UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES 
 
 BROWSING ROOM
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 FROM THE PROSE WRITINGS OF 
 
 Edited with 
 Notes and an Introdttction 
 
 LEWIS E. GATES 
 
 Instructor in English, Harvard University 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 1 1895
 
 Copyright, 1895, 
 
 BV 
 
 HENRY HOLT & CO.
 
 Library 
 
 PR 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 AT just this time, when prose is apt to be either over 
 refined and euphuistic on the one hand, or lawless and 
 even barbarous on the other, there seems special reason 
 for trying to make more accessible and popular the writ- 
 ings of Cardinal Newman. No style is more fit than 
 Cardinal Newman's to be a model for those who are 
 anxious to avoid all extravagance and yet to escape 
 mediocrity. And it is with the hope of offering to the 
 lovers of literature who are convinced of this fact a 
 convenient means of making Newman's style better 
 known, that the editor has put together this volume of 
 Selections. 
 
 But there is another object which the volume has in 
 view ; the Selections are chosen for matter as well as 
 for style. They are meant, after a few introductory 
 passages of general interest, to give something like 
 a connected account in Newman's own words of his 
 theory of life and of his justification of it. There are 
 special reasons why that theory should be known con- 
 nectedly and completely to American readers. In the 
 new world we are for the most part radical, Protestant. 
 
 iii 
 
 270404
 
 iv PREFACE. 
 
 scientific, untraditional, and lacking in perspective 
 and in atmosphere. Newman is intensely conservative, 
 almost mystical, Romantic, mediaeval, and everywhere 
 alive to the imaginative splendor and power of the past. 
 Now it is undoubtedly difficult for any one who is per- 
 meated with the modern spirit which has such free play 
 in America, who accepts unhesitatingly its postulates, 
 and looks at all things unquestioningly from its point 
 of view, to comprehend how a man of real mental 
 power, of broad and far-reaching historical knowledge, 
 of keen intellect and piercingly certain logical method, 
 can have held in these days of science, the ideas about 
 religion and about life that Newman adhered to. To 
 comprehend this is for the modern man difficult, if he 
 has not the time to run through many volumes, and to 
 bring into connected form the different parts of an 
 elaborate system. The present volume aims to do this 
 work in an unpretentious manner for the ordinary 
 reader, and to give him, without technicalities, of phi- 
 losophy or theology, a fairly adequate statement, in 
 Newman's own words, of his most characteristic ideas. 
 With these ideas before him, the reader is left to suit 
 himself in the matter of accepting or rejecting New- 
 man's conclusions. The important point is that New- 
 man's doctrine be at any rate thoroughly understood ; 
 perhaps it will have to be transcended, but it ought not 
 to be ignorantly disregarded or put aside with a sneer. 
 The Introduction deals for the most part with New- 
 man's style and rhetorical methods ; the last chapter 
 points out the relation of his work to certain character-
 
 PREFACE. V 
 
 istic tendencies in the life and the literature of the 
 early part of the century. 
 
 The best short sketch of Cardinal Newman's life is 
 that by Mr. W, S. Lilly, in the Dictionary of National 
 Biography. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, Mass., 
 
 March 23, 1895.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 I. Newman's Manner and its Critics .. . ix 
 
 II. The Rhetorician ...... xiii 
 
 III. Methods xxiii 
 
 IV. Irony xxviii 
 
 V. Style . xxxii. 
 
 YI. Additional Characteristics . ... xxxvii 
 
 VII, Relation to his Times xlvi 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY Ix 
 
 SELECTIONS. 
 
 Site of a University ...... I 
 
 The Aim of a University Course ... n 
 
 The Man of the World 14 
 
 Knowledge Viewed in Relation to Learning . iq 
 
 Lord Bacon ........ 41 
 
 Literature and Life ...... 44 
 
 St. Philip Neri 51 
 
 John Keble 55 
 
 Oxford Fashions ....... 63 
 
 Kingsley and Newman ..... 68 
 
 The Irreligion of the Age 83 
 
 Knowledge and Character ..... 86 
 
 Faith, not Knowledge, governs Life ... 95 
 
 Science and Religion ...... 101 
 
 Theology . 106 
 
 Art and Religion ....... 114
 
 viii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Prejudiced Man ng 
 
 Count Potemkin and John Bull .... 127 
 
 The Anglican Clergy ...... 145 
 
 The Cells in the Birmingham Oratory . . 148 
 
 Catholic First Principles 156 
 
 God, the World, the Church . . . . 160 
 
 Miracles ......... 167 
 
 Gurta and Juba ....... 178 
 
 Callista's Vision 193 
 
 NOTES 197
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 NEWMAN'S style unites in an exceptional degree the 
 qualities of an academic style with those of the style of 
 a man of the world. It has the accuracy, the precis- 
 ion of outline, and the fine conscientiousness of the 
 scholar's style, as well as the ease, the affability, and 
 the winning adroitness that come from much human 
 intercourse. In its union of scholarliness and urban- 
 ity it is unique. The style of another Oxford man, 
 whose work almost necessarily suggests itself for com- 
 parison with that of Newman, attempts very much this 
 same combination of qualities. Matthew Arnold's 
 ideal of good writing involves, like Newman's, a per- 
 fect union of strength and grace. But Arnold is never 
 comparable to Newman in strictness and certainty of 
 method ; he is always so afraid of pedantry and scho- 
 lasticism as to assume even greater desultoriness than 
 is natural to him. His urbanity, too, has not quite the 
 genuineness of Newman's ; it is a somewhat costly 
 affair. He prides himself on it too palpably. He 
 is too consciously debonair. There is always a sus- 
 picion of self-assertion in his work that does more to 
 detract from perfect grace of demeanor than a great 
 
 IX
 
 X INTRODUCTION 
 
 deal of severity of method and strenuousness of logic 
 would detract. In Newman's writings, even in his 
 most personal works and in his most intimate moments, 
 there is a curious lack of this self-assertion. Probably 
 no book so uncompromisingly autobiographical as the 
 Apologia seems from first to last so free from egotism 
 and leaves so charming an impression of frankness and 
 simplicity. 
 
 It is, nevertheless, not strange that among a people 
 like the English, intensely suspicious of manner and 
 affectedly straightforward, Newman's adroitness and 
 grace should have exposed him to some unpleasant 
 charges of insincerity. It is so easy for a bluff, down- 
 right man to misinterpret subtlety as duplicity, and to re- 
 buke reticence and indirectness as deceit and hypocrisy. 
 This is substantially what Kingsley did in his famous at- 
 tack upon Newman. He had an instinctive dislike of 
 Newman's sinuousness and suppleness, and without 
 pausing to analyze very carefully, he spoke out fiercely 
 against Newman's whole work as containing a special va- 
 riety of ecclesiastical hypocrisy. The charge was the 
 more plausible inasmuch as there is unquestionably a 
 certain debased ecclesiastical manner whose cheaply in- 
 sinuating suavity might, by hasty observers, be confused 
 with Newman's bearing and style. Yet the injustice 
 of this confusion and the unfairness of Kingsley's 
 charges become plain after a moment's analysis. 
 
 In spite of Newman's ease and affability, you feel, 
 throughout his writings, when you stop to consider, an 
 underlying suggestion of uncompromising strength and 
 unwavering conviction. You are sure that the author 
 is really giving you himself frankly and unreservedly,
 
 INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 notwithstanding his apparent self-effacement, and that 
 he is imposing upon you his own conclusions, persua- 
 sively and constrainingly. Moreover, you are sure that, 
 however adroitly he may be developing his thesis, with 
 an eye to the skilful manipulation of your prejudices, 
 he would at any moment give you a point-blank answer, 
 if you put him a point-blank question. - There is never 
 any real doubt in your mind of his courage and manly 
 English temper, or of his readiness to meet you fairly 
 on the grounds of debate. In the last analysis, it is 
 this fundamental sincerity of tone and this all-perva- 
 sive but unobtrusive self-assertion that preserve New- 
 man's style from the undue flexibility and the insincer- 
 ity of the debased ecclesiastical style, just as his un- 
 failing good taste preserves him from its cheap suavity 
 or unctuousness. 
 
 But the adroitness of Newman's methods has led to 
 still more serious charges than those of Kingsley. In 
 a general examination of Newman's theories, Mr. E. A. 
 Abbott ' has accused him of systematically doctoring 
 or medicating the truth, and of having elaborated, 
 though perhaps unconsciously, various ingenious meth- 
 ods for inveigling unsuspecting readers into the ac- 
 ceptance of doubtful propositions. For these methods 
 Mr. Abbott has devised satirical names, the Art of 
 Lubrication, the Art of Oscillation, the Art of Assimi- 
 lation ; he does not assert that Newman consciously 
 palters with truth, or tries to make the worse ap- 
 pear the better reason. But he urges that Newman 
 was constitutionally fonder of other things than of 
 
 l PMomythus, by E. A. Abbott, London, 1891.
 
 xii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 truth, that he desired, with an overmastering strength, 
 to establish certain conclusions, and that he persuaded 
 himself of their correctness by a series of manoeuvres 
 which really involved insincere logic. 
 
 Of the details of Mr. Abbott's criticisms this is not 
 the place to speak. But the ultimate cause of his at- 
 tack on Newman seems once more to be temperamental 
 hostility rather than anything else, an utter inability to 
 comprehend, or, at any rate, to tolerate Newman's 
 mental constitution and his resulting methods of con- 
 ceiving of life and relating himself to its facts. Truth 
 is to Newman a much subtler matter, a much more 
 elusive substance, than it is to the Positivist, to the 
 mere intellectual dealer in facts and in figures ; it can- 
 not be packed into syllogisms as pills are packed into 
 a box ; it cannot be conveyed into the human system 
 with the simple directness which the Laputa wiseacre 
 aimed at who was for teaching his pupils geometry by 
 feeding them on paper duly inscribed with geometrical 
 figures. Moreover, language is an infinitely treacher- 
 ous medium ; words are so " false," so capable of end- 
 less change, that he is " loath to prove reason with 
 them." And readers, too, are widely diverse, and are 
 susceptible to countless other appeals than that of 
 sheer logic. For all these reasons it is doubtless the 
 case that Newman is constantly studious of effect in 
 his writings ; that he is intensely conscious of his 
 audience ; and that he is always striving to win a way 
 for his convictions, and aiming to insinuate them into 
 the minds and hearts of his hearers by gently persuasive 
 means. 
 
 But all this by no means implies any real careless-
 
 INTRODUCTION. xiii 
 
 ness of truth on Newman's part, or any sacrifice of 
 truth to expediency. Truth is difficult of attain- 
 ment, and hard to transmit; all the more strenu- 
 ously does Newman set himself to trace it out in its 
 obscurity and remoteness, and to reveal it in all its 
 intricacies. Moreover, subtle and elusive as it may 
 be, it is nevertheless something tangible and describ- 
 able and defensible ; something, furthermore, of the 
 acquisition of which Newman can give a very definite 
 account ; something as far as possible from mere 
 misty sentiment, and something, furthermore, to be 
 strenuously asserted and defended. 
 
 Now a fair-minded reader of Newman is always 
 conscious of the essential mental integrity of his 
 author, of his courage and readiness to be frank, 
 even in those passages or in those works where the 
 search for the subtlest shades of truth or the desire 
 to avoid clashing needlessly on prejudice, or the wish 
 to win a favorable hearing takes the author most in- 
 directly and tortuously toward his end. It is this 
 underlying manliness of mind and frank readiness to 
 give an account of himself that prevent Newman's 
 prevailing subtlety, adroitness, and suavity from leav- 
 ing on the mind of an unprejudiced reader any impres- 
 sion of timorousness or disingenuousness. 
 
 II. 
 
 IN what has been said of Newman's realization of 
 the elusive nature of truth and of the great difficulty 
 of securing a welcome for it in the minds and hearts.
 
 xiv INTRO D UC TION. 
 
 of 'the mass of men lies the key to what is most dis- 
 tinctive in his methods. He was a great rhetorician, 
 and whatever he produced shows evidence on analysis 
 of having been constructed with the utmost niceness 
 of instinct and deftness of hand. He himself frankly 
 admitted his rhetorical bent. Writing to Hurrell 
 Froude in 1836, about the management of the Tracta- 
 rian agitation, he says : " You and Keble are the philos- 
 ophers, and I the rhetorician." * And in a somewhat 
 earlier letter he speaks of his aptitude for rhetoric in 
 even stronger terms : " I have a vivid perception of the 
 consequences of certain admitted principles, have a 
 considerable intellectual capacity of drawing them out, 
 have the refinement to admire them, and a rhetorical 
 or histrionic power to represent them." 2 
 
 This rhetorical skill was partly natural and instinc- 
 tive, and partly the result of training. From his 
 earliest years as a student Newman had been con- 
 spicuous for the subtlety and flexibility of his intel- 
 ligence, for his readiness in assuming for speculat- 
 ive purposes the most diverse points of view, and 
 for his insight into temperaments and his comprehen- 
 sion of their modifying action on the white light of 
 truth. With this admirable equipment for effective 
 rhetorical work, he came directly under the influence 
 in Oriel College of two exceptionally great rhetoricians, 
 Dr. Copleston, for many years Provost of Oriel, and 
 Whately, one of its most influential Fellows. Cople- 
 ston was a famous controversialist and dialectician 
 who had long been regarded as the chief champion of 
 
 1 Letters and Correspondence ofj. H. Newman, 1891, II. 156. 
 Ibid. t I. 416.
 
 INTRO D UC TION. xv 
 
 the University against the attacks of outsiders. His 
 Advice to a young Reviewer with a Specimen of the Art, 
 (1807), had turned into ridicule the airs and preten- 
 sions of the young Edinburgh Reviewers and had led 
 them into severe strictures on University methods, 
 against which attacks, however, Dr. Copleston had 
 vigorously defended Oxford in various publications to 
 the satisfaction of all University men. He was the 
 Provost of Oriel during the first year of Newman's 
 residence there, and suggestions of the influence of 
 his ideas and methods are to be found throughout 
 the early pages of the Apologia and the Autobiograph- 
 ical Memoir. Still more decisive, however, was the 
 influence of a yet more famous rhetorician, Dr. 
 Whately, whose lectures on Logic and on Rhetoric 
 remained almost down to the present day standard 
 text-books on those subjects. Whately was also re- 
 nowned as a controversialist, and his Historic Doubts 
 concerning Napoleon Bonaparte was perhaps the clever- 
 est and most famous piece of ironical argumentation 
 produced in England during the first quarter of the 
 century. Newman, for several of his most impression- 
 able years, was intimately associated with Whately. 
 " He emphatically opened my mind," Newman says in 
 the Apologia, " and taught me to think and to use my 
 reason." ' Under the influence of these two masters 
 of rhetoric and redoubtable controversialists Newman's 
 natural aptitude for rhetorical methods was encouraged 
 and fostered, so that he became a perfect adept in all 
 the arts of exposition and argumentation and persua- 
 sion. 
 
 1 Apologia, p. n.
 
 xvi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Whatever work of Newman's, then, we take up, we 
 may be sure that its construction will repay careful 
 analysis. In trying to present any set of truths New- 
 man was always consciously confronting a delicate 
 psychological problem ; he was perfectly aware of 
 the elements that entered into the problem ; he knew 
 what special difficulties he had to face because of 
 the special nature of the truth he was dealing with, its 
 abstractness, or its complexity, or its novelty. He had 
 measured also the precise degree of resistance he 
 must expect because of the peculiar prejudices or pre- 
 occupations of his readers. And the shape which his 
 discussion finally took, the particular methods that he 
 followed, were the result of a deliberate adaptation 
 of means to ends ; they were the methods that his 
 trained rhetorical instinct and his insight into the truth 
 he was handling and into the temperaments and in- 
 telligences he was to address himself to dictated as 
 most likely to persuade. 
 
 Of course, ordinarily Newman does not explain the 
 method he follows or comment on the difficulties of 
 his problem. In the Apologia, however, he has de- 
 parted from this rule. In the Preface to this self- 
 justificatory piece of writing, he takes his readers into 
 his confidence, plainly with a purpose, sets forth 
 the prejudices against which he must make his way, 
 considers the possibility of this course or that as 
 likely to attain his end, notes the precise considera- 
 tions that ultimately govern his choice, and is explicit 
 as to the elaborate plan which underlies and controls 
 the seeming desultoriness of the discussion. 
 
 Newman's account of the problem which in this case
 
 INTRODUCTION. xv ii 
 
 confronted him will be found on pages 69-82 of the 
 Selections. Briefly, he had been charged by Kingsley 
 with teaching " lying on system." He had protested 
 vigorously against the charge and had obtained a 
 half-hearted apology. Later, however, the charge had 
 been reiterated more formally and with the added 
 taunt that as Newman recommended systematic dis- 
 simulation no one could be expected to accept his self- 
 exculpating word. These charges fell in precisely, as 
 Newman recognized, first, with the general trend of 
 British prejudice against Roman Catholics, and secondly 
 with the particular prejudice against Newman himself 
 that sprang from his early attempts to make the Angli- 
 can Church more Catholic, and his subsequent seces- 
 sion to Rome. How, then, was Newman to persuade 
 the public of Kingsley's injustice and his own inno- 
 cence ? He saw at once that to deal with each sepa- 
 rate charge would be mere waste of time ; to prove 
 that in a special case he had not lied or recommended 
 lying would carry him no whit toward his end, as 
 long as contemptuous distrust remained the dominant 
 mood of the British mind towards himself and his 
 party. First of all, he must conquer this mood ; he 
 must overthrow the presumption against him, and 
 win for his cause at least such an unbiassed hearing as 
 is accorded to the ordinary man upon trial whose 
 record has been hitherto clean ; then, he might hope 
 to secure for his particular denials a universal scope 
 The method that he chose in order to win his readers 
 was admirably conceived. He would put himselt 
 vitally and almost dramatically before them ; he would 
 bring them within the actual sound of his voice and 
 2
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the glance of his eye ; he would let them follow him 
 through the long course of his years as student, tutor, 
 preacher, and leader, and come to know him as inti- 
 mately as those few friends had known him with whom 
 he had lived most freely. Then, he would ask his 
 readers, when he had put his personality before them 
 in its many shifting but continuous aspects, and with 
 all the intense persuasiveness of a dramatic portrayal, 
 whether they were ready to believe of the man they 
 had thus watched through the round of his duties that 
 he was a liar. Of the peculiar power which Newman 
 could count on exerting in thus appealing to his per- 
 sonal charm he was, of course, unable to speak in his 
 Preface. In truth, however, he was having recourse to 
 an influence which had always been potent whenever 
 it had a chance to make itself felt. Throughout his 
 life at Oxford it was true of his relations to others that 
 " friends unasked, unhoped " had " come," all men 
 who met him falling almost inevitably under the sway 
 of his winning and commanding personality. New- 
 man was therefore well advised when he resolved 
 to reveal himself to the world and to trust to the con- 
 ciliating effect of this self-revelation to prepare for his 
 specific denial of Kingsley's charges. 
 
 In accordance with this purpose and plan, the Apol- 
 ogia pro Vita Sua, or History of his Religious Opin- 
 ions, was written ; and for these reasons his answer to 
 certain definite charges of equivocation and systematic 
 and elaborate misrepresentation was so shaped as to 
 include in its scope the story of his whole life. Of the 
 289 pages of the Apologia, only the last 15 pages are 
 devoted to the actual refutation of Kingsley's charges ;
 
 INTRO D UC TION. xix 
 
 the preceding 274 pages are all indirectly persuasive, 
 and simply prepare the way for the final defence. 
 Probably in no other piece of writing is the actual 
 demonstration so curiously small in proportion to the 
 means that are taken to make the logic effective. Of 
 course, it may be urged in reply to this view of the con- 
 struction of the Apologia, that to look at the book as 
 purely a reply to Kingsley, is to judge it from an arbi- 
 trary and artificial point of view, and hence to distort 
 it inevitably and throw its parts out of proportion ; 
 that the real aim of the book was simply and sincerely 
 autobiographic, and that regarding the book as frank 
 autobiography, the critic need find nothing strange in 
 the proportioning of its parts. In answer to this ob- 
 jection, it should be noted that the last few pages of 
 the book deal directly and argumentatively with the 
 Kingsley episode, and thus point the purpose with 
 which all that precedes has been written ; and that 
 Newman himself has declared in his Preface that the 
 sole reason for his self-revelations is his wish to clear 
 away misconceptions, to win once again the confidence 
 of that English public that had long been distrustful of 
 him, and to make widely effective his refutation of 
 Kingsley's charges. The book, then, is fairly to be de- 
 scribed as an enormously elaborate and ingenious piece 
 of special pleading to prepare the way for a few syllo- 
 gisms that have now become grotesquely insignificant. 
 It has been worth while to lay great stress on this 
 disproportion between persuasion and demonstration 
 in the Apologia, because this disproportion illustrates, 
 with almost the over-emphasis of caricature, certain 
 of Newman's fundamental beliefs and resulting tricks
 
 XX INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of method. First and foremost, it illustrates the slight 
 esteem in which he held the formal logic of the 
 schools and syllogistic demonstrations. Not that he 
 failed to recognize the value of analysis and logical 
 demonstration as verifying processes ; but he unhesi- 
 tatingly subordinated these processes to those by which 
 truth is originally won, and to those also by which 
 truth is persuasively inculcated. 
 
 In a sermon on Implicit and Explicit Reason, he dis- 
 tinguishes with great elaborateness between the method 
 by which the mind makes its way almost intuitively to 
 the possession of a new truth or set of truths, and the 
 subsequent analysis by which it takes account of this 
 half-instinctive original process and renders the mo- 
 ments of the process self-conscious and articulate. 
 His description of the intellect delicately and swiftly 
 feeling its way toward truth, may well be quoted entire : 
 "The mind ranges to and fro, and spreads out and 
 advances forward with a quickness which has become 
 a proverb, and a subtlety and versatility which baffle 
 investigation. It passes on from point to point, gain- 
 ing one by some indication ; another on a probability ; 
 then availing itself of an association ; then falling back 
 on some received law ; next seizing on testimony ; 
 then committing itself to some popular impression, or 
 some inward instinct, or some obscure memory ; and 
 thus it makes progress not unlike a clamberer on a 
 steep cliff, who, by quick eye, prompt hand, and firm 
 foot, ascends, how he knows not himself, by personal 
 endowments and by practice, rather than by rule, leav- 
 ing no track behind him, and unable to teach another. 
 It is not too much to say that the stepping by which great
 
 INTRODUCTION. xxi 
 
 geniuses scale the mountain of truth is as unsafe and 
 precarious to men in general as the ascent of a skilful 
 mountaineer up a literal crag. It is a way which they 
 alone can take ; and its justification lies alone in their 
 success. And such mainly is the way in which all men, 
 gifted or not gifted, commonly reason not by rule, but 
 by an inward faculty. Reasoning, then, or the exer- 
 cise of reason, is a living, spontaneous energy within 
 us, not an art." x 
 
 But not only is syllogistic reasoning not the original 
 process by which truth is attained ; it is in no way 
 essential to the validity or completeness of the pro- 
 cess. " Clearness in argument certainly is not indis- 
 pensable to reasoning well. Accuracy in stating doc- 
 trines or principles is not essential to feeling and 
 acting upon them. The exercise of analysis is not 
 necessary to the integrity of the process analyzed. 
 The process of reasoning is complete in itself, and 
 independent." 2 
 
 Finally, logical demonstration has relatively little 
 value as a means of winning a hearing for new truth, 
 of securing its entrance into the popular consciousness, 
 and of giving it a place among the determining powers 
 of life. " Logic makes but a sorry rhetoric with the 
 multitude; first shoot round corners, and you may 
 not despair of converting by a syllogism. "3 Men 
 must be inveigled into the acceptance of truth ; they 
 cannot be driven to accept it at the point of the syllo- 
 gism. " The heart is commonly reached, not through 
 
 1 Oxford University Sermons, ed. 1887, p. 257. 
 8 Ibid., ed. 1887, p. 259. 
 3 Selections, p. 97.
 
 Xxii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the reason, but through the imagination, by means of 
 direct impressions, by the testimony of facts and 
 events, by history, by description. Persons influence 
 us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame 
 us." ' 
 
 The application of all this, particularly of what 
 Newman says touching the persuasiveness of a personal 
 appeal, to the whole method of the Apologia, hardly 
 needs pointing out. The work is, from first to last, 
 intensely personal in its tone and matter, pursuasive 
 because of its concreteness, its dramatic vividness, the 
 modulations of the speaker's voice, the sincerity and 
 dignity of his look and bearing. Logic, of course, 
 gives coherence to the discussions. The processes of 
 thought by which Newman moved from point to point 
 in his theological development, are consistently set 
 forth ; but the convincing quality of the book comes 
 from its embodiment of a life, not from its systemat- 
 ization of a theory. 
 
 In accordance with this general character of the 
 book is its tone throughout ; its style is the perfection 
 of informality and easy colloquialism. Now and then, in 
 describing his ideas on specially complicated questions, 
 Newman makes use of numbered propositions, and 
 proceeds for the time being with the precaution and 
 precision of the dialectician. But for the most part he 
 is as unconstrained and apparently fortuitous in his 
 presentation of ideas as if he were merely emulating 
 Montaigne in confidential self-revelation, and had no 
 ulterior controversial purpose in view. Perhaps no 
 
 1 Selections, p. 96.
 
 INTRO D UC TION: xxiii 
 
 writer has surpassed, or even equalled, Newman in 
 combining apparent desultoriness of treatment with 
 real definiteness of purpose and clairvoyance of 
 method. 
 
 III. 
 
 ANOTHER admirable example of Newman's least 
 formal, and perhaps most characteristic method, may 
 be found in his series of papers on the Rise and Pro- 
 gress of Universities. Here again there is apparent- 
 desultoriness, or at most a careless following of histori- 
 cal sequence. One after another, with what seems like 
 a hap-hazard choice, Newman describes a half-dozen of 
 the most famous Universities of the past, explains pop- 
 ularly their organization, methods, and aims, entertain- 
 ing the reader meanwhile with such superlative pieces 
 of rhetoric as the description of Attica and Athens 
 (Selections, p. 3) and with such dramatic episodes as 
 that of Abelard. Yet underneath this apparent caprice 
 runs the controlling purpose of putting the reader in 
 possession, through concrete illustrations, of the com- 
 plete idea of a typically effective University. Each 
 special school that Newman describes illustrates some 
 essential attribute of the ideal school ; and incidentally, 
 as it were, the reader who is all the time beguiled, 
 from chapter to chapter, by Newman's picturesque 
 detail, takes into his mind the various features, and 
 ultimately the complete image, of the perfect type. 
 
 In the series of Discourses on the Idea of a Univer- 
 sity Newman's method is more formal and his tone
 
 INTRODUCTION; 
 
 more controversial. The purpose of the Discourses will 
 be found explained in the Notes of the present volume 
 p. 198. Newman was addressing a distinctly scholarly 
 audience, and was treating of a series of abstract 
 topics, on which he was called to pronounce in his 
 character of probable vice-chancellor of the proposed 
 University. Accordingly, throughout these Discourses 
 he is consistently academic in tone and manner and 
 formal and elaborate in method. He lays out his 
 work with somewhat mechanical precision ; he sketches 
 his plan strictly beforehand ; he defines terms and re- 
 fines upon possible meanings, and guards at each step 
 against misinterpretations ; he pauses often to come to 
 an understanding with his hearers about the progress 
 already made, and to consider what line of advance 
 severe logical method next dictates. In all these ways he 
 is deliberate, explicit, and demonstrative. Yet despite 
 this strenuous regard for system and method, not even 
 here does Newman become crabbedly scholastic or 
 pedantically over-formal ; the result of his strenuous- 
 ness is, rather, a finely conscientious circumspection of 
 demeanor and an academic dignity of bearing. There 
 is something irresistibly impressive in the perfect poise 
 with which he moves through the intricacies of the 
 many abstractions that his subject involves. He ex- 
 hibits each aspect of his subject in just the right per- 
 spective and with just the requisite minuteness of de- 
 tail ; he leads us unerringly from each point of view to 
 that which most naturally follows ; he keeps us always 
 aware of the relation of each aspect to the total sum 
 of truth he is trying to help us to grasp ; and so, little 
 by little, he secures for us that perfect command of an
 
 INTRODUCTION. xxV 
 
 intellectual region, in its concrete facts and in its 
 abstract relations, which exposition aims to make 
 possible. These Discourses are as fine an example as 
 exists in English of the union of strict method with 
 charm of style in the treatment of an abstract topic. 
 
 In the Development of Christian Doctrine and the 
 Grammar of Assent the severity of Newman's method 
 is somewhat greater, as is but natural in strictly scien- 
 tific treatises. Yet even in these abstract discussions 
 his style retains an inalienable charm due to the 
 luminousness of the atmosphere, the wide-ranging com- 
 mand of illustrations, the unobtrusively tropical phras- 
 ing, and the steady harmonious sweep of the periods. 
 Few books on equally abstract topics are as easy 
 reading. 
 
 While Newman's method is under consideration a 
 word or two about his Present Position of Catholics 
 will be in place. The book is controversial through- 
 out, and contains some of Newman's most ingenious 
 and caustic irony. But it is specially interesting be- 
 cause it illustrates once more his consummate skill in 
 adapting his method to the matter in hand. His pur- 
 pose in this case is to right the Roman Catholic 
 Church with the English nation, to exhibit the Roman- 
 ists as he knows them really to be, a conscientious, 
 honorable, patriotic body of men, and to put an end 
 once for all, if possible, to the long tradition of cal- 
 umny that has persecuted them. Such is his problem. 
 He sets about its solution characteristically. He does 
 not undertake to demonstrate the truth of Roman doc- 
 trines, or by direct evidence and argument to refute 
 the wild charges of hypocrisy and corruption which
 
 xxvi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Protestants are habitually making against Romanists. 
 His methods are much subtler than these and also 
 much more comprehensive and final. He sets himself 
 to analyse Protestant prejudice, and to destroy it by re- 
 solving it into its elements. He takes it up historically, 
 and exhibits its origin in an atmosphere of intense par- 
 tisan conflict, and its development in the midst of pecu- 
 liarly favorable intellectual and moral conditions ; he 
 shows that it is political in its origin and has been in- 
 wrought into the very fibre of English national life : 
 " English Protestantism is the religion of the throne : it 
 is represented, realized, taught, transmitted in the suc- 
 cession of monarchs and an hereditary aristocracy. It 
 is religion grafted upon loyalty ; and its strength is not 
 in argument, not in fact, not in the unanswerable con- 
 troversialist, not in an apostolical succession, not in 
 sanction of Scripture but in a royal road to faith, in 
 backing up a King whom men see, against a Pope 
 whom they do not see. The devolution of its crown is 
 the tradition of its creed ; and to doubt its truth is to be 
 disloyal towards its Sovereign. Kings are English- 
 men's saints and doctors ; he likes somebody or some- 
 thing at which he can cry, ' huzzah,' and throw up his 
 hat." ' 
 
 To hate a Romanist, then, is as natural for John 
 Bull as to hate a Frenchman, and to libel him is a 
 matter of patriotism. The Englishman's romantic 
 imagination has for generations long been spinning 
 myths of Catholic misdoing to satisfy these deep in- 
 stinctive animosities. Moreover, besides loyalty and 
 
 1 Selections, p. 62.
 
 INTRODUCTION. xxvn 
 
 patriotism, many other typical English qualities have 
 contributed to foster and develop this Protestant preju- 
 dice. Such are the controlling practical interests of 
 the English, their content with compromise-working 
 schemes, and their contempt for abstractions and 
 subtleties ; their shuddering dislike of innovation ; 
 their well-meaning obstinacy in ignorance, and their 
 heroic adherence to familiar though undeniable error ; 
 their insularity ; their hatred of foreigners in general, 
 and their frenzied fear of the Pope in particular. 
 With unfailing adroitness of suggestion, Newman 
 makes clear how these national traits, and many 
 others closely related to them, have co-operated to 
 originate and develop Protestant hatred of Roman 
 Catholicism. His mastery of the details of social life 
 and of motives of action is in this discussion of English 
 history and contemporary life specially conspicuous. 
 Every phase of peculiarly English thought and feeling 
 is present to him ; every intricacy of the curiously 
 subterranean British national temperament is traced 
 out. And the result is that prejudice is explained 
 out of existence. The intense hostility that seems so 
 primitive an instinct as to justify itself like the belief 
 in God or in an outer world, is resolved into the ex- 
 pression of a vast mass of petty and often discredit- 
 able instincts, and so loses all its validity in losing 
 its apparent primitiveness and mystery. 
 
 Such is the general plan and scope of Newman's at- 
 tack on Protestant prejudice ; in carrying out the plan 
 and making his attack brilliantly effective, he shows 
 inexhaustible ingenuity and unwearied invention. He 
 uses fables, allegories, and elaborate pieces of irony ;
 
 xx viii iNTKOb UC TfOM 
 
 he develops an unending series of picturesque illustra- 
 tions of Protestant prejudice, drawn from all sources, 
 past and present ; he sets curious traps for this preju- 
 dice, catches it at unawares and shows it up to his read- 
 ers in guises they can hardly defend ; he plays skilfully 
 upon the instincts that lie at its root, and by clever 
 manipulation makes them declare themselves in a 
 twinkling in favor of some aspect of Romanism. In 
 short, he uses all the rhetorical devices of which he is 
 master to win a hearing from the half-hostile, to beguile 
 the unwilling, to amuse the half-captious, and finally to 
 insinuate into the minds of his readers an all-permeat- 
 ing mood of contempt for Protestant narrowness and 
 bigotry, and of open-minded appreciation of the merits 
 of Roman Catholics. 
 
 IV. 
 
 FOR still another reason the lectures on the Present 
 Position of Catholics are specially interesting to a 
 student of Newman's methods ; they illustrate excep- 
 tionally well his skill in the use of irony. To the gen- 
 uine rhetorician there is something specially attractive 
 in the duplicity of irony, because of the opportunity it 
 offers him of playing with points of view, of juggling 
 with phrases, of showing his virtuosity in the manipu- 
 lation of both thoughts and words. Newman was too 
 much of a rhetorician not to feel this fascination. 
 Moreover, he had learned from his study of Copleston 
 and Whately the possibilities of irony as a con trover-
 
 INTRO D UC TION. xxix 
 
 sial weapon. Copleston's Advice to a Young Reviewer^ 
 and Whately's Historic Doubts Concerning Napoleon 
 Buonaparte were typical specimens of academic irony, 
 where with impressive dignity and suavity and the 
 most plausible simplicity and candor the writers, while 
 seemingly advocating a certain policy or theory or set 
 of conclusions, were really sneering throughout at a 
 somewhat similar policy or theory that of their op- 
 ponents and laying it open helplessly to ridicule. 
 
 One of the most noteworthy characteristics of New- 
 man's irony and in this point his irony resembled 
 that of his masters was its positive argumentative 
 value. Often an elaborate piece of irony is chiefly de- 
 structive ; it turns cleverly into ridicule the general at- 
 titude of mind of the writer's opponents, but makes no 
 attempt to supply a substitute for the faith it destroys. 
 Swift's irony, for example, is usually of this character. 
 It is intensely ill-natured and savage, and so extrava- 
 gant that it sometimes defeats its own end as argu- 
 ment. Its hauteur and bitterness produce a reaction 
 in the mind of the reader, and force him to distrust 
 the judgment and sanity of a man who can be so in- 
 veterately and fiercely insolent. Its indictment is so 
 sweeping and its mood so cynical, that the reader, 
 though he is bullied out of any regard for the ideas 
 that Swift attacks, is repelled from Swift himself, and 
 made to hate his notions as much as he despises those 
 of Swift's opponents. Moreover, full of duplicity and 
 -'nnuendo as it is, its innuendoes often are merely dis- 
 guised sneers, and not suggestions of genuinely valid 
 reasons why the opinions or prejudices which the 
 writer is assailing should be abandoned. In the Mod-
 
 XXX INTRODUCTION. 
 
 est Proposal and the Argument against Abolishing 
 Christianity, for example, the irony reduces to one long 
 sneer at the prejudice, the selfishness, and the cruelty 
 of Yahoo human nature ; there is very little positive 
 argument in behalf of the oppressed Irish on the one 
 hand, or in favor of Christianity on the other. 
 
 Newman's irony, on the contrary, is always subtle, 
 intellectual, and suggestive. It is positive in its in- 
 sinuation of actual reasons for abandoning prejudice 
 against Romanists; it is tirelessly adroit, and adjusts 
 itself delicately to every part of the opposing argument ; 
 it is suggestive of new ideas, and not only makes the 
 reader see the absurdity of some time-worn prejudice, 
 but hints at its explanation and insinuates a new opin- 
 ion to take its place. In tone, too, it is very different 
 from Swift's irony ; it is not enraged and blindly savage, 
 but more like the best French irony self-possessed, 
 suave, and insinuating. Newman addresses himself 
 with unfailing skill to the prejudices of those whom 
 he is trying to move, and carries his readers with him 
 in a way that Swift was too contemptuous to aim at. 
 Newman's irony wins the wavering, while it routs the 
 hostile. This is the double task that it always pro- 
 poses to itself. 
 
 An example of his irony at its best maybe found in 
 the amusing piece of declamation against the British 
 Constitution and John Bullism which Newman puts into 
 the mouth of a Russian Count. The passage occurs in 
 a lecture on the Present Position of Catholics, which 
 was delivered just before the war with Russia, when 
 English jealousy of Russia and contempt for Russian 
 prejudice and ignorance were most intense. It was, of
 
 INTRODUCTION. xxxi 
 
 course, on these feelings of jealousy and contempt that 
 Newman skilfully played when he represented the Rus- 
 sian Count as grotesquely misinterpreting the British 
 Constitution and BlackstonJs Commentaries, and as 
 charging them with irreligion and blasphemy. His 
 satirical portrayal of the Russian and the clever mani- 
 pulation by which he forces the Count to exhibit all hi* 
 stores of ungentle dullness and all his stock of malig 
 nant prejudice delighted every ordinary British reader, 
 and threw him into a pleasant glow of self-satisfaction, 
 and of sympathy with the author ; now this was the very 
 mood, as Newman was well aware, in which, if ever, 
 the anti-Catholic reader might be led to question with 
 himself whether after all he was perfectly informed 
 about Roman Catholicism, or whether he did not, like 
 the Russian Count, take most of his knowledge at 
 second-hand and inherit most of his prejudice. 
 Throughout this passage the ingenuity is conspicuous 
 with which Newman makes use of English dislike of 
 Russia and blind loyalty to Queen and Constitution ; 
 the passage everywhere exemplifies the adroitness, the 
 flexibility, the persuasiveness, and the far-reaching 
 calculation of Newman's irony. 
 
 Indeed, this elaborateness and self-consciousness, 
 and deliberateness of aim, are perhaps, at times, limi- 
 tations on the success of his irony; it is a bit too 
 cleverly planned and a trifle over-elaborate. In these 
 respects it contrasts disadvantageously with French 
 irony, which at its best, is so delightfully by the way, 
 so airily unexpected, so accidental, and yet so dex- 
 trously fatal. It would be an instructive study in 
 literary method to compare Newman's ironical defence
 
 xxxii INTRODUCTION: 
 
 of Roman Catholicism in the passage already referred 
 to with Montesquieu's ironical attack upon the same 
 system in the Lettres Persanes. 
 
 V. 
 
 WHEN we turn from Newman's methods to his 
 style in the narrower meaning of the term, we still find 
 careful elaboration and ingenious calculation of effect, 
 although here again the conscientious workmanship 
 becomes evident only on reflection, and the general 
 impression is that of easy and instinctive mastery. 
 Nevertheless, Newman wrought out all that he wrote, 
 with much patient recasting and revising. " It is 
 simply the fact," he tells a friend in one of his letters, 
 "that I have been obliged to take great pains with 
 everything I have written, and I often write chapters 
 over and over again, besides innumerable corrections 
 
 and interlinear additions I think I have never 
 
 written for writing's sake ; but my one and single desire 
 and aim has been to do what is so difficult viz., to 
 express clearly and exactly my meaning ; this has been 
 the motive principle of all my corrections and re- 
 writings." * 
 
 It is perhaps this sincerity of aim and this sacrifice 
 of the decorative impulse in the strenuous search for 
 adequacy of expression that keep out of Newman's 
 writing every trace of artificiality. Sophisticated as is 
 
 1 Letters, II. 476.
 
 INTROD UC TION. xxxiii 
 
 his style it is never mannered. There is no pretence, no 
 flourish, no exhibition of rhetorical resources for their 
 own sake. The most impressive and the most richly 
 imaginative passages in his prose come in because he 
 is betrayed into them in his conscientious pursuit of all 
 the aspects of the truth he is illustrating. Moreover, 
 they are curiously congruous in tone with the most 
 colloquial parts of his writing. There is no sudden 
 jar perceptible when in the midst of his ordinary dis- 
 course, one chances upon these passages of essential 
 beauty ; perfect continuity of texture is characteristic 
 of his work. This perfect continuity of texture illus- 
 trates both the all-pervasive fineness and nobleness 
 of Newman's temper which constantly holds the ele- 
 ments of moral and spiritual beauty in solution, and 
 which imprints a certain distinction upon even the com- 
 monplace, and also the flexibility and elasticity of his 
 style, which enables him with such perfect gradation of 
 effect to change imperceptibly from the lofty to the 
 common. At least, two admirable examples of this ex- 
 quisite gradation of values or of this continuity of tex- 
 ture will be found in the Selections, one in the descrip- 
 tion of Athens, pages 1-7, the other in the passage on 
 Theology, pages 106-113. ^ n tne former passage a 
 style almost easily colloquial is made subservient to the 
 production of really gorgeous descriptive effects ; yet 
 despite the splendor of the scene that Newman calls 
 up in the paragraphs on pages 4-7, there is no jar 
 when he returns suddenly to simple exposition. Sim- 
 ilarly, in the passage on Theology, the change from a 
 scientific explanation of the duties of the theologian to 
 the almost impassioned eloquence of the ascription of
 
 xxxiv INTRODUCTION: 
 
 goodness and might to the Deity is effected with no 
 shock or sense of discontinuity. 
 
 In its freedom from artificiality and in it sperfect sin- 
 cerity, Newman's style contrasts noticeably with the 
 style of a great rhetorician from whom he nevertheless 
 took many hints De Quincey. Of his careful study 
 of De Quincey's style there can be no question. In 
 the passage on the Deity, pages 109-111, to which 
 reference has just been made, there are unmistakable 
 reminiscences of De Quincey in the iteration of em- 
 phasis on an important word, in the frequent use of 
 inversions, in the rise and fall of the periods, and in- 
 deed in the subtle rhythmic effects throughout. The 
 piece of writing, however, where the likeness to De 
 Quincey and the imitation of his manner and music 
 are most obtrusive, is the sermon on the Fitness of the 
 Glories of Mary, that piece of Newman's prose, it 
 should be noted, which is least defensible against the 
 charge of artificiality and undue ornateness. A pas- 
 sage near the close of the sermon best illustrates the 
 points in question : " And therefore she died in pri- 
 vate. It became Him, who died for the world, to die 
 in the world's sight ; it became the Great Sacrifice to 
 be lifted up on high, as a light that could not be hid. 
 But she, the Lily of Eden, who had always dwelt out 
 of the sight of man, fittingly did she die in the garden's 
 shade, and amid the sweet flowers in which she had 
 lived. Her departure made no noise in the world. 
 The Church went about her common duties, preach- 
 ing, converting, suffering. There were persecutions, 
 there was fleeing from place to place, there were 
 martyrs, there were triumphs. At length the rumour
 
 ' 
 
 f V NJA^*>W~-- ~" \S *-s\s\s 
 
 I ^' 
 
 INTRO D UC TION. XX XV 
 
 spread abroad that the Mother of God was no longer 
 upon earth. Pilgrims went to and fro ; they sought 
 for her relics, but they found them not ; did she die at 
 Ephesus ? or did she die at Jerusalem ? reports varied ; 
 but her tomb could not be pointed out, or if it was 
 found, it was open ; and instead of her pure and fra- 
 grant body, there was a growth of lilies from the earth 
 which she had touched. So inquirers went home mar- 
 velling, and waiting for further light." l 
 
 Though the cadences of Newman's prose are rarely 
 as marked as here, a subtle musical beauty runs elu- 
 sively through it all. Not that there is any of the sing- 
 song of pseudo-poetic prose. The cadences are always 
 wide-ranging and delicately shifting, with none of the 
 halting iteration and feeble sameness of half-metrical 
 work. Moreover, the rhythms, subtly pervasive as they 
 are, and even symbolic of the mood of the passage as they 
 often prove to be, never compel direct recognition, but 
 act merely as a mass of undistinguished under-and 
 over-tones like those which give to a human voice depth 
 and tenderness and suggestiveness. 
 
 Newman understood perfectly the symbolic value of 
 rhythm and the possibility of imposing upon a series 
 of simple words, by delicately sensitive adjustment, a 
 power over the feelings and the imagination like that 
 of an incantation. Several of the passages already 
 quoted or referred to illustrate his instinctive adapta- 
 tion of cadence to meaning and tone ; another remark- 
 able passage of this kind is that on p. 161 of the 
 Selections which describes the apparent moral chaos in 
 
 1 Discourses to Mixed Congregations, ed. 1892, p. 373.
 
 xxxvi INTRODUCTION, 
 
 human history. For subtlety of modulation, however, 
 and symbolic suggestiveness, perhaps the tender leave- 
 taking with which the Apologia closes is the most 
 beautiful piece of prose that Newman has written : 
 " I have closed this history of myself with St. Philip's 
 name upon St. Philip's feast-day ; and having done so, 
 to whom can I more suitably offer it, as a memorial of 
 affection and gratitude, than to St. Philip's sons, my 
 dearest brothers of this House, the Priests of the Birming- 
 ham Oratory, AMBROSE ST. JOHN, HENRY AUSTIN 
 MILLS, HENRY BITTLESTON, EDWARD CASWALL, WILL- 
 IAM PAINE NEVILLE, and HENRY IGNATIUS DUDLEY 
 RIDER, who have been so faithful to me ; who have 
 been so sensitive of my needs ; who have been so indul- 
 gent to my failings ; who have carried me through so 
 many trials ; who have grudged no sacrifice, if I have 
 asked for it ; who have been so cheerful under discour- 
 agements of my causing ; who have done so many good 
 works, and let me have the credit of them ; with whom 
 I have lived so long, with whom I hope to die. 
 
 " And to you especially, dear AMBROSE ST. JOHN 
 whom God gave me, when He took every one else 
 away; who are the link between my old life and my 
 new ; who have now for twenty-one years been so de- 
 voted to me, so patient, so zealous, so tender ; who 
 have let me lean so hard upon you ; who have watched 
 me so narrowly ; who have never thought of yourself, 
 if I was in question. 
 
 " And in you I gather up and bear in memory those 
 familiar affectionate companions and counsellors, who 
 in Oxford were given to me, one after another, to be 
 my daily solace and relief; and all those others, of
 
 INTRODUCTION. Xxxvii 
 
 great name and high example, who were my thorough 
 friends, and showed me true attachment in times long 
 past ; and also those many younger men, whether I 
 knew them or hot, who have never been disloyal to me 
 ' by word or deed ; and of all these, thus various in their 
 relations to me, those more especially who have since 
 joined the Catholic Church. 
 
 " And I earnestly pray for this whole company, with a 
 hope against hope, that all of us, who once were so 
 united, and so happy in our union, may even now be 
 brought at length, by the Power of the Divine Will, 
 into One Fold and under One Shepherd." 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE careful gradation of values in Newman's style 
 and the far-reaching sweep of his periods connect 
 themselves closely with another of his noteworthy 
 characteristics, his breadth of handling. He mani- 
 pulates with perfect ease and precision vast masses of 
 facts and makes them all contribute with unerring co- 
 operation to the production of a single effect. How- 
 ever minute his detail, and his liking for concreteness 
 which will be presently illustrated often incites him to 
 great minuteness, he never confuses his composition, 
 destroys the perspective, or loses sight of total effect. 
 The largeness of his manner and the certainty of his 
 handling place him at once among really great jon- 
 structive artists.
 
 xxxviii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Against this assertion it will be urged that in his 
 fiction it is just this breadth of effect and constructive 
 skill that are most noticeably lacking ; that each of his 
 novels, whatever its merits in places, is unsuccessful 
 as a whole, and leaves a blurred impression. This 
 must at once be granted. But after all it is in his 
 theoretical or moral or historical work that the real 
 Newman is to be found ; in such work he is much 
 more himself, much more thoroughly alive and efficient 
 than in his stories, which, though cleverly turned out, 
 were after all things by the way, were amateurish in 
 execution, and never completely called forth his 
 strength. Moreover, even in his novels, we find 
 occasionally the integrating power of his imagination 
 remarkably illustrated. The description in Callista of 
 the invading and ravaging locusts is admirably sure in 
 its treatment of .detail and even and impressive in 
 tone ; the episode of Gurta's madness is powerfully 
 conceived, is swift and sure in its action, and is devel- 
 oped with admirable subordination and coloring of 
 detail and regard to climax. 
 
 On the whole, however, it must be, granted that in 
 his fiction Newman's sense of total effect and construc- 
 tive skill are least conspicuous. In his abstract dis- 
 cussions they never fail him. First and foremost, 
 they shew themselves in the plan of each work as a 
 whole. The treatment is invariably symmetrical and 
 exhaustive ; part answers to part with the precision 
 and the delicacy of adjustment of a work of art. Each 
 part is conscious of the whole and has a vitally loyal 
 relation to it, so that the needs and purposes of the 
 whole organism seem present as controlling and cen-
 
 INTRODUCTION. xxxix 
 
 tralizing instincts in every chapter, and paragraph, and 
 sentence. 
 
 In his use of elaborate illustrations for the sake 
 of securing concreteness and sensuous beauty, New- 
 -man shows this same integrating power of imagi- 
 nation. In the long illustrations which often take 
 almost the proportions of episodes in the epical pro- 
 gress of his argument or exposition, the reader never 
 has a sense of bewilderment or uncertainty of aim ; 
 the strength of Newman's mind and purpose subdues 
 perfectly all his endlessly diverse material, and com- 
 pels it into artistic coherence and vital unity ; all de- 
 tails are colored in harmony with the dominant tone 
 of the piece, and re-enforce a predetermined mood. 
 When a reader commits himself to one of Newman's 
 discussions he must resign himself to him body and 
 soul, and be prepared to live and move and have his 
 being in the medium of Newman's thought, and, more- 
 over, in the special range of thought, and the special 
 mood that this particular discussion provokes. Per- 
 haps this omnipresence of Newman in the minutest de- 
 tails of each discussion becomes ultimately to the 
 careful student of his writing the most convincing 
 proof of the largeness of his mind, of the intensity of 
 his conception, and of the vigor and vitality of his im- 
 agination. 
 
 It may be urged that the copiousness of Newman at 
 times becomes wearisome ; that he is over-liberal of 
 both explanation and illustration ; and that his style, 
 though never exuberant in ornament, is sometimes 
 annoyingly luminous, and blinds with excess of light. 
 This is probably the point in which Newman's style is
 
 xl INTRODUCTION. 
 
 most open to attack. It is a cloyingly explicit, rather 
 than a stimulatingly suggestive, style ; it does almost 
 too much for the reader, and is almost inconsiderately 
 generous. " To really strenuous minds there is a 
 pleasurable stimulus in the challenge for a continuous 
 effort on their part, to be rewarded by securer and more 
 intimate grasp of the author's sense. Self-restraint, a 
 skilful economy of means, aschis, that too has a beauty 
 of its own." J Whether in much of his work Newman 
 has not neglected the ideal which these sentences of 
 Mr. Pater inculcate, may fairly be questioned, yet it 
 should be noted that Mr. Pater himself, very soon 
 after setting up this standard of style, instances New- 
 man's Idea of a University as an example of " the per- 
 fect handling of a theory." 
 
 One characteristic of the purely suggestive style is 
 certainly to be found in Newman's writing, great 
 beauty and vigor of phrase. This fact is the more 
 noteworthy because a writer who, like Newman, 
 is impressive in the mass, and excels in securing 
 breadth of effect, very often lacks the ability to strike 
 out memorable epigrams. A few quotations, brought 
 together at random, will show what point and terseness 
 Newman could command when he chose. " Ten thou- 
 sand difficulties do not make a doubt." 2 " Great 
 things are done by devotion to one idea.'^ 3 "Calcu- 
 lation never made a hero." 4 " All aberrations are 
 founded on, and have their life in, some truth or 
 
 1 Pater's Appreciations, ed. 1890, p. 14. 
 
 2 Apologia, p. 239. 3 Hist. Sketches, ed. 1891, III. p. 197. 
 4 Development of Christian Doctrine, ed. 1891, p. 328.
 
 ItfTROD UC r/OM xli 
 
 other." 1 "Great acts take time." 2 "A book after 
 all cannot make a stand against the wild living intellect 
 of man." 3 " To be converted in partnership." " It 
 is not at all easy (humanly speaking) to wind up an 
 Englishman to a dogmatic level." s " Paper logic." 6 
 " One is not at all pleased when poetry, or eloquence, 
 or devotion is considered as if chiefly intended to 
 feed syllogisms." ? " Here below to live is to change, 
 and to be perfect is to have changed often." 8 In 
 terseness and sententiousness these utterances could 
 hardly be surpassed by the most acrimonious searcher 
 after epigram, though of course they have not the 
 glitter of paradox to which modern coiners of phrases 
 aspire. 
 
 Of wit there is very little to be found in Newman's 
 writings ; it is not the natural expression of his temper- 
 ament. Wit is too dryly intellectual, too external and 
 formal, too little vital to suit Newman's mental habit. 
 To the appeal of humour he was distinctly more open. 
 It is from the humorous incongruities of imaginary 
 situations that his irony secures its most persuasive 
 effects. Moreover, whenever he is not necessarily pre- 
 occupied with the tragically serious aspects of life and 
 of history, or forced by his subject-matter, and audi- 
 ence, into a formally restrained manner and method, he 
 has, in treating any topic, that urbanity and half-playful 
 kindliness that come from a large-minded and almost 
 tolerant recognition of the essential imperfections of 
 
 1 Apologia, p. 188. 2 Ibid. p. 169. 3 Ibid., p. 245. 4 Ibid. 219. 
 
 s Ibid. 204. 6 Ibid. 169. 7 Ibid. p. 170. 
 
 8 Devel. of Christian Doctrine, ed. 1891, p. 40.
 
 xlii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 life and human nature. The mood of the man of the 
 world, sweetened and ennobled, and enriched by pro- 
 found knowledge and deep feeling and spiritual seri> 
 ousness, gives to much of Newman's work its most 
 distinctive note. When he is able to be thoroughly 
 colloquial, this mood and this tone can assert them- 
 selves most freely, and the result is a style through 
 which a gracious kindliness which is never quite 
 humor, and which yet possesses all its elements, 
 diffuses itself pervasively and persuasively. Through- 
 out the whole of the Rise and Progress of Universities 
 this tone is traceable, and, to take a specific example, 
 it is largely to its influence that the description of 
 Athens, quoted on pages 3-7, owes its peculiar charm. 
 What can be more deliciously incongruous than a com- 
 mercial traveller, or " drummer," and the Acropolis ? 
 or more curiously ill- ad justed than his standards of 
 valuation to the qualities of the Grecian landscape ? 
 Yet how little malicious is Newman's use of this 
 incongruity or disproportion, and how unsuspiciously 
 the " agent of a London Company " ministers to the 
 quiet amusement of the reader, and also helps to 
 heighten, by contrast, the effect of beauty and romance 
 and mystery that Newman is aiming at. 
 
