XII

'Tories! Yes! we are Tories. Our faith is in the Divine right of kings. But easy, my boys, easy; all free men are kings, and they hold their empire from heaven. That is our political, philosophical, moral, religious creed. In its spirit we have lived, and in its spirit we hope to die.'—Recreations of Christopher North.

IN the days of my youth—say half a century ago—with extraordinary avidity my reading contemporaries devoured the 'Noctes Ambrosianæ' of 'Christopher North,' mastering the barbaric Scotch dialect of Galloway, in which the Ettrick Shepherd is made to speak, for the delightsomeness of his imagination and his quaintly-expressed notions about men and matters. Nowadays, if I mention the books to any young fellow of twenty-five to thirty-five, I am stared at as blankly as if I had asked was he intimately acquainted with the man in the moon! In Alfred Miles's fine volumes, 'The Poets of the Century,' his poems are not even quoted, and his very name is merely lumped in with a number of the smaller fry of North Britain; while Mr. Stedman, in 'Victorian Poets,' will have it that his verses had become 'antiquated' even before their author's death.Wilson has been overshadowed by our Southeys, Coleridges, Wordsworths, and Ruskins, though he was greater, more interesting, more lovable as a mere human being than any of them, and deserves to be as long remembered for his books. A generation that calls Kipling a poet, and makes an Alfred Austin its Laureate, may indeed be expected to forget many of the men of true genius honoured by their fathers.

Wilson came into the Lake Country in 1807 from Paisley, where he was born twenty-two years previously. He had recently buried his father, from whom he had inherited some £40,000. The property he purchased, and retained in his possession till his decease in 1854, was a small farmhouse and its lands, known as Elleray. It is situated on the slopes of Orrest Head, so well beloved of Windermere residents, and so frequented by tourists on account of the magnificent prospect it commands. He added to the house, and converted it into a charming home for a wife and growing family, and a haven of rest for himself in his frequent retirements from his future busy professional life in Edinburgh. It was pulled down about forty years ago, when the estate changed hands. From either of the lofty ranges enclosing the romantic Troutbeck Valley there is one of the most magnificent mountain views in all England. The tumbled masses, immortal weather-beaten monarchs—Wansfell, Loughrigg, and their compeers and allies, and, farther off, the Langdale Pikes (twin cloud-piercing giants), and Cringle Crags, and 'The Old Man' of Coniston, and, on a clearer day than usual, the dominating summit of distant Scafell—these, their sunshine and shadows, their waving woodlands, their stretches of purple heatherand vast brown beds of bracken, their foaming cascades and garrulous streams, and the blue inland sea at their feet dotted with verdant islands and white-sailed yachts, and traversed by elegant steam gondolas thronged with happy 'trippers,' are all visible in one never-to-be-forgotten picture arranged in the wisdom of the Almighty for the pleasure of His people. Such an outlook, but from a lower altitude, delighted daily the eyes of Nature-loving Wilson, whose very prose was poetry, of a calibre not less than Kingsley's in his celebrated 'Devonshire Idylls,' or than Ruskin's rhapsodies on Switzerland. His ardent temperament and unusual virility compelled him to throw himself heartily into almost every possible form of physical and intellectual enjoyment. There never was such a man as he for undertaking everything and anything, and for doing nothing badly, including the art of 'loafing,' when he was in the cue for it. Nearly six feet high, broad-shouldered—'lish,' as they say here (meaning 'lissom,' as Southerners say, or 'lithe,' as the dictionaries have it)—blue-eyed, loosely arrayed, and collarless, he strode along the vales or over the fells, doing his thirty and forty miles at a stretch, or rode his famous pony Colonsay in a still-remembered trotting-match, or, with a couple of like-minded friends he chased a bull by moonlight across the uplands, each of the huntsmen being armed with a long spear. He was a mighty fisherman, storing numberless rods and artificial flies among the books of his library, and even whiling away the tedium of his last illness by arranging and rearranging the latter, and recalling as he did so the exploits of former days accomplished with the aid of this one or that, for sometimeshis catches had amounted to as many as eighteen and twenty dozen of trouts in a day. He was an adept at wrestling and at boxing, throwing or being thrown with keen enjoyment of the tussle, and attacking and punishing professional pugilists or bullies of the fair, if in his opinion oppression or unfair play were evidenced. He kept a fleet of sailing-boats on the lake, and was dubbed 'Lord High Admiral of Windermere,' and he was as expert a swimmer as he was a sailor, delighting in occasionally frightening his shipmates by feigned accidents, and then having a boisterous laugh at their fears for him. Cock-fighting was at that time a 'gentlemanly' sport, and his breed of game-cocks was celebrated far and near. He seems never to have kept fewer than fifty at once. As great a conversationist and humorous and jovial companion as he was an athlete, he was much sought after for dinner and supper parties, while at balls he was accounted the best of dancers. So universal a genius in all manly outdoor pastimes, and so genial a friend within doors, was liable to many temptations in that sadly too 'drinking' age, and as a young man he certainly was often the worse for liquor, as his own letters help to prove. Yet was he never quarrelsome, never did he put forth his strength and skill for any low or mean purpose, never but in play or in defence of the ill-used. 'Everybody loved him,' records his daughter, rich and poor, and the dumb animals also. Many stories are told of his chivalrous and gallant conduct, especially towards womanhood, and of the wonderful combination in his character of almost feminine tenderness and sympathy with the roistering vigour of an ancient Viking. He would keeppatient watch at night by a sick servant's bed, tend with his own hands some wounded dog; and there is on record the fact of a fledgling sparrow taking refuge in his study, and being fed and cared for and so tamed that it stayed as a denizen of the same room for at least eleven years.

The delightful time at Elleray was crowned with a still higher happiness when he married a beautiful and engaging lady, every way his peer in bodily graces and in mind, whom he loved passionately, and for whose death in middle life he grieved so deeply that he never fully recovered the blow, though so exceptionally blessed with affectionate and able children and eminent sons-in-law. His married days at Elleray were by no means all spent in mere physical enjoyments and recreation. They were full of literary and social occupations. All his great contemporaries and neighbours were frequent guests. At their reunions there was first-rate talk, and often competitions in versifying some given theme, or some other proof was forthcoming that the circle was one of learning and talent. De Quincey was, though insignificant in stature, and obliged to trot by the side of the stalwart Wilson, one of his most valued touring companions. Hartley Coleridge was always welcomed, and on one occasion he was detained a prisoner in his own interest for a fortnight, in order to prevent an outbreak of intoxication, and to secure some promised contribution for an editor who was to pay him cash for his needs. Here, too, came other well-known litterateurs to see and converse with the rising poet and journalist, and perchance to go a-fishing with him in the becks and tarns of the neighbourhood. It was at this period that his greatest poems werewritten, and some published—for instance, 'The Isle of Palms,' and 'The City of the Plague,' the former a story of shipwrecked lovers, and the latter one of London during the Great Plague, introducing a wandering Magdalene from Grasmere whose memory goes back, in the hour of trouble, to her 'beautiful land of mountains, lakes, and woods,' to the 'green and primrose banks of her own Rydal Lake,' and the 'deep hush of Grasmere Vale,' and the waters 'reflecting all the heavens.' His society and surroundings, as well as his instincts, encouraged the poetic vein, already evinced by his having won the Oxford Newdigate Prize during his University days.

