Srom f 0e feifirarg of (profeeeor ^tffiam J^tnr^ (Breen f £t6rarg of (Princeton ^^eofogicaf ^emtnarj BX 5199 .S8 E'T 1894 v. 2 Ernie, Rowland Edmund Prothero, 1852-1937. The life and correspondence of Arthur PenrhvrL Stanley Digitized by tine Internet Arcliive in 2015 https://arcliive.org/details/lifecorresponden02ernl_0 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY VOL. II. THE LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF Arthur Penrhyn Stanle LATE DEAN OF WESTMINSTER BY / ROWLAND E. PROTHERO, 'm.a!^ BARRISTER-AT-LAW, LATE FELLOW OF ALL SOULS COLLEGE, OXFORD With the Co-operation and Sanction of the VERY REV. G. G. BRADLEY, D.D. DEAN OF WESTMINSTER WITH PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS VOL. II NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS MDCCCXCIV Copyright, 1893, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS [All rights reserved'^ CONTENTS CHAPTER XVI 1858-61 PAGE First Impressions of Oxford after his return — Tour in Spain — Revived Interest in Oxford — 'Canterbury Sermons' — His Influence as Pro- fessor of Ecclesiastical History — St. George's-in-the-East — 'Essays and Reviews' ....... I CHAPTER XVII 1859-62 Tour in Denmark — Ober-Ammergau — Publication of 'The Eastern Church ' — Mount Athos — Death of the Prince Consort — Invitation to accompany the Prince of Wales to the East . . -45 CHAPTER XVIII February-June 1862 Second Tour in the East — Sunday at Cairo with the Prince of Wales — The Nile — Karnak — Dendera — Death of Mrs. Stanley — Entry into Jerusalem — Bethany — The Mosque of Hebron — The Samar- itan Passover — The Shores of Lake Tiberias — Tent-life in Pales- tine— The Cedars of Lebanon . . . . .66 CHAPTER XIX 1862-63 "The Death of General Bruce — The Blank in Stanley's Life left by his Mother's Death — Rumours of Preferment — Colenso on the Penta- teuch — Publication of the First Part of his Lectures on the ' History of the Jewish Church ' — Letter to the Bishop of London on Sub- scription — Growing Intimacy with the Royal Family — Publication of the ' Sermons in the East ' ..... 92 V vi CONTENTS CHAPTER XX August-December 1863 PAGE Thoughts of Marriage — Prospects of Preferment — Tour in Italy — En- gagement to Lady Augusta Bruce — Acceptance of the Deanery of Westminster — Sermon on ' Great Opportunities ' — Marriage — In- stallation as Dean . . . . . . . 1 29 CHAPTER XXI 1864-74 Final Judgment on 'Essays and Reviews,' February 1864 — Refusal of High Church Leaders to preach in Westminster Abbey — Stanley's Attitude towards Theological and Ecclesiastical Controversies — 'Essays on Church and State,' 1870 — Speeches in Convocation on ' Essays and Reviews,' on Bishop Colenso, on Ritualism, on the Public Worship Regulation Bill, on the Revision of the Authorised Version, on the Athanasian Creed — The Pan-Anglican Synod and Westminster Abbey, 1867 — Dr. Vance Smith, 1870 — Select Preach- ership at Oxford, 1872 . . . . . • ^SS CHAPTER XXII 1864-74 Stanley's Literary Work — Its Amount, Variety, and Freshness — Its Unity of Aim — 'The Theology of the Nineteenth Century,' 1864 — The Second Part of the ' Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church,' 1865 — Review of ' Ecce Homo,' 1866 — 'Memorials of Westminster Abbey,' 1867 — 'Connection of Church and State,' 1868 — 'The Three Irish Churches,' 1869 — ' Essays on Church and State,' 1870 — 'Lectures on the History of the Church of Scotland,' 1872 ......... 236 CHAPTER XXIII 1864-81 Stanley's Administration of Westminster Abbey — His Incapacity for Business — His Love and Care for the Building — His Choice of Select Preachers — His Offer of the Abbey Pulpit to Dr. Colenso, 1874 — Mission Lectures in the Nave, 1872-79 — Bach's Passion Music, 1871-72 — Services for Children, 1871-81 — Saturday-After- noon Services, 1 88 1 — Distinguished Visitors to the Abbey — The Choir opened to the Public gratuitously — Parties of Working Men conducted over Westminster — Stanley's Gifts as a Preacher — Inter- ments in the Abbey, 1864-81 — P'uneral of Charles Dickens, 1870 — Proposed Monument to the Prince Imperial, 1879-80 . . 278 CONTENTS vn CHAPTER XXIV 1864-70 PAGE Domestic and Social Life — Regrets for Oxford — Letters to his Wife — Foreign Tour in 1864 — 'The Waters Tragedy' — Interview with Newman — Love for Westminster Abbey — Domestic Happiness — His Daily Life at Westminster — Foreign Tour in 1865 — Visit to Bishop Thirlwall — Funeral of Lord Palmerston — Vallombrosa in 1866 — In- terview with Pope Pius IX. — Dupanloup — Discovery of Original MS. of Prayer Book of 1662 — Foreign Tour in 1867 — Thiers — Death of Dean Milman, 1 868 — Foreign Tour in 1868 — The Prussian Royal Family — The Vatican Council, 1869 — Pere Hyacinthe and Dr. D61- linger — Consecration of Dr. Temple, December 21st, 1869 — Corre- spondence with the Rev. C. Voysey . . . . -331 CHAPTER XXV 1870-73 Stanley's Speech at the Dinner given to Archbishop Lycurgus — The Outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War — Stanley's Love of Scotland and of Walter Scott — His Friendship with the Bishop of St. Andrews — His Gift of Verse-writing — His Visit to Sedan — The Old Catholic Congress at Munich, 1871 — The Illness of the Prince of Wales, 1871- 72 — The Marriage of Pere Hyacinthe — The Old Catholic Congress at Cologne, 1872 — Death of Merle d'Aubigne — Lamartine's Poetry — Monte Generoso — The Queen's Request that Stanley should per- form the Protestant Ceremony at St. Petersburg on the Occasion of the Marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh . . .381 CHAPTER XXVI 1874-76 The Wedding of the Duke of Edinburgh at St. Petersburg — Stanley's Part in the Ceremony — His Reception in Russia — Lord Beaconsfield at Marlborough House and Westminster Abbey — The Persecuted Russian Baptists — Stanley and Mrs. Annie Besant — Lady Augusta Stanley's Illness at Paris — Stanley's Addresses as Lord Rector of St. Andrews — The Alarming State of his Wife's Health — Fluctuations of Hope and Fear — Her Death on March ist, 1876 . . 422 CHAPTER XXVII 1876-80 The Effect upon Stanley of his Wife's Death — The Third Volume of 'Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church' — Tour in Portugal, 1876 — Renewal of his Work at Westminster under changed Condi- VOL. II A viii CONTENTS tions — His Daily Life — His Literary Worlc — The Queen's Assump- tion of the Imperial Title — The Eastern Question — The Death of Victor Emanuel and Tio Nono, 1878 — The Burials Bill, 1877 — The Scottish Church and Mr. Gladstone — Lectures, Addresses, and Ser- mons — Deaths of Mr. Motley, Miss Louisa Stanley, Sir Gilbert Scott, the Duchess of Argyll, Mr. Russell Gurney, and Earl Russell — Visit to America, 1878 — Its Success — 'Memoir of Edward and Catherine Stanley,' 1879 — Tour in Italy, 1879 — Death of Mary Stanley, 1879 475 CHAPTER XXVIII 1880-81 Despondency and Depression — Anxieties in 1880 — Tour in France, 1880 — 'Christian Institutions,' March i88i — Its Cold Reception — His Interest in Public Affairs — His Sermons on the Beatitudes — His Last Illness — His Death and Burial ..... 549 Appendix ......... 575 Index ......... 583 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN VOL. II Ladv Augusta Stanley {from a Negative in the Possession of Her Majesty the Queen) ...... Frontispiece Arthur Stanley when Regius Professor of Ecclesias- tical History at Oxford (from a Photograph by Hills cr" Saunders of Oxford) ....... to face p. 40 The Library, Deanery, Westminster .... " 237 Dean Stanley at Work at his Desk in the Deanery {from a Photograph by Samuel B. Walker) ... " 475 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY CHAPTER XVI 1858-61 FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF OXFORD AFTER HIS RETURN — TOUR IN SPAIN — REVIVED INTEREST IN OXFORD —' CANTER- BURY SERMONS ' — HIS INFLUENCE AS PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY — ST. GEORGES-IN-THE-EAST — 'ESSAYS AND REVIEWS' 'To-morrow,' writes Stanley to Charles Kingsley on April 13th, 1858, on the eve of leaving Canterbury, ' I leave a home which I have enjoyed increasingly for seven years, to enter on a life of turmoil and confine- ment, which derives its only charm from the hope, at times very faint, of being more useful than I have been here. Such a hope is revived by finding that my lectures have awakened a response from anyone so well able to judge of ecclesiastical history as you are. I wish that I knew any one generation as you know that of Hypatia, or of Eliza- beth (of either Hungary or England).' Less than a year elapsed before he was completely re- conciled to the change. In February 1859 he visited Canterbury in order to preach a sermon on the death of the Rector of St. Martin-with-St. Paul, Canon Chesshyre, who had succeeded to his stall in the Cathedral. ' It has been,' he writes to Pearson, ' very melancholy to me in more ways than one. First, it VOL. 11 B 2 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1858 was sad to think of such a very useful life as was Ches- shyre's, so unmixedly, unblamably useful, thus cut short. I had a real, deep regard for him. He was so natural, so comprehensive, such a true offspring of the Church of Eng- land. I preached to the afternoon congregation in the Cathedra], and to his own parish in the evening — both enormous, in the Cathedral reaching up to the altar-steps. But oh ! my dear H. P., what was more sad to me than anything was the feeling of how the whole place had faded away from me. A merciful dispensation ! but it seems to imply such a hoUowness in one's affections that, in one short year, all those passionate regrets should have been buried, and a new home sprung up, and no wish to return.' Yet Oxford was not a bed of roses. In the University party spirit ran high, and was especially directed against one of his two dearest and most intimate friends. In the Cathedral Chapter elements of discord continually disturbed the harmony of the governing body. 'This morning at Chapter,' he tells his mother, within a few weeks of his installation as Canon, *a discussion arose about the former mode of services in Christ Church Cathedral. " I stated the fact to be so," said Pusey, who was sitting by Ogilvie, " in preaching be- fore the University." " Can you refer to it .'' " asked Jacobson. " It was in my condemned sermon," replied Pusey. I could not help stealing a glance at Ogilvie, who was one of the judges that condemned the sermon. You can imagine the black thundercloud. It burst afterwards in another direc- tion. Another discussion arose about the income of the College property. " We shall only be laying up stores for the rapacionsiiess of future Commissioners." Certainly the Chapter here contains very explosive elements.' Nor did he at once succeed in awakening such a re- sponse among his pupils as he had at first expected. In a letter to J. C. Shairp he enlarges upon his Oxford expe- riences : ' Let me begin with its sours. The dusty, secular, dried-up aspect of the place is very unpleasing. The stiff- CHAP. XVI OXFORD IMPRESSIONS 3 ness of the undergraduates in social intercourse is only surpassed by their marvellous lack of interest (as far as appears in my lectures) in anything like theological study. I am curious, if ever I come to St. Andrews again, to hear or see how the Scotch students receive their instruc- tions. ' On the other hand, the possession of a house makes me independent of much of the useless gossip and rattle of academical machinery, and gives me a hope of future useful social influences. There is a pleasure in finding oneself at the top of the tree, as far as any wish I could form in con- nection with Oxford — everything open to one's view, great persons civil and kind, small persons grateful for notice. Now and then, too, in the undergraduate world a spark of interest seems to be struck, which makes one hope that, even where none such appears, there may be some effect produced. 'Of the Balliol youth I. see but little. None of them come to my lectures, which, I presume, arises from the fact that none of them go into Orders, a feature in the prospects of the Church of England far darker than any of those about which our agitators and alarmists are so wild/ One great attraction which his position at Oxford offered to him was the Long Vacation, with its leisure for study or for travel. In the solitude of the University, dur- ing the greater part of July and August, 1858, he was busy preparing his October lectures, in order that he might be free for an expedition to the north of Spain. ' I am monarch of all I survey, My right there is none to dispute. From Peckwater unto St. Aldates ^ I am lord of the fowl and the brute ; i.e. of my cockatoo and a stray dog that wanders from one quadrangle to another.' As soon as his work was completed he started on August 30th, 1858, for the Continent. Leaving his mother at Biarritz, he made his way by a Spanish steamer from 1 At Oxford St. 'Aldates' is pronounced as 'St. Olds.' B 2 4 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY Marseilles to Barcelona. His travelling companion was the Rev. North Pinder, an old Rugbeian, and then a Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College, Oxford. Stanley had already visited the south of Spain with his sisters. He was now anxious to see something of the northern provinces of a country which always fascinated him by its historical and Oriental characteristics. From Barcelona he made a pilgrimage to Montserrat, where Ignatius Loyola dedicated his sword to the black image of the Virgin. Then, proceeding down the east coast to Valencia, he traversed the bleak desert, dotted here and there with dusky olives, which reaches up to the very gates of Madrid. The treeless, dusty, idle, extortionate capital, standing in a 'hideous situation,' was little to his taste. It only excited in him surprise that, merely to gratify the comfort of the gouty Charles V. or the gloomy humours of Philip II., the old metropolitan glories of Grenada, or Seville, or Toledo, should have been sacrificed. In the picture-galleries, except when the subjects of the pictures were historical portraits, or illustrated the national history or character, he took small interest. Yet of Murillo's genius he carried away a very vivid impression. ' His pictures have that lively art of telling a story which always pleases me so much in Sir Joshua Reynolds.' With the Armoury he was delighted. Here he could see the swords of Roland, the Cid Campeador, and Boabdil, of Pizarro, and Ferdinand the Catholic ; the suit of mail worn by Columbus, and the helmet of Charles V., engraved with the motto, ' Plus ultra,' which he was fond of quoting. His insatiable curiosity even led him to a bull-fight. Already, on an Easter Sunday, from the tower of the Cathedral at Seville, he had seen a similar spectacle. The bull-fight at Madrid was held on a Monday, and he therefore could go CHAP. XVI TOLEDO 5 to the actual scene with a clear conscience. ' I was,' he says, 'quite unable to feel a spark of excitement either for bulls, fighters, or spectators. The death of the poor animals was less disgusting than I had expected. But there was a childishness and a languor about the whole affair that made it to me altogether unmeaning — a cruel teasing of a poor dumb beast, that was gradually worn out by exhaustion, and then butchered without difficulty. I never desire to see or to think of it again.' After leaving Madrid, the real interest of the tour began for Stanley. The Escurial, Toledo, Alcala, Segovia, Burgos, with their cathedrals, their universities, their churches, their tombs and monasteries, their Roman remains, their reminis- cences of Spanish sovereigns from Alonzo VI. to Philip II., of the Cid and Gil Bias, of Cervantes and Ximenes, richly repaid him for the weariness, delays, and discomforts of his journey. Toledo formed 'the climax of the tour.' Apart from the glories of the Cathedral, of the Convent of San Juan de los Reyes, or of the Jewish synagogue, nothing could surpass the beauty of the situation. His description shows how keen was his eye for natural beauty when it formed the background for human interest. ' It is,' he says, 'the walk along the hills behind the river which is of such extraordinary grandeur. What a contrast to the flatness and wretchedness of Madrid and the Manzanares ! The wild, savage, mountain scenery, descending almost precipi- tously into the broad, full stream, is such as might make you think yourself far away from town or history. But then, it is for ever opening and closing upon glimpses of the city, which appear in a succession of stone-paved pictures — Moorish bridge, Roman aqueduct, Palace of Charles V., Cathedral spire, Jewish synagogue. Church of the Catholic Kings — a solitary group of women washing on the bare rocks below, a watch-tower on the hill, a troop of gipsies or foresters passing over the mountain-track with their laden asses ; this is the magic-lantern, this is the true "Vision of 6 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY Don Roderick," not in the enchanted cave, but on the enchanted mountain and beautiful river of Toledo.' At Burgos, Stanley's enthusiasm for the Cid triumphed over sickness and fatigue. At the tomb of the Cid, at San Pedro de Cardena, he examined every nook of the Chapel, every line of the elaborate epitaph in Latin hexameters, every detail of the sculptured armour. His one disappoint- ment was that his guide could not point out the spot where Babieca, the Cid's faithful war-horse, was buried, so decid- edly as that where Roderick and Ximena his wife were laid. In one of his most characteristic letters he describes how he tracked the footsteps of the Cid from the first moment that he entered Spain : ' I first fell in with him at Valencia. Little enough remains of him, but the inn bears his name, and from the top of the Cathedral tower we overlooked the same view that he, after he had taken the city from the Moors, showed to his wife and daughter from the same spot — the distant sea, the city rising out of its circle of verdure, and the desert encompassing it on the side of the land. Next in the Armoury of Madrid appeared his sword — one, I should rather say, of his two swords — La Colada. It could not be in better company, for not far off was Durandel, and the sword of Pelayo, and the sword of the Gran Capitan. Next we heard of him at Toledo. Our good guide related the scene as if it had happened yesterday. "I did not see it myself," he said, "and therefore I cannot tell whether it is true. But this is what I have heard in the histories. When Alonzo VI. conquered Toledo, he and the Campeador rode up through the Visagra Gate. Close by was a small mosque, and here Alonzo halted to return thanksgiving for his victor}', when suddenly the Campeador's horse fell on its knees before the wall. They opened the wall, and found there a crucifix, which the Christians had walled-up when the Moors came in, with a light burning before it. The crucifix and the light were brought into the mosque, which is now ' Christo de la Luz.' " ' The next time was at Segovia. In the ancient Castle (where also Gil Bias was imprisoned) is a hall containing CHAP. XVI CARDENA 7 effigies of the Spanish kings during the whole period of the Moorish wars, and underneath the four corners are the four champions who upheld the Christian cause. Chief of these, I need not say, is the Cid. ' This brings me to his last resting-place, his birthplace and his burial-place — Burgos and Cardena. On the steep side of the hill on which stands Burgos Castle are a few broken pillars, standing in what was once the High Street — as at Edinburgh — where the aristocracy of Castile resided under the shadow of their great castle. Here amongst them dwelt the Cid. . . . There he was born and died, and hard by you will see a Moorish archway, to remind him of his country's enemies. But now, to Cardena let us go. It is a wild walk of five miles or more over the bleak downs of Castile, fit burial-place for the wild Castilian hero. It is the earliest Benedictine convent in Spain, built by Sancha over the grave of her husband, Theodoric, who fell, hunting, at the Spring Cardena, which still trickles out of the rock behind the convent-wall. It was sacked by the Moors and the monks murdered ; and for this reason, perhaps, after its restoration the Cid determined to be buried beside them. Originally his sepulchre was before the high altar. It was afterwards moved to the S. transept, and though it was opened and rifled by the French, it still remains much as it was when first put up by Alonzo the Wise. Here again read the inscriptions, which, as they are in Latin, I shall translate into my own rude verse, turned over in the long night journey between Burgos and this place : This holy church of Peter, where Cardena's waters flow. Good Sancha builded up on high, but Zephas laid it low ; Alonzo raised it up again, and Garcia watch'd its rise ; The mighty Cid hath honour'd it — for in its walls he lies. High chiefs have foster'd its advance, great kings have lent their aid : Good Pontiffs, with paternal eye, its glories have survey'd : Here rest our kings, and here our chiefs : and here our martyrs sleep. Behold ! and see how Benedict doth all our worthies keep. ' After this compendious history, enter the transept and look at the venerable monument. There he lies, with Ximena by his side. His arms are carved beneath — namely, the two swords crossed behind a cross, and the chains of captive Moors on each side. Round the rim of the grave is a rude epitaph, written by Alonzo the Wise himself. Here it is : 8 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY The Champion, never conquered, for ever famed in war, Lies closed within this sepulchre, Rodrigo of Bivar. Underneath again are these lines : As mighty Rome in deeds of war all other lands excels, As Arthur ever living still in British memory dwells. As Charlemagne to France hath left his own majestic name, So sheds the never-conquered Cid on rugged Spain his fame. 'Round about the chapel hang the armorial bearings of all his family — father, mother, wife, sons, daughters, com- panions ; and over the portal, from the Vulgate, " How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished!" Farewell, Cid Campeador ! The shades of evening are fall- ing fast, and we caught the last glimpse of him as he was seen in vast painted bas-relief, careering on Babieca, over the convent-door, trampling down the Moors under his feet. ' And farewell Spain ! I think, when I wrote before, that I looked forward with pleasure to the day on which I should recross the frontier of civilised France. Yet now that the last day has come, I think only of the delightful scenes I have enjoyed and the happy escapes out of all difficulties which have distinguished this little tour. And Spain itself, with all its drawbacks, becomes dearer in the retrospect. It is an "Archangel ruined" — and its original brightness still shines out of its ruins, and the very decay is interesting and instructive. It was a glorious October evening, and we mounted the rock of St. Sebastian and watched the sun go down. The hills of Biscay, with their many promontories, were lit up in the departing glow — and the purple ranges of the Pyrenees rose up on the east — and the dim line of France was seen to the north — and calmly, almost without a ripple, did the still Atlantic roll into the double bay — and the crescent moon was encased in a golden fleece of clouds, that caught the splendour of the last sunlight. Everything was softened down into harmony and repose ; and so is it with the recollections of this strange land, which we thus leave, to be once more, I trust, in our own next week.' Stanley returned to Oxford in October 1858. Six months had now elapsed since he had, with many misgivings and much reluctance, transferred his home to Christ Church. Every day reconciled him more completely to his new life. CHAP. XVI ' CANTERBURY SERMONS' 9 In March 1859 he published a volume of his ' Canterbury Sermons,' and the publication of this volume seems to mark the date when he finally bade farewell to his old home, and definitely transferred his affections to the new. In a letter to J. C. Shairp he states the objects which he had in publishing the ' volume of (chiefly) " Canterbury Sermons " on the Preaching of the Gospel. They do not round off the subject as clearly as I could have wished. But I wanted to put out a feeler to see whether anything that can be said on this matter can make any way through the dense mass of un- scriptural, unevangelical clamour that hedges us in.' Elsewhere he returns to the same subject, still in refer- ence to the ' Canterbury Sermons ' : 'Of course, my object was to preserve the due propor- tions, though bringing out more prominently those doctrines which have suffered undue eclipse. Considering, for example, how large an amount of our Lord's severity is aimed against the religious world, and how entirely this is put by them on one side, I think that the sermon on the Truth of Christ contains as much of that quality as could be expected in such an outline. Apparently, the public will ignore those doctrines as long as they can. But this only convinces me the more of their truth, and comforts me by the thought of the vast latent future that is reserved for the religion of the Gospel, whenever it shall be really acknowledged.' The ' Canterbury Sermons,' in fact, illustrate some of the most characteristic habits of Stanley's mind. Striving to make religion a life rather than a creed, his preaching is practical, not doctrinal ; it is directed rather for the truth than against error. He sets aside theology in order to reach the fountain-head of the Christian faith. He uses the words, 'Jesus is the Son of God,' not as a theological watchword, nor as a doctrinal statement of an ineffable relation, but as a summary of a life, character, and teaching lO LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1858-61 which satisfied and developed his idea of God. Through- out the Sermons his object is one which he steadily pursued in all his writings and conversation — to elevate, expand and widen the tone of thought on the subjects which he touches. Throughout his motto might have been, 'The letter killeth ' ; throughout he instinctively endeavours to penetrate to the original idea in its plastic, embryonic, fluid state, before it had stiffened into dogma ; throughout he is sustained by the conviction of the glorious future which might yet await the Church if once its teaching were truly based on 'The Way, the Truth, the Life.' Before 1859, as has been said, Stanley frequently laments his severance from Canterbury. After that date the regret gradually disappears. In March i860 he writes to Shairp : ' You rightly argue that I have at last found my foot- ing here. My lectures appear to be better understood, and I find that I can say what I wish without being either attacked or suspected. The evil, no doubt, still is the dearth of able, serious students.' Yet his gratitude for the repose of Canterbury never failed. 'I never cease,' he says in 1863, ' to be thankful for the seven years in that green island ; but I feel that it was good to take to sea again, and on that sea I suppose that it will now be my fate to be tossed about as long as I live, or, at least, as long as I have my health.' At Oxford he found himself, as time went on, possessed of much of that independence which he had especially valued at Canterbury, while a wider sphere of usefulness, particularly among the rising generation, compensated him for the comparative loss of leisure, and of freedom from theological controversy. In the midst of misgivings when he first accepted the Professorship, he had been cheered by the hope of awakening an interest in the study of eccle- CHAP. XVI HIS INFLUENCE AT OXFORD II siastical history, and of exercising 'useful social influences.' Both among young and old the hope was abundantly realised. It may, indeed, be questioned whether he would not have exercised a deeper influence on his time had he remained at Oxford. There might have been less ground for the sad complaint which he uttered not long before his death : ' This generation is lost ; it is either plunged in dogmatism or agnosticism. I look forward to the generation which is to come.' If he had remained at Oxford, he might have mediated between the two extremes more effectually than at Westminster ; for, while he charmed older men, he led the young. ' My heart leaps up,' he would say, 'when I behold an undergraduate.' And the delight which he felt in the society of young men was warmly reciprocated by the young men themselves. Few undergraduates could resist the enthusiasm which marked his formal lectures or his informal, catechetical, conversational instruction. Fewer still were proof against his personal charm in the midst of his breakfast-parties, or his social gatherings on Sunday evenings at Christ Church. ' It was his custom,' ^ says one who afterwards became an intimate friend, but who was then an undergraduate, ' at Christ Clnirch, when alone, to open his house on Sun- day evenings to any of his undergraduate acquaintances who cared to go, and it was a privilege of which several of us availed ourselves whenever it was offered. To nothing: in my University life do I look back with more pleasure than to those delightful Sunday evenings at Stanley's house, and to the perfect freedom from restraint that we all felt in his company. Many thoughtless sayings were often uttered by us, which might well have provoked a rebuke or a sar- casm from one in his position. But though I clearly recol- lect one or two cases in which a question was asked, or a 2 Mr. Victor Williamson, to whose untiring labours in arranging and cata- loguing the mass of papers relating to the late Dean Stanley the biographer is on every page indebted. 12 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1858-61 remark made, that caused us to burst into laughter at the unlucky speaker, not a word or expression ever fell from Stanley in his answer to make the man conscious that he had said a silly thing.' His lectures were always interesting. Every character or incident with which he dealt was made alive to his hearers. In addressing large classes he combined the written lecture with simpler, unwritten illustration, or even with questioning, in a manner that might be commended to modern teachers. The questions were enforced by touches, sometimes, in his unskilful hands, by pokes with a long stick which was intended to indicate the quarter whence an answer was expected. Once, as a pupil remembers, he addressed a very ordinary question about the parent of a patriarch to one of those who were sitting near him. The stick touched the head which was leaning forward over a note-book. The head rose, and disclosed the blushing features of a well- known Oxford tutor, who could not answer the question. After this accident the use of the stick was discontinued. Another anecdote, related by the Rev. A. G. Butler, is characteristic : ' When preparing a lecture upon early Church history, Stanley wished for a large chart giving a list, in order, of the early Fathers and the principal heretics. This he en- trusted me to draw up on a large sheet from a paper which he furnished ; and in giving me his directions he begged that, with a view to distinctness, the heretics might be underlined with red ink. But here arose the difficulty. Who was a heretic Some one or two great offenders were promptly disposed of ; some others were condemned, with a sigh, in deference to general opinion. But it was amusing to see his tenderness for Origen, his unwillingness to brand him even with the faintest mark of disapprobation ; and it was only after a struggle that he bid me put " a very small line of red" under his name. "Perhaps," he added with his playful smile, "they won't see it." ' But Stanley's influence was not confined to the lecture- CHAP. XVI HIS INFLUENCE AT OXFORD 13 room : it was great also in the pulpit. Many young men in the University felt the povi^er of his appeal to work at something, to fill whatever place they happened to hold. The following extract from a letter written by the Rev. H. L. Thompson, for some years Censor of Christ Church, and now Head-Master of Radley College, to Dr. Liddell, protests against an attack made upon Stanley in a letter communicated to the press, and bears striking testi- mony to the character of his influence as a preacher : * Dr. Pusey's letter was very painful to those who, like myself, remember Dr. Stanley's sermons in our under- graduate days, and feel sure that his influence was largely for good. I had a letter the other day from a clergyman of my own standing, who spoke of the Dean's sermons as almost the only sermons from which he gained practical good when at Oxford, and I have heard the same account of them from other men of different ages and widely dif- ferent opinions. He used to direct men's thoughts to the duty and manliness of earnest work ; and those who were aroused by him from a frivolous and purposeless life, and found themselves led, by the very change, to think about the vital questions of religious doctrine, were by no means slavish followers of his opinions. He had given them a purpose by urging them to work ; and then they were led to think, and to think for themselves. Dr. Pusey's ex- perience must be very one-sided. No doubt, however, he has come to know some cases where independent thought has led to unbelief ; but who does not know of similar cases where there has been a fatal and more hopeless reaction from the teaching of the High Church school ' Still stronger, because more personal, is the testimony afforded by the following letter from the late John Richard Green, the historian : ' 2 Victoria Gardens, Ladbroke Road, Netting Hill, W.: December 1863. ' My dear Dr. Stanley, — I have only now learnt from Oakley your direction, or I should have ventured before to offer my congratulations on your marriage. No one can 14 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1858-61 wish you more happiness than I, to whom you have been the cause of so much. ' I have often longed in the midst of my work, historical or clerical, to tell you how wholly that work, and the happiness which comes from it, are owing to you. I am glad I delayed till now, till the close of your Oxford teaching, that you may at least know what your teaching has done for one Oxford man out of the many that you taught. ' I came up to Oxford a hard reader and a passionate High Churchman ; two years of residence left me idle and irreligious. Partly from ill-health, partly from disgust at my college, I had cut myself off from society within or without it. I rebelled doggedly against the systems around me ; I would not work because work was the Oxford virtue ; I tore myself from history, which I loved, and plunged into the trifles of archaeology, because they had no place in the University course. I remember that in the absolute need I felt of some reading, and my resolve to read nothing that could possibly bring me in contact with what Oxford valued, I spent a year over the literature of the eighteenth century, and especially the vexed questions in the life of Pope ! Of course, all this seems now absurd as a sick man's dream, but absurd as it was, it was the life I had deliberately chosen and was doggedly carrying on when accident brought me to your lecture-room. ' It was the same with religion. High Churchism fell with a great crash, and left nothing behind — nothing but a vague reverence for goodness, however narrow and bigoted in form, which kept me as far from the shallow conceit of the current Oxford Liberalism as I had already drifted from the Mansel orthodoxy. I saw only religious parties unjust to one another, and I stood apart, unjust to them all. I had vvithdrawn myself from Oxford work, and I found no help in Oxford theology. ' I was utterly miserable when I wandered into your lecture-room ; and my recollection of what followed is not so much of any definite words as of a great unburthening. Then, and afterwards, I heard you speak of work, not as a thing of classes and fellowships, but as something worthy for its own sake, worthy because it made us like the Great Worker. That sermon on Work was like a revelation to me. " If you cannot, or will not, work at the work which Oxford^ CHAP. XVI HIS INFLUENCE AT OXFORD 15 gives you, at any rate work at something." I took up my old boy-dream, history, again. I think I have been a steady worker ever since. And so in reUgion — it was not so much a creed that you taught me, as fairness. You were liberal ; you pointed forward, you believed in a future as other " Liberals " did, but you were not, like them, un- just to the present or the past. I found that old vague reverence of mine for personal goodness, which alone re- mained to me, widened in your teaching into true catho- licity. I used to thilik as I left your lecture-room of how many different faiths and persons you had spoken, and how you had revealed and taught me to love the good that was in them all. I cannot tell you how that great principle of fairness has helped ever since ; how in my reading it has helped mc out of partisanship and mere hero-worship. In my parish it used to disclose to me the real sterling worth of obstructive churchwardens or meddling committeemen. But it has helped me most of all in my realisation of the Church, that Church of all men and all things " working together for good," drawn on through error and ignorance by and to Him who is Wisdom and Truth. ' I have said much more than I purposed, and yet much less than I might say. Of course, there were other influ- ences. Carlyle helped me to work ; above all, Montaigne helped me to fairness. But the personal impression of a living man must always be greater and more vivid than those of books. ' I only pray that in your new sphere you may be to others what in your old sphere you were to me. 'Believe me, dear Dr. Stanley, ' Faithfully yours, 'J. R. Green.' Nor did Stanley lose interest in his pupils as soon as they had passed from under his immediate care. He fol- lowed their subsequent course, always ready to reopen communication with them, and always ready to help them in the difficulties of after-life. No one, probably, knows how many struggling pupils owed to his delicate sympathy that timely aid which changed the whole future of their careers. To accumulate instances of such pecuniary assist- i6 LIFE OF DEAN' STANLEY 1858-61 ance would be almost an insult to his memory. But his time and his advice were also placed at their disposal. 'If I can hope,' he writes to a former pupil, who had consulted him on a difficulty, ' to be of any use to those who have at- tended my lectures, it is my best reward.' The following series of letters show how ungrudgingly his help was given. The first letter refers to the Athanasian Creed. 'Your difficulty about "the damnatory clauses" is, as you must be aware, not new. You will find that they were regarded just as you view them by Archbishop Tillotson, Bishop Burnet, Bishop Tomline, Dr. Arnold, and, I believe, many others, whose names would carry weight. There are some softening explanations that can be given of them : e.g., "must thus think" is too strong aversion of " ita sen- tiat"; "whosoever will" hardly renders the force of " giii- ainqiie vidt" ; and it is possible that the anathemas did not extend to every detail. But the only satisfactory mode of reconciling our minds to these clauses seems to me this : ' First, the main question for a clergyman to ask himself is, whether he is willing to receive the Prayer Book as a whole. If he is, then any objections to particular portions ought not to weigh with him. No Liturgy can ever be perfect, and the only chance of having one at all is the readiness of those concerned to accept the exceptional blemishes for the sake of the excellent effect of the whole together. The harshness of the damnatory clauses is over- borne a hundredfold by the spirit of all the Collects and all the occasional services, nay, even by the spirit of the con- cluding words of the Creed itself — "And they that have done good," &c. The same kind of surrender is required no less in the case of the Authorised Version. There are hundreds of false readings. But we need not scruple to read them, because the excellence of the translation as a whole, and the difficulty of altering it, ought to make us content with its general effect, without troubling ourselves minutely as to its particular faults. ' But, secondly, you may rest perfectly assured that your view of the clauses is shared by the vast majority of English clergymen. I do not believe that there is one in 1,000 who would apply the words in their strict and literal sense, even to Unitarians — not one in 10,000 who would apply them to CHAP. XVI ADVICE TO PUPILS the Greek Christians, who differ from its doctrine on the Holy Spirit. 'There is, probably, no bishop who would object to receiving you for Ordination because of your scruples on this point. ' If it were not for the great difficulty of revising one part of the Prayer Book without the rest, I have little doubt that the Athanasian Creed would be removed. But this difficulty is so keenly felt at present, that I cannot see any reason why you may not, with perfect good faith, be guided by the considerations which I have named to you. ' If there should be anything in what I have said which would make you wish to write to me again, pray do not scruple. I shall be delighted to help you in any way that I can.' The second letter replies to questions on the Interpre- tation of the Bible, and on the expediency of writing sermons before ^dination. 'I. I do not think that any book on the Interpretation of Scripture is necessary. ' You have only to approach the Bible with the reverence due to the authority which all Christians acknowledge, and with the wish to make out the meaning as you would that of any other book, and then (it seems to me) the interpre- tation will come of itself. If, however, you should wish for any special directions as to what are thought the difficulties of Scripture, I think that you would derive some help from an essay on the Interpretation of Scripture at the end of the second volume, and a Preface on the Study of Theology at the beginning of the third volume, of Arnold's Sermons. Also, two sermons which were published separately by him on the Interpretation of Prophecy ; and (if it were not adding too much) many of the sermons of the sixth volume. These sermons are published by Fellowes, in London, and you can get each volume apart from the others ; and even when they do not bear on the direct interpretation of Scrip- ture, you would find them very instructive as sermons. If you should wish for commentaries on any special parts, or for any helps in any particular department, ask again, and I will do my best to answer you. '2. I entirely agree with the doubt which you express VOL. II C i8 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1858-61 yourself as to the expediency of writing sermons before you are ordained. I think that it would be entirely lost time. But you might gain much benefit, both to your style and to your future power of instruction, by making short analyses or expositions of passages of the Bible — say, a parable, or a Gospel or Epistle of the Sunday, such as you might hereafter develop into a sermon. Also, you might keep a book for extracts, for passages from other books, which strike you as bearing on particular texts, or as en- forcing particular duties. If it were any help to you now and then to send me such an analysis, I would return it to you, with any remarks that occurred to me. But this is just as you would wish.' The third letter is a reply to a pupil's request to recom- mend a book on the Sacrament. ' The best book which I know on the Sacrament is one which was put into my hands by one of the best of men in Scotland this summer ; but it combines two names which have of late been so curiously brought into public notice that I hardly like to mention it. It is Colcnsd s collec- tion of extracts from Maurice on this subject. I forget the exact title, but Macmillan doubtless would have it. It is a very small book, published some ten years ago.' The fourth and last letter answers several questions, the tenor of which appears from the nature of the reply : ' Your letter needs no excuses. To be allowed to help any single human soul through the difficulties of this mortal life, to help one who is so sincerely striving to serve God as I believe you to be, is a mercy which, I trust, I feel as I ought. It is, at any rate, an inexpressible ground of com- fort and encouragement. 'In answer to your first question, I cannot myself even conceive how our Lord should have addressed His hearers otherwise than in conformity with the received notions of the time on matters of Biblical Science. We all acknow- ledge this on matters of phy.sical science, and the dis- coveries and arguments, by which the books of the Old Testament are now assigned to authors different from those whose names they bear, as entirely belong to our age as do CHAP. XVI ADVICE TO PUPILS 19 the arguments and discoveries of astronomy or geology. He Himself has said, that of the times of the end of the world He was ignorant. The Evangelists tell us that He increased in ivisdom — which Keble has so well para- phrased : Was not our Lord a little child, Taught by degrees to pray, By father dear and mother mild Instructed day by day. ' The monstrous claim that we make, on His behalf, that He should have been a cyclopedia of all the knowledge of the nineteenth century, appears to me exactly analogous to that of the Jews of the first century, that He should have been a conquering king, like Julius Caesar or Solomon. That there should have been this reticence, this ignorance, is not only a necessary consequence of His humanity (like His weakness. His sufferings, His agony in the Garden, which are all of them at least as incompatible with the omnipotence of Deity as His ignorance, if so it be, is with the omniscience of Deity), but is to me a blessed proof of the universal adaptation of the Bible to our wants. How far, far better for its perpetual progress, and for the perpetual progress of truth, than if it had been wedded to any one critical theory of any particular age, which would have been unintelligible to any other than its own ! ' The only exception which I venture to make to this general admission of our Lord's humanity is, that it does appear to me as if in the Gospels, even beyond what appears in the Epistles, the allusions to the Old Testament are free from detail, free from special interpretation, point to the grander principles which are involved in the passages that He touches, carry us to a sphere from which we may look down with safety on all the controversies which have since arisen. I will take as a single instance the comment on "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." This kind of elevation, however, seems to me quite different from the mechanical anticipation of science, which appears to me so preposterous. 'The same general principle will, I think, apply to the case of the Demoniacs. It is difificult to know exactly what is meant. For my part, I should be sorry to part entirely with the notion of possession. But if there should be any truth in the statement that the symptoms are those of 20 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1858-61 madness, then what I have said before would meet the case here. If at that time the forms of what we call madness were called demoniacal possession, then, again, He could not, I conceive, have spoken otherwise than He did. ' Into the question of the modern spiritualists I have not entered. But it seems to me that people somewhat com- plicate the matter by regarding it from a religious side. It may be that particular persons (perhaps all people in some degree) are endowed with a sort of magnetic power, which causes, or enables them to cause, these impressions, but which is no more preternatural or religious than the power of music, or scent, or poetry, or any other natural, though extraordinary, gift. The only point of view from which it is theologically interesting is, that it may have been the outward, human, or natural instrument throitgJi which, in former times, revelations from a higher moral world were made.' Among older men Stanley's influence was necessarily different. He lacked the resolute, determined concentra- tion on the mastery of a single branch of knowledge, the sustained attention to any one line of thought, which are essential to intellectual leaders. He never could have settled down alone in a remote solitude to think out a subject. But everything combined to make him a moral and social power of the best and highest kind. He had that genius for friendship which consists in the craving for sympathy and the readiness to give it. He felt the need for himself, and he satisfied it in others, to have his tastes, wishes, views consulted. He delighted to pour out his stores for the pleasure and profit of his friends, but it was an equal delight to him to be the recipient also of their treasures. He felt an instinctive shrinking from those altercations which so often destroy the blessings of friendship. On one occasion he wrote to his sister, mention- ing with extreme pleasure that, at three successive houses in which he had been staying, he had never heard a note of discord. When any harshness or acerbity of temper was CHAP. XVI H/S GENIUS FOR FRIENDSHIP 21 betrayed in his presence, he would simply relapse into silence, and look distressed, until he could find the oppor- tunity of introducing some change of topic. The habit, which he often inculcates in his sermons, of making the best of people — of ignoring differences, and finding and developing points of sympathy — was his own continual practice. It was not that he was unable to see faults in his friends. With all his admiration for Arnold, he yet lamented his failings. But, as he had a genius for friendship, so also he had a passion for justice. He dwelt upon the good that he found in men till to him, and often to them, it absorbed, effaced, and overcame the evil. He hardly ever stated, and very rarely even admitted, anything to the prejudice of another man. If he could not speak well of them, he would close his lips in a determined way. He had none of that selfish angularity which is only con- scious of its own bruises. He never, it may be almost said with literal truth, had a feud or a coolness with any of his associates which was not caused by his taking up the cudgels on behalf of someone, often a stranger to himself, who was attacked. Even then the alienation was never on his side. If a friend or acquaintance insisted on break- ing with him, he would watch his opportunity to win him back, sometimes by frank, but gentle, remonstrances, some- times by acts of thoughtful kindness, sometimes by inviting him to his table to meet distinguished guests. He was almost equally anxious to remove misunderstandings be- tween his friends, pleading with each for the other, yet without ceasing to be friendly to both ; eager to smooth away all occasions for outbreaks, and, if they occurred, to gather up and piece together the broken fragments of friendship. He was remarkable for the extension and expansive- ness of his genius for friendship. His countless friends 22 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1858-61 were like beads, scattered far and wide when the string connecting them was broken. Nothing could ever bring them together again. Nor was the genius less remarkable for its intensity. In his intimate friendships, which were, of course, few, there was no reserve. To his mother and sisters his heart and mind stood open from the earliest years. From Hugh Pearson or Professor Jowett he had no secrets. And with his wife the union of thought and feeling was so complete that it is only wonderful how much affection, sympathy, and interest it left to spare for others. In June 1858 Stanley's close and intimate friend. Bishop Cotton, was preparing to leave England for Calcutta, to the see of which he had been appointed. The Bishop writes from Christ Church to his successor-elect at Marl- borough College, the present Dean of Westminster : 'I came here from a desire to see A. P. S. in his Oxford home before going to my Indian. We have had two pleasant banquets. What an element of peace and goodwill he is ! The first dinner was heterogeneous enough ; yet all was most harmonious and cheerful. Stanley's stories about Becket's brains and Louis XVIth.'s blood assume a posi- tively sacred value when they bind together in friendly union the latitudinarian and the stiff-necked .' Consistent and undeviating in the pursuit of the one great object of his life, he was untiring in his efforts to propagate, both by teaching and example, the spirit of tolerance. Whatever storms might rage in academical society, his own home at Christ Church was a place on the threshold of which all controversial bitterness was neces- sarily abandoned. Thus it was that the social influence which he exercised was, in its special way, unique. In him were happily blended cheerfulness, perfect simplicity, a high and serious view of life, and a many-sided capacity for its enjoyment. Whether he was speaking, writing, or talking, he commanded a perennial flow of what was very nearly CHAP. XVI HIS BREADTH OF SYMPATHY 23 his best self. His mind was not, perhaps, fundamentally original. He culled from all sources, but especially from the lips of men of superior knowledge, the information which he distilled into the honey of his books and conversa- tion. Possessing a rapid perception of analogies or differ- ences, and gifted with a highly pictorial power of descrip- tion, the collocation of his ideas was always apposite, fresh, suggestive, and their presentment always vivid and pictur- esque. Few persons talked with him without eliciting, if not an original thought, at least a new point of view. At any moment, in connection with a vast variety of subjects, there was a pent-up store of interest and enthusiasm which was ready to burst into expression. Partly by instinct and taste, partly on principle, he always endeavoured to keep himself in touch with the doings and thoughts of the day. Like Bishop Fraser, he was convinced that ' the man who is out of gear with his times cannot influence others.' It was this union of breadth of sympathy with alertness of mind which made his conver- sation so quickening, refreshing, and stimulating. But his sympathies were not only broad : they were also high. On whatever subject he talked, he impressed his hearers with the sense that close behind the surface there existed a loftier tone of thought, which was always ready to respond to the slightest touch of congenial feeling. He was at once too full of tact and too delicately conscious of the moods of other men to intrude this side of his nature upon mixed society. But what was said with truth of the late Bishop of Manchester was, in a less direct and practical way, true of Stanley : ' He was daily bringing down light from Heaven into the life of other people.' No one could long come in contact with Stanley without feeling that he was walking in the light, and without being affected by its radiation. It was this background that gave dignity to his simplicity of 24 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY i860 character, that preserved the spiritual elements of his nature from materialisation, that gilded his social intercourse with a tenderness, an unobtrusiveness, a sincerity, an evenness of temper, and a consideration for others, that permeated, purified, and strengthened the society in which he moved. The crisis at which Stanley returned to Oxford gave to his social influence a peculiar value. The air was heavily charged with controversy. One question that raged throughout the greater part of his Oxford residence was the proposal to provide a higher salary than 40/. for the Professor of Greek, a post which was held by his friend. Professor Jowett. Time after time the vote was defeated by theological opponents. Stanley threw himself into the struggle with characteristic eagerness,^ persevered in it with his usual pertinacity, and eventually succeeded in carrying his point. His letters are filled with allusions to a contest which now need scarcely be revived, but which sowed broad- cast a bitter sense of rankling injustice among the future leaders -of academical life. Another controversy, to which a similar theological complexion was imparted, was the contest for the Boden Professorship of Sanskrit, in i860. All Stanley's efforts were employed on behalf of Professor Max M tiller, but without success. His own disappointment was keen. ' You will have,' he writes to the defeated candidate, 'many consolations. I need not dwell upon them. But you must also give us the best consolation that we can have, 3 In 1861 he published, in an anonymous pamphlet, a series of extracts from the works of Professor Jowett, as material on which to decide whether the spirit of his writings was ' a spirit at variance, or in unity, with the best teaching of the Prayer Book and the highest interests of the Church of England ' : Statements of Christian Doctrine and Practice, extracted from the published •writings of the Rev. Benjamin Jowett. Oxford, 1 86 1. In the same year he also published Speech Delivered in the House of Congregation, November 20, 1 86 1, on the Endowment of the Regius Professor of Creek. With Notes. By A. P. Stanley, D.D. Oxford, 1 861. CHAP. XVI ST. GEORGE' S-IN-THE-EAST 25 and that is, the assurance that we have not been mistaken in the high expectations we had formed of you. You have it still in your power, thank God ! to turn your energies from this wretched turmoil to the pursuits which have made your name what it is. You can still show that, although not Boden Professor, you are, and will remain, the oracle of all who wish to know the secrets of Indian literature and religion. You can still, by your writings, show what the Christian religion may be to India and the world, as you could not do before, lest you should be sus- pected of unworthy motives. You can still show us how a Christian scholar and philosopher can put to shame, by Christian magnanimity, "the ignorance of foolish men." You can, in this crisis of your life, rise to the greatness of the occasion, and make your friends more proud of you than if they had brought you into the Professorship by a majority of hundreds. ' " Leave off wrath and let go displeasure, fret not thy- self, else shalt thou be moved to do evil." ' Outside Oxford other theological contests were raging, and in two of the fiercest Stanley took an important part. One of them was the case of St. George's-in-the-East ; the other was that caused by the publication of ' Essays and Reviews.' The story of the riots at St. George's-in-the-East has been told by Mr. Bryan King in his pamphlet, ' Sacrilege and its Encouragement,' by Mr. Lowder in his 'Twenty- one Years in St. George's Mission,' and lastly, with full details, in the recent biography of Archbishop Tait.* It is here only necessary to refer to such points in a disgraceful episode in the ecclesiastical history of the Metropolis as will best explain the part which was played by Stanley. The parish of St. George's-in-the-East had been since 1842 under the care of the Rev. Bryan King. It is a river- side district, which then contained a population of 38,000 souls, consisting partly of a large, continually-shifting class * Life of Archbishop Tail, vol. i. pp. 229-249. 26 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY of dock labourers and sailors, partly of the resident trades- men who supplied their wants. In this crowded district a separate mission had been established, to which Mr. Lowder was appointed in 1856, and which now forms the parish of St. Peter's, London Docks. The noble work done by Mr. Lowder and his colleagues was watched with keen interest by Stanley, who twice preached in the Mission Chapel. But the Rev. Bryan King, and the scene of the riots at St. George's-in-the-East, were otherwise unknown to him before the autumn of 1859. The Rev. Bryan King, a man of high courage and intense earnestness, endeavoured to alter the old, slovenly services in the parish church. The changes which he made were in themselves slight, but they provoked the dissatisfaction and suspicions of his congregation. The Nonconforming element was strong in the parish, and the latent Puritanism of East-end London was roused. When, in 1856, the Rector announced his intention of adopting Eucharistic vestments, the discontent grew stronger. The bulk of the congregation gradually withdrew from the church, leaving only a few parishioners who sympathised with the Rector in his ritual innovations. An unfortunate division of au- thority fomented the growing dissatisfaction. By an Act of George II. the vestry possessed the right of nominating a lecturer, to whom the Rector was obliged, on Sunday afternoons, to allow the use of the pulpit in the parish church. In May 1859 the vestry nominated to the vacant lectureship the Rev. Hugh Allen, who was distinguished for the vehemence of his ' No Popery ' tenets. An after- noon service, at which the Rector and his choir sang the Litany, preceded the lecture ; the second congregation arrived before the Litany was concluded, and thus the fol- lowers of the Rev. Bryan King and of the lecturer were brought into collision within the walls of the church. CHAP. XVI ST. GEORGE'S-IN-IHE-EAST 27 At first the disturbances were confined to the afternoon service. The congregation of Mr. Allen protested against the singing of the Litany by saying the responses very loudly and very unmusically. The effect of the discord suggested to an eyewitness the comparison of ' a handful of singing- mice in a cage, surrounded by an army of starved cats.' Sunday after Sunday the protestants arrived early, in order to disturb the Rector's service. Finding they could enter their protests with impunity, they proceeded to disturb all public worship in the church. A society was formed, called the Anti-Puseyite League. Animosities were fanned by correspondents in religious newspapers ; the noisy irre- verence of a disorderly mob profaned the services, both in the morning and the evening. A regular plan was organised to cough, hiss, stamp, scrape the feet, slam the doors of the pews, let loose dogs in the building, hustle and insult the Rector and the choir. These demonstrations were not confined to the sermon or the choral service, but the Lessons were interrupted by songs roared out from the galleries, and such expressions in the prayers as ' the Cross of Christ,' 'the Blood of Christ,' 'the Body and Blood of Christ,' became the signals for disorder and buffoonery. Actual violence could be prevented by the police ; but the law appeared powerless to check noises and interruptions, which did not come within the legal definition of 'outrage.' In May i860 Stanley intervened as a peacemaker. He opened negotiations with the Rev. Bryan King, and even- tually persuaded him to retire temporarily from the parish on a year's leave of absence, leaving his place to be filled by some clergyman of Stanley's selection. His choice had fallen upon the Rev. Septimus Hansard, an old Rugbeian and a former pupil of his own, who had already proved his exceptional powers of dealing with the population of a low Irish neighbourhood near Cato Street, and who was well 28 LIFE OF DEAN iiTANLEY i860 known to Mr. 'Tom ' Hughes and Dr. Tait. On June 3rd, i860, after visiting Charles Lowder at the Mission House, and finding that the choice of the curate-in-charge was personally acceptable to him, Stanley wrote the following letter to Mr. Hansard : ' Listen with all your mind to this proposal. ' You will probably get a letter from T. Hughes, to the effect that he and I have concerted (with A. C. London) a scheme, in which your co-operation is of the utmost im- portance. ' If you consent, it is this : that Bryan King should be invited to absent himself for change of air from St. George's for a year, and that a curate should be put in his place by the Bishop. This curate is to be yourself. You are the only man who would work the place well, and at the same time co-operate with the Mission Clergy, who will be the only working-staff left. The prospect of your appointment is the only thing which, probably, would reconcile Bryan King to leaving his parish for a time. You would receive the whole support of T. Hughes and all his companions, of A. P. S., and of all those whose aid you would most value. You would restore the parish to peace. You would win a crown of glory for yourself and many souls to God. By the end of the year you would have proved what you could do, and be rewarded accordingly. ' Bryan King could, of course, retire on his full salary. But money matters will be arranged for you in any way that you propose.' Mr. Hansard accepted the task, and in July i860 a paragraph appeared in the ' Times ' announcing his appoint- ment as curate-in-charge of St. George's-in-the-East. It was part of the plan that the force of 170 policemen, hitherto employed at the church, should be at once with- drawn. But the following extract from a letter of July 24th, i860, shows Stanley's forethought : ' When you dismiss the policemen from St. George's Church, you must take care to retain a body outside, to guard against any attack on the Mission Church. Every CHAP. XVI ST. GEORGE'S-IN-THE-EAST 29 security must be taken for this, lest you should appear to throw off the hornets from yourself on them.' 'Trust in the Lord,' as Cromwell said, 'and keep your temper dry,' was Stanley's final advice. He was present in church on the first Sunday after the change was made. At the evening service Mr. Hansard preached in his academical gown, and when he appeared in the pulpit, Stanley heard an old woman exclaim, ' Thank God it's black ! ' ' Dear old soul,' he used to add, when telling the story in later years, ' she would say, if she were alive now, "Thank God it's white ! " ' Stanley also visited Mr. Bryan King at Bruges, and succeeded in inducing him to abstain from any communications with his parishioners, which might hamper the action of Mr. Hansard. Gradually the riots ceased, the opposition was overcome, the mob quelled, and the services restored to their former tranquillity. For six Sundays peace had been maintained. The restoration of order afforded the opportunity for trifling concessions in matters of indifference. In November i860 Mr. Hansard headed a deputation of the parishioners to the Bishop of London, who proposed that a cathedral ser- vice should be taken as the model of parochial worship. Mr. Bryan King, to whom this proposal was submitted by his curate-in-charge, refused to accept the suggested com- promise, and Mr. Hansard, as his representative, felt him- self unable, without disloyalty to his rector, to alter the ritual of St. George's-in-the-East. The Bishop, on the other hand, insisted that the services should be so arranged as to correspond with the customary rittial of London churches. Between the conflicting authorities of his Dio- cesan and his Rector the position of Mr. Hansard was rendered intolerable. He therefore resigned. The ulti- mate settlement of the question was effected by the Bishop providing, at his own cost, for the care of the parish, and by 30 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY i860 the appointment of Mr. Bryan King, in 1 861, to the rectory of Avebury, in the Diocese of Salisbury. If the history of the riots at St. George's-in-the-East is a well-worn subject, that of ' Essays and Reviews ' is still more threadbare. But Stanley's position in the strife was so characteristic, and the effect upon his career so impor- tant, that the story must once more be told at length. In February i860 a volume of seven theological essays by different authors was published under the title of ' Essays and Reviews.' The volume was prefaced by a short ' Advertisement ' : ' It will readily be understood that the Authors of the ensuing Essays are responsible for their respective articles only. They were written in entire independence of each other, and without concert or comparison. ' The volume, it is hoped, will be received as an attempt to illustrate the advantage derivable to the cause of reli- gious and moral truth from a free handling, in a becoming spirit, of subjects peculiarly liable to suffer by the repeti- tion of conventional language, and from traditional modes of treatment.' The first essay was by Dr. Temple, Head Master of Rugby, the last, by Professor Jowett. The subjects chosen by the two writers respectively were, ' The Education of the World,' and ' The Interpretation of Scripture.' The other five Essayists were Dr. Rowland Williams, Professor Baden-Powell, the Rev. H. B. Wilson, Mr. C. W. Goodwin and the Rev. Mark Pattison. The spring and summer passed away, and the volume had excited but little attention. The appearance of an article in the 'Westminster Review,' followed, first, by the autumn Charge of Bishop Wilberforce, and then by his article in the ' Quarterly Review'^ at the beginning of 1861, gave the signal for a wild and panic-stricken agitation. '"Quarterly Review, January 1 86 1. CHAP. XVI PUBLICATION OF 'ESSAYS REVIEWS'' 3 1 Addresses, memorials, and remonstrances against the mis- chievous tendencies of the boolc poured in upon the Arch- bishops and Bishops. Inflammatory language was freely- used by the champions of orthodoxy ; extracts unfairly culled from the Essays were widely circulated ; and the Archbishops were entreated to take action against the Essayists, who were described as traitors to their sacred calling, and as guilty of moral dishonesty. Stanley had from the first declined to take any part in the volume. He was keenly alive to ' the absurdity of en- deavouring to produce an effect on a public already terri- fied by throwing together a number of names which gather, not strength, but weakness, not attractiveness, but repul- siveness, from this concatenation.' He strongly objected to the form and scheme of the work. ' In a composite publi- cation ' he, from the first, recognised 'a decided blunder.' While he admitted the ' rare merit ' of Dr. Temple's essay, he acknowledged the ' inexpediency of its place.' ' Jowett's essay,' he goes on to add, in a letter written shortly after the publication of 'Essays and Reviews,' ' is decidedly the next best — too negative and antagonistic, of course, but wonderfully fertile of thought, and really con- taining no just ground of offence. The others are strangely crude. Goodwin, a layman, has written a clear, able state- ment of the Mosaic Cosmogony ; Wilson, an able but very irritating essay on the National Church. Pattison, on the Eighteenth Century, has much interesting matter, but im- perfectly cooked. The two others appear to me super- fluous.' On the question of the credibility of miracles, which was raised by Professor Baden-Powell's essay, he took up a position wholly opposed to that of the Essayist. He writes to a friend in July i860 : ' I suspect that the controversy respecting miracles must at last come to this : 32 UFE OF DEAN STANLEY i860 ' Will the advocates of Gospel miracles concede that they may be wrought through the intervention of general or natural laws ? Will their opponents concede that the grandeur of the end to be obtained justifies the belief that there are general laws on this subject not fully, as yet, known to us ? ' Must the healing or quickening miracles of Christ be always regarded as valuable in proportion to their eccen- tricity, or may they not be regarded, rather, as valuable in proportion to their connection with His moral and spiritual character, or aim ? ' Must the miracles of Elisha be always elevated to the same degree of importance as the miracles of Christ, or may they not be silently suffered to recede into the back- ground of sacred history, as Elisha himself does, compared with Elijah ? ' To a former pupil, who was consulting him on the course of his theological reading, he again expresses his regret for the publication : ' I am sorry to think that you should have been troubled in any way by this unhappy controversy as to the " Essays and Reviews" — almost sorry that you should have read the book. At the same time, I sincerely believe that any- one who reads the first, sixth, and seventh essays, not with a desire to find falsehood in them, but truth, will not only derive from them most valuable helps to the study of history and of the Bible, but will also have his faith con- firmed and his charity increased, without any unsettlement of mind whatever. 'The other Essays contain some good passages, but are, in my opinion, so unequal to those which I have named that I much lament that they should ever have been published together.' Few men regretted more deeply than Stanley the error of judgment which had been committed by the seven authors of ' Essays and Reviews.' Neither his intimate personal friendship with Professor Jowett and Dr. Temple, nor his sympathy with liberal theology, blinded him to the impolicy of the publication and to the offensive tone and CHAP. XVI THE GROWING AGlTATrON 33 tenor of some of the Essays. He especially censured the generally negative character of the volume. ' No book,' he said, 'v^fhich treats of religious questions can hope to make its way to the heart of the English nation unless it gives at the same time that it takes away.' But the agitation against the book assumed the char- acter which especially excited his indignation. No effort was made to discriminate or distinguish, but all the seven writers were involved in one and the same sweeping censure, and branded with the same charge of infidelity or atheism. The champions of orthodoxy rushed into print, with wild denunciations of the Essayists, and with dogmatic asser- tions as to the essentials of Christianity which, in his opinion, were more mischievous than the language used by their opponents. Protests were signed by hundreds of men who never took the trouble to read the book which they condemned, or who openly avowed their reliance upon un- fair extracts, in comparison with which, to use the language of Stanley, 'the Hampden extracts were white as wool.' The injustice of such an attack aroused all the comba- tiveness of his nature. And when it was especially directed against Dr. Temple and Professor Jowett, the two men who least deserved obloquy, and had most to lose by it, he rushed into the fray, with chivalrous disregard of the personal consequences to himself. In January 1861, immediately after the publication of Bishop Wilberforce's article in the ' Quarterly Review,' Stanley was requested to write an article in the April number of the 'Edinburgh Review' on 'Essays and Reviews.' He consented to do so, and in his reply to the editor indicated part of the ground which he proposed to take : ' No doubt the " Edinburgh " ought to steer a middle course between the bottomless Charybdis of the " West- VOL. II D 34 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY i86i minster" and the barking Scyllaof the "Quarterly," and it seems to me that there would be no difficulty whatever in finding such a position. ' In the first place, the folly of the project of this volume might be condemned strongly. For seven men, without real agreement of view, to combine as if they had, and to combine, moreover, when the name of almost every one of the set would add weakness instead of strength to the others, appears to me a practical blunder, of which I cannot conceive how men of ability could be guilty. I exonerate Temple, because he gave his name for a different reason, and one highly honourable to himself. The illusion (for it is a mere illusion), and the consequent panic — as of a con- spiracy against Revealed Religion — which this volume has excited, has, I consider, put back the progress of Biblical criticism and sound theology in this country probably for five years. ' But, secondly, it might be pointed out from the volume itself how groundless this panic is. The book comprises essays as different from each other as those which usually appear in the " Edinburgh " or " Quarterly." Temple's was (in substance) a sermon preached by him before the Uni- versity of Oxford two years ago, and heard, I believe, with general approbation, and attacked only by Goldwin Smith for advocating too strongly the doctrine of special Provi- dence. Pattison's is a mere scholastic review of the eighteenth-century divines, which might have appeared in the " Quarterly " as a sequel to those which he wrote on Casaubon, Huet, and Scaliger. Jowett's is a supplement to his Commentary, written in a more constructive style than usual, and, had it appeared separately, and without his name, it would, I am convinced, have been hailed as a con- siderable accession to Biblical scholarship. ' The others are very different, both from these three and from each other. Wilson's, the ablest of the four, has com- mitted the unpardonable rashness of throwing out state- ments, without a grain of proof, which can have no other object than to terrify and irritate, and which have no con- nection with the main argument of his Essay. Powell's is a mere rechauffe of his (to me) unintelligible argument about miracles, though I believe it represents the common view of the religious world much more nearly than they like to admit. Goodwin's is a clear, but offensive, exposi- CHAP. XVI ADDRESS TO THE B/SHOPS 35 tion of the relations of Genesis and geology. Williams is guilty of the same rashness as Wilson — on a larger scale — casting Bunsen's conclusions before the public without a shred of argument to prepare the way for them or support them.' While Stanley was preparing his article for the ' Edin- burgh Review ' an event occurred which, in his opinion, accentuated and embittered the whole crisis. Protests and remonstrances were accumulating in every part of England, and early in February, 1861, a number of the Bishops met at Lambeth, and decided to reply to one of the addresses in such a general form as would virtually answer other appeals of a similar character. The address to which they replied was couched in the following terms : ' We wish to make known to your Grace and to all the Bishops the alarm we feel at some late indications of the spread of rationalistic and semi-infidel doctrines among the beneficed clergy of the realm. We allude especially to the denial of the atoning efficacy of the Death and Passion of our Blessed Saviour, Jesus Christ, both God and man, for us men and for our salvation, and to the denial also of a Divine Inspiration, peculiar to themselves alone, of the Canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testament. ' We would earnestly beseech your Grace and your Lordships, as faithful stewards over the House of God, to discourage by all means in your power the spread of specu- lations which would rob our countrymen, more especially the poor and unlearned, of their only sure stay and comfort for time and eternity. And to this end we would more especially and most earnestly beseech you, in your Ordina- tions, to "lay hands suddenly on no man" till you have convinced yourselves (as far as human precaution can secure it) that each deacon who, in reply to the question, " Do you unfeignedly believe all the Canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testament " answers, " I do believe them," speaks the truth as in the sight of God.' The reply of the Archbishops and Bishops ran as follows : 36 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1861 'Lambeth: February 12, 1 86 1. ' Reverend Sir, — I have taken the opportunity of meet- ing many of my episcopal brethren in London to lay your address before them. ' They unanimously agree with me in expressing the pain it has given them that any clergyman of our Church should have published such opinions as those concerning which you have addressed us. ' We cannot understand how these opinions can be held consistently with an honest subscription to the formularies of our Church, with many of the fundamental doctrines of which they appear to us essentially at variance. ' Whether the language in which these views are ex- pressed is such as to make the publication an act which could be visited in the Ecclesiastical Courts, or to justify the synodical condemnation of the book which contains them, is still under our gravest consideration. But our main hope is our reliance on the blessing of God in the continued and increasing earnestness with which, we trust, that we and the clergy of our several dioceses may be enabled to teach and preach that good deposit of sound doctrine which our Church teaches in its fulness, and which we pray that she may, by God's grace, ever set forth as the uncorrupted Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. ' I remain, reverend Sir, your faithful servant, 'J. B. Cantuar. ' I am authorised to append the following names : — C. T. Ebor A. C. London H. M. Durham C. R. Winton H. Exeter G. Peterborough C. St. David's A. T. Chichester J. Lichfield S. Oxon T. Ely T. V. St. Asaph J. P. Manchester R. D. Hereford J. Chester A. Llandaff R. J. Bath and Wells J. Lincoln C. Gloucester and Bristol W. Sarum R. Ripon J. T. Norwich J. C. Bangor J. Rochester S. Carlisle.' It was intended that the letter should be published with the address. Unfortunately, it found its way into print CHAP. XVI HIS CORRESPONDENCE WITH TAIT 37 through the unauthorised hands of a private clergyman, without any indication of the character of the protest to which it repHed. In a letter to Dr. Tait,^ Stanley challenged the action of the Bishops collectively, and of the Bishop of London individually, commenting strongly on the contradiction between his private acquittal of three of the Essayists (Professor Jowett, Dr. Temple, and the Rev. Mark Pattison) and his sweeping censure of them in public. He regarded the letter as an attempt to curtail the liberties of the Church by an episcopal declaration on points for which proper courts were provided. In his view, it gave high sanction to the indiscriminate charges made against the seven Essayists ; it fanned the flame of violent language with which they were assailed ; it gave colour to the charge that several clergymen had conspired to undermine the Christian faith ; it branded the opinions of Dr. Temple and Professor Jowett as inconsistent ' with an honest subscrip- tion to the formularies of our Church,' and threatened aggressive measures against the five clerical Essayists which would render their position as clergymen intolerable. 'Truth,' writes Stanley to a friend, 'is a better watchword than Freedom. But I think there is a better one still — at least, it seems to me more acces- sible and available — which is Justice. It is the excessive inequality and inequity of the Episcopal judgment of which I complain. There is no desire, no attempt at what I should have thought even the stupidest and most cautious man might seek after — a fair distribution of praise and blame. " False weights are truly an abomination to the Lord." ' In Stanley's opinion, the Episcopal letter offended against every principle of justice. It demanded the removal from the Church of five distinguished clergymen, without * For the full correspondence between Stanley and Tait, see the Life of Archbishop Tait, vol. i. pp. 284-7, ^'^^ PP- 308-12. 38 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY i85i specifying any precise charges. It involved all the writers in one vague anathema, when the opinions of the different essays were so various as to require nice discrimination. It concealed real divergence of opinion under a false appearance of unanimity. Professing to be deliberate, it contained one name which was appended without the knowledge or the wish of the supposed assenting Bishop. Stanley had little sympathy with many of the opinions expressed in ' Essays and Reviews ' ; he condemned as strongly as possible the mode of publication ; he depre- cated the assertion of the difficulties and negations of Christianity without the qualification of its counterpoising truths. But educated divines either knew, or ought to have known, the existence of the difficulties to which the Essays were addressed. The wholesale condemnation was, there- fore, in his opinion, dishonest ; and he also felt that the views of tke authors ought to be tolerated in the Church, unless it were to lose its hold on the intellectual laity. In the question between the Bishops and the Essayists was involved the whole future of the National Church, ' the learning of the most learned, the freedom of the freest, the reason of the most rational Church in the world.' The ♦ Episcopal manifesto seemed to him to proscribe free thought and research in the Church of England, to deny to the clergy that liberty which was exercised by laymen, to proclaim to all the young and honest intellects of England that those who entered the gates of the ministry must leave inde- pendent thought behind them. The final issue, as it ap- peared to him, was, in fact, whether the Bible was to be read, or was to remain a closed book. The cause of liberty was, as he believed, brought before the bar, and was 'plead- ing for its very life.' The events of the first few months of 1861 deepened Stanley's forebodings. In February and March the Lower CHAP. XVI RUMOURED ACTION AGAINST DR. TEMPLE 39 House of Convocation had expressed its concurrence with the Episcopal censure of a book which one leading speaker admitted that he had never read, and both Houses had decided on further proceedings if the Committee appointed to examine 'Essays and Reviews' reported in favour of a synodical judgment. During the same months it seemed probable that, in consequence of the Bishops' censure and the action of Convocation, Dr. Temple would be called upon to resign the head-mastership of Rugby School. Men like Dr. Vaughan (the present Dean of Llandaff), Dr. Lightfoot (afterwards Bishop of Durham), and Dr. Westcott (the present Bishop of Durham), agreed with Stanley in regarding such a result as a national calamity, as well as in deprecating the violent and sweeping charges with which the Essayists were assailed. Dr. Vaughan, fresh from the perusal of a recently-published volume of Dr. Temple's sermon.s, could 'conceive no graver responsibility than that which would be incurred by silencing such exhortations from the pulpit of Rugby School.' Dr. Lightfoot was 'unable to conceive a greater calamity, happening just at this crisis, not only to Rugby, but to the English Church generally, than the resignation of Dr. Temple. ' Do you think it would be possible to circulate, and obtain signatures to, a paper expressing confidence in Dr. Temple as an instructor of boys I fancy that there are a great number of moderate-minded men who would be ready to sign such a paper, and whose sense of justice revolts against the indiscriminate censure with which all the writers have been assailed, and which the Bishops' manifesto seems to sanction. ' It is very much to be apprehended, I fear, that the agitation about " Essays and Reviews " will have the effect of dividing men into two well-defined and extreme parties, the one consisting of irrational champions of so-called orthodoxy, the other of men who, under the pressure of opposition, will be driven into a position of reckless scepti- cism, from which they would have been quite safe if left to themselves. Such an act as Temple's resignation would 40 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY i86i be the signal for an internecine war, than which nothing could be more fatal to religion and to truth.' In a similar strain wrote Dr. Westcott : ' However widely I may differ from Professor Jowett on this and most subjects — and you know how widely I am compelled to differ from him — I feel that the very gravest evil is likely to befall our Church from the vague charges of "infidelity," or even "atheism," which are brought against him. ' But, apart from the injustice which is done to individual writers by attributing to them conclusions which, however logical in our judgment, they would, I am sure, be the first to repudiate, there is a still greater danger in answering such reasoning by traditional authority. It is acknowledged by all, that men of high intellectual culture have for some years shrunk from taking Orders. I should never wish to overestimate the value of intellect in sacred functions, and yet it would be a serious calamity if our ministers, as a class, should fall below the laity in sacred learning. Now I fear this must be, and in fact is already, the case, from the belief that all free criticism, however reverent, is ban- ished from questions of theology. Some men, in conse- quence of this belief, suppress at once all the spirit of inquiry which lies within them, and bear about a miserable feeling of dishonesty ; others hastily assume that the results of free inquiry would be antagonistic to Church principles, and re- fuse to join the Church ; and even the labours of those who would show that there is a real harmony between " old faiths" and recent criticism are looked on with suspicion.' From these and similar letters Stanley felt assured that he had behind him a mass of support which had hitherto found no expression, except in abstention from the agita- tion against ' Essays and Reviews.' His personal sym- pathies, his hopes of the Church, his desire for toleration and expansion, his sense of justice, were involved in the issue of the struggle ; all the generosity and all the com- bativeness of his nature were aroused. Of these feelings, hitherto, so far as public expression went, pent up within CHAP. XVI ARTICLE IN THE 'EDINBURGH REVIEW' 4 1 himself, his fiery article in the 'Edinburgh Review"^ was the passionate outcome. The article, powerfully written, and full both of 'swing' and 'sting,' does not attempt to defend 'Essays and Reviews': it rather insists upon the injustice with which the writers had been treated, and labours to prove that many of the men who had taken the lead in condemning the volume were themselves responsible in their published writings for the same opinions which they now denounced as infidel. The well-timed appearance of the article added to the great effect of its powerful writing. In the opinion of Mrs. Stanley, it affected the whole of his future career. ' I am very glad you have written this,' says his mother ; 'not that I agree with it all, but because it puts out of the question your ever being a Bishop.' 'I was annoyed at the time,' said Stanley long afterwards, ' but now I see she was quite right.' The article had poured volleys into opponents on every side, and for months, and even years, to come, it involved him in controversy. Richard Congreve wrote to deprecate his allusion to Comte. Dr. Thomson, afterwards Arch- bishop of York, threatened to withdraw from the list of contributors to the ' Dictionary of the Bible * because of his reference to that publication. From the author of the article in the ' Westminster Review,' which he had severely handled, he received explanations that led him to regret the severity of his language. In the ' Saturday Review ' appeared an attack upon him of so virulent a nature that three of the staff, including the present Lord Justice Bowen, withdrew from all connection with that journal. Long letters were exchanged between him and the Archbishop of Canterbury upon the statement which he made in the ' Edinburgh Review' — and repeated in a speech before Convocation in 1864 — that the seven Essayists had acted without concert. ' Edinburgh Review, April 1 86 1. 42 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1861 With the Bishop of St. David's, Connop Thirlwall, he engaged in a still more lengthy correspondence. In the ' Edinburgh Review' Stanley had identified passages in the Bishop's published writings with ' almost all the principles and many of the statements ' which Thirlwall, in the Epis- copal manifesto, now denounced as ' incompatible with the profession of a clergyman.'^ Challenged to prove this accusation, he produced the passages on which he relied from Thirlwall's introduction ^ to Schleiermacher's ' Essay on St. Luke,' and his preface to the translation of Niebuhr's ' History of Rome.' The closing letter in the correspond- ence indicates Stanley's view of the course which, in his opinion, the Bishops should have adopted : ' When I spoke of an Episcopal Declaration, such as might have allayed the popular panic, without leaving the painful impression which has been created by the letter of February 12, more than one course had presented itself to me as fulfilling these conditions. It seemed to me that, if the censure were severe, it should distinctly have excepted those portions of the book which even a single prelate thought undeserving of the censure ; or that, if such a dis- crimination was impossible, the censure should have ab- stained from those grave imputations which, as they stand at present, without any public contradiction from the sub- scribers, apply equally to all the writers in the volume. ' It seemed to me also, that if the Bishops thought the book, in part or in whole, worthy of censure, they ought also to have stated, no less clearly, the danger of an ignorant, indiscriminate outcry, and the difficulties necessarily at- tendant on a fearless and truthful discussion of the ques- tions which the book professed to handle. ^ The same charge was made in a pamphlet entitled Essays and Revieivs A7iticipated, the authorship of which was at the time attributed to George Eliot. The pamphlet was reviewed in the Spectator, and drew from the Bishop an answer in that paper. The Bishop's Charge of 1863 defends his action (see Bishop Thirlwall's Letters, vol. i. p. 234, and his Remains, vol. ii.). * Published in 1825. 1" The translation was made in conjunction with Julius Hare, and pub- lished in 1828-32. CHAP. XVI END OF THE AGITATION 43 ' Any one of these courses would surely have tended to allay the panic, without provoking the additional distrust which, on all sides, the Episcopal letter appears to have excited.' The questions raised by ' Essays and Reviews ' were finally removed to the law-courts by the trials of Dr. Williams and Mr. Wilson, first before the Dean of Arches (December 15th, 1862), and then, on appeal, before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in June 1863. Towards the fund which was raised for the defence of the Essayists Stanley subscribed liberally. But the following letter, written after the appeal against the adverse decision of the Dean of Arches, proves that even the excitement of legal proceedings did not bias the balance of his judgment : ' Some weeks ago G. wrote to me on behalf of the Essay and Review Fund, reminding me (quite properly) of my promise to subscribe more, if more were needed. I replied that I should be glad to do so ; but added that as the appeal must now be restricted to certain definite points, I should like to know what they were, in order to know exactly what it was for which I subscribed. I said this, because I believed that a promiscuous appeal against all the remaining charges would be very imprudent, and would damage the real stand that can be made against some of them. 'To this G. returned no answer, from which I infer that he misunderstood my meaning. I have not the slightest intention of withdrawing my support to the cause. All that I deprecated was giving a needless support to mere obstinacy or rashness. I am as clearly of opinion that they ought to appeal against some of the points as that they ought to modify their own language on the other points.' The final judgment of the Privy Council, from which the two Archbishops dissented, was delivered by Lord Chancellor Westbury on February 8th, 1864. Stanley was present in Court. ' I saw at once, from the absence of the two Archbishops 44 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1858-61 and the fallen countenance of Phillimore, that we were safe. But I had not expected anything so clean and clear, still less that the Archbishops would have concurred in the acquittal on the score of Eternal Punishment, and (what I myself should have considered far the most questionable part of the statements, in a legal view) Justification. 'That the Church of England does not hold — (i) Verbal Inspiration, (2) Imputed Righteousness, (3) Eternity of Torment, is now, I trust, fixed for ever. I hope that all will now go on smoothly, and that the Bible may be really read without those terrible nightmares. Thank God ! ' 11 One more attempt was made to reopen the controversy. A resolution was moved in June 1864, in both Houses of Convocation, synodically con- demning ' Essays and Reviews,' ' as containing teaching contrary to the doc- trine received by the united Church of England and Ireland, in common with the whole Catholic Church of Christ.' Stanley, then Dean of West- minster, vigorously opposed the resolution, which was carried by a large majority (39 to 19). See Chapter xxi. CHAP. XVII TOUR m DENMARK 45 CHAPTER XVII 1859-1862 TOUR IN DENMARK — OBER-AMMERGAU — PUBLICATION OF 'THE EASTERN CHURCH ' — MOUNT ATHOS— DEATH OF THE PRINCE CONSORT — INVITATIDN TO ACCOMPANY THE PRINCE OF WALES TO THE EAST Professorial lectures, University politics, ecclesiastical controversies, and literary work, had fully occupied Stanley since he finally removed his home from Canterbury to Oxford. His relaxation was, as usual, found in foreign travel. In 1859 he made a tour through Denmark, North Germany, and Plolland. In i860 he witnessed the Ober- Ammergau Play,^ then almost unknown in England. In 1861 he visited Mount Athos. In the Danish tour, which he made in 1859 with Hugh Pearson, the chief object of attraction was Elsinore : 'It was just dusk when we reached it, and you may suppose how H. P. and I wandered out in search of the sea and the Ghost. It was a very humble inn, and we found the landlord and a somewhat excitable Dane dis- cussing Hamlet as we came in. 'The next morning we surveyed the whole place. It has two grand and separate interests. The first is its natural situation. It is one of the great geographical points of the world — the entrance to the Sound, winding away like a broad river towards Copenhagen, Sweden imme- diately opposite, and Helsingborg coming out almost to meet Helsingor, "the narrow promontory" (the true name ^ Stanley wrote a graphic account of the Play in Macmillati' s Magazine for October i860. 46 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY of Elsinore). Each shore, especially the Danish, is crowded with villages, and the Sound itself crowded with white sails ; whilst the centre of the whole scene is the great palatial Castle of Elsinore — Kronenborg, built (in the same style as the other Danish palaces) by Frederick II., father of Christian IV. 'And this brings me to the second charm — Hamlet. I feel now that I have got to the bottom of all that there is of connection between the play and the country. The real story of Hamlet throws him back into the remotest legendary Pagan times. The name means " fool," and the part which he plays in the story makes him a type, or caricature, of the Jutlanders, he being, in the legend, a prince, not of Denmark, but of Jutland. It is a succession of absurd disguises of real cunning under feigned folly or madness. This, they say, is what the Jutlanders still are. But in Shakespeare the whole scene, as well as the whole of the manners and thoughts of the story, are transferred to the Danes of his own time. The castle of Elsinore had just been built by Frederick, and therefore this was the only Court and palace of which Shakespeare knew, and he has, accordingly, moved the place and persons hither from Jutland. ' The Castle, as it stands, is evidently what he had heard of, and what he has represented, standing on the very edge of the sea, not, indeed, as Shakespeare, with his recollections of Dover, imagined, on a bristling cliff, but still so that the waves roar beneath the platform. The " Platform " is the line of ramparts which runs in front of the Castle. There the guards are still pacing to and fro — Bernardo, Francisco, and Marcellus ; and in the turns and windings of the fortifi- cations you can see how the Ghost could lead the Prince onwards to a more and " more remote part of the Platform." There is no Ghost in the original story ; but there is a ghost in the Castle of Elsinore, an ancient David Leo Holger, buried under the central tower, and to be seen from time to time, with his white beard, like Barbarossa's red beard, grow- ing round the table at which he sleeps, waiting for the revival of Denmark. The manners and forms and persons, too, of the Court are taken from the actual time. Frederick II. and Christian IV. were Shakespeare's contemporary sovereigns. They had each of them the kind of mingled fierceness and philosophy that appears in Hamlet's own CHAP. XVII STANLEY'S 'EASTERN CHURCH 47 character. Christian IV., who had just been on an embassy to England, was a great drinker himself, as well as all his companions, and hence the bitter reproval of " the cus- tom more honoured in the breach than the observance." Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were two well-known courtiers of Christian IV., whose portraits appear side by side in the gallery at Fredericksborg. Lutheranism had just been firmly established in Denmark, and therefore Hamlet and Horatio go to study in Wittenberg. ' It is a wonderful proof of the power of the play that the names are now fixed in Elsinore. There is a beautiful pleasure-ground about a mile from the town, where there is a Hamlet's Terrace, and a broken pillar surrounded by trees called Hamlet's ^ra^/^; and the three steamers which run between Elsinore and Copenhagen are Hamlet, OpJielia, and Horatio. The whole scene of the Sound is admirably described in Southey's " Life of Nelson," and the battle of Copenhagen ends the connection with England which Hamlet had begun.' The tour of the following year (i860) was too short to be really restorative of Stanley's vigour. Its benefit was soon exhausted by the steady strain of lectures and tuition, the labour of preparing for the press the ' Lectures on the Eastern Church,' and by the excitement into which he was thrown by the publication of ' Essays and Reviews.' Stanley's ' Eastern Church ' was published in March 1861. The volume makes no pretence to the completeness of * Sinai and Palestine,' the most finished and elaborate of all his writings. But it is, in some respects, a more charactei^- istic product of his literary methods. In his Introductory Lectures as Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Stanley had referred to the proverbial dryness of his subject, and com- pared it to the valley of dry bones in the Prophet's vision. In ' The Eastern Church ' he has made the dry bones live, and has imparted to relics, institutions, and characters, a living, human interest. And he has achieved his success by methods which were essentially part of himself. So far as was possible, the history was studied on the exact spot, and 48 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1861 the appropriate atmosphere, the local colour, the lifelike details, are reproduced with picturesque power. The relics of the past are treated as living, human spirits, or as the instruments of living, human spirits, whose influence is at work on all sides around us for our own and for all future ages. Every similarity, contrast, or analogy, with whatever is most familiar in our own institutions or life, is noted, so that new ideas may be brought home to the most ordinary understanding. No effort is made to drag the reader over the whole field of Church history : the lesser events are only touched upon so as to preserve the thread of continuity ; the leading persons, the important scenes, the critical stages, are studied in all the detail which is possible, and stand out in overwhelming prominence by the effacement of sub- ordinate occurrences. In the Lecture on the Council of Nicaea these literary methods are strikingly exemplified : the Oriental character of the assembly, the local colouring, the journeys of the Bishops, the elaborate portraiture of the notabilities, the first meeting of the Council, are all placed before the reader with that fulness and amplification of detail which are essential to vivid realisation, and which are, therefore, in the end the best economy of time. The work of preparing these Lectures for the press, con- tinued in the midst of other engrossing interests, left him greatly in need of rest and change of scene. In August 1 861 Stanley set out on a lengthy expedition with his sister Mary, travelling through Hungary and the Carpa- thians to Constantinople, and thence to Mount Athos, returning by Athens and Corfu to England. For months before he left England, at the moment of his departure, and throughout his journey, the grave ques- tions stirred by ' Essays and Reviews ' occupied his mind. With the personalities of the controversy, so far as they affected himself, he concerned himself little. Even the CHAP. XVII ANXIETY ON CHURCH AFFAIRS 49 savage attack of the 'Saturday Review' he ascribed to 'the stomach,' and passed by. But the fate of his friends and the prospects of the Church, if the opponents of 'Essays and Reviews' succeeded in narrowing its pale, disquieted him more deeply than even his most intimate associates had realised. On the eve of crossing to Calais he wrote to Pearson : ' I wish I could leave Church affairs in a better state. I do not think that anyone knows what a pang it gives me to think of Sarum and S. Oxon combining with Win- chester and Carlisle to tear the Church to pieces, and render a quiet faith impossible. What good can be done to any human being by turning the most sacred doctrines into mere weapons of offence against the best men in the Church, and trying to keep out of Orders those who might else be successors of Arnold and of Milman .'' ' Throughout the whole tour the future of the Anglican Church occupied his thoughts. At Herrnhut, at the Con- stantinopolitan Synod, in the monasteries of Mount Athos, it guided the direction of his conversations with a Mora- vian Bishop, the Patriarch of Constantinople, the Abbot of a Bulgarian monastery. The journey was full of varied interest. To Herrnhut, the cradle of the Moravian religion, he was attracted by the vain hope of discovering any record of John Wesley's visit to Count Zinzendorf in 1738. At Gorlitz he found the tomb of Jacob Bohmen, and a New Jerusalem like that of Nicon at Moscow, or of Bernardino Caloto at Varallo. Cracow interested him not only as the burial-place of Copernicus, Sobieski, and Kosciusko, but as ' the filthiest of European capitals.' It was his starting- point for the drive through the Carpathian Mountains. The discomfort and difficulties of his expedition across the range compelled him to make a series of forced marches. 'Hopes were held out of reaching Kesmarck at 10.30 P.M., which, as there was a bright moonlight, seemed not VOL. II E 50 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY i86i too late an hour. By this moonlight, in fact, we crossed the Carpathian ridge, and rejoiced in its light till mid- night. But midnight came, and the moon set, and no Kesmarck. By successive shocks, and by the natural sub- sidence of the bags, we had by this time sunk so low into the narrow trough of the cart that our position well corre- sponded with the increasing depression of our spirits. " Then like a chorus the passion deepened," for the wilds, lengthening as we went, suggested the awful thought that the driver had lost his way. Village after village, all plunged in the deepest darkness and sleep, at long inter- vals were passed, but no Kesmarck. Al last a solitary light appeared. It was the watch-tower of Kesmarck. All else was dark. 'It was the chill hour of 2 a.m. . . . Where was the Crown Inn } No indications of aught like it. As a last resource Horagch^ returned to the town to seek the lonely watchman on the lighted tower. On his way he met a gipsy, the one wanderer through the streets of Kesmarck, " homeless and houseless " at that dark hour; and under the gipsy's guidance we arrived at the gates of " the Crown." . . . The landlord emerged. " One room!' Into that was put M. S. instantly. Now for another. The chambermaid, completing her toilette, and snatching up a sleeping child from a bed beside that which she had va- cated, vanished into darkness. And there A. P. S. was at last ensconced, and in five minutes the jolting Britska, the ever-lengthening shades of night and ever-receding Kes- marck, dissolved into the troubled dreams which carry on the recollections of the day, even into the most profound repose. ' In spite of all this, the Carpathians are well worth see- ing. Lomnitz "did burst upon us in unclouded glory." By sunrise, by sunset, in noonday, and by moonlight, did that glorious mountain and his glorious brethren cheer our path and reward our toils. In beauty and grandeur of outline they exceed any like range of the Alps. They are, perhaps, surpassed by the Carrara peaks, by the mountains of Greece and of southern Asia Minor, and by one aspect of the Sinaitic mountains. But else I know nothing which approaches them. Of British mountains, the Coolin hills have the nearest resemblance. And there is one view o£ The courier. CHAP. XVII PESTH IN 1 86 1 51 the range which, combining them with a vast prospect of the plains of Hungary, and with the fortress of the Zapolyas for its central feature, must take its place amongst the finest of European views that I have set eyes upon. . . .' Pesth was reached on August 19th, 186 1, the eve of St. Stephen's Day — 'not the first Martyr, but the first King of Hungary.' At 7.30 the next morning Stanley was in the streets to witness the ' really national procession of the Prince Primate, Archbishop of Gran, magnates and commons, schools and families, and trades and students, following from church to church the withered hand of the first Apostolic King of Hungary.' The moment at which Stanley arrived in Pesth was a most important crisis in Hungarian history. Hungary was not one of the hereditary States of the Austrian Empire. Her union with Austria was personal, consisting: in the identity of the reigning sovereign. Her Diets and County Assemblies could not be arbitrarily overridden, and separate Hungarian Ministers preserved the form of national independence. To maintain these relations, as defined in the Pragmatic Sanction of 1723, and embodied in the Constitutional Laws of 1848, was the object of the National Party in Hungary. On the other hand, the Austrian Centralists desired to establish for all the hetero- geneous States of the Empire a central Parliament, which was to be held at Vienna. With this object, a new Constitution, which marked the triumph of the German Liberals under Baron von Schmerling, was issued, and the Hungarian Diet was convened in March 1861 to confirm the new form of government. Against these proceedings the Hungarian Nationalists firmly protested in two masterly addresses. The result was the dissolution of the Hun- garian Diet. To the two leaders of the Hungarian Nationalists, 52 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1861 Francis Deak^ and Baron Joseph Eotvos, Stanley was introduced. He was present at the meeting of the Diet in which a final protest against the action of the Govern- ment was moved by Deak, ' a huge, farmer-like man, with strong, shrewd features.' On August 22nd the Chambers were dissolved. 'This morning at 11 a.m. we went to be in good time for the final dissolution. It took place simultaneously at noon in both Houses. We chose the Lower House. It was still more striking than the night before. Every place was filled, in House and galleries. . . . The dissolution came in the form of a message sent to be read by the President, com- manding their dissolution on pain of being dispersed by an armed force. It was read in a loud, clear voice by one of the secretaries of the House, amidst loud occasional cries of disapproval and derision. One short speech immediately followed from an old man with a white beard. I know not what. Then came the most striking moment of the whole. Deak rose in his place amidst one universal shout of " Long life." I had a good view of him, and was very much impressed with his appearance ; his immovable, massive figure, and his strong, calm, lion-like, yet profoundly mournful, countenance, almost expressed what he was say- ing as if we had been able to understand him. It was ap- parently a succession of brief resolutions, implying that they yielded to force, and to force only ; each resolution being adopted by the simultaneous rising of the whole House. This was followed by a speech from the President, thanking the House for his election, and taking farewell. Finally the minutes were entered. Deak rose and left the House, and they all followed in a body. ' It was certainly the finest political sight I have ever witnessed, and there was an affectionateness with which they crowded round each other, their arms about each others' necks, kissing each other in farewell, shaking hands for the last time with the President, and an actual grief visible on the faces of such men as Deak and Eotvos, which gave a touching personal interest to the stern dignity of 8 Francis Dectk, Hungarian Stalesmati, with a preface by Mountstuart E. Grant Duff, M.P. London, 1880. CHAP. XVII CONSTANTINOPLE REVISITED 53 the political catastrophe. Eotvos said to us, as we came out, " Vous avez vu le premier acte d'un grand drame." ' To ' Constantinople revisited ' Stanley returned, excited by all the additional charms which his studies on the Eastern Church, the events of the Crimean War, and his sister's work in the Hospital of Koulalee, had invested the Ottoman capital. Of the new sights that the city afforded him, the most interesting was his interview with the Patriarch : ' .... I should say, by way of preface, that we have arrived at a very critical moment in the history of the Eastern Church. They have on their hands two or three controversies, to them more important than " Es.says and Reviews " can be to us. First, there has been a change lately made in the election of the Patriarch. The "Twelve Thrones" — i.e. the greater bishops — who used to elect him have been superseded by a mixed assembly of bishops and laity, and the present Patriarch, after a violent contest, in which, as at the Second Council of Ephesus, the bishops are said to have pulled each others' beards, is the first- fruits of the new system. His rival, Anthoinus, who had been Patriarch before, and who is said to be the abler man of the two, has retired to Mount Athos, where we hope to see him. Another still more pressing controversy is the Bulgarian. The Bulgarians have caught the contagion of nationalities, and wish to have bishops of their own race and language. . . . 'We entered the Synod. It was held in an oblong room with a divan running round it. In the corner was seated the "CEcumenical Patriarch, the Bishop of New Rome, His All-Holiness, Joachim." Along the other two sides of the room were the thirteen bishops who happened to be at the Synod. We were introduced to the Patriarch, the dragoman having first kissed his hands in our behalf. We were then motioned to sit, A. P. S. next the Patriarch. Pie then, with a considerable degree of tact and dignity, introduced us by successive waves of the hand to each of the bishops, mentioning each by the name of his see. Next to the Patriarch was " Ephesus " (the bishop of the diocese), then " Heraclea," then "Cyzicus," 54 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1861 " Chalcedon," " Nicaea." The rest were more obscure ; two from the disturbed Bulgaria — "Sophia" and " Puslawa." You may imagine how my heart leaped within me at hear- ing the sound of these words, and accordingly I begged the dragoman to express " how highly gratifying it was to hear the enumeration of names so famous in history." The Pa- triarch, after a pause, begged that I would speak in Greek. I declined, but invited Mr. Clarke to say a few words, which he did, intimating that I was Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford. I then (through the dragoman) in- formed the Bishop of Nicasa about my visit to Nicaea and my interest in the Council, and asked one or two questions about the spot. He confirmed all that I had seen, with the addition that the tree by the shores of the lake marked the situation of Constantine's throne. ' I asked, in like manner, the Bishop of Chalcedon some questions about his Council, and then put some general inquiry to the Patriarch about the antiquities of Constanti- nople and the burial-place of Constantine. Ephesus, who corresponds in dignity to York (being the occupier of the greatest see of this part of the world till Constantinople arose), said but little. Most of the antiquarian questions were referred to Heraclea, who evidently was regarded as the chief luminary of the Synod. He was a very intelligent old man, and asked whether I had ever heard " Canning " (this is the name by which Lord Stratford is always known) speak of him ; to which I was obliged to reply that I had not, but that I would certainly speak of him to Lord Stratford. ' I then begged to know whether the fame of any bishop or theologian of so remote a Church as the English had reached his All-Holiness. " No one, except that once, eighteen years ago, he had seen a Bishop of London pass through on his way from India." ' I then suggested to the dragoman to propose the Bulgarian question. Not if the seven Essayists had been named in the Synod at Fulham could the faces of the pre- lates have grown longer and darker than they did on hearing this ominous word. For a minute or two there was a silence. I broke it by saying, through the dragoman, " There is a somewhat analogous case in England. In a corner of the island is a small tribe (the Welsh), with a language and nationality of its own, which is always insisting on having bishops who can speak its language. CHAP. XVII MOUNT ATHOS 55 The English, on the contrary, desire that the bishops should not be confined to the natives of this little tribe, lest the civilisation and learning of that part of the country should suffer in consequence. This seems to be the case in Bul- garia." The Patriarch listened, but vi^as not quite w^illing to accept the analogy, maintaining that, in point of fact, Bul- garians were promoted indiscriminately to clerical and epis- copal offices with the Greeks. " We ask no questions whether a man is a Greek or Bulgarian. If he is fit, we appoint him. Is it not so.''" (turning to Ephesus and Hera- clea). " And there are actually present here two bishops who are Bulgarians." . . . The Patriarch, having now broken the ice, proceeded to speak of his predecessor. " It is true he is at Mount Athos, but so far from his being in a dun- geon, there is no such thing as a dungeon in Mount Athos. He is lodged in the very best convent, after the manner in which all distinguished guests are received. I hope that you will see him, and make a report of his condition with the utmost impartiality and exactness." Of course I as- sented. During this interview pipes, sweetmeats, and coffee had been handed about. We rose, and they rose, and, all mutually bowing, we retired.' At Constantinople Stanley parted from his sister, who visited Scutari, Koulalee, and the Crimea.