 Several allusions have already been made to New- 
 man's liking for concreteness. And in an earlier para- 
 graph his distrust of the abstract was described and 
 illustrated at length. These predilections of his have 
 left their unmistakable mark everywhere on his style 
 in ways more technical than those that have thus far 
 been noted. His vocabulary is, for a scholar, excep- 
 tionally idiomatic and unliterary; the most ordinary
 
 INTRODUCTION. xliii 
 
 and unparsable turns of every-day speech are inwrought 
 in*o the texture of his style. In the Apologia he speaks 
 of himself in one place as having had " a lounging 
 free-and-easy way of carrying things on," r and the 
 phrase both defines and illustrates one characteristic 
 of his style. Idioms that have the crude force of pop- 
 ular speech, the vitality without the vulgarity of slang, 
 abound in his writings. Of his increasingly clear recog- 
 nition, in 1839, f tne weakness of the Anglican position, 
 he says : " The Via Media was an impossible idea ; it 
 was what I had called ' standing on one leg. ' " 2 His 
 loss of control over his party in 1840 he describes as 
 follows : " I never had a strong wrist, but at the very 
 time when it was most needed, the reins had broken 
 in my hands." 8 Of the ineradicableness of evil in 
 human nature he exclaims : " You do but play a sort 
 of ' hunt the slipper,' with the fault of our nature, till 
 you go to Christianity." 4 Illustrations of this idioma- 
 tic and homely phrasing might be endlessly multiplied. 
 Moreover, to the concreteness of colloquial phrasing 
 Newman adds the concreteness of the specific word. 
 Other things being equal, he prefers the name of the spe- 
 cies to that of the genus, and the name of the class to that 
 of the species ; he is always urged forward toward the 
 individual and the actual ; his mind does not lag in 
 the region of abstractions and formulas, but presses 
 past the general term or abstraction or law, to the 
 image or the example, and into the tangible, glowing, 
 sensible world of fact. His imagery, though never 
 
 * Apologia, p. 59. x Ibid., p. 149. 3 Ibid. t p. 128. 
 
 * Disc, and Arg., p. 274.
 
 xliv INTRODUCTION. 
 
 obtrusive, is almost lavishly present, and though 
 never purely decorative, is often very beautiful. 
 It is so inevitable, however, springs so organically 
 from the thought and the mood of the moment, that 
 the reader accepts it unmindfully, and is conscious only 
 of grasping easily and securely the writer's meaning. 
 He must first look back through the sentences and 
 study the style in detail before he will come to realize 
 its continual but decisive divergence from the literal 
 and commonplace, and its essential freshness and 
 distinction. 
 
 On occasion, of course, Newman uses elaborate, 
 figures ; but always for purposes of exposition or per- 
 suasion. In such cases the reader should note the 
 thoroughness with which the figure adjusts itself to 
 every turn and phase of the thought, and the surpris- 
 ing omnipresence and suggestiveness of the tropical 
 phrasing. These qualities of Newman's style are well 
 illustrated in the following passage from the Develop- 
 ment of Christian Doctrine : 
 
 "Whatever be the risk of corruption from intercourse 
 with the world around, such a risk must be encountered 
 if a great idea is duly to be understood, and much more 
 if it is to be fully exhibited. It is elicited and expanded 
 by trial, and battles into perfection and supremacy. 
 Nor does it escape the collision of opinion even in its 
 earlier years, nor does it remain truer to itself, and with 
 a better claim to be considered one and the same, 
 though externally protected from vicissitude and 
 change. It is indeed sometimes said that the stream 
 is clearest near the spring. Whatever use may fairly be 
 made of this image, it does not apply to the history of
 
 INTRODUCTION. x lv 
 
 a philosophy or belief, which on the contrary is more 
 equable, and purer, and stronger, when its bed has 
 become deep, and broad, and full. It necessarily rises 
 out of an existing state of things, and for a time savors 
 of the soil. Its vital element needs disengaging from 
 what is foreign and temporary, and is employed in 
 efforts after freedom which become more vigorous and 
 hopeful as its years increase. Its beginnings are no 
 measure of its capabilities, nor of its scope. At first 
 no one knows what it is, or what it is worth. It remains 
 perhaps for a time quiescent ; it tries, as it were, its limbs, 
 and proves the ground under it, and feels its way. From 
 time to time, it makes essays which fail, and are in 
 consequence abandoned. It seems in suspense which 
 way to go ; it wavers, and at length strikes out in one 
 definite direction. In time it enters upon strange terri- 
 tory ; points of controversy alter their bearing ; parties 
 rise and fall around it ; dangers and hopes appear in 
 new relations ; and old principles reappear under new 
 forms. It changes with them in order to remain the 
 same. In a higher world it is otherwise, but here 
 below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have 
 changed often. 1 " The image of the river pervades 
 this passage throughout and yet is never obtrusive and 
 never determines or even constrains the progress of 
 the thought. The imagery simply seems to insinuate 
 the ideas into the reader's mind with a certain novelty 
 of appeal and half-sensuous persuasiveness. Another 
 passage of much this kind has already been quoted on 
 page xx, where Newman describes the adventurous 
 investigator scaling the crags of truth. 
 
 1 Development of Christian Doctrine, ed. 1891, pp. 39-49.
 
 xlvi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Closely akin to this use of figures is Newman's 
 generous use of examples and illustrations. Whatever 
 be the principle he is discussing, he is never content 
 till he has realized it for the reader in tangible, visible 
 form, until he has given it the cogency and intensity of 
 appeal that only sensations or images possess. In all 
 these ways, then, by his idiomatic and colloquial 
 phrasing, by his specific vocabulary, by his delicately 
 adroit use of metaphors, by his carefully elaborated 
 imagery, and by his wealth of examples and illustra- 
 tions, Newman keeps resolutely close to the concrete, 
 and imparts everywhere to his style warmth, vividness, 
 color, convincing actuality. 
 
 VII. 
 
 IT remains to suggest briefly Newman's relation to 
 what was most characteristic in the thought and feel- 
 ing of his times. This is not the place for a discus- 
 sion of his theological position, or for a technical ac- 
 count of the great religious movements which he 
 partly originated and largely guided and determined. 
 But without an attempt at any such special analysis of 
 his doctrine or determination of the processes of his 
 thought, it will be possible to connect him, by virtue of 
 certain temperamental characteristics, and certain pre- 
 vailing modes of conceiving life, with what was most 
 distinctive in the literature of the early part of the cen- 
 tury. 
 
 Perhaps the most general formula for the work of
 
 INTRODUCTION. . xlvii 
 
 English literature during the first quarter of the present 
 century is the rediscovery and vindication of the con- 
 crete. The special task of the eighteenth century had 
 been to order, and to systematize, and to name ; its 
 favorite methods had been analysis and generalization. 
 It asked for no new experience ; it sought only to 
 master and reduce to formulas, and to find convenient 
 labels for what experience it already possessed. It 
 was perpetually in search of standards and canons ; it 
 was conventional through and through ; and its men 
 felt secure from the ills of time only when sheltered 
 under some ingenious artificial construction of rule and 
 precedent. Whatever lay beyond the scope of their 
 analysis- and defied their laws, they disliked and 
 dreaded ; the outlying regions of mystery which hem life 
 in on every side, are inaccessible to the intellect and 
 irreducible in terms of its laws, were strangely repel- 
 lent to them, and from such shadowy vistas they res- 
 olutely turned their eyes and fastened them on the 
 solid ground at their feet. The familiar bustle of the 
 town, the thronging streets of the city, the gay life of 
 the drawing-room and coffee-house and play-house ; or 
 the more exalted life of Parliament and Court, the in- 
 trigues of State-chambers, the manoeuvres of the bat- 
 tle-field ; the aspects of human activity, wherever col- 
 lective man in his social capacity goes through the 
 orderly and comprehensible changes of his ceaseless 
 pursuit of worldly happiness and worldly success ; 
 these were the subjects that for the men of the eight- 
 eenth century had absorbing charm, and in seeking to 
 master this intricate play of forces, to fathom the mo- 
 tives below it, to tabulate its experiences, to set up
 
 xlviii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 standards to guide the individual successfully through 
 the intricacies of this commonplace every-day world, 
 they spent their utmost energy, and to these tasks they 
 instinctively limited themselves. In poetry it was a 
 generalized view of life that they aimed at, a semi-phil- 
 osophical representation of man's nature and actions. 
 Pope, the typical poet of the century, " stooped to truth 
 and moralized his song." Dr. Johnson, the most 
 authoritative critic of the century, taught that the poet 
 should " remark general properties and large appear- 
 ances .... and must neglect the minuter discrimi- 
 nations, which one may have remarked, and another 
 have neglected, or those characteristics which are alike 
 obvious to vigilance and carelessness." In prose the 
 same moralizing and generalizing tendencies prevailed 
 and found their most adequate and thorough-going ex- 
 pression in the abstract and pretentiously Latinized 
 style of Dr. Johnson. 
 
 Everywhere thought gave the law ; the senses and 
 the imagination were kept jealously in subordination. 
 The abstract, the typical, the general these were every- 
 where exalted at the expense of the image, the speci- 
 fic experience, the vital fact. In religion the same ten- 
 dencies showed themselves. Orthodoxy and Deism 
 alike were mechanical in their conception of Nature 
 and of God. Free-thinkers and Apologists alike tried 
 to systematize religious experience, and to rationalize 
 theology. In the pursuit of historical evidences and 
 of logical demonstrations of the truth or falsity of re- 
 ligion, genuine religious emotion was almost neglected 
 or was actually condemned. Enthusiasm was dis- 
 trusted or abhorred ; an enthusiast was a madman. In-
 
 IN TROD UC TION. xlix 
 
 tense feeling of all kinds was regarded askance, and 
 avoided as irrational, unsettling, prone to disarrange 
 systems and to overturn standards and burst the bonds 
 of formulas. 
 
 ' Now it was to this limited manner of living life and 
 of conceiving of life that the great movement which, 
 for lack of a better name, may be called the Romantic 
 Movement, was to put an end. The Romanticists 
 sought to enrich life with new emotions, to conquer 
 new fields of experience, to come into imaginative 
 touch with far distant times, to give its due to the en- 
 compassing world of darkness and mystery, and even 
 to pierce through the darkness in the hope of finding, 
 at the heart of the mystery, a transcendental world of 
 infinite beauty and eternal truth. A keener sense of 
 the value of life penetrated them and stirred them into 
 imaginative sympathy with much that had left the men 
 of the eighteenth century unmoved. They found in the 
 naive life of nature and animals and children a pictur- 
 esqueness and grace that was wanting in the sophisti- 
 cated life of the " town ; " they delighted in the mys- 
 terious chiaroscuro of the middle ages, in its ri ;h 
 blazonry of passion, and its ever-changing spectacular 
 magnificence ; they looked forward with ardor into the 
 future, and dreamed dreams of the progress of man ; 
 they opened their hearts to the influences of the 
 spiritual world, and religion became to them something 
 more than respectability and morality. In every way 
 they endeavored to give some new zest to life, to im- 
 part to it some fine novel flavor, to attain to some 
 exquisite new experience. They sought this new 
 experience imaginatively in the past, with Scott and 
 4
 
 1 INTROD UC TION. 
 
 Southey; they sought it with fierce insistence in foreign 
 lands, following Byron, and in the wild exploitation of 
 individual fancy and caprice ; they sought it with Cole- 
 ridge and Wordsworth through the revived sensitive- 
 ness of the spirit and its intuitions of a transcendental 
 world of absolute reality ; they sought it with Shelley 
 in the regions of the vast inane.' 
 
 Now it was in the midst of these restless conditions 
 and under the influence of all this new striving and 
 aspiration that Newman's youth and most impression- 
 able years of development were spent, and he took 
 color and tone from his epoch to a degree that has 
 often been overlooked. His work, despite its reac- 
 tionary character, indeed, partly because of it, is a 
 genuine expression of the Romantic spirit, and can be 
 understood only when thus interpreted and brought 
 into relation with the great tendencies of thought and 
 feeling of the early part of our century. Of his direct 
 indebtedness to Scott, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, he 
 has himself made record in the Apologia l and in his 
 Autobiographical Sketch? But far more important than 
 the influence of any single man was the penetrating 
 and determining action upon him of the romantic at- 
 mosphere, overcharged as it was with intense feeling 
 and tingling with new thought. The results of this 
 action may be traced throughout his temperament and 
 in all his work. 
 
 Mediaevalism, as we have seen, was a distinctive 
 note of the Romantic spirit, and, certainly, Newman 
 was intensely alive to the beauty and the poetic charm 
 of the life of the Middle Ages. One is sometimes 
 
 1 Apologia, p. 96. * Letters and Correspondence, I. 18.
 
 INTRODUCTION. \\ 
 
 tempted to describe him as a great mediaeval ecclesiastic 
 astray in the nineteenth century and heroically striving 
 to remodel modern life in harmony with his temper- 
 amental needs. His imagination was possessed with 
 the romantic vision of the greatness of the Mediaeval 
 Church, of its splendor and pomp and dignity, and 
 of its power over the hearts and lives of its members ; 
 and the Oxford movement was in its essence an attempt 
 to reconstruct the English Church in harmony with 
 this romantic ideal, to rouse the Church to a vital 
 realization of its own great traditions, and to restore to 
 it the prestige and the dominating position it had had 
 in the past. As Scott's imagination was fascinated 
 with the picturesque paraphernalia of feudalism, with 
 its jousts, and courts of love, and its coats of mail 
 and buff-jerkins, 1 so Newman's imagination was cap- 
 tivated by the gorgeous ritual and ceremonial, the art 
 and architecture of mediaeval Christianity, and found 
 in them the symbols of the spirit of mystery and awe 
 which was for him the essentially religious spirit, and 
 of the mystical truths of which revealed religion was 
 made up. The Church, as Newman found it, was 
 Erastian and worldly ; it was apt to regard itself as 
 merely an ally of the State for the maintenance of 
 order and spread of morality ; it was coldly rational in 
 belief and theology, and prosaic in its conception of 
 religious truth and of its own position and functions. 
 Newman sought to revive in the Church a mediaeval 
 faith in its own divine mission and the intense spiritual 
 consciousness of the Middle Ages ; he aimed to restore 
 to religion its mystical character, to exalt the sacra- 
 1 Leslie Stephen, Hour in a Library.
 
 Hi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 mental system as the divinely appointed means for the 
 salvation of souls, and to impose once more on men's 
 imaginations the mighty spell of a hierarchical organ- 
 ization, the direct representative of God in the world's 
 affairs. Such was the mediaeval ideal to which he 
 devoted himself. Both he and Scott substantially 
 ruined themselves through their mediasvalism. Scott's 
 luckless attempt was to place his private and family 
 life upon a feudal basis and to give it mediaeval color 
 and beauty ; Newman undertook a much nobler and 
 more heroic but more intrinsically hopeless task, that 
 of re-creating the whole English Church in harmony 
 with mediaeval conceptions. 
 
 Before Newman, Keble had already conceived of 
 the English Church in this imaginative spirit. In the 
 passage quoted in the Selections, pp. 55-58, Newman 
 describes how Keble had made the Church " poetical," 
 had " kindled hearts towards it," and by " his happy 
 magic " had thrown upon its ritual, offices, and serv- 
 ants a glamour and beauty of which they had for many 
 generations been devoid. It was to the continuance 
 and the furtherance of this process of regeneration and 
 transfiguration that Newman devoted the Oxford 
 movement. 
 
 But the essentially Romantic character of the new 
 movement comes out in other ways than in its idealiza- 
 tion of the Church. The relation of Newman and 
 of his friends to Nature was precisely like that of the 
 Romanticists. Newman, like Wordsworth, Coleridge, 
 and Shelley, found Nature mysteriously beautiful and 
 instinct with strange significance, a divinely elaborated 
 language whereby God speaks through symbols to the
 
 INTRODUCTION- Hn 
 
 human soul. Keble's Christian Year is full of this 
 interpretation of natural sights and sounds as images 
 of spiritual truth, and with this mystical conception 
 of Nature Newman was in perfect sympathy. Nature 
 was for him as rich in its spiritual suggest! veness, 
 as for Wordsworth or Shelley, and was as truly for him 
 as for Carlyle or Goethe the visible garment of God. 
 But in interpreting the emotional value of Nature 
 Newman has recourse to a symbolism drawn ready- 
 made from Christianity. The mystical beauty of 
 Nature, instead of calling up in his imagination a 
 Platonic ideal world as with Shelley, or adumbrating 
 the world of eternal verity of German transcendental- 
 ism as with Wordsworth and Coleridge, suggested to 
 Newman the presence and power of seraphs and 
 angels. Of the angels he says, " Every breath of air 
 and ray of light and heat, every beautiful prospect, is, 
 as it were, the skirts of their garments, the waving of 
 the robes of those whose faces see God." Again, he 
 asks, " What would be the thoughts of a man who, 
 when examining a flower, or a herb, or a pebble, or a 
 ray of light, which he treats as something so beneath 
 him in the scale of existence, suddenly discovered 
 that he was in the presence of some powerful being 
 who was hidden behind the visible things he was in- 
 specting, who, though concealing his wise hand, was 
 giving them their beauty, grace, and perfection, as 
 being God's instrument for the purpose, nay, whose 
 robe and ornaments those objects were, which he was 
 so eager to analyze ? " r 
 
 Despite the somewhat conventional symbolism that 
 1 Apologia, p. 28.
 
 liv IN TROD UC TION. 
 
 pervades these passages, the mystical mood in the 
 contemplation of Nature that underlies and suggests 
 them is substantially the same that expresses itself 
 through other imagery in the Romantic poets. In his 
 intense sensitiveness, then, to the emotional value of 
 the visible Universe, and in his interpretation of the 
 beauty of hill and valley and mountain and stream in 
 terms of subjective emotion, Newman may justly be 
 said to have shared in the Romantic Return to Nature. 
 But in a still more important way Newman's work 
 was expressive of the Return to Nature. Under this 
 term is to be included not merely the fresh delight that 
 the Romanticists felt in the splendor of the firmament 
 and the tender beauty or the sublimity of sea and land, 
 but also their eager recognition of the value of the 
 instinctive, the spontaneous, the natural in life, as 
 opposed to the artificial, the self-conscious, the sys- 
 tematic, and the conventional. This recognition per- 
 vades all the literature of the first quarter of our cen- 
 tury, and, in fact, in one form or another, is the charac- 
 teristic note of what is most novel in the thought and 
 the life of the time. In this Return to Nature Newman 
 shared. For him, as for all the Romanticists, life 
 itself is more than what we think about life, experience 
 is infinitely more significant than our formulas for 
 summing it up, and transcends them incalculably. 
 General terms are but the makeshifts of logic and can 
 never cope with the multiplicity and the intensity of 
 sensation and feeling. Newman's elaborate justifica- 
 tion of this indictment of logic is wrought out in the 
 Grammar of Assent and in his Sermon on Implicit and 
 Explicit Reason.
 
 INTRODUCTION. l v 
 
 Throughout these discourses he pleads for those 
 vital processes of thought and feeling and intuition 
 which every man goes through for himself in his ac- 
 quisition of concrete truth, and which he can perhaps 
 describe in but a stammering and inconsequent fashion 
 in the terms of the schoolman's logic. It is by these 
 direct, spontaneous processes, Newman urges, that 
 most men reach truth in whatever concrete matter they 
 apply themselves to, and the truth that they reach is 
 none the less true because they have not the knack of 
 setting forth syllogistically their reasons for accepting 
 it. In his rejection, then, of formal demonstration as 
 the sole method for attaining truth, in his recognition of 
 the limitations' of logic, and in his deep conviction of 
 the surpassing importance of the spontaneous and in- 
 stinctive in life, Newman was at one with the Roman- 
 ticists, and in all these particulars he shared in their 
 Return to Nature. 
 
 This insistance of Newman's on the vital character 
 of truth is a point the importance of which cannot be 
 exaggerated when the attempt is being made to grasp 
 what is essential in his psychology and his ways of 
 conceiving of life and of human nature. For him truth 
 does not exist primarily as for the formalist in the 
 formulas or the theorems of text-books, but in the minds 
 and the hearts of living men. In these minds and 
 hearts truth grows and spreads in countless subtle 
 ways. Its appeal is through numberless other channels 
 than those of the mind. Man is for Newman primarily 
 an agent, an acting creature, not an intellect with 
 merely accidental relations to an outer world. First 
 and foremost he is a doer, a bringer about of results, a
 
 Ivi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 realizer of hopes and ambitions and ideals. He is a 
 mass of instincts and impulses, of prejudices and 
 passions ; and it is in response to these mighty and 
 ceaselessly operating springs of action that he makes 
 his way through the world and subdues it to himself. 
 Truth, then, to commend itself to such a being, must 
 come not merely by way of the brain but also by that 
 of the heart ; it must not be a collection of abstract 
 formulas, but must be concrete and vital. If it be reli- 
 gious truth, it must not take the form of logical de- 
 monstrations, but must be beautifully enshrined in the 
 symbols of an elaborate ritual, illustrated in the lives 
 of saints and doctors, authoritative and venerable in 
 the creeds and liturgies of a hierarchical organization, 
 irresistibly cogent as inculcated by the divinely ap- 
 pointed representatives of the Source of all Truth. In 
 these forms religious truth may be able to impose itself 
 upon individuals, to take complete possession of them, 
 to master their minds and hearts, and to rule their 
 lives. 
 
 But what shall be the test of such truth ? How shall 
 the individual be sure of its claims ? How shall he 
 choose between rival systems ? Here again Newman 
 refuses to be content with the formal and the abstract, 
 and goes straight to life itself. In the search for a 
 criterion of truth he rejects purely intellectual tests, 
 and has recourse to tests which call into activity the 
 whole of a man's nature. It is the Illative Sense 
 that detects and distinguishes truth, and the Illative 
 Sense is simply the entire mind of the individual vigor- 
 ously grasping concrete facts with all their implications 
 for the heart and for the imagination and for conduct
 
 INTRODUCTION. Ivii 
 
 and extracting from them their peculiar significance. 
 This process, by which the individual searches for and 
 attains truth in concrete matters, is admirably described 
 in the passage quoted in the Introduction, p. xx. The 
 formal logic of the schools can never thus reach truth ; 
 it always falls short of life ; its symbols are general 
 terms, colorless abstractions, from which all the palpi- 
 tating warmth and persuasiveness of real life have 
 been carefully drained. Propositions fashioned out 
 of these colorless general terms cannot by any pro- 
 cess of syllogistic jugglery be made to comprehend 
 the whole truth of a religious system. They leave 
 out inevitably what is most vital, and what is there- 
 fore most intimate in its appeal to the individual, 
 to his heart and practical instincts, and his imagina- 
 tion. " We proceed as far indeed as we can, by 
 the logic of language, but we are obliged to sup- 
 plement it by the more subtle and elastic logic of 
 thought ; for forms by themselves prove nothing." r " It 
 is to the living mind that we must look for the means 
 of using correctly principles of whatever kind." 2 " In 
 all of these separate actions of the intellect, the indi- 
 vidual is supreme and responsible to himself, nay, under 
 circumstances, may be justified in opposing himself to 
 the judgment of the whole world ; though he uses rules 
 to his great advantage, as far as they go, and is in con- 
 sequence bound to use them." 1 Absolute "proof can 
 never be furnished to us by the logic of words, for as 
 certitude is of the mind, so is the act of inference 
 which leads to it. Every one who reasons is his own 
 
 1 Grammar of Assent, ed. 1889, p. 359. z Ibid., p. 360. 
 3 Ibid, ed., 1889, p. 353.
 
 Iviii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 centre." ' The progress of the individual " is a liv 
 ing growth, not a mechanism; and its instruments 
 are mental acts, not the formulas and contriv- 
 ances of language." * 
 
 The foregoing analysis has tended to illustrate the 
 facts that Newman aimed to make religion an in- 
 tensely concrete personal experience, and to fill out 
 the spiritual life with widely-varying and richly-beauti- 
 ful feeling ; and that he also set himself everywhere 
 consciously and directly against the eighteenth century 
 ideal, according to which reason was the sole dis- 
 coverer and arbiter of truth and regulator of conduct. 
 In these respects Newman's work was in perfect har- 
 mony with that of the Romanticists. Like them he 
 was pleading for the spontaneous, for the emotions 
 and the imagination, for what is most vital in life, in 
 opposition to the formalists, the systematizers, and 
 the devotees of logic. 
 
 In the following points, then, Newman's kinship with 
 the Romanticists is recognizable : in his imaginative 
 sympathy with the past, in the range and perspective 
 of his historical consciousness, and in his devotion 
 to an ideal framed largely in accordance with a loving 
 reverence for mediaeval life. His vein of mysticism, 
 his imaginative sympathy with nature, his interpreta- 
 tion of nature as symbolic of spiritual truth, his rejec- 
 tion of reason as the guide of life, and his recognition 
 of the inadequacy of generalizations and formulas to 
 the wealth of actual life and to the intensity and variety 
 
 1 Grammar of Assent, p. 345. 
 'Ibid., ed. 1889, p. 350.
 
 IN TROD UC TION. Hx 
 
 of personal experience, are also characteristics that 
 mark his relation to the men of his period. 
 
 These are a few of the considerations which make it 
 possible to bring Newman's temperament and work 
 into intelligible connection with the conditions of 
 thought and feeling most characteristic of his time, and 
 which help to render comprehensible the Oxford move- 
 ment and the Roman Catholic revival as expressions of 
 tendencies widely operative throughout English life and 
 literature. It will perhaps be urged that, after ali, 
 what is individual to a man or a movement is far more 
 significant than what the man or movement shares 
 with others, and that therefore to study wherein New- 
 man differed from his contemporaries would have been 
 far more profitable than by a curious blurring of traits 
 to try to reduce Newman's form and face to somewhat 
 the same pattern with those of various men quite unre- 
 lated to him in actual life. This contention would be 
 perfectly just if appreciation were the sole end in the 
 study of literature. But if the search for causes be also 
 part of the task of criticism, and if a piece of literature 
 is thoroughly grasped only when it is comprehended in 
 its relations to the general conditions of thought and 
 feeling in the midst of which the author lived and 
 wrought, then the justification for such an analysis of 
 an author's work as that which has just been at- 
 tempted, becomes apparent. It has been with a view 
 to helping students to a broader and at the same time 
 more penetrating comprehension of Newman's char- 
 acter and work and of the qualities of his style, that 
 these closing suggestions have been made.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Abbott, Edwin A. Philomythus. London, 1891. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew. Culture and Anarchy. Ed. 1883. Pp. 29-30. 
 
 Birrell, Augustine. Res Judicatae. London, 1892. 
 
 Brodrick, George C. A History of the University of Oxford. 
 London, 1886. 
 
 Bulwer-Lytton. England and the English. London, 1833. 
 Bk. in, chaps. 4 and 5; bk. iv. chap. 9. 
 
 Church, R. W. The Life and Letters of Dean Church. 
 Edited by his daughter. London, 1894. 
 
 Church, R. W. The Oxford Movement: twelve years, 1833- 
 1845. London, 1891. 
 
 Couch, L. Quiller, editor. Reminiscences of Oxford by Ox- 
 ford men. 1559-1850. Oxford, 1892. 
 
 Froude, J. A. The Oxford Counter-reformation. Short 
 Studies on Great Subjects. 4tn series. London, 1883. pp. 151- 
 
 235- 
 
 Froude, J. A. The Revival of Romanism. Short Studies, 
 3d series. 
 
 Hore, A. H. Eighteen Centuries of the Church in England. 
 London, 1881. 
 
 Hutton, Richard Holt. Cardinal Newman. Boston, 1890. 
 
 Hutton, R. H. Essays on Some of the Modern Guides of 
 English Thought in Matters of Faith. London, 1887. 
 
 Kingsley, Charles. "What, then, does Dr. Newman 
 mean?" London, 1864. 
 
 Liddon, Henry Parry. Life of E. B. Pusey. London, i8y4. 
 3 vols. 
 
 Liddon, Henry Parry. Thoughts on Present Church Trou- 
 bles. London, 1882. 
 
 Martineau, James. Essays. London, 1866. pp. 329-406 : 
 Personal Influences on Present Theology. 
 
 lx
 
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 Meynell, Wilfrid. Cardinal Newman: a Monograph. By 
 John Oldcastle [pseudonym]. London. [1890.] Portraits. 
 
 Molesworth, William Nassau. History of the Church of 
 England from 1660. London, 1882. 
 
 Mozley, Anne. Letters and Correspondence of John Henry 
 Newman. London, 1891. 2 vols. 
 
 Mozley, J. B. Letters. London, 1885. 
 
 Mozley, Thomas. Reminiscences chiefly of Oriel College 
 and the Oxford Movement. Boston, 1882. 2 vols. 
 
 Newman, Francis W. Contributions chiefly to the early 
 history of Cardinal Newman; with comments. 2d ed. Lon- 
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 Palmer, Sir William, Bart. A Narrative of Events con- 
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 Pattison, Mark. Memoirs. London, 1885. 
 
 Pfleiderer, Otto von. Die Entwicklung der Protestantischen 
 Theologie. Freiburg, 1891. 
 
 Shairp, J. C. Aspects of Poetry. London, 1881. pp. 
 438-464. 
 
 Stephen, Leslie. An Agnostic's Apology. London, 1893. 
 (Newman's theory of belief.) 
 
 Tulloch, John. Movements of Religious Thought, etc. 
 London, 1885. 
 
 Ward, Wilfrid. William George Ward and the Oxford 
 Movement. London, 1889. 
 
 Ward, Wilfrid. William George Ward and the Catholic Re- 
 vival. London, 1893. 
 
 Ward, Wilfrid. Witnesses to the Unseen, and other Essays. 
 London, 1893. 
 
 Wilberforce, Samuel, Bishop. Essays. London, 1874. 2 
 vols. I. pp. 334-93. 
 
 Williams, Isaac. Autobiography. London, 1892. 
 
 Wordsworth, Charles (Bishop of St. Andrews). Annals of 
 my Early Life: 1806-1846. 2d ed. London, 1891. (Appen- 
 dix on the Oxford Movement.) 
 
 Wordsworth, Charles. Annals of my Life: 1847-1856. 
 London, 1893.
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 Site of a 
 
 IF we would know what a University is, considered 
 in its elementary idea, we must betake ourselves to the 
 first and most celebrated home of European literature 
 and source of European civilization, to the bright and- 
 beautiful Athens, Athens, whose schools drew to her 
 bosom, and then sent back again to the business of life, 
 the youth of the Western World for a long thousand 
 years. Seated on the verge of the continent, the city 
 seemed hardly suited for the duties of a central metrop- 
 olis of knowledge ; yet, what it lost in convenience 
 of approach, it gained in its neighbourhood to the 
 traditions of the mysterious East, and in the loveliness 
 of the region in which it lay. Hither, then, as to a 
 sort of ideal land, where all archetypes of the great and 
 the fair were found in substantial being, and all de- 
 partmenfs of truth explored, and all diversities of intel- 
 lectual power exhibited, where taste and philosophy 
 were majestically enthroned as in a royal court, where 
 there was no sovereignty but that of mind, and no no- 
 bility but that of genius, where professors were rulers, 
 
 i
 
 2 SITE OF A UNIVERSITY. 
 
 and princes did homage, hither flocked continually 
 from the very corners of the orbis terrarum, the many- 
 tongued generation, just rising, or just risen into man 
 hood, in order to gain wisdom. 
 
 Pisistratus had in an early age discovered and 
 nursed the infant genius of his people, and Cimon, 
 after the Persian war, had given it a home. That war 
 had established the naval supremacy of Athens ; she 
 had become an imperial state ; and the lonians, bound 
 to her by the double chain of kindred and of subjec- 
 tion, were importing into her both their merchandise 
 and their civilization. The arts and philosophy of the 
 Asiatic coast were easily carried across the sea, and 
 there was Cimon, as I have said, with his ample for- 
 tune, ready to receive them with due honours. Not 
 content with patronizing their professors, he built the 
 first of those noble porticos, of which we hear so much 
 in Athens, and he formed the groves, which in process 
 of time became the celebrated Academy. Planting is 
 one of the most graceful, as in Athens it was one of 
 the most beneficent, of employments. Cimon took in 
 hand the wild wood, pruned and dressed it, and laid 
 it out with handsome walks and welcome fountains. 
 Nor, while hospitable to the authors of the city's civili-" 
 zation, was he ungrateful to the instruments of her 
 prosperity. His trees extended their cool, umbrageous 
 branches over the merchants, who assembled in the 
 Agora, for many generations. 
 
 Those merchants certainly had deserved that act of 
 bounty ; for all the while their ships had been carrying 
 forth the intellectual fame of Athens to the western 
 World. Then commenced what may be called her
 
 SITE OF A UNIVERSITY. 3 
 
 University existence. Pericles, who succeeded Cimon 
 both in the government and in the patronage of art, is 
 said by Plutarch to have entertained the idea of mak- 
 ing Athens the capital of federated Greece : in this he 
 failed, but his encouragement of such meri as Phidias 
 and Anaxagoras led the way to her acquiring a far 
 more lasting sovereignty over a far wider empire. 
 Little understanding the sources of her own greatness, 
 Athens would go to war : peace is the interest of a seat 
 of commerce and the arts ; but to war she went ; yet 
 to her, whether peace or war, it mattered not. The 
 political power of Athens waned and disappeared ; 
 kingdoms rose and fell ; centuries rolled away, they 
 did but bring fresh triumphs to the city of the poet and 
 the sage. There at length the swarthy Moor and Span- 
 iard were seen to meet the blue-eyed Gaul ; and the 
 Cappadocian, late subject of Mithridates, gazed with- 
 out alarm at the haughty conquering Roman. Revo- 
 lution after revolution passed over the face of Europe, 
 as well as of Greece, but still she was there, Athens, 
 the city of mind, as radiant, as splendid, as delicate, 
 as young, as ever she had been. 
 
 Many a more fruitful coast or isle is washed by the 
 blue ^Egean, many a spot is there more beautiful or 
 sublime to see, many a territory more ample ; but 
 there was one charm in Attica, which, in the same per- 
 fection, was nowhere else. The deep pastures of 
 Arcadia, the plain, Argos, the Thessalian vale, these 
 had not the gift ; Boeotia, which lay to its immediate 
 north, was notorious for its very want of it. The 
 heavy atmosphere of that Bceotia might be good for 
 vegetation, but it was associated in popular belief with
 
 4 SITE OF A UNIVERSITY. 
 
 the dulness of the Bceotian intellect : on the contrary, 
 the special purity, elasticity, clearness, and salubrity of 
 the air of Attica, fit concomitant and emblem of its 
 genius, did that for it which earth did not : it brought 
 out every bright hue and tender shade of the landscape 
 over which it was spread, and would have illuminated 
 the face of even a more bare and rugged country. 
 
 A confined triangle, perhaps fifty miles its greatest 
 length, and thirty its greatest breadth ; two elevated 
 rocky barriers, meeting at an angle ; three prominent 
 mountains, commanding the plain, Parnes, Penteli- 
 cus, and Hymettus ; an unsatisfactory soil ; some 
 streams, not always full ; such is about the report 
 which the agent of a London company would have 
 made of Attica. He would report that the climate 
 was mild ; the hills were limestone ; there was plenty 
 of good marble ; more pasture land than at first survey 
 might have been expected, sufficient certainly for sheep 
 and goats ; fisheries productive ; silver mines once, 
 but long since worked out ; figs fair ; oil first-rate ; 
 olives in profusion. But what he would not think of 
 noting down, was, that that olive tree was so choice in 
 nature and so noble in shape that it excited a relig- 
 ious veneration ; and that it took so kindly to the light 
 soil, as to expand into woods upon the open plain, and 
 to climb up and fringe the hills. He would not 
 think of writing word to his employers, how that clear 
 air, of which I have spoken, brought out, yet blended 
 and subdued, the colours on the marble, till they had 
 a softness and harmony, for all their richness, which in 
 a picture looks exaggerated, yet is after all within the 
 truth. He would not tell, how that same delicate and
 
 SITE OF A UNIVERSITY. 5 
 
 , brilliant atmosphere freshened up the pale olive, till 
 the olive forgot its monotony, and its cheek glowed like 
 the arbutus or beech of the Umbrian hills. He would 
 say nothing of the thyme and the thousand fragrant 
 herbs which carpeted Hymettus ; he would hear noth- 
 ing of the hum of its bees ; nor take much account of 
 the rare flavour of its honey, since Gozo and Minorca 
 were sufficient for the English demand. He would 
 look over the ygean from the height he had as- 
 cended ; he would follow with his eye the chain of 
 "islands, which, starting from the Sunian headland, 
 seemed to offer the fabled divinities of Attica, when 
 they would visit their Ionian cousins, a sort of viaduct 
 thereto across the sea : but that fancy would not occur 
 to him, nor any admiration of the dark violet billows 
 with their white edges down below ; nor of those grace- 
 ful, fan-like jets of silver upon the rocks, which slowly 
 rise aloft like water spirits from the deep, then shiver, 
 and break, and spread, and shroud themselves, and 
 disappear in a soft mist of foam ; nor of the gentle, in- 
 cessant heaving and panting of the whole liquid plain ; 
 nor of the long waves, keeping steady time, like a line 
 of soldiery as they resound upon the hollow shore, he 
 would not deign to notice that restless living element at 
 all except to bless his stars that he was not upon it. 
 Nor the distinct details, nor the refined colouring, nor 
 the graceful outline and roseate golden hue of the jut- 
 ting crags, nor the bold shadows cast from Otus or 
 Laurium by the declining sun ; our agent of a mer- 
 cantile firm would not value these matters even at a 
 low figure. Rather we must turn for the sympathy we 
 seek to yon pilgrim student, come from a semi-barba-
 
 6 SITE OF A UNIVERSITY. 
 
 rous land to that small corner of the earth, as to a 
 shrine, where he might take his fill of gazing on those 
 emblems and coruscations of invisible unoriginate 
 perfection. It was the stranger from a remote 
 province, from Britain or from Mauritania, who in a 
 scene so different from that of his chilly, woody 
 swamps, or of his fiery, choking sands, learned at once 
 what a real University must be, by coming to under- 
 stand the sort of country which was its suitable home. 
 Nor was this all that a University required, and 
 found in Athens. No one, even there, could live on 
 poetry. If the students at that famous place had noth- 
 ing better than bright hues and soothing sounds, they 
 would not have been able or disposed to turn their 
 residence there to much account. Of course they 
 must have the means of living, nay, in a certain sense, 
 of enjoyment, if Athens was to be an Alma Mater at 
 the time, or to remain afterwards a pleasant thought in 
 their memory. And so they had : be it recollected 
 Athens was a port, and a mart of trade, perhaps the 
 first in Greece ; and this was very much to the point, 
 when a number of strangers were ever flocking to it, 
 whose combat was to be with intellectual, not physical 
 difficulties, and who claimed to have their bodily wants 
 supplied, that they might be at leisure to set about 
 furnishing their minds. Now, barren as was the soil 
 of Attica, and bare the face of the country, yet it had 
 only too many resources for an elegant, nay, luxurious 
 abode there. So abundant were the imports of the 
 place, that it was a common saying, that the produc- 
 tions, which were found singly elsewhere, were brought 
 all together in Athens. Corn and wine, the staple of
 
 SITE OF A UNIVERSITY. 7 
 
 subsistence in such a climate, came from the isles of 
 the ^Egean ; fine wool and carpeting from Asia Minor ; 
 slaves, as now, from the Euxine, and timber too ; and 
 iron and brass from the coasts of the Mediterranean. 
 The Athenian did not condescend to manufactures him- 
 self, but encouraged them in others ; and a population 
 of foreigners caught at the lucrative occupation both for 
 home consumption and for exportation. Their cloth, 
 and other textures for dress and furniture, and their 
 hardware for instance, armour were in great request. 
 Labour was cheap ; stone and marble in plenty ; and 
 the taste and skill, which at first were devoted to public 
 buildings, as temples and porticos, were in the course 
 of time applied to the mansions of public men. If 
 nature did much for Athens, it is undeniable that art 
 did much more. 
 
 Here some one will interrupt me with the remark : 
 " By the by, where are we, and whither are we going ? 
 what has all this to do with a University ? at least 
 what has it to do with education ? It is instructive 
 doubtless ; but still how much has it to do with your 
 subject ? " Now I beg to assure the reader that I am 
 most conscientiously employed upon my subject ; and 
 I should have thought every one would have seen this : 
 however, since the objection is made, I may be allowed 
 to pause awhile, and show distinctly the drift of what I 
 have been saying, before I go farther. What has this 
 to do with my subject ! why, the question of the site is 
 the very first that comes into consideration, when a 
 Studium Generale is contemplated ; for that site should 
 be a liberal and noble one ; who will deny it ? All 
 authorities agree in this, and very little reflection will
 
 8 SITE OF A UNIVERSITY. 
 
 be sufficient to make it clear. I recollect a conversa- 
 tion I once had on this very subject with a very emi- 
 nent man. I was a youth of eighteen, and was leaving 
 my University for the Long Vacation, when I found 
 myself in company in a public conveyance with a 
 middle-aged person, whose face was strange to me. 
 However, it was the great academical luminary of the 
 day, whom afterwards I knew very well. Luckily for 
 me, I did not suspect it; and luckily too, it was a 
 fancy of his, as his friends knew, to make himself on 
 easy terms especially with stage-coach companions. 
 So, what with my flippancy and his condescension, I 
 managed to hear many things which were novel to me 
 at the time ; and one point which he was strong upon, 
 and was evidently fond of urging, was the material 
 pomp and circumstance which should environ a great 
 seat of learning. He considered it was worth the 
 consideration of the government, whether Oxford 
 should not stand in a domain of its own. An ample 
 range, say four miles in diameter, should be turned 
 into wood and meadow, and the University should be 
 approached on all sides by a magnificent park, with 
 fine trees in groups and groves and avenues, and with 
 glimpses and views of the fair city, as the traveller 
 drew near it. There is nothing surely absurd in the 
 idea, though it would cost a round sum to realize it. 
 What has a better claim to the purest and fairest pos- 
 sessions of nature, than the seat of wisdom ? So 
 thought my coach companion ; and he did but express 
 the tradition of ages and the instinct of mankind. 
 
 For instance, take the great University of Paris. 
 That famous school engrossed as its territory the
 
 SITE OF A UNIVERSITY. 9 
 
 whole south bank of the Seine, and occupied one half, 
 and that the pleasanter.half, of the city. King Louis 
 had the island pretty well as his own, it was scarcely 
 more than a fortification ; and the north of the river 
 was given over to the nobles and citizens to do what 
 they could with its marshes ; but the eligible south, 
 rising from the stream, which swept around its base, 
 to the fair summit of St. Genevieve, with its broad 
 meadows, its vineyards and its gardens, and with the 
 sacred elevation of Montmartre confronting it, all this 
 was the inheritance of the University. There was that 
 pleasant Pratum, stretching along the river's bank, in 
 which the students for centuries took their recreation, 
 which Alcuin seems to mention in his farewell verses 
 to Paris, and which has given a name to the great 
 Abbey of St. Germain-des-Pre's. For long years it was 
 devoted to the purposes of innocent and healthy 
 enjoyment ; but evil times came on the University ; 
 disorder arose within its precincts, and the fair 
 meadow became the scene of party brawls ; heresy 
 stalked through Europe, and Germany and England no 
 longer sending their contingent of students, a heavy 
 debt was the consequence to the academical body. 
 To let their land was the only resource left to them : 
 buildings rose upon it, and spread along the green 
 sod, and the country at length became town. Great 
 was the grief and indignation of the doctors and 
 masters, when this catastrophe occurred. " A 
 wretched sight," said the Proctor of the German 
 nation, " a wretched sight, to witness the sale of that 
 ancient manor, whither the Muses were wont to 
 wander for retirement and pleasure. Whither shall
 
 10 SITE OF A UNIVERSITY. 
 
 the youthful student now betake himself, what relief 
 will he find for his eyes, wearied with intense reading, 
 now that the pleasant stream is taken from him ? " 
 Two centuries and more have passed since this com- 
 plaint was uttered ; and time has shown that the 
 outward calamity, which it recorded, was but the em- 
 blem of the great moral revolution, which was to 
 follow ; till the institution itself has followed its green 
 meadows, into the region of things which once were 
 and now are not. Historical Sketches, ed. 1891, vol. iii., 
 pp. 18-26 (1854).
 
 Bfm of a TUniversitg Course. 
 
 TODAY I have confined myself to saying that that 
 training of the intellect, which is best for the individ- 
 ual himself, best enables him to discharge his duties 
 to society. The Philosopher, indeed, and the man of 
 the world differ in their very notion, but the methods, 
 by which they are respectively formed, are pretty 
 much the same. The Philosopher has the same com- 
 mand of matters of thought, which the true citizen and 
 gentleman has of matters of business and conduct. If 
 then a practical end must be assigned to a University 
 course, I say it is that of training good members of 
 society. Its art is the art of social life, and its end is 
 fitness for the world. It neither confines its views to 
 particular professions on the one hand, nor creates 
 heroes or inspires genius on the other. Works indeed 
 of genius fall under no art ; heroic minds come under 
 no rule ; a University is not a birthplace of poets or 
 of immortal authors, of founders of schools, leaders 
 of colonies, or conquerors of nations. It does not 
 promise a generation of Aristotles or Newtons, of 
 Napoleons or Washingtons, of Raphaels or Shake- 
 speares, though such miracles of nature it has before 
 now contained within its precincts. Nor is it content 
 on the other hand with forming the critic or the 
 experimentalist, the economist or the engineer, though 
 
 ii
 
 12 THE AIM OF A UNIVERSITY COURSE. 
 
 such too it includes within its scope. But a Uni- 
 versity training is -the great ordinary means to a great 
 but ordinary end ; it aims at raising the intellectual 
 tone of society, at cultivating the public mind, at puri- 
 fying the national taste, at supplying true principles 
 to popular enthusiasm and fixed aims to popular aspi- 
 ration, at giving enlargement and sobriety to the ideas 
 of the age, at facilitating the exercise of political 
 power, and refining the intercourse of private life. It 
 is the education which gives a man a clear conscious 
 view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in 
 developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, 
 and a force in urging them. It teaches him to see 
 things as they are, to go right to the point, to disen- 
 tangle a skein of thought, to detect what is sophistical, 
 and to discard what is irrelevant. It prepares him to 
 fill any post with credit, and to master any subject 
 with facility. It shows him how to accommodate him- 
 self to others, how to throw himself into their state of 
 mind, how to bring before them his own, how to 
 influence them, how to come to an understanding with 
 them, how to bear with them. He is at home in any 
 society, he has common ground with every class ; he 
 knows when to speak and when to be silent ; he is able 
 to converse, he is able to listen ; he can ask a question 
 pertinently, and gain a lesson seasonably, when he has 
 nothing to impart himself ; he is ever ready, yet never 
 in the way ; he is a pleasant companion, and a com- 
 rade you can depend upon ; he knows when to be 
 serious and when to trifle, and he has a sure tact 
 which enables him to trifle with gracefulness and to be 
 serious with effect. He has the repose of a mind
 
 THE AIM OF A UNIVERSITY COURSE. 13 
 
 which lives in itself, while it lives in the world, and 
 which has resources for its happiness at home when it 
 cannot go abroad. He has a gift which serves him in 
 public, and supports him in retirement, without which 
 good fortune is but vulgar, and with which failure and 
 disappointment have a charm. The art which tends 
 to make a man all this, is in the object which it pur- 
 sues as useful as the art of wealth or the art of health, 
 though it is less susceptible of method, and less tangi- 
 ble, less certain, less complete, in its result. Idea of 
 a University ', ed. 1891, pp. 177-178 (1852).
 
 dfcan of tbe WorlO. 
 
 PRIDE, under such training, instead of running to 
 waste in the education of the mind, is turned to 
 account ; it gets a new name ; it is called self-respect ; 
 and ceases to be the disagreeable, uncompanionable 
 quality which it is in itself. Though it be the motive 
 principle of the soul, it seldom comes to view ; and 
 when it shows itself, then delicacy and gentleness are 
 its attire, and good sense and sense of honour direct 
 its motions. It is no longer a restless agent, without 
 definite aim ; it has a large field of exertion assigned 
 to it, and it subserves those social interests which it 
 would naturally trouble. It is directed into the 
 channel of industry, frugality, honesty, and obedience ; 
 and it becomes the - very staple of the religion and 
 morality held in honour in a day like our own. It 
 becomes the safeguard of chastity, the guarantee of 
 veracity, in high and low ; it is the very household god 
 "of society, as at present constituted, inspiring neatness 
 and decency in the servant girl, propriety of carriage 
 and refined manners in her mistress, uprightness, man- 
 liness, and generosity in the head of the family. It 
 diffuses a light over town and country ; it covers the 
 soil with handsome edifices and smiling gardens ; it 
 tills the field, it stocks and embellishes the shop. It 
 
 14
 
 THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 1 5 
 
 is the stimulating principle of providence on the one 
 hand, and of free expenditure on the other ; of an 
 honourable ambition, and of elegant enjoyment. It 
 breathes upon the face of the community, and the 
 hollow sepulchre is forthwith beautiful to look upon. 
 
 Refined by the civilization which has brought it into 
 activity, this self-respect infuses into the mind an in- 
 tense horror of exposure, and a keen sensitiveness of 
 notoriety and ridicule. It becomes the enemy of 
 extravagances of any kind ; it shrinks from what are 
 called scenes ; it has no mercy on the mock-heroic, on 
 pretence or egotism, on verbosity in language, or what 
 is called prosiness in conversation. It detests gross 
 adulation ; not that it tends at all to the eradication of 
 the appetite to which the flatterer ministers, but it sees 
 the absurdity of indulging it, it understands the an- 
 noyance thereby given to others, and if a tribute must 
 be paid to the wealthy or the powerful, it demands 
 greater subtlety and art in the preparation. Thus 
 vanity is changed into a more dangerous self-conceit, 
 as being checked in its natural eruption. It teaches 
 men to suppress their feelings, and to control their 
 tempers, and to mitigate both the severity* and the 
 tone of their judgments. As Lord Shaftesbury would 
 desire, it prefers playful wit and satire in putting down 
 what is objectionable, as a more refined and good- 
 natured, as well as a more effectual method, than the 
 expedient which is natural to uneducated minds. 
 It is from this impatience of the tragic and the bom- 
 bastic that it is now quietly but energetically opposing 
 itself to the unchristian practice of duelling, which it 
 brands as simply out of taste, and as the remnant of
 
 1 6 THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 
 
 a barbarous age ; and certainly it seems likely to effect 
 what Religion has aimed at abolishing in vain. 
 
 Hence it is that it is almost a definition of a gentle- 
 man to say he is one who never inflicts pain. This 
 description is both refined and, as far as it goes, 
 accurate. He is mainly occupied in merely removing 
 the obstacles which hinder the free and unembarrassed 
 action of those about him ; and he concurs with their 
 movements rather than takes the initiative himself. 
 His benefits may be considered as parallel to what are 
 called comforts or conveniences in arrangements of a 
 personal nature : like an easy-chair or a good fire, 
 which do their part in dispelling cold and fatigue, 
 though nature provides both means of rest and ani- 
 mal heat without them. The true gentleman in like 
 manner carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or a 
 jolt in the minds of those with whom he is cast ; all 
 clashing of opinion, or collision of feeling, all restraint, 
 or suspicion, or gloom, or resentment ; his great con- 
 cern being to make every one at their ease and at 
 home. He has his eyes on all his company ; he is 
 tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, 
 and merciful towards the absurd ; he can recollect to 
 whom he is speaking ; he guards against unseasonable 
 allusions, or topics which may irritate ; he is seldom 
 prominent in conversation, and never wearisome. He 
 makes light of favours while he does them, and seems 
 to be receiving when he is conferring. He never 
 speaks of himself except when compelled, never de- 
 fends himself by a mere retort, he has no ears for 
 slander or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing motives to
 
 THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 17 
 
 ' those who interfere with him, and interprets every- 
 thing for the best. He is never mean or little in his 
 disputes, never takes unfair advantage, never mistakes 
 personalities or sharp sayings for arguments, or insinu- 
 ates evil which he dare not say out. From a long- 
 sighted prudence, he observes the maxim of the 
 ancient sage, that we should ever conduct ourselves 
 towards our enemy as if he were one day to be our 
 friend. He has too much good sense to be affronted 
 at insults, he is too well employed to remember 
 injuries, and too indolent to bear malice. He is 
 patient, forbearing, and resigned, on philosophical 
 principles ; he submits to pain, because it is inevitable, 
 to bereavement, because it is irreparable, and to death, 
 because it is his destiny. If he engages in controversy 
 of any kind, his disciplined intellect preserves him 
 from the blundering discourtesy of better, perhaps, 
 but less educated minds ; who, like blunt weapons, 
 tear and hack instead of cutting clean, who mistake 
 the point in argument, waste their strength on trifles, 
 misconceive their adversary, and leave the question 
 more involved than they find it. He may be right or 
 wrong in his opinion, but he is too clear-headed to be 
 unjust ; he is as simple as he is forcible, and as brief 
 as he is decisive. Nowhere shall we find greater can- 
 dor, consideration, indulgence : he throws himself 
 into the minds of his opponents, he accounts for their 
 mistakes. He knows the weakness of human reason 
 as well as its strength, its province and its limits. If 
 he be an unbeliever, he will be too profound and 
 large-minded to ridicule religion or to act against it ; 
 he is too wise to be a dogmatist or fanatic in his in- 
 2
 
 1 8 THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 
 
 fidelity. He respects piety and devotion ; he even 
 supports institutions as venerable, beautiful, or useful, 
 to which he does not assent ; he honours the ministers 
 of religion, and it contents him to decline its mysteries 
 without assailing or denouncing them. He is a friend 
 of religious toleration, and that, not only because his 
 philosophy has taught him to look on all forms of 
 faith with an impartial eye, but also from the gentle- 
 ness and effeminacy of feeling, which is the attendant 
 on civilization. 
 
 Not that he may not hold a religion too, in his own 
 way, even when he is not a Christian. In that case 
 his religion is one of imagination and sentiment ; it is 
 the embodiment of those ideas of the sublime, 
 majestic, and beautiful, without which there can be no 
 large philosophy. Sometimes hie acknowledges the 
 being of God, sometimes he invests an unknown 
 principle or quality with the attributes of perfection. 
 And this deduction of his reason, or creation of his 
 fancy, he makes the occasion of such excellent 
 thoughts, and the starting-point of so varied and sys- 
 tematic a teaching, that he even seems like a disciple 
 of Christianity itself. From the very accuracy and 
 steadiness of his logical powers, he is able to see 
 what sentiments are consistent in those who hold any 
 religious doctrine at all, and he appears to others to 
 feel and to hold a whole circle of theological truths, 
 which exist in his mind no otherwise than as a number 
 of deductions. Idea of a University, ed. 1891, pp. 
 207-211, (1852).
 
 fmowle&ge IDieweD in IRelation to Xcarning. 
 