Alas, these halcyon hours were over all too soon for the hitherto-fortunate couple! The wife's dower was a handsome one, but the far larger property of the husband was swept away by the fraudulence of a relative who was his trustee. The family had to leave Elleray for the home of Mrs. Wilson, senior, in Edinburgh, though the Windermere house was retained, and frequently returned to after the early stress of changed circumstances was over. Cruel as was the wrench, it brought out the better side of Wilson's disposition. He murmured not, bowing before the trial with real Christian resignation, and at the same moment bracing himself to the task of earning a subsistence with truly noble fortitude. In the Scotch metropolis he soon became connected with the newly-startedBlackwood's Magazine, and was, with Lockhart, one of the ruling spirits of that famous periodical. For long years his wit, his rhetoric, his trenchant and slashing criticisms, his keen insight into literary merit, his almost incredible fertility of subject-matter (he sometimes, underpressure, wrote the whole of the articles for a particular number), speedily lifted it to the foremost place among similar journals, and made it the fiercest organ of the most rampant intellectual Toryism that Britain has ever known, bitterly hated, sorely dreaded, yet bought by friend and foe alike, and read wherever our language was understood. It is worth any reader's while to buy at some second-hand bookseller's 'The Recreations of Christopher North' and the 'Noctes,' both reprints from 'Old Ebony.'

Suddenly there occurred a vacancy in the University Professorship of Moral Philosophy. Wilson tried for the post against Sir William Hamilton. All the influence of a grateful and unscrupulous Tory administration (that of Lord Liverpool, George IV.'s first Premier) was exerted on his behalf, and they handled the unreformed City Corporation, in whose appointment the Professorship lay, as voters in rotten boroughs were then handled. John Wilson secured the chair, to the great scandal of the other side, who truly pointed out that he had had no philosophical training nor known bias to ethical studies, while his previous life had given no evidence of his fitness to teach morals to young men. As a matter of fact, however, this was a turning-point in his own spiritual career. He took the advice of Sir Walter Scott to 'forswear sack, purge, and live cleanly like a gentleman.' He set himself diligently to the study of his new subject, and mastered it. He never published any system of Moral Philosophy. He has made no such mark in the history of philosophy as did his great competitor. Yet, far beyond almost any teacher of modern times, he achieved the highest of all distinctions—thatof being beloved, reverenced, almost idolized, by generations of students during a term of thirty years, moulding and shaping the lives of multitudes of public men and of those who create the national welfare in schools and colleges, and filling them with noble aspirations and ideals. His was a 'muscular Christianity,' taught and practised long ere the term was invented and popularized.

His strenuous life was now, at the end of the thirty years of occupancy of the chair, drawing to its close. A paralytic stroke obliged him to resign. After a lingering time of gradual decay the fine spirit—erring, repentant, forgiven, witnessing mightily for the higher and better side of human nature—passed into a world of kindred souls, as he wished it might, ''mid the blest stillness of a Sabbath day.'

'Of all creatures that feed upon the earth, the professional critic is the one whose judgment I least value for any purpose except advertisement. But of all writers, the one whom he sits in judgment on is also the one whom he is least qualified to assume a superiority over. For is it likely that a man, who has written a serious book about anything in the world, should not know more about that thing than one who merely reads his book for the purpose of reviewing it. But so it must be, and a discreet man must just let it be. What I want to know is whether men and women and children who care nothing about me, but take an intelligent interest in the subject, find the book readable. What its other merits are nobody knows so well as I.'—A letter to Lord Tennyson by James Spedding.

'Bacon, like Moses, led us forth at last;The barren wilderness he pass'd,Did on the very border standOf the blest promised land,And from the mountain top of his exalted wit,Saw it himself, and show'd us it.'Abraham Cowley.

HE was a 'Baconian specialist.' Specialists are seldom known to the public, and seldom read, even when known by name, except by the chosen few they write for. His life of the great philosopher and essayist—Francis Bacon, Viscount St. Albans, and Baron Verulam, etc.—in seven volumes, is the standard biography. The fourteen additional volumes of Bacon's works, edited by Spedding and two coadjutors, is the standard edition of these. There is a smaller form of the 'Life and Letters' in a couple of volumes—a condensation of the completer edition—and also done by Spedding. He spent thirty years in gathering materials, and putting them in order. 'Minute, accurate, and dry,' hismagnum opuscan never become popular; but it is exhaustive, leaving nothing more to be said on the subject. It will beseen at once what infinite pains he must have taken to perfect his self-imposed task—how he must have searched, and searched again, in all available libraries and depositories of old MSS., old letters, old records of State and documents in private hands—how he must have written and rewritten, added, struck out, and revised over and over during that long period, as new facts cropped up or new views occurred to his mind. Says Mrs. Lynn Linton of him: 'He was one who touched the crown of the ideal student, whose justice of judgment was on a par with his sweetness of nature, whose intellectual force was matched by his serenity, his patience, his self-mastery, his purity.' There is another book of his—'Evenings with a Reviewer'—written to defend Bacon from unfounded aspersions on his character made by Macaulay, and by Pope at an earlier period. This was originally printed for private circulation among a few friends, and was not given to the world till after the decease of our author. It is cast in the conversational form affected by Vaughan in his 'Hours with the Mystics,' by Smith, of Keswick, in 'Thorndale' and 'Gravenhurst,' and in similar works where it is desired that all sides shall be fairly presented, and the whole of the issues involved thoroughly thrashed out and carefully summed up.

It is confirming to those of us who remain sceptics in relation to the Shakespeare-Bacon theory, and who believe 'The Great Cryptogram' to exist only in some kink of the brain of its first exponent, and not in any of Shakespeare's plays or poems, that so painstaking and minute an investigator—one so utterly conversant with all that Bacon ever did or wrote, one so familiar with his contemporaries andhis age, even to the analysis of the respective shares of Shakespeare and Fletcher in the composition of 'Henry VIII.'—never seems to have for a moment suspected any sort of literary co-partnership between the philosopher and the actor.