* Stanley him- self went on, with Professor Clarke, to Mount Athos. The Holy Mountain was reached in September 1861. ' The peninsula of Athos contains no towns that are famous in Greek history ; it has no connection with Greek mythology. Until the monastic system fastened upon it as a refuge from the storms which raged round the Byzan- tine Empire, it remained unoccupied by either history or religion. The monasteries are twenty in all, with several inferior establishments dependent upon them — all inde- pendent of each other, but all under a common Govern- ment, held at a town in the centre of the peninsula. In this respect, as in many others, there are only two institu- tions in the world with which, as far as I know, they can be at all compared ; and that is the two English univer- sities, the colleges being like the monasteries, the Gov- * Miss Stanley's account of 'Ten Days in the Crimea,' prefaced by a short note from her brother, appeared in Macmillan's Magazine in 1861. 56 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1861 eminent like the University Council. To many people it might be tedious to go the whole round of the monas- teries, but to me it was certainly not so. It became a matter of curiosity to see the difference of each from each, how we should be received, &c., what varieties of intelli- gence or of Government there were, what element of the different races of the Eastern Church prevailed in each. There was one great drawback — the language. Clarke could talk some Greek, Georgio could interpret, and I could follow enough to guess what was said. But to have been able to converse would have made an immense differ- ence, as they were extremely communicative.' Stanley was reluctantly obliged to leave unseen the four monasteries in the south-west corner of the peninsula, be- cause Professor Clarke was forced to press onwards by land to Salonica. Arrived at the Consulate of Salonica, he found the English Consul on the point of starting on a mission to Mount Athos. A complicated dispute had arisen between the different monasteries. Affairs reached a deadlock. The Abbot of Coutloumoussi claimed English nationality, and had, as an Ionian, relied on his appeal to the English Consul of Salonica. At the latter's sugges- tion, the dispute had been referred to the Synod for recon- sideration, and it was at this juncture that he had deter- mined to visit the Holy Mountain in order to promote the general pacification. Stanley welcomed the opportunity of completing his tour of the monasteries. The party consisted of Stanley, the English Consul, his dragoman, and ' a very intelligent young Scotchman, settled here as missionary to the Spanish Jews.' ' As soon as our approach was seen from the hill the bells of the Convent began to ring, and when we entered the courtyard the grateful abbot and his monks were there with unfeigned joy to receive us. We were immediately taken to the church, and a Te Deum was celebrated for our arrival. It was certainly a curious and impressive sight. There was an unmistakable sincerity of gratitude CHAP. XVII MOUNT ATHOS 57 in the service. The name of Victoria was distinctly audible in the Greek prayers. The congregation before whom the service was performed consisted of three persons — the English Consul, a Scotch Presbyterian minister, and an Oxford Professor of Ecclesiastical History. I whispered to the Scot, " If you will promise not to inform against me to the Archbishop of Canterbur}', I will promise not to inform against you to the General Assembly." 'Then took place a series of receptions in the Convent. . . . At every stage the bells were rung ; at every inter- view the same formalities: ten times that day were the sweet- meats and coffee served round to us. . . . It was evident that our arrival was an event of the first magnitude. Things had arrived at a deadlock in the Synod. Four monas- teries only out of the twenty had taken the part of Cout- loumoussi. But of these four, one was the mighty Laura ; and of the Laura, the representative in the Synod was the great Melchizedek, by universal consent the most powerful personage in the whole Mountain. . . . ' The cause of the adhesion of Melchizedek to the English party will hardly bear investigation. Some years ago a monk at the Laura was undergoing some kind of punishment — hanging with his head downwards, or the like — and Melchizedek was told that he was dying. " Non- sense ! " said Melchizedek. But the man did die, and M. was charged with his murder, and in that extremity be- thought himself that his grandfather had been an Ionian, flew for protection to the late Consul of Salonica, obtained it, and has ever since been a staunch adherent of our interests. However, he was the pillar on which the three weaker monasteries leaned, and his name was repeated so often as to make the conversation sound like a chapter in the Epistle to the Hebrews. At last a noise was heard on the stairs, as if an elephant was approaching, and Melchizedek entered. He is, or rather would be if his legs were in proportion to the rest of his body, one of the hugest men I ever saw. His head, his neck, his shoulders, his breast, his hands, are those of a giant. Anything less like the ideal Melchizedek, or less like the ideal King of the Holy Mountain, it is impossible to conceive : coarse, fierce, worldly, full of boisterous jokes ; capable, I should think, of any act, incapable of any sentiment. There was no mis- taking his absolute predominance. He evidently was 58 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1861 very entertaining — hardly ever spoke without producing roars of laughter.' From this scene of debate, intrigue, and festivity, Stanley started alone to visit the group of monasteries in the south-west corner of the peninsula which he had left unseen. ' Great are the pleasures of companions, great the triumph of following in the wake of a victorious Consul ; but great also the pleasures of freedom, and of selecting your own time and topic of interest. Across the grain of the peninsula I struck off to the monastery of the Zographou, or "of the Painter," so called from a sacred picture of St. George painted by an invisible hand.^ It is situated inland, and is almost entirely Bulgarian. Its chief interest was its Abbot, Anthoinus. ' As Melchizedek represented the most offensive and worldly aspect of the Mountain, so Anthoinus represented its most spiritual side. He evidently commanded great respect, both within and without the walls of his monastery, and it was impossible to doubt his devotion. He came to dine with me. The party consisted of Anthoinus, his second in office, Hilarion, a travelling monk, myself, and Georgio as interpreter. Considering the extreme difficulty of making the subjects intelligible, the conversation was very brisk. I will give you one specimen. A. P. S. : " What is the latest miracle that has taken place on the Holy Mountain " Anthoinus (we were now sitting at dessert) : " Every divnne blessing is a miracle ; these grapes are a miracle ; this water-melon is a miracle. All miracles are but the working of Divine Providence." ' Stanley thus sums up ' the most curious impressions ' which he carried away from Mount Athos : ' As to the monks themselves, you will have partly gathered from my account the general idea which they ^ Mr. Riley's version of the story is, that the three founders quarrelled over the name of this monastery. It was finally agreed to prepare a panel of wood, place it in the church, and pray that the image of the saint to whom the monastery should be dedicated might be imprinted on it. When the church was re-entered, the image of St. George was found on the panel {Atkos, by Athelstan Riley, London, 1887, pp. 353-4). CHAP. XVII IMFRESS/ONS OF MOUNT ATHOS S9 leave. In some respects it is very different to what I had conceived. There is no appearance of asceticism. . . . They have, most of them, the manners and looks of kindly, friendly, jovial people, who are full of little jokes, delighted to see strangers, and making hospitality one of the first of virtues. Again, there is very little restraint. In half of the monasteries there is no abbot — only two wardens, elected by the community — and in these every monk can make as large a fortune as he pleases on his own account, which he can dispose of as he wishes during his lifetime (though after death it must come to the monastery). They are not here shut up within the convent, nor even within the peninsula. In fact, large numbers are non- residents, like the Oxford Professors, and those who live in the mountains are constantly going to and fro. Therefore, although the fantastic rule about the exclusion of females of all kinds is preserved in the Mountain, it is absurd to suppose that the monks have never seen a woman. They have as much opportunity as any other people, whenever they cross over to any of their farms on the next peninsula, or to their town houses at Salonica. Their occupations, too, are almost entirely secular. The vast majority are laymen. They are, in fact, a great lay corporation with a few clerical chaplains. The larger number are labourers, fishermen, cooks, carvers, painters, who have chosen to unite their professions with their attendance on church services. . . . ' The world has not been shut out from the Holy Mountain, and there is no pretence on their part to any elevation above it. The one motive and advantage which they profess, and which they evidently feel, is that there is "quiet" in the Mountain — and, in spite of their occasional disputes and troubles, t/ia^ they unquestionably have, as contrasted with the incessant clatter and publicity of an Eastern town, and the incessant uncertainties and vexa- tions of the Turkish Government, from which their inde- pendent position sets them free. In this respect I have no doubt that the Mountain has been a useful institution, a refuge from the troubles of the shipwreck of the Byzantine, or tyranny of the Turkish, Empire. . . . 'How far the monks are more ignorant than their neigh- bours I cannot say. . . . Perhaps the most remarkable piece of ignorance I came across, because it was in their 6o LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY i86i own line of knowledge, was that in the two great Bulga- rian monasteries the names of Cyril and Methodius, the Apostles of Bulgaria, were quite unknown. There was one pleasing feature of their minds : in talking of the legends about pictures, although they evidently received with un- hesitating belief the chief stories about them, there was no tendency to exaggerate, or to catch at, miracles merely for their own sake. They were very willing to say that this or that rested on tradition, that the Church did not impose it, that it was a lie, &c., &c. In short, there was that sort of frank simplicity and openness which, a hundred years hence, might not be a bad soil for a really great theology.' At Athens Stanley rejoined his sister, and with her revisited some of the chief scenes of interest in Greece which had fascinated him twenty years before.^ Recent discoveries, as well as the pleasure of testing the strength of his memory, gave freshness even to scenes which he had most thoroughly explored. The whole of this part of the tour ' was quite a resurrection of buried delights,' reviving his first feelings that, 'with the single exception of Pales- tine, there is no travelling equal to that of Greece for compactness, variety, romance, and beauty.' Stanley returned to England in the last week of October 1861. On December 14th in the same year the Prince Consort died. When the news reached Stanley he was at Fulham, conducting an examination for Holy Orders. 'How great the calamity is,' he writes to Pearson, ' may be measured by thinking that its most appalling re- sults transcend even anything which the passionate burst of public grief has ventured to express, or even knows or thinks of. No public death could have affected me so much. ^ Stanley and his sister accompanied Sir Thomas Wyse, the English Minister at Athens, and his niece, Miss Wyse. His letters relating to this part of the tour are published in Impressions of Greece, by the Right Hon. Sir Thomas Wyse, K.C.B., London, 1S71. At Arachova a Greek ballad on the death of the Bandit Daveli was sung to the party. Stanley's verse-translation was printed in Eraser's Magazine for January 1862. CHAP. XVII DEATH OF PRINCE ALBERT 6i ' I do not suppose that I should ever have known more of him. But so long as he lived I felt sure that there was a steady support to all that was most excellent in the English Church. That barrier is now thrown down, and through the chasm, God protect us from the spirits that will rush in ! ' As one of the Chaplains to the late Prince, Stanley was present in St. George's Chapel, on Monday, De- cember 23rd, 1861, at the funeral of Prince Albert. 'It was,' he writes, 'a profoundly mournful and impressive sight. Indeed, considering the magnitude of the event and of the persons present, all agitated by the same emo- tion, I do not think that I have ever seen, or shall ever see, anything so affecting.' The interest that Stanley felt in the death of the Prince Consort is evidenced by a manuscript in which he has collected together every incident connected with the pro- gress of the fatal illness. His account is gathered from every side — from members of the Royal Family, as well as from those who were in attendance on the Prince, or were attached to the Royal Household. It is thrown into the form of a daily journal, and is accompanied by a plan of the rooms which the Prince occupied, and a description of the pictures on the walls and the books on the tables. Most of the manuscript is too private for publication. But the fact that such an account should have been written is too characteristic of Stanley to be omitted. Scarcely less peculiar to him is the mode in which it is prepared. As, on the one side, it illustrates his insatiable curiosity, and the power with which any striking event seized hold upon his mind, so, on the other hand, it exem- plifies his anxiety to realise a scene with all the vividness that the complete command of details, of local colour, and of all attendant circumstances, ean lend to the imagination. And the commencement of the account throws light on 62 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1861 yet another of Stanley's mental peculiarities. He is careful to note that the last entry in the Prince's Diary — ' Ought not to go, but must ' — refers to the morning when he was present at the review of the Eton Volunteers : that the last object in which he interested himself at Windsor Castle was the lighting of the Waterloo Gallery ; that on his last visit to the Library he expressed his pleasure at the accidental but instructive coincidence that the arrange- ment of the books, beginning with the Bible and ending with Theology, brought theological literature, though from a totally different point of view, back into immediate contact with the Bible. In the Prince's morning-room hung his favourite portrait of the Queen, taken soon after their marriage. On the table lay books, chiefly of a business character — directo- ries, army lists, navy lists, clergy lists, &c. — and among them a small French book, by the Abbe Segur, on the Difficulties of Religion. In the dressing-room hung por- traits of the Queen and of the Princess Royal. Among the books on the table were Erskine May's ' Constitutional History ' and Professor Max Miiller's presentation copy of his ' Lectures on the Science of Language.' Beyond these rooms was the Red Room, and, separated by a nar- row passage, a large, airy room, with an oriel window looking to the east. In this room, which was hung with blue and was called the King's Room, both George IV. and William IV. had died. Between these rooms the Prince was moved every day for light and air. He expressed much pleasure at the change. ' Oh, how delightful to see the sun ! Only, how I wish that I could hear the little birds singing, as I used to do at Rosenau ! ' (his birthplace). It was not till Friday that the Prince Consort's illness caused any general anxiety. The morning of Saturday the 1 3th broke with a glorious sunrise, which streamed in CHAP. XVII PRINCE OF WALES IN THE EAST 63 full splendour through the oriel window of the ' King's Room.' Throughout the day the dying man was at times conscious, and at half-past five in the afternoon a change in his condition animated with a faint gleam of hope the watchers by his bedside. But he never rallied. The death of the Prince Consort brought with it impor- tant consequences for Stanley. A request was rqade to him which, under the circumstances, he could not refuse. In January 1862 he was summoned to Osborne. ' Osborne : Jan. 13, 1862. ' My dear Dr. Stanley, — It was the wish of the lamented Prince Consort, when he decided on the Prince of Wales making a tour in the Holy Land, to have had the benefit of your advice and knowledge in regard to the details. ' Under these circumstances, I have been directed by Her Majesty to ask whether you can conveniently come to Osborne for a few days, choosing the earliest convenient day after to-morrow for that purpose. * Yours truly, 'R. Bkuce.' Two days after his arrival at Osborne he had a private interview with General Bruce. ' As I was sitting in the Equerry's Room,' he writes to his mother, 'reading the "Times," General Bruce came in, and sate down. He seemed uneasy, as if wishing to say some- thing, and at last I laid down the paper. He then turned to me and said, " I hardly know how to approach what I am going to say ; but is it totally impossible that you should go with us " I was silent. He went on: "The Prince Consort has often said, 'What would it be if Professor Stanley could go with you ' I fear it is impossible. The Queen has said the same thing to me since you came, and this morning the Prince of Wales has said the same thing from himself. They do not urge it, they do not intend to request it, because they know what it is that they ask. But if you could go, it would be inestimable." "Such a thought had never occurred to me before I came here, and, 64 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1862 to speak quite openly, I doubt whether I am the proper person. It is neither comphment nor blame to me to say one thing or the other. I should not be a suitable com- panion for him." "I assure you," he said, "you are the only person that I can think of." . . . ' I said, " Have you considered what his father would have thought of my theological connections } I have endeavoured to keep impartial in the midst of our Church parties ; the special'Object of my going might distress the many excellent persons who regard me with terror and aversion. It is of the utmost importance that the Prince should grow up, not under the influence of any special theological school. Have you thought of this " " I can only tell you," he said, " what occurred when the Prince of Wales went to Oxford. It was mentioned to me, and I mentioned to the Prince, that it was thought objectionable that the Prince of Wales should be there without some religious instruction. The Prince replied, 'I cannot endure to see him placed under any of those extreme influences. There is only one man in Oxford to whom I could intrust him for this — that is Dr. Stanley.' " " Well," I said, " it is impossible not to be moved by what you say. But there are two great objections. One, the extreme inconvenience of leaving my occupations and employments ; the other, the reluctance I have to leave my mother for so long a time and for such a distance. One mode does occur to me — that I should join you at Jerusalem, after you have finished Egypt. You will have then gone through a part of your journey for which I have no special qualifications — you will have had chaplains on the way. Would this meet the case 1 " " I accept anything which you offer." I said, "You know that I do not use many words on these occasions. But you will let me express that, whatever is my final decision, I cannot but have been most deeply gratified by the manner in which the pro- posal has been made." I had walked with the Prince of W. and Prince Louis just before in the most entire un- consciousness. ... I feel now as if it must be, but two or three things I shall urge further to-morrow. . . .' Stanley regarded the proposal which had been made him 'with vast reluctance and misgivings.' 'But I feel,' he says to Hugh Pearson, ' that I could not refuse such a contribution to a household plunged in such grief as this.' CHAP. XVII STANLEY INVITED TO GO 65 His friends agreed in urging him to accept the task. ' I hope,' wrote Professor Jowett to Mrs. Stanley, 'that you will let him go. There is no one equally fit, no one who could amuse and influence the Prince in the same way. I know his old dislike to going to the same places twice over, Jaut I think they would derive a new interest from being seen in such company. . . . Arthur has sim- plicity, and nature, and endless stores of amusing conver- sation. I feel convinced that the Prince would take to him, and like him. . . . For Arthur himself, I think the break in the monotony of life would be a great advantage. He seems to me to have been somewhat overstrained during the last few years, and I believe the rest of six months and the refreshment of the memories of Palestine would give him a new spring of life.' 'The Queen,' wrote Dr. Tait, 'could not have chosen better for her son.' ' I rejoice,' said F. D. Maurice, ' for the country's sake, in your new work.' ' I doubt not,' writes Dr. Vaughan, ' that, when your life is seen as a whole, this chapter in it will not be one of its least useful and least eventful.' Reluctant to leave his mother, whose health was delicate, Stanley hesitated. But when Mrs. Stanley herself urged upon him the duty of accepting a responsibility which afforded him the opportunity of rendering a service to the Royal family in their present trouble, he no longer wavered, but determined to accompany the Prince of Wales. At first he stipulated that he should join the party in Palestine. It was, however, finally arranged that he should meet the Prince at Alexandria, ascend the Nile with him, and accompany him, not only through the Holy Land, but on the Egyptian portion of the expedition. 'I am now perfectly satisfied,' he writes to Pearson at the end of January, 1862 ' (and so is the dear mother), that it was necessary to go. It may end in smoke, or even in gall and wormwood ; but it may also be full of interest, and may be productive of some good.' VOL. II F 66 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1862 CHAPTER XVIII February to June, 1862 SECOND TOUR IN THE EAST — SUNDAY AT CAIRO WITH THE PRINCE OF WALES — THE NILE — I-CARNAK — DENDERA — DEATH OF MRS. STANLEY — ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM — BETHANY— THE MOSQUE OF HEBRON — THE SAMARITAN PASSOVER — THE SHORES OF LAKE TIBERIAS — TENT-LIFE IN PALESTINE — THE CEDARS OF LEBANON On February 12th, 1862, Stanley left England for Alex- andria. ' I am quite well,' he writes to his mother from Paris, ' with no backward looks, and I never went abroad with so strong a feeling of its necessity.' By his mother's advice he took with him his faithful ser- vant, Waters, whose talent for bird-stuffing made him a valu- able addition to the party. On board the steamer between Marseilles and Malta, besides reading 'Hypatia,' which was 'too highly coloured ' for his taste, and re-reading 'Tancred,' and writing ' more than half the preface ' to his lectures, he found time to send home a long letter filled with minute sketches of' his fellow-passengers and their sayings and do- ings, and concluding with, ' Waters and I as well as ever.' At Malta, anxious that his serv^ant should see, and be interested in, everything, he took him over the Church of St. John and the Governor's Palace. Sunday, February 22nd, 1862, was spent on board the steamer between Malta and Alexandria. ' Waters is in full communication with the dragoman, and continues to enjoy himself much. I found him to-day (Sunday) by himself, leaning over the sea, read- CHAP. XVIII TOUR WITH THE PRINCE OF WALES 67 ing his Prayer-book. I began to talk about its being the time when they were going to church at Oxford, and he took out of his pocket a coloured photograph of the three little girls, dressed in their Sunday best, which, apparently, he carried about with him everywhere. He said that he could not get out of his mind the beauty of the Church of Malta : lie had quite longed to clean the silver rails. . . .' Alexandria was reached on the 24th of February. There he received ' a death blow to the only vision of real pleasure ' on which he had counted. His old dragoman, Mohamed, was unable to accompany the expedition. Four days later the Prince of Wales arrived from Trieste in the Osdorne, was joined by Stanley, and at once proceeded to Cairo. The journey had now begun. The party consisted of the Prince of Wales, General Bruce, Major Teesdale, Captain Keppel, the Hon. R. Meade, Consul-General Colquhoun, Dr. Minter, Captain Power of the Osborne, and Stanley. The tour was undertaken under conditions totally different to any of his former or later expeditions. He was no longer with companions of his own choice, and of tastes and training like his own. Few young men of twenty would have fully appreciated Stanley's in- satiable appetite for every detail of historical or sacred associations — an appetite so absorbing as to leave little room for sympathy with their very different interests. But, on the whole, the result was, to say the least, as favourable as could reasonably have been expected. Every one of the party felt the charm of his companionship. 'The Prince,' writes General Bruce to his sister. Lady Augusta Bruce, on March 3rd, 1862, 'takes great delight in the new world on which he has entered, and we have made an immense acquisition in Mr. Stanley, who communicates to others the intelligent interest which he finds himself in all that relates to the past as well as to the present.' Sunday, March 2nd, was spent at Cairo. A state 68 LIFE OF DEAN' STANLEY 1862 visit from the Viceroy prevented the Prince attending the morning service ; but Stanley assisted the Chaplain in the administration of the Sacrament. ' It carried my thoughts away from the present, and gave me better heart for the future.' * After luncheon there was a ride through the streets on donkeys, much to the horror of the old Turkish Pasha, the Chamberlain, who thought it not at all cojivcnable, and adduced to the contrary the example of the Comte de Chambord. But in vain. H. R. H. rode on a donkey called "Captain Snooks"; ... I had "Tom Sayers " ; someone else, "Bill Thomson." We rode round the streets. . . . Of course the novelty was gone ; but the rush of Oriental imagery seemed to me as remarkable as ever. ' At the termination of the Turkish quarter we were met by five beautiful open carriages, in which we were (in order to save the ignominy of arriving on donkeys) to reach the English church. But no carriages could penetrate the intricate and narrow lanes of the Coptic quarter, and so we defiled on foot through these filthy passages. ... It was a remarkable proof of the Prince's quickness of memory and kindness of attention that in church he recognised Crichton (of whose arrival in Egypt he had not heard a word) as having once played at tennis with him at Oxford. He, immediately on coming out, said to me, " Was not that Crichton " stopped for him, begged me to call him, and spoke to him for some minutes. That is certainly a most useful and king-like quality.' The Pyramids were visited at early dawn on the morning of March 6th. ' General Bruce and I slept in the same tent. At break of day Keppel opened the tent curtain, and announced that the Prince was already off for the Pyramids. We got up and rushed off as fast as we could. ' We all reached the base of the Great Pyramid from different directions, and in the dim twilight I stumbled over someone as I was setting foot on the first step. It was the Prince. We were so early that the Arabs had not collected, and instead, therefore, of the superfluous help CHAP. XVIII THE PYRAMIDS 69 that most travellers find, there were not enough even to furnish one apiece. I had secured one little Bedouin boy, whom I offered to the Prince, but he resolutely refused and began the ascent himself. I became somewhat uneasy, for the stones, though manageable enough with the assist- ance of the Arabs, were so smooth in certain places that a single false step would have tumbled H. R. H. down to the bottom. My boy kept asking, " Where is the Governor .'' What ! that little chap ! ivhy he go up alone f At last I insisted on the boy going alongside of the Prince, and, though he still went on without help, the Arab could have given him a helping hand in case of need. And so we all came to the top. . . . The sun had just risen, and the view, but for the mist on Cairo, was glorious, although, no doubt, far inferior to the view at sunset. We sate there for about half an hour and then came down.' When the voyage was resumed, 'there is,' writes Stanley, 'unlimited room for reading between these well-known and monotonous banks. The Prince set his mind on my reading " Ea.st Lynne," which I did at three sittings. Yesterday I stood a tolerable examination in it. A brisk cross-examination took place between H. R. H., A. P. S., Meade, and Keppel. I came off with flying colours, and put a question which no one could answer : " With whom did Lady Isabel dine on the fatal night " It is impossi- ble not to like him (the Prince), and to be constantly with him brings out his astonishing memory of names and persons.' Another letter, written on the Nile on Sunday, March 9th, expresses Stanley's pleasure in the voyage : ' I cannot refrain from writing to you, though I have hardly anything to say. But I feel so increasingly satisfied that you must have this expression of my pleasure. The mere enjoyment of a perfectly good-humoured and happy party sailing, without the slightest discomfort, up the most wonderful of rivers, is in itself not to be despised, and I am more and more struck by the amiable and endearing qualities of the Prince. ... H. R. H. had himself laid down a rule that there was to be no shooting to-day, and, 70 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1862 though he was sorely tempted as we passed flocks of cranes and geese seated on the bank in the most inviting crowds, he rigidly conformed to it. A crocodile was allowed to be a legitimate exception, but none appeared. He sate alone on the deck with me, talking in the frankest manner for an hour in the afternoon, and made the most reasonable and proper remarks on the due observance of Sunday in Eng- land. We are now sitting in his cabin — he writing his Journal, I writing this. In short, I am very happy, and shall be so to the end, if all goes as well. We shall probably be on land again on the 25th, and, I think, see all that we need see.' At Thebes Stanley received the news that his mother had been seriously ill. Shortly after his departure from England Mrs. Stanley, whose health had for some time been failing, grew so alarmingly worse that she was scarcely expected to recover. As soon as the news of her illness reached the Queen, Her Majesty wished that Stanley should be at once recalled. ' The poor Queen,' writes Lady Augusta Bruce to Miss Stanley on February 27th, 1862, ' exclaimed when she heard of it, " Oh ! that was Mr. Stanley's only hesitation, only doubt about going — the unwillingness to leave his mother," and she would have wished to recall him at once — to do anything rather than allow such a sacrifice to be made. It was only when Mrs. Stanley's own wishes were made clear that the Queen, deeply touched and affected, desired me to express all she felt for you, for her, for Mr. Stanley, and to say that noth- ing should be done but what Mrs. Stanley decided.' When, on March i6th, the news of his mother's illness reached Stanley, the danger seemed to have passed : ' At midnight last night a welcome packet was tost into my bed, which contamed your dear letters of the 25th. My dearest mother, my dearest sisters, you may imagine what a turn it gave me to think of what might have been in store for me. Oh no ! I will not come back until you send for me. Only remember that, when Syria is over, I shall consider my task to be accomplished, and that, if CHAP. XVIII KARNAK 71 there should be the least cause for recalling me from Beyrout, there will be no adequate reason zvhy I should stay. . . .' In the same letter he goes on to describe the Sunday which he had just spent at Karnak: ' . . . Karnak, which I chose for our first day, has thoroughly answered. . . . The Prince had already sug- gested what had already occurred to me and was arranged with General Bruce, that our service at Thebes should be in some tomb or temple. Accordingly, I chose to-day a corner in the Great Hall of Karnak, read the Psalms of the day (March 16), and preached ^ on the two verses about Egypt which they contain. It was, I must say, a striking scene. In the furthest aisles of that vast Cathedral were herded together the horses, dromedaries, asses, and their attend- ants. In the shade of two of the gigantic pillars, seated on a mass of broken stones, were ourselves, two or three stray travellers, and the servants in the background. The Prince expressed great pleasure at the sermon, and begged to have a copy of it. It was on the good and evil of the old Egyptian religion. . . . Farewell my dearest, most precious mother. God keep and preserve you ! ' On the return voyage Dendera was visited. The ex- pedition had been delayed by a crocodile-hunt. But no crocodiles had appeared, and the disappointed sportsmen were obliged to be content with a flock of pelicans. ' By this time the sun was beginning rapidly to sink, and we arrived at the point where the choice lay between pursuing the last faint chance of the crocodiles or catch- ing the last daylight for the Temple. . . . Satisfied with the pelicans, we all rushed to shore, sprang on the horses and donkeys, and galloped off over the dusty plain towards the Temple. . . . The whole plain was covered by the broken stragglers of the party ; the donkeys, which at first kept pace with the horses — amongst them 1 Sermon II. of the Sermons in the East : 'Israel in Egypt' — 'Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt' (Ps. Ixxx. 8); ' I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt ' (Ps. Ixxxi. lo). 72 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1862 mine — flagged ; a troop of wild Arabs added to the con- fusion by flying to and fro, and distracting us from the right road. The foremost horseman reached the portico just as the sun rested upon it. . . . So i-apid and abrupt was the sunset that before I had entered the Temple it was dark. Happily there were half a dozen candles amongst us, which just served to light up the vast gloomy halls and gigantic pillars, and to welcome, one after another, the riders as they dropped in. . . . I had announced at breakfast that Cleopatra was a remarkable likeness of a distinguished person whom they all knew. . . . Therefore, in spite of the darkness and dust, H. R. H. and the others consented to be led all round the precincts of the Temple till we reached the wall where I remembered the sculptures were. . . . The mounds of dust were so high that by lift- ing up our candles to the wall the light fell exactly on the colossal face. The likeness is becoming very faint, but Teesdale guessed it. . . . Would the Bishop of Oxford have been gratified, or not, to have seen us all standing before the gigantic Queen, and speculating on the resem- blance of her features to his ' On March 23rd the party returned to Cairo. There the news was broken to Stanley that his mother was dead. She had died on the morning of Ash Wednesday, March 7th. ' I must,' he writes to his sisters, 'have been un- consciously watching with you, for I was awake most of the night, and then fell asleep, to be roused at dawn — and then all was over.' The packet which had reached him at Thebes contained the last letter that he ever received from his mother, 'the last, I suppose, that she wrote — quite herself, but in a sadly shaken handwriting. . . .' The shock was overwhelming. In a long letter of twenty pages, written from Cairo, he pours out his whole soul to his sisters : ' It was between 4 and 5 yesterday that we reached this. Mr. Calvert, the Consul, came on board. I had an in- describable misgiving from his manner. . . . The carriages came round, and I was, as usual, going in the second CHAP. XVIII DEATH OF MRS. STANLEY 73 carriage. General Bruce asked me to go in the first, with the Prince, Teesdale, and himself. It was a long drive. The General looked very sad. . . . We arrived at the Pal- ace here, and entered the large hall. General Bruce at last said, " Will you come into this room .'' " . . . The moment we were alone he said, " Mr. Calvert has, I am afraid, received some bad news. Your mother has been very ill." I interrupted him at once, and said, "She is dead !" ' My dearest children, I have written this because I know you will wish to know every detail. But how can I write ."^ Long as I have expected this — year by year, almost day by day — I do not know, I do not understand, what has happened. I cannot know now, nor for months to come. It is the one great blow. ' . . . Calvert had brought down "The Times," and told the General instantly on coming on board. Nothing could have been more considerate than the conduct of everyone, from H. R. H. downwards. ... I begged to see Meade. He, I knew, would feel for me — from what I had heard of his own mother's death. He did indeed, God bless him ! No younger brother could have been more tender, more considerate, than he was. . . . ' At last I ventured to read your two most consoling letters. Yes, I fully admit all that you say. I could not have returned in time. I could not have had any further parting words than we have had a hundred times. Again and again, in those long evenings, have we talked over this event, and the future life, and its mysteries, and the ways of Providence, and her wishes, and her hopes, and her faith, and what she should say if she were dying. It would not be worthy of her to add to this great sorrow one grain of imaginary grievance or self-reproach at my absence. . . . ' By degrees I read all the letters. ... I shall answer the Bishop of London, and Acland, and Jowett, and H. P. Dear H. P. ! It is indeed a consolation to me that he was there, and to read the service ; and it will have been a con- solation to him. ... I sent for Meade again later in the evening, and begged him to fulfil Jowett's request by read- ing to me aloud the 14th, 15th, and i6th chapters of St. John. They took me to another world. . . . 'Tell Leycester Penrhyn with what entire relief I am able to say to those who ask (the Prince especially asked) whether there was any business to be done, that there is 74 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1862 one who will do everything. ..." Gather up the frag- ments that remain." This, you say, is what we must do. Yes ; and on that text, as it occurs in the Gospel of next Sunday, I had intended to preach, and shall preach, on my first Sunday in Palestine. . . . 'There is one painful part in this absence — the deaden- ing effect of distance. " Merciful ! " you will say. Yes, but I feel that the event which is so absorbing in itself is broken by the pause of this immense interval. God's will be done ! It is altogether a terrible crisis. How I shall struggle through all the parts of it, or what I shall be when it is over, who can say Something altogether different seems before me. May it be what she would have wished ! I try to think that our communion with her is unbroken. But that can only be through some higher communion, in which she and we may alike partake. May we have grace to share in that, whenever and whatever it be. 'March 26. — The letters do not go till noon, so that I can add a few last words. You can understand how each day seems to bring with it a new stage of this new life. But you may comfort yourselves with the thought that I now feel much better able to look forward to what lies before me, and to see how it will be done. ' Every morning I wake with the tearful recollection of that sweet face and dear voice. But there is no bitterness in the waking. . . . It is only a confusion — that I shall see her again, and then the reflection that this cannot be. . . . And then, one after another, the kind fellow-travellers drop in, and ask how I am, and make some cheerful, half-playful remark, to which I feel that I can now quite respond. I have told them all that I do not wish to cast any shadow over them., and I do not think I need. ' For myself, I feel that the effect will be — at least it ought to be — to make me devote myself more wholly to the work before me, not dwelling on any little drawbacks or annoyances, but thinking only of the great possible good. Perhaps up to this time I have hardly done this enough. I will, with God's help, repair this for the future, and I trust that, in the light of this great visitation, I shall not indulge in any murmurs. I feel more and more convinced that not only am I acting in conformity with her wishes, but that I should have done wrong in the sight of God and man in withdrawing from my post.' CHAP. XVIII DEATH OF MRS. STANLEY 75 Among the many letters of condolence which Stanley received was one from Professor Jowett. His answer was written from Cairo on March 25th, 1862 : ' I knew when I saw that pile of letters, which, for some time after hearing the dreadful news I did not venture to open, that I should find one from you, and that it would be a comfort to me. For years I have looked forward to this inevitable day, and wondered how I could bear it. It has come under circumstances which, in some respects, greatly aggravate the trial. Making all allowance for the softening effects of distance and necessary duty, and also, I must gratefully add, for the tender care and sympathy of the comparative strangers amongst whom I have to pursue my lonely course, it is a cruel pang not to have been there at the moment, not to be there now, to enter into the full tide of grief of all those who knew and loved and revered her. . . . God's will be done. ' I have talked with her again and again of this great event — of what she herself would think and feel and say, and of what she would wish for me. I remember well, when we were told of the overwhelming darkness which had fallen upon Buckle when he lost his mother, to whom, as I to mine, he owed everything, she said, " It is a great consolation to me to think that it will not be so with you when I am gone. You will not think that your interest in life is over ; you will remember that, by carrying on your work, you will be carrying on my wishes, my interests, my affection." So may it be. ' You truly say that this is a call to a higher world. I obeyed your suggestion as well as I could. I could not read those chapters for myself. But I had them read to me by the one of our party who had most keenly felt the same sorrow, Meade (of the Foreign Office), who has been to me as a younger brother in kindness and in sympathy. How wide is the scope of those words ! How distantly, as on distant mountains, do they reflect the feelings of human sorrow ! 'I have determined to go on. For a moment — for an hour — I wavered. But the unanimous opinion of all my friends and relations, as I opened letter after letter, proved to me the disappointment and grief which my return would cause to them in England, and reflection showed me that, 76 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1862 whilst this heavy blow has struck off half my powers and opportunities, it has given me others. The Prince himself was to me as he had never been before. The others were as if they were of the same family. From one came forth a voice which, but for this, I should probably never have heard at all. 'The Holy Land will become to me doubly holy when thus revisited. You ask to speak of her to me when I return. I should have entreated you to do so. It is the chief pain of my present situation that, from ignorance of her, there is no one here who can. She loved you, she knew you, she regarded your interests as hers and as mine. To her constant courageous support you owe whatever poor services I may have been able to render you. She was indeed a tower of strength to many who knew it not. It was a wonder to me that she was not more highly valued even than she was. It is a melancholy satisfaction to me to think that, through this accidental link of my journey with the Prince, her death has assumed something at least of a national character, and her worth has been recognised by such poor recognition as sovereigns can give too late. '"Where is she now " — a question that she asked again and again, as our different friends and relations passed away, always with the same perfect reliance on the "judgment of God according to truth." You will hear from my sisters how and when I received the news. It was in the most blessed interval, the only interval of repose that the journey would have allowed. ' One of the few new reflections that this journey left upon me was the fact that this is the last century, proba- bly, that will see the Egyptian paintings and sculptures. But I cannot now write of these things. ' I must end. I can write of nothing else, and if I write of her I have no bounds. Tell me what is said of her, what you see of my sisters. I know of nothing else that I can ask for.' The news had reached Stanley 'at the most blessed time and place,' if the end was destined to come during his absence. It had come, not in the hurry of travelling, nor in the whirl of parties, but at the quiet close of a journey, in the interval of repose between Egypt and Palestine. It CHAi'. xviii INTENSITY OF STANLEY'S GRIEF 77 was broken to him, in the tenderest manner, by the most considerate of men. All that the kindness of his travelling- companions could do to alleviate the agony of his grief was done. He felt also that he already knew his mother's inmost mind, that he would have gained nothing from his presence at the final scene, and that, as he writes to the Bishop of London, the accidental connection of his name ' with a matter of public interest has given at least some- thing of a public recognition to a character and a mind so grand and beautiful, and yet, out of her own circle, so little known.' But he was weighed down by the absence of any- one who had known his mother well. No one was aware what mother and son had been to each other, how great the debt which he owed to her, how all that he did was done with a view to her approval, how implicitly he relied upon her quiet wisdom and tender sympathy. The ' guardian genius,' to use his own words, ' had passed away that nursed his very mind and heart.' The outer world might regard the death of Mrs. Stanley as the death of an aged parent, which it was natural, but useless, to lament. Yet none the less 'the heart knoweth his own bitterness.' His mother's dying wishes were paramount with him. She had desired that he should continue his journey. But it was with a heavy heart that he proceeded on his way. Continually the sense of his loss breaks out into words. The return to Alexandria suggests the contrast of his visit a month before, when ' I saw all things as for her, and she was still with us on earth.' On Sunday, March 30th, his loss is present to him as he preaches on the text, ' Gather up the fragments that remain.' ^ H.M.S. Osborne was then lying in the port of Jaffa, and the party were preparing to land in Palestine. * Sermon IV. of the Sermons in the East: 'The fragments that remain.' 78 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1862 ' We had the service on board the Osborne on Sunday morning. I preached on "Gather up the fragments." Just before the service began, and whilst I was sitting alone, Meade came in, and in the tenderest manner said, " Is not this too much for you.''" "No," I said, "it will be the greatest comfort to me," and so it was ; you can imagine what I said.' ' Every dispensation of Providence/ says Stanley in that sermon, ' is a kind of miracle wrought for our benefit.' Of such a character is any 'signal visitation of joy or of sorrow.' ' It is possible to drive such a blessing or such a calamity out of our thoughts, and cut off all its consequences. But it is possible also, and it is far better, to " gather up all the fragments " that it has left, to see what it has taught us which we knew not before — of our strength, of our weak- ness, of God, of our own soul. Or it may be that we have known a noble character, a good example. It has gone from us ; it is absent from us ; we see it no more. Shall we blot out its remembrance Shall we think that " out of sight is out of mind } " or shall we not rather " gather up all the fragments that remain " — all the sayings, all the doings, all the memories of such a character, that they may still cheer, and sustain, and guide, and warn us in our passage through this mortal life ? ' To his letters from home he looked forward with eager delight, for they bridged over the chasm of distance which left so dreary a void. On his journey from Jaffa to Jerusalem, in the train of the first heir to the English throne who, since Edward I. and Eleanor, had visited the Holy City, the thought was present of 'the one transfigured soul to whom every step of this march, both in its exalted and inferior aspect, would have had so profound an interest.' To see Hebron was one of the ambitions of his life. The desire was realised. But ' it was not what it would have been a month ago.' On April 15th, his mother's birthday,, he was passing over the corner of the Plain of Megiddo, CHAP. XVIII DECISION TO CONTINUE THE TOUR 79 which was the actual scene of Barak's victory. It was new ground to him. ' How she would have rejoiced,' he thinks, 'at my gaining on this day any new touches for my lectures.' But though the sense of his loss was never absent, the pain was resolutely repressed. It was, he believed, his duty to continue the expedition. It was, he knew, his mother's wish that he should do so. To throw himself into the work that lay immediately before him with all the force of his nature was at once the wisest and the most unselfish course. 'When this service is over,' he writes, 'and I return, I know, of course, there will be so much to say and hear about it that, perhaps, the first words with everyone will be about this expedition. But I hope that all those who have felt with me so kindly and deeply will still be able to go back to the one thought which lies smothered at the bottom of my heart under all this compli- cation of cares and pleasures and business. I daresay that my fellow-travellers, and still more those whom I casually meet, would say, if they think about it at all, " How he has got over it ; how little he seems to remember what he only heard a week or a fortnight ago." So, in one sense, it is. I must be either the one thing or the other ; and I can only carry on the journey by throwing it off. But the effect is to make the whole of each day pointless and blank ; at night and at waking a dull, confused sense of the change comes over me, and then I try to take refuge in those good thoughts which everyone wishes for me, and presumes that I have, but which, alas ! seem often so very far away — with her, beyond the reach of recall.' The Prince of Wales landed at Jaffa on March 31st, 1862. His entrance into the Holy Land and his approach to Jerusalem followed the footsteps of Richard Coeur de Lion and Edward I. The long cavalcade, escorted by a troop of Turkish cavalry, whose spears and pennons glittered in ' the Syrian sun, climbed the pass of Beth-horon, and caught their first view of the Holy City from the spot where Richard 8o LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1862 hid his face in his shield and said, ' Ah ! Lord God, if I am not thought worthy to win back the Holy Sepulchre I am not worthy to see it.' ' By this time the cavalcade had increased. The Turkish Governor, the English clergy, groups of ragged Jews, Franciscan monks, Greek clergy. Here and there, under the clumps of trees, groups of children singing hymns, the stragglers at last becoming a crowd. The long retinue of spearmen before and behind, the clatter of the horses' hoofs on the broken stones of the execrable road drowning every other sound — and this increasing as we passed under the walls. The Prince at the head of the motley procession, which, barbarous and ragged as it was, still seemed to contain the representatives, the offscourings, if you will, of all nations. That evening, and the evening before, the Prince came to my tent to get the names of the places he had seen correctly written down in his Journal, and on the first evening (the Sunday) he said, on going out, in the most engaging manner, " You see that I am trying to do what I can to carry out what you said in your sermon " (gather up the fragments).* The city and its neighbourhood were carefully explored — the hills of Judaea, Bethlehem, the ruined groves of Jericho, and, above all, Bethany. '. . . Late in the afternoon we reached Bethany. I then took my place close beside the Prince. Everyone else fell back, by design or accident, and at the head of the cavalcade we moved on towards the famous view. This was the one half-hour which, throughout the journey, I had determined to have alone with the Prince, and I succeeded. I pointed out each stage of the Triumphal Entry — the "fig-trees," the "stones," the first sight of Jerusalem, the acclamations, the palms, the olive-branches, the second sight, where " He beheld the city, and wept over it." ' The whole cavalcade paused on that long ledge. It was as impressive to me, and as authentic, as ever. I thought of Ammergau ; I thought of the many times I had talked over this very moment with our dearest mother. I turned round to call the attention of the rest of the party, and as I turned I saw, and bade the Prince look round too, CHAP. XVIII MOHAMED 8i the only detail which could have been worth noticing on such an occasion — a flock of white sheep and black goats feeding on the mountain-side, the groundwork of the great parable, delivered also from this hillside, on the Day of judgment. ' The cavalcade moved on again, and I fell to the rear, feeling that I had at least done my best. How often I felt as if my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth ! By the Valley of Jehoshaj^hat we returned, and so the day closed.' During one of his rides in the neighbourhood of Jeru- salem Stanley met again, to his intense delight, his old servant Mohamed : ' As I was picking my way over the rocks a Mussulman rushed out from some European tents close by, stopjoed my horse, seized my hand, and covered it with kisses. " Oh ! my master, my dear master." It was Mohamed ! He ran along by the side of my horse, I pressing his hand, and he still kissing mine. We parted at the descent of the hill.' The Holy Place and the sacred spectacle which Stanley most regretted to have left unseen on his first visit to Pales- tine in 1853 were the Mosque of Hebron and the Samaritan Passover on Mount Gerizim. He was now enabled not only to witness the most interesting vestige of the earliest Jewish ritual, but to penetrate to the jealously-guarded sanctuary, first Jewish, then Christian, then Mussulman, which is supposed to cover the Cave of Machpelah. Had his journey borne no other fruit, he would have felt himself richly rewarded.^ The visit to the Mosque of Hebron was a triumph for the diplomacy of General Bruce. Since 1 187 no European, except in disguise, was known to have set foot within the sacred precincts. Even to royal personages the Mosque ' Detailed accounts, both of the Mosque and of tlie Passover, will be found in the appendices to Vol. i. of Stanley's History of the yeivish Church. But his letters, written at the time and on the spot, have an independent interest. VOL. II G 82 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1862 had remained hermetically sealed for nearly seven hundred years. Through lines of soldiers the entrance of the Mosque was reached. In the narrow streets 'hardly a face was visible in the houses as we passed — only the solitary figure of a guard standing on every housetop, evidently to secure that no stones should be thrown down. In short it was a complete military occupation. ' At last we reached the corner of the great Jewish enclosure. Up the sharp flight of stairs, gazing at the huge polished stones, we mounted. At the summit we turned inside, and here immediately were met by the chief guardian of the Mosque. No one could be more courteous than he was, declaring that for no one but for the eldest son of the Queen of England would he have allowed this ; sooner should the princes of any other nation have passed over his body. There was a deep groan from the attendants when the shrine of Abraham was opened, redoubled at the shrine of Jacob and of Joseph. You may imagine my feelings when I thrust my arm down as far as I could to reach into the rocky vault, and when I knelt down to ascertain how far the tomb of Abraham was part of the native mountain. ' When we all came out, I know not what feelings pre- ponderated. I must say that the person for whom I felt the most was General Bruce. ... It was a most suc- cessful piece of diplomacy, and when we returned to the encampment I went up immediately to congratulate him. He said that he had been most desirous of making the attempt, not only on the Prince's account, but on mine, . . . and that the Prince, from the first, had made my entrance an indispensable condition of his going at all. I expressed my gratitude, only could not help adding that it was not now what it would have been a month ago. . . . From him I went to the Prince, to thank him, and to express how, but for him, I should never have had this great opportunity. " Well," he said, with touching and almost reproachful simplicity, "high station, you see, has, after all, some merits, some advantages." " Yes, sir," I replied, "and I hope that you will always make as good use of it." ' On April 9th the party returned to Jerusalem, and the following morning left it for Bethel, Shiloh, and Nablus. On CHAP, xvm THE SAMARITAN PASSOVER 83 April 1 2th was held the Samaritan Passover. The whole male Samaritan community were camped on the terrace below the summit of Mount Gerizim. ' At three-quarters of an hour before sunset the prayers began. Presently, suddenly there appeared among the worshippers six sheep, guarded by some of the youths. They wandered to and fro in the crowd, so innocent — and the young men who tended them so simple in their appearance — that it was like a pastoral scene in a play, or like one of the tableaux at Ammergau. 'The sun, which had hitherto burnished up the Medi- terranean Sea in the distance, now sank very nearly to the farthest western ridge. The recitation of prayers became more vehement ; indeed it was, I believe, the recitation from the early chapters of Exodus. The sheep were driven more closely together, still perfectly playful. The sun touched the ridge. The youths burst into a wild chant, and drew their long, bright knives, and brandished them in the air. In a moment the sheep were thrown on their backs, and the long knives were drawn across their throats. There were a few silent convulsions — " dumb as a sheep that openeth not his mouth " — and the six forms lay life- less on the ground, with the blood streaming from them, the one only Jewish sacrifice that remains in the world. ' In the blood the young men dipped their fingers, and marked the foreheads and noses of all the children — not the doors of the tents nor the faces of the grown-up. It was, as they explained it, a kind of relic of the past, of which only this fragment remained. It sounds hardly anything in relating it ; but there was a wildness about it which was extremely striking, and I have no doubt that it carries one back beyond any other institution to those ancient days. 'The next process was the skinning and roasting. For this a trough and a deep hole were prepared. In both vines and brambles (those of Jotham's parable) were thrown and set on fire. Over those in the trough were placed two cauldrons, and again, amidst the recitation of Exodus xii., the water boiled, and, when it had boiled enough, was poured by the same youths over the dead sheep, to take off their wool. Their legs were torn off and thrown aside, and the sheep themselves were spitted on long poles — 84 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1862 hardly crosses, as it has been sometimes said — and they were hoisted aloft, and were prepared to be sunk into the second hole, filled v/ith burning faggots, to roast them. ' By this time it was past eight, and the question arose, how long it would be before the feast took place — three, four, or five hours ? One after another the different mem- bers of the party gave way, and at last all determined to return to the tents at the foot of the mountain. I, however, was resolved to remain. They were extremely good, made no difficulties, and accordingly, with Waters, I retired to one of the Samaritan tents and slept, or tried to sleep. Strange feeling! — we two the only Europeans on that wild mountain height, in the midst of this ancient sect, to wit- ness the only direct vestige of the Jewish Passover. ' At half-past one we were roused. The moon was still bright, and high in the heavens. The whole male commu- nity was gathered round the hole, now closed up with wet earth, where the six sheep were being roasted. Mats were arranged for them, on which we were not allowed to tread. Indeed, it was curious to see how totall}' we were disre- garded, as though we did not exist. Then the hole was opened. A cloud of steam and smoke burst forth, remind- ing one of Heber's line, so remarkable as showing how he had caught the peculiarities of the country — Smokes on Gerizim's mount Samaria's sacrifice, and out were brought on their long poles the sheep, their heads and ears still visible, black from the oven. They were thrown on the mats. The mats were laid out between two files of the Samaritans. 'Those who were in white had ropes round their waists ("girded"), staves in their hands, and shoes on their feet. A long wild chant burst out, which suddenly stopped, and down they all sank on their haunches and set to work on the masses of fiesh before them. They did not seize it with so much " haste " as I had been led to expect. But they ate in perfect silence, and so rapidly that in ten minutes it was all gone but a few bones and scraps, which were gathered up in the mats and placed in a bundle over the fire, which was once m.ore kindled. By its light and with candles the whole ground was searched for fragments, as if they were the particles of sacramental bread. These were thrown on the burning mass, and a huge bonfire was stirred CHAP. XVIII EASTER AT LAKE TIBERIAS 85 up, which lit up the mountain and then gradually died away, and left us to return home. 'It was now about 2.30 a.m., and Waters and I, alone with two guides, picked our way (the horses having been sent down before) over the rugged mountain, by the light of the moon, back to camp, and there — about 3.30 — got into bed and fell fast asleep.' Easter Sunday, April 20th, 1862, was spent by the shores of Lake Tiberias. ' Halfway between Tabor and Tiberias we were enter- tained by a famous Bedouin chief, who had protected the Christians during the massacres. ... It was my first sight of the kind, and was exceedingly interesting. I looked at everything with a view to Abraham and to Jael, and have now a far better notion of both than I had before. . . . He was much gratified by the Prince's visit, kissed his foot in the stirrup, and offered him two mares. . . . ' It was Easter-eve. The Prince and I rode alone over the hills. He made the best proposals for the arrangement of the Communion the next day, and spoke much of you,^ of Catherine,'^ of our dear mother, ... of his father. " It will be a sad Easter for me," he said. . . . "Yes," I said, "and a sad one for me. But I am sure that, if your father and my mother could look down upon us, they would be well satisfied that we should both be at this time in this place." '. . . Suddenly we reached the ledge of the cliffs, and the whole view of the Lake burst upon us. He quite screamed with surprise and pleasure. " So unexpected and so beau- tiful." It was, indeed, that view of which I am always afraid to speak, lest the glory of the recollection should tempt me to exaggerate its real character. But on that evening, the setting sun throwing its soft light over the descent, the stormy clouds flying to and fro, it was truly grand ; . . . and when we found our tents pitched at the bottom of the hill, by the old walls of Tiberias, on the very edge of the Lake, General Bruce came up to me and said, " You have indeed done well for to-morrow." ' From the moment that it had become possible that we should be here on Easter-day I had fixed my heart upon it, and when Easter-day broke I went out early to * Mary Stanley. ^ Mrs. Vaughan. 86 UFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1862 look at the view. The eastern hills were dark ; the sun, behind a bank of black clouds, poured down its first rays on the calm Lake, and the western tops were tinged with golden light. At 10 we had our service in the great tent. We were all there. I selected what I thought the most essential parts of the service for Easter-day. (H. P. will, I am sure, like to know what it was.) I began with the anthem, " Christ our Passover^ . . . Then the special Psalms, then Ex. xii. (especially appropriate after the Samaritan Passover), Te JDeimi, Rom. vi.. Jubilate, and then the whole Communion Service. ' I preached on John xxi., taking the chapter through piece by piece. ... It was certainly a very solemn occasion, and I am thankful we had it there, and not in Jerusalem, amidst the clatter of the contending Churches. ' After a long, quiet morning we strolled into the filthy town, and then, glad to escape from it, walked along the shores to the hot springs, and thence far away, farther than I had ever reached before, to the hill immediately overhanging the exit of the Jordan. Altogether, it was to me the climax of the tour to have had our Good Friday ser- vice at Nazareth, and our Easter Communion on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. ..." On the journey from Tiberias to Damascus Stanley was again able to gratify a wish which had remained unfulfilled in 1853. ' Then came a totally new country to me — the hills of Naphtali. In the midst of them, on a green upland plain, was a place I particularly wished to see — Kadesh-Naph- tali, the Holy Place of that great tribe, the birthplace of Barak, and close by the scene of the murder of Sisera. It is described in Judges iv. as taking place under the tere- binth (oak), . . . and it was delightful to see how many tere- binths still grew on the plain. H. R. H. and I both tore away a small branch, he for the Princess Royal, for whom he has made a collection of flowers or leaves from almost every famous spot he has seen. . . .' The tent-life was now all but over, and, as the party approaches Damascus, Stanley gives a detailed account of a typical day's journey through the Holy Land : CHAP. XVIII TENT-LIFE 87 'There is still a pause on this hot afternoon, which I will employ in giving you an account of our life — in tents — now passing away. I will begin with the evening. You must imagine us winding down some hillside. In front is usually the Prince, in his white robe, with his gun by his side. Close by him, also in a white burnous, is the in- terpreter (Noel Moore), who must always be with him as we approach any town, to be prepared for the arrival of some petty governor coming out to meet us, and falling on his knees to kiss the Prince's stirrup. Not far off come Keppel and Meade, Keppel in his grey shooting-jacket and wideawake, Meade in his flying white burnous, and Kefieh (red and yellow silk handkerchief) round his head, looking exactly like a Bedouin. Then, perhaps, the General, Dr. Minter, and A. P. S. in grey. Dr. M. and A. P. S. always in helmets. Teesdale, in brown, is perpetually poking about on the outskirts for partridges, or vultures, or gazelles. " He never fires but he kills," says Waters. ' Then, not altogether parted from us, and always within reach of communication, come the great Kann6, the courier; Downie, the gigantic and learned Scot, generally leading his horse to spare him ; the Prince's valet, very quiet and spare of words — Crosse — somewhat gloomy in appear- ance, but full of work ; Macdonald, the youngest of the party; Waters (unless lingering to have a shot at a curious bird), sticking as close to A. P. S. as he can. Around, or behind, or before, but usually as we approach the encamp- ment scampering over everybody in violent haste to be close to H. R. H., the long array of fifty mounted spearmen, their red pennons flashing through the rocks and thickets as they descend, commanded by two well-known personages — well-known, I mean, to us through their familiar faces, though unable to exchange a word with anyone except Moore, and a few words of Turkish with Teesdale, and of Arabic with Meade. . . . They have been with us all the way from Jaffa. 'We descend, and the servants gallop to the front, in order to make the most of their time before we reach the tents. We find the tents just pitched, usually on some grassy platform by a running brook. Tea and coffee come round to us. By this time the sun has set, and, if there is nothing to be seen, A. P. S. has withdrawn to his tent and either writes or has a gentle sleep ; whilst Waters, at the door of 88 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1862 the tent, is stuffing a dove or a partridge ; sometimes a huge vulture is hung up over the door. Little visits arc ex- changed at this time, and the different books handed about. At 7 P.M. a bell rings — once, twice, thrice — for dinner, and then we all gather, and find a substantial but not luxurious meal (in this respect a great and beneficial contrast to the Nile) spread. We have generally a very merry dinner. . . . The tastes of the different members of the party are very freely discussed, particularly the aver- sion of A. P. S. to rice, and his love for biscuits, oranges, and tea. ' Dinner ended, we adjourn to another tent, where we all lie or sit on carpets, and all, except A. P. S. and the General, have various kinds of pipes. On cold nights A. P. S. brings in his railwa3'^-rug, and then Meade and Keppel always insist on sitting next to him and having a corner of the rug to themselves. These reunions are not very lively — there is a gradual tendency to fall asleep; but now and then we have stories, and on one or two nights a really animated discussion. Occasionally there are guests — the governor of the next town, or a Vice-Consul, or the Protestant clergyman of the place. . . . ' At break of day the first sound is the doctor's voice going about to see his patients, under whom are included any sick members of any part of the encampment — soldiers, muleteers, servants, &c. Generally, while I am dressing the doctor comes and sits outside my tent, asking for in- formation for his journal of the previous day ; and on occasions also from time to time H. R. H. drops in, partly to ask similar questions, partly to inspect the stuffing opera- tions. At 7 A.M. the breakfast-bell rings, and we are usually all there. At 8 a.m. the horses are saddled and we upon them, and forth we go much as I described our entrance. 'We ride on over hill and valley till noon, and then look about for a tree and water, the two requisites for a luncheon-place. We find it, and the mule, laden with cold meat, oranges, biscuits, &c., which always keeps pace with us, comes up. Carpets and we all spread ourselves out — uncomfortably if the tree is spare and the ground hard, most delightfully sometimes. We rest for about two hours. There is an immense consumption of oranges, chiefly between Meade and A. P. S. ; and then the General gives the signal, and the party somewhat reluctantly rises. . . . And so we CHAP, xviii THE CEDARS OF LEBANON 89 toil on through the afternoon, and the day ends as I have described. ' I must say that, considering the numbers, the diversity of the party, the variety of interests and pursuits, the tedium of a great part of the journey to one section or other of those engaged, the tour has been wonderfully harmonious. This must always be put down to its credit.' From Damascus the party turned westward, and, passing by Baalbec, reached Beirut on May 6th. After visiting Tyre and Sidon and the entrance of the Dog River, they proceeded to Tripoli. In 1853 the snow had rendered the cedars of Lebanon inaccessible from the side of Baalbec, and Stanley had been compelled to leave the cedars unseen. Now, however, he was enabled to visit them by the easier approach from Tripoli and Ehden. ' The cedars ! And so at last, contrary to all expecta- tion, I have seen them. The first sight of them produced an impression upon me wholly unlike that which (perhaps from their being usually described by those who approach them from above) is commonly given. ' Imagine a vast semicircle of mountains, the upper range covered with snow, the lower range, which is, in fact, the deposit of glaciers, shutting up this upper range ; and again, in the heart of the lower range, a rich, green, culti- vated valley, penetrating till it ends in rocky barrenness. Exactly in the centre of the view, just appearing above the lower range and under the snowy range, you see a black massive cloud or clump — the only vegetation on the whole horizon till your eye descends on the green valley below. That is the cedar-grove. We lost sight of them till, on surmounting the intervening rocks, and standing on the edge of a ravine which parted us from them, one after another, through the mist which was floating round us, the trees appeared close at hand. •The second view is, perhaps, disappointing, for what then are seen are only the youngest cedars, which form the outskirts of the grove. But in a few minutes we were in the midst of them, and although again they were different from what I had expected, the whole effect was most im- 90 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1S62 pressive. They stand exactly as I have already described in the first view of them, between the bare rocky range and the snowclad heights behind. They stand in a little island, as it were, planted in the centre of the barren mountains, an island consisting of seven hills, or knolls, of which six are arranged round the seventh — a square mount in the midst, on which stands the rude Maronite chapel. These knolls give a peculiarity to the place for which I was not prepared. The great old cedars are not, as I had imagined, all collected together, but are interspersed with their younger brethren. Two or three stand on the central knoll, four or five on the hill, nearer to the snow. ' In one respect they are far inferior to their English descendants : they have no wide-spreading branches feathering to the ground, probably from their closeness to each other. One of them, I observed, actually supported in its gigantic arms a lesser tree whose trunk was quite decayed. But their trunks were very remarkable — so huge, so irregular, so venerable, with the grey scales of bark that covered them as with a skin. ... It was impossible for us to carry off a section of a fallen tree. . . . 'All were pleased to have seen them. The Prince was very anxious that we should have the service under their shade (it was Sunday morning). I gladly consented, pro- posing it should be a short morning service, and that the evening service should be in the tents on our return. All was prepared, when the clouds gathered in and the rain came on so thick and fast that we had to mount in haste and ride back as fast as we could to Ehden, which we reached at two P.M. The Palace by this time was well prepared for us with carpets, &c., and here in the afternoon we had our last Syrian service. I added my Cedar Sermon to the one I had already written on our tent-life (Numbers x. 35, 36), especially on morning and evening prayer.'^ On May 13th, 1862, the party left the shores of Syria. The homeward journey carried them successively to Patmos, Ephesus, Smyrna, Constantinople, Athens, and Malta. At this last place the return to civilisation was marked by Stanley's purchase of ' a new ready-made frock-coat, with 6 Sermon X. of the Sermons in the East: 'The Last Encampment.' CHAP. XVIII RETURN TO ENGLAND 91 which Waters and H. R. H. are equally delighted.' The Eastern tour ended at Marseilles. A rapid journey across France brought the travellers back to England on June 13th, 1862, Stanley still wearing the beard, in which, for the amusement of his friends, he was photographed. 92 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1862-63 CHAPTER XIX 1862-63 THE DEATH OF GENERAL BRUCE — THE BLANK IN STANLEY'S LIFE LEFT BY HIS MOTHER'S DEATH — RUMOURS OF PRE- FERMENT — COLENSO ON THE PENTATEUCH — PUBLICATION OF THE FIRST PART OF HIS LECTURES ON THE ' HISTORY OF THE JEWISH CHURCH ' — LETTER TO THE BISHOP OF LONDON ON SUBSCRIPTION — GROWING INTIMACY WITH THE ROYAL FAMILY— PUBLICATION OF THE 'SERMONS IN THE EAST' The one cloud that darkened the last few weeks of the Eastern tour was the serious illness of General Bruce. At Constantinople a fever declared itself, which he had con- tracted, as was supposed, in the unwholesome marshes in the upper valley of the Jordan. Harassed by his many responsibilities, and exhausted by his exertions, he was completely prostrated. For several days his condition caused grave alarm. On Saturday, May 25th, 1862, he had so far recovered that Stanley was admitted to see him. ' He begged that I would come again, and read part of the Service to him. I read most of the 119th Psalm for the day, and, as I read it, could not help thinking how singularly applicable it was to his case. His temporary withdrawal has brought to my mind forcibly all that he has been to the party.' After leaving Constantinople General Bruce continued slowly to improve. But on landing in England he was still so weak that he could not travel beyond London. Stanley was therefore requested to come on at once to CHAP. XIX DEATH OF GENERAL BRUCE 93 Windsor, in order that the Queen might learn from his lips 'how all is and has been.' He arrived on Saturday, June 14th, and there, by Her Majesty's thoughtful kindness, he met his sister Mary for the first time since his mother's death. There also, on the following Sunday, he preached the last of the sermons^ published in the volume of ' Sermons in the East,' choosing for his text the words that are inscribed on his own and his wife's tomb : ' I see that all things come to an end, but Thy commandment is exceeding broad ' (Psalm cxix. 96). Returning to London, he found that General Bruce was lying dangerously ill at St. James's Palace, in the rooms of his sister, Lady Augusta Bruce. During the last four months Stanley had been brought into daily and intimate contact with the General. The tender consideration which the Prince's Governor had shown towards him at the time of his mother's death bound Stanley to him by a sacred tie. He honoured the lofty sense of responsibility that stimulated his chivalrous devotion to his delicate duties. He valued at its true worth the graceful courtesy which never failed under the most trying circumstances, and which not only was combined with tact, firmness, and decision, but was the real expression of an inherently kind and noble nature. Stanley was constantly with his friend during his illness, and throughout the night which preceded his death in the early morning of Friday, June 27th, 1862. 'It was,' said he, 'the very first time that I had seen a human soul pass with full consciousness from this world to the world beyond.' Thoughtful for the absent, considerate for others. General Bruce's character remained the same to the last. His courtesy was no 'outward mask, but was shown in his very dying moments, when the last prayer had ^ Sermon XIV. : * The Breadth of God's Commandments.' 94 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY been breathed, to the nurse who attended him. His last farewell seemed waved to me from the invisible world.' The death of General Bruce drew Stanley very close to his widow and sister. To both he offered a sympathy which was always elicited by the grief of others, but which was now deepened in its tenderness both by his own recent bereavement and by his share in their sorrow. 'The thought,' writes Mrs. Bruce, ' of what you must have been to my dear husband during the last four months of his life, and the recollection of the help you gave him that last night, will ever be most consoling to me.' Lady Augusta Bruce, writing two days after the death of her brother, talks to him with the most open-hearted confidence of the late General, and of her dead mother and sister Matilda. ' I feel,' she says, ' that you are no stranger to such memories and associations, and that you would wish to feel a living interest in the home of his youth. Once more, may God bless you for all you have been to him and us ! ' General Bruce was buried at Dunfermline, where Stanley performed part of the funeral service. * There was a little knot of ecclesiastical difficulties which I had not anticipated. Of the absence of a surplice I had happily thought overnight, and sent, on a chance, to Dean Ramsay, whom I had never seen. Then it appeared that the usual practice had been to have the whole service read in the house, the vault being underneath the Presby- terian church erected in the ruins of the Abbey. A com- promise was proposed, however, that the first part of the service should be in the house, and the rest at the grave. (In point of fact, I have been told by a Presbyterian since that this was quite needless ; they are now accustomed to funerals with the English service, even in their churches. However, remembering what a clatter our English clergy are making at having any other than our own service read in our churchyards, I was quite content with what would give least offence — certainly as much as I had any right to ask.) The coffin was laid, I think, in the dining-room, on CHAP. XIX FUNERAL OF GENERAL BRUCE 95 a table hung with black. The room was quite filled. Both the two Presbyterian ministers, and also the Episcopalian minister, were present. I stood at the head of the coffin, and read the service down to the end of the Lesson, and then added the last prayer. ' Then we passed into another room, where, at a table covered with a white cloth, sate the Presbyterian minister. He read a chapter (Job xiv.), and offered up a prayer, commonplace but inoffensive. Then, in perfect silence, first wine and then cake were handed round ; and then the second minister read another chapter (i Thess. iv.) and another prayer. It seems that this is a relic of a practice which existed, and still exists, of a feast given to the friends, which for many years was the only service at a Scotch funeral, the clergyman being asked merely to say Grace before and after, and in the Grace introducing appropriate remarks. The meal has gradually dwindled away, and the Grace has passed into this attempt at something liturgical. We then went off in mourning carriages, I in my surplice, with Thomas and Charles Bruce and the Presbyterian minister. Dunfermline is two miles from the house. We passed through the churchyard in silence. The coffin rested for a few moments at the entrance of the vault, during which I read the opening sentences. We then descended into the vault, and I read the remainder of the service by the light of the candles in the vault. " For he rests from his labo2irs " — " from the miseries of this sinful world," were the words which most were borne to me.' In watching by the bedside of General Bruce, and in offering to his sorrowing relations every consolation which a deep and heartfelt sympathy could suggest, Stanley found the best relief from the numbing sense of his own loss. His return to his London house at Grosvenor Crescent, and the first sight of the corner of the drawing-room in which his mother used to sit, or of her own room, in which he had parted from her five months before, revived his grief in all its first anguish. He came back, as Mrs. Vaughan wrote to her aunt, Mrs. Augustus Hare, 'graver and more serious. His sorrow is of that deep, silent kind which 96 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY does not admit of any relief. One sees that it never leaves him, and that it is a long, continuous suffering that has fallen upon him.' In the interval between the death and funeral of General Bruce he visited Oxford. Mrs. Jacob- son,2 who was one of his closest friends and neighbours, remembered, more than twenty-five years later, his return to a place which at every turn was alive with recollections of his mother. ' My husband and I knew how the bereavement of his mother's death would be freshly brought back to his loving heart by the sight of the places where she had been so much with him, and how lonely he would feel. I hardly liked to go to his door for fear of intruding on his sorrow. But early on Sunday morning, while we were at breakfast, the door opened, and he came in. His bright smile gave way to irrepressible emotion, and he flung himself on a chair behind one of our children, of whom he was fond. Bursting into tears, he hid his face behind the child's curly hair, thankful to conceal the anguish of his lonely heart.' For the first few days the pain was great of revisiting scenes associated with his mother's presence. Later 'it became,' as he himself says, ' a pleasure rather than a pain to be at places where we had been together.' It was his chief delight to carry out her wishes as though she were still living. 'I have much to do,' he writes in September 1862, 'in printing my lectures, and this, after all, being her last desire and interest, gives me more real satisfaction and pleasure than anything else. I feel as if I could have no rest till I had finished.' When, later on in the same year, there appeared to be some prospect of his being offered a bishopric, it was by a reference to her advice that he tried to decide on the course which in that case he would adopt. ' My dearest child,' he writes to his sister Mary, 'you may think how I have, over and over again, thought what our * The wife of Dr. Jacobson, then Canon of Christ Church, afterwards Bishop of Chester. CHAP. XIX THE BLANK IN STANLEY'S LIFE 97 dearest mother would have said.' In accepting the Deanery of Westminster a year later, it is again by the same thought that he is mainly guided. ' It was,' he tells Professor Jowett, ' the one change my dear mother desired for me.' So completely had his mother identified herself with all his interests, so entirely had he relied on her sympathy and counsel, that months elapsed before he could take up the threads of his old life. He had lost his mainspring of action, and his despondency is clearly shown in his letters. 'I cannot,' he says, 'write as heretofore.' The hue of everything was jchanged, and it sometimes seemed that the shadow deepened as it lengthened. ' It soothes me,' he writes to Professor Jowett, 'even to think that anyone has seen that dear face in a dream. Strange that this should hardly ever have been the case with me. To me, the pleasure of sleep is of the land where all things are forgotten, and — then — day brings back my night.' Writing from Foxhow, near Ambleside, where he was staying with Mrs. Arnold, he says : ' Noiv, for the first time, Arnold's death, and all that relates to it, is pushed back beyond another range. You will not wonder that I find life very dull — a burden, which I can bear cheerfully, but which I would gladly lay down.' From the same place, a year later, he writes to Professor Jowett : 'Nothing that has happened, nothing, I trust, that can ever happen, can make her memory other than the greatest gift I have received — a gift greater even than that which the genius hujtis loci was in its time to me.' Yet on all sides he had much to arouse him from absorption in his private troubles. Archbishop Sumner died on September 6th, 1862, and in Oxford, where Stanley VOL. II H 98 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1862 was then keeping his residence as Canon, the one absorb- ing topic of conversation was the choice of his successor, and the consequent distribution of vacant preferments. Though never anxious for preferment, Stanley always entered into such discussions with eager curiosity. With his own name rumour v/as busy. He could not avoid feeling unsettled when, in the daily press, statements claiming to be authoritative assigned to him this or that bishopric. But before the actual death of Archbishop Sumner he had written on the prospect of his obtaining preferment : ' My friends are, I daresay, kindly carving out im- aginary preferments for me in the movements which the death of the poor Archbishop, now hourly to be expected, is likely to cause. There is only one see, as you know, which I should think worth taking, and only two deaneries, neither of which is likely to be vacant ; so that I trust there is no chance of my departure from Oxford, which, for many reasons, I should much regret.' ' My entreaty,' he tells his sister, 'night and morning, is that I may be spared the neces- sity of the choice and the pain of the change. I long to have you home to consult. But do not hurry home, for you could not arrive in time for my answer, if the offer is made. If it is not made, you cannot think with what a feeling of grateful relief, almost as if my life were spared, I shall return to the work here.' ' York,' he says in another letter, ' I should, of course, accept willingly. Still, I earnestly hope for a reprieve.' Gradually the vacancies were filled up. * I have a strong impression that there was no solid ground for any of the rumours about A. P. S., and I am looking forward so thank- fully to a renewed lease of freedom and repose.' 'I feel,' he says in November, 'as if I had a new lease of life. . . .' His principal anxiety, as the autumn advanced, had been CHAP. XIX RUMOURS OF PREFERMENT 99 the possible promotion of Dr. Trench to the See of Gloucester, and the consequent offer of the Deanery of Westminster. This anxiety was finally removed by the elevation of Dr. EUicott to the vacant bishopric. ' It is,' writes Stanley, 'an immense relief to me to have this year left entirely free to digest all that has happened. You remember how the dear mother not only deprecated any bishopric, but, though she occasionally wished for one of the London deaneries, was always glad to find that neither of them was likely to fall vacant, and used always to write with such joy whenever she saw the Dean of St. Paul's looking par- ticularly well. I should have felt that I was acting against her advice. A few years, or perhaps even months, when circumstances have changed, I should not feel this so pain- fully.' Nor was the possibility of his elevation to a bishopric or a deanery the only distraction which diverted Stanley's attention from his private troubles. Contests, in which he had already taken a conspicuous part, as well as new ques- tions, with which he was to identify himself more or less prominently, filled the air. At Oxford, the tempest stirred by the endowment of the Greek Professorship was still raging. The terms of the subscription required for University degrees, or for Holy Orders, were once more forced to the front. The storm raised by ' Essays and Reviews ' was still at its fiercest. Other clouds already darkened the near horizon. In the autumn of 1 86 1 Bishop Colenso had published 'A Commentary on the Epi-stle to the Romans,' in which he had defied popular theology by his free handling of such questions as the na- ture of Our Lord's Atonement and the Eternity of Future Punishment. 'The lightest word of a bishop is heavy,' and the theories put forward in the book had given rise to grave anxiety. Now, however, the Bishop of Natal was preparing to go further in his ' free handling of the Holy H 2 lOO LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY Scripture.' At the end of August 1862 Stanley met him in London. 'I saw Colenso,' he writes to Professor Jowett, 'who said (I think) that he had sent his privately-printed book on the Old Testament to you. If he has not, bury in silence all that I say of him or of it. An excellent man, and an able book ; but it is so written as to vex me a good deal. I have urged upon him, if possible, to write it more like a defence, and less like an attack. Every additional work composed about the Elohistic and Jehovistic ele- ments, &c. &c., as if to destroy the Bible — when it really should be as if to bring out a series of interesting and in- structive facts in and about the Bible — is so much done to drive us further and further from the haven where we would be. No man ought ever to write himself down as a heretic.' In October 1862 the first volume of Colenso's work on the Pentateuch was published, and in the following No- vember Stanley writes to J. C. Shairp upon the subject. His attitude is the same that he took in the case of 'Essays and Reviews,' and that he consistently maintained through- out the agitation which Colenso's book occasioned. 'The case of Colenso's book appears to me to be in a nutshell — perfectly decisive against those who make the exactness of the numbers in the Old Testament, and the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, essential to revela- tion, but almost entirely ineffectual as to any wider con- clusions. In fact, it only suggests this curious question : " How far does the Oriental tendency to exaggerate numbers invalidate the narrative in which they occur " I trust that people will have the good sense to reason upon it calmly. I regret the book extremely; it is just like our old friend Laing over again, with his scepticism about the furniture, forgetting the identity of Holyrood. 'And, to me, anything which detracts even from the outward history is a loss. But I cannot join in the indis- criminate outcry against an evidently honest and single- minded religious man. (Read his preface and conclusion.) His book, they say, has sold enormously — as if, forsooth, these questions were new ! Meanwhile, it will be the carcase to which all the vultures for ecclesiastical advancement and CHAP. XIX CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLENSO lOI popular favour will be gathered together for the next month or so. • Of course the arithmetic is entirely beyond me. But I bow, as always, so here, to the greatest living authority in Jiis own sicbject! In the same strain he wrote several letters to Bishop Colenso himself, deprecating 'the evil which the publication of the book, in its present form, was likely to occasion.' Professor Stanley to the Bishop of Natal. (!•) ' Without entering into details, I will say generally, that I have nothing to say against the numerous arith- metical and chronological invalidations of the history that you adduce. Whether any answer can be made I know not, nor do I much care. Kennicott and Lord Arthur Hervey have already done so much in this way that a little more or less makes but a slight difference in the case. ' But I think that there are two or three modes of argu- ment pervading your statements that ought to be recon- sidered. ' I. The apportionment of the Elohistic and Jehovistic portions (after the first four chapters of Genesis) has always seemed to me very precarious. I do not doubt that the elements exist ; but the overlaying of one by the other, and the occasional use of the Jehovistic by the Elohist, and of the Elohistic by the Jehovist, to my mind, and, I am sure, to most ordinary readers, acts as a powerful damper of interest in any minute analysis. I do not say this to dis- courage the examination. Far from it. The argument from David's Psalms is so ingenious as to compel attention. Only I would warn you, if you wish to conciliate the belief of your readers, not to lay too much stress upon it. In the case of the Psalms (you will think me enslaved by the fascination of the great name) I cannot make up my mind to abandon at once the dates of Ewald ; for the mass of readers, I grant this last objection has no force. '2. It seems to me that you argue, beyond what is reasonable, from the improbability of omissions, or, again, of certain actions. " Can we conceive that David would have I02 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1862 left the Ark to neglect, &c. &c. ?" Surely it might well be assumed that in a barbarous age, indeed, in any age, the inconsistencies and caprices of men are so manifold that a vast margin must be left for them under any hypothesis. But also, ' 3. You seem to me to transfer too much to these ancient prophets and writers and chiefs our modern notions of Divme Origin. And this I must think a matter of much importance. Our notion, or, rather, the modern Puritanical notion of Divine Origin, is of a preternatural force or voice, putting aside secondary agencies, and separated from those agencies by an impassable gulf. The ancient Oriental, Bib- lical notion was of a supreme will acting through those agencies, or, rather, being inseparable from them. Our notions of Inspiration and Divine communications insist on absolute perfection of fact, morals, doctrine. The Biblical notion was that Inspiration was compatible with weakness, infirmity, contradiction. ' The value of most of the facts you adduce is to show (not so much the unhistorical or fictitious character of the history as) the utterly unscriptural and unwarrantable manner in which we have wrested the sacred writings from their real intention. And, indeed, in some instances, this would be acknowledged by the bitterest of your opponents. ' 4. Finally, may I protest against your use of the word orthodox, and against all that your use of it implies. I may do so without fear of misconstruction, as you have done me the honour, or at least the favour, of ranking me with the orthodox. But I am convinced that no honest inquirer after truth, especially if he be a clergyman- — -still more if he be a bishop — ought to write himself down as a heretic. . . . " Orthodox" has, or ought to have, one of two meanings, i. The legal sense (actually fixed by the ist of Elizabeth), "That which is in accordance with the Decrees of the P'our first Councils." Nothing that you have said in any way con- travenes these. Indeed, you agree much more with these Decrees, both by omission and commission, than most of your opponents. 2. The moral sense of "True," or "Scriptural." To give up this is to give up your whole position. You are not attacking the Bible ; you are endeavouring to make out from it what it says of itself. You are not attacking the Christian truth ; you are endeavouring to bring it out CHAP. XIX CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLENSO 103 in its true Scriptural character, apart from the unscriptural, uncatholic theories by which it and the Bible have been overlaid. If you are right, you are not less, but more, orthodox than Hengstenberg, than Pusey, than myself.' Professor Stanley to the Bishop of Natal. (2.) ' I write abruptly and critically. But do not suppose me insensible either to the vast labour or the painful efforts which this work must have cost you. It is my full consciousness of this which makes me so anxious that no indiscretion of expression or exaggeration of argu- ment should lead off the public scent from your real meaning and real intention. ' I must, to avoid misunderstanding, repeat briefly what my strong feeling is about your book, and then you can judge how far my agreement or disagreement goes. *(l) I consider that, in principle, your argument about the numbers, genealogies, Jehovistic orElohistic documents, &c., are what have been stated many times before, and are of very slight importance, except as bearing on the question of the literal inspiration, as it is called, of the sacred text. ' (2) I consider that anyone is quite free to make any conjectures about the authorship of the Pentateuch, and that on this subject, as on that of the numbers, &c., no one view has a right to claim more reputation for orthodoxy than another. If Samuel wrote it, I should be very glad to know that it was written by so great a prophet, and I con- sider that all such names as "forger," &c., as applied to him, or whoever was the author or compiler, are quite misplaced. ' (3) I consider that the early chapters of Genesis do not claim to be, and are not, historical in the same sense as the later historical books. But that from the time of Abraham downwards there is a distinct, though not exclusively historical, narrative, is what I have always maintained, and what I have set forth both in my book on Palestine, (which you have opposed on that very account), and in my forth- coming lectures. All such expressions as Jictitiojis and the like appear to me totally erroneous and misleading. 'But (4), most of all, what I thought I had urged again and again, both in conversation and letters, is, that I regard I04 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1862 the whole plan of your book as a mistake. My object for twenty years, and my object in my forthcoming book, is to draw forth the inestimable treasures of the Old Testament, both historically, geographically, morally, and spiritually. To fix the public attention on the mere defects of structure and detail is, to my mind, to lead off the public mind on a false scent and to a false issue.' Professor Stanley to the Bishop of Natal. (3-) ' I am convinced that this succession of negative attacks on the structure of the Old Testament completely leads off the public mind on a false scent. It is because Ewald's book has such a totally different object that I so greatly admire and have so much profited by it. Of course, in saying this I do not mean to disparage any researches or inquiries, and yours in particular seem to me fully within the scope of the Church and of the Bible. But in them- selves they appear to me of an importance so secondary to that of a just appreciation of the Old Testament itself, that I cannot think the good of their publication at all com- mensurate with the amount of alarm and misapprehension which they produce. ' There was a pamphlet written by Sir W. Hamilton at the time of the Free Church controversy of which I know nothing but the title ; but that has always seemed to me very instructive, and very applicable to our present circum- stances : — "Be not Martyrs by Mistake'' ' Throughout his correspondence with Colenso Stanley had strongly insisted upon the evils which, in his opinion, the Bishop's negative criticism on the Pentateuch must necessarily occasion. His forebodings were verified sooner than he expected, and in a direction which he had not an- ticipated. In i860, Frederick Maurice had been appointed by the Crown to the incumbency of St. Peter's, Vere Street, and, in spite of the opposition of the 'Record,' had been instituted by the Bishop of London. The assaults of his theological opponents, and the recent decisions of Dr. CHAP. XIX UNEASINESS OF MAURICE 105 Lushington in the cases of Mr. Heath and Mr. Wilson, had, however, produced such an effect on the sensitive nature of the new incumbent that he contemplated the resignation of St. Peter's. In almost the last letter which Stanley wrote before his departure for his second Eastern tour, he had implored Maurice to postpone the final decision till his return. The appeal succeeded. Stanley left England with the promise that no decisive step should be taken in his absence. 'The thought,' he says, 'of your retirement was like a sword.' But in September 1862 the proposed pub- lication of Colenso's work on the Pentateuch renewed and increased Maurice's uneasiness.^ On October 13th he placed his resignation in the hands of Bishop Tait, believing that he would be better able to resist Colenso's destructive theories if he raised himself, by the sacrifice of his emolu- ments, beyond the possible suspicion of worldly motives. Bishop Tait at once appealed to Stanley to use his per- sonal influence with Maurice to persuade him to withdraw his proffered resignation. Stanley's efforts proved unavail- ing. ' I have been,' he writes to the Bishop on October 17th, 1862,* 'to see him (Maurice) to-day, but I find (and all his family and his friends say) that, in spite of all their arguments, his decision is irrevocable.' Failing to shake Maurice's resolution, he appealed to Colenso to postpone the publication of his book. ' I do not forget that the Truth, of which you are in search, is "dearer than Plato, than Socrates," — than any friend, however precious to you or to the Church. But I ask this favour of you, not only in behalf of Maurice, but in behalf of the work in which you are engaged. ' I need not repeat what I have said before, that I depre- cate your mode of approaching the subject, and that from many, perhaps, of the conclusions to which your researches * Life of F. D. Maurice, vol. ii. chap. xiii. pp. 421-34. * Life of Archbishop Tait, vol. i. p. 513. io6 LIFE OF DEAN- STANLEY 1862 have led you I should dissent. But I know that yours is a work of honest research, and, agreeing or disagreeing, I cannot but desire, in common with all lovers of truth and (I may add for myself) of the history of the Old Testament, that such researches should be considered on their own merits, and their own merits alone. Your work, appearing in the midst of the storm of Maurice's resignation, would be doomed to certain misconstruction, and would be con- demned before it could be heard. ' On this ground, therefore, as well as on the more general grounds of the peace of the Church, and the more special grounds of thus hoping to retain in the service of the Church a man to whom you and I, and so many more, owe so much, I venture to make this appeal to your gener- osity and courage, which have never, I ibelieve, been found wanting before, and which, I trust, may enable you to respond, even at this last hour, to an entreaty which, God knows, has no other motive than the desire to prevent a deplorable and wide-spreading misfortune, public and private.' Stanley's appeal was successful. Bishop Colenso at once consented to do his utmost to delay the publication of the first part of his work on ' The Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua.' At the same time, the Bishop of London refused to accept Maurice's resignation of his living. By these and other means Maurice was induced to remain in his incumbency. Writing to his ' dearest Auntie ' (Mrs. Augustus Hare), Stanley rejoices in 'this unexpected deliverance from a calamity so great as Maurice's retirement would have been. 'That the Bishop of London should have had the firm- ness to refuse the resignation (it is, as you may remember, what my dear father did in the case of Mr. Wodehouse) reflects great credit on the Bishop ; and that Maurice should have had the courage to withdraw at the last mo- ment from his untenable position reflects great credit on him also. ' The Bishop of Natal, also, has behaved extremely CHAP. XIX STANLEY'S VIEWS ON INSPIRATION 107 well, for as soon as he heard (which he only did on last Saturday night) that the publication of his book was one of the grounds of Maurice's retirement, he immediately proposed to withdraw it, and would have done so, had it not been already in the hands of the booksellers.' Relieved from a great dread, Stanley returned with a lighter heart to those professorial duties in which he could 'at times forget what has made all else, and even these, so fiat and unprofitable.' He was immersed in literary work. At the moment when Colenso's volume was announced for publication he was preparing for the press two books which unconsciously replied, as it were, to the questions raised by the Bishop of Natal. The first was a volume of three sermons on 'The Bible: its Form and its Substance' ;^ the second contained his 'Lectures on the Jewish Church'^ down to the establishment of the monarchy under the superintendence of Samuel. In 'The Bible: its Form and its Substance,' Stanley discusses the general question of Inspiration. The first two sermons had been preached in his mother's hearing ; the last was delivered in October 1862. 'How chansred the whole congregation seemed to be by the consciousness that that one listener was absent.' The three discourses form a commentary on the two opening verses of the Epistle to the Hebrews. In discussing the discrepancies between the Old and the New Testament he had quoted this passage, and in a subsequent continuance of the same discussion the passage was similarly used by the Archbishop and Metropolitan of Moscow, the aged Philaret. Stanley protests against the theory of an uniform and equal in- spiration of every word and letter of the Bible. Such a ^ The Bible : its Form and its Substance. Three sermons preached before the University of Oxford. Oxford, 1862. '^Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church. Part I., 'Abraham to Samuel.' London, 1862. I08 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1862 theory he holds to be a modern introduction into Christian theology. So far as Colenso's work undermined this late hypothesis, he welcomes the Bishop's inquiry as useful. But, in Stanley's opinion, the discovery of discrepancies, contradictions, or errors need not, and should not, shake men's faith in the Divine influence which pervades the sacred volume. While he concedes that the Bible is not inspired in such a sense as to preclude human imperfection, he pleads earnestly for the belief that it yet is an inspired book, divinely framed and divinely superintended. Men are not compelled to surrender their faith that * God spake ' in the Bible ' by the prophets and by His Son ' because, at the same time, they recognise that God spake ' at sundry times and in divers manners.' In the spirit of these sermons Stanley approaches Jewish history. Renan and Ewald saw in the Bible the history of the gradual unfolding of the highest religious ideas. Stanley finds in it more than this : he finds the history of the gradual progress of the true religion. He holds that Jewish history is the ordained preparation for a religion which is divine, that the Christian revelation is the point to which the whole series of events recorded in the Old Testament was providentially arranged to lead, and that at certain crises in the course of these events it is possible to trace the manifestation of Divine action. The Bible is sacred history. It is the history of a Church. It is also the history of a people, and a real history. It is a field on which the light of common day must be allowed to fall ; it is not a spot too sacred for the sun to shine upon. It is a history to be judged with the same freedom as any other record of human character and action, a history to be explained by the same critical processes, to be elucidated by more accurate interpretation, to be illustrated by widen- ing knowledge. Stanley accepts the critical and historical CHAP. XIX 'LECTURES ON THE JEWISH CHURCH' IO9 mode of dealing with the Bible ; he accepts also the religious and historical method. He employs both without attempting their reconciliation. Stanley held that the question whether the Pentateuch could or could not be proved to belong to a later date than that generally assigned ought not to affect the convictions of Christians. Seeking to avoid rather than to solve perplexed questions of controversy, anxious to dwell on features which were not the subjects of dispute, he entered into no discus- sion of the structure or the composition of the Mosaic books. Between the corrosive criticism of one school and the intolerant dogmatism of another he finds a free soil, from which a rich harvest may be raised. His method is essentially constructive and synthetical. In its application it is rather the wisdom of love than the love of wisdom which predominates. Analysts might discover that the old facts of the Bible had been raised to a fabulous power. But beneath the accidents Stanley found eternal verities, which illuminated the past, interpreted the present, and predicted the future. It was his object, as he says himself, ' to draw out the inestimable treasures of the Old Testament, both historically, geographically, morally, and spiritually.' All the charm and grace of his style are devoted to the picturesque illustration of the Scriptural narrative. He clothes with new life and meaning the story of the Patriarchs, or of Israel in Egypt. He paints, with exquisite feeling and with the inward eye of a poet, the scenery of Sinai and the march through the Wilderness. He traces the effect of the wandering on the ritual and character of the Israel- itish race, and demonstrates, whether Moses was or was not the chronicler, the substantial reality of the facts. He gives to portions of the Jewish history which before were dim, obscure, confused — as, for instance, the period of the Judges — a new clearness, afresh interest, and a deeper significance. I lO LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1862 The volume of Lectures was, moreover, prepared for the press under the influence of his recent loss. To remove from it, as far as he could, all jarring notes was a task congenial to the feelings that occupied his mind. It is dedicated to the memory of his mother, 'by whose firm faith, calm wisdom, and tender sympathy these and all other labours have for years been sustained and cheered.' 