 IT were well if the English, like the Greek language, 
 possessed some definite word to express, simply and 
 generally, intellectual proficiency or perfection, such as 
 " health," as used with reference to the animal frame t 
 and " virtue," with reference to our moral nature. I 
 am not able to find such a term ; talent, ability, 
 genius, belong distinctly to the raw material, which is 
 the subject-matter, not to that excellence which is the 
 result of exercise and training. When we turn, indeed, 
 to the particular kinds of intellectual perfection, words 
 are forthcoming for our purpose, as, for instance, judg- 
 ment, taste, and skill ; yet even these belong, for the 
 most part, to powers or habits bearing upon practice or 
 upon art, and not to any perfect condition of the in- 
 tellect, considered in itself. Wisdom, again, is cer, 
 tainly a more comprehensive word than any other, 
 but it has a direct relation to conduct, and to humari 
 life. Knowledge, indeed, and Science express purely 
 intellectual ideas, but still not a state or quality of the 
 intellect ; for knowledge, in its ordinary sense, is but 
 one of its circumstances, denoting a possession or a 
 habit ; and science has been appropriated to tho sub- 
 ject-matter of the intellect, instead of belonging HI 
 English, as it ought to do, to the intellect itself. The 
 consequence is that, on an occasion like this, many
 
 20 KNOWLEDGE IN RELA TION TO LEARNING. 
 
 words are necessary, in order, first, to bring out and 
 convey what surely is no difficult idea in itself, that 
 of the cultivation of the intellect as an end ; next, in 
 order to recommend what surely is no unreasonable 
 object ; and lastly, to describe and make the mind 
 realize the particular perfection in which that object 
 consists. Every one knows practically what are the 
 constituents of health or of virtue ; and every one 
 recognizes health and virtue as ends to be pursued; 
 it is otherwise with intellectual excellence, and this 
 must be my excuse, if I seem to any one to be bestow- 
 ing a good deal of labour on a preliminary matter. 
 
 In default of a recognized term, I have called the 
 perfection or virtue of the intellect by the name of 
 philosophy, philosophical knowledge, enlargement of 
 mind, or illumination ; terms which are not uncom- 
 monly given to it by writers of this day : but, whatever 
 name we bestow on it, it is, I believe, as a matter of 
 history, the business of a University to make this in- 
 tellectual culture its direct scope, or to employ itself 
 in the education of the intellect, just as the work of a 
 Hospital lies in healing the sick or wounded, of a Rid- 
 ing or Fencing School, or of a Gymnasium, in exercis- 
 ing the limbs, of an Almshouse, in aiding and solacing 
 the old, of an Orphanage, in protecting innocence, of a 
 Penitentiary, in restoring the guilty. U say, a Univer- 
 sity, taken in its bare idea, and before we view it as an 
 instrument of the Church, has this object and this 
 mission ; it contemplates neither moral impression nor 
 y /mechanical production ; it professes to exercise the 
 / mind neither in art nor in duty ; its function is intel- 
 lectual culture ; here it may leave its scholars, and it
 
 KNO WLEDGE IN RELA TION TO LEARNING. 2 1 
 
 has done its work when it has done as much as this. 
 It educates the intellect to reason well in all matters, 
 to reach out towards truth, and to grasp it. 
 
 This, I said in my foregoing Discourse, was the 
 object of a University, viewed in itself, and apart from 
 the Catholic Church, or from the State, or from any 
 other power which may use it ; and I illustrated this 
 in various ways. I said that the intellect must have 
 an excellence of its own, for there was nothing which 
 had not its specific good ; that the word " educate" 
 would not be used of intellectual culture, as it is used, 
 had not the intellect had an end of its own ; that, had 
 it not such an end, there would be no meaning in call- 
 ing certain intellectual exercises " liberal," in contrast 
 with " useful," as is commonly done ; that the very 
 notion of a philosophical temper implied it, for it threw 
 us back upon research and system as ends in them- 
 selves, distinct from effects and works of any kind ; 
 that a philosophical scheme of knowledge, or system 
 of sciences, could not, from the nature of the case, 
 issue in any one definite art or pursuit, as its end ; and 
 that, on the other hand, the discovery and contem- 
 plation of truth, to which research and systematizing 
 led, were surely sufficient ends, though nothing beyond 
 them were added, and that they had ever been ac- 
 counted sufficient by mankind. 
 
 Here then I take up the subject ; and, having deter- 
 mined that the cultivation of the intellect is an end 
 distinct and sufficient in itself, and that, so far as words 
 go, it is an enlargement or illumination, I proceed to 
 inquire what this mental breadth, or power, or light, or 
 
 --
 
 2 2 KNO WLEDGE IN RELA TION TO LEA RNING. 
 
 philosophy consists in. A Hospital heals a broken 
 limb or cures a fever : what does an Institution effect, 
 which professes the health, not of the body, not of the 
 soul, but of the intellect ? What is this good, which 
 in former times, as well as our own, has been found 
 worth the notice, the appropriation, of the Catholic 
 Church ? 
 
 I have then to investigate, in the Discourses which 
 follow, those qualities and characteristics of the in- 
 tellect in which its cultivation issues or rather con- 
 sists ; and, with a view of assisting myself in this un- 
 dertaking, I shall recur to certain questions which 
 have already been touched upon. These questions 
 are three : viz. the relation of intellectual culture, first, 
 to mere knowledge ; secondly, to professional knowl- 
 edge ; and thirdly, to religious knowledge. In other 
 words, are acquirements and attainments the scope of a 
 University Education ? or expertnesss in particular arts 
 and pursuits ? or moral and religious proficiency ? or 
 something besides these three ? These questions I 
 shall examine in succession, with the purpose I have 
 mentioned ; and I hope to be excused, if, in this anx- 
 ious undertaking, I am led to repeat what, either in 
 these Discourses or elsewhere, I have already put 
 upon paper. And first, of Mere Knowledge, or Learning, 
 and its connection with intellectual illumination ot 
 Philosophy. 
 
 I suppose the prima-facie view which the public at 
 large would take of a University, considering it as 
 a place of Education, is nothing more or less than 
 a place for acquiring % a great deal of knowledge on a
 
 KNO WLEDGE Iff RELA TION TO LEARNING. 23 
 
 great many subjects. Memory is one of the first de- 
 veloped of the mental faculties ; a boy's business when 
 he goes to school is to learn, that is, to store up things 
 in his memory. For some years his intellect is little 
 more than an instrument for taking in facts, or a re- 
 ceptacle for storing them ; he welcomes them as fast as 
 they come to him ; he lives on what is without ; he has 
 his eyes ever about him ; he has a lively susceptibility 
 of impressions ; he imbibes information of every kind ; 
 and little does he make his own in a true sense of the 
 word, living rather upon his neighbours all around him. 
 He has opinions, religious, political and literary, and, 
 for a boy, is very positive in them and sure about 
 them ; but he gets them from his schoolfellows, or his 
 masters, or his parents, as the case may be. Such as 
 he is in his other relations, such also is he in his school 
 exercises ; his mind is observant, sharp, ready, reten- 
 tive ; he is almost passive in the acquisition of knowl- 
 edge. I say this in no disparagement of the idea of 
 a clever boy. Geography, chronology, history, lan- 
 guage, natural history, he heaps up the matter of these 
 studies as treasures for a future day. It is the seven 
 years of plenty with him : he gathers in by handfuls, 
 like the Egyptians, without counting; and though, as 
 time goes on, there is exercise for his argumenta- 
 tive powers in the Elements of Mathematics, and for 
 his taste in the Poets and Orators, still, while at 
 school, or at least, till quite the last years of his time, 
 he acquires, and little more ; and when he is leaving for 
 the University, he is mainly the creature of foreign 
 influences and circumstances, and made up of acci- 
 dents, homogeneous or not, as the case may be. More-
 
 24 KNO WLEDGE IN RELA TION TO LEARNING. 
 
 over, the moral habits, which are a boy's praise, en- 
 courage and assist this result ; that is, diligence, 
 assiduity, regularity, despatch, persevering applica- 
 tion ; for these are the direct conditions of acquisition, 
 and naturally lead to it. ( Acquirements, again, are 
 emphatically producible, and at a moment ; they are a 
 something to show, both for master and scholar ; an 
 audience, even though ignorant themselves of the 
 subject of an examination, can comprehend when 
 questions are answered and when they are not. Here 
 again is a reason why mental culture is in the minds 
 of men identified with the acquisition of knowledge. 
 The same notion possesses the public mind, when it 
 passes on from the thought of a school to that of a 
 University : and with the best of reasons so far as this, 
 that there is no true culture without acquirements, and 
 that philosophy presupposes knowledge. It requires a 
 great deal of reading, or a wide range of information, 
 to warrant us in putting forth our opinions on any seri- 
 ous subject ; and without such learning the most orig- 
 inal mind may be able indeed to dazzle, to amuse, to 
 refute, to perplex, but not to come to any useful result 
 or any trustworthy conclusion. There are indeed per- 
 sons who profess a different view of the matter, and 
 even act upon it. Every now and then you will find a 
 person of vigorous or fertile mind, who relies upon his 
 own resources, despises all former authors, and gives 
 the world, with the utmost fearlessness, his views upon 
 religion, or history, or any other popular subject. And 
 his works may sell for a while ; he may get a name in 
 his day ; but this will be all. His readers are sure to 
 find on the long run that his doctrines are mere
 
 KNO WLEDGE IN RELA TION TO LEARNING 25 
 
 theories, and not the expression of facts, that they are 
 chaff instead of bread, and then his popularity drops 
 as suddenly as it rose. 
 
 Knowledge then is the indispensable condition of 
 expansion of mind, and the instrument of attaining to 
 it ; this cannot be denied, it is ever to be insisted on ; 
 I begin with it as a first principle ; however, the very 
 truth of it carries men too far, and confirms to them 
 the notion that it is the whole of the matter. A nar- 
 row mind is thought to be that which contains little 
 knowledge ; and an enlarged mind, that which holds a 
 great deal ; and what seems to put the matter beyond 
 dispute is, the fact of the great number of studies 
 which are pursued in a University, by its very profes- 
 sion. Lectures are given on every kind of subject ; 
 examinations are held ; prizes awarded. There are 
 moral, metaphysical, physical Professors ; Professors 
 of languages, of history, of mathematics, of experi- 
 mental science. Lists of questions are published, 
 wonderful for their range and depth, variety and diffi- 
 culty ; treatises are written, which carry upon their very 
 face the evidence of extensive reading or multifarious 
 information ; what then is wanting for mental culture 
 to a person of large reading and scientific attainments ? 
 what is grasp of mind but acquirement ? where shall 
 philosophical repose be found, but in the conscious- 
 ness and enjoyment of large intellectual possessions ? 
 
 And yet this notion is, I conceive, a mistake, and 
 my present business is to show that it is one, and that 
 the end of a Liberal Education is not mere knowledge, 
 or knowledge considered in its matter ; and I shall 
 best attain my object, by actually setting down some
 
 26 KNO WLEDGE IN RELA TION TO LEARNING. 
 
 cases, which will be generally granted to be instances 
 of the process of enlightenment or enlargement of 
 mind, and others which are not, and thus, by the com- 
 parison, you will be able to judge for yourselves, Gen- 
 tlemen, whether Knowledge, that is, acquirement, is 
 after all the real principle of the enlargement, or 
 whether that principle is not rather something be- 
 yond it. 
 
 For instance,* let a person, whose experience has 
 hitherto been confined to the more calm and unpre- 
 tending scenery of these islands, whether here or in 
 England, go for the first time into parts where physical 
 nature puts on her wilder and more awful forms, 
 whether at home or abroad, as into mountainous dis- 
 tricts ; or let one, who has ever lived in a quiet village, 
 go for the first time to a great metropolis, then I sup- 
 pose he will have a sensation which perhaps he never 
 had before. He has a feeling not in addition or in- 
 crease of former feelings, but of something different in 
 its nature. He will perhaps be borne forward, and 
 find for a time that he has lost his bearings. He has 
 made a certain progress, and he has a consciousness of 
 mental enlargement ; he does not stand where he did, 
 . he has a new centre, and a range of thoughts to which 
 he was before a stranger. 
 
 Again, the view of the heavens which the telescope 
 opens upon us, if allowed to fill and possess the mind, 
 may almost whirl it round and make it dizzy. It 
 
 * The pages which follow are taken almost verbatim from the 
 author's I4th (Oxford) University Sermon, which, at the time of 
 writing this Discourse, he did not expect ever to reprint.
 
 KNO WLEDGE IN RELA T10N TO LEARNitiG. 2 7 
 
 brings in a flood of ideas, and is rightly called an in- 
 tellectual enlargement, whatever is meant by the term. 
 
 And so again, the sight of beasts of prey and other 
 foreign animals, their strangeness, the originality (if 
 I may use the term) of their forms and gestures and 
 habits, and their variety and independence of "each 
 other, throw us out of ourselves into another creation, 
 and as if under another Creator, if I may so express 
 the temptation which may come on the mind. We 
 seem to have new faculties, or a new exercise for 
 our faculties, by this addition to our knowledge ; like 
 a prisoner, who, having been accustomed to wear 
 manacles or fetters, suddenly finds his arms and legs 
 free. 
 
 Hence Physical Science generally, in all its depart- 
 ments, as bringing before us the exuberant riches and 
 resources, yet the orderly course, of the Universe, 
 elevates and excites the student, and at first, I may 
 say, almost takes away his breath, while in time it 
 exercises a tranquillizing influence upon him. 
 
 Again, the study of history is said to enlarge and 
 enlighten the mind, and why ? because, as I conceive, 
 it gives it a power of judging of passing events, and of 
 all events, and a conscious superiority over them, 
 which before it did not possess. 
 
 And in like manner, what is called seeing the world, 
 entering into active life, going into society, travelling, 
 gaining acquaintance with the various classes of the 
 community, coming into contact with the principles 
 and modes of thought of various parties, interests, and 
 races, their views, aims, habits and manners, their 
 religious creeds and forms of worship, gaining ex-
 
 28 KNO WLEDGE IN RELA TION TO LEARNING. 
 
 perience how various yet how alike men are, how low- 
 minded, how bad, how opposed, yet how confident in 
 their opinions ; all this exerts a perceptible influence 
 upon the mind, which it is impossible to mistake, be it 
 good or be it bad, and is popularly called its enlarge- 
 ment. 
 
 And then again, the first time the mind comes 
 across the arguments and speculations of unbelievers, 
 and feels what a novel light they cast upon what he 
 has hitherto accounted sacred ; and still more, if it 
 gives in to them and embraces them, and throws off as 
 so much prejudice what it has hitherto held, and, as if 
 waking from a dream, begins to realize to its imagina- 
 tion that there is now no such thing as law and the 
 transgression of law, that sin is a phantom, and 
 punishment a bugbear, that it is free to sin, free to 
 enjoy the world and the flesh ; and still further, when 
 it does enjoy them, and reflects that it may think and 
 hold just what it will, that " the world is all before it 
 where to choose," and what system to build up as 
 its own private persuasion ; when this torrent of wil- 
 ful thoughts rushes over and inundates it, who will 
 deny that the fruit of the tree of knowledge, or what 
 the mind takes for knowledge, has made it one of the 
 gods, with a sense of expansion and elevation, an 
 intoxication in reality, still, so far as the subjective 
 state of the mind goes, an illumination ? Hence the 
 fanaticism of individuals or nations, who suddenly 
 cast off their Maker. Their eyes are opened ; and, 
 like the judgment-stricken king in the Tragedy, they 
 see two suns, and a magic universe, out of which they 
 look back upon their former state of faith and in-
 
 KNOWLEDGE IN RELA T1ON TO LEARNING. 29 
 
 nocence with a sort of contempt and indignation, as 
 if they were then but fools, and the dupes of im- 
 posture. 
 
 On the other hand, Religion has its own enlarge- 
 ment, and an enlargement, not of tumult, but of peace. 
 It is often remarked of uneducated persons, who have 
 hitherto thought little of the unseen world, that, on 
 their turning to God, looking into themselves, regulat- 
 ing their hearts, reforming their conduct, and medi- 
 tating on death and judgment, heaven and hell, they 
 seem to become, in point of intellect, different beings 
 from what they were. Before, they took things as 
 they came, and thought no more of one thing than 
 another. But now every event has a meaning ; they 
 have their own estimate of whatever happens to them ; 
 they are mindful of times and seasons, and compare 
 the present with the past ; and the world, no longer 
 dull, monotonous, unprofitable, and hopeless, is a vari- 
 ous and complicated drama, with parts and an object, 
 and an awful moral. 
 
 Now from these instances, to which many more 
 might be added, it is plain, first, that the communi- 
 cation of knowledge certainly is either a condition or 
 the means of that sense of enlargement, or enlighten- 
 ment of which at this day we hear so much in certain 
 quarters : this cannot be denied ; but next, it is equally 
 plain, that such communication is not the whole of the 
 process. ^"The enlargement consists, not merely in the 
 passive reception into the mind of a number of ideas 
 hitherto unknown to it, but in the mind's energetic 
 and simultaneous action upon and towards and among 
 those new ideas, which are rushing in upon it. It is
 
 30 KNO WLEDGE IN RELA TfON TO LEARNING. 
 
 the action of a formative power, reducing to order and 
 meaning the matter of our acquirements ; it is a mak- 
 ing the objects of our knowledge subjectively our own, 
 or, to use a familiar word, it is a digestion of what we 
 receive, into the substance of our previous state of 
 thought ; and without this no enlargement is said to 
 follow. There is no enlargement, unless there be a 
 comparison of ideas one with another, as they come 
 before the mind, and a systematizing of them. We 
 feel our minds to be growing and expanding then, 
 when we not only learn, but refer what we learn to 
 what we know already. It is not the mere addition 
 to our knowledge that is the illumination ; but the 
 locomotion, the movement onwards, of that mental 
 centre, to which both what we know, and what we are 
 learning, the accumulating mass of our acquirements, 
 gravitates. And therefore a truly great intellect, and 
 recognized to be such by the common opinion of man- 
 kind, such as the intellect of Aristotle, or of St. 
 Thomas, or of Newton, or of Goethe (I purposely 
 take instances within and without the Catholic pale, 
 when I would speak of the intellect as such), is one 
 which takes a connected view of old and new, past 
 and present, far and near, and which has an insight 
 into the influence of all these one on another ; without 
 which there is no whole, and no centre. It possesses 
 the knowledge, not only of things, but also of their 
 mutual and true relations ; knowledge, not merely con- 
 sidered as acquirement but as philosophy. 
 
 Accordingly, when this analytical, distributive, har- 
 monizing process is away, the mind experiences no 
 enlargement, and is not reckoned as enlightened or
 
 KNO WLEDGE IN RELA TION TO LEARNING. 3 1 
 
 comprehensive, whatever it may add to its knowledge. 
 For instance, a great memory, as I have already said, /} I ] 
 does not make a philosopher, any more than a diction- 
 ary can be called a grammar. There are men who 
 embrace in their minds a vast multitude of ideas, but 
 with little sensibility about their real relations towards 
 each other. These may be antiquarians, annalists, 
 naturalists ; they may be learned in the law ; they may 
 be versed in statistics ; they are most useful in their 
 own place ; I should shrink from speaking disrespect- 
 fully of them ; still, there is nothing in such attain- 
 ments to guarantee the absence of narrowness of mind. 
 If they are nothing more than well-read men, or men ' 
 of information, they have not what specially deserves 
 the name of culture of mind, or fulfils the type of 
 Liberal Education. 
 
 In like manner, we sometimes fall in with persons 
 who have seen much of the world, and of the men 
 who, in their day, have played a conspicuous part in it, 
 but who generalize nothing, and have no observation, 
 in the true sense of the word. They abound in infor- 
 mation in detail, curious and entertaining, about men 
 and things ; and, having lived under the influence of 
 no very clear or settled principles, religious or politi- 
 cal, they speak of every one and every thing, only as 
 so many phenomena, which are complete in them- 
 selves, and lead to nothing, not discussing them, or 
 teaching any truth, or instructing the hearer, but 
 simply talking. No one would say that these persons, 
 well informed as they are, had attained to any great 
 culture of intellect or to philosophy. 
 
 The case is the same still more strikingly where the
 
 32 KNO WLEDGE IN RELA TION TO LEARNING. 
 
 persons in question are beyond dispute men of inferior 
 powers and deficient education. Perhaps they have 
 been much in foreign countries, and they receive, in a 
 passive, otiose, unfruitful way, the various facts which 
 are forced upon them there. Seafaring men, for exam- 
 ple, range from one end of the earth to the other ; but 
 the multiplicity of external objects, which they have 
 encountered, forms no symmetrical and consistent 
 picture upon their imagination ; they see the tapestry 
 of human life, as it were on the wrong side, and it tells 
 no storyf? They sleep, and they rise up, and they find 
 themselves, now in Europe, now in Asia ; they see 
 visions of great cities and wild regions ; they are in the 
 marts of commerce, or amid the islands of the South ; 
 they gaze on Pompey's Pillar, or on the Andes ; and 
 nothing which meets them carries them forward or 
 backward, to any idea beyond itself. Nothing has a 
 drift or relation ; nothing has a history or a promise. 
 Every thing stands by itself, and comes and goes in its 
 turn, like the shifting scenes of a show, which leave 
 the spectator where he was. Perhaps you are near 
 such a man on a particular occasion, and expect him 
 to be shocked or perplexed at something which occurs ; 
 but one thing is much the same to him as another, or, 
 if he is perplexed, it is as not knowing what to say, 
 whether it is right to admire, or to ridicule, or to dis- 
 approve, while conscious that some expression of 
 opinion is expected from him ; for in fact he has no 
 standard of judgment at all, and no landmarks to 
 guide him to a conclusion. Such is mere acquisition, 
 and, I repeat, no one would dream of calling it 
 philosophy.
 
 KNO WLEDGE IN RE LA TION TO LEARNING. 33 
 
 Instances, such as these, confirm, by the contrast, 
 the conclusion I have already drawn from those which 
 preceded them, f That only is true enlargement of 
 mind which is the power of viewing many things at 
 once as one whole, of referring them severally to their 
 true place in the universal system, of understanding 
 their respective values, and determining their mutual 
 dependence. Thus is that form of Universal Knowl- 
 edge, of which I have on a former occasion spoken, 
 set up in the individual intellect, and constitutes its 
 perfection. Possessed of this real illumination, the 
 mind never views any part of the extended subject- 
 matter of Knowledge without recollecting that it is but 
 a part, or without the associations which spring from 
 this recollection. It makes everything in some sort 
 lead to everything else ; it would communicate the 
 image of the whole to every separate portion, till that 
 whole becomes in imagination like a spirit, everywhere 
 pervading and penetrating its component parts, and 
 giving them one definite meaning. Just as our bodily 
 organs, when mentioned, recall their function in the 
 body, as the word " creation " suggests the Creator, 
 and " subjects " a sovereign, so, in the mind of the 
 Philosopher, as we are abstractedly conceiving of him, 
 the elements of the physical and moral world, sciences, 
 arts, pursuits, ranks, offices, events, opinions, individ- 
 ualities, are all viewed as one, with correlative func- 
 tions, and as gradually by successive combinations 
 converging, one and all, to the true centre. 
 
 To have even a portion of this illuminative reason 
 and true philosophy is the highest state to which 
 nature can aspire, in the way of intellect ; it puts the 
 3
 
 34 AW0 WLEDGE IN RELA TION TO LEARNING. 
 
 mind above the influences of chance and necessity, 
 above anxiety, suspense, unsettlement, and supersti- 
 tion, which is the lot of the many. Men, whose minds 
 are possessed with some one object, take exaggerated 
 views of its importance, are feverish in the pursuit of 
 it, make it the measure of things which are utterly 
 foreign to it, and are startled and despond if it 
 happens to fail them. They are ever in alarm or 
 in transport. Those on the other hand who have 
 no object or principle whatever to hold by, lose their 
 way every step they take. They are thrown out, 
 and do not know what to think or say, at every fresh 
 juncture; they have no view of persons, or occur- 
 rences, or facts, which come suddenly upon them, and 
 they hang upon the opinion of others for want of 
 internal resources. But the intellect, which has been 
 disciplined to the perfection of its powers, which 
 knows, and thinks while it knows, which has learned 
 to leaven the dense mass of facts and events with the 
 elastic force of reason, such an intellect cannot be 
 partial, cannot be exclusive, cannot be impetuous, 
 cannot be at a loss, cannot but be patient, col- 
 lected, and majestically calm, because it discerns the 
 end in every beginning, the origin in every end, the 
 law in every interruption, the limit in each delay ; be- 
 cause it ever knows where it stands, and how its 
 path lies from one point to another. It is the 
 rerpdyuvos of the Peripatetic, and has the "nil ad- 
 mirari " of the Stoic, 
 
 Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, 
 Atque metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum 
 Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari.
 
 KNO WLEDGE IN RELA TION TO LEA RNING. 3 5 
 
 There are men who, when in difficulties, originate 
 at the moment vast ideas or dazzling projects ; who, / ] 
 under the influence of excitement, are able to cast 
 a light, almost as if from inspiration, on a subject 
 or course of action which comes before them ; who 
 have a sudden presence of mind equal to any emer- 
 gency, rising with the occasion, and an undaunted 
 magnanimous bearing, and an energy and keenness 
 which is but made intense by opposition. This is 
 genius, this is heroism; it is the exhibition of a 
 natural gift, which no culture can teach, at which no 
 Institution can aim : here, on the contrary, we are con- 
 cerned, not with mere nature, but with training and 
 teach ing. -^Th at perfection of the Intellect, which is 
 the result of Education, and its beau ideal, to be im- 
 parted to individuals in their respective measures, 
 is the clear, calm, accurate vision and comprehension 
 of all things, as far as the finite mind can embrace 
 them, each in its place, and with its own characteris- 
 tics upon it. It is almost prophetic from its knowledge 
 of history; it is almost heart-searching from its 
 knowledge of human nature ; it has almost super- 
 natural charity from its freedom from littleness and 
 prejudice ; it has almost the repose of faith, because 
 nothing can startle it ; it has almost the beauty and 
 harmony of heavenly contemplation, so intimate is it 
 with the eternal order of things and the music of the 
 spheres. 
 
 And now, if I may take for granted that the true 
 and adequate end of intellectual training and of a 
 University is not Learning or Acquirement, but rather, 
 is Thought or Reason exercised upon Knowledge, or
 
 36 KNO WLEDGE IN RELA TION TO LEARNING. 
 
 what may be called Philosophy, I shall be in a 
 position to explain the various mistakes which at the 
 
 present day beset the subject of University Education. 
 
 ******* 
 
 I will tell you, Gentlemen, what has been the practical 
 error of the last twenty years, not to load the memory 
 of the student with a mass of undigested knowledge, 
 . w but to force upon him so much that he has rejected all. 
 It has been the error of distracting and enfeebling 
 - the mind by an unmeaning profusion of subjects ; of 
 implying that a smattering in a dozen branches of 
 study is not shallowness, which it really is, but enlarge- 
 ment, which it is not ; of considering an acquaintance 
 with the learned names of things and persons, and 
 the possession of clever duodecimos, and attendance 
 of on eloquent lecturers, and membership with scientific 
 institutions, and the sight of the experiments of a 
 platform and the specimens of a museum, that all this 
 was not dissipation of mind, but progress. All things 
 now are to be learned at once, not first one thing, 
 then another, not one well, but many badly. Learning 
 is to be without exertion, without attention, without 
 toil ; without grounding, without advance, without 
 finishing. There is to be nothing individual in it ; and 
 this, forsooth, is the wonder of the age. What the 
 steam engine does with matter, the printing-press is 
 to do with mind ; it is to act mechanically, and the 
 population is to be passively, almost unconsciously 
 enlightened, by the mere multiplication and dissemina- 
 tion of volumes. Whether it be the school-boy, or 
 the school-girl, or the youth at college, or the mechanic 
 in the town, or the politician in the senate, all have
 
 KNO WLEDGE IN RELA TION TO LEARNING. 3 7 
 
 been the victims in one way or other of this most 
 preposterous and pernicious of delusions. Wise men 
 have lifted up their voices in vain ; and at length, lest 
 their own institutions should be outshone and should 
 disappear in the folly of the hour, they have been 
 obliged, as far as they could with a good conscience, 
 to humour a spirit which they could not withstand, and 
 make temporizing concessions at which they could 
 not but inwardly smile. 
 
 ******* 
 
 I protest to you, Gentlemen, that if I had to choose 
 between a so-called University, which dispensed with 
 residence and tutorial superintendence, and gave its 
 degrees to any person who passed an examination in a 
 wide range of subjects, and a University which had no 
 professors or examinations at all, bujt merely brought a 
 number of young men together for three or four years, 
 and then sent them away as the University of Oxford 
 is said to have done some sixty years since, if I were f J] 
 asked which of these two methods was the better dis- 
 cipline of the intellect, mind, I do not say which is 
 morally the better, for it' is plain that compulsory 
 study must be a good and idleness an intolerable mis- 
 chief, but if I must determine which of the two 
 courses was the more successful in training, moulding, 
 enlarging the mind, which sent out men the more 
 fitted for their secular duties, which produced better 
 public men, men of the world, men whose names would 
 descend to posterity, I have no hesitation in giving 
 the preference to that University which did nothing, 
 over that which exacted of its members an acquaint- 
 ance with every science under the sun. And, paradox 
 
 270404
 
 38 KNO WLEDGE IN RELA TION TO LEARNING. 
 
 as this may seem, still if results be the test of systems, 
 the influence of the public schools and colleges of 
 England, in the course of the last century, at least will 
 bear out one side of the contrast as I have drawn 
 it. What would come, on the other hand, of the ideal 
 systems of education which have fascinated the im- 
 agination of this age, could they ever take effect, 
 and whether they would not produce a generation 
 frivolous, narrow-minded, and resourceless, intellect- 
 ually considered, is a fair subje,ct for debate ; but so 
 .far is certain, that the Universities and scholastic 
 establishments, to which I refer, and which did little 
 more than bring together first boys and then youths in 
 large numbers, these institutions, with miserable de- 
 formities on the side of morals, with a hollow profes- 
 sion of Christianity, and a heathen code of ethics, I 
 say, at least they can boast of a succession of heroes 
 and statesmen, of literary men and philosophers, of 
 men conspicuous for great natural virtues, for habits 
 of business, for knowledge of life, for practical judg- 
 ment, for cultivated tastes, for accomplishments, who 
 have made England what ' it is, able to subdue the 
 earth, able to domineer over Catholics. 
 
 How is this to be explained? I suppose as follows : 
 When a multitude of young men, keen, open-hearted, 
 sympathetic, and observant, as young men are, come 
 together and freely mix with each other, they are sure 
 to learn one from another, even if there be no one to 
 teach them ; the conversation of all is a series of 
 lectures to each, and they gain for themselves new 
 ideas and views, fresh matter of thought, and distinct 
 principles for judging and acting, day by day. An
 
 KNOWLEDGE IN R EL A TfON TO LEARNING. 
 
 39 
 
 infant has to learn the meaning of the information 
 which its senses convey to it, and this seems to be its 
 employment. It fancies all that the eye presents to it 
 to be close to it, till it actually learns the contrary, and 
 thus by practice does it ascertain the relations and 
 uses of those first elements of knowledge which are 
 necessary for its animal existence. A parallel teach- 
 ing is necessary for our social being, and it is secured 
 by a large school or a college ; and this effect may be 
 fairly called in its own department an enlargement of 
 mind. It is seeing the world on a small field with 
 little trouble ; for the pupils or students come from 
 very different places, and with widely different no- 
 tions, and there is much to generalize, much to adjust, 
 much to eliminate, there are inter-relations to be 
 defined, and conventional rules to be established, 
 in the process, by which the whole assemblage is 
 moulded together, and gains one tone and one char- 
 acter. 
 
 Let it be clearly understood, I repeat it, that I am 
 not taking into account moral or religious considera- 
 tions ; I am but saying that that youthful community 
 will constitute a whole, it will embody a specific idea, 
 it will represent a doctrine, it will administer a code of 
 conduct, and it will furnish principles of thought and 
 action.'* It will give birth to a living teaching, which in 
 course of time will take the shape of a self-perpetuat- 
 ing tradition, or a genius loci, as it is sometimes called ; 
 which haunts the home where it has been born, and 
 which imbues and forms, more or less, and one by one, 
 every individual who is successively brought under its 
 shadow. Thus it is that, independent of direct in-
 
 40 KNO WLEDGE IN RELA TION TO LEARNING. 
 
 Struction on the part of Superiors, there is a sort of 
 self-education in the academic institution's of Protestant . 
 England ; a characteristic tone of thought, a recog- 
 nized standard of judgment is found in them, which as 
 developed in the individual who is submitted to it, be- 
 comes a twofold source of strength to him, both from 
 the distinct stamp it impresses on his mind, and from 
 the bond of union which it creates between him and 
 others, effects which are shared by the authorities of 
 the place, for they themselves have been educated in 
 it, and at all times are exposed to the influence of its 
 ethical atmosphere. Here then is a real teaching, 
 whatever be its standards and principles, tjpe or false ; 
 and it at least tends towards cultivation of the intel- 
 lect ; it at least recognizes that knowledge is some- 
 thing more than a sort of passive reception of scraps 
 and details ; it is a something, and it does a some- 
 thing, which never will issue from the most strenuous 
 efforts of a set of teachers, with no mutual sympathies 
 and no intercommunion, of a set of examiners with no 
 opinions which they dare profess, and with no com- 
 mon principles, who are teaching or questioning a set 
 of youths who do not know them, and do not know 
 each other, on a large number of subjects, different in 
 kind, and connected by no wide philosophy, three 
 times a week, or three times a year, or once in three 
 years, in chill lecture-rooms or oh a pompous anni- 
 versary. Idea of a University, ed. 1891, pp. 124-148
 
 XorJ) JBacon. 
 
 BETTER, far better, to make no professions, you will 
 say, than to cheat others with what we are not, and to 
 scandalize them with what we are. The sensualist, or 
 the man of the world, at any rate is not the victim of 
 fine words, but pursues a reality and gains it. The 
 Philosophy of Utility, you will say, Gentlemen, has at 
 least done its work ; and I grant it, it aimed low, but 
 it has fulfilled its aim. If that man of great intellect 
 who has been its Prophet in the conduct of life played 
 false to his own professions, he was not bound by his 
 philosophy to be true to his friend or faithful in his 
 trust. Moral virtue was not the line in which he 
 undertook to instruct men ; and though, as the poet 
 calls him, he were the " meanest " of mankind, he was 
 so in what may be called his private capacity and 
 without any prejudice to the theory of induction. He 
 had a right to be so, if he chose, for any thing that the 
 Idols of the den or the theatre had to say to the 
 contrary. His mission was thie increase of physical 
 enjoyment and social comfort ; * and most wonder- 
 fully, most awfully has he fulfilled his conception and 
 his design.* Almost day by day have we fresh and 
 
 * It will be seen that on the whole I agree with Lord Macaulay 
 in his Essay on Bacon's Philosophy. I do not know whether he 
 would agree with me. 
 
 41
 
 42 LORD BACON. 
 
 fresh shoots, and buds, and blossoms, which are to 
 ripen into fruit, on that magical tree of Knowledge 
 which he planted, and to which none of us perhaps, 
 except the very poor, but owes, if not his present life, 
 at least his daily food, his health, and general well- 
 being. He was the divinely provided minister of tem- 
 poral benefits to all of us so great, that, whatever I 
 am forced to think of him as a man, I have not the 
 heart, from mere gratitude, to speak of him severely. 
 And, in spite of the tendencies of his philosophy, 
 which are, as we see at this day, to depreciate, or to 
 trample on Theology, he has himself, in his writings, 
 gone out of his way, as if with a prophetic misgiving 
 of those tendencies, to insist on it as the instrument of 
 that beneficent Father,* who, when He came on earth 
 in visible form, took on Him first and most prom- 
 inently the office of assuaging the bodily wounds of 
 human nature. And truly, like the old mediciner in 
 the tale, " he sat diligently at his work, and hummed, 
 with cheerful countenance, a pious song ; " and then 
 in turn " went out singing into the meadows so gaily, 
 that those who had seen him from afar might well 
 have thought it was a youth gathering flowers for his 
 
 * De Augment, iv. 2, vid. Macaulay's Essay ; vid. also " In 
 principle operis, ad Deum Patrem, Deum Verbum, Deum Spiri- 
 tum, preces fundimus humillimas et ardentissimas, ut human! 
 generis aerumnarum memores et peregrinationis istius vitae in 
 qua dies paucos et malos terimus, novis suis eleemosynis, per matiais 
 nostras, familiam humanam dotare dignentur. Atque illud insuper 
 supplices rogamus, ne humana divinis officiant, neve ex resera- 
 tioneviarum sensfis et accensionemajoreluminisnaturalis aliquid 
 incredulitatis et noctis animis nostris erga divina mysteria obori- 
 atur: " etc. Praf. Instaur. Magn.
 
 LORD B 'A CON. 43 
 
 beloved, instead of an old physician gathering healing 
 herbs in the morning dew." * 
 
 Alas, that men, in the action of life or in their heart 
 of hearts, are not what they seem to be in their 
 moments of excitement, or in their trances or intoxica- 
 tions of genius, so good, so noble, so serene ! Alas, 
 that Bacon too in his own way should after all be but 
 the fellow of those heathen philosophers who in their 
 disadvantages had some excuse for their inconsistency, 
 and who surprise us rather in what they did say than 
 in what they did not do ! Alas, that he too, like 
 Socrates or Seneca, must be stripped of his holy-day 
 coat, which looks so fair, and should be but a mockery 
 amid his most majestic gravity of phrase ; and, for all 
 his vast abilities, should, in the littleness of his own 
 moral being, but typify the intellectual narrowness of 
 his school ! However, granting all this, heroism after 
 all was not his philosophy : I cannot deny he has 
 abundantly achieved what he proposed. His is simply 
 a Method whereby bodily discomforts and temporal 
 wants are to be most effectually removed from the 
 greatest number ; and already, before it has shown any 
 signs of exhaustion, the gifts of nature, in their most 
 artificial shapes and luxurious profusion and diversity, 
 from all quarters of the earth, are, it is undeniable, by 
 its means brought even to our doors, and we rejoice in 
 them. Idea of a University, ed. 1891, pp. 117-119 
 (1852). 
 
 * Fouque's Unknown Patient.
 
 literature an& Xffc. 
 
 HERE then, I say, you are involved in a difficulty 
 greater than that which besets the cultivation of 
 Science ; for, if Physical Science be dangerous, as I 
 have said, it is dangerous, because it necessarily ignores 
 the idea of moral evil ; but Literature is open to the 
 more grievous imputation of recognizing and under- 
 standing it too well. Some one will say to me perhaps : 
 " Our youth shall not be corrupted. We will dispense 
 with all general or national Literature whatever, if it 
 be so exceptionable ; we will have a Christian Lit- 
 erature of our own, as pure, as true, as the Jewish." 
 You cannot have it : I do not say you cannot form a 
 select literature for the young, nay, even for the middle 
 or lower classes ; this is another matter altogether : I 
 am speaking of University Education, which implies 
 an extended range of reading, which has to deal with 
 standard works of genius, or what are called the 
 classics of language : and I say, from the nature of the 
 case, if Literature is to be made a study of human 
 nature, you cannot have a Christian Literature. It is 
 a contradiction in terms to attempt a sinless Literature 
 of sinful man. You may gather together something 
 very great and high, something higher than any Litera- 
 ture ever was ; and when you have done so, you will 
 find that it is not Literature at all. You will have 
 
 44
 
 ^ - _ 
 
 lr^ -, LITER A TURE AND LIFE. 45 
 
 $ C ^ C V\^-*UA^. _ rtv fLf j^? __ ' 1 ^ 
 
 simply left the delineation of man, as such, and have 
 substituted for it, as far as you have had anything to 
 substitute, that of man, as he is or might be, under 
 certain special advantages. Give up the study of man, 
 as such, if so it must be ; but say you do so. Do not ^ 
 say you are studying him, his history, his mind and 
 his heart, when you are studying something else. 
 
 Man is a being of genius, passion, intellect, conscience, 
 power. He exercises these various gifts in various 
 ways, in great deeds, in great thoughts, in heroic acts, 
 in hateful crimes. He founds states, he fights battles, 
 he builds cities, he ploughs the forest, he subdues the V 
 elements, he rules his kind. He creates vast ideas, njw 
 and influences many generations. He takes a thou- 
 sand shapes, and undergoes a thousand fortunes. 
 Literature records them all to the life. 
 
 Quicquid agunt homines, votum, timor, ira, voluptas, 
 Gaudia, discursus. 
 
 He pours out his fervid soul in poetry ; he sways to 
 and fro, he soars, he dives, in his restless specula- 
 tions ; his lips drop eloquence ; he touches the canvas, 
 and it glows with beauty ; he sweeps the strings, and 
 they thrill with an ecstatic meaning. He looks back 
 into himself, and he reads his own thoughts, and notes 
 them down ; he looks out into the universe, and tells 
 over and celebrates the elements and principles of 
 which it is the product. 
 
 Such is man : put him aside, keep him before you ; 
 but, whatever you do, do not take him for what he is 
 not, for something more divine and sacred, for man re- 
 generate. Nay, beware of showing God's grace and
 
 4 6 LITER A TURE AND 
 
 its work at such disadvantage as to make the few whom 
 it has thoroughly influenced compete in intellect with 
 the vast multitude who either have it not, or use it ill. 
 The elect are few to choose out of, and the world is 
 inexhaustible. From the first, Jabel and Tubal cain, 
 Nimrod " the stout hunter," the learning of the 
 Pharaohs, and the wisdom of the East country, are of 
 the world. Every now and then they are rivalled by a 
 Solomon or a Beseleel, but the habitat of natural gifts 
 is the natural man. The Church may use them, she 
 cannot at her will originate them. Not till the whole 
 human race is made new will its literature be pure and 
 true. Possible of course it is in idea, for nature, 
 inspired by heavenly grace, to exhibit itself on a large 
 scale, in an originality of thought or action, even far 
 beyond what the world's literature has recorded or 
 exemplified ; but, if you would in fact have a literature 
 of saints, first of all have a nation of them. 
 
 What is a clearer proof of the truth of all this than 
 the structure of the Inspired Word itself ? It is un- 
 deniably not the reflection or picture of the many, 
 but of* the few ; it is no picture of life, but an antici- 
 pation of death and judgment. Human literature is 
 about all things, grave or gay, painful or pleasant; 
 but the Inspired Word views them only in one aspect, 
 and as they tend to one scope. It gives us little in- 
 sight into the fertile developments of mind ; it has no 
 terms in its vocabulary to express with exactness the 
 intellect and its separate faculties ; it knows nothing 
 of genius, fancy, wit, invention, presence of mind, 
 resource. It does not discourse of empire, commerce, 
 enterprise, learning, philosophy, or the fine arts.
 
 LITER A TURE AND LIFE. 47 
 
 Slightly too does it touch on the more simple and in- 
 nocent courses of nature and their reward. Little 
 does it say* of those temporal blessings which rest 
 upon our worldly occupations, and make them 
 easy ; of the blessings which we derive from the 
 sunshine day and the serene night, from the suc- 
 cession of the seasons, and the produce of the 
 earth. Little about our recreations and our daily 
 domestic comforts ; little about the ordinary occa- 
 sions of festivity and mirth, which sweeten human 
 life ; and nothing at all about various pursuits or 
 amusements, which it would be going too much into 
 detail to mention. We read indeed of the feast when 
 Isaac was weaned, and of Jacob's courtship, and of 
 the religious merry-makings of holy Job ; but excep- 
 tions, such as these, do but remind us what might be 
 in Scripture, and is not. If then by Literature is 
 meant the manifestation of human nature in human 
 language, you will seek for it in vain except in the 
 world. Put up with it, as it is, or do not pretend to 
 cultivate it ; take things as they are, not as you could 
 wish them. 
 
 Nay, I am obliged to go further still ; even if we 
 could, still we should be shrinking from our plain 
 duty, Gentlemen, did we leave out Literature from Ed- 
 ucation. For why do we educate, except to prepare 
 for the world ? Why do we cultivate the intellect of 
 the many beyond the first elements of knowledge, 
 except for this world ? Will it be much matter in the 
 
 *Vide the Author's Parochial Sermons, vol. i. 25. 
 ^J
 
 4 8 LITER A TURE AND LIFE. 
 
 world to come whether our bodily health or whether 
 our intellectual strength was more or less, except of 
 course as this world is in all its circumstances a trial for 
 the next ? If then a University is a direct preparation 
 for this world, let it be what it professes. It is not a 
 Convent, it is not a Seminary ; it is a place to fit men 
 of the world for the world. We cannot possibly keep 
 them from plunging into the world, with all its ways 
 and principles and maxims, when their time comes ; 
 but we can prepare them against what is inevitable ; 
 and it is not the way to learn to swim in troubled 
 waters, never to have gone into them. Proscribe (I 
 do not merely say particular authors, particular works, 
 particular passages) but Secular Literature as such ; 
 cut out from your class books all broad manifestations 
 of the natural man ; and those manifestations are 
 waiting for your pupil's benefit at the very doors of 
 your lecture room in living and breathing substance. 
 They will meet him there in all the charm of nov- 
 elty, and all the fascination of genius or of amiable- 
 ness. To-day a pupil, to-morrow a member of the 
 great world : to-day confined to the Lives of the 
 Saints, to-morrow thrown upon Babel ; thrown on 
 Babel, without the honest indulgence of wit and hu- 
 mour and imagination having ever been permitted to 
 him, without any fastidiousness of taste wrought into 
 him, without any rule given him for discriminating 
 " the precious from the vile," beauty from sin, the 
 truth from the sophistry of nature, what is innocent 
 from what is poison. You have refused him the 
 masters of human thought, who wou-ld in some sense 
 have educated him, because of their incidental cor-
 
 LITERATURE AND LIFE. 49 
 
 ruption : you have shut up from him those whose 
 thoughts strike home to our hearts, whose words are 
 proverbs, whose names are indigenous to all the world, 
 who are the standard of their mother tongue, and the 
 pride and boast of their countrymen, Homer, Ariosto, 
 Cervantes, Shakespeare, because the old Adam smelt 
 rank in them ; and for what have you reserved him ? 
 You have given him " a liberty unto " the multitudinous 
 blasphemy of his day ; you have made him free of its 
 newspapers, its reviews, its magazines, its novels, its 
 controversial pamphlets, of its Parliamentary debates, 
 its law proceedings, its platform speeches, its songs, 
 its drama, its theatre, of its enveloping, stifling atmos- 
 phere of death. You have succeeded but in this, 
 in making the world his University. 
 
 Difficult then as the question may be, and much as 
 it may try the judgments and even divide the opinions 
 of zealous and religious Catholics, I cannot feel any 
 doubt myself, Gentlemen, that the Church's true pot- 
 icy is not to aim at the exclusion of Literature from 
 Secular Schools, but at her own admission into them. 
 Let her do for Literature in one way what she does for 
 Science in another ; each has its imperfection, and she 
 has her remedy for each. She fears no knowledge, but 
 she purifies all ; she represses no element of our 
 nature, but cultivates the whole. Science is grave, 
 methodical, logical ; with Science then she argues, and 
 opposes reason to reason. Literature does not argue, 
 but declaims and insinuates ; it is multiform and ver- 
 satile : it persuades instead of convincing, it seduces, it 
 carries captive ; it appeals to the sense of honour, or to 
 the imagination, or to the stimulus of curiosity; it 
 4
 
 50 LITERATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 makes its way by means of gaiety, satire, romance, the 
 beautiful, the pleasurable. Is it wonderful that with 
 an agent like this the Church should claim to deal 
 with a vigour corresponding to its restlessness, to inter- 
 fere in its proceedings with a higher hand, and to 
 wield an authority in the choice of its studies and of 
 its books which would be tyrannical, if reason and 
 fact were the only instruments of its conclusions ? 
 But anyhow, her principle is one and the same 
 throughout ; not to prohibit truth of any kind, but to 
 see that no doctrines pass under the name of Truth 
 but those which claim it rightfully. Idea of a Univer- 
 sity, ed. 1891, pp. 229-234 (1852). 
 
 ~+*J
 
 St. pbflfp IRerf. 
 
 SUCH at least is the lesson which I am taught by all 
 the thought which I have been able to bestow upon 
 the subject ; such is the lesson which I have gained 
 from the history of my own special Father and Patron, 
 St. Philip Neri. He lived in an age as traitorous to 
 the interests of Catholicism as any that preceded it, 
 or can follow it. He lived at a time when pride 
 mounted high, and the senses held rule ; a time when 
 kings and nobles never had more of state and homage, 
 and never less of personal responsibility and peril ; 
 when mediaeval winter was receding, and the summer 
 sun of civilization was bringing into leaf and flower a 
 thousand forms of luxurious enjoyment ; when a new 
 world of thought and beauty had opened upon the 
 human mind, in the discovery of the treasures of 
 classic literature and art. He saw the great and the 
 gifted, dazzled by the Enchantress, and drinking in 
 the magic of her song ; he saw the high and the wise, 
 the student and the artist, painting, and poetry, and 
 sculpture, and music, and architecture, drawn within 
 her range, and circling round the abyss : he saw 
 heathen forms mounting thence, and forming in the 
 thick air : all this he saw, and he perceived that the 
 mischief was to be met, not with argument, not with 
 science, not with protests and warnings, not by the 
 recluse or the preacher, but by means of the great 
 
 5 1
 
 52 ST. PHILIP NERL 
 
 counter fascination of purity and truth. He was raised 
 up to do a work almost peculiar in the Church, not 
 to be a Jerome Savonarola, though Philip had a true 
 devotion towards him and a tender memory of his 
 Florentine house ; not to be a St. Charles, though in 
 his beaming' countenance Philip had recognized the 
 aureole of a saint ; not to be a St. Ignatius, wrestling 
 with the foe, though Philip was termed the Society's 
 bell of call, so many subjects did he send to it ; not to 
 be a St. Francis Xavier, though Philip had longed to 
 shed his blood for Christ in India with him ; not to be 
 a St. Caietan, or hunter of souls, for Philip preferred, 
 as he expressed it, tranquilly to cast in his net to gain 
 them ; he preferred to yield to the stream, and direct 
 the current, which he could not stop, of science, litera- 
 ture, art, and fashion, and to sweeten and to sanctify 
 what God had made very good and man had spoilt. 
 
 And so he contemplated as the idea of his mission, 
 not the propagation of the faith, nor the exposition of 
 doctrine, nor the catechetical schools; whatever was 
 exact and systematic pleased him not ; he put from 
 him monastic rule and authoritative speech, as David 
 refused the armour of his king. No ; he would be but 
 an ordinary individual priest as others : and his 
 weapons should be but unaffected humility and un- 
 pretending love. All He did was to be done by the 
 light, and fervour, and convincing eloquence of his 
 personal character and his easy conversation. He 
 came to the Eternal City and he sat himself down 
 there, and his home and his family gradually grew up 
 around him, by the spontaneous accession of materials 
 from without. He did not so much seek his own as
 
 ST. PHILIP NERI. 
 
 S3 
 
 draw them to him. He sat in his small room, and 
 they in their gay worldly dresses, the rich and the 
 wellborn, as well as the simple and the illiterate, 
 crowded into it. In the mid-heats of summer, in the 
 frosts of winter, still was he in that low and narrow 
 cell at San Girolamo, reading the hearts of those who 
 came to him, and curing their souls' maladies by the 
 very touch of his hand. It was a vision of the Magi 
 worshipping the infant Saviour, so pure and innocent, 
 so sweet and beautiful was he ; and so loyal and so dear 
 to the gracious Virgin Mother. And they who came 
 remained gazing and listening, till at length, first one 
 and then another threw off their bravery, and took 
 his poor cassock and girdle instead : or, if they kept 
 it, it was to put haircloth under it, or to take on them 
 a rule of life, while to the world they looked as before. 
 In the words of his biographer, " he was all things 
 to all men. He suited himself to noble and ignoble, 
 young and old, subjects and prelates, learned and 
 ignorant; and received those who were strangers to 
 him with singular benignity, and embraced them with 
 as much love and charity as if he had been a long 
 while expecting them. When he was called upon to 
 be merry he was so ; if there was a demand upon his 
 sympathy he was equally ready. He gave the same 
 welcome to all : caressing the poor equally with the 
 rich, and wearying himself to assist all to the utmost 
 limits of his power. In consequence of his being so 
 accessible and willing to receive all comers, many 
 went to him every day, and some continued for the 
 space of thirty, nay forty years, to visit him very often 
 both morning and evening, so that his room .. went by
 
 54 ' ST. PHILIP NERI. 
 
 the agreeable nickname of the Home of Christian 
 mirth. Nay, people came to him, not only from all 
 parts of Italy, but from France, Spain, Germany, and 
 all Christendom ; and even the infidels and Jews, who 
 had ever any communication with him, revered him as a 
 holy man."* The first families of Rome, the Massimi, 
 the Aldobrandini, the Colonnas, the Altieri, the Vitel- 
 leschi, were his friends and his penitents. Nobles of 
 Poland, Grandees of Spain, Knights of Malta, could 
 not leave Rome without coming to him. Cardinals, 
 Archbishops, and Bishops were his intimates ; Fede- 
 rigo Borromeo haunted his room and got the name of 
 " Father Philip's soul." The Cardinal-Archbishops 
 of Verona and Bologna wrote books in his honour. 
 Pope Pius the Fourth died in his arms. Lawyers, 
 painters, musicians, physicians, it was the same too 
 with them. Baronius, Zazzara, and Ricci, left the law 
 at his bidding, and joined his congregation, to do its 
 work, to write the annals of the Church, and to die in 
 the odour of sanctity. Palestrina had Father Philip's 
 ministrations in his last moments. Animuccia hung 
 about him during life, sent him a message after death, 
 and was conducted by him through Purgatory to 
 Heaven. And who was he, I say, all the while, but an 
 humble priest, a stranger in Rome, with no distinction 
 of family or letters, no claim of station or of office, 
 great simply in the attraction with which a Divine 
 Power had gifted him ? and yet thus humble, thus un- 
 ennobled, thus empty-handed, he has achieved the 
 glorious title of Apostle of Rome. Idea of a Univer- 
 sity, ed. 1891, pp. 234-238 (1852). 
 
 * Jiacci, vol. i., p. 192, ii., p. 98.
 
 $obn feeble. 
 