Apart, however, from any questions of literature, and his high place among its leading lights, James Spedding's personal character and his association on terms of equality with the most eminent men of his day, and the regard in which he was held by them, makes him an interesting and important man of mark in the district—one whose memory should not be allowed to die.

He was the son of a Cumberland squire living at Mirehouse, on Bassenthwaite Water. The estate, lying on the eastern shore, is a little north of where the River Derwent discharges itself into the lake, and at the foot of mighty Skiddaw. Mirehouse Woods clothe the slopes of Skiddaw Dodd. He was born in 1808, sent to school at Bury St. Edmunds, and afterwards went to Cambridge University. At college he took no high degree. He was, nevertheless, an eminent 'Apostle'—eloquent in debate, though calm and unimpassioned. Does anyone ask who and what Cambridge 'Apostles' were? They were a band of ardent spirits among the undergraduates, holding regular meetings, and often foregathering in each others' rooms to discuss tobacco and coffee, and where, says Carlyle in his 'Life of Sterling' (who was a member), 'was much logic and other spiritual fencing, and ingenuous collision, probably of a really superior quality in that kind, for not a few of the then disputants have since proved themselves men of parts, and attained distinction in the intellectual walks oflife.' Besides Spedding and Sterling, this genial circle of comrades included the Tennysons, Trench (afterwards Archbishop), Arthur Hallam, Frederick Denison Maurice (the founder of the club, and toasted as such at one of its annual dinners), and many another of equal or little less fame—a band of youthful friends who, as the future Laureate wrote, held debate

'On mind and art,And labour and the changing mart,And all the framework of the land.'

Of Spedding himself Lord Tennyson wrote in later days: 'He was the Pope among us young men—the wisest man I ever knew.' With this opinion agrees the report of Caroline Fox as to a remark of Samuel Laurence, the portrait painter: 'Spedding has the most beautiful combination of noble qualities I ever met with.'

Leaving the University, James Spedding went, in 1835, into the Colonial Office, under Sir Henry Taylor, author of 'Philip van Artevelde,' a chief with tastes wholly congenial to those of his youthful subordinate. During the time he remained in the Civil Service he went with Lord Ashburton as travelling secretary to the Commission appointed to settle the United States dispute with this nation as to the proper line of their North-West boundary. He acquitted himself so ably in his Government work that he was offered the post of an Under-Secretary of State at a salary of £2,000 a year. This he refused in order to give himself entirely to literature. Mr. Gladstone entertained the highest opinion of his abilities and integrity, and greatly lamented his decision not to serve his country inthe post for which he was so obviously fitted. Still later in life Mr. Gladstone tried to persuade him to take the Professorship of History at Cambridge—a prospect which had no more attractions for Spedding than Government officialism.

Spedding never married. He was wedded to his self-chosen life-work of building up the standard biography of Bacon. He was, however, by no means a man of one idea. He was an ardent Liberal in politics, and during the awful upheaval of the European nations, about the middle of last century, he became even a vehement partisan of the Hungarian Revolution, and of Louis Kossuth and its other leaders. He was a votary of Keats, and of Tennyson, the latter staying with him twice at Mirehouse. He was an ardent admirer of the celebrated Jenny Lind, the 'Swedish Nightingale.' He was also an advocate of phonetic 'reform,' as it was called, not merely, it is to be feared, for the sake of promoting the study and commercial use of shorthand reporting, but with the view of actually changing the orthography of our ancient language. With all its difficulties and peculiarities, one would have felt lasting regret had he and his coadjutors succeeded in their raid on our historical and ethnological inheritance in the English spellingbook. He was, furthermore, a careful student of handwriting. The last-named study was necessitated by his continuous poring over the MSS. relating to his sixteenth- and seventeenth-century investigations.

Some people who had observed Spedding's patient and leisurely methods of study, and his calmness and deliberation of thought and verbal expression, considered him of a lazy disposition,and as strangely lacking in energy. This was an erroneous judgment. He was certainly cautious, because acute in noticing details, and refused to commit himself without due, and perhaps sometimes undue, premeditation, but he frequently assumed purposely an air of ignorance when he was merely endeavouring to draw others out, and he was fond of adopting the Socratic method with those whom he conversed, in order to get at the bottom of them, or of the subject under discussion. His memory was an exceedingly retentive one. To a friend he writes: 'I have no copy of "The Palace of Art," but when you come I shall be happy to repeat it to you.' Readers of Tennyson know that this poem contains seventy-four stanzas, besides the prelude to it. He was, like so many others in this series, a contributor toBlackwood, and to theEdinburghand theGentleman's Magazineas well. In theEdinburghhe reviewed Tennyson's first book with discrimination and with appreciation.

The chief fascination about Spedding, I say again, was undoubtedly his commanding personality and his abiding comradeship with the greatest men of genius among his contemporaries. Such diverse characters as James Anthony Froude and Edward Fitzgerald were among his intimates. He was with Froude on that historian's first visit to Thomas Carlyle, and Fitzgerald called to see him in the hospital where he died. It was in 1881 that he was knocked down by a cab in London, and carried to St. George's. On his death-bed, says Fitzgerald, he was 'all patience,' refusing to hear the cabman blamed, and, indeed, fully exonerating him.

When Spedding's brother died, the friend ofthem both, Alfred Tennyson, wrote to James in touching sympathy with his loss, a noble poem which, in the volume, is inscribed simply 'To J. S.' The last two verses may fitly conclude this sketch, for they apply as much to one brother as to the other:

'Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace;Sleep, holy spirit, tender soul,While the stars burn, the moons increase,And the great ages onward roll.Sleep till the end, true soul and sweet,Nothing comes to thee new or strange;Sleep full of rest from head to feet—Lie still, dry dust, secure of change.'

'Deep streams run still, and why? Not because there are no obstructions, but because they altogether overflow those stones or rocks round which the shallow stream has to make its noisy way. 'Tis the full life that saves us from the little noisy troubles of life.'—William Smith.* * * * *'So when our complainingTells of constant strifeWith some moveless hindranceIn our path of life,'What we need is onlyFulness of our own.If the current deepen,Never mind the stone!'Let the fuller natureFlow its mass above;Cover it with pity,Cover it with love.'Lucy Smith.

* * * * *

'So when our complainingTells of constant strifeWith some moveless hindranceIn our path of life,'What we need is onlyFulness of our own.If the current deepen,Never mind the stone!'Let the fuller natureFlow its mass above;Cover it with pity,Cover it with love.'Lucy Smith.

'As unto the bow the cord is,So unto the man is woman,Though she bends him, she obeys him,Though she draws him, yet she follows.Useless each without the other.'Longfellow'sHiawatha.