'I had a sort of shrinking,' he writes to Mrs. A. Hare, 'from mixing up her dear memory with anything that was likely to breed disputation. Still, I knew what she thought of the book, and it was the only way of expressing — oh ! how inadequately — what she has been to me, and how "faltering will be the steps" (as the poor Queen says in the preface to the Prince's speeches) without her on the way that lies before me. Also, it is my hope that in the volume itself there is enough to strengthen and cheer (I am sure that is my humble desire), without suggesting quarrels or doubts.' The Lectures, which were published in 1862, deal with the first period of Jewish history — the period that closes with the death of Samuel and the establishment of the Monarchy — the time when the old theocracy, with its sublime ideals and frequent aberrations in practice, gave place to that strong system of government which nurtured in the Jewish race expectations of the kingly Messiah who should fulfil their highest aspirations. Starting with the age of the Patriarchs and the call of Abraham, Stanley found the ground already prepared for him by Ewald. The comparison which he suggests between the work of Ewald and of Niebuhr, and between the methods of historical and critical investigation which the two great German scholars applied to Jewish and Roman history, may perhaps be extended to himself and Dr. Arnold. What Niebuhr was to Arnold, that Ewald was to Stanley. If Ewald was a second Niebuhr in his acuteness, CHAP. XIX 'LECTURES ON THE JEWISH CHURCH' III his learning, his enthusiasm, and, it must be added, in his rashness and the positiveness of his conclusions, Stanley's ' Lectures on Jewish History,' in their general spirit, might well be compared to Arnold's ' Chapters on early Roman History. ' Both Arnold and Stanley possessed qualifications which, with greater leisure and greater specialisation, might have made either a great historian. In both there is the same largeness of view, the same sense of the unity and continuity of history, the same appreciation of the relations between past and present, the same conviction of the similarity of human nature in one age and country to human nature in another. In both, again, there is, consequently, the same de- termination to break down the conventional and imaginary barriers between ancient and modern history, and to show that ancient society was at bottom governed by the same laws which are obeyed by society in the nineteenth century. Stanley owes much of his material to Ewald. He also adds much that was the result of his own study, and he brings to his work powers that were peculiarly his own. The first part of his ' Lectures on Jewish History ' con- tains little or nothing that is new, unless it be the account of Machpelah. It is a companion volume to ' Sinai and Palestine,' and it is on the geographical side that his work is most original. But this want of novelty can scarcely be regarded as a fault, since the object is rather to illustrate the salient points and leading characters in the growth of the Jewish people than to break new ground or to pro- mote Biblical science. Nor, again, are the lectures remark- able for analytical sagacity, critical acuteness, or logical power. But the special line that Stanley chose afforded little scope for the display of these qualities, even had they been at his command. He kept his object too steadily before him, and was too conscious of his own mental deficiencies, to wander into fields which belong to other 112 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY purposes and to other minds. So far, the defects which may be discovered in the book are inseparable from its design. Other, more positive, blemishes were due to the manner of its composition. The diffuseness of some of the chapters belongs to the oral form of their original delivery as lectures ; the air of haste and want of finish, by which this, as well as his other work, is sometimes char- acterised, result from his habit of rapid writing ; the tendency to make rhetorical points, or to sacrifice sober inquiry to the enforcement of moral lessons, is the fault of a sermon-writer, and in this case springs directly from the delivery of some portions of the work from the pulpit ; the scantiness of detail which is occasionally visible, and the superabundance of illustration that overlays the gravity and reticence of the Bible, are blemishes which only the most fastidious taste can eradicate from picturesque historical writing. The most serious defect is the want of critical power, which shows itself in various ways — in exaggera- tions, in the excessive laudation of Ewald, and in the rashness which, for instance, attempts a new version of Deborah's song, in spite of an acknowledged deficiency in Hebrew scholarship. Defects, both positive and negative, may be alleged against Stanley's ' Lectures on the Jewish Church ' ; errors and inaccuracies may be discovered in his pages. But his largeness of view, his varied learning, his happy sense of historical analogy, his dramatic feeling, his picturesque imagination, his human-heartedness, enthusiasm and earnestness, enabled him to paint the real life, character, and surroundings of the actors in Jewish history with a vividness, a richness, and a vitality that were never before equalled, and have never been surpassed. He threw an unfailing geniality and freshness into his work, until the reader is carried away by his enthusiasm. CHAP. XIX 'LECTURES ON THE JEWISH CHURCH' II3 Writing in unbroken sympathy with the scenes and persons he describes, throwing himself back into the past with the vigour of a contemporary actor, painting his his- torical and geographical pictures with the hand of a mas- ter vividly impressed with a sense of the continuity of history, he did more than any other English scholar to give living human interest to the Biblical narrative. His keen sense of the relations of past and present is one of the most characteristic features of his lectures ; another, is the vividness of his historical imagination ; a third, is the vigour and vitality of his historical or geo- graphical pictures. Everywhere the parallel between the past and the present is before his mind. In the earliest times he finds counterparts with modern features. He forces upon our notice the thought that the actors in the Bible were men of like passions with ourselves, and the actions in which their feelings found expression were substantially the same, though accidentally different. No detail is too small for his notice, because nothing is wholly unrelated or disconnected to one who possesses Stanley's power of detecting remote analogies or bringing to the light hidden resemblances. And this sense of the continuity of history not only gives breath to his treatment of the Biblical narrative : it also, in his skilful hands, becomes a valuable instrument in the vivid expression of his imaginative insight into the character and surroundings of ancient history. The power with which Stanley realises to himself scenes, times, or personages that have become almost mythical from too great or too little familiarity, is one of the most striking of his gifts as an historian. His wide historical knowl- edge and his warm sympathies, his insatiable curiosity for details, his love of studying human character, were com- bined with an active imagination, an eye which was poeti- VOL. II I 114 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1862 cal in the keenness of its penetration, and a dramatic feeling which seized intuitively upon the salient features. The same qualities were at work when he visited any historical scene. As he possessed much of the poet's insight into character, so also he possessed the inward eye of the painter, which calls up groups, and combines, in their original colour and freshness, the details which pass before other men's vision without making any impression. The figure or the scene which he thus realised to him- self he brought before his readers with a vividness pecul- iar to himself. In his own life he always carried about with him a sense that he was moving through history and taking a part in its course. This feeling was not due to vanity ; for he looked upon the humblest of his contem- poraries in the same light, and repeated their sayings and doings with the same eagerness with which other men might quote the words or the actions of some world-re- nowned figure. But the habitual practice of thus repre- senting to himself contemporary history was one great secret of the freshness with which he painted the past. He spared no pains to bring home to his readers in the most familiar form the idea that he wished to convey. When, for instance, he lectures at Edinburgh on Solomon, he is careful to inquire beforehand whether he can be told of any building in the city or in the neighbourhood which corresponds to any of the dimensions of the Temple. Similarly, in the ' Lectures on the Jewish Church,' and in all his historical writings, suggestive parallels, comparisons, and analogies between ancient and modern men, epochs, or scenes, are employed to bring out the reality of the Old World, and to impart to its inhabi- tants the roundness and substance of contemporary life. In the preparation of his lectures for the press Stanley was reminded at every page of his mother, to whose criti- CHAP. XIX 'SUCCESS OF THE LECTURES' cism they had been submitted before deUvery. When the book itself appeared, its reception both by the pubUc and by friends revived in all its keenness the pain of his loss. Its success was robbed of its charm by the loss of her to whom it would have been most dear. His mother's death seemed to have left a blank in his life which nothing could supply. As each letter arrived, it recalled to his mind ' the eager expectation with which those letters were ex- pected in former days, when, at each successive birth of my progeny, my dearest mother looked out for any note of ap- probation or disapprobation as the one event of the day. That is gone for ever. No one can ever again fill that place for me. But still these kind tokens seem to me like echoes or reverberations of her voice, and as such I gladly welcome them. She had read everything in the book (though not quite in its revised state) except the appendices, the notes, and the preface and introduction. These last were written in jottings during my voyage from Marseilles to Alexan- dria ; and I had written to tell her of their completion in the letters which never reached her.' Inquiries into the authorship of the books of the Bible, investigations of the geology, natural history, and astronomy of the sacred narrative, and all the numerous theories of inspiration were, Stanley believed, legitimate subjects of discussion, because upon them the Articles and the Liturgy expressed no opinion. He felt that on all these points, as he says in the brief note on Colenso's volume appended to his Lectures, 'the cause of religion has nothing to lose, and evefything to gain, by free inquiry.' But in his ' Lectures on the Jewish Church ' he had, for various reasons, en- deavoured to avoid the controversies which, during the last three years, so vehemently agitated the Church on questions of Biblical criticism and the relations of theology to science He well knew that the course v/hich he adopted would rather alienate than attract support, and that his book, to use his words to Henry Bunsen, would be ' condemned by Il6 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1863 the advanced liberals as not going far enough, while those who are reputed " orthodox" will try to suppress it.' But though his own lectures avoided points of contemporary controversy, he could not stand aloof from the agitation for the relaxation or increased stringency of the terms of sub- cription, to which recent discussions were giving vital im- portance. In the question of legal forms of declaration was involved one of his two leading ideas in ecclesiastical poli- tics. Without latitude of subscription his dream of a com- prehensive National Church, finding room in her bosom for all Christian people, was impossible of fulfilment. Stanley's interest in the question of subscription be- longed to an older date than the publication of ' Essays and Reviews,' or the appearance of Colenso's criticisms on the Pentateuch. The attitude which he throughout main- tained on the subject is a remarkable proof that his opinions were not too fluid for consistency. As an undergraduate he had thrown himself warmly into the cause of Dr. Hampden, against those who desired to suspend or censure the Professor for heresy." The scruples respecting the Athanasian Creed, which tormented him at the time of his Ordination,^ enabled him to appreciate the similar scruples of others. But his sympathies were also extended to those from whom he differed. In 1840 he had joined in the petition,^ presented to the House of Lords by Archbishop Whately, which pleaded for a latitude of subscription in favour of opinions opposed to his own. Writing in that year to Canon Wodehouse, he took up a position from which he never receded : ' I confine myself exclusively to the grievance of sub- scription. This I have well considered — as well, perhaps, as Vol. i. Chap. VI. 8 Vol. i. Chap. VII. » Vol. i. Chap. VIII. CHAP. XIX QUESTION OF SUBSCRIPTION 117 I ever shall — and have been called to the consideration of it by such a call as can never occur again [his Ordination]. But the questions whether Nevvmanism is true or false, whether the Baptismal or Ordination services, or even the damnatory clauses themselves, are wrong, are all points on which I do not think I have any business to write at present. And therefore I feel convinced that the only way of keep- ing quite straight is to limit myself strictly to my own field, viz., that the present subscription is a grievance.' He had voted against every stage of the measures by which the terms of subscription were used as the instru- ment to remove Dr. Pusey and his friends from their academical position. He had procured, at the cost of con- siderable labour, the opinion of two eminent lawyers against the imposition of the test which it was proposed to impose with the same object. He had himself signed and procured signatures for the Address of Thanks to the Proctors for their firmness in defeating the attempt to procure the same result by the condemnation of ' Tract 90.' In 1850 he had warmly welcomed the latitude of opinion which was conceded to the Evangelicals by the decision of the Privy Council in the case of Mr. Gorham. At the time of the University Commission he bad used strenuous efforts to procure the relaxation of terms which were then used as weapons against the followers of Dr. Pusey. He had forcibly pleaded against the legal pro- ceedings by which it was sought to drive from the Church the authors of ' Essays and Reviews.' He had found, from recent experience in the case of the Greek Professorship at Oxford, that the latitude of interpretation for which he pleaded was not conceded to theological opponents, even by those who had most suffered by a narrow construction. He had learned that no considerations of faithful services struck the weapons furnished by the enforcement of the 1" Vol. i. Chap. IX. 11 Vol. i. Chap. X. Il8 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1863 existing terms of subscription from the hands of con- tending parties in ecclesiastical politics. If other proofs were wanting of the futility of relying on mutual tolerance, they were supplied by the prosecution of Professor Jowett which was commenced, at the end of 1862, by ' Pusey, Heurtley, and Ogilvie — Heurtley and Ogilvie having both in former times pronounced judicially that Pusey's doc- trines were contrary to the Articles.' Few men in England had, therefore, a better right to be heard on the question of subscription than Stanley. \vy 1862 the subject was forced upon public attention by recent controversies. The demand for the relaxation of the forms of declaration required by the law of the land was met by a corresponding demand for increased stringency. Bishop Tait, in his second diocesan Charge (1862), boldly declared himself in favour of a 'generous and confiding policy' as 'the best and most Christian' attitude. Lord Ebury in the House of Lords, and Mr. Dodson in the Lower House, became the mouthpieces of those who demanded a simplification and relaxation in the terms of subscription. Early in 1863 Stanley was invited to meet Mr. Gladstone at the Duchess of Sutherland's, to discuss the subject with him. 'When I arrived there were only the two little Glad- stone boys there — at tea — Herbert and Henry — good little creatures. They were in some alarm at having dropped some jam into the crystalline butter-bowl. But I managed to mop it up with my pocket-handkerchief.' After dinner the subject of subscription was introduced. 'We went on discussing it till after the ladies were gone, and on till 12.30 p.m. {sic). It was an immense relief to me. Gladstone was most satisfactory. If he were to say publicly what he said privately, the question would be settled. I was extremely glad to have the opportunity of giving him all my mind ; and he, lending himself to it with CHAP. XIX LETTER TO THE BISHOP OF LONDON II9 the astounding readiness which he has, completely under- stood everything which I said. ' What made all this profusion of talk the more remark- able was, that he was full of the Budget, which comes on next Thursday.' A few days later Stanley published his * Letter to the Lord Bishop of London on the State of Subscription in the Church of England and in the University of Oxford.' The pamphlet is a remarkably powerful and telling argument against the network of obligations and pledges which an anomalous and irregular machinery had, in the course of three centuries of ecclesiastical and political struggles, drawn across the threshold of Ordination and University degrees. It admits that the stringent form of subscription then required could only be subscribed as involving a general, not a particular, assent. But it points out that it was in the power of any ' malignant and narrow-minded partisan ' to 'rattle up the sleeping lions, heedless of the reflection that, when aroused, they will devour with equal indiscrimi- nation on the right hand and on the left, and so add to the general evils of controversy the great and peculiar aggrava- tions of constant imputations of dishonesty and bad faith.' It urges upon the Bishop that in the direction of relaxation must be sought one remedy at least for — ' the greatest of all calamities to the Church of England — the gradual falling-off in the supply of the intelligent, thoughtful, and highly-educated young men who, twenty and thirty years ago, were to be found at every Ordination.' Widely read and eagerly discussed, the brilliant Letter added fresh impetus to the cause of reform. After months of discussion, both in and out of Parliament, an Act of Par- liament, subsequently ratified by canons of Convocation, substituted the existing form of declaration for the I20 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY numerous and stringent oaths and pledges which were formerly binding on the clergy.^^ At the Queen's request, Stanley sent his pamphlet to Her Majesty. In a letter with which he forwarded it to Lady Augusta Bruce he says : 'Will you kindly say to Her Majesty how much honoured I feel by her request to read it ? I should not have presumed to send it, because I am so unwilling ever to appear to intrude our theological and ecclesiastical troubles upon her. ' I sometimes think that it is the privilege of exalted station that it is raised above any of the petty vexations of small circles and particular professions. Do you remember the answer of Nehemiah to the people, who wanted him to leave off building the walls of Jerusalem and meet them in some village in the plain — " I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down ; why should the work cease whilst I come down to you.-"" Even in my own small sphere I feel somewhat aggrieved at having to " come down" from building up the lives of David and Solomon, and all my dear friends in the Bible history, to enter into this controversy about subscription. 'Now I go back with renewed pleasure to "the walls of Jerusalem." It is a great pleasure to me that I have those interests on which to fall back, and it gives me increasing confidence in any attempts that I have made for widening the Church to feel that in so doing I am working, not against the Bible or the Church of England, but most entirely in the spirit of both.' ^- The Act was passed in 1865. ' In lieu of expressing in several successive sets of words his "unfeigned assent and consent to all and everything" within the covers of the Prayer Book, and to an acknowledgment that " all and every one of the Articles, being in number nine-and-thirty, besides the Ratification, are agreeable to the word of God," a clergyman has now on his Ordination to declare once and for all as follows : " I assent to the Thirty- Nine Articles of Religion, and to the Book of Common Prayer, and of Order- ing of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons; I believe the doctrine of the Church of England as therein set forth to be agreeable to the word of God; and in public prayer and administration of the Sacraments I will use the form in the said book prescribed, and none other, except so far as shall be ordered by lawful authority'" {Life of Archbishop Tail, vol. i. Chap. XVII. pp. 494-5). CHAP. XIX THE QUEEN AND STANLEY 121 The Queen's request for Stanley's pamphlet on sub- scription afforded one of many indications of the increasing favour with which he was regarded at Court. In March 1862 he had been appointed one of the Honorary Chaplains, and, a few months later, a Deputy Clerk of the Closet. In the autumn of the same year the Queen had wished him to be a bishop, but had not pressed her wish on the Prime Minister, finding that Lord Palmerston was opposed to the appointment, and doubting whether Stanley desired the position. The intimate relations with the Royal Family into which he was brought supplied him with a new source of interest, and gratified what he describes as his 'historical curiosity to penetrate into unknown regions.' Yet one cloud marred his pleasure. 'A year ago,' he writes on December 14th, 1862, after performing a memorial service to the late Prince Consort, ' it would have been the climax of human interest. Now the charm of these scenes is sadly worn off ; yet still I doubt whether there could have been anyone in England to whom they could have been more moving than to me.' Originally introduced to the Prince Consort by Baron Bunsen, Stanley had been appointed to be one of the Prince's Chaplains. But it was not till after his return from the second tour in the East that he was brought into close relations with the Queen. The sacrifice which he had made in leaving England to accompany the Prince of Wales to Palestine, and the value of his companionship throughout the tour, had been warmly appreciated. Deeply moved by the circumstances of his mother's death, the Queen had, through Lady Augusta Bruce, expressed her sympathy with him in the loss. Throughout the tour Her Majesty had been warmly interested in the extracts from his letters, which Miss Stanley forwarded to Windsor. And it was to Stanley that in June r862 the Queen 122 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1863 turned, in the absence of General Bruce, for the private details of the expedition. Thus began relations which gradually ripened into unreserved and friendly confidence. At the Queen's request, his Sermons Preached in the East before the Prince of Wales were privately printed. Both in what they say and in what they omit to say the sermons are remarkably characteristic. ' My " Sermons in the East," ' he writes to the present Dean of Westminster in November 1862, ' were to me on the journey an immense relief, and it was a great satisfaction to find that by the end of the time I had said in them almost everything that I could have wished to say.' Free from dogmatic exposition, brief, bold, and manly, they were directed to the practical end of influencing life and conduct. Avoiding doctrinal questions or contro- versial disputes, they fasten upon those essential principles which he had himself found to be the best support of the Christian character. Writing to Lady Augusta Bruce in May 1863, he says : 'It was one of the blessings of my journey in the East, on which I look back with true thankfulness, that I had to fix my attention on those parts of Christianity which were at once the most important and the most clear of any of these modern controversies. These I knew would be most useful for the Prince of Wales, as they were also most useful to me.' The persuasive earnestness and solemn eloquence of his practical appeals, the picturesqueness of the language, the felicitous use of local colour, the skilful adaptation of the natural features which each spot in turn presented to 1^ The Sermons were subsequently published. Sermons Preached before /lis Royal Highness the Prince of IVales during his Tour in the East in the Spring of 1862, with Notices of some of the Localities visited. Published by command. London, 1863. CHAP. XIX THE QUEEN AND STANLEY 123 the enforcement of moral lessons, triumphed over the difficult conditions of their delivery. In the midst of all the distractions of foreign travel they riveted the attention of those who heard them. Nor did Stanley's opinion of the sermons change with years. In 1875 he alludes to them in a letter written to the Hon. Lady Welby : ' You ask about my sermons. Since I published my " Sermons in the East " (those which I preached before the Prince of Wales, and which, I think, contain my thoughts on the most sacred and spiritual subjects more truly than anything else that I have written) I have printed none, except in " Good Words," &c. I have an impression that they do not reach the public, and I have an instinctive dread of asking the world to read what it professes not to care for.' In the summer and autumn of 1862 Stanley was more than once summoned to Windsor or to Osborne. The news of the engagement of the Prince of Wales was sent to him from Laeken, bringing him, as he says in September 1862, 'one ray of real happiness.' At the anniversary of the Prince Consort's death he spent a week at Windsor. ' Such a week of various mournful, moving scenes I never passed.' On Sunday, December 14th, 1862, two special services were held in the Queen's private rooms, both of which were conducted by Stanley. '. . . The Queen had desired that I should read some part of the last chapters of St. John, some prayers, and perhaps an extract from my Sermon. ... In the morning I went at g.45 to Mrs. Bruce's room, and with her and Lady Augusta fo the fatal room. I went in first. There was the valet who had been with him at his death. There was a table placed for me. In a few moments they came in. I began by kneeling down and reading two prayers, chiefly made up from the Burial Service. I then sate down and read John xiv. 1-6, 18-20, 27, 28; xvi. 7, 16-22, 28, 32, 33, and upon these verses read about five pages of reflec- tions, which I had written in the morning. Then two more 124 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1S63 prayers and the Lord's Prayer, and an enlarged form of the Blessing. The Queen then rose from the bedside, where she had been kneeling, kissed the Princesses (I think the Princes kissed her hand), kissed the Bruces, and then came across to me. I knelt and kissed her hand, and she passed away with all the others. . . . ' . . . The room was almost exactly as it was when I saw it before, except, perhaps, that there were fresh garlands of flowers on the beds and round the bust. It was a very bright morning, and there was nothing of funeral gloom in the room. The great state bed, in which the kings had died, had been moved out early in the illness to make room for smaller beds. . . . '. . . I then returned to my room and revised my sermon. The service was at 12 — Litany and Communion Service as usual. There was the usual congregation — none of the Royal Family present, except the Prince of Wales and Prince Louis. . . .' He adds a postscript to tell his sister of the Queen's satisfaction with the service, and to send her a rough draft of the prayers which he had used. ' You will be pleased to hear that the Queen expressed to Mrs. Bruce the greatest comfort and satisfaction in the service of this morning, and had desired that I would print it privately for her use, and also asked me to read again this evening, at about 9.30 (the hour of the death), which I did. There were present the whole family, the Bruces, the Duchess of Athole, Lady C. Barrington, and a few servants.' Of his private interviews with the Queen during the week at Windsor Stanley records every detail for the gratification of his sister. His stay closed with the con- secration of the Mausoleum at Frogmore, and the subsequent memorial service. 'At II the Dean of Christ Church arrived, and with him and the Bishop of Oxford we went to the Mausoleum. The whole Household were there. The clergy (the Bishop, the two Deans, and two or three of the Windsor clergy) were on a raised platform at the east end, immediately above the CHAP. XIX EASTER AT SANDRINGH AM, 1863 1 25 sarcophagus. The Queen and all the children came in when everyone was assembled. They remained inside whilst the clergy and choir walked round chanting the Psalm. The Bishop then read the two or three prayers extremely well, and then were sung two hymns. I could not see, indeed, I did not venture to look at, the Queen. Then was read the Deed of Consecration (prefaced by the letter of the Queen herself) by Sir R. Phillimore. Then she and the family passed out, and we returned as we came. The Dean of Christ Church received a message to stay for the night, and had an interview both with the Prince of Wales and the Queen. . . . After dinner I was summoned to the Queen. She was sitting with the Princess Alice. There was a good deal of conversation, about " Essays and Reviews," about the Apocalypse, the Psalms — most interesting. 'This morning (Thursday) I walked with the Household to the Mausoleum. The coffin had been moved early in the morning, and deposited in a temporary sarcophagus. We all assembled outside. Then came the Queen and children, who passed in first. . . . The Dean of Windsor stood alone at a small table and read passages from the Bible, wonderfully appropriate — "the sepulchre in the garden," " the new sepulchre," &c., and an admirable prayer. He was deeply affected, and could hardly struggle through. Then the Queen and children went and knelt by the coffin, each depositing their wreath, and passed out. Each of the Household, from Lord Granville downwards, went up and deposited their wreaths in like manner. It was extremely touching ; more so than the ceremony yesterday ; as much so almost as the funeral.' During his visit to Windsor the Prince of Wales had verbally invited Stanley to administer the Sacrament to him and the Princess Alexandra at Sandringham on Easter Sunday, 1863. The Prince was married on March loth, 1863. On the following Sunday Stanley preached a sermon at Whitehall on ' Christ at the Marriage in Cana,' which con- vinced more than one of his hearers that he who could thus describe married life ' might make his own, if he had a wife, the perfection of human bliss.' 126 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1863 ' In spite of all the fancies and perversions and exag- gerations of later times, the institution of Christian marriage and the blessings of a Christian home are such as have indeed been worthy of " this beginning of miracles." A happy marriage is a new beginning of life, a new starting- point for happiness and usefulness ; it is the great opportu- nity once for all to leave the past, with all its follies and faults and errors, far, far behind us for ever, and to press forward with new hopes, and new courage, and new strength into the future which opens before us. A happy home is the best likeness of heaven ; a home where husband and wife, father and mother, brother and sister, child and parent, each in their several ways, help each the other forward in their difficult course as no other human being can ; for none else has the same opportunities ; none else so know the character of any other ; none else has such an interest at stake in the welfare, and the fame, and the grace, and the goodness of anyone else as of those who are bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, in whose happiness and glory we ourselves become happy and glorious, in whose misery we become miserable, by whose selfishness, and weakness, and worldliness we are dragged down to earth ; by whose purity, and nobleness, and strength we are raised up, almost against our will, to duty, to heaven, and to God.' A fortnight later the Prince of Wales by letter renewed his verbal invitation to Sandringham. ' It would be especially agreeable to me,' writes the Prince, 'as last Easter Sunday we took the Holy Sacrament together at the Lake of Tiberias.' ' On the evening of Easter-eve,' writes Stanley, ' the Princess came to me in a corner of the drawing-room with her Prayer Book, and I went through the Communion Service with her, explaining the peculiarities, and the like- nesses, and differences to and from the Danish service. She was most simple and fascinating.' In a letter to the Rev. J. N. Simpkinson, Stanley speaks of the pleasure which his visit to Sandringham afforded him : CHAP. XIX CONVERSATION WITH THE QUEEN 12/ ' I turn to a better and more cheering side of the world. . . . My visit to Sandringham gave me intense pleasure. The Easter-day at Tiberias was the one day on which I look back in our whole journey with quite unmixed satisfaction, and therefore it was a great matter of thankfulness that the Prince should have wished to keep such a remembrance of it. I was there for three days. I read the whole service, preached, and then gave the first English Sacrament to this " Angel in the Palace." I saw a good deal of her, and can truly say that she is as charming and beautiful a creature as ever passed through a fairy-tale.' The summer of 1863 found Stanley again at Osborne. Among the topics that were touched upon in an interview with the Queen, he 'asked for an account of the news of her accession. "It was this. About 6 a.m. mamma came and called me, said I must go and see Lord Conyngham directly — alone. I got up, put on my dressing-gown, and went into a room where I found Lord Conyngham and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Lord Conyngham knelt, kissed my hand, and gave me the certificate of the King's death. In an hour from that time Baron Stockmar came. He had been sent over by King Leopold on hearing of the King's dangerous illness. At 2 P.M. that same day I went to the Council, led by my two uncles, the King of Hanover, and the Duke of Cambridge. ' " Lord Melbourne was very useful to me, but I can never be sufficiently thankful that I passed safely through those two years to my marriage. Then I was in a safe haven, and there I remained for twenty years. Now that is over, and I am again at sea, always wishing to consult one who is not here, groping by myself, with a constant sense of desolation." ' Children were always attracted to Stanley, and he com- pletely won the heart of Princess Beatrice, then a child of six years old. He had first met the Princess, in the corridor at Windsor, in November 1862. ' She was with Mrs. Bruce, and when I came up to them there was much whispering and entreaty. She wished Mrs. Bruce to ask a question which she was at last induced 128 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1863 to put herself. " Is it true that he can neither taste nor smell ? " Then followed an animated conversation on tasting and smelling.' At Osborne in July, he describes a tea-party with her at the Swiss Cottage ; a surprise of curds and sugar in the summer-house ; a game of croquet, in which he was defeated ; a visit to the Confectionery, ' a fascinating place piled up with cakes of every description, but guarded by a witch, whom I was first obliged to exorcise.' He also records with particular delight another scene at the Swiss Cottage. 'The Princess offered Mrs. Bruce some cakes of her own making. Mrs. Bruce declined them. "Very well, then," said the Princess, "as Dr. Stanley is not here I shall give them to the donkey." ' CHAP. XX THOUGHTS OF MARRIAGE 129 CHAPTER XX August-December, 1863 THOUGHTS OF MARRIAGE — PROSPECTS OF PREFERMENT — TOUR IN ITALY— ENGAGEMENT TO LADY AUGUSTA BRUCE — ACCEPTANCE OF THE DEANERY OF WESTMINSTER — SER- MON ON 'GREAT OPPORTUNITIES' — MARRIAGE — INSTAL- LATION AS DEAN During the year and a half which had elapsed since his mother's death Stanley had met with many interests to withdraw his attention from dwelling too exclusively upon his bereavement. But, even in the midst of distractions that formerly would have absorbed his mind, he was oppressed by a numbing sense of loneliness. Neither the excitement of controversy, nor preaching, nor literary work, nor lec- tures, nor Court favour, filled the blank in his life. His relations, his friends, and he himself, grew conscious that something more was needed to restore the buoyancy of his spirits, to revive his hopefulness, to replace the broken mainspring of action. A happy marriage seemed to offer the only substitute for all that he had lost, and his sisters were rejoiced to find, not only that his thoughts were turn- ing in that direction, but that, if his feelings were recipro- cated, his choice was made. Stanley's connection with the Court brought him fre- quently into contact with Lady Augusta Bruce.^ The acquaintance between them was of long standing. It dated at least from 1857, when they had met in Paris at the house 1 Lady Augusta Bruce was the 5th daughter of the 7th Earl of Elgin. VOL. II K I30 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1863 of Madame Mohl. A letter from Mrs. Stanley, written in January 1862, seems to show that she was aware of the impression which Lady Augusta had already made upon her son. Lady Augusta had written to thank her for the present of a little book, compiled by Mrs. Vaughan, and called ' Rays of Sunlight for Dark Days.' ' It was,' replies Mrs. Stanley, * your devoted friend, Arthur Stanley, and not his mother, who sent the little book. I have forwarded your most kind answer to him, and I need hardly say how gratified he, and still more Mrs. Vaughan, will feel at the opportunity given to any of those selected words of conveying a drop of com- fort to any one of that sacred family, for sacred truly the whole nation considers it. ' One word more allow me, dear Lady Augusta. How often we have spoken and thought of the blessing of know- ing that jo!( were there, and of imagining, from what we did know, w/iat you would be, at such a time, of strength and support, and, when the time for it came, of cheerfulness.' Recent events had not only thrown Stanley into the society of Lady Augusta ; they had also drawn them closely together. The bond between them was interwoven with many strands of human sorrow. Within the space of four months, the one had lost a brother, the other a mother. Their mutual friends remarked with pleasure the growing intimacy. It had been the cherished wish of General Bruce, that two persons so eminently fitted to be the complement of each other's happiness should learn to know and love one another. 'I never saw,' he told his wife in i860, 'two people so likely to suit each other as Dr. Stanley and Augusta.' In January 1862, after dwelling on the advantage that it was both to the Prince of Wales and himself to secure the companionship of Stanley, he had added : ' This will also help my design of making him meet Augusta.' Always dependent in a peculiar degree on feminine sym- CHAP. XX HIS RUMOURED ENGAGEMENT pathy, Stanley felt, with an ever-increasing sense of loneli- ness, the blank which his mother's death had left, and the loss of the strength and support which he had derived from her encouragement, and which, in Church matters, he could no longer receive from his sister Mary. In the late sum- mer of 1863 rumours were rife of his engagement to Lady Augusta Bruce. The report was premature. Stanley still hesitated to declare his feelings. ' It is clear to me,' he says in August to Mary Stanley, ' that, if life and health are spared to me, my course will never again be smooth. I feel that in the Church a line has been marked out for me which I cannot abandon, to which I shall have often to give my undivided soul, which would require all the thought and labour and time that I could bestow. I do not doubt that I should derive immense support — indeed, that I might gain new strength and life altogether — from one who would feel with me and think for me in such a career. This, you know, our dearest mother was to me. But I shrink from imposing on anyone else the burden which she undertook from her own natural love and sympathy.' In September 1863, while still hesitating over the most important step of his life, he started with his sister Mary and Hugh Pearson on a tour through Italy, in which Canosa, Rome, and Monte Casino were to be the principal points of interest. Before he left England, rumour was again busy with his name in connection with Church pre- ferment. So confidently was it stated that he had been offered the Archbishopric of Dublin, that Bishop Tait wrote begging him not to decline the offer. His answer was as follows : ' Christ Church, Oxford : Sept. 1863. ' My dear Bishop, — I did not answer your kind note because there was nothing to say. I have had absolutely no communication on the subject. ' But, were the Archbishopric to be offered, I think that I must decline it. An English see you know that, how- K 2 132 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1863 ever reluctantly, I should feel it my duty to take ; because in the Church of England I have a real interest, and should esteem it wrong to neglect any possible opportunity of rendering it a service. ' But the Irish Church I cannot seriously defend as an institution. And its whole position as a " missionary church," on which ground alone the great proportion of the English public maintain it, I think even more untenable than the institution itself. ' How could I, then, with hardly any sympathy in Ire- land or England, do any good there ' I think I anticipate your arguments in behalf of my taking it : there would be more leisure than in an English see ; and there would be a chance of being more indepen- dent of these endless Biblical and critical wrangles than one can be in England. ' Nevertheless, the great arguments against leaving Eng- land (including also the Queen) and going to Ireland are too powerful. 'What Butler said wrongly about Canterbury I think I may truly say (in my humble measure) of Dublin : " It is too late to support a falling Church." ' Ever yours truly, 'A. P. Stanley.' Before writing this answer he had heard that the Deanery of Westminster was likely to become vacant by the elevation of Dr. Trench to the Archbishopric of Dublin. He knew that in all probability the Deanery would be offered to him. While the public was hotly discussing his possible elevation to the Irish archbishopric, he was making up his mind that, if the offer came, he would leave Oxford for Westminster. But before he finally decided he asked the advice of Dr. Liddell, then Dean of Christ Church, in the soundness of whose judgment he placed implicit confidence : ' The Archbishop of Dublin is believed to be dying. It is thought by many that Trench will be his successor. It is with a heavy heart that I anticipate, as a not improbable consequence, the offer of Westminster to myself. As has CHAP. XX PROSPECT OF LEAVING OXFORD SO often happened to me in life, the change, which to many would seem the most delightful, possibly would be to me, now, and for the present at least, full of pain and repugnance. ' But, if it were offered, I think that, for various cogent reasons, which you can figure to yourself, at least in part, without any description, I ought not to decline it. ' I shall, in all probability, be still abroad when the vacancy (if so be) occurs, and shall therefore be out of reach of immediate communication. But you will probably know whether the offer has been made, and from this letter you will know beforehand that (unless unforeseen arguments from yourself or anyone else should intercept my acceptance) I should, however reluctantly, accept the Deanery.' Stanley had taken so firm a root at Oxford that the idea of change, always distasteful to his mind, was unwel- come. Yet there was much in the condition of the Univer- sity which rendered him less averse to seek another sphere of usefulness. During the past three years Oxford had again become the battle-ground of party strife. The atmosphere had grown parched and dry with the heat of theological controversy. Society was split up by feuds, which poisoned social intercourse and dissolved private friendships. Towards Stanley himself, who was prom- inently identified with three of the contests that were raging in the University, the language of his theological opponents had become intensely embittered. Of one of the leaders he says, ' So entirely is he, in this respect, bereft of reason as to render charity comparatively easy.' Of the movement in favour of relaxing the terms of subscription Stanley had made himself the mouthpiece, and all change was vehemently opposed by both the two great parties in the University. Into the struggle for the endowment of the Greek Professorship he threw himself with all the energy of his chivalrous nature.^ For six years * A Speech delivered in the House of Convocation, November 20, l86l, on the Endowment of the Regius Professorship of Greek. With Notes. By Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D. Oxford, 1861. 134 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1863 he had watched Professor Jowett assiduously and laboriously lecturing to the most intellectual of the undergraduates, and living the life of a hermit, that he might devote more time to his work. No hindrance was interposed by Heads of Houses or tutors to prevent the young men under their charge from attending his lectures. By accepting his labours the University, as Stanley argued, incurred the obligation, that she was bound in simple honour and justice to discharge, of rewarding him with the same reasonable endowments with v/hich she remunerated other professors. She was boun'd, in his opinion, either to accept Professor Jowett's teaching and reward him, or to refuse his teaching and withhold the reward. Yet, time after time, the Uni- versity, while accepting his work, was induced by a combi- nation of ecclesiastical parties to reject the proposal to increase the endowment of the Greek chair beyond the paltry sum of ^40 a year. At the end of 1862 the struggle assumed a new phase. Dr. Pusey, in union with Professor Heurtley and Professor Ogilvie, commenced the prosecution of Professor Jowett for heresy in the Vice-Chancellor's Court at Oxford. The result of such a step was not for one moment doubtful. So confident was Stanley of the triumph of the accused, that he used his influence to stifle a protest, which some members of the University were anxious to promote. But in a sermon ^ preached before the University on February 8th, 1863, he directly attacks the ^Theological hatred — the hatred of Christians by each other for their theological opinions, the bitter internecine hatred of those of whom in former ages it was said, " See how they love one another." ' The rules which in that sermon he lays down to abate the * The sermon was published. Human Corruption : A Sermon preached before the University of Oxford on Sexagesima Sunday, February 8, 1863. Oxford, 1863. CHAP. XX K/NCSLEV'S DEGREE evil of controversy were rules which he himself always endeavoured to practise : * Never condemn a book unless ive have read it. . . . ' Let us determine never to condemn in one man the same sentiment which in another we forgive or applaud. . . . ' Let us never judge of one side of the question without hearing or reading the other side. . . . ' Let ns never impute to our opponents, tvhether Churches, sects, or individuals, intentions which they themselves dis- claim, f tor fasten upon them opprobriotts names which they themselves repudiate. . . . ' Let us never attack anyone zvithout first making out deliberately, carefully, seriously, all the poifits wherein we agree ; and then, and ftot till then, stating the points zvherein ive disagree ; and stating these also to ourselves no less de- liberately, carefully, and seriously, lest, after all, there be perchance no disagreernent at all, or not that which we thought there was.' The summer of 1863 added a third contest, which v/as provoked by the same theological bitterness. Stanley and Dr. Liddell had proposed that the University should confer the honorary degree of D.C.L.on the Rev. Charles Kingsley. The proposal was resisted by Dr. Pusey, partly on the ground of Kingsley's universalism, but more particularly on the ground that 'Hypatia' was a work not fit to be read by our 'wives and sisters.' To Stanley the attack on 'Hypatia' seemed the more unjustifiable and offensive because the book had been recommended to him by Mrs. Augustus Hare, and because he had himself urged his mother to read it. He carefully prepared a speech for the Council, in which he demanded 'that the aspersions cast upon the moral character of the book, in the gross language which I have copied out from Pusey's lips, be withdrawn.' In writing to Dr. Liddell on the subject he adds a note which, to those who remember him in later days, is curious : 136 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1863 ' I will write out what I mean to say, and bring it with me. Unfortunately, I have not the slightest presence of mind or fluency of utterance on these occasions.' But though the atmosphere of controversy in which he was plunged made him, in one sense, eager to leave Oxford, it supplied another, and more powerful, in- ducement to remain. He could not endure the thought of leaving his friends to fight their battles alone. Dr. Liddell, in replying to Stanley's letter, strongly dis- suaded him from accepting the Deanery of Westminster. The advice, as Stanley afterwards said, would have power- fully influenced his decision ; but the letter missed him at Milan, and did not reach him till January 1864, when the change was already made. Dr. Liddell's advice was plain- spoken : ' . . . I apprehend from your language that if the Deanery of Westminster falls vacant, you knozv it will be offered you. Well, I heartily regret it, partly for selfish reasons, no doubt, but partly because I really think you would be both more useful and happier in your Chair at Oxford. Life in London, no doubt, has its bright side ; but to live perforce for eight months in Westminster is {experto crede) not an enviable lot. Preaching in the Abbey will give you a wide scope of influence ; but I know not how far your physical powers will be adequate to fill that vast space ; and I much question whether any influence you may there exert will, in reality, be nearly so great as that which you have at Oxford. There, at best, you will infuse a flavour or a fermenting action into the mass ; at Oxford you create the flavour and the fermenting leaven itself. You will have a seat in Convocation. But that is a barren honour : and I think you will soon come to the conclusion that the time spent in that body of debate, not action, is wasted time. Nor will you be more at Her Majesty's service at West- minster than at Oxford ; nay, not so much. For, being bound to eight months' residence, and desiring (as you will desire) some time for travel, the time at your command will become more limited than at present it is. CHAP. XX VISIT TO CANOSA 'These are my honest conclusions. No doubt most of them have occurred to you, and I cannot expect that they will have any weight against other considerations.' The letter, as has been said, miscarried, and before Stanley's return he had decided to accept the Deanery of Westminster. The tour lasted till the end of October 1863. The most interesting feature was the visit to Canosa, which, according to his custom, is described in a letter to his cousin, Louisa Stanley. * H. P. and A. P. S. had both an ardent desire to visit Canosa — you remember the name, or, if not, by turning to the pages of your beloved Dean* you will find it : but we had a very faint notion of its whereabouts. It was in none of our maps ; but, happily, a single allusion in Murray's handbook indicated to H. P.'s watchful eye that it could not be very far from Parma. Accordingly, after due in- quiry at Parma, whence it seemed that no one had ever visited this famous place, we started at 6 a.m. in a carriage, leaving the dear sister (who had not been quite well) behind, to await our return. We drove for three hours over the plain, and then found ourselves in a village at the foot of the Apennines. There the road stopped, and we had to walk or ride. A country horse, with a sack on its back for a saddle, was brought out to be used between us, and we started over the hills, with a peasant for a guide. 'The great Matilda had two castles in this neighbour- hood, each planted on an almost precipitous crag ; one, evidently called from the ruddy purple colour of the rock, Rosina ; the other, possibly from its ashy paleness and hoary limestone cliff, Canosa. We hit upon Rosina first, by mistake for the other, but were warned by the solitary priest who lived there that we must go north. It was a long pull, over bare hills, under a burning sun, for two hours ; but it was well worth while. H. P., it is true, was reduced to a state of lamentable exhaustion at the end of the climb, but soon recovered himself, and is all the better for the exercise, which of itself shows how well the journey has answered for him. '.Anything more desolate than the Castle of Canosa can- * Dean Milman's History of Latin Christianity. 138 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY not be conceived. It is a ruin of a ruin : a few hovels at the foot of the hill, but the fortress itself totally deserted, and a mere collection of shattered walls ; nevertheless, the main incidents of the scene can be well made out. ' From the top of the Castle you can imagine Gregory and Matilda belle, spirituelle, j'e suis sitr" I remember Villemain saying to me, vcrtueiise j'esptre") looking out over the wide view of Apennines and plain from Lucca to Modena — her vast properties, which she then made over to her great guest. Underneath the Castle you see the road by which the Emperor came, bareheaded and barefooted, in his sackcloth and shirt, in the driving snow (different certainly from our fare on that day), through the first enclosure, of which the traces are just visible at the foot of the hill, up the winding path in the rock, to the spot still marked where he was admitted across the drawbridge, to the gateway itself, where he was compelled to stand out- side. This was the very highest height of Hildebrand's exaltation ; not Innocent, not Boniface, not John Knox, not Dr. Candlish, ever soared so high above the tem- poral powers. You will see, if I remember rightly, in the Dean's account how soon he came crashing down. ' And now every trace of the scene (except those features which I have described) is gone. Matilda's donation lost twice or three times over ; her name and Gregory's swept out of the recollection of the peasants, as if they had never been. " Who has been the owner of this castle.'" "Count Valentine of Poland." "And who before him.-*" "We do not know." A dim belief that once a Pope had been there was all that remained. The Priest of the village knew a little more from a MS. story- book that he had once had, but had lent to someone, and lost ; and on this hung all chance of the continuance of the tradition. No Englishman, as far as we could make out, had ever been there before. Perhaps in a few years the rock itself will disappear ; for, sixteen years ago, huge fragments had fallen down from the overhanging cliff, and I should not be surprised if the rest were to follow. I carried off a fragment of the stones, and a feather dropped by one of the flight of doves that, lingering, perhaps, from Matilda's dovecotes, our presence disturbed.' Yet, even in the midst of the delights of a foreign tour. CHAP. XX ENGAGEMENT TO LADY A. BRUCE 139 the prevailing note of sadness is struck. He begins a letter written to Mrs. Arnold from abroad with the words, ' A blight has fallen upon my powers of writing, at least of writing letters, against which I cannot contend. You can understand the reason, and forgive it.' At the end of October 1863, he returned to Oxford with his mind made up on both the important points which he had to decide. On November 6th he writes to his cousin, Louisa Stanley, to announce his engagement : ' On this day the proposal has been made and received, and the long-expected and widely-rumoured event will at last take place, and you will have a new cousin, Augusta. ' Dear Louisa, you will imagine with what mingled thoughts I at last ventured on this great step. But if any marriage was wrought out of many threads in earth and heaven, it has been this. Not — " Who is it that comes from the Bridal-chamber " But — " Who is it that comes from the chamber of death " " It is Raphael, the Angel of Life.'" Before his engagement was publicly known Stanley received the following letter from Lord Palmerston : '94 Piccadilly: November 8, 1863. ' My dear Sir, — The Deanery of Westminster is about to become vacant by the promotion of Dr. Trench to the Archbishopric of Dublin, and I have been authorised by the Queen to ascertain whether it would be agreeable to you to accept that Deanery when it becomes vacant. I shall have great pleasure in receiving an affirmative answer. ' My dear Sir, ' Yours faithfully, ' Palmerston. ' The Reverend Doctor A. P. Stanley.' Stanley at once accepted the offer, and the news of his approaching marriage was published on the same day (November 8th, 1863) as the announcement of his accept- ance of the Deanery of Westminster. 140 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY Among all the congratulatory letters which poured in upon him from every side, there were none that did not express delight at his approaching marriage. His friends, and particularly those who knew both him and Lady Augusta Bruce, saw in their union the best possible means of filling up the blank in his life which his mother's death had left behind, of restoring his buoyancy and cheerfulness, of ministering the sympathy and encouragement on which he was always so dependent. One lady, in the midst of warm congratulations, did, indeed, suggest that 'he will forget all about it if he happens to get hold of an interest- ing folio on the fatal morning.' But all rejoiced 'at the thought of his following out in his practice the doctrine which he preached in Whitehall Chapel on the Sunday after the Prince's marriage.' On his acceptance of the Deanery of Westminster, however, opinions were more divided. Regrets were largely mingled with congratulations. Those of his friends who were not immediately con- nected with the teaching-work of Oxford, for the most part, warmly welcomed the change. There were, indeed, some who felt misgivings at his exchange of an academic office for the wear and tear of social and polemical life in London. There were others who, holding, with Newman, that 'uni- versities are the natural centres of intellectual life,' doubted whether the influence which he was sure to gain in the wider circle of the Metropolis would compensate for the loss of the hold upon young men which his post at Oxford ensured to him. But, on the whole, his acceptance of the Deanery was regarded as a great gain to the English Church. ' You could not go on lecturing for ever,' writes Bishop Tait, 'and the calmness of the Deanery, with its great position, will be a blessing.' ' You will not leave Oxford without regret,' says the present Archbishop of Canterbury, then Head Master of Wellington College, CHAP. XX DEAN OF WESTMINSTER 141 ' but all well-wishers to the Church will rejoice in your being installed in the midst of the London clergy. And the material church of Westminster will, I hope, have to rejoice in your work there, as Canterbury did before.' The late Bishop Lightfoot, then Hulsean Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge, and his colleague as Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of London, offers his 'very hearty congratulations on your appointment. I should feel more unalloyed pleasure if I could quite recon- cile myself to the thought of your leaving Oxford. I hope, at all events, that it may not interfere with our meeting, as hitherto, at Fulham. If it does, I shall not forgive Lord Palmerston.' The late Dean of St. Paul's (R. W. Church) wrote that the * Deanery of Westminster seems made for you.' Mr. Bowen (now Lord Justice Bowen) expresses his delight ' that you are going to the Deanery of Westminster, partly because it is some mark of honour to yourself, whom ever since I was a boy I have been taught to look on as the most worthy of honour in the Church ; and quite as much because the Deanery of Westminster is the Blue Ribbon of learning and scholarship, and everybody that I know and respect feels that your appointment is what the Government have owed the country for a long time. It must be pleasant to you to know that all educated men and all the best friends of the Church of England are deeply interested in any distinction bestowed on you.' Other friends rejoiced in the 'increased nearness to the centre of action ' ; another congratulated him on the relief from 'the letter-writing drudgery of a bishop'; another pointed to ' the leisure which the Deanery affords for the continuance of literary work.' To one 'the escape to the freer atmosphere of London from the narrowness of Oxford,' to another 'the independence,' seemed a 'vast gain'; another, sympathising with his reluctance to change his 142 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1863 home, reminded him of his dread at leaving Canterbury, and the quickness with which he had taken root in the University. But among his friends at Oxford the prevailing feeling was one of almost unmixed dismay. Their pleasure at the recognition of Stanley's claims to preferment was over- powered by the sense of 'personal loss,' by 'the grievous blank, which will change the place, to some of us, both in fact and in prospect,' by 'the impossibility of finding anyone to fill your place,' by the conviction that 'your removal will throw Oxford back twent}^ years,' or that ' your going away is a serious matter, not only for your friends, but for the University,' by the 'difficulty of finding another to teach as you have done, by example even more than by precept, to be truly charitable and considerate, as well as truly liberal towards those who differ from us in opinion.' Most strongly were these or similar feelings expressed by Dr. Liddell, Professor Jowett, and Professor Donkin. ' On your intended marriage,' writes Dr. Liddell on No- vember 9th, 1863, ' I do most heartily and exultingly congratulate you. Since you lost her, whose complete union with you was to me one of the most touching and lovely traits I have met with — even in you — I felt there was a something wanted " to free the hollow heart from paining," and I felt that, under the circumstances, even in your case, that something must be a wife. May Lady Augusta be all that you wish, and you all that she hopes ! ' But here, alas ! my congratulations end. Neither for you, nor for us, nor for anyone, can I look with pleasure on your leaving your living work here for the dead mass that will meet you at Westminster. thinks it an excellent appointment, because it will remove you from Oxford. So, no doubt, think the s and s, and hoc genus omne. "Hoc Ithacus velit et magno mercentur Atridae." Pardon my unavailing regrets. You receive no more honourable testimony than the universal sorrow of your friends and CHAP. XX LEAVING OXFORD 143 the joy of your non-friends at your promotion — though " promotion " I cannot call it.' Professor Jowett writes in a similar tone : 'Balliol College: Nov. 8, 1863. ' My dear Stanley, — I wish you every blessing and joy in your marriage. I think you are quite right and wise in marrying. And I am sure you could not have made a better choice. ' Look at Genesis xxiv. 67.^ I hardly like to tell you that I regret the other step as much as I rejoice in this. I believe you could be of more use to the Court at Oxford than in London, and of much more use to the Church. The London clergy cannot be influenced like young men at Oxford ; your time would be wasted in meetings and business. Your influence upon society depends a good deal on your having another sphere which enables you to with- draw from it. For a very slight addition to possible influ- ence in London, you give up the eminent success which you have had at Oxford. You will be thought to have with- drawn from the Liberal cause at Oxford, and to have accepted a great preferment at a time when you have begun a war against the majority of the clergy. ' My view is, that you should continue to fight the battle here, and, when your opinions have made more way, four or five years hence, cum consensu omninni, you should be made a bishop, to fight the same battle in another place. ' I cannot think that, if this were properly represented to the Queen, she, or any other true friend of yours, could wish you to accept the Deanery of Westminster. ' But I must return from this crabbed and unasked-for counsel to tell you how much I rejoice at your marriage. I saw the lady once, and I thought she was frank and good and wise, and very unlike my imperfect notions of people who live at Court, in being the most natural person in the world. You must forgive my counsels, which I only send under the idea that the step may be revocable, and believe me ' Your sincere friend, 'B. Jowett.' ^ ' And Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and took Rebekah, and she became his wife; and Isaac was comforted after his mother's death.' 144 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1863 In a similar strain wrote Professor Donkin : ' When I heard who was Archbishop of Dublin, I in- stantly saw the shadow of the coming calamity, which came before I had time to reconcile myself to the thought of it. ' Perhaps it is hardly fair to talk of it in this way ; and I do really congratulate you, because I suppose the change will be really a good one for you, though the loss is hope- lessly irreparable to us. I mean that I do not see the slightest chance of anyone else occupying the same position in Oxford, or having the same kind of influence, or having so much power to do good, or being regarded with so much affection by all sorts and conditions of men. But I do not doubt that you will be as well and usefully, or even more usefully, employed in your new position ; and perhaps more happily, after the first regrets (which 1 hope I may assume that you will feel) for Oxford.' It is not surprising that such strong expressions of feel- ing should have increased the reluctance with which Stanley decided upon leaving Oxford. The forebodings and regrets of friends did not, however, shake his resolution. 'They are,' he says, ' wrong, I believe. I shall be able to do them better service at Westminster than had I remained.' But the pain of parting from the University was at times so great as to wring from him the exclamation, ' Would that I had declined this wretched Deanery, or prevented the offer of it ! ' He dreaded the plunge into the difficulties of a new position. He feared, above all, ' the " functional weakness " that grows up in high ecclesiastical situations, and destroys all that was sincere and natural in the former self.' ' I feel,' he adds to Lady Augusta, 'that it will be a constant struggle to make head against it. But in that struggle I shall now have your help. If it be possible to be proof against this temptation, perhaps it will be worth all the misgivings that the Deanery will have caused to me and my friends. My dear father was far more useful as a bishop from carrying into the office quali- ties so unlike what are usually found there. May I be able to follow in his footsteps ! ' CHAP. XX HIS REGRETS AND FEARS 145 Round his home at Oxford his affections were closely twined. ' To leave this dear house,' he tells Lady Augusta, ' will be a Paradise Lost. May it be with us as with those two who, Hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow. Through Eden took their solitary way. Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon, and in the wilderness of Westminster we shall find our Paradise Regained.' As though to complete the severance with his old life, his faithful servant. Waters, who, with his wife and children, had lived with him at Oxford, thought that he would be unable to accompany him to London. ' You may fancy,' he writes to Lady Augusta, ' how to me it is the loss of so far more than a servant — a real friend ; and then, those three dear little children were such a constant delight to me. I cannot bear to think of their passing away to strangers.' In the midst of this conflict of feeling he preached his last sermon as Professor of Ecclesiastical History. His whole heart is thrown into the farewell words on ' Great Opportunities,' ^ which he spoke before the University, in Christ Church Cathedral, on November 29th, 1863. The sermon was written ' in the odd moments which I can snatch here and there.' ' I hated it,' he tells Pearson, ' when I was writing it, but when once I began to preach it, it carried me away.' All the emotions that stirred the very depths of his soul at the thought of passing from a great institution, in which he had formed a part, and with which many happy memories were associated, throb through his parting words. All the inmost history of theological controversies, of past and present academical progress, of friendship severed or cemented, may be read between the lines. The sentences * Great Opportunities. A Farewell Sermon. London, 1863. VOL. II L 146 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY thrill and tingle with warnings from the past, with encourage- ment for the future, with eager appeals and lofty aspirations, with all the fears and hopes that divided his own breast. It was possible to read in the future ' nothing but a dreary winter of unbelief, which is to be the beginning of the end, and to shrivel up every particle of spiritual life.' There was a real ' danger to the Church of England of losing for ever the noble ambition that faith and freedom, truth and goodness, may yet be reconciled.' But yet, through all the possibilities and dangers, there shone 'the glorious prospect to be spoken of, if never hereafter in this place, yet in other spheres, if God so please, and before other hearers so long as life and strength shall last — the glorious prospect to be found in the conviction that in the religion of Christ better and better understood, in the mind and words and work of Christ more and more fully per- ceived, lies the best security . . . for the things which be- long, not to our peace only, but to the peace of universal Christendom.' At the moment when Stanley preached his farewell sermon his theological opponents had succeeded in striking off his name from the list of Select Preachers. For nine years his voice was to be silenced in the University pulpit. To himself, and to many of those who heard him, the thought was present that he might be speaking for the last time in that place. The opportunity was a great one, and it was made the most of by the preacher. Two letters may be quoted to illustrate the effect which the farewell pro- duced upon his hearers. The first is a letter from Dr. Liddell. ' Christ Church, Oxford : November 29, 1863. ' My best and dearest Friend, — How have you torn open afresh all the wounds which the first news of your depar- ture caused ! I can scarcely see to write — for tears. 'And how nobly have you avenged the friends who CHAP. XX H/S FAREWELL SERMON 147 would fain have continued you in the office of teaching good and giving true glory to God in this place. I wish for no other punishment upon those who have closed our pulpits against you (for the present — not for long, I am confident) than that they should have heard you to-day. You must print. ' Yours ever most affectionately, 'H. G. L.' The second letter is from one of the best-known and most distinguished among the London clergymen of to-day, who at that time held a country living, and who writes to thank Stanley for ' that noble farewell sermon at Christ Church. As an Oxford man, a Christ Church man, a young man, and, therefore, as one specially therein addressed, I cannot resist writing to say how very deeply I have felt every word of it. You have been, and you are being, most deeply useful to me, and I feel that I must give expression to my feelings and tell you so. You will not, I am sure, suspect me of any other motive in writing thus to you. Oxford was utterly wasted by me, and worse. I knew not then in any degree the things which belonged to my peace ; but, thank God, bitterly as I regret that time, there is a living, working present — perhaps a future, in which to live and work for God and truth. 'Though I could write much, I shall not write more, as my sole object was to express a gratitude to you which I have for some time been feeling — as a private in your regiment to give at least my little cheer to my General.' In the struggle of conflicting feeling through which Stanley was passing he found in his future wife his strongest stay and support. To her he turned for that sympathy which no other living person could minister, and which she was peculiarly qualified to give him. ' You feel no doubt, as I do,' he writes to Lady Augusta Bruce, *. . . a dim mysterious feeling, as of gradually drawing nearer to the confines of a new world. I have often thought, and I remember telling the Queen, in speaking of the marriage of the Prince of Wales, that marriage is the I4^> LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1863 only event in modern life which corresponds to what baptism was in the ancient Church — a second birth, a new creation, old things passing away, all things becoming new. Oh, let us both look forward to a new flight upwards ! Old things, indeed, will not pass away, but they will be transfigured. I feel as if this double move must indeed be the crisis of my life, in which I must either be extinguished by the mere greatness of the event, or be made more useful to my Church and countr)- than I have ever been before. ' You must be my wings. I shall often flag and be dispirited ; but you, now, as my dear mother formerly, must urge me on, and bid me not despair when the world seems too heavy a burden to be struggled against. Many and many will be the talks, if you will let me have them with you, like that which we had on our first Sunday — Sunday week. ' I had my lecture to-day again. You will not wonder that, when I looked round on their faces, and felt that, after the end of this short course, I shall address neither them nor any Oxford generation again, my heart sank within me. IBut I felt that the thought gave new force to my words, both as I spoke and as they listened. . . .' How readily Lady Augusta sympathised with his feelings, how singularly adapted she was to be the partner of his hopes and aspirations, and with what feminine instinct she ministered the support and encouragement that he always needed, is known to all who met her as Lady Augusta Stanley. The spirit in which both husband and wife entered upon their married life is forcibly illustrated by the following extract from one of her letters, and from Stanley's answer. Lady Augusta writes to him from St. James's Palace during the weeks of despondency and misgiving which closed his career at Oxford : . . I did not sleep very well, and happening to wan- der into my darling brother's sitting-room, which I now occupy, at an unnaturally early hour, I was startled by the picture which suddenly offered itself to my gaze. The sky was crimson, and against it, in the clear atmosphere of early morning, the towers of Westminster and the whole CHAP. XX ENTERING ON A NEW LIFE 149 group of those beautiful buildings stood out in the most perfect distinctness. It seemed as though not a detail of the architecture were lost ; and yet, near and vivid as it was, there was something so mysterious and impressive and solemn in the silent beauty of the scene, that it seemed more like a vision of the Holy City than anything earthly or material. I sat and watched it till the glowing light of this glorious dawn had melted into the light of day, and the vision had passed away. ' Need I tell you, my beloved, with what thoughts and aspirations and earnest prayers my heart was filled, or how blessed were the moments I thus spent within sight of our home, on which may God our Father grant that a light more beautiful still, a halo more sacred and more holy, may rest for ever and ever } I cannot describe my thank- fulness for the accident that brought me where I was, or the impression that has been left on my mind. That one bright spot amidst the surrounding darkness, and the nature of the light, so soft and mellow and diffusive, warming and gladdening and vivifying all round. So may your home be, my beloved, and may the peace and joy and affection that reign there cheer, and lighten, and raise, and soften the hearts that are brought, in whatever degree, within its influence ! " And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the m.oon, to lighten it ; for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof." . . .' To this letter Stanley replies from Windsor, where he had been summoned to preach before the Queen : ' What a beautiful vision you send me ! It cheers me, for I needed cheering. . . . These troubles, no doubt, are only for the moment, and a year hence will be but small specks. Still, I cannot help being depressed by them at a time when the duty and wisdom of leaving Oxford are so much questioned by so many of my best friends. Let us hope that your glimpse of the Abbey may be a type of that which is to be. My dear mother was very fond of the text, " Unto the godly there ariseth up light in the dark- ness." "Not," she used to say, "that we are 'the godly,' but still in all our darkness a light has arisen." To me, doubtless, in this darkness, such as it is, you, and your love, are the light that has arisen up. Under any circumstances. I 50 LIFE OF DEAN STAiYLEY 1863 I should have had the same self-reproach and grief at making the great change of a well-known sphere for one full of untried difificulties ; but it might have been that I should have had no one to give me the hope of a new light dawning on my new life, such as I now have.' In November 1863 came the news of the alarming illness of Loi'd Elgin, the Governor-General of India, and the brother of Lady Augusta Bruce. The news was followed early in the next month by the intelligence of his death. The loss seemed at once to sever yet another link with the past, and to weave another strand into the bond that was to unite Stanley and Lady Augusta together in the future. 'To me,' writes Stanley, 'it is a mournful pleasure that I have now a right to be a comfort to you. You know that I felt it to be so in the June of last year. How much more so now.'' ' The death of Lord Elgin not only postponed the wedding from December i6th to the 23rd, but rendered it necessary that the ceremony, if it took place, as pre- viously arranged, in Westminster Abbey, should be as private as possible. No alteration in the place was, how- ever, made. 'I am so glad,' Stanley tells his future wife, ' . . . that you still hold to the marriage in the Abbey. It might be absolutely private, of course — all music and show dispensed with, and as few as possible present. But it is for us the most domestic, and therefore the most private, place ; and I must confess that even the Abbey would be doubly sanctified in my eyes if it were made the scene of this blessed event. " Through the grave and gate of death " indeed we shall pass, if- God so will, to "a joyful resurrec- tion " of a new life ; and for this end, what can be more fitted than that Church of Tombs ' On December 22nd, 1863, on the evening before the marriage, Stanley wrote to Hugh Pearson : ' I fill up a few vacant moments by a few words to you, best and dearest of friends, on the eve of this great change. CHAP. XX FIRST SERMON AS DEAN 151 You know, as none knows, what it has cost me to reach this point. But all misgivings are over. So much of such various kinds has led me on to this event that, if ever any human transaction can be thought to be predestined, it is this. ' I foresee a stormy time at Westminster, more stormy even than was Oxford. But I am in muchf better heart about it than I was.' At Westminster the elements of storm had already gathered. One of the most learned and respected of the Canons, Dr. Wordsworth, afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, felt it his duty to publish his protest against Stanley's appoint- ment to the Deanery, and to preach against it from the pulpit of the Abbey. ' Well,' wrote the Dean-elect to his sister Mary, ' I am very glad that the Pope should have a respite.' Honouring, as he did, the apostolic zeal and saintly character of his assailant, he was not provoked into a war of words. ' Perhaps,' he writes to Lady Augusta, ' it is to be answered by a calm reply, certainly by an invita- tion to dinner on the first opportunity.' In his installation sermon, preached at Westminster on January loth, 1864, he alludes to the inauguration by the protesting Canon of ' the adventurous movement for the spiritual aid of West- minster.' He thus explains the allusion, when sending a copy of the sermon to M. de Circourt : ' Dr. Wordsworth published a protest against my ap- pointment filled with the most reckless misrepresentations. I thought that the only notice which it was fitting for me to take of this attack was to pronounce an eulogy upon that part of his conduct which really deserved it.' Thus met, Dr. Wordsworth's protest became the first step in the cordial and friendly intercourse between Dean and Canon. As his first task in entering on his new duties at West- minster was to keep peace, so his last effort at Oxford had 152 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1863 been to make it. In December 1863, on the eve of leaving the University, he sought an interview with Dr. Pusey. His object was to induce him to withdraw from the hostile attitude which the Professor of Hebrew had adopted towards Professor Jowett. He followed up the personal interview by a long letter. In it he endeavoured to meet Dr. Pusey's objections to the three passages in the ' Com- mentary on the Epistle to the Romans ' on which the opposition was mainly founded. The action and the argu- ment are so characteristic of Stanley that the letter may be quoted at length : ' I hope that it is only in accordance with the wish, which you so kindly expressed the other day, to do justice to one who has been much misunderstood, and who has suffered in consequence, if I trouble you with a few words on the three passages which you mentioned as occupying the chief place in your objections to his book: (i) the notice of the discrepancies of the narratives of St. Paul's conversion ; (2) the explanations of opiaOevro'; in Rom. i. 4 ; ^ (3) and of 6 cov iirl ttuvtcov ^ in Rom. ix. 5. ' I have since looked again at the passages, and also at the explanations of them elsewhere, and I am still more confirmed in the opinion, which I ventured to express to you the other day, that his view in each of the passages is either such as has been stated by distinguished theo- logians whom any English university would be glad to honour, or else is different from what you had conceived it to be. ' In the first, I see that Paley states the principle (in Part iii. Chapter i. of his " Evidences ") of recognising the differences in the sacred narratives so broadly as fully to cover the case in the Acts to which Jowett refers. And I observe that the very case is referred to, and the discrep- ancies fully acknowledged, in books which, whatever may be our individual opinions as to their merits, have an absolutely universal reception in the English Church — I ' Translated in the Authorised Version, ' declared (margin, determined') to be the Son of God.' ' Translated in the Authorised Version, ' Who is over all, God blessed for ever.' CHAP. XX EFFORT TO MAKE PEACE AT OXFORD 1 53 mean Howson's "Life of St. Paul," and the Notes on the Greek Testament by the present Dean of Canterbury.^ 'In the second case (Rom. i. 4) it is merely the expla- nation of the word 6pia-6ivTO<;. He is unwilling to desert what seems to be its recognised sense. But he sees no such contradiction as you seem to suppose between this sense and the passage in Col. i. 16. On the contrary, he expressly states that they can easily be reconciled. ' In the third case (Rom. ix. 5) he gives no decided opinion, but, as I said then, though doubtful whether I remembered rightly, states the arguments for and against the received interpretation. But, even had he taken the other view, that surely might be tolerated without offence in a Greek Professor now which was solemnly adopted by Erasmus, without offence, in his time. * I am not propping my own argument with these, or any other, of Jowett's views. Our tastes and pursuits are probably as different as those of any two men in this place. Still less do I expect that you will agree with him, or with any of those whom I have cited as sanctioning his views. But after the opening which you kindly allowed to me, I cannot leave Oxford without entreating you to consider whether the passages which you mentioned to me are a sufficient ground for the strong opinions which you enter- tain, and the strong measures which I believe that you have taken against a person who, on these points, only holds what in others we pass by unnoticed. ' I have dwelt on these passages because they are the only ones which you mentioned to me. But I believe that the same may be said, in great measure, of the part of the book (the Essay on the Atonement) which has given such offence to so many excellent persons, who are not aware that St. Anselm has virtually said the same thing in the eleventh century, and my own respected predecessor^'' only two years ago. ' If it were mainly a matter personally affecting Jowett himself, I should not feel the matter so keenly. But I am convinced that no more serious blow can be inflicted on the permanent interests of religion in this place than by the continuance of a hostile position towards him on the part of persons like yourself.' 9 Dr. Alford. 10 Dr. Trench. 154 LIFE OF DEAN- STANLEY With this attempt to conciliate contending parties at Oxford Stanley's life as Professor of Ecclesiastical History comes to a fitting close. On December 23rd, 1863, he was married to Lady Augusta Bruce in Westminster Abbey. A fortnight later, on Saturday, January 9th, 1864, he was installed as Dean of the same Collegiate Church. As soon as the installation service was ended a formal Chapter was held. 'They were all there, Wordsworth included (who, how- ever, absented himself from church both Saturday and Sunday). I shook hands with him cordially, and he with me. ' I confess that I felt no elation, nothing but depression, at the prospect before me. It seemed to me as if I were going down alive into the sepulchre. 'I had a long conversation with Lord J. Thynne,^^ very courteous and sensible, but opening a vista of interminable questions of the most uninteresting kind, for the discussion of which I felt totally incapable. I repeat that, as far as the actual work of the Dean is concerned, it is far more unsuited to me than that of a bishop. To lose one's time in Confirmations is bad, but to lose it in leases and warming-plans is worse. ' However, the deed is done, and my useful life I con- sider to be closed, except so far as I can snatch portions from the troubles of the office.' With such feelings Stanley entered upon the new field that was opened to him at Westminster — a field which to his first sight seemed barren, but which he made in after years so fertile in opportunities and so rich in its yield of varied influences. The Senior Canon and Sub-Dean of Westminster. Plans for heating the Abbey were being discussed by the Chapter. CHAP. XXI 'ESSAVS AND REVIEWS' 155 CHAPTER XXI 1864-74 FINAL JUDGMENT ON 'ESSAYS AND REVIEWS,' FEBRUARY 1864 — REFUSAL OF HIGH CHURCH LEADERS TO PREACH IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY — STANLEY'S ATTITUDE TOWARDS THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL CONTROVERSIES — 'ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND STATE,' 1870— SPEECHES IN CON- VOCATION ON ' ESSAYS AND REVIEWS,' ON BISHOP COLENSO, ON RITUALISM, ON THE PUBLIC WORSHIP REGULATION BILL, ON THE REVISION OF THE AUTHORISED VERSION, ON THE ATHANASIAN CREED — THE PAN-ANGLICAN SYNOD AND WESTMINSTER ABBEY, 1867 — DR. VANCE SMITH, 1870 — SELECT PREACHERSHIP AT OXFORD, 1872 ' Happy New Year indeed ! I only dread the rapid flight of time.' So Stanley writes on January ist, 1864, 'during that short period of perfect bliss which is only granted to mortals once in a lifetime.' Foreseeing the storms that were gathering round him at Westminster, perplexed by the uncertainties of his new position, he turned to his wife for that encouragement and support which, amid all the possibilities of the future, seemed alone to be secure. He writes of her to J. C. Shairp 'as the chief earthly stay for my coming pilgrimage.' 'I can- not but feel,' he adds, ' that the day may have come when the shades of failure and disappointment are to close round me, as they have closed round so many others. But if I am to struggle on- wards and upwards yet, it will be, under God, through her.' The day after his installation (Sunday, January loth, 1864) he delivered his first sermon in Westminster Abbey as Dean. ' I preached,' he writes to the Bishop of London, 156 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY who had written to congratulate him upon the impression which he had produced, ' with the utmost discomfort to myself, from the feeling that I was probably neither heard nor understood, and could not help contrasting the occasion with that of my farewell sermon at Oxford. Therefore, I am very glad to hear that anyone was pleased, and am encouraged by your letter to print it, concerning which I had serious doubts.' ^ Cheered by his success, and supported by 'the good Angel whom I have always at my side,' he began, as he writes to the present Dean of Westminster at the end of January 1864, 'to see hopes breaking through the darkness.' 'And yet,' he adds in the same breath, 'I hardly dare to look forward to the future.' In the ancient instrument to which he declared his assent at his installation occurred a memorable phrase. ' I am greatly struck,' he tells Pearson, 'by the fact that I am set here "for the enlargement of the Christian Church." ' To maintain that degree of enlargement which was already secured to the Church by its union with the State, and to widen its borders so that it might more worthily fulfil its mission as the National Church, were the two objects to which he devoted all his efforts. In this double meaning, the enlargement of the Church was the political aim of his Churchmanship, and the drift of his sermons, speeches, and writings. In his increased opportunities of preserving the comprehensiveness, and of extending the limits, of the Church he found the brightest side of his new position ; in the obstacles and opposition that he encountered lay its darkest clouds. The crisis was singularly unpropitious for the cause on which he had embarked. Religious public opinion was setting in the opposite direction. The panics created by 1 The sermon was afterwards printed : A Reasonable, Holy, and Living Sacrifice. London, 1864. (Reprinted in Sermons on Special Occasions.) CHAP. XXI 'ESSAYS AND REVIEWS' * Essays and Reviews,' and by Bishop Colenso's work on the Pentateuch, were still gathering fresh strength. Few persons could wholly defend either publication, or deny that their tendency was, in some respects, mischievous. In the heat of discussion mistakes were made on both sides, and, as the two parties drifted more widely apart, it might seem to many that religious men became less liberal, and liberal men less religious. On February 8th, 1864, the long-expected judgment of the Privy Council was delivered in two of the prosecutions which that publication had occasioned. Dr. Williams had been prosecuted by the Bishop of Salisbury, Mr. Wilson by a private clergyman, the Rev. James Fendall. Both defen- dants were accused of denying the inspiration of the Holy Scripture, and Mr. Wilson was further charged with denial of the doctrine of eternal punishment. Dr. Lushington, the Dean of Arches, holding the charges to be proved, sentenced the two clergymen to be suspended for a year. This judgment of the inferior Court was now reversed on appeal by the judgment of the Privy Council. The only material before the Court was contained in the specific passages extracted from the writings of the two Essayists for the purpose of the prosecution. The Privy Council decided that the opinions expressed in these extracts by Dr. Wil- liams and Mr. Wilson on the three questions of justifica- tion, inspiration, and eternal punishment, were not contra- dicted by, or inconsistent with, the Articles and formularies of the Church of England. Stanley, as has been said, was present in court on the occasion of the acquittal of the Essayists. ' At last ' — to quote his subsequent description of the scene in the ' Edinburgh Review ' — 2 'the judgment to which the Church, not of England only, but of foreign nations also, had been looking forward with « The Three Pastorals. July 1864. 158 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY intense expectation, was pronounced. No one who was present can forget the interest with which the audience in that crowded council-chamber listened to sentence after sentence as they rolled along from the smooth and silvery tongue of the Lord Chancellor, enunciating, with a lucidity which made it seem impossible that any other statement of the case was conceivable, and with a studied moderation of language which at times seemed to border on irony, first, the principles on which the judgment was to proceed, and then the examination, part by part and word by word, of the three charges that remained, till at the close not one was left, and the appellants remained in possession of the field.' 'Thus ends the panic of "Essays and Reviews,'" is Stanley's contemporary comment to Pearson, 'by establish- ing the legality of two great doctrines for which the prophets have contended against the whole bench of bishops.' In this sanguine forecast he was mistaken. The panic was rather increased than stayed by a decision which the opponents of 'Essays and Reviews' believed to be 'soul-destroying.' A letter addressed to the ' Record ' by Dr. Pusey gave the signal for an offensive and defensive alliance between High Churchmen and Low Churchmen. At a meeting held in Oxford a Declaration of Faith was formulated, declaring 'our firm belief that the Church of England and Ireland, in common with the whole Catholic Church, maintains without reserve or qualification the inspiration and Divine autho- rity of the whole canonical Scriptures, as not only contain- ing, but being, the Word of God ; and further teaches, in the words of our blessed Lord, that the "punishment " of the "cursed," equally with the "life" of the "righteous," is " everlasting." ' This document was sent round to every clergyman in England, Wales, and Ireland, accompanied by a letter en- treating him to sign it 'for the love of God.' It vv^as at this stormy crisis that Stanley wrote to repre- CHAP. XXI PREACHERS AT WESTMINSTER sentatives both of the High Church and EvangeUcal par- ties, asking them to preach at the Special Services which he was preparing to hold in the Abbey on Sunday evenings. The leading Low Churchmen accepted his invitation ; but Keble, Pusey, and Liddon all declined. Stanley's corre- spondence with them strikingly illustrates how widely men who pursue the same object may differ as to the means for its attainment. It will be seen that Keble and Liddon refused at once, and that Pusey only decided to do so after long hesitation. Rev. John Keble to Dean Stanley. ' Torquay: March lith, 1864. ' My dear Sir, — I am sincerely obliged by your kindness in thinking of me as one fit to be applied to on such an occasion, and I must beg Lady Augusta, with yourself, to accept my best thanks for the invitation contained in your letter. However, under any circumstances I believe I should have felt that I must decline that proposal, because (among other reasons) I fear that I could not make myself heard in the Abbey. ' But I should not be dealing quite frankly with you if I did not add (though it grieves me sorely to do so) that, were I to accept it, it would be in discomfort and fear, lest by seeming to bear with doctrines which you avowedly uphold, and which I believe in my heart to contradict the foundation of the faith, I should cause harm which would far outweigh any good one might hope to do by preaching. ' I am sure you will forgive my plain speaking, and will believe me to remain ' Your obliged and faithful servant, ']. Keble. 'I only got your letter this morning. The delay I trust will not have caused you inconvenience.' Dr. Pusey to Dean Stanley. ' Christ Church : Feb. 23. ' My dear Dr. Stanley, — First let me thank you and Lady Augusta sincerely for your personal kindness. I l6o LIFE OF DEAN' STANLEY 1864 wrote a letter to you on the day upon which I received yours, and then kept it back (you will be surprised to hear) in sheer perplexity. . . . 'We are at a critical moment. I, as you may have heard, have joined those, whether Evangelicals or others, who think it necessary that the Church should in some way reaffirm the doctrines upon which doubt has been thrown by the late judgments. Your friends, I hear, are rejoicing in it. So there we are in direct antagonism. Some to whom I owe great deference say to me, " I con- fess that I should feel a shock at your preaching at the Abbey at this juncture, and I think that this would be the feeling of many people." It gives an appearance of unre- ality if people, who are at that moment in active antago- nism on what they believe to be of vital moment, unite as if there were nothing at issue between them. ' Then, as to yourself, my dear Dr. Stanley, I have felt that it was almost hypocrisy to talk to you in an ordinary way, and say nothing of what was in the depth of my soul. And as it would have been impertinent and useless to say this, I have kept nearly silent. Painful as it is, some things in your Jewish History I thought it necessary to remark upon in my notes on my Lectures on Daniel. Still more, I should have to say in my preface that we have nothing to fear from assailants, but have much to fear from defenders. You seem to me to take every oppor- tunity of committing yourself to anyone who does not believe as others. I know not, of course, how much you have studied Dr. Colenso's first volume. I went through it with my evening party, and never met with anything more stupid, or narrow, or blundering. Yet you endorsed the principles of a book which was frightfully unsettling the faith of the lower classes, not by its arguments, but by the fact that a bishop pledged his character that the Pentateuch was incredible. * I believe the present to be a struggle for the life or death of the English Church, and what you believe to be for life I believe to be for death ; and you think the same reciprocally of me. ' I fear, then, lest by accepting a personal token of con- fidence from you, in offering me what has never been of- fered to me before — the privilege of preaching to all those souls in the Abbey — I should be confusing people's minds, as CHAP. XXI CORRESPONDENCE WITH PUSEY l6l though there were not these radical differences between us ; and this would be aggravated if my name'were in the same cycle as some of your friends. People might ask, " What do these people think to be truth ? " I have been guilty of seeming discourtesy in not thanking you for your personal kindness, but I expected on each day to come to some conclusion on the next, or the day after, and still I could not decide when your letter came this morning. ' Believe me, ' With sincere personal regard, ' Yours faithfully, ' E. B. PusEY.' Dean Stanley to Dr. Pusey. ' February 25, 1864. ' My dear Dr. Pusey, — I have to thank you for your great kindness and frankness, and am truly touched by the perplexity which my offer has caused you. ' My grounds for making the offer were, that I felt it to be my duty as D. of W. to give to every preacher of eminence within the Church the opportunity of addressing the mixed congregations assembled in the Abbey, and so of convey- ing to some class or other the truths they most needed to hear. It was not, of course, my object to place these several preachers there that they might contradict each other, but that they might edify the congregation as far as possible in the truths which we all hold together. I know well that you would powerfully set forth such truths ; and it has always seemed to me very unjust that you should have been excluded, when others quite as extreme on either side were admitted, and I therefore lost no time in asking you to take what I considered to be your due part in these special services. ' I regret, but cannot be surprised (after what I have often heard you say), that you should be displeased at the recent judgment, which to me appears so wise and just. But I cannot see that this divergence makes any difference in my position, or in yours, with regard to these sermons. I can understand that you might feel your relations altered towards the Church itself, whose highest tribunal and whose two Primates have delivered a judgment which you so much deplore. But as to any action within the Church, I cannot recognise any further difference than may have VOL. II M 1 62 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1864 been occasioned by the divergence which existed between us at the time of the Gorham judgment, and which was expressed by many in terms at least as strong as those which you use on the present occasion. ' I confess that I was startled and pained by your letter of adhesion to a newspaper (you will forgive me for saying what I am sure you must often have heard said by others) of so scandalous a character as "The Record." But again I repeat that I feel myself constrained to overlook any particular course which you may have thought it right to adopt, in consideration of the points on which we are agreed, and of the common standing which we have as clergymen of the English Church. ' I would fain hope that these common grounds counter- balance the differences which separate us ; that even these differences are not so great as those which part you from the unscrupulous and slanderous journal with which, for a particular purpose, you have thought it right to com- bine. 'With regard to the theological differences to which you so kindly allude, and especially to the note which you mention in my " Lectures on the Jewish Church," I will only say that I have said there nothing, in principle, beyond what you yourself said formerly in the book on German Theology, or than what the Bishop of St. David's has said in his recent Charge. At any rate, they cannot affect my wish that you should preach in the Abbey. ' I therefore respectfully and for your own sake renew my request, in the name of our common Christianity and our common Church, that you will allow your name to appear in the list of the preachers in the Abbey, if only to show that there are still grounds of union left for clergymen of the Church of England besides those of a common antipathy and common fear, and that there are subjects left in which we can edify the vast congregations of a city like London without attacking each other. ' Yours sincerely, 'A. P. Stanley.' Dr. Pusey to Dean Stanley. ' February 28, 1864. ' My dear Dr. Stanley, — Can you tell me who the other preachers are whom you propose to invite to preach at the CHAP. XXI CORRESPONDENCE WITH PUSEY 163 Abbey ? I know that you sympathise most with those most opposite to my belief. And yet this is not the case of persons preaching incidentally in the same church. It is a cycle of preachers — one system, one whole. You appeal to me kindly in the name of " our common Chris- tianity." Alas ! I do not know what the common Christian- ity of myself and Professor Jowett is. I do not know what single truth we hold in common, except that somehow Jesus came from God, which the Mohammedans believe too. I do not think that Professor Jowett believes our Lord to have been very God, or God the Holy Ghost to be a per- sonal being. The doctrine of the Atonement, as he states it, is something wholly unmeaning. Of his heart, of course, I do not speak ; I only speak of his writings. ' For yeurself, my dear Dr. Stanley, you say that you have said nothing in principle beyond what I said in my books when I was twenty-eight. Would to God you did not ! ' I wrote to the " Record " because I wanted to unite with the party who take it in, and to whom I had access through it. I dare say it has said many a hard thing of myself and my friends ; no one can suppose that I endorse these things. But I must, and do, join heart and soul with those who oppose this tide of rationalism. Nothing, of course, but the deep conviction that the souls of the young and the faith were imperilled would have induced me to unite in the prosecution of Professor Jowett. ' Yours faithfully, ' E. B. PusEY. 'As time is going on, you had better, anyhow, fill up the April Sundays.' Dean Stanley to Dr. Ptisey. ' Deanery, Westminster : February 29, 1864. ' My dear Dr. Pusey, — I have not framed any cycle beyond April and May. it is, properly speaking, informal for me to announce the names of the preachers so long beforehand. But you can know the names privately, if it is any satisfaction to you. ' Those for April, besides yourself, would be the Arch- bishop of York, Canon Stowell, and myself. Those for May, the Bishop of London, Canon Wordsworth, Mr. H 2 164 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY Rowsell, and Mr. Thorold. The Archbishop of Canterbury I asked, and he would have preached, but was engaged. ' This list is, perhaps, sufficient for your purpose, as it includes, besides others, the three prelates against whose judgment you wish to protest, and myself, against whom you seem to speak, as not holding any common Christian- ity with yourself — at least, I can hardly understand your argument otherwise. ' But nothing that you say at all shakes my convic- tion that we have a common Christianity, and that it is my duty to request you to preach. Nor can I well apply to any other quarter for a preacher till I have had a defini- tive answer from yourself. I should have to ask persons whose opinions are the same as your own, or stronger, and I should almost feel bound to state to them (if y^ou do not consent) what has passed between us, lest they should be inadvertently led into a course which you — with whom, as I suppose, they would wish to act — have disapproved. 'When I spoke of your adhesion to the "Record," I did not, of course, imagine that you intended to endorse its attacks upon yourself ; but I venture to express my sur- prise that you should scruple about preaching in the same church with the Archbishops and myself, and not scruple about making an ally (without a word of justification) of a newspaper which notoriously violates the first principles of Christian truth and charity every week. ' I do not enter on any argument as to your statements respecting Professor Jowett. But you must not construe my silence in any sense as an acquiescence in any part of them. ' Once more, therefore, I will ask for as early an answer as you can conveniently give, and I still hope that it may be in the affirmative. ' Yours sincerely, 'A. P. Stanley.' Dr. Piiscy to Demi Stanley. ' March 5, 1864. ' My dear Dr. Stanley, — I trust that I have not caused you inconvenience by the difficulty which I have had in making up my mind. It would have been a glad office to me to preach to those 3,000, if so be that God would have spoken through me to one soul effectively. But I dare not. CHAP. XXI CORRESPONDENCE WITH PUSEY 165 'I think that one of the great dangers of the present day is to conceive of matters of faith as if they were matters of opinion, to think all have an equal chance of being right, which involves this — that there is no faith at all. The essence of your scheme seems to me to be to exhibit as one those whose differences I believe to be vital ; and so, although it is with a pang that I relinquish the offer which (differing so much from me) you kindly made me of speaking God's truth earnestly to all those souls, I cannot with a safe conscience accept it. ' I thank you for your personal kindness, and remain ' Yours sincerely, 'E. B. PuSEY. ' I write in pencil in the train, returning from my preach- ing at Cambridge, to save the midday post at Oxford.' Dean Stanley to Dr. Pusey.^ • (?) March 6, 1864. ' My dear Dr. Pusey, — I cannot close this correspondence without expressing my regret that you should have felt it necessary to decline my request that you would preach in the Abbey. It has been a satisfaction to me to have had the opportunity of endeavouring to end the exclusion under which you have hitherto been prevented from preach- ing on these occasions, and it is a matter of sincere sorrow that you should think it right thus to isolate yourself from the great mass of your fellow-Churchmen, and to deprive our great congregation of the benefit of hearing you preach. I remain * Yours truly, 'A. P. S.' The correspondence with Dr. Liddon resulted in a similar refusal, on the same grounds. Only the draft of one of Stanley's letters remains, but the tenor of his previous letter is made clear by Dr. Liddon's answer : Dr. Liddon to Dean Stanley. ' Christ Church : March 8, 1864. ' My dear Mr. Dean, — I thank you sincerely for the kindness of your note — for all of it, but particularly for your ^ This letter is apparently only the rough draft of the letter actually sent. 1 66 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1864 reference to Dr. Pusey's reply to your letter. It seems due to him that I should say that I am writing to you in entire independence of his judgment. ' I trust that you will not deem me wanting, either in respect and gratitude to yourself, or in duty to the Church, if I beg you to allow me to decline your invitation. 'The recent judgment of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council has thrown not a few minds among us into the greatest perplexity. It is my duty knowingly to do nothing which, in any degree, with any one mind, may increase this (in my judgment) very natural distress. 'There is a current report that you will ask Professor Jowett, Mr. Maurice, and other clergymen of the same school to preach at the Abbey. You have an unquestioned right to do so ; and the generosity which prompts you to ask me, who have never concealed my dissent from lati- tudinarian principles, would d fortiori lead you to ask men of undeniable eminence, and with whose convictions you so much more nearly agree. Therefore I do not take the liberty of inquiring whether the report be true. I assume it to be so. ' But every clergyman, however humble his position, has a certain number of persons who look up to him, and whose case he is bound to keep in mind, not less in his public acts than in his public utterances. If, at the present serious juncture, I should voluntarily range myself side by side with men who notoriously rejoice at the recent disastrous judgment, such conduct on my part would be understood by not a few people to mean that, after all, I believed the questions at issue to be of little real impor- tance— mere questions of words, which ought not to divide educated and large-hearted men. The result would — or, at any rate, too probably might be — in some cases in- difference ; in others, the Church of Rome. ' If, of course, my own conscience was perfectly clear as to the duty of public acts of fellowship with men like Mr. Maurice, &c., &c., it would be right to disregard con- sequences. But, on the contrary, I cannot but recognise the fact, that on the most sacred questions we are hope- lessly divided — on questions which touch nothing less than the revealed character and attributes of Almighty God. A legal (rather than a moral) bond retains us within the same communion — or, rather, God's providence does so, I hope CHAP. XXI CORRESPONDENCE WITH LIDDON 1 6/ and pray with a view to future unity of conviction, how- ever improbable that may seem at present. ' But, meanwhile, I shrink from being a party to pre- senting these sharp contrasts (as some men would say) between different opinions (as I am bound to say), between truth and error, before the people of London at a time when so much is at stake. I am not insensible to the privilege you offer me of preaching in the first of English cathedrals to the first of English congregations. But you would be the last man in the world to recognise ambition as a legitimate motive in these matters ; and I must trust to your kindly interpretation of what I have said as to what seem to me to be the real merits of the question. To the people of London at large, and to yourself, it can- not make a shade of difference whether I preach or not. Someone else will do much better in my place. To me it seems to be a question between truthfulness and insincerity of purpose. ' Again thanking you, * I am, my dear Mr. Dean, ' Yours very faithfully, ' H. P. LiDDON. 'The Very Reverend The Dean of Westminster." Dean Stanley to Dr. Liddon. ' March 9, 1864. 'My dear Liddon, — I cannot close my communications with you respecting the sermons at Westminster Abbey without expressing to you, as I once did before, only now in a stronger tone, my deep disappointment at the posi- tion which the leaders of the High Church party have adopted in this crisis of the Church of England. ' Had they, a few months, or years, before, accepted the proposal which was vainly offered to the clergy yesterday,* that scene of deplorable levity and injustice might have been prevented, with all its disastrous consequences. Had they now endeavoured to guide the minds of their younger, or less instructed, brethren through this necessary period *The reference is to the action of Convocation at Oxford in March 1864. The grant to the Rev. B. Jowett in payment of }iis work as Professor of Greek, although recommended on this occasion by Dr. Pusey and Mr. Keble, was rejected by the non-resident members of Convocation, on the ground of the Professor's theological opinions. 1 68 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1864 of transition, instead of inflaming and intensifying the panic and the faction of the moment to the highest pitch, what disasters might not have been averted for the future ! ' I shall never regret, whatever comes, that I have made the attempt to treat as brethren in the same church those who refuse to preach within the same walls as myself, and who accept, without excuse, the alliance of the most un- scrupulous of English newspapers, whilst they shrink from the slightest possibility of appearing under the same con- secrated roof with a man so holy and self -devoted as Frederick Maurice. 'That they have so met the offer of conciliation will not shake my conviction that I might reasonably have ex- pected a more blessed result, or alter my desire that such a result should follow.' Dr. Liddon to Dean Stanley. ' Christ Church : March 10, 1864. * My dear Mr. Dean, — I could not but fear that my letter would cause you pain. So far as I know my own heart, I meant nothing personal — nothing that, as I thought, was not due to conscience and principle. That I expressed myself unskilfully is only too likely. That you do not consider my letter a reason for suspending our intercourse is a fresh proof of your generosity, for which I cannot but thank you. ' It is only by his books and by his letters in the news- papers that I know anything of Mr. F. D. Maurice. What you say about his holiness and devotedness is only what others have told me. That he is so good a man I rejoice to believe with all my heart. It is an earnest of his return to the faith of the Church. That so good a man should be mistaken is a very perplexing mystery of the moral world. But he is not its only illustration. No doubt he is a re- buke to most of us who hold truths which he denies. Tyre and Sidon have always a lesson for Chorazin and Bethsaida. But mere moral goodness is not a sufficient basis for engaging in a public profession to teach the people a common faith. You must draw the line somewhere ; and the question is one of degree. No one doubts Channing's goodness. Yet Channing taught Socinianism in terms. 'One of the many miseries of the recent judgment is undoubtedly tJiis : that it must lead to an increase of CHAP. XXI CORRESPONDENCE WITH LIDDON 169 sectarian feeling and action among the clergy. When, through the long-deplored deficiencies of administration in her public law, the Church is no longer protected against the most serious forms of error, individuals cannot but feel that their moral responsibility to God and man for appear- ing publicly to countenance such errors is almost indefinitely increased. Thus opinion tends more and more to super- sede law. This is deplorable ; but, in spiritual matters especially, law should emanate from sources which com- mand the respect of conscience. How different are the principles enunciated in the " Statute of Appeals " from the facts of the actual Judicial Committee of the Privy Council — constructed with a view to hearing appeals in Admiralty cases ! ' But here you will not agree. I, too, deplore the vote of the day before yesterday. But I am not surprised. As the " Times " pointed out, the recent "judgment " is the real culprit. And while I lament the mistake which so mis- construed or ignored the "clause" of the statute as to refuse Professor Jowett the endowment, and to acquiesce (one knows not for how long) in a false and painful posi- tion, I cannot lament the truly Christian feeling of distress, and something more, which the judgment itself has elicited from men of the widest knowledge and of the greatest holiness of life, e.g. Mr. Keble. You speak, my dear Mr. Dean, of a period of transition. Transition to what } One current of thought flows towards Mr. J. Stuart Mill, and Positivism beyond, and another towards Baur and the school of Tubingen, and the desolate waste beyond that. The Girondinsof revolution have their day : but they make way for its Jacobins. . . . All might have been saved if Newman had remained with us ; or if (pardon my bold- ness) someone like yourself had taken up his work, and had endeavoured to recover the hearts of English Church- men to the principle of authority — a recovery to issue in God's good time, and with due respect to the gains achieved by the Reformation, in a reconciliation of the Churches of Christendom. As it is, the prospect is dreary ; one can only trust in Him who reigns above the storm. ' But the co-operation of High and Low Churchmen in defence of truths which they hold in common is surely a feature of the present crisis for which to be thankful. That the " Record " should be the vehicle or symbol of this recon- I/O LIFE OF DEAN STAiYLEY 1864 ciliation may be unwelcome, but it is hardly so serious as your allusion implies. Mr. Maurice writes to a paper so flagrantly disloyal to Christian truth as the " Spectator." I do not suppose that he would endorse its editorial irre- ligion ; he merely illustrates in one way, as Dr. Pusey in another, the exigencies of a position. ' You say, my dear Mr. Dean, that we refuse to preach in the same church with yourself. You will, I trust, for- give me for saying that Churchmen have hoped — hoped and prayed, hoped against hope — that one from whom so much might be expected as yourself would one day be with them. A very able undergraduate told me that he " had even shed tears at the thought of what Dr. Stanley might have done for the cause of positive truth at Oxford with his wonderful powers." Even now we do not acquiesce in the miserable conviction that you have cast in your lot with men like Colenso and others, who are labouring to destroy and blot out the faith of Jesus Christ from the hearts of the English people. We still believe that your generosity rather than your judgment links you even with Mr. Maurice and Mr. Jowett. We are quite sure that your love of truth, your sense of moral beauty, and, in an eminent degree, your historical tastes and wide sympathies, link you to us, who cherish the memories of the Movement of 1833-50, as to no other men in the English Church. ' You will, I trust, forgive the extreme freedom with which I have answered a letter to which silence might have been the most respectful answer, if it had not been open to misunderstanding. ' Your faithful and obliged ' H. P. LiDDON. ' The Very Reverend The Dean of Westminster.' The refusal of the High Church leaders to preach in Westminster Abbey was partly dictated by the conditions of the existing crisis. But their deeper reasons were in- dependent of any temporary cause. They were based on Stanley's attitude towards ecclesiastical and religious ques- tions of the day. His first attempt to use his position as Dean of Westminster for 'the enlargement of the Church ' thus ended in failure. But the failure neither shook his CHAP. XXI CORRESPONDENCE WITH LWDON 171 conviction that he was right nor deterred him from renew- ing the effort. In March 1866, when the pubUcation of Pusey's Eirenicon seemed to afford a more propitious opportunity, he again invited Pusey and Liddon to preach, and they again declined. ' The motto of your letter,' says Liddon, ' might well be, " Charity suffereth long, and is kind." ' No personal nor temporary issue was involved in the refusal. A principle seemed to be at stake. ' Forgive me,' says Liddon in his first letter, in March 1866, — 'is not the practical question this — Whether the Church of Christ is to be viewed as a mere Literary Society, or as a home and mother of dying souls .'' If the former, then the greater the divergence of "views " the better, because such divergence is a proof of intellectual movement, to say the least. If the latter, tJien fixed doctrines are neces- sary, and it is a mere question of fact and degree when divergence of opinion is tolerable. You would not tolerate the Yorkshire clergyman who has just been saying that our Divine Lord is the son of Joseph and Mary. You accept, then, within limits, a principle which enables you to under- stand those who, like myself, have no doubt that the truths recently impugned by writers whom you uphold are inte- gral portions of the revelation of Jesus Christ, and who would not permit such truths to be impugned, if they could prevent it.' In the same spirit is couched his second letter : ' I dare say it does not fall to your lot to see as much as we more decided Churchmen do of persons who are embarrassed by the claims of the Church of Rome. Their one great argument is, " divisions in the Church of Eng- land." That these divisions exist — deep and far-reaching — is an undeniable fact, and quite beyond the power of any individual to control. But I shrink more than I can say from helping to make the already painful contrasts more vivid and distressing by officiating publicly before the Church in London with a number of clergymen from whom I am separated in heart and mind by an interval scarcely less than that which parts Athanasius from Soci- nus. Less injury, it seems to me, would be done to faith, 172 LIFE OF DEAN- STANLEY in all that is most precious and sacred, if none were allowed to preach in the Abbey who had not qualified themselves for doing so by writing in the "Essays and Reviews." ' I must entreat you to believe that the matter is one of principle. To yourself personally I have every reason to be affectionately grateful, and for your character and genius (as distinct from the errors to which you give your power- ful support) I have a sincere respect, which it would be impertinent, but very agreeable to me, to dwell upon.' The correspondence already quoted proves how deeply, as well as widely, the High Church party diverged from Stanley's views. Nor was the chasm less broad or less profound which separated him from Low Churchmen. What he thought to be for the life of Christianity both ecclesiastical parties held to be for its death. Much that they regarded as vital seemed to him to be trivial, if not deadly. Time only widened the breach. Throughout the whole of his career as Dean of Westminster he avowed aims and laboured for ends which were unpalatable to the religious world at large, and, above all, to the great majority of his clerical brethren. Clear and definite in his views, outspoken, uncompromising, and even fiery in their expression, he lived in an atmosphere of contention which thickened rather than dispersed in the course of years. To understand his position it is necessary to grasp the meaning of the words, ' the enlargement of the Christian Church, and the triumph of all truth,' with which he dedi- cated the third volume of the 'Jewish Church ' to the mem- ory of his wife, as expressing the joint aim of their lives. While he attracted thousands of the members of other com- munions by the comprehensiveness of his charity, he re- pelled large numbers of persons by the sacrifices which he was prepared to make for the attainment of his ideal. No ecclesiastic in the world probably stood higher in the re- spect of a larger and more varied circle of the members of CHAP. XXI STANLEY'S POSITION IN THE CHURCH 1 73 many Churches. But it is equally probable that, within his own Church, and among his clerical brethren, no living clergyman was more fiercely assailed, or, in his ecclesiastical character, regarded with greater aversion. So stormy was the atmosphere in which Stanley lived as Dean of Westminster, that it might be supposed to be the air which he breathed most freely. Yet such a suppo- sition is very far from the truth. By tastes and interests he belonged to that class of persons in the religious com- munity which Izaak Walton distinguished from ' the active Romanists ' and ' the restless Nonconformists ' as ' passive, peaceable Protestants.' ' These last,' says the gentle angler, 'pleaded and defended their cause by established laws, both ecclesiastical and civil : and, if they were active, it was to prevent the other two from destroying what was by those known laws established to them and their posterity.' Stanley knew that any system which aims at union involves individual sacrifice for the common good, and that the spirit of division is also the spirit of subdivision. Thrown upon an age of unusual ferment in both thought and specu- lation, he had to choose between the refusal to conform to any system in which he found something from which to dissent, and continuance in the most elastic and compre- hensive form of religious organisation that existed, in the hope of preserving and widening its basis. He chose the latter alternative with all its consequences. 