 SUCH was the gift of the author of the Christian 
 Year, and he used it in attaching the minds of the ris- 
 ing generation to the Church of his predecessors, Ken 
 and Herbert. He did that for the Church of England 
 which none but a poet could do : he made it poetical. 
 It is sometimes asked whether poets are not more 
 commonly found external to the Church than among 
 her children ; and it would not surprise us to find the 
 question answered in the affirmative. Poetry is the 
 refuge of those who have not the Catholic Church to 
 flee to and repose upon, for the Church herself is the 
 most sacred and august of poets. Poetry, as Mr. 
 Keble lays it down in his University Lectures on the 
 subject, is a method of relieving the over-burdened 
 mind ; it is a channel through which emotion finds ex- 
 pression, and that a safe, regulated expression. Now 
 what is the Catholic Church, viewed in her human as- 
 pect, but a discipline of the affections and passions ? 
 What are her ordinances and practices but the regu- 
 lated expression of keen, or deep, or turbid feeling, 
 and thus a " cleansing," as Aristotle would word it, of 
 the sick soul ? She is the poet of her children ; full of 
 music to soothe the sad and control the wayward, 
 wonderful in story for the imagination of the romantic ; 
 rich in symbol and imagery, so that gentle and delicate 
 
 55
 
 56 JOHN KEBLE. 
 
 feelings, which will not bear words, may in silence in 
 timate their presence or commune with themselves. 
 Her very being is poetry ; every psalm, every petition, 
 every collect, every versicle, the cross, the mitre, the 
 thurible, is a fulfilment of some dream of childhood or 
 aspiration of youth. Such poets as are born under her 
 shadow, she takes into her service ; she sets them to 
 write hymns, or to compose chants, or to embellish 
 shrines, or to determine ceremonies, or to marshal pro- 
 cessions ; nay, she can even make schoolmen of them, 
 as she made St. Thomas, till logic becomes poetical. 
 Now the author of the Christian Year found the An- 
 glican system all but destitute of this divine element, 
 which is an essential property of Catholicism ; a 
 ritual dashed upon the ground, trodden on, and broken 
 piece-meal ; prayers, clipped, pieced, torn, shuffled 
 about at pleasure, until the meaning of the composi- 
 tion perished, and offices which had been poetry were 
 no longer even good prose ; antiphones, hymns, ben- 
 edictions, invocations, shovelled away ; Scripture les- 
 sons turned into chapters ; heaviness, feebleness, un- 
 wieldiness, where the Catholic rites had had the light- 
 ness and airiness of a spirit ; vestments chucked off, 
 lights quenched, jewels stolen, the pomp and circum- 
 stances of worship annihilated ; a dreariness which 
 could be felt, and which seemed the token of an incip- 
 ient Socinianism, forcing itself upon the eye, the ear, 
 the nostrils of the worshipper; a smell of dust and 
 damp, not of incense ; a sound of ministers preaching 
 Catholic prayefs, and parish clerks droning out Catho- 
 lic canticles ; the royal arms for the crucifix; huge ugly 
 boxes of wood, sacred to preachers, frowning on the
 
 JOHN KEBLE. 57 
 
 congregation in the place of the mysterious altar ; and 
 long cathedral aisles unused, railed off, like the tombs 
 (as they were,) of what had been and was not ; and for 
 orthodoxy, a frigid, unelastic, inconsistent, dull, help- 
 less dogmatic, which could give no just account of 
 itself, yet was intolerant of all teaching which con- 
 tained a doctrine more or a doctrine less, and resented 
 every attempt to give it a meaning, such was the 
 religion of which this gifted author was, not the judge 
 and denouncer (a deep spirit of reverence hindered 
 it,) but the renovator, as far as it has been reno- 
 vated. Clear as was his perception of the degeneracy 
 of his times, he attributed nothing of it to his Church, 
 over which he threw the poetry of his own mind and 
 the memory of better days. 
 
 His happy magic made the Anglican Church seem 
 what Catholicism was and is. The established system 
 found to its surprise that it had been all its life talking 
 not prose, but poetry. 
 
 " Miraturque novas frondes et non sua poma." 
 
 Beneficed clergymen used to go to rest as usual on 
 Christmas Eve, and leave to ringers, or sometimes to 
 carollers, the observance which was paid, not without 
 creature comforts, to the sacred night ; but now they 
 suddenly found themselves, to their great surprise, to 
 be " wakeful shepherds ; " and " still as the day came 
 round," " in music and in light," the new-born Saviour 
 " dawned upon their prayer." Anglican bishops had 
 not only lost the habit of blessing, but had sometimes 
 been startled and vexed when asked to do so ; but now 
 they were told of their " gracious arm stretched out to
 
 58 JOHN KEBLE. 
 
 bless ; " moreover, what they had never dreamed when 
 they were gazetted or did homage, they were taught 
 that each of them was " an Apostle true, a crowned 
 and robed seer." The parish church had been shut 
 up, except for vestry meetings and occasional services, 
 all days of the year but Sundays, and one or two other 
 sacred days ; but church-goers were now assured that 
 "Martyrs and Saints" "dawned on their way," that 
 the absolution in the Common Prayer Book was " the 
 Golden Key each morn and eve ; " and informed, more- 
 over, at a time too when the Real Presence was all but 
 utterly forgotten or denied, of " the dear feast of Jesus 
 dying, upon that altar ever lying, while Angels pros- 
 trate fall." They learned, besides, that what their 
 pastors had spoken of, and churchwardens had used 
 at vestry meetings, as a mere table, was " the dread 
 altar ; " and that " holy lamps were blazing ; " " per- 
 fumed embers quivering bright," with " stoled priests 
 ministering at them," while the " floor was by knees of 
 sinners worn." 
 
 Such doctrine coming from one who had such claims 
 on his readers from the weight of his name, the depth 
 of his devotional and ethical tone,' and the special gift 
 of consolation, of which his poems themselves were 
 the evidence, wrought a great work on the Establish- 
 ment. The Catholic Church speaks for itself, the An- 
 glican needs external assistance ; his poems became a 
 sort of comment upon its formularies and ordinances, 
 and almost elevated them into the dignity of a religi- 
 ous system. It kindled hearts towards his Church ; it 
 gave a something for the gentle and forlorn to cling 
 to ; and it raised up advocates for it among those, who
 
 JOHKT KEBLE. 59 
 
 otherwise, if God and their good Angel had suffered 
 it, might have wandered away into some sort of phi- 
 losophy, and acknowledged no Church at all. Such 
 was the influence of his Christian Year; and doubt- 
 less his friends hail his Lyra Innocentium, as being 
 likely to do a similar work in a more critical time. 
 And it is to be expected that for a while something of 
 a similar effect may follow its publication. That so 
 revered, so loved a name as the author's, a name 
 known by Oxford men for thirty years and more, that 
 one who has been " a hermit spirit " unlike the world 
 all his days, who even in his youth caused the eyes of 
 younger men to turn keenly towards him, if he was 
 pointed out to them in public schools or college 
 garden, who by the mere first touch of his hand has 
 made them feel pierced through, so that they could 
 have sunk into the earth for shame, and who, when re- 
 moved from his loved University, was still an unseen 
 silent influence moving hearts at his will, that a 
 " whisper " from such a man, " with no faint and erring 
 voice," will for the time retain certain persons in the 
 English Church, who otherwise, to say the least, would 
 have contemplated a return to that true Mother whose 
 baptism they bear, the one sole Ark of salvation, of 
 this we make no question at all. But there is another 
 point, of which we entertain just as little doubt, or 
 rather are a great deal more confident, that as far as 
 the Volume has influence, that influence will, on the 
 long run, tell in favor of the Catholic Church ; and 
 will do what the author does not, nay, from his posi- 
 tion, alas ! cannot, may not contemplate, will in 
 God's good time bring in a blessed harvest into the
 
 60 JOHN KEBLE. 
 
 granaries of Christ. And being sure of this, much as 
 the immediate effects of its publication may pain the 
 hearts of those who are sighing and praying for the 
 souls of others, we can bear to wait, we can afford to 
 be patient, and awfully to watch the slow march of the 
 divine providences towards this poor country. Essays 
 Critical and Historical, ed. 1885, Vol. ii., pp. 442-446 
 (1846). 
 
 Keble was young in years, when he became a Uni- 
 versity celebrity, and younger in mind. He had the 
 purity and simplicity of a child. He had few sym- 
 pathies with the intellectual party, who sincerely 
 welcomed him as a brilliant specimen of young Oxford. 
 He instinctively shut up before literary display, and 
 pomp and donnishness of manner, faults which always 
 will beset academical notabilities. He 'did not respond 
 to their advances. His collision with them (if it may 
 be so called) was thus described by Hurrell Froude in 
 his own way. " Poor Keble ! " he used gravely to say, 
 " he was asked to join the aristocracy of talent, but he 
 soon found his level. " He went into the country, but 
 his instance serves to prove that men need not, in the 
 event, lose that influence which is rightly theirs, be- 
 cause they happen to be thwarted in the use of the 
 channels natural and proper to its exercise. He did 
 not lose his place in the minds of men because he was 
 out of their sight. 
 
 Keble was a man who guided himself and formed 
 his judgments, not by processes of reason, by inquiry 
 or by argument, but, to use the word in a broad sense,
 
 JOHNKEBLE. 61 
 
 by authority. Conscience is an authority; the Bible 
 is an authority ; such is the Church ; such is An- 
 tiquity ; such are the words of the wise ; such are 
 hereditary lessons ; such are ethical truths ; such are 
 historical memories, such are legal saws and state 
 maxims ; such are proverbs ; such are sentiments, 
 presages, and prepossessions. It seemed to me as if 
 he ever felt happier, when he could speak or act under 
 some such primary or external sanction ; and could 
 use argument mainly as a means of recommending or 
 explaining what had claims on his reception prior to 
 proof. He even felt a tenderness, I think, in spite of 
 Bacon, for the Idols of the Tribe and the Den, of the 
 Market and the Theatre. What he hated instinctively 
 was heresy, insubordination, resistance to things es- 
 tablished, claims of independence, disloyalty, innova- 
 tion, a critical, censorious spirit. And such was the 
 main principle of 'the school which in the course of 
 years was formed around him ; nor is it easy to set 
 limits to its influence in its day ; for multitudes of men, 
 who did' not profess its teaching, or accept its pe- 
 culiar doctrines, were willing nevertheless, or found it 
 to their purpose, to act in company with it. 
 
 Indeed for a time it was practically the champion 
 and advocate of the political doctrines of the great 
 clerical interest through the country, who found in Mr. 
 Keble and his friends an intellectual, as well as moral 
 support to their cause, which they looked for in vain 
 elsewhere. His weak point* in their eyes, was his 
 consistency ; for he carried his love of authority 
 and old times so far", as to be more- than gentle to^ 
 wards the Catholic Religion, with which the Toryism
 
 6 2 JOHN KEBLE. 
 
 of Oxford and of the Church of England had no 
 sympathy. Accordingly, if my memory be correct, he 
 never could get himself to throw his heart into the 
 opposition made to Catholic Emancipation, strongly 
 as he revolted from the politics and the instruments by 
 means of which that Emancipation was won. 1 fancy 
 he would have had no difficulty in accepting Dr. John- 
 son's saying about " the first Whig ; '' and it grieved 
 and offended him that the " Via prima salutis " should 
 be opened to the Catholic body from the Whig quarter. 
 In spite of his reverence for the Old Religion, I con- 
 ceive that on the whole he would rather have kept its 
 professors beyond the pale of the Constitution with 
 the Tories, than admit them on the principles of the 
 Whigs. Moreover, if the Revolution of 1688 was too 
 lax in principle for him and his friends, much less, as 
 is very plain, could they endure to subscribe to the 
 revolutionary doctrines of 1776 and 1789, which they 
 felt to be absolutely and entirely out of keeping with 
 theological truth. Apologia, ed. 1890, pp. 289-291 
 (1864).
 
 EVERY year brings changes and reforms. We do 
 not know what is the state of Oxley Church now ; it 
 may haye rood-loft, piscina, sedilia, all new ; or it may 
 be reformed backwards, the seats on principle turning 
 from the Communion-table, and the pulpit planted in 
 the middle of the aisle ; but at the time when these 
 two young men walked through the churchyard, there 
 was nothing very good or very bad to attract them 
 within the building ; and they were passing on, when 
 they observed, coming out of the church, what Shef- 
 field called an elderly don, a fellow of a college whom 
 Charles knew. He was a man of family, and had 
 some little property of his own, had been a contempo- 
 rary of his father's at the University, and had from 
 time to time been a guest at the parsonage. Charles 
 had, in consequence, known him from a boy ; and now, 
 since he came into residence, he had, as was natural, 
 received many small attentions from him. Once, 
 when he was late for his own hall, he had given him 
 his dinner in his rooms ; he had taken him out on a 
 fishing expedition towards Faringdon ; and had prom- 
 ised him some tickets for some ladies, lionesses of 
 his, who were coming up to the Commemoration. He 
 was a shrewd, easy-tempered, free-spoken man, of 
 small desires and no ambition ^ of no very keen sensi- 
 
 63
 
 64 OXFORD FASHIONS. 
 
 bilities or romantic delicacies, and very little religious 
 pretension ; that is, though unexceptionable in his de- 
 portment, he hated the show of religion, and was im- 
 patient with those who affected it. He had known 
 the University for thirty years, and formed a right 
 estimate of most things in it. He had come out to 
 Oxley to take a funeral for a friend, and was now return- 
 ing home. He hallooed to Charles, who, though feeling 
 at first awkward on finding himself with two such dif- 
 ferent friends and in two such different relations, was, 
 after a time, partially restored to himself by the uncon- 
 cern of Mr. Malcolm ; and the three walked home 
 together. Yet, even to the last, he did not quite know 
 how and where to walk, and how to carry himself ; 
 particularly when they got near Oxford, and he fell in 
 with various parties who greeted him in passing. 
 
 Charles, by way of remark, said they had been look- 
 ing in at a pretty little chapel on the common, which 
 was now in the course of repair. Mr. Malcolm laughed. 
 "So, Charles," he said, "you're bit with the new 
 fashion." 
 
 Charles coloured, and asked, " What fashion ? " 
 adding, that a friend, by accident, had taken them in. 
 
 " You ask what fashion," said Mr. Malcolm ; " why, 
 the newest, latest fashion. This is a place of fashions ; 
 there have been many fashions in my time. The 
 greater part of the residents, that is, the boys, change 
 once in three years ; the fellows and tutors, perhaps, 
 in half a dozen ; and every generation has its own 
 fashion. There is no principle of stability in Oxford, 
 except the Heads, and they are always the same and 
 always will be the same to the end of the chapter.
 
 OXFORD FASHIONS. 65 
 
 What is in now," he asked, " among you youngsters 
 drinking or cigars ? " 
 
 Charles laughed modestly, and said he hoped drink- 
 ing had gone out everywhere. 
 
 " Worse things may come in," said Mr. Malcolm ; 
 " but there are fashions everywhere. There once was 
 a spouting club, perhaps it is in favor still ; before it 
 was the music-room. Once geology was all the rage ; 
 now it is theology ; soon it will be architecture, or me- 
 diaeval antiquities, or editions and codices. Each wears 
 out in its turn ; all depends on one or two active men ; 
 but the secretary takes a wife, or the professor gets 
 a stall ; and then the meetings are called irregularly, 
 and nothing is done in them, and so gradually the 
 affair dwindles and dies." 
 
 Sheffield asked whether the present movement had 
 not spread too widely through the country for such a 
 termination ; he did not know much about it himself, 
 but the papers were full of it, and it was the talk of 
 every neighbourhood ; it was not confined to Oxford. 
 
 " I don't know about the country," said Malcolm, 
 " that is a large question ; but it has not the elements 
 of stability here. These gentlemen will take livings and 
 marry, and that will be the end of the business. I am 
 not speaking against them ; they are, I believe, very 
 respectable men ; but they are riding on the springtide 
 of a fashion." 
 
 Charles said it was a nuisance to. see the party- 
 spirit it introduced. Oxford ought to be a place of 
 quiet and study ; peace and the Muses always went 
 together ; whereas there was talk, talk, in every 
 quarter. A man could not go about his duties in a 
 5
 
 66 OXFORD FASHIONS. 
 
 natural way, and take every one as he came, but was 
 obliged to take part in questions, and to consider 
 points which he might wish to put from him, and must 
 sport an opinion when he really had none to give. 
 
 Mr. Malcolm assented in a half-absent way, looking 
 at the view before him, and seemingly enjoying it. 
 " People call this country ugly," said he, " and per- 
 haps it is ; but whether I am used to it or no, I always 
 am pleased with it. The lights are always new ; and 
 thus the landscape, if it deserves the name, is always 
 presented in a new dress. I have known Shotover 
 there take the most opposite Jiues, sometimes purple, 
 sometimes a bright saffron or tawny orange." Here 
 he stopped : " Yes, you speak of party-spirit ; very 
 true, there's a good deal of it. . . No, I don't think 
 there's much," he continued, rousing ; " certainly 
 there is more division just at this minute in Oxford, 
 but there always is division, always rivalry. The 
 separate societies have their own interests and honour 
 to maintain, and quarrel, as the orders do in the 
 Church of Rome. No, that's too grand a comparison ; 
 rather, Oxford is like an almshouse for clergymen's 
 widows. Self-importance, jealousy, tittle-tattle are the 
 order of the day. It has always been so in my time. 
 The two great ladies, Mrs. Vice-Chancellor and Mrs. 
 Divinity-Professor, can't agree, and have followings 
 respectively : or Vice-Chancellor himself, being a new 
 broom, sweeps all the young Masters clean out of Con- 
 vocation House, to their great indignation : or Mr. 
 Slaney, Dean of St. Peter's, does not scruple to say in 
 ' a stage-coach that Mr. Wood is no scholar ; on which 
 the said Wood calls him in return ' slanderous Slaney ; '
 
 OXFORD FASHIONS. 67 
 
 or the elderly Mr. Barge, late Senior Fellow of St. 
 Michael's, thinks that his pretty bride has not been 
 received with due honours ; or Dr. Crotchet is for years 
 kept out of his destined bishopric by a sinister in- 
 fluence ; or Mr. Professor Carraway has been infa- 
 mously shown up, in the Edinburgh, by an idle fellow 
 whom he plucked in the schools ; or (majora movemus) 
 three colleges interchange a mortal vow of opposition 
 to a fourth ; or the young working Masters conspire 
 against the Heads. Now, however, we are improving ; 
 if we must quarrel, let it be the rivalry of intellect and 
 conscience, rather than of interest or temper ; let us 
 contend for things, not for shadows." 
 
 Sheffield was pleased at this, and ventured to say 
 the present state of things was more real, and there- 
 fore more healthy. Mr. Malcolm did not seem to hear 
 him, for he did not reply ; and, as they were now ap- 
 proaching the bridge again, the conversation stopped. 
 Sheffield looked slily at Charles, as Mr. Malcolm pro- 
 ceeded with them up High Street ; and both of them 
 had the triumph and the amusement of being convoyed 
 safely past a proctor, who was patrolling it, under the 
 protection of a Master. Loss and Gain, ed. 1893, 
 chap. 5, pp. 29-33 (1848).
 
 flewman. 
 
 MR. KINGSLEY begins then by exclaiming, " O the 
 chicanery, the wholesale fraud, the vile hypocrisy, the 
 conscience-killing tyranny of Rome ! We have not far 
 to seek for an evidence of it ! There's Father Newman 
 to wit : one living specimen is worth a hundred dead 
 ones. He, a Priest, writing of Priests, tells us that 
 lying is never any harm." 
 
 I interpose : " You are taking a most extraordinary 
 liberty with my name. If I have said this, tell me 
 when and where." 
 
 Mr. Kingsley replies : " You said it, Reverend Sir, 
 in a sermon which you preached, when a Protestant, 
 as Vicar of St. Mary's, and published in 1844 ; and I 
 could read you a very salutary lecture on the effects 
 which that Sermon had at the time on my own opinion 
 of you." 
 
 I make answer : " Oh. . . Not, it seems, as a priest 
 speaking of priests ; but let us have the passage." 
 
 Mr. Kingsley relaxes : " Do you know I like your 
 tone. From your tone, I rejoice, greatly rejoice, to be 
 able to believe that you did not mean what you said." 
 
 I rejoin : " Mean it ! I maintain I never said it, 
 whether as a Protestant or as a Catholic." 
 
 Mr. Kingsley replies : " I waive that point." 
 
 I object : " Is it possible ? What ? waive the main 
 68
 
 KINGSL EY AND NE WMAN. 69 
 
 question ! I either said it or I didn't. You have 
 made a monstrous charge against me ; direct, distinct, 
 public. You are bound to prove it as directly, as 
 distinctly, as publicly ; or to own you can't ! " 
 
 "Well, "says Mr. Kingsley, "if you are quite sure 
 you did hot say it, I'll take your word for it; I 
 really will." 
 
 My word 7 I am dumb. Somehow I thought that 
 it was my word that happened to be on trial. The 
 word of a Professor of lying, that he does not lie ! 
 
 But Mr. Kingsley reassures me : " We are both 
 gentlemen," he says : " I have done as much as one 
 English gentleman can expect from another." 
 
 I begin to see : he thought me a gentleman at the 
 very time that he said I taught lying on system. After 
 all, it is not I, but it is Mr. Kingsley who did not 
 mean what he said. " Habemus confitentem reum." 
 So we have confessedly come round to this, preaching 
 without practising ; the common "theme of satirists 
 from Juvenal to Walter Scott ! Apologia^ ed. 1865, 
 pp. 17-18 (1864). 
 
 I cannot be sorry to have forced my Accuser to 
 bring out in fulness his charges against me. It is far 
 better that he should discharge his thoughts upon me 
 in my lifetime, than after I am dead. Under the 
 circumstances I am happy in having the opportunity 
 of reading the worst that can be said of me by a writer 
 who has taken pains with his work and is well satisfied 
 with it. I account it a gain to be surveyed from with- 
 out by one who hates the principles which are nearest
 
 70 KINGSLE y AND NE WMAN. 
 
 to my heart, has no personal knowledge of me to set 
 right his misconceptions of my doctrine, and who has 
 some motive or other to be as severe with me as he 
 can possibly be. . . . 
 
 But I really feel sad for what I am obliged now to 
 say. I am in warfare with him, but I wish him no ill ; 
 it is very difficult to get up resentment towards 
 persons whom one has never seen. It is easy enough 
 to be irritated with friends or foes vis-a-vis ,- but, 
 though I am writing with all my heart against what he 
 has said of me, I am not conscious of personal unkind- 
 ness towards himself. I think it necessary to write as 
 I am writing, for my own sake, and for the sake of the 
 Catholic Priesthood; but I wish to impute nothing 
 worse to him than that he has been furiously carried 
 away by his feelings. Yet what shall I say of the up- 
 shot of all his talk of my economies and equivocations 
 and the like ? What is the precise work which it is 
 directed to effect ? I am at war with him ; but there is 
 such a thing as legitimate warfare : war has its laws : 
 there are things which may fairly be done, and things 
 which may not be done. I say it with shame and 
 with stern sorrow ; he has attempted a great trans- 
 gression ; he has attempted (as I may call it) to poison 
 the wells. I will quote him and explain what I mean. 
 . . . He says, 
 
 " I am henceforth in doubt and fear, as much as any 
 honest man can be, concerning every word Dr. Newman 
 may write. How can I tell that I shall not be the dupe 
 of some cunning equivocation, of one of the three kinds 
 laid down as permissible by the blessed Alfonso da 
 Liguori and his pupils, even when confirmed by an
 
 KINGSLE Y AND NE WMAtt. 7 1 
 
 oath because ' then we do not deceive our neighbour, 
 but allow him to deceive himself ? ' ... . It is admis- 
 sible, therefore, to use words and sentences which have 
 a double signification, and leave the hapless hearer to 
 take which of them he may choose. What proof have 
 7, then, that by ' mean it? I never said it I' Dr. New- 
 man does not signify, I did not say it, but I did mean 
 it?" Pp. 44,45. 
 
 Now these insinuations and questions shall be 
 answered in their proper places ; here I will but say 
 that I scorn and detest lying, and quibbling, and 
 double-tongued practice, and slyness, and cunning, 
 and smoothness, and cant, and pretence, quite as 
 much as any Protestants hate them ; and I pray to be 
 kept from the snare of them. But all this is just now 
 by the bye ; my present subject is my Accuser ; what I 
 insist upon here is this unmanly attempt of his, in his 
 concluding pages, to cut the ground from under my 
 feet; to poison by anticipation the public mind 
 against me, John Henry Newman, and to infuse into 
 the imaginations of my readers, suspicion and mistrust 
 of everything that I may say in reply to him. This I 
 call poisoning the wells. 
 
 " I am henceforth in doubt and fear" he says, " as 
 much as any honest man can be, concerning every word 
 T3r. Newman may write. How can I tell that I shall 
 not be the dupe of some cunning equivocation ?".... 
 
 Well, I can only say, that, if his taunt is to take ef- 
 fect, I am but wasting my time in saying a word in 
 answer to his calumnies ; and this is precisely what he 
 knows and intends to be its fruit. I can hardly get 
 myself to protest against a method of controversy so
 
 7 2 KINGSL E Y AND NE WMAtf. 
 
 base and cruel, lest in doing so, I should be violating 
 my self-respect and self-possession ; but most base and 
 most cruel it is. We all know how our imagination 
 runs away with us, how suddenly and at what a pace ; 
 the saying, " Caesar's wife should not be suspected," 
 is an instance of what I mean. The habitual preju- 
 dice, the humour of the moment, is the turning-point 
 which leads us to read a defence in a good sense or a 
 bad. We interpret it by our antecedent impressions. 
 The very same sentiments, according as our jealousy 
 is or is not awake, or our aversion stimulated, are 
 tokens of truth or of dissimulation and pretence. 
 There is a story of a sane person being by mistake 
 shut up in the wards of a Lunatic Asylum, and that, 
 when he pleaded his cause to some strangers visiting 
 the establishment, the only remark he elicited in 
 answer was, " How naturally he talks ! you would 
 think he was in his senses." Controversies should be 
 decided by the reason ; is it legitimate warfare to ap- 
 peal to the misgivings of the public mind and to its 
 dislikings ? Anyhow, if my accuser is able thus to 
 practise upon my readers, the more I succeed, the less 
 will be my success. If I am natural, he will tell 
 them " Ars est celare artem ; " if I am convincing, he 
 will suggest that I am an able logician ; if I show 
 warmth, I am acting the indignant innocent ; if I am 
 calm, I am thereby detected as a smooth hypocrite ; if 
 I clear up difficulties, I am too plausible and perfect to 
 be true. The more triumphant are my statements, the 
 more certain will be my defeat. 
 
 So will it be if my Accuser succeeds in his ma- 
 noeuvre ; but I do not for an instant believe that he
 
 KINGSLE Y AND NE WMAN. 73 
 
 will. Whatever judgment my readers may eventually 
 form of me from these pages, I am confident that they 
 will believe me in what I shall say in the course of 
 them. I have no misgiving at all, that they will be 
 ungenerous or harsh towards a man who has been so 
 long before the eyes of the world ; who has so many to 
 speak of him from personal knowledge ; whose natural 
 impulse it has ever been to speak out ; who has ever 
 spoken too much rather than too little ; who would 
 have saved himself many a scrape, if he had been wise 
 enough to hold his tongue ; who has ever been fair to 
 the doctrines and arguments of his opponents ; who 
 has never slurred over facts and reasonings which told 
 against himself ; who has never given his name or 
 authority to proofs which he thought unsound, or to 
 testimony which he did not think at least plausible ; 
 who has never shrunk from confessing a fault when he 
 felt that he had committed one ; who has ever con- 
 sulted for others more than for himself ; who has given 
 up much that he loved and prized and could have re- 
 tained, but that he loved honesty better than name, 
 and Truth better than dear friends. . . . 
 
 What then shall be the special imputations, against 
 which I shall throw myself in these pages, out of the 
 thousand and one which my Accuser directs upon me ? 
 I mean to confine myself to one, for there is only one 
 about which I much care, the charge of Untruthful- 
 ness. He may cast upon me as many other impu- 
 tations as he pleases, and they may stick on me, as 
 long as they can, in the course of nature. They will 
 fall to the ground in their season.
 
 74 KINGSLE Y AND NE WMAN. 
 
 And indeed I think the same of the charge of Un- 
 truthfulness, and select it from the rest, not because it 
 is more, formidable but because it is more serious. 
 Like the rest, it may disfigure me for a time, but it 
 will not stain : Archbishop Whately used to say, 
 " Throw dirt enough, and some will stick ; " well, will 
 stick, but not, will stain. I think he used to mean 
 " stain," and I do not agree with him. Some dirt 
 sticks longer than other dirt ; but no dirt is immortal. 
 According to the old saying, Praevalebit Veritas. 
 There are virtues indeed, which the world is not fitted 
 to judge of or to uphold, such as faith, hope, and 
 charity : but it can judge about Truthfulness ; it can 
 judge about the natural virtues, and Truthfulness is 
 one of them. Natural virtues may also become super- 
 natural ; Truthfulness is such ; but that does not with- 
 draw it from the jurisdiction of mankind at large. It 
 may be more difficult in this or that particular case for 
 men to take cognizance of it, as it may be difficult for 
 the Court of Queen's Bench at Westminster to try a 
 case fairly which took place in Hindostan : but that is 
 a question of capacity, not of right. Mankind has the 
 right to judge of Truthfulness in a Catholic, as in the 
 case of a Protestant, of an Italian, or of a Chinese. I 
 have never doubted, that in my hour, in God's hour, 
 my avenger will appear, and the world will acquit me 
 of untruthfulness, even though it be not while I live. 
 
 Still more confident am I of such eventual acquittal, 
 seeing that my judges are my own countrymen. I 
 consider, indeed, Englishmen the most suspicious and 
 touchy of mankind ; I think them unreasonable, and 
 unjust in their seasons of excitement ; but I had rather
 
 KINGSLE Y AND NE WMAM 75 
 
 be an Englishman (as in fact I am,) than belong to 
 any other race under heaven. They are as generous, 
 as they are hasty and burly -, and their repentance for 
 their injustice is greater than their sin. 
 
 For twenty years and more I have borne an imputa- 
 tion, of which I am at least as sensitive, who am the 
 object of it, as they can be, who are only the judges. 
 I have not set myself to remove it, first, because I 
 never have had an opening to speak, and, next, be- 
 cause I never saw in them the disposition to hear. I 
 have wished to appeal from Philip drunk to Philip 
 sober. When shall I pronounce him to be himself 
 again ? If I may judge from the tone of the public 
 press, which represents the public voice, I have great 
 reason to take heart at this time. I have been treated 
 by contemporary critics in this controversy with great 
 fairness and gentleness, and I am grateful to them for 
 it. However, the decision on the time and mode of 
 my defence has been taken out of my hands ; and I 
 am thankful that it has been so. I am bound now as 
 a duty to myself, to the Catholic cause, to the Catholic 
 Priesthood, to give account of myself without any de- 
 lay, when I am so rudely and circumstantially charged 
 with Untruthfulness. I accept the challenge ; I shall 
 do my best to meet it, and I shall be content when I 
 have done so. 
 
 It is not my present accuser alone who entertains, 
 and has entertained, so dishonourable an opinion of 
 me and of my writings. It is the impression of large 
 classes of men ; the impression twenty years ago and 
 the impression now. There has been a general feeling
 
 7 6 KINGSLE y AND NE WMAN. 
 
 that I was for years where I had no right to be ; that 
 I was a " Romanist " in Protestant livery and service ; 
 that I was doing the work of a hostile Church in the 
 bosom of the English Establishment, and knew it, or 
 ought to have known it. There was no need of argu- 
 ing about particular passages in my writings, when the 
 fact was so patent, as men thought it to be. 
 
 First it was certain, and I could not myself deny it, 
 that I scouted the name " Protestant." It was certain 
 again, that many of the doctrines which I professed 
 were popularly and generally known as badges of the 
 Roman Church, as distinguished from the faith of the 
 Reformation. Next, how could I have come by them ? 
 Evidently, I had certain friends and advisers who did 
 not appear ; there was some underground communica- 
 tion between Stonyhurst or Oscott and my rooms at 
 Oriel. Beyond a doubt, I was advocating certain 
 doctrines, not by accident, but on an understanding 
 with ecclesiastics of the old religion. Then men went 
 further, and said that I had actually been received 
 into that religion, and withal had leave given me to 
 profess myself a Protestant still. Others went even 
 further, and gave it out to the world, as a matter of 
 fact, of which they themselves had the proof in their 
 hands, that I was actually a Jesuit. And when the 
 opinions which I advocated spread, and younger men 
 went further than I, the feeling against me waxed 
 stronger and took a wider range. 
 
 And now indignation arose at the knavery of a con- 
 spiracy such as this : and it became of course all the 
 greater in consequence of its being the received belief 
 of the public at large, that craft and intrigue, such as
 
 KINGSLE Y AND NE WMAtf. 7 7 
 
 they fancied they beheld with their eyes, were the 
 very instruments to which the Catholic Church has in 
 these last centuries been indebted for her maintenance 
 and extension. 
 
 There was another circumstance still, which in- 
 creased the irritation and aversion felt by the large 
 classes, of whom I have been speaking, against the 
 preachers of doctrines, so new to them and so unpalat- 
 able ; and that was, that they developed them in so 
 measured a way. ' If they were inspired by Roman 
 theologians, (and this was taken for granted), why did 
 they not speak out at once ? Why did they keep the 
 world in such suspense and anxiety as to what was 
 coming next, and what was to be the upshot of the 
 whole ? Why this reticence, and half-speaking, and 
 apparent indecision ? It was plain that the plan of 
 operations had been carefully mapped out from the 
 first, and that these men were cautiously advancing to- 
 wards its accomplishment, as far as was safe at the 
 moment ; that their aim and their hope was to carry 
 off a large body with them of the young and the igno- 
 rant ; that they meant gradually to leaven the minds of 
 the rising generation, and to open the gates of that 
 city, of which they were the sworn defenders, to the 
 enemy who lay in ambush outside of it. And when in 
 spite of the many protestations of the party to the con- 
 trary, there was at length an actual movement among 
 their disciples, and one went over to Rome, and then 
 another, the worst anticipations and the worst judg- 
 ments which had been formed of them received their 
 justification. And, lastly, when men first had said of 
 me, " You will see, he will go, he is only biding his
 
 78 KINGSL E Y AND 
 
 time, he is waiting the word of command from Rome," 
 and, when after all, after my arguments and denuncia- 
 tions of former years, at length I did leave the Anglican 
 Church for the Roman, then they said to each other, 
 " It is just as we said : we knew it would be so." 
 
 This was the state of mind of masses of men twenty 
 years ago, who took no more than an external and 
 common sense view of what was going on. And partly 
 the tradition, partly the effect of that feeling, remains 
 to the present time Certainly I consider that, in my 
 own case, it is the great obstacle in the way of my 
 being favourably heard, as at present, when I have to 
 make my defence. Not only am I now a member of a 
 most un-English communion, whose great aim is con- 
 sidered to be the extinction of Protestantism and the 
 Protestant Church, and whose means of attack are 
 popularly supposed to be unscrupulous cunning and 
 deceit, but how came I originally to have any relations 
 with the Church of Rome at all ? did I, or my opin- 
 ions, drop from the sky ? how came I, in Oxford, in 
 gremio Universitatis, to present myself to the eyes of 
 men in that full-blown investiture of Popery ? How 
 could I dare, how could I have the conscience, with 
 warnings, with prophecies, with accusations against 
 me, to persevere in a path which steadily advanced to- 
 wards, which ended in, the religion of Rome ? And 
 how am I now to be trusted, when long ago I was 
 trusted, and was found wanting ? 
 
 It is this which is the strength of the case of my 
 Accuser against me ; not the articles of impeachment 
 which he has framed from my writings, and which I 
 shall easily crumble into dust, but the bias of the
 
 KINGSLE Y AND NE WMAN. 79 
 
 court. It is the state of the atmosphere ; it is the 
 vibration all around, which will echo his bold assertion 
 of my dishonesty ; it is that prepossession against me, 
 which takes it for granted that, when my reasoning is 
 convincing it is only ingenious, and that when my 
 statements are unanswerable, there is always something 
 put out of sight or hidden in my sleeve; it is that 
 plausible, but cruel conclusion to which men are apt to 
 jump, that when much is imputed, much must be true, 
 and that it is more likely that one should be to blame, 
 than that many should be mistaken in blaming him ; 
 these are the real foes which I have to fight, and the 
 auxiliaries to whom my Accuser makes his advances. 
 
 Well, I must break through this barrier of prejudice 
 against me if I can ; and I think I shall be able to do 
 so. When first I read the Pamphlet of Accusation, I 
 almost despaired of meeting effectively such a heap of 
 misrepresentations and such a vehemence of animosity. 
 What was the good of answering first one point, and 
 then another, and going through the whole circle of its 
 abuse ; when my answer to the first point would be 
 forgotten, as soon as I got to the second ? What was 
 the use of bringing out half a hundred separate prin- 
 ciples or views for the refutation of the separate counts 
 in the Indictment, when rejoinders of this sort would 
 but confuse and torment the reader by their number 
 and their diversity ? What hope was there of condens- 
 ing into a pamphlet of a readable length, matter which 
 ought freely to expand itself into half a dozen 
 volumes ? What means was there, except the ex- 
 penditure of interminable pages, to set right even one 
 of that series of " single passing hints," to use my
 
 8o KINGSLEY AND NEWMAN. 
 
 Assailant's own language, which, " as with his fingei 
 tip he had delivered " against me ? 
 
 All those separate charges had their force in being 
 illustrations of one and the same great imputation. 
 He had already a positive idea to illuminate his whole 
 matter, and to stamp it with a force, and to quicken it 
 with an interpretation. He called me a liar, a sim- 
 ple, a broad, an intelligible, to the English public a 
 plausible arraignment ; but for me, to answer in detail 
 charge one by reason one, and charge two by reason 
 two, and charge three by reason three, and so on 
 through the whole string both of accusations and re- 
 plies, each of which was to be independent of the rest, 
 this would be certainly labour lost as regards any 
 effective result. What I needed was a corresponding 
 antagonist unity in my defence, and where was that to 
 be found? We see, in the case of commentators on 
 the prophecies of Scripture, an exemplification of the 
 principle on which I am insisting ; viz., how much 
 more powerful even a false interpretation of the sacred 
 text is than none at all ; how a certain key to the vis- 
 ions of the Apocalypse, for instance, may cling to the 
 mind (I have found it so in the case of my own), be- 
 cause the view, which it opens on us, is positive and 
 objective, in spite of the fullest demonstration that it 
 really has no claim upon our reception. The reader 
 says, " What else can the prophecy mean ? " just as 
 my Accuser asks, "What, then, does Dr. Newman 
 
 mean ? " I reflected, and I saw a way out of 
 
 my perplexity. 
 
 Yes, I said to myself, his very question is about my 
 meaning; " What does Dr. Newman mean ? " It pointed
 
 KINGSLE Y AND NE WMAN. 8 1 
 
 in the very same direction as that into which my mus- 
 ings had turned me already. He asks what I mean ; 
 not about my words, not about my arguments, not 
 about my actions, as his ultimate point, but- about that 
 living intelligence, by which I write, and argue, and 
 act. He asks about my Mind and its Beliefs and its 
 sentiments ; and he shall be answered ; not for his 
 own sake, but for mine, for the sake of the Religion 
 which I profess, and of the Priesthood in which I am 
 unworthily included, and of my friends and of my 
 foes, and of that general public which consists of 
 neither one nor the other, but of well-wishers, lovers of 
 fair play, sceptical cross-questioners, interested in- 
 quirers, curious lookers-on, and simple strangers un- 
 concerned yet not careless about the issue, for the 
 sake of all these he shall be answered. 
 
 My perplexity had not lasted half an hour. I recog- 
 nized what I had to do, though I shrank from both 
 the task and the exposure which it would entail. I 
 must, I said, give the true key to my whole life ; I 
 must show what I am. that it may be seen what I am 
 not, and that the phantom may be extinguished which 
 gibbers instead of me. I wish to be known as a liv- 
 ing man, and not as a scarecrow which is dressed up 
 in my clothes. False ideas may be refuted indeed by 
 arguments, but by true ideas alone are ihey expelled. 
 I will vanquish, not my Accuser, but my judges. I 
 will indeed answer his charges and criticisms on me 
 one by one,* lest any one should say that they are 
 unanswerable, but such a work shall not be the scope 
 
 * This was done in the Appendix, of which the more important 
 parts are preserved in the Notes. 
 6
 
 82 KINGSLE Y AND NE WMAN. 
 
 nor the substance of my reply. I will draw out, as far 
 as may be, the history of my mind ; I will state the 
 point at which I began, in what external suggestion 
 or accident each opinion had its rise, how far and how 
 they developed from within, how they grew, were 
 modified, were combined, were in collision with each 
 other, and were changed ; again how I conducted my- 
 self towards them, and how, and how far, and for how 
 long a time, I thought I could hold them consistently 
 with the ecclesiastical engagements which I had made 
 and with the position which I held. I must show, 
 what is the very truth, that the doctrines which I 
 held, and have held for so many years, have been 
 taught me (speaking humanly) partly by the sugges- 
 tion of Protestant friends, partly by the teaching of 
 books, and partly by the action of my own mind : and 
 thus I shall account for that phenomenon which to so 
 many seems so wonderful, that I should have left " my 
 kindred and my father's house " for a Church from 
 which once I turned away with dread ; so wonderful to 
 them ! as if forsooth a Religion which has flourished 
 through so many ages, among so many nations, amid 
 such varieties of social life, in such contrary classes 
 and conditions of men, and after so many revolutions, 
 political and civil, could not subdue the reason and 
 overcome the heart, without the aid of fraud in the 
 process and the sophistries of the schools. Apologia, 
 ed. 1890, pp. xii-xxiii (1864).
 
 <Ibe f creliflion of tbe 
 
 THESE instances give us warning: Is the enemy 
 of Christ, and His Church, to arise out of a certain 
 special falling away from GOD ? And is there no rea- 
 son to fear that some such Apostasy is gradually pre- 
 paring, gathering, hastening on in this very day ? For 
 is there not at this very time a special effort made al- 
 most all over the world, that is, every here and there, 
 more or less in sight or out of sight, in this or that 
 place, but most visibly or formidably in its most civil- 
 ized and powerful parts, an effort to do without Reli- 
 gion ? Is there not an opinion avowed and growing, 
 that a nation has nothing to do with Religion ; that it 
 is merely a matter for each man's own conscience ? 
 which is all one with saying that we may let the Truth 
 fail from the earth without trying to continue it in and 
 on after our time. Is there not a vigorous and united 
 movement in all countries to cast down the Church of 
 Christ from power and place ? Is there not a fever- 
 ish and ever-busy endeavour to get rid of the necessity 
 of Religion in public transactions ? for example, an at- 
 tempt to get rid of oaths, under a pretence that they 
 are too sacred for affairs of common life, instead of 
 providing that they be taken more reverently and more 
 suitably ? an attempt to educate without Religion- ? 
 that is, by putting all forms of Religion together, 
 
 83
 
 84 THE IRRELIGION OF THE AGE. 
 
 which comes to the same thing; an attempt to en- 
 force temperance, and the virtues which flow from it, 
 without Religion, by means of Societies which are 
 built on mere principles of utility ? an attempt to make 
 expedience, and not truth, the end and the rule of meas- 
 ures of State and the enactments of Law ? an attempt 
 to make numbers, and not the Truth, the ground of 
 maintaining, or not maintaining, this or that creed, as 
 if we had any reason whatever in Scripture for think- 
 ing that the many will be in the right, and the few in 
 the wrong ? An attempt to<deprive the Bible of its one 
 meaning to the exclusion of all other, to make people 
 think that it may have an hundred meanings all 
 equally good, or, in other words, that it has no mean- 
 ing at all, is a dead letter, and may be put aside ? an 
 attempt to supersede Religion altogether, as far as it 
 is external or objective, as far as it is displayed in ordi- 
 nances, or can be expressed by written words, to 
 confine it to our inward feelings, and thus, considering 
 how variable, how evanescent our feelings are, an at- 
 tempt, in fact, to destroy Religion ? 
 
 Surely, there is at this day a confederacy of evil, 
 marshalling its hosts from all parts of the world, organ- 
 izing itself, taking its measures, enclosing the Church 
 of Christ as in a net, and preparing the way for a 
 general Apostasy from it. Whether this very Apostasy 
 is to give birth to Antichrist, or whether he is still to be 
 delayed, as he has already been delayed so long, we 
 cannot know ; but at any rate this Apostasy, and all 
 its tokens and instruments, are of the Evil One, and 
 savour of death. Far be it from any of us to be of 
 those simple ones who are taken in that snare which is
 
 THE IRRELIGION OF THE AGE. 85 
 
 ending around us ! Far be it from us to be seduced 
 with the fair promises in which Satan is sure to hide 
 his poison ! Do you think he is so unskilful in his 
 craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in 
 his warfare against the Truth ? No ; he offers you 
 baits to tempt you. He promises you civil liberty ; he 
 promises you equality ; he promises you trade and 
 wealth ; he promises you a remission of taxes ; he 
 promises you reform. This is the way in which he 
 conceals from you the kind of work to which he is 
 putting you ; he tempts you to rail against your rulers 
 and superiors ; he does so himself, and induces you 
 to imitate him ; or he promises you illumination, 
 he offers you knowledge, science, philosophy, en- 
 largement of mind. He scoffs at times gone by ; he 
 scoffs at every institution which reveres them. He 
 prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and 
 praises you, and encourages you. He bids you mount 
 aloft. He shows you how to become as gods. Then 
 he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with 
 you ; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between 
 yours, and grasps them, and then you are his. Dis- 
 cussions and Arguments, ed. 1888, pp. 59-61 (1838).
 
 y s\J*r ^ , s*> t>< i 
 
 <kv' 
 V^- 1 ^' 
 
 QL^ V I s 
 
 v*' -"~* w ^-/ / 7>t-' > 
 
 IRnowle&gc and Character. 
 
 A DISTINGUISHED Conservative statesman tells us 
 from the town-hall of Tamworth that " in becoming 
 wiser a man will become better ; " meaning by wiser 
 more conversant with the facts and theories of physical 
 science ; and that such a man will " rise at once in the 
 scale of intellectual and moral existence. " " That, " 
 he adds, " is my belief. " He avows, also, that the 
 fortunate individual whom he is describing, by being 
 " accustomed to such contemplations, will feel the 
 moral dignity of his nature exalted. " He speaks also 
 of physical knowledge as " being the means of useful 
 occupation and rational recreation ; " of " the 
 pleasures of knowledge " superseding " the indulgence 
 of sensual appetite, " and of its " contributing to the 
 intellectual and moral improvement of the community." 
 Accordingly, he very consistently wishes it to be set 
 before " the female as well as the male portion of the 
 population ; " otherwise, as he truly observes, " great 
 injustice would be done to the well-educated and vir- 
 tuous " women of the place. They are to " have equal 
 power and equal influence with others. " It will be 
 difficult to exhaust the reflections which rise in the 
 mind on reading avowals of this nature. 
 
 The first question which obviously suggests itself is 
 how these wonderful moral effects are to be wrought 
 under the instrumentality of the physical sciences. 
 86
 
 KNOWLEDGE AND CHARACTER. 87 
 
 Can the process be analyzed and drawn out, or does it 
 act like a dose or a charm which comes into general 
 use empirically ? Does Sir Robert Peel mean to say, 
 that whatever be the occult reasons for the result, so 
 it is ; you have but to drench the popular mind with 
 physics, and moral and religious advancement follows 
 on the whole, in spite of individual failures? Yet 
 where has the experiment been tried on so large a 
 scale as to justify such anticipations? Or rather, does 
 he mean, that, from the nature of the case, he who is 
 imbued with science and literature, unless adverse 
 influences interfere, cannot but be a better man ? It is 
 natural and becoming to seek for some clear idea of 
 the meaning of so dark an oracle. To know is one 
 thing, to do is another ; the two things are altogether 
 distinct. A man knows he should get up in the morn- 
 ing, he lies a-bed ; he knows he should not lose his 
 temper, yet he cannot keep it. A labouring man knows 
 he should not go to the ale-house, and his wife knows 
 she should not filch when she goes out charing, but, 
 nevertheless, in these cases, the consciousness of a 
 duty is not all one with the performance of it. There 
 are then, large families of instances, to say the least, 
 in which, men may become wiser, without becoming 
 better ; what, then, is the meaning of this great maxim 
 in the mouth of its promulgators ? 
 
 Mr. Bentham would answer, that the knowledge 
 which carries virtue along with it, is the knowledge 
 how to take care of number one a clear appreciation 
 of what is pleasurable, what painful, and what pro- 
 motes the one and prevents the other. An uneducated 
 man is ever mistaking his own interest, and standing
 
 88 KNOWLEDGE AND CHARACTER. 
 
 in the way of his own true enjoyments. Useful 
 Knowledge is that which tends to make us more useful 
 to ourselves ; a most definite and intelligible account 
 of the matter, and needing no explanation. But it 
 would be a great injustice, both to Lord Brougham and 
 to Sir Robert, to suppose, when they talk of Knowl- 
 edge being Virtue, that they are Benthamizing. Ben- 
 tham had not a spark of poetry in him ; on the con- 
 trary, there is much of high aspiration, generous senti- 
 ment, and impassioned feeling in the tone of Lord 
 Brougham and Sir Robert. They speak of knowledge 
 as something " pulchrum, " fair and glorious, exalted 
 above the range of ordinary humanity, and so little 
 connected with the personal interest of its votaries, 
 that, though Sir Robert does obiter talk of improved 
 modes of draining, and the chemical properties of 
 manure, yet he must not be supposed to come short 
 of the lofty enthusiasm of Lord Brougham, who ex- 
 pressly panegyrizes certain ancient philosophers who 
 gave up riches, retired into solitude, or embraced 
 a life of travel, smit with a sacred curiosity about 
 physical or mathematical truth. 
 
 Here Mr. Bentham, did it fall to him to offer a criti- 
 cism, doubtless would take leave to inquire whether 
 such language was anything better than a fine set of 
 words " signifying nothing, " flowers of rhetoric, 
 which bloom, smell sweet, and die. But it is impossi- 
 ble to suspect so grave and practical a man as Sir 
 Robert Peel of using words literally without any mean- 
 ing at all ; and though I think at best they have not 
 a very profound meaning, yet, such as it is, we ought 
 to attempt to draw it out
 
 KNOWLEDGE AND CHARACTER. 89 
 
 Now, without using exact theological language, we 
 may surely take it for granted, from the experience of 
 facts, that the human mind is at best in a very un- 
 formed or disordered state ; passions and conscience, 
 likings and reason, conflicting, might rising against 
 right, with the prospect of things getting worse. Under 
 these circumstances, what is it that the School of 
 philosophy in which Sir Robert has enrolled himself 
 proposes to accomplish ? Not a victory of the mind 
 over itself not the supremacy of the law not the re- 
 duction of the rebels not the unity of our complex 
 nature not an harmonizing of the chaos but the 
 mere lulling of the passions to rest by turning the 
 course of thought ; not a change of character, but a 
 mere removal of temptation. This should be carefully 
 observed. When a husband is gloomy, or an old 
 woman peevish and fretful, those who are about them 
 do all they can to keep dangerous topics and causes 
 of offence out of the way, and think themselves lucky, 
 if, by such skilful management, they get through the 
 day without an outbreak. When a child cries, the 
 nurserymaid dances it about, or points to the pretty 
 black horses out of window, or shows how ashamed 
 poll-parrot or poor puss must be of its tantarums. 
 Such is the sort of prescription which Sir Robert Peel 
 offers to the good people of Tamworth. He makes no 
 pretence of subduing the giant nature, in which we 
 were born, of smiting the lions of the domestic enemies 
 of our piece, of overthrowing passion and fortifying 
 reason ; he does but offer to bribe the foe for the nonce 
 with gifts which will avail for that purpose just so long 
 as they will avail, and no longer.
 
 90 KNOWLEDGE AND CHARACTER. 
 
 < ^t/ J ' 
 This was mainly the philosophy of the great ^Tully, 
 
 except when it pleased him to speak as a disciple of 
 the Porch. Cicero handed the recipe to Brougham, and 
 Brougham has passed it on to Peel. If we examine 
 the old Roman's meaning in " O philosophia, vitce dux" 
 it was neither more nor less than this ; that, while we 
 were thinking of philosophy, we were not thinking of 
 anything else ; we did not feel grief, or anxiety, 
 or passion, or ambition, or hatred all that time, 
 and the only point was to keep thinking of it. 
 How to keep thinking of it was extra artem. If a man 
 was in grief, he was to be amused ; if disappointed, to 
 be excited ; if in a rage, to be soothed ; if in love, to be 
 roused to the pursuit of glory. No inward change was 
 contemplated, but a change of external objects \ as if 
 we were all White Ladies or Undines, our moral life 
 being one of impulse and emotion, not subjected to 
 laws, not consisting in habits, not capable of growth. 
 When Cicero was outwitted by Ca2sar, he solaced him- 
 self with Plato ; when he lost his daughter, he wrote a 
 treatise on consolation. Such, too, was the philosophy 
 of that Lydian city, mentioned by the~historian, who 
 in a famine played at dice to stay their stomachs. 
 
 And such is the rule of life advocated by Lord 
 Brougham ; and though, of course, he protests that 
 knowledge " must invigorate the mind as well as enter- 
 tain it, and refine and elevate the character, while it 
 gives listlessness and weariness their most agreeable 
 excitement and relaxation," yet his notions of vigour 
 and elevation, when analyzed, will be found to resolve 
 themselves into a mere preternatural excitement under 
 the influence of some stimulating object, or the peace
 
 KNOWLEDGE AND CHARACTER. 91 
 
 which is attained by there being nothing . to quarrel 
 
 with. 
 
 * * * 
 
 In morals, as in physics, the stream cannot rise 
 higher than its source. Christianity raises men from 
 earth, for it conies from heaven ; but human morality 
 creeps, struts, or frets upon the earth's level, without 
 wings to rise. The Knowledge School does not con- 
 template raising man above himself ; it merely aims at 
 disposing of his existing powers and tastes, as is most 
 convenient, or is practicable under circumstances. It 
 finds him, like the victims of the French Tyrant, 
 doubled up in a cage in which he can neither lie, stand, 
 sit, nor kneel, and its highest desire is to find an atti- 
 tude in which his unrest may be least. Or it finds him 
 like some musical instrument, of great power and com- 
 pass, but imperfect ; from its very structure some keys 
 must ever be out of tune, and its object, when ambi- 
 tion is highest, is to throw the fault of its nature 
 where least it will be observed. It leaves man where 
 it found him man, and not an Angel a sinner, not a 
 Saint; but it tries to make him look as much like 
 what he is not as ever it can. The poor indulge in low 
 pleasures; they use bad language, swear loudly and 
 recklessly, laugh at coarse jests, and are rude and 
 boorish. Sir Robert would open on them a wider 
 range of thought and more intellectual objects, by 
 teaching them science ; but what warrant will he give 
 us that, if his object could be achieved, what they 
 would gain in decency they would not lose in natural 
 humility and faith ? If so, he has exchanged a gross 
 fault for a more subtle one. " Temperance topics "
 
 92 KNOWLEDGE AND CHARACTER. 
 
 stop drinking ; let us suppose it ; but will much be 
 gained, if those who give up spirits take to opium? 
 Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret, is at least 
 a heathen truth, and universities and libraries which 
 recur to heathenism many reclaim it from the heathen 
 for their motto. 
 
 Nay, everywhere, so far as human nature remains 
 hardly or partially Christianized, the heathen law 
 remains in force ; as is felt in a measure even in the 
 most religious places and societies. Even there, 
 where Christianity has power, the venom of the old 
 Adam is not subdued. Those who have to do with our 
 Colleges give us their experience, that in the case of 
 the young committed to their care, external discipline 
 may change the fashionable excess, but cannot allay the 
 principle of sinning. Stop cigars, they will take to 
 drinking parties ; stop drinking, they gamble ; stop 
 gambling, and a worse license follows. You do not 
 get rid of vice by human expedients ; you can but use 
 them according to circumstances, and in their place, as 
 making the best of a bad matter. You must go to a 
 higher source for renovation of the heart and of the 
 will. You do but play a sort of " hunt the slipper " 
 with the fault of our nature, till you go to Christianity. 
 