TWO rarely beautiful lives were theirs—close-welded, and thereby each sharing and each doubling the beauty of the other. Their beauty was spiritual, intellectual, influential.

William sprang from the mercantile classes of the Metropolis—from a race of evangelical Free Churchmen of such liberal leanings as to throw no obstacle in his way of becoming a theological and metaphysical thinker of a decidedly 'advanced' type; while an elder brother became an eloquent Episcopalian preacher at the celebrated Temple Church.

Lucy, whose maiden name was Cummings, was the daughter of a medical man who had married a lady socially superior to himself, and was brought up by her parents in an atmosphere of 'Welsh Calvinism.'

William was a shy, sensitive boy and lad, learning quickly, given to introspection, and taking a high place in his schools. His university life was spent at Glasgow—Oxford and Cambridge being at thattime (the late forties of last century) closed against all except Anglicans—and there his mental bias towards philosophy was strengthened and developed, especially by the teaching of Dr. Chalmers. From college he was sent to study law under the well-known author, Sharon Turner. This study he cordially detested, yet in after-years he confessed that compulsory training for the Bar had invigorated and disciplined his reasoning powers to a degree he learned to be grateful for. Some travels abroad, too, though at a later period—notably to Italy—matured his character and widened his outlook. His first literary efforts were articles which were accepted by theAthenæum, then just started. In that paper, and inBlackwood(is it not singular that most of our Lake celebrities were contributors to 'Old Ebony'?) he had frequent enough insertions to earn thereby a modest income—small, but sure, and sufficient for the limited needs of a quiet-living single man. For years he followed the career of an essayist and reviewer, pondering deeply meanwhile problems that seem to admit of no definite solution during the present limitations of human knowledge—problems which have bewildered Christians and non-Christians alike for centuries past, and, if Milton's authority may be relied upon, even the fallen principalities and powers in Hades—'Fixed Fate, Freewill, Foreknowledge Absolute'—the origin of evil, the eternal duration of sin's consequences, the nature of sin itself, the possibility of finding and knowing God, the attainment of final certitude on any question other than mathematical, the relation of revealed or natural religion to science, the unalterable reign of law in mental and moral as well as in physical regions—these, and many similar enigmas, whirledperpetually through his brain, and would not rest till at least an honest attempt had been made to solve them. The necessity that appeared to be laid on him to discover answers to the practically unanswerable induced a habit of seclusion and a shrinking from any society that might interrupt the flow of speculative thought. He would pass people in the streets and the country roads absolutely without seeing them; and though cheerful and apt in conversation when obliged to meet his fellows, he invariably preferred to be alone on long mountain walks that he might think his own thoughts, and by meditation work out his difficulties, and record in his MSS. for future publication the conclusions he had arrived at, even though those conclusions amounted to no more than that none could be attained to! It was while residing in solitary seclusion, first at sunny Bowness upon Windermere Lake and then across the watershed at Keswick, on the rainier side of the mountains, that his great books 'Thorndale' and 'Gravenhurst' were wrought in the secret recesses of his soul. The first, the sub-title of which is 'The Conflict of Opinion,' is constructed on the conversational model, as, indeed, is the second also. Materialist, Roman Catholic, Theist, or Unitarian, and Scientific Evolutionist, all are heard with fairness and courtesy, and the discussions are intensely interesting to readers with thoughtful minds. But there is, after all has been said that can be said, nothing more than an open verdict returned on the highest themes that can occupy human attention. There is no more settlement of any of the vast questions debated for the inquirer who has discarded Divine revelation than for him who accepts it in whole or in part. 'Gravenhurst'has for a secondary title 'Knowing and Feeling: a Contribution to Psychology.' So far as it leads us to an end that end seems hardly distinguishable from the Eastern 'Necessitarianism,' or 'Fatalism,' in which all metaphysicians sooner or later engulf us who get rid of human responsibility for sin and its consequences by making the Creator the author of both moral and material evil. Yet the conclusions are logical if only certain premises are granted. Both books are crowded with sweet and helpful thoughts—wayside flowers of brilliancy and fragrancy, the gathering of which may easily lure the reader from the watchfulness needed in travelling along these winding roads, so destitute of authoritative sign-posts; the sign-posts erected by previous explorers having been cut down by more modern pedestrians, because, forsooth! the painted directions were faded, and they had no brush wherewith to freshen them!

While William was thus developing his life-work and weaving his intellectual robes, Lucy was growing into her charming womanhood amid the happy surroundings of her home in North Wales, and evolving the noblest of characters through self-denial and loving devotion to others. As a girl she was highly educated. When past her girlhood she proved a handsome and cultured lady, sought in marriage by at least two men, both of whose offers she refused, but neither of whom espoused any other. She remained single that she might help retrieve the fortunes of her parents, which had become so reduced that the house endeared to them by long residence had to be sold, and her own little patrimony given up to the clearance of debt. The broken father and mother were thenceforth tended, and, indeed, partly supported,by Lucy, who earned something by making translations from German, and in similar ways, till she lost them both in one sad week.

It was by an apparent chance, though by a very real providence of God, that these two met, William Smith and Lucy Cummings, while mother and daughter were in one set of apartments of a Keswick lodging-house, and 'Thorndale Smith,' as he came to be called, in an upper. A pleasant comradeship began on purely literary matters, and ripened into warm friendship, and frequent correspondence after parting for the season, till they met again some time afterwards at Patterdale. Then it was that friendship suddenly sprang upwards into the unique form of love most exquisitely portrayed in the ideal biography written of her husband by Lucy, after his premature decease. This biography was written originally for private circulation among her friends, and was afterwards attached, as a preface, to a new edition of 'Gravenhurst.' It is one of the most lovely stories of wedded life in our English tongue. All that poets have imagined of 'The Angel of the House,' of love's wealth, of love's visions, of 'Love's Young Dream,' seem to have been realized in the experiences of these kindred souls, brought together at a later period in life than most people enter on the married state. After a period of unalloyed happiness William's health began to fail, and a long time of anxious watching fell to Lucy Smith. Still was their talk ever of higher things and of the deeper problems of life and humanity. Despite his assumed negative position with regard to much that Christians hold to be essential truth, there was an undercurrent of devout belief in God left in William's heart, as is evidenced by lines in his verses, as for example:

'Earth can be earth, yet riseInto the region of God's dwelling-placeIf Light and Love are what we call His skies.'

In his 'Athelwood,' too—a tragedy, set on the stage and played by Macready and Helen Faucit—there are passages, notably those put into the mouth of Dunston, which show the same thing:

'God, where art Thou?I call for Thee, they give me but a world,Thy mechanism; I call aloud for Thee,My Father, Friend, Sustainer, Teacher, Judge.'