'The path,' as he himself says, ' of a theologian who in any existing system loves truth and seeks charity is indeed difficult at best.' And so he found it to be by his own experience. But the desire 'to serve a great institution, and by serving it to endeav- our to promote within it a vitality which shall secure it as a 174 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY shelter for such as will have to continue the struggle after we are gone,' was the ambition by which he was animated, and the cause for which he endured much that, to a man of his sensitive nature, would otherwise have been intolerable. A Church that embodies so much reverence for the past as the Church of England necessarily appealed in the strongest manner to his historic feeling. But, apart from this, the union of Church and State appeared to him to be 'a combination which, with all its shortcomings, exhibits one of the noblest works which God's Providence through a long course of ages has raised up in Europe.' He did not deny, that each by itself, and in relation to the other, needed changes in order that they might more worthily represent the religious condition of the country. But in the joint action of the secular and ecclesiastical elements within the body politic he found the widest sphere of religious liberty, the most extensive field for future usefulness, the broadest prospect of religious progress. A Church which, in outline, is stamped with a peculiar reverence for the historic past, and yet, in its peculiarities of detail, is the product of a Reformation, is, as he thought, necessarily latitudinarian — by the very conditions of its existence 'neither High, nor Low, but Broad.' And Stanley valued the Established Church as the strongest guarantee of religious toleration, and as the best guardian of that broad traditionary platform of belief on which Christendom might some day meet in amity. He valued it also for its elasticity and capacity of growth, for the opportunity which it afforded to the devel- opment of religious freedom, for the refuge that it offered, not only to the commanding and aspiring, but to the simple and childlike minds of the community. He valued it, finally, as CHAP. XXI H/S VIEW OF CHURCH AND STATE I7S * another form of that great Christian principle, that cardinal doctrine of the Reformation, which is at the same time truly catholic and truly Apostolical — that Christian life and Christian theology thrive most vigorously, not by separation, and isolation, and secrecy, but by intercom- munion v^rith the domestic and social relations of man — in the world, though not of it.' He could not endure the thought of cutting adrift the life of the Church from that of the nation, nor of depriving the State of the official witness to the spiritual aspects of national interests. The consequences of such a severance seemed to him to be fatal to religious liberty. In the rupture of the bond of union he saw the destruction of a great idea embodied in a grand historic fact ; the exchange of a wide outlook for a narrow, restricted scope ; the triumph of the persecuting principle of exclusion, which governs sects, over the tolerant principle of com- prehension, that animates the Church ; the repudiation of the supremacy of impartial law, and the subordination of the clergy to the prejudices of inquisitorial prelates or the panics of tumultuous Synods. Valuing, as he did, the constitutional framework of the Church of England, and dreading what seemed to him the inevitable consequences of its severance from the State, he defended the existing union with all the vigour of which he was capable. Those Ritualists who denounced the Es- tablishment as Erastian, and those Nonconformists who agitated for disestablishment, stood outside the pale of his toleration ; both were placed beyond the limits to which the catholicity of his charity extended. But had Stanley confined himself to the defence of the existing framework of the National Church, he would have been easily pardoned by his clerical brethren. There was, however, another side to his activity. He was not merely anxious to preserve the enlargement which the Church already possessed, and 176 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY which the State guaranteed ; he desired also to stretch the borders of the Church to its widest possible limits, and so to widen its basis that it might more worthily sustain its national character. In the prospects of increased use- fulness that awaited the Church, when thus enlarged, lay his chief hope for the future. In principle, though not in form, his theory agreed with that of men who had profoundly influenced his mind. The identity of the Christian Commonwealth with the Christian State was the vision that inspired the Ecclesiasti- cal Polity of Hooker. It was the ruling thought of Selden's grave sense, of Burke's high political philosophy, and of the religious philosophy of Coleridge. It was the work to which Arnold, both in practice and speculation, desired to set his hand before the evening of his life closed about him. It was this same principle of identity which in Stanley's mind took the form of the close approximation, and, in time, the intimate union of all the secular and religious elements within the nation, the ultimate cohesion, in an outward form, if possible, 'of our fellow-countrymen in one communion of fellowship of good words and good works.' So long as Stanley restricted his pursuit of his ideal to social efforts to remove the estrangement which impedes the approaches of rival religious bodies, and which breeds misunderstanding and fosters exasperation, he gave little or no offence to his clerical brethren. If he did not command their full sympathy, he did not excite their dread and aversion. But when he endeavoured to simplify and universalise Christian theology and the ideas of the Christian Church, and directed his energies towards the removal of the doctrinal or legal barriers to comprehension, their feelings underwent a marked change. Nor is it difficult to under- stand why much that was really positive and conservative CHAP. XXI HIS RELIGIOUS TEACHING 177 in his teaching should have been regarded as purely nega- tive and destructive. Stanley loved his great profession, and estimated highly its powers of usefulness. But it never seemed to him to be a thing apart from ordinary life. He was himself a man of varied human tastes, devoted to literature, interested in politics. And this variety of tastes and interests has stamped its impress on his teaching. In all his sermons, speeches, and writings, he endeavours to secularise, human- ise, and moralise Christian theology — to draw it down, as it were, from heaven to earth. One aspect of his mission was the attempt to vindicate the sanctity of the secular world ; to maintain that the sacred seal which is set on one side of life is the pledge of the sacredness of the whole ; to find the same law in things earthly and things heavenly ; to claim for every natural opportunity of doing good or turning from evil a channel of Divine grace ; to break down the limits within which ecclesiastical parties confine the exclusive operations of spiritual influences ; to show that all history, and not one branch of history only, contains the record of God's dealings with mankind. Another aspect of the sam.e mission was the effort to lay bare the deep basis of morality on which theology rested ; to bring sacred thought out of the shadowy region of abstraction ; to humanise conventional forms, and to make them living instruments of moral education ; to propagate Christianity as a life, rather than to hand it down as a system, a thesis, or a philosophy. A third aspect of the same mission, and one which was more congenial to the tastes of a man who was more an ecclesiastic than a theologian, and less an abstract thinker than an historian, was his effort to trace the genesis of beliefs, and still more of ceremonies and institutions ; to indicate their early forms, and the processes by which they have been changed ; to insist on the close VOL. II N 178 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY community of origin which unites sacred and secular usages ; to find the birth of Christian institutions in the social customs of early ages, and thus to combat, by the evidence of historical fact, the belief in what he calls ' the magical offices of a sacerdotal caste.' Such teaching as this has a strongly positive side ; but, for those who differed from it, it was, not unnaturally, confounded with negative criticism. It is always more easy to be just to a declared foe than to an ally who seems to be betraying the cause. When Stanley vindicated the sanctity of secular life, he was thought by his adversaries to lose sight of the Divine in the human, to depreciate the hidden spiritual mysteries which the Church embodies in its creeds, to secure simplicity by the sacrifice of essential complexities. Man's finite understanding comprehends the manifestations of Infinite Power most readily through limitations. Hence the denial of the exclusive limitations seemed to be a denial of the reality of the manifestations. ' Everybody's business is nobody's business.' To trace the operations of spiritual influences everywhere appeared to result in finding them nowhere. The assertion that all history is sacred was treated as a doubt of the special sanctity of any one particular record. So, again, in the excess of his recoil from the dead nomenclature and lifeless abstractions of theology, he seemed to his critics to ignore its true value, and, passing to the opposite extreme, to regard doctrines which did not appeal directly to the conscience or regulate conduct as mere playthings of the schools. Wherever the impulses of natural piety could reach, wherever truth came into direct contact with human consciousness, or touched the common necessities of spiritual life, there he stood on sure ground, and spoke with positive emphasis. But he was so intent on empha- sising the natural, moral, and historical a.spects of the CHAP. XXI METHODS OF RELIGIOUS INQUIRY 1/9 'deep things of God,' that he sometimes seemed to neglect those depths of meaning which transcend all types of human feeling, and from which mere moral analysis pro- duces results that are inadequate or misleading. To many minds it seemed that, in unfolding the genesis of beliefs, he was attempting their refutation ; that, in insisting on the human circumstances, the simple usages, the moral inten- tion of the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, he was impugning the sanctity of the rites themselves ; and that, in his absorbing interest in the outward develop- ment of institutions, he neglected their inner meaning, their animating spirit, and the transcendent facts which they implied and symbolically expressed. Nor was it only Stanley's wish to draw down theology from heaven to earth which thus shocked the theological instincts of his clerical brethren. The means by which he pursued his end gave almost equal offence. He applied to theology the methods of historical science and the law of historical development, and thus came into collision with all the conservative instincts which rightly guard the great interests of the Christian faith. He believed that no fear of consequences nor inducement of advantages could relieve men from the obligation of free inquiry. No man loved to look facts more directly in the face, or to know the exact and certain truth. His passion for light is the feature upon which Matthew Arnold has seized in his threnody on his friend : What ! for a term so scant Our shining visitant Cheer'd us, and now is pass'd into the night ? Could'st thou no better keep, O Abbey old ! The boon to thy foundation- hour foretold. The presence of that gracious inmate, Light ? And it was with penetrating insight and the fullest free- dom that Stanley searched the foundations of Christian N 2 l80 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1864 institutions and Christian creeds, indicating what was uncertain, what unproved, what unverifiable, what parasitic, exaggerated, or abnormal. Though here, too, the positive and negative results of his work were largely blended, yet the destructive character appeared to many minds to pre- dominate. In reaching the divine simplicities on which he desired to build he brushed aside many uncertain, yet cherished, accumulations of the past. When he drew men back from what he considered the outworks of the letter into the citadels of the spirit, he seemed to sacrifice to the spoiler many a pious inheritance. When he sought to discriminate between the essence and the accidents of Christianity, men ridiculed his capacity to decide between substance and form. When he endeavoured to break the ' spell of ecclesiasticism,' and set principles upright on their feet, he appeared to surrender the world of the unseen to the jurisdiction of mere opinion, and to exalt human reason- ing above the tradition and authority of the Church. That some of the suspicion with which Stanley's aims and opinions were regarded was plausible, if not natural, can scarcely be denied ; that it was essentially unfounded was most fully known to those who knew him best, or who studied his writings in their entirety. Passages might be, it is true, collected from his utterances which seem to imply a colourless dilution of Christian realities. But such passages, at their strongest, only afford evidence of the occasional excess into which he was led by the strength of his longings after peace and his aspirations for union. They are contradicted by the general tenor of his writings, and by pages after pages suffused with the atmo- sphere of quiet filial trust in which he habitually lived. His toleration never obliterated distinctions between good and evil, and rarely confused indefiniteness of enclosure with that variety of access for which he contended. The CHAP. XXI HIS STANDARD OF DOCTRINE l8r guiding principle of his catholicity was, that as the Father's house has many mansions, so also has it many entrances. Nor did his impatience of doctrinal distinctions proceed from lack of sympathy with what was real in Christianity ; it was, rather, due to a variety of other causes. It was due, in the first place, to his peculiar habit of mind. Nothing deeply interested him outside the plane of human life. Where the human personality did not distinctly emerge, there his warmest sympathies were not elicited. If he were asked to define a dogma, he would draw out its history. Where one man would inquire into the tenets of a heresy, he would search for the date, the birthplace, the surround- ings, of the heresiarch. This subordination of the specula- tive faculty to his biographical, political, historical instincts left him intellectually averse to philosophical systems or metaphysical thought. A second reason for his inadequate grasp of the answers which the Church, in its creeds and its theology, has given to the deeper questionings of mankind must be sought in the circumstances of his life. The problems and their answers lay outside his own Christian experiences. His happy childhood, the tranquil atmosphere of his home sur- roundings, the sweetness of his nature, his prosperous life, contributed to make his conception of religion bright and sunny. He knew nothing of the gloom and the pessimism by which a St. Augustine or a Luther, a Calvin or a Bunyan, was tortured before attaining to a knowledge of truth. The tragedies of the human soul, the depths of spiritual pain, the dark technicalities of a Puritan theology, be- longed to a domain of thought and feeling to which he was a stranger, and he turned from what to many men are necessary verities of religious experience, and therefore essential elements of a comprehensive Christian science, as grim shadows created by mere morbidity of the imagination. 1 82 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1864 And, lastly, his impatience of doctrinal distinctions pro- ceeded from the closeness of his moral contact with the spiritual forces of the Gospel, from the vividness with which he realised the teaching of the Bible, from the sanctity that he attached to every side of human life. ' Not by outward acts, or institutions, or signs of power,' he says, ' but by being what He was, has the history of Jesus Christ retained its hold on mankind.' The life of Christ seemed to him to be primarily sacred and divine ' because it was supremely, superhumanly, transcendently good.' To follow in the Master's footsteps, and to embody His principles in daily life and conduct, was to him the one matter on which he insisted as supremely important. If he was silent on a variety of speculations into the supernatural side of religion, it was mainly because the miracle of life was with him everywhere. In the course of history, in the moral pro- gress of nations, in the education of individual character, he traced the guiding hand of God. ' I tremble,' he writes to his wife, ' to think how every step of my life seems to have been a kind of miracle.' ' You must not vex your- self,' he tells her on another occasion, ' with the thought that you are anything else to me than the most abiding, enduring source of hope and joy. That such an event as our marriage should have been permitted at all I can only regard as one of those "miraculous" signs of God's Providence to each individual human soul that is to me one of the deepest proofs of His existence, of His love, of His purpose for us.' Finding, as he did, the truest proofs of religion in the ordinary events of everyday life, treating all ground as holy, looking upon all days as the days of Christ, and regarding as a constant miracle man's moral growth, he was disposed to lay little — perhaps too little — stress on the more extraordinary phenomena of Divine power. They CHAP. XXI VIEIVS ON CHURCH AND STATE 183 awed him with their mystery ; they commanded his reverence ; but they were not the supports on which his own faith was built. From the very first Stanley's aims and opinions brought him into conflict with powerful tendencies of party feel- ing along the whole line of theological and ecclesiastical thought. And the circumstances in which he stood almost necessarily gave to his attitude an appearance of onesided- ness. He was fighting against the whole force of religious public opinion, as represented in Convocation and in the religious press. The danger that he dreaded was, not the intolerance of science, but the intolerance of the dominant orthodoxy, which was seeking' to crush the advocates of free critical inquiry. Always attracted towards the weaker side, he championed the cause of those who were attacked as latitudinarians with a fervour which sometimes ap- proached to partisanship and a boldness that often bordered on rashness. He thus created among his clerical brethren the impression that his charity ended where the so-called orthodoxy began, and that he was more ready to sympathise with those who were perplexed by the doctrinal difficulties of Christianity than with those who were assured of what to them were its doctrinal verities. Tolerant of the freest speculations of honest doubters, he seemed to be impatient of the position to which honest believers were led by their positive convictions. In upholding the union of Church and State, and in maintaining the subordination of the clergy to the law, he offended those who felt that the spirit of the union had changed, that the supremacy of a personal sovereign was not the same thing as the supremacy of Parliament, and that modifications were necessary to bring the lay and ecclesiastical elements into harmony within the body politic. In his attempt to simplify the idea of the Christian Church 1 84 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1864 he was charged with obliterating its distinctive charac- teristics, with degrading its sacred ordinances to the level of human usages, and with endeavouring to construct a Church in which only negations were positive, and whose only bond of union was the common disbelief that cannot bind. At the same time, alike in what he taught and did not teach, he increased the suspicion which his defence of the unpopular party, and his views of a comprehensive estab- lished_ Church, had aroused. His anxiety to avoid the discussion of disputed dogmas was misconstrued into a denial of the mysteries of the Christian faith. Eager to discover common ground in the midst of wide divergences of opinion, he often irritated those whom he desired to win by ignoring radical differences, and assuming an identity between conflicting views. Fastening upon the paramount importance of the moral and spiritual aspects of religion, he depreciated the value of the ceremonial observances in which they were enshrined. With the ' clear-headed and intrepid Zwingli,' he held that the operations of the Divine influence can only be through moral means, that the true significance of rites lies in the souls and spirits of the re- ceivers, and that the essence of all acts of communion is the moral and spiritual fellowship with Christ. In the intensity of his desire to drive men from the letter to the spirit of Christianity, he seemed to those who most widely differed from him to delight in shattering the shell that guarded the kernel. Setting the substance of religion immeasurably above its outward tokens, struggling to grasp the realities of which words are only the shadows, he spoke almost with contempt of the superstition of forms, and treated with something like impatience what he called ' the materialism of the Altar and the Sacristy.' To him such controversies as those about vestments, which he CHAP. XXI ^ESSAVS OAT CHURCH AND STATE' 185 described as a mere question of ' clergymen's clothes,' seemed trivial, when compared with the adjustment of the balance between science and theology, and mischievous, when they multiplied sectarian differences, or impeded ' measures for the conciliation of our Nonconformist brethren.' In his ' Essays on Church and State ' ^ will be found some of his most deliberate thoughts on the ecclesiastical controversies of the day. The volume contains a history of thirty years of religious war. It contains also a defence of the union of Church and State, a plea for liberty on behalf of Evangelicals, Rationalists, and Ritualists, an appeal for the admission of ' nonconforming members of the Church ' to the widest privileges of membership that the law would allow. Here are collected his essay on the Gorham Judgment, which prevented the exclusion of the Evangelical party from the Church ; his article on the judg- ment in the case of ' Essays and Reviews,' which upheld the liberty of critical inquiry ; his article on Ritualism, in which he demands the toleration of opinions and prac- tices most distasteful to himself. Here appears his speech in Convocation on the Colenso controversy, in which the principles established by the judgment in the case of ' Essays and Reviews ' seemed to be again endangered. Here is the letter to the Bishop of London in which he fought the battle of subscription, that he had made peculiarly his own. Here are addresses in which he urges the advantages of the connection of Church and State,^ or maintains the principle of concurrent endowment as the true solution of the Irish Church question.''' Here, finally, is a paper on * Essays, chiefly on Church and State. London, 1870, 8vo. ^ An Address on the Connection of Church and State. Delivered at Sion College. London, 1868, 8vo. " The Three Irish Churches. An Historical Address delivered at Sion College. London, 1869, 8vo. i86 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1864 the theology of the nineteenth century,^ in which he traces its relation to the Bible, to general history and philosophy, and to the Christian Church. To the articles contained in this volume it might be sufificient to refer for the history of Stanley's attitude towards the controversies in which, during the first eight years of his life as Dean of Westminster, he was so re- peatedly engaged. But he not only fought for his opinions with his pen in the pages of the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, or of Fraser's Magazine. He fought the battle also, often single-handed, in Convocation. He had at first hesitated whether he should not imitate the example of most of his predecessors, and absent himself entirely from its debates, or, like Archbishop Trench, become a silent spectator of its proceedings. Eventually he decided that ' some good might be done by letting Convocation perceive that there was another point of view from which their proceedings might be approached.' For six or seven years he constantly took part in its discussions, though he was subsequently inclined to doubt whether in so doing he had pursued the wisest course. In that time he devel- oped a power of debate for which those who knew him best were wholly unprepared, and the existence of which he himself had never suspected. In these unpremeditated speeches in Convocation his opinions were uttered with the most entire freedom, and were sometimes urged with the exaggeration which the 'one-sided unanimity' of his opponents was apt to engender. Almost his first appearance as a debater in Convocation was made in June 1864, when the synodical condemnation of 'Essays and Reviews' was carried by a large majority. Stanley strongly protested against the ' indecent speed ' * First printed in Eraser's Magazine for February 1865, from a paper read at a meeting of tlie London clergy. CHAP. XXI H/S SPEECHES IN CONVOCATION 187 with which, in his opinion, the matter was dragged through Convocation, and succeeded in carrying the postponement of a decision from June 22nd to June 24th. In the course of his first speech he met the assertion that the Essayists had combined together in writing the volume with a direct denial, based upon his personal authority. To the charge of a conspiracy of silence he replied by declaring that he was himself responsible for the advice under which two of the Essayists had acted. ^ When the final debate took place, on June 24th, 1864, Stanley, in a vigorous speech, attacked the judgment by which it was proposed to condemn the book. ' I main- tain,' he said, 'that there are four great objections (there may be many others) ; but there are four great objections on the face of it which ought to prevent this assembly from adopting the judgment : first, it is ambiguous ; secondly, it is undiscrimi- nating ; thirdly, it is unfair ; and fourthly, it is nugatory. * In the first place, it is ambiguous. I have already endeavoured to prove this. I went yesterday through the judgment word by word, and I showed that, while it as- serted that the Essays contained teaching contrary to the doctrine received by the Church of England, there was absolutely no definition of what the teaching was which was thus said to be contrary to the doctrine of the Church of England. There was nothing but the vaguest and most indefinite expressions, which indefiniteness was increased by the statement that the teaching of the Essays was con- trary to that " held in common with the whole Catholic Church of Christ." There was no definition of what was meant by the words "the Catholic Church of Christ" in this sentence. These are merely general terms, and they have no meaning at all unless' they are defined. The charges brought are general charges, that cannot be dis- proved because they are not attempted to be proved. It has been said that the greatest blunder of which a theolo- gian can be guilty is ambiguity. I fully concur in this ; but if ambiguity is the greatest blunder of which an individual ^ Chronicle of Convocation, Lower House, June 22nd, 1864, pp. 1756-57. i88 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY theologian can be guilty, what must be the case when this ambiguity is the main characteristic of that which pro- fesses to be a formal synodical decision ? '. . . My second objection to the judgment is that it is undiscriminating. It is an undiscriminating judgment upon a book of most unequal and varied merits. It is a book composed by seven different writers — seven gentle- men of different characters, capacities, and attainments. Each has its own characteristic merits. It is a book partly good and partly bad ; and yet there is absolutely, both in this judgment and the reports upon which it is founded, no indication whatever that there is any variety of style or temper between the different Essayists, no indication of any one being more orthodox or less orthodox than another. There is no attempt to do what in the commonest literary review in a periodical would be done. A periodical would think it necessary to its mere honesty of character that it should make some discrimination between the different parts and the different writers of such a book. But in this judgment they are treated all in a lump, and all are equally worthy of condemnation.' Dealing with his third point, he uses a characteristic argument. Nothing in ecclesiastical controversy pained him more deeply than the respect paid to persons — the liberty which was conceded to prosperous dignitaries and denied to the friendless and the absent. 'This judgment,' he says, ' is essentially unfair. By unfairness I do not mean only general unfairness — though of that there is avast amount — but more specifically I mean, that it deals out a different measure of justice to the same offence, condemning in one class of persons what it acquits in another. The offence, if it be one, which you meet in this book you meet with in other books. ... In a book which I myself published twenty years ago there are, as I have already said, expres- sions which substantially contain the principles condemned in the extracts from these Essays in the reports of both Houses of Convocation on the composition of the Penta- teuch, on the date of the Book of Daniel, on the relative value of internal and external evidence, on the sacrifice of 1" Ibid., June 24th, 1864, pp. 1784-85. 11 The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold. CHAP. XXI SPEECH ON 'ESSAYS AND REVIEWS' 1 89 Isaac. But if no synodical judgment has been proposed or attempted in regard to that book, it is manifestly unfair that passages containing substantially the same principles should be passed over in perfect silence in the one case, and should be singled out for condemnation in the other. It surely ought not to be that the one book has been condemned as heterodox because its publication was accompanied by panic, clamour, and alarm, and the other passed by because from accidental circumstances it pro- duced no panic, clamour, or alarm. Is this assembly to be guided, not by the calm justice of our serener hours, but by the clamour of the moment, and are we to say that we will surrender our judgments entirely to the play of acci- dental circumstances But there is yet a more signal vmfairness than this. I maintain that the judgment con- demns statements and principles which some of the framers of that judgment have themselves promulgated or edited. ' . . . The fourth objection that I have to urge against the judgment is that it is nugatory. If it is an evil to pass a judgment that is ambiguous, undiscriminating, and unfair, there is one consolation, that it is entirely nugatory. It has been well shown by the Archdeacon of Coventry and others that all synodical censures in this age will be futile. But I contend that this particular judgment will come before the world, not only as futile, but, to use the words of De Quincey, as a " superfetation of futility." If the synodi- cal judgment passed on this book be not illegal in form, it is illegal in this sense — that, if it means anything at all, it asserts that to be the doctrine of the Church of England which the Supreme Court of Appeal has asserted not to be the doctrine of the Church of England ; and that it asserts that to be contrary to the teaching of the Church of England which the Supreme Court of Appeal has asserted not to be contrary to its teaching. . . .' He concludes with the following words : ' I yield to no man, God being my helper, in the earnest desire to uphold the honour of Him who is perfect Truth, perfect Justice, and perfect Love. I am not in the habit of using sacred names on these occasions — and this occasion is below the use of sacred terms, which ought to occur to 12 Chronicle of Convocation, Lower House, June 24th, 1864, pp. 1788-89. 1* Ibid. p. 1 790. 190 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY us only in the most solemn temper and frame of mind — but I will say that it is for the sake of that faith, and in defence of that most holy Name, that I do myself protest, and I call upon others to protest against — I will not call it, because it is not a phrase that ought to be applied to any mere human or ecclesiastical judgment, "a miserable and soul-destroying judgment"^*; I will content myself with calling it, as I have proved it to be, an ambiguous, an indiscriminate, an unfair, and therefore an iniquitous, judg- ment.' Another struggle in which Stanley took a prominent and unpopular part was that which centred round the name of Bishop Colenso. The controversy was one in which he engaged, if not single-handed, at least with a very scanty following. The part which he played in the conflict affords, therefore, a still stronger illustration of his chivalry and courage. He had scarcely any personal acquaintance with Bishop Colenso, and no personal sympathy with the form of his work. It is unnecessary to enter into the merits of the complicated questions at issue between the Bishop of Capetown and the Bishop of Natal. It will be sufficient here to state only those facts which serve to explain the position adopted by Stanley towards Bishop Gray and Bishop Colenso. In February 1863 the Lower House of Convocation requested the Upper House, and the Upper House agreed, to appoint a committee to consider the character of Bishop Colenso's writings. In the following May the committee reported that the obnoxious volumes contained ' errors of the gravest and most dangerous character,' and the report, after being accepted by the Lower House of Convocation, was sent up to the Upper House. But the Upper House declined to act upon the report, on the ground that the The reference is to the words in which Pusey had spoken of the judgment of the Privy Council. Chronicle of Convocation, Lower House, June 24th, 1864, p. 1792. CHAP. XXI BISHOP COLENSO'S DEPOSITION 191 books which were impugned were ' shortly to be submitted to the consideration of an Ecclesiastical Court.' Proceed- ings against Bishop Colenso's writings were, in fact, already taken. On July ist, 1863, Bishop Colenso was formally cited to appear in the following November before Bishop Gray, who, acting in what he believed to be his inherent right as Metropolitan of Capetown, claimed jurisdiction over the Bishop of Natal. The trial began at Capetown in November 1863. Bishop Colenso did not appear, but contented himself with protesting against Bishop Gray's jurisdiction and giving notice of appeal in case jurisdiction was assumed and judgment delivered. Bishop Gray pro- ceeded to hear the case, and on December i6th, 1863, de- livered judgment and pronounced sentence. The words of the sentence were : * We do hereby sentence, adjudge, and decree the said Bishop of Natal to be deposed from the said office as such Bishop, and to be further prohibited from the exercise of any Divine office within any part of the Metropolitical Province of Capetown.' Four months' grace was given to Bishop Colenso to retract what he had written and to express repentance. The incriminated Bishop took no action, and when the interval had expired the Bishop of Capetown proceeded to Natal and took charge of the Diocese as vacant. The Bishop of Natal now appealed to the Queen in Council on the question whether his trial and deposition were legal. The case was heard before the Judicial Com- mittee of the Privy Council, and on March 20th, 1865, the Lord Chancellor delivered judgment in favour of Dr. Colenso, holding that the Bishop of Capetown had no coercive jurisdiction, and that, therefore, the proceedings he had taken, and the sentence he had pronounced, were 'null and void in law.' 'If Colenso,' wrote Stanley to 192 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY Pearson, ' has any real stuff in him, he will return at once to his work at Natal.' This was the course which the Bishop pursued. Landing at Durban in November 1865, he re- sumed his official duties. The Bishop of Capetown at once pronounced a solemn sentence of ' the greater excommuni- cation,' and caused it to be read in the Cathedral of the Diocese of Natal. The sentence declared ' John William Colenso ' to be ' separated from the communion of the Church of Christ,' and 'to be taken of the whole multitude of the faithful as a heathen man and a publican.' Dr. Colenso's case appealed from many sides and in the strongest manner to Stanley. The causes, as he be- lieved, of freedom of inquiry, of justice, of the supremacy of law, of the union of Church and State, were involved in the struggle. Although the Bishop's peculiar style of criticism was in many ways repugnant to his taste and feeling — although he himself approached the Scriptures with the very opposite object of drawing from them whatever they contained of elevation, of religious instruction, of experi- ence, of the counsel of God, of knowledge of the human heart, of poetry, and of history — yet he esteemed the author of the Commentaries on the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua as a conscientious searcher after truth. It was not the results, but the lawfulness, of the inquiry which he defended, and he identified the Bishop's cause with the right of the clergy to ascertain the nature, and test the grounds, of the value they attached to the Bible. He was indignant at the spirit in which hard names were hurled at the head of an absent and friendless man, and in which hundreds of pages were written to confute what was never asserted, and to assign inferences that were never admitted. On Dr. Colenso's fate depended, as he thought, the union of the Colonial Churches with the State of England, as well as the claims of the Colonial clergy to be judged, not CHAP. XXI SPEECH ON COLEATSO, 1865 193 by irresponsible Metropolitans, but by English laws. It is not, therefore, surprising that, throughout the subsequent proceedings in Convocation, Bishop Colenso found in Stanley an untiring champion. On June 28th, 1865, the Lower House of the Convoca- tion of Canterbury, without any formal notice of the pro- posed resolution, was asked to concur in an Address of the Upper House expressing ' hearty admiration of the courage, firmness, and devoted love of the truth of the Gospel as this Church has received the same ' with which the South African bishops had opposed 'heretical and false doctrine.' Stanley strongly opposed the resolution, which involved grave theological questions as well as legal points of considerable intricacy. ' Am I to understand,' he asked, 'that this House has made up its mind on the question that it is unlawful for a clergyman, a prelate of the Church of England, to deny the Mosaic origin of any portion of the Pentateuch .'' I wish the House to consider that that is the position we take up — that to question any portion of the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch, in our judgment, excludes anyone from holding any office in the Church of England. Again, we mean also, by concurring in this Address, to declare that we have made up our minds that it is unlawful for any clergyman of the Church of England to hold the opinion concerning future punishment which was held by Origen and by St. Gregory of Nyssa, and that any person who holds such opinion cannot hold any office within the Church of England. Again, we are called upon to assert that we have made up our minds that any person who holds the views on the Atonement that were held by Alexander Knox, that were held by William Law, that were held by Coleridge, that were held by St. Anselm and by St. Chrysostom, may not hold any office in the Church of England. We may have made up our minds on the subject, but I ask if this is certainly the case Again, not having the Judgment of the Bishop of Capetown before me, which is one of the inconveniences of this matter being brought before us on so short a notice, I am not aware whether the question of the salvation of good heathens was VOL. II O 194 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1866 involved, but I think it was. Now, are we prepared to say that no clergyman is justified in holding an office in the Church of England who believes in the possibility of the salvation of Marcus Aurelius and Socrates ? I have not the Judgment before me, but I think that is the proposition to which we should be pledged. Again, are we prepared to say that it is unlawful for any clergyman who maintains that any portions of the early chapters of Genesis are to be taken in any other than a strict historical meaning to retain office in the Church of England .'' ' A year later (June 1866) similar resolutions were suddenly brought, without notice, before Convocation, on the last day but one of its sittings, and when some of its most important members had dispersed. The Lower House was asked to concur in a resolution 'that Dr. Colenso, having been not only excommunicated by the Bishop of Capetown and the Bishops of South Africa with him in Synod, but also deposed from his office of bishop, if a bishop shall be duly elected and consecrated for the See of Natal in the place of Bishop Colenso, the Church of England would of necessity hold communion with that bishop.' Stanley opposed the resolution with all the vigour at his command. He pointed out the legal difficulties it involved. He insisted on its fatal consequences to the freedom and independence of the Colonial Church, if its clergy were to be abandoned, bound hand and foot, to the mercy of their Metropolitan. He urged its theological effects, reviewing seriatim the six grounds on which Dr. Colenso had been excommunicated. If one charge were affirmed, then 'a canonized saint' of the Church like Gregory of Nyssa was 'an excommunicated heretic'; if another, then ' English divines and bishops of unquestioned orthodoxy ' shared in the same condemnation. If this pro- position were accepted, then 'hundreds, I might say 16 Chronicle of Convocation, Lower House, June 28th, 1865, p. 2383. CHAP. XXI SPEECH ON COLENSO, 1866 thousands, of clergymen in England ' are equally guilty ; if that doctrine were confirmed, then Jeremy Taylor and Athanasius must be pronounced to be heretics. Nor did he shrink from adopting the personal consequences of his defence of the ' unfriended and the absent.' He challenged his hearers to attack ' the well-friended and the present.' * I might,' he says, ' mention one who, although on some of these awful and mysterious questions he has expressed no direct opinion, yet has ventured to say that the Pentateuch is not the work of Moses ; who has ventured to say that there are parts of the Sacred Scriptures which are poetical and not historical ; who has ventured to say that the Holy Scriptures themselves rise infinitely by our being able to acknowledge both that poetical character and also the historical incidents in their true historical reality ; who has ventured to say that the narratives of those historical incidents are coloured, not unfrequently, by the necessary infirmities which belong to the human instruments by which they are conveyed — and that individual is the one who now addresses you. I am not unwilling to take my place with Gregory of Nyssa, with Jerome, and with Athanasius. But in that same goodly company I shall find the despised and rejected Bishop of Natal. At least deal out the same measure to me that you deal to him ; at least judge for all a righteous judgment.' The South African controversy had now entered on a new stage, which, though not immediately connected with Convocation, led indirectly to one of Stanley's most unpopular acts as Dean of Westminster. Dr. Colenso had resumed his work in his diocese. Writing to him on the eve of his departure from England, Stanley said : ' I have every hope of your success on your return if you are able to fulfil the three promises held out in the ^' The speech was published in pamphlet form during the Pan-Anglican Conference at Lambeth in September 1867, under the title of The South African Controversy in its Relations to the Church of England. London, 1867, 8vo. 196 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY Preface to the fifth part of your book on the Pentateuch, and in your address, namely — (i) entire abstinence from the controversial and denunciatory acts and words of your opponents ; (2) entire toleration of the different opinions and practices of the clergy under your control who take other views than your own of their duty; and (3), chief of all, confidence that you have a true mission and large sphere before you as a bishop, if not as a missionary, but better far if both together, amongst the laity and the natives, if not amongst the clergy of Natal. ' No ecclesiastic can, in our day, or, perhaps, in any day, as it seems to me, maintain his position without having such a sphere, independent of the success of his own par- ticular views. With such a sphere, and with a spirit at once of courage and toleration, we may, with God's help, defy the world.' The return of Dr. Colenso made Bishop Gray the more desirous of procuring the election and consecration of a new Bishop of Natal in the room of the man whom, in spite of the decision of the Privy Council, he treated as deposed and excommunicated. The English prelates, on the other hand, recommended caution and delay. Even those who sympathised with Bishop Gray were not clearly convinced that any new election would be canonical, or would be so recognised, either in South Africa or in England. The affairs of the Colonial Church, and its relations to the mother-Church were, in fact, so entangled that it was difficult to define the exact validity and force of the credentials of the Colonial Episcopate. There were colonies with distinct varieties of civil constitution and jurispru- dence ; bishops with, and bishops without, Royal Patents ; dioceses, some with recognised, some with unrecognised, Church Synods, and others with none at all ; and decisions of English Courts only increased the confusion by conflict- ing one with another. Under these circumstances the Canadian Synod urged a gathering of Anglican bishops for consultation and advice, and some of the American bishops CHAP. XXI THE PAN-ANGL/CAiV SYNOD expressed a wish that the daughter-Church across the Atlantic should be admitted to the proposed Conference. The suggestion was accepted by the Canterbury House of Convocation. In February 1867 Archbishop Longley invited the whole Anglican Episcopate to meet at Lambeth in the following September. Stanley, from the first, feared that the influence of the Conference would be used in favour of the Bishop of Capetown, and of some modification of the constitution and government of the Church. He also strongly deprecated any secret deliberations. When the proposal for a Con- ference came before Convocation in February 1866, he expressed his hope that, if the bishops were to assemble at Lambeth for any other purpose than the interchange of friendly sympathy, ' their proceedings would be open and public' Nor did he stand alone in his fears. The Arch- bishop of York and the bishops of the Northern Province, as well as the Bishop of Peterborough, declined to attend the Conference, and the Bishop of St. David's was only present on the express condition that the question of Bishop Colenso's position should not be debated. No sooner had the Conference assembled than it became evident that the pledge of excluding the Natal difficulty from the discussion could not be kept. At the preliminary meeting the attempt was made to bring the question forward, and on more than one occasion the topic was reintroduced. On the fourth day the Bishop of Capetown made a determined effort to procure from the assembled bishops their sanction to the consecration of a new Bishop of Natal. He even threatened to resign his see if his pro- posal were rejected. After a heated debate, a hypothetical resolution was adopted declaring that, if a new bishop were consecrated, there would be no necessary severance of communion between the Home and the Colonial Church. 198 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY This resolution was interpreted by Bishop Gray to mean that the Conference had given its approval to the appoint- ment of a new bishop. Such a misunderstanding, which could hardly have arisen unless the proceedings had been secret, may be thought to have justified Stanley's demand for complete publicity. ' The misstatements of the Bishop of Capetown's letter,' he writes to BishojD Ewing,' combined with the enthusiasm which, in spite of them, he excites, remind me more of the influence of Habakkuk Mucklevvrath over the Covenanters than anything that I have ever seen in my time.' The Conference concluded with a special service. Before the opening of the proceedings the Archbishop expressed a wish to hold this service in Westminster Abbey. In the uncertainty that Stanley felt as to the pur- poses for which the Conference was summoned, he feared that it might be used for party objects, such as giving support to the Bishop of Capetown, repudiating the Judgment of the Privy Council, and confirming the alleged deposition of the Bishop of Natal. He therefore declined to promise the use of the building for the proposed special service, though he offered it for other objects indicated in the following correspondence : ' Deanery, Westminster : Sept. 21st, 1867. ' My dear Lord Archbishop, — I have been honoured with a communication from your Grace, through the Bishop of London, requesting the use of Westminster Abbey for a special service to be held for the English, American, and Scottish bishops now assembled in England — to be held, as I understood, on September 28. 'On all occasions it is my earnest desire to render the Abbey and the precincts of Westminster available for purposes of general utility and edification, and this desire is increased when the request comes from your Grace. ' You will kindly allow me to state the difficulty which 18 From the Guardian, October 9th, 1S67, p. 1071. CHAP. XXI THE PAN-ANGLICAN SYNOD 199 I feel in the present instance. I have endeavoured to act in such matters on the rule of granting the use of the Abbey to such purposes, and such only, as are either co- extensive with the Church of England, or have a definite object of usefulness or charity, apart from party or polemi- cal considerations. ' Your Grace will, I am sure, see that, however much your Grace's intentions would have brought the proposed Conference at Lambeth within this sphere, in fact it can hardly be so considered. The absence of the Primate and the larger part of the bishops of the Northern Province, not to speak of the bishops of India and Australia, and of other important colonial or missionary sees, must, even irre- spectively of other indications, cause it to present a partial aspect of the English Church ; whilst the appearance of other prelates, not belonging to our Church, places it on a different footing from the institutions which are confined to the Church of England. And, further, the absence of any fixed information as to the objects to be discussed and promoted by the Conference leaves me, in common with all who stand outside, in uncertainty as to what would be the proposals or measures which would receive, by impli- cation, the sanction given by the use of the Abbey — a sanction which, in the case of a church so venerable and national in its character, ought, I conceive, to be lent only to public objects of well-defined or acknowledged bene- ficence. ' These are the grounds why I hesitate to take upon myself the responsibility suggested. But, when stating this difficulty, I feel so strongly the value of the friendly intercourse, to promote which has been the chief intention of your Grace, and of, I doubt not, many of the prelates who have concurred in this Conference, and I am so desirous that the Abbey shall be made to minister to the edification of large sections of our Church, even when not representing the whole, and of those outside our own immediate pale (especially our brethren from America) who are willing to co-operate with us in all things lawful and good, that I would gladly, if possible, join in advancing such a purpose. * It has occurred to me that, as the service indicated by your Grace is to be held after the Conference is finished, the Abbey might be granted for it without any relation to 200 LIFE OF DEAJV STANLEY the Conference itself ; but either for some specific object, such as the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, or for other home or foreign missions of unquestioned im- portance, or else (in those general terms which, as I appre- hend, express your Grace's wishes) for the promotion of brotherly good-will and mutual edification amongst all members of the Anglican communion. ' Under these circumstances, and on this understanding, which I should wish to be made as public as the announce- ment of the service itself, I should have great pleasure in permitting the use of the Abbey for such a service to be held in the morning or afternoon of September 28 (as may be deemed most convenient) ; and I trust that, if this meets your Grace's wishes, your Grace will undertake to preach on the occasion. * I beg to remain, ' My dear Lord Archbishop, ' Yours faithfully and respectfully, ' A. P. Stanley.' ' Addington Park, Croydon : Sept. 25th, 1867. ' My dear Dean, — I laid your note before the Confer- ence yesterday, but it will probably not close its sittings on Friday evening, as there is reason to believe that com- mittees will be appointed to report at a future date. Under these circumstances, it is obvious from the tenor of your letter that the Abbey is not open to us. I regret, therefore, that we shall not be able to avail ourselves of your kind offer under the specified conditions. ' Believe me, my dear Dean, ' Yours very truly, ' C. T. Cantuar.' 'Deanery, Westminster: Sept. 27th, 1867. ' My dear Lord Archbishop, — I have to acknowledge, with thanks, your Grace's letter of the 25th, and to express my regret that your Grace and the bishops assembled should have felt themselves precluded from accepting my proposal — in reply to your Grace's request — to meet in the Abbey for "some specific object" of charity or usefulness, "or for the purpose of promoting brotherly good-will and mutual edification amongst all members of the Anglican communion." CHAP. XXI THE PAN-ANGLICAN SYNOD 20 1 ' I beg, however, that you will assure the prelates assembled, especially those of our American brethren for whose sake, as I stated in my former letter, I especially proposed to grant the use of the Abbey as before men- tioned, that if they, or any of them, should wish to attend the services in the Abbey on Sunday next (at 10 a.m. or at 3 P.M.), every accommodation and welcome shall be afforded. ' I beg to remain, ' My dear Lord Archbishop, ' Yours faithfully and respectfully, ' A. P. Stanley.' Stanley's refusal to allow the use of Westminster Abbey was severely criticised by the religious press. ' The Guar- dian,' he writes to his sister Mary on October 6th, 1867, 'when it complains of my refusal of the Abbey, might have had the grace to acknowledge that I offered it for the only legitimate purposes of the Conference, and that this offer was declined. The Archbishop so mismanaged the announce- ment of my offer that the Americans never understood it, and went off furious. I have written a letter to the senior American bishop trying to explain their misapprehension.' In his letter to Bishop Hopkins, of Vermont, Stanley alludes to the death of Sir Frederick Bruce, the British Minister at Washington, and his brother-in-law, which occurred in September 1867, and the news of which reached the Deanery at the time when the Conference opened. He also explained why he had refused the use of the Abbey to the Conference as a body, and offered it to the individual members for purposes in which the whole nation could sympathise. The Pan-Anglican Synod had been opposed from the outset by some of the ablest men in the Church, in consideration of the dangerous, because indefinite and secret, character which such an assembly must assume, unless convoked by lawful authority and conducted with publicity. The Conference could not, in Stanley's opinipn, 202 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1867 be considered as a fair representative of the Church of England, and he refused to open to its members the doors of Westminster Abbey on precisely the same grounds on which he would have refused to admit any association in whose representative character and partisan objects he had no confidence. To take any other course would have been to stultify the position that he had throughout assumed. His letter to Bishop Hopkins, and the Bishop's reply, are printed below : ' Deanery, Westminster : Oct., 1867. ' My Lord Bishop, — Understanding that some mis- apprehension exists on the part of the American bishops as to their invitation to a service in Westminster Abbey, I beg that you will do me the favour of communicating the following statement, in as public a way as you think fit, to your episcopal brethren. ' It was impossible for me, as guardian of a building like the Abbey, which belongs to the whole Church and people of England, to take the responsibility of giving its sanction to a meeting that included only a portion of the English bishops, and of which the objects were undefined, the issues unknown, and the discussions secret. But I was so anxious to show every courtesy to the bishops from the United States, that chiefly on their account, as I particularly specified in my letter to the Archbishop, I deviated so far from the usual rules which guide the services in the Abbey as to propose the use of the Abbey for a service which should gather them there, either for some specific object of charity or usefulness, or for the general promotion of good-will and mutual edification of all members of the Anglican communion. I was encouraged the more to make this offer by the pledge which I had received, that no question exciting party differences should be introduced into the meeting, and I was therefore in hopes that his Grace would have felt himself able to accept a proposal which I had reason to believe would have been gratifying to our American brethren. ' The proposal was, however, declined ; and I must, therefore, through you, beg to express my regret that such an opportunity was lost of cultivating that feeling of amity between the two countries which is at all times so welcome. CHAP. XXI LETTER TO BISHOP HOPKINS 203 The circumstance of the severe domestic affliction which has recently befallen us, whilst it prev'^ented me from showing that hospitality which I should otherwise have offered to you, makes me doubly anxious that in a country from which we have received expressions of such sincere sympathy there should be no misunderstanding as to the cordial desire which I entertain to welcome Americans on all occasions to our great national sanctuary. *I remain, &c., 'Arthur P. Stanley.' ' Burlington, Vt. : Nov. 9th, 1867. 'Very Rev. and dear Sir, — Your letter of October, addressed, through me, to all the American bishops, reached me last night, and I have sent it for publication to the editor of "The Church Journal," New York. 'The high reputation which you enjoy as an author of acknowledged ability concurs with your elevated position as the Dean of Westminster to give importance to your course in withholding the use of the venerable Abbey from the Pan-Anglican Council. How far your explanation will be satisfactory to my respected colleagues it is not for me to say ; but with regard to myself, I frankly confess that I do not understand it. 'You state, as the reason for your decision, that you are the guardian of the Abbey, which belongs to the whole Church and people of England, and that you could not give its sanction to a meeting which included a portion only of the English bishops, and of which the objects were undefined, the issues unknown, and the discussions secret. ' Here are several points to which I cannot assent in accordance with true Church principle. ' In a certain sense it may be said that the Abbey, and every cathedral — nay, even every parish church, belongs to the whole Church of England. But in the strict and proper sense of jurisdiction, the Abbey belongs to the Diocese of London and the Province of Canterbury. You are, indeed, the Dean, and, so far, the guardian of the edifice ; but I do not comprehend how this can discharge the vows of ordi- nation, which bound you to "obey your Bishop " and Arch- bishop, and " follow, with a glad mind and will, their godly admonitions." Nor do I perceive on what ground of eccle- 204 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY siastical law you thought fit to take a course directly con- trary to what you knew to be their design in holding this important Conference of bishops from every quarter of the world. The call was given by your own Archbishop, to whom you owe respect and deference. The Council was attended by your own Bishop, to whom you owe canonical obedience. It was fully sanctioned by the great majority of the other English bishops. It had the express approval of the Convocation of Canterbury, to which you belong. It had the cordial concurrence of the archbishops and bishops of Ireland, the metropolitans and bishops of the Colonies, the bishops of Scotland, and those of the United States ; and its proceedings were marked by the unanimous consent of the whole. Are you, on any ground of true Church principle, or even of common-sense, to be regarded as the representative of " the whole Church and people of England," in withholding the use of the venerable Abbey from an assembly like this What previous meeting of bishops has ever been held within its walls which would bear a comparison in numbers and in dignity And are you by virtue of your office as the Dean an absolute auto- crat, to deny, in opposition to your own Archbishop and Bishop, and all the other prelates of the English commu- nion, the use of the Abbey by the Council of Lambeth, on the sole pretext that some three or four of the bishops, who have no authority whatever over the Diocese of Lon- don, thought fit to dissent from the judgment of all their brethren 'You disapproved the Council because "its objects were undefined and its issues unknown." I pray you to remem- ber, if you can, any Council of the Church whose action could be known beforehand. Was it not enough to be assured that an assembly called by your own Archbishop, and consisting of the bishops of the Church, could not possibly be supposed to have any object, or arrive at any issue, inconsistent with truth and duty? Could not the Dean of Westminster trust seventy-six prelates of the Church with the care of her sacred interests Or was he really justified in regarding them as a band of conspirators against her honour and dignity, so that he was conscien- tiously compelled, in despite of all real canonical principle, to shut his Abbey doors against them 'This, my dear sir, is the position in which your strange CHAP. XXI LETTER FROM BISHOP HOPKINS 205 course has placed you, in my humble judgment. You will pardon me, I trust, for speaking plainly. I cannot do otherwise on a question in which the honour of the Church is concerned. I have no hesitation in saying that I think you made a great mistake, and that, as -a justification of it seems altogether impossible, it would be more frank and candid on your part to call it by its proper name, and let it be forgotten as soon as possible, since the remembrance of it can only be attended with mortification. ' Your allusion to your offer to receive our bishops, pro- vided they came in their official capacity and without any connection with the Council, renders it proper for me to say that the invitation thus limited was unanimously de- clined, as being, indeed, an assault upon the Council, and upon ourselves for coming to attend it. I am very willing to suppose that you did not so intend it ; but it could hardly admit of any other fair construction. ' And your reference to your own domestic affliction, of which I had heard nothing at the time, while it certainly calls on me for sympathy, and furnishes a sufficient apology for the absence of any social hospitality, would have been better made when we were on the spot, since then we could not have been led to suppose that your antipathy to the Council was the cause of your seeming discourtesy. ' But this, being merely a private and personal matter, is easily explained, and could not be the ground of any un- pleasant feeling. I am persuaded that the kind and cordial attention which our bishops received from other quarters was quite as great as we could have expected or desired. And we had certainly no reason to complain of any failure in English hospitality. ' The only question of any real importance is the very serious one, whether the Dean of Westminster has a right, on true Church principles, to withhold the Abbey from the meeting of a Council called by his Archbishop and sanc- tioned by his own Bishop of London. The question extends itself to St. Paul's Cathedral, as it was openly stated in Council that the Bishop had no power to tender either of those buildings for the closing service of the great assembly, though no one doubted that one of these sacred edifices would have been the proper place for that solemn occasion. 'If the Dean possesses such a right — if the Bishop of London has no power over the use of the Cathedral of St. 2o6 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY Paul or Westminster Abbey — I must distinctly aver that I regard the fact as a serious blot upon the ecclesiastical system of our venerable Mother-Church of England, entirely inconsistent with primitive practice, and existing nowhere else in Christendom. The Bishop is the rector-in-chief of all the churches in the diocese, and hence the promise of obedience to his godly judgment is an essential part of the vows made in ordination. But especially is he the rector- in-chief of his own cathedral, which is the place containing his official seat, and called cathedral for that very reason, because the Bishop's chair is there. ' It was understood in the Council that the Dean of St. Paul's, like the Dean of Westminster, was hostile to our assembly, and that they had the legal authority to close, against their own bishop and archbishop, so far as the Con- ference at Lambeth was concerned, the doors of both the Cathedral and the Abbey ; and this is what I stated in the beginning that I could not understand. Believing that our Mother-Church is truly Catholic in all her essential prin- ciples, I certainly do not understand how she could have fallen into so flagrant an inconsistency and so gross a de- parture from ecclesiastical law and order as they existed universally in the purest ages of the Christian dispensation. ' I trust that your own part in the late case may have the good result of turning the attention of the Church of England to this anomaly, and restoring to the bishops those ancient rights in their own cathedrals and quasi-cathedrals which have been so long withheld. It is this hope which has led me to write so much at large upon the subject, because it is one which deserves the serious attention of all concerned. For it must be remembered that the affront was not offered so much to the American bishops as to your own. With all personal respect and regard, your faithful brother in Christ, 'John H. Hopkins, ' Bishop bf Vermont. ' To the Very Rev. the Dean of Westminster." So far as Stanley was concerned, these two letters closed the incident. ' I shall,' he says, ' take no further notice of the Bishop of Vermont. I wrote to him what was meant to be a courteous and friendly letter, CHAP. XXI LETTER FROM PHILLIPS BROOKS 207 and as he has not taken it as such, it is useless to continue the correspondence. His ignorance of facts will be palpable to anyone in this country, and to many in his own.' It may at least be said that Bishop Hopkins did not speak the universal feeling of the American clergy. His letter was repudiated by one of the most distinguished of its members, the Rector of the Church of the Holy Trin- ity, in Philadelphia. The late Phillips Brooks, afterwards Bishop of Massachusetts, at that time almost a stranger to Stanley, wrote at once to protest against the Bishop of Vermont's language. ' I have just happened,' he writes on November 29th, 1867, ' to see in the " Church Journal " of New York a letter from you to Bishop Hopkins, our presiding bishop, with his reply, and I am so mortified and indignant at the impu- dence and ill-feeling of the Bishop's letter that, whatever may be the liberty I take in doing so, I cannot help sitting down at once and disowning — as I am sure I may do for our whole Church — the spirit and substance of his melan- choly letter. It is a little matter to you, but it is much to us. I, for one, am not willing that my Church should be so misrepresented. I am not willing that you should for a moment think that it is the Church which does what the Bishop of Vermont has done — answer the kind courtesy of your note to him by personal insults and impertinent criti- cisms of customs with which he had nothing in the world to do. I beg you to believe, sir, that the only feeling in our Church at large on reading the Bishop's letter will be one of sorrow and shame. We would not willingly see any gentleman insulted in our name, and we owe too much to you for all that you have sent us in your books, which we know here as well as any Englishman can, to feel lightly the dis- grace of such words as the Bishop of Vermont has written.' But to return from what is in the nature of a digression to Stanley's statement of his views in Convocation. In his speeches on ' Essays and Reviews ' and in defence of Bishop Colenso he had demanded toleration for the so-called 208 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1866 Rationalists. He made the same demand in favour of the Ritualists, although his personal sympathies were not en- listed on their side, and although such an appeal was, as he frankly admitted, the severest trial to which his principles of toleration could be put. Since i860 the Ritual movement had been rapidly grow- ing in importance, although public attention had been di- verted from it by the stormy controversies which centred round ' Essays and R*eviews ' and Bishop Colenso. On February 8th, 1866, the question was brought before Con- vocation, and a Committee of the Lower House was ap- pointed to consider and report upon fit 'measures for clearing the doubts and allaying the anxieties ' which had been expressed. Stanley insisted upon the two great evils to which Ritualism, in his opinion, led — the defiance of the wishes of congregations, and the defiance of the au- thority of bishops. But he described the practices them- selves, in the language of Calvin, as ' tolerabiles ineptice.' ' Let us first,' he said, 'take the first word, "tolerabiles'' — that is, they ought to be tolerated. They ought to be tolerated, first, on the general grounds in regard to practices, which are equally true as regards opinions also, namely — that the idea of a National Church implies its comprehension or toleration of as great a diversity of practices and of opinions within its pale as is compatible with practical unity. Of course there is that limit, the limit of practical (not uniformity, but) unity. But within that limit a National Church ought to contain the largest breadth, both of practice and opinion, that can be included. . . . ' Two nations or parties (as it was said a long time ago) were struggling in the womb of the Church of England, each one from time to time attempting to cast out the other. Neither has ever entirely succeeded, and I trust never will succeed to the end of time. That is one reason why these practices, if it is possible without rending asunder the practical unity of the Church, ought to be tolerated. Another reason why we should leave them without further CHAP. XXI SPEECH OJV RITUALISM notice is that . . . (except in the two aspects to which I have alluded — their defiance of the people and the bishops) they are innocent ; that is, they have no malignant object. Many may think these practices foolish, but their greatest enemy will not say they have any object beyond that of aiding the devotions of the people, or of assimilating our services to the Churches of other communions. But those objects are not sinful ; they do not tend to the engendering of evil passions ; they are not of the nature of many of those pursuits in which so many of the clergy during the last few years have been engaged — attacking and excluding one excellent person after another, and promoting ill-will and misunderstanding between man and man. They only assume that character when adopted in antagonism to the bishops or the parishes. In themselves they are innocent — even their enemies being judges — and this is a sound reason why they should be permitted, if it can be done without the disruption of particular parishes, or disturbing the unity of the whole Church.' ' I now come,' he goes on to say, ' to the second word which Calvin used, " inepticB." If you look out the word in the Facciolati Lexicon, you will find many explanations given for it; some I do not deny are sufficiently offensive ; but amongst them I will take two — "unfit or unsuitable," and "trifling." They are " unsuitable " under the aspect in which we now consider them — namely, they do not express the particular doctrines which their friends and enemies connect with them ; and they are "trifling," comparatively with the greater matters of justice, truth, and mercy, of which I have already spoken. People often think, and some (perhaps many) in this room think, that, although trifling in themselves, they are not trifling in respect to the tremendous doctrines they sym- bolise. ' It is said that they symbolise important doctrines, which accounts for the great fight made for them ; but that also accounts for the great fight made against them. It is my wish to show that there is no reason for the fight, either for them or against them. If we take the chief point in dispute, the "vestments," it is important once for all to ' Chronicle of Convocation, Lower House, February 9th, 1866, pp. 174-6. VOL. II P 2IO LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1866 remember what is their origin, and what doctrines or things they do or do not symbolise. An explanation has been given of their origin — that they have grown out of the garments worn by the Apostles. But what were the garments of the Apostles, except just the common dress worn by the country-people at that time These vest- ments, which have made so much noise, altered, of course, in the ages which have since elapsed, were neither more nor less than the shirt, the coat, and the overcoat of the Greek or Roman peasants of the time. When the tunicle, the alb, and the chasuble are adopted as an imitation of the Roman Catholic custom, that is another matter ; but this is not the ground taken up. ' What was their true historical origin is the question. It was that the clerical order naturally retained these old vestments, which originated in the time of the Roman Empire. This was partly by chance and partly because the clerical order is naturally averse to changes. For instance, bishops' wigs, which are not in themselves sym- bolical of anything, were worn simply because the bishops retained them after other persons left them off. So it was respecting these ecclesiastical vestments : they were all originally ordinary garments. What is the tunicle or the alb .'' It is simply a white shirt. What is the mysterious chasuble It is perfectly well known that it is the slang name by which a Roman peasant called the long smock- frock which he drew over his coat on a rainy day, and which encased him as in a " little house " — " casula " — just as, by the same metaphor, a hat with us is called a " tile." What is the dalmatic It was a new fashion of the over- coat introduced by two Roman emperors whose characters do not commend them to us for imitation — Commodus and Heliogabalus — and was afterwards adopted by sov- ereigns everywhere. Richard II., in his portrait at the end of this room,^*^ is represented as wearing the dalmatic, and what it symbolises in his case it is difficult to say. . . . ' He thus concludes : ' This, then, is what I have to say on the matter — that these parties ought to be tolerated on the general principles 20 The portrait of Richard II., now on the south side of the Sacrarium in the Abbey, was at that time hanging in the Jerusalem Chamber. '^1 Chronicle of Cotivocation, Lower House, February 9th, 1866, pp. 176-7. CHAP. XXI SPEECH ON RITUALISM 211 by which the Church of England tolerates all that it can include within its pale ; they ought to be tolerated because they are innocent ; they ought to be let alone because they are "inapt," unsuitable to express any principle for or against which any one is contending. Things which quicken one man's devotion do not affect another. With one it is Gothic, and with another Grecian, architecture. With some it is dresses like these, with some a white surplice, with others no surplice at all. All these things ought to be tolerated as so many helps to the devotion of the Church, according to the different ways in which they strike different minds. The only serious dangers are those to which I have before alluded, where they spread in defiance of the parish or the constituted authorities, or where they are exalted as if they made part of the essence of religion. When St. Remigius came to Clovis, the King of the Franks, to preach Christianity to him, he appeared with the utmost pomp he could command ; upon which the barbarian chief, greatly struck by the spectacle, exclaimed, "Do I behold the Kingdom of Heaven.?" "No," replied the saint, "you only see one step towards it!" That is the true state of the case in all these things. It may be a good step, or a bad step, but it is not the Kingdom of Heaven itself ; and it is a great misfortune when those who defend these practices reverse the sentence of St. Remigius, and represent these practices to be the Kingdom of God itself. I have already expressed my hope and belief that this con- fusion between the externals and the essentials of religion is shared by few. On those who do not share it, but who do place these things in their true relative position, the argu- ments used here or elsewhere will doubtless have their due weight. If there be any who think, on the one side, that it is absolutely vital to obey the rubric about vestments, or, on the other side, to obey the rubric about placing the com- munion-table in the body of the church, my only hope is that such persons must be very few.'22 It was in tliis same spirit that Stanley welcomed the Bennett Judgment, in 1872. The Vicar of Frome Selwood was prosecuted for various statements respecting ' the Real Objective Presence in the Eucharist ' by an Evangelical ^ Ibid. pp. 1 78-79. 212 LIFE OF DEAN' STANLEY 1874 association formed for the purpose of suppressing such opinions. The case came before the Privy Council, where it was viewed, as Stanley says in his article in the ' Edin- burgh Review,' ' not in the heated atmosphere of partisan theologians, but by the dry daylight of English law.' Judgment acquitting Mr. Bennett was pronounced on June 8th, 1872. 'Again and again in the course of the decision the toleration of the Lutheran or Roman doctrine of the Eucharist is based on the maxims laid down for the tolera- tion of the Calvinistic doctrine of Baptism, of the free critical interpretation of the Scriptures, and of the Origenist doctrine of Future Punishment. It is the last and crowning triumph of the Christian latitudinarianism of the Church of England.' Nor is any inconsistency with these principles involved in his support of the Public Worship Regulation Act of 1874, which was intended to restrain the ceremonial ex- cesses or shortcomings of the clergy. He had always maintained that the limits of toleration were passed when the authority of Bishops or the wishes of congregations were defied. He therefore defended the Bill before the Lower House of Convocation on April 30th, 1874. He ridiculed the idea that, if the Bill passed, 'there would be an immense secession, that the Church would be overthrown, that disestablishment and disruption would take place. Such expressions as these are constantly used by every single person who feels himself aggrieved in any way whatever, and this fact, as I said before, cannot but tend to diminish their effect.' He insisted on the insignificance of the points in which discipline would probably be enforced. ' I presume,' he said, ' that what, to the minds of many of the clergy, appears most likely to be interfered with under this Bill is their 2* 'The Bennett Judgment' {^Edinburgh Review, July 1872). CHAP. XXI SPEECH ON RITUALISM 213 preconceived opinion as to the position in which a clergy- man should stand in regard to the Communion-table. I must be permitted to ask, with some astonishment and pain, whether it is possible that any large number of the clergy can believe either in the lawfulness, or the wisdom, or, I will add, the success of establishing a new Church, possibly with the help of some ex-colonial Bishop, on the basis of the fundamental dogma of insisting on the essential and indispensable necessity of a clergyman's standing a few feet to the right or the left, on one side or the other, of the Communion-table — a position which, even in the Roman Catholic Church, which it is the special object of most of these persons to imitate — ' (Loud cries of 'No, no'). 'At any rate, it is held up as a very great authority in reference to such matters.' (Renewed cries of ' No.') ' At all events, the position of the clergyman is, in the Roman Catholic Church, regarded with such absolute in- difference that the chief pastor of that Church, when he celebrates the Communion, always stands in exactly the opposite direction, not with his back, but with his face to the people, no doubt following the primitive usage. And in the most famous representation of that sacred ordinance that has ever been made in the Roman Catholic Church of the West, which has been the foundation of all the most solemn festivals ever instituted in the Christian world with a view of doing honour to the Holy Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, the priest is represented, not in the attitude which is eagerly claimed by those clergy of our Church as indispensable, but in that attitude and posture which are regarded by them as so detestable that, rather than adopt it, they declare that they will form themselves into a new Church. I allude, of course, to Raphael's picture of the Miracle of Bolsina, which is the foundation of the great Roman Catholic festival of Corpus Christi, where the priest is at the north end of the table, just in the very attitude of an ordinary Protestant clergyman. ' On such a point, even on their own principles, there is nothing to justify anyone in seeking to form a new Church from the fact of a Bill having been passed to prevent such feuds as have hitherto arisen from the opposite opinions which have existed on a matter of such infinite insignifi- cance. And then, therefore, it is proposed, and I think very properly, to make the Bishop absolute judge as to 214 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1874 whether, in case of any complaint being made, it is desir- able that it should be brought before the Court that is to be appointed for the trial of any question. He must judge whether it be a complaint worthy of consideration, or whether it be one of those frivolous cases where both parties are equally to blame and equally to be repressed.' Finally, he repudiated the theory that Convocation could, by any resolution of its own, remedy the evils for which legislation was invited. The tendency to treat the decrees of Convocation as having any binding force on the con- sciences of the clergy was, in his opinion, a deadly mis- chief. In a letter to a friend written in 1874 he had said, ' the only cure for Ritualism is the destruction of Convoca- tion — Delenda est Convocatio. Never was a more disas- trous step of false policy than the revival of such a body in direct defiance of Burke's warning true to the letter.' In this spirit his concluding remarks were framed : ' The other general remark that I would make before I sit down is this. A great deal has been said about the necessity, or desirableness, of remedying these evils, not by legislation, but by the action of this House. I do not now speak of the impossibility of enforcing the decisions of this House legally except by legislation. I should have thought that to anyone who was acquainted merely with the elements of the English Constitution, it must be perfectly obvious that no resolution passed by this House could have the binding force of law upon an English citizen unless it had received the sanction of the Imperial Legislature. But I do not speak of that difficulty or that impossi- bility. It is not of the impossibility, but of the wrong which is attempted to be done by language of this kind, that I would speak. I speak of the rights which I claim, as an English clergyman and an English citizen, of acknow- ledging no law for my guidance except the law of this realm and of this land. I do not acknowledge, and I do not think the clergy outside this House will acknowledge, any resolution passed by this House as binding upon men, either in ministerial or in civic capacities ; and I am the more anxious to say this because there is no person CHAP. XXI SPEECH ON RITUALISM 215 in this House who is more eager on all occasions to conform to what I have the best reasons for knowing to be the law of this country, and therefore the law of this Church, than •I am. If there are any members of this House who think that on any occasion there can be any rule or law to which I think myself bound, or by which I think other persons ought to feel bound, than the law of England, or that I do not gladly obey or enforce the State law, they are greatly mistaken. 'And it is for that reason that I do deprecate most strongly, and have deprecated often before, the tone which runs through all these debates of endeavouring to set up the decrees and the resolutions of this House, either in temporal or spiritual matters, as having the binding force of, or as in any sense superior to, the acts of the Imperial Legislature. I was shocked and surprised the other day, in the House of Lords, to hear a right rev. prelate whom I greatly respect distinguish between his position as a peer of Parliament and his position as a Father in God, speaking as if he were only a peer of Parliament when Parliament was sitting, and only a Father in God when sitting in the Upper House of Convocation. I entirely re- pudiate any such distinction. I regard the Bishops of this realm as much more Fathers in God when they are sitting in the supreme council of the nation, addressing the peers of England, than when they are talking to half a dozen reporters in a private drawing-room in Dean's Yard. It is most desirable, at all events, that if there be anybody in this House who values the importance of maintaining the supremacy of law, and of protesting against those usurpations to which I have just alluded, they ought freely and openly to express their feelings on that subject, as their duty alike to the State and the Church, alike to the Imperial Legislature and to their brethren in this House.' ^ In these Convocation speeches, whether on the subject of ' Essays and Reviews,' or of Bishop Colenso, or of Ritual- ism, Stanley was contending for the preservation of that enlargement which the National Church already possessed. But he also strove with equal vigour to widen its borders, and 'to unite in one fellowship of good works ' those who The Guardian^ May 6, 1S74, pp. 558-559. 2l6 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1870 stood without the pale of its communion. Two illustrations must suffice, and these are taken from his speeches on the revision of the Authorised Version of the Bible and on the Athanasian Creed. On February loth, 1870, a Committee of Convocation on the Revision of the Authorised Version was appointed by Convocation. Of this Committee Stanley was a member. It met on March 24th to draw up resolutions, which were to guide the selection and the proceedings of the Re- visionists. Amongst these resolutions, the fifth, and last, ran in the following terms : ' That it is desirable that Convocation should nominate a body of its own members to undertake the revision, who shall be at liberty to invite the co-operation of any persons eminent for scholarship, to whatever nation or religious body they belong.' Under these resolutions a Committee, or 'Company,' was appointed by Convocation to revise the Authorised Version of the New Testament. The Revisers met for the first time on Wednesday, June 22, 1870. The inaugural meeting was preceded by a celebration of the Holy Com- munion in Henry the Seventh's Chapel in Westminster Abbey, and almost all the Revisers, including several Scotch Presbyterians and English Nonconformists, were present. Among them was Dr. Vance Smith, the Unitarian minister of St. Saviour Gate Chapel, in York. The whole Company of Revisers had been invited to partake together of the Holy Communion by Stanley in the following circular : ' Deanery, Westminster: June i8th, 1870. ' It having been suggested that the Company of Revisers of the Authorised Version of the New Testament might be desirous of partaking together of the Holy Communion before entering on their work, the Dean of Westminster has consented to administer the Holy Communion to such of the Company as shall be disposed to attend in the Chapel CHAP. XXI DR. VANCE SMITH 217 of Henry VII., in Westminster Abbey, at 11.30 a.m. on Wednesday, June 22.' The Communion of June 22nd was vehemently de- nounced, by the religious press and by the Church Union, as ' a deliberate embodiment of insult and defiance to the whole of Catholic Christendom,' as 'an act of desecration,' and as the blasphemous act of 'a dignitary of the Church,' who * has cast pearls before swine, and given that which is most holy to the dogs,' as 'a gross profanation of the Sacrament,' ' a horrible sacrilege,' ' a dishonour to our Lord and Saviour of the gravest and most emphatic character.' The excite- ment grew to a white heat ; protests and remonstrances poured in upon the Primate, and in Archbishop Tait's absence a resolution was moved and carried in the Upper House of Convocation to the following effect : 'That it is the judgment of this House that no person who denies the Godhead of our Lord Jesus Christ ought to be invited to join either Company to which is committed the revision of the Authorised Version of Holy Scripture ; and that it is further the j udgment of this House that any such person now on either Company should cease to act therewith. ' This resolution was communicated to the Lower House for adoption on February i6th, 1871. Stanley at once moved the previous question, on three grounds : ' (i) That the resolution involves on its very face a breach of good faith, a scandalous inconsistency and vacillation on the part of this venerable House of Convocation, which Convocation ought not for a moment to entertain ; (2) It involves by implication a new principle in the translation of the Holy Scriptures, and one which scholars in all such matters ought entirely to repudiate ; (3) The resolution, as worded, is intrinsically absurd and impracticable.' '^^ He showed, on the first point, that the fifth resolution of Convocation, under which the Company of Revisers had been appointed, ^ Chronicle of Convocation, Lower House, February i6th, 1871, p. 170. 2l8 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY ' was adopted in the Committee with a view of covering the widest possible area from which scholars might be selected for this work. It was felt that this work could only be satisfactorily conducted, either to themselves or the public, by the selection of persons whose only qualification should be their scholarship, without regard to the religious opinions they entertained or the religious bodies to which they belonged. Not only was this resolution almost unanimously adopted by the Committee of Revision, but it was adopted after a discussion of all the points now at issue — that is to say, the possibility of admitting Unitarians, and also the more extreme case of Jews — for the Jews, or at least many Jews, deny the Divine mission of our Lord altogether, while the Unitarians, like Sir Isaac Newton and John Milton, only differ from us in taking a lower view of His Divine character and Divine nature. It was on this point that the Bishop of Gloucester made a slight objection, which was overruled. The Bishop of Winchester drew up this very fifth resolution with his own hand, and in it were the words, " to whatever nation or religious communion they may belong." It was I who suggested that the word " communion " should be changed to " body," so as to include Jews as well as Unitarians, and with that alteration it was adopted by the Committee of Revision. ' It is hardly necessary to pursue further the manner in which Convocation is pledged doubly, trebly, and with its eyes open, at every stage, to stand by this fifth resolution, on the faith of which the Companies have met week after week for a long time past at their important work. No- thing could have been more satisfactory than our unity, the ease of our communications, and our mutual harmony, which has never for one moment been interrupted by any theological difference whatever. The accommodations of the Companies have been furnished on the faith of this resolution, and would certainly not have been given except on that faith. They have been living, travelling, feeding on that pledge ; for the funds which have been raised were contributed by the public mainly on the faith of this resolu- tion, and in large part from the purses of those against whom the resolution sent down from the Upper House is directed. I ask, then, is it possible to imagine a case in which there could be a greater breach of good faith than the rescinding of the fifth resolution ? ' Hid. pp. 171-4. CHAP. XXI DR. VANCE SMITH 219 Coming to his second point, he said : ' If there be anything which is important in translating the Holy Scriptures, it is that the persons concerned in it should not be supposed to be actuated by theological partialities or antipathies of their own ; yet here is a reso- lution intended to exclude certain persons who are sup- posed to have certain theological views — that is, in other words, it is intended that others who have other opinions ought to accommodate the translation to opinions of their own. Without the presence of a countervailing opinion, without the power of consulting what are the grounds or reasons on which other views of the meaning of the sacred text can be founded, it is not to be supposed that we can arrive at fair and accurate conclusions on the translation of difficult passages.' ^' The third ground on which he moved the previous question was, that 'the meaning of the House was so ignorantly and inadequately expressed that it will exclude members whom it is not intended to exclude, or else include the very persons whom it is intended to exclude.' He ended with an indignant repudiation of the arguments by which it was sought to justify an admitted breach of faith. ' It is put forward, I am grieved to see, in the Upper House,' he says, 'that while the resolution is fully acknowledged to be a breach of good faith, it is nevertheless desirable that this breach of good faith should be made for the honour of — of whom.'' — the honour of the All-wise, the 7\ll-holy, the All-true, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Alas ! and has it come to this } that our boasted orthodoxy has landed us in this hideous heresy ! Is it possible that it should be supposed that we can consent for a moment to degrade the Divine attributes of our Lord Jesus Christ to the level of a mere capricious heathen divinity Can we believe that anything but dishonour can be conferred on Him by making His name a pretext for inconsistency, for vacillation, for a breach of faith between two contracting parties I have read in that Sacred Book, the meaning of 27 Ibid. p. 174. 220 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1871 which it was the object of this revision to bring out more clearly for the people of England — I have read in that Sacred Book that one of the characteristics of those who dwell on God's holy hill is, " Whoso sweareth to his neigh- bour and disappointeth him not, though it were to his own hindrance." I have also found that in the other part of the Sacred Book it is declared, " Not everyone that saith Lord, Lord, but he that doeth the will of My Father " — and we know that the will of the Father is judgment, justice, and truth — "shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." I for one lift up my voice against any such detestable doctrine as that our Lord and Saviour can be honoured in any way but by a strict adherence to the laws of honour, integrity, and truth. I repudiate the notion that any dis- honour can be brought on His sacred Name by that which, from every recorded word and every act of His sacred life, we must be certain He would have entirely ap- proved.' The result of a long and heated debate was that the Lower House refused to endorse the resolution of the bishops, and contented itself with an expression of regret at the offence caused by the fact that a member of one of the Companies of Revision ' who denies, and has publicly declared his rejection of, the Creed commonly called the Nicene,' should have received the Holy Communion. The whole controversy was one in which the contend- ing parties never stood on common ground. The line of reasoning by which the administration of the Sacrament to an alleged Unitarian was condemned as sacrilegious, was one that had no weight with Stanley, and that Dr. Vance Smith could not be expected to appreciate. Hence it was that Stanley made no answer to his critics, and Dr. Vance Smith was surprised at the outcry. To Stanley, the inauguration of so solemn an undertaking as the Revision of the Authorised Version of the Bible with a Celebration of the Holy Communion, and the invitation Ibid. pp. 177-8. CHAP. XXI DR. VANCE SMITH 221 of all who were chosen for such a responsible office, seemed to be at once his sacred duty and his high privilege. ' It is quite true,' he wrote privately to a friend who asked for confirmation of the alleged facts, ' that, in conformity with a resolution of Convocation, eminent Nonconformist scholars were invited to join in the work of revising the Authorised Version, and that one of these was a person holding the opinions (whether of Laelius Socinus and P'austus Socinus I do not know, for I have not read their writings, but) of Milton and of Sir Isaac Newton. ' It is also quite true that a notice was sent to all the persons engaged in the work of revision that the Holy Communion would be administered to such as were disposed to attend, and amongst those who did so attend there was one, at least, who was supposed to hold the opinions to which I have referred. Possibly there may have been others. It was with very great thankfulness that I was able to be the means of gathering together in remembrance of our common Lord these various persons, being convinced that in so doing I was obeying His command to His disciples, that they should love one another, and following His example by joining in the same good work, and in the same Holy Communion, with persons of the most various opinions.' So also, on the other hand, the spirit in which the Holy Communion was received by Dr. Vance Smith was earnest and devout. * I went to the service,' he wrote in 1887, 'in a perfectly earnest and devout spirit, desiring to join, so far as I could, in that particular mode of celebrating a Christian rite which I highly value, and glad of the opportunity of confessing myself a Christian disciple, in communion, at least for that occasion, with so many to whom I looked with sentiments of the greatest respect and esteem. T had at first, I confess, some hesitation in eoing. My difficulty, however, was all on my own side. I did not dream that others would object to my presence, which, of course, they had no kind of right to do. I overcame my own hesitation mainly in consequence of the intervention 222 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1870 of Dean Stanley. I had letters and a telegram from him on the subject, and the result was that I determined to put away my scruples, and for that occasion to "conform" so far as I could. 'To me the service was, and is, a simple commemora- tion of the self-sacrifice and the death of our common Lord and Master, and I did not apprehend that anyone would object to my presence, whatever my own personal difficulty might be. I was amazed at the outburst — of what shall I term it.? — which immediately followed, very much as if I had been a heathen, or an unbelieving Jew, or had gone to scoff ! ' The last, and in some respects the most embittered, of the many controversies that occupied Stanley in Convoca- tion during the years 1864-72 arose upon the Athanasian Creed. Respect for rubrical commands, which was a feature of the Oxford Movement, revived the use of a Creed which a previous generation had seldom read. The more frequent repetition of the ' damnatory clauses ' stimu- lated a growing sense of uneasiness and an increasing desire for relief. Educated and earnest men were startled at its unfamiliar words, and intending candidates for Holy Orders found in its language an insurmountable obstacle. The Ritual Commission, of which Stanley was a member, dealt with the subject in their Fourth Report, which was published in September 1870. Among the suggestions that were before them to re-translate, shorten, omit, or explain the Creed, the majority of the Commissioners decided to recommend the last. They proposed that the Creed should retain its present place and form in the Public Service, but that a rubric should be added ex- planatory of the sense in which the condemnations of the Confession of Faith were to be understood.^^ 29 Stanley's reasons, as stated in the Report, for dissenting from the recom- mendations of his colleagues are given in the Appendix at the end of this chap- ter. See p. 232. CHAP. XXI THE ATHANASIAN CREED 223 The publication of the report increased the discussion of the subject. No unanimity prevailed. Even those who agreed in desiring an explanatory rubric differed materially as to the terms of the explanation. Some desired to see the Creed relegated to the same place in the Prayer Book which is held by the Thirty-nine Articles. Others desired that its use should be optional, not compulsory. Others pleaded for delay, for re-translation, and further investiga- tion of its history. Others protested, with more or less vehemence, against any attempt ' to tamper with ' the Creed, ' to mutilate ' it by omitting any of its clauses, or to ' degrade ' it by rendering its use permissive, or by the reduction of the number of days on which it is appointed to be used, or, still more, by its removal from the Public Service of the Church. Stanley had himself throughout advocated the ' thoroughgoing policy ' of omitting . the Creed from the services of the Church. Nothing, he believed, short of such a banishment could relieve the un- easiness of congregations, though the explanation might remove the scruples of candidates for Holy Orders. This opinion he had maintained on the Ritual Commission, and in this opinion he had the support of Archbishop Tait. But the growing excitement during the year 1871 con- vinced the Archbishop that the more extreme course would be unpalatable to a great majority of Churchmen. He therefore fell back upon the proposal supported by the majority of the Ritual Commissioners, and in December 1 87 1 gave formal notice that the expediency of adopting an explanatory rubric would be brought before Convoca- tion in the following February. On both sides the utmost excitement prevailed. While Stanley vehemently protested in a private letter against the abandonment of what he regarded as the only straight- forward and satisfactory course. Canon Liddon and Dr. 224 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1872 Pusey threatened to retire from the ministry if the Creed were either * mutilated' or 'degraded.' Convocation thus met in February 1872 under circumstances which threat- ened a stormy debate. Stanley threw himself into the fray with all his energy. He repudiated the suggestion of an explanatory rubric, as 'a miserable attempt to explain away simple and emphatic words.' 'These damnatory clauses,' he said, 'occur in the beginning, middle, and end of this Creed, and they derive additional difficulty and force from being attached to these subtle and minute dogmatic forms. And here, between these clauses and those dogmatic forms, I, like many others who have spoken, would draw a great distinction. Those dogmatic forms — "persons," "sub- stance," and the like — although they are open to great misconception and great misunderstanding when recited in public worship, yet, as even those who dissent from the Creed would acknowledge, contain at the bottom of them sacred Biblical truths. And the more we explore these words and get to the original Biblical meaning, which was greatly expanded and unfolded, sometimes happily and sometimes unhappily, in these forms, the more we shall see that those inner truths are instructive and of great importance. But when we come to the clauses of which I now proceed to speak it is exactly the reverse. The more you explore them, the more difficult do you find it to arrive at anything whatever that is true at the bottom of them. . . . 'These clauses belong to a state of mind which prevailed, no doubt, in the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries, and, we must confess with sorrow, even, perhaps, to one or two centuries preceding. They belong to that state of belief which maintained that error on these theological subjects was the greatest of crimes. They belong to that wretched system which regarded heresy as a crime which the Church, and the State, and all the powers of the earth, were bound to extirpate, in the same way as murder, or theft, or any of the other great moral and social evils that pollute man- kind. I hold that this opinion, which is thus incorporated in the damnatory clauses, is absolutely false ' ('Oh! oh!' and interruption), ' and I will venture to say, not only is it CHAP. XXI THE ATHANASIAN CREED 225 absolutely false, but it is believed by every single member of this House to be absolutely false.' ^ Words mean what grammar makes them mean ; and Stanley could not endure that any meaning should be put upon the clauses which was either less or more than their grammatical construction implied and declared. ' I even admire these clauses,' he said, ' for their magnificent perspicuity of language. Whoever was the author, he knew what he meant. He meant, as the Emperor Charlemagne meant that anyone who could not accept those words was everlastingly lost, and should be destroyed by sword and fire from the face of Christendom. I admire the Emperor Charlemagne, but I cannot admire those who come with these modern explanations to draw out the teeth of this old lion, who sits there in his majesty, and defies any explanation to take out his fierce and savage fangs.' Stanley's speech was received with clamorous interrup- tions. Archdeacon Denison, after vainly appealing to the Prolocutor to silence the audacious speaker, left the Jerusalem Chamber in disgust. Hostile pamphlets and pulpit denunciations were showered upon him. His con- duct was branded by one of his opponents as ' scarcely reconcilable with the most fundamental principles of morality.' He was warned that, if he had conducted him- self in 'the service of an earthly sovereign with like pro- fligacy,' he 'would inevitably have been tried by court- martial and shot.' He, and those who supported him, were called upon ' to go out instantly from the Church, of which such men proclaim themselves disaffected and disloyal ministers.' He was publicly taunted with the committal of a graver offence than ' the tutor who corrupts his pupil's mind, or the trustee who robs the widow and orphan of their property.' Chronicle of Convocation, Lower House, April 24th, 1872, pp. 352-3. Ibid. p. 359. VOL. II Q 226 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1872 Nor was he assailed with words only. An attempt was made to erase his name from the list of University Preachers at Oxford, to which, after nine years' exclu- sion, he had been restored. The Board to whom the nomination of Select Preachers was entrusted by the University of Oxford consisted of the Vice-Chancellor (then Dr. Liddell), the two Divinity Professors, and the two Proctors. Stanley had been nominated by the Board in December 1872, and his name approved by the Vice- Chancellor. The nomination was not, however, complete till it had received the sanction of Convocation, which consists of resident and non-resident Masters of Arts of the University of Oxford. On the 3rd of December notice was given, in the following letter to the Vice-Chancellor, that Stanley's name would be opposed : ' Dear Mr. Vice-Chancellor, — We, the undersigned members of Convocation, wish at the earliest moment to announce to you that, having heard that the Very Rev. the Dean of Westminster is to be nominated as one of the Select Preachers, we feel it our duty to oppose that nomination in Convocation. ' We respectfully request that you will fix a day for the Convocation which may be convenient for non-resident members. ' John W. Burgon, ' Montagu Burrows, 'C. P. GOLIGHTLY, 'H. R. BrAMLEY.' ' Edward C. Woollcombe, Speaking for himself, the Rev. J. W. Burgon, afterwards Dean of Chichester, thus stated the grounds of his oppo- sition to the nomination of Dean Stanley : ' I cannot think the advocate of the Westminster Abbey sacrilegious Communion ; the patron of Mr. Vance Smith, the Unitarian teacher ; the partisan of Mr. Voysey, the in- fidel ; the avowed champion of a negative and cloudy Chris- tianity, which is really preparing the way for the rejection of all revealed truth, a fit person to be selected to address the youth of this place from the University pulpit.' CHAP. XXI THE SELECT TREACHERSHIP 227 On the nth of December, 1872, the nomination was submitted to Convocation, and carried by 349 votes to 287. 'The victory,' writes Professor Jowett, ' is not of great importance to the University or to the Liberal Party ; but I am glad that we have won, and, in one point of view, especially glad. I do not think that we could have won with anyone but you. I was surprised to find the number of persons who came up unbidden out of respect and regard for you. And though in these wretched contests there is not much to rejoice in, I think that you and Lady Augusta may really rejoice in the proof that a great many persons hardly known to you have given of their attachment.' Thus the attempt to burden Convocation with a duty which, except as a matter of form, had ceased to belong to it, resulted in defeat. The opposition was not supported by the recognised leaders of the High Church party, who held that a body which is asked to pronounce upon the orthodoxy of a clergyman ought to be composed of mem- bers of the Church of England ; and who knew that, since the passing of the Universities Tests Act, Convocation had become as little a theological body as the House of Com- mons. Among those who voted for the nomination was the venerable Dr. Lushington, who, at the age of ninety-one, travelled from London to vote at Oxford. ' This Oxford Tempest,' writes Stanley on December 14th, 1872, in replying to congratulations, ' has absolutely been one of the most delightful incidents of my life : no trouble whatever (except writing such letters as the present), and the pleasure of receiving so many proofs that I am not forgotten by my friends, known or unknown, young or old, or the very, very old, like Hawkins at 80, W. W. Hull at 84 or more. Dr. Bosworth at 85, and Dr. Lushington at 91.' As a protest against ' the unfaithfulness to the truth of God which the University manifested by its vote in Q 2 228 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1872 favour of Dean Stanley,' the Dean of Norwich (E. M. Goulburn) resigned the post of Select Preacher. ' If,' he said in his letter to the Vice-Chancellor, * the pulpit of the University is to be turned into a vehicle for conveying to our youth a nerveless religion, without the sinew and bone of doctrine, a religion which can hardly be called faith so much as a mere Christianised morality, I for one must decline to stand there.' Dr. Goulburn, in a private letter to Dean Stanley, informed him of his resignation, and expressed the hope that the course which he had felt compelled to pursue would not interrupt their friendship. ' Many thanks,' replies Stanley, ' for your kind letter — kind and cordial as always. You may be assured that the differences of opinion which we have discussed ever since the days when we travelled together from Geneva to Athens have never diminished my regard for you, and I trust never will. ' As to the particular matter of which you speak, it has been so long my fate to encounter misunderstanding and opposition that I cease to consider it as a subject either of surprise or annoyance. ' Indeed, when I remember the same kind of opposition, with the same epithets of " Rationalist," " Latitudinarian," " Socinian," "Heretic," " Erastian," were lavished on men of whom the world was not worthy, and with wliom I am not worthy to place myself, except in the humble endeavour to walk in their footsteps — Tillotson, Chilling worth, Jeremy Taylor, Cudworth, Locke, Arnold — I know not whether I should not rather rejoice to share their obloquy. ' I only regret that excellent persons like yourself should feel it your duty to thwart the efforts of those who, no doubt with many imperfections, are striving to bring out the treasures of the Bible, to enter into the spirit of the Gospels, and to show that religion and science need not be opposed to each other, and that reason is the means which God has given us for arriving at the knowledge of His will. ' This regret is increased by the reflection that mean- while little discouragement — I might say much encourage- CHAP. XXI THE ATHANASIAN CREED 229 ment — is given to the return of the grossest superstitions, and to expressions of unchristian uncharitableness. 'This, however, only makes it more evidently incumbent on those who value the maintenance of pure Christianity in England to pursue their own course, as best they can, in the hope of better days, and in the faith that truth will at last prevail. ' I cannot refrain from adding the pleasure which it gives me to think that what you write and preach has a soothing and edifying effect on those to whom I have no access, just as, probably, there are those to whom I have access on whom you produce no result.' Out of the heated atmosphere of Convocation the dis- cussion was finally withdrawn by the Archbishop. While Dr. Tait plainly stated his opinion that 'the best plan would be to remove the Creed from the regular services of the Church, and to retain it in the Articles,' he admitted that such a course was not feasible. He therefore consented to the appointment of a large Committee, consisting of fifty members of the two Houses of Convocation, which was to meet in December 1 872, to consider the question by the light of the recent debates. In the interval Dr. Tait appealed to the leaders of the opposite parties to agree to accept some arrangement, even if it were not the one which they themselves advocated. Stanley at once responded to the appeal in the spirit in which it was made. ' I am quite prepared,' he wrote to the Archbishop on November 28th, 1872, 'to advocate, not the best course abstractedly, but the best course practicable.' ' An explanatory note, however,' he adds, ' I cannot support, unless combined with some practical consequence, and I shall much prefer that things should remain as they are, rather than that an explanatory note should be put forward as the remedy for allaying the scruples for the sake of which the Committee is convoked. ' I consider that the explanatory note has always been an endeavour, not to relieve the scruples of those aggrieved, 23© LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY but to retain the use of the Creed in spite of the objections felt for it.' On this view of the matter he spoke in the Committee. But the party of moderation and compromise prevailed. A Synodical Declaration was drawn up and agreed upon, which was intended ultimately to take the place of an explanatory rubric in the Prayer Book. This Declaration was brought before the Lower House of Convocation for its acceptance in February 1873, and was carried in spite of Stanley's opposition. ' I know,' he said, ' that if we continue in the course which was initiated by "Tract 90," that if we continue in this constant system of making anything mean anything, it is very possible, nay, it is more than probable, that the same process will be applied to the other Creeds, and that other words, which you may wish to retain as most sacred, will be explained away in the same way as the Archdeacon of London has explained the lucid and perspicuous language of the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed. It is this danger which I have seen, with regret, constantly growing in the Church of England since the time to which I have alluded, thirty years ago. It is that danger, constantly growing, that dis- regard of the plain meaning of English words, that makes me look on these explanations with more than a passing emotion of melancholy. Sometimes, when I look upon our own Church, and on the great Church of Rome, when I think how 900 bishops of the Catholic Church have con- descended to receive under miserable explanations of this kind the wretched figment of the Pope's Infallibility — when I regard this, and regard the cognate symptoms in our own Church, it does give me a pang of sorrow to think that my years have been extended into this darkening shadow which is now passing over the Church of Christ — to think that that truthfulness, that straightforward dealing, that uprightness of purpose which characterised the much-abused eighteenth century, is becoming gradually obscured in this cloud — let us hope this temporary cloud — which now rests on the Church of England and the Church of Rome. But I will hope better things. I cannot believe that even this House, with all its subjection to those sinister influences of CHAP. XXI THE ATHANASIAN CREED 231 which I have spoken, will lend itself to further this unhappy and increasing obscuration of the consciences of the clergy. ' ^ The long struggle ended in May 1873 in the accept- ance of the Synodical Declaration.