 I say, you must use human methods in their place, 
 and there they are useful ; but they are worse than 
 useless out of their place. I have no fanatical wish to 
 deny to any whatever subject of thought or method of 
 reason a place altogether, if it chooses to claim it, in 
 the cultivation of the mind. Mr. Bentham may de- 
 spise verse-making, or Mr. Dugald Stewart logic, but 
 the great and true maxim is to sacrifice none to com-
 
 KNOWLEDGE AND CHARACTER. 93 
 
 bine, and therefore to adjust, all. All cannot be first, 
 and therefore each has its place, and the problem is to 
 find it. It is at least not a lighter mistake to maka 
 what is secondary first, than to leave it out altogether. 
 Here then it is that the Knowledge Society, Gower 
 Street College, Tamworth Reading-room, Lord Broug- 
 ham and Sir Robert Peel, are all so deplorably mis- 
 taken. Christianity, and nothing short of it, must be 
 made the element and principle of all education. 
 Where it has been laid as the first stone, and acknowl- 
 edged as the governing spirit, it will take up into 
 itself, assimilate, and give a character to literature and 
 science. Where Revealed Truth has given the aim 
 and direction to Knowledge, Knowledge of all kinds 
 will minister to Revealed Truth. The evidences of 
 Religion, natural theology, metaphysics, or, again, 
 poetry, history, and the classics, or physics and 
 mathematics, may all be grafted into the mind of a 
 Christian, and give and take by the grafting. But if 
 in education we begin with nature before grace, with 
 evidences before faith, with science before conscience, 
 with poetry before practice, we shall be doing much 
 the same as if we were to indulge the appetites and 
 passions, and turn a deaf ear to the reason. In each 
 case we misplace what in its place is a divine gift. If 
 we attempt to effect a moral improvement by means of 
 poetry, we shall but mature into a mawkish, frivolous, 
 and fastidious sentimentalism ; if by means of argu- 
 ment, into a dry, unamiable longheadedness ; if by 
 good society, into a polished outside, with hollowness 
 within, in which vice has lost its grossness, and 
 perhaps increased its malignity ; if by experimental
 
 94 
 
 KNOWLEDGE AND CHARACTER. 
 
 science, into an uppish, supercilious temper much 
 inclined to scepticism. But reverse the order of 
 things : put Faith first and Knowledge second ; let the 
 University minister to the Church, and then classical 
 poetry becomes the type of Gospel truth, and physical 
 science a comment on Genesis or Job, and Aristotle 
 changes into Butler, and Arcesilas into Berkeley.* 
 Discussions and Arguments, ed. 1888, pp. 261-275 
 (1841). 
 
 * [On the supremacy of each science in its own field, of thought 
 and the encroachments upon it of other sciences, vide the author's 
 " University Teaching," Disc. 3, and " University Subjects," No. 
 7 and 10.]
 
 ffaitb, not fmowle&ge, governs Xife. 
 
 PEOPLE say to me, that it is but a dream to suppose 
 that Christianity should regain the organic power in 
 human society which once it possessed. I cannot 
 help that ; I never said it could. I am not a politician ; 
 I am proposing no measures, but exposing a fallacy, 
 and resisting a pretence. Let Benthamism reign, if 
 men have no aspirations ; but do not tell them to be 
 romantic, and then solace them with glory ; do not 
 attempt by philosophy what once was done by re- 
 ligion. The ascendancy of Faith may be impracticable, 
 but the reign of Knowledge is incomprehensible. The 
 problem for statesmen of this age is how to educate 
 the masses, and literature and science cannot give the 
 solution. 
 
 Not so deems Sir Robert Peel ; his firm belief and 
 hope is, " that an increased sagacity will administer to 
 an exalted faith ; that it will make men not merely 
 believe in the cold doctrines of Natural Religion, but 
 that it will so prepare and temper the spirit and under- 
 standing, that they will be better qualified to compre- 
 hend the great scheme of human redemption." He 
 certainly thinks that scientific pursuits have some 
 considerable power of impressing religion upon the 
 mind of the multitude. I think not, and will now say 
 why. 
 
 95
 
 g6 BELIEF AND ACTION. 
 
 Science gives us the grounds or premises from 
 which religious truths are to be inferred ; but it does 
 not set about inferring them, much less does it reach 
 the inference ; that is not its province. It brings be- 
 fore us phenomena, and it leaves us, if we will, to call 
 them works of design, wisdom, or benevolence ; and 
 further still, if we will, to proceed to confess an Intelli- 
 gent Creator. We have to take its facts, and to give 
 them a meaning, and to draw our own conclusions from 
 them. First conies Knowledge, then a view, then rea- 
 soning, and then belief. This is why Science has so 
 little of a religious tendency ; deductions have no 
 power of persuasion. The heart is commonly reached, 
 not through the reason, but through the imagination, 
 by means of direct impressions, by the testimony of 
 facts and events, by history, by description. Persons 
 influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds 
 inflame us. Many a man will live and die upon a 
 dogma : no man will be a martyr for a conclusion. A 
 conclusion is but an opinion ; it is not a thing which 
 is, but which we are " certain about ; " and it has often 
 been observed, that we never say we are certain with- 
 out implying that we doubt. To say that a thing must 
 be, is to admit that it may not be. No one, I say, will 
 die for his otfn calculations ; he dies for realities. 
 This is why a literary religion is so little to be de- 
 pended upon ; it looks well in fair weather, but its 
 doctrines are opinions, and, when called to suffer for 
 them, it slips them between its folios, or burns them at 
 its hearth. And this again is the secret of the distrust 
 and raillery with which moralists have been so com- 
 monly visited. They say and do not. Why ? Because
 
 BELIEF AND ACTION. 97 
 
 they are contemplating the fitness of things, and they 
 live by the square, when they should be realizing their 
 high maxims in the concrete. Now Sir Robert thinks 
 better of natural history, chemistry, and astronomy, 
 than of such ethics ; but they too, what are they more 
 than divinity in posse? He protests against "con- 
 troversial divinity : " is inferential much better ? 
 
 I have no confidence, then, in philosophers who 
 cannot help being religious, and are Christians by im- 
 plication. They sit at home, and reach forward to 
 distances which astonish us ; but they hit without 
 grasping, and are sometimes as confident about 
 shadows as about realities. They have worked out by 
 a calculation the lie of a country which they never saw, 
 and mapped it by means of a gazetteer ; and like blind 
 men, though they can put a stranger on his way, they 
 cannot walk straight themselves, and do not feel it 
 quite their business to walk at all. 
 
 Logic makes but a sorry rhetoric with the multitude ; 
 first shoot round corners, and you may not despair of 
 converting by a syllogism. Tell men to gain notions 
 of a Creator from His works, and, if they were to set 
 about it (which nobody does), they would be jaded and 
 wearied by the labyrinth they were tracing. Their 
 minds would be gorged and surfeited by the logical 
 operation. Logicians are more set upon concluding 
 rightly, than on right conclusions. They cannot see 
 the end for the process. Few men have that power of 
 mind which may hold fast and firmly a variety of 
 thoughts. We ridicule " men of one idea ; " but a 
 great many of us are born to be such, and we should be 
 happier if we knew it. To most men argument makes 
 7
 
 98 BELIEF AND ACTION 1 . 
 
 the point in hand only more doubtful, and considerably 
 less impressive. After all, man is not a reasoning 
 animal ; he is a seeing, feeling, contemplating, acting 
 animal. He is influenced by what is direct and precise. 
 It is very well to freshen our impressions and convic- 
 tions from physics, but to create them we must go 
 elsewhere. Sir Robert Peel " never can think it possi- 
 ble that a mind can be so constituted, that, after being 
 familiarized with the wonderful discoveries which have 
 been made in every part of experimental science, it 
 can retire from such contemplations without more en- 
 larged conceptions of God's providence, and a higher 
 reverence for His name." If he speaks of religious 
 minds, he perpetrates a truism ; if of irreligious, he in- 
 sinuates a paradox. 
 
 Life is not long enough for a religion of inferences ; 
 we shall never have done beginning, if we determine 
 to begin with proof. We shall ever be laying our 
 foundations ; we shall turn theology into evidences, 
 and divines into textuaries. We shall never get at our 
 first principles. Resolve to believe nothing, and you 
 must prove your proofs and analyze your elements, 
 sinking further and further, and finding " in the lowest 
 depth a lower deep," till you come to the broad bosom 
 of scepticism. I would rather be bound to defend the 
 reasonableness of assuming that Christianity is true, 
 than to demonstrate a moral governance from the phys- 
 ical world. Life is for action. If we insist on proofs 
 for everything, we shall never come to action : to act 
 you must assume, and that assumption is faith. 
 
 Let no one suppose that in saying this I am main- 
 taining that all proofs are equally difficult, and all
 
 BELIEF AND ACTION. 99 
 
 propositions equally debatable. Some assumptions 
 are greater than others, and some doctrines involve 
 postulates larger than others, and more numerous. I 
 only say that impressions lead to action, and that 
 reasonings lead from it. Knowledge of premises, and 
 inferences upon them, this is not to live. It is very 
 well as a matter of liberal curiosity and of philosophy 
 to analyze our modes of thought ; but let this come 
 second, and when there is leisure for it, and then our 
 examinations will in many ways even be subservient 
 to action. But if we commence with scientific knowl- 
 edge and argumentative proof, or lay any great stress 
 upon it as the basis of personal Christianity, or at- 
 tempt to make man moral and religious by Libraries 
 and Museums, let us in consistency take chemists for 
 our cooks, and mineralogists for our masons. 
 
 Now I wish to state all this as matter of fact, to be 
 judged by the candid testimony of any persons what- 
 ever. Why we are so constituted that Faith, not 
 Knowledge or Argument, is our principle of action, is 
 a question with which I have nothing to do ; but I 
 think it is a fact, and if it be such, we must resign 
 ourselves to it as best we may, unless we take refuge 
 in the intolerable paradox, that the mass of men are 
 created for nothing, and are meant to leave life as 
 they entered it. So well has this practically been un- 
 derstood in all ages of the world, that no Religion has 
 yet been a Religion of physics or of philosophy. It 
 has ever been synonymous with Revelation. It never 
 has been a deduction from what we know : it has ever 
 been an assertion of what we are to believe. It has 
 never lived in a conclusion ; it has ever been a mes-
 
 100 BELIEF AND ACTION. 
 
 sage, or a history, or a vision. No legislator or priest 
 ever dreamed of educating our moral nature by science 
 or by argument. There is no difference here between 
 true Religions and pretended. Moses was instructed, 
 not to reason from the creation, but to work miracles. 
 Christianity is a history, supernatural, and almost 
 scenic : it tells us what its Author is, by telling us 
 what He has done. I have no wish at all to speak 
 otherwise than respectfully of conscientious Dissen- 
 ters, but I have heard it said by those who were not 
 their enemies, and who had known much of their 
 preaching, that they had often heard narrow-minded 
 and bigoted clergymen, and often Dissenting ministers 
 of a far more intellectual cast ; but that Dissenting 
 teaching came to nothing, that it was dissipated in 
 thoughts which had no point, and inquiries which con- 
 verged to no centre, that it ended as it began, and 
 sent away its hearers as it found them ; whereas the 
 instruction in the Church, with all its defects and mis- 
 takes, comes to some end, for it started from some 
 beginning. Such is the difference between the dog- 
 matism of faith and the speculations of logic. 
 
 Lord Brougham himself, as we have already seen, 
 has recognized the force of this principle. He has not 
 left his philosophical religion to argument ; he has 
 committed it to the keeping of the imagination. Why 
 should he depict a great republic of letters, and an in- 
 > tellectual Pantheon, but that he feels that instances 
 ] and patterns, not logical reasonings, are the living 
 | conclusions which alone have a hold over the affec- 
 5 v ^ltions, or can form the character? Discussions and 
 \ Arguments, ed. 1888, pp. 292-297 (1841).
 
 Science an& IReligion. 
 
 WHEN Sir Robert Peel assures us from the Town-hall 
 at Tamworth that physical science must lead to relig- 
 ion, it is no bad compliment to him to say that he is 
 unreal. He speaks of what he knows nothing about. 
 To a religious man like him, Science has ever sug- 
 gested religious thoughts ; he colours the phenomena 
 of physics with the hues of his own mind, and mis- 
 takes an interpretation for a deduction. " I am san- 
 guine enough to believe," he says, " that that superior 
 sagacity which is most conversant with the course and 
 constitution of Nature will be first to turn a deaf ear 
 to objections and presumptions against Revealed Re- 
 ligion, and to acknowledge the complete harmony of 
 the Christian Dispensation with all that Reason, as- 
 sisted by Revelation, tells us of the course and con- 
 stitution of Nature." Now, considering that we are 
 all of us educated as Christians from infancy, it is not 
 easy to decide at this day whether Science creates 
 Faith, or only confirms it ; but we have this remark- 
 able fact in the history of heathen Greece against the 
 former supposition, that her most eminent empirical 
 philosophers were atheists, and that it was their 
 atheism which was the cause of their eminence. " The 
 natural philosophies of Democritus and others," says 
 Lord Bacon, " who allow no God or mind in the frame 
 
 101
 
 102 SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 
 
 of things, but attribute the structure of the universe to 
 infinite essays and trials of nature, or what they call 
 fate or fortune, and assigned the causes of particular 
 things to the necessity of matter, without any inter- 
 mixture of final causes, seem, as far as we can judge 
 from the remains of their philosophy, much more solid, 
 and to have go?te deeper into nature, with regard to 
 physical causes, than the philosophies of Aristotle or 
 Plato : and this only because they never meddled with 
 final causes, which the others were perpetually incul- 
 cating." 
 
 Lord Bacon gives us both the fact and the reason 
 for it. Physical philosophers are ever inquiring 
 whence things are, not why ; referring them to nature, 
 not to mind ; and thus they tend to make a system a 
 substitute for a God. Each pursuit or calling has its 
 own dangers, and each numbers among its professors 
 men who rise superior to them. As the soldier is 
 tempted to dissipation, and the merchant to acquisi- 
 tiveness, and the lawyer to the sophistical, and the 
 statesman to the expedient, and the country clergyman 
 to ease and comfort, yet there are good clergymen, 
 statesmen, lawyers, merchants, and soldiers, notwith- 
 standing ; so there are religious experimentalists, 
 though physics, taken by themselves, tend to infidelity ; 
 but to have recourse to physics to make men religious 
 is like recommending a canonry as a cure for the gout, 
 or giving a youngster a commission as a penance for 
 irregularities. 
 
 The whole framework of Nature is confessedly a 
 tissue of antecedents and consequents ; we may refer 
 all things forwards to design, or backwards on a phys-
 
 SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 103 
 
 ical cause. La Place is said to have considered he 
 had a formula which solved all the motions of the solar 
 system ; shall we say that those motions came from 
 this formula or from a Divine Fiat? Shall we have re- 
 course for our theory to physics or to theology ? Shall 
 we assume Matter and its necessary properties to be 
 eternal, or Mind with its divine attributes ? Does the 
 sun shine to warm the earth, or is the earth warmed 
 because the sun shines ? The one hypothesis will 
 solve the phenomena as well as the other. Say not it 
 is but a puzzle in argument, and that no one ever felt 
 it in fact. So far from it, I believe that the study of 
 Nature, when religious feeling is away, leads the mind, 
 rightly or wrongly, to acquiesce in the atheistic theory, 
 as the simplest and easiest. It is but parallel to that 
 tendency in anatomical studies, which no one will 
 deny, to solve all the phenomena of the human frame 
 into material elements and powers, and to dispense 
 with the soul. To those who are conscious of 
 matter, but not conscious of mind, it seems more 
 rational to refer all things to one origin, such as 
 they know, than to assume the existence of a 
 second origin such as they know not. It is Religion, 
 then which suggests to Science its true conclusions ; 
 the facts come from Knowledge, but the principles 
 come of Faith.* 
 
 There are two ways, then, of reading Nature as a 
 
 * [This is too absolute, if it is to be taken to mean that the 
 legitimate, and what may be called the objective, conclusion 
 from the fact of Nature viewed in the concrete is not in favour 
 of the being and providence of God. Vide "Essay on Assent," 
 PP- 33 6 > 345' 369- and " Univ. Serm." p. 194.]
 
 104 SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 
 
 machine and as a work. If we come to it with the 
 assumption that it is a creation, we shall study it with 
 awe ; if assuming it to be a system, with mere curi- 
 osity. Sir Robert does not make this distinction. 
 He subscribes to the belief that the man " accustomed 
 to such contemplations, struck with awe by the man- 
 ifold proofs of infinite power and infinite wisdom, will 
 yield more ready and hearty assent yes, the assent of 
 the heart, and not only of the understanding, to the 
 pious exclamation, ' O Lord, how glorious are Thy 
 works ! ' ' He considers that greater insight into 
 Nature will lead a man to say, " How great and wise 
 is the Creator, who has done this ! " True : but it is 
 possible that his thoughts may take the form of " How 
 clever is the creature who has discovered it ! " and 
 self-conceit may stand proxy for adoration. This is 
 no idle apprehension. Sir Robert himself, religious 
 as he is, gives cause for it ; for the first reflection that 
 rises in his mind, as expressed in the above passage, 
 before his notice of Divine Power and Wisdom, is, that 
 " the man accustomed to such contemplations will feel 
 the moral dignity of his nature exalted" But Lord 
 Brougham speaks out. " The delight," he says, " is 
 inexpressible of being able to follow, as it were, with our 
 eyes, the marvellous works of the Great Architect of 
 Nature." And more clearly still : " One of the most 
 gratifying treats which science affords us is the knowl- 
 edge of the extraordinary powers with which the human 
 mind is endowed. No man, until he has studied 
 philosophy, can have a just idea of the great things 
 for which Providence has fitted his understanding, the 
 extraordinary disproportion which there is between his
 
 SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 105 
 
 natural strength and the powers of his mind, and the 
 force which he derives from these powers. When we 
 survey the marvellous truths of astronomy, we are first 
 of all lost in the feeling of immense space, and of the 
 comparative insignificance of this globe and its in- 
 habitants. But there soon arises a sense of gratifica- 
 tion and of 'new wonder at perceiving how so insignifi- 
 cant a creature has been able to reach such a knowledge 
 of the unbounded system of the universe." So, this is 
 the religion we are to gain from the study of Nature ; 
 how miserable ! The god we attain is our own mind ; 
 our veneration is even professedly the worship of self. 
 The truth is that the system of Nature is just as 
 much connected with Religion, where minds are not 
 religious, as a watch or a steam-carriage. The ma- 
 terial world, indeed, is infinitely more wonderful than 
 any human contrivance ; but wonder is not religion, or 
 we should be worshipping our railroads. What the 
 physical creation presents to us in itself is a piece of 
 machinery, and when men speak of a Divine Intelli- 
 gence as its Author, this god of theirs is not the Liv- 
 ing and True, unless the spring is the god of a watch, 
 or steam the creator of the engine. Their idol, taken 
 at advantage (though it is not an idol, for they do not 
 worship it), is the animating principle of a vast and 
 complicated system ; it is subjected to laws, and it is 
 connatural and co-extensive with matter. Well does 
 Lord Brougham call it " the great architect of nature ; " 
 it is an instinct, or a soul of the world, or a vital 
 power ; it is not the Almighty God.* Discussions and 
 Arguments, ed. 1888, pp. 298-302 (1841). 
 
 * \_Vide " University Teaching," Disc. 2.]
 
 Now what is Theology ? First, I will tell you what 
 it is not. And here, in the first place (though of course 
 I speak on the subject as a Catholic), observe that, 
 strictly speaking, I am not assuming that Catholicism 
 is true, while I make myself the champion of Theology. 
 Catholicism has not formally entered into my argument 
 hitherto, nor shall I just now assume any principle 
 peculiar to it, for reasons which will appear in the 
 sequel, though of course I shall use Catholic language. 
 Neither, secondly, will I fall into the fashion of the day, 
 of identifying Natural Theology with Physical The- 
 ology ; which said Physical Theology is a most jejune 
 study, considered as a science, and really is no science 
 at all, for it is ordinarily nothing more than a series of 
 pious or polemical remarks upon the physical world 
 viewed religiously, whereas the word " Natural " prop- 
 erly comprehends man and society, and all that is 
 involved therein, as the great Protestant writer, Dr. 
 Butler, shows us. Nor, in the third place, do I mean 
 by Theology polemics of any kind ; for instance, what 
 are called " The Evidences of Religion," or " the Chris- 
 tian Evidences ; " for, though these constitute a science 
 supplemental to Theology and are necessary in their 
 place, they are not Theology itself, unless an army is 
 synonymous with the body politic. Nor, fourthly, do I 
 1 06
 
 THEOLOGY. 107 
 
 mean by Theology that vague thing called " Chris- 
 tianity," or " our common Christianity," or " Chris- 
 tianity the law of the land," if there is any man alive 
 who can tell what it is. I discard it, for the very reason 
 that it cannot throw itself into a proposition. Lastly, 
 I do not understand by Theology, acquaintance with 
 the Scriptures ; for, though no person of religious feel- 
 ings can read Scripture but he will find those feelings 
 roused, and gain much knowledge of history into the 
 bargain, yet historical reading and religious feeling 
 are not science. I mean none of these things by Theo- 
 logy, I simply mean the Science of God, or the truths 
 we know about God put into system ; just as we have a 
 science of the stars, and call it astronomy, or of the 
 crust of the earth, and call it geology. 
 
 For instance, I mean, for this is the main point, that, 
 as in the human frame there is a living principle, acting 
 upon it and through it by means of volition, so, behind 
 the veil of the visible universe, there is an invisible, 
 intelligent Being, acting on and through it, as and when 
 He will. Further, I mean that this invisible Agent is 
 in no sense a soul of the world, after the analogy of 
 human nature, but, on the contrary, is absolutely dis- 
 tinct from the world, as being its Creator, Upholder, 
 Governor, and Sovereign Lord. Here we are at once 
 brought into the circle of doctrines which the idea of 
 God embodies. I mean then by the Supreme Being, 
 one who is simply self-dependent, and the only Being 
 who is such ; moreover, that He is without beginning 
 or Eternal, and the only Eternal ; that in consequence 
 He has lived a whole eternity by Himself ; and hence 
 that he is all-sufficient, sufficient for His own blessed-
 
 lo8 THEOLOGY. 
 
 ness, and all-blessed, and ever-blessed. Further, I 
 mean a Being, who having these prerogatives, has the 
 Supreme Good, or rather is the Supreme Good, or has 
 all the attributes of Good in infinite intenseness ; all 
 wisdom, all truth, all justice, all love, all holiness, all 
 beautifulness ; who is omnipotent, omniscient, omni- 
 present ; ineffably one, absolutely perfect ; and such, 
 that what we do not know and cannot even imagine of 
 Him, is far more wonderful than what we do and can. 
 I mean One who is sovereign over His own will and 
 actions, though always according to the eternal Rule of 
 right and wrong, which is Himself. I mean, moreover, 
 that He created all things out of nothing, and preserves 
 them every moment, and could destroy them as easily as 
 He made them; and that, in consequence, He is 
 separated from them by an abyss, and is incommuni- 
 cable in all His attributes. And further, He has 
 stamped upon all things, in the hour of their creation, 
 their respective natures, and has given them their work 
 and mission and their length of days, greater or less, 
 in their appointed place. I mean, too, that He is ever 
 present with His works, one by one, and confronts 
 everything He has made by His particular and most 
 loving Providence, and manifests Himself to each 
 according to its needs ; and has on rational beings 
 imprinted the moral law, and given them power to obey 
 it, imposing on them the duty of worship and service, 
 searching and scanning them through and through with 
 His omniscient eye, and putting before them a present 
 trial and a judgment to come. 
 
 Such is what Theology teaches about God, a 
 doctrine, as the very idea of its subject-matter presup-
 
 THEOLOGY. 109 
 
 poses, so mysterious as in its fulness to lie beyond any 
 system, and in particular aspects to be simply external 
 to nature, and to seem in parts even to be irreconcil- 
 able with itself, the imagination being unable to em- 
 brace what the reason determines. It teaches of a 
 Being infinite, yet personal; all-blessed, yet ever 
 operative ; absolutely separate from the creature, yet 
 in every part of the creation at every moment ; above 
 all things, yet under everything. -It teaches of a Being 
 who, though the highest, yet in the work of creation, 
 conservation, government, retribution, makes Himself, 
 as it were, the minister and servant of all ; who, though 
 inhabiting eternity, allows Himself to take an interest, 
 and to have a sympathy, in the matters of space and 
 time. His are all beings, visible and invisible, the 
 noblest and the vilest of them. His are the substance, 
 and the operation, and the results of that system of 
 physical nature into which we are born. His too are 
 the powers and achievements of the intellectual es- 
 sences, on which he has bestowed an independent 
 action and the gift of origination. The laws of the 
 universe, the principles of truth, the relation of one 
 thing to another, their qualities and virtues, the order 
 and harmony of the whole, all that exists, is from Him ; 
 and, if evil is not from Him, as assuredly it is not, 
 this is because evil has no substance of its own, but 
 is only the defect, excess, perversion, or corruption of 
 that which has substance. All we see, hear, and 
 touch, the remote sidereal firmament, as well as our 
 own sea and land, and the elements which compose 
 them and the ordinances they obey, are His. The 
 primary atoms of matter, their properties, their mutual
 
 HO THEOLOGY. 
 
 action, their disposition and collocation, electricity, 
 magnetism, gravitation, light, and whatever other sub- 
 tle principles or operations the wit of man is detecting 
 or shall detect, are the work of His hands. From Him 
 has been every movement which has convulsed and re- 
 fashioned the surface of the earth. The most insignifi- 
 cant or unsightly insect is from Him, and good in its 
 kind ; the ever-teeming, inexhaustible swarms of ani- 
 malculae, the myriads of living motes invisible to the 
 naked eye, the restless, ever-spreading vegetation 
 which creeps like a garment over the whole earth, the 
 lofty cedar, the umbrageous banana, are His. His are 
 the tribes and families of birds and beasts, their grace- 
 ful forms, their wild gestures, and their passionate 
 cries. 
 
 And so in the intellectual, moral, social, and politi- 
 cal world. Man, with his motives and works, his 
 languages, his propagation, his diffusion, is from Him. 
 Agriculture, medicine, and the arts of life, are His 
 gifts. Society, laws, government, He is their sanction. 
 The pageant of earthly royalty has the semblance and 
 the benediction of the Eternal King. Peace and civil- 
 ization, commerce and adventure, wars when just, con- 
 quest when humane and necessary, have His co-opera- 
 tion, and His blessing upon them. The course of 
 events, the revolution of empires, the rise and fall of 
 states, the periods and eras, the progresses and the 
 retrogressions of the world's history, not indeed the in- 
 cidental sin, over-abundant as it is, but the great out- 
 lines and the results of human affairs, are from His 
 disposition. The elements and types and seminal 
 principles and constructive powers of the moral world,
 
 THEOLOGY. .Ill 
 
 in ruins though it be, are to be referred to Him. He 
 " enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world. " 
 His are the dictates of the moral sense, and the retrib- 
 utive reproaches of conscience. To Him must be as- 
 scribed the rich endowments of the intellect, the 
 irradiation of genius, the imagination of the poet, the 
 sagacity of the politician, the wisdom (as Scripture 
 calls it), which now rears and decorates the Temple, 
 now manifests itself in proverb or in parable. The 
 old saws of* nations, the majestic precepts of philoso- 
 phy, the luminous maxims of law, the oracles of indi- 
 vidual wisdom, the traditionary rules of truth, justice, 
 and religion, even though imbedded in the corruption, 
 or alloyed with the pride, of the world, betoken His 
 original agency, and His long-suffering presence. 
 Even where there is habitual rebellion against Him, or 
 profound far-spreading social depravity, still the under- 
 current, or the heroic outburst, of natural virtue, as 
 well as the yearnings of the heart after what it has not, 
 and its presentiment of its true remedies, are to be as- 
 scribed to the Author of all good. Anticipations or 
 reminiscences of His glory haunt the mind of the 
 self-sufficient sage, and of the pagan devotee ; His 
 writing is upon the wall, whether of the Indian fane, 
 or of the porticoes of Greece. He introduces Himself, 
 He all but concurs, according to His good pleasure, 
 and in His selected season, in the issues of unbelief, 
 superstition, and false worship, and He changes the 
 character of acts by His overruling operation. He 
 condescends, though he gives no sanction, to the altars 
 and shrines of imposture, and He makes His own fiat 
 the substitute for its sorceries. He speaks amid the
 
 112 THEOLOGY. 
 
 incantations of Balaam, raises Samuel's spirit in the 
 witch's cavern, prophesies of the Messias by the 
 tongue of the Sibyl, forces Python to recognize His 
 ministers, and baptizes by the hand of the misbe- 
 liever. He is with the heathen dramatist in his denun- 
 ciations of injustice and tyranny, and his auguries of 
 divine vengeance upon crime. Even on the unseemly 
 legends of a popular mythology He casts His shadow, 
 and is dimly discerned in the ode or the epic, as in 
 troubled water or in fantastic dreams. All that is 
 good, all that is true, all that is beautiful, all that is be- 
 nificent, be it great or small, be it perfect or fragment- 
 ary, natural as well as supernatural, moral as well as 
 material, comes from Him. 
 
 If this be a sketch, accurate in substance and as far 
 as it goes, of the doctrines proper to Theology, and 
 especially of the doctrine of a particular Providence, 
 which is the portion of it most on a level with human 
 sciences, I cannot understand at all how, supposing it 
 to be true, it can fail, considered as knowledge, to 
 exert a powerful influence on philosophy, literature, 
 and every intellectual creation or discovery whatever. 
 I cannot understand how it is possible, as the phrase 
 goes, to blink the question of its truth or falsehood. 
 It meets us with a profession and a proffer of the 
 highest truths of which the human mind is capable ; it 
 embraces a range of subjects the most diversified and 
 distant from each other. What science will not find 
 one part or other of its province traversed by its path ? 
 What results of philosophic speculation are unques- 
 tionable, if they have been gained without inquiry as
 
 THEOLOGY. 113 
 
 to what Theology had to say to them ? Does it cast no 
 light upon history ? has it no influence upon the prin- 
 ciples of ethics ? is it without any sort of bearing on 
 physics, metaphysics, and political science ? Can we 
 drop it out of the circle of knowledge, without allow- 
 ing, either that that circle is thereby mutilated, or on 
 the other hand, that Theology is really no science ? 
 
 And this dilemma is the more inevitable, because 
 Theology is so precise and consistent in its intellectual 
 structure. When I speak of Theism or Monotheism, 
 I am not throwing together discordant doctrines ; I am 
 not merging belief, opinion, persuasion, of whatever 
 kind, into a shapeless aggregate, by the help of ambig- 
 uous words, and dignifying this medley by the name 
 of Theology. I speak of one idea unfolded in its just 
 proportions, carried out upon an intelligible method, 
 and issuing in necessary and immutable results ; under- 
 stood indeed at one time and place better than at 
 another, held here and there with more or less of in- 
 consistency, but still, after all, in all times and places, 
 where it is found, the evolution, not of half-a-dozen 
 ideas, but of one. Idea of a University, ed. 1891, 
 pp. 60-67 (1852). 
 8
 
 Brt anfc IRelfgfon. 
 
 AND now I have said enough to explain the incon- 
 venience which I conceive necessarily to result from 
 a refusal to recognize theological truth in a course of 
 Universal Knowledge ; it is not only the loss of Theo- 
 logy, it is the perversion of other sciences. What it 
 unjustly forfeits, others unjustly seize. They have 
 their own department, and, in going out of it, attempt to 
 do what they really cannot do ; and that the more mis- 
 chievously, because they do teach what in its place is 
 true, though when out of its place, perverted or carried 
 to excess, it is not true. And, as every man has not 
 the capacity of separating truth from falsehood, they 
 persuade the world of what is false by urging upon it 
 what is true. Nor is it open enemies alone who en- 
 counter us here, sometimes it is friends, sometimes 
 persons who, if not friends, at least have no wish to 
 oppose Religion, and are not conscious they are doing 
 so ; and it will carry out my meaning more fully if I 
 give some illustrations of it. 
 
 As to friends, I may take as an instance the cultiva- 
 tion of the Fine Arts, Painting", Sculpture, Architect- 
 ure, to which I may add Music. These high minis- 
 ters of the Beautiful and the Noble are, it is plain, 
 special attendants and handmaids of Religion ; but 
 it is equally plain that they are apt to forget their 
 114
 
 ART AND RELIGION. 115 
 
 place, and, unless restrained with a firm hand, instead 
 of being servants, will aim at becoming principals. 
 Here lies the advantage, in an ecclesiastical point of 
 view, of their more rudimental state, I mean of the an- 
 cient style of architecture, of Gothic sculpture and 
 painting, and of what is called Gregorian music, that 
 these inchoate sciences have so little innate vigour and 
 life in them, that they are in no danger of going out of 
 their place, and giving the law to Religion. But the 
 case is very different when genius has breathed upon 
 their natural elements, and has developed them into 
 what I may call intellectual powers. When Painting, 
 for example, grows into the fulness of its function as a 
 simply imitative art, it at once ceases to be a dependant 
 on the Church. It has an end of its own, and that of 
 earth : Nature is its pattern, and the object it pursues 
 is the beauty of Nature, even till it becomes an ideal 
 beauty, but a natural beauty still. It cannot imitate 
 that beauty of Angels and Saints which it has never 
 seen. At first, indeed, by outlines and emblems it 
 shadowed out the Invisible, and its want of skill became 
 the instrument of reverence and modesty ; but as time 
 went on and it attained its full dimensions as an art, it 
 rather subjected Religion to its own ends than minis- 
 tered to the ends of Religion, and in its long galleries 
 and stately chambers, did but mingle adorable figures 
 and sacred histories with a multitude of earthly, not to 
 say unseemly forms, which the Art had created, bor- 
 rowing withal a colouring and a character from that bad 
 company. Not content with neutral ground for its de- 
 velopment, it was attracted by the sublimity of divine 
 subjects to ambitious and hazardous essays. Without
 
 n6 ART AND RELIGION. 
 
 my saying a word more, you will clearly understand. 
 Gentlemen, that under these circumstances Religion 
 was bound to exert itself, that the world might not 
 gain an advantage over it. Put out of sight the severe 
 teaching of Catholicism in the schools of Painting, as 
 men now would put it aside in their philosophical 
 studies, and in no long time you would have the hierar- 
 chy of the Church, the Anchorite and Virgin-martyr, 
 the Confessor and the Doctor, the Angelic Hosts, the 
 Mother of God, the Crucifix, the Eternal Trinity, sup- 
 planted by a sort of pagan mythology in the guise of 
 sacred names, by a creation indeed of high genius, of 
 intense, and dazzling, and soul-absorbing beauty, in 
 which, however, there was nothing which subserved 
 the cause of Religion, nothing on the other hand which 
 did not directly or indirectly minister to corrupt nature 
 and the powers of darkness. 
 
 The art of Painting, however, is peculiar: Music 
 and Architecture are more ideal, and their respective 
 archetypes, even if not supernatural, at least are ab- 
 stract and unearthly ; and yet what I have been observ- 
 ing about Painting, holds, I think, analogously, in the 
 marvellous development which Musical Science has 
 undergone in the last century. Doubtless here too the 
 highest genius may be made subservient to Religion ; 
 here too, still more simply than in the case of Painting, 
 the Science has a field of its own, perfectly innocent, 
 into which Religion does not and need not enter ; on 
 the other hand here also, in the case of Music as of 
 Painting, it is certain that Religion must be alive and 
 on the defensive, for, if its servants sleep, a potent en-
 
 ART AND RELIGION. 
 
 117 
 
 chantment will steal over it. Music, I suppose, though 
 this is not the place to enlarge upon it, has an object 
 of its own ; as mathematical science also, it is the ex- 
 pression of ideas greater and more profound than any 
 in the visible world, ideas, which centre indeed in Him 
 whom Catholicism manifests, who is the seat of all 
 beauty, order, and perfection whatever, still ideas after 
 all which are not those on which Revelation directly 
 and principally fixes our gaze. If then a great master 
 in this mysterious science (if I may speak of matters 
 which seem to lie out of my own province) throws him- 
 self on his own gift, trusts its inspirations, and ab- 
 sorbs himself in those thoughts which, though they 
 come to him in the way of nature, belong to things 
 above nature, it is obvious he will neglect everything 
 else. Rising in his strength, he will break through the 
 trammels of words, he will scatter human voices, even 
 the sweetest, to the winds ; he will be borne upon 
 nothing less than the fullest flood of sounds which art 
 has enabled him to draw from mechanical contri- 
 vances ; he will go forth as a giant, as far as ever his 
 instruments can reach, starting from their secret depths 
 fresh and fresh elements of beauty and grandeur as he 
 goes, and pouring them together into still more marvel- 
 lous and rapturous combinations ; and well indeed 
 and lawfully, while he keeps to that line which is his 
 own ; but, should he happen to be attracted, as he well 
 may, by the sublimity, so congenial to him, of the 
 Catholic doctrine and ritual, should he engage in 
 sacred themes, should he resolve by means of his art 
 to do honour to the Mass, or the Divine Office, (he 
 cannot have a more pious, a better purpose, and Re-
 
 1 18 ART AND RELIGION. 
 
 ligion will gracefully accept what he gracefully offers ; 
 but) is it not certain, from the circumstances of the 
 case, that he will be carried on rather to use Religion 
 than to minister to it, unless Religion is strong on its 
 own ground, and reminds him that, if he would do 
 honour to the highest of subjects, he must make him- 
 self its scholar, must humbly follow the thoughts given 
 him, and must aim at the glory, not of his own gift, but 
 of the Great Giver ? Idea of a University \ ed. 1891, 
 pp. 78-81 (1852).
 
 THE Prejudiced Man, then for thus I shall personify 
 that narrow, ungenerous spirit which energizes and op- 
 erates so widely and so unweariedly in the Protestant 
 community the Prejudiced Man takes it for granted, 
 or feels an undoubting persuasion, not only that he 
 himself is in possession of divine truth, for this is a 
 matter of opinion, and he has a right to his own, but 
 that we, who differ from him, are universally impostors, 
 tyrants, hypocrites, cowards, and slaves. This is a 
 first principle with him ; it is like divine faith in the 
 Catholic, nothing can shake it. If he meets with any 
 story against Catholics, on any or no authority, which 
 does but fall in with this notion of them, he eagerly 
 catches at it. Authority goes for nothing ; likelihood, 
 as he considers it, does instead of testimony ; what he 
 is now told is just what he expected. Perhaps it is a 
 random report, put into circulation merely because it 
 has a chance of succeeding, or thrown like a straw to 
 the wind : perhaps it is a mere publisher's speculation, 
 who thinks that a narrative of horrors will pay well for 
 the printing : it matters not, he is perfectly convinced 
 of its truth ; he knew all about it beforehand ; it is 
 just what he always has said ; it is the old tale over 
 again a hundred times. Accordingly he buys it by the 
 thousand, and sends it about with all speed in every 
 
 119
 
 120 THE PREJUDICED MAN. 
 
 direction, to his circle of friends and acquaintance, to 
 the newspapers, to the great speakers at public meet- 
 ings ; he fills the Sunday and week-day schools with 
 it ; loads the pedlars' baskets, perhaps introduces it 
 into the family spiritual reading on Sunday evenings, 
 consoled and comforted with the reflection that he 
 has got something fresh and strong and undeniable, 
 in evidence of the utter odiousness of the Catholic 
 Religion. 
 
 Next comes an absolute, explicit, total denial or 
 refutation of the precious calumny, whatever it may 
 be, on unimpeachable authority. The Prejudiced Man 
 simply discredits this denial, and puts it aside, not re- 
 ceiving any impression from it at all, or paying it the 
 slightest attention. This, if he can : if he cannot, if it 
 is urged upon him by some friend, or brought up 
 against him by some opponent, he draws himself up, 
 looks sternly at the objector, and then says the very 
 same thing as before, only with a louder voice and 
 more confident manner. He becomes more intensely 
 and enthusiastically positive, by way of making up for 
 the interruption, of braving the confutation, and of 
 showing the world that nothing whatever in the uni- 
 verse will ever make him think one hair-breadth more 
 favourably of Popery than he does think, than he ever 
 has thought, and than his family ever thought before 
 him, since the time of the fine old English gentleman. 
 
 If a person ventures to ask the Prejudiced Man 
 what he knows of Catholics personally what he knows 
 of individuals, of their ways, of their books, or of their 
 worship, he blesses himself that he knows nothing of 
 them at all, and he never will ; nay, if they fall in his
 
 THE PREJUDICED MAN. 121 
 
 way, he will take himself out of it ; and if unawares he 
 shall ever be pleased with a Catholic without knowing 
 who it is, he wishes by anticipation to retract such 
 feeling of pleasure. About our state of mind, our 
 views of things, our ends and objects, our doctrines, 
 our defence of them, our judgment on his objections to 
 them, our thoughts about him, he absolutely refuses to 
 be enlightened : and he is as sore if expostulated with 
 on so evident an infirmity of mind, as if it were some 
 painful wound upon him, or local inflammation, which 
 must not be handled ever so tenderly. He shrinks 
 from the infliction. 
 
 However, one cannot always make the whole world 
 take one's own way of thinking; so let us suppose 
 the famous story, to which the Prejudiced Man has 
 pledged his veracity, utterly discredited and scattered 
 to the winds by the common consent of mankind : 
 this only makes him the more violent. For it ought, 
 he thinks, to be true, and it is mere special pleading 
 to lay much stress on its not having all the evidence 
 which it might have ? for if it be not true, yet half a 
 hundred like stories are. It is only impertinent to 
 ask for evidence, when the fact has so often been 
 established. What is the good of laboriously vindicat- 
 ing St. Eligius, or exposing a leading article in a news- 
 paper, or a speaker at a meeting, or a popular publica- 
 tion, when the thing is notorious ; and to deny it is 
 nothing else than a vexatious demand upon his time, 
 and an insult to his common sense. He feels the 
 same sort of indignation which, the Philistine cham- 
 pion, Goliath, might have felt when David went out to 
 fight with him. " Am I a dog, that thou comest to me
 
 122 THE PREJUDICED MAN. 
 
 with a staff? and the Philistine cursed him by his 
 gods." And, as the huge giant, had he first been hit, 
 not in the brain, but in the foot or the shoulder, would 
 have yelled, not with pain, but with fury at the insult, 
 and would not have been frightened at all or put upon 
 the defensive, so our Prejudiced Man is but enraged 
 so much the more, and almost put beside himself, by 
 the presumption of those who, with their doubts or 
 their objections, interfere with the great Protestant 
 Tradition about the Catholic Church. To bring proof 
 against us is, he thinks, but a matter of time ; and we 
 know in affairs of every day, how annoyed and impa- 
 tient we are likely to become, when obstacles are put 
 in our way in any such case. We are angered at 
 delays when they are but accidental, and the issue is 
 certain ; we are not angered, but we are sobered, we 
 become careful and attentive to impediments, when 
 there is a doubt about the issue. The very same dif- 
 ficulties put us on our mettle in the one case, and do 
 but irritate us in the other. If, for instance, a person 
 cannot open a door, or get a key into a lock, which he 
 has done a hundred times before, you know how apt 
 he is to shake, and to rattle, and to force it, as if some 
 great insult was offered him by its resistance : you 
 know how surprised a wasp, or other large insect is, 
 that he cannot get through a window-pane ; such is the 
 feeling of the Prejudiced Man, when we urge our ob- 
 jections not softened by them at all, but exasperated 
 the more ; for what is the use of even incontrovertible 
 arguments against a conclusion which he already con- 
 siders to be infallible ? 
 
 This, you see, is the reason why the most over
 
 THE PREJUDICED MAX. 123 
 
 whelming refutations of the calumnies brought against 
 us do us no good at all with the Protestant com- 
 munity. We were tempted, perhaps, to say to our- 
 selves, " What will they have to say in answer to this ? 
 now at last the falsehood is put down forever, it will 
 never show its face again ? " Vain hope ! just the re- 
 verse : like Milton's day-star, after sinking into the 
 ocean, it soon " repairs its drooping head," 
 
 " And tricks its beams, and with new-spangled ore 
 Flames in the forehead of the morning sky." 
 
 Certainly ; for it is rooted in the mind itself ; it has 
 no uncertain holding upon things external ; it does 
 not depend on the accident of time, or place, or 
 testimony, or sense, or possibility, or fact ; it depends 
 on the will alone. Therefore, " unhurt amid the war 
 'of elements," it "smiles" at injury, and "defies" 
 defeat; for it is safe and secure, while it has the 
 man's own will on its side. Such is the virtue of 
 prejudice it is ever reproductive ; in vain is Jeffreys 
 exposed ; he rises again in Teodore ; Teodore is put 
 down ; in vain, for future story-tellers and wonder- 
 mongers, as yet unknown to fame, are below the 
 horizon, and will come to view, and will unfold their 
 Jale of horror, each in his day, in long succession ; 
 i'or these whispers, and voices, and echoes, and re- 
 verberations, are but the response, and, as it were, 
 the expression of that profound inward persuasion, and 
 that intense illusion, which wraps the soul and steeps 
 the imagination of the Prejudiced Man. 
 
 However, we will suppose him in a specially good
 
 124 THE PREJUDICED MAN. 
 
 humour, when you set about undeceiving him on some 
 point on which he misstates the Catholic faith. He 
 is determined to be candour and fairness itself, and to 
 do full justice to your argument. So you begin your 
 explanation ; you assure him he misconceives your 
 doctrines ; he has got a wrong view of facts. You ap- 
 peal to original authorities, and show him how shame- 
 fully they have been misquoted ; you appeal to history 
 and prove it has been garbled. Nothing is wanted to 
 your representation ; it is triumphant. He is silent for 
 a moment, then he begins with a sentiment. " What 
 clever fellows these Catholics are ! " he says, " I defy 
 you to catch them tripping ; they have a way out of 
 everything. I thought we had you, but I fairly own I 
 am beaten. This is how the Jesuits got on ; always 
 educated, subtle, well up in their books ; a Protestant 
 has no chance with them." You see, my Brothers, 
 you have not advanced a step in convincing him. 
 
 Such is the Prejudiced Man at best advantage ; but 
 commonly under the same circumstances he will be 
 grave and suspicious. " I confess," he will say, " I 
 do not like these very complete explanations ; they 
 are too like a made-up case. I can easily believe 
 there was exaggeration in the charge ; perhaps money 
 was only sometimes taken for the permission to sin, 
 or only before the Reformation, but our friend pro- 
 fesses to prove it never was taken ; this is proving 
 too much. I always suspect something behind, when 
 everything is so very easy and clear." Or again, 
 "We see before our eyes a tremendous growth of 
 Popery ; how does it grow ? You tell me you are 
 poor, your priests few, your friends without influence ;
 
 THE PREJUDICED MAN. 125 
 
 then how does it grow ? It could not grow without 
 means ! it is bad enough if you can assign a cause ; 
 it is worse if you cannot. Cause there must be 
 somewhere, for effects imply causes. How did it get 
 into Oxford ? tell me that. How has it got among 
 the Protestant clergy ? I like all things above board ; 
 I hate concealment, I detest plots. There is evi- 
 dently something to be accounted for ; and the more 
 cogently you prove that it is not referable to anything 
 which we see, the graver suspicions do you awaken, 
 that it is traceable to something which is hidden." 
 Thus our Prejudiced Man simply ignores the possible 
 existence of that special cause to which Catholics of 
 course refer the growth of Catholicism, and which 
 surely, if admitted, is sufficient to account for it viz., 
 that it is true. He will not admit the power of truth 
 among the assignable conjectural causes. He would 
 rather, I am sure, assign it to the agency of evil 
 spirits, than suspect the possibility of a religion being 
 true which he wills should be a falsehood. Present 
 Position of Catholics, ed. 1889, pp. 236-243 (1851). 
 
 The Prejudiced Man travels, and then everything he 
 sees in Catholic countries only serves to make him more 
 thankful that his notions are so true ; and the more he 
 sees of Popery, the more abominable he feels it to be. 
 If there is any Sin, any evil in a foreign population, 
 though it be found among Protestants also, still Popery 
 is clearly the cause of it. If great cities are the schools 
 of vice, it is owing to Popery. If Sunday is profaned,
 
 126 THE PREJUDICED MAN. 
 
 if there is a carnival, it is the fault of the Catholic 
 Church. Then, there are no private homes, as in Eng- 
 land, families live on staircases ; see what it is to belong 
 to a Popish country. Why do the Roman labourers 
 wheel their barrows so slow on the Forum ? why do the 
 Lazzaroni of Naples lie so listlessly on the beach ? why, 
 but because they are under the malaria of a false relig- 
 ion. Rage, as is well-known, is in the Roman like a 
 falling sickness, almost as if his will had no part in it 
 and he had no responsibility ; see what it is to be a 
 Papist. Bloodletting is as frequent and as much a 
 matter of course in the South as hair-cutting in Eng- 
 land ; it is a trick borrowed from the convents, when 
 they wish to tame down refractory spirits. Present Posi- 
 tion of Catholics^ ed, 1889, pp. 249-250 (1851).
 
 Count potemfcin anD Jobn 3Butl. 
 
 AND here I might conclude my subject, which has 
 proposed to itself nothing more than to suggest, to 
 those whom it concerns, that they would have more 
 reason to be confident in their view of the Catholic 
 religion, if it ever had struck them that it needed some 
 proof, if there ever had occurred to their minds at least 
 the possibility of truth being maligned, and Christ 
 being called Beelzebub ; but I am tempted, before 
 concluding, to go on to try whether something of a 
 monster indictment, similarly frightful and similarly 
 fantastical to that which is got up against Catholicism, 
 might not be framed against some other institution or 
 power, of parallel greatness and excellence, in its 
 degree and place, to the communion of Rome. For 
 this purpose I will take the British Constitution, which 
 is so specially the possession, and so deservedly the 
 glory, of our own people ; and in taking it I need 
 hardly say, I take it for the very reason that it is so 
 rightfully the object of our wonder and veneration. I 
 should be but a fool for my pains, if I laboured to 
 prove it otherwise ; it is one of the greatest of human 
 works, as admirable in its own line, to take the produc- 
 tions of genius in very various departments, as the 
 Pyramids, as the wall of China, as the paintings of 
 Raffaelle, as the Apollo Belvidere, as the plays of 
 
 127
 
 1 28 COUNT PO TEMKIN AND JOHN BULL. 
 
 Shakespeare, as the Newtonian theory, and as the ex- 
 ploits of Napoleon. It soars, in its majesty, far above 
 the opinions of men, and will be a marvel, almost a 
 portent, to the end of time ; but for that very reason it 
 is more to my purpose, when I would show you how 
 even it, the British Constitution, would fare, when sub- 
 mitted to the intellect of Exeter Hall, and handled by 
 practitioners, whose highest effort at dissection is to 
 chop and to mangle. 
 
 I will suppose, then, a speaker, and an audience too, 
 who never saw England, never saw a member of par- 
 liament, a policeman, a queen, or a London mob ; 
 who never read the English history, nor studied any 
 one of our philosophers, jurists, moralists, or poets ; 
 but who has dipped into Blackstone and several Eng- 
 lish writers, and has picked up facts at third or fourth 
 hand, and has got together a crude farrago of ideas, 
 words, and instances, a little truth, a deal of falsehood, 
 a deal of misrepresentation, a deal of nonsense, and a 
 deal of invention. And most fortunately for my pur- 
 pose, here is an account transmitted express by the 
 private correspondent of a morning paper, of a great 
 meeting held about a fortnight since at Moscow, under 
 sanction of the Czar, on occasion of an attempt made 
 by one or two Russian noblemen to spread British 
 ideas in his capital. It seems the emperor thought 
 it best in the present state of men's minds, when se- 
 cret societies are so rife, to put down the movement 
 by argument rather than by a military force ; and so 
 he instructed the governor of Moscow to connive at 
 the project of a great public meeting which should be 
 opened to the small faction of Anglo-maniacs, or
 
 COUNT POTEMKIN AND JOHN BULL. 129 
 
 John-Bullists, as they are popularly termed, as well 
 as to the mass of the population. As many as ten 
 thousand men, as far as the writer could calculate, 
 were gathered together in one of the largest places 
 of the city ; a number of spirited and impressive 
 speeches were made, in all of which, however, was 
 illustrated the fable of the " Lion and the Man," the 
 man being the Russ, and the lion our old friend the 
 British ; but the most successful of all is said to have 
 been the final harangue, by a member of a junior 
 branch of the Potemkin family, once one of the impe- 
 rial aides-de-camp, who has spent the last thirty years 
 in the wars of the Caucasus. This distinguished 
 veteran, who has acquired the title of Blood-sucker, 
 from his extraordinary gallantry in combat with the 
 Circassian tribes, spoke at great length ; and the ex- 
 press contains a portion of his highly inflammatory 
 address, of which, and of certain consequences which 
 followed it, the British minister is said already to 
 have asked an explanation of the cabinet of St. Peters- 
 burg : I transcribe it as it may be supposed to stand 
 in the morning print : 
 
 The Count began by observing that the events of 
 every dayj as it came, called on his countrymen more 
 and more importunately to choose their side, and to 
 make a firm stand against a perfidious power, which 
 arrogantly proclaims that there is nothing like the 
 British Constitution in the whole world, and that no 
 country can prosper without it ; which is yearly 
 aggrandizing itself in East, West, and South, which 
 is engaged in one enormous conspiracy against all 
 9
 
 130 CO UNT PO TEMKIN AND JOHN- B ULL. 
 
 States, and which was even aiming at modifying the 
 old institutions of the North, and at dressing up the 
 army, navy, legislature, and executive of his own 
 country in the livery of Queen Victoria. " Insular in 
 situation," he exclaimed, " and at the back gate of 
 the world, what has John Bull to do with continental 
 matters, or with the political traditions of our holy 
 Russia?" And yet there were men in that very city 
 who were so far the dupes of insidious propagandists 
 and insolent traitors to their emperor, as to maintain 
 that England had been a civilized country longer than 
 Russia. On the contrary, he maintained, and he 
 would shed the last drop of his blood in maintaining, 
 that, as for its boasted Constitution, it was a crazy, 
 old-fa. c hioned piece of furniture, and an eyesore in the 
 nineteenth century, and would not last a dozen years. 
 He had the best information for saying so. He could 
 understand those who had never crossed out of their 
 island, listening to the songs about " Rule Britannia," 
 and "Rosbif," and " Poor Jack," and the "Old Eng- 
 lish Gentleman " ; he understood and he pitied them ; 
 but that Russians, that the conquerors of Napoleon, 
 that the heirs of a paternal government, should bow 
 the knee, and kiss the hand, and walk backwards, and 
 perform other antics before the face of a limited mon- 
 arch, this was the incomprehensible foolery which 
 certain Russians had viewed with so much tenderness. 
 He repeated, there were in that city educated men, 
 who had openly professed a reverence for the atheisti- 
 cal tenets and fiendish maxims of John-Bullism. 
 
 Here the speaker was interrupted by one or two 
 murmurs of dissent, and a foreigner, supposed to be a
 
 COUNT PO TEMKIN AND JOHN BULL. 13 1 
 
 partner in a Scotch firm, was observed in the extremity 
 of the square, making earnest attempts to obtain a 
 hearing. He was put down, however, amid enthusi- 
 astic cheering, and the Count proceeded with a warmth 
 of feeling which increased the effect of the terrible 
 invective which followed. He said he had used the 
 words " atheistical " and " fiendish " most advisedly, 
 and he would give his reasons for doing so. What 
 was to be said to any political power which claimed 
 the attribute of Divinity ? Was any term too strong 
 for such a usurpation ? Now, no one would deny 
 Antichrist would be such a power : an Antichrist 
 was contemplated, was predicted in Scripture, it was 
 to come in the last times, it was to grow slowly, it 
 was to manifest itself warily and craftily, and then to 
 have a mouth speaking great things against the 
 Divinity and against His attributes. This prediction 
 was most literally and exactly fulfilled in the British 
 Constitution. Antichrist was not only to usurp, but 
 to profess to usurp the arms of heaven he was to 
 arrogate its titles. This was the special mark of the 
 beast, and where was it fulfilled but in John-Bullism ? 
 " I hold in my hand," continued the speaker, " a book 
 which I have obtained under very remarkable circum- 
 stances. It is not known to the British people, it is 
 circulated only among the lawyers, merchants, and 
 aristocracy, and its restrictive use is secured only by 
 the most solemn oaths, the most fearful penalties, and 
 the utmost vigilance of the police. I procured it 
 after many years of anxious search by the activity of 
 an agent, and the co-operation of an English book- 
 seller, and it cost me an enormous sum to make it my
 
 132 COUNT PO TEMKIN AND JOHN B ULL. 
 
 own. It is called ' Blackstone's Commentaries on the 
 Laws of England,' and I am happy to make known to 
 the universe its odious and shocking mysteries, known 
 to few Britons, and certainly not known to the deluded 
 persons whose vagaries have been the occasion of this 
 meeting. I am sanguine in thinking that when they 
 come to know the real tenets of John Bull, they will at 
 once disown his doctrines with horror, and break off all 
 connection with his adherents. 
 