Still more remarkable was his impromptu acknowledgment when he lay dying, and his wife, referring to some of his published views, said: 'William, such love as mine for you cannot be the result of mere mechanism or vital forces, can it?' 'Oh, no,' he responded; 'it has a far higher source.' 'Once,' adds his wife, 'I saw the hands clasped as in a speechless communion with the Unseen, and twice I caught the solemn word "God" uttered, not in a tone of appeal or entreaty, but as if the supreme contemplation which had been his very life meant more, revealed more, than ever!' In a former article I pointed out how seldom professed, and even perfectly sincere, doubters ever entirely shake off the impressions of Divine reality and the Divine Presence. My own conviction is that the God whom they seek (I am not thinking of the unbelief that springs from moral unfaithfulness or obliquity) does, after all, touch their hands in the darkness, and the Christ whom they fail to understand has included them in His great and universal atonement. It may be that the Holy Spirit, who shows the things of Christ to men, gives them a saving view of Calvary as they pass through the Valley of the Shadow. I cannot believe that anybonâfideseeker after God ever became a 'lost soul' in any sense of those awful words, even though his seeking endured for a lifetime without conscious finding.

Lucy Smith survived her husband's death at Brighton several years, often making her way back to their beloved Borrowdale, where some of their intensest happiness had been experienced, and to Patterdale, where their first love was awakened. In the latter place there are 'exquisite shade of birch-trees on high ground' where she and her lover read together and recited poetry—his or hers or another's; peeps of Ullswater through the woods; mossy knolls and sequestered grassy walks; and all had memory-voices for her in the midst of their outward quietude. She had, as might have been foretold, imbibed much of her husband's philosophy, and in some directions her cherished 'orthodoxy' of opinion had reached its vanishing point, but her orthodoxy of heart was not touched adversely. It actually grew as life passed onward, and her sunset-lights glowed with the radiancy of heaven. William's real creed, 'God, Immortality, Progress'—a noble residuum, after all—was hers with great assurance, and she writes that she shared 'his craving for fellowship in Christ's deep love, and for a willing acceptance of His sufferings.' They both looked to being united—to quote her own words from her verses—'In, life more high in seeing, serving God, in nearer, nobler ways.' She ripened in character, in lovable ways, in self-forgetting devotion to her friends, till her poet-heart ceased to beat, and her yearnings after a fuller and more perfect soul-life were at length realized through the mercies and merits of the One she knew but in part, though He knew her, and her aspirations and difficulties, through and through.

Wherever its Revelations of the essentials of Deity and Humanity occur they may and must be considered as the most solemn and precious of all the contents of the Bible. But even of these it should be specially noted that they are for the most part progressive. The Bible contains, in fact, a series as well as a collection of Revelations—a series, of which the earliest terms are the least, and which very gradually, and not quite uniformly, rises to its height, and only after long centuries reaches its final terms in Him who was Himself the highest Revelation which man can be conceived capable of receiving in the flesh. That there is such a progression in the Revelation of truth and duty in the Bible must be obvious at once to anyone who considers the gradual manner in which those two greatest of all ideas—God and Immortality—are disclosed in it, and how the great duty of loving all men as ourselves, and considering every man as our brother, was never at all insisted on under the older dispensations.—Rev. Frederic Myers:Catholic Thoughts on the Bible and Theology.

'Must then all quests be nought, all voyage vain,All hopes the illusion of the whirling brain?Or are there eyes beyond earth's veil that see,Dreamers made strong to dream what is to be?'F. W. H. Myers:The Renewal of Youth.

FREDERIC MYERS, of Keswick, is still known by his once-celebrated 'Lectures on Great Men,' and by his two volumes of 'Catholic Thoughts' on the Church and on the Bible and theology. The lectures were delivered to his parishioners. The series commenced about 1840, in accordance with his strong conviction that a clergyman should be the educator as well as the spiritual guide of his flock, and as a consequence of his horror at the 'dreadful separation and want of sympathy of the various orders and classes of modern society.' Remember the period to which these words were applied. It was several years after this that Maurice, Kingsley, Ludlow, and their friends commenced their remarkable movement for bringing the influence, learning, and wealth of the better social strata to the aid of the poorer. Since those early days of awakening to the claims ofhuman brotherhood many things have happened to draw 'the various classes and orders of men' nearer together. Cruel taxes upon the food of the masses, for the further enrichment of the rich, have been swept away. The awakening of the democracy has brought it political power, and with this power the felt necessity for national education. The abolition of child-labour, the regulation and inspection of factories, mines, and workshops, the removal of many sectarian restrictions upon religious equality, an interest in sanitation and the preservation of public health, and many other such things for which the great 'middle classes' have steadfastly laboured side by side with the wage-earners, are results of the transfer of power from the few to the many. Such matters as these, now looked upon as among the common-places of civic life, were then hardly deemed by their most sanguine advocates as within the reach of 'practical politics.' Kindly-hearted Christian pastors, of the type of Frederic Myers, were few and far between, though wherever they existed they provoked among the people that element of 'Divine discontent' which found many voices ere it was appeased, from the decent respectability of Christian Socialism to the plebeian, and often extravagant, cries of Chartism.

Myers, and such as he, fitly began the movement, though scarcely consciously, by seeking 'to call forth the powers within man, by the culture of his whole nature; energy of all kinds—with the simultaneous cultivation of his sympathies, the nurture of truthfulness, justice, love, and faith.' He strove to awaken a spiritual ambition among his hearers by setting before their mental vision the struggles and the conquests of men who had resolved toachieve something worth the winning, and who had in their day become epoch-makers—who had possessed in eminent degree the qualities we all ought ever to cherish, according to our capacities, and our opportunities for self-development. His dozen specimen characters are well chosen from the regions of religion, adventure, and statesmanship. His two other books are devoted to the solution of questions then being much debated after the commencement of the Romeward Oxford movement known as 'Tractarianism.' The earlier one—that on the Church—was originally printed for private circulation. It is well for us that it was fully published at a later date, for though that era was prophetic of the coming of political advancement, it also set in motion a retrograde religious stream of thought and practice which is still flowing through the Anglican Church, and affecting the spiritual well-being of the nation. The principles enunciated in this masterly reply to Newman's doctrine of the Church, and his thorough examination of the sacerdotal claims of the Puseyite Oxonians can never become antiquated. With him the primary idea of the Christian Church is of a brotherhood of 'men worshipping Christ as the revelation of the Highest.' Equality of Christian privilege is, in his view, so characteristic of its constitution that the existence of a priestly caste within its borders is destructive of it. Christian faith is in Christ Himself, and not in doctrines or formulas of even the holiest and wisest men. In the true and universal—i.e., the Catholic—Church there can be no majestry, only a ministry. It is a Spiritual Republic in which no worldly distinctions can be recognised. 'Apostolic Sucsession,' in the High Anglican andRomish sense of the phrase, has no place therein, and no room exists for any human assumption over the minds and souls of believers in Christ within the purely spiritual Church, which is His body. Many readers will naturally see some lack of logical sequence in the argument which follows as to the relation of the Established Anglican Church to this Catholic and Spiritual one. That the conclusions reached on this point do not seem necessarily to flow from the premises must surely be conceded by all. Either legitimate conclusions must be drawn from the assumed fundamental position, or fresh premises must be granted. Nevertheless, as the Scriptural ground of his position was generally accepted, his timely work certainly helped to save the Church of England from the medievalist enemies within its own borders. Instead of their carrying the Establishment over to Rome, several of the ablest leaders of the new ritualistic movement severed themselves from its communion, and, as is well known, entered the Papal fold, some rising to great honour and dignity within it.