^ Few men felt more acutely the burden of the 'damnatory clauses ' than Stanley. To him, no explanation of the meaning the words were intended to have could be satisfactory, and he deeply lamented the loss of what he considered to be a great opportunity. In his opinion, the Declaration which was adopted not only gave no real relief, but was calculated to impair the reverence with which the two other Creeds were regarded. 'There the Creed stands now,' he said a few years later, * and there, thanks to this waste of an opportunity, it will go on standing until it carries off the other two Creeds upon its back. When that day comes it will be seen who was right in the present controversy.' ^ The Declaration ran as follows : ' For the removal of doubts, and to prevent disquietude in the use of the Creed commonly called the Creed of St. Athanasius, this Synod doth solemnly declare : • I. That the confession of our Christian faith commonly called the Creed of St. Athanasius doth not make any addition to the faith as contained in Holy Scripture, but warneth against errors vsfhich from time to time have arisen in the Church of Christ. ' 2. That as Holy Scripture, in divers places, doth promise life to them that believe, and declare the condemnation of them that believe not, so doth the Church in this confession declare the necessity for all who would be in a State of salvation of holding fast the Catholic faith, and the great peril of re- jecting the same. Wherefore the warnings in this confession of faith are to be understood no otherwise than the like warnings in Holy Scripture, for we must receive God's threatenings, even as his promises, in such wise as they are generally set forth in Holy Writ. Moreover, the Church doth not herein pronounce judgment on any particular person or persons, God alone being the Judge of all.' Chronicle of Convocation, Lower House, February i2th, 1873, pp. 131-2. Life of Archbishop Tail, vol. ii. p. l6i. 232 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1870 Appendix to Chapter XXI Fourth Report of the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the Rubrics and Ritual of the Church of England. London, 1870. Out of the twenty-seven Commissioners, seventeen signed pro- tests against the recommendation of their colleagues to retain the Creed in the pubhc service of the Church, and to append to it an Explanatory Rubric. The following reasons are given by Stanley for his protest : ' I . Because the Creed was received and enforced in the Church of England when it was believed to be " the Creed of St. Athanasius," whereas it is now known to be the work of an unknown author, not earlier than the fifth century, perhaps as late as the eighth. ' 2. Because its exposition of the doctrine of the Trinity is couched in language extremely difficult to be understood by a general congregation, in parts absolutely certain to be under- stood in a sense different from what was intended by the original words ; as, for example, " person," " substance," and " incompre- hensible." ' 3. Because it is never recited in a mixed congregation in any other Church than our own. '4. Because the parts of the Creed which are at once most emphatic, most clear, and most generally intelligible are the con- demning clauses, which give most offence, and which in their literal and obvious sense are rejected by the Explanatory Note which is now proposed to be appended to them. * 5. Because the use of anathemas in the public services of all Churches has been generally discontinued. ' 6. Because these condemning clauses assert in the strongest terms a doctrine now rejected by the whole civilised world — viz. the certain future perdition of all who deviate from the particular statements in the Creed. ' 7. Because they directly exclude from salvation all members of the Eastern Churches ; to whom, nevertheless, the clergy and the bishops of the Church of England at various times, and CHAP. XXI RITUAL COMMISSION REPORT 233 especially of late, have made overtures of friendly and Christian intercourse entirely inconsistent with the declaration that they " shall without doubt perish everlastingly." * 8. Because the passage commonly quoted from the Authorised Version of Mark. xvi. 16 in their defence is irrelevant — {a) as being much more general in its terms ; (^) as being of very doubt- ful genuineness ; (^r) as being in the original Greek much less severe than in the English translation. ' 9. Because the use of this Creed, and of those clauses espe- cially, has been condemned by some of the most illustrious divines of the Church of England, such as Chillingworth, Baxter, Bishop Jeremy Taylor, Archbishop Tillotson, Archbishop Seeker, Dr. Hey, Dr. Arnold, Dr. Burton, Bishop Lonsdale. ' 10. Because the use of the Creed arouses scruples in candi- dates for Ordination which can only be overcome by strained explanations. '11. Because it has been rejected by the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America, which is in full com- munion with the Church of England, and whose clergy are author- ised by statute to minister in our churches, being yet under no obligation to use this Creed. '12. Because it is a stumbHng-block in the way of almost all Nonconformists. ' 13. Because the public use of the Creed as a Confession of Christian Faith, being, as it is, the composition of an unknown author, and not confirmed by any general authority, is a manifest violation of the well-known decrees of the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon. ' 14. Because the recitation of the Creed had in many English churches become obsolete till it was revived some thirty years ago. '15. Because many excellent laymen, including King George III., have, for the last hundred years at least, declined to take part in its recitation. ' 16. Because, so far from recommending the doctrine of the Trinity to unwilling minds, it is the chief obstacle in the way of the acceptance of that doctrine. ' For these reasons I consider that the relaxation of the use of the Creed, whilst giving relief to many, ought to offend none. It 234 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1870 has, no doubt, a historical value as an exposition of the teaching and manners of the Church between the fifth and ninth centuries. It has also a theological value, as rectifying certain erroneous statements, and as excluding from the essentials of the Catholic Faith the larger part of modern controversy. But these advan- tages are quite insufficient to outweigh the objections which are recorded above, and which, even in the minds of those disposed to retain the use of the Creed, have found expression in an Explanatory Note tantamount to a condemnation of it. ' With regard to the Explanatory Note, whilst acknowledging the benefit derived from the indirect but unquestionable dis- couragement which it inflicts on the use of the Creed, I would humbly state the reasons why it appears to me to aggravate the mischief which it is intended to relieve : * I. Because it attempts a decision on a complex dogmatical and historical question which the Commission is not called to offer, and which it has not attempted in other instances equally demanding and more capable of such explanations, such as the Baptismal Service, the Ordination Service, and the Visitation of the Sick. ' 2. Because this dogmatical decision was carried by a small majority in a Commission of reduced numbers ; whereas in order to have any weight it ought to have received the general concur- rence of those most qualified to pronounce it. ' 3. Because the words in the Creed which it professes to ex- plain are perfectly clear in themselves, whilst it leaves unexplained other words, such as " person," " substance," " incomprehensible," which are popularly understood in a sense different from their original meaning, and which, as so understood, mislead the mass of the congregation, and even preachers, into some of the very opinions so terribly denounced by the condemning clauses. ' 4. Because the statement which it impHes is historically false, viz., that " the condemnations in this Confession of Faith " do not apply to the persons to whom they evidently were intended to apply. '5. Because the main statement which it contains is either extremely questionable, or a mere truism, or else so ambiguous as to be only misleading. ' 6. Because, after well considering a similar explanation given CHAP. XXI RITUAL COMMISSION REPORT 235 in 1689, Archbishop Tillotson thus expressed himself: — "The account given of Athanasius' Creed appears to me nowise satis- factory. I wish we were well rid of it." * 7. Because, in most instances, it will give no ease to those who are offended by the use of the Creed in public services. ' 8. Because, whilst virtually condemning the use of the Creed, it still leaves the Rubric enjoining that use. ' 9. Because it will have the effect of increasing the existing burden, by seeming to state that, in the view of the Commission, it is a sufficient remedy. '10. Because it is one of several proposed Explanatory Notes which appear in the minutes, and which are manifestly inconsistent with this and with each other. '11. Because (in the language used by our Chairman in put- ting it to the vote), it is "illogical and unsatisfactory " ' (Report, pp. xvii., xviii.). 236 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1864 CHAPTER XXII 1864-74 STANLEY'S LITERARY WORK — ITS AMOUNT, VARIETY, AND FRESHNESS — ITS UNITY OF AIM— 'THE THEOLOGY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY,' 1864 — THE SECOND PART OF THE 'LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF THE JEWISH CHURCH,' 1865 — REVIEW OF 'ECCE HOMO,' 1866— 'MEMO- RIALS OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY,' 1867 — 'CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE,' 1868 — 'THE THREE IRISH CHURCHES,' 1869 — 'ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND STATE,' 1870 — ' LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND,' 1872 The discharge of duties necessarily associated with the custodianship of Westminster Abbey occupied a great measure of Stanley's care and attention. The prominent part which he took in the debates in Convocation required his regular attendance at its meetings, and involved him in a mass of correspondence. As a preacher his popularity became so great that he was applied to from all quarters and on every variety of occasion ; and he so rarely refused his aid that more than one of his friends remonstrated with him on the frequency of his preaching. His position in society and his numerous social engagements made de- mands upon his time which became increasingly heavy. His holidays were spent in foreign tours, which, with their long journeys and his insatiable craving for information, would have rather fatigued than refreshed other men. Yet, in spite of incessant calls upon his time and strength, he completed an amount of literary work which, even in a man who was otherwise unemployed, would have been con- CHAP. XXII FRESHNESS OF LITERARY WORK 237 siderable, and which in one so preoccupied was remark- able. Scarcely less striking than the amount of varied work which he did was the ease and effectiveness with which it was done. One main source of the freshness which per- vaded his sermons, his conversation, his travels, and his literary work, was the economy of his strength which he invariably exercised. He had most clearly recognised the extent and the limitations of his powers. In travelling, he required all arrangements to be made for him, steadily refused to see any sight which did not interest him, and consequently was never tired. In society, he never at- tempted to make conversation, but, talking only on those subjects which aroused his enthusiasm, spoke with a fire that glowed and warmed, yet never burned or left a scar. In preaching, he enforced, and illustrated by concrete applica- tion from past or contemporary events, only those moral and spiritual aspects of Christianity which to him were most vital, and hence his sermons were never dry, laboured, or dead, but were always picturesque, interesting, and directly bearing on human life and human conduct. As a man of letters, he only worked as his powers designed him to work, and only wrote as he loved to write, and therefore his writing is never forced, but always natural and always fresh. And at this stage of his career there ran through all he wrote a continuous current of hopeful enthusiasm. He had not learned, as he learned in later times, to despair of his generation, or to think that he had lost its ear. To say this of Stanley's work is only another way of saying that he had the rare fortune of seeking the objects which, by character, temperament, and intellect, by tastes and interests, by social and official position, he was specially adapted to pursue. Many men are impeded in the pursuit of their ideals by external circumstances, or disqualified 238 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1864 by their own personal and mental deficiencies, or hindered by the accidents of their birth and position. No such im- pediments, disqualifications, or hindrances stood in the way of Stanley. Whatever obstacles existed to the attainment of his ideals lay outside himself ; they did not proceed from within. In society, in his literary work, in the pulpit, on the platform, his heart and head worked together towards one goal, and consequently he was always able to throw his best self into the struggle for the enlargement of the Church. His aristocratic birth, his pecuniary independence, his official position, combined to arm him with weapons which needy men, of humbler origin, and occupying more sub- ordinate posts, could not hope to wield. Fresh, vigorous, enthusiastic as Stanley's work always was, it would have wholly missed its mark if he had aimed at objects beyond his powers, or if he had attached undue importance to the part which he was himself to take in the attainment of his ideals. He gauged his own capacities with singular accuracy. He firmly believed that, as he wrote to M. de Circourt in 1864, ' we are on the verge of a religious revolution — a revolution more gradual, I trust, and therefore more safe, but not less important, than the Reformation, and ending, I hope, not in further divisions, but in further union. If I could con- tribute to this result one thousandth part, I should feel, humbly and thankfully, that I had done my work in life.' Looking back upon past history, he saw that religious systems inevitably undergo, from time to time, a sifting process, when men ask what meaning and value phrases, laws, and practices possess, and what response they make to the moral nature of man. Judaism, Paganism, Roman Catholicism, had each in their turn undergone the ordeal. The Reformation was a demand for reality in the place of formalism. And now once more, in the nineteenth century. CHAP. XXII ITS UNITY OF AIM 239 men turned to the Bible, to religious history, and theology, and asked what they meant, what was the exact truth about them, what was their bearing upon life and conduct. At such a moment there was great risk that the essence and the accidents of religion should be confounded, and that speculations about religion should be identified with the religious life itself. Stanley saw with the utmost clearness the danger of the crisis, and proposed what seemed to him the true safeguard. He held that the religious life con- sisted in the ardour, the love, the aspiration with which men attach themselves to the fixed and permanent objects of the Christian faith. He held also, that the speculative ideas of every age must necessarily vary with the incessant movement of the human intellect, and that these changing ideas require continual readjustment with the fixed objects of the religious life. Their reconciliation is the task of the true religious reformer, and the work that he achieves is a true religious revolution. But Stanley never attempts to assume the office of a religious reformer. He is content to be a religious teacher. ' I agree with you,' he writes to J. C. Shairp in 1865, 'that the prophet of the second Reformation has not yet appeared. Perhaps he never will. But that a second Reformation is in store for us, and that the various tendencies of the age are preparing the way for it, I cannot doubt, unless Christianity itself is doomed to suffer a por- tentous eclipse.' The harmony of the future he does not himself attempt. He felt that the time was not yet ripe for any successful effort to show that theology and science, religion and morality, are, so far as they meet, one and indivisible. He believed that he was living in an age of transition, and therefore concentrated his efforts as a religious teacher on holding the centre of religious life in its right place, on 240 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1864 distinguishing the accidental from the essential elements of Christianity, on maintaining the due subordination of in- tellectual ideas about religion, and on demonstrating that the Divine virtues of the Bible were neither exhausted by- theology nor impaired by scientific discovery. To him, ' the greatest of all miracles is the character of Christ,' and the wider Christianity, to which he looked forward with hope, consisted in the personal effort to realise in human conduct the Divine image of truth and goodness which was revealed in Christ. Believing firmly in the indestructible force and assimilating powers of the spirit of Christianity, he said with the first pastor of the Pilgrim Fathers, ' I am verily persuaded that the Lord has more truth yet to come for us — yet to break forth out of His Holy Word.' Clinging to his trust in the progressive historical develop- ment of Christianity, he, like Archbishop Whately, refused to think ' that the Reformers locked the door and threw away the key for ever.' It was to the union of a broad and simple Christianity with a free, enlightened historical science, that he looked for the birth of a great theology, ' not dead, nor dying, but instinct with immortal life.' In this ' catholic, comprehensive, all-embracing Christianity ' lay his hopes of Christian progress, of Christian union, of the final victory of faith over unbelief, and to it he be- lieved that 'the morrow, the coming century,' belonged. Upon this central idea all his powers, tastes, sympathies, and interests converge with a directness which was one great secret of his influence. To champion free inquiry was to keep the ground open for the reception of the new ideas, which might contain the element of a larger system. To protest against ' the spirit of combination for party purposes,' as being itself the equivalent of ' what the New Testament calls heresy,' was to cut off at its source the fount of division. To place ' all that was ceremonial, all that was dogmatic, CHAP. XXII nS UNITY OF AIM 241 all that was miraculous, on a lower level among the essential elements of Christianity than what was moral or spiritual,' was to ' feel truly the littleness of what is little, as well as the greatness of what is great.' To relax stringent terms of subscription, or to banish from use the Athanasian Creed, was to remove obstacles which sever Church from Church and alienate Christian from Christian. To uphold the Esta- blished Church in England was to maintain the guarantee of toleration, and to support the principle of comprehen- sion, against the intolerance and exclusiveness of sectarian prejudice. To solve the Irish Church Question by offering to all the three Irish Churches the benefits of an establish- ment, was to create a neutral ground on which all might meet in peace, and to promote a closer intercourse between the Catholic, Protestant, and Presbyterian communions. To meet English Nonconformists in social and friendly inter- course, or to advocate an interchange of pulpits between them and the Established clergy, was to disarm bitterness, and to prepare for ' that Christian unity which does not permit either ecclesiastical or dogmatical differences to hinder the recognitions and feelings of a common relation- ship to Christ.' ^ It is with thoughts and purposes like these in his mind that Stanley approaches parties within and without the Established Church, or notes the points of agreement which each holds in common with other communions. It is his object to show ecclesiastical parties that the Church of England is historically broader and more comprehensive than their respective conceptions of it will allow. In his address on the Three Irish Churches he points out that they all equally rest for the essentials of their faith on the same one and indivisible Foundation. Similarly, he holds up his historical mirror to the Established Church of Scotland, the 1 Letter from the late Dr. AUon to Dean Stanley, February 15th, 1868. VOL. II R 242 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY dissenting Presbyterian, and the Episcopalian, and tells each in turn that the true Church is something greater and better than any or all of the rival communions. Himself the staunchest champion of the existing union of Church and State, he practised his own precept of making 'the most of what there is of good in institutions, in opinions, in communities, in individuals.' And this sympathy was neither a strategic union, nor an armed truce, nor the toler- ance of indifference. It was the real fellow-feeling which springs from the power, and the habit, of descending into those deeper regions of thought and emotion where conflict- ing opinions find a point of union. To the Baptists he was grateful for the preservation of ' one singular and interest- ing relic of primitive and apostolic times ' ; to the Quakers, for ' dwelling, even with exaggerated force, on the insigni- ficance of all forms, of all authority, as compared with the inward light of conscience ' ; to the ' Dissenting Churches ' generally, for keeping alive * that peculiar force of devotion and warmth which is apt to die out in the light of reason and in the breath of free inquiry.' Religion, he told his American hearers, could ill afford to lose even 'the Churches which we most dislike, and which in other respects have wrought most evil.' And as with Churches, so with individuals. In the highest utterances of each man's faith, or in the best moments of his life, he rejoiced to find the common ground of religious feeling or spiritual aspiration. He delighted to collect instances of such expressions from the most varied quarters. It was a Spanish Roman Catholic who said, ' Many are the roads by which God carries His own to heaven.' ^ It was the venerable patriarch of German Catholic theology. Dr. Dollinger, who said that theology must * Cervantes in Don Quixote, Part II., c. 8. CHAP. XXII SEARCH FOR COMMON GROUND 243 ' transform her mission from a mission of polemics into a mission of irenics ; which, if it be worthy of the name, must become a science, not, as heretofore, for making war, but for making peace, and thus bring about that reconciUation of Churches for which the whole civilised world is longing.' In their loftiest moods of inspiration, the Catholic Thomas a Kempis, the Puritan Milton, the Anglican Keble, rose above their peculiar tenets, and ' above the limits that divide denominations, into the higher regions of a common Christianity.' It was the Baptist Bunyan who taught the world that there was ' a common ground of communion, which no difference of external rites could efface.' It was the Moravian Gambold who wrote : The man That could surround the sum of things, and spy The heart of God and secrets of His empire, Would speak but love. With love the bright result Would change the hue of intermediate things, And make 07ie thing of all theology. It was ' the Bloody Advocate, Mackenzie,' who, what- ever his illiberality of action, rose to true liberality of thought when he said, ' I am none of those who acknow- ledge no temples but in their own heads. To chalk out the bordering lines of the Church militant is beyond the geography of my religion.' It v/as Dr. Chalmers who, in the very heat of the great Disruption of the Scottish Church in 1843, asked the question, 'Who cares about any Church, but as an instrument of Christian good .'' ' It was the Scotch Episcopalian, Archbishop Leighton, who declared that ' the mode of Church government is unconstrained ; but peace and concord, kindness and good-will, are indis- pensable.' It was the founder of Irish Presbyterianism (Edward Bryce) who incisted ' most on the life of Christ ^ See the Vision of Wandering Willie in Redgaunilei. R 2 244 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY in the heart, and the light of His Word and Spirit on the mind.' It was Zwinglius who loved to dwell on 'the meeting in the presence of God of every blessed spirit, every holy character, every faithful soul that has existed from the beginning of the world even to the consummation thereof.' It was the 'main, fundamental, overpowering principle ' of Wesley's life, not to promote particular doctrines, but to ' elevate the whole Christian world in the great principles of Christian holiness and morality.' It was the solemn proclamation of a message of ' unity and com- prehension ' — 'in necessary things unity, in doubtful things liberty, in all things charity ' — which Richard Baxter carried to 'a stormy and divided age,' that gave the great Noncon- formist leader his pre-eminence. This was the spirit in which he delighted to see men rise above the spirit of parties. It was Archbishop Ussher who assured the leaders of the Ulster Presbyterians that ' it would break his heart if their successful ministry in Ulster were interrupted.' It was the Protestant Bishop of Elphin (Law) who, in 1793, looked upon his ' Roman Catholic brethren as fellow-subjects and fellow- Christians, believers in the same God, partners in the same redemption. Speculative differences on some points of faith are, with me, of no account. They and I have but one religion — the religion of Christianity. Therefore, as children of the same Father, as travellers on the same road, as seekers of the same salvation, why not love each other as brethren ' It was a Roman Catholic prelate (Bishop Moriarty) who, at the very crisis of the Irish Church agitation, testified to the fact ' that in every relation of life the Protestant clergy who reside amongst us are not only blameless, but estimable and edifying. They cannot escape our observation, and sometimes, when we noticed that quiet and decorous and CHAP. XXII 'THEOLOGY OF igTH CENTURY ' 245 modest course of life, we felt ourselves giving expression to the wish, talis cum sis ictinain Piaster esses ! ' Animated by this spirit and actuated by these aims Stanley threw himself into his literary work. During the years 1864-72 the chief results of his labours were his ' Lectures on the Jewish Church,' and his ' Memorials of Westminster Abbey.' The first he regarded as the main purpose of his life, and his chief contribution to the relig- ious revolution that he believed to be impending. The second he looked upon as an interlude, which carried him 'too far away from the vital questions of the day.' While these works marked the main direction of his literary activ- ity, there gathered round them, like the spray flung up by some impetuous torrent, a cloud of addresses, speeches, articles, lectures, essays, pamphlets, letters to the ' Times,' and sermons, which indicated the force and volume of the stream. In 1864 he was preparing a slight memoir of Lord Elgin, contributing to the ' Edinburgh Review ' an article on the Three Pastorals, and engaged in a controversy on the Court of Appeal with Pusey and Keble in the 'Times.' In January 1865 he writes to his cousin, Louisa Stanley, describing himself as busy with the completion of his ' Lectures on the Jewish Church,' which he was also deliv- ering at the Deanery to the younger men among the Lon- don clergy. Yet, even in the midst of this work, he found time to prepare and read before a meeting of London clergy his address on ' The Theology of the Nineteenth Century.' * Of that address the late Archbishop Magee wrote in 1884 : ' It impressed me greatly, not only for its great charm of style and its thoroughly Stanleyan characteristics, but because it brings out more strongly than most of his pub- lications that orthodox side of his nature which he used * Printed in Fraier's Magazine for February 1 865, and republished in the Essays on Church and State. 246 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY sometimes so provokingly to conceal. The essay is a de- fence of Broad Church theology, and for that very reason its testimony to the worth of dogma, and still more to the intense belief of the writer in the Divinity and supremacy of Christ, are all the more valuable.' In the autumn of 1865 was published the second part of the ' Lectures on the Jewish Church.' ^ The volume deals with that second period of history which lies between the accession of Saul and the fall of Jerusalem. So much has been already said on the Lectures that little need be added. The main difference between the two parts lies in the form into which the material is thrown. In the first period, poetry, metaphor, prophecy, and history seemed to Stan- ley to be so intermingled that continuous narrative was in great part abandoned. In the second period this difficulty had to a great extent disappeared. Though chronological uncertainties still remained, the substantially historical char- acter of the whole is almost universally admitted, and the sacred history speaks for itself as a continuous narrative. In other respects the aim, the spirit, the charm, and the method of the treatment are the same. There is the same bold, yet reverent, handling of subjects which are pecul- iarly liable to suffer from repetitions of conventional lan- guage, and from traditional methods of treatment. There is the same effort to interpret the Bible, not by our own fancies concerning it, but by what it says of itself ; to dis- tinguish between the letter and the spirit ; to extinguish ' the unnatural war between faith and reason, between human science and divine.' There is the same determi- nation to allow the sacred writings to speak for them- selves, and the same consequent increase of insight into the structure and meaning of each part of the sacred records. ^ Lectures on tlie History of the Jewish Church, Vol. II. London, 1865, 8vo. CHAP. XXII 'LECTURES ON JEWISH CHURCH ' 247 There is the same conviction that, taken with all its difficul- ties, the Bible is still the Book of books to all mankind, the fountain and the bulwark of truth and holiness, the guide both of learned and unlearned into one communion of thought and feeling. There is the same quiet confidence that, standing high above the human speculations which have gathered round it, it contains treasures of wisdom, justice, toleration, freedom, and love, which have never yet been exhausted. In both volumes, again, there is the same tendency to make the moral and spiritual truths of the Bible the fortress of his theology. It is in the elevation of the teaching of Psalmists and Prophets, and not in their minute predic- tions of future events that Stanley finds the surest proof of their prophetic spirit. It is in the loftiness of character, which rises above times and circumstances, and not in ex- traordinary displays of power — it is not in physical signs and wonders, but in 'the clinging trust to the one Supreme Source of spiritual goodness and truth, which brings men into communion with the Divine and Eternal' — that he discovers the moral prodigies which afford an evidence of the supernatural that no criticism can shake. Closely aris- ing from this thought is his handling of the relations which the history of the Jewish commonwealth bears to the events of the Christian Dispensation. No resemblance of accidental, outward circumstances can illustrate the charac- ter of Christ or justify the craving for personal relations with that life. The heroes and saints of Judaea — or, as Stanley says, 'of any other country' — are only 'types of Christ' so far as there exists any real harmony of moral and mental qualities or situations, any inward community of spirit between His manifestation and their likeness to Him. If this be so, then the prophets and kings of the Old Testament are not 'machines or pictures'; they are living 248 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1865 men, speaking of their own sorrows or joys, their own trials and difficulties, and colouring the utterance of their experiences with their own human Jewish or Oriental peculiarities. It is only when their characters are under- stood that their real resemblance to Christ is revealed, and that it clearly appears in what respects they are truly types, 'in what consists the character and Person of Him whom we are called upon to love and adore, and in what con- sists the possibility of our approach to Him.' The two volumes are alike in aim and spirit. They also possess the same distinctive charm — the fascination of a style which is graphic, picturesque, eloquent, and rich in pertinent illustration ; the same grouping into vivid pic- tures of a body of small facts ; the same grasp of the critical and salient features in the character of an age or of an individual. In both volumes there is the love of illus- tration, which is never satisfied till it has suggested parallels or contrasts, and compared men and events at different times and in different countries ; in both the same power of narration, which gives vivid interest to the dullest or most familiar facts ; in both the same capacity of detecting the humours of history, which adds force to the vivid narrative and life to the graphic portraiture. In both there are the same wide knowledge of human nature, the same intense sympathy with it under every aspect, the same belief that its essential elements are identical in every age, and the same practical application of the lesson of the remote past to the tide and current of modern life. In both there is the same imaginative realisation of the heroes and scenes of Scripture, which transforms half-mythical figures into human beings, and brings men and events so freshly before the eye that the Bible becomes rich, not only in celestial truth, but in vital human realities. In both, finally, there is the same danger of painting inaccurate representations, CHAP. XXII 'LECTURES ON JEWISH CHURCH' 249 and of regarding events and persons with too modern an eye. Both vohimes are ahke in being the work of a moralist who is writing historically. Always on the watch to detect and enforce the moral and spiritual conclusions which sacred history suggests, Stanley blends the teacher with the his- torian, and unites the historical lecturer with the moral essayist. This didactic attitude exercises an inspiring in- fluence on history, and gives to his historical writing a peculiar elevation. But it may be questioned whether the attitude does not deprive his work of some of its value, at the same time that it adds to its influence. It is difficult to combine the historian's reverence for the importance of facts with the preacher's desire to draw from them moral lessons. And the effort to unite the two functions helps to make Stanley's treatment of history, in the critical sense of the word, unhistorical. One, and the most generally accepted, duty of historians is to set before the mind definite views of what actually happened, to describe events as facts, to contribute to the knowledge of the issues they involved. In Stanley's work it is often hard to discover what he believes to have really taken place. He deals with aspects of life, and is almost more occupied with the conceptions which later ages formed of historical events, and with the influence that they have thus exercised, than with the events themselves. He offers a vivid, impressive description of transactions ; he creates a belief in their reality ; he leaves a sense of their first-rate importance. But the part of the past which he brings into most prominence is one that is often ignored — it is the effect on national and individual development that the conceptions which men have formed of history have pro- duced, and may still produce. Professor Maurice, in a letter dated December 27th, 1865, 250 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY criticises one of the most novel and characteristic positions assumed by Stanley in his second volume of lectures.^ The Professor thanks him for the book, which, he says, ' has given me so manj^ new lights on the Old Testament history, and has revealed to me so many confusions into which I had fallen respecting it. Your conception of the relation of the two kingdoms to each other, many as are the old notions and impressions which it disturbs, has too much evidence in its favour not to commend itself, at least, to the most earnest reflection of every student. Your clear visions of the different prophets and kings have made me ashamed of ever having ventured to say my say about any of them. ' The one subject upon which I have not yielded to your arguments is that of the priesthood. I do not dispute any of your facts, or their value ; I should go further than you go in speaking of the sins of the Jewish priests, and of those who, rightly or wrongly, have borne that name in all countries and all ages. Priests, Jewish and heathen and Christian, it seems to me, have been worse than other men, because they themselves have offered, and have led man- kind to offer, sacrifices to Moloch and Ashtaroth — or, in later times, emphatically to the Devil — when they have been appointed to offer them to the Eternal God of Truth and Love. I cannot exempt them from this terrible charge under the plea that they had not the very highest of func- tions in being witnesses that all creation is God's, or that any mere words of the prophet, grand as they may be, could dispense with the actual offering which the priests, as repre- sentatives of their nation or of humanity, were to bring. ' It strikes me that there is something more of an appeal to mere modern sentiment, in your description of the butcherly and soldierly character of the Jewish priest, than I find in any other part of your volume. I admit that the priest was the butcher. Did he not thereby testify (i) against the Egyptian worship of the animal, (2) against the notion that the slaughter of animals is a mere gratification of the brutal appetite .'' ' If you introduce the other idea — that of the Epistle to the Hebrews — if you consider the offering of animal sacri- fices to be no longer the priest's duty, because the Elder * Lecture XXXVI., in Stanley's Jexuish Church on the Jewish Priesthood. CHAP. XXII MAURICE'S CRITICISM 251 Brother of the Human Race has offered that perfect sacrifice of the will which can alone be satisfactory to God, I entirely accept the change. But it seems to me to involve the principle that those who set forth this Elder Brother to men should be themselves perpetually commem- orating His complete sacrifice by claiming the right to offer up themselves and all human creatures to the living and true God ; which oblation must include the consecra- tion of all animal and vegetable life, of all things as well as of all persons, of all offices and tasks, and therefore be inseparably connected with the Old Dispensation, taking up its fundamental maxim into itself, and explaining why its mere accidents have passed away. ' In this sense I do not see how you can show that the prophetical office has more of an enduring character than the priestly. I admit the permanence of the first, but certainly with as manifest an alteration of its outward appearances as it is possible to conceive. I fully believe that the prophet will be always wanted to reprove the abominations of the priest — that Savonarola was to Alex- ander the Sixth what Samuel was to Hophni and Phinehas. But I think the true prophet will always have to rebuke prophets who speak a lie in the name of the Lord, as well as priests who cause His offering to be abhorred. Each of those offices, like the royal, subsists, I think, in its orig- inal purpose and significance, Christ being the real inter- preter of each, embodying them all in Himself, Who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. And I cannot but feel that in the Southern nations of Europe, where the priest has extinguished the prophet, in England, where the prophet has extinguished the priest, in the United States of America, where there has been an obliteration of the king, there is a peril to that which has exalted itself, even more than to that which has been depressed. ' Nevertheless, I look for the revival of each land through that which it has, in a measure, reverenced : the priesthood will, I trust, rise up for the deliverance of France and Spain and Italy ; the preachers (lay and cleri- cal) may yet do something for England. The American people may assert the majesty of Christ's kingdom above their own sovereignty. I do not, therefore, consider you unpatriotic for giving what appears to me an exaggerated and exclusive prominence to the prophet. It is a genuine 252 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY English belief. But if England is to serve humanity, I ask of it justice to what has been so sacred in the eyes of the other nations.' ' I felt sure,' Stanley replies, ' that you would not approve of that chapter,'' and I quite admit that " there are more things " in the old priesthoods than my " philosophy " is able to " dream of." What, however, I wished to bring out as clearly as possible was, that in those outward circumstances in which both the upholders and the assailants of modern priesthoods find, as they sui^pose, the essentials of the office, there is no likeness at all between the Christian clergy and the Leviti- cal order, and that the sooner the parallels between them (except in so general a form as to be unequal to support the weight of modern controversy) are disposed of, so much the better for a right understanding of the whole matter.' No sooner had he completed his Lectures than he turned to the preparation of his ' Memorials of Westminster.' But here, again, he did not allow the principal work on which he was engaged to absorb him so completely that he had neither interest nor leisure for other topics. Now he is writing an article on the Form of Subscription for ' Eraser's Magazine.' Now he is preparing, and delivering, two addresses on the Unity of Christendom and Pusey's Eireni- con, which he subsequently worked up into an article for the ' Contemporary Review.' ^ Now he is writing to the 'Times' (May 1866) to plead the cause of the Monastery of Monte Casino, now contributing to the same newspaper (November 3rd, 1866) an obituary notice of Bishop Cotton, who was drowned in India while crossing a plank from the shore to the steamer, and whose loss he deplores in a letter to his sister Mary : ' I feel almost as if I had seen him, at night, missing his footstep on the plank leading from the steamer to the ' Ibid. * Reprinted in Essays on Chttrch and State. CHAP. XXII REVIEW OF 'ECCE HOMO' 253 shore.^ For the magnitude of the loss, public and private, to all who knew him I have nothing to say to console myself or anyone else. It is simply one of those irreparable blanks which go on darkening our course as we advance in life, and which are not the less felt because they come in such quick succession. ' No one has been to me, and, I should think, to many, so unvarying, so faithful a friend. Very few men in the Church of England, certainly in the Colonial Church, so exactly filled his place. For all this, the more I think of it, the more deeply I grieve. But for the manner of his death, I cannot but regard it as full of consolation. A sudden departure for him, of all men, was not to be lamented. I long to see some comment upon it. It was heartbreaking to see in the newspapers the same stony telegram repeated over and over without remark.' In 1866 he reviewed ' Ecce Homo' in ' Macmillan's Magazine.' To Stanley, the publication of the book appeared as one of the signs of the times, and as a pledge that the fruits of the new theology were to be, beyond all previous measure, abundant. Many of the theologians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had been intent on arranging a hortus siccus of dogmatic definitions, and on justifying their arrangement by Scriptural texts. Ewald's and Kenan's lives of Christ, the preaching of Frederick Robertson, the Bampton Lectures of Liddon, were all, in different ways, permeated with the modern spirit. The theologians of the nineteenth century insisted on knowing Him in whom they believe, and on drawing out the actual characteristics which alone give real significance to theo- logical terms. What Christianity wanted was, not so much a revolution, as a recognition. 'The more this can be done,' writes Stanley, 'the more fully it is understood what He was, what He did ; what is meant by His life, by His death, by His resurrection, * The first report, from which Stanley is writing, was inaccurate. Bishop Cotton was returning to the steamer after the consecration of a cemetery. 254 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1866 SO much the more fully will the Church of' our day under- stand the sense in which He was Divine and the sense in which He was human.' To this end he regarded ' Ecce Homo ' as a powerful con- tribution. The mystery of its authorship was itself a fact ' worth a hundred artificial " Eirenicons," a hundred schemes of occasional confraternity of rival sects.' When the high- est subject of theology could be so treated that the author was conjectured to be either a Roman Catholic, a Protestant, a Nonconformist, or an American U nitarian, then, he argues, it was evident that the essence of Christianity lay in the doctrines which these rival communions held in common, and not in the differences by which they were divided. In its representation of the character and teaching of Christ he found an Evangelical Christianity which, without looking to abstract doctrine or precision of dogmatic statement for the salvation of the world, relied on truth and charity as superior to the virtue of orthodoxy, and stirred the inmost soul to the enthusiasm which purifies and strength- ens both faith and practice by establishing His transcend- ent claim on the allegiance of our moral and spiritual natures. In the following letter he gives, with all the frankness of private correspondence, his impressions of 'Ecce Homo.' ' It had to me the same rare interest,' he writes in February 1866, 'that was excited by Renan's book, namely, the feeling that here was an attempt, in one case as the other, by a mind of undoubted power, to grasp the vital points of the greatest subject in all history. As regards the appreciation of the character and the teaching of the Gospel as a whole, I need hardly say that it is all, and more than all, that Renan has achieved, without those terrible blotches which so disfigure the truth and grandeur of the conception given. Perhaps the chapter which most struck me in this respect was that on the Indignation of Christ. If in some respects (as CHAP, xxn REVIEW OF 'ECCE HOMO' 255 in the explanation of the Prayer on the Cross) the repre- sentation of it is carried to excess, I cannot but think that this is not more than is required to compensate for the almost total abeyance of this side of the Divine character in the mind of Christendom for so many ages. In the same way, I am also inclined to pardon the corresponding exag- geration in Renan of the joyous, festive side of the history, which shocks the world chiefly because its unquestionable truth has so long been obscured. ' The style and the mode of delineating the character appear to me to have struck with marvellous tact and feeling the true historical chord, without losing a sense of the infinite possibilities and capacities wrapped up in the character ; and to have maintained the sense of reverence, without micrging it in that cloud of conventional generalities which have so fatally obscured all ordinary representations of the subject. ' May I venture to make a few criticisms ' First, as I read the Preface and parts of the book itself, I am oppressed with an apprehension lest there may be some arriere pensee for which I am not prepared, some secret polemic, which may leap out from behind a covert, and take advantage of my genuine admiration. If this be too suspicious, you must ascribe it to the experience of one who has seen too much of the snares and pitfalls of the controversial world. ' Secondly, I am struck from time to time with the thought that the writer contemplates the Christian kingdom as being not merely in its historical development (as it there undoubtedly is), but in its original essence and intention, an outward political institution. I allude particularly to the chapter on Baptism, and especially to the literalising interpretation of "water." I gladly recognise that the rest of the volume looks in another and higher direction, and hope that here, as in the other case, I may be quite mis- taken. The too meagre and literal view of Baptism seems to me to extend, though in a much less degree, to the view of the Lord's Supper. ' Thirdly, I think that the language about the Gospel miracles might have been worded so as more exactly to meet all the facts of the case. ' I am always jealous of seeing the word supernatural applied to acts which, on any hypothesis, are the least 256 LIFE OF DEAN- STANLEY 1866 directly convincing manifestations of that which is most above Nature. And though I quite appreciate and gladly welcome the force of the remarks which distinguish the Gospel miracles from others, especially in their relation to Christ Himself, yet I feel that there should always be a recognition of the fact, impressed upon us by the whole modern view of the history of the Middle Ages, that miracles may be thrown into the shade, and yet the sub- stance and value of the history and characters remain unshaken. ' Fourthly, I am inclined (though I have no right to speak on such a matter, and feel, moreover, that it is quite subordinate to the main argument) to think that the con- trast of the relative importance of the teaching and life of Christ — and of Socrates — is somewhat overstated. On the one hand, what would be the value of the Cross and Resurrection without that insight into the mind which is displayed in the teaching — according to the lines of Bunyan, which I am never tired of quoting as my confession of Faith : Blest Cross — Blest Sepulchre — blest, rather, He — 77,!^ Man that there was put to shame for me. On the other hand, I confess that, for my own part, the life of Socrates as given in Grote's eighth volume is far more impressive to me than anything I ever read of his teaching. And, to me, the character and teaching of Christ seem to gain by being put in the same parallel, so as to bring out more strongly the infinite superiority. ' To return to the general drift of the book, it bids fair to realise what has been long a dream of my waking hours — the hope that the actual description of what Christ was and is for human history will be as a new revelation — so powerful, so conciliatory — yet so long neglected or un- known, and therefore so little expected. ' Ewald would have done this, or nearly this, had he not been a German; Renan, to a great extent, had he not been a Frenchman. The writer of this book has had the won- derful advantage of being an Englishman.' In 1867 he was appointed a member of the Ritual Commission, and was a regular attendant at the numerous meetings which preceded the publication of its first Report CHAP. XXII '■MEMORIALS OF WESTMINSTER-' 257 in August. In the course of the same year he contributed two articles to the ' Edinburgh Review,' one on Ritualism,^** the other on the Due de Broglie's book, ' L'EgHse et L' Empire Romain au IV"" Siecle.' The bulk of the latter article is devoted to the Council of Constantinople. ' But M. de Broglie's picture,' says Stanley, ' of the littleness and futility of this Council is doubly valuable from the time when it appears.' He then draws one of his characteristic parallels between the approaching CEcumenical Council at Rome and the approaching Pan-Anglican Synod at Lam- beth: ' The Roman Council is intended, if we may believe common rumour, if not by the venerable Pontiff himself, at least by his most influential advisers, to be called together partly for the sake of suppressing an obnoxious prelate, the Cardinal Andrea at Subiaco, partly in the hope of adding to the Articles of the Roman Catholic faith two new dogmas — one on the Infallibility of the Pope, the other on the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. The Anglican Council is intended — not, indeed, by the venerable Primate who has issued the invitations, but by the prelates [the Bishop of Capetown and the Bishop of Montreal] at whose request they were issued, and with whom the whole project originated — to be called together partly for the sake of suppressing an obnoxious bishop in South Africa, partly in the hope of adding two new dogmas to the faith of the Church of England — one on the Verbal Inspiration of Scripture, the other on the Everlasting Torments of Hell.' In December of the same year (1867) appeared the ' Memorials of Westminster Abbey.' To Stanley, the Abbey was the representative of the religious life of England ; from it he drew illustrations of his best hopes of humanity and of the Church; in it he saw the image of the sacred- ness of history and of God's dealings with the English nation. ' Edinburgh Review, April 1S67. " Ibid. July 1 867. ' Memorials of Westmimler Abbey. London, 1868, 8vo. VOL. II S 258 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1868 To make its treasures known to the people of England was one of the main objects of his life, and from the moment of his appointment to the Deanery he had determined to write its history. As the historian of the Abbey, he was actuated by the same ideal which governed his adminis- tration of its affairs. In writing its Memorials ; in choosing the preachers to occupy its pulpit ; in inaugurating musical services and services for children ; in affording to laymen, or to clergymen of other communions, the opportunity of speaking within its walls ; in opening its consecrated soil as a place of interment for men of genius or distinction ; in his love and care for its buildings, in his delight to guide parties of working-men through the Abbey and its pre- cincts — he was filled with the one wish to make Westminster, in the highest and fullest sense, the centre and representa- tive of religious and national life. In the midst of his multifarious literary, social, and ecclesiastical activity, the subject of the ' ?.Iemorials of West- minster ' had been steadily pursued. It appears in 1864, in a letter from Provins on the doings of Edmund Crouch- back, whose tomb and recumbent effigy are among the most interesting of the Abbey monuments. It rises to the surface during his foreign tour in 1865, when he visits Rheims 'in order to compare it with Westminster,' and combines the scenes of the coronation of French sovereigns at Rheims and their funerals at St. Denis into ' a French Westminster,' or when he visits the Chapel of St. Lucius at Coire, 'where Lucius, the legendary founder of Westminster Abbey, King of Britain, and afterwards Bishop of Coire, preached so loud that his voice could be heard four leagues off.' At Pisa, in 1866, he is 'glad to see that the modern monuments in the Campo Santo have played as bad pranks with the old architecture as they have in Westminster Abbey ' ; at Florence he obtains an introduction to the CHAP. XXII 'MEMORIALS OF WESTMINSTER' 259 keeper of the archives, that he might have ' a thorough explanation of the history of Santa Croce, the Florentine Westminster Abbey' ; at Vallombrosa, the spectacle of the evicted prior and monks suggests to him that ' so departed, 300 years ago, the monks of Westminster : but Westminster has still remained with something worthy of its great name, while Vallombrosa will in a few years be nothing but a name.' At Le Puy, in 1867, he notices that the strange, fantastic basaltic pillar which is dedicated to ' Our Lady of France ' was taken possession of by the Virgin with a 'miraculous dedication prepared by herself, like St. Peter at Westminster.' At other times special portions of the same history are studied. Thus, in November 1865 he speaks of himself as ' immersed in the history of Edward the Con- fessor, in preparation for the celebration of the Sooth anni- versary of the dedication of the Abbey.' The anniversary- service^^ was held on December 28th, 1865, and 'although on a week-day, the Church was crowded.' Still greater crowds attended the memorial service on December 25th, 1866, when the Sooth anniversary of the Coronation of William the Conqueror in Westminster Abbey ^* was cele- brated. The proof which the attendance at these ser- vices afforded 'of the interest that is felt by all classes in the history of this great institution ' encouraged and invigorated him in the prosecution of his laborious task. In April 1866 it is evident, from the paper on Westmin- ster Abbey which he read before the Royal Institution of Great Britain, that the plan of the Memorials was already formed in his mind, and that it only remained to group round the skeleton outline the necessary facts and details. The Dedication of Westminster Abbey. London, 1866, 8vo. Reprinted in the Sertnons on Various Occasions. " The Coronation of William the Conqueror. London, 1867, 8vo. Re- printed in the Sermons on Various Occasions. 26o LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1868 Even allowing for the assistance which was eagerly ren- dered by his friends, the compilation of so large, and, in its way, so complete, a work as the ' Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey' is a remarkable feat of energy and literary facility. In this thick octavo volume he tells the history of the foundation of the Abbey of St. Peter, un- ravels the continuous threads of diverse elements which entwine its fortunes with the history of the nation, and revives the memories of the illustrious men and women who lie buried within its walls. Crowded with informa- tion, and teeming with anecdote and illustration, the Memorials form a biographical dictionary without its dul- ness. To the personal interest of the building it is a copious guide, and its composition is marked by all Stan- ley's nice discrimination of analogies or contrasts, his mastery of facts and details, his sympathy with all classes and professions among his fellow-countrymen, his appre- ciation of truth, nobility, and goodness, wherever they exist. Nothing in its way can be more characteristic of Stanley than his suggestive treatment of the royal tombs. In no other country, he points out, is the same building connected with the deaths as well as the lives of sover- eigns, with their coronations as well as their funerals. In no other country have the ashes of the great citizens of the nation mingled with the dust of its kings. The Monarchy of France might not have fallen in its imperial isolation had her poets, warriors, and statesmen surrounded her rulers, as with a guard of honour, after their deaths. No opportunity of this kind is missed by Stanley ; and as a proof of his industry, his power of amassing facts, and his literary facility, the Memorials is a remarkable work. But the volume is not the most successful or artistic of his books. It has defects which arise, partly from the limita- tions of his powers, partly from the form of its composition. CHAP, xxii 'MEMORIALS OF WESTMINSTER'' 26 1 On its architectural side it is deficient, for architecture was a subject on which, Hke music, he professed profound igno- rance. Another defect arises from its, perhaps inevitable, diffuseness of aim. In the ' Memorials of Canterbury ' he seizes certain representative figures, and round them groups all the facts and minute details which give them life and reality. In the ' Memorials of Westminster ' he was una- ble, or unwilling, to pursue the same process, and the wide range of the historical facts that are accumulated increases the disconnectedness. Unlike its predecessor, it is rather a book of reference than a book to read. He himself felt the same impression which the Memorials produced on others. He considered its compilation as one of the inev- itable drawbacks of his removal to Westminster. ' It is not,' he writes to Professor Max Miiller, ' a good book, nor one that in itself touches the vital questions of the age. But my position here made it necessary, and therefore it has been written.' The encyclopaedic character of the volume wearied him, and the mere chronological or topo- graphical grouping of details which were only associated by their connection with one building, and which nowhere converged on a common centre, afforded him but little scope for the display of his most characteristic gifts. Where space and subject permit, as in the description of the founder of the Abbey, he uses his vivid historical imagi- nation with brilliant effect. The character and the figure of Edward the Confessor, with his flushed rose-red face, con- trasted with the milky whiteness of his waving hair and beard, his thin pale hands, and startling peals of unearthly laughter, are painted with all his picture-making power. Two months after the publication of the Memorials he delivered his address on the ' Connection of Church and State ' at Sion College. The address, which was subse- quently printed in the form of a pamphlet, was given in 262 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1868 February 1868.^^ It involved him in a mass of correspond- ence. Among the letters which poured in upon him from all sides was one from a Nonconformist, personally un- known to him, who invited him to join the Nonconformist body, on the ground that the union of conflicting opinions within one Church magnified animosities and contradic- tions. The following passage is extracted from the long reply which Stanley wrote to his correspondent : * That animosities and contradictions are intensified by being brought face to face within one society is true, but I consider this to be an evil which a National Church shares with the State and with the family, and which, as in the case of parties in the State and of divers characters in the family, is more than counterbalanced by the advan- tage of variety, by the occasion for self-control, and by the experience of divergent opinions. ' I venture to think that, even in Nonconformist Churches, unless they are extremely small, or unless the governing force be very severe, the same principle of diversity in unity must exist in some degree ; and I see no complete escape from it, except in that which I for one regard as the only legitimate, and perhaps as the ultimately destined, issue of the recoil from National Churches, viz., absolute Individualism. This, which would demand the total dissolution of all Churches (in the modern sense of the word), may be the end to which we are approaching, in which there will be no outward religious society at all, and each human soul, as in the intellectual, so in the religious world, will find out for itself its own food and its own com- panions. But in the interval I feel bound to make the most of the institutions we have, and the National Church, I feel sure, has capabilities which have never yet been fully developed, and which are, in some respects, more fully in harmony with the age than those of the Nonconformist Churches. ' That the English formularies have many defects I quite allow, and, as you know, I am constantly labouring to get them altered, and have in part succeeded. But I do not 1^ The Connection of Church and State. London, 1868, 8vo. Reprinted in Essays on Church and Slate. CHAP. XXII 'THE THREE IRISH CHURCHES' 263 wish to eradicate every element on which the so-called catholic tendencies of the Christian mind can feed. In two or three instances we have them in excess. But so long as public worship is conducted with any outward or any ancient forms, even though it be only the two Sacra- ments, and so long as any sacred art, or architecture, or order of clergy is tolerated at all, so long I expect the ten- dencies towards sacerdotalism and Ritualism to appear, even in the most Protestant Churches. That a vast J amount of intolerance is bred amongst us I freely confess, and, as you know, I have been as much exposed to its attacks as anyone ; yet still I feel that I should not be as free, nor find a position so well suited to me, in any Non- conformist Church as I have in my own. Although I have heard sermons in Nonconformist chapels that I have pre- ferred to most I hear in the Abbey, yet I have also heard, even from highly respected Nonconformist ministers, sermons which showed me that Churchmen like myself could only have a place there by claiming a wider tolera- tion of divergence even there than I claim and possess here ; and I think that the long historical succession of latitudinarian Churchmen, from Chillingworth down to Milman, proves the same thing. I have ventured to throw out these few remarks, not with the view of eliciting an answer or of persuading you, but only to show that I give your kind arguments full weight, and that I profess myself unconvinced, not because they have no force, but because, on the whole, the counter-arguments seem to me to outweigh them.' In February 1868, when Stanley delivered his address on Church and State, the Irish Established Church had so little entered into his consideration that it was not mentioned. Within the next few months this corner of the subject had become the ground on which the whole question was dis- cussed. On March 23rd, 1868, Mr. Gladstone laid on the table of the House of Commons his resolutions in favour of the disestablishment of the Irish Church. In the subsequent discussions on the question he obtained majorities against the Government, and on May 4th Mr. Disraeli announced 264 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1868 that a dissolution would take place in the following autumn. Public meetings on either side were organised in London and elsewhere, and one was held to protest against the Bill at St. James's Hall on May 6th, 1868. Stanley was present, and vainly endeavoured to obtain a hearing from an excited audience. His object was to show that, from a Liberal point of view, the proposed mode of dealing with the Irish Church was indefensible. But on this, as on three other occasions of his appearance on a public platform, he was shouted down. His first words, ' I approach you as a Liberal of the Liberals,' gave the signal for loud cries of ' Turn him out ! ' 'He is a traitor !' 'He is a Liberal ! ' When, by the efforts of the chairman, a moment's silence was obtained, he went on to say that all the Liberal statesmen, down to the present time, had been in favour of concurrent endowment. This statement aroused a fresh outbreak of clamour, and the Archbishop of York, who was sitting by him, said, ' You have now delivered yourself of the only two important things which you have to say. Sit down.' ' It was perfectly true,' added Stanley in telling the story, ' and I did so.' In August 1868 Stanley visited Ireland, in order to study the question on the spot and for himself. ' As to the Church Question,' he writes to Dr. Liddell in the following October, 'what I learned was, I think, this : (i) The almost unani- mous concurrence of reasonable men in behalf of the double or triple endowment ; (2) the generally pacific relations of the two populations towards each other ; (3) the vast extent to which, on the one hand, the Roman Catholic Church is all but recognised, and the Protestant Church, in the West and South, in many cases withdrawn — an important consideration, because a few additional changes carried out in these two directions v/ould be merely a legalisa- tion of the status quo, and would not be of that revolutionary character which the two contending English parties are anxious to ascribe to the supposed necessary measures ; CHAP. XXII 'THE THREE IRISH CHURCHES' 265 (4) the modifying effect which Protestantism has exercised on Roman Catholicism in some points. The whole aspect of the cultiis in the Churches is far superior to what one sees in the Churches of Southern Europe. On the other hand, the power of the priesthood is much greater. (5) The Irish Protestant clergy seem to me a more reasonable body of men than I had anticipated. The Bishops I thought more accessible to argument than our own, and I doubt whether even Thirlwall is intrinsically an abler man than Fitzgerald. ' On the whole, therefore, I adhere to my view — (i) a triple endowment ; (2) a legal recognition of the Roman Catholics in the South and West, and of the Presbyterians in the North ; (3) a reduction of the Church of England staff where it is not needed, and, if necessary, a series of Acts placing it on the same legal basis as the Church of England in India. ' I have not seen in any of the speeches any attempt to define the word "disestablishment." Every possible change, from total destruction to the slightest modification of the present state of things, might be included under the phrase, so far as it has yet been interpreted — surely as regards, at least, the two leaders, a most discreditable confusion to have introduced into the two hostile camps. ' I agree entirely with you as to the impolicy of fore- dooming the Church of England. I am inclined to believe that, in both countries, the principle of a legal control of the religious communities has struck too deep to be up- rooted. No statesman will now venture to destroy May- nooth or Oxford, St. Patrick's or Westminster Abbey.' The dissolution had now taken place, and the disestab- lishment of the Irish Church was the burning question be- fore the electorate. John Stuart Mill offered himself for re-election at Westminster as a supporter of Mr. Gladstone's proposals, and his opponent was the late W. H. Smith. In 1865, Stanley had written a letter to the electors of West- minster,^^ in which he intimated that, though he should take no active part in the election, he should support Mill on account of his distinguished abilities. He then went on to Published in the Times of July 1st, 1865. 266 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1868 negative the charge of atheism which during the contest had been directed against a certain passage in Mill's philo- sophical writings. The passage in question ' contains,' he says, ' a forcible exposition of the foundation of all true religion. The substance of it is, that God is good, and that we are called upon to worship Him because of His goodness.' In 1868 the issue before the electorate was one in which he was deeply interested. Though nothing could be further from his wishes than to see the Irish Church disestablished, he had formed the conclusion that some change was nec- essary and inevitable. In a letter written from abroad in November 1868, Stanley declared his intention of con- tinuing to support the candidature of Mill ' on an occasion when men of his powers of mind, elevation of character, and philosophic culture, were especially needed in the House of Commons.' He returned to England to find, as he wrote to Dr. Liddell, ' Westminster all in a blaze about my letter on Mill. It is always hazardous to write anything intended for popular use on occasions of this kind. But I had several reasons. ' I wished to make as much as I honestly could of my adherence to the Liberal Party, when so much of their re- cent course has been to me so extremely revolting. I was doubly glad to do so when the Bishoprics were pending.^" It gave me, thirdly, the opportunity of expressing what seems to me the one thing needful to say at the present moment about the Irish Church question — its extreme complication, and the need, for its consideration, of all those qualities which are exactly the reverse of those dis- played by the leaders on the subject. But I see that electioneering is but one continual appeal to the most brutal, unreasoning stupidity and passion.' In his address on 'The Three Irish Churches,' delivered at Sion College on January 28th, 1869, Stanley pleads for 1' The Conservatives were still in office, and on November 1 2th, 1868, Mr. Disraeli offered Dr. Tait the Archbishopric of Canterbury, vacant by the death of Dr. Longley. ' The appointment of Tait to Canterbury,' writes Stanley in this same letter, ' is a good — it may be a great — event.' CHAP. XXII ' THE THREE IRISH CHURCHES' 267 that principle of ' levelling-up,' or of concurrent endowment, which he considered to be the true solution of the burning question, and which consisted in endowing, and placing under the same State control, the Protestant Episcopalian, Roman Catholic, and Presbyterian Churches. His treat- ment of the subject is in many ways characteristic. He recognises three co-existing elements in Irish ecclesiastical life, each of which, he argues, ought to be developed in the natural channels indicated by its own separate character- istics. Each must be regarded, he says, as what it is his- torically, and nothing more. Each is a National Church in the sense of representing a powerful nation. To the paci- fying, civilising, controlling, elevating, impartial influence of the State, which in these high matters had shown itself more Christian than the Church, he looked for the mainte- nance of a mutual truce, through which the three Churches might ultimately exchange the narrow, proselytising, exclu- sive spirit of rival sects for the free, magnanimous, imperial spirit of an united Church. In March 1869 he thus explains to his cousin, Louisa Stanley, his solution of the question : ' My scheme for Ireland is very briefly told, and as it is what all the great Whigs approved till February 1868, and still wish for in their hearts, I have no doubt it is right : — (i) Reduce the Irish Protestant Church, which has more clergy and bishops than it needs. (2) Let the bishops be like our bishops in India — part of our Church, but, as being in a distant country, without seats in the House of Lords. (3) Give the surplus to the Roman Catholics and Presbyterians. All this elaborate scheme of Gladstone's is partly the same thing very much disguised, and partly quite unnecessary, and, perhaps, mischievous. He leaves some property to the Irish Church, and so does not entirely dis- endow it. He leaves it in the power of the Irish Church, if it likes, to remain part of the Church of England, and therefore does not disestablish it. If it is disestablished, it must be by its own act. He gives the surplus money to 268 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1869 the lunatic asylums, which do not want it, to get out of the difficulty of giving it to the Roman Catholics, who ought to have it, but whom the Scotch and English Dissenters wish to prevent from having it. Therefore, as you may suppose, I was not much pleased by his speech, which I thought v/onderfuUy perspicuous, but not eloquent or per- suasive. I had the advantage of hearing (or seeing on their faces) the comments of the Lord Chancellor, Delano, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Duke of Argyll, the Duke of Cambridge, and the Count of Paris, who sat all close round me. * I suspect that the Bill will undergo many modifications before it reaches its completion, and I shall not go into shrieks of alarm or despair before that time comes. It is very fortunate that we have such an excellent head as our present Archbishop.' The pamphlet^® passed through three editions in four months. ' I could not believe,' wrote Lord Dufferin, ' that anyone could have put together so many brilliant and interesting pages on such a subject. It is very humiliating to us mere Irishry to find that, in addition to all other usurpations, Saxons like you invade our paths, and appropriate to yourselves our native fields of literature in such a way as to leave no share of them to any of us, to whom of right they belong.' But the principles which it advocated were urged too late. ' Many thanks,' writes Lord Oranmore in February 1869, ' for your admirably-written, most graphic, and large-minded pamphlet. I believe that, had we a real statesman in Great Britain, he might carry out your views, and so confer a last- ing blessing on the country. But I fear no such man exists. Each leader thinks of little but how he can gain a certain number of votes. Here, the government of the country is mainly directed by Cardinal Cullen, an extreme Ultra- montane Jesuit ; and in England and Scotland extreme changes are encouraged simply as each party desires to increase his parliamentary support. Like American steamers, when one goes ahead, the captain of the other The address was published in pamphlet form : The Ihree Irish Churches. London, 1869, 8vo. Reprinted in Essays on Church and State. CHAP. XXII 'RECONSTRUCTION OF IRISH CHURCH' 269 sits on the safety-valve. Your pamphlet will show to pos- terity that some had larger and higher views ; now I fear the opportunity will be lost in party conflict, which in this country is quickly reviving religious bigotry and strife.' Later in the same year in which the pamphlet on the Irish Church was published he contributed to the ' Quar- terly Review ' an article on the ' Reconstruction of the Irish Church.' During the interval that elapsed between January and October 1869^*' the Irish Church Act had been passed, and, as Archbishop Tait notes in his Diary ' a great occasion has been poorly used, and the Irish Church has been greatly injured, without any benefit to the Roman Catholics.' In Stanley's article on ' The Reconstruction of the Irish Church ' he pursues the same line of reasoning which he had followed in his address. The opportunity of securing to the three National Churches of Ireland the ad- vantages of establishment was indeed lost ; but it was not too late to secure some, at least, of those advantages for the Irish Church. Whatever 'disestablishment' meant, it did not mean the total abolition of the institution, nor yet the removal of all legal privileges, nor yet the entire separation from the State, nor absolute freedom of clerical self-govern- ment, nor total dissolution of ecclesiastical corporations. He therefore urges on the Irish Church the wisdom of ' a wise re-establishment,' and, above all, ' the declaration that it still formed part of the Church of England, bound by its laws, and adhering to its doctrine and worship.' However tempting might be the opportunity of starting avowedly on a fresh basis, of choosing a new ritual and a new creed, of framing for itself new formularies, the result of such a Quarterly Revierv, October 1869. Reprinted in an abridged form in Essays on Church and Stale. In April 1869 he wrote an article for the Quarterly Review on 'Travels in Greece,' and in October 1869 an article in the Edinburgh Review on 'The CEcumenical Council.' ''■^ Life of Archbishop Tait, vol. ii. p. 42. 270 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1 870-72 course must inevitably be the sacrifice of hereditary and traditionary influences, the loss of the connection with the law and civilisation of England, the descent into the heated atmosphere of sectarian polemics and aggressive proselyt- ism. If, on the other hand, the Irish Church elected to remain a part of the old, established. Imperial Church, its clergy might still continue to be, what the Establishment had secured their being — ' an ecclesiastical body, following the movement of the na- tional mind, representing the cause of law and order, the destined instrument of civilisation and progress ; not the slave of a tyrannical majority, or a despotic priesthood, or a party faction ; a body capable of holding its own moder- ating, elevating course, without pandering to the passions or the prejudices of the people by whom it is maintained, or the clergy by whom it is ruled.' During the years 1870 and 1872 Stanley was necessarily much occupied with his official duties as Dean of West- minster. He was also conducting a voluminous correspond- ence, preaching frequently in the Abbey and elsewhere, taking a prominent part in the struggles in Convocation, serving • regularly on the Ritual Commission and on the Committee for the Revision of the Authorised Version of the Bible, and spending his vacations in visits to friends in England, Scotland, or the Continent, or in attendance at the Old Catholic Congress at Cologne, or in explorations of the battlefields of the recent war between France and Germany. Yet, in spite of all these occupations and in- terests, his pen continued active. The following list of his most important publications conveys some idea of his in- exhaustible energy. He wrote articles in the ' Edinburgh ' ^ and ' Contemporary ''^ Reviews on a variety of subjects. His 22 Edinburgh Review : 'The Pope and the Council,' July 1871; the 'Ben- nett Judgment,' July 1872. 2^ Contemporary Review : ' The Athanasian Creed,' August 1870 and CHAP. XXII 'LECTURES ON SCOTTISH CHURCH' 2yi letters to the ' Times ' dealt with St. Bartholomew's Day, the Old Catholics, and the Athanasian Creed. He lectured on ' The Early Christianity of Northumbria ' 2* ; he prepared an elaborate paper on the Roman Sarcophagus recently discovered at Westminster. In 1870 he published his ' Essays on Church and State.' ^ In telling Professor Jowett of his intention to collect and republish these articles, addresses, and speeches, he says, ' All that I am really anxious for, as far as I am personally concerned, is that I should not be misunderstood.' 'It is not,' he writes to his cousin, ' a volume to which I am much attached. But I trust that by degrees it will form a soil for the peaceful olive, the sustaining corn, the cheering vine.' In 1871 he wrote an introduction to the volume of Captain (now Sir Charles) Wilson on the ' Recovery of Jerusalem,' ^ and a preface to the 'Facsimile of the Prayer Book of 1639.'^'^ In 1872 he contributed to 'Good Words'^ a paper on Richard Hooker, wrote a preface to the ' Letters and Journals of the Earl of Elgin,' and delivered before the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh his ' Lectures on the History of the Church of Scotland,' and in the City Hall of Glasgow his two addresses on the Early Christians. The ' Lectures on the History of the Church of Scot- land, were so important and characteristic a work that they deserve and demand detailed notice. They were preluded November 1870; 'Thomas Erskine of Linlathen,' May 1870; * Dean Alford,' March 1871 ; ' Disestal^lishment,' May 1871 ; ' The Eighth Article,' April 1872. 2* The Early Christianity of Northumbria. London, 1871, 8vo. Essays on Church and State. London, 1870, 8vo. '^^ The Recovery of Jerusalem. By Captain C. W.Wilson, R. E. London, 1871, 8vo. 2' Facsimile of the Black-letter Prayer Book of London, 1 87 1, fol. 28 Good Words, November 1872. Letters and yournals of the Earl of Elgin. London, 1872, 8vo. •'^ Published in the same year as Lectures on the History of the Church of Scotland. London, 1872, 8vo. 272 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1872 by the first sermon that he ever delivered in a Presbyterian church. On the Sunday before the first lecture (January 7th, 1872) he preached in the Old Greyfriars' Church, at Edinburgh. In the autumn of the previous year the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Winchester (S. Wilberforce) had preached in the Presbyterian church at Glengarry. The act provoked a storm of indignation which caused both prelates to draw back, and excuse them- selves on the plea that they had only preached as a mission. ' You will see,' said Archbishop Tait to one of his friends, ' that the consequence of this will be that Stan- ley will preach at Greyfriars'.' ' I had always intended,' writes Stanley to his sister Mary, ' if ever I did preach in a Presbyterian church, to preach there. I had also long ago fixed on my text (John xiii. 34),^^ in order to bring in that story of Archbishop Ussher.' The story to which he refers is thus told. In the seventeenth century the minister of Anwoth, on the shores of Galloway, was the famous Samuel Rutherford, the great religious oracle of the Covenanters. ' It is one of the traditions cherished on the spot, that on a Saturday evening, at one of those family gatherings whence, in the language of a great Scottish poet, Old Scotia's grandeur springs, when Rutherford was catechising his children and servants, a stranger knocked at the door of the Manse, and (like the young English traveller in the celebrated romance which has given fresh life to those same hills in our own age), begged shelter for the night. The minister kindly received him, and asked him to take his place amongst the family and assist at their religious exercises. It so hap- pened that the question in the Catechism which came to the stranger's turn was that which asks, " How many Commandments are there.'*" He answered, "Eleven." '1 ' A new commandment I give unto you.' The sermon is prefixed to the Lectures on the History of the Church of Scotland. London, 1879, 8vo. CHAP. XXII ^LECTURES ON SCOTTISH CHURCH' 273 " Eleven !," exclaimed Rutherford ; " I am surprised that a person of your age and appearance should not know better. What do you mean } " And he answered, " A new com- mandment I give unto you, that ye love one another ; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another." ' The stranger proved to be ' the great divine and scholar, Archbishop Ussher, the Primate of the Church of Ireland.' In telling this anecdote, and in commenting on this eleventh Commandment, Stanley points out that it is a new com- mand so far as it gives a paramount place to the force of the human affections. 'V/e are,' he says, 'to love one an- other by making the best of one another ; by seeing, as far as we can, their better side. He that will live in peace and rest Must see, and hear, and say the best.' He goes on to apply the command to the divisions of Churches. This love, he says, ' consists in a better under- standing, a better appreciation of the peculiar spirit of every Church ; in recognising the inward resemblance which exists under outward divergence ' ; it consists, further, in a 'larger and deeper theology'; it consists, finally, in 'the union of Christian Churches for great objects,' 'in working together for public good,' in ' a loyal and universal en- thusiasm on behalf of the great principles of truth, justice, and beneficence, which are the true objects of the devotion of Christendom.' In the spirit of this sermon the lectures were delivered on the 8th, 9th, nth, and 12th of January, 1872. He approaches his subject from a special point of view, and with a particular purpose. His object is to vindicate the value of a National Church, and of the attitude of those moderate men within the Established Church of Scotland VOL. II T 274 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1872 who endeavoured, in the past or the present, to broaden its basis, to moderate the Calvinistic and Covenanting fervour of Presbyterianism into a tempered rehgious enthusiasm, to graft on its characteristic virtues that cathoUcity, elasticity, variety, and sympathetic adaptation which found Httle room in its fiery, though contracted, heart. So prominently does he keep his object in view that he unduly emphasises some features, ignores others, and mars the historical accuracy of his picture as a whole. No one could hope to give a complete history of the Church of Scotland in the compass of four lectures. But it was the obvious purpose of his addresses which aroused the hostile criticism of those who differed from him, and gave him reason to appreci- ate the truth of the motto belonging to the ecclesiastical thistle. Nemo me impune lacessit. Yet Stanley was in the main justified in his view of the Church history of Scotland. He rightly recognised that Buckle's picture of Scottish religious and ecclesiastial character was overcharged, and that it was painted in an untruthful monotony of fanatical and superstitious gloom. He traced back the growth of the moderate movement to the original constitution and character of the Church of Scotland. He held that the Established Church, even in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was never without its witnesses to the virtues of a rational and liberal attitude, both of thought and policy. He maintained that its history was not entirely black with the shadow of the Covenant, or only lighted with the fierce and lurid glare of fanaticism. Throughout its whole existence — from John Knox to the present day — he found that the softer and more harmonious tones of saintly charity, and reasonable faith, and hope- ful aspiration, were blended with the excesses of a harsher and more violent colouring. He found these gentler hghts in the polished culture of Buchanan, in the tolerant for- CHAP. XXII 'LECTURES ON SCOTTISH CHURCH' 275 bearance of the Regent Murray, in the enlarged views and philosophic Christianity of men of the type of Henry Mor- ton in ' Old Mortality,' in the ' statesmanlike and Christian- like policy ' of a Patrick Forbes, in the character of that ' most Apostolical of Presbyterians,' Archbishop Leighton, who, in his indifference to mere forms of Church govern- ment, and his intense desire for union, struck the two essential notes of moderation. At the Revolution, the same liberality of thought, mingling with the old leaven of the Calvinistic Covenanting system, showed itself in the kindly feeling and fine good-humour of William Carstairs, the trusted adviser of William III., and the second founder of the Presbyterian Church. Throughout the eighteenth century he traced the same enlarged, enlightened tempera- ment in men like Robertson or Blair, in Principal Wishart or Professor Leechman, in the * latitudinarian, moderate, Christian-minded Gillespie ' of Carnock, the founder of the schism called Tlie Relief. In the Scotland of the present day, in spite of its dis- cordant elements, he found that growth of a larger religion and those germs of union which he saw at work elsewhere. He traced their promise in the singular identity of outward doctrine and ritual which pervaded the three estranged sections of Scottish religious life. He discovered their signs in the elements of religious life which are above institu- tions and beyond parties, in the antiquarian and mediaeval revival, in the larger liberality and greater moderation of rival communions, in the intellectual unity of educated men, in the decline of party spirit in religion, in the wide influence of religious teachers who, like Walter Scott or Robert Burns, represent the romantic, moderate, indepen- dent characteristics of the Scottish Church. Finally, he asks the question. What institution most nearly corresponds to these aspirations after unity, and to 2/6 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1872 the idea of that invisible spiritual Church, which is without a name, but ' of which the members recognise each other wherever they meet? '^^ He answers his own question by claiming the distinction for the Established Church. ' It alone,' he urges, ' carries, like the prophet Amphiaraus, a "blank shield with no device of sect or party." ' It bears no device of party, but treats parties as ' in themselves mere accidents.' It alone has been the means of shelter- ing ' the intelligence without which devotion dwindles into fanaticism, and the charity and moderation without which the most ardent zeal profits nothing.' It appeals to Scot- land by its historical associations, its Presbyterian char- acter, its relations to the seceding Churches, and, above all, by its vitality. ' It is the glory,' he says, ' of the Free Church that it maintained itself on the strength of a single abstract principle, by the sheer force of self- denying energy, and of a bold appeal to the religious scruples of a narrow conscience. It is the still greater glory of the Established Church that it maintained itself, in spite of the loss of many of its most zealous ministers, by the strength of its ancient traditions, by its firm conviction of right, and by its promise of a glorious future ; that it has received new life into its ranks ; that it has had the courage to repent of its former errors ; that it has become the centre of hopes and aspirations unknown to its own former exist- ence, or to the communions which have divided from it. The very word " residuary," used against it as a reproach, was, and is, its best title of honour. Churches and seces- sions which build themselves on particular dogmas are not residuary; they gather to them many of the most ardent and energetic, but they gather also the fierce partisans and the narrow proselytisers, and they leave out of sight those who are unable or unwilling to follow the leaders of ex- tremes. But Churches which are founded on no such special principles, which have their reason of existence simply because they profess in its most general aspect the form of Christianity most suitable to the age or country in 82 Prevost Paradol's Edinburgh Lectures, quoted by Stanley in The Church of Scotland, Lecture IV. CHAP. XXII 'LECTURES ON SCOTTISH CHURCH' 277 which they live — they are "residuary" Churches, because they gather into themselves the "residue" of the nation, the simple, the poor, who are too little instructed to under- stand the grounds which separate the different Churches ; the refined, the thoughtful, who understand them too well to care about them, who care more for the religious, moral, and intellectual life of the people than for the Solemn League and Covenant, for Non-Intrusion, or for spiritual jurisdiction.' 2/8 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1864-81 CHAPTER XXIII 1864-81 STANLEY'S ADMINISTRATION OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY — HIS INCAPACITY FOR BUSINESS — HIS LOVE AND CARE FOR THE BUILDING — HIS CHOICE OF SELECT PREACHERS— HIS OF- FER OF THE ABBEY PULPIT TO DR. COLENSO, 1874— MISSION LECTURES IN THE NAVE, 1872-9 —BACH'S PASSION MUSIC, 1871-2 — SERVICES FOR CHILDREN, 1871-81 — SATURDAY- AFTERNOON SERVICES, 1881 —DISTINGUISHED VISITORS TO THE ABBEY — THE CHOIR OPENED TO THE PUBLIC GRATUI- TOUSLY—PARTIES OF WORKING-MEN CONDUCTED OVER WESTMINSTER — STANLEY'S GUTS AS A PREACHER— INTER- MENTS IN THE ABBEY, 1864-81 — FUNERAL OF CHARLES DICKENS, 1870— PROPOSED MONUMENT TO THE PRINCE IMPERIAL, 1879-80 In his official guardianship of Westminster Abbey Stanley was inspired by the same ideals and animated by the same enthusiasms which gave such force to his speeches in Con- vocation and such freshness to his varied literary work. The Abbey was, to his eyes, the material embodiment of his ideal of a comprehensive National Church, the out- ward symbol of the harmonious unity in diversity which pervades the English Commonwealth, a monument reared in stone to that intimate union of Church and State out of which the English Constitution has been evolved. To him it was a dumb, yet eloquent, preacher of the sanctity of every form of healthy national life, a powerful, though silent, witness to the identity of secular and ecclesiastical realities. To him, again, the strange, irregular conjunction of tombs which had gradually gathered within this ' temple CHAP. XXIII WESTMINSTER ABBEY 279 of silence and reconciliation ' taught, not only the wise tol- eration of Death, but the all-embracing sympathies of the religion of the true Church of England. Thus, within the consecrated walls and precincts of the Abbey he found the visible expression of the aim which he steadfastly pursued as Dean, and which he described as the effort to make the Abbey ' more and more the centre of religious and national life in a truly liberal spirit.' He rejoiced to think that at the moment of its founda- tion the Abbey became at once the centre of a new relig- ious and political world, and that from that time forward it had kept its hold on the reverence of the English people with a tenacity unequalled by any other building. It had been at once the seat of royalty and the cradle of liberty. In the coronation of every sovereign from the Conquest downwards it witnessed each successive stage in the his- tory o{ the English Monarchy. By the home which its Chapter House for three centuries had given to the House of Commons it witnessed also the parallel growth of Eng- lish constitutional freedom. In its structure were repre- sented the three great architectural epochs of our national buildings. Its pavements or its walls enshrined the for- tunes, in life or death, of royal dynasties, embraced the memories of illustrious persons of diversified genius, per- petuated the records of varying forms of worship, of chang- ing phases of theological thought, of conflicting acts of reverential devotion. It was a chronicle written in stone of the history, the constitution, the glories, the growth of the English nation. It was also a moving commentary on the words of St. Jerome, ' Vox quidem dissona sed una religio,' and an unique representative of the varieties of the creeds of the nation, its worship, its sects and parties, its interests and pursuits, embracing the greatest possible range within religious limits, and gathering beneath one consecrated roof 28o LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1864-81 every form of human activity, lay and ecclesiastical, relig- ious and secular. Here, side by side, lay not only those who in life were separated by political, literary, or military jealousies, but English, French, and German worthies, sceptics and believers, Protestants and Roman Catholics, Churchmen and Nonconformists. ' So long as Westminster Abbey maintains its hold on the affections or respect of the English Church and nation, so long will it remain a standing proof that there is in the tru- est feeling of human nature, and in the highest aspirations of religion, something deeper and wider than the partial judg- ments of the day and the technical distinctions of sects.' ^ To all these august associations Stanley responded with the instinct of genius. He rose to the exigencies of a position which appealed forcibly to his own ideals, character, and sympathies. He felt in every fibre the in- spiring force of the place which he had been chosen to occupy. Though at first depressed by the burden of busi- ness details, he threw himself with such eagerness into the congenial portions of his work that his mind and heart became absorbed in the interests and opportunities sup- plied by the Abbey. Goldsmith's Chinese philosopher wondered that the custody of the national temple was confided to 'a college of priests.' But, whatever were Stanley's weaknesses, they were not those infirmities of the ecclesiastical profession to which the Oriental sage referred. To open the Abbey pulpit to Churchmen of every shade of religious opinion, to give to laymen or to clergymen of other communions the opportunity of speaking within its walls, to make known its treasures to the world, to interest in its monuments and services every class of his ^ ' On Westminster Abbey.' A paper read before the Royal Institution of Great Britain on Friday, April 27th, 1866, by A. P. Stanley. CHAP. XXIII STANLEY'S LOVE OF THE ABBEY 28 1 countrymen, became some of the chief objects of his life. Six years before his appointment to the Deanery he had conducted Michael Sukatin, his Russian friend, over the Abbey, which he then described as ' extremely difficult to lionise.' The difficulty was soon overcome. He became, as it were, the soul of the Abbey. To follow him through its chapels and transepts was to follow a ' Christian Plu- tarch.' His presence, as he drew out the tale imprisoned in the silent stones, and made each sepulchre surrender its dead, gave to its walls and monuments life and speech and motion. From the buried stones of the original Abbey of Edward the Confessor, to the last addition made by him- self, all told the tale of continuous national history. In dealing with the Bible he had endeavoured to make it a living book, that so it might the more readily become a Book of Life. In the same spirit, both with voice and pen, he laboured to reanimate the inheritance of the past, to make the Abbey an eloquent memorial of all that was greatest and most famous in national history, to keep alive its power as the incentive to heroic action, to appeal, through its splendid associations with the past, not only to the care but to the emulation of the present. Nor was it merely with the past history of England that he linked the present life of the nation. In and through the Abbey both were raised to a higher level, connected with the history of the Bible, and leavened with the Divine principles that permeate, not only the sacred narrative, but the questions and interests which absorbed the nineteenth century. On the north side of the altar in the Abbey is a statue representing Moses, and looking towards the transept which contains the tombs of statesmen ; at the south side is another statue, representing David, and looking towards the Poets' Corner. The erec- tion of these figures was Stanley's one piece of ritualism, and the close connection between past and present which 282 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1864-81 they symbolised was a feeling seldom absent from his mind. The general ideal which guided Stanley in his adminis- tration of Westminster Abbey was not more congenial to his own tastes, temperament, and tone of thought than it was, as he believed, congenial to the spirit of the Abbey itself, to its history, its associations, and the best traditions of his predecessors. In writing its memorials, in choosing the preachers to occupy its pulpit, in introducing mission- lectures and orchestral performances, in inaugurating services for children, in the subjects and substance of his own sermons, in his care and love for the structure, in open- ing the Abbey as a place of interment to men of distinction, in guiding parties of sightseers over its buildings, he was ever actuated by the desire to make Westminster, in the widest sense of the word, the centre and the representative of the highest aspects of religious and national life. There were, indeed, practical points arising out of the administration of its affairs with which he was scarcely competent to deal. A Dean possessed of greater financial capacity would undoubtedly have arranged far better terms for the Abbey when its property was transferred to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. A Dean more qualified to deal with practical details of business would not have al- lowed Westminster School to become possessed of a portion of the Abbey property, the loss of which clouded and em- bittered the last few months of his life. In such questions Stanley found it impossible to take an interest, and his real ignorance of money matters made him timorous. He never mastered arithmetic, and though, when at Rugby, he considered himself ' not so very bad an accountant,' he never quite appreciated the difference between eighteen-pence and one-and-eightpence. In this same connection Mr. Locker-Lampson relates of him a characteristic story : CHAP. XXIII HIS BUSINESS INCAPACITY 283 ' I was telling him that musician Halle's cook had lately won a good round sum of money in a lottery with the number 23. Halle was interested, and asked her how she came to fix on so lucky a number. " Oh ! sir," said she, " I had a dream. I dreamt of number seven, I dreamt of it three times, and as three times seven makes twenty- three, I chose that number, sir." When I had concluded my story I observed a wistful expression on Arthur's countenance, as if he were ready, nay anxious, to be amused, but could not for the life of him quite manage it. Then suddenly his face brightened, and he said, but not without a tinge of dejection, "Ah, yes, I see; yes, I sup- pose three times seven is 7iot twenty-three." ' Stanley's ignorance of finance and incapacity for busi- ness undoubtedly marred the completeness of his effi- ciency as Dean of Westminster. His want of architectural knowledge also contributed, as, half in jest, half in earnest, he was fond of saying, to make him unfit for his posi- tion. But this defect, at least, was more than compen- sated by his enthusiasm and love for the building and its contents. No part of the Abbey or its precincts escaped his keen historical curiosity, and there was hardly any corner on which his investigations did not throw new light. It would be impossible to enumerate in detail all the traces which he left behind him of his love for the building of which he was the official guardian : the various rearrangements of the monuments, each stage in which involved him in a mass of voluminous correspondence ; the removal of the black incrustations that defaced the glories of tombs like those of Margaret Beaufort, and Henry VH. and his Queen, Elizabeth of York ; the careful restoration of the picture of Richard H. in the Jerusalem Chamber ; the examination and cataloguing of the documents in the muniment room; the erection of new painted windows such as those to Chaucer, to Cowper, and to George Herbert ; the addition 284 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1864-81 of monuments to the memory of worthies such as Outram, the Bayard of India, John Keble, and John and Charles Wesley. In allowing a monument to be erected to the Wesleys Stanley was pursuing a precedent already estab- lished in Westminster Abbey, a precedent which he was careful to emphasise by the choice of the site. 'About eight or ten years ago,' wrote Stanley in 1878, 'the President of the Wesleyan Conference asked if I would allow the erection of a monument in Westminster Abbey, in Poets' Corner, to Charles Wesley, as the sweet Psalmist of our " English" Israel. I ventured to ask, " If we are to have a monument to Charles, why not to John " To John Wesley, accordingly, together with his brother Charles — not as excluding Charles, but as the greater genius, as the greater spirit of the two — that monument has been erected.' It is placed close to the monument which, in the last cen- tury, was erected to the memory of the Congregational divine and poet, Isaac Watts. To Stanley also was due the verification of many disputed points respecting the spots where persons buried within the Abbey precincts lay interred. His own interest in the national burial-ground so largely depended on knowing the exact resting-place of each illustrious person, that he was anxious, wherever doubt existed, to fix the precise locality. It was thus that he seized the opportunity of examining the tomb of Rich- ard II. and Queen Anne of Bohemia, in the hope of deter- mining whether the murdered king was really buried there, and was disappointed to find no trace of violence in the human remains discovered within the monument. Thus, too, he fixed the spot where lies the Parliamentarian Earl of Essex, and found among the royal monuments in Henry VI I. 's Chapel the graves of Elizabeth Claypole, and prob- ably of General Worsley, the one the daughter, the other the favourite, of the Protector Cromwell. The discovery of the spot in which lie, side by side, CHAP, xxin HIS CARE FOR ABBEY MONUMENTS 285 Charles II., Mary II., William III., Queen Anne, and Prince George of Denmark, was an accident. But the finding of the coffin of James I. was the reward of a diligent search, which incidentally revealed other hidden historical treasures. In the course of the explorations the actual spot was ascertained where was buried the great Duke of Argyll, to whom Walter Scott has reared an im- perishable monument in ' The Heart of Midlothian.' Anne of Denmark, the Queen of James I., was found lying alone in an ample vault, as though waiting for her husband to fill the vacant space ; the fragments of Torrigiani's high altar, um^.er which Edward VI. was buried, and which was destroyed by the Puritans in 1641, were brought to light and carefully collected ; Queen Elizabeth's coffin, bearing the deeply-incised Tudor rose, and also, as he was de- lighted to tell the Queen in 1878, the arms of Cyprus, was seen lying upon that of her sister Mary. Finally, in the tomb of Henry VII. himself were discovered the missing bones of James I. Writing in February 1869 to James Anthony Froude, Stanley thus announces the result of his search : 'After trying Edward VI. 's vault in vain, we turned to the chapel corresponding to that which contains the body of Anne of Denmark, and there found, not a vault, but a grave, with a very tall skeleton but no name ; and the stature and the absence of a vault forbade the supposition of its being James ; who it can be I cannot conjecture, unless it be General Worsley, the one Cromvvellian general who was not disinterred. We returned to the head of Henry VII. 's tomb, and there, after much pushing, the wall suddenly yielded, an aperture was found, and there, in the most majestic tranquillity, lay, side by side, the two dark-grey, leaden coffins of Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York — and a shade newer and lighter, James I. I need not describe my thoughts. The vault was closed this morning, and so the mystery is solved, and my three weeks' intense interest and anxiety are over. It has been 286 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1864-81 more of both to me than an outside observer can easily imagine, haunting me with agitating and magnificent visions both by day and night.' Mr. George Scharf, who was present at the opening of the vault and the discovery of the three coffins, describes the scene. As soon as the name of King James was read, Stanley asked him to go to the Jerusalem Chamber, where a Royal Commission was sitting, and tell the Archbishop of Canter- bury and Lord Stanhope that the Dean particularly desired their presence. When they arrived at the spot the Dean, who was standing surrounded by the Canons, the architect of the Abbey (Sir Gilbert Scott), and several friends, * made a motion with his hands, as if asking for space to be cleared, and said in his peculiar tone of short breath, " Stand back ! stand back ! and let the first Scottish archbishop look upon the first Scottish king of England." ' James I. was allowed to repose undisturbed in the venerable cavern which he had chosen for his resting-place. The coffin of Lord Essex was replaced in the grave, and the words inscribed upon it at the time of the Common- wealth are now written on the slab which marks the spot where he lies. But Catherine de Valois, the daughter of the mad king of France, the wife of Henry V., the Kate of Shakespeare, was found, and removed to a spot more suited to be the resting-place of the widow of an illustrious king. In consequence of her second marriage with Owen Tudor she lived a disparaged life;, and at her death re- ceived less than a royal funeral. After many vicissitudes of fortune, her coffin was removed for safety to a remote spot near the Percy vault. Stanley had obtained the Queen's consent to the transferrence of the remains to the chapel erected over the grave of Henry V., and when the first opportunity occurred of gaining access to the CHAP. XXIII HIS DISCOVERIES AND RESTORATIONS 287 Northumberland vault, the neglected Catherine de Valois was reverently removed to her husband's chantry. In Westminster Abbey as a whole, and in its minutest details, his life became more and more centred. His love for the national sanctuary which had been entrusted to his care showed itself in a variety of ways — in his refusal to permit unnecessary restorations, in his respect for the mon- uments of every age as parts of the history of the country and of the Abbey, in his eagerness to make new discoveries in or about the building, in his boyish delight at finding the monogram of Izaak Walton scratched with the angler's own hand on the tomb of Isaac Casaubon, in the labour which he spent on tracing out the story of 'Jane Lister — dear childe,' in the pleasure with which he brought from Ticonderoga the point of a rusty bayonet which had been dug up on the battlefield, and reverently placed it on the tomb of Colonel Townsend. But the two most important structural changes which commemorate his tenure of the Deanery were the restoration of the Chapter House and the completion of the altar in the Abbey itself. While Stanley was Dean of Westminster the Chapter House was completely restored. He took the keenest interest in a work which his predecessor had begun. The building had long been used as part of the Record Office ; the capitals of the pillars had been hacked away, the tracery of the windows filled with brickwork, and an upper floor inserted, to make the building more commo- dious for the reception of documents. Stanley summoned meetings of antiquarians and archaeologists, forced the subject of the restoration upon the attention of the public, and urged the duty of carrying on the work with such tenacity that he obtained a grant from the Government for its completion. It was mainly through his vigour that the ancient cradle of English parliamentary life was restored 288 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1864-81 to its former glory, and became one of the archaeological and architectural triumphs of the nineteenth century. It was also while Stanley was Dean that the reredos, the altar, the sedilia, and the tesselated pavement within the altar- rails were completed, between the years 1867 and 1873. During the erection of this screen and its accompanying pavement two of the piers of the original building of Edward the Confessor were discovered beneath the floor. If Stanley had enjoyed no other title to distinction than his love and care for the building, he would have left his mark on the ancient Abbey as one of the most memorable in the long line of abbots and deans who have held the keys of the Abbey of St. Peter. Delighting to treat the Abbey as ' the consecrated tem- ple of reconciled ecclesiastical enmities,' he endeavoured to induce men of all shades of religious opinion to occupy its pulpit. To what has been already said of the difficulty which he encountered from some of the High Church leaders, it only remains to add that, after three or four applications. Dr. Liddon consented to preach. On the 1 8th of June, 1876, he delivered what Stanley describes as 'a fine discourse, with nothing of protest or polemics involved.' Even in spite of the refusal of the High Church leaders, the list of special preachers was fairly representative.^ ^ The special preachers for 1864 were : 1. The Dean of Westminster. 2. The Archbishop of York (Dr. Thomson). 3. Dr. Hugh Stowell (Canon of Manchester). 4. The Rev. J. R. Woodford (afterwards Bishop of Ely). 5. Dr. Wordsworth (afterwards Bishop of Lincoln). 6. The Rev. A. Thorold (now Bishop of Winchester). 7. The Rev. J. Rowsell (now Canon of Westminster). 8. The Rev. Jas. Fraser (afterwards Bishop of Manchester). 9. The Bishop of London (Dr. Tait). 10. The Rev. F. D. Maurice. 11. The Rev. George Moberly (afterwards Bishop of Salisbury). CHAP. XXIII HIS CHOICE OF PREACHERS 289 No one party was excluded. But success was only at- tained by the exercise of much caution, tact, and tenacity. He was aware that the Chapter of the Abbey dreaded lest he should nominate as special preachers those of his Oxford friends whose names were then obnoxious to the theological world. Professor Jowett was, perhaps, the man on whom public attention was at that time chiefly fixed. Stanley therefore determined, as a matter of prudence, not to nominate him. It was not till July ist, 1866, that Professor Jowett preached in the Abbey. His sermon, which was delivered to a vast congregation, chiefly of men, was — so Stanley wrote to Pearson — ' truly characteristic and truly Christian.' Though the Professor has, from that time on- ward, annually preached in the Abbey, no formal remon- strance has ever been uttered. The only preachers whom Stanley had determined to nominate in his first year of office, and whom the Chapter might be expected to oppose, were Professor Maurice and Dr. Temple. In writing to Maurice in April 1864, Stanley says : ' I asked Pusey, Liddon, and Keble to preach, and they all declined, from believing that they had no common Christianity with those whom I might be likely to invite to preach on other occasions. I hope that you, in your sermon, will prove by example that they are wrong.' Maurice's nomination excited no opposition, and he preached on the 5th of June, 1864. Dr. Temple, then Head Master of Rugby, was nominated in June to preach on the 3rd of July, 1864. The Chapter, at their ordinary meeting 12. The Bishop of Oxford (Dr. Wilberforce). 13. The Dean of Chichester (Dr. Hook). 14. The Rev. F. Temple (now Bishop of London). 15. The Bishop of Ripon (Dr. Bickersteth). 16. The Rev. J. L. Claughton (afterwards Bishop of St. Alban's). 17. The Rev. E. M. Goulburn (afterwards Dean of Norwich). 