 " Now, I should say, gentlemen, that this book, 
 while it is confined to certain classes, is of those 
 classes, on the other hand, of judges, and lawyers, 
 and privy councillors, and justices of the peace, and 
 police magistrates, and clergy, and country gentlemen, 
 the guide, and I may say, the gospel. I open the 
 book, gentlemen, and what are the first words which 
 meet my eyes ? ' The King can do no wrong.' I beg 
 you to attend, gentlemen, to this most significant 
 assertion ; one was accustomed to think that no child 
 of man had the gift of impeccability ; one had im- 
 agined that, simply speaking, impeccability was a 
 divine attribute ; but this British Bible, as I may call 
 it, distinctly ascribes an absolute sinlessness to the 
 King of Great Britain and Ireland. Observe, I am 
 using no words of my own, I am still but quoting what 
 meets my eyes in this remarkable document. The 
 words run thus : ' It is an axiom of the law of the land 
 that the King himself can do no wrong.' Was I 
 wrong, then, in speaking of the atheistical maxims of 
 John Bullism ? But this is far from all : the writer 
 goes on actually to ascribe to the Sovereign (I tremble 
 while I pronounce the words) absolute perfection; for
 
 CO UNT PO TEMKIN AND JOHN B ULL. 133 
 
 he speaks thus : ' The law ascribes to the King in his 
 political capacity ABSOLUTE PERFECTION ; the King can 
 do no wrong!' (groans). One had thought that no 
 human power could thus be described ; but the 
 British legislature, judicature, and jurisprudence, have 
 had the unspeakable effrontery to impute to their 
 crowned and sceptred idol, to their doll," here cries 
 of " shame, shame," from the same individual who had 
 distinguished himself in an earlier part of the speech 
 " to this doll, this puppet whom they have dressed 
 up with a lion and a unicorn, the attribute of ABSOLUTE 
 PERFECTION ! " Here the individual who had several 
 times interrupted the speaker sprung up, in spite of the 
 efforts of persons about -him to keep him down, and 
 cried out, as far as his words could be collected, " You 
 cowardly liar, our dear good little Queen," when he 
 was immediately saluted with a cry of " Turn him out," 
 and soon made his exit from the meeting. 
 
 Order being restored, the Count continued : 
 " Gentlemen, I could wish you would have suffered this 
 emissary of a foreign potenate (immense cheering), 
 who is insidiously aiming at forming a political party 
 among us, to have heard to the end that black 
 catalogue of charges against his Sovereign, which as 
 yet I have barely commenced. Gentlemen, I was say- 
 ing that the Queen of England challenges the divine 
 attribute of ABSOLUTE PERFECTION ! but, as if this were 
 not enough this Blackstone continues, ' The King, 
 moreover, is not only incapable of doing wrong, but 
 even of thinking wrong ! ! he can never do an improper 
 thing ; in him is no FOLLY or WEAKNESS ! ! ! ' " 
 (Shudders and cheers from the vast assemblage, which
 
 134 COUNT POTEMKIN AND JOHN BULL. 
 
 lasted alternately some minutes.) At the same time a 
 respectably dressed gentleman below the platform 
 begged permission to look at the book ; it was immedi- 
 ately handed to him ; after looking at the passages, he 
 was observed to inspect carefully the title-page and 
 binding ; he then returned it without a word. 
 
 The Count, in resuming his speech, observed that 
 he courted and challenged investigation, he should be 
 happy to answer any question, and he hoped soon to 
 publish, by subscription, a translation of the work, from 
 which he had been quoting. Then, resuming the sub- 
 ject where he had left it, he made some most forcible 
 and impressive reflections on the miserable state of 
 those multitudes, who, in spite of their skill in the 
 mechanical arts, and their political energy, were in the. 
 leading-strings of so foul a superstition. The passage 
 he had quoted was the first and mildest of a series of 
 blasphemies so prodigious, that he really feared to 
 proceed, not only from .disgust at the necessity of utter- 
 ing them, but lest he should be taxing the faith of his 
 hearers beyond what appeared reasonable limits. 
 Next, then, he drew attention to the point that the 
 English Sovereign distinctly claimed, according to the 
 same infamous work, to be the "fount of justice ; " 
 and, that there might be no mistake in the matter, the 
 author declared, "that she is never bound in justice to 
 do anything" What, then, is her method of acting? 
 Unwilling as he was to defile his lips with so profane 
 a statement, he must tell them that this abominable 
 writer coolly declared that the Queen, a woman, only 
 did acts of reparation and restitution as a matter of 
 grace! He was not a theologian, he had spent his
 
 COUNT POTEMKTN AND JOHN BULL. 135 
 
 life in the field, but he knew enough of his religion to 
 be able to say that grace was a word especially proper 
 to the appointment and decrees of Divine Sovereignty. 
 All his hearers knew perfectly well that nature was one 
 thing, grace another ; and yet here was a poor child 
 of clay claiming to be the fount, not only of justice, 
 but of grace. She was making herself a first cause 
 of not merely natural, but spiritual excellence, and 
 doing nothing more or less than simply emancipating 
 herself from her Maker. The Queen, it seemed, 
 never obeyed the law on compulsion, according to 
 Blackstone ; that is, her Maker could not compel her. 
 This was no mere deduction of his own, as directly 
 would be seen. Let it be observed, the Apostle called 
 the predicted Antichrist " the wicked one," or, as it 
 might be more correctly translated, " the lawless," be- 
 cause he was to be the proud despiser of all law ; now, 
 wonderful to say, this was the very assumption of the 
 British Parliament. "The Power of Parliament," said 
 Sir Edward Coke, " is so transcendent and absolute, 
 that it cannot be confined within any bounds ! ! It has 
 sovereign and uncontrollable authority ! ! " Moreover, 
 the Judges had declared that " it is so high and 
 mighty in its nature, that it may make law, and THAT 
 WHICH is LAW IT MAY MAKE NO LAW ! " Here verily was 
 the mouth speaking great things ; but there was more 
 behind, which, but for the atrocious sentiments he had 
 already admitted into his mouth, he really should not 
 have the courage, the endurance to utter. It was 
 sickening to the soul, and intellect, and feelings of a 
 Russ, to form the words on his tongue, and the ideas 
 n his imagination. He would say what must be said
 
 136 COUNT POTEMKIN AND JOHN BULL. 
 
 as quickly as he could, and without comment. The 
 gallant speaker then delivered the following passage 
 from Blackstone's volume, in a very distinct and arti- 
 culate whisper : " Some have not scrupled to call its 
 power the OMNIPOTENCE of Parliament ! " No one 
 can conceive the thrilling effect of these words ; they 
 were heard all over the immense assemblage ; every 
 man turned pale ; a dead silence followed ; one might 
 have heard a pin drop. A pause of some minutes 
 followed. 
 
 The speaker continued, evidently labouring under 
 intense emotion : " Have you not heard enough, my 
 dear compatriots, of this hideous system of John- 
 Bullism ? was I wrong in using the words fiendish and 
 atheistical when I entered upon this subject ? and 
 need I proceed further with blasphemous details, which 
 cannot really add to the monstrous bearing of the 
 passages I have already read to you ? If the Queen 
 'cannot do wrong,' if she ' cannot even think wrong,' 
 if she is ' absolute perfection,' if she has ' no folly, no 
 weakness,' if she is the ' fount of justice,' if she is ' the 
 fount of grace,' if she is simply ' above law,' if she is 
 'omnipotent,' what wonder that the lawyers of John- 
 Bullism should also call her ' sacred ! ' what wonder 
 that they should speak of her as 'majesty!' what 
 wonder that they should, speak of her as a ' superior 
 being ! ' Here again I am using the words of the book 
 I hold in my hand. ' The people ' (my blood runs cold 
 while I repeat them) ' are led to consider their Sov- 
 ereign in the light of a SUPERIOR BEING.' ' Every one 
 is under him,' says Bracton, ' and he is under no one.' 
 Accordingly, the law-books call him ' Vicarius Dei in
 
 COUNT PO TEMKIN AND JOHN BULL. 137 
 
 terra,' ' the Vicar of God on earth ; ' a most astonish- 
 ing fulfilment, you observe, of the prophecy, for 'Anti- 
 christ is a Greek word, which means 'Vicar of Christ.' 
 What wonder, under these circumstances, that Queen 
 Elizabeth, assuming the attribute of the Creator, once 
 said to one of her Bishops : ' Proud Prelate, / made 
 you, and I can unmake you /' What wonder that James 
 the First had the brazen assurance to say, that ' As it 
 is atheism and blasphemy in a creature to dispute the 
 Deity, so it is presumption and sedition in a subject to 
 dispute a King in the height of his power ! ' Moreover, 
 his subjects called him the ' breath of their nostrils ; ' 
 and my Lord Clarendon, the present Lord Lieutenant 
 of Ireland, in his celebrated History of the Rebellion, 
 declares that the same haughty monarch actually on 
 one occasion called himself ' a God ; ' and in his great 
 legal digest, commonly called the ' Constitutions of 
 Clarendon,' he gives us the whole account of the King's 
 banishing the Archbishop, St. Thomas of Canterbury, 
 for refusing to do him homage. Lord Bacon, too, went 
 nearly as far when he called him ' Deaster quidam,' 
 ' some sort of little god.' Alexander Pope, too, calls 
 Queen Anne a goddess : and Addison, with a servility 
 only equalled by his profaneness, cries out, " Thee, god- 
 dess, thee Britannia's isle adores.' Nay, even at this 
 very time, when public attention has been drawn to the 
 subject, Queen Victoria causes herself to be repre- 
 sented on her coins as the goddess of the seas, with a 
 pagan trident in her hand. 
 
 " Gentlemen, can it surprise you to be told, after 
 such an exposition of the blasphemies of England, that, 
 astonishing to say, Queen Victoria is distinctly pointed
 
 1 38 COUNT PO TEMKIN AND JOHN B ULL. 
 
 out in the Book of Revelation as having the number of 
 the beast ! You may recollect that number is 666, ; 
 now, she came to the throne in the year thirty-seven, 
 at which date she was eighteen years old. Multiply 
 then 37 by 18, and you have the very number 666, which 
 is the mystical emblem of the lawless King ! ! ! 
 
 " No wonder then, with such monstrous pretensions, 
 and such awful auguries, that John-Bullism is, in act 
 and deed, as savage and profligate, as in profession it 
 is saintly and innocent. Its annals are marked with 
 blood and corruption. The historian Hallam, though 
 one of the ultra-bullist party, in his Constitutional 
 History, admits that the English tribunals are 'dis- 
 graced by the brutal manners and iniquitous partiality 
 of the bench.' ' The general behaviour of the bench,' 
 he says elsewhere, ' has covered it with infamy ' Soon 
 after, he tells us that the dominant faction inflicted on 
 the High Church Clergy ' the disgrace and remorse of 
 perjury.' The English Kings have been the curse and 
 shame of human nature. Richard the First boasted 
 that the evil spirit was the father of his family; of 
 Henry the Second St. Bernard said, ' From the devil he 
 came, and to the devil he will go ; ' William the Second 
 was killed by the enemy of man, to whom he had sold 
 himself, while hunting in one of his forests ; Henry the 
 First died of eating lampreys ; John died of eating 
 peaches ; Clarence, a king's brother, was drowned in a 
 butt of malmsey wine ; Richard the Third put to death 
 his Sovereign, his Sovereign's son, his two brothers, 
 his wife, two nephews, and half-a-dozen friends. Henry 
 the Eighth successively married and murdered no less 
 than six hundred women. I quote the words of the
 
 COUNT PO TEMKTN A AW JOHN BULL. 139 
 
 ' Edinburgh Review,' that, according to Hollinshed, no 
 less than 70,000 persons died under the hand of the 
 executioner in his reign. Sir John Fortescue 
 tells us that in his day there were more persons 
 executed for robbery in England in one year, than in 
 France in seven. Four hundred persons a year were 
 executed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Even so 
 late as the last century, in spite of the continued pro- 
 tests of foreign nations, in the course of seven years 
 there were 428 capital convictions in London alone. 
 Burning of children, too, is a favourite punishment with 
 John Bull, as may be seen in this same Blackstone, 
 who notices the burning of a girl of thirteen given by 
 Sir Matthew Hale. The valets always assassinate 
 their masters ; lovers uniformly strangle their sweet- 
 hearts ; the farmers and the farmers' wives universally 
 beat their apprentices to death ; and their lawyers in the 
 inns of court strip and starve their servants, as has 
 appeared from remarkable investigations in the law 
 courts during the last year. Husbands sell their wives 
 by public auction with a rope round their necks. An 
 intelligent Frenchman, M. Pellet, who visited London 
 in 1815, deposes that he saw a number of skulls on 
 each side of the river Thames, and he was told they 
 were found especially thick at the landing-places 
 among the watermen. But why multiply instances, 
 when the names of those two-legged tigers, Rush, 
 Thistlewood, Thurtell, the Mannings, Colonel Kirk, 
 Claverhouse, Simon de Monteforte, Strafford, the Duke 
 of Cumberland, Warren Hastings, and Judge Jeffreys, 
 are household words all over the earth ? John-Bullism, 
 through a space of 800 years, is semper idem, unchange-
 
 1 40 CO UNT PO TEMKTN AND JOHN B ULL. 
 
 able in evil. One hundred and sixty offences are 
 punishable with death. It is death to live with gipsies 
 for a month ; and Lord Hale mentions thirteen persons 
 as having, in his day, suffered death thereon at one 
 assize. It is death to steal a sheep, death to rob a 
 warren, death fo steal a letter, death to steal a hand- 
 kerchief, death to cut down a cherry-tree. And, after 
 all, the excesses of John-Bullism at home are mere child's 
 play to the oceans of blood it has shed abroad. It 
 has been the origin of all the wars which have deso- 
 lated Europe ; it has fomented national jealousy, and 
 the antipathy of castes in every part of the world ; it 
 has plunged flourishing states into the abyss of revolu- 
 tion. The Crusades, the Sicilian Vespers, the wars of 
 the Reformation, the Thirty Years' War, the War of 
 Succession, the Seven Years' War, the American War, 
 the French Revolution, all are simply owing to John- 
 Bull ideas ; and to take one definite instance, in the 
 course of the last war, the deaths of two millions of 
 the human race lie at his door ; for the Whigs them- 
 selves, from first to last, and down to this day, admit 
 and proclaim, without any hesitation or limitation, that 
 that war was simply and entirely the work of John- 
 Bullism, and needed not, and would not have been, 
 but for its influence, and its alone. 
 
 " Such is that ' absolute perfection, without folly and 
 without weakness,' which, revelling in the blood of man, 
 is still seeking out her victims, and scenting blood all 
 over the earth. It is that woman Jezebel, who fulfils 
 the prophetic vision, and incurs the prophetic denunci- 
 ation. And, strange to say, a prophet of her own has 
 not scrupled to apply to her that very appellation.
 
 CO UNT PO TEMKIN AND JOHN B ULL. 1 4 1 
 
 Dead to good and evil, the children of Jezebel glory in 
 the name ; and ten years have not passed since, by a 
 sort of infatuation, one of the very highest Tories in 
 the land, a minister, too, of the established religion, 
 hailed the blood-stained Monarchy under the very title 
 of the mystical sorceress. Jezebel surely is her name, 
 and Jezebel is her nature ; for drunk with the spiritual 
 wine-cup of wrath, and given over to believe a lie, at 
 length she has ascended to heights which savour rather 
 of madness than of pride ; she babbles absurdities, 
 and she thirsts for impossibilities. Gentlemen, I am 
 speaking the words of sober seriousness ; I can prove 
 what I say to the letter ; the extravagance is not in 
 me but in the object of my denunciation. Once more 
 I appeal to the awful volume I hold in my hands. I 
 appeal to it, I open it, I cast it from me. Listen, then, 
 once again ; it is a fact ; Jezebel has declared her own 
 omnipresence. l A consequence of the royal preroga- 
 tives,' says the antichristian author, ' is the legal UBI- 
 QUITY of the King ! ' 'His Majesty is 'always present 
 in all his courts : his judges are the mirror by which 
 the King's image is reflected ; ' and further, ' From this 
 ubiquity ' (you see he is far from shrinking from the 
 word), ' from this ubiquity it follows that the Sov- 
 ereign can never be NONSUIT ! ! ' Gentlemen, the sun 
 would set before I told you one hundredth part of the 
 enormity of this child of Moloch and Belial. Ineb- 
 riated with the cup of insanity, and flung upon the 
 stream of recklessness, she dashes down the cataract 
 of nonsense, and whirls amid the pools of confusion. 
 Like the Roman emperor, she actually has declared 
 herself immortal ! she has declared her eternity 1
 
 1 42 CO UNT PO TEMKTN A ND JOHN B ULL. 
 
 Again, I am obliged to say it, these are no words of 
 mine ; the tremendous sentiment confronts me in black 
 and crimson characters in this diabolical book. ' In 
 the law,' says Blackstone, ' the Sovereign is said never 
 to die!' Again, with still more hideous expressive- 
 ness, ' The law ascribes to the Sovereign an ABSOLUTE 
 
 IMMORTALITY. THE KlNG NEVER DIES.' 
 
 " And now, gentlemen, your destiny is in your own 
 hands. If you are willing to succumb to a power 
 which has never been contented with what she was, 
 but has been for centuries extending her conquests in 
 both hemispheres, then the humble individual who has 
 addressed you will submit to the necessary conse- 
 quence ; will resume his military dress, and return to 
 the Caucasus ; but if, on the other hand, as I believe, 
 you are resolved to resist unflinchingly this flood of 
 satanical imposture and foul ambition, and force it 
 back into the ocean ; if, not from hatred to the Eng- 
 lish far from it from love to them (for a distinction 
 must ever be drawn between the nation and its domi- 
 nant John-Bullism) ; if, I say, from love to them as 
 brothers, from a generous determination to fight their 
 battles, from an intimate consciousness that they are 
 in their secret hearts Russians, that they are champing 
 the bit of their iron lot, and are longing for you as 
 their deliverers ; if, from these lofty notions as well 
 as from a burning patriotism, you will form the high 
 resolve to annihilate this dishonour of humanity ; if 
 you loathe its sophisms, ' De minimis non curat lex,' 
 and ' Malitia supplet astatem,' and ' Tres faciunt colle- 
 gium,' and ' Impotentia excusat legem,' and ' Possession 
 is nine parts of the law,' and ' The greater the truth, the
 
 CO UNT PO TEMKIN A ND JOHN B ULL. j 43 
 
 greater the libel' principles which sap the very founda- 
 tions of morals ; if you wage war to the knife with its 
 blighting superstitions of primogeniture, gavelkind, 
 mortmain, and contingent remainders ; if you detest, 
 abhor, and adjure the tortuous maxims .and perfidious 
 provisions of its habeas corpus, quare impedit, and qui 
 tarn (hear, hear) ; if you scorn the mummeries of its wigs 
 and bands, and coifs, and ermine (vehement cheering) ; 
 if you trample and spit upon its accursed fee simple 
 and fee tail, villanage, and free soccage, fiefs, he riots, 
 seizins, feuds (a burst of cheers, the whole meeting in 
 commotion) ; its shares, its premiums, its post-obits, its 
 precentages, its tariffs, its broad and narrow gauge" 
 Here the cheers became frantic, and drowned the 
 speaker's voice, and a most extraordinary scene of 
 enthusiasm followed. One half of the meeting was seen 
 embracing the other half ; till, as if by the force of a 
 sudden resolution, they all poured out of the square, 
 and proceeded to break the windows of all the British 
 residents. They then formed into procession, and 
 directing their course to the great square before the 
 Kremlin, they dragged through the mud, and then 
 solemnly burnt, an effigy of John Bull which had been 
 provided beforehand by the managing committee, a lion 
 and unicorn, and a Queen Victoria. These being 
 fully consumed, they dispersed quietly ; and by ten 
 o'clock at night the streets were profoundly still, and 
 the silver moon looked down in untroubled lustre on 
 the city of the Czars. 
 
 Now, my Brothers of the Oratory, I protest to you 
 my full conviction that I have not caricatured this par-
 
 1 44 COUNT PO TEMKIN AJVD JOHN BULL. 
 
 allel at all. Were I, indeed, skilled in legal matters, I 
 could have made it far more natural, plausible, and 
 complete ; but, as for its extravagance, I say delib- 
 erately, and have means of knowing what I say, 
 having once been a Protestant, and being now a Cath- 
 olic knowing what is said and thought of Catholics, 
 on the one hand, and, on the other, knowing what they 
 really are I deliberately assert that no absurdities con- 
 tained in the above sketch can equal nay, that no 
 conceivable absurdities can surpass the absurdities 
 which are firmly believed of Catholics by sensible, 
 kind-hearted, well-intentioned Protestants. Such is 
 the consequence of having looked at things all on one 
 side, and shutting the eyes to the other. Present 
 Position of Catholics in England^ ed. 1889, pp. 24-41
 
 Bnglican 
 
 The Establishment is the keeper in ordinary of those 
 national types and blocks from which Popery is ever 
 to be printed off, of the traditional view of every Cath- 
 olic doctrine, the traditional account of every ecclesias- 
 tical event, the traditional lives of popes and bishops, 
 abbots and monks, saints and confessors, the tradi- 
 tional fictions, sophisms, calumnies, mockeries, sar- 
 casms and invectives with which Catholics are to be 
 assailed. 
 
 This, I say, is the special charge laid upon the Es- 
 tablishment. Unitarians, Sabellians, Utilitarians, Wes- 
 leyans, Calvinists, Swedenborgians, Irvingites, Free- 
 thinkers, all these it can tolerate in its very bosom ; no 
 form of opinion comes amiss ; but Rome it cannot abide. 
 It agrees to differ with its own children on a thousand 
 points, one is sacred that her Majesty the Queen is 
 " The Mother and Mistress of all Churches ; " on one 
 dogma it is infallible, on one it may securely insist with- 
 out fear of being unseasonable or excessive that " the 
 Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this realm." 
 Here is sunshine amid the darkness, sense amid confu- 
 sion, an intelligible strain amid a Babel of sounds ; what- 
 ever befalls, here is sure footing ; it is, " No peace with 
 Rome," " Down with the Pope," and " The Church in 
 10 145
 
 146 THE ANGLICAN CLERGY. 
 
 danger." Never has the Establishment failed in the 
 use of these important and effective watchwords ; many 
 are its shortcomings, but it is without reproach in the 
 execution of this its special charge. Heresy, and scep- 
 ticism, and infidelity, and fanaticism, may challenge it 
 in vain ; but fling upon the gale the faintest whisper of 
 Catholicism, and it recognizes by instinct the presence 
 of its connatural foe. Forthwith, as during the last year, 
 the atmosphere is tremulous with agitation, and dis- 
 charges its vibrations far and wide. A movement is in 
 birth which has no natural crisis or resolution. Spon- 
 taneously the bells of the steeples begin to sound. Not 
 by an act of volition, but by a sort of mechanical im- 
 pulse, bishop and dean, archdeacon and canon, rector 
 and curate, one after another, each on his high tower, 
 off they set, swinging and booming, tolling and chiming, 
 with nervous intenseness, and thickening emotion, and 
 deepening volume, the old ding-dong which has scared 
 town and country this weary time ; tolling and chiming 
 away, jingling and clamouring and ringing the changes 
 on their poor half-dozen notes, all about " the Popish 
 aggression," " insolent and insidious," " insidious and 
 insolent," " insolent and atrocious,"'" atrocious and in- 
 solent," atrocious, insolent, and ungrateful," " ungrate- 
 ful, insolent, and atrocious," " foul and offensive," " pes- 
 tilent and horrid, " "subtle and unholy," "audacious 
 and revolting," " contemptible and shameless," "ma- 
 lignant," " frightful," " mad," " meretricious," bobs (I 
 think the ringers call them), bobs, and bobs-royal, and 
 triple-bob-majors, and grandsires, to the extent of 
 their compass and the full ring of their metal, in hon- 
 our of Queen Bess, and to the confusion of the Holy
 
 THE ANGLICAN CLERGY. 147 
 
 Father and the Princes of the Church. 1 Present Posi- 
 tion of Catholics in England, ed. 1889, pp. 75-77 
 (1851). 
 
 1 The foregoing lecture in 1851 was, by an accidental coinci- 
 dence, written simultaneously with an able pamphlet by Serjeant 
 Bellasis, apropos of the conduct of the Anglican clergy of the day.
 
 tTbe Cells in tbe 3Bfrmingbam raters; 
 
 Two of my instances are despatched, and now I 
 come to my third. There is something so tiresome in 
 passing abruptly from one subject to another, that I 
 need your indulgence, my Brothers, in making this third 
 beginning ; yet it has been difficult to avoid it, when 
 my very object is to show what extensive subject- 
 matters and what different classes of the community 
 are acted on by the Protestant Tradition. Now, I am 
 proceeding to the Legislature of the Nation, and will 
 give an instance of its operation in a respectable 
 political party. 
 
 In this case, its fountain springs up, as it were, 
 under our very feet, and we shall have no difficulty at 
 all in judging of its quality. Its history is as fol- 
 lows : Coaches, omnibuses, carriages, and cars, day 
 after day drive up and down the Hagley Road ; pas- 
 sengers lounge to and fro on the footpath ; and close 
 alongside of it are discovered one day the nascent 
 foundations and rudiments of a considerable building. 
 On inquiring, it is found to be intended for a Catholic, 
 nay, even for a monastic establishment. This leads to 
 a good deal of talk, especially when the bricks begin 
 to show above the surface. Meantime the unsuspect- 
 ing architect is taking his measurements, and ascer- 
 tains that *the ground is far from lying level ; and then, 
 148
 
 THE BIRMINGHAM CELLS. 149 
 
 since there is a prejudice among Catholics in favor of 
 horizontal floors, he comes to the conclusion that the 
 bricks of the basement must rise above the surface 
 higher at one end of the building than at the 
 other ; in fact, that whether he will or no, there 
 must be some construction of the nature of a vault or 
 cellar at the extremity in question, a circumstance not 
 at all inconvenient, considering it also happens to 
 be the kitchen end of the building. Accordingly, he 
 turns his necessity into a gain, and by the excavation 
 of a few feet of earth, he forms a number of chambers 
 convenient for various purposes, partly beneath, partly 
 above the line of the ground. While he is thus intent 
 on his work, loungers, gossipers, alarmists are busy at 
 theirs too. They go round the building, they peep 
 into the underground brickwork, and are curious about 
 the drains ; * they moralize about Popery and its 
 
 * It is undeniable, though the gentleman who has brought the 
 matter before the public has accidentally omitted to mention it, 
 that the Protestant feeling has also been excited by the breadth 
 of the drain, which is considered excessive, and moreover crosses 
 the road. There exists some nervousness on the subject in the 
 neighbourhood, as I have been seriously given to understand. 
 There is a remarkable passage, too, in the scientific report, which 
 our accuser brings forward, and which has never been answered 
 or perhaps construed : " One of the compartments was larger 
 than the rest, and was evidently to be covered in without the build- 
 ing over it." This is not the first time a dwelling of mine 
 has been the object of a mysterious interest. When our cottages 
 at Littlemore were in course of preparation, they were visited on 
 horseback and on foot by many of the most distinguished resi- 
 dents of the University of Oxford. Heads of houses and canons 
 did not scruple to investigate the building within and without, 
 and some of them went so far as to inspect and theorize upon the
 
 150 THE BIRMINGHAM CELLS. 
 
 spread ; at length they trespass upon the enclosure, 
 they dive into the half-finished shell, and they take 
 their fill of seeing what is to be seen, and imagining 
 what is not. Every house is built on an idea ; you do 
 not build a mansion like a public office, or a palace 
 like a prison, or a factory like a shooting-box, or a 
 church like a barn. Religious houses, in like manner, 
 have their own idea ; they have certain indispensable 
 peculiarities of form and internal arrangement. 
 Doubtless, there was much in the very idea of an 
 Oratory perplexing to the Protestant intellect, and 
 inconsistent with Protestant notions of comfort and 
 utility. Why should so large a room be here ? why so 
 small a room there ? why a passage so long and wide ? 
 and why so long a wall without a window ? the very 
 size of the house needs explanation. Judgments which 
 had employed themselves on the high subject of a 
 Catholic hierarchy and its need, found no difficulty in 
 dogmatizing on bedrooms and closets. There was 
 much to suggest matter of suspicion, and to predispose 
 the trespasser to doubt whether he had yet got to the 
 bottom of the subject. At length one question flashed 
 upon his mind : what can such a house have to do 
 with cellars ? cellars and monks, what can be their mu- 
 tual relations ? monks to what possible use can they 
 put pits, and holes, and corners, and outhouses, and 
 sheds ? A sensation was created ; it brought other 
 visitors ; it spread ; it became an impression, a belief ; 
 the truth lay bare ; a tradition was born ; a fact was 
 
 most retired portions of the premises. Perhaps some thirty years 
 hence, in some " History of my own Times," speculations maybe 
 found on the subject, in aid of the Protestant Tradition.
 
 THE BIRMINGHAM CELLS, 15! 
 
 elicited which henceforth had many witnesses. Those 
 cellars were cells. How obvious when once stated ! 
 and every one who entered the building, every one 
 who passed by, became, I say, in some sort, ocular 
 vouchers for what had often been read of in books, but 
 for many generations had happily been unknown to 
 England, for the incarcerations, the torturings, the 
 starvings, the immurings, the murderings proper to a 
 monastic establishment. 
 
 Now I am tempted to stop for a while in order to 
 improve (as the evangelical pulpits call it) this most 
 memorable discovery. I will therefore briefly con- 
 sider it under the heads of i. THE ACCUSATION ; 2. 
 
 ITS GROUNDS ; 3. THE ACCUSERS ; and, 4. THE ACCUSED. 
 
 First. THE ACCUSATION. It is this, that the 
 Catholics, building the house in question, were in the 
 practice of committing murder. This was so strictly 
 the charge, that, had the platform selected for making 
 it been other than we know it to have been, I suppose 
 the speaker might have been indicted for libel. His 
 words were these : It was not usual for a coroner to 
 hold an inquest, unless where a rumour had got abroad 
 that there was a necessity for one ; and how was a 
 rumor to come from the underground cells of the 
 convents ? Yes, he repeated, underground cells : and 
 he would tell them something about such places. At 
 this moment, in the parish of Edgbaston, within the 
 borough of Birmingham, there was a large convent, of 
 some kind or other, being erected, and the whole of 
 the underground was fitted up with cells ; and what 
 were those cells for ? " 
 
 Secondly. THE GROUNDS OF THE ACCUSATION.
 
 152 THE BIRMINGHAM CELLS. 
 
 They are simple ; behold them : i. That the house is 
 built level ; 2. and that the plot of earth on which it 
 is built is higher at one end than at the other. 
 
 Thirdly. THE ACCUSERS. This, too, throws light 
 upon the character of Protestant traditions. Not 
 weak and ignorant people only, not people at a dis- 
 tance but educated men, gentlemen well connected, 
 high in position, men of business, men of character, 
 members of the legislature, men familiar with the lo- 
 cality, men who know the accused by name, such are 
 the men who deliberately, reiteratedly, in spite of 
 being set right, charge certain persons with pitiless, 
 savage practices ; with beating and imprisoning, with 
 starving, with murdering their dependents. 
 
 Fourthly. THE ACCUSED. I feel ashamed, my, 
 Brothers, of bringing my own matters before you . 
 when far better persons have suffered worse imputa- 
 tions ; but bear with me. /then am the accused. A 
 gentleman of blameless character, a county member, 
 with whose near relatives I have been on terms of 
 almost fraternal intimacy for a quarter of a century, 
 who knows me by repute far more familiarly (I sup- 
 pose) than any one in this room knows me, putting 
 aside my personal friends ; he it is who charges me, 
 and others like me, with delighting in blood, with en- 
 joying the shrieks and groans of agony and despair, 
 with presiding at a banquet of dislocated limbs, 
 quivering muscles, and wild countenances. Oh, what 
 a world is this ! Could he look into our eyes and say 
 it ? Would he have the heart to say it, if he recol- 
 lected of whom he said it ? For who are we ? Have 
 we lived in a corner ? have we come to light suddenly
 
 THE BIRMINGHAM CELLS. 153 
 
 out of the earth ? We have been nourished, for the 
 greater part of our lives, in the bosom of the great 
 schools and universities of Protestant England: we 
 have been the foster sons of the Edwards and Henries, 
 the Wykehams and Wolseys, of whom Englishmen are 
 wont to make much ; we have grown up amid hun- 
 dreds of contemporaries, scattered at present all over 
 the country, in those special ranks of society which 
 are the very walk of a member of the legislature. Our 
 names are better known to the educated classes of the 
 country than those of any others who are not public 
 men. Moreover, if there be men in the whole world 
 who may be said to live in publico, it is the members 
 of a College at one of our Universities ; living, not in 
 private houses, not in families, but in one or two 
 apartments which are open to all the world, at all 
 hours, with nothing, I may say, their own ; with col- 
 lege servants, a common table, nay, their chairs and 
 their bedding, and their cups and saucers, down to 
 their coal-scuttle and their carpet brooms, a sort of 
 common property, and the right of their neighbours. 
 Such is that manner of life, in which nothing, I may 
 say, can be hid ; where no trait of character or peculi- 
 arity of conduct but comes to broad day such is the 
 life I myself led for above a quarter of a century, 
 under the eyes of numbers who are familiarly known 
 to my accusers ; such is almost the life which we all 
 have led ever since we have been in Birmingham, with 
 our house open to all comers, and ourselves accessible, 
 I may almost say at any hour ; and this being so, con- 
 sidering the charge, and the evidence, and the accuser, 
 and the accused, could we Catholics desire a more ap-
 
 154 THE BIRMINGHAM CELLS. 
 
 posite illustration of the formation and the value of a 
 - Protestant Tradition ? " 
 
 I set it down for the benefit of time to come; 
 " though for no other cause," as a great author says, 
 " yet for this : that posterity may know we have not 
 loosely, through silence, permitted things to pass away 
 as in a dream, there shall be for men's information ex- 
 tant thus much." One commonly forgets such things, 
 from the trouble and inconvenience of having to 
 remember them ; let one specimen last, of many which 
 have been suffered to perish, of the birth of an anti- 
 Catholic tradition. The nascent fable has indeed 
 failed, as the tale about the Belgian sin-table has 
 failed, but it might have thriven : it has been lost by 
 bad nursing ; it ought to have been cherished awhile 
 in those underground receptacles where first it drew 
 breath, 'till it could comfortably bear the light; till its 
 limbs were grown, and its voice was strong, and we on 
 whom it bore had run our course, and gone to our ac- 
 count ; and then it might have raised its head with- 
 out fear and without reproach, and might have magis- 
 terially asserted what there was none to deny. But 
 men are all the creatures of circumstances ; they are 
 hurried on to a ruin which they may see, but cannot 
 evade : so has it been with the Edgbaston Tradition. 
 It was spoken on the house-tops when it should have 
 been whispered in closets, and it expired in the effort. 
 Yet it might have been allotted, let us never forget, 
 a happier destiny. It might have smouldered and 
 spread through a portion of our Birmingham popu- 
 lation ; it might have rested obscurely on their memo- 
 ries, ofid now and then risen upon their tongues ; there
 
 THE BIRMINGHAM CELLS. 155 
 
 might have been flitting notions, misgivings, rumours, 
 voices, that the horrors of the Inquisition were from 
 time to time renewed in our subterranean chambers ; 
 and fifty years hence, if some sudden frenzy of the 
 hour roused the anti-Catholic jealousy still lingering 
 in the town, a mob might have swarmed about our 
 innocent dwelling, to rescue certain legs of mutton 
 and pats of butter from imprisonment, and to hold an 
 inquest over a dozen packing-cases, some old hampers, 
 a knife-board, and a range of empty blacking bottles. 
 
 Thus I close my third instance of the sort of evi- 
 dence commonly adducible for the great Protestant 
 Tradition ; not the least significant circumstance about 
 them all being this, that though in the case of all three 
 that evidence is utterly disproved, yet in not one of 
 the three is the charge founded on it withdrawn. In 
 spite of Dr. Waddington, Dr. Maitland, and Mr. Rose, 
 the editors of Mosheim still print and publish his 
 slander on St. Eligius ; in defiance of the Brussels 
 protest, and the chair tariff of St. Gudule, the Kent 
 clergyman and the Times still bravely maintain our 
 traffic in sins ; in violence to the common sense of 
 mankind, the rack and the pulley are still affirmed to 
 be busy in the dungeons of Edgbaston ; for Pro- 
 testantism must be maintained as the Religion of Eng- 
 lishmen, and part and parcel of the Law of the land. 
 Present Position of Catholics, ed. 1889, pp. 118-125 
 (1851).
 
 156 CATHOLIC FIRST 
 
 Catbolfc fftrst principled. 
 
 Now I have come to the point at which the mainte- 
 nance of private opinion runs into bigotry. As Prejudice 
 is the rejection of reason altogether, so Bigotry is the im- 
 position of private reason, that is of our own views and 
 theories of our own First Principles, as if they were the 
 absolute truth, and the standard of all argument, inves- 
 tigation, and judgment. If there are any men in the 
 world who ought to abstain from bigotry, it is Protest- 
 ants. They, whose very badge is the right of private 
 judgment should give as well as take,should allow others 
 what they claim themselves ; but I am sorry to say, as I 
 have had occasion to say again and again, there is very 
 little of the spirit of reciprocity among them ; they mono- 
 polize a liberty which, when they set out, they professed 
 was to be for the benefit of all parties. Not even the intel- 
 lectual, not even the candid-minded among them,are free 
 from inconsistency here. They begin by setting up 
 principles of thought and action for themselves ; then, 
 not content with applying them to their own thoughts 
 and actions, they make them the rule for criticising and 
 condemning our thoughts and actions too ; this, I repeat, 
 is Bigotry. Bigotry is the infliction of our own unproved 
 First Principles on others, and the treating others with 
 scorn or hatred for not accepting them. There are 
 principles, indeed, as I have already said, such as the
 
 CA T HO LIC FIRST PRINCIPLES. 1 5 7 
 
 First Principles of morals, not peculiar or proper to the 
 individual, but the rule of the world, because they come 
 from the Author of our being, and from no private fac- 
 tory of man. It is not bigotry to despise intemperance ; 
 it is not bigotry to hate injustice or cruelty ; but what- 
 everts local, or national, or sectional, or personal, or 
 novel, and nothing more, to make that the standard of 
 judging all existing opinions, without an attempt at 
 proving it to be of authority, is mere ridiculous bigotry. 
 " 'In necessariis rtnitas, in dubiis liber tas" is ever the rule 
 of a true philosopher. And though I know in many 
 cases it is very difficult to draw the line, and to decide 
 what principles are, and what are not, independent of 
 individuals, times and places, eternal and divine, yet so 
 far we may safely assert, that when the very persons 
 who hold certain views, confess, nay, boast, nay, are 
 jealously careful, that those views come of their own 
 private judgment, they at least should be as jealous and 
 as careful to keep them to their own place, and not to 
 use them as if they came distinctly from heaven, or 
 from the nature of things, or from the nature of man. 
 Those persons, surely, are precluded, if they would be 
 consistent, from using their principles as authoritative, 
 who proclaim that they made them for themselves. 
 Protestants, then, if any men alive, are, on their own 
 showing, bigots, if they set up their First Principles as 
 oracles and as standards of all truth. 
 
 This being considered, have we not, my Brothers, a 
 curious sight before us ? This is what we call an en- 
 lightened age : we are to have large views of things ; 
 everything is to be put on a philosophical basis ; rea- 
 son is to rule : the world is to begin again ; a new and
 
 158 CATHOLIC FIRST PRINCIPLES. 
 
 transporting set of views is about to be exhibited to 
 the great human family. Well and good ; have them, 
 preach them, enjoy them, but deign to recollect the 
 while, that there have been views in the world before 
 you ; that the world has not been going on up to this day 
 without any principles whatever ; that the Old Religion 
 was based on principles, and that it is not enough to 
 flourish about your " new lamps," if you would make 
 us give up our " old " ones. Catholicism, I say, had 
 its First Principles before you were born : you say they 
 are false ; very well, prove them to be so : they are false, 
 indeed, if yours are true ; but not false merely because 
 yours are yours. While yours are yours it is self-evi- 
 dent, indeed, to you, that ours are false ; but it is not 
 the common way of carrying on business in the world, 
 to value English goods by French measures, or to pay 
 a debt in paper which was contracted in gold. Cathol- 
 icism has its First Principles, overthrow them, if you 
 can ; endure them, if you cannot. It is not enough to 
 call them effete because they are old, or antiquated be- 
 cause they are ancient. It is not enough to look into 
 our churches, and cry, " It is all a form, because divine 
 favour cannot depend on external observances ; " or, " It 
 is all a bondage, because there is no such thing as sin ; " 
 or, " a blasphemy, because the Supreme Being cannot be 
 present in ceremonies ; " or, " a mummery, because pray- 
 er cannot move Him ; " or, " a tyranny, because vows 
 are unnatural ; " or, " hypocrisy, because no rational 
 man can credit it at all." I say here is endless assump- 
 tion, unmitigated hypothesis, reckless assertion ; prove 
 your " because," "because," "because;" prove your 
 First Principles, and if you cannot, learn philosophic
 
 CA THOLTC FIRST PRINCIPLES. 1 59 
 
 moderation. Why may not my First Principles contest 
 the prize with yours ? they have been longer in the 
 world ; they have lasted longer, they have done harder 
 work, they have seen rougher service. You sit in your 
 easy-chairs, you dogmatize in your lecture-rooms, you 
 wield your pens : it all looks well on paper : you write 
 exceedingly well : there never was an age in which 
 there was better writing ; logical, nervous, eloquent, 
 and pure, go and carry it all out in the world. Take 
 your First Principles, of which you are so proud, into 
 the crowded streets of our cities, into the formidable 
 classes which make up the bulk of our population ; try 
 to work society by them. You think you can ; I say 
 you cannot at least you have not as yet ; it is yet to 
 be seen if you can. " Let not him that putteth on his 
 armour boast as he who taketh it off." Do not take it 
 for granted that that is certain which is waiting the 
 test of reason and experiment. Be modest until you 
 are victorious. My principles, which I believe to be 
 eternal, have at least lasted eighteen hundred years ; 
 let yours live as many months. That man can sin, 
 that he has duties, that the Divine Being hears prayer, 
 that He gives His favours through visible ordinances, 
 that He is really present in the midst of them, these 
 principles have been the life of nations ; they have 
 shown they could be carried out ; let any single nation 
 carry out yours, and you will have better claim to speak 
 contemptuously of Catholic rites, of Catholic devotions, 
 of Catholic belief. Present Position of Catholics^ ed. 
 1889, pp. 291-5(1851).
 
 <Bo&, tbe TKHorl&, tbc Cburcb. 
 
 STARTING then with the being of a God, (which, as I 
 have said, is as certain to me as the certainty of my 
 own existence, though when I try to put the grounds 
 of that certainty into logical shape I find a difficulty in 
 doing so in mood and figure to my satisfaction), I look 
 out of myself into the world of men, and there I see 
 a sight which fills me with unspeakable distress. The 
 world seems simply to give the lie to that great truth, 
 of which my whole being is so full ; and the effect 
 upon me is, in consequence, as a matter of necessity, 
 as confusing as if it denied that I am in existence my- 
 self. If I looked into a mirror, and did not see my 
 face, I should have the sort of feeling which actually 
 comes upon me, when I look into this living bus,y 
 world, and see no reflection of its Creator. This is, 
 to me, one of those great difficulties of this absolute 
 primary truth, to which I referred just now. Were it 
 not for this voice, speaking so clearly in my conscience 
 and my heart, I should be an atheist, or a pantheist, 
 or a polytheist when I looked into th'e world. I am 
 speaking for myself only ; and I am far from denying 
 the real force of the arguments in proof of a God, 
 drawn from the general facts of human society and the 
 course of history, but these do not warm me or en-
 
 GOD, THE WORLD, THE CHURCH. 161 
 
 lighten me ; they do not take away the winter of my 
 desolation, or make the buds unfold and the- leaves 
 grow within me, and my moral being rejoice. The 
 sight of the world is nothing else than the prophet's 
 scroll, full of " lamentations, and mourning, and 
 woe." 
 
 To consider the world in its length and breadth, its 
 various history, the many races of man, their starts, 
 their fortunes, their mutual alienation, their conflicts ; 
 and then their ways, habits, governments, forms of 
 worship ; their enterprises, their aimless courses, their 
 random achievements and acquirements, the impotent 
 Conclusion of long-standing facts, the tokens so faint 
 and broken of a superintending design, the blind 
 evolution of what turn out to be great powers or truths, 
 the progress of things, as if from unreasoning elements, 
 not towards final causes, the greatness and littleness 
 of man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, the 
 curtain hung over his futurity, the disappointments of 
 life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, physical 
 pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and intensity of 
 sin, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary 
 hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole race, so 
 fearfully yet exactly described in the Apostle's words, 
 " having no hope and without God in the world," all 
 this is a vision to dizzy and appal ; and inflicts upon 
 the mind the sense of a profound mystery, which is 
 absolutely beyond human solution. 
 
 What shall be said to this heart-piercing, reason- 
 bewildering fact ? I can only answer, that either there 
 is no Creator, or this living society of men is in a true 
 sense discarded from His presence, Did I see a boy 
 n
 
 162 GOD, THE WORLD, THE CHURCH. 
 
 of good make and mind, with the tokens on him of a 
 refined nature, cast upon the world without provision^ 
 unable to say whence he came, his birth-place or his 
 family connections, I should conclude that there was 
 some mystery connected with his history, and that he 
 was one, of whom, from one cause or other, his parents 
 were ashamed. Thus only should I be able to account 
 for the contrast between the promise and the condition 
 of his being. And so I argue about the world ; if 
 there be a God, since there is a God, the human race 
 is implicated in some terrible aboriginal calamity. It 
 is out of joint with the purposes of its Creator. This 
 is a fact, a fact as true as the fact of its existence ; and 
 thus the doctrine of what is theologically called original 
 sin becomes to me almost as certain as that the world 
 exists, and as the existence of God. 
 
 And now, supposing it were the blessed and loving 
 will of the Creator to interfere in this anarchical con- 
 dition of things, what are we to suppose would be the 
 methods which might be necessarily or naturally 
 involved in His purpose of mercy ? Since the world 
 is in so abnormal a state, surely it would be no surprise 
 to me, if the interposition were of necessity equally 
 extraordinary or what is called miraculous. But that 
 subject does not directly come into the scope of my 
 present remarks. Miracles as evidence, involve a 
 process of reason, or an argument ; and of course I am 
 thinking of some mode of interference which does not 
 immediately run into argument. I am rather asking 
 what must be the face-to-face antagonist, by which to 
 withstand and baffle the fierce energy of passion and 
 the all-corroding, all-dissolving scepticism of the in-
 
 GOD, THE WORLD, THE CHURCH. 163 
 
 tellect in religious inquiries ? I have no intention at 
 all of denying, that truth is the real object of our 
 reason, and that, if it does not attain to truth, either 
 the premiss or the process is in fault ; but I am not 
 speaking here of right reason, but of reason as it acts 
 in fact and concretely in fallen man. I know that even 
 the unaided reason, when correctly exercised, leads to 
 a belief in God, in the immortality of the soul, and in 
 a future retribution ; but I am considering the faculty 
 of reason actually and historically ; and in this point 
 of view, I do not think I am wrong in saying that its 
 tendency is towards a simple unbelief in matters of 
 religion. No truth, however sacred, can stand against 
 it, in the long run ; and hence it is that in the pagan 
 world, when our Lord came, the last traces of the 
 religious knowledge of former times were all but disap- 
 pearing from those portions of the world in which the 
 intellect had been active and had had a career. 
 
 And in these latter days, in like manner, outside the 
 Catholic Church things are tending, with far greater 
 rapidity than in that old time from the circumstance of 
 the age, to atheism in one shape or other. What a 
 scene, what a prospect, does the whole of Europe 
 present at this day ! and not only Europe, but every 
 government and every civilization through the world, 
 which is under the influence of the European mind ! 
 Especially, for it most concerns us, how sorrowful, in 
 the view of religion, even taken in its most elementary, 
 most attenuated form, is the spectacle presented to 
 us by the educated intellect of England, France, and 
 Germany ! Lovers of their country and of their race, 
 religious men, external to the Catholic Church, have
 
 164 GOD, THE WORLD, THE CHURCH. 
 
 attempted various expedients to arrest fierce wilful 
 human nature in its onward course, and to bring it into 
 subjection. The necessity of some form of religion 
 for the interests of humanity, has been generally 
 acknowledged : but where was the concrete represent- 
 ative of things invisible, which would have the force 
 and the toughness necessary to be a breakwater against 
 the deluge? Three centuries ago the establishment 
 of religion, material, legal, and social, was generally 
 adopted as the best expedient for the purpose, in those 
 countries which separated from the Catholic Church ; 
 and for a long time it was successful ; but now the 
 crevices of those establishments are admitting the 
 enemy. Thirty years ago, education was relied upon : 
 ten years ago there was a hope that wars would cease 
 forever, under the influence of commercial enterprise 
 and the reign of the useful and fine arts ; but will any 
 one venture to say that there is anything anywhere 
 on this earth, which will afford a fulcrum for us, where- 
 by to keep the earth from moving onwards ? 
 
 The judgment, which experience passes whether on* 
 establishments or on education, as a means of maintain- 
 ing religious truth in this anarchical world, must be 
 extended even to Scripture, though Scripture be divine. 
 Experience proves surely that the Bible does not 
 answer a purpose for which it was never intended. It 
 may be accidentally the means of the conversion of 
 individuals ; but a book, after all, cannot make a stand 
 against the wild living intellect of man, and in this 
 day it begins to testify, as regards its own structure 
 and contents, to the power of that universal solvent,
 
 GOD, THE WORLD, THE CHURCH. 165 
 
 which is so successfully acting upon religious establish- 
 ments. 
 
 Supposing then it to be the Will of the Creator to in- 
 terfere in human affairs, and to make provisions for 
 retaining in the world a knowledge of Himself, so defi- 
 inite and distinct as to be proof against the energy of 
 human scepticism, in such a case, I am far from say- 
 ing that there was no other way, but there is nothing 
 to surprise the mind, if He should think fit to intro- 
 duce a power into the world, invested with the prerog- 
 ative of infallibility in religious matters. Such a pro- 
 vision would be a direct, immediate, active, and 
 prompt means of withstanding the difficulty ; it would 
 be an instrument suited to the need ; and, when I find 
 that this is the very claim of the Catholic Church not 
 only do I feel no difficulty in admitting the idea, but 
 there is a fitness in it, which recommends it to my 
 mind. And thus I am brought to speak of the 
 Church's infallibility, as a provision, adapted by the 
 mercy of the Creator, to preserve religion in the world, 
 and to restrain that freedom of thought, which of 
 course in itself is one of the greatest of our natural 
 gifts, and to rescue it from its own suicidal excesses. 
 And let it be observed that, neither here nor in what 
 follows, shall I have occasion to speak directly of 
 Revelation in its subject-matter, but in reference to the 
 sanction which it gives to truths which may be known 
 independently of it, as it bears upon the defence of 
 natural religion. I say, that a power, possessed of 
 infallibility in religious teaching, is happily adapted 
 to be a working instrument, in the course of human 
 affairs, for smiting hard and throwing back the im-
 
 1 66 GOD, THE WORLD, THE CHURCH. 
 
 mense energy of the aggressive, capricious, untrust- 
 worthy intellect : and in saying this, as in the other 
 things that I have to say, it must still be recollected 
 that I am all along bearing in mind my main purpose, 
 which is a defence of myself. Apologia, ed. 1890, 
 pp. 241-246 (1864).
 
 /IMractes. 
 
 THE Protestant, I say, laughs at the very idea of 
 miracles or supernatural acts as occurring at this day ; 
 his First Principle is rooted in him ; he repels from 
 him the idea of miracles ; he laughs at the notion of 
 evidence for them ; one is just as likely as another ; 
 they are all false. Why ? Because of his First Prin- 
 ciple : there are no miracles since the Apostles. Here, 
 indeed, is a short and easy way of getting rid of the 
 whole subject, not by reason, but by a First Principle 
 which he calls reason. Yes, it is reason, granting his 
 First Principle is true ; it is not reason, supposing his 
 First Principle is false. It is reason, if the private 
 judgment of an individual, or of a sect, or of a philos- 
 ophy, or of a nation, be synonymous with reason ; it 
 is not reason, if reason is something not local, nor tem- 
 poral, but universal. Before he advances a step in his 
 argument, he ought to prove his First Principle true ; he 
 does not attempt to do so, he takes it for granted ; and 
 he proceeds to apply it, gratuitous, personal, peculiar 
 as it is, to all our accounts of miracles taken together, 
 and thereupon and thereby triumphantly rejects them 
 all. This, forsooth, is his spontaneous judgment, his 
 instinctive feeling, his common sense, a mere private 
 opinion of his own, a Protestant opinion ; a lecture- 
 room opinion ; not a world-wide opinion, not an in-
 
 1 68 MIRACLES. 
 
 stinct ranging through time and space, but an assump- 
 tion and presumption, which, by education and habit, 
 he has got to think as certain, as much of an axiom, as 
 that two and two make four ; and he looks down upon 
 us, and bids us consider ourselves beaten, all because 
 the savour of our statements and narratives and reports 
 and legends is inconsistent with his delicate Protestant 
 sense, all because our conclusions are different, not 
 from our principles and premisses, but from his. 
 
 And now for the structure he proceeds to raise on 
 this foundation of sand. If, he argues, in matter of 
 fact, there be a host of stories about relics and mir- 
 acles circulated in the Catholic Church, which, as a 
 matter of First Principle, cannot be true ; to what must 
 we attribute them ? indubitably to enormous stupidity 
 on the one hand, and enormous roguery on the other. 
 This, observe, is an immediate and close inference : 
 clever men must see through the superstition ; those 
 who do not see through it must be dolts. Further, 
 since religion is the subject-matter of the alleged 
 fictions, they must be what are called pious frauds, for 
 the sake of gain and power. Observe, my Brothers, 
 there is in the Church a vast tradition and testimony 
 about miracles : how is it to be accounted for ? If 
 miracles can take place, then the truth of the miracle 
 will be a natural explanation of the report, just as the 
 fact of a man dying satisfactorily accounts for the 
 news that he is dead ; but the Protestant cannot so ex- 
 plain it, because he thinks miracles cannot take place ; 
 so he is necessarily driven, by way of accounting for 
 the report of them, to impute that report to fraud. He 
 cannot help himself. I repeat it ; the whole mass of
 
 MIRACLES. 169 
 
 accusations which Protestants bring against us under 
 this head, Catholic credulity, imposture, pious frauds, 
 hypocrisy, priestcraft, this vast and varied superstruc- 
 ture of imputation, you see, all rests on an assump- 
 tion, on an opinion of theirs, for which they offer no 
 kind of proof. What then, in fact, do they say more 
 than this, ^"Protestantism be true, you Catholics are a 
 most awful set of knaves ? Here, at least, is a most in- 
 telligible and undeniable position. 
 