The 'Thoughts on the Bible and Theology' involve the theory that sacred literature 'contains, rather than consists of, special revelations.' In it, though not wholly Divine, 'the Divine Spirit may mingle with the human, and mingling, overmaster it.' It has infirmities and imperfections, but, he hastens to add, 'less in proportion to its holy truths than the chaff is to the wheat in any harvest—yea, is even only as the small dust of the balance compared with the greatest weight that the balance will weigh.' His theological teaching cannot be presented satisfactorily in a few lines, and it must be, therefore, dismissed with the sole remark that, though far from being rationalistic, it appearshighly rational, as it is based on the written words of God, and is not derived from the dogmas and traditions of Churchmen.

Frederic Myers was born in London in 1811, educated at home and at Cambridge, and became perpetual curate of St. John's, Keswick, in 1839, holding that living till his death in 1851, thus giving twelve years of his prime to the thoughtful activities of his ministry, and to the liberalizing of the Church of England.

Frederic William Henry Myers was the son of Frederic by his second wife. He was born at Keswick, and this town was, of course, the headquarters of his boyhood and youth. Therefore we claim him for the Lake District, though the necessities of his official life made it expedient to reside afterwards in the Metropolis. The year of his birth was 1843, Blackheath and Cheltenham were the places of his school education, and Cambridge was his Alma Mater. His classical knowledge and his memory were especially good. He could recite the whole of 'Virgil,' and had a love, spoken of as 'enthusiastic,' for Pindar, Æschylus, and Homer. His culture was widened by a trip to the East, and another to America. Somewhat of an athlete and a good swimmer, he once swam across the Niagara River below the Falls. Returning to England, he became one of her late Majesty's School Inspectors. He died in 1901. This brief summary of his life must suffice.

His literary output is of more value to us than are the details of his personal career. This output all thinking men will be grateful for, whatever their opinions about his teaching on telepathy, hypnotism, and so forth. Had he only given the world his well-knownpoem on 'St. Paul,' he would have contributed more than most hymn-writers have done to its moral profiting. If the old Hebrew Seer was one who saw visions of the future through Time's manifold veils, and visions of Jehovah behind the marching cohorts of human generations, and who also had the Divine gift of 'discernment of spirits,' surely F. W. H. Myers may be called a nineteenth century seer. He solved in his prose works for many an earnest seeker after the truth many a scientific doubt respecting God and Immortality, while in his principal poem he seems to identify himself with the great Apostle in the yearning and the self-abandonment essential to such a herald of the Cross. As he wrote, he must have entered into close sympathy with the flaming desires with which Paul's breast was burning, and the love with which he ached for souls whom he set himself to win for the Kingdom of Heaven. To present the inner life of him whom Christ Himself chose to fill the vacant office of the fallen Judas was a daring venture, but successful. He makes Paul say:

'Whoso hath felt the Spirit of the HighestCannot confound Him nor deny;Yea, with one voice, O world, though thou deniest,Stand thou on that side, for on this am I.'

Myers made the great choice, ranking himself among those 'who,' as he puts it, 'suppose themselves to discern spiritual verities,' amid a tumult of Agnosticism and positive philosophy which arose about that time, partly, perhaps, as a result of the reaction from that exaggerated High Church teaching opposed by his father. Accepting the actual discoveries of experimental science without question,he yet maintained there is both direct and indirect evidence that the cosmic laws of uniformity, conservation of energy, and evolution, do not exhaust the controlling laws of the universe, nor explain all classes of phenomena. There is, at least, a fourth cosmic law as ascertainable as any of the others by observation and experiment. To this fourth law the greatest poets, such as Goethe, Wordsworth, Tennyson, to say nothing of the still greater Semitic Poets, have helped to introduce mankind, and psychical research has demonstrated their scientific truth. 'Life, consciousness, and thought' are facts not fully explained by physiology. The communion of mind with mind without speech or bodily contact or proximity is as certain as that of X rays or wireless telegraphy. The communion of the human soul with the Oversoul of the Universe is not a dream, but a fact as indubitable as the fact of gravitation. The study of these facts, their modes of motion, and the laws which govern them, bring careful philosophers to the conclusion that behind the natural law is an active will, and behind natural force and evolution one universal and intelligent motive power. Mental and spiritual phenomena are ignored—or, for some obscure reason, at any rate neglected—by the ordinary man of science. No real all-round student of cosmic appearances, and the laws and influences that control and guide them to cosmic ends, can afford to shut his eyes to the existence of clues which, whenever they have been loyally followed, have led along the chain of cause and effect to the ultimate discovery of God and Immortality. He who follows the Gleam, everywhere shining before him, arrives sooner or later, whatever he thinks of the creeds of the sects, atthe abode of the Eternal Presence, leaving the Land of Negations far behind him. This is the substance, or at least the fair interpretation, of the ideas woven throughout the series of Essays written by our author on 'Science and a Future Life,' 'Charles Darwin and Agnosticism,' 'Tennyson as Prophet,' and 'Modern Poets and Cosmic Law.' At a later period he put forth in support of his views, in collaboration with two others, a large collection of instances, gathered from definite experiences of witnesses, of 'Phantasms of the Living.' These evidences occupy two bulky volumes. He may have been sometimes too credulous. Some of his alleged facts may have needed closer examination. His deductions from observations may not always have been accurate, yet his argument is strong in itself, strongly fortified, and apparently, as a whole, still unshaken. He was, as he says of Tennyson, 'the proclaimer of man's spirit as part and parcel of the Universe, and indestructible at the very root of things,' and as such he has restored to many a doubter, unsettled by scientific materialism, his latent self-hood, his 'subliminal soul,' his realization of the invisible world, and a belief in that intellectual 'Cosmic Will' which common men persist in calling 'God.'