18. The Rev. H. Twells (Head Master of the Godolphin Grammar -School, Hammersmith). VOL. n U 290 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1874 in the last week of June, entered a formal protest. ' You,' said Stanley, ' are acting entirely according to your sense of duty in doing as you do. I am acting from the same sense of duty in insisting on his name. You may sign the protest ; but there is one thing you cannot do, and that is, make me quarrel with you for so doing.' The protest was signed, and buried in the archives of the Chapter. It was never again heard of, though Dr. Temple frequently preached at the special services, and no opposition was ever afterwards offered to any of the Dean's nominations. Many years later, and under peculiar circumstances, Stanley's offer of the pulpit of Westminster Abbey was declined. In 1874 the Bishop of Natal visited England for the purpose of pleading the cause of Langalbalele, a South African chief who had been, in his opinion, grievously wronged by the Colonial Government. He had come, at ' the sacrifice of his dearest prospects, and of valuable friendships, cemented by the most trying circumstances,' in order to render justice to an unfortunate savage ; and his conduct in the particular matter to which his visit referred received the approval of the highest authorities at the Co- lonial Office. Dr. Colenso's magnanimous action strongly appealed to the sympathies of Stanley. On the Bishop's previous visit to England he had not offered Dr. Colenso the opportunity of preaching in the Abbey, because he con- sidered that 'prudence enjoined abstinence from a course which would have given offence without any corresponding advantage.' On this occasion he acted diffei'ently. He felt, as he said himself, ' that the generous devotion to the cause of Christian charity, for which the Bishop had hazarded so much, was a call on all conspicuous clergymen to show that they felt the merits CHAP. XXIII HIS INVITATION OF COLENSO 291 of his conduct, and were not to be deterred from doing him justice by any theological obloquy under which he might happen to labour.' The same considerations were strongly urged upon him by his friends, and especially by Professor Max Miiller. 'The question is,' writes Stanley to the Professor, 'will anything be gained by asking him to preach in the Abbey If it is thought indispensable for Colenso's posi- tion, I would ask him. But I am very doubtful. I should have to do it through a questionable right ; (I mean from the divided responsibility which the Canons share with the Dean, and which I can only override by a kind of imperious absolutism). It will probably not be a very suc- cessful performance, not justifying itself like your lecture or Caird's, and it would involve a strain upon me which, in my present anxieties, I am not very well able to bear. And my own opinion has been stated, in the most public, emphatic way which I could choose. Still, I repeat, if the thing ought to be done, and if the game is worth the candle, I will do it. Only, I should like my friends to consider it well in its public bearings.' After much hesitation Stanley decided to invite Bishop Colenso to preach in the Abbey. In order to relieve the rest of the Chapter from all responsibility in the matter, he inaugurated a special course of sermons on Monday even- ings in Advent 1874, and it was on the last of these special services that he determined to ask the Bishop of Natal to occupy the pulpit. Meanwhile the situation underwent a great change. It had been publicly announced that on Sunday, December 13th, 1874, Dr. Colenso would preach for the Rev. Stop- ford Brooke at St. James's, York Street. The Bishop of London (Dr. Jackson), however, intervened by intimating that, unless the proposed sermon were quietly abandoned, he would be obliged to inhibit the Bishop of Natal from preaching. Dr. Colenso at once gave way, without obliging u 2 292 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1874 the Bishop of London to proceed to extremities. This episode did not alter Stanley's determination. In spite of what had occurred, he invited the Bishop of Natal to preach in Westminster Abbey on Monday, December 21st, 1874. At the same time he wrote to inform the Bishop of London that he had offered Dr. Colenso the use of the Abbey pulpit as a mark of his sympathy with the object of his visit to England. He adds the hope that his proposal, ' if taken in the spirit in which it is offered, will have the effect, not of weakening, but of strengthening the Church, by showing that its institutions are capable of honouring Divine gifts of heart and mind, and of rendering homage to the weightier matters of justice, mercy, and truth, even when surrounded with elements to some distasteful and alarming, and will in the long run tend, not to distract, but to heal and pacify, our divisions.'^ Dr. Colenso, though aware that Westminster Abbey was extra-diocesan, and therefore beyond the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London, wisely declined the offer to preach. ' 37 Phillimore Gardens, Kensington : ' December 17th, 1874. ' My dear Dean of Westminster, — I have been consider- ing your invitation that I should preach in the Abbey the last of the Advent sermons on Monday next, and have come to the conclusion that I had better decline to comply with your kind request. I need hardly say that under other circumstances I should have gladly carried out your wishes. I might, perhaps, have tried to say a few words to comfort the hearts of some who, at this great crisis of religious thought in England, are looking anxiously to their spiritual advisers for help in their uncertainty. I might have tried also to impress upon my fellow-countrymen the duty which we owe, as English Christians, towards the inferior races under our charge — to say that surely the rule of a nation like ours, over so many weaker communities, means some- ^ This letter to the Bishop of London, as well as the two following letters, was published in the Times of Saturday, December 19th, 1874. CHAP. XXIII HIS INVITATION OF COLENSO 293 thing more than the amount of property, of material wealth, she can squeeze out of the subject-peoples — that if Eng- land extends her sway over the earth, to enforce justice, to practise mercy, to show care and pity for the weak and helpless, to redress the wrongs of the downtrodden and oppressed, and to raise its dependents in the scale of humanity, there is then a reason for the existence of her vast Colonial Empire — that it is only such acts as these which will show that our religion is a reality, and not a mere name, and that the passionate love of right and justice which God has planted in the bosom of His children is a sign that our Father thinks and feels as we do. But there are others who will teach these things when I am gone. I did not come home to assert my own personal position in the Church of England — if that were doubtful which has been recognised by his Grace the Primate of All England, and, above all, by the Crown — and I have no wish what- ever to occupy the few remaining days of my stay in England with any such contention as might seem to be implied by my preaching at Westminster after the recent action of the Bishop of London, though, of course, I am aware that you are not under his jurisdiction. I therefore think it best not to avail myself of the invitation which you have given me to preach in the venerable Abbey, so dear to the memories of Englishmen ; and I shall return to my diocese rejoicing that I have been permitted to bear to England the cry of the oppressed, and thankful that by English hearts that cry has been heard and answered. ' I am, my dear Dean of Westminster, ' Yours very truly, ' J. W. Natal.' To this letter Stanley replied as follows : 'Deanery, Westminster: Dec. i8th, 1874. ' My dear Bishop of Natal, — I beg to thank you for your letter of yesterday. In proposing to you that you should preach in Westminster Abbey, it was my wish to render such honour as my office here permitted to your Christian labours as a missionary-bishop, and to your courageous defence of what you believed to be true and just. I acquiesce in your, to me unexpected, decision, with a mingled feeling of regret and of pleasure. Of regret, that 294 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1874 the congregation of Westminster Abbey will lose the opportunity of hearing within its walls a voice to which circumstances have given (if I may venture to say so) a power beyond its own. Of pleasure, from the thought that possibly the moderation and love of peace which have actuated you in this resolve may tend to soften those bitter feelings and unreasonable prejudices which it was no less my own hope, in making the offer, to correct or subdue. I have stated elsewhere the grounds on which it appeared to me that, without disrespect to those bishops who have taken part against you, you might have availed yourself of this or any other like opportunity which was offered to you. One bishop certainly, probably more, had your stay been prolonged, would have taken the same view of what is due to your public services as is, no doubt, shared by thousands of your countrymen. But in matters of this nature generosity, delicacy, and forbearance are never thrown away, and it is to be hoped that, when you have returned to your distant labours, you will be encouraged by the thought that in this, as in the greater matters which brought you home, your brief visit to England has not been altogether in vain. ' Believe me ' Yours very faithfully, 'Arthur P. Stanley.' ' As to the proposal itself,' writes Stanley to Archbishop Tait on December 22nd, 1874, ' it cost me a great effort, situated as I am, to make an offer which I anticipated would produce a storm of controversy. The result has shown how much one had overestimated the opposition. I have had a multitude of letters since the public announcement, but instead of the usual torrent of invectives, only one letter of complaint, and that anonymous. ' No doubt this has been greatly assisted by Colenso's magnanimity — by me quite unexpected — in refusing. But this will probably tend to fortify his position, and to nullify the effects of the inhibitions, both here and in Africa. ' I now feel that I have every cause to be thankful for having made the attempt.' CHAP. XXIII MISSIONARY LECTURES 295 In the last year of Stanley's life, it may be added, he made his last protest on behalf of Bishop Colenso. In the early part of 188 1, at a stormy and tumultuous meeting of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, when a question arose relating to the Bishop of Natal, he once more stood forth as the champion of an ' absent and friend- less ' man. ' The Bishop of Natal,' he said, ' is the one colonial bishop who has translated the Bible into the language of the natives of his diocese. He is the one colonial bishop who, when he believed a native to be wronged, left his diocese, journeyed to London, and never rested till he had procured the reversal of that wrong. He is the one colonial bishop who, as soon as he had done this, returned immediately to his diocese and his work. For these acts he has never received any praise, any en- couragement, from this, the oldest of our missionary socie- ties. For these deeds he will be remembered when you who censure him are dead, buried, and forgotten.' Another plan which Stanley adopted for enlarging the sphere of influence that the Abbey might exercise was the delivery of lectures in the nave of Westminster. The occa- sion was the appointment by Archbishop Tait of St. Andrew's Day as a Day of Intercession for Missions. Stanley determined to invite others than those of his own ministry and communion ' to take their part in showing that they, too, joined, on various grounds, in this common work of ours, and that, at least in this place, the heathen world should not be scandalised by the echoes of a disunited Christendom.' By inviting laymen to lecture on Christian missions he bore his testimony to the facts — that the laity really are the English Church, and that by lay as well as clerical learning and intelligence religion may be propa- gated and its questions answered. His own strong wish also was to open the pulpit of the Abbey to the Noncon- formist clergy. But this was impossible, though the mis- 296 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1872-78 sionary lectures on St. Andrew's Day afforded him a modi- fied opportunity of enlisting their services in a common cause. In 1877, when writing to Dr. Stoughton, then Pro- fessor of Historical Theology in the Independent College, Hampstead, to thank him for the lecture which he had recently delivered in the nave of the Abbey, he says : ' I had long looked forward to hearing your voice in Westminster Abbey, and though I should have wished that it had been in the heart of our services, and not on the outskirts, yet it was truly welcome, anyhow and anywhere, under our roof.' The first year in which a lecture was delivered was 1872. Professor Max Miiller was asked to give the first lecture, in the nave of the Abbey. He, however, hesitated, and his place was taken by a missionary, who recounted his experiences in India. The following year Stanley again applied to Professor Max Miiller, and on this occa- sion with success. On the legality of the proposed lecture Stanley had no doubt. ' In order,' he says, 'to fortify my belief that in so doing I was within the let- ter of the law I consulted Lord Coleridge, now the Lord Chief Justice. He was clearly of opinion that the lecture might take place, and consulted the Lords Justices, with whom he had met in consultation on some other subjects. They also were of the same opinion. In accordance with his advice, I adopted a few precautions, which were, perhaps, unnecessary, but which it seemed reasonable to take to avoid needless offence. The service was in the nave, not in the choir ; the lecture was delivered from the reading- desk, not from the pulpit ; the garment which I wore was my black Geneva gown, not my surplice; a few hymns and prayers were substituted for the ordinary service.' But though assured of the legality of the proceeding, Stanley did not take the step without some hesitation. Writing to Professor Max Miiller on November 24th, 1873, he says : CHAP. XX 1 11 MISSIONARY LECTURES 297 ' I feel, of course, that it is taking a step which may- involve serious consequences. I do not mean legally, because on that I am quite secure, but as an opening for the future, which may be both good and bad. Still, it seems to me right to make the experiment, and, if it is to be made, I do not think that I would have a better occa- sion or a better man. I know that I should be safe in your hands, both as to the matter and the manner, both as to the knowledge and the feeling.' The attention which this lay lecture attracted by its ability, and by the novelty of the proceeding, encouraged Stanley to persevere in his experiment. The third lecture was delivered in 1874, by the Rev. James Caird, Principal of the University of Glasgow, 'the most eloquent orator,' as Stanley calls him, 'of the Northern Kingdom.' 'The lecture was,' he adds, ' in point of delivery and of substance conjoined, the most impressive address that I have ever heard within West- minster Abbey. Charles Kingsley was there, for the last time in his life. He at times could hardly help crying out " Bravo ! " whilst the lecture was being delivered. He caught the cold in returning to the Cloisters that night which ended in his death.' Four more lectures were delivered. The fourth was by Dr. Moffat, the father-in-law of Livingstone ; the fifth, by Archdeacon Reichel, now Bishop of Meath ; the sixth, by Dr. Stoughton ; the seventh, and last, by the late Principal Tulloch, of St. Andrews University, and at that time Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. After Principal Tulloch's address the lectures were discontinued, partly because the date fixed for the Day of Intercession was changed, partly from the lack of interest shown in them, partly from the difficulty of finding lecturers who were equal to the magnitude of the occasion. The Liberal papers very slightly sympathised with the ex- periment ; the Nonconformist organs were studiously cold ; 298 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY and Stanley himself felt that his experience of the results of these exceptional services scarcely justified their con- tinuance. If the Mission Lectures were a hazardous and not wholly successful experiment, the performance of Sebastian Bach's Passion Music on Maundy Thursday in 1871, though an equally bold innovation, was abundantly justified by results. For the first time in this country the great composer's illustration of the Passion of our Saviour, as related in the Gospel of St. Matthew, was heard, according to his own intention, as an integral part of an act of worship. That such an innovation should have been ventured upon in such a place is not a little remarkable. Far more surprising is it that one so destitute of musical feeling as Stanley should have been the first person to introduce it, with its full orchestral accompaniment, into the religious services of the Church. Before 1871 musical festivals had been held in cathedrals. But at these festivals the religious element was almost entirely wanting. It was Stanley who first in- vested the performance of great musical works in this country with the solemn religious character which was their most appropriate setting. In the early part of 1871 the Precentor of the Abbey, the Rev. S. Flood-Jones, suggested to Stanley the idea of giving Bach's Passion Music as a special service in the Abbey. The suggestion pleased him, and he resolved to take upon himself the whole cost and responsibility of the experiment. The singers and musicians so carefully trained by Mr. (now Sir) Joseph Barnby were enlisted for the performance. As soon as the platform was erected in the nave for the reception of fifty instrumentalists and an enlarged choir of 250 singers, strong remonstrances were addressed to Stanley. But he remained firm, arguing that, if the performance of oratorios in cathedrals was legal. CHAi'. XXIII BACH'S PASS/ON MUSIC 299 though unaccompanied by religious services, they could not be less legal because they were essential features in a religious service. On the evening of Holy Thursday, April 6th, 1871, the Passion Music was given in Westminster Abbey in the presence of a vast congregation, while outside the doors had gathered a crowd of persons who were unable to obtain admission. The service began with the usual order for Evening Prayer. At the point where the Psalms are usu- ally chanted the first part of the Passion Music was per- formed by the full choir and orchestra. Between the two parts a sermon was preached by Stanley. He chose for his text the words, ' And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me ' (John xii. 32). At the conclu- sion of the sermon, in which he vindicated the propriety of devoting the highest gifts of man, through whatever medium of art they revealed themselves, to the service and glory of the Creator, the second portion was rendered. The solemn beauty of the music produced a profound impression on those who heard it. But the criticisms of the press were at variance. The ' Times ' warmly approved of the innovation, and one religious newspaper — the ' Guardian ' — spoke of the ' liberality and large-mindedness of Dean Stanley, to which we are indebted for a hearing of the work in its proper place — in church.' On the other hand, another religious organ thus described the service : 'The Dean of Westminster, on the evening of Maundy Thursday, gave a grand performance of Bach's Passion Music in the Abbey, by way of counterpoise to such devo- tions as the Reproaches, the Three Hours, and the Sta- tions. The result was exactly what might have been expected. The church was crammed, and the audience — congregation would be a misnomer — was very much the same as at any other concert. Dean Stanley, of course, took the opportunity of airing his peculiar views as to the Atonement, the chief purpose of which, he seemed to 300 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1871-80 think, was to furnish artists of all kinds, not to say graphic writers, with subjects.' A third weekly censor of literary taste, not connected with any religious party, but always noted for its bitter attacks on Stanley, attributed 'it to the Dean's well-known liberality that he provided his entertainment on "Good Friday Eve," in order to compete as harmlessly as possible with his rivals at Sydenham and elsewhere. . . . The Dean's programme is weighted with some three minutes of worship, and a sermon, the length of which is indefinite ; but then it has the religious flavour to an extent which no lay competitor can ever offer. . . . On the other hand, the Crystal Palace offers the advan- tages of a run into what is by courtesy called "the coun- try," and the attractions of the grounds, with their facilities for "kiss-in-the-ring" and opportunities of frequent refec- tion, so essential to a Cockney's holiday.' Stanley's experiment rather than the language of his critics has been justified by results. The performance was repeated, with equal success, in the following year, and similar performances since that time have been so fre- quently and generally given in cathedrals and churches that the Passion Music may almost be regarded as a spe- cial service of the English Church. Another special service arranged and carried out by Stanley was the service for children which was held on the afternoons of successive Holy Innocents' Days. He had always enjoyed the companionship of children, and the interest which he displayed in them in public was a most marked characteristic of his private life. His letters as a boy at Rugby or at O.xford are filled with affectionate references to his cousins, 'the dear children at Sheen.' As a young man, he delighted to collect a number of them into a room with him by himself, to play with them and tell them stories ; at Norwich, when staying in his father's house, he was accustomed to hold a Bible-class for them on Sunday CHAP, xxm SERVICES FOR CHILDREN 301 afternoons ; as Dean of Westminster, he enjoyed taking them over the Abbey, especially if they were not too old to be on their good behaviour, and would ask questions and listen to the answers. The little Barbara James had been his favourite companion on the Rhine steamer in 1840; the children of his servant Waters were his playmates in his house at Christ Church ; the Deanery at Westminster was seldom without the presence of a small nephew. And at all times his playful tenderness, and his thorough sym- pathy with innocent mirth and fun, not only attracted him to children, but in turn drew children towards him. These services began on December 28th, 1871, and he continued them to the year of his death. The Psalms were specially selected for the occasion. The eighth Psalm was chosen, to show ' how little children may find out the glory of God in the great works of Nature ' ; the fifteenth Psalm, that they might see ' how, from our earliest years down to our latest age, that in which God finds most pleas- ure is the humble, pure, truthful, honourable mind ' ; the 127th Psalm, in order to impress on parents ' what precious, inestimable gifts are given them in their little children.' The Lessons were, in the same way, specially selected : ' the First Lesson to remind you how little Samuel knelt upon his knees at morning and evening, waiting for the voice of God to tell him what he was to do ; and the Sec- ond, to set before us the example of our Saviour Christ himself as the little child.' The short, simple sermons which he preached on these occasions are admirably adapted to their purpose. Ad- dressed to parents as well as to children, they riveted the attention of both alike. In these addresses he showed a real genius for seizing upon happy subjects suggested by the Abbey itself or by the special services of the day. In 1873, vk^hen Holy Innocents' Day fell on Sunday, the chil- 302 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1871-80 dren's service was held on December 27th (St. John's Day), and Stanley points his moral from the tradition and stories of the Apostle. In 1875 he sets before the chil- dren the example of what may be expected from them and draws his illustrations from the story of David and Goliath, and from the conduct of the boys during the fire which had the day before destroyed the Goliath training-ship in the Thames. In 1877 he collects the remembrances which the Abbey contains of 'little boys and girls whose death shot a pang through the hearts of those who loved them, and who wished that they never should be forgotten.' In 1878 he takes the story of the great heathen giant, St. Christopher, as it is sculptured in Henry VII. 's Chapel, and uses it to enforce the lessons that He prayeth well who loveth well, Both man and bird and beast, and that parents bear upon their shoulders the burden of forming the characters of their children. Many of the children, after the service was over, were entertained at tea in the Deanery by Stanley and Lady Augusta, whose love for them equalled, if it did not surpass, his own. After tea they were encouraged to act charades, or to play games in a house which might seem to be de- signed for ' hide-and-seek.' The smallest child felt at home with him at once. Among the letters which he preserved most carefully were some from his little friends, and, with other objects that stood on his mantelpiece till the day of his death, was a Christmas-card sent him by a little boy to whom he was warmly attached. His interest in them never flagged. In the midst of his many occupations he did not forget to write for them, as he had done in his own childhood and boyhood, verses on the deaths of their pets, or to add new lines or suggest new scenes for their childish plays. CHAP. XXIII WEEK-DAY SERMONS 303 After his wife's death he still kept up, as far as possible, these gatherings of children, and, endeavouring in this, as in other instances, to blend the thought of her with their innocent gaiety, he would invite the same children whom she had asked, only with the addition of their younger brothers and sisters. To the end of his career as Dean he was always medi- tating on new plans which might make the services of the Abbey more widely useful, and attract persons to whom the ordinary services were inconvenient or distasteful. Such services were those that he held on successive Sat- urday afternoons in the months of June and July 1881. It was to the audiences which gathered on these occasions that he began a course of brief sermons on the Beatitudes. The course was never finished : the fourth sermon, which was delivered on July 9, 1881, was the last that he ever preached. In this course of week-day sermons he endeavours to take 'from those who are commemorated in this Abbey some one or two persons for each of the Beatitudes who may give us something of a glimpse of what is meant by the "pure in heart," by the "merciful," by the "poor in spirit," by the "peacemakers," by those who "hunger and thirst after righteousness," and those who are persecuted for " righteousness' sake." If I can raise your minds to the appreciation of such virtues, if I can do this in any way so as to produce an impression upon you that we have some- thing in life worth striving for, and that this Abbey, by its various examples, has something worth teaching, I shall not have spoken in vain.' The names that he selects are characteristic. As types of the unselfishness of the 'poor in spirit' he chooses Ed- ward the Confessor, and Jeremiah Horrocks, the scientific discoverer. Of those ' that mourn ' the Abbey is full. One grave alone is commended by nothing but its 'sug- gestive sorrow': it is the tablet in the Cloisters to 'Jane 304 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1881 Lister, dear cbilde, died October 7, 1688.' The venerable and beautiful figure of Margaret Tudor, mother of Henry VII., exemplifies meekness. Of those who 'hunger and thirst after righteousness,' whose souls aspire to higher and severer courses of duty, the selected instance is Henry V. On the name of the 'merciful' Martin of Galway, the dumb animals, if they could speak, would pour out their blessings ; by their possession of this virtue Charles James Fox, who exerted himself to destroy the slave-trade, and Charles Dickens, who pleaded the cause of the poor and the suffering, are remembered among those who ' hunger and thirst after righteousness.' In the white soul of Sir Isaac Newton he finds that single-minded pursuit of truth which in scientific discovery is purity ; in Milton's exquisite lines on chastity and married love, in the unsullied page of Addison, in the natural innocence of Wordsworth, he dis- covers the purity of heart which frees their writings from those dark and fleshly stains that often defile literature. In these Saturday sermons on the Beatitudes Stanley gives a more special and pointed application to the thoughts which were ever in his mind when guiding visit- ors through the Abbey. It was his delight to take literary and listening friends, eminent strangers, and parties of working-men, or of children, from tomb to tomb, to answer their questions and pour out his knowledge. The first of his illustrious visitors was Queen Emma of the Sandwich Islands. Of all the distinguished persons who visited Westminster while he was Dean, she was ' the is cr. who expressed the greatest interest in the Abbey.' horn knowledge of the various monuments was surprising, ^gged.^xpressed distress at not finding a monument to ^get to ge, 'the author of the "Ancient Mariner,"' and she kl boylhat General Wolfe was buried, not in the Abbey, bii lineGreenwich, a fact which, in those early days of his \ CHAP. XXIII ILLUSTRIOUS VISITORS 305 experience, Stanley had not himself known. Another for- eign potentate was the Shah of Persia. The moment that he entered the west door of the Abbey he exclaimed in French, ' Where is Pitt Where is Fox } ' As he proceeded up the nave, he said in Persian to Sir Henry Rawlinson, ' St. Paul's is the efflorescence of architecture, Westminster Abbey is its kernel.' All his questions, which were many and appropriate, were delivered,' writes Stanley, ' with a fierceness of tone and demeanour unlike anything I have ever witnessed.' A third royal visitor was the Em- peror of Brazil, who arrived at the Deanery one Sunday afternoon between the services. ' I do not wish,' he told Stanley, ' to see the Abbey at length, because I have seen it before, but I wish to see one or two things that I omitted to see on the former occasion.' The two things which he wished to see were the grave of Livingstone and the monument of Dr. Blow, the organist. On leaving he said, ' I shall come again on my return from Palestine. I know that you have written a book on it, which I shall read.' The following year he returned, and asked to see the Abbey. He went through it carefully. As he passed the grave of Lady Augusta Stanley, he called the attention of his attendants to it, and crossed himself three times. In Poets' Corner he saw the grave of the Duke of Argyll. 'That,' said Stanley, 'I regard as the monument of Walter Scott, for he is the hero of what you call in French the prison of Edinburgh.' 'Ah!' the Emperor replied, ' it is what you call Midlothian's Heart. It is most beautiful ! I have seen Effie Deans to-day.' He had come to the Abbey on his way from the National Gallery, where he had seen the picture by Millais of Effie Deans and George Robertson, and was thus able at a moment's notice to reproduce the allusion. ' Of all eminent persons,' says VOL. II X 3o6 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1 880 Stanley, ' who visited the Abbey, he certainly showed the most minute and extensive knowledge.' Among other distinguished persons who visited the Abbey with Stanley may be mentioned M. Renan, who in 1880 was lecturing in London. ' Everything he saw,' writes Stanley, ' was seen with the greatest interest. I do not think that he, any more than other Frenchmen, was familiar with the mediaeval history of English kings, but still the general effect of the Confessor's Chapel was vividly impressed upon him. I told him the story that is portrayed there, of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, whom, in a trance, the Confessor had seen turning round from their right sides to their left, and from which he augured that the great changes of the Norman Conquest were impending over the world. He also saw with interest the place designed for the monument of the Prince Imperial, the controversy about which had not then reached a termination. " It is strange," he said, " how much more poetical are the events of history than poetry itself." ' A few days afterwards I met M. Renan at dinner in London. It was just when the decisive change of public feeling in the general election was taking place, and I asked, " What impression is jDroduced upon you by this great event " He said, " It reminds me of the story which you told me in the Chapel of Edward the Confessor. The people are ordinarily like the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. They sleep from generation to generation, and nothing occurs to disturb their slumbers. Now and then, like the Sleepers, they turn round from the right to the left, or from the left hand to the right, and then ensue the great changes of mankind." ' Even of greater interest to Stanley than individuals, however eminent, were the crowds of working-men who, on Mondays and public holidays, were attracted to West- minster Abbey. Under Dean Trench the nave and tran- septs of the Abbey were thrown open to the public without payment. In Stanley's time two further steps were taken in the same direction. The interior chapels were opened to CHAP. XXIII FREE DAYS AT THE ABBEY 307 all-comers, free of charge, every Monday in the year, and on Easter Monday and Easter Tuesday, Whit Monday and Whit Tuesday, the August Bank Holiday, and Boxing- Day. It was his hope that he might even be able to open the Abbey gratuitously to the public every day of the year. But in this hope he was disappointed. The proceeds of the small fee for admission defrayed the expenses of the vergers and other officials charged with the protection of the Abbey, and it was therefore found to be impossible to admit the public free of charge. Since Stanley's death, and by his generous bequest of 3000/. for the purpose, one other day (Tuesday) has been added to those on which the Abbey is thrown open gratuitously. ' Easter Monday,' he writes to his sister Mary in April 1870, 'was the great trial for the opening of the Abbey on Mondays. We had 4,000 the week before, and were therefore prepared with additional policemen. I do not think there were quite so many as we expected — about 9,000. I went in and out several times. Of all the people that I asked, only one had been there before. They all expressed the deepest gratitude. One man from Birming- ham said that he should so very much like to let Dean Stanley know what pleasure he had received. After letting him talk on a little, I told him who I was. They came with all their children, which was, of course, quite impossible when each had to pay sixpence. The service on Easter Monday was quite as full as on Easter Sunday, and I had the Easter Hymn hung up everywhere for them to sing. This is the chief pleasure that I have had this year.' It was his habit to walk about the Abbey on these occa- sions, when the building was thronged with sightseers, and to fall into conversation with them on the tombs and monuments. One working-man, thus encountered, de- lighted him by asking 'whether in these great cathedrals all denominations did not worship.' A little boy whom 3o8 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1880 he met wandering through the Abbey was full of informa- tion on every subject connected with the monuments. ' He asked to see the grave of Pym, of Strode (of whom he spoke as one of the Five Members), looked at the bust of Thackeray, and said that, as he understood, there was a de- scription given of him in "Endymion," which he had not yet read; and spoke of having read the "Paradise Lost" and the "Paradise Regained " of Milton, and hoping soon to read the " Penseroso " and the " Comus." ' So struck was Stanley with the boy's intelligence that he provided for his education. On Easter Monday in 1880, after the afternoon service, a lighterman of the name of Giles, and his wife, were stand- ing before the monument to John and Charles Wesley, when Stanley, passing in front of them, turned round, and asked, ' Do you not think those words — "I look upon all the world as my parish " — most beautiful and appropri- ate .'' " After some conversation, the lighterman asked him where he could see the fragment of the carved fringe of Torrigiani's altar. Stanley took him to see what he wanted, and then ' to the grave of my dear wife,' and after- wards to various objects of interest in the Abbey. ' May I copy these verses .'' ' asked the man ; and the answer came, to quote his words, ' with such a smile, " Any that you like." ' When the lighterman returned home, he wrote to thank Stanley for the pleasure which he had given him. By re- turn of post came the reply : ' I am truly thankful to have explained anything in the Abbey to you. May I ask you to let me know at what time of the day you will come again ? ' ' Thus began,' to use the words of Mr. John Giles, the lighterman, ' a working-man's acquaintance with the traveller, the preacher, the teacher who drew all hearts to him by love, the dear, humble Dean Stanley.' CHAP, xxm WORKING-MEN IN THE ABBEY 309 Shortly afterwards Mr. Giles called at the Deanery, and was shown into the library, where he found Stanley. He had himself lately read ' Sinai and Palestine,' and, refer- ring to it, sr'id : ' " How beautiful to have been able to walk where the Saviour had walked ! " I never shall forget the answer, or the look with which it was accompanied : " Beautiful indeed, and not beyond the power of any man, to endeavour to walk in the footsteps of the Saviour." ' Then he asked me what books I was in the habit of reading. I told him several that I had read, at the same time asking who Plato was, as I had heard that Plato, al- though a heathen, had said that he was glad he was a man, and not a beast. He answered, that that was a great thing for a heathen to have said, and told me who he was. He seemed pleased when I said that I had read some of the poets, naming Southey, Hood, Shakespeare, Eliza Cook. He said that Southey was in many ways often hard to understand. Then he turned, and pointed to a marble bust, saying, " That is my dear wife, and that," pointing to a portrait, " is her brother." . . . After some further conversation of a similar kind, one of the best interviews I ever had with this dear friend of the people ended. As he shook me by the hand with the grip of a friend, he said, " Never come this way without calling upon me. I shall always be glad to see you." He walked to the top of the stairs with me, and said as I descended, " Good-bye. God bless you ! " ' Several similar interviews followed between the Dean and Mr. Giles. In May 1881, shortly before his death, Stanley sent him the Revised Version of the New Testament, about which they had often talked together. ' Never,' says Mr. Giles, 'do I take that treasured gift in my hands without thinking of his words. We were talking of favourite chapters, and I gave I Corinthians xiii. — the one on Charity. "Yes," he replied, " that Love is grand. You will find in the Revised Version that Charity is Love." ' ' When,' says Mr. Giles, ending his letter of recollections, LIFE OF DEAN STAXLEV 1880 'I saw the last bulletin, at 10.15 on the evening of the 1 8th day of July, 1881, I returned home with a heavy heart, and said to my good wife, "We shall never see the dear Dean again in this world. But let us live vv'ith that hope to meet him around the throne of Jesus, his Master, Whom he loved to the uttermost, and Whose humility in his everyday life he always imitated." And when, on the 25th of July, I was permitted to look upon the coffin that contained the body that had held that piercing bright soul, I thanked God, with tearful eyes, that the dear good Dean Stanley was at rest from his labours, and that his works still follow him.' It was also Stanley's delight to take parties of working- men over the Abbey on Saturday evenings, and afterwards to provide them with tea in the Jerusalem Chamber. 'These parties appear to me,' he says, ' one of the most useful purposes to which the Abbey can be turned. They enable me to encounter members of that class in the most natural and easy way, and afford lasting opportunities of doing and receiving good on both sides.' Both visitors and guide learned something from each other. ' On passing by the tomb of Sir Cloudesley Shovel,' writes Stanley, ' a working-man told me an incident that I never heard from anyone else — that he derived his name from the humble origin from which he sprang ; for, said my working friend, it was so humble that he was taken with a shovel out of a heap of ashes, and he was called Shovel from the instrument then used, and Cloudesley from the filthy and cloudy ap- pearance which he presented on that occasion.' These opportunities were warmly appreciated by those who enjoyed them. One illustration out of many must suffice. ' A Working Man ' * has written his recollections of two visits to the Abbey wliich he and others paid in 1870 *'A Working Man's Recollections of the late Dean and Lady Augusta Stanley,' by Geo. R. Humphery, Librarian and Hon. Sec. of Messrs. P". Braby and Co.'s Library, Deptford (^Hoiise and Home, May iQlh and June 23rd, 1882). CHAP. XXIII A WORKING-MAN'S RECOLLECTIONS and 1879, and of the teas which followed in the Jerusalem Chamber. Mr. Humphery's first interview with Stanley was on May 28, 1870. 'Having introduced himself and Lady Augusta Stanley to us, and expressed his great pleasure in meeting us, he drew me on one side, and said, " Are there any Roman Catholics in your party I replied, " Not that I am aware of; but there are a few of no Church." "Because," he added, " in any description I may give I should not like to hurt the feelings of anyone." I at once concluded that none but a great man would be so thoughtful of the feelings of others, or so candid in expressing his solicitude for the same. This was my brief introduction to one of the best friends of the working-classes, and a friend my class can ill afford to lose. We spent the afternoon with the Dean and her Ladyship, each of whom vied with the other in contributing to the enjoyment and adding to the informa- tion of our party, and few of those present will forget their kindness.' From the Jerusalem Chamber, through the nave, side- chapels, and choir of the Abbey, through Henry VH.'s Chapel, and by Poets' Corner, the party were guided by the Dean and his wife, and it was evident, says Mr. Humphery, 'that he had thoroughly enlisted the sympathy of the party; they crowded round him, so that not a word should be lost, while her Ladyship kindly kept the fringe of the party informed of anything imperfectly heard. All listened with rapt attention to his panoramic description of England and her Abbey.' On the second visit, on June 15th, 1879, ' the Dean arrived, having left an interesting meeting at Lord Mount Temple's to keep his engagement with us ; showing by that that he recognised good to be done before personal enjoyment. We were greeted with the usual welcome and expression of delight ; but we were pained to observe that suffering, mental or physical, or both, had laid a heavy hand upon our dear friend. Never a robust frame, he appeared much weaker. The lines in the face were 312 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY more deeply marked. Those who knew him were distressed at the noticeable alteration, fearing greatly that his labours here were fast drawing to a close.' He guided the party through the Abbey with the same contagious enthusiasm and the same power of awakening and sustaining the interest of others. But he was now alone. Never able to approach the spot where his wife lay without a change in his step, which his companion could not fail to recognise, he could not guide the party to her grave. ' Following the Dean, we were again assembled in Henry VH.'s Chapel, and having formed a half-circle in front of that monarch's tomb, our guide, supporting himself against the masonry, said, " If you go round this tomb you will see where she lies. I have had printed a description of the windows. The law of burial in this place is very curious. This Chapel is for the Royal family and their friends, subject to the consent of the Dean-in-charge, who, in his turn, cannot bury there without the permission of the sovereign. I have the power to prevent anyone being interred here. This is very peculiar, but illustrates the English people's respect for rights. There was no difficulty in this case. Her Majesty sending the necessary permission without being asked." Having with considerable effort thus spoken, he added, with great difficulty, " You will find it round there ; you will find a description on the tomb." ' So deep was the impression made upon the minds of the workmen by the kindness and hospitality of Stanley that ' they consulted how best to give expression to their strong sense of gratitude. Permission was therefore asked to place a floral wreath on the grave of Lady Augusta Stanley. A well designed and executed wreath and cross were purchased, and these small visible recognitions of the valuable work of her Ladyship and the Dean were placed upon her tomb on the afternoon of Saturday, November 30th, 1879, as an expression of the deepest gratitude and appreciation of the eminent services rendered to us, and the working-classes generally.' CHAP. XXIII THE TWO SOLDIERS Another illustration may be given of the use which Stanley made of these opportunities of talking with working- men. In 1882, at Bletchley Station, a gentleman travelling from Norwich to Liverpool entered a third-class smoking- compartment, which had as its other occupants two soldiers and two civilians. ' We were,' he said, in telling the story, ' a very quiet party : one of the soldiers was reading a tract, the other was smoking a clay pipe, the two civilians were dozing. I was trying to decipher the title of the tract, or, if possible, to get into conversation with the reader of it, who sat opposite to me. At Rugby the two civilians left us, and as the train passed out of the station the reader of the tract said to the other soldier, " Mate, hand us the pipe, and take a spell at Wycliffe." ' I then found they had but one pipe between them, and when no match could be found my opportunity came, and I proffered a light, at the same time asking how it was that one pipe had to do duty for both of them, and what was the tract that seemed to interest them so much. I learnt that their other pipe had been broken just before reaching Bletchley, and that the tract was " Wycliffe and the Bible." They had each read it twice, and begged me to accept it, as it was so good everybody should read it." ' " Where is your home " I asked. ' " Chester, sir." 'I said, "I, too, am from a cathedral city — the city of Norwich." '"Norwich!" both of them exclaimed, "why, that's where Dean Stanley lived ! " '"Yes," I said, "but what do you know about Dean Stanley .? " ' I shall never forget the expression of the face turned towards me, as the speaker said, "Me and my mate here have cause to bless the Lord that we ever saw good Dean Stanley, sir, I can tell you." 'Then they recounted to me how some years before, when they had been at Shoeburyness for gunnery practice, they were released from duty a day earlier than they ex- pected, and instead of starting for home they decided to spend the day in London. In carrying out this decision they found themselves at the Abbey just as the doors were 314 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1864-81 locked, and they turned to retrace their steps with deep dis- appointment, which found expression in the words : " Here we have been fooling about all day sight-seeing, and have missed the best sight of all — we shall go home without seeing the inside of the Abbey, the place we most wanted to see. '"Our words and disappointed looks," continued my friend, "attracted the notice of a gentleman, who ap- proached us and said, ' You very much wish to see the inside of the Abbey, do you? Well, can't you come to- morrow ? ' ' " ' No, sir, we must be at Chester to-morrow, and if we don't see inside the Abbey to-day, it's not likely we ever shall.' ' " With this the gentleman invited us to go with him, and, taking the keys from the beadle, he entered with us into the Abbey, walking by our side, and pointing out to us the things most worth seeing. Presently he came to a marble monument erected to one of our soldiers, and, as we stood looking at it in admiration, the gentleman said, ' You wear the uniform of Her Majesty, and I daresay would like to do some heroic deed worthy of a monument like this.' ' " We both said, yes, we should — when, laying his hand on each of us, he said : ' My friends, you may both have a more enduring monument than this, for this will moulder into dust, and be forgotten ; but yoii, if your names are writ- ten in the "Lamb's Book of Life," jft'?/ will abide forever.' ' " We neither of us understood what he meant — but we looked into his grave, earnest, loving face with queer feel- ings in our hearts, and moved on. Just as we were leaving the Abbey, our guide told us he was the Dean, and invited us to the Deanery to breakfast next morning. We did not forget to go, I can assure you, and after breakfast the Dean came to say good-bye. He gave us money enough to pay our fares to Chester, and once again, in earnest, loving tones, he told us to be sure and get our names writ- ten in the Lamb's Book of Life, and then, if we never met again on earth, we should meet in Heaven. ' " And so we parted v/ith the Dean ; and as we travelled home we talked about our visit to the Abbey, and puzzled much as to the meaning of the Lamb's Book of Life."' It will be enough to say that those words proved the turning-point in the lives of those two men and their wives, CHAr. XXIII HIS OWN SERMONS and that, as one of them said, ' We trust that our names are written in the Book of Life, and that we may some day, in God's good time, meet Dean Stanley in heaven.' Still wider opportunities of influencing others were enjoyed by Stanley as a preacher. It is especially in his sermons written on the deaths of illustrious persons, or on events of historical importance, that his powers are most strikingly exemplified. Here the same gifts which, in their simpler form, were used to attract and sustain the interest of children, or to give life to the Beatitudes by teaching them through history, or to win the hearts of working-men whom he accidentally encountered in the Abbey, are ex- panded in a more carefully elaborated shape. Stanley's official duties as Dean only required him to preach three or four times in every year ; but the special circumstances of the Chapter gave him frequent oppor- tunities of occupying the Abbey pulpit, and Sunday after Sunday he attracted congregations which few preachers of the day could have gathered together. He had not the oratorical power of Samuel Wilberforce, nor was he eloquent in the ordinary sense of the word ; but he was almost in- variably interesting and suggestive. He seldom preached a sermon which did not impress upon his hearers some pure and practically useful thought, with every accompaniment of the literary skill, the picturesque language, the felicitous illustration, the appropriate metaphor, and the pointed anecdote that could fix it in the memory. Always emi- nently himself in preaching, his sermons exhibited the closest resemblance to the natural man. They had the charm of illustrating his invincible habit of making the best of others, and of seeking the good in everything ; the large charity which loved to rise above discord into the freer atmosphere of union ; the quiet, filial trust in the Divine purpose, in which he himself lived ; the enthusiasm for 3i6 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1864-81 everything true, and pure, and lovely, and of good report, which was the potent charm of his social presence. A man who preached so much could not always be at his best. He was necessarily unequal. Accustomed to deliver the same sermons again and again, he lost the freshness of his interest in what he was saying, and com- municated the loss even to hearers to whom the matter was new. New passages, interpolated at different times, were written in every corner and between the lines of the original text, in a hand always difficult to decipher ; mys- terious signs in red ink obscurely indicated the place at which they were to be introduced ; and the result was that at times the preacher either lost his way, or was so absorbed in finding it as to lose his energy of delivery. But in the sermons written for special occasions these peculiar diffi- culties vanished. The manuscript was comparatively clear, the preacher deeply interested ; his voice, his manner, his tones were full of energy and animation. The topics were new : they appealed to his historical and biographical interests ; they stimulated to its highest activity his in- stinct for detecting in the services of the day the happiest guide for the subjects of his discourse ; they afforded scope to his habit of detecting parallels or distinctions ; they gave play to his genius for seizing on crucial points in situations or characters ; they served as the stepping-stones by which he traversed the river of time, and made one territory of sacred and profane history, of things secular and spiritual, of the events recorded in the Bible and the events that excited the interests of the England of the day. On occa- sions such as those of the Siege of Paris, or the deaths of Charles Dickens, Frederick Maurice, or Charles Kingsley, he rose to the highest levels of eloquence. Even through these memorial sermons there runs that remarkable thread of unity which gave such life and CHAP. XXIII HIS MEMORIAL SERMONS enthusiasm to his literary work. The lives that he com- memorated preached the thoughts which he never wearied of enforcing. With telling effect he quotes the will of Charles Dickens,^ heard for the first time, by most of his hearers, from the pulpit of Westminster Abbey on June 19th, 1870 : ' I commit my soul to the mercy of God, through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ ; and I exhort my dear children humbly to try and guide themselves by the teach- ing of the New Testament in its broad spirit, and to put no faith in any man's narrow construction of its letter here or there.' The death of Sir John Herschel^ supplied, as it were, a text from which to preach on the true reconciliation of Science and Religion, ' the danger of mistrusting, even for a moment, the grand and only character of Truth — its capability of coming unchanged out of every possible form of fair discussion.' ' How many a cobweb of fine-spun folly, how many an imaginary distinction of metaphysics, how many a scho- lastic entanglement, how many a baneful superstition, has vanished before the touch of this Ithuriel's spear of scientific research ! How firm a grasp of reality, how strong and fresh a belief in the possibility of knowledge and certainty, how just a sense of the difference between false, artificial authority, and true, natural authority can be given to the least scientific of us by such an interpretation of science as that which has in these latter days been afforded to us! This is no subtraction from any theology which deserves the name. It is giving new meaning to its words, new bounds to its domain, new life to its skeleton.' The death of George Grote gave him the opportunity * 'Charles Dickens.' Preached on June 19th, 1870. Reprinted in Sermons on Special Occasions. '•'Science and Religion.' Preached on May 21st, 1871. Reprinted in Sermons on Special Occasions. ■^'The Religious Aspect of History.' Preached on June 25th, 1871. Reprinted in Sermons on Special Occasions. 3l8 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1864-81 of pleading for the religious aspect of all history, whether sacred or profane. ' Of the three great manifestations of God to man in Nature, in conscience, in the course of human events, " God in history " will, to a large part of mankind, be the most persuasive. On the great scale of the world's move- ments we see impressed the "unceasing purpose" of the Creator ; on the smaller scale of the lives of heroes, saints, and sages, we see the highest efforts of the Creature. ' Doctrine, precept, warning, exhortation, all are in- vested with double charms when clothed' in the flesh and blood of historical facts. If there has been an "everlasting remembrance " of One supremely just, in whom the Divine Mind was made known to man in a special and transcen- dent degree, it is because that Just One, the Holy and the True, became " flesh and dwelt amongst us," and became (so let us speak with all reverence and all truth) the subject of historical description, of historical analysis, of historical comparison.' As he gathers the noble army of travellers round the grave of Livingstone,^ it is to repeat the words of the famous explorer, that he ' never, as a missionary, felt him- self bound to be either Presbyterian, Episcopalian, or Independent, or called upon in any way to love one denomination less than another.' In Frederick Maurice^ he sees a teacher whose life was one of constant warfare for fallen causes and forgotten truths, but who yet remained the most peaceful, the most pacific, and the most peace- making of men. And the secret of this he finds in his 'trust, absolute, unbroken, yet with a perfect understanding of what he believed, in the greatness and goodness of God, and of God's dealings with the whole race of mankind. The religions of the world were all, to him, manifestations, more or less imperfect, of the religion of Jesus Christ. The various developments of the Christian Church were 8 'The Mission of the Traveller.' Preached April 19th, 1874. Reprinted in Sermons on Speciiil Occasions. * ' Frederick Denison Maurice.' Preached on April 7th, 1872. Reprinted in Sermons on Special Occasions. CHAP, xxia HIS MEMORIAL SERMONS 319 all, to him, various provinces of the Kingdom of Christ. The threefold name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, was not to him a dark insoluble mystery, but a glorious revelation of the depths of the moral being of God. Believing in the truth of this revelation as positively as the strictest Pharisee or fanatic of any Jewish or Chris- tian sect, he could afford to be as reverent as he was free, as fearlessly bold as he was perfectly humble ; he was not, he could not be, afraid of any evil tidings, of any in- quiry, of any research, for his heart stood fast, and believed in the eternal God.' In Charles Kingsley he found a human contradiction to that false distinction between the secular and the spiritual, between the Church and the world, which, as he believed, had stunted rather than forwarded the upward growth of the spirit of man towards its Divine original. He saw also, and above all else, in the poet, scholar, and novelist, a spiritual teacher and guide. On two points, as it seemed to him, Kingslcy laid special stress. To illus- trate the first he quotes his strenuous insistence on the fact ' that the main part of the religion of mankind and of .Christendom should consist in the strict fulfilment of the duty of man, which is the will of God. " The first and last business of every living being, whatever his station, party, creed, tastes, duties, is Morality. Virtue, virtue, always virtue ! " ' The second point was 'faith that God is good, and that man, to be well-pleasing to God, must be good also.' In illustration of this he quotes the following passage from Kingsley's sermons : * See whether in the light of that one idea of an abso- lutely good God all the old-fashioned Christian ideas about the relations of God to man — whether a Providence, Prayer, Inspiration, Revelation ; the Incarnation, the Pas- sion, and the final triumph of the Son of God — whether 1" ' Charles Kingsley.' Preached on January 31st, 1875. Reprinted in Sermons 011 Special Occasions. 320 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1864-81 all these, I say, do not begin to seem to you, not merely beautiful, not merely probable, but rational and logical and necessary moral consequences from the one idea of an Absolute and Eternal Goodness, the Living Parent of the Universe.' These sermons on special occasions, in which his powers as a preacher were most strikingly exemplified, are closely connected with that part of Stanley's administration of the Abbey which provoked most criticism. If, in opening Westminster as the place of interment for illustrious per- sons, he sometimes erred on the side of too great a lati- tude of inclusion, it was at least a characteristic fault, due partly to his ungrudging admiration of the great qualities of his contemporaries, partly to his historical attitude towards events of his time, partly to his anxiety that no link should be dropped in the chain which bound the his- tory of England to Westminster Abbey. During Stanley's tenure of the Deanery there were fifteen interments in the Abbey. The following are the names : Algernon Duke of Northumberland, Lord Palmer- ston, Charles Dickens, George Peabody (temporary), Sir John Herschel, George Grote, Sir George Pollock, Lord Lytton, Dr. Livingstone, Sir Sterndale Bennett, Sir Charles Lyell, Bishop Thirlwall, Lord Lawrence, Sir Rowland Hill, Lord Henry Percy. Of these fifteen, the first and the last were buried by prescriptive right in the Percy Chapel, and the Dean's consent was not asked, but demanded. In the case of Lord Palmerston, the responsibility was assumed by the Government of 1865. Sir George Pollock was buried in the Abbey during Stanley's absence from England, and without his concurrence. The claims of Sir Rowland Hill were forced upon him, against his will, by the public press. One interment, that of George Peabody, the American philanthropist, was only a temporary CHAP. XXIII INTERMENTS IN THE ABBEY 321 arrangement, the body being removed in the following year to Salem, Massachusetts. Between the years 1864 and 188 1, therefore, there were nine interments in the Abbey for which Stanley was responsible, and in no one instance did he himself take the initiative in proposing the burial in Westminster Abbey to the relatives of the deceased. In each case, as it arose, he only acted upon a requisition signed by distinguished specialists of the day. The case of Lord Lytton was the only one which seemed doubtful. But his great European reputation, his combination of public ofifice with literary distinction, and the great variety of his attainments, ap- peared to Stanley to justify an honour which no one point, taken singly, could have procured. Lord Lytton was buried, it may be added, not in Poets' Corner, but in a side-chapel, in which, in allusion to his being a Hertford- shire man and the author of ' The Last of the Barons,' he was laid by the side of Humphrey Bourchier, who fell at the battle of Barnet, in the Wars of the Roses. This general statement of Stanley's rule of action would be sufficient, if it were not for the hostile criticism which his supposed conduct aroused in the case of Charles Dickens, the first funeral in the Abbey for which Stanley was responsible. Stanley had not known Dickens till the year of his death. In that year he had three times met him — once at a private party, where he had been greatly struck by his conversational powers ; once at the Academy Dinner, where he made, on Maclise, Stanley says, ' one of the only three good speeches that I remember to have heard on the occasion, much coveted and sought after, of that Dinner' ; '1 Of the two other speeches, one was made by Lord Derby, whose trans- lation of Homer had recently appeared; the other by Matthew Arnold, who described the one day in the year in which a Grecian colony in Calabria resumed their Grecian customs, and returned for a few hours to the days of art and poetry. VOL. II Y 322 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1870 and once, a few weeks before the novelist's death, he dined with Stanley himself at the Deanery. Charles Dickens died on J-une 6th, 1870. Stanley at once sent an intimation through a friend that, if an application for the novelist's interment in the Abbey were made to him, he would gladly consider it. It was, however, in- tended to bury Dickens, whose will prescribed, in the strictest manner, the absolute plainness of his funeral, in the graveyard of Rochester Cathedral. But this intention was abandoned in consequence of an Order of the Privy Council, which had closed the churchyard as a place of public interment. The death occurred on Friday ; Satur- day and Sunday passed, but no request was made. On Monday, June 9th, there appeared in the 'Times ' an elab- orate leading-article, strongly recommending a funeral in Westminster Abbey, as the one place which was fitting to receive a writer of such distinction. As, however, no application had arrived from anyone in authority, Stanley took no further steps. ' At eleven o'clock on Monday morning arrived Mr. Forster, the future biographer of Dickens, accompanied by the son of the deceased novelist. Mr. Forster said, " I imagine that the article in the ' Times ' must have been written with your concurrence " I replied, " No ; I had no concern with it ; but at the same time I had given it privately to be understood that I would consent to the interment if it was demanded." The letter had, it seemed, gone astray, and it was only on the expression of public feeling in the "Times" that they had ventured to apply. I said, " After this strong expression in the 'Times,' of course all further solicitation is unnecessary, and I at once consent." ' Mr. Forster replied, " Do not consent till you hear what are the conditions on which alone I can allow it." I answered, "Let me hear them." Mr. Forster said, "The first condition is, that there shall be only two mourning- coaches, with mourners sufficient to fill them." "That," I said, " is entirely an affair of the family ; do as you like." CHAP. XXIII CHARLES DICKENS "The second condition is, that there shall be no plumes, trappings, or funereal pomp of any kind." " That," I replied, " is a matter between you and the undertaker, and is no concern of mine." "The third condition is, that the place and time of the interment shall be unknown beforehand." I replied, " To this condition I am perfectly willing to con- sent so far as I am concerned. But look at the circum- stances : a leading-article in the ' Times ' requesting his burial ; a public — by this, as well as by their own feel- ings— on the tiptoe of expectation ; the remains, now at Rochester, to be removed to London. How is it possible, under these circumstances, to preserve the secret " ' It was finally arranged that the body of Charles Dickens should be brought from Rochester to London that night ; that, as soon as the last sightseer had left the Abbey, the grave should be dug in Poets' Corner, and that the mourners were to arrive at nine o'clock the following morning, so that the funeral might take place before the ordinary morning service. By the dim light on Monday evening Stanley chose the spot for the grave in Poets' Cor- ner, close to Thackeray's bust, and surrounded by the graves of Handel, Cumberland, and Sheridan. During the night the grave was dug. At nine o'clock on Tuesday morning a solitary hearse, with two mourning-coaches, drove into Dean's Yard without attracting any attention whatever. In the Abbey, Stanley and the other ofificiating clergy were waiting. The coffin was carried to Poets' Cor- ner, accompanied by ten or twelve mourners, and lowered into the grave in the presence of these few spectators. ' It was,' writes Stanley, 'a beautiful summer morning, and the effect of the almost silent and solitary funeral, in the vast space of the Abbey, of this famous writer, whose interment, had it been known, would have drawn thousands to the Abbey, was very striking. As the small procession quitted the Church I asked Mr. Forster, as it would be so great a disappoint- ment to the public, whether he would allow the grave to 324 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1879-80 be open for the remainder of that day. He said, " Yes ; now my work is over, and you may do what you like." The usual service was at ten o'clock. At eleven o'clock there arrived reporters from every newspaper in London, requesting to know when the funeral would take place. I told them it was over. Meantime the rumour had spread, and during that day there were thousands of people who came to see the grave. Every class of the community was present, dropping in flowers, verses, and memorials of every kind, and, some of them quite poor people, shedding tears.' The storm of abuse excited by the proposal to erect a monument in Westminster Abbey to the Prince imperial exceeded in violence the murmurs aroused by the inter- ment of Dickens. The tragic incidents of the Prince's death in the Zulu War on June ist, 1879, evoked a sym- pathy which was exceptional in character and almost uni- versal in extent. That the heir of the Napoleons should fall as an English soldier by the hands of savages was a coincidence as strange, as suggestive, and as full of pathos as any of which a poet, a historian, or a novelist, could have conceived the occurrence. When, therefore, on the day before the funeral, Stanley received an application from an influential committee to erect a monument to the Prince's memory, he at once consented, subject to the approval of Her Majesty, in whose royal chapel of King Henry VH. the proposed recumbent figure was intended to be placed. The manifestation of public sympathy had been so un- usual that he had no doubt of the propriety of acceding to the request. The tragic associations of the fall of a Prince who gave his life for the country which had received him as a guest, and which had learned to respect his character, gave him a claim, as Stanley thought, to be ranked among those princes to whom Westminster Abbey has, at various times, given shelter or admitted memorials. CHAP. XXIII MONUMENT TO PRINCE IMPERIAL 325 The spot chosen by Stanley for the monument was not in the Abbey Church properly so called, but in the royal chapel appended to it, in which, as a general rule, no persons are interred or commemorated except members of the Royal Family, or persons specially connected with them. And in Henry VII. 's Chapel the particular locality was suggested by a significant fact. In a chapel on the south-eastern side was interred the Duke of Montpensier, brother of King Louis Philippe, who died at Salt-hill, in 1 807, during the first exile of the Bourbon family from France. In the corresponding chapel on the north-east side Stanley now proposed to place the monument to another Prince belong- ing to a rival dynasty, but exiled from, and finding a refuge in, the same country. The Abbey, as he always delighted to remember, knew no distinctions of politics, foreign or domestic. It was, as Macaulay described it, 'the great temple of silence and reconciliation.' No asso- ciation excited greater interest than the tombs of Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots within the same walls. In the analogous correspondence between the monuments to chieftains of the Bourbon and Napoleonic dynasties he saw another example of the cherished characteristic of the national burial-place, another link in the invisible chain of hospitality and charity which stretches across the widest gulfs of race and creed and party. At first the plan for the monument proceeded without any obstacle. The Queen's permission was obtained, though it was given with some reluctance ; the few voices which were raised against the proposal soon relapsed into silence ; a slight discussion that was raised in the House of Commons died away. It was not till the spring of 1880 that the opposition began to assume a serious form. An agitation commenced which was, to a considerable extent, based on misconceptions of the facts. It was, for instance, 326 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1879-80 persistently stated, in spite of frequent contradictions, that the site on which was to be erected ' the effigy of an un- fledged princeling ' was ' the rifled grave of Oliver Crom- well.' The statement was entirely contrary to the facts. Stanley, who had himself distinguished the 'rifled grave' of the Protector with a memorial slab, and who, at that very moment, was endeavouring to raise funds for a fitting monument to occupy the spot where he had been interred, was the last person thus to break the circle of historical combinations. It was again asserted, with every variety of perverse misrepresentation, that he had received the Queen's commands to erect the monument, and that 'Windsor bade him prostitute his position by pandering to Imperialist sympathies.' Here again the assertion, so glibly and confidently made, was entirely false to the actual facts. The Queen had, it is true, given her consent to the proposed monument ; but she had done so reluctantly, in spite of her deep sympathy with the widowed, childless, and exiled Empress Eugenie, from respect to the com- mittee by which the proposal was supported, and in response to what was believed to be the genuine and general expression of national concern in an event of exceptionally tragic interest. It was, again, alleged that the erection of the monument would be an insult to the two great republics of France and the United States. But, when the Prince Imperial died in a strange land, France showed by the unanimous voice of her public organs that pity and sympathy overpowered all other sentiments enter- tained by her in the face of a pathetic calamity. She made no remonstrance against the proposed statue ; the French Ambassador expressed in the strongest terms that it was a matter for England, and not for France ; and Stanley's own acquaintance with Frenchmen of all classes convinced him that the tribute it was proposed to pay was regarded CHAP, xxiii MONUMENT TO PRINCE IMPERIAL 327 as natural and proper. Nor was it possible that the United States, which had honoured the names of Lafayette and Pulaski, the Polish exile, and which would certainly have paid similar honours to the two Orleans princes, if either of them had chanced to fall in the service of the Union during the battles of 1861 and 1862, could be insulted by the erection of a monument to the Prince Imperial, who had lost his life in the service of the English Government. On these and similar grounds Stanley believed that the agitation was either mistaken or fictitious. He had himself no political or personal sympathy with the Im- perialist cause. If the Republican Government of France failed to establish itself, he looked to the restoration of a constitutional monarchy under the Orleans dynasty. But, firmly convinced of the propriety of the proposed monu- ment, he found nothing to shake his conviction in the scantily-signed petition presented to him by Mr. Fordham, or in the arguments addressed to him by a deputation of working-men, or in the scurrilous and threatening letters by which he was continually assailed. He adhered to his resolution in the face of a growing agitation, to which the elections of 1880 gave additional strength. But he had always stated his readiness to yield to any adverse opinion, expressed either by the Queen or by Parliament. On July i6th, 1880, the House of Commons voted, by 162 to 147, that ' In the opinion of this House, the erection in Westminster Abbey of a statue to the memory of the late Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte would be inconsistent with the national character of that edifice.' In the face of this hostile vote he was at once prepared to withdraw his consent to the erection of the proposed monument. At this stage, however, the matter was taken out of his hands by the Napoleon Memorial Committee, which had hitherto, somewhat to his surprise, allowed him to bear the 328 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1879-80 whole brunt of the agitation against their proposal. The following correspondence, which appeared in the public press, closed the history of the incident : ' Cleveland Square, S.W. : July 21st, 1880. ' Dear Mr. Dean, — At a meeting of the Napoleon Me- morial Committee held this day I was requested to in- form you that the Committee have unanimously resolved to withdraw the proposal to place the monument of the late Prince Imperial in Henry VI I. 's Chapel. ' I beg to remain, dear Mr. Dean ' Yours very faithfully, ' Sydney. ■ The Very Rev. the Dean of Westminster.' ' Deanery, Westminster: July 21st, 1880. ' My dear Lord, — I have received your Lordship's com- munication of the resolution of the Committee to withdraw the proposal for erecting a monument to the late Prince Imperial in King Henry VII. 's Chapel. I accede to the withdrawal. You will, perhaps, permit me to add a few words on the subject. ' There are few acts of my official life at Westminster on which I look back with more satisfaction than the ac- ceptance of the offer of the monument to the Prince Im- perial. ' It was the response to a feeling of universal sympathy which at the time I believed to be permanent, and which I still believe to have been genuine. ' It was in entire conformity with the best traditions of the Abbey, in the commemoration of an event most tragical, and, considering all the circumstances of the case, most historical. It expressed the sense of national reparation due for a signal misfortune. ' " Sjint lachiytHce reritm, et mentcin viortalia tajignnt." ' I have since repeatedly refused to withdraw my con- sent to a proposal to which I considered myself in honour pledged. In the early part of this year I made the follow- ing public statement : ' "The authority of the Sovereign, or the Parliament, or of the Ministers for the time being, would have absolved me from any responsibility in the matter. But such authority has not intervened, and so long as I am left to act on my CHAP. XXIII MONUMENT TO PRINCE IMPERIAL 329 own responsibility, I cannot recede from what I deliber- ately believe to be my public duty." 'The Sovereign, who is the Visitor of the whole institu- tion, and to whom it appertains to command or forbid the interment or the commemoration of anyone in King Henry VII. 's Chapel, has since the acceptance of the offer never swerved from the determination to keep the engage- ment then entered upon. The Ministers have supported this determination equally in the late and the present Par- liament. But a majority of the House of Commons has defeated the decision of the Ministers by a resolution which has the effect of throwing upon the House the responsibility of a refusal. The resolution, to have its full effect, should have assumed the usual form which alone could give it legal validity — that of an Address to the Crown as Visitor of the Abbey. But your Committee have rightly judged (i.e. if I may presume to give an opinion) that a proposed honour met in a temper so unlike to that in which it was offered would lose its gracious intention. 'I have always recognised a legitimate difference of opinion on the subject. There are very few interments or commemorations in the Abbey which have not provoked some such difference. But I was not prepared to find that an overflow of generous sympathy was to be checked from political considerations, or that circumstances en- tirely accidental or irrelevant should have been magnified into importance, or that the liberal and comprehensive principles which, without respect to persons, or party, or nationality, have hitherto marked the administration of Westminster Abbey, should have been discouraged or thwarted. ' Such an expression of opinion it may for many reasons be inexpedient to disregard. It conveys, no doubt, the views of a large amount of public feeling. I venture to utter on the part of many their grateful sense of the public spirit of those who, at some risk to themselves, have stood firm against what they conceived to be an illiberal and ignorant clamour. I have, further, to acknowledge the kindly expressions used on the occasion towards myself, as also (if I may venture to do so) towards the gallant and unfortunate Prince and his widowed mother. They are in striking contrast to the persistent misrepresentations and savage menaces which have hitherto supported the agita- tion on this subject. 330 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1880 'The monument, which is nearly completed, will receive a habitation worthy of the labour and skill which the gifted sculptor has bestowed upon it, and of the pathetic feelings which it embodies. 'The vacant chapel in Westminster Abbey which should have contained it will always cherish the association, which will give it enduring interest. 'On the adjoining pavement I long ago caused to be recorded the only act in which a precedent for the recent action of the House of Commons is sought to be found — the disinterment of the magnates of the Commonwealth under the pressure of the strong outburst of party passion which followed the Restoration. Posterity will judge how far the ungenerous spirit which governed the Parliament of 1661 still, under an altered form, survives in the Parlia- ment of 1 880. ' I have the honour to be ' Yours faithfully, *A. P. Stanley.' That so picturesque and tragical an event as the death of the last of the Bonapartes should not be commemorated in Westminster Abbey was undoubtedly a disappointment to Stanley. But in the agitation and its result he found a characteristic consolation. 'At least,' he said, 'they show how deeply the English people love their Abbey.' CHAP. XXIV FIRST YEAR AS DEAN CHAPTER XXIV 1864-70 DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL LIFE — REGRETS FOR OXFORD— LET- TERS TO HIS WIFE — FOREIGN TOUR IN 1864— 'THE WATERS TRAGEDY' — INTERVIEW WITH NEWMAN — LOVE FOR WEST- MINSTER ABBEY — DOMESTIC HAPPINESS — HIS DAILY LIFE AT WESTMINSTER — FOREIGN TOUR IN 1865— VISIT TO BISHOP THIRLWALL — FUNERAL OF LORD PALMERSTON — VALLOMBROSA IN 1866 — INTERVIEW WITH POPE PIUS IX.— DUPANLOUP— DISCOVERY OF ORIGINAL MS. OF PRAYER BOOK OF 1662 — FOREIGN TOUR IN 1867— THIERS— DEATH OF DEAN MILMAN, 1868— FOREIGN TOUR IN 1868— THE PRUSSIAN ROYAL FAMILY — THE VATICAN COUNCIL, 1869 — PERE HYACINTHE AND DR. DOLLINGER — CONSECRATION OF DR. TEMPLE, DECEMBER 21ST, 1869 — CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE REV. C. VOYSEY. Not less interesting, and scarcely less important, than Stanley's official guardianship of Westminster Abbey, his literary labours, or his championship of lost causes and vilified names, is his domestic and social life. During the first few months which followed his removal to Westminster regrets for Oxford frequently rose to the surface in his letters. Weeks passed before he could shake off the feeling expressed in the following extract from a letter written to Professor Max Miiller on January 8th, 1864, the evening before his installation as Dean of West- minster : 'This morning I left Oxford — left the dear home of seven years, never to revisit it as my own ; for to-morrow I cease to be Canon, Professor, Councillor. I try to repeat to myself that with like regrets I left Canterbury, and with like misgivings I came to Oxford. But this I know : there 332 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY are some opportunities, and some vast sources of happi- ness, which can no more return ; and there are difficulties in store for me such as I have never encountered before. Remember me, dear friend, for my dear mother's sake, and take courage, from my present sense of the value of what I am leaving, not to despair of Oxford.' The arrival of Dr. Liddell's belated letter in January 1864^ revived in all its freshness the pain of his decision to accept the Deanery. Writing from Edinburgh, where he had just delivered, 'with tolerable success,' two lectures on Solomon,^ he sends the letter to his sister Mary. ' Considering that it is the only postal miscarriage that we have ever had, and its immense importance (for it might have prevented the acceptance, or, at least, the offer), I think that it is one of the most singular links in my destiny that has yet appeared.' There were later moments, also, when all his depression returned. One such occasion arose from the visit which he paid to Oxford in March 1864, in order to vote for the proposed increase to the endowment of the Greek Profes- sorship. The proposal was rejected by Convocation. Alarmed at the acquittal by the Privy Council of Dr. Williams and Mr. Wilson, and anxious to express their disapprobation of 'Essays and Reviews,' the majority of the members decided to accept the labours, but withhold the salary, of Professor Jowett. ' I felt yesterday,' writes Stanley to Hugh Pearson on his return to Westminster, ' more than ever the irreparable loss to me of my position there, and the insuperable difficulties of my position here. ' The event of yesterday was a proof of the wretched corruption of the clergy. Such levity ! Such folly ! How can one bear up against it, and make anything of so strange a profession } ' ^ See Vol. ii. p. 136. 2 These two lectures were substantially the same as Lectures xxvi., xxvii., xxviii. in Vol. ii. of the Lectures on the History oj the jfewisk Church. CHAP. XXIV FIRST YEAR AS DEAN 333 'I often sigh for Oxford,' he writes in April 1864 to Professor Max Miiller, 'and fear lest my time here will be broken to pieces against insuperable obstacles, and in use- less, trivial labour.' So again, in July of the same year, he complains to the Professor of ' the haste in which alone this terrible whirl allows me to write anything.' Gradually, however, he became reconciled to ' the new life,' which he describes himself, in June 1864, as 'learning amid countless small calls and pre-occupation of business.' The objections offered to his appointment, which threat- ened to bring him into unpleasant relations with at least one of his colleagues, wholly died away ; he was on good terms with every member of the Chapter, and Dr. Words- worth became his warm personal friend. This peaceful entrance upon his office Stanley owed partly to his own resolve of keeping silent under all attacks, partly to the conciliatory tact of his v/ife, who spared no pains to smooth his path. ' Is it possible,' asked one of the canons, who was struck by the cordial warmth of her manner, ' that all this can be sincere .'' ' ' Yes,' was the reply of the Duchess of Buccleuch ; ' it is the echo of her heart.' Every day Stanley learned to lean more and more upon his wife, who was to be his 'inseparable partner in every joy and struggle,' and whose 'sustaining love,' 'inspiring courage,' and 'never-failing faith in the enlargement of the Church and the triumph of all truth,' 3 supported him for the next twelve eventful years of his life. For the moment, indeed, and at intervals throughout this and the following year, Lady Augusta had resumed her place at Court. In writ- ing to her, Stanley comments on the fact that few persons after marriage are ever transported so exactly back into a former position. He feels, he says, that 'you now know all ' Dedication of Vol. iii. of tlie Lectures on the History of the Jetuish Church. 334 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1864 the drawbacks of the new Ufa you have chosen, all the shortcomings of the fretful, anxious, moody being that you have taken to yourself for better or worse ' ; but he adds the confident hope that 'your thoughts turn back to this dear library, and that you are here in heart and spirit.' In his letters to his wife he collects every detail of his social life — his two meetings with Garibaldi, the parties to which he is going, his speech at the Fishmongers' Dinner, and all the miscellaneous sights that he has seen, or the news that he has heard. He speaks of his pleasure in meeting at dinner all the Nonconformist leaders. ' It struck me,' he adds, ' that they were very nearly as much removed from knowledge of us as we from knowledge of them.' He had called on Bishop Colenso, thinking 'that, unless I took some means of showing him sympathy and kindness, we shall all have cause to repent it afterwards.' He writes to her of current events in the ecclesiastical world. 'I have not,' he says in March 1864, immediately after the decision of the Privy Council in the case of ' Essays and Reviews,' 'the very least fear about the Church of England now. There will be a succession of explosions between this and August. But they will pass away, and the Judgment of the Privy Council, with its healing effect, will remain ; the gradual tide of progress will move us on ; and if we can but be true to ourselves, all will be right.' He tells her of his visits to the dying Duke of New- castle, with whom he read and prayed, and to whom he administered the Sacrament. He consults her about his sermons, ' into which I cannot throw myself unless I know that they have your approval beforehand.' He describes the physical difficulties which he encountered in taking the part in the Special Services that he reserved for himself. ' I read,' he says in one of his letters, 'the Lessons in the Abbey, which I much enjoyed. That fine chapter of Deuteronomy was almost as good as a ser- CHAP. XXIV LETTER TO LADY A. STANLEY 335 mon. I only wish that the eagle would have stooped his neck a little, so as not exactly to have thrust up his head between me and the congregation.' Those who remember Stanley's reading of the Lessons will welcome the image, which the paragragh recalls, of the small figure hidden behind the lectern. No one who heard him could doubt his love for the book from which he read — a love that was no less deep and reverential because it was full of dramatic intelligence. Thrilled himself, he thrilled his hearers. His voice lost, as it were, its consciousness of time and place, and gathered depth and resonance as he entered with passionate sympathy into the wailing anguish of David's lament for his 'son Absalom,' or chaunted with ' ringing exaltation ' the triumphant Song of Deborah. For his wife's amusement, also, he gathers every ridicu- lous incident which his keen sense of humour detected. No detail, for instance, is spared which can heighten the ludicrous effect of the famous Fray of the Frying-Pan, which in March 1864 convulsed Westminster School and its authorities. By ancient custom it was the duty of the College cook on Shrove Tuesday to throw a pancake over a bar in the great schoolroom at Westminster. ' As the pancake falls to the other side, the boys scramble for it, and he who gets it comes to the Dean for a guinea. On this occasion the cook failed in throwing the cake. Thereupon an ancient war-cry, not heard for twenty years, arose — "Book him!" — and a shower of books was dis- charged by the boys at his head. He, goaded to frenzy, flung the fryingpan among the boys — a formidable weapon, which might have killed the luckless wight it struck. This wight was George Dasent. It happily avoided any vital part, but cut open his head — an unfortunate head, for it had already been cut open by a stone flung in the streets. Now upon the scene appeared the boy himself, with his bleeding head, and the fryingpan in his hand, which he begged for a trophy, and which I granted. 'Before dinner I saw the cook, who said in the most 336 LIFE OF DEAAT STANLEY doleful manner that he felt sure beforehand that he should fail in throwing the pancake. " I met Sanders in the cloister, and said, ' I know it will be no go.' " He particu- larly lamented that it should have struck young Dasent, who was the most innocent of the whole set. "But then, sir, there are occasions when the innocent must suffer for the guilty." I told him that I had given Dasent the fryingpan. " Oh ! but it was a new one ! " ' Accepting the change from Oxford to London, increas- ingly happy in his home-surroundings and his official posi- tion, looking forward with growing hopefulness towards the ecclesiastical future, he recovered all the energies which his mother's death had temporarily and partially paralysed. His life resumed its former course, though it flowed between wider banks and in a fuller stream. The old interests were pursued with all his former vigour, the old relaxations enjoyed with unabated zest. In August 1864 he started with his wife for a foreign tour. The expedition differed in two respects from any which he had previously undertaken. It consisted mainly of visits made to French country-houses, and he enjoyed in Lady Augusta the companionship of a finished linguist. 'You may think,' he writes to his sister, 'of the extraor- dinary comfort — in addition to all other pleasures — of having someone who is as absolutely at home in French as in English.' The tour began with a visit to Madame Lebrun at Provins, the ancient residence of the Counts of Champagne. A letter written from that quaint decayed city shows the ascendency of the historical interest which Westminster was already assuming over his mind. The Counts of Champagne were zealous Crusaders. One of them — Thibaut the Troubadour — brought back from the Fourth Crusade 'a bright crimson rose, the rose of Sharon — the rose stained with the blood of Venus's foot, as she ran after CHAP. XXIV PROVINS 337 Adonis through the thickets. And this rose became the Rose of Provins, which we incorrectly call a Provence rose. The gardens of Provins were once full of it ; the " Conserves de Roses de Provins" were sold throughout France; and the wreaths in Church festivals were made of it. It flowers in June, and consequently, when we were there, only one or two remained ; I enclose a leaf. ' The widow of Thibaut's son married Edmund of Lan- caster, the Crouchback, who lies buried in a stately tomb beside his father's grave in Westminster Abbey. This crouchbacked Edmund had a singular mission at Provins. Thibaut the Troubadour had, in accordance with the rising power of the middle-classes, created a mayor of Provins, and one of the first of them was Guillaume Pentecote, whose father had been in the Fourth Crusade. This Cru- sading mayor was opposed to an early-closing movement, and had the great curfew bell of the town rung an hour later; in consequence of which he was attacked by a mob, headed by the Lord Shaftesbury of that time, and killed in his Mansion House, a tower at the corner of Madame Lebrun's garden. For this crime Edmund came to visit Provins, and made such havoc of the inhabitants that the place has never recovered since. And what with his mal- treatment of it, and the carrying off of their drapers and clothiers to England by the English, who afterwards occu- pied it, it has shrunk into smaller dimensions than any town of like importance on this side of the Alps. Fields and farms extend where once were streets, and a hedgerow grows where once was the Rue des Orfevres. There was a new bell made, called Guillonette, in honour of William, which still rings the curfew : Je suis Guillonette, Et j'^tais faite Pour sonner la retraite. Out of all this havoc two relics were carried to England. One was the yard measure which, for many years, was in France peculiar to Provins ; the other was the crimson rose, which Edmund of Lancaster carried home, and which through him became the Rose of Lancaster. ' I have been obliged to compress my story a good deal, but I assure you that it is quite a picture of the time, when one puts it all together : the Crusades, the mayor, VOL. II Z 338 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY the Troubadour Count, the English conqueror's vengeance ; and I shall now always look on the tomb of Crouchback with double the interest that I had in him before.' In the midst of his tour his plans were interrupted and his pleasure completely destroyed by the news that two of the children of his servant, Waters, were lying dangerously ill from scarlet-fever. ' We can think and talk of nothing else,' he writes. While staying at Val Richer with M. Guizot, he heard that the youngest of the children, ' dear little Nellie,' as he calls her, was dead, and that neither her sister nor her father was expected to recover. He hurried home at once, but only arrived to find that the death of Ellen Waters on September 15th had been followed by that of her sister Emmeline on September 17th, and that of Waters himself on the 21st of the same month. The blow was a very heavy one to a man of Stanley's affectionate nature. ' I am one of those,' writes the Queen, in expressing her sympathy with him and with the widow, 'who think the loss of a faithful servant the loss of a friend, and one who can never be replaced.' Such, also, was Stanley's feeling. Always the kindest and most con- siderate of masters, he was warmly attached to his servant and his children. His grief at the ' Waters Tragedy ' was scarcely less than that which the death of his nurse, Sarah Burgess, had caused him. Benjamin Waters was far more to him than a servant. He had been his com- panion on his second tour in the East; he had proved him- self, as his master said, a ' faithful and familiar friend ' ; and his little girls were the pets of the bachelor home of the Canon of Christ Church. Not the least of the many difficulties which, at the last moment, made it painful for Stanley to leave Oxford had been the reluctance of Waters to accompany him to Westminster. Won over by the kindness of Lady Augusta, Waters had in the end fol- CHAP. XXIV ' THE WATERS TRAGEDY' 339 lowed his master to the Deanery, and there he was estab- lished with his wife and family. The father and his two daughters were buried in Holywell Cemetery, at Oxford, where Stanley read the Burial Service over his friend, and chose the inscription that was placed upon the tomb — ' Behold, I and the children whom God hath given me.' Mrs. Waters and her two surviving children found a home at the Deanery until 1881. 'What the loss is to me,' writes Stanley to his aunt, Mrs. Augustus Hare, on September 24th, 1864, ' what the grief, you and Augustus can well understand. I loved him like a brother, and he was doubly endeared to me by his companionship through all those trying days in 1862. ' I long for you to see my dearest Augusta. Her sym- pathy in this affliction is most consoling. What a valley of the shadow of death has her life been for the last five years ! But I know no one who has a firmer hold on " the staff " to support.' In the same strain he writes to his friend Henry de Bunsen on September 27th : ' I have to thank you for your sympathy. You have seen and felt exactly what this blow has been to me — a blow so far more severe than is the loss even of a faithful servant, severe as such a blow always is. It is the shat- tering asunder of a whole cluster of living recollections, and associations, and graces, such as I can never replace. What is the purpose of such a destruction } Shall we ever know? Shall we ever, in this life, even guess at it.'' I laid my dear Waters in his grave yesterday in the Holy- well Cemetery, at Oxford, with his beloved children. Vale, diilcissime ! I may indeed say, Vivat — vivant — in Deo ! ' Stanley had neither the heart nor the time to resume his foreign tour. He therefore spent the rest of his holiday in England. At the end of October 1864 he was 340 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1864 preaching in one of the churches at Birmingham. The next clay he called on Dr. Newman at the Oratory. The following account of the interview is written to J. C. Shairp on October 30th, 1864: ' The Oratory is a collegiate building by the roadside, more barred and grated than Balliol or St. Salvador, but otherwise nothing peculiarly monastic. I sent up my card, and waited in a small parlour. There were two or three religious engravings — some of Overbeck's little prints — over the fire, and in one corner a commonplace bird's-eye view of Oxford (of this I had heard before from someone), with the text in Latin from Ezekiel over the upper frame — " So7i of Man, can these dry bones live ? " — and on the lower frame — " O Lord God, Thou ktiowest." ' Presently the " Filitis hominis " appeared. The feat- ures are quite unaltered, and the voice, and, as far as I re- member, the manner. The same appearance of simplicity and tenderness, and yet, withal, something of weakness, as if he could offer no resistance to you. " It is very kind of you to come out so far" were his first words. At first we talked of Oxford — of the times when I had seen him ; then of Pusey — his industry. "It is more than energy — it is a power." "He always despised those who read newspapers." He had not seen him since 1846, when, as I remember being told, he had been to see him ; " he begged me to come to him " when E. B. P. was supposed to be mortally ill. ' He then spoke of the Roman Catholics having bought a piece of ground in Oxford for a new "church," "to which I may possibly be obliged to go from time to time " — evidently with a profound inner repugnance. He very much deprecated the notion of any proselytism ; as far as he was concerned, he would never encourage anything of the kind — " No — o, never." It was to be for the sake of the Roman Catholic students — something more accepta- ble than the small chapel at St. Clement's. I spoke of my travels in France, and mentioned Albert de Broglie. " I have heard of his book, but never read it."* (I think that of all the things that he said, this the most surprised me.) I spoke of its interest. "Oh, yes; of all subjects, it is * L'Eglise et U Empire Romain au IVme Siecle, CHAP. XXIV INTERVIEW WITH NEWMAN that which has most attraction forme — not the Roman Republic, but the Roman Empire." ' I then gradually led to Ewald ; and he regretted his ignorance of German. " But their style is so uncongenial — they despise style; my brother" (i.e. F. N.), "who was here the other day, tells me that even he can only make out their meaning by spanning the parentheses with his fingers or with a pair of compasses." I spoke of the great merits of Ewald ; and he urged once, twice, and thrice the great service which he or anyone would render who would draw a distinction between the dissolving criticism of the Old Testament and the Gospels. His constant recurrence to this, and the very great difficulty of bringing him to acknowledge that the Gospels must stand or fall by their own merits, appeared to me the weakest part — the least truth-like part — of his conversation. I endeavoured to point out the difference between the shadowy character of Genesis and the historical character of David's life. He played, playfully and apologetically, " the Devil's advocate " against the books of Samuel — said that they appeared to him more like a poem than any other part of the Bible ; and enlarged, with the only directly poetic fervour which he showed, on the dramatic character of Saul's fall, the rise of David, the gradual growth of Samuel. I urged the evidently composite character of Genesis. This he at once acknowledged. " It struck me the moment I first read those chapters in Hebrew. There must be two docu- ments. And I mentioned it to Pusey, who seemed to acknowledge it. Would he acknowledge it now " A. P. S. : "I think not." "But then, I seem to myself" (and here the fear seemed to revive) " to see this same compilatory character in the Gospels : not a regular history, but bio- graphical anecdotes strung together." 'I put to him the question how far any speculations on these characteristics of the sacred books, or on inspiration, were barred by the Council of Trent. " Not in the least " ; and he entered on an elaborate argument, with which I need not trouble you, but it appeared to me quite con- vincing— to confirm ex abundanti my view that the Decrees of Trent are on these points as open as the English formu- laries interpreted by the Privy Council. " But then, there is a continuous tradition, which no doubt has been growing fainter and fainter, as to the peculiar sacredness of those 342 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY books, and this tradition is incorporated in what they call the School." (Here again I will not go into the argu- ments and facts adduced.) He recurred once more to the question of the lines of entrenchment round the Gospels, and asked whether a Protestant theologian, who were to establish such a distinction between the Old Testament and the New Testament, would not be hailed as a benefactor in the English Church. A. P. S. : " No ! he would be cursed far more, as having disparaged the O. T., than blessed for having saved the N. T." He urged that these questions were so much more vital to us than to them, because we had nothing to repose on besides the Bible. They had their Church authority, &c. I granted this, but said, "There is the very reason why (if I may so speak) you and your Church are far more bound to meet those questions face to face and fearlessly than we are. You, if any, are called to the task, and you do not help us." " I grant it," he said. " We can do nothing; our 'School' is scattered. We have no theologians left ; the French Revolution spoiled us of our revenues ; we are powerless." "At any rate," I said, " give us breathing-space ; do not help to shut down the trap-door upon us, as is the wish of so many of our excel- lent friends in the Church of England, and prevent the dis- cussion of all those questions which have rushed in upon us." ' This was nearly the last thing that passed. He offered to show me his library. I went up ; it was the complete collection of all his Oxford and Littlemore books — books given him by his pupils, &c. — evidently a great pride and pleasure to him. We passed out through the corridors, passed through the dimly-lighted church out into another cloister, and rejoined Tom Arnold in the reading-room of the College. ' What was the upshot of the whole It left the impression, not of unhappiness or dissatisfaction, but of a totally wasted life, unable to read, glancing at questions which he could not handle, rejoicing in the caution of the Court of Rome, which had (like the Privy Council) kept open question after question that he enumerated as having been brought before it ; also, although without the old bitterness, still the ancient piteous cry, "O my mother! why dost thou leave us all day idle in the market-place " Studiously courteous, studiously calm.' CHAP. XXIV DAILY LIFE AT WESTMINSTER 343 His autumn holiday ended, Stanley found himself fully immersed in the various duties, occupations, and interests which gathered round his literary work, his official position, the pursuit of his religious and ecclesiastical ideals. Stanley's day began with family prayers, consisting of one of the Psalms of the day and a simple prayer, put to- gether by himself from different parts of the Liturgy, containing special petitions adapted to the particular needs of any member of his household, and always, after his wife's death, concluding with the benedictory words of the Prayer for the Church Militant. Breakfast, at nine o'clock, was a meal over which he liked to linger when he had interest- ing guests staying in the house. But he ate scarcely any- thing himself. A hard-boiled egg, from which his wife had peeled the shell, two slices of toast, buttered and cut into small pieces, and tea, satisfied his appetite. Even this morsel he would forget to eat if he became absorbed in the conversation or immersed in the 'Times.' At 10.30 he entered the library with the letters of the day, or more often left a trail of papers behind him, which had to be gathered up by his wife or his secretary. Begging-letters, congratulations, requests for tickets of admission to the Abbey, anathemas, and remonstrances poured in upon him. Once at work, he dictated letter after letter without hesitation, or gave clearly and shortly the necessary hint for the answer. After his correspond- ence was finished he settled down to the lecture, the article, or the sermon which he happened to be writing. Nothing disturbed him while thus occupied. Questions were asked and answered without apparently interrupting him in his task. He always insisted upon a reply being sent to every letter that he received. However offensive the language of the writer might be, he never passed by the communication, but always returned some gentle 344 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1864-70 answer, which now and then, to his great dehght, produced a letter of regret. Luncheon, unless there were visitors, was a frugal meal, often eaten in the library without interruption of his work. At three o'clock he attended the afternoon service in the Abbey, or went out, either for a walk, or, more rarely, for a drive. If he drove, he liked to be set down to walk home. It was always necessary to provide an object for the afternoon's expedition — some friend to be visited, some bit of old London to be explored, some picture or statue to be seen in a gallery. His favourite walks were down the Embankment, to see Mrs. Vaughan at the Temple, or round and about St. James's Park. Sunday was observed with old-fashioned strictness. Except when compelled to do so by some distant preaching engagement, he never used his carriage. Tea, at five o'clock, was his favourite meal — the one meal with which he could not dispense, the only one that he remembered for himself. Between six and eight he read or worked, and no literary work, unless he had a sermon to write or proof-sheets to correct, was ever done after dinner. Barely a year had elapsed since he left Oxford, yet 'Westminster,' as he says, 'daily grows increasingly dear.' His life was fuller and more crowded than it had ever been before ; but his marriage made the increased burden light, for it brought out the strength and dignity of his character, while it restored the lightness and vivacity of earlier times. He drew fresh vigour from the companionship of a wife who made herself one with him to an extraordinary degree, who threw herself heart and soul into all his work and aspirations, whose power of understanding others was as strong as it was quick, and whose sympathy was at once ready and real, wide yet always individual, tender but at the same time intensely practical. Strong in her self- CHAP. XXIV LADV AUGUSTA STANLEY 345 control, no passionate or unguarded word ever escaped her lips. Admitted, as she was, to the most intimate confidence of the Queen, she showed a devotion to her royal mistress and friend which was not less remarkable for its silence than for its fidelity. Uniting the warm heart of a woman to the instinct of a statesman, she laboured to do good to all around her, without a tinge of party spirit, and without a thought of petty interests. Gay, cheerful, keenly enjoy- ing life, she inspired brightness and hope by her presence. Helpful to all with whom she came in contact, full of kindly thought for everyone but herself, she was one of those women on whom her friends knew that they could count, with a certainty that she would not fail. The sim- ple, easy, genuine courtesy with which she received all who came to her house was never omitted from hurry or from preoccupation. The small acts of thoughtful kindness, which are especially grateful to the humble or obscure, were never neglected, and her gracious welcome, extended alike to all ranks — to the uninteresting as well as to the interest- ing— filled the Deanery with an atmosphere of sunshine. The charm of her character was felt over such a circle as few of her sex have ever influenced. Living, as she habitually did, under the influence of high thoughts and motives, it was impossible, in spite of her habitual reserve on such sacred subjects, not to feel sensible of the depth and purpose which lay at the heart of her religion, and of the secret strength of conscience and faith, which revealed itself in the quickness of her inexhaustible sympathy. 'There was a light of the other world' — to quote the words of the late Dean Church — ' shining within, and from time to time disclosing itself in a tone or a look.' Her love of children and devotion to the poor and suffering in West- minster were only natural links in the chain of a life of un- conscious, yet absolute, self-surrender, and of service for 34<5 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1 864-70 others, both great and small. She was not only a good, but a great, woman. From two defects which are sometimes conspicuous in religious women of devoted lives — feeble- ness of mind and strength of prejudice — she was entirely free. Her judgment was as wise, her counsel as sound, as her heart was warm and loving. 'Defects,' as Mr. Locker-Lampson wrote of his sister-in-law, ' she had, which is only to say that she was human ; but these were so kept under, so hidden away, that one could only surmise them.' There remains in Stanley's handwriting a transla- tion of Luther's description of an angel, and there is no doubt to whom he applied the description : ' An angel's is a fine, tender, kind heart, as if we could find a man or woman who had a heart sweet all through, and a gentle will, without subtlety, yet of sound reason. He who has seen such has colours wherewith to picture to himself what an angel is.' Dependent as Stanley always was on female companion- ship, sympathy, and attention, his wife wove herself into the very fabric of his life. There was between them a division of labour like that which was made in all his foreign tours. Everything was to be done for him, and all arrangements made to suit him ; but he was to supply the interests, in- tellectual, moral, historical, geographical, that gave vitality to the expedition. So, generally, he was entirely dependent on his wife in all the minor matters of existence ; but he made the richness of her life by pouring out for her freely all the treasures of his mind and heart. With tender care and solicitude she watched over the health and comfort of one who, even in the most essential points of food and dress, was incapable of taking care of himself. Morning after morning they worked together in the library at the Deanery, the wife seated, with her books, papers, and let- ters a few feet from the spot where he stood at his desk CHAP. XXIV STANLEY'S PERSONAL CHARM 347 accomplishing his daily task of Jewish history, sermon, lecture, article, or correspondence. Always effacing her- self in order to bring him forward. Lady Augusta was only eager that his work, his name, his brilliant gifts, should be known and appreciated. Both were full of energy. Well-mated — perhaps, as Mr. Locker-Lampson says, ' too well-mated ' — each abetted and stimulated the other to fresh exertions, until in her case first, and then in his, exhausted nature yielded to the strain. In the companionship of such a wife all Stanley's social gifts were developed to the utmost. Few persons came into contact with him without being affected by his win- ning charm. Dreaded and disliked as he was, in conse- quence of his opinions, in many homes in England, he had few, if any, personal enemies. But the fascination of his presence is more easily remembered than described. It was blended of physical, mental, and moral characteristics. It lay partly in the slight, shadowy figure, the rare beauty of his smile, the refined alertness of his delicate, expressive face, the well-bred courtesy of his manner ; the rapidity of his quick, eager movements, which suggested that he im(st find, and communicate to others what he sought ; the quaint, endearing dependence which gave an almost pathetic touch to his appearance. It consisted still more in the wide range of his ready sympathies, in the share that he claimed in every healthy form of human interests, in his eagerness to gain and impart knowledge, in his constant endeavour to discover something that was excellent in the most impop- ular of characters or of works. It was heightened by his sunny vivacity, his active imagination, his picturesqueness as a raconteur, his ready command of appropriate anecdote, felicitous illustrations, or apt quotations. Most of all it lay in the charm of purity and simplicity, of nobility of senti- ment and original innocence of soul — in the charm of a 348 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1864-70 chivalrous nature, that was free from vanity or jealousy, full of genuine enthusiasm for all that was good and pure — a nature which harboured nothing mean nor sordid, and which strove for truth and loved justice with a veritable passion. The Deanery of Westminster soon became the centre of an ever-widening circle of social influence. No ill-natured sarcasms or gossip at the expense of others were tolerated within its walls. Master and mistress showed in an un- mistakable manner that, however witty or amusing might be the form of expression, such topics of conversation were uncongenial to the spirit of the house. The doors of the Deanery were open to all comers. In society, as well as in ecclesiastical politics or theological controversy, Stanley habitually made toleration a living principle of conduct. His heart and his lip, his public and private life, were in complete harmony. Under his roof Church dignitaries, who an hour before had denounced their host in Convoca- tion with unmeasured vehemence, learned to love him as a man as heartily as they abhorred him as a theologian. Here gathered foreign ecclesiastics of every country and every shade of Christian creed. Here Nonconformists forgot their bitterness in the social recognition which levelled the barriers of estrangement and ho.stility. Here was softened that rancour which harshness and neglect engender in the conscientious, if mistaken, sufferers from theological conflicts. Here, too, and not least of all, he delighted to gather the artisans and working-men whose intelligent reverence for the Abbey and its precincts it was his own and his wife's greatest pleasure to elicit. The welcome which the Deanery offered to men of widely varying interests and professions was something more than the outcome of an insatiable desire for informa- tion : it was the natural result of Stanley's habit of regard- CHAP. XXIV FOREIGN TOUR IN 1865 349 ing life. Not only was he 'keen as a hound in pursuit of knowledge,' but all men, whatever their special pursuits, appeared to his historical imagination and his instinctive love of man as necessary links in the endless human pro- cession, each bearing some gift, great or small, towards the shrine of the Divine purpose. Hence it was that he could welcome the musician or the man of science, though he felt no personal interest in their arts and occupations, as sin- cerely and as eagerly as the leaders of literature, whom he met on equal terms and as a master of their craft. With the Deanery of Westminster for his home, and in the companionship of his wife, in the midst of new inter- ests and surrounded by increased opportunities of influence, Stanley recovered all his former energy. He so habitually poured out his thoughts into the ear of the public through his books, sermons, addresses, and speeches, th^t scarcely any additional light is thrown upon his opinions by his private letters. But his correspondence with his sister Mary, his cousin, Louisa Stanley, or friends like Hugh Pearson, Professor Jowett, and many others, fills up the outline of his personal history. In August he and his wife left England for their autumn holiday, which opened with a visit to the Queen of Holland at Herzogenbosch. ' Her consideration and her intelligence are,' he says, 'for her position, very remarkable.' The visit ended, they travelled northwards to Amsterdam. The famous galleries are barely mentioned. ' Saw the pictures ' is the scanty notice with which they are dismissed. Broek, ' the cleanest village in Europe ' ; Purmerend and its dairies, 'as clean as a drawing-room'; Schardam, 'with its army of 700 windmills, every one whirling its arms round with incredible activity,' — each in their several ways delighted him. Reaching Utrecht at 7 p.m., after a long day's travelling and sightseeing, he at once sallied forth, without 350 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY his dinner, in search of the Jansenist archbishop, with difficulty found him, and then had an interview with him and his chaplain which lasted till lo p.m. 