 Now, on the other hand, let me take our own side 
 of the question, and consider how we ourselves stand 
 relatively to the charge made against us. Catholics, 
 then, hold the mystery of the Incarnation ; and the 
 Incarnation is the most stupendous event which ever 
 can take place on earth ; and after it and hence- 
 forth, I do not see how we can scruple at any miracle 
 on the mere ground of its being unlikely to happen. 
 No miracle can be so great as that which took place 
 in the Holy House of Nazareth ; it is indefinitely 
 more difficult to believe than all the miracles of the 
 Breviary, of the Martyrology, of Saints' lives, of 
 legends, of local traditions, put together ; and there is 
 the grossest inconsistency on the very face of the 
 matter, for any one so to strain out the gnat and to 
 swallow the camel, as to profess what is inconceivable, 
 yet to protest against what is surely within the limits 
 of intelligible hypothesis. If, through divine grace, 
 we once are able to accept the solemn truth that the 
 Supreme Being was born of a mortal woman, what is 
 there to be imagined which can offend us on the 
 ground of its marvellousness ? Thus, you see, it 
 happens that, though First Principles are commonly
 
 17 MIRACLES. 
 
 assumed, not proved, ours in this case admits, if not 
 of proof, yet of recommendation, by means of that 
 fundamental truth which Protestants profess as well as 
 we. When we start with assuming that miracles are 
 not unlikely, we are putting forth a position which lies 
 imbedded, as it were, and involved, in the great re- 
 vealed fact of the Incarnation. 
 
 So much is plain on starting ; but more is plain 
 too. Miracles are not only not unlikely, they are 
 positively likely ; and for this simple reason, because, 
 for the most part, when God begins He goes on. 
 We conceive that when He first did a miracle, He 
 began a series ; what He commenced, He continued : 
 what has been, will be. Surely this is good and 
 clear reasoning. To my own mind, certainly, it is 
 incomparably more difficult to believe that the Divine 
 Being should do one miracle and no more, than that 
 He should do a thousand ; that He should do one 
 great miracle only, than that He should do a multitude 
 of less besides. This beautiful world of nature, His 
 own work, He broke its harmony ; He broke through 
 His own laws which He had imposed on it; He 
 worked out His purposes, not simply through it, but 
 in violation of it. If He did this only in the lifetime 
 of the Apostles, if He did it but once, eighteen huiv 
 dred years ago and more, that isolated infringement 
 looks as the mere infringement of a rule : if Divine 
 Wisdom would not leave an infringement, an anomaly, 
 a solecism on His work, He might be expected to 
 introduce a series of miracles, and turn the apparent 
 exception into an additional law of His providence. 
 If the Divine Being does a thing once, He is, judging
 
 MIRACLES. 171 
 
 by human reason, likely to do it again. This surely is 
 common sense. If a beggar gets food at a gentleman's 
 house once, does he not send others thither after him ? 
 If you are attacked by thieves once, do you forthwith 
 leave your windows open at night ? If an acquaint- 
 ance were convicted of a fraud, would you let that be 
 the signal for reposing confidence in him, as a man 
 who could not possibly deceive you ? Nay, suppose 
 you yourselves were once to see a miracle, would you 
 not feel that experience to be like passing a line ? 
 should you, in consequence of it, declare, "I never 
 will believe another if I hear of one ? " would it not, 
 on the contrary, predispose you to listen to a new 
 report? would you scoff at it and call it priestcraft 
 for the reason that you had actually seen one with 
 your own eyes ? I think you would not ; then I ask 
 what is the difference of the argument, whether you 
 have seen one or believe one ? You believe the 
 Apostolic miracles, therefore be inclined beforehand 
 to believe later ones. Thus you see, our First Prin- 
 ciple, that miracles are not unlikely now, is not at all 
 a strange one in the mouths of those who believe that 
 the Supreme Being came miraculously into this world, 
 miraculously united Himself to man's nature, passed a 
 life of miracles and then gave His Apostles a greater 
 gift of miracles, than He exercised Himself. So far on 
 the principle itself ; and now, in the next place, see 
 what comes of it. 
 
 This comes of it, that there are two systems going 
 on in the world, one of nature, and one above nature ; 
 and two histories, one of common events, and one of 
 miracles ; and each system and each history has its
 
 172 MIRACLES. 
 
 own order. When I hear of the miracle of a Saint, 
 my first feeling would be of the same kind as if it 
 were a report of any natural exploit or event. Sup- 
 posing, for instance, I heard a report of the death of 
 some public man ; it would not startle me, even if I 
 did not at once credit it, for all men must die. Did 
 I read of any great feat of valor, I should believe it, 
 if imputed to Alexander or Cceur de Lion. Did I 
 hear of any act of baseness, I should disbelieve it, 
 if imputed to a friend whom I knew and loved. And 
 so, in like manner, were a miracle reported to me as 
 wrought by a member of Parliament, or a Bishop of 
 the Establishment, or a Wesleyan preacher, I should 
 repudiate the notion : were it referred to a saint, or 
 the relic of a saint, or the intercession of a saint, I 
 should not be startled at it, though I might not at 
 once believe it. And I certainly should be right in 
 this conduct, supposing my First Principle be true. 
 Miracles to the Catholic are facts of history and biog- 
 raphy, and nothing else ; and they are to be regarded 
 and dealt with as other facts ; and as natural facts, 
 under circumstances, do not startle Protestants, so 
 supernatural, under circumstances, do not startle the 
 Catholic. 1 They may or may not have taken place in 
 particular cases; he may be unable to determine 
 
 1 Douglas, succeeding Middleton, lays down the sceptical and 
 Protestant First Principle thus : " The history of miracles (to 
 make use of the words of an author, whose authority you will 
 think of some weight) is of a kind totally different from that of 
 common events ; the one to be suspected always of course, without 
 the strongest evidence to confirm it ; the other to be admitted of 
 course, without as strong reason to suspect it," etc. Criterion, p. 26.
 
 MIRACLES. 173 
 
 which ; he may have no distinct evidence ; he may 
 suspend his judgment, but he will say, " It is very pos- 
 sible ; " he never will say, " I cannot believe it." 
 
 Take the history of Alfred : you know his wise, 
 mild, beneficent, yet daring character, and his roman- 
 tic vicissitudes of fortune. This great king has a 
 number of stories, or, as you may call them, legends, 
 told of him. Do you believe them all ? no. Do you, 
 on the other hand, think them incredible ? no. Do 
 you call a man a dupe or a blockhead for believing 
 them ? no. Do you call an author a knave and a cheat 
 who records them ? no. You go into neither extreme, 
 whether of implicit faith or of violent reprobation. 
 You are not so extravagant ; you see that they suit his 
 character, they may have been ; yet this is so romantic, 
 that has so little evidence, a third is so confused in 
 dates or in geography, that you are in matter of fact 
 indisposed towards them. Others are probably true, 
 others certainly. Nor do you force every one to take 
 your own view of particular stories ; you and your 
 neighbours think differently about this or that in detail 
 and agree to differ. There is in the Museum at 
 Oxford, a jewel or trinket said to be Alfred's ; it is 
 shown to all comers : I never heard the keeper of the 
 Museum accused of hypocrisy or fraud for showing, 
 with Alfred's name appended, what he might or might 
 not himself believe to have belonged to that great king : 
 nor did I ever see any party of strangers, who were 
 looking at it with awe, regarded by any self-complacent 
 bystander with scornful compassion. Yet the relic is 
 not to a certainty Alfred's. The world pays civil 
 honour to it on the probability; we pay religious
 
 174 MIRACLES. 
 
 honour to relics, if so be, on the probability. Is the 
 Tower of London shut against sightseers, because the 
 coats of mail or pikes there may have half legendary 
 tales connected with them ? why then may not the 
 country people come up in joyous companies, singing 
 and piping, to see the Holy Coat at Treves ? There is 
 our Queen again, who is so truly and justly popular ; 
 she roves about in the midst of tradition and romance ; 
 she scatters myths and legends from her as she goes 
 along ; she is a being of poetry, and you might fairly 
 be sceptical whether she had any personal existence. 
 She is always at some beautiful, noble, bounteous work 
 or other, if you trust the papers. She is doing alms- 
 deeds in the Highlands; she meets beggars in her 
 rides at Windsor; she writes verses in albums, or 
 draws sketches, or is mistaken for the housekeeper by 
 some blind old woman, or she runs up a hill, as if she 
 were a child. Who finds fault with these things ? he 
 would be a cynic, he would be white-livered, and would 
 have gall for blood, who was not struck with this grace- 
 ful, touching evidence of the love which her subjects 
 bear her. Who could have the head, even if he had 
 the heart, who could be so cross and peevish, who 
 could be so solemn and perverse, as to say that some 
 of the stories may be simple lies, and all of them might 
 have stronger evidence than they carry with them ? 
 Do you think she is displeased at them? Why, then, 
 should He, the Great Father, who once walked the 
 earth, look sternly on the unavoidable mistakes of His 
 own subjects and children in their devotion to Him 
 and His ? Even granting they mistake some cases in 
 particular, from the infirmity of human nature, and the
 
 MIRACLES. 175 
 
 contingencies of evidence, and fancy there is or has 
 been a miracle here or there when there is not ; 
 though a tradition, attached to a picture, or to a shrine, 
 or to a well, be very doubtful ; though one relic be 
 sometimes mistaken for another, and St. Theodore 
 stands for St. Eugenius, or St. Agathocles ; still, once 
 take into account our First Principle, that He is likely 
 to continue miracles among us, which is as good as the 
 Protestant's, and I do not see why He should feel 
 much displeasure with us on account of this error, or 
 should cease to work wonders in our behalf. In the 
 Protestant's view, indeed, who assumes that miracles 
 never are, our thaumatology is one great falsehood ; 
 but that is his First Principle, as I have said so often, 
 which he does not prove but assume. If he, indeed, 
 upheld our system, or we held his principle, in either 
 case he or we should be impostors ; but though we 
 should be partners to a fraud, if we thought like Prot- 
 estants, we surely are not, because we think like 
 Catholics. 
 
 Such, then, is the answer which I make to those 
 who would urge against us the multitude of miracles 
 recorded in our Saints' Lives and devotional works, 
 for many of which there is little evidence, and for some 
 next to none. We think them true in the sense in 
 which Protestants think the details of English history 
 true. When they say that, they do not mean to say 
 there are no mistakes in it, but no mistakes of conse- 
 quence, none which alter the general course of history. 
 Nor do they mean they are equally sure of every part; 
 for evidence is fuller and better for some things than
 
 176 MIRACLES. 
 
 for others. They do not stake their credit on the truth 
 of Froissart or Sully, they do not pledge themselves for 
 the accuracy of Doddington or Walpole, they do not 
 embrace as an Evangelist, Hume, Sharon Turner, or 
 Macaulay. And yet they do not think it necessary, on 
 the other hand, to commence a religious war against 
 all our historical catechisms, and abstracts, and dic- 
 tionaries, and tales and biographies, through the 
 country; they have no call on them to amend and 
 expurgate books of archaeology, antiquities, heraldry, 
 architecture, geography, and statistics, to rewrite our 
 inscriptions, and to establish a censorship on all new 
 publications for the time to come. And so as regards 
 the miracles of the Catholic Church ; if, indeed, 
 miracles never can occur, then, indeed, impute the nar- 
 ratives to fraud ; but till you prove they are not likely, 
 we shall Consider the histories which have come down 
 to us true on the whole, though in particular cases they 
 may be exaggerated or unfounded. Where, indeed, 
 they can certainly be proved to be false, there we shall 
 be bound to do our best to get rid of them ; but till 
 that is clear f we shall be liberal enough to allow others 
 to use their private judgment in their favour, as we use 
 ours in their disparagement. For myself, lest I appear 
 in any way to be shrinking from a determinate judg- 
 ment on the claims of some of those miracles and relics, 
 which Protestants are so startled at, and to be hiding 
 particular questions in what is vague and general, I 
 will avow distinctly, that, putting out of the question 
 the hypothesis of unknown laws of nature (that is, of 
 the professed miracle being not miraculous), I think it 
 impossible to withstand the evidence which is brought
 
 MIRACLES. 177 
 
 for the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius at 
 Naples, and for the motion of the eyes of the pictures 
 of the Madonna in the Roman States. I see no reason 
 to doubt the material of the Lombard crown at Monza ; 
 and I do not see why the Holy Coat at Treves may 
 not have been what it professes to be. I firmly believe 
 that portions of the True Cross are at Rome and else- 
 where, that the Crib, of Bethlehem is at Rome, and the 
 bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul also. I believe that 
 at Rome too lies St. Stephen, that St. Matthew lies at 
 Salerno, and St. Andrew at Amalfi. I firmly believe 
 that the relics of the saints are doing innumerable mira- 
 cles and graces daily, and that it needs only for a 
 Catholic to show devotion to any saint in order to 
 receive special benefits from his intercession. I firmly 
 believe that saints in their life-time have before now 
 raised the dead to life, crossed the sea without vessels, 
 multiplied grain and bread, cured incurable diseases, 
 and superseded the operation of the laws of the uni- 
 verse in a multitude, of ways. Many men, when they 
 hear an educated man so speak, will at once impute 
 the avowal to insanity, or to an idiosyncrasy, or to 
 imbecility of mind, or to decrepitude of powers, or to 
 fanaticism, or to hypocrisy. They have a right to say 
 so, if they will ; and we have a right to ask them why 
 they do not say it of those who bow down before the 
 Mystery of mysteries, the Divine Incarnation. If they 
 do not believe this, they are not yet Protestants ; if 
 they do, let them grant that He who has done the 
 greater may do the less. Present Position of Catholics, 
 ed. 1889, pp. 303-313 (1851). 
 
 12
 
 (Burta an& 
 
 IN the bosom of the woods which stretched for 
 many miles from the immediate environs of Sicca, and 
 placed on a gravel slope reaching down to a brook, 
 which ran in a bottom close by, was a small, rude hut, 
 of a kind peculiar to Africa, and commonly ascribed to 
 the wandering tribes, who neither cared, nor had 
 leisure, for a more stable habitation. Some might 
 have called it a tent, from the goat's-hair cloth with 
 which it was covered ; but it looked, as to shape, like 
 nothing else than an inverted boat, or the roof of a 
 house set upon the ground. Inside it was seen to be 
 constructed of the branches of trees, twisted together or 
 wattled, the interstices, or rather the whole surface, 
 being covered with clay. Being thus stoutly built, 
 lined, and covered, it was proof against the tremen- 
 dous rains, to which the climate, for which it was 
 made, was subject. Along the centre ridge or back- 
 bone, which varied in height from six to ten feet from 
 the ground, it was supported by three posts or pillars ; 
 at one end it rose conically to an open aperture, which 
 served for chimney, for sky-light, and for ventilator. 
 Hooks were suspended from the roof for baskets, ar- 
 ticles of clothing, weapons, and implements of various 
 kinds ; and a second cone, excavated in the ground with 
 the vertex downward, served as a storehouse for grain.
 
 GURTA AND JUBA. 179 
 
 The door was so low, that an ordinary person must 
 bend double to pass through it. 
 
 However, it was in the winter months only, when 
 the rains were profuse, that the owner of this respect- 
 able mansion condescended to creep into it. In sum- 
 mer she had a drawing-room, as it may be called, of 
 nature's own creation, in which she lived, and in one 
 quarter of which she had her lair. Close above the 
 hut was a high plot of level turf, surrounded by old 
 oaks, and fringed beneath with thick underwood. In 
 the centre of this green rose a yew tree of primeval 
 character. Indeed, the whole forest spoke of the very 
 beginnings of the world, as if it had been the immedi- 
 ate creation of that Voice which bade the earth clothe 
 itself with green life. But the place no longer spoke 
 exclusively of its Maker. Upon the trees hung the 
 emblems and objects of idolatry, and the turf was 
 traced with magical characters. Littered about were 
 human bones, horns of wild animals, wax figures, 
 spermaceti taken from vaults, large nails, to which 
 portions of flesh adhered, as if they had had to do 
 with malefactors, metal plates engraved with strange 
 characters, bottled blood, hair of young persons, and 
 old rags. The reader must not suppose any incanta- 
 tion is about to follow, or that the place we are de- 
 scribing will have a prominent place in what remains 
 of our tale ; but even if it be the scene of only one 
 conversation, and one event, there is no harm in de- 
 scribing it, as it appeared on that occasion. 
 
 The old crone, who was seated in this bower of de- 
 light, had an expression of countenance in keeping, 
 not with the place, but with the furniture with which it
 
 i8o GURTA AND JUBA. 
 
 was adorned : that furniture told her trade. Whether 
 the root of superstition might be traced deeper still, 
 and the woman and her traps were really and directly 
 connected with the powers beneath the earth, it is im- 
 possible to determine : it is certain she had the will, it 
 is certain that that will was from their inspiration ; 
 nay, it is certain that she thought she really possessed 
 the communications which she desired ; it is certain, 
 too, she so far deceived herself as to fancy that what 
 she learned by mere natural means came to her from 
 a diabolical source. She kept up an active corre- 
 spondence with Sicca. She was consulted by 
 numbers : she was up with the public news, the social 
 gossip, and the private and secret transactions of the 
 hour ; and had, before now, even interfered in matters 
 of state, and had been courted by rival political parties. 
 But in the high cares and occupations of this interest- 
 ing person, we are not here concerned ; but with a 
 conversation which took place between her and Juba, 
 about the same hour of the evening as that of 
 Caecilius's escape, but on the day after it, while the 
 sun was gleaming almost horizontally through the tall 
 trunks of the trees of the forest. 
 
 " Well, my precious boy, " said the old woman, " the 
 choicest gifts of great Cham be your portion ! You 
 had excellent sport yesterday, I'll warrant. The rats 
 squeaked, eh ? and you beat the life out of them. That 
 scoundrel sacristan, I suppose, has taken up his 
 quarters below. " 
 
 " You may say it, " answered Juba. " The reptile ! 
 he turned right about, and would have made himself 
 an honest fellow, when it couldn't be helped. "
 
 GUR TA AND JUBA. 18 1 
 
 " Good, good ! " returned Gurta, as if she had got 
 something very pleasant in her mouth ; " ah ! that is 
 good ! but he_ did not escape on that score, I do 
 trust. " 
 
 "They pulled him to pieces all the more cheer- 
 fully, " said Juba. 
 
 " Pulled him to pieces, limb by limb, joint by joint, 
 eh ? " answered Gurta. " Did they skin him ? did 
 they do anything to his eyes, or his tongue ? Anyhow, 
 it was too quickly, Juba. Slowly, leisurely, gradually. 
 Yes, it's like a glutton to be quick about it. Taste 
 him, handle him, play with him, that's luxury ! but to 
 bolt him, faugh ! " 
 
 " Caeso's slave made a good end, " said Juba : " he 
 stood up for his views, and died like a man. " 
 
 " The gods smite him ! but he has gone up, up : " 
 and she laughed. " Up to what they call bliss and 
 glory ; such glory ! but he's out of our domain, you 
 know. But he did not die easy ? " 
 
 " The boys worried him a good deal, " answered 
 Juba : " but it's not quite in my line, mother, all this. 
 I think you drink a pint of blood morning and even- 
 ing, and thrive on it, old woman. It makes you 
 merry ; but it's too much for my stomach." 
 
 " Ha, ha, my boy ! " cried Gurta : " you'll improve 
 in time, though you make wry faces, now that you're 
 young. Well, and have you brought me any news 
 from the capitol ? Is any one getting a rise in the 
 world, or a downfall ? How blows the wind ? Are 
 there changes in the camp ? This Decius, I suspect, 
 will not last long." 
 
 " They all seem desperately frightened," said Juba, 
 IS
 
 182 GURTA AND JUBA. 
 
 " lest they should not smite your friends hard enough, 
 Gurta. Root and branch is the word. They'll have 
 to make a few Christians for the occasion, in order to 
 kill them : and I almost think they're about it," he 
 added, thoughtfully. " They have to show that they 
 are not surpassed by the rabble. 'Tis a pity Chris- 
 tians are so few, isn't it, mother ? " 
 
 " Yes, yes," she said ; " but we must crush them, 
 grind them, many or few : and we shall, we shall ! 
 Callista's to come." 
 
 " I don't see they are worse than other people," said 
 Juba ; " not at all, except that they are commonly 
 sneaks. If Callista turns, why should not I turn too, 
 mother, to keep her company, and keep your hand 
 in?" 
 
 " No, no, my boy," returned the witch, " you must 
 serve my master. You are having your fling just now, 
 but you will buckle to in good time. You must one 
 day take some work with my merry men. Come here, 
 child," said the fond mother, " and let me kiss you." 
 
 " Keep your kisses for your monkeys, and goats, 
 and cats," answered Juba : " they're not to my taste> 
 old dame. Master ! my master ! I won't have a mas- 
 ter! I'll be nobody's servant. I'll never stand to be 
 hired, nor cringe to a bully, nor quake before a rod. 
 Please yourself, Gurta ; I'm a free man. You're my 
 mother by courtesy only." 
 
 Gurta looked at him savagely. " Why you're not 
 going to be pious and virtuous, Juba ? A choice saint 
 you'll make ! You shall be drawn for a picture." 
 
 " Why shouldn't I, if I choose ? " said Juba. " If I 
 must take service, willy, nilly, I'd any day prefer the
 
 GURTA AND JUBA. 183 
 
 other's to that of your friend. I've not left the master 
 to take the man." 
 
 " Blaspheme not the great gods," she answered, "or 
 they'll do you a mischief yet." 
 
 " I say again," insisted Juba, " if I must lick the 
 earth, it shall not be where your friend has trod. It 
 shall be in my brother's fashion, rather than in yours, 
 Gurta." 
 
 " Agellius ! " she shrieked out with such disgust, 
 that it is wonderful she uttered the name at all. "Ah! 
 you have not told me about him, boy. Well, is he safe 
 in the pit, or in the stomach of an hyena ? " 
 
 " He's alive," said Juba ; " but he has not got it in 
 him to be a Christian. Yes, he's safe with his uncle." 
 
 " Ah ! Jucundus must ruin him, debauch him, and 
 then we must make away with him. We must not be 
 in a hurry," said Gurta, " it must be body and soul." 
 
 " No one shall touch him, craven as he is," an- 
 swered Juba. " I despise him, but let him alone." 
 
 " Don't come across me," said Gurta, sullenly ; " I'll 
 have my way. Why, you know I could smite you to 
 the dust, as well as him, if I chose." 
 
 " But you have not asked me about Callista," an- 
 swered Juba. " It is really a capital joke, but she has 
 got into prison for certain, for being a Christian. 
 Fancy it ! they caught her in the streets, and put her 
 in the guard-house, and have had her up for examina- 
 tion. You see they want a Christian for the nonce : it 
 would not do to have none such in prison ; so they 
 will flourish with her till Decius bolts from the scene. 
 
 " The furies have her ! " cried Gurta : " she is a 
 Christian, my boy : I told you so, long ago."
 
 184 GURTA AND JUS A. 
 
 " Callista a Christian ! " answered Juba, " ha ! ha ! 
 She and Agellius are going to make a match of it, of 
 some sort or other. They're thinking of other things 
 than paradise." 
 
 " She and the old priest, more likely, more likely," 
 said Gurta. " He's in prison with her, in the pit, as 
 I trust." 
 
 " Your master has cheated you for once, old woman," 
 said Juba. 
 
 Gurta looked at him fiercely, and seemed waiting 
 for his explanation. He began singing : 
 
 " She wheedled and coaxed, but he was no fool ; 
 He'd be his own master, he'd not be her tool ; 
 Not the little black moor should send him to school. 
 
 " She foamed and she cursed, 'twas the same thing to him ; 
 She laid well her trap ; but he carried his whim : 
 The priest scuffled off, safe in life and in limb." 
 
 Gurta was almost suffocated with passion. " Cyp- 
 rianus has not escaped, boy ? " she asked at length. 
 
 " I got him off," said Juba, undauntedly. 
 
 A shade, as of Erebus, passed over the witch's 
 face ; but she remained quite silent. 
 
 " Mother, I am my own master," he continued. " I 
 must break your assumption of superiority. I'm not 
 a boy, though you call me so. I'll have my own way. 
 Yes, I saved Cyprianus. You're a bloodthirsty old 
 hag ! Yes, Pve seen your secret doings. Did not I 
 catch you the other day, practising on that little child ? 
 You had nailed him up by hands and feet against the 
 tree, and were cutting him to pieces at your leisure,
 
 GURTA AND JUBA. 185 
 
 as he quivered and shrieked the .while. You were 
 examining or using his liver for some of your black 
 purposes. It's not in my line ; but you gloated over 
 it ; and when he wailed, you wailed in mimicry. You 
 were panting with pleasure." 
 
 Gurta was still silent, and had an expression on 
 her face, awful from the intensity of its malignity. 
 She had uttered a low piercing whistle. 
 
 " Yes ! " continued Juba, " you revelled in it. You 
 chattered to the poor babe, when it screamed, as a 
 nurse to an infant. You called it pretty names, and 
 squeaked out your satisfaction each time you stuck it. 
 You old hag ! I'm not of your breed, though they 
 say I am of your blood. / don't fear you," he said, 
 observing the expression of her countenance, " I don't 
 fear the immortal devil ! " And he continued his 
 song : 
 
 " She beckoned the moon, and the moon came down ; 
 The green earth shrivelled beneath her frown ; 
 But a man's strong will can keep his own." 
 
 While he was talking and singing, her call had 
 been answered from the hut. An animal of some 
 wonderful species had crept out of it, and proceeded 
 to creep and crawl, moeing and twisting as it went, 
 along the trees and shrubs which rounded the grass 
 plot. When it came up to the old woman, it crouched 
 at her feet, and then rose up upon its hind legs and 
 begged. She took hold of the uncouth beast and 
 began to fondle it in her arms, muttering something in 
 its ear. At length, when Juba stopped for a moment 
 in his song, she suddenly flung it right at him, with
 
 l86 GURTA AMD JUBA. 
 
 great force, saying, " Take that ! " She then gave 
 utterance to a low inward laugh, and leaned herself 
 back against the trunk of the tree under which she 
 was sitting, with her knees drawn up almost to her 
 chin. 
 
 The blow seemed to act on Juba as a shock on his 
 nervous system, both from its violence and its strange- 
 ness. He stood still for a moment, and then, without 
 saying a word, he turned away, and walked slowly 
 down the hill, as if in a maze. Then he sat down. . . . 
 
 In an instant up he started again with a great cry, 
 and began running at the top of his speed. He 
 thought he heard a voice speaking in him ; and, how- 
 ever fast he ran, the voice, or whatever it was, kept up 
 with him. He rushed through the underwood, tram- 
 pling and crushing it under his feet, and scaring the 
 birds and small game which lodged there. At last, 
 exhausted, he stood still for breath, when he heard it 
 say loudly and deeply, as if speaking with his own 
 organs, " You cannot escape from yourself ! " Then a 
 terror seized him ; he fell down and fainted away. 
 
 When his senses returned, his first impression was 
 of something in him not himself. He felt it in his 
 breathing ; he tasted it in his mouth. The brook 
 which ran by Gurta's encampment had by this time 
 become a streamlet, though still shallow. He plunged 
 into it; a feeling came upon him as if he ought to 
 drown himself, had it been deeper. He rolled about 
 in it, in spite of its flinty and rocky bed. When he 
 came out of it, his tunic sticking to him, he tore it off 
 his shoulders, and let it hang round his girdle in 
 shreds, as it might. The shock of the water, however,
 
 GURTA AND JUS A. 187 
 
 acted as a sedative upon him, and the coolness of the 
 night refreshed him. He walked on for a while in 
 silence. 
 
 Suddenly the power within him began uttering, by 
 means of his organs of speech, the most fearful blas- 
 phemies, words embodying conceptions which, had they 
 come into his mind, he might indeed have borne with 
 patience before this, or uttered in bravado, but which 
 now filled him with inexpressible loathing, and a 
 terror to which he had hitherto been quite a stranger. 
 He had always in his heart believed in a God, but he 
 now believed with a reality and intensity utterly new 
 to him. He felt it as if he saw Him; he felt there 
 was a world of good and evil beings. He did not love 
 the good, or hate the evil ; but he shrank from the 
 one, and he was terrified at the other; and he felt 
 himself carried away, against his will, as the prey of 
 some dreadful, mysterious power, which tyrannized 
 over him. 
 
 The day had closed the moon had risen. He 
 plunged into the thickest wood, and the trees seemed 
 to him to make way for him. Still they seemed to 
 moan and to creak as they moved out of their place. 
 Soon he began to see that they were looking at him, 
 and exulting over his misery. They, of an inferior 
 nature, had had no gift which they could abuse and 
 lose ; and they remained in that honour and perfection 
 in which they were created. Birds of the night flew 
 out of them, reptiles slunk away ; yet soon he began 
 to be surrounded, wherever he went, by a circle of 
 owls, bats, ravens, crows, snakes, wild cats, and apes 
 which were always looking at him, but somehow made
 
 1 88 GURTA AND JUBA. 
 
 way, retreating before him, and yet forming again, and 
 in order, as he marched along. 
 
 He had passed through the wing of the forest which 
 he entered, and penetrated into the more mountainous 
 country. He ascended the heights ; he was a taller, 
 stronger man than he had been ; he went forward with 
 a preternatural vigour, and flourished his arms with 
 the excitement of some vinous or gaseous intoxication. 
 He heard the roar of the wild beasts echoed along the 
 woody ravines which were cut into the solid mountain 
 rock, with a reckless feeling, as if he could cope with 
 them. As he passed the dens of the lion, leopard, 
 hyena, jackal, wild boar, and wolf, there he saw them 
 sitting at the entrance, or stopping suddenly as they 
 prowled along, and eyeing him, but not daring to 
 approach. He strode along from rock to rock, and 
 over precipices, with the certainty and ease of some 
 giant in Eastern fable. Suddenly a beast of prey came 
 across him ; in a moment he had torn up by the roots 
 the stump of a wild vine plant, which was near him, 
 had thrown himself upon his foe before it could act on 
 the aggressive, had flung it upon its back, forced the 
 weapon into its mouth, and was stamping on its chest. 
 He knocked the life out of the furious animal ; and 
 crying " Take that," tore its flesh, and, applying his 
 mouth to the wound, sucked a draught of its blood. 
 
 He has passed over the mountain, and has de- 
 scended its side. Bristling shrubs, swamps, precipitous 
 banks, rushing torrents, are no obstacle to his course. 
 He has reached the brow of a hill, with a deep placid 
 river at the foot of it, just as the dawn begins to break. 
 It is a lovely prospect, which every step he takes is
 
 GURTA AND JVBA. 189 
 
 becoming more definite and more various in the day- 
 light. Masses of oleander, of great beauty, with their 
 red blossoms, fringed the river, and tracked out its 
 course into the distance. The bank of the hill below 
 him, and on the right and left, was a maze of fruit 
 trees, about which nature, if it were not the hand of 
 man, had had no thought except that they should be 
 all together there. The wild olive, the pomegranate, 
 the citron, the date, the mulberry, the peach, the apple, 
 and the walnut, formed a sort of spontaneous orchard. 
 Across the water groves of palm trees waved their long 
 and graceful branches in the morning breeze. The 
 stately and solemn ilex, marshalled into long avenues, 
 showed the way to substantial granges or luxurious 
 villas. The green turf or grass was spread out be- 
 neath, and here and there flocks and herds were 
 emerging out of the twilight and growing distinct 
 upon the eye. Elsewhere the ground rose up into 
 sudden eminences crowned with chestnut woods, or 
 with plantations of cedar and acacia, or wildernesses 
 of the cork tree, the turpentine, the carooba, the 
 white poplar, and the Phenician juniper, while overhead 
 ascended the clinging tendrils of the hop, and an under- 
 wood of myrtle clothed their stems and roots. A pro- 
 fusion of wild flowers carpeted the ground far and near. 
 Juba stood and gazed till the sun rose opposite to 
 him, envying, repining, hating, like Satan looking in 
 upon Paradise. The wild mountains, or the locust- 
 smitten tract would have better suited the tumult of 
 his mind. It would have been a relief to him to have 
 retreated from so fair a scene, and to have retraced 
 his steps, but he was not his own master, and was
 
 190 QURTA AND f US A. 
 
 hurried on. Sorely against his determined strong 
 resolve and will, crying out and protesting and 
 shuddering, the youth was forced along into the ful- 
 ness of beauty and blessing with which he was so 
 little in tune. With rage and terror he recognized 
 that he had no part in his own movements, but was a 
 mere slave. In spite of himself he must go forward 
 and behold a peace and sweetness which witnessed 
 against him. He dashed down through the thick 
 grass, plunged into the water, and without rest or res- 
 pite began a second course of aimless toil and travail 
 through the day. 
 
 The savage dogs of the villages howled and fled from 
 him as he passed by ; beasts of burden, on their way to 
 market, which he overtook or met, stood still, foamed 
 and trembled ; the bright birds, the blue jay and 
 golden oriole, hid themselves under the leaves and 
 grass ; the storks, a religious and domestic bird, 
 stopped their sharp clattering note from the high tree 
 or farmhouse turret, where they had placed their nests ; 
 the very reptiles skulked away from his shadow, as if it 
 were poisonous. The boors who were at their labour 
 in the fields suspended it to look at one whom the 
 Furies were lashing and whirling on. Hour passed 
 after hour, the sun attained its zenith, and then de- 
 clined, but this dreadful compulsory race continued. 
 O what would he have given for one five minutes of 
 oblivion, of slumber, of relief from the burning thirst 
 which now consumed him ! but the master within him 
 ruled his muscles and his joints, and the intense pain 
 of weariness had no concomitant of prostration of 
 strength. Suddenly he began to laugh hideously ; and
 
 GURTA AND JUBA. 191 
 
 he went forward dancing and singing loud, and playing 
 antics. He entered a hovel, made faces at the chil- 
 dren, till one of them fell into convulsions, and he ran 
 away with another ; and, when some country people 
 pursued him, he flung the child in their faces saying, 
 " Take that," and said he was Pentheus, King of 
 Thebes, of whom he had never heard, about to sol- 
 emnize the orgies of Bacchus, and he began to spout 
 a chorus of Greek, a language he had never learnt or 
 heard spoken. 
 
 Now it is evening again, and he has come up to a 
 village grove, where the rustics were holding a feast in 
 honour of Pan. The hideous brutal god, with yawn- 
 ing mouth, horned head, and goat's feet, was placed in 
 a rude shed, and a slaughtered lamb, decked with 
 flowers, lay at his feet. The peasants were frisking 
 before him, boys and women, when they were startled 
 by the sight of a gaunt, wild, mysterious figure, which 
 began to dance too. He flung and capered about with 
 such vigour that they ceased their sport to look on, 
 half with awe and half as a diversion. Suddenly he 
 began to groan and to shriek, as if contending with 
 himself, and willing and not willing some new act ; 
 and the struggle ^nded in his falling on his hands and 
 knees, and crawling like a quadruped towards the idol. 
 When he got near, his attitude was still more servile ; 
 still groaning and shuddering, he laid himself flat on 
 the ground, and wriggled to the idol as a worm, and 
 lapped up with his tongue the mingled blood and dust 
 which lay about the sacrifice. And then again, as if 
 nature had successfully asserted her own dignity, he 
 jumped up high in the air, and, falling on the god,
 
 192 CURT A AND JUBA. 
 
 broke him to pieces, and scampered away out of pur- 
 suit, before the lookers-on recovered from the surprise. 
 Another restless, fearful night amid the open coun- 
 try ; . . . but it seemed as if the worst had passed, 
 and, though still under the heavy chastisement of his 
 pride, there was more in Juba of human action and of 
 effectual will. The day broke and he found himself 
 on the road to Sicca. The beautiful outline of the 
 city was right before him. He passed his brother's 
 cottage and garden ; it was a wreck. The trees torn 
 up, the fences broken down, and the room pillaged of 
 the little that could be found there. He went on to 
 the city, crying out Agellius ; the gate was open, and 
 he entered. He went on to the Forum ; he crossed to 
 the house of Jucundus ; few people as yet were stirring 
 in the place. He looked up at the wall. Suddenly, 
 by the help of projections and other irregularities of 
 the brick-work, he mounted up upon the flat roof, and 
 dropped down, along the tiles, through the impluvium 
 into the middle of the house. He went softly into 
 Agellius's closet, where he was asleep, he roused him 
 with the name of Callista, threw his tunic upon him, 
 which was by his side, put his boots into his hands, 
 and silently beckoned him to follow* him. When he 
 hesitated, he still whispered to him Callista, and at 
 length seized him and led him on. He unbarred the 
 street door, and with a movement of his arm, more 
 like a blow than a farewell, thrust him into the street. 
 Then he barred again the door upon him, and lay 
 down himself upon the bed which Agellius had left. 
 His good angel, we may suppose, had gained a point 
 in his favour, for he lay quiet and fell into a heavy 
 sleep. Callista^ ed. 1856, chap. 23 (1855).
 
 CalHsta's melon. 
 
 O WISDOM of the world ! and strength of the world ! 
 what are you when matched beside the foolishness 
 and the weakness of the Christian ? You are great in 
 resources, manifold in methods, hopeful in prospects', 
 but one thing you have not, and that is peace. You 
 are always tumultuous, restless, apprehensive. You 
 have nothing you can rely upon. You have no rock 
 under your feet. But the humblest, feeblest Christian 
 has that which is impossible to you. Callista had 
 once felt the misery of maladies akin to yours. She 
 had passed through doubt, anxiety, perplexity, despon- 
 dency, passion ; but now she was in peace. Now she 
 feared the torture or the flame as little as the breeze 
 which arose at nightfall, or the busy chatter of the 
 grasshoppers at the noonday. Nay, rather, she did 
 not think of torture and death at all, but was pos- 
 sessed by a peace which bore her up, as if bodily, on 
 its mighty wings. For hours she remained on her 
 knees, after Caecilius left her : then she lay down on 
 her rushes and slept her last mortal sleep. 
 
 She slept sound ; she dreamed. She thought she 
 was no longer in Africa, but in her own Greece, more 
 sunny and bright than before ; but the inhabitants 
 were gone. Its majestic mountains, its rich plains, its 
 expanse of waters, all silent : no one to converse with, 
 193
 
 194 CALLISTA'S VISION. 
 
 no one to sympathize with. And, as she wandered on 
 and wondered, suddenly its face changed, and its 
 colours were illuminated tenfold by a heavenly glory, 
 and each hue upon the scene was of a beauty she had 
 never known, and seemed strangely to affect all her 
 senses at once, being fragrance and music, as well as 
 light. And there came out of the grottos, and glens, 
 and woods, and out of the seas, myriads of bright 
 images, whose forms she could not discern ; and these 
 came all around her, and became a sort of scene or 
 landscape, which she could not have described in 
 words, as if it were a world of spirits, not of matter. 
 And as she gazed, she thought she saw before her a 
 well-known face, only glorified. She, who had been 
 a slave, now was arrayed more brilliantly than an 
 oriental queen ; and she looked at Callista with a 
 smile so sweet, that Callista felt she could but dance 
 to it. 
 
 And as she looked more earnestly, doubting whether 
 she should begin or not, the face changed, and now 
 was more marvellous still. It had an innocence in its 
 look, and also a tenderness, which bespoke both Maid 
 and Mother, and so transported Callista, that she must 
 needs advance towards her, out of love and reverence. 
 And the Lady seemed to make signs of encourage- 
 ment : so she began a solemn measure, unlike all 
 dances of earth, with hands and feet, serenely moving 
 on towards what she heard some of them call a great 
 action and a glorious consummation, though she did 
 not know what they meant. At length she was fain to 
 sing as well as dance ; and her words were, " In the 
 Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
 
 CALLISTA'S VISION. 195 
 
 Ghost ; " on which another said, " A good beginning 
 of the sacrifice." And when she had come close to 
 this gracious figure, there was a fresh change. The 
 face, the features were the same ; but the light of Di- 
 vinity now seemed to beam through them, and the 
 hair parted, and hung down long on each side of the 
 forehead ; and there was a crown of another fashion 
 from the Lady's round about it, made of what looked 
 like thorns. And the palms of the hands were spread 
 out as if towards her, and there were marks of wounds 
 in them. And the vestment had fallen, and there was 
 a deep opening in the side. And as she stood en- 
 tranced before Him, and motionless, she felt a con- 
 sciousness that her own palms were pierced like His, 
 and her feet also. And she looked round, and saw 
 the likeness of His face and of His wounds upon all 
 that company. And now they were suddenly moving 
 on, and bearing something, or some one, heaven- 
 wards ; and they too began to sing, and their words 
 seemed to be, " Rejoice with Me, for I have found My 
 sheep," ever repeated. They went up through an 
 avenue or long grotto, with torches of diamonds, and 
 amethysts, and sapphires, which lit up its spars and 
 made them sparkle. And she tried to look, but could 
 not discover what they were carrying, till she heard 
 a very piercing cry, which awoke her. Callista, ed. 
 1856, chap. xxxi. (1855).
 
 NOTES. 
 
 i. Site of a University. This selection is taken from the third 
 chapter of the Rise and Progress of Universities, a series of papers 
 originally - published in Dublin in 1854, under the title Office and 
 Work of Universities, to supplement Newman's more formal and 
 elaborate Discourses on University Teaching (1852). Throughout 
 these papers, Newman's manner and method are characteristic. He 
 makes no parade of logical divisions or of abstract definitions ; 
 he is unpretentious, almost colloquial in style ; he has, as he says 
 of himself in the Apologia, "a lounging, free-and-easy way of 
 carrying things on." Yet despite this ease, unpretentiousness, lack 
 of formality, and apparent aimlessness, he guides the reader un- 
 erringly to a perfect intellectual possession of the subject under 
 discussion. He takes up in a pleasantly familiar tone one after 
 another of the great Universities and describes the characteristic- 
 ally good points in each; and in this seemingly unsystematic 
 fashion he gives the reader, without wearying him, a thorough 
 comprehension of the aims and the ideal conditions of University 
 life. Later chapters are Free Trade in Knowledge the Sophists : 
 Discipline, Macedonian and Jfoman Schools : Supply and Demand 
 the Schoolmen : Professors and Tutors. 
 
 4 : 8. A confined triangle. The passage that follows is a re- 
 markable bit of descriptive writing. The reader should note the 
 skilful definition of the outlines of the scene, the constant use of 
 sensations other than those of sight, the sensitive registration of 
 motions of various kinds, the continuous emphasis on details that 
 a painter would be powerless to reproduce, and finally the breadth 
 of handling by means of which details are made constantly subor- 
 dinate to total effect. All these points in Newman's method con- 
 tribute to the life, vivacity, symmetry, and imaginative glow of the
 
 198 NOTES. 
 
 description. The easy air of mastery is also characteristic of New- 
 man ; the tone never grows artificial and the note is never forced. 
 The tone is almost colloquial throughout, and at the very climax 
 of the description Newman does not hesitate to make his " agent 
 of a London Company " " bless his stars." 
 
 11 : i. To-day I have confined myself. This is an extract from 
 the seventh of the nine Discourses on University Teaching that 
 Newman delivered in 1852 to the Catholics of Dublin. Newman's 
 task was two-fold : first, to win over prelates and gentry to thor- 
 ough sympathy with the plan for the higher education of Catho- 
 lics; secondly, to organize the new institution and to determine 
 its aims and policy. He remained Rector of the University down 
 to 1858, when he returned to England, taking up his residence at 
 Birmingham, where the rest of his life was spent. It should be 
 borne in mind, in reading these extracts,that one important part of 
 Newman's task was to prove to rather narrowly religious ecclesi- 
 astics the need of general culture and of a knowledge of the world. 
 Accordingly, while a large part of the Discourses is devoted to 
 demonstrating the incompleteness of any curriculum that refuses 
 to recognize theology as a science and to include theological truth 
 as a legitimate subject of study, yet Newman never forgets that 
 he is also championing liberal knowledge both against the prej u- 
 dice of bigots and against the utilitarian objections of the prac- 
 tical man. These discourses illustrate strikingly the range of 
 Newman's sympathies. He appreciates the good in all modes of 
 life and types of character, while never for a moment falling into 
 the dilettante's fallacy that all lives or all characters are equally 
 good. 
 
 14 : I. Pride under such training. Newman's insight into 
 the springs of human action, his skill in tracing out the interplay 
 of motives, his intuitive knowledge of the structure and working 
 of individual minds and hearts were important sources of his power 
 oyer men. His works are full of evidences of this subtle compre- 
 hension of character. Sometimes he analyzes a mood, explaining 
 minutely its origin and its reaction in conduct and life. See, for ex- 
 ample, his account of detachment in chap. xi. of the Rise and Prog- 
 ress of Universities. Sometimes, as in the text, he follows out a 
 single quality in all its ramifications. Sometimes he develops a
 
 NOTES. 
 
 199 
 
 type of character in all its details of feeling and thought and 
 action. See, for example, in the present extract the description 
 of the gentleman and in the preceding extract the description of 
 the cultivated man of the world. In all these cases Newman's 
 complete mastery of the details of moral life is conspicuous, and 
 illustrates both the intensity of his imaginative sympathy with 
 souls and the keenness of his analysis. 
 
 19. Knowledge. . . . Learning. In the first four of his Dis- 
 courses on University Teaching Newman argues for the inclusion 
 of theology in a university curriculum. Science, he maintains, is 
 an organic whole made up of many complementary parts, of which 
 parts theology is the most important. A university, then, that 
 excludes theology from its list of studies offers its students not 
 simply incomplete knowledge, but mutilated knowledge ; the truth 
 that is left after theology is taken away is weakened and vitiated 
 throughout, and cannot perfectly fulfil its functions, because it 
 lacks the aid of the missing parts. In his plea for theology New- 
 man is contending against the ideal of education in accordance 
 with which London University had been founded in 1825-8. Cf. 
 Notes 88 : 5. A suggestive argument for this unecclesiastical ideal 
 may be found in the Edinburgh Review of Feb., 1826. Regarded 
 still more comprehensively, Newman's plea for theology is meant 
 to counteract anti-dogmatic theories of religion which teach that re- 
 ligion is merely a matter of feeling, that nothing certain can be 
 known about God or the future life, and that one set of ideas 
 about the unseen world is as good as another, provided each be 
 held sincerely and conduce on the whole to morality. Finally, 
 Newman's plea for theology was sure to win for him the sympathy 
 and confidence of even the most conservative of the Catholic ec- 
 clesiastics whom he was addressing, and to conciliate their favor 
 for the new university. To plead for theology, then, was the first 
 part of Newman's task. The second part was to .convince his 
 hearers, many of whom were almost fanatical in their adherence to 
 the Roman Catholic Church and in their intense distrust of the 
 tendencies of modern science, that a liberal education is essential 
 to fit men for the best kind of life. To this end he devotes Dis- 
 courses V.- VIII. The fifth Discourse demonstrates that know- 
 ledge is its own end, and is to be pursued, not because of its
 
 200 NOTES. 
 
 practical value in the mechanical arts, or because of its ameli- 
 orating effect on character, but simply and solely because of the 
 infinite desirableness for every individual of being able to com- 
 prehend " the relative disposition of things," and " to map out 
 the universe." This disinterested knowledge of things in their 
 causes is shown to be the end of Liberal Education. Such Liberal 
 Knowledge is then discriminated from Useful Knowledge, which 
 aims to minimize bodily discomforts and to supply temporal 
 wants. At this point the passage on Bacon occurs, which is 
 quoted, p. 41. Then follows Discourse VI., most of which is given 
 in the present Selection. The extracts, pp. 1 1, 14, and 44, are from 
 these same Discourses, and are parts of a continuous plea for the 
 value of a liberal education in forming a man for his proper place 
 in the world. 
 
 28 : 19. The world is all before it. An adaptation of the fourth 
 line from the end of the Paradise Lost : 
 
 The world was all before them, where to choose 
 Their place of rest, and Providence their guide." 
 
 28 : 30. The judgment-stricken king. See the Baccha of 
 Euripides, 918-9. Pentheus, King of Thebes, who has defied 
 Dionysus, and has been smitten with madness, speaks : 
 
 Kal /XT/V opav fj.01 860 fdv TJXfovs SOKU, 
 Kal 
 
 1 Lo, I seem to see two suns and a double Thebes as well, the 
 city of seven gates.' 
 
 34 : 28. Terpdyaiios. See Aristotle, Eth. N., I., x., 1 1 : dei yap 
 f//idXurra Trdvruv irpdti Kal Oewpififffi ra KO.T dper^v, Kal rds rtix a * 
 olirei (cdXXwra Kal irdvri} irdvruis ^u/xeXws 8 7' wj d\t)6us dyafffa Kal 
 TfTpdyuvos avev \f/6yov. 'For most persistently and strenuously of 
 all men will he pursue in deed and thought the things of virtue, 
 and endure the chances of life most nobly and most fittingly, 
 that man, I mean, who is truly good and four-square without 
 flaw.' 
 
 Aristotle and his followers are called the Peripatetics, because
 
 NOTES. 201 
 
 the master is supposed to have lectured to his pupils while walk- 
 ing about in the courts of the Lyceum. 
 
 34 : 28. Nil admirari. See Zeller's account of the ethics of 
 the Stoics, in Zeller's Stoics, Epicureans, etc., Reichel's translation, 
 pp. 235-7 : " The right relation, therefore, towards emotions in- 
 deed, the only one morally tenable is an attitude of absolute 
 hostility. The wise man must be emotionless." Cf. Horace, 
 Epistles i. 6: 
 
 " Nil admirari prope res est una, Numici, 
 Solaque, quae possit facere et servare beatum." 
 
 ' To shun emotion is the sole way, Numicius, to win to happi- 
 ness and to retain it.' 
 
 For the name Stoic see Notes 90 : 3. 
 
 34 : 30. Felix qui potuit. From Virgil's Georgics, II., 490-2. 
 
 ' Happy is he who has come to know the sequences of things, 
 and is thus above all fear, master of the dread march of fate, and 
 careless of the wild noise of greedy Acheron.' 
 
 41: ii. True to his friend. The allusion is to Bacon's faith- 
 lessness to his early patron, the Earl of Essex. At the Queen's 
 request Bacon drew up the charges against Essex when he was 
 put on trial for treason, and conducted the case against him with 
 such vigor as to secure his conviction and execution. The pre- 
 cise degree of blame attaching to Bacon's conduct is still debated. 
 
 41 : 1 1 . Faithful in his trust. Bacon was tried and condemned 
 for bribery and forced to resign his post as Lord Chancellor in 
 1621. 
 
 41 : 18. Idols of the den. See Bacon's Novum Organum : 
 Works, Ed. Spedding, Boston, 1868, VIII., 76-8. " There are four 
 classes of Idols which beset men's minds. To these for distinc- 
 tion's sake I have assigned names, calling the first class, Idols of 
 the Tribe ; the second, Idols of the Cave; the third, Idols of the 
 Marketplace; the fourth, Idols of the Theatre? . . . 
 
 " The Idols of the Tribe have their foundation in human nature 
 itself, and in the tribe or race of men. . . . The human under- 
 standing is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, 
 distorts and discolours the nature of things by mingling its own 
 nature with it." . . .
 
 202 NOTES. 
 
 " The Idols of the Cave are the idols of the individual man. 
 For every one .... has a cave or den of his own, which refracts 
 and discolours the light of nature." . . . 
 
 " There are also Idols formed by the intercourse and association 
 of men with each other, which I call Idols of the Market-place, 
 on account of the commerce and consort of men there." 
 
 " Lastly, there are Idols which have immigrated into men's 
 minds from the various dogmas of philosophies, and also from 
 wrong laws of demonstration. These I call Idols of the Theatre ; 
 because in my judgment all the received systems are but so many 
 stage-plays, representing worlds of their own creation after an un- 
 real and scenic fashion." 
 
 41 : 23. / agree with Lord Macaulay. See Macaulay's essay 
 on Lord Bacon, originally published in the Edinburgh Review for 
 July, 1837. " The philosophy which [Bacon] taught was essentially 
 new. It differed from that of the celebrated ancient teachers, not 
 merely in method, but also in object. Its object was the good of 
 mankind, in the sense in which the mass of mankind always have 
 understood and always will understand the word good." .... 
 " What then was the end which Bacon proposed to himself ? It 
 was, to use his own emphatic expression, ' fruit.' It was the mul- 
 tiplying of human enjoyments and the mitigating of human suf- 
 ferings. . . . Two words form the key of the Baconian doctrine 
 Utility and Progress." Macaulay's panegyric on the Philosophy of 
 Utility is often urged in proof of his Philistinism. See Morison's i 
 Life of Macaulay, chap, iii., and Leslie Stephen's Hours in a 
 Library, 3d series. With Macaulay's sneers at the " cant," the 
 " sterile exuberance," the " unprofitableness " of Platonism and 
 Aristotelianism, Newman could not have sympathized ; nor would 
 Macaulay have agreed with what Newman says of the " low aim" 
 and the " intellectual narrowness" of the Baconian school of 
 thought. 
 
 44 : i. Here, then .... you are involved. This extract, and 
 the following one on St. Philip Neri, come at the very end of the 
 last, or ninth, of the Discourses on University Teaching. In Dis- 
 courses V. VIII. Newman has vindicated the rights of Liberal 
 Education, and has shown that knowledge is worth pursuing for 
 its own sake, apart from its effects upon character or from its
 
 NOTES. 203 
 
 practical results. Now, in closing, he devotes a Discourse to de- 
 fining the duties of the Church toward knowledge. He divides 
 all secular knowledge into Science or the Book of Nature, and 
 Literature or the Book of Man, and considers the duties of the 
 Church toward each. In relation to Science the Church must be 
 on the watch to hold in check " the wild living intellect of man." 
 The Church must defend theology against men of Science, who are 
 ever ready to judge of things divine by human standards and to 
 exalt observation and experiment into the sole tests of truth. The 
 Church must make good for Theology a place among the Sciences ; 
 it must secure to Theology its own methods of study and criteria of 
 truth, and, above all, must prevent the insidious encroachments of 
 private judgment and rationalism upon the domain of revelation. 
 The duty of the Church toward the second division of knowledge, 
 Literature, is defined in the text. 
 
 45 : 17. Quicquid agunt. See Juvenal, Satires, I., 85-6: 
 
 " Quidquid agunt homines, votum, timor, ira, voluptas, 
 Gaudia, discursus, nostri est farrago libelli." 
 
 " What ever since that Golden Age was done, 
 What human kind desires, and what they shun, 
 Rage, passions, pleasures, impotence of will. 
 Shall this satirical collection fill." 
 
 Dryden. 
 
 46 : ^.Jabel and Tubalcain. See Gen. iv. 20-2. Jabal, 
 Vulgate, Jabel, " was the father of such as dwell in tents, and of 
 such as have cattle." Tubal-cain was " an instructor of every 
 artificer in brass and iron." 
 
 46 : 9. Beseleel. See Exodus xxxi., 2. Bezaleel, Vulgate, 
 Beseleel, was one of the makers of the tabernacle. 
 
 51 : i. Such at least is the lesson. The reference is to the last 
 paragraph of the preceding Selection. 
 