Myers wrote a few sketches of men and women of the hour, under the title of 'Classical Essays,' terse, readable, and displaying literary insight. The most recent 'Life of Wordsworth,' with whose semi-pantheism he had much sympathy, is his also. Nor was St. Paul his only excursion into the realms of poesy. 'The Renewal of Youth and Other Poems' is his. Little of its contents, however, rise to the level of his religious poem, and someare distinctly trivial. Since penning this sentence I have happened upon an 'Appreciation' of the volume mentioned, by the late John Addington Symonds. He likens the muse of Myers to a 'flute of silver, or a fife of gold,' through which he breathed strains, now stronger, now weaker, according to the degree of his inspiration. 'To some ears this instrument may seem too artificial, too metallic,' for his wont was to select words for their colour-values and their sonority—for the mode of saying things rather than for the expression of new and original thoughts. Symonds finds in the poetry not only a special message of God and Immortality, but a declaration of the happy influence of womanhood in human affairs. Whether or not this judgment is right on the last point, it is certain that the all-absorbing intuition of the poet's soul was that of an eternal life for mankind, not an immortality of the species at the expense of the individual, by sacrifice and extinction, but of every separate being:

'Oh, dreadful thought, that all our sires and weAre but foundations of a race to be—Stones which are thrust in earth, to build thereonSome white delight, some Parian Parthenon!'

'There to the north the silver Solway shone,And Criffel, by the hazy atmosphereLifted from off the earth, did then appearA nodding island or a cloud-built throne.And there, a spot half fancied and half seen,Was sunny Carlisle; and by hillside greenLay Penrith with its beacon of red stone.'Southward through pale blue steam the eye might glanceAlong the Yorkshire fells, and o'er the rest,My native hill, dear Ingleboro's crest,Rose shapely, like a cap of maintenance.The classic Duddon, Leven, and clear KentA trident of fair estuaries sent,Which did among the mountain roots advance.'Westward, a region of tumultuous hills,With here and there a tongue of azure lakeAnd ridge of fir, upon the eye did break.But chiefest wonder are the tarns and rillsAnd giant coves, where great Helvellyn broodsUpon his own majestic solitudes,Which even now the sunlight barely fills.'Frederick William Faber:Poems.

View of Windermere

Photo by Brunskill, Bowness

VIEW OF WINDERMERE.

'Summer Lake and Copse-wood Green.'—Faber.

Enlarge image

'Especially did he endeavour to study the spirit of the Church at its foundation head, in the City of Rome, under the shadow of St. Peter's Chair. Fully recognising the claims of his own country to his labours, he made it his business to introduce into it in every possible way the devotions and practices which are consecrated by the usage of Rome.'—Father Bowden'sLife of Faber.

OF Huguenot descent, his ancestors having fled from France to England to avoid the persecutions arising out of the 'Edict of Nantes,' and of Evangelical Church of England training, he early developed an unexpected 'spurt' towards Romanism, and that rather of the medieval Italian than of the modern English type.

Starting from such a parentage and such environments as this, it becomes an interesting study of character and temperament, and of the forces that mould and direct them, to trace the gradual development of ideas, and habits, through boyhood to youth, and youth to manhood. The key to his having ultimately become a priestly devotee of a mystical form of Mariolatry, is only secured by a careful perusal of his letters, books, and poetry; of his memoir byFather Bowden; and such fragmentary notices of him as contemporaries have given us. His life itself, as we read it, must furnish us with clues by which to follow the labyrinths of his mind to the end it reached.

He was born in 1814 at Calverley, near Leeds, of which parish his father was the vicar. The family removed the following year to Bishop Auckland on Mr. Faber becoming secretary to the Bishop of Durham. As he grew to boyhood the circumstances of his home-life wrought a development of character beyond his years, his precociousness was stimulated by his parents, and his ardent devotion to work or play gave promise of future eminence. The beautiful scenery around him encouraged his romantic tendencies. Sent to a private clerical school at Kirkby Stephen, he was never really free from ecclesiastical influences at any point of his outlook on the world. His imaginative disposition was still further quickened, and his poetical tastes and instincts acquired a direction for life in the midst of the wild Westmorland hills, for 'solitude is the nurse of enthusiasm.' He took long rambles over mountain and fell, rebuilding in fancy the ruined castles of the eastern borderland, and the abbeys of the western, repeopling them with steel-clad knights, and ladies fair and gay, or with monks chanting their vespers as the great sun went down in glory beyond the clear-cut ramparts guarding the blue inland meres. If one reads no farther than the index to his verses one sees at a glance how firm a grasp the enchanted region had upon his affections, beginning to secure them even then, intensifying the grasp while he lived in young manhood at Ambleside, and recurring to his memory when far away by 'Adria's sapphire waters,' or beneath the shadow of St. Mary's in his 'dearCity' of Oxford. Helvellyn and Loughrigg, when sunshine and storm combine to throw rainbow-bridges from peak to peak; the little babbling rivers Rothay and Brathay, when their glittering foam-bells danced beneath the autumn-tinted trees; the green vale of Rydal, where the thrushes pipe the whole day through—were each as much, or perhaps more, to him, and appealed as clamourously for the weaving of a lay, as great Parnassus himself, or even as 'the sweet Styrian Lake.' Amidst the wind-sounds in the 'brotherhood of trees' and the bird-voices of the daytime—nay, in the very night-silences of the towers and fastnesses of the 'awful sanctuary God hath built' in the Lake District—he heard 'the echoes of Church bells,' and dreamed dreams of fonts and altars at which he might serve his 'mother' as her priest.

Educational progress compelled him, after a short tariance at Shrewsbury, to go forward to Harrow. Here he would ride and swim, but he would not play. Instead of giving himself up to the healthy commingling of learning and the usual school athletics, he thought and thought, till he began to think himself an unbeliever in Divine mysteries. From Harrow to Balliol College, Oxford, was a natural transition. He left his infidel doubts and temptations behind, only, however, to come under the influence of the Tractarian flood then streaming through the University, and sweeping some of its best sons towards Rome. He was specially attracted by the preaching of Newman, who was then engaged in constructing a theology from the writings of Anglican Fathers, showing that the Church of England was Roman in its teaching though not Papal in government.