'The whole position of their Church is so singular,' he says, 'that I am very glad to have seen them, and to have verified with my own eyes that they really existed.' From Holland the travellers made their way to Baden, to stay with Mr. Baillie and his wife, Lady Frances Baillie, the sister of Lady Augusta Stanley. ' The dear children,' he says, ' were all asleep in their little beds when we arrived, but we shall see them to-morrow.' Baden, revisited after thirty years,^ brought back a rush of recollections. ' I was charmed,' he writes to his sister Mary, ' to find myself unexpectedly once again at the foot of the old stone crucifix, commanding a beautiful view over the valley. Do you remember sitting there with me, dearest, and reading that poem in the "Christian Year"^ ending So all God does, if rightly understood, Shall work thy final good ? I recollect thinking it so appropriate to the scene. I read it again when I came home. How much more it now expresses to both of us than then — children as we were ! ' At Baden he met the Queen of Prussia, afterwards the Empress Augusta. ' On Wednesday we went to tea with the Princess Hohenlohe, the Queen of Prussia, alone, coming in the evening. The Queen in public is very stately, full of set phrases. But on this occasion she sate down, and poured forth a continuous flow of questions to me to be answered, listening very attentively to me till I had finished my answer, and then beginning a new question. ' These were some of the questions : — (i) How old is the world ? (2) What is the oldest portion of the human race } (3) What difference is there between the Jews in Palestine and the Jews in Europe, and do they retain their ancient 5 Vol. i. chap. vi. p. 165. Twentieth Sunday after Trinity. CHAP. XXIV THIRLWALL AT SJ: DAV/D'S usages ? (4) Are there any likenesses between the Jewish religion and the Egyptian ? (5) What are the advantages or disadvantages of the Empress Eugenie's plan for re- building the Church of the Holy Sepulchre ? (6) What are the results of Tischendorf's discovery of the Sinaitic MS. } 'Each of these questions, stated at great length and with much precision, certainly gave me a considerable notion of her knowledge and intelligence. When she had finished, she rose and bade us an affectionate farewell. During the whole of the time (I think it must have been nearly two hours) no one spoke except the questioner and the answerer.' From Baden they made their way to Venice, passing through the Dolomites, then an almost unexplored country. Coming back through North Italy, and Switzerland, and the North of France, they reached England at the begin- ning of October 1865. They returned to pay a long- promised visit to Bishop Thirlwall at Abergwili. Stanley's letter describing the place and his pilgrimage to St. David's is written to his cousin, Louisa Stanley, and is dated ' The Mouth of the Winding River, near the Castle of Merlin.' ' You may remember,' he says, ' this enchanted grove. It is described, not quite accurately, in the " Faery Queen," where Merlin left his workmen to build the large wall. It is the spot where, although our Laureate seems not to have known it, the ancient Wizard was lured away by Vivien, and has not since been seen by mortal eyes. It is the spot, however, where, as I think, he still lives in the shape of a new Merlin, a wise old sage, to whom all learning is known, from the most ancient records of Egypt and Nineveh to the last German novel or Dutch poem. To this wizard, by a spell long ago set at work, we have been brought this year, fearing that by postponing the visit to another time we might never come at all. ' He, too, was once under the glamour of a wily one, but that is now broken, and he is himself again. You doubtless remember who that Vivien was — Samuel of Oxford. * It is charming to see him surrounded by his books of every kind, and always with one of them in his hands, going every evening to feed his swans and ducks in the pond at the bottom of the garden. 352 LIFE OF DEAN' STANLEY ' Above the house rises the hill of the old Merlin. From its weird summit you see the Castle or Tower of Merlin, Caer-Merddin (Car-Marthen), which is on some 1 2th of August to be swept away by a flood of the river Towy, which, nevertheless, will spare this secluded nest by the mouth of the VVili (Abergwili) ; and down the valley, on the other side, you behold Grongar Hill (and Dynas Vawr), where Madoc wandered, and the Golden Grove, where another Merlin worked in his retirement at the same great work as this Merlin, "The Liberty of Prophesying." Truly it is a very classic vale, this Vale of the Towy. 'But we had yet a further pilgrimage to make, to the shrine of St. David ; you know that in the Middle Ages it was thought that two pilgrimages to St. David's were worth one to Rome ; and, indeed, well it might be, for even now it is twice as difficult to get there. However, it is now accomplished, and well is it worth the double, double toil and trouble of reaching it. At break of day, before sun- rise, we started from Haverford West — it was the last of our light sunshiny days — up hill and down steep dales, till at length, in the wilderness, we reached the sacred city. Still, however, the sacred precinct lay concealed till we came to the crest of the beacon where it lies hid. ' There was the deep slope of the churchyard from which, if you take a piece of turf, and stand with it on the seashore, you will see the Green Island of the Blessed. (Herewith is a tuft of its grass.) There was the long pile of the cathedral where lies St. David, and Edmund Tudor, father of Henry VH., and our old friend Giraldus, and Silvester the Pilgrim, whose medicinal art could not ward off death. There were the seven sisters, each as ugly as the others. There is the tower which disturbed the dreams of Gilbert Scott. And there is the palace built by Bishop Gower, with a prospect beautiful to behold, and its halls occupied by Bishop Anselm, who with its land portioned out, they say, his five daughters in wedlock to five bishops. And there is the little stream of the Allan, across which lay the stone which cracked itself by speaking when once a corpse passed over it, and over which Henry H. boldly stepped, though warned that he would be slain in doing so. ' And far away we struggled, through wind and sun, to St. David's Head. What rocks ! what creeks ! what cir- cles ! what ramparts ! what a cromlech ! what a view ! — CHAP. XXIV DEATH OF LORD PALMERSTON 353 far away where St. Patrick saw the vision of his future labours in Ireland. And on the other side, above that pur- ple cave, is the ruined chapel of the poor nun — you know her well, I doubt not, the mother of St. David — who there, in the midst of storm and thunder, gave birth to the babe that ought never to have been born ; and close by is her well, still used, and visited on her day, the 2nd of March ; and out of it I picked these leaves, and from its side this fern.' From St. David's he travelled to Scotland, whence he was recalled by the intelligence of the death of Lord Palmerston. He hurried back for the funeral, which was held in Westminster Abbey on October 27th, 1865. 'The spectacle,' he says, 'was very grand — the ten Cabinet Ministers, so different each from each, standing by the open vault, Lord Russell in advance of the rest, filled with unutterable thoughts ; and then, as the service drew to an end, came "the despairing storm," which wrapped us all in one dark fu- neral pall.' The sermon," which he preached on the Sunday follow- ing the funeral, was 'a very difficult and delicate task. The occasion was greater than the man.' But the tribute which he paid to the memory of the deceased statesman was singularly just. In him he saw an embodiment of that power of rising above party spirit which he himself always regarded as the cure for religious strife. The thought that guided Lord Palmerston's public life was his unfailing concern for the greatness of England. ' He was,' he said, 'an Englishman even to excess. It was England, rather than any special party in England — it was the honour and interests of England, rather than even the Constitu- tion, or the State, or the Church of England, that fired his imagination, and stimulated his efforts, and secured his fame. To England, and to no lesser interest, the vast ' ' Lord Palmerston ' (^Sermons on Special Occasions). VOL. II A A 354 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1866 length of that laborious life, with whatsoever shortcomings, was in all simplicity and faithfulness devoted.' The autumn holiday of 1866 began with a series of visits in France, and ended with Florence and Rome. ' Arthur,' writes Lady Augusta to her sister-in-law from Florence, ' was rather low at the prospect of five days in this city of pictures, but got over it better than he ex- pected.' 'The only fresh place,' he tells his sister, ' which I saw was, I think, " Vallombrosa." ' He sends a long description of the spot to his cousin, Louisa Stanley : ' Here is the spot from which a letter must be begun to you. Here are the "autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades, high overarch'd, imbower." ^ Do you not think that Milton's visit to Florence is one of the most poetical incidents of his life Then and there he met the blind old Galileo, suffering from the effects of the Inquisition, "The Tuscan Artist," who from the " top of Fiesole " explored the moon, — himself before he wrote those lines to become blind also. And then it was that he made that same journey to Vallombrosa which we have now made, and of which the recollection must have been treasured up in his mind, through all the thirty years of civil war, and poverty, and blindness, till it came out in these verses, which are, as you shall hear, as exact as if he had written them on the spot to-day. 'It was with us, as with him, on an "autumnal" day that the peasants on one of the " Etrurian Mountains," who were feeding, Gurth-like, their swine under the shade of the chestnut-trees, or beating down the chestnuts from the spreading branches, saw a man and woman walking up the stony path which now, as doubtless in Milton's time, leads from the foot of the hill to the Convent. These were your cousins Arthur and Augusta ; we left our car- riage at a small hamlet, and made this delightful walk of two hours in the cool of a beautiful evening. ' Every feature of the scene agrees. The " Etrurian shades," which give the name to the " Valley of Shades " * Paradise Lost, i. 302. CHAP. XXIV VALLOMBROSA 355 (Vallis Umbrosa), are, first, wide glades of chestnuts, suc- ceeded by a dark belt of pines, above which again, crowning the crest of the hill, brown and purple with the tints of autumn, is a forest of beech. The "leaves" are chiefly from the chestnuts, " strewn " about in every direction, not merely from the October winds, but from the havoc of the chestnut-gatherers, of whom I have just spoken. They are "strewn" on the "brooks," which are an essential characteristic of the place ; indeed, its first name was "Acqua Bella." Its springs and rivulets burst forth in every little glen, falling in cascades, whose murmur must have murmured on in Milton's ears as it murmured in ours. And down on these clear rills and polished stone were showered the falling leaves from right and left. " High overarch'd" and most deeply " imbowered " are the tall pines, shooting up like the columns of endless naves and transepts ; and through these we reached the Convent, which lies between them and the purple crown of beeches. ' As you look from Florence you can just see a white spot, like a star in the night, gleaming from the dark bosom of the mountains ; that is the upper convent, " the Paradi- sino," as it is called, perched on a craggy rock overlooking the whole plain of the Arno ; the dome of Florence Cathedral just visible, and the range of the Carrara hills rising beyond. The lower and larger convent is a huge modern building, of the date of 1637. This or 1638 is the very year of Milton's visit ; he must have arrived just at the moment of its completion, and slept in the very apartments still used for travellers. Some kind soul has put there, in memory of him, a photograph of the fallen Angels in the " Paradise Lost." ' But, alas for Vallombrosa ! it was a melancholy day for the poor monks when we arrived : it was the last day of their possession. As we toiled up the last ascent through the pine-forest, we met a cavalcade coming down the hill : a grand dignitary in front, on horseback — others, some on horses, some drawn in baskets by huge white oxen. These, as we learned on reaching the Convent, were the Prior and the Government officers, to whom he had just made over the keys and the title-deeds of the monastery, and we found only three or four left to take charge of the buildings for the next few weeks, before their final departure. They were sadly cast down ; they had been there twenty-five or 356 UFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1 866 twenty-eight years, and now had to retire on their little pensions, and leave the beautiful haunts of so many years. It quite grieved our hearts to see them and think of them. ' So, I suppose, departed the monks of Glastonbury and Westminster 300 years ago. But Westminster has still remained with something worthy of its great name ; and Vallombrosa will in a few years be nothing but a name. I could not help thinking whether our turn would ever come again, and Westminster also be a desert. " Light be the hand of ruin laid ! " ' It was at Florence that, in October 1866, Stanley read in ' Galignani ' the news of Bishop Cotton's death ^ ; and it was from Florence that he sent to the ' Times ' an obituary notice of his friend. He carried with him, as he said, 'a heavy burden ' when he left Florence for Rome. ' The blank, the marvel, remain the same. Only, how rapidly one becomes familiar with an event which at first seemed so incredible ! ' Rome was reached in the third week of October 1866. The Imperial City exercised over him all its old fascination, and his pleasure was doubled, not only by the companionship of his wife, but by the society of Mr. Gladstone. His second letter to his sister is written from '51 Piazza di Spagna.' 'We have moved here,' he begins, 'from our hotel. The Gladstones were so kindly urgent about it, and the advantages of the situation so great, that we determined to try the experiment, and it completely answers. They are on the second, we on the third, floor. The dining-room is on the third floor, and we have hitherto always dined together. This is the only time when we necessarily meet ; but very pleasant it is. He is so ex- tremely enjoying his liberty.' His own enjoyment was extreme. ' The charm of Rome' seemed to him 'greater than ever.' Time passed ^ See p. 252. * CHAP. XXIV ROME IN 1866 357 too rapidly in exploring every point of interest — the Cat- acombs with Rossi, the excavations on the Palatine with Rosa, the Roman churches and Albano with ' the Oxford antiquary, Parker.' ' Another week flown, and only one more left ! ' he writes on November 5th. 'You can under- stand how we count each day that remains.' In Monsignor Nardi he made a new and delightful acquaintance. ' He is one of the most curious persons I ever fell in with — so very acute, so very amusing, such a centre of extraordinary stories. I doubt whether any such person could exist out of Rome.' Meanwhile the interest of the political situation increased every day. It was doubtful whether the Pope would remain at the Vatican if the French troops were withdrawn. The alarm of the high Papal party, and the hopes of the Italian nationalists, both combined to indicate the point to which they thought affairs would converge if the French soldiers left. ' It is very hard,' writes Lady Augusta as the time for their departure drew near, ' on Arthur, having to leave Rome at this moment, for he dearly loves a crisis.' On the Festival of All Souls' Day (November 2nd) he with difficulty obtained admission into the Sistine Chapel. ' I had,' he writes, 'adopted Hohl's advice' (the courier), 'and converted my frock-coat into a "frac noir " ; but nothing would induce the guards to let me in, not even all the solicitations of Nardi. So I went back with my American to the Hotel d'Angleterre, where he caught a friend who lent me his coat — much too large, but the right cut — which at once enabled me to get in. ' Presently Gladstone came with Sir Stephen Glynne. Sir Stephen was properly dressed, and passed. But Glad- stone was in the same condition as I had been, and not all his arguments in his best Italian would induce the guards to concede the point. "We have," they said, "just refused to admit Lord Stanley on the same grounds." So he re- 358 LTFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1866 mained outside till two cardinals of his acquaintance, pass- ing by, took him in.' The interest of the visit to Rome culminated in a private interview with Pope Pius IX. Once before (in 1863), in company with Hugh Pearson, he had had a similar inter- view. On that occasion the Pope resisted ' with dignified courtesy any attempt to kiss his hand, and pressed us down upon the chairs, where we sate during the colloquy. Something had been said to him by Mon- signor Talbot, who introduced us, about my having been with the Prince of Wales to the East, and this caused him to speak of the Royal Family of England. ' It was remarkable that he never could remember the title or name of the Prince of Wales. He called him Prince George, and after one or two futile attempts I dropped the efTort to set him right, and spoke always of the Prince Royal of England. He spoke of the Queen, and said that she had lately had a great misfortune in being upset out of her carriage in the Highlands. I replied, " Yes ; but her chief misfortune has been that she has lately lost her ex- cellent husband." "Ah, yes!" he said, "that may be, but nevertheless it is a great misfortune to be upset out of your carriage." ' He spoke also of Oxford, and described, on the name being mentioned to him, Faber. I do not think any of the other Oxford names were familiar to him. I mentioned Samuel Wilberforce, the Bishop. But he only said, " Ah ! Wilberforce ! he is one of the Oxford Professors." The Bishop, on hearing this afterwards, was extremely indig- nant, and said, " It shows the ignorance of the man." He finally said, " You know Pusey When you meet him, give him this message from me — that I compare him to a bell, which always sounds to invite the faithful to Church, and itself always remains outside." ' On the occasion of the second interview with the Pope, in 1866, Stanley was accompanied by Sir Stephen Glynne. ' I went in full decanal costume. He observed and took hold of the cassock which I wore. He said, " I have seen something of this kind before. It is the same as an Eng- CHAP. XXIV INTERVIEW WITH PIO NO NO 359 lish clergyman once wore in coming to see me. His name was Thompson." We spent one or two minutes in en- deavouring" to ascertain who Thompson could be. It turned out to be Townsend, who had come in former years on a mission for converting the Pope. The Pope said, with shouts of laughter, " And what do you suppose he came to do.-* — the most ridiculous thing in the world, to attempt the fusion of the two Churches. What nonsense ! As if in matters of faith you could make exchanges. In matters of politics and commerce you can subtract and make ex- changes, but in matters of religion, in matters of the Seven Sacraments, to say ' Take five and leave two ' — quite ridiculous ! " ' He also spoke of the difficulty of understanding Townsend's Latin. Townsend, in fact, had, as we after- wards learnt, insisted on speaking in Latin with the English pronunciation, so that he said, " Sancte Pater," which the Pope understood to be " Sancte Peter," and was much gratified, but at the same time perplexed. He said, " It is impossible to understand the pronunciation. We pro- nounce it in this way" — and he then repeated the first two lines of the "^Eneid." ' When we got up to go away, and I knelt to kiss his hand, he again dwelt on the fact that the cassock was the same which he had seen worn by " Thompson " ; and so we parted.' Stanley's only dream which he thought worthy of record was, it may be added, that he was himself elected Pope. He thus tells the dream : 'The intelligence of my election was communicated to me as a secret not to be known till the next day. My immediate difficulty was, what name I should take. I thought that Paul would be suitable, as he was the British 'Apostle. But then the last Paul was Paul V. I should be Paul VI. ; and then there was that ill-omened " Six " which, as the Latin distich records, has ever been the ruin of Rome. ' In this mind I went on, after asking Hugh Pearson, to the Athenaeum. I there met Jacobson, the Bishop of Chester. I knew by the turn of his mouth that he guessed my secret. " Why not take the name of Gulielmus .'' " (his 36o LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1 866 own name). I turned. I wrapt myself in the nearest ap- proach that I could find to the great-coat which I had left behind at the Athenaeum. It was the white blanket of the bed. I walked along the dusty Flaminian Way, and as I proceeded met many groups of cardinals. It seemed to me that this blanket so nearly resembled the white flannel gown which the Pope usually wears, that the secret would be known before its publication in the "Times" the next day, and in that agony I woke.' * It was a terrible wrench leaving Rome,' writes Stanley to his sister (November I2th, 1866) on his way back to England. ' It reminded me of that sudden parting in 1852.^*^ Such extreme enjoyment abruptly ceasing.' Stopping for a few days in Paris, he met Dupanloup, the Bishop of Orleans. ' He was very agreeable, different from what I had expected — more gentle, less animated. I asked him about Pusey's visit. He said that he had arrived at Orleans at the moment when the Bishop was giving a party of thirty — to the Prefect, the Mayor, the officers, &c., &c. Pusey made himself most agreeable to them all. " Si je puis me servir d'un mot mondain, il a eu un grand succ^s." He was most interested when I told him that it was probably the first dinner-party at which Pusey had been for twenty years.' The year 1867 — the year of the Sultan's visit to England and of the French Exhibition — found Stanley ' suffering from a foolish, harmless, but troublesome malady, which I have not had since I was a child — the shingles.' In March the Pan-Anglican Synod was dis- cussed. ' You will see,' he writes, ' that I have given Convocation my mind upon the subject, which is afar more dangerous affair than all the green and red garments that ever were worn.' Of the Sultan, who visited England in the summer, Stanley saw little. It was expected that he 1° See Vol. i. chap. viii. p. 438. CHAP. XXIV THE RITUAL COMMISSION 361 would visit Westminster Abbey, and an elaborate pro- gramme was prepared for his reception ; but he never came. * My own views,' says Stanley, ' of the Grand Turk were limited to a tolerably near sight of him as he drove in through the Horse Guards on the day of his arrival, as he drove out through the same on this (July 2 1st, 1867), the day of his departure, and a very distant survey of him at the Crystal Palace. I had, you know, been presented to him at Constantinople in 1862. The contrast was certainly striking enough between the impassable statue, which only moved to turn away from the eyes which were bowed to his, and the inquisitive traveller, himself bowing right and left, and gazing with all his eyes at the strange world around him.' The autumn holiday was delayed to a somewhat later date than usual by the work of the Ritual Commission. 'The Commission,' he writes in August 1867 to Henry de Bunsen, ' is extremely interesting to me, and may eventually be fruitful of most important results. It is a wonderful school for patience and statesmanship ; almost every single state- ment about it that has appeared in the newspapers is false.' To his pertinacity was mainly due the curious dis- covery of the original copy of the Prayer Book, the MS. volume appended to, and forming part of, the Act of Uni- formity, and the original of the Sealed Books deposited in the various cathedrals. The volume had been lost since 1825. It was discovered, at the end of the summer of 1867, in a closet in the chief clerk's office in the House of Lords. In a letter to the Rev. J. N. Simpkinson, Stanley thus describes the finding of the volume : ' It had been removed there when the Acts of Parlia- ment were, in 1864, transferred from the ancient Parliament Office, or Jewel House, in the precincts of the Abbey — an old square tower visible, and visible only, from our college garden — to the Victoria Tower, where they are now de- posited. 362 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY ' In searching for it, or rather for the last footsteps of it, in these two towers I put the officers of the House of Lords on the scent, which, to my great surprise, led to its almost immediate recovery. ' It is exceedingly curious, and will, I expect, when care- fully examined, throw new light on that unfortunate Set- tlement of 1662. The rubric on Ornaments, which is not in the Irish Prayer Book, is (unfortunately) in the original MS. of the English.' When at length he left England, France was once more the scene of the holiday, which began with a visit to Paris and to the Exhibition. Stanley and his wife were staying with Madame Mohl, and at her house met Thiers for the first time. 'The conversation turned almost entirely upon the alleged discovery by M. Chasles of the correspondence between Pascal and Newton asserting that the theory of gravitation was due to the French, and not to the English, philosopher. Thiers was entirely persuaded of the truth of this fiction. He was at this time devoted to astronomy, and he took up this theory with the greatest animation.' On one other occasion Stanley saw Thiers. It was after the Commune, and the place was the Theatre at Ver- sailles, where the Assembly then sat. The question before the House was the return of the Orleans Princes. ' It was a striking scene, because I could not help re- membering that this was the theatre in which the French Guards held their banquet on the eve of the 6th of October in the great French revolution, when the ladies of the Court appeared in the boxes, and threw down white cock- ades amongst them, which the Guards put on, amid the song of " O Richard ! O mon roi ! I'univers t'abandonne ! " ' Thiers spoke in favour of the return in a low voice though clear. The only words that I remember were these : — "I have always been in favour of a constitutional monarchy. My maxim has been, ' He who does not wish to cross the Atlantic must first cross the British Channel ' " ; " but this," he went on to say, "is for the time postponed." ' CHAP. XXIV THIERS 363 Stanley was fond of collecting anecdotes about Thiers. From the Duchess of Colonna he heard the following con- versation : "'I believe," said Thiers, "in God, in a future exist- ence, and in our reunion with those we have loved. As for the retribution to the bad — after all, nous nc sommcs pas ni^chants — I leave that to the good God. I know that death cannot be far off. I will endeavour, to use a fine phrase of Bossuet in speaking of Henrietta Maria, to be 'doux envers la mort.' " ' Another friend, the late M. Scherer, met Thiers at an evening party. He followed Grevy, Sch6rer, and others to the door, and talked as he sat on the arm of a chair. ' Grevy was complaining, after his manner, of the ways of Providence. Thiers protested. "Quant au bon Dieu, je suis toujours ministeriel." ("When it is a question of the good God, I am always on the side of the Government.") ' Thiers was always opposed to civil interments. " When I am taken to Notre Dame de Lorette I desire to have a quantity of Holy Water, a great quantity of Holy Water. I am of the religion of Henri Quatre." When Pressens6 went to him with a deputation of Protestant ministers, and spoke incidentally of the greatness of Calvin, he said, "Ah, no ! Calvin may have been a distinguished scholar, but your really great man was Henri Quatre. To become a Catholic and remain a Protestant — that is the real thing for mankind." ' After leaving Paris, Stanley travelled through Auvergne by Bourges to Vienne, Orange, and Avignon. Thence he made his way by Montpellier and Carcassonne to the Pyre- nees, and thence to Biarritz. The journey was full of reminiscences of former tours, but everywhere he found some new object of interest which he had missed before. At Clermont he read everything that he could find which bore on the site of the battle of Gergovia. ' From a reading-room in the town I borrowed " Caesar's Commentaries," the works of Sidonius Apollinaris, first 364 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1867 Bishop of Auvergne, and five pamphlets on the site of Gergovia ; for it was this ancient fortress of the Gauls, which alone held out against Caesar, that we sought. ' It is a vast oblong plateau, running out from amongst the volcanoes into the level plain, with sides and front pre- cipitous, in part broken into terraces, on which the various Gaulish tribes were arrayed round their chief, Vercinget- orix, who was termed by our prosaic driver, Verge kis- torique, and by a poetic little shepherd-boy on the heights guarding his single goat, St. Victorix. With the help of these two guides, of Cassar, and of the five French anti- quaries, we contrived to identify the scene of the siege, the false attack, the real attack, and the walls of the ancient city. The little shepherd did what he could to illustrate Caesar by pointing out to us a mediaeval tower in which the Romans had fired pistols up the chimney, and a breach in the wall by which a woman had indicated an entrance by showing them a pig eating corn on the steps. The commanding position, the immense horizon, make this as fine a stage for the glory of St. Victorix as Clermont is for Pope Urban and The Hermit.' At Avignon Stanley and his wife went to call on John Stuart Mill, * first going to the cemetery, to see his wife's tomb. It was beautifully kept in order, with a very remarkable epi- taph upon her by himself, which ends thus : " Were there but a few hearts and intellects like hers this Earth would already become the hoped-for Heaven." We found him alone, reading. We had a long conversation. I might have met him many times in London and never have had such an opportunity ; it was extremely interesting in every way, and not the least so from the locality.' In the middle of November 1867 Stanley returned to London. There he remained till the following August. Meanwhile the position of the Irish Church had become a burning question. Determined to study the state of affairs on the spot, he spent the first portion of his holi- day in Ireland. ' Rarely,' he writes, CHAP. XXIV TOUR IN IRELAND 365 ' have I enjoyed a tour more. The novelty, the interest of the peculiar juncture, the exceeding entertainment afforded, the unbounded kindness of the people, the extraordinary beauty and charm of peculiar places — Cashel, Killarney, Valentia, Connemara, Clonmacnoise, Donegal, Derry, the Antrim coast, the Boyne — have all made it a vision indeed of a Green Island. I seem to have formed a hundred new- friendships and created a hundred new interests. And in the distant past, St. Patrick and St. Columba, the Ormondes and the Geraldines, have started into new life. And oh ! what a spot is Derry, and how enchanting are those ro- mantic groups of ruined churches, and carved crosses, and round towers, seen here, and nowhere else ! The common people are very delightful — so peaceful, so obliging, so very amusing. 'The Irish Church Question is not much discussed, but it gives much zest to all that I see and hear ; and when I read the election speeches in the newspapers I think, with a sigh, how very little the speakers know of the country, or of the state of things of which they talk — -either for or against.' From Ireland he was recalled by the news of the death of Dean Milman. On September 28th, 1868, he writes to Louisa Stanley, telling her that he intends to return for the funeral in St. Paul's Cathedral. ' You know,' he says, 'how I loved the dear old Dean, and how much I valued his long, unvarying kindness. It has been a great pleasure to me that I saw him so lately ; as always, with the sense that it might be for the last time ; as always, with the hope that the extraordinary vitality which he showed might still battle with the advance of age, and keep him yet awhile amongst us. Bitterly, deeply as I mourn for his loss, publicly and privately, I cannot but feel that so to depart, with his eye not dimmed nor his natural force abated, was a blessing such as one always in prospect and retrospect rejoices to think of for those we love. ' How very far back that closed chapter takes us ! What a host of famous memories ! What a defence and bulwark of all that was just and right! Dear, sacred old sage of other days — sacred with our own dearest recollections — there is no like of him left.' 366 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1868 After the funeral he and his wife left England for Germany. Passing through Paris in the first week of October 1868, they found French society absorbed in the Spanish question. M. Prevost-Paradol, whom they met at Madame Mohl's house, described the scene that he had witnessed on September 30th, at the station at Biarritz, when Queen Isabella arrived there in flight from Spain :^ ' Presently a train going towards Madrid, which had been shunted to allow of the Royal train coming in, passed. It was full of Spanish refugees returning. They all put their heads out of the windows and hooted at the Queen. Isabella looked at them fiercely and sadly, but with con- summate dignity — and so parted from her subjects. What a scene ! ' At Meaux they halted to see the cathedral of Bossuet. The grave of the ' Eagle of Meaux ' had been recently opened, in order to ascertain the exact spot in which he was buried. The skeleton still remained perfect, and Stanley, to his great delight, was told that the great French preacher was no taller than himself. Baden-Baden was the destination of the travellers, and they arrived there at a moment when the Prussian Royal Family had assembled for the birthday of the Crown Prince. Stanley and his wife dined with the Royal party, ' certainly a most intelligent and encouraging group in these days of depressed Royalty.' ' The Queen of Prussia was not quite so full of ques- tioning as before, but with more conversation of her own that was very curious. The King is a tall, soldierlike old man, speaking only French and German. The Crown Prince looks quite worthy of the future before him — so natural, so eager, such an open, handsome countenance. The Crown Princess, as full of genius and of power as when I saw her three years ago. " Ah ! " she said, " how much ^1 Disgusted at the corrupt administration of the Government, a pronuncia- nteuto by Prim and Topete was accepted by the country at Cadiz. Queen Isa- bella fled to France, and there resigned in favour of her son, Alphonso XII. ^ The late Emperor Frederick. CHAP. XXIV DEBATES ON IRISH CHURCH 367 has passed in those three years ! " Her eyes filled with tears at the thought of her lost child. ' On the Crown Prince's birthday we went to the Neue Schloss to pay our respects. Amongst his presents was a picture of the meeting between him and his father after the battle of Sadowa, painted by an artist who had been there. He showed it to us himself, and pointed out the different generals, " each exactly in the position in which they were at the moment." Moltke, the chief adviser of the whole campaign and battle, is a very retiring, modest, pale, slender man, of very few words.' Already war was in the air. ' There is,' says Stanley, ' a good deal of uneasiness about war with France, which preoccupies everyone.' 'The conversation,' he adds in another letter, ' runs on the situation of Prussia in Germany. It is curious to read the speeches in England describing "all Europe as watching the decision of the Irish Church Question," and then to find that in France and Germany it is the last thing thought of, the Spanish Revolution in the one, the Prussian ascendency in the other, occupying all men's minds.' Throughout the first six months of 1869 Stanley fol- lowed, with mingled anxiety and disappointment, the prog- ress of the debates in Parliament on the Irish Church. The Upper House declared itself in favour of his favourite scheme of concurrent endowment, and on other points in the Bill it strongly opposed the measure passed by the House of Commons. In July 1869 a compromise was effected which secured the passing of the Irish Church Act, and Stanley turned, with undivided interest, to watch the progress of the crisis in the Church of Rome. For the last ten years the centralising movement had gathered strength among Roman Catholics. The tide, which was setting irresi.stibly in favour of Ultramontanism, reached its height when Pope Pius IX. formally summoned tlie The residence of the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Baden. 368 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1869 Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church to meet in a Council to be held at Rome on December 8th, 1869. Stanley determined to make Rome the goal of his autumn expedition. If his duties at Westminster prevented his presence at the opening of the Council, he hoped that he might at least witness the gathering of the Bishops. With this object, after a short tour in Northumberland, along the Roman Wall, he left England in October 1869. The Council was a picturesque and striking event, which strongly appealed to his historical imagination. But all his sympathies were enlisted on the side of those who resisted the Ultramontane movement, of which it was the outcome. He would have been inconsistent with him- self if he had not agreed with Dollinger and Friedrich, with Montalembert and Albert de Broglie, with Newman and Lord Acton, with the ' Correspondant ' and the ' Home and Foreign Review,' rather than with Veuillot and the ' Univers,' or with Manning, Ward, and the ' Dublin Re- view.' In two articles which he contributed to the 'Edin- burgh Review' in 1869^* and 1871^^ he discusses the difficulties that confronted the Council and the results that it had effected. Both articles are full of the princi- ples which he was never weary of enforcing. He dwells upon the exclusion of the lay element from the Council as a deviation from precedent which was fatal to its claim to be CEcumenical. 'Such a change,' he says, 'amounts to a revolution.' And the change was, in his opinion, 'not ennobling, but degrading, to the cause of the Church and of the religion which it professes to serve. It is the result of that double tendency by which, on the one hand, the higher powers and intelligences, to which Providence has committed the guidance of human affairs, are tempted to hold aloof from the course of religious development, and so to hand it over, unchecked, and without control or " October 1869. 1^ July 1 87 1. CHAP. XXIV THE (ECUMENICAL COUNCIL 369 Stimulus, to the ecclesiastical, monastic, or puritanical bias, which, on the other hand, is always striving to assert its exclusive sway.' The two heroes of the Council were, in his opinion, Dr. Dollinger and Pere Hyacinthe. They were left in a position which seemed to him, perhaps from his own experience, difficult, but not untenable. ' They are not more at variance with the usages or decrees of Pope or Council than many a devout Catholic was in the Middle Ages, or in Austria under the rule of Joseph II., or in France under the influence of Gallicanism. To maintain the rights and discharge the duties of a Reformer within a national or ancient Church is a far more arduous task than to found a Puritan or a Free- thinking sect ; but it is, partly on that very account, far more fruitful, far more Christian.' When Stanley reached Paris, on his way to Rome, in October 1869, Pere Hyacinthe, the Superior of the Car- melite Convent at Passy, and the preacher of the eloquent Advent sermons at Notre Dame, had already published his protest against the 'doctrines and practices which are called Roman, but are not Christian.' On the day on which he had been ordered to return to his convent he left France, and at the time of Stanley's arrival in Paris he was under sentence of excommunication, and on his way to America. Not to see Pere Hyacinthe was a deep disappointment to Stanley. But, by a long journey, he succeeded in seeing Dr. Dollinger at Munich. ' By a forced march,' he writes on October 9th, 1869, ' we reached Munich. I telegraphed to Dollinger to say that I was coming, and this morning he came to see me before I was up, being in bed with a sick-headache. He stayed some time, and at 5.30 p.m. I was well enough to go to dine with him at 11 Friihlingstrasse. It was most interesting to hear his expectations of the Council. I 1*" September 20th, 1869. VOL. II BB 370 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1869 never could have got so much out of him in- any other way.' TravelUng from Munich by Innspruck and the Brenner to Rome, Stanley found that the preparations for the Council had hardly begun. An expedition to Naples occupied a week, and he then returned to Rome, ' calcu- lating,' as he tells his sister, ' on a delightful three weeks, when lo ! a summons from the Archbishop quite unexpectedly arrived, demanding my presence in England for a meeting of the Ritual Com- mission. Most reluctantly we felt obliged to come back. We had six most interesting days in Rome, seeing the first arrivals of the Bishops.' ' I was deeply vexed,' he writes to Henry de Bunsen, ' to leave Rome before the Council began. But still I feel that I know enough to be able to follow the accounts with deep interest.' During his absence in Italy two appointments were made in which he was keenly interested — that of Dr. Temple to the Bishopric of Exeter, and that of Dr. Bright to the Chair of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford vacated by the death of Professor Shirley. The appointment of Dr. Temple was officially announced early in October 1869. ' I am quite astounded,' he writes to his sister from Rome, ' at the opposition to Temple. I consider it so far the best appointment, and so inevitable, if Gladstone was to make any Liberal bishops, that I cannot conceive anyone being surprised.' The appointment was peculiarly pleasing to Stanley, on personal as well as other grounds. He always watched the career of his friends with the warmest interest. ' You know,' he wrote to Professor Jowett, when congratulating him on his election to the Mastership of Balliol College in CHAF. XXIV THE NEW BISHOP OF EXETER 37 1 1870, 'that I live and feed on the public advancement of my friends ' ; and it was in the same spirit that he rejoiced in the elevation of Dr. Temple. At the same time, the appointment relieved him from the fear of being himself offered a bishopric. ' If Oxford,' he writes to Professor Jowett, ' had been offered, I should certainly have taken it. But that having passed away, I do not think myself bound, at least for the present, to accept any ordinary see.' ' My dear mother,' he adds, in another letter to the same friend, 'rejoiced after my article on "Essays and Reviews" that it would make my removal to a bishopric impossible. I rejoiced, in like manner, after the affair of the Irish Church. I do not know which of the two most assisted. I almost think the latter.' Dr. Temple was consecrated at Westminster Abbey on St. Thomas's Day (December 21st), 1869. The opposition to the appointment, though not formidable in point of extent, had been very determined. ' Pusey,' writes Stanley, 'has gone so far as to assert that the choice was the most frightful enormity that has ever been perpetrated by a Prime Minister.' Every stage of the appointment had been contested. The crisis was darkened by the sudden and alarming ill- ness of Archbishop Tait. The Bishops, for the most part, shrank from joining in the consecration. Even when the Bishop of London (Jackson), the Bishop of Ely (Harold Browne), and the Bishop of St. David's (Thirlwall), had consented to take part in the ceremony, it was feared that the service in Westminster Abbey might be interrupted, and Stanley had made special preparations for the forcible ejec- tion of anyone who disturbed the proceedings. When the K I! 2 372 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1869 three Bishops met in the Jerusalem Chamber before the ceremony, Dr. Temple and Stanley being present, * eight or ten protests were handed in to the Bishop of London. He, with a firmness and common-sense that did him great honour, considering the little sympathy that he entertained for Dr. Temple's theological views, resisted them all, on the ground of their utter contrariety to the law of the land. It was a long delay, and the congregation in the Abbey, crowded to excess, was wondering what could be the cause. When we entered, the darkness was something beyond all precedent. It was difficult, even with all the lights in the Abbey, to discern one person from another ; and so, in the language of a High Church news- paper, "on that darkest day in the whole year was perpe- trated the darkest crime which had been perpetrated in the English Church." ' The other appointment which had taken place during his absence from England was that of the Rev. W. Bright to the Professorship of Ecclesiastical History which Stanley himself had formerly held at Oxford. He wrote to the newly-appointed Professor a warm letter of congratulation. ' Your letter,' replies Dr. Bright on November 14th, 1869, * was delivered to me while I was giving a college lecture. If I had opened and read it at once, I doubt whether I should have been able to go on. 'There are some occasions on which words of thanks seem really too weak and inexpressive. This, to me, is one of them. 'That my "High Church" friends should warmly con- gratulate me was pleasant enough, but natural enough. I have been, in one way, more deeply touched by the kind- ness of several Liberals here, who, while they must have desired a different appointment, have felt able to give me a cordial expression of their good-will. If this kindness, shown by persons with whom I had no special associations reaching far back into the past, gave me vivid and unex- pected pleasure, what must it be to me to possess such a letter as this of yours Believe me that I feel much more than I can write in the way of gratitude for such a greeting. ' I received a most kind letter from the Bishop of Lon- CHAP. XXIV LETTER FROM DR. BRIGHT 373 don, which I thought I could best acknowledge by saying to him, as I would now say to you, that, by God's help, I would never forget to promote, as far as I can, in those who may read this great subject with me a spirit of charity and justice. I will never encourage — I will always discourage the temper of hard and unfair partisanship which would sacrifice truthfulness to the supposed interests of a cause. These are lessons which I learned from Arnold at Rugby, and from you at O.xford, which I shall hope and strive to remember as earnestly as any " Broad Churchman " could ; and which, perhaps, have a special value and significance for a person occupying a different standpoint, because they manifestly transcend all diversities of ecclesiastical or theological opinion between those who worship Him Who is Truth and Love. ' I never can forget what I owe to you, let such diversi- ties be what they will. And I shall, if possible, have a yet livelier and more continuous recollection of it when I re- move (as I suppose I shall do next spring) to the house that once was yours.' Another letter that Stanley received four years before, from a leader whose theological views were opposed to his own and to those of Dr. Bright, may be quoted here. It gives a further proof of the kindly feeling with which he was regarded by men who were most strongly opposed to him in their opinions. The Rev. A. W. Thorold (after- wards Bishop of Rochester, and now Bishop of Winchester) wrote to him in December 1864, fresh from a re-reading of ' Arnold's Life.' ' I had not read it,' he says, 'for twenty years; in fact, not since the College days, when hardly an afternoon passed without my seeing you, and my earnest wishing to know you, and my envying the undergraduates who joined you in your walks, and whom you treated as if you felt them friends. 'Mr. Dean, I am but a simple parish priest, while you are the Queen's friend, and the one man who, more than any other in these times, is influencing the thought and feeling of the rising generation ; and therefore I am almost afraid of taking a liberty with you in what a full heart presses me to pour out. 374 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY ' But I do not want you to think because in some things (and those of such great moment that depth of convic- tion, and liberty, and courage are indispensable when we come across them) I, and others with whom I am in the habit of acting, take opposite ground to you, and do and teach as conscience bids us, that therefore we are incapable of appreciating your motives, or respecting, and even esteeming you for those gifts and qualities which make men truly great. 'You have taught me — I cannot say how much. You are to me, in some respects, a kind of beacon-light ; for courage in upholding unpopular opinions, and unaffected kindness towards those who so markedly differ from you, are qualities which I can admire, though I may not feel to possess them ; and I want you to be sure that, among those who seem to stand opposite to you, there are not a few who in their hearts regard you with a feeling which only needs occasion and opportunity to become a true affection, and who, while they cannot always go with you, or follow you, can bless you, and ask for you that in all things you may know God's will, and at all times be ready to fulfil it. This is a sick man's letter, as you will readily gather from its length and the clumsy way in which it is worded.' The one cloud which, to Stanley's eye, at this period darkened the ecclesiastical horizon was the prosecution of the Rev. C. Voysey for heresy. Stanley had from time to time corresponded with Mr. Voysey for many years, and had been instrumental in procuring him a curacy at Great Yarmouth, and subse- quently in London. When curate of St. Mark's, White- chapel, Mr. Voysey was dismissed by his vicar on account of a sermon which had given offence to a prominent mem- ber of the congregation. Through the intervention of Dr. Tait, then Bishop of London, he obtained another curacy in London, at St. Mark's, Victoria Docks. Thence, in 1863, he went as curate to Healaugh, near Tadcaster, and in the following year was made vicar of the parish. CHAP. XXIV CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR. VOYSEY 375 Mr. Voysey's sermons as curate and as vicar called down the criticism of the Archbishop of York, in whose diocese the rural parish of Healaugh was situated. In 1864 Mr. Voysey sent extracts from the incriminated sermons to Stanley, asking his advice. In reply Stanley writes a long letter, from which the following passage is extracted ' Might I venture, before offering any advice as to your proceedings with the Archbishop, to urge you to reconsider the advisableness of the position which, in these extracts, you have taken up ' If, as I presume, your population is rural, I cannot imagine any course more inappropriate (and of sermons, the first, second, and third excellence seems to be that they should be appropriate) to those to whom they are addressed. ' I do not mean that these difficulties should be explained away or denied. But to insist upon them as a necessary preliminary to the instruction to be derived from these or any other parts of Scripture appears to me, under the cir- cumstances, the least likely to promote the end you have in view of any course that you could adopt. To state the whole case is impossible, because it would be simply unintelligible. ' Preach on the true doctrines of the Bible, and the errors and weaknesses of the human writers will soon cease to have any hold on the minds of all but a few inquiring people, who can be dealt with in their own way. But to introduce discussions on the Semitic phraseology, as a neces.sary part of Christian edification, for a Broad Church- man seems to me as absurd as for a High Churchman to introduce, as essential, discussions on the Nag's Head Con- vention or the canons of Nicaea. ' If I were the Archbishop, I should lament your course of proceedings, not as wrong in itself, nor as unlawful for you to maintain, but as exceedingly unsuitable to the circumstances in which you are placed.' 'It is enough for me,' he writes in a second letter, replying to an explanation from Mr. Voysey, ' that you will 376 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1866 do what you can to drive out error by stating the truth, and not to secure the truth by always attacking error.' A few months later Mr. Voysey consulted him about a sermon which he proposed to publish. Stanley replies on March 1 2th, 1866: ' Your sermon I have read. It is quite clear from counsel's opinion that you would run the greatest risk in publishing it, and inflict a very severe injury on the Church. Right or wrong, that opinion represents the view which lawyers, even on the Liberal side, are likely to take of the matter. I have always thought that the decision of the Judicial Committee in the case of "Essays and Reviews," though most just in itself, legally as well as morally, was, nevertheless, a mercy beyond all expectation — so greatly are men's minds biassed by what they imagine to be expected of them. And even that decision went barely on the letter of the law. Had it not been for the extraordinary good fortune that the points selected were (with the excep- tion of Justification) points on which the Articles were un- mistakably and impressively silent, I doubt whether we should have gained the victory. In the case of the so-called miraculous "Conception," any change of meaning in the old terms is as yet so new that I should apprehend the utmost danger of a premature foreclosing of the question, if it were to come before a court, unless under the most favourable circumstances. ' With regard to the sermon itself, as to the general position that the proof and assurance of the Incarnation consist, not in the physical or potential parts of the narra- tive, but in the moral and spiritual parts, I entirely concur ; and so, I conceive, would most people, unless they were on the watch for some argument in the controversy about miracles. And it is this last consideration which makes me deprecate any statement of the case in so controversial a way as you have done, still more any precipitation of a legal decision on a matter which will probably settle itself by silence or a general consent.' Throughout the years 1867-69 the correspondence continues. Now Stanley deprecates ' the somewhat defiant tone which I find in almost all that you write.' Now he CHAP. XXIV CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR. VOYSEY 37/ refuses to allow that the moral excellence and beauty of Christ's teaching, or even His sinless perfection, were the only things in the Gospel which ' give the superhuman idea of the Saviour's character. The whole of what Hegel calls the " Schicksallosigkeit " — the concatenation of events, &c., &c., go to make up the complex image of the unique phenomenon, quite as much as the moral excellence.' Now he rebukes his correspondent for calling the story of Balaam and his ass ' ridiculous.' Now, again, he urges that ' the main object of having any part of the Bible read in Church is, not to draw out all the objections that can be urged against it, but all the lessons that can be derived from it.' Now, finally, he combats Mr. Voysey's view of the Atonement. ' The death of Christ,' he says, ' though described in figures drawn from the Mosaic law, is never spoken of as having for its object the appeasing of God's anger, or as the substitution for the sins of man, but as having for its main purpose the moral purification of the heart and conscience. And the sacrifice of Christ Himself is described as being one of the heart, and will, and spirit.' Throughout the lengthy correspondence Stanley takes his stand less on reason than on the Bible. Read, he in effect says, the Bible in the light derived from it, and in the spirit which its words engender, and the idea of God, which lies at the bottom of every human soul, finds in its words a more complete realisation of a man's deep- est cravings than he can anywhere else discover — in any dreams of his own imagination, or in any theories stated by others. Above all will this complete realisa- tion be found in the life, character, works, and teaching of Christ. All his remonstrances against the tone of Mr. Voysey's sermons were, however, unavailing. Mr. Voysey was deter- 3/8 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1868 mined to challenge a legal decision upon the validity of his opinions. It was in vain that Stanley protested. ' I am convinced,' he writes in 1868, ' that if the question were really to come before the courts of law there would be such an amount of public indigna- tion brought to bear against you for preaching, for example, such a sermon as that on the Raising of Lazarus in a country parish, that it would be thought (irrespective of the question of doctrine) such a breach of good feeling, charity, and common-sense that the mind, even of the great functionaries in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Coun- cil, would be hopelessly prejudiced against you before the trial began. I use these strong words advisedly, though with great pain, because I have never wavered in my respect for the temper and patience with which you have received my remonstrances, and because I not only believe you to be yourself animated by good motives, but think that the pale of the Church of England should be kept wide enough to embrace both you and the extreme Ritualists. But just as I have always in their case deprecated the needless aggravation of the controversy by the mode in which they have run counter to the feeling of the country, and, in some instances, to their own congregations, so also I deprecate even more strongly, in proportion to my deeper respect for yourself, the like outrage on still tenderer and more cherished and sacred feelings by such proceedings as those of which I speak.' Mr. Voysey found himself unable to accept Stanley's advice. Legal proceedings were challenged, and in due course taken against him, in the Chancery Court of York. Stanley subscribed to the fund which was raised for his defence, and in a letter published in the newspapers ^" stated the grounds on which he acted. He strongly deprecated Mr. Voysey's treatment of Biblical and sacred subjects. But, at the same time, he recognised in his sermons a rare honesty of purpose, as well as a humble and devout faith, which seemed to him to demand the utmost sympathy for 1' The Times for August i6th, 1869. CHAP. XXIV CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR. VOYSEY Z79 the frame of mind that led to results in other respects so much to be lamented. ' There are, however,' he continues, 'other and more general reasons why I am glad to have this opportunity of protesting against a course which appears to me fraught with mischief to the Church. The questions which Mr. Voysey has stirred are such as agitate the minds both of clergy and laity in an unusual degree at the present time. They admit of every conceivable shade in their mode of exposition and solution. Persons of high rank in the Church are known to have entertained them, and at times given them utterance, without drawing upon themselves legal prosecution, or even considerable blame. Under these circumstances, an attempt at an abrupt sup- pression of their agitation in a single instance appears to me deplorable.' He points out that the same questions were being agitated in all the Churches of Europe, and argues that it would be 'a deplorable issue if restraint were to be enforced by the Church of England first among the historical Churches in Christendom.' He urges also, that, in point of principle, the latitude demanded had been conceded by recent judgments. ' All, therefore, that could be effected by an adverse decision in this instance would be a limita- tion in point of detail, which would leave a sense of per- sonal hardship, without furnishing any guide for future action.' On December 2nd, 1869, judgment was given against Mr. Voysey on the charge of heresy. He at once deter- mined to appeal to the Privy Council. Every argument that Stanley could bring to bear upon him to induce him to abandon the appeal proved useless. The appeal was heard in November 1870, and the judgment of the Privy Council, delivered on February iith, 1871, confirmed the decision of the Chancery Court of York.^^ On October 1st, 1871, Mr. Voysey opened his own chapel in St. George's Hall, Langham Place. 380 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1872 The correspondence between Mr. Voysey and Stanley was never entirely interrupted by what had passed between them. Naturally, however, it assumed a very different character. 'Your refusal,' writes Stanley in 1872, ' in every instance in which I have remonstrated with you to be guided by my advice has made me long relinquish any attempt to influence or guide your course. But I have never doubted the honesty and sincerity of your motives.' One other letter to Mr. Voysey may be quoted. It bears the date of November 29th, 1876, and it was, there- fore, written after the death of Lady Augusta Stanley : 'For the sermon I return my sincere expression of gratitude. I am come to that stage of existence when praise and blame have but little effect. Still, it is pleasant to know that there are those who understand what my imperfect efforts have meant, and who, when I am gone, will remember for what objects and with what hopes I did my best whilst time and opportunity were given.' CHAP. XXV DINNER TO ARCHBISHOP LYCURGUS 38 1 CHAPTER XXV 1870-73 STANLEY'S SPEECH AT THE DINNER GIVEN TO ARCHBISHOP LYCURGUS— THE OUTBREAK OF THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR — STANLEY'S LOVE OF SCOTLAND AND OF WALTER scorr — HIS friendship with the bishop of st. ANDREWS— HIS GIFT OF VERSE-WRITING— HIS VISIT TO SEDAN — THE OLD CATHOLIC CONGRESS AT MUNICH, 1871 — THE ILLNESS OF THE PRINCE OF WALES, 1871-72 — THE MARRIAGE OF PERE HYACINTHE— THE OLD CATHOLIC CON- GRESS AT COLOGNE, 1872 — DEATH OF MERLE D'AUBIGNE — LAMARTINE'S POETRY — MONTE GENEROSO — THE QUEEN'S REQUEST THAT STANLEY SHOULD PERFORM THE PROTES- TANT CEREMONY AT ST. PETERSBURG ON THE OCCASION OF THE MARRIAGE OF THE DUKE OF EDINBURGH. During Stanley's occupancy of the Deanery of West- minster the Jerusalem Chamber was put to many new uses. In it were held the meetings of the Ritual Commis- sion, of the Company for the Revision of the New Testa- ment, of the Palestine Exploration Fund. It was also the scene of a banquet given by the Greek merchants of London, on January 25th, 1870, to welcome Alexander Lycurgus, the Archbishop of Syros, Delos, and other islands of the yEgean. In proposing the health of the guest Stanley seized, with happy instinct, on a series of coincidences suggested by the occasion. Two hundred and fifty years before the Jerusalem Chamber had been used for a similar purpose, and never since. On that occasion Dean Williams, by command of James I., enter- tained the French Ambassador and the French ecclesi- 382 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1870 astics who came to negotiate the marriage of Prince Charles and Henrietta Maria of France. With an allusion to this precedent Stanley concludes his speech : ' What my predecessor said to the French ecclesiastics whom he received may still more truly be said to our Greek guests to-day : "There ought to be no secret antipa- thies between Churches for which no reason can be given, but let every house sweep the dust from their own door." We have our vocation ; the Greeks have theirs. We have our faults ; they have theirs. We, each of us, have dust before our doors. But let each of us sweep out our own dust, and not insist on taking possession of our neighbour's house to sweep out his dust. Let us each do this, and we shall be pursuing the best, because the only practicable, course toward the attainment of our common end, the reunion, in this sense, of the divisions of Christen- dom.' The peaceful opening of the year 1870 strikingly con- trasted with the events of its later months. On the 18th of July, the same day on which the Papal decree of infal- libility was promulgated at Rome, the declaration of war between France and Germany burst like a thunderclap upon Europe. At that moment the storm raised by the so-called ' Westminster Scandal,' occasioned by the admis- sion of Dr. Vance Smith to the Sacrament, was raging. ' Surely,' writes Stanley to Hugh Pearson, ' this, like many other ridiculous things, must be withered up in the pres- ence of this terrible catastrophe of the war.' A few weeks later (August 12th, 1870) he wishes success with all his heart to Germany : ' The news from the war is, I think, the most deeply, awfully interesting of any public event that I remember. The war itself appeared to me the most wicked and cause- less that I have ever heard of ; because, although equally useless and causeless wars have been waged in former times, none has been waged so causelessly and wantonly in the full light and security of civilised ages ; and for this I regard the French as alone responsible.' CHAP. XXV THE POPE'S TEMPORAL POWER 383 He followed every stage in the struggle with the closest interest. The month of August was spent in Scotland in paying 'a succession of visits to various relations — cousins, brothers, sisters. It was quite as well to be thus employed, for it was impossible to live out of reach of newspapers in this exciting time.' September found him still in the North. ' We count the hours,' he tells M. de Circourt, 'for the arrival of the journals, which probably give us more information than you have in Paris. The drama is indeed working itself out with fearful rapidity.' The news of the battle of Sedan reached him on the field of Culloden. ' I go with the Prussians entirely,' he says, ' except in the bombardment of Strasbourg.' But, however just he might feel the retribution to be, he could not withhold his sym- pathy from the vanquished party. ' It is,' he writes, ' impossible not to feel pity for the bitter mortifications which this unhappy Emperor and this vainglorious nation must now be enduring.' Another political event of the summer of the same year, to which his letters frequently allude, was the fall of the Pope's temporal power. 'It is,' he says in September 1870, ' rather a grief to me. It had been so much reduced that it did very little harm, and I am afraid that the spiritual power, which is only another kind of temporal power, will be much more mischievous without the moderating checks involved in the regal position.' He saw in the Prince- Bishop of Rome the last and greatest survivor of the old mixed sovereignties which had once been common ; his picturesque feeling resented the destruction of a quaint historical anomaly ; he loved Rome in its mediaeval as well as its classic aspects ; he deplored an event which tended to convert, by the artificial process of a sudden annexa- tion, the one spot in Europe that was the home of strange ecclesiastical customs, and of poetic and artistic 384 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1870 ruins, into the commonplace capital of a kingdom of yesterday. One result of the stirring events which disturbed the Continent was that it made a foreign tour impracticable, and compelled him to spend the whole of his autumn holiday in Scotland. Years before his marriage had bound him by personal ties to Scotland, the country had laid upon him a spell which never relaxed its hold. Of all the great names in literature, none was so dear to him as that of Walter Scott, the noblest — as he delighted to call him- — and purest writer of fiction, and 'one of the greatest religious teachers of Scottish Christendom.' 'I am,' he used to say, 'of the religion of Walter Scott.' As a child Stanley had been fascinated by the writings of one to whom he gives the title of 'a second Shakespeare.' Each successive book, whether poem or novel, was eagerly anticipated and greedily devoured, and the glamour of Scott's 'wizard notes ' held him as firmly at threescore as in his impression- able boyhood. ' Find " Guy Mannering " and let me take the taste out of my mouth,' was his remark after finishing a novel of the modern type. During the last weeks of his wife's illness he tried to beguile the heavy hours by reading aloud ' Old Mortality,' and among the books with which he endeavoured to deaden the first agony of her death was ' Redgauntlet.' He was, perhaps, himself hardly conscious how great a debt he owed to Scott. In the writings of the author of the Waverley novels, and, in a less degree, in the writings of Stanley, there is something peculiarly exhilarating to the imagination. Both men pursued the same broad, tolerant method of regarding open questions ; both adopted the same historical and synthetical, rather than philosophical and analytical, treatment of character. Both loved to dwell in CHAP. XXV INFLUENCE OF WALTER SCOTT 385 the past, and both possessed the power of revivifying its scenes and figures till they lived again in the present. To both, vanquished causes and fallen heroes appealed with pathetic force. Both treasured tales of Scottish superstition, popular legends, and any anecdotes which illustrated the national peculiarities, social or theological. Both were en- thusiastic students of antiquarian and mediaeval lore. In both there was the same love of the grandiose, of pageantry, of romance, and of chivalry. It might have been Stanley, if it had not been Scott, who murmured the lay of Prince Charlie by the Lake Avernus, and stood wrapt in silent devotion before the tomb of the Stuarts in St. Peter's. Both men sympathised deeply with conflicting schools of opinion and feeling, and both held the balance evenly between contending parties. The same candour character- ised Stanley which prompted Scott, in spite of his own personal proclivities, to represent the highest Christian type in Jeanie Deans, the daughter of a Cameronian, or in Bessie Maclure, the mother of two martyrs for the Covenant. In both men there was the same inclination to dwell upon the higher rather than the lower aspects of men or movements. The same instinct which led Scott, while fully alive to the weak, worldly, and trivial side of the Jacobite cause, to dwell upon its noble, chivalrous, poetic aspects, governed Stanley in all his judgments of human action. Both were, as writers, careless of form in comparison with matter. In the private characters of both there was the same wide humanity which treated all the world as blood-relations, the same faithful- ness to a wide circle of friends, the same reservation of their inner selves for their few chosen intimates. Even Stanley's pugnacity has in it something of Scott's ' Sound, sound the clarion ! ' Before he knew anything by personal observation of Scotland, Stanley was steeped in the weird magic atmo- VOL. II cc 386 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1870 sphere that the Wizard of the North had breathed from childhood. The genius of the country — with its wild scenery, its witch-tenanted heaths, its haunted castles, its prophetic dooms on royal houses and great families — penetrated his soul, and enveloped him in the same mist of wonders in which it had nursed its own 'poetic child.' To a degree experienced by few natives of the country he became saturated with the romantic suggestions and associations of Scottish history or story. ' No history,' he says, ' of any European State has been so romantic as that of Scotland. Whatever of early romance England has had to show pales before the stories of Robert Bruce and James the Fifth.' Nor did these impressions belong only to the remote ox mediaeval past. The wild physical surroundings of storm and mist seemed to him to have preserved intact that spiritual atmosphere of credulity and imagination which is the parent of legend and romance. In the stories of the Covenanters are revived tales as strange as any that have clustered round the early saints. In the career of Charles Edward is enacted the last romance of Europe. It is significant that the only public allusion which he ever made to his own ancestry was made before a Scottish audience. In describing the marvellous promise of Alex- ander Stewart, the son of James IV., the pupil of Erasmus, 'the young Marcellus of the Scottish Church,' who died at Flodden, he goes on to say : — 'If he fell in the memorable charge of my namesake on that fatal day, may he accept thus late the lament which a kinsman of his foe would fain pour over his untimely bier.'^ True to his own belief that original records are not con- fined to contemporaneous histories or contemporaneous literature, he studied the movements of actors in Scottish 1 The Study of Greatness: Inaugural Address delivered before the Uni- versity of St. Andrews on March 31st, 1875, p. 46. CHAP. XXV ROMANCE OF SCOTTISH HISTORY 387 history on the spots where they lie — among the mountains, the streams, or shapeless stones which survive even history and tradition and legend. And as autumn after autumn passed away, and he visited one after another of the scenes rich in legendary, or poetic, or religious, or historic interest, the fascination of Scotland grew upon him. In the second of his inaugural lectures as Professor of Ecclesiastical His- tory he urges upon his hearers the importance of studying a movenlent in the place of its origin, if its spirit is to be rightly grasped. He had but lately returned from a tour in Scotland, and his first illustration of the value of such a study is taken from the history of the Scottish Covenanters. Their ' stubborn endurance,' their ' thirst for vengeance,' their 'investment of the narrowest questions of discipline with the sacredness of universal principles,' cannot be adequately realised except among ' the caves and moors and moss hags of the Western Lowlands,' within hearing of the cry of the peewits which circle round the encamp- ments on the hillsides. In the religious history of Scotland he took an undying interest. And he knew it, it may be truly said, better than most Scotchmen. His keen sense of the humour, the shrewdness, the kindliness of the national character, made him appreciate the Scottish people, and attracted him towards the clergy. *I am sure,' he writes in 1870, 'that it is impossible to find anywhere a more excellent form of Christian clergy than some of those that I have been lately seeing of the Established Church of Scotland.' ' I certainly think,' he says in a letter describing his visit to Edinburgh in January 1872, 'that the main peculiarity of the Church of Scotland, in which it excels our own, is its humour. The fund of ecclesiastical stories is quite infinite. And it is certain 388 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1870 that the clergy of the Established Church are the only clergy cast in the same mould with ourselves.' A Church in which he found the virtues that he attri- buted to an established Church, and which possessed also the saving gift of humour, strongly appealed to his sympa- thies. Added to this, there was no religious history in which he discovered such rich elements of romance. He delighted to follow St. Ninian across the trackless wilds of Galloway, to the cave beneath the samphire-covered cliff of Glenluce Bay ; or to stand in the deserted churchyard of Kirk Madreen, by the weather-beaten column which preserved the first authentic trace of Christian civilisation. On the shores of the Firth of Forth he had penetrated to the venerable hermitage of St. Serf, and to the romantic Chapel of Culross, where the saint discovered the infant Kentigern, his ' darling Mungo.' From the oak-groves of Derry he had traced the steps of Columba to the white beach of lona, on which he drove his coracle, and from which he yet, Throned on his towers, conversing with the storm, Counts every wave-worn isle and mountain hoar From Kilda to the green lerne's shore. Nor was it only the legendary associations of the Celtic saints, or the vestiges of the early faith that they recalled, which interested him. It was in the same spirit that he pictured to himself, among the shattered relics of the Cathedral of St. Andrews, the execution of Wishart and the murder of Beaton ; or followed the daring exploits of Claverhouse, and gathered the tales that linger of his black charger ; or, in St. Giles's Cathedral, re-enacted the scene of Jenny Geddes^; or dwelt at Anwoth on the 2 The inscription placed on the tablet erected to the memory of James Hannay, Dean of the Cathedral, who read the Service-book on the occasion CHAP. XXV SCOTTISH RELIGIOUS CHARACTER 389 kindlier aspects in the stern character of Rutherford ; or stood in the churchyard of Badenoch by the graves of Margaret Wilson and Margaret Maclachlan, the Wigton- shire martyrs ; or explored the scene of the murder of Archbishop Shairp on Magus Moor. It was with Scott as his guide that he steered through the mazes of the Scottish religious character and history. Wherever he went the creations of imaginative genius accompanied, if they did not sometimes dwarf into compara- tive insignificance, the actors in real history. Especially was this true of Scott's fictitious characters. At Tours, Quentin Durward occupied his mind fully as much as Louis XI. When he visited the Roman Wall he re- membered how Bertram, crossing the Border to stay with Dandie Dinmont, reflected among the remains of the mighty rampart on the greatness of the Roman Empire. In the wilds of Galloway, it was at least as much his object to explore the wanderings of Guy Mannering as those of St. Ninian. 'We went,' he writes in 1870, ' to Sweetheart Abbey, after a hasty tour through Galloway in search of Ellangowan, which we failed somehow to find. Amongst other curious things, we happened to sleep one night in the house of the descendants of the family of the real Bride of Lammermoor (Lord Stair), and the next in the house of the descendants of the bridegroom (Lord Selkirk).' No writer had, in his opinion, thrown so broad a flood of light as Scott upon the religious heart of Scotland. In the splendid appeal of Ephraim Macbriar to his judges he caught the genuine ring of that fervid devotion which was so marked a characteristic of Scottish theology. In the ravings of Habakkuk Mucklewrath he detected a natural which roused the wrath of Jenny Geddes in 1637, revised by Stanley. It provoked a bitter controversy. But its accuracy was vindicated by Colonel Fergusson in the Aihenaum for January 5th and February 2nd, 1884. 39^ LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1870 outcome of the wild violence of the Covenanters. In the character of Balfour of Burley he saw that sharp contrast of deep-set religious zeal, with viciousness of life, which forms so striking a phenomenon in Scottish religious history. In Henry Morton he recognised the existence of those en- larged and philosophic views of Christianity which accom- panied the subsidence of ecclesiastical violence. In David Deans he saw the embodiment of the religious exclusiveness of Scotland. In the refusal of his daughter Jeanie to give up the slayer of Porteous, lest she should be branded, like the ' fause Menteith,' as a betrayer of her country, he found the patriotic independence which embittered, while it ele- vated, religious animosities. In the Baron of Bradwardine he welcomed the type of an Episcopalian layman. In the saying of Pleydell, ' I belong to the suffering Episcopal Church of Scotland, which is now, happily, the shadow of a shade,' he caught a suggestion of the persecution which fell upon the Episcopal Church during and after the Stuart Rebellion. Nor did the element of romance die out from the religious history of Scotland with the nineteenth century. Few more dramatic scenes were enacted — none, in the moral scale, were more impressive — than that which took place on May i8th, 1843. that day Dr. Welsh, the ex-Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, handed a protest to the Queen's Commissioner, and, with those who had signed it, left St. Andrew's Church, and moved in a long procession down the northern slope of Edinburgh to Canonmills. It was the ' great Disruption ' — the secession of the four hundred and seventy-four ministers who resigned their churches, homes, and incomes to found the Free Church of Scotland. With two of the leaders of that movement — Dr. Candlish and Dr. Chalmers — Stanley had some personal acquaintance. CHAP. XXV FRIENDSHIP IN SCOTLAND It was in the year 1843 that he paid his first visit to Scotland. He was then staying with his college friend, George Moncrieff, and he heard a sermon from Dr. Cand- lish, at that time in the zenith of his fame. No church was large enough to contain the crowds which flocked to hear the preacher. * The service was held,' writes Stanley, ' on the mountain-side, and the spectacle was very impres- sive. Crowds of people from all the country round were seated on the ground to hear him, whilst he, from a struc- ture like a watch-box, which, I believe, they call a " Tent," delivered consecutively two sermons and two services. ' I do not recollect a single sentence of either sermon, except one, in which he dwelt on the pleasure it would be to every man, once in his life, to have the chance of starting afresh and beginning over again. This, which was sug- gested the day before, as we were sitting on a bench over- looking the falls, had something of a human character about it. All the rest of both sermons was made up of vigorous but dry statements of Calvinism.' Years after Stanley met Dr. Candlish again at breakfast in Edinburgh : ' Erskine of Linlathen said in his kindly way to my dear wife, who did not know Candlish, " You will pick him out directly. He is just like a man possessed by a demon." That exactly described him — a man of great intelligence and character, with a fierce, fiery look about him which, with his wild, scattered hair, did convey the impression of someone possessed.' Of Dr. Chalmers Stanley says, Virgiliwn tantum vidi. In 1847 Chalmers, fresh from the perusal of the 'Life of Thomas Arnold,' met the young University tutor in the streets of Oxford. 'You have,' he said to Stanley, 'the best machinery in the world, and you know not how to use it.' These words, taken down from the lips of the Free Church leader, were written on a photograph of St. Mary's 392 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1870-73 Church which was the gift to Stanley of Dr. (now Sir Henry) Acland, and was one of his cherished posses- sions. ' In front of that academic church of Oxford,' writes Stanley,^ ' we parted, just as he touched on the question of the interpretation of the Apocalypse. " But this," he said, "is too long to discuss here and now ; you must come and finish our conversation when we meet at Edinburgh." That meeting never came. He returned home ; and the next tidings I had of him was that he was departed out of this world of strife.' From 1843 onwards Stanley's visits to Scotland became numerous, and ev^ery year his circle of acquaintances widened. Principal Shairp, of St. Andrews, had always been one of his most intimate friends. It was on a visit to him that Stanley first became known to three men who were in 1856 the spiritual flower of Scotland — John Macleod Campbell, the author of a celebrated book on the Atonement, Norman Macleod, and Erskine of Linlathen. With two of the three men the acquaintance ripened into close friendship. For Norman Macleod * Stanley felt the warmest admiration and affection, and to hold brief con- verse with Erskine of Linlathen was, as he said, ' to have one's conversation in heaven.' With the various phases of the whole religious history of the country he became scarcely less familiar than the most erudite of Scottish divines, and in the men and the communities that were making the history of the day he took the keenest interest. It was not till 1872 that he preached his first sermon in a Presbyterian place of worship. But after that time he seldom came to Scotland without preaching in one of the ^ Lectures on the History of the Church of Scotland, delivered at Edinburgh in 1872. Lecture iv., p. 154. * To the memory of Dr. Norman Macleod he paid a warm tribute in Good Words for July 1872. CHAP. XXV CHARLES WORDSWORTH 393 parish churches of the Establishment at Erroll, Dundee, Roseneath, or Glasgow. Neither from the Free Church nor from the United Presbyterians did he ever receive an invitation to preach, and consequently he never officiated in the churches of those communities. But on one occa- sion he was present at the ' Jubilee ' of a United Presbyte- rian minister near Limekilns, and spoke both at the break- fast and at the service held in the chapel. The General Assemblies, both of the Establishment and of the Free Church, were objects of great interest to him. He studied their ' overtures,' read their debates, and more than once attended their meetings. ' I should not have been listened to half as patiently in Convocation,' was his remark after observing the fairness with which the Assembly of the Establishment heard a long, aggressive, and hostile speech. After his marriage with Lady Augusta Bruce his con- nection with Scotland was necessarily drawn still closer. It also assumed a different character. Every autumn he spent some weeks in the homes of his wife's relations, and in almost every country-house in Scotland he became a welcome guest. The delight which he took in meeting- eminent persons was well known to his hosts, and soon there were few men of mark in the country, especially among the clergy, to whom he was not personally known. Among his more intimate friends and correspondents were men like Principal Caird, Principal Tulloch, Dr. John Brown, Dean Ramsay, Dr. Guthrie, Dr. Alexander Duff, Dr. Wal- lace, Professor Knight, Dr. Story, Professor Campbell, Dr. Cameron Lees, Dr. Watson, Dr. Service, Bishop Ewing, Bishop Wordsworth, and many others. Of the many friendships made by Stanley in his later years in Scotland, none gave him greater pleasure than that of Charles Wordsworth, Bishop of St. Andrews. The record of their intercourse illustrates many salient features 394 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1870-73 in Stanley's character — his unwillingness to take offence, his unbounded hospitality, the playfulness of his wit, his desire to find points of union even with those from whom he differed most widely in opinions, in tastes, and in accomplishments. The Bishop was a High Church Tory of the old school, a fine scholar, unrivalled in his master)'- of Latin versification, a cricketer, an oarsman, a skater, and a tennis-player. In all these points he was totally unlike Stanley. But the two men were animated by many com- mon feelings, and were especially united in the constant endeavour, within their respective spheres, to conciliate discords, to remove distrusts, and to check extremes. The commencement of their friendship was highly characteristic. Charles Wordsworth's brother William, as Canon of Westminster and Archdeacon, had thought it his duty publicly to oppose Stanley's appointment to the Deanery. But the Bishop of St. Andrews was among the first of those whom the Dean invited to preach at the ser- vices in the nave of the Abbey. It was not till 1871, how- ever, that the two men became really intimate. Their close friendship originated in the hospitality which Stanley and Lady Augusta offered to the members of the New Testament Revision Company, and especially to those who came from a distance. For nearly twelve years, at the rate of ten months in each year, and of four days in each month, two or three bedrooms in the Deanery were placed at the disposal of those who were invited. 'We were ex- pected,' writes Bishop Wordsworth, ' to meet the family party at breakfast ; and for the rest of our time, and for any other meal, we were left free. Our comfort could not have been greater at our own homes. Such an instance of simple, public-spirited hospitality is, I should suppose, quite unexampled.' At one of these breakfast-parties the Bishop invited Stan- CHAP. XXV CHARLES WORDSWORTH 395 ley to turn to account the poetical powers which, through- out his life, he frequently exercised in every style of verse composition, grave as well as gay. For one form of poetry, indeed, of which he left some characteristic speci- mens, he felt that he needed a special inspiration. 'It v/ould be,' he writes, 'a great pleasure to me if I could leave behind me a few hymns. How much the memory of our beloved Dean of St. Paul's^ will be kept alive by his hymns! But they seem to me too sacred and serious to be written unless I am driven by some special cause.' ^ But for the less serious forms of verse his pen was always ready. 'In January 1872,' writes the Bishop of St. Andrews, ' while we were at breakfast, I received from Dean Ramsay a printed copy of some Latin Elegiacs, which I had sent to him not long before, in acknowledgment of the twentieth edition of his " Scottish Reminiscences." I let Stanley see them, and suggested how pleased the old man would be if he would turn them into English verse. He did so, and before the end of the day the translation (of which part, I think, was composed while we were sitting at our revision work in the Jerusalem Chamber) was sent off by post to Edinburgh. It need not be said that good Dean Ramsay was charmed.' The Latin verses and the English translation ran as follows : Editio accessit vicesima ! plaudite qulcquid Scotia festivi fert lepidique ferax ! Non vixit frustra, qui frontem, utcunque severam Noverit innocuis explicuisse jocis : Non frustra vixit, qui tot monumenta Priorum Salsa pia vetuit sedulitate mori : Non frustra vixif qui quali nos sit amore Vivendum, exemplo praecipiensque docet. Dr. Milman. " In an Appendix to this chapter will be found three of Stanley's hymns, which are reprinted from the Westminster Abbey Hymn Book. 396 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1872 Nec merces te indigna manet : juvenesque senesque Gaudebunt nomen concelebrare tuum ; Condiet appositum dum fercula nostra salinum, Prsebebitque suas mensa secunda nuces ; Dum stantis rhedse aurigam tua pagina fallet, Contentum in sella taedia longa pati ! Quid? quod et ipsa sibi devinctum Scotia nutrix Te perget gremio grata fovere senem ; Officiumque pium simili pietate rependens, Soecula nulla sinet non ' meminisse Tui. Hail, twentieth edition ! From Orkney to Tweed Let the wits of all Scotland come running to read. Not in vain hath he lived who by innocent mirth Hath lightened the frowns and the furrows of earth ; Not in vain hath he lived who will never let die The humours of good times for ever gone by ; Not in vain hath he lived who hath laboured to give In himself the best proof how by LOVE we may live. Rejoice, my dear Dean, thy reward to behold, In united rejoicing of young and of old ; Remembered so long as our board shall not lack A bright grain of salt or a hard nut to crack ; So long as the cabman, aloft in his seat. Broods deep o'er thy page as he waits in the street. Yea, Scotland herself, with affectionate care, Shall nurse an old age so beloved and so rare, And still gratefully seek in her heart to enshrine One more Reminiscence, and that shall be thine. The literary partnership thus begun continued for sev- eral years. In March 1876, shortly after the death of Lady Augusta, Bishop Wordsworth repeated to Stanley a Latin inscription which he proposed to place on the walls of a summer-house. The first distich expresses the feel- ing of a heathen ; the second gives the answer of a Christian. The Dean's English version might have been ' Alluditur ad titulum libri Reminiscences, &c. CHAP. XXV ^BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER' 397 the spontaneous utterance of a thought that after 1876 was ever uppermost in his heart : Inveni portum : spes et fortuna, valete ! Sat me lusistis ; ludite nunc alios. Immo alii inveniant ego quem, Christo auspice, portum, Spes ubi non fallax, Forsque perennis adest. Hail, happy haven ! By this tranquil shore From life's long storms I find an easy port : False Hope and fickle Fortune, now no more My course beguile : — let others be your sport. Hail, happier Haven still ! May others, too, Led by their Lord, find here what I have found ; With Hope more sure than earth's vain fancies knew. With brighter Bliss than this world's fortune crowned. Once more, in August 1878, shortly before Stanley left England for America, he met Wordsworth at Megginch Castle. 'The day I was there,' writes the Bishop, ' I finished some Latin verse, which had been running in my head the day before, on Lord Beaconsfield's return from Berlin ; and remembering what had taken place in reference to my Elegiacs on Dean Ramsay's book, I showed them to Stanley, and asked him to give me a translation of them, which I might send to Lord Beacons- field, with the original.' A few days afterwards the Bishop received an English version of his Latin poem, from which the following lines are taken : To the Right Hon. the Earl of Beaco7isfield. Hail to the chief who in triumph returns ! Peace, but with honour, his footsteps attends ; Heart of old England with gratitude burns. City with country its welcoming blends. Shines here no helmet, here glitters no sword. Trumpet sounds none in the long, crowded street ; 398 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1878 Citizens only his cavalcade guard, Flowers from fair hands this new conqueror greet. Brighter the hopes that his victories fill Than trophies won hard on the red battle-field ; A sword in his voice, and a host in his will, That daunts all aggression and dares — not to yield. Genius prepared both for faction and fighting ; Patriot on fire for a land not his own : Eastern and Western in Congress uniting. Swayed by his counsel, their quarrels condone. Apology of the Translator to the Original. What English bard can rival such Latinity, True classic child of Christ Church and of Trinity? Yet still, when Whig with Tory thus combines The glories of a Premier to rehearse, Mark how the Whig's untrammell'd freedom shines Whene'er he quits the Tory's gloomy verse — And though hard bound within the Bishop's fetter. The Presbyter prefers the spirit, not the letter. The Latin original, together w^ith the English version, were sent by the Bishop of St. Andrewrs to Lord Beacons- field, with whom he had had no previous acquaintance. He received the following reply : ' Hughenden Manor : August 26th, 1878. ' Dear Bishop of St. Andrews, — It is the happiest union since Beaumont and Fletcher. ' I am deeply gratified by such an expression of sym- pathy from men so distinguished for their learning and genius. ' Your faithful and obliged servant, ' Beaconsfield.' From that time the Bishop and the Dean amused them- selves by corresponding as Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, the Dean taking the name of Fletcher because, like the Elizabethan dramatist, he was the son of a Bishop. CHAP. XXV LORD SHAFTESBURY 399 Two years later Stanley met Lord Beaconsfield at Hatfield, and gives an account of their conversation. ' You ask,' writes ' Fletcher ' to ' Beaumont,' ' about Lord Beaconsfield at Hatfield. Perhaps the most memorable incident was that a discussion arising, as is almost inevitable in that historic house, about Mary Queen of Scots, I ventured to observe that the sensation occasioned by Darnley's murder (an event so common in Scotland at that period as not to demand any special notice) was due to its extraordinary mode — explosion ; and I proceeded to add that three explosions, or would-be explosions, had taken place in English history, all of them producing serious results: — (i) Explosion of the Kirk of Field, destroying the character of Queen Mary. (2) Explosion of the Parlia- ment by Guy Fawkes, inducing the No Popery sentiment. (3) Explosion of the Clerkenwell Prison, destroying the Church of Ireland. At this moment Lord B. entered, and Lady Salisbury exclaimed at the want of sequence in my third instance. " Do you not see it " said Lord B. ; "it is transparent to the humblest capacity. A ^Jtontli afterivards came the solemn declaration of W. E. G. on the subject at Edinburgh ! " On going to the Rye House with him, and speaking of Dryden, he ejaculated, "No one reads Dryden now. The Little lVa^::;g;oner and Peter Bell Think scorn of him who wrote Achitophel." Are these lines his own ' ^ Another instance of Stanley's lifelong love of verse composition may be quoted here, because, like his friend- ship with Bishop Wordsworth, it illustrates the friendly relations which he delighted to maintain with men from whose opinions he strongly dissented. In their theological views and their ecclesiastical policy no two persons could differ more widely than Stanley and Lord Shaftesbury. ^ The lines occur in Don Juan, Canto III. : ' The little boatman and his Peter Bell Can sneer at him who drew Achitophel.' 400 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1873 Yet the lines quoted below show how kindly were the personal feelings which the Dean entertained for the Christian philanthropist. In 1873 Lord Shaftesbury wrote to the late Canon Conway, suggesting that some new and younger chairman should be found for the Society for Pro- moting Window-gardening among the Working-classes of Westminster, which held its annual flower show in Dean's- Yard. He added that he was in the condition of a tree which, as Lucan says, ' casts a shadow no longer by its leaves, but only by its stem.' Canon Conway sent the note to Stanley, who returned it with the following verses : ' Triinco, non frondibus, efficit umbram^ Well said old Lucan ; often have I seen A stripling tree all foliage and all green, But not a hope of grateful soothing shade, Its empty strength in fluttering leaves displayed. Give me the solid trunk, the aged stem That rears its scant but glorious diadem ; That through long years of battle or of storm Has striven whole forests round it to re-form ; That plants its roots too deep for man to shake, That lifts its head too high for grief to break ; That still, through lightning-flash and thunder-stroke, Retains its vital sap and heart of oak. Such gallant tree for me shall ever stand, A great rock's shadow in a weary land. The result was that Lord Shaftesbury withdrew his suggestion, and, as long as he lived, annually presided at the gathering in the College gardens. Nor was it only for Church dignitaries or veteran states- men that his pen was active. He was as ready at sixty to soothe a child's sorrow for the loss of a pet as he had been when himself a child at Alderley. The following lines are taken from a little poem which was written in CHAP. XXV VERSES FOR CHILDREN- 401 1870 for the children of Canon Holland, whose pet dove had been killed by a parrot. They illustrate, if not his poetic powers, his habit of seeking historical parallels, as well as his tenderness and sympathy. Who kill'd my little dove, Emblem of peace and love? — Who kill'd my little dove ? So the poor children wept their favourite lost When his sweet corpse their playful pathway crost. So Europe wept when Peace was cast aside. When the pure dove of halcyon moments died. ' I,' said the Parrot, As red as a carrot, ' So gay and so smart, I tore out the heart Of the good little dove, Emblem of peace and love.' So spake the bird within his gilded cage, Filled with fierce vanity and empty rage. So spake the Imperial Parrot, full of swagger, With eyes like bayonets, and beak like dagger. Stanley had but just returned from Scotland when the news reached him of the death of his aunt, Maria Hare, on November 12th, 1870. 'The day of the funeral at Hurst- monceux was,' he writes to his cousin, Louisa Stanley, 'wild and stormy, but with occasional gleams of light, and Pevensey Level looked beautiful in its shade and sunshine. ' Poor Augustus ! To him, it is the end of a blessed service of more than a son's affection. To me, it is the uprooting of a thousand memories — Stoke, Hodnet, Hurstmonceux, Augustus, Julius, Marcus, the Bunsens — the last of our dearest mother's family. How far we seem on our way to join them ! How blessed the passage from this darkening, lurid scene ! 'I think that the point which most brightly shines out VOL. II D D 402 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1870 from my dear Auntie's character is her unaffected cheerful- ness. Her Hfe was, in some respects, one of much suffer- ing, yet, also, most happy.' Throughout the winter months of 1870-71 the fate of Paris was the one absorbing topic of conversation in London. Stanley himself had, as he says, ' lost all interest in the war, except the one supreme interest of seeing its termination. Its continuance is so heartrending, and so demoralising to both nations, that no evil resulting from a peace to either side seems to me so great as its prolonga- tion.' To the protracted agony of the siege succeeded the short and sudden horrors of the Commune. ' I am,' he says, 'quite struck down by it, and can think of nothing else.' No sooner was peace restored in the French capital than he hurried to Paris, partly to escort Mme. Mohl to her home, partly to see with his own eyes the ruin and devastation. Much was condensed into the short visit of five days in June 1870. The day after his arrival in Paris the funeral of the murdered Archbishop Darboy was cele- brated— 'very solemn, but too long, and not well attended. We were in Notre Dame from 8 a.m. to 1.30 p.m.' In the Theatre of Versailles he heard a debate of the Assembly on the Orleans Princes — ' the exact counterpart of the debate in 1848, with the speech of Thiers as the analogue of that of Lamartine.' Visits to friends and the close in- spection of the various ruins filled up the interval before his return to London, which he describes as the return Back from the jaws of death, Back from the gates of hell. The summer holiday in 1871 began with the usual visit to Scotland. On August 9th the Scott Centenary was celebrated at Edinburgh. At six o'clock two thousand guests sat down to a banquet in the Corn Exchange. Among the speakers was Stanley. CHAP. XXV BATTLE-FIELD OF SEDAN 403 'The speeches began at once, and lasted without any intermission, except two or three songs, till eleven. Partly from the size of the hall, partly from its acoustic deficiencies, it was almost impossible to be heard throughout. Each set of speakers, therefore, seemed to the other to be on the opposite side of a vast roaring river, each heard only by snatches across. I never heard Lord Houghton speak so well ; indeed it was perfect. Wonderful to say, he and I were amongst the few that were heard throughout.' In the previous year Stanley had failed to explore Galloway, ' partly from the ignorance of hosts, partly from the impenetrable mist which veiled all the essential features of this remote corner.' With his usual pertinacity he tried again, and by the aid of Dr. Stuart, ' the chief antiquary of Scotland,' succeeded in tracing the footsteps of St. Ninian and his companions. On such an expedition he cared nothing for fatigue or for the distances which he drove. ' It was already 6 p.m.,' he writes, ' when we started on our way back to Monteath, which we had left at 10, and did not reach till 1.30 a.m., having made a journey of 74 miles. Often did I think of Guy Manner- ing's midnight travels in those parts, in the never-failing hope of reaching Kippletringan.' At the beginning of September 1871 Stanley left Eng- land for the Continent. His first object was to explore the battle-fields of the recent war. 'Sedan we reached at 11, and took a carriage, in which we drove incessantly till 4 p.m. over every part of the field. It was most interesting — as if five or six battles had been fought. Everywhere were graves marked by white crosses with garlands. The general features are clear enough : the vast plain enclosed by the hills which the Germans surrounded, and the Belgian frontier coming down on two sides. * There is a valley in the midst of the plain, where there was a charge of cuirassiers corresponding to the charge of Balaclava. They all perished. Close by was an old stone D D 2 404 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1871 cross, exactly a counterpart in situation to that imagined in " Marmion " as the spot from which he saw the battle. A beautiful wooded stream skirts one side of the plain. On its banks are two burial-grounds, somewhat better tended than the rest. There are several gravestones : — " Hier ruhen zusammen in Gott 20 Franzosen und 28 Deut- schen, welche gefallen sind treu ihrer Pflicht i Sept. 1871." ' We finished by seeing, first the little house where the Emperor of the French had his interview with Bismarck, and then the larger Chateau of Bellevue, where he made the final capitulation with the King. The cottage is close to the roadside. The woman who was present at the scene took us up by a small back stairs, the same by which the Emperor and Bismarck had mounted, into two very small rooms. In the inner of these they sate down for a few minutes at a table with two chairs. Then they rose and went out to sit before the house on two other chairs, one of which had since been carried off by Bismarck, the other by a Prussian officer. ' Bismarck then rode off to the headquarters of the King, and left the Emperor, who remained in the little room upstairs for three hours. She waited outside. She heard him call, " Entrez." She entered. He was sitting (she sate herself at the table to imitate him) with his head between his hands, and, without ever looking up, ordered her to call one of the French generals. The general came, and the Emperor received him in like manner, never rais- ing his head. At 10 a.m. Bismarck returned "en grande tenue," with what she called the " huissiers de mort " — a troop like the Black Brunswickers — to escort him to the Bellevue Chateau. As he went out he gave her five gold pieces, which she has had framed and hung up ; " Bon enfant," she said — the one only good word we have heard of the unfortunate Emperor of the French. ' The Chateau de Bellevue is a house standing out on a sort of promontory overlooking the whole plain. There are two small rooms, and a glass conservatory on the ground-floor. In one of these he spoke with the King alone : in the glass part with the King, the Crown Prince, Moltke, and Bismarck. ' As one saw these places it gave the impression of how completely the capitulation of Sedan has taken its place among the great events of the world's history, where every detail is remembered and wondered at.' CHAP. XXV POTSDAM From Sedan he travelled by Metz, Worth, and Stras- burg, to Cassel, and Wilhelmshohe, ' the scene of the Emperor's imprisonment, a truly regal refuge.' Thence he and his wife made their way to Potsdam, where they spent three days with the Crown Prince and the Princess Royal at the Neue Palais. ' At the door stood the Crown Prince. A cordial wel- come, and immediately he showed us into a suite of splendid rooms on the ground-floor. " In this room I was born, and here many of your countrymen have slept before." The paper on the walls is of peacocks — painted. " It is exactly the same as that in the Prefecture of Versailles, so that by the peacocks' tails there I was constantly re- minded of my own home." Presently an excellent dinner. Before we had finished the Prince came again with the Princess, and after some talk left us to peaceful repose. 'The next morning we breakfasted with them at 9 a.m., with all the children, including the baby, which was carried about while the others ate. They are delightful children, excellently well mannered, and talking with real intelligence — Prince William, Princess Charlotte, Prince Henry, Prin- cess Victoria, Prince Waldemar, and the baby (Sophie). Afterwards we walked in the gardens, which have all been created by the Crown Princess. Before, there was only rough ground round the Palace. Their dinner or luncheon was at 2 P.M., again with the children. The dinner or supper, with the household and several guests, at 7.30 p.m. or 8 p.m. ' The battle-fields furnished endless topics of conversa- tion with the Prince. No one could be more modest or frank about them, and we were able from him to get many questions answered which were suggested to us on the spot, and which no one else could have answered. ' The Crown Prince is generally up before breakfast, at his farm. After breakfast there is a walk ; after luncheon, and after dinner, a talk. They all go to bed at 10 p.m. There are also the drives, morning and evening. How the intervening hours are spent I do not know. One morning, in this walk, the whole account of the triumphal entry was given by the children. Little Prince William rode in with his uncle, the Grand Duke of Baden. "The Emperor stood for two hours in the sun without his hat. And he is seventy-three ! What do you think of that 1 " " The flowers 4o6 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1871 came sailing down from the third and fourth storeys of the houses, so that at last you could not see anything of the soldiers but their bayonets." 'It is impossible to write all the little anecdotes, &c., which make up the charm of a visit like this. I return, however, to the thought that if monarchy is to be saved by any man in this century, it will be by our host.' On the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th of September 1871, were held the meetings of the Old Catholic Congress at Munich. Stanley was present at the discussions, which were 'ex- ceedingly interesting, and quite successful,' though he took no part in the proceedings. On his way to the Bavarian capital he ' managed by a very early rise to see the scene of Wallenstein's murder ' at Eger. The Ober-Ammergau play was seen once more, and then the travellers crossed the Brenner Pass into Italy, and journeyed to Rome. ' Here once again ! ' he writes to Pearson. ' You would lament the fall of the Pontiff till you got to the Forum, and then you would rejoice at the astounding prospect of what will be. In four years' time the Temple and the Capitol will be seen in their natural proportions from the original pavement of the Forum, which is now rapidly appearing. How singular that no pope or cardinal should ever have thought of doing so obvious a work ! ' Still, the interest of the place is very much curtailed, and there is something very inappropriate in the substitu- tion. It is like turning Oxford or Cambridge into a capital.' ' Our interview with the Pope,' he tells his sister, * fell through, I feel convinced, in consequence of a paragraph that appeared in one of the Italian papers that "il padre Arthuro Stanley," who had just arrived in Rome, had been at the Munich Conference. There is evidently a very strong feeling against the " Anti-Infallibilists." In the form announcing the appointment of the new Archbishop of Paris in the place of " George Darboy, deceased," there was not the faintest allusion to the tragical death. When I noticed this to a good old Catholic friend of Augusta's, he CHAP. XXV ILLNESS OF PRINCE OF WALES 407 said, " Ah ! that was probably done on purpose. The Pope was so very much dissatisfied with the Archbishop. In fact, ' il est mort fort a propos.' Returning through Paris, he went to Versailles to hear the trial of the Communist prisoners. ' It was a strange mixture of a court-martial and a court of justice. The judges were all military officers, but the advocates were lawyers. The prisoners were twenty-seven in number. One of them was making his defence in a long, shrill speech, with just the same futile arguments that I remember in the Rush trial. They were a miserable set — not one face among them on which one could rest with pleasure or respect. The wonder seemed to be that they ever could have risen to the head of affairs.' In the winter of 1871-72 the heart of the English people was deeply stirred by the illness of the Prince of Wales. On the issue of that battle with death the whole nation hung with expectation, possessed with one thought and one desire, gathering round one hearth with a renewed sense of the nobility and sanctity of family affections. No one could feel more keenly than Stanley with the grief and anxiety of the mother, the wife, the children, in whom were for the time impersonated the sorrow and suspense through which, sooner or later, every household in the land must pass. But his sympathy was heightened by personal affec- tion for the Prince, as well as deepened by the sense of the value of the life at stake, and of the beneficent influence that the heir to a noble inheritance might exercise over the community. It was with these feelings that Stanley followed the course of the Prince's illness, as the nation passed through the various stages of dread and hope and thanksgiving. Each successive stage is marked in the three sermons ^ 9 The National Thanksgiving: (i) ' Death and Life,' December loth, 1871 ; (2) 'The Trumpet of Patmos,' December 17th, 1871 ; (3) 'The Day of Thanksgiving,' March 3rd, 1872. The three sermons are reprinted in the Sermons on Special Occasions. 408 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1872 which he preached on December loth and December 17th, 1871, and on March 3rd, 1872. In one he dwells on the true lessons of life and death, in another on the permanent good to be gathered from the national anxiety, in the third on the duties owed by the Throne to the people, and by the people to the Throne. The last sermon was preached before the Prince of Wales. ' As soon as I received the order for Thanksgiving,' he writes to Louisa Stanley in March 1872, ' I went to Marlborough House to suggest, through Fisher and Keppel, that the Prince of Wales should come. He consented at once, and it was agreed that he, the Princess, and the Crown Prince of Denmark, and, if in town, Prince Alfred, should come. I kept it a secret, except from the Canons. We met them at the great Western door; the nave (as usual) was quite clear. They walked in with me, and took their places on my right. I preached on Psalm cxxii. I. The Prince of Wales heard every word, and has decided that it shall be published, which it will be, and you shall have a copy. It was one of those rare occasions on which I was able to say all that I wished to say. They were conducted again to the West door, and departed. ' Let this account serve for the dear sister, too, who, I hope, is with you. Oh ! how much I thought of her, and of the dear face that is gone. It is these moments which bring back the past indeed.' The strain of Stanley's ceaseless activities had been, for the last eight years, severe. It was now increased by the failure of his efforts to put an end to the recitation of the Athanasian Creed in the public services of the Church of England. Tired of polemics, he meditated the discontinu- ance of his attendance at Convocation, longing to retire to his books, and determined to ' withdraw from all this hurly- burly.' ' I long,' he writes to Pearson in July 1872, ' to set to work at one of my books. But which } To put together all that I have written on the early Church, Baptism, the Lord's Supper, &c. 1 Or on the Church of CHAP. XXV OLD CATHOLIC CONGRESS, 1872 409 England? or to begin at once on the Maccabees, &c.? I somewhat shrink from the latter, on account of the books on the Talmud not being yet written.' ' Do come, dear friend,' adds Lady Augusta in a private letter to Pearson written at the same date, ' and give dearest Arthur your best advice about his work. I am so very anxious that he should do something perma- nent. I think it would be good for him in every way, and " the day is far spent " for us all. But yet there is all the power of work in him, if he only gets a quiet start.' Pearson's counsel was to continue the ' History of the Jewish Church,' and the advice was adopted. But before he began the projected work he left Westminster for his annual holiday. After a few weeks in Scotland he went abroad, mainly with the object of attending the Congress of Old Catholics at Cologne. On September 20th, 1872, the Congress of Old Catholics opened at Cologne, under the presidency of Dr. Schultze, the distinguished Professor of Canon Law at Prague. The movement was one with which Stanley strongly sympa- thised. Its very vagueness was, in his eyes, a merit. It is possible that, had the Old Catholics openly broken with the Roman Church, and adopted Luther's rough-and-ready policy of war to the knife, they would have pursued a more practicable and successful course. But it was their refusal to add another to the schisms by which Christendom was divided which enlisted Stanley's sympathy. In his view, the movement represented a transitional phase of thought, and was the outcome of the blending of popular and sci- entific enthusiasms, which hitherto had not been fused together. It was necessarily tentative, because it was an attempt at an historical revision of theology, and an endeavour to distinguish the permanent from the tempo- rary elements of Christianity. It was avowedly still on LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1872 the road, and had not yet reached its goal. Its leaders were inspired by no desire to form a sect ; they did not • even repudiate the great Church whose integrity of doc- trine it was their professed object to maintain. The union of the Churches which they contemplated was not to be effected by proselytism or by absorption. It was rather to be brought about by developing whatever germs of goodness and truth were to be found in rival communions, and by the brotherly recognition of each as fulfilling its own mission and working out its own idea. When, therefore, Stanley was invited to be present at the Congress, he accepted the invitation in a letter which was published in the 'Times.' ^'^ In the Congress itself he took no active part, beyond attending the meeting and describing the discussions in two letters to the ' Times ' from 'An Occasional Correspondent.'" 'It would,' he says to M. de Circourt, ' have been difficult to do more, on account of the imper- fection of my German. But it was also unnecessary, for almost every sentiment that I could have wished to utter was expressed in the most powerful manner by Professor Reinkens. The only criticism which I could make was, that there was too hard a tone adopted towards the Roman Church — not a sufficient appreciation of its position in the history of Europe.' One of the probable questions at the Congress was the celibacy of the clergy. To the decision of the Old Catho- lics on this point a new interest was attached by the recent marriage of Pere Hyacinthe Loyson to an Ameri- can lady whom he had converted to Roman Catholicism.^ 1" The Times, September 19th, 1872. 11 The Times, September 27th and October 2nd, 1872. 