 51 : 5. St. Philip Neri (1515-1595)- He spent most of his 
 life at Rome. He was the founder of the Brotherhood of the Ora- 
 tory. Despite his far-reaching influence over men he took no 
 part in public affairs. Almost his sole interference in such mat- 
 ters is said to have' been on the occasion of Pope Clement's re- 
 fusal to be reconciled with Henry IV. of France on the latter's
 
 204 NOTES. 
 
 abjuration of Calvinism. It was owing to Neri's influence on the 
 Pope through the Pope's confessor that Clement VIII. was led 
 to receive Henry once more into the Church. See Bacci's Life 
 of St. Philip Neri, translated by F. W. Faber, London, 1847, and 
 Faber's Spirit and Genius of St. Philip JVeri, London, 1850. St. 
 Philip was Newman's ideal. Soon after joining the Catholic 
 Church Newman was received into the Brotherhood of the Ora- 
 tory, and the last thirty-two years of his life (1858-90) were spent 
 in the Edgbaston Oratory, Birmingham. 
 
 55 : i. The author of the Christian Year. John Keble (1792- 
 1866) took double first-class honors at Oxford in 1811, was at 
 once elected fellow of Oriel College, and remained at Oxford, 
 filling various positions, till 1823. In this year, on the death of 
 his mother, he left Oxford to make his home with his father, at 
 Fairford, Gloucestershire, where he remained, refusing offers of 
 promotion in the Church, until his father's death in 1835. In this 
 same year he was married, and in 1836 he was made vicar of 
 Hursley in Hampshire, where he spent the rest of his life fulfill- 
 ing the duties of the priest of a country parish. His Christian 
 Year was published anonymously in 1827. By 1867 it had passed 
 through 109 editions, each numbering 3,000 or 5,000 copies. In 
 1846 was published his second important book of verse, Lyra 
 Innocentium ; it is from Newman's review of this volume that 
 the extract in the text is taken. Keble wrote seven of the Tracts 
 for the Times, edited Hooker's Works, and published a volume of 
 lectures on poetry, which he had delivered during his tenure of 
 the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford, 1831-41. 
 
 55 : 3. Ken and Herbert. Ken (1637-1711) was Bishop of 
 Bath and Wells from 1685 to 1691. He was fearless towards 
 princes, witness his treatment of William II. of Holland, Charles 
 II. and James II. of England, and utterly self-forgetful in his 
 devotion to the needs of his people. " His Morning and Evening 
 Hymns," Macaulay has said, " are still repeated daily in thousands 
 of dwellings." The Tractarians held him in high reverence. 
 Tract Ixxv. contained a special service in his memory drawn up 
 by Newman, and two of Isaac Williams's poems were devoted to 
 his honor. George Herbert (1593-1633) was rector of Bemerton, 
 near Salisbury, from 1629 to 1633, and author of the Temple (1633).
 
 NOTES. 205 
 
 His best-known poem begins " Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so 
 bright." Other familiar poems are " I made a posie while the 
 day ran by," and " Who is the honest man ? " The latter may 
 have suggested Wordsworth's " Who is the happy warrior ? " 
 
 56 : 27. Socinianism. Lxlius Socinus and Faustus Socinus, 
 uncle and nephew, were Italians, who during the latter part of the 
 sixteenth century did much to spraad anti-Trinitarian doctrines. 
 Socinianism stands in the text for a rationalizing religion, a re- 
 ligion devoid of mystery and appealing solely to the intellect. 
 
 57 : 20 Miraturque novas frondes et non sua poma. ' The tree 
 marvels at strange foliage and fruit not its own.' The quotation is 
 from Virgil's Georgics, II., 81, where the poet is describing the 
 process of grafting. 
 
 61 : 14. He hated .... heresy. " He delighted to see his 
 little nephew under his teaching snapping at all the Roundheads, 
 and kissing all the Cavaliers." (Tulloch's Movements of Religious 
 Thought, Lecture iii.) " A member of a family with which he had 
 
 been intimate had adopted Liberal opinions in theology 
 
 He came to call one day when the erring brother happened to be 
 at home and learning that he was in the house, he refused to 
 enter, and remained sitting in the porch." Froude's Short 
 Studies, IV., 176. 
 
 62:8\ The first Whig. "The first Whig was the Devil." 
 BosweW s Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, III., 326. 
 
 62: 18. Doctrines of 7776. Neither Keble nor Newman had 
 the faith in human nature that underlies modern democratic 
 theories. See the famous passage in the Apologia, describing 
 fallen humanity : " I look out of myself into the world of men, 
 and there I see a sight which fills me with unspeakable distress. 
 .... The sight of the world is nothing else than the prophet's 
 scroll, full of 'lamentations, and mourning, and woe.' " Selec- 
 tions, p. 1 60. 
 
 64 : 20. The new fashion. This " new fashion " is, of course, 
 the Tractarian mode of thought. The Selection suggests the 
 view that worldly-wise Dons took of the Tractarian agitation. 
 Loss and Gain : The Story of a Convert, was published anony- 
 mously in 1848. Newman's name was placed on the title-page in 
 1874. The book gives a remarkably sympathetic and suggestive
 
 2 o6 NOTES. 
 
 picture of Oxford life during the years when the ideas of the 
 Tractarians were finding lodgment and fructifying in the best 
 minds. 
 
 67 : 6. In the Edinburgh. The criticisms of the Edinburgh 
 Review upon Oxford were for a time very searching and severe. 
 They were probably in part provoked by a clever skit, called 
 Advice to a Young Reviewer* with a Specimen of the Art, which 
 had been published at Oxford in 1807 by Copleston, University 
 Professor of Poetry. In the Edinburgh for Jan., 1808, Lord 
 Brougham in a review of La Place made the charge that Oxford 
 undergraduates had no opportunity of going " beyond the mere 
 elements of geometry " in their study of mathematics. In the 
 number for July, 1809, Payne Knight assailed the recent Oxford 
 edition of Strabo, ridiculed its Latinity and made it the pretext 
 of a severe attack on the laziness and amateurishness of Oxford 
 scholarship and on the limitations of its curriculum. In the Oc- 
 tober number for 1809, Sydney Smith, in the course of a favor- 
 able notice of Edgeworth's Professional Education, blamed the 
 Oxford training for its disregard of the needs of practical life, and 
 its blindly reverential insistence on a dry-as-dust classical scholar- 
 ship. In 1810, these articles provoked from the pen of Dr. Cople- 
 ston an elaborate defence of Oxford methods, published under 
 the title, Replies to the Calumnies of the Edinburgh Review against 
 Oxford. In April, 1810, Playfair, Sydney Smith, and Payne 
 Knight united in a satirical review of Dr. Copleston's Replies. 
 The reviewers admitted that they had hardly taken into account 
 the Oxford Reforms of 1802, but contended that nevertheless 
 their charges of neglect of the sciences and of amateurishness in 
 scholarship were just. 
 
 Like most of the Edinburgh 1 s attacks on " things as they were," 
 the Oxford articles made at the time a great stir ; and although 
 after 1821 the Edinburgh took a much friendlier tone toward the 
 University, the memory of the earlier articles still rankled in the 
 breasts of the dons. It should be noted that Dr. Copleston was 
 for many years (1814-1826) the Provost of Newman's old college, 
 Oriel. Cf. Newman's eloquent tribute to him in the Idea of a 
 University ^ ed. 1891, pp. 154-8. It was a favourite charge that at- 
 tacks on Oxford came from the pens of disappointed aspirants
 
 NOTES. 207 
 
 for honors. In his Introduction, for example, Copleston asserts 
 that most of the abuse of Oxford proceeds from " that hireling 
 tribe of turncoats, who, disappointed of honours or rewards here 
 adequate to their own fancied merits, have carried over to the 
 enemy, as the most acceptable passport, some local informa- 
 tion, and have courted the favor of their new employers, by mean 
 detraction aud extravagant abuse of their former friends." Sim- 
 ilarly, in his Autobiographical Memoir for 1821, Newman speaks 
 of certain strictures on Oxford in the July number of the Edin- 
 burgh, and notes the fact that the writer of the article was a few 
 months before the unsuccessful candidate for an Oriel fellowship. 
 Letters and Correspondence, I., 65. For Newman's account of the 
 earlier attacks of the Edinburgh on Oxford and of Copleston's 
 reply, see his Idea of a University, ed. 1891, pp. 153-8. 
 
 68 : I. Mr. Kingsley begins. This extract is taken from the 
 concluding part of Mr. Kingsley and Dr. Newman : a Correspond- 
 ence, with which the original editions of the Apologia opened. In 
 subsequent editions the correspondence was omitted. 
 
 The words of Kingsley that led to the controversy were a.s 
 follows : " Truth for its own sake had never been a virtue with 
 the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need not 
 be, and on the whole ought not to be ; that cunning is the weapon 
 which Heaven has given to the saints wherewith to withstand the 
 brute male force of the wicked world which marries and is given 
 in marriage. Whether his notion be doctrinally correct or not, it 
 is at least historically so." This passage occurred in an unsigned 
 review of Froude's History of England in Mac millan's Magazine 
 for January, 1864. Newman at once wrote to the editor, protesting 
 against the passage. Kingsley acknowledged the authorship of 
 the article and referred in justification of his charge to a sermon 
 on Wisdom and Innocence, which Newman had preached at Ox- 
 ford, in 1843. After an exchange of several letters, Kingsley 
 finally consented to insert in Macmillan's Magazine for February, 
 1864, the following note : 
 
 " To the Editor of Macmillan's Magazine. 
 
 Sir : In your last number I made certain allegations against 
 the teaching of Dr. John Henry Newman, which I thought were 
 justified by a sermon of his, entitled ' Wisdom and Innocence.'
 
 208 NOTES. 
 
 (Sermon 20 of ' Sermons bearing on Subjects of the Day.') Dr. 
 Newman has by letter expressed, in the strongest terms, his denial 
 of the meaning which I have put upon his words. It only remains, 
 therefore, for me to express my hearty regret at having so seriously 
 mistaken him." 
 
 Newman, who was by no means content with this explanation, 
 forthwith published the entire correspondence between Kingsley 
 and himself, adding, as his sole comment, an ironical sum- 
 mary. By way of rejoinder, Kingsley published an excessively 
 bitter pamphlet, What then does Dr.Newman mean ? in which while 
 nominally professing to believe in Newman's truthfulness, he 
 substantially charges him with systematic duplicity, with mis- 
 representation and falsehood. It was in answer to this pamphlet 
 that the Apologia was written ; the line of thought that led to its 
 composition, is traced in the extract, pp. 79-82. Newman's ironical 
 summary of his correspondence with Kingsley is given in the 
 Selections, p. 68. 
 
 70 : 31. Alfonso da Liguori (1696-1787). He was a famous 
 Roman Catholic casuist, author of many works for the guidance 
 both of laity and of clergy in delicate questions of conscience. A 
 full account of his teachings may be found in the Encyclopedia 
 Britannica, art. Liguori. 
 
 75 : 5. For twenty years and more. In a letter of 1864, New- 
 man speaks of having been subject to lying attacks ever since 
 1833, the year when the Tractarian movement began. In the 
 present passage the date that he has in mind is probably that of 
 the publication of Tract xc., i.e., 1841. His interpretation of the 
 thirty-nine articles was vehemently assailed as conscious prevari- 
 cation, and wilful misconstruction. 
 
 76 : 16. Stonyhurst or Oscott. Stonyhurst, in Lancashire, is a 
 boy's college, " the Catholic Eton ;" it celebrated its centenary in 
 July, 1894. Near Oscott, a village four miles from Birmingham, 
 is St. Mary's Roman Catholic College. 
 
 83 : 4. Some such Apostasy. Cf. Newman's declarations in 
 the first chapter of the Apologia : "The vital question was, how 
 were we to keep the Church from being liberalized ?"...." It 
 was the success of the Liberal cause that fretted me inwardly." 
 In his notes at the end of the Apologia, Newman enumerates
 
 NOTES. 209 
 
 eighteen propositions characteristic of Liberal theology, to all of 
 which he objects. Among them are the following: 
 
 " No religious tenet is important unless reason shows it to be 
 so." 
 
 " No one can believe what he does not understand." 
 " No theological doctrine is anything more than an opinion 
 which happens to be held by bodies of men." 
 " There is a right of Private Judgment." 
 " It is lawful to rise in arjps against legitimate princes." 
 " The people are the legitimate source of power." 
 " Virtue is the child of knowledge and Vice of ignorance." 
 84 : ii. To deprive the Bible of its one meaning: It is the 
 Protestant doctrine of the right of private judgment in the in- 
 terpretation of Scripture that Newman here attacks. 
 
 84 : 18. Expressed by written -words. Newman contends here 
 against the anti-dogmatic principle. Cf. his definition of his posi- 
 tion in 1833. "First was the principle of dogma; my battle was 
 with liberalism ; by liberalism I mean the anti-dogmatic principle 
 
 and its developments From the age of fifteen, dogma has 
 
 been the fundamental principle of my religion : I know no other 
 religion; I cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion; 
 religion, as a mere sentiment, is to me a dream and a mockery." 
 Apologia, ed. 1890, p. 49. 
 
 84 : 27. -Antichrist. See Notes, 131 : 12. 
 
 85 : 2. Satan. Newman's belief in the world of evil spirits 
 was intense and absolute. See a letter of Elizabeth Mozley's 
 quoted in Newman's Letters and Correspondence, I., 335: "One 
 sees that Dr. Newman's great power .... is a certain vivid 
 
 realization of the unseen ' How can people say what ' 
 
 is, or is not, natural to evil spirits ? What is a grotesque mani- 
 festation to us may not be so to them. What do we know 
 about an evil spirit ? ' The words were nothing, but there was an 
 intensity of realization in his face as he said them, of a reality 
 and of his ignorance about it, that was a key to me as to the 
 source of his influence over others." Cf. Notes, 178. 
 
 86 : i. Conservative Statesman. The letters on the Tarn-worth 
 Reading-room appeared in the Times in February, 1841, by way 
 of comment on a speech that Sir Robert Peel had delivered upon 
 
 14
 
 210 NOTES. 
 
 the establishment of a Library and Reading-room in the town 
 of Tamworth. In their treatment of knowledge and their ideas 
 about education these letters contrast strikingly with Newman's 
 Discourses on University Teaching. They illustrate his intense 
 distrust of secular knowledge and of intellectual excellence, 
 pursued as ends in themselves, and without regard to religious 
 culture. They are also pervaded by an anti-democratic manner 
 of thought and feeling that, despite Newman's universal courtesy 
 and complete unpretentiousness bothof demeanor and of temper, 
 is nevertheless distinctive of his whole character. He only half 
 veils his contempt for the smattering of knowledge that common 
 people can derive from journals and reading-rooms and Libraries 
 of Useful Knowledge. He is thoroughly academic in his sym- 
 pathies and prejudices ; he is a typical ecclesiastic in his feeling 
 that the multitude must be treated with tender condescension 
 and friendly solicitude, but never for a moment as equals or as 
 essentially and individually deserving. 
 
 87 : 27. Mr. Bentham (1748-1832). He was the founder of the 
 Utilitarian school in morals, politics, and philosophy. 
 
 88 : 5. Lord Brougham (1778-1868). He was one of the prime 
 movers in the cause of popular education ; in 1825 he formed the 
 famous Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. In 
 1828, largely through his instrumentality, London University, now 
 University College, was opened for instruction ; the new institu- 
 tion was totally independent of the Church, was anti-theological, 
 if not anti-religious, was meant to give freer and better opportu- 
 nities for the study of the sciences than the old universities of- 
 fered, and has always remained identified with Free Thought and 
 Positivism. Brougham's Discourse on his inauguration as Lord 
 Rector of Glasgow University (1825) will be found in his 
 Speeches, Vol. III., ed. 1838, p. 69, together with various other 
 important addresses on popular education. In the preceding let- 
 ter Newman has commented very severely on this Inaugural. 
 
 88 : 8. Not a spark of poetry. In his computation of pleasures 
 and pains with a view to deciding the relative values of causes 
 of action, Bentham laid it down as a rule that.in quality, " push- 
 pin was worth as much as poetry." 
 
 88 : 26. Signifying nothing.
 
 NOTES. 211 
 
 " It is a tale 
 
 Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
 Signifying nothing." Macbeth, Act V., Sc. 5. 
 
 90 : 3. Porch. The Stoic philosophers were called philosophers 
 of the Porch, because Zeno, founder of the school, taught in a 
 porch (Geek <rro<i). The Stoics taught that virtue consisted in 
 recognizing the limitations that the law of nature imposes on 
 the individual, and in regulating the appetites and desires in 
 accordance with the dictates of reason. Cf. Notes, 34 : 28. 
 
 90 : 5. O philosophia. Newman misquotes. See Cicero, Tus- 
 cul. Qucest., bk. v., 2: "O vitae philosophia dux! O virtutis 
 indagatrix, expultrixque vitiorum ! " ' O philosophy, guide of 
 life ! Searcher out of virtue and scourge of vice ! ' 
 
 90 : 16. White Ladies or Undines. In the mythology of the 
 Scottish Highlands White Ladies were mysterious maidens who 
 were held captive in lonely regions under some spell, and who 
 appeared to solitary wayfarers or shepherds and offered them 
 gifts of flowers or corn in return for assistance. In the system of 
 Paracelsus, an Undine was a water-sprite. Newman's immediate 
 allusion is probably to de la Motte Fouque's well-known story, 
 Undine, in which a water-sprite marries the Knight Sir Huldbrand 
 and so receives a human soul. Newman's question, then, is 
 whether rational men are to be dealt with, as are these semi- 
 human creatures, purely by external expedients; whether reason- 
 able beings can be transformed in character, simply by a change 
 of surroundings. 
 
 90: 19. When Cicero was outwitted. Cicero had sided with 
 Pompey against Caesar, and on the defeat of Pompey at Pharsalia 
 in 48 B. c. was forced out of public life. He took refuge in study 
 and composition. In a letter to Varro in 46 B. c. he declares, 
 " As soon as I was back in Rome, I had a reconciliation with my 
 old friends, my books." Ad. Fam., IX., i. In 45 B. c. he com- 
 posed his Academica, dealing wholly with philosophical questions 
 and discussing incidentally many of Plato's doctrines. Cf. New- 
 man's Hist. Sketches, I., 285 : [Cicero] " then published the De 
 claris Oratoribus and Orator ; and a year later, when he was 
 sixty-three, his Academics Quastiones, in the retirement from 
 public business to which he was driven by the dictatorship of 
 Caesar."
 
 212 NOTES. 
 
 90 : 21. A treatise on consolation. Cicero's daughter Tullia died 
 in 45 B. C., and his treatise De Consolatione seu de Luctu Minuendo 
 was written soon afterwards. 
 
 90:22. That Lydian City. "In the days of Atys the son. of 
 Manes, there was great scarcity through the whole land of Lydia. 
 For some time the Lydians bore the affliction patiently, but 
 finding that it did not pass away, they set to work to devise 
 remedies for the evil. Various expedients were discovered by 
 various persons ; dice, and huckle-bones, and ball, and all such 
 games were invented, except tables, the invention of which they 
 do not claim as theirs. The plan adopted against the famine 
 was to engage in games one day so entirely as not to feel any 
 craving for food, and the next day to eat and abstain from 
 games." Herodotus, I., 94. (Rawlinson's translation.) 
 
 91 : ii. FrenchTyrant. Newman has in mind Scott's account 
 of Louis the Eleventh's iron cages for prisoners : " At this for- 
 midable castle [Loches] were also those dreadful places of con- 
 finement called cages, in which the wretched prisoner could nei- 
 ther stand upright, nor stretch himself at length, an invention, it 
 is said, of the Cardinal Balue." Quentin Durward I., chap. xv. 
 In point of fact these cages were eight feet long and about seven 
 feet high. Philippe de Comines was confined in one of them for 
 eight months ; Balue himself, their supposed inventor, was en- 
 closed in a cage for fourteen years. See Comines, Memoirs, 
 bk. vi., chap. xii. 
 
 92 : 3. Naturam expellas. See Horace, Epistles, I., x , 24-5 : 
 
 " Naturam expellas furcS, tamen usque recurret, 
 Et mala perrumpet furtim fastidia victrix." 
 
 ' Though you drive nature out with a pitchfork yet will she always 
 make her way back and stealthily destroy your mischievous 
 squeamishness and subdue you to her will.' 
 
 92 : 30. Mr. Bentham . . . verse-making. Cf. Notes, 88 : 8. 
 
 92 : 31. Mr. Dugald Stewart. Stewart's attack on the pre- 
 tensions of the Aristotelian logic is to be found in his Ele- 
 ments of the Human Mind, Part II., chap. iii. A sentence at the 
 opening of section iii. sums up his position: "The general result 
 of the foregoing reflections is, That neither the means employed 
 by the school logic for the assistance of the discursive faculty^
 
 NOTES. 
 
 213 
 
 nor the accomplishment of that end, were it really attained, 
 are of much consequence in promoting the enlargement of 
 the mind, or in guarding it against the influence of erroneous 
 opinions." 
 
 93 : 5. Knowledge Society. In 1825 was formed the " Society 
 for Promoting the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge ; " among the 
 foremost of the original members were Brougham, Lord John 
 Russell, and Dr. Lushington. The main object of the society 
 was the cheap publication of good literature. Elementary trea- 
 tises on the sciences were written to order and widely dissemi- 
 nated. One of the most famous and successful ventures of the 
 Society was the Penny Magazine, of which 200,000 copies were 
 sold per week. See Martineau's History of the Peace, bk. iii., 
 chap. xi. Cf. Peacock's Crotchet Castle, chap, xvii., where Dr. 
 Folliott sneers at " the march of mind " and at the " learned 
 friend," who writes penny tracts on chemistry ; the " learned 
 friend " was Lord Brougham. 
 
 93 : 5. Gower Street College. See Notes, 88 : 5. 
 
 94:7. Arcesilas. Arcesilaus or Arcesilas (315-241 B. c.) was 
 the head of the New Academy ; it was under him that Platonism 
 first became radically sceptical. His doubts were " directed not 
 only to knowledge derived from the senses, but to rational knowl- 
 edge as well." (Zeller's Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, Reichel's 
 translation, p. 501.) With Berkeley, on the other hand, the same 
 analysis that leads to idealism leads to belief in God as an Infinite 
 Spirit, the supporter and regulator of ideas. In Arcesilaus, then, 
 idealism is the occasion of scepticism ; in Berkeley it is made the 
 basis of religious faith. Cf. Newman's article on Cicero, in the 
 Encyclopedia Metropolitana, Greek and Roman Philosophy and 
 Science, (London, 1853), p. 218. "Mistaking the profession of 
 ignorance, which Socrates had used against the sophists on 
 physical questions, for an actual scepticism on points connected 
 with morals, [Arcesilas] fell into the opposite extreme, and 
 declared, first, that nothing could be known, and therefore, 
 secondly, nothing should be advanced." 
 
 97 : 14. The lie of a country. English usage favors lie rather 
 *han lay in this sense. Cf. E. A, Freeman, Venice, p. 312, and
 
 214 NOTES. 
 
 also " the lie and issue of the whole matter " in Newman's Gram- 
 mar of Assent, ed. 1889, p. 76. 
 
 98 : 25. Scepticism. This is one of the passages that seem to 
 justify the charge of scepticism sometimes brought against New- 
 man, the charge that he fled to the Church because he was afraid 
 of his reason. Later, in this same discussion he declares : " I be- 
 lieve that the study of nature, when religious feeling is away, leads 
 the mind, rightly or wrongly, to acquiesce in the atheistic theory, 
 as the simplest and easiest." Selections, p. 103. Again, through- 
 out the whole of Tract 85, there is observable a sceptical bias ; 
 Newman is contending against rationalism and private judgment 
 and in favor of submission to the authority of the Anglican 
 Church, and his argument is that if a man begins choosing for 
 himself among the doctrines of the Church, he will soon be choos- 
 ing among the doctrines of the Bible ; that if he doubts about ec- 
 clesiastical miracles, he will soon be doubting about Balaam and 
 Jonah. In other words, if reason be allowed to question the 
 authority of the Church, it will soon question and reject the 
 authority of the Bible. Hence, the only safe course is for the in- 
 dividual to submit unhesitatingly in matters of faith to the voice 
 of the Church. This argument seems, as Mr. Leslie Stephen has 
 pointed out, essentially sceptical. " A conclusion peremptorily 
 asserted in this fashion is simply scepticism afraid of itself. It 
 orders us to believe because, if we don't believe, we shall doubt. 
 That is virtually to admit that doubt is the legitimate and normal 
 result of reasoning, which is, I take it, the essential characteristic 
 of scepticism." Nineteenth Centttry, XXIX., 201. In the same 
 strain with that of this passage, Prof. Huxley has asserted that a 
 " Primer of Infidelity " can be compiled from Cardinal Newman's 
 works. Nineteenth Century, XXV., p. 948. Elaborate defences of 
 Newman against these charges of scepticism may be found in 
 Wilfrid Ward's Witnesses to the Unseen (published originally 
 in the Nineteenth Century, XXIX., reissued with other essays in 
 1893) and in R. H. Hutton's Cardinal Newman, chap. v. More- 
 over, there are several crucial passages in Newman's works that 
 the reader should have in mind, while trying to decide on the fun- 
 damental trend of Newman's thought. Such passages are the 
 following : " I know that even the unaided reason, when cor-
 
 MOTES. 215 
 
 rectly exercised, leads to a belief in God, in the immortality of the 
 soul, and in a future retribution." Selections, p. 163. " By Re- 
 ligion I mean the knowledge of God, of His Will, and of our 
 duties towards Him ; and there are three main channels which 
 Nature furnishes for our acquiring this knowledge, viz., our own 
 minds, the voice of mankind, and the course of the world, that is, 
 of human life and human affairs. The informations which these 
 three convey to us teach us the Being and Attributes of God, our 
 responsibility to Him, our dependence on Him, our prospect of re- 
 ward or punishment, to be somehow brought about, according as 
 we obey or disobey Him. And the most authoritative of these 
 three means of knowledge, as being specially our own, is our own 
 mind." Grammar of Assent, ed. 1889, p. 389. " Truth certainly, 
 as such, rests upon grounds intrinsically and objectively and ab- 
 stractedly demonstrative, but it does not follow from this that the 
 arguments producible in its favour are unanswerable and irresist- 
 ible The fact of revelation is in itself demonstrably true, 
 
 but it is not therefore true irresistibly I cannot convert 
 
 men, when I ask for assumptions which they refuse to grant to 
 me ; and without assumptions no one can prove anything about 
 anything." Grammar of Assent, p. 410. 
 
 98 : 28. Life is for action. This is the sum and substance of 
 Newman's plea against rationalism. Man is not mere intellect ; 
 life is not pure thought. Truth, though ultimately always demon- 
 strable by logical processes, is constantly reached in practical life 
 by short cuts, of which logic can give but a sorry account. The 
 principle of life is faith or belief, the voluntary acceptance of 
 ideas and propositions according as they commend themselves to 
 the whole nature of the man who receives them. " Belief . . . 
 being concerned with things concrete, not abstract, which va- 
 riously excite the mind from their moral and imaginative proper- 
 ties, has for its objects, not only directly what is true, but inclu- 
 sively what is beautiful, useful, admirable, heroic; objects which 
 kindle devotion, rouse the passions, and attach the affections ; 
 and thus it leads the way to actions of every kind, to the estab- 
 lishment of principles, and the formation of character, and is 
 thus again intimately connected with what is individual and per- 
 sonal." Grammar of Assent, ed. 1889, pp. 90-1. The real aim
 
 2l6 MOTES. 
 
 of the Grammar of Assent 'is to define the faculty, viz., the Illa- 
 tive Sense, which makes these justly discriminating choices of 
 truth in concrete matters, to study its relation to other faculties 
 of the mind, to suggest the best discipline for it, to illustrate its 
 action in all departments of life, and to trace in detail the process 
 by which Newman's own Illative Sense leads him to accept the 
 truth of Christianity and Catholicism. The whole of this pas- 
 sage from the Tarn-worth Reading-room will be found quoted in 
 the Grammar of Assent, pp. 92-97. 
 
 101 : 24. Democritus and others. The passage occurs in 
 Bacon's De Augmentis, bk. iii, chap. 4. See Lord Bacon's Works, 
 ed. Ellis and Spedding, 1858, IV., 363-4. 
 
 106: i. Now what is Theology? This is part of Newman's 
 plea for giving Theology a place among the sciences. His 
 purpose in making this plea and its relation to the rest of the 
 argument in his Discourses on University Teaching have been ex- 
 plained, Notes, 19. Cf. with this account of Theology that given 
 in the Grammar of Assent, pp. 147-8. 
 
 117 : i. -Music . . . has an object of its own. Newman was a 
 thoroughly-trained musician and played admirably on the violin. 
 See his Letters and Correspondence, I., 71, and also Newman as a 
 Musician, in Month, LXXIII., i. 
 
 119 : i. The prejudiced man. This extract is taken from New- 
 man's Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England, 
 which were delivered in 1851, before the Brothers of the Oratory 
 in Birmingham, and published in the same year. The object of 
 the lectures, as defined by Newman, was not " to prove the 
 divine origin of Catholicism, but to remove some of the moral 
 and intellectual impediments which prevent Protestants from 
 acknowledging it. Protestants cannot be expected to do justice 
 to a religion whose professors they hate and scorn." During 
 1851, the feeling against Catholics was exceptionally intense. In 
 the autumn of the preceding year had occurred what was called 
 the " Papal aggression." The Pope had raised Ur. Wiseman to 
 the rank of a Cardinal, and made him the first Catholic Arch- 
 bishop of Westminster and Primate of England ; he had also re- 
 distributed England into Catholic dioceses, over which he ap- 
 pointed Catholic bishops, whose titles included the names of
 
 NOTES. 217 
 
 English towns. This establishment of a Romish hierarchy in 
 England excited in the breasts of many worthy Protestants the 
 utmost consternation. On November 4, Lord John Russell 
 published with reference to the whole affair, the famous Durham 
 letter, the tone of which is fairly represented by the following 
 extract : " There is an assumption of power in all the documents 
 which have come from Rome, a pretension to supremacy over the 
 realm of England, and a claim to sole and undecided sway, which 
 is inconsistent with the Queen's supremacy, with the rights of our 
 bishops and clergy, and with the spiritual independence of the 
 nation as asserted even in Roman Catholic times." On November 
 5, the Pope and Cardinal Wiseman were burned in effigy and 
 the anti-Catholic demonstrations were almost riotous. As soon 
 as Parliament met, in February, 1851, a bill was read for the 
 first time by a majority of 332, forbidding Roman Catholic eccle- 
 siastics to assume the new titles the Pope had assigned them, and 
 this bill, though fiercely opposed in its later stages, became law in 
 April, 1851. It was in the midst of this atmosphere of intense 
 feeling that Newman's lectures were delivered in the summer of 
 1851. 
 
 123 : 9. And tricks its beams. The quotation is from near the 
 close of Lycidas ; Newman substitutes " its " for " his " to suit 
 the context. 
 
 123 : 15. Unhurt amid the war of elements. See Addison's 
 Cato, Act V., Scene i. : 
 
 " The soul, secured in her existence, smiles 
 At the drawn dagger, and defies its point. 
 The stars shall fade away, the sun himself 
 Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years; 
 But thou shall flourish in immortal youth, 
 Unhurt amidst the war of elements, 
 The wrecks of matter, and the crash of worlds." 
 
 123 : 19. Jeffreys .... Teodore. " Only two years have I 
 been [in Birmingham], and each of these two has been signalised 
 by accusations against Catholics, similar, in the disreputable- 
 ness of their authors, and in the enormity of their falsehood, 
 and in the brilliancy of their success, to the calumnies of Maria 
 Monk. Two years ago it was Jeffreys ; last year it was Teodore.
 
 2i8 NOTES. 
 
 You recollect how Jeffreys acted his part, how he Wept, and 
 prayed, and harangued, and raised a whole population against an 
 innocent company of monks ; and how he was convicted of fraud 
 and confessed his guilt, and was sent to prison. You also recol- 
 lect how an impostor, called Teodore, declaimed such shocking 
 things, and wrote such indecent pamphlets against us, that they 
 cannot have been intended for any other purpose than to afford 
 merriment to the haunts of profligacy and vice ; yet he was fol- 
 lowed for a time, was admitted into Protestant place:, of worship, 
 and honoured as a truth-telling oracle, till at length he was plainly 
 detected to be what every one from the first would have seen he 
 really was, were it usual to do the same common justice to Cath- 
 olics which every Protestant considers his due." Newman's 
 Present Position of Catholics in England, Lecture IV. 
 
 127 : 20. I should be but a fool. Newman feels himself bound 
 as a Catholic to be almost ludicrously emphatic in his professions 
 of loyalty and patriotism. Cf. the passage in the Apologia, ed. 
 1890, p. xvi. : "I had rather be an Englishman (as in fact I 
 am), than belong to any other race under heaven." 
 
 128 : 7. Exeter Hall. The great gathering place of dissenters 
 in London. 
 
 128 : 10. / will suppose, then, a speaker. The very effective 
 parody that follows may have been suggested by Whately's His- 
 toric Doubts relative to Napoleon Buonaparte (1819). This pam- 
 phlet parodied Hume's attack on the credibility of miracles by 
 an elaborate proof that Napoleon Buonaparte was a myth. 
 Whately strongly influenced Newman for several years beginning 
 with 1822 ; " he, emphatically, opened my mind," writes New- 
 man, " and taught me to think and to use my reason." (Apologia, 
 ed. 1890, p. n.) Another similar parody by an Oriel man was 
 Copleston's Advice to a Young Reviewer, with a Specimen of 
 the Art (1807). This was a mock-review of " Mr. Milton's 
 ' f.' Allegro,'" and imitated very cleverly the tone and manner of 
 the early Edinburgh Review articles. Newman doubtless, as an 
 Oriel man, had been well trained in the Academic irony these 
 pieces of writing illustrate. 
 
 129 7. The Lion and the Man. Newman's allusion is to a fable 
 with which he had begun his first Lecture. The Lion, who was
 
 NOTES. 219 
 
 being entertained by the Man, was led through the Man's beauti- 
 ful palace to inspect its works of art. In all the paintings and 
 sculpture and carvings he found men and lions portrayed, but the 
 men were always victorious and the lions vanquished ; in the 
 pictures, the lions were always running away from the hunter, 
 and in the carvings they were wrought into the legs or the arms of 
 chairs or the brackets of mantels. When at length the Lion was 
 asked for his opinion of the decorations, he admitted their beauty 
 and skill, but added that Lions would have fared better, if Lions 
 had been the artists. So, according to Newman, Catholics would 
 have fared better in English art and literature during the last 
 three hundred years, had not Protestants always been the por- 
 trayers and Catholics the portrayed. 
 
 129 : 23. The Count began. The reader will not need to be told 
 that, in the ironical passage that follows, John Bullism stands for 
 Roman Catholicism, the British Constitution for the ordinances 
 and institutions of the Catholic Church, the Kings and Queens 
 of England for the Popes, and Blackstone's Commentaries for 
 any esoteric work, on the mysteries of ecclesiasticism. Russians, 
 of course, correspond to Protestants, and Newman's contention 
 is that, to any good Catholic, current Protestant ideas about 
 Roman Catholicism seem precisely as grotesque as the Russian 
 Count's ravings about the British Constitution seem to an enlight- 
 ened Englishman. The skill should be noted with which through- 
 out this whole passage Newman plays upon British prejudice. 
 
 131 : 12. Antichrist. See I. John iv. 18: "This is that spirit 
 of Antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come." Cf. I. 
 John ii. 18. The favorite Protestant interpretation of these pas- 
 sages identified Antichrist with the Papacy. Newman's own 
 imagination " was stained by the effects of this doctrine up to the 
 year 1843." (Apologia, ed. 1890, p. 7.) In the 83d Tract for the 
 Times, however, on the Patristical Idea of Antichrist (1838), he 
 seems to suggest that the sceptical spirit of modern science is the 
 spirit of Antichrist ; see especially Discussions and Arguments, 
 ed. 1888, p, 98. Cf. also the Protestant Idea of Antichrist (1840), 
 Essays Critical and Historical, II., 112-185, where Newman 
 argues at length against the identification of the Mediaeval Church 
 with Antichrist
 
 220 MOTES. 
 
 133 : 15. You cowardly liar. Newman means to suggest that 
 a good Catholic's devotion to the Pope is as praiseworthy as a 
 loyal Englishman's love for the Queen ; and that a Catholic's in- 
 dignation when he is forced to listen to stupid slanders against the 
 Pope is as justifiable as the patriotic outburst of wrath in the 
 text. 
 
 135 : 3. Divine Sovereignty. The argument is plain. The 
 Russian Count's malice and stupidity are the counterparts of 
 Protestant prejudice. His misinterpretations of the 'British Con- 
 stitution correspond to Protestants' misconstruction of Catholic 
 doctrines and ceremonial. His grotesque horror over the blas- 
 phemy of innocent legal fictions satirizes Protestant denunciations 
 of the wickedness of the reverential phraseology and elaborate 
 etiquette of the Papal Court. Cf. Present Position of Catholics, 
 p. 79, where Newman represents the Prejudiced Man as exclaim- 
 ing, " The Pope not the man of sin ! why, it is a fact that the 
 Romanists distinctly maintain that ' the Pope is God, and God is 
 the Pope.' " 
 
 136 : 31. Bracton, an English judge, who died in 1268. His 
 De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Anglia is one of the earliest dis- 
 cussions of the law of England. 
 
 137 : 13. Lord Clarendon. George Villiers, fourth Earl of 
 Clarendon, was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, from 1847 to 1852, in 
 Lord John Russell's Government. The History of the Rebellion 
 was, of course, the work of Edward Hyde, first Earl of Clarendon 
 (1608-1674), and was published 1702-4. The Constitutions of 
 Clarendon were famous enactments, whereby in 1164 Henry II. 
 greatly limited the power of the Church. 
 
 138 : i. The number of the beast. See Revelations xiii. 18 : 
 " Let him that hath understanding count the number of the 
 beast : for it is the number of a man ; and his number is six hun- 
 dred three score and six." The beast is often identified with 
 Antichrist. 
 
 138 : 19. The English Kings. This rigmarole about the 
 crimes of English monarchs corresponds, in Newman's opinion, to 
 the collections of scandals about the Popes to which Protestants 
 give credence, and on which they base their hostility to the 
 Papacy.
 
 MOTES. 22 1 
 
 140: i. One hundred and sixty offences. The Count is merely 
 a century behind in his knowledge of English law. 
 
 142 : 29. De minimis, etc. There is no reason for expounding 
 these legal terms and maxims ; their grotesque misconstruction 
 and misapplication is plain enough to produce the effect New- 
 man desires. 
 
 145 : ii. Sabellians. The Sabellian heresy originated in the 
 third century. It taught that the Deity is one in substance but 
 triple in manifestation, and that the so-called persons of the 
 Trinity are merely the forms in which an indivisible Monad ener- 
 gizes in the universe. God is immanent in the Universe, and 
 merely reveals himself, becomes vocal in its phenomena. Ulti- 
 mately, the Infinite Monad shall withdraw again into itself and 
 become silent ; then, the visible universe shall be no more. 
 See E. de Pressense, Heresy and Christian Doctrine (translated 
 by Annie Harwood), London, 1873, PP- 146-150. 
 
 145 : 12. Irvingites. To the ordinary readers of to-day, Edward 
 Irving (1792-1834) is best known through Carlyle's Reminis- 
 cences ; but between 1827 and 1834 Irving was a very prominent 
 figure in the religious world of London. The most fanatical of 
 his followers became dreamers of dreams, seers of visions, and 
 speakers in unknown tongues. Finally, the manifestations grew 
 so grotesque, that the saner members of the congregation refused 
 to sanction them and compelled Irving and the extremists to 
 withdraw to a new place of worship. The sect of the Irvingites 
 still exists; their chief place of worship is in Gordon Square, 
 London. 
 
 146 : 8. As during the last year, i. e., during 1850-51. The 
 allusion is to the so-called " Papal Aggression," the attempt of 
 the Pope to establish a Roman Catholic hierarchy in England. 
 Cf. Notes, 119: I. 
 
 148: i. Two of my instances. Newman has been illustrating 
 Protestant ignorance of all things Catholic, and the prejudice of 
 Protestants in commenting on the things of which they are 
 ignorant. He has been bringing home to his readers the intense 
 hostility with which English Protestants approach whatever per- 
 tains to the Catholic Church. His first illustration has been a
 
 222 MOTES. 
 
 series of misinterpretations which for over a hundred years and 
 by half a dozen famous Protestant historians had been imposed 
 on a few innocent phrases of a certain Catholic writer, St. Eloi 
 or St. Eligius. Ever since the publication of Mosheim's Ecclesias- 
 tical History (1755)) St. Eloi had been represented as teaching 
 that "true Christianity consisted, not in the absence of fraud and 
 injustice, or again, of immorality, hatred, or strife, but in merely 
 coming to church, paying tithes, burning candles, and praying to 
 the saints." But careful examination of St. Eloi's writings 
 showed that the quotation urged against him had been torn from 
 a context that corrected its deficiencies, and imposed on it a 
 totally new meaning. 
 
 Newman's second instance was a scandalous charge that had 
 recently been brought against the Catholic Cathedral of St. 
 Gudule, Brussels. A certain enthusiastic Protestant clergyman 
 had asserted at an anti-Catholic meeting, that on one of the doors 
 of the Cathedral at Brussels there was posted a list of all the sins 
 possible to human nature, with the prices for which each would 
 be forgiven. According to Newman, however, this list of sins 
 was merely a price-list of the various kinds of chairs in the 
 Cathedral, on feast-days, and on ordinary days. 
 
 Newman's third instance follows in the text. 
 
 153 : 4. Edwards and Henries. Cf. Idea of a University, 
 ed. 1891, p. 155: "Edward the Second, flying from the field of 
 Bannockburn, is said to have made a vow to the Blessed Virgin 
 to found a religious house in her honour, if he got back in safety. 
 Prompted and aided by his Almoner, he decided on placing this 
 house in the city of Alfred," *'. <?., in Oxford. This is Newman's 
 account of the foundation in 1326 of Oriel College, Oxford. New- 
 man was elected Fellow of Oriel in 1823. Henry VIII. usually 
 shares with Cardinal Wolsey the honor of founding Christ 
 Church, Oxford, 1525-1532. Henry VI. founded Eton in 1440; 
 William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, founded Winches- 
 ter College, Winchester, and New College, Oxford, between 1373 
 and 1393. Wolsey's share in the establishment of Christ Church, 
 Oxford, has already been noted. 
 
 Newman is simply emphasizing the fact that he and his Catho- 
 lic friends have been trained in the great English Colleges and
 
 NOTES. 
 
 223 
 
 Universities, and may claim a common share with Protestants in 
 the best traditions of English culture. 
 
 154 : 13. The Belgian sin-table. Cf. Notes, 148: i. 
 
 155 :i8. Mosheim. It was in "NioshemC s Ecclesiastical History 
 that St. Eligius was first calumniated in the fashion of which 
 Newman has complained in the earlier parts of this Lecture. 
 
 159 : 12. Try to work society. That religious unbelief tends to 
 the disintegration of society is a familiar argument in favor of 
 established creeds. Roman Catholics are apt to point with a 
 certain complacency to the social disturbances so characteristic 
 of recent years, and to urge that they are the necessary expression 
 of the modern spirit. If you teach that society is founded solely 
 on expediency, and if you encourage every man to judge for him- 
 self on questions of politics and morals and religion, can you 
 wonder, they ask, if there result savage attacks of all kinds on 
 the established order ? 
 
 160 : I. Starting then -with the being. This passage comes 
 from chapter iv. of the Apologia, where Newman is describing the 
 position of his mind since 1845. "F rom the time that I became 
 a Catholic, of course I have no further history of my religious 
 opinions to narrate. ... I have been in perfect peace and con- 
 tentment ; I never have had one doubt. I was not conscious 
 to myself, on my conversion, of any change, intellectual or moral, 
 wrought in my mind. I was not conscious of firmer faith in the 
 fundamental truths of Revelation, or of more self-command ; 
 I had not more fervour ; but it was like coming into port after a 
 rough sea ; and my happiness on that score remains to this day 
 without interruption." (Apologia, ed. 1890, p. 238.) After this 
 preliminary account of the results of his change of faith, Newman 
 goes on to explain why he found little or no difficulty in accept- 
 ing those additional articles of the Catholic faith which, as an 
 Anglican, he had rejected. He admits that there are difficulties 
 attendant on some of these articles ; but difficulties are connected 
 with every point of religious belief, most of all with the belief in 
 God, the belief which is nevertheless " borne in upon our minds 
 with most power." " Ten thousand difficulties," however, " do 
 not make one doubt ;"..." difficulty and doubt are incommen- 
 surate." Newman next considers the doctrines of Transubstan-
 
 224 NOTES. 
 
 tiation and the Trinity, and points out that both have to do with 
 things in themselves, not with phenomena, and hence are truths 
 beyond the control or criticism of science, which deals wholly 
 with phenomena. Finally, he undertakes to prove, in the passage 
 given in the text, that the system of the Catholic Church " is in 
 no sense dishonest, and that therefore the upholders and teachers 
 of that system, as such, have a claim to be acquitted in their own 
 persons of that odious imputation." 
 
 160 : 7. Unspeakable distress. The nature of Newman's re- 
 action upon the great spectacle of human folly, wickedness, 
 and woe should be carefully noted. His distress is caused not 
 so much by intense sympathy with a struggling humanity, as by 
 the impingement of a vast mass of disorderly evil upon his con- 
 sciousness, by the resulting shock to his spiritual sensitiveness, 
 and by the threat to the integrity of his spiritual life. 
 
 160 : 18. J^his voice. Newman postulates a God in obedience 
 to the dictates of his moral consciousness. Cf. his Grammar of 
 Assent, ed. 1889, p. 417 : " I assume the presence of God in our 
 conscience, and the universal experience, as keen as our experience 
 of bodily pain, of what we call a sense of sin or guilt. This sense 
 of sin, as of something not only evil in itself, but an affront to the 
 good God, is chiefly felt as regards one or other of three viola- 
 tions of His law. He Himself is Sanctity, Truth, and Love ; and 
 the three offences against His Majesty are impurity, inveracity, 
 and cruelty." This consciousness of guilt, Newman urges, is 
 really a consciousness of the violation of a law ; and law implies 
 a Lawgiver. This interpretation of conscience is what Newman 
 has in mind when he speaks of assuming " the presence of God in 
 our conscience." Cf. Grammar of Assent, ed. 1889, p. 63, where 
 Newman traces in detail the " induction from particular experi- 
 ences of conscience," by means of which we have " a warrant for 
 concluding the Ubiquitous Presence of One Supreme Master." 
 
 160: 22. Arguments in proof of a God. Apart from this testi- 
 mony of the moral consciousness, the so-called demonstrations of 
 the existence of God seem to Newman, on the whole, of doubtful 
 worth. Cf. Discussions and Arguments, ed. 1888, p. 299 : " The 
 whole framework of Nature is confessedly a tissue of antecedents
 
 NOTES. 225 
 
 and consequents ; we may refer all things forwards to design, or 
 backwards on a physical cause. . . . The one hypothesis will 
 solve the phenomena as well as the other. ... I believe that 
 the study of Nature, when religious feeling is away, leads the 
 mind, rightly or wrongly, to acquiesce in the atheistic theory, as 
 the simplest and easiest." This assertion, although limited by 
 Newman in a foot-note (Selections, p. 103), seems nevertheless to 
 express his prevailing opinion. Cf . Discussions and Arguments, 
 p. 295 : " I would rather be bound to defend the reasonable- 
 ness of assuming that Christianity is true, than to demonstrate 
 a moral governance from the physical world." In the fourth 
 of his University Sermons, p. 70, Newman speaks of the 
 ineffectiveness of the argument from design, and of a pos- 
 sible " unsoundness in the intellectual basis of the argument." 
 Even in the passage in the Grammar of Assent, ed. 1889, 
 p. 72, where he summarizes apparently with more respect, the 
 argument based on the prevalence of order in the universe, he 
 admits that the argument tends merely to prove the existence of 
 " mind at least as wide and as enduring in its living action, as the 
 immeasurable ages and spaces of the universe on which that 
 agency has left its traces." Finally, in the Grammar of Assent, 
 p. 66, he expressly notes that the argument for a great First Cause 
 is unconvincing. From these passages, then, it is plain that New- 
 man found in the moral consciousness the surest grounds for his 
 belief in God ; and that he did not pretend, even on these grounds, 
 to demonstrate the existence of God, but merely postulated it in 
 obedience to an instinct as imperative as that which leads us to 
 postulate the existence of an outside world. Cf. Grammar of 
 Assent, p. 63. 
 
 167. Miracles. Newman's various pleas for miracles have ex- 
 posed him to severe attacks on the score of insincerity, credu- 
 lousness, and illogicalness. Newman published two Essays on 
 Miracles, the first, in 1826, the second, in 1842, as a preface to a 
 new translation of Fleury's Ecclesiastical History. For the rela- 
 tions between the two Essays see the Apologia, ed. 1890, pp. 20-23, 
 and Note B, at the end of the Apologia, on Ecclesiastical Mira- 
 cles. Newman's ideas of the comparative credibility of Scripture 
 miracles and of ecclesiastical miracles will be found still fur- 
 
 '5
 
 226 NOTES. 
 
 ther expounded in the correspondence with the Bishop of Nor- 
 wich, appended to the Present Position of Catholics. For criticisms 
 of Newman's treatment of miracles see E. A. Abbott's Philomy- 
 thus ; Kingsley's What, then, does Dr. Newman mean ? ; Prof. 
 Huxley's article in the Nineteenth Century, XXV., p. 948 ; and 
 Leslie Stephen's Newman's Theory of Belief in An Agnostic's 
 Apology. A vigorous reply to Mr. Abbott may be found in Wil- 
 frid Ward's Philalethes in Witnesses to the Unseen and Other 
 Essays. Cf. R. H. Hutton, Cardinal Newman, chap. v. 
 
 169 : 21. Breviary. The daily service-book of Catholic priests ; 
 to be distinguished from the Missal which contains the service 
 of the Mass. Beside homilies, prayers and psalms, appropriate 
 for every saint's day, the Breviary contains many legends of the 
 lives and the deaths of the saints. 
 
 174 : 6. Holy Coat. The Empress Helena, Mother of Con- 
 stantine the Great, is said to have presented to the Cathedral of 
 Treves, which she founded, the original seamless coat of Jesus. 
 The relic was exhibited in 1844 to vast crowds of pilgrims from 
 all parts of the world; the next exhibition, that of 1891, was also 
 successful. Argenteuil in France possesses a rival Holy Coat, 
 which was last exhibited in the spring of 1894. 
 
 176 : 2. Froissart. Jean Froissart (1337-1410), whose Chro- 
 nique deals with the history of France during the last seventy-five 
 years of the fourteenth century. 
 
 176 : 2. Stilly. The famous minister of Henry the Fourth of 
 France. His Memoires recite the events of his administration 
 under that monarch. 
 
 176 : 3. Doddington. The allusion is to George Bubb Doding- 
 ton, Lord Melcombe (1691-1762), whose great wealth, shameless 
 intrigues for office, ostentatious bad taste, and occasional wit 
 have combined to preserve his memory. Thomson dedicated to 
 him his Summer, and Hogarth in the Analysis of Beauty has 
 immortalized his wig. Hi's Diary (1784) contains much amusing 
 gossip about Court life under George II. 
 
 176:4- Sharon Turner (1768-1847). He is best remembered 
 by his History of the Anglo-Saxons, published 1799-1805. I le also 
 wrote a somewhat portentous Sacred History of the World as dis- 
 played in the Creation and subsequent Events.
 
 NOTES. 227 
 
 177 : i. St. Januarius. See Edward Kinesman, Lives of the 
 Saints, p. 742 : " The most stupendous miracle is that seen 
 to this day in the Church of St. Gennaro, in Naples, viz., the 
 blood of St. Januarius, kept in two glass vials. When either 
 vial, held in the right hand, is presented to the head of the saint, 
 the congealed blood first melts, and then goes on apparently to 
 boil." The miracle is said to be wrought in the sight of large 
 concourses of people, thrice yearly, on Sept. 19, Dec. 20, and 
 about the first of May. See Alban Butler, Lives of the Saints, 
 ed. 1814, IX., 251. Murat, when King of Naples, is said to have 
 commanded the Bishop, who was hostile to the French, to work 
 the miracle on pain of seeing his church cannonaded out of exist- 
 ence ; after many protests on the part of the prelate, the miracle 
 took place. 
 
 177 : 4. Lombard Crown. The famous iron crown of Italy, 
 one of the four crowns with which the Emperors of the Holy 
 Roman Empire were crowned. See Bryce's Holy Roman Empire, 
 chap. xii. The crown is of gold and is decorated with many 
 precious stones ; it gets its name from a fillet or narrow band of 
 iron, running round the inside, and said to have been made of a 
 nail used in the Crucifixion. With this crown Napoleon crowned 
 himself at Milan in 1805 ; the last two Austrian Emperors have 
 also been crowned with it. 
 
 178. Gurta and Juba. The last two selections are given to 
 illustrate Newman's portrayal of the supernatural. If his con- 
 ception of life and of religion is to be understood, the intensity 
 of his belief in the spiritual world must be thoroughly apprehended. 
 Cf. Notes 85 : 2. Common life is for Newman enveloped at every 
 point in a circumambient atmosphere of mystery, which at any mo- 
 ment may part for the revelation of supernatural forces. It is diffi- 
 cult to realize the intensity of this conviction of Newman's when we 
 read those of his discussions in which he grasps comprehensively 
 the phenomena of the actual world, facts and ideas, and 
 arranges them unerringly in their proper relations in due subordi- 
 nation to their determining principles. In such passages he 
 seems anything but a mystic, and his clear apprehension of facts 
 and rigorous application of principles seem quite out of keeping 
 with a mystical habit of mind. Yet the orderly wprld of science
 
 228 NOTES, 
 
 that Newman's logic gives him, is only a part of his truth. The 
 system of nature is one system ; the system of the supernatural 
 is another system, even more real than the natural, and infinitely 
 more important in its issues for good and for ill. At any mo- 
 ment, the white light of infinite bliss may rain down on our com- 
 mon life, or our ordinary, every-day paths may suddenly open 
 beneath our feet into black gulfs of infinite woe. 
 
 178 : i. In the bosom of the woods. Newman's Callista, a Tal* 
 of the Third Century, published in 1855, was written to illustrate 
 the relations between Christians and heathen during the earliest 
 days of the Church. Callista is a Greek maiden, a modeller of 
 images, who, losing her first naive delight in life and her sense of 
 untroubled youth, grows more and more restless and distraught, 
 until one day a priest of the new religion puts before her in simple 
 words the story of God's love to man and his promises of 
 eternal life to those who do his will. The world-weary girl finds 
 here an escape from her despair, becomes a Christian, and almost 
 at once proves her sincerity by joyfully welcoming martyrdom. 
 Two other characters in the story are the youths Agellius and 
 Juba, the former a Christian, the latter a scoffer at all religions. 
 Agellius is in love with Callista but never wins more than a word 
 from her. He is faithful, however, in his remote adoration, and 
 is the leader of the small band of Christians, who, after her mar- 
 tyrdom, bear off her body for Christian burial. His step-mother, 
 and Juba's, is Gurta, a Numidian woman, who has the reputation 
 of a sorceress. The scene in the chapters given in the text is 
 laid at her hut, and the time is just after the mob of the neighbor- 
 ing city have made a fierce onslaught on Christians. In the 
 tumult Callista has been captured and imprisoned on suspicion. 
 
 193 : i. O -wisdom of the -world. Callista is in prison. She 
 has been baptised by a Christian priest, and has received the 
 Eucharist. An imperial rescript has just arrived commanding 
 her torture and execution on the morrow.
 
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