While at Oxford he remained, as all through hiscareer, pure, truthful, sincere, and studious, though ever romantic and impulsive. One of his best impulses was to read his Bible twice from beginning to end, prayerfully and meditatively, without note or comment. This brought him back for a season to the Evangelicalism he had been reared in. Attending Newman's sermons and lectures turned him once more to Church tradition and authority. He soon left his Bible for sacramentalism and all its concommitants. His friends accused him of vacillation. 'No, not vacillation,' he answered; 'but oscillation.' Perhaps we may say his course was like the Borrowdale road, which an old guide-book says 'serpentizes.' Under Newman's more intimate friendship and guidance he was set to the translation of Patristic writings, while still reading for ordination, and began to hope Tractarianism would 'soon saturate' the Church of England. Pursuing his theological studies, winning the Newdigate Prize, and receiving a Fellowship from his college, he, of course, took in due time deacon's and priest's orders, and left Oxford to undertake a tutorship in the household of Mr. Harrison, of Ambleside.

Into the parochial work of Ambleside he threw himselfcon amore, the incumbent being old and feeble. From thence he went on a brief tour through Belgium, returning with another set-back from Rome owing to what he had seen of the low intellectual state and morals of the Belgium priesthood. It was during the period of his Ambleside tutorship that he became acquainted with Wordsworth, whom he accompanied on long walks, the elder poet 'muttering verses to himself' in the intervals of conversation.

Somewhat later came the memorable tour ofEurope, and visit to Rome, with his pupils, which practically sealed his conversion. The perusal of the records of this journey in his 'Sights and Thoughts in Foreign Countries' affords a curious revelation of biased history (and therefore often very inaccurate), an interesting account of his mental perplexities, and of the wonderful organization of the Papal hierarchy, enabling it to shadow his steps and 'create an atmosphere' around him wherever he went. This time he carried letters of introduction from the astute Dr. Wiseman, which assured his seeing the æsthetic best of all the great cathedrals and institutions of the Church, in each country he traversed, and helped him to shut the eyes of his memory to Inquisitions, and persecutions, and the pride and licentiousness of Popes and Cardinals, and to the grosser side of popular superstition, comprising the annals of the places he visited, and to the story of Italy especially. He had a keen sense of the misdeeds of poor people provoked to reprisals by the tyranny of kings and priests, but never breathed a word—for he failed to notice anything wrong—against the Church that was courting him, and was coquetting with others like him in the Anglican Communion of that day. At Rome the cultured and winsome Dr. Grant was selected as his chaperon, and once more the attractive figment of a world-dominion of an united Church was dangled before his imaginative mind amidst the music and incense of elaborate ceremonials appealing to his senses. The kindness and sympathy of those who were watching over him effectually removed the last veil between him and Roman doctrine. The Pope accorded him an interview in private, and he prostrated himself to kiss his feetand receive his benediction. The Pope was already the 'Holy Father' to him, and he is able in his letters of this date, though still nominally an Anglican, to pledge himself to a life-crusade against the detestable and diabolic heresy of Protestantism 'as being' what he calls 'the devil's masterpiece.'

After all this, one wonders how he could have persuaded himself it was right to accept, on his return to England, the living of Elton, in Huntingdonshire. He did so, however, and for the space of two years he did his utmost to Romanize the district. His charming manners, and natural persuasiveness, the vein of superstition in him (evidenced by his kissing relics and touching them for healing), which fitted well with the ignorance of his rural parishioners, gave him such influence in this direction that when, in 1845, he somewhat suddenly relinquished his pastorate, and was officially united with the Roman Church, he carried off with him several of his young men, who were the nucleus of his Brotherhood of the Will of God in Birmingham.

From this time forward, the Church having gained a priest but, as Wordsworth said, 'England having lost a poet,' there was developed in him a neurotic mysticism impelling him to ascetic neglect of his body, and suppression of human affections and responsibilities, which preyed on his physical frame, producing incessant headaches, and complete prostrations, and unquestionably shortened his days on earth. His love fixed on such intangible objects as Mary and the saints, rather than the living Christ, indulges itself in luscious outbreathings towards her who was not only to him Queen of Heaven and of Purgatory, and Mother of God, but his 'dear Mama,' his 'dearest Mama,' in whose 'fondlingcare,' and under whose 'sweet caress' he dwelt, finding, he tells her, 'Our home, deep in Thee, eternally, eternally.' His favourite saints are 'Joseph our Father,' and St. Wilfrid, whom he adopted as his patron, and from whom his monks were called 'Wilfridians.' He lived henceforth a life of self-renunciation, the will of God being accepted by him as made known through his superiors in the Roman priesthood. He devoted his time, substance, and skill to church building, and creation of monastic brotherhoods, in Birmingham, in Shropshire, in the City of London, and finally at Brompton, ere long merging his order in that of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri—an Italian confraternity introduced into England by Newman, a missionary body formed for proselytizing the poor and the young. Besides the beautiful church of St. Wilfrid's erected under the auspices of the Earl of Shrewsbury, there is the well-known Brompton Oratory, wherein his preaching, magnetizing rather by its fervour and picturesqueness than convincing by its reason and logic, held congregations of thousands spell-bound, who were partly, no doubt, attracted by his fame, though quite as much by the exquisite singing of the hymns of his composition and the lavish ceremonies of the Mass. It proved an immense strain upon his nervous system, the daily necessity of feeding the monks, building his churches slowly but magnificently, supplying the vestments, the lights, the incense, and all the other thousand and one requirements of so gorgeous a ritual. He failed under it in 1863, and died while only forty-nine years of age, prematurely worn out and aged.

Protestant as I am, at the extreme antipodes of conviction, religious experience, education, and sympathiesfrom Father Faber, I doubt not his soul went straight to the Great All Father, the only 'Holy Father,' without the help of Masses to liberate it from any intermediate imprisonment, or process of purification, and without need of intercession from our Lord's virgin Mother, or from any portion of the pantheon of Roman saints. Some of his objectionable opinions and teachings—some that are very terrible to us—as well as many that are common to all true Christians, will be noticed in the next article, and there may only be added now a caution to many Protestants, as well as to many of the Church of Rome, not to confound wrong views with moral wrong-doing, nor to make a man's intellectual mistakes the measure of his presumed status before the throne of his God. 'Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right,' when He sits in judgment upon the soul? As Faber's own celebrated hymn declares:

'The love of God is broader,Than the measures of man's mind;And the Heart of the Eternal,Is most wonderfully kind.'

'Souls of men! why will ye scatterLike a crowd of frightened sheep?Foolish hearts! why will ye wanderFrom a love so true and deep?'Was there ever kindest shepherdHalf so gentle, half so sweet,As the Saviour who would have usCome and gather round His feet?'It is God: His love looks mighty,But is mightier than it seems:'Tis our Father: and His fondnessGoes far out beyond our dreams.'There's a wideness in God's mercy,Like the wideness of the sea;There's a kindness in His justice,Which is more than liberty.'There is no place where earth's sorrowsAre more felt than up in heaven;There is no place where earth's failingsHave such kindly judgment given.'Frederick William Faber:Hymns.

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