12 M. Hyacinthe Loyson was himself present at the Conference. But it was at first doubtful whether celibacy would be discussed. ' An unexpected ally,' writes Stanley, ' appeared in the person of Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln, who, though an extremely rigid High Churchman, and with hardly any personal knowledge of CHAP. XXV OLD CATHOLIC COATGRESS, 1872 411 During the Franco-Prussian War Pere Hyacinthe had been much in England, and a frequent guest at the Deanery. The intercourse had been renewed at Rome in the autumn of 1 87 1. Stanley had learned to respect most highly the character of his friend, and though his confidence in Pere Hyacinthe was unshaken, the news of his approaching marriage caused him 'profound anxiety.' So great was his annoyance that, as he says himself, it made him positively ill. 'Although,' he writes to M. de Circourt in September 1872, 'I had for some time anticipated the possibility of such an event, I did not know of his fixed decision till just before leaving London for Scotland in August last. ' I could have desired that the step should be deferred till a more general movement could divest it of the personal character which, taken by itself, it was likely to assume. But there were many reasons which led Hyacinthe to an opposite conclusion : The distress of prolonged suspense, the desire of placing before the world by a public act his protest against the present system of the Roman Church, and the feeling that it was more honourable to do this in anticipation of the Congress at Cologne. ' The resolution once adopted, the mode and place were dictated by considerations which appeared to me convinc- ing. Being both Catholics, and wishing to avoid the sup- position that they had become Protestants, the marriage could not take place in a Protestant church. In a Catholic church it would have been difificult, if not impossible. There remained, therefore, the alternative of a civil mar- riage, which could more easily take place in England than elsewhere. I was present as a friend, but not as taking any part in the ceremony.' At such a crisis Pere Hyacinthe more than ever needed a friend, and Stanley stood by him both in private and pub- Hyacinthe, wrote a powerful Latin letter on his behalf, entreating them to take up the whole question of the celibacy of the clergy. At the last meeting, when the final and most stirring addresses were made to the assembly, and the programme of the future reforms were set forth, the marriage of the clergy was announced in the most distinct terms as one of the most necessary changes.' 412 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1872 lie. He well knew that, as Pere Hyacinthe himself antici- pated, the marriage would be the signal for a general outcry. '"II voulait se marier," s'ecriera-t-on de toutes parts, "il n'a pas eu le courage de le dire. II a parle de I'infaillibi- lite, et ce n'^tait qu'un pretexte. Ce beau drame finit par une comedie." ' The moment was one which Stanley chose to emphasise his unshaken confidence in Pere Hyacinthe, not only by his presence at his marriage on September 3rd, 1872, but by letters to his relations and friends. ' Hya- cinthe's marriage,' he writes to his sister Mary, ' is too long an affair to enter upon. Of course, he and she both being Catholics, it was an object to them not to be married in a Protestant church, which would immediately have given rise to the notion that they were Protestants. Therefore they were not married by a Protestant clergy- man, nor in a Protestant church. ' So far from being rich, she is very poor — so poor that his one anxiety is, how they will maintain themselves at all. ' All the objections in point of prudence, &c., are obvious enough, and he knew that whatever influence he still retained would be endangered by this course. But he is so much above such considerations (as, in fact, he showed in the first instance by sacrificing the greatest position in the French Church, as preacher at Notre Dame) that, although it adds to the difficulty of the situation, I do not think that it is so great an annoyance to him as to his friends. ' He certainly is one of the most interesting and elevated characters I ever saw, and it is a little trying to me to see how people turn their backs upon him, and run after a man like Monsignor . However, this is the way of the world.' Immediately after Pere Hyacinthe's marriage Stanley left England to proceed by easy stages to Cologne. The Congress lasted three days, and as soon as it broke up he set out for Geneva. On his way he was delayed at Baden by the death of Princess Hohenlohe, at whose funeral Lady Augusta, at the Queen's request, represented Her Majesty. I CHAP. XXV MERLE D'AUBIGNE 413 The German Emperor and Empress^* were at the same time staying at Baden. 'The last night that we were there the Empress sent for us to take leave. She was quite alone. After talking for some minutes, she said, "The Emperor wishes much to see you," and presently the door opened, and in he walked. We had not seen him since 1869. I said to him, "It is three years since I have had the honour of seeing your Majesty, but it seems to be three centuries." It was ex- tremely interesting, I must say, to be with the author of those famous telegrams, and in the presence of the very Augusta who received them. ' He spoke most naturally and kindly about England, and then, when we told him that we had been over the battle-fields last year, he said, with much feeling " Battle- fields ought not to be seen till they have ceased to be fields of battle. Terrible were the scenes we had to traverse. That is the reverse of the medal. But when war is once lighted, one must follow it to the end. And when one is in the right, there is an Ally on high, without Whose help nothing can be done. It is to this that we owed our wonderful successes, the devotion of our soldiers, the enthusiasm of our people." ' At Geneva, only ten days before the historian's death, he had several interviews with Merle d'Aubign^, whom Dr. Tait and he had visited in 1840. ' Probably,' he writes to the Archbishop of Canterbury on October 21st, 1872, ' I was the last Englishman whom he saw. He was in his usual health and vigour, though in his seventy-eighth year, and we conversed, both in this and in a previous interview, on the state of Christendom and the history of the Reformation. He had been much occupied in writing an address to the Old Catholics, of whom he spoke with sincere interest. He also spoke with profound veneration and regard of Mr. Erskine of Linlathen, whom he had known well in former years. The discussion about the Massacre of St. Bartholomew had been a matter which naturally excited his old ardour, and he described how, in a 18 Kaiser VVilhelm I. The Empress Augusta. 414 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1872 journey to Rome many years ago, he had been the means of procuring an impression of the Papal Medal, of which the existence has been now attempted to be denied. On that visit he had an introduction to Gerbert (afterwards Archbishop of Perpignan), who, not knowing who he was, enlarged to him on the advantages which the Church of Rome enjoyed in possessing the bones of St. Paul. " But," said Merle, " we pride ourselves on the possession and con- stant enjoyment of some much more valuable relics of St. Paul." "What are they.''" said Gerbert, with great curi- osity. "He wrote a number of letters," said Merle, "and these we constantly read." ' I give you these details to show you how lively the good old man was to the end. ' It is sad to think of his wife and children, who seemed so especially happy with him. I have a charming note from him, which I shall much value, as among the last he wrote. Of you he spoke with his usual interest. His loss will be much felt in Geneva, where he seemed to be a kind of living link with Calvin.' A letter written from Macon to his cousin, Louisa Stanley, at the end of October describes Annecy, the birthplace of St. Francois de Sales, the ruined Abbey of Cluny, and the Church of Brou, near Bourg-en-Bresse, which, though 'a Brou unvisited,' has been immortalised by Matthew Arnold. But the most interesting passage is one which illustrates his constant love for his old home at Alderley. ' You know,' he says, ' that this is the birthplace of Lamartine. I forget whether you shared my temporary enthusiasm about him, and which I still think was in some degree merited, when he was in power in 1848. I found some verses of his about his own neighbourhood here which seem to me, in spite of his sentimentalism, to be really true ; at least, I always feel it in thinking of Alderley. Next to the great and famous places I have seen, or, rather, on a level with them, though a level of another kind, seem to me to stand out from all the past the rectory, the church, the village, the mill, the beech-wood, the park, the mere. CHAP. XXV PROFESSOR SEDGWICK C'est la que c'est mon cceur ; Ce sont la les s^jours, les sites, les rivages, Dont mon ame attendrie ^voque les images, Et dont, pendant les nuits, mes songes les plus beaux Pour enchanter mes yeux composent leurs tableaux ; La, mon coeur en tout lieu se retrouve lui-meme, Tout s'y souvient de moi, tout m'y connait, tout m'aime ; Mon ceil trouve un ami dans tout cet horizon ; Chaque arbre a son histoire, et chaque pierre un nom, Ce site ou la pens^e a rattach^ sa trame, Ces lieux encore pleins des fastes de mon ame, Sont aussi grands pour moi que ces champs du destin, Oil naquit ou tomba quelque empire incertain.' The year 1873 was marked by the death of several of Stanley's oldest friends — Dr. Lushington, Professor Sedg- wick, Bishop Wilberforce, Mrs. Arnold, and Sir Henry Holland. At the funeral of Dr. Lushington, whose fatal illness was attributed to a chill which he caught in travelling to Oxford to vote for Stanley as Select Preacher, Stanley himself officiated. A few days later Professor Sedgwick — the ' dear old Sedgy ' of Oxford letters — died at Cambridge. ' What a world of recollections will be buried with him ! ' writes Stanley to his sister of their old friend and neigh- bour at Norwich. As Select Preacher at Cambridge, it fell to Stanley's lot to preach in the University Church on the Sunday following the Professor's death (February 2nd, 1873). The sermon is one of the finest of his oraisons fiinkbres. ' Your noble and very just tribute to the memory of Professor Sedgwick,' wrote the Vice-Chancellor to him, * is one which the University would not willingly let die, and I hope, therefore, that you will consent to publish the sermon which you preached to-day.' Personally, Stanley had always maintained the most friendly relations with Bishop Wilberforce. It was said by 1^ Reprinted in Sermons on Special Occasions. 4i6 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY one who was well known to both, that they had agreed to love each other in private, and to do each other as much mischief as possible in public. The Bishop's death,i^ as Stanley felt, robbed the Church of its romance. ' It shakes me to the centre,' he says on his return from a visit to the spot where the fatal accident had occurred. Almost simultaneously Lord Westbury died. ' How are the mighty fallen ! ' is the text from which Stanley preached in Westminster Abbey on the death of two of the most distinguished men in their generation. ' I have read,' writes a judicious friend of Stanley's, 'your elegies on Westbury and Wilberforce with great satisfaction. It was a difficult task in both cases. But nothing can be more just and true than the judgments you have delivered. They have both left nihil simile ant secimdiim in their respective provinces. Yet in pronounc- ing these funeral orations how much must remain unsaid. What might Westbury have not done in reforming the law, had he seriously devoted himself to the task What might Wilberforce have done in the Church of England, if he had seriously attempted to lead the clergy, instead of being led by them As it is, how much will be heard of them in fifty — nay, in twenty-five years .'' Their fame is, and will be, like that of a great actor, whom those that have seen and heard praise, as eclipsing all that they have known, but who cannot transmit the grace and force of his action to those who have neither seen nor heard. 'How different the man was whom you commemorated a year and a half ago — Grote ! With natural powers, I suppose, much inferior to both of them, how will his seri- ous and devoted life perpetuate his name as long as men care to hear and read of Athens and Greece.' A brief autumn holiday, mainly spent at Monte Gene- roso, was shortened in order that he and his wife might the more easily obey a request which the Queen had made to them. 'Though,' wrote Her Majesty to Lady Augusta on August 8th, 1873, 16 July 1873. CHAP. XXV. APP. STANLEY'S HYMNS ' I shall see you to-morrow, I wish to prepare you for what not only I, but Alfred and others (including the Dean of Windsor and Lord Granville) are very anxious for. It is, that I am very desirous that your Dean should perform the English ceremony at St. Petersburg, and that you should attend as one of my ladies. You travel so much, and dread cold so little, that, as in January the Russian climate is said to be healthy, I hope you may be able to undertake a mission which will require great discretion, and which will be a comfort to me. But you must fully consider whether you can manage it, and that is why I have thought it best to write before I see you both.' Appendix to Chapter XXV. Stanley's Hymns. I. Hymn for Good Friday. Where shall we learn to die ? Go, gaze with steadfast eye On dark Gethsemane, Or darker Calvary, Where, thro' each lingering hour. The Lord of grace and power. Most lowly and most High, Has taught the Christian how to die. When in the olive shade His long last prayer He prayed ; When on the Cross to Heaven His parting spirit was given, He showed that to fulfil The Father's gracious will. Not asking how or why. Alone prepares the soul to die. No word of angry strife, No anxious cry for life : By scoff and torture torn, He speaks not scorn for scorn ; VOL. II 4i8 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY Calmly forgiving those Who deem themselves His foes, In silent majesty He points the way at peace to die. Delighting to the last In memories of the past ; Glad at the parting meal In lowly tasks to kneel ; Still yearning to the end For mother and for friend ; His great humility Loves in such acts of love to die. Beyond His depth of woes A wider thought arose, Along His path of gloom Thought for His country's doom, Athwart all pain and grief Thought for the contrite thief : The far-stretched sympathy Lives on when all beside shall die. Bereft, but not alone, The world is still His own ; The realm of deathless truth Still breathes immortal youth ; Sure, though in shudd'ring dread That all is finished. With purpose fixed and high. The Friend of all Mankind must die. Oh ! by those weary hours Of slowly-ebbing powers. By those deep lessons heard In each expiring word ; By that unfailing love Lifting the soul above, When our last end is nigh, So teach us, Lord, with Thee to die. CHAP. XXV. API'. STANLEY'S HYMNS 419 2. Hymn for Ascension Day. He is gone — beyond the skies, A cloud receives Him from our eyes; Gone beyond the highest height Of mortal gaze or angel's flight ; Through the veils of Time and Space, Passed into the Holiest Place ; All the toil, the sorrow done, All the battle fought and won. He is gone — and we return. And our hearts within us burn ; Olivet no more shall greet With welcome shout His coming feet ; Never shall we track Him more On Gennesareth's glistening shore ; Never in that look or voice Shall Zion's hill again rejoice. He is gone — and we remain In this world of sin and pain ; In the void which He has left. On this earth of Him bereft, AVe have still His work to do, We can still His path pursue ; Seek Him both in friend and foe. In ourselves His image show. He is gone — we heard Him say, 'Good that I should go away.' Gone is that dear Form and Face, But not gone His present grace ; Though Himself no more we see. Comfortless we cannot be : No, His spirit still is ours. Quickening, freshening all our powers. He is gone — towards their goal, World and Church must onwards roll : K K 2 420 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY Far behind we leave the past ; Forwards are our glances cast : Still His words before us range Through the ages, as they change : Wheresoe'er the Truth shall lead, He will give whate'er we need. He is gone — but we once more Shall behold Him as before ; In the Heaven of Heavens the same As on earth He went and came. In the many mansions there, Place for us will He prepare : In that world, unseen, unknown, He and we may yet be one. He is gone — but, not in vain ; Wait, until He comes again ; He is risen, He is not here. Far above this earthly sphere ; Evermore in heart and mind, Where our peace in Him we find To our own Eternal Friend, Thitherward let us ascend. 3. Hymn on the Transfiguraiion. * Master, it is good to be High on the mountain here with Thee : ' Here, in an ampler, purer air, Above the stir of toil and care. Of hearts distraught with doubt and grief, Believing in their unbelief, Calling Thy servants, all in vain. To ease them of their bitter pain. ' Master, it is good to be Where rest the souls that talk with Thee : ' Where stand revealed to mortal gaze The great old saints of other days ; CHAP. XXV. APP. STANLEY'S HYMNS 421 Who once received on Horeb's height The eternal laws of truth and right ; Or caught the still small whisper, higher Than storm, than earthquake, or than fire. * Master, it is good to be With Thee, and with Thy faithful Three ; ' Here, where the Aposde's heart of rock Is nerved against temptation's shock ; Here, where the Son of Thunder learns ' The thought that breathes and word that bums ; ' Here, where on eagle's wings we move With Him Whose last best creed is Love. ' Master, it is good to be Entranced enwrapt, alone with Thee ; ' Watching the glistering raiment glow, Whiter than Harmon's whitest snow ; The human lineaments that shine Irradiant with a light Divine : Still we, too, change from grace to grace, Gazing on that transfigured Face. ' Master, it is good to be In life's worst anguish close to Thee : ' Within the overshadowing cloud Which wraps us in its awful shroud, We wist not what to think or say, Our spirits sink in sore dismay ; They tell us of the dread ' Decease ' : But yet to linger here is peace. ' Master, it is good to be Here on the Holy Mount with Thee : ' When darkling in the depths of night. When dazzled with excess of light. We bow before the heavenly Voice That bids bewildered souls rejoice. Though love wax cold, and faith be dim, ' This is My Son ; O hear ye Him.' 422 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY CHAPTER XXVI 1874-76 THE WEDDING OF THE DUKE OF EDINBURGH AT ST. PETERS- BURG—STANLEY'S PART IN THE CEREMONY — HIS RECEP- TION IN RUSSIA — LORD BEACONSFIELD AT MARLBOROUGH HOUSE AND WESTMINSTER ABBEY — THE PERSECUTED RUS- SIAN BAPTISTS— STANLEY AND MRS. ANNIE BE.SANT— LADY AUGUSTA STANLEY'S ILLNESS AT PARIS — STANLEY'S AD- DRESSES AS LORD RECTOR OF ST. ANDREWS— THE ALARM- ING STATE OF HIS WIFE'S HEALTH — FLUCTUATIONS OF HOPE AND FEAR — HER DEATH ON MARCH ist, 1876 On January 9th, 1874, Stanley and his wife left England for St. Petersburg. To Lady Augusta's special care the Queen consigned two gifts. ' I address,' writes Her Majesty in January 1874, ' this letter to St. Petersburg, with two parcels, which re- quire explanation, and which are entrusted to your special care. The one contains two sprigs of myrtle, which I ask you to put at once into a little warm water, and to keep to the afternoon of the 22nd, to be placed in the middle of a bouquet of white flowers, which I shall ask you to order and give from me to Marie before the English wedding, with this explanation, viz. that this myrtle comes from a large healthy plant here which has grown from a little bit of myrtle much smaller than these sprigs which was in the Princess Royal's nosegay, and which all the brides (I think) have had a piece of in succession. The second box con- tains two Prayer-books : the one in white, with an illu- mination of some verses, which I had painted on purpose, is for the Grand Duchess ; and the other plain one is for Alfred — botli to be given them on their wedding-day and for the English wedding. My dear mother gave my CHAP. XXVI JOURNEY TO RUSSIA 423 beloved husband and me Prayer-books, which I now have, and often use, especially the dear Prince's.' The detailed narrative of all that the travellers saw and heard is told in a series of letters to his sister Mary. ' Palace, Berlin : January 12th, 1874. ' Safe here without a single drawback. The moment we touched the shores of Calais began the change from ordi- nary travelling. The Consul and Vice-Consul appeared on board, took us instantly into a private room in the station, and placed us in a coupe, in which we remained, unchanged and uninvaded, the whole way to Cologne, which we reached at 1 1 p.m., and found our rooms all ready at the Hotel du Nord — the same we had at the old Catholic Congress. 'Started at 9.30 next day — one compartment to our- selves, another for the servant. Dined at Minden, and at 7.30 reached Berlin. At the station was Lord Odo Russell, in his fur cloak, with all necessary indications, and the royal carriages waiting to receive us and bear us away to the Palace. ' It is the old palace of the Electors and Kings, not that inhabited by the Emperor. It is impossible to imagine anything more splendidly comfortable. A whole suite of rooms, all warmed, and with blazing fires — real open fire- places. They are the rooms which the First Napoleon occupied on his invasion of Berlin. We had hardly sat down to dinner, which was already prepared, in our travel- ling dresses, just as we were, when the Crown Princess was announced. She sat with us while we dined, and arranged for me to preach in the chapel in her palace next day at 9.30 a.m. 'Accordingly we went. It is a very small chapel. No one there but the Crown Prince and Princess, the children and governesses. I preached on the Gospel of the day. Then to the German cathedral, where we heard a not very interesting sermon from Hengstenberg, brother of the famous Hengstenberg. ' We dined with the Crown Prince and Princess — no one but ourselves and the children (5 p.m.) ; excellent, well- behaved children, remembering perfectly their visit to the Abbey and Deanery, and our visit to Potsdam. The Crown 424 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY Prince showed us his room, all filled with pictures by the Princess, except one of Ben Nevis given him by the Prince Consort. 'Monday, went over the Palace here — very interesting portraits of the old Prussian family. Then to the Thier- garten, to meet all the members of the Royal Family, skating. Imagine the energy of the Prince and Princess of Wales after their long journey of two nights and a day — skating away all the afternoon ! At 6 p.m. dinner at the Palace — exceedingly magnificent. The Emperor, though recovering, did not appear. But the Empress, the Crown Prince and Princess ; Prince Charles (Emperor's brother), and his wife and his son ; Prince Frederick Charles, the great general and conqueror of Metz, and his daughter, Princess Marie (whom I took in to dinner) ; the Prince and Princess of Wales, Prince Arthur, and all their suite ; the Odo Russells, Moltke, and Bismarck, were present. He (Bismarck) came among the last — a giant amongst them all in look and stature. He stalked across the room to Lord Odo and the Danish Minister, and begged to be introduced to me. I had but a few minutes' conversation with him, but enough to let me see his countenance, and hear his manner of speaking — much more gracious and familiar than I had expected, and exceedingly pleasant in his tone on the marriage. "It is very important that the two countries which zve regard as friends to tis should be friends to one another. War is a wild teacher, and any- thing which helps to keep him off is so much clear gain." I sat between the Crown Princess and Princess Marie — she is a very simple, innocent, pleasing girl. 'The Crown Princess is always very interesting. She had had, she said, the greatest difficulty in persuading the people in the Palace that "the Bishop" (as they insist on calling me) and Augusta were not two independent person- ages, to be put in rooms far apart.' 'The Russian Epiphany: Winter Palace, St. Petersburg. ' On Tuesday we went over the Museum with the Usedoms. In the afternoon with the Empress, to see two charitable institutions of hers. In the evening, dinner with the Crown Prince. The Prince of Wales's party there, after a boar-hunt, in which 80 boars were killed — and in their travelling dresses, to start that night. After CHAP. XXVI JOURNEY TO RUSSIA 425 the dinner we went to a party at Professor Helmholtz's, the first scientific man in Berlin, and met there various distinguished scientific men. ' Wednesday. At 5 p.m. we dined quite alone with the Crown Princess and the children ; then to Prince Bismarck's, almost on the way to the station. Princess Bismarck was exceedingly gracious, and received us at once to tea with her daughter. When she found that we were going that night she sent in to her husband, and he came out and sat with us till we went. I couldn't find an opportunity of entering on the great ecclesiastical question, but we talked in a perfectly easy manner on England and Shake- speare ; and in order to explain why he had never taken the Embas.sy in England, he gave a most elaborate and • accurate account of the inconveniences of the house in Carlton Terrace, which at once determined him never to undertake the post in England unless the house was sold. He gave us a very cordial invitation to see him on our return, and altogether left the impression of a far more amiable and gracious exterior and interior than I had been led to expect. 'At II P.M. we started for St. Petersburg. We had one large compartment with a stove, and not exactly beds, but long sofas, and so got through the night tolerably well. ' When day broke we were on the Great Northern Plain of Germany. A bright sun, and snow on the ground. At 12 we reached Konigsberg, the ancient capital of Prussia. There we were met by the French and English Consuls, and at once conducted into an inner room for breakfast. At about 4 P.M. we reached the Russian frontier. Instantly a Feld Jager, despatched from St. Petersburg, took us out. All the officials were at our disposal. We had an excellent dinner, in excellent rooms, and started again in far superior carriages. Two large compartments — one for ourselves, one for the servants ; a stove, and every sort of convenience, and at every halt tea brought into the carriages. The next day broke on a snowy landscape, about 7 A.M. It was very interesting to see the first Russian church, with its fine cupolas, the first sledge, the first wooden village. The only place of interest we passed was Pskof, where is buried the hermit who rebuked Ivan the Terrible. ' It was between 7 and 8 when we arrived. Never had 426 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY we such a disembarkation before. There was red cloth laid down into the station, servants dressed like the doges of Venice in red embroidered cloaks and white ruffs. Young Loftus, a very handsome young man with a letter of instruction from his father — and then appeared three royal carriages. Into the first the stately servants instantly placed Augusta, and before I had time to move, off she was driven. Into the second Lady Emma Osborne, which in like manner drove off. Into the third, called out as for " Herr Decant," I entered, and in this magnificent style we were carried through the wintry streets, amidst a falling snow shower, along the quays, to the door of one of the great compartments of the Winter Palace. ' There we were again received by an array of servants and by two Chamberlains, in full Court costume, to welcome and explain everything. The rooms are magnificent — a large suite for us, and another suite below for Lady Emma, all looking out on the Neva. The temperature warm, but not oppressive, and if it was colder we could have open fires. 'We had just finished a delicious tea when Countess Bloudhoff was announced — one of the ancient ladies of the Court, speaking English down to its very depths. She spoke first to Augusta and Lady Emma, and then, turning to me, said, " As for you, you are an old friend. The French say, ' Un livre est une epitre ^crite a des amis in- connus.' I am one of those unknown friends who know you by your books, and by all I have heard of you from Philaret and from Prince Urusoff," &c. . . . She had put in my room a beautiful little picture of Philaret to greet me. 'Then came Col. Colville, with a letter from Lord A. Loftus, to announce that I was to be presented to the Emperor the next day. Accordingly, after a morning's walk on the Quay, I went with him, in full Court dress, first to Prince Gortschakoff, the Prime Minister, and was left alone with him for a very agreeable half-hour, he talking excellent English about the persons he had known in Eng- land— Mr. Canning, Sir W. Scott, &c. He had been at the Coronation of George IV. Then I came back with Lord A. Loftus, and was driven to another door, where T found myself amid a host of ofificers of the Army and the Court. One of them took charge of me, asked me CHAP. XXVI ST. PETERSBURG 427 many questions about the Stanley family — whether the gipsies did not acknowledge Lord Derby as their king, &c. ' Then I was ushered into the Emperor's room. He was quite alone, standing in full uniform by a desk, exceedingly gracious. At first he spoke, in English, of my former visit, and my knowledge of Philaret. I said that I had much en- joyed my stay, but never dreamed of coming again under such auspicious circumstances, and hoped that the benedic- tions of both the Churches might descend on an event so happy for both countries. " The only sufferers," I said, "are the parents." His eyes filled with tears, and he said, " Yes, it is true, she has been the joy of our lives, but it must be." It was impossible not to be moved by his emo- tion. He then turned off to speak of the Epiphany Fes- tival, and I told him how much I had desired to see it, and had only seen the ceremony before in Greece. We then parted. ' Augusta, meanwhile, with Lady Emma, had been sent for to the Empress, and just as I was passing through the galleries I was also summoned to see her. She was with the Grand Duchess and Prince Alfred. There is some- thing singularly amiable about the Empress and singularly frank and cheerful in the Grand Duchess. We had much conversation on the marriage ceremony. * By this time it was far on in the day, and it became necessary to take measures for making some of the innu- merable calls. Accordingly, I had a list made out of the various members of the Imperial Family, took one of the carriages, and, under the charge of one of these Venetian- looking servants, drove in succession to six of the palaces. The door was opened; the servant announced, "This is Oldenburg" — "This is Vladimir, son of Alexander," and so on. At the Cesarewitch's there was, in a book for the inscription of names, an entry which puzzled me — the " Prince and Princess Walesky." At last I saw it was Russ for "of Wales." Tea with Countess Bloudhoff, and there met Prince Urusoff — delighted to see me, and re- membering all our old Moscow adventures in 1857. Dined with the household, and then to bed, after going with all the officers and ladies to Evening Service in the Imperial Chapel. This morning (January i8th), at 11 a.m., at the Imperial Chapel again — a vast crowd of officers, 2 metro- politans, 2 bishops, 6 archimandrites, and a splendid choir. 428 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY The Emperor and all the Princes, Russian and English, were present. One of the dignitaries who stood by us ex- plained each part of the service. Had it not been for the endless repetition it would have been very fine ; as it was, the Nicene Creed and the Lord's Prayer, chanted by the choir, was splendid. ' This lasted for more than an hour, and then I was hur- ried away through the corridors, filled with troops and ban- ners, to a window commanding the Neva. This gave a full view of the ceremony. Out of the palace filed soldiers, chanters, deacons, archimandrites, bishops, metropolitans, the Emperor and all the Princes, bareheaded, to a small temporary chapel on the frozen river, with a hole under- neath it, for the benediction of the water. An immense crowd under the windows, like that in the Piazza of St. Peterson Easter day. Guns fired the moment that the bene- diction was completed, and then every face turned upwards and every breast crossed. The only thing wanting was the weather ; it was a dismal dark thaw. * Immediately after this the procession returned into the Palace, and room after room was opened, with little tables for lunch. At one of these we were seated, when in came the Emperor, sat down, and talked to Augusta. The whole scene, inside and outside, even with this deplorable weather, was magnificent, beyond my expectation. 'Then at 4 p.m. was the service in the English Church. All the English Princes were there, and the church was crowded. I preached on the Marriage Feast of Cana, which was not only the Gospel of the day in New Style, but the Second Lesson for the Epiphany, Old Style.^ None of the Imperial Family, but several of the Court, were there, and it was very affecting. The Prince of Wales has written a very kind note, begging that it may be printed . . . And now I must end . . . As for being too cold, I have never been so warm in winter, inside or outside ; and as for the interest, the kindness, and the splendour, they are not to be exaggerated.' ' Winter Palace, St. Petersburg : January j\ . 'It is hardly possible to find time to write, or even to collect one's thoughts. I think I left off on Sunday night. ^ The Marriage Feast, a Sermon preached in the Chapel of the Royal Factor)' at St. Petersburg. St. Petersburg, 1S74. CHAP. XXVI ST. PETERSBURG 429 On Monday morning we went with two of the Court ladies, wonderfully intelligent, to the Museum in the Hermitage. Imagine what it is ! An immense collection of pictures, statues, and antiquities, almost like the Vati- can, under the same roof as the Palace. It is needless to describe it ; but what is truly astonishing, and what, having been discovered since I was here, I had not seen, are the Grecian sculptures of the habits of the Scythians 400 years B.C., in which there are the most beautiful representations of peasants in the same costume and with the same customs as you see in Russia now. Whilst we were deep in these there came a message from the Empress, to say that she desired to have my sermon read to her. I had lent the MS. to someone, and a man was instantly despatched to fetch it. It arrived just before the hour named by the Empress. ' The interview was deeply affecting. There was no one but herself and the Grand Duchess, and I begged her to interrupt me if there was anything which she did not understand. This led to a constant series of remarks and questions as I went on ; and when I came to the part relating to the feelings of the parents, it was a hard struggle to get through. After it was over they both discussed, in the most easy and natural manner, the details of the mar- riage ceremonies, and parted with the most gracious sayings, and expressions of desire to have it printed and translated. ' At 4 P.M. we went again to tea with Countess Bloudhoff, and there met a most delightful (I speaking German) ecclesiastic, lanishoff, to make whose acquaintance had been the one recommendation of the Empress Augusta. ' At 6 P.M. we dined with the Emperor. It was a dinner of 80, everyone in uniform except Lord Suffield, F. Knollys, and myself. The Emperor said a few kind words about the sermon before dinner. I sat between Countess Bloud- hoff and Countess Adelsberg (the wife of one of the two chief Ministers), Augusta between the Cesarewitch and the Grand Duke Alexis. All the English Royal party and their suite were there. The dinner was extremely short, and the whole party broke up at 9 p.m. ' Tuesday. — lanishoff came by appointment, dressed in red robes and Order, wrapped up in fur. ... I started with him in a sledge to pay my official visits to the three metropolitans of St. Petersburg, Moscow and Kief, and 430 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY Bajanoff, the Chaplain of the Imperial Family, who will perform the marriage, as being a married man, and also from his having been their spiritual director for three generations. ' The first visit was to Isidore of St. Petersburg. Nothing could be more cordial. He kissed me three times on each side of the face, as did all the others. We discussed various topics with each. I asked Isidore about the Bulgarians and various points connected with the marriage. Innocent of Moscow, who was almost blind, and whom I had seen before at Moscow as Archbishop of Kamschatka, was ques- tioned about missions. Ascanius of Kief talked history, and I asked him what opinion was held in Russia of the guilt or innocence of Mary Stuart. Bajanoff spoke English, and had Scott and Mant's Bible. It really was touching to see how totally without jealousy or any sort of feeling, except love for the Emperor's family, they all seem to be. 'To-day is the first fine day — brilliant sun — and all the morning was spent in driving to and fro in sledges from church to church. ' It is impossible to exaggerate the comfort. In no winter, anywhere, have I felt so absolutely saved from the slightest sensation of disagreeable cold. The preparations for the marriage are very little discussed. The programme is only published to-day. I had a long talk with the Duke of Edinburgh over all the details, and found him very agreeable. 'The music is to be by the Russian choir, and I shall add a special prayer of my own. The chief difficulty in composing it was to avoid the question of precedence between the two families. You will see how I have endeavoured to manage it.^ 2 The following is the special prayer used by Stanley : ' O Lord, our Heavenly Father, King of kings and Lord of lords, who dost from Thy throne behold all the dwellers upon earth, and of whom every family in heaven and earth is named, most heartily we beseech Thee to look with Thy favour on these Royal and Imperial Houses in this moment of their union. ' Pour down the riches of Thy grace and the abundance of Thy consola- tions on the august parents of her whom they now commit as of special trust to the husband of her choice, and to the care and keeping of our most Gracious (^ueen, whom may God long preserve. ' Let Thy blessing descend on the heirs of thrones and kingdoms who stand before Thee this day, and give to them and to all other members of the CHAP. XXVI ST. PETERSBURG ' At the Cathedral of St. Isaac I was presented by the Arch-Presbyter with a book that had been prepared for Bismarck, but which, as he did not come, they determined to give to me. What a triumph to have something which Bismarck lost ! 'There are in the Winter Palace 1,600 rooms and 4,000 inhabitants. ' To-night I went to the Russian Geographical Society. The reports made one feel how one is on the very frontier of Asia.' ' Winter Palace ; January H, n A.M. 'The morning of a mighty day — dark, dull, thaw. Yesterday was spent almost entirely in preparations — the arrangements of the Hall, the rehearsal of the Russian singers, the negotiations between the Grand Marechal de la Cour and the Metropolitans for their coming to our service; and — not last, not least — the endeavour to find a bouquet of white roses in which to entwine a sprig of myrtle which had come in a box from Osborne, to be presented to the Grand Duchess. ' Elphinstone and I set off in a sledge to a flower-shop to which we were directed, and on arriving found the roses by dint of hazarding the word "rose," and remembering the word " Baby " for " white " ; but not the possibility of a step further, from the total ignorance of French, English, or German. At last the man made a sign, and took us to his next neighbour, a barber. In a moment the whole thing was cleared up. The barber not only spoke excellent French, but conducted the negotiation in a style worthy of Gortschakoff. "Choose," he said, "from the roses what you consider the best, and I will tell him that must be the worst amongst the roses that he is to send. Do not say Imperial and Royal families here present the will and the power to fulfil Thy work, and hand it on to their children and their children's children. ' Bless all estates of men in both lands, that all, whether in Church or State, in their several vocations and ministries, may serve Thee to the edifying of Thy people and the glory of Thy great name, in knowledge of Whom standeth our eternal life, and Whose service is perfect freedom. 'Grant that the union in deeds of war, which this Hall celebrates, may be exchanged for the more blessed union of brotherly kindness and perseverance in well-doing; that peace and happiness, truth and justice, faith and charity, may be established among us for all generations, and that by divers gifts from East and West, from North and South, Thy kingdom may be built up and enlarged ever more and more, in the unity of the Spirit and in the bond of peace, through Jesus Christ our Redeemer.' 432 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1874 too much about lilies-of-the-valley, or he will send nothing but them." We did not tell him for whom we wanted them, but I shall after the marriage. 'Tea as usual with Countess Bloudhoff ; then dinner, then to the play — one I had long wished to see, "The Life of the Czar," a most instructive national story from the times of the first Romanoff, all in Russ, but admirably explained to us by one of the angels of the Court, one of those wonderfully intelligent ladies. It represented three things all in one — the hatred to the Poles, the devotion to the Emperor, and a Russian marriage. Then to an evening party at Count Adelsberg's, the most influential of the Russian grandees — music, ending with a supper, which lasted till 2 a.m. The Prince of Wales was there, the Duke of Coburg (whom I had not seen since Egypt), and a vast succession of Russian magnates. 'And now we are all arrayed — I in my red robes for the Russian service, to be exchanged for white for the English, Augusta in lilac and resplendent with diamonds. Lady Emma in pink. At 12 we start — I with my two chaplains, the two English clergymen. 'The marriage is over! At twelve we started — i.e. I and my two assistants were conducted to our places in the Imperial Chapel, close to the chancel rails, where all the clergy, not of the Greek Church, were placed. It corg- manded the whole view of the ceremony, which I need not describe. It was a very pretty sight. All the old metro- politans were there, even the blind Innocent of Moscow, and stood round in their splendid vestments, whilst the venerable chaplain, Bajanoff, formed the centre of the bridal group. ' It was much more like a family gathering than anything in Western Churches. The bride and bridegroom were closed round by the four groomsmen (for there are no bridesmaids), as if protecting them, and the crowns are held over their heads so long as to give the impression of a more than fugitive interest. The walking round and round the altar, with these four youths pacing with them, had quite the effect of what originally it must have been, a wedding dance. The sunshine, which after a dull, gloomy morning had gradually crept into the dome, at this moment lighted up the group below, and gave a bright, auspicious air to the whole scene. The singing was magnificent. CHAP. XXVI ST. PETERSBURG 433 The Lord's Prayer again struck me as the most beautiful vocal music I had ever heard. 'At a given moment, just before the conclusion of the service, one of the Court officers came to summon me away. With difficulty we found our way through the crowd to the antechamber, where I changed my red robe for my white ones, and immediately took my place on the high platform which had been made in front of the altar that stood against the screen. All the curtains were drawn down, and all the candles lighted, so that the whole place was transformed. ' The Hall was full from end to end — far more than the English Church would have accommodated — and as I looked down upon the vast array of officers, &c., it was a splendid sight. The Russian choir was on my right, the English residents on my left ; the two English clergy on each side, and the five Russian clergy, who came in with changed garments as soon as their service was over. ' Then came up the Hall the bride and bridegroom, and stood before me, the Emperor and Empress on their right. The music of the choir broke out with Psalm xxi. i as they advanced. ' It was a thrilling moment when, for the first and last time in my life, I addressed each by their Christian name — " Alfred " and " Marie " — and looked each full in the face, as they looked up into mine. The first part of the service I read from the Coronation Prayer-book. The second, from one lent by Lady Mary Hamilton, out of which were mar- ried George IV., the Princess Charlotte, William IV., the Duke of Kent, and the Prince of Wales. At the very end came the Prayer,^ which you will doubtless see in the news- papers ; then the final benediction and the chanting of Psalm cxii. I, 2, 3. ' When this was over I bowed to the Emperor and Em- press, and they returned it ; and I then turned round to the metropolitans and kissed their hands. Immediately afterwards I was summoned away to sign the leaf of the Register, which had been brought from the Chapel Royal. All the Princes were there, signing as witnesses. The Grand Duke Constantine was exceedingly kind, and begged to see me on the first opportunity. "There is so much," he said, "that we have in common." ^ The Prayer which Stanley used is given on pp. 430-1. VOL. II FF 434 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY ' At 4.30 P.M. followed the banquet of 800 guests. I sat by the Danish Minister ; opposite me were the Emperor and the whole line of Princes and Princesses. The four heirs of England, Russia, Denmark, and Germany, all so different, each from each, but, of all, certainly none to compare with the last. He is like a sunbeam wherever he goes. These were all waited on by the high dignitaries of the Court, who stood behind and talked to them. Then at 9.30 a ball, or rather an immense evening party, multitudes and multitudes spreading through hall and galleries, in one of which the Princes danced, or rather walked, the Polo- naise — once, the Emperor with Augusta. Even if it were only for the new acquaintances we have made, what a wonderful episode this will be ! ' We are both perfectly well.' 'January if, 1874. ' The day of the marriage was so filled with successive scenes and incidents that it was impossible to recall at the end all one had lived through. Did I describe the signing of the Register in the " Malachite Drawing-room " It was filled with the Princes and great dignitaries. The Emperor was standing by, and warmly pressed my hand, saying, "May God bless what you have done! " The Empress was sitting, as she, and she alone, had sat through the two services, fragile, silent, and woe-worn, but with perfect self-control. ' It was my work to sign first. I filled up the blank space : "At — St. Petersburg, in the Alexander Hall of the Winter Palace, prepared for the purpose ; solemnised — Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Dean of Westminster." The Grand Duke Vladimir held the sheet as I wrote, and then threw sand over it as it was finished. ' Then came the bride and bridegroom, and then twenty- five other signatures, beginning with the Emperor, and ending with the Chaplain, Mr. Thompson. As I had to wait till he had signed, we were there to the last. The floor was almost covered with the trains of the Princesses. It was impossible to tread here or there without putting one's foot on one or other of them, as on a separate carpet. The Crown Princess came up with her most gracious smile, and said to one of the Grand Dukes near her, " You could not have abetter benediction on the marriage." The Grand CHAP. XXVI ST. PETERSBURG 435 Duke Constantine introduced himself, and expressed his great desire to have a "good long talk." ' ' Wednesday, January \\, 1874. * After the marriage everything becomes less interesting. The faces of the two, as I saw^ them kneeling before me, and the firm yet tremulous voices, still remain in my memory, over and above everything else. Then came the Saturday. I cannot recall what we did. Then Sunday. I preached for the famine of a district on the Volga. The Princes were prevented at the last moment from coming, but the Princess of Wales was there, and a crowded con- gregation. 'Afterwards there was a luncheon at the clergyman's house with the churchwardens and English residents. On the Sunday evening, after dining as usual with the household in the Palace, we went to a concert of sacred music given by the Grand Duchess Marie, in consideration of the English scruples about Sunday. The anthems were sung by the choir from the Imperial Chapel, and were as good as it was possible to imagine. Afterwards the Grand Duchess showed us over her house. It is, if any place ever was in this world, a "Palace of Art" — com- fortj space, splendour, pictures of every kind, water-colour drawings of all the famous places she has seen (including Westminster Abbey). " Look at that little fellow in the corner. He is my uncle, Alexander I. Look at him in that other corner — he is grown a little older." She her- self was overflowing with wit and intelligence. * On Saturday, I now remember that in the morning we went again to the Hermitage, to see the pictures, with Mademoiselle Voiekof, one of the ladies of the Court. She is one of those wonderful persons that one only meets in Russia — knowing every subject, speaking every lan- guage, sacrificing herself entirely to the persons with whom she is, as devout as she is liberal, and as liberal as she is devout, as frank and straightforward as she is kind and considerate. With her we saw, what I had seen with such interest on my first visit, the Gallery of Peter the Great, and then the chief pictures. There are also two wonderful sculptures, one by Michael Angelo of a human creature scooped out of a square block of marble, with the most muscular development which it is possible to imagine. 436 LIFE OF BEAM STANLEY Another by Raphael of a child, one of the Holy Innocents, caught up by a dolphin. ' From this we returned to our rooms to meet Macarius, Archbishop of Vilna, one of the most intelligent of the Russian prelates. As he knew only Russ, Mademoiselle Voiekof came to interpret, and the conversation was doubly interesting from her additional information, and appreciation of all that was said. ' That afternoon, as usual, we drank tea with the Countess Bloudhoff, and there met a new set of scientific men. We dined that night with the Grand Duchess Catherine, daughter of the accomplished Grand Duchess Helen, whose acquaintance had been so strongly urged upon me in 1857 by Prince Urusoff, and whom we had seen at Lucerne in 1864. "How strange!" I said to Prince Urusoff, who was there, " that your wish should have been fulfilled, and that we are thus dining together at her daughter's." She and her children were very charming. 'Then we went to the Chreptowiches, vi^ith whom we had been engaged to dine, but from whom the invitation of the Grand Duchess had parted us. ' I return to Monday. We had intended to go to the Alexander Nevski Monastery. " Impossible," said Coun- tess Bloudhoff ; " the Grand Review will make it impossible. The Palace is surrounded by troops from 1 1 to 2." So a messenger was despatched, and we remained for the Re- view. The Crown Princess begged us to sit with her in an embrasure of the window looking out on the Alexander Green while it went on. I am not much interested in reviews, but it was curious to see the immense masses as- sembled, and the infantry leaping up and down to warm their feet in the frozen snow, and the Cavalry galloping to and fro over the ice without falling. ' Then we went to the Imperial Library. I had been much struck by it before ; how much more now that the whole staff of librarians turned out to receive us ! No library that I have ever seen is, as regards its curiosities, so well arranged. Since I was there they have received the two most authentic copies, both of the Bible and the Koran. The light faded away before we had seen all that we desired. 'That night we dined with the Emperor and Empress — a dinner of twenty-two. Augusta sat by the Emperor, CHAP. XXVI ST. PETERSBURG 437 I by a charming lady whose name I never heard. The Empress begged to have the additional Prayer I had made. ' On Tuesday we started at lo a.m. for the Alexander Nevski. The Monastery is a kind of little Westminster Abbey, the place of interment for famous and noble families. But the interesting part of the visit was the in- spection of the students at the school and college attached — very rough, and strange in appearance, but some of them exceedingly quick, and the subjects of their studies some- thing quite surprising in the midst of their barbarism. The "Rector," the chief of the place, lanishoff, is a delightful man, speaking German and French, and entering with the greatest ardour into all I said. He is a married priest, and Augusta visited his wife. She was deaf, but very pleasing. There was also an old sister living with them, and a peasant who had brought him up after his mother's early death, and whom, therefore, he had constantly living with them. From this I flew back in a sledge to the Palace for the presentation to the Duchess of Edinburgh, who was now returned from Tsarskoe Selo. All the English and German suites, all the Corps Diplomatique and many of the great functionaries, were there. We went in with the English suite. She and the Duke came in, her train borne up behind her, and with them Augu.sta and Lady E. Osborne, as in waiting. There was a large semicircle, and she went round with the utmost self-possession, with a word of Eng- lish or German to each, as the case might be. ' When this was over I went to have my hair cut at the benevolent barber's who had helped us out of our difficulty about the roses. He had found out in the mean- time who we were, and expressed his profound delight at having thus met " Votre Eminence." ' I dined at Prince Gortschakoff's — a large party. Sat between two most agreeable Russians, Chreptowich, and Valouieff, who takes in the "Times" and knows every single question discussed in England — boatraces, Exeter reredos, Tichborne, &c. Then to the theatre, to see " Ivan the Terrible," a most interesting historical play, in Russ, but every sentence explained by Mademoiselle Voidkof as it went on. Wednesday, at 9.30 a.m., we started in sledges to see the house of Peter the Great. It was as I saw it in 1857, only that the devotion was increased — the little 438 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1874 chapel was so filled with worshippers that it was impossi- ble to enter. Then, in a drifting snowstorm, through "the Islands" — the same that I had seen before on that lone: summer evenmg. At 12, once more through the Hermi- tage, to show it to James.* At 1.30 I had summoned all the British Protestant clergy — Presbyterians, Independ- ents, &c. — to join in presenting a Russian translation of the Bible, from the Bible Society, to the Grand Duchess. She received us and it just before her second grand recep- tion. Nothing could have been more ready and gracious than her answers. Some calls, and then to dine at the British Embassy — and now I write all this while everyone else is at the Opera.' ' Moscow : , 1874. Feb. 5 ^ ' Here once more in this famous place ! It seems hardly credible that all the events have occurred in the interval which make the sixteen years of absence so long. We started at 8 a.m. yesterday in the Imperial train. Each person has a compartment, or nearly so, to himself — the ladies and gentlemen apart — and for the greater part of the day I was absolutely alone, all intercourse with the others being cut off by the Imperial saloon, which came between. Latterly I got round during one of the stop- pages, and had a very agreeable evening. We halted for breakfast and dinner, each of which was with the Emperor and family. They all came except the Empress and the younger Princes. The Crown Prince and Princess of Prussia had gone on before. At each large station at which we stopped there were illuminations, hurrahs, and National Hymns sung by hundreds of peasants. The whole country was wrapped in deep snow. 'At Moscow, which we reached at 11 p.m., there was an immense crowd and (for the first time since our visit) an immense confusion. The Royal servants from Petersburg had come with us, and they were some help — but the multitude of carriages and sledges in the streets made progress for a time impossible. At last we reached the hotel at i a.m., where rooms had been taken for the whole suite, there being no room in the Kremlin. It is a modern hotel, but built after the fashion of an Eastern caravanserai. His footman, James Brookes, now one of the vergers in Westminster Abbey. CHAP. XXVI MOSCOW 439 'In the morning the same clatter of carriages again. At 10.30 we drove (by order) to the Kremlin. There we found ourselves in one of the Great Halls, and the first person that recognised me was Serge Sukatin, the eldest of the two brothers ; Michael, my special friend, I have not yet seen. There was a large assemblage of the Court dignitaries of Petersburg and Moscow. At last came our host ; the door opened, and in walked the Emperor with the Princess of Wales, the Prince of Wales with the Crown Princess, the Crown Prince with the Cesarevna, the Bride and Bridegroom, &c. They marched straight on, the whole of their promiscuous Court assemblage following, through the three Great Halls of St. Andrew, St. George, and St. Alexander, down through the ancient Hall of the Patriarchs, through a long corridor lined with peasants in their peasants' dresses, holding in their hands their wed- ding gifts of cakes, &c. ; and then, through a very high, covered space, we were in the old cathedral church. The two Vicars of the Metropolitan were there, with all the clergy, amongst others, either the same, or a successor of the same. Deacon with the sonorous voice of 1857. There was instantly sung a Te Deum, and then all the members of the Imperial Family went round and kissed the sacred pictures — the Grand Duchess hand-in-hand with the Cesar- evna. The church was entirely filled, strange to say, not only with grandees, but with very humble middle-class, and peasants. It was a touching and splendid sight, such as could be seen in no other country but this. As regards the outward show of religion in general, I do not wonder at their thinking all the other Churches pagan in com- parison. 'Then, while Augusta was preparing for the reception (to which, as having been presented already at Peters- burg, I did not go), I went to the review in the great riding-school. I was the only civilian present, and when it was over the Emperor walked straight across the empty space, and said, with his most gracious smile, " You will end by being a military." ' This afternoon I took Augusta to the view from the Kremlin walls. It is certainly less attractive in winter than in summer. The waste of snow is not an adequate substitute for the forest of gardens, out of which, when last I saw it, the city seemed to spring, and the gilded and 440 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1874 coloured domes and towers need a bright sun to set them off. To-night I looked for the first moment of the Em- peror's arrival at the Opera, and then came away. I do not think it was more enthusiastic than that for any other popular sovereign. But of course these manifestations are always touching.' ' Kremlin, Moscow : ^} , 1874. Feb. 6 ' To-day we went to see the antiquities of the Kremlin. After losing ourselves again and again in the Palace, we at last stumbled on one excellent guide after another, ending with Serge Sukatin, and had them explained to per- fection. The wonders were greater even than I had remem- bered. 'This lasted till 2 p.m. At 2.30 we started in a sledge, through driving snow, to meet the Princess of Wales and her sister at the Foundling Hospital. We went through immense galleries of nurses and babies, and then re- freshed ourselves by another snowy drive round the Kremlin. 'At 5.30 there was a state dinner in the Vladimir Hall of the Kremlin. It was of at least 200. We had met in the Hall of St. George, and then passed into this, each as splendid as the other and magnificently lighted, and at the chief table, where the Emperor sat, the plate consisted of ancient flagons and plates and ornaments, all English (with the exception of two or three Danish, out of compliment to the Prince of Denmark and the Cesarevna), presents to the former Czars from Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I. — the Danish ones from Christian IV. Augusta sat be- tween the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Coburg, I between the Greek Minister and Countess Tolstoi. The dinner, which was as short as it was interesting, ended by the proposal of the health of "la Reine Victoria," "I'Em- pereur de I'Allemagne," et "le Roi Chretien," by the Emperor; the "Bridal Pair" by the Prince of Wales, and (I think) the " Imperial Family " by the Crown Prince. ' After dinner we returned to the Hall of St. George, and there we stood round while the Emperor and Princess walked to and fro, talking now to this, now to that one. At the same table as the Emperor, at the opposite end from where I sat, had been the two Vicars, coadjutor- CHAP. XXVI MOSCOW 441 bishops of the present Metropohtan — one of whom (Leon- idas) had been a sailor and spoke English. The Emperor went up to them and spoke to them for some minutes, and then stepped across to me and introduced me to Leonidas. 'At 10.30 there was the ball of the nobles, if ball that can be called which had hardly the semblance of a dance. We found ourselves on a spacious platform protruding into an immense hall, crowded as thick as it could be packed with human heads, like the Guildhall on a nomination day, or Exeter Elall at some popular meeting, the galleries above also filled — in short, a dense assembly of more than 4,000 people. ' When the Imperial party entered the band struck up, a fountain in the far distance began to play in the midst of a silvery illumination, and a long line of sudden light ran round the two sides of the cornices, joining at the end of the Hall. When the band ceased there was a loud cheer, and when the cheer ceased the Emperor led the Princess of Wales down into the narrow lane opened through the crowd, and marched with her through the Hall, and up again to the platform, and down again, followed by the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales and the Cesarevna, &c., &c., and whilst this was going on I came here, and am' writing to you. 'To-day (Saturday)- we went with Serge Sukatin through the Patriarchal Library, the old scenes of Nicon's life, the Church of the Coronations, the Church of the Burials, the old original Church of the Kremlin, which I had not seen before, and then a beautiful drive to the Sparrow Hills and the Donskoi Monastery. It was the first very bright, very cold day we have had, but quite delightful, a sledge with three horses tearing over the deep snow, and from the Sparrow Hills, the Monte Mario of this Russian Rome, the domes and towers flashed in the glorious sunlight. Blind old Eugenius, Abbot of the Donskoi Convent, was dead, and I visited his grave. ' To-night we dined with the Emperor in his private apartments. This morning Michael Sukatin came, quite unaltered, and full of delight at seeing me. ' Su7iday. Service at the English Church at 11. I preached on the Lesson of the day. At i p.m. I went with the Emperor and all the Princes an hour and a half's journey by the railroad (new since 1857) to the Convent 442 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY of Troitsa. For the Emperor and the Imperial Family it was a real pilgrimage. They went simply that the Grand Duchess might salute the tomb of St. Sergius before her departure from Russia. We were only there an hour, and of course saw nothing of the wonders which I had seen on my first visit. But the general effect was very fine. Thousands of peasants on the hills of snow. At our disem- bai'kation, sledges upon sledges, each with three horses, tearing through the snowdrifts up to the Convent with the Princes and their suites, the great bell ringing, the church densely crowded, the feeble old Abbot aged so much since 1857 that I should not have known him, the Emperor and the Princes kissing the tomb of the old hermit. We went from this church to an adjoining church, where the old Philaret is buried. The Emperor pointed it out to me himself, and then said, " Here is someone who remembers you." It was Grotsky, the Theological Professor of 1857. He kissed me many times, as did the old Abbot, exclaim- ing, " Stanley ! Stanley ! " and uttering a few words of Latin. We came back, and dmed with the Emperor at the station at 7. ' They went back to Petersburg. We stayed on for three days, and moved to the Kremlin, to the rooms occupied and vacated by the Prince of Wales. This was the climax of the whole journey. To have spent three days in that historic Palace, with the view of Moscow, was indeed delightful. On Monday night there was a dinner given to us, to which were invited all the most interesting people in Moscow.' ' Berlin : February yth, 1874. ' Here we arrived this morning at 5 a.m. The glorious dream is over, and the most splendid certainly, and one of the most interesting, passages of my life. ' The last days at St. Petersburg were n"ot behind the first in their continued delight, only obscured to me in some degree by a heavy -cold I had caught at Moscow. The Thursday night I went to a meeting, half lay, half ecclesiastical, under the auspices and at the invitation of the Grand Duke Constantine. To my great surprise, the meeting was opened by one of the members of the Imperial Council. M. Pobedonestcheff,^ whom I had often met at ^ Stanley's manuscript copy of the Address is endorsed with the words, ' The best appreciation of my relations with the Eastern Church.' CHAP. XXVI RETURN TO ST. PETERSBURG 443 the Palace, in a French address, in the most beautiful language, expressed in the name of the meeting their felicitations and farewells to me. I care neither about praise nor blame, but it was a wonder and pleasure to find myself so perfectly understood by a man who, a month before, had never seen me. I answered in a few words of English. ' Friday, I forget what happened. Saturday, a very in- teresting day in the Museum of Mines. Sunday, preached in the morning in Prince Oldenburg's Lutheran Chapel, and in the afternoon my farewell sermon to many English and many Russians in the English Church. ' In the evening an immense state dinner at the Palace for the Emperor of Austria. After dinner there was the usual passage to and fro in the circle of guests. We spoke for the last time to the Emperor and Empress of Russia, and I saw quite close, but was not introduced to, the Emperor of Austria — older and plainer than I expected. A far more interesting person in appearance was Andrassy, his Prime Minister, in Hungarian dress, with the black locks and handsome face of a romantic bandit. ' Monday I went to the Alexander Nevski Monastery once more, first to address a few words in French to the students, to which one of them replied. It was deeply affecting to me — the thought that these were the only words that they had ever heard, or were ever likely to hear, from a stranger, and the last time that I was ever likely to see them. Then, by invitation of the Metropolitan of St. Peters- burg, whose fete day it was, I breakfasted or dined at a state banquet, where were all the chief lay and ecclesiastical digni- taries connected with the Church. The three metropolitans and the other members of the Holy Synod were opposite to me, and the great lay officer of it. Count Tolstoi, sat by me. When the banquet was over, after the usual toasts of " the Emperor," "the Holy Synod," the "Metropolitan," the Metropolitan rose, and (quite without precedent, they said) proposed "the Dean of Westminster, and the Church of England as represented in him," and begged me to convey his salutations to the Metropolitan of Canterbury. He also gave me a Russian Prayer Book, in commemoration of the day. I returned home, visiting the Lutheran bishop on the way. We had a sore struggle in carrying out our plan for leaving the next day, so many things still to be done. 444 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1874 But we thought we could not again change. On the morning of Tuesday we took a last drive, in bright sunshine, in a sledge, to the Neva, and then took a drive in a sledge with the Laplanders and the reindeers. We had seen the Laplanders on our first day's arrival, but not the reindeer. So we thus ended as we began. It was deeply affecting to take the last farewells. Some of them came to the station. One came as far as the first station on the way. ' We watched all the signs of Russia as long as we could. Peasants — wood-houses — gilded cupolas — fields of snow — at last, all melted away, and we are again in the common life of Europe.' Among the many friendships which Stanley formed in St. Petersburg, none was closer or more lasting than that with the Countess Bloudhoff. The Countess, who was already advanced in years, was the daughter of the cele- brated Count Bloudhoff, herself well known in literary circles, and a mine of tradition respecting the reigns of the Emperors Nicholas and Alexander II. With her Stanley maintained for several years a copious correspondence, which only ceased with his death. In his first letter to the Countess, Stanley describes the arrival of the Duchess of Edinburgh at Windsor in March 1874. ' I have postponed,' he says, ' any letter till we could give you some account of the arrival of your beloved Princess. The Queen invited us to come here on Friday evening, so as to be in time for the reception. All the members of the Royal Family that were in England came either that day or the next. Besides these and the Household there were no other guests. 'The day itself (March 7th, N.S.) was one such as we rarely see in England at this season — such as is described, by one of our early English poets : Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, The bridal of the earth and sky. Not only splendid in itself, but, unlike our variable climate, so fixedly, solidly fine that rain and mist were as impossible CHAP. XXVI LETTER TO COUNTESS BLOUDHOFF 445 as during your brilliant winters in Russia. The coming in of March was that of a lamb, as gentle, as pure, as spotless as ever followed St. Agnes. 'We saw the Queen and all the family (except Prince Arthur, who had gone to meet the comers at Gravesend) drive out through the Park, down a long avenue of Guards, and amidst a crowd of boys from the great school of Eton. We waited till we saw the head of the returning procession, and then went down to the entrance of the Castle, with the other members of the Household, to receive the Queen and the bridal pair. 'The Queen and her daughter-in-law stepped out first, and as soon as they had passed inside the doors she kissed her most warmly. ' My dear wife and I waited till the carriage arrived con- taining our old Petersburg friends, and you may imagine what a cordial greeting passed between us. We then all followed to the corridor (which is a kind of artery to the whole Palace), and then the Queen introduced all the members of the Household to the Grand Duchess, who looked full of radiance in the midst of her new home. ' There was no flaw, or chill, or entanglement of any kind. The. Queen was delighted ; the bride and bridegroom were quite at their ease ; and so ended the vTravTH}, if that is not too sacred a word to use on what is, however, like all domestic unions, a truly sacred thing.' The letter concludes with the first hint of the fatal illness from which Lady Augusta never recovered. ' We reached our Westminster home,' continues Stanley in de- scribing his journey from St. Petersburg to London, ' on the 25th of February, and on that night were summoned to the Queen, who was in London, and who was full of impatience to hear every detail of our visit. The next day my dear wife was taken with a very severe cold, so severe as to confine her to her room for a week. She only moved to come here to Windsor. She is, I am thankful to say, almost well. How thankful we both are that we escaped all serious illness in Russia, where our time was so precious ! ' A second letter to the Countess Bloudhoff was written on March 13th, and described the reception of the Duchess 446 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1874 of Edinburgh at Buckingham Palace. It is finished by Lady Augusta. ' My dear husband,' she says, 'is at this moment sitting with the Committee for revising the translation of the New Testament. I have also been very busy since I recovered from my indisposition. I have on my hands a scheme for reorganising the nursing in our hospital at Westminster, and as Easter approaches there are multiplied duties and arrangements connected with the dear Abbey. We hope after Easter to get away for some quiet days to Oxford, when he can have uninterrupted hours for writing, and I can escape from the door-bell ! We had a parish meeting last week, at which, instead of the usual speech on parish matters, he gave an account of our visit, and showed your bread and salt, and drew many useful lessons from the life of your great Peter. ' On Sunday evening we went to a lodging-house where many of the waifs and strays of London gather, and there he again, after reading the parable of the Talents, described what had been achieved by that great man, and what had been achieved by one since, who had in one generation transformed his people from a nation of serfs to a nation of free men ; and then he touched on what each' one there could do to shake off the slavery of evil habits and passions, which any might feel held them in a worse bondage than the bondage of serfdom. ' I thought you would have liked to know how, in every way, these vivid Russian pictures and recollections helped him, in giving life and energy to himself and to his minis- trations. I hope and trust that your attack has been quite got over, and that you feel strong again. ' Remember us most affectionately to all our friends. I think of them round you at this moment, 5 p.m., as I am preparing the tea for my husband when he comes in, and before we go out for our constitutional walk. ' God bless you, dearest Countess, ' Yours affectionately, 'Augusta Stanley.' One result of the recent wedding was, that in the summer of 1874 the Emperor of Russia paid a visit to England. Stanley was invited to meet the Czar at CHAP. XXVI LORD BEACONSFIELD 447 luncheon at Marlborough House. Lord Beaconsfield, who had lately become Prime Minister, sat in a post of honour, whilst Mr. Gladstone, whose fall was still recent, and who had lately forsworn public life, sat, in a less prominent place, near the Dean. When the company rose to leave the luncheon-room, Mr. Disraeli, as he then was, came down from his lofty position, and passed in front of the place where Stanley and Mr. Gladstone were standing. He turned to his political rival, and said, in allusion to the latter's absence from Parliament, 'with a mixture of comedy and tragedy expressed on his countenance, " You must come back to us ; indeed, we cannot possibly do without you." Mr. Gladstone, with more than usual severity, answered, "There are things possible, and there are things impossible ; what you ask me to do is one of the things that are impossible." Upon this Disraeli turned to me, as the nearest representative of the public present, and said, "You see what it is — the wrath, the inexorable wrath of Achilles." ' Stanley's meeting with Lord Beaconsfield at Hatfield has been already mentioned. During that visit the two men went together to see the Rye House, and 'Lord Beaconsfield was very much delighted with the little rustic parlour in which we had tea and bread-and-butter.' An- other meeting with him is worthy of record. On the last Sunday in 1876, Stanley was walking rapidly towards Westminster Abbey, and passing Whitehall. ' Suddenly Lord Beaconsfield came out into the street. I touched my hat, and was going to pass on ; but he rec- ognised me, and said something kind about what had occurred in the earlier part of the year.^ He then said, " My head is full of telegrams. Will you allow me to take a turn with you and get some fresh air " I of course assented, and we walked on towards Westminster Abbey. He said, "To-morrow will be a great day in India. It will 8 The death of Lady Augusta Stanley. 448 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1874 be New Year's Day, and the Queen will be proclaimed by her new title ; the imagination of the Orientals will be strongly impressed by the pageant." 'Then, changing the subject, he asked, "What do you think of my new bishop?" It was the Bishop of TruroJ I said, " I think it an excellent appointment. You know the saying of Alphonso the Wise : ' Give me old books to read, old wood to burn, and old friends to work with.' The Bishop of Truro is a very old friend of the Bishop of Exeter, and therefore they are sure to work well together." We still walked on, and I said to him, " You have not only given us an excellent bishop in the Bishop of Truro, but an excellent canon in Canon Farrar." Lord Beaconsfield made some remarks, and I said, " I am going to hear what he has to say on the last Sunday of this year ; but I am not going into my regular place, but into the crowd, like Haroun-al-Raschid, to see how the people behave." * We walked on still, and he said, " I have never heard him ; I should very much like to go, too." " But, my Lord," I said, " I can give you no place, because I go as one of the public." He said, "That is exactly what I should like to do. I like these Haroun-al-Raschid expeditions." We entered the north transept, which was crowded to excess. But we wound our way through the crowd till we reached the monument of the three captains, and then I stood on the pedestal, and Lord Beaconsfield by my side. I do not think that the people gathered who we were. We listened to Canon Farrar, who was in the midst of an eloquent passage about the length of eternity, for about five minutes, and then I turned to Lord Beaconsfield and said, " Perhaps now you would like to go." He said, "But is it possible.?" " Perfectly," I answered, " if you will follow the same course as when we entered." I came down from the pedestal, and he followed me, and we wound our way through the crowd, and out into St. Margaret's Churchyard. He said, " I could not follow him. Perhaps I am hard of hearing, and I was not accustomed to his voice ; but it was a fine delivery, and suitable to the occasion. But I would not have missed the sight for anything — the darkness, the lights, the marvellous windows, the vast crowd, the courtesy, ' The present Archbishop of Canterbury. CHAP. XXVI THE RUSSIAN BAPTISTS 449 the respect, the devotion — and fifty years ago there M^ould not have been fifty persons there ! " ' ^ During the visit of the Emperor to England Stanley was able to make good use of the influence which he had acquired in Russia. A Hamburg missionary named Oncken had spent a long life in missionary work on the Continent, and had planted hundreds of Baptist centres in Europe, from Holland to the Black Sea. For some years these Baptists had been exposed to cruel persecutions in Southern Russia, and it occurred to the Reverend Edward White, one of the many Nonconformist ministers to whom Stanley gave the right hand of fellowship, and not the left, that he might obtain help from the Dean. ' I had the pleasure,' writes Mr. White, 'of accompanying Mr. Oncken and his friend, Mr. Wilkin, to the Deanery. The Dean and Lady Augusta received us with their usual kindness, their minds having been prepared for the interview by a letter in which we had given a sketch of the life and labours of the excellent man who now sought his aid. The interview in the Dean's library made a striking picture : the venerable and stately form of the man through whose arduous toils at least a million copies of the Bible, in many languages, had been circulated in Europe, and that of the frail Church dignitary, that minute figure into which God had poured an ineffable sum of ethereal energy, sweetness, and light — of Heaven's best natural gifts of tenderness and humour, joy and glad- ness. According to the Dean's theory of the nature of things, he could not feel much enthusiasm for seceders from the Russian Church. But he had read the story of the Oncken Missions with wonder, and was struck with the gentle, noble personality of their author. The Dean re- ceived him with the utmost cordiality, but, promising nothing, only consented to watch for any opportunity of ^ The above account is taken from an MS. volume in which Stanley dictated, or noted with his own hand, some scattered reminiscences of persons and events connected with his life at Westminster. VOL. II GG 450 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY useful application to the Russian authorities, frankly con- fessing his despair of being able to interfere with success. ' Soon after this interview followed the visit of the Russian Emperor to England. Mr. Wilkin wrote to the Dean, earnestly reminding him of his promise. After the Emperor's departure the Dean wrote as follows to Mr. Wilkin: ■ " Deanery, Westminster : 1874. ' " My dear Sir, — I am extremely touched by your letter, the more so from feeling how ill I deserve your kind expressions for the little I have been able to do. I can truly say that the matter of your poor friends the Baptists in Russia has never been out of my mind during the Emperor's visit. But the extreme difficulty, not to say impossibility, of introducing a somewhat complicated and probably unexpected subject, either to the Emperor him- self or to any of his suite, was increased to the utmost extent by the circumstance that the actual interviews I was able to have with any of the party amounted to not more than a very few minutes. I had hoped from day to day that some longer opportunity might occur, and this, fortunately, was obtained on the very last day, when we had the chance of speaking on the subject at some length to one of the Emperor's most trusted friends, to whom the matter was quite new, but who fully entered into my feelings on the occasion. And I have, since their depar- ture, written to this same person in the same sense, urging that if any mention of the troubles of the Baptists should be made, it should receive some attention, and not be set aside without inquiry. For your good wishes, for your Christian prayers, for your generous sympathy with one whom you must regard as greatly mistaken in many points which you deem highly important, I beg to express my heartfelt thanks. * " Yours faithfully, '"A. R Stanley." * After a time the news arrived in England that a special messenger had been sent from St. Petersburg to the south of Russia, and from that moment no further accounts of persecution reached Mr. Wilkin from his Baptist friends.' CHAP. XXVI MRS. ANNIE BESANT The incident shows that in the midst of state ceremonies other aspects of his life-interests were neither forgotten nor neglected. He was always ready to respond to the call of suffering. Already, as Lady Augusta's letter shows, he had thrown himself eagerly into his professional duties, and was using his new experiences as a means of interest- ing and elevating the waifs and strays of London. His interview with Mrs. Annie Besant, in April 1874, six weeks after his return from Russia, affords another illus- tration of his keen sympathy with sorrow, and of the per- sonal efforts he was always ready to make for its relief. The story has been told by Mrs. Besant in print. ^ Mrs. Besant, who at the time was nursing her dying mother in London, was entirely unknown to the world, and had not become a public character. Everyone is apt to draw — unconsciously and unintentionally — the inferences which best agree with their own opinions. The story rests entirely on Mrs. Besant's authority. No allusion to the incident occurs in any of Stanley's letters ; it is there- fore impossible to correct the impressions produced on Mrs. Besant by any explanation of the circumstances and motives under which he himself acted, or to verify her recollection of his words by any authoritative statement of the expressions which he used. ' My dear mother had an intense longing to take the Sacrament, but absolutely refused to do so unless I partook of it with her. " If it be necessary to salvation," she per- sisted doggedly, " I will not take it if darling Annie is to be shut out. I would rather be lost with her than saved without her." In vain I urged that I could not take it without telling the officiating clergyman of my heresy, and that under such circumstances the clergyman would be sure to refuse to administer to me. She insisted that she could not die happy if she did not take it with me. I » Our Corner, October 1884. 452 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1874 went to a clergyman I knew well, and laid the case before him ; as I expected, he refused to allow me to communi- cate. I tried a second ; the result was the same. I was in despair. ' At last a thought struck me : there was Dean Stanley, my mother's favourite, a man known to be of the broadest school within the Church of England ; suppose I asked him .'' I did not know him, though as a young child I had known his sister as my mother's friend, and I felt the request would be something of an impertinence. Yet there was just the chance that he might consent, and then my darling's deathbed would be the easier. I told no one, but set out resolutely for the Deanery, West- minster, timidly asked for the Dean, and followed the servant upstairs with a very sinking heart. I was left for a moment alone in the library, and then the Dean came in. ' Very falteringly I preferred my request, stating baldly that I was not a believer in Christ, that my mother was dying, that she was fretting to take the Sacrament, that she would not take it unless I took it with her, that two clergymen had refused to allow me to take part in the ser- vice, that I had come to him in despair, feeling how great was the intrusion, but — she was dying. ' " You were quite right to come to me," he said as I concluded ; "of course I will go and see your mother, and I have little doubt that if you will not mind talking over your position with me we may see our way clear to doing as your mother wishes." ' I could barely speak my thanks, so much did the kindly sympathy move me ; the revulsion from the anxiety and fear of rebuff was strong enough to be almost pain. But Dean Stanley did more than I asked. He suggested that he should call that afternoon, and have a quiet chat with my mother, and then come again on the following day to administer the Sacrament. *" A stranger's presence is always trying to a sick per- son," he said, with rare delicacy of thought, "and, joined to the excitement of the service, it might be too much for your dear mother. If I spend half an hour with her to-day, and administer the Sacrament to-morrow, it will, I think, be better for her." 'So Dean Stanley came that afternoon, and remained CHAP. XXVI LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 453 talking with my mother for about half an hour, and then set himself to understand my own position. ' On the following day he came again, and celebrated the "Holy Communion " by the bedside of my dear mother. Well was I repaid for the struggle it had cost me to ask so great a kindness from a stranger when I saw the comfort that gentle, noble heart had given to my mother.' The first six months after Stanley's return from Russia were full of varied work. In May 1874 he read before the Royal Institution a paper on ' The Roman Catacombs as Illustrating the Belief of the Early Christians.' '^^ In the following June he delivered an address at Bedford on the occasion of unveiling the statue of Bunyan.^^ Two days later he spoke to the boys of Rugby School on the thirty- second anniversary of the death of Dr. Arnold (June I2th).^ In the same month also, on the invitation of Dr. Allon, he gave two addresses at Cheshunt College, 'an institution,' as he describes it, 'founded by that strange Protestant saint, the Countess of Huntingdon.' On each occasion he seized the opportunity to enforce his own views of Christianity and its duties. 'When we reflect,' he says in his paper on the Catacombs, ' that these same ideas which form the all-sufficing creed of the early Church are not openly disputed by any Church or sect in Christendom, it may be worth while to ask whether, after all, there is anything very absurd in supposing that all Christians have something in common with each other. The pictures of the Good Shepherd and of the Vine, the devotional language of the epitaphs — I know not whether they would be called sectarian or unsectarian, denominational or undenominational — but they have not been watchwords of parties ; no public meetings have been held for defending or abolishing them, no persecutions or 10 May 28th, 1874. Reprinted in Christian Institutions. 11 June loth, 1874. Published in Macmillan'' s Mas^azine for July 1874. ^2 Published in Macmillan' s Magazine for July 1874. 13 Published in Macmillan' s Magazine for August 1874. 454 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1874 prosecutions have been set on foot to put them down or to set them up ; and yet it is certain that, by the early Christians, they were not thought vague, fleeting, unsub- stantial, colourless, but were the food of their daily lives — • their hope under the severest trials — the very dogma of dog- mas, if we choose so to call them — the very life of their life.' In the address on John Bunyan, the universal charity of the man was the point which was specially emphasised, and it was, argues Stanley, by the universality of his teaching that Bunyan became the teacher, not of any par- ticular sect, but of the universal Church. * Protestant, Puritan, Calvinist as he was, yet he did not fear to take the framework of his story and the figures of his drama from the old mediaeval Church, and the illustra- tions in which the modern editions of his book abound give us the pilgrim with his pilgrim's hat, the wayside cross, the Crusading knight with his red-cross shield, the winged angels at the Celestial Gate, as naturally and as gracefully as though it had been a story from the "Golden Legend," or from the favourite romance of his early boyhood, " Sir Bevis of Southampton." Such a combination of Protestant ideas with Catholic forms had never been seen before, perhaps never since.' What was it, he asks in his address on the great Head- master of Rugby, that Arnold told the Rugby boys of religion } 'It was that religion — the relation of the soul to God — depends on our own moral and spiritual characters. He made us understand that the only thing for which God supremely cares, the only thing that God supremely loves, is goodness — that the only thing which is supremely hate- ful to God is wickedness. All other things are useful, admirable, beautiful in their several ways. All forms, ordinances, means of instruction, means of amusement, have their place in our lives. But religion, the true relig- ion of Jesus Christ, consists in that which makes us wiser and better, more truthful, more loving, more tender, more considerate, more pure. Therefore, in his view, there CHAP. XXVI STAATLEV'S POSITION IN 1874 455 was no place or time from which religion is shut out — there is no place or time where we cannot be serving God by serving our fellow creatures.' The year 1874 marks the culminating point in Stanley's career. 'No clergyman, perhaps, who ever lived,' to quote the words of Archbishop Tait, ' exercised over the public at large, and especially over the literary and thoughtful portion of it, so fascinating an influence.' He was now at the height of his literary fame. As a writer and as a preacher he held the ear of the public. Whatever he wrote or said commanded respectful attention. He was a power, not only in the Church, but in the world. He had made Westminster Abbey a centre of religious and national life. His home at the Deanery was the coveted resort of all that was best and most distinguished in English, and, it may be added, in Continental, life. He was one of the most brilliant figures in society, and a welcome guest in almost every house in London or the country. In his writings, his sermons, his conversation, his kindly acts to rich and poor, friends and strangers, he diffused his per- sonal charm over the widest possible circle. His power in the world was partly won by his literary influence, partly by his social gifts, but, most of all, by his character. His lively flow of anecdote and reminiscences made his conversation — to quote once more the words of Archbishop Tait — 'the most instructive, and certainly the most interesting, of any of his contemporaries.' A humorous and sprightly companion, he threw himself with the eagerness of a boy into every innocent amusement. His talk was totally free from assumption or self-assertion. His simple nature remained in all its freshness, unspoiled by high position, social favour, or worldly success. His transparent sincerity, his disinterestedness, his indifference to admiration, his disregard of obloquy, his readiness to 456 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1874 forgive, attracted many men who disliked his opinions as dangerous. No opponent who was brought into personal contact with him questioned his single-mindedness, or doubted his perfect truthfulness, or suspected him of vanity or self-seeking, or dreamed that it was possible for him to take an unfair advantage of his antagonists. He trusted his fellow-men, and drew them towards him by his reliance on whatever was best in their characters. Always looking for points to admire rather than to depreciate, he was without a tinge of jealousy. No one ever heard a sneer or a cruel sarcasm pass his lips ; his irony was always playful, and his jest good-humoured. Those who knew him longest and most intimately agreed in the testimony that they had never known 'so white a soul, so single a heart.' To the innocence of his pure and delicate mind it was positive pain to hear of anything mean, despicable, or degrading ; if his indignation did not flame out in words, the expression of his face and the change in his manner showed how he revolted from it with abhorrence. Thus it was that he at once enjoyed, and elicited, and pleased, all that was good in society, and society was the better for his stimulating and elevating presence. But over all his work and varied interests there gradu- ally crept the shadow of Lady Augusta's illness. In October 1874 he writes from Bordeaux to M. de Circourt, saying that he was prevented from attending the Old Catholic Congress at Bonn by the advice of the doctor, who had ordered his wife to take sea-baths. They had, in con- sequence, followed the coast of France from Dieppe to La Rochelle, combining French history with baths and douches. ' I was not sorry to be absent ; ' he continues : ' the attempt at reunion by re-arranging the " Confes- sions " of the Churches appears to me not only the wrong mode of producing unity, but also to produce an inevitable CHAP. XXVI ILLNESS OF LADY AUGUSTA AS7 harvest of equivocal and useless declarations, in which I should have felt myself out of place. The true union is, in my judgment, that which I indicated in my addresses in Russia — the union of better knowledge and mutual appre- ciation, and the frank recognition of the different vocations of the various Churches. To acknowledge this is death to Ultramontanism, and it is death conveyed in the most salu- tary and Christian form — by the perception of light and life. And for the Old Catholics themselves, I am persuaded . . . that their best hope is the gradual formation of a National Church, both in Germany and in Switzerland.' On their way back from Rochelle, while staying with Madame Mohl at Paris, Lady Augusta was prostrated by a fever, which reduced her to the extremity of weakness. 'Thank God ! ' Stanley writes on November 3rd, 1874, 'the illness has now taken a favourable turn, and my dear wife is, for the first time, permitted to leave her bed for a few hours. My relaxation in the intervals of my watching has been the reading of the " Memoires de St. Simon." Surely he is the French Shakespeare. Nowhere, outside the pages of the great English dramatist, is there such a gallery of portraits drawn from the various phases of human nature.' ' I do not think,' he says in a letter to his sister written on the same day, ' that it would be possible to be shut up (as I virtually am) for days and days with any one person who could be so unfailingly entertaining as Madame Mohl. The conversa- tion runs in two channels — either the characters and incidents of the reign of Louis XIV., of which she has an astonishing knowledge, and with the most vehement likes and dislikes, or else the characters and histories of her living friends and enemies, who are described and analysed with a vivacity that knows no bounds.' Day by day the invalid grew slowly better, though still too weak to bear the journey back to England. It was at this crisis of her illness that Stanley heard of the death 458 LIFE OF DEAN- STANLEY 1874 of Mr. Baillie, the husband of his wife's sister, Lady Frances BailUe. He carefully concealed the news from his wife, lest the shock should cause a relapse ; but, he says, 'it is heartrending to see her so incessantly treasuring up her little experiences, and sending messages to Fanny, 1* and to have to keep up a cheerful countenance about it ; but so it must be. 'All my plans have been overthrown. I had intended a course of lectures this winter in the Abbey on the rites and sacraments, &c., of the early Church, and I have a sermon to preach at Oxford in December. But how thankful we should be that this is the first interruption which illness has thrown in my way since 1849! I wish that one of the theologians or philosophers would write something satisfactory on Providence. It certainly works in a very "mysterious way." ' At length the return journey was successfully accom- plished. ' Here she is,' he writes from the Deanery on November 21st, 1874, ' safe, and, I trust, recovering ; but very different from that indefatigable, indomitable dispenser of all good influences who has hitherto shared all my labours.' A few days later he received the welcome news that he had been elected Lord Rector of St. Andrews, a distinc- tion which he highly prized, not only for himself, but for the sake of his wife. The following letter from Prin- cipal Tulloch announced his election and described his duties : 'St. Andrews: November 26th, 1874. ' My dear Dean, — I have the pleasure of informing you that you have just been appointed Rector of our old Uni- versity, the state of the vote being — ' Dean Stanley, 70. ' Marquis of Salisbury, 66. ' I hope that you will kindly accept the office, and let us enjoy your Rectorial reign for three years at least. ^' Lady Frances Baillie. CHAP. XXVI LORD RECTOR OF ST. ANDREWS 459 ' Your duties are — First, to appoint an Assessor (as he is called), to be a member of the University Court, who must not be a Principal or Professor, but any other person, here or elsew^here, who may appear to you interested in the Uni- versity, and likely to promote its welfare. The Rector is head of the Court, the senior Principal taking his place in his absence. ' Secondly, you are expected to deliver an Address to the students and professors at such time during the session as may be convenient to you. 'Just before Easter would be a very good time for the Address. After the usual tumult of the election it would be well to give the students a quiet time for work. After Easter would be too late for the Divinity students, who disperse in the end of March. ' I shall be glad to hear from you, and to give you any further information you may wish. ' I was sorry to notice that Lady Augusta had not been well. Her health, I hope, has improved by this time. Believe me ' Yours always truly, 'John Tulloch.' The office was accepted with delight by the first Church dignitary to whom it was ever offered, and the new Lord Rector appointed his nephew, Lord Elgin, as his Assessor. His Inaugural Address was delivered on the 31st of March, 1875.^^ In his 'Lectures on the Church of Scotland' he had been eager to draw a moral from his view of historical facts. No such object was now before him, and his Address was therefore less open to hostile criticism. St. Andrews was, as he tells M. Mohl, ' a spot which I had long known and enjoyed, and I was able to speak of it with more know- ledge and more enthusiasm than most Lord Rectors.' In ' The Study of Greatness ' he urges that the special duty of education in an age of equality and mediocrity was to fix ^''Sermons and Addresses delivered at St. Andrews: 'The Study of Greatness.' London, 1877. 460 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY the minds of students on all that is great in men, in books, in ideas, in institutions. The ennobling and inspiring force of association with a great institution like that of St. Andrews is stated in glowing words. No picturesque point escapes his notice, and even the dullness of what, to other minds, would have been uninteresting periods of its history is brightened by the flash of genius. ' Still,' he says, ' this secluded sanctuary of ancient wisdom, with the foam- flakes of the Northern Ocean driving through its streets, with the skeleton of its antique magnificence lifting up its gaunt arms into the sky, carries on the tradition of its first beginnings. Two voices sound through it : " One is of the sea, one of the cathedral " — " each a mighty voice " ; two inner corresponding voices also, which in any institution that has endured and deserves to endure must be heard in unison — the voice of a potent past, and the voice of an invigorating future.' Nowhere in education is the contemplation of great- ness more profitable than in theology. The barrenness of Christian theology, as compared with the richness of the Christian religion, is partly due, in his opinion, to the fact that ' the intellectual oracles of the Church have been too often looked for in those who, by imperfect culture or meagre endowments, are entitled only to a very inferior place in the school of divine philosophy.' In the first ranks of Scottish theology he places ' the wise humour, the sagacious penetration, the tender pathos of Robert Burns ; the far-seeing toleration, the pro- found reverence, the critical insight into the various shades of religious thought and feeling, the moderation which " turns to scorn the falsehood of extremes," the lofty sense of Christian honour, purity, and justice, that breathes through every volume of the romances of Walter Scott. You will not suppose that in thus commending the works of secular genius I forget that neither in the secular nor the ecclesi- astical sphere is mental power a guarantee for moral strength. I fully grant that Burns, by his miserable weak- CHAP. XXVI ADDRESSES AT ST. ANDREWS 461 ness, was, as none knew better than himself, a beacon of melancholy warning, no less than of blazing light, to the youth of Scotland.' The whole Address is fired with the conviction that, however dismal and ignoble the circumstances of the age, 'it was yet possible to attain' a higher and 'more spiritual theology, a more patriotic and generous policy.' He con- cludes with an English paraphrase of the exulting words of the victorious Caesar : ' Spe trepido : hand unquam vidi tam magna daturos Tam prope me Superos ; camporum limite parvo Absumus a votis.' * I tremble not with terror, but with hope. As the great day reveals its coming scope : Never in earlier days, our hearts to cheer. Have such bright gifts of Heaven been brought so near ; Nor ever has been kept the aspiring soul By space so narrow from so grand a goal.' The effect of the Address is thus described by Principal Shairp in a letter to Lady Augusta : ' During his three days here he was at his brightest and best, with but one thing wanting to make all perfect — your presence. In his Address on Wednesday he sur- passed himself, or, rather, I should say that he was at his very best. I put his Address alongside of that wonderful burst at the Scott Centenary ; only that was but twenty minutes, this was maintained for nearly an hour and a half. Everyone, old and young, was hushed and thrilled by it. I wish you had seen the faces of the students, how in- tent, eager, and responsive they were as they drank in every word. 'Then, at the two evening-parties he threw himself in among the students in a way that astonished everyone. Poor shy lads ! they had never seen before, perhaps will never see again, such a man, addressing them in such easy, equal, and hearty terms. The naturalness and gracefulness with which he moved about from one to another surprised me, well as I knew the charm of his manner. 462 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1877 'His presence has been like a bright angel visit, that has sweetened many a heart not used to such things. His Address and his influence here will, I trust, be no passing, but a permanent, good to the old place. Before the term of his Rectorship expires we shall hope to see him here again, and you with him, restored to health, as before.' The second Address was given on March i6th, 1877. • In the interval Lady Augusta had died, and the keynote of the lecture is struck in the opening sentences. By her death he had lost a mainstay of his life. At the same time, the divergence between the faith and the intelligence of the age was increasingly manifest. The change of note was partly due to the nature of the subject. He felt, as he tells the Queen, that it was ' less inspiring, because less congenial to the mass of the students.' But the loss of confidence was, in a larger measure, due to the change which he recognised in the tendencies of the age. 'The face of Providence,' he writes to Professor Max Miiller about this time, 'seems set against a reasonable progress of Christianity.' The first Address had insisted upon the brightness which the contemplation of greatness shed upon the studies of students. 'That brightness,' he says in his address on ' The Hopes of Theology,' ' I would still wish to maintain, though within a more definite range, and in a humbler and graver tone, more suited to the altered cir- cumstances, both of him who speaks and of you who listen.' Without ignoring the outward manifestations of danger, he still hopes 'that the difficulties of religion — national re- ligion, Christian religion — are but the results of passing maladies, either in its professed friends or supposed foes.' His buoyant confidence in the near future, which in- spired the first Address, is gone. Though he still trusts 18 Sermons and Addresses : 'The Hopes of Theology' (also published in Macmillan's Magazine for May 1877). CHAP. XXVI ADDRESSES AT ST. ANDREWS 463 in the ultimate triumph of the cause to which he had devoted his energies, he despairs of the present generation. The victory will not be won to-day ; it is inevitably post- poned to the morrow. ' The day, the year, may perchance belong to the de- structives, the cynics, and the partisans. But the morrow, the coming century, belongs to the catholic, comprehensive, discriminating, all-embracing Christianity, which has the promise, not, perhaps, of the present time, but of the times that are yet to be.' His hopes of the future were based on the great ad- vance which theology had made in these latter centuries. That progress, in his opinion, consisted in the increasing recognition of the fact that the essentially supernatural elements of religion are those which are moral and spiritual. On the means by which these spiritual elements of Chris- tianity may be handed on and developed, and on the charac- teristics by which they may be distinguished from the like elements in inferior religions, he preached two striking sermons^' at St. Andrews on March i8th, 1877. The first contains one of those parallels at which his eye was always so quick to gather in all that he read or saw. It is touched with peculiar deftness. ' I remember,' says Professor Knight, 'how it thrilled and lifted up the audience of students and professors alike.' The good deeds, the good thoughts, the good memories of great men, he says, elevate, strengthen, encourage, or rebuke those who come after them, and their perpetuation is 'the true Apostolic succession.' 'The weary traveller in the south of Spain who, after passing many an arid plain and many a bare hill, finds himself at nightfall under the heights of Granada, will hear rushing and rippling under the shade of the spreading 1" ' Succession of Spiritual Life ' and ' Principles of Christianity.' Printed in Sermons and Addresses. 464 LIFE OF DEAN- STANLEY 1875 trees, and along the side of the dusty road, the grateful murmur of running waters, of streamlets whose sweet music mingles with his dreams as he sleeps, and meets his ear as the first pleasant voice in the stillness of the early dawn. What is it ? It is the sound of the irrigating rivulets called into existence by the Moorish occupants of Granada five centuries ago, which, amidst all the changes of race and religion, have never ceased to flow. Their empire has fallen, their creed has been suppressed by fire and sword, their nation has been driven from the shores of Spain, their palaces crumble into ruins, but the trace of their bene- ficent civilisation still continues, and in this continuity that which was good and wise and generous in that gifted but unhappy race still lives on, to cheer and refresh their enemies and conquerors. Even so it is with the good deeds of those who have gone before us. Whatever there has been of grateful consideration, of kindly hospitality, of far-reaching generosity, of gracious charity, of high-minded justice, of unselfish devotion, of saintly devotion — these still feed the stream of moral fertilisation, which will run on when their place knows them no more, when even their names have perished.' The delivery of the Rectorial Address at St. Andrews in March 1875 made almost the only break in a year of enforced seclusion. All the fluctuations of hope, dread, and despondency are recorded in Stanley's letters, written as he watched by the side of his sick wife. ' I resign my- self,' he writes to Professor Max Miiller in February 1875, 'to six months of this stranded existence. If at the end of that time my dear wife is anything like what she was before in activity and strength, I shall be satisfied. Like what she was in wisdom and love she is, and has been throughout, and will be, I have no doubt, to the end.' 'Our life,' he tells Madame Mohl in June, 'is sadly changed — a mere ghost of its former self. But she still keeps up her cheerfulness and her patience wonder- fully.' August and September were spent at Norwood. The yearly visit to Scotland was abandoned. ' Unless I CHAP. XXVI ILLNESS OF LADY AUGUSTA 465 have to go to St. Andrews on business,' he says to his sister in September, ' I have not the heart to face Scotland again without her.' Months had now passed, and no permanent change had come for the better. In the early- autumn they returned to the Deanery. In another letter to his sister, written on the ist of October, he says : ' Our stay at Norwood has been anxious, and at times depressing — but still happy. By closing the door of one's mind absolutely against the past and the future, the present has become perfectly endurable, and with pleasures of its own. I have written five out of the ten lectures which will make up my next volume on the Jewish Church. This is a prodigious relief, and has been a won- derful distraction and assistance to me during these long solitary days and nights.' ' I had thought of coming to you,' Stanley writes to Professor Max Miiller from Westminster later in the same month, ' but did not like to leave home, where we are again — I trust, not to move. I know not what report to give, so very weak, so suffering, and yet such unconquerable cheer- fulness and vivacity. Mrs. Drummond, her invaluable cousin, is with us. All the world is changed for me. But I find it best, and she also desires, that I should fill up the time not occupied by my thoughts and work for her with work of my own ; and so I struggle on.' On the nth of October Stanley preached in West- minster Abbey. On the following day the Prince of Wales was to leave England for India. ' To-morrow,' he says, ' the first heir of the English throne who has ever visited the Indian Empire starts on his journey to those distant regions which the greatest of his ancestors, Alfred the Great, a thousand years ago, longed to explore.' '8 ' England and India,' reprinted in Sermons on Special Occasions. VOL. II H H 466 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY The 13th of October, 1874, was the day on which Lady- Augusta had first taken to her bed in Paris. ' It is astonishing how all thought and desire of travel or of movement has for me passed away, and how the life from day to day suffices.' So Stanley writes to his sister on the fatal anniversary. In the same letter he describes the visit which the Prince of Wales had paid to Lady Augusta on the day of his leaving England : ' On the Sunday night we had a message to say that the Prince and Princess of Wales would come to take leave of us at 3.30 P.M. the next day. They came about 4 p.m., having been detained by the members of the family coming to Marlborough House. 'They brought all the five children, wishing, the Prince said, to have them all with him as long as possible. 'They all came up, and remained about twenty minutes. Fanny was in the back library, and the children, after being for a few minutes with Augusta, who was delighted to see them, went to her. 'The Prince and Princess remained with Augusta and me. A. talked with all her usual animation. They were both extremely kind. The Princess looked inexpres- sibly sad. There was nothing much said of interest, chiefly talking of the voyage, &c. As I took him downstairs, he spoke of the dangers — but calmly and rationally, saying that, of course, the precautions must be left to those about him. I said to him, " I gave you my parting benediction in the Abbey yesterday." " Yes," he replied, " I saw it. Thank you." ' Later on in the evening Augusta wished me to telegraph our renewed thanks and renewed good wishes to the Castalia at Dover. I did so, and at 1 1 p.m. there came back a telegram from him : " Many thanks for your kind message. God bless both of you ! Just off for Calais." 'It is impossible not to 'be affected by these thoughtful acts and kind words. Augusta was very much gratified, and none the worse for the exertion.' 1^ Lady Frances Baillie. CHAP. XXVI /LLiVESS OF LADV AUGUSTA 467 For a moment it seemed that the progress of the malady might be arrested. ' I think,' says the eager watcher in November, ' that there is more strength and more interest in things.' In a letter dated ' December 4th, 1875, Carlyle's 80th birthday,' he reports to Pearson that, ' on the whole, she is better (Jenner says) than any time since our return from France. Judas Maccabaeus is to have a lecture to himself. He is a delightful person.' But the gleam of hope died away before the end of the month. ' I sometimes doubt,' he writes to Pearson, 'whether, when I see her so constantly suffering, I ought to wish her stay in this world to be prolonged. And yet to have her, even in this state, is so inexpressibly precious and consoling that I cannot endure to think that she may be lost to me.' The anniversary of their wedding-day (December 22nd) was clouded by dark forebodings of the future. With thoughtful kindness, the Queen endeavoured to cheer Stanley by a letter which she remembered to send him on the anniversary. It closes with a warm expression of affection for Lady Augusta : * And now, before concluding, let me once more try to express how deeply I feel for you ! But it is almost im- possible, for I cannot distress you by saying too much. My sympathy and sorrow are too great. I know your beloved one so well, and love her so truly. She was with me on those two fearful nights in my life when my darling mother and when my precious husband were taken. She was so much with me during those two dreadful first years of loneliness, and was always so kind and helpful, that to think of her now as so suffering, or at least as so helpless, is terrible. May our Heavenly Father, who has sent this fearful trial, support, comfort, and sustain you ! ' On January ist, 1876, there came an alarming change for the worse. ' She is much worse,' he tells Pearson in a letter written on January 2nd : H H 2 468 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1876 ' A new phase appeared last night, which, though allevi- ated this morning, leaves us in the greatest anxiety. My dear one never lost consciousness. She is quite calm, and down to late yesterday evening was listening with the greatest interest to my proof-sheets.' After New Year's Day the fatal end was only a question of time. Life became protracted suffering. Almost at the moment when hope was thus suddenly changed for despair Madame Mohl had lost her husband. ' I had already written,' he tells de Circourt on January 7th, 1876, 'to Madame Mohl to express my sympathy on hearing of the loss of one whom the darkening shadow of my own life, beginning under their roof, had endeared to me yet more than ever. How he loved and admired my angel wife ! How she loved and admired him ! Within the last few days my anxiety for her has greatly increased with her increasing weakness. I will not say that my, or her, hope has entirely failed, for as long as that life remains which has hitherto struggled so powerfully against this wasting malady, as long as that strong will continues unbroken which has determined, if possible, to live for others, even in the midst of her own sufferings, so long hope is not ex- tinct, nor happiness. She retains all her calmness and cheerfulness — she has committed to me all her wishes — and to the Supreme Disposer all her cares. For her friends and for her Queen and country she still preserves that in- tense sympathy which was the characteristic of her whole being. In her enfeebled state I dare not communicate to her the tidings of Mohl's death. It is useless. Her affec- tion for him, her tender regard for his widow, are not the less certain. Your expression of the widely-spread con- cern for her touches me deeply, because it is so true, and so richly deserved ; and know the trial through which I am now passing. ... I still labour (it is her wish and my solace), and I have now reached "the days of Herod the King." ' ' I write on this matter because it is urgent,' he says to the Rev. J. Llewelyn Davies in a letter on the Burