 
 ' rang vehemently all yesterday. This morning I went to 
 the 8 o'clock service, and this evening shall go to the 
 4 o'clock to read in. 
 
 ' Considering the immense inferiority to Canterbur)-, it 
 is still an interesting cathedral, ar\d the very peculiar sight 
 of the students in their white surplices somewhat makes up 
 for the other losses. But I will not deny that it was to me 
 a very mournful ceremony, and the bells yesterday sounded 
 much more like a funeral knell of a dear friend than the 
 birth of a new one. So be it, however ! I shall not re- 
 sign yet, and I feel that, in all probability, this is the final 
 change — unless to Westminster or St. Paul's. It is im- 
 possible to say ; but I can hardly imagine that I should 
 now be tempted to decline cither of those in any form, 
 stall or Deanery.' 
 
 Stanley's final departure from Canterbury was postponed 
 till the Easter Vacation of 1858. ' What an end of life,' he 
 writes to Pearson, ' these partings make ! I should be torn 
 to shreds if they were to come more than once in seven 
 years.' Seven years after his appointment to the Professor- 
 ship of Ecclesiastical History he left Oxford for the 
 Deanery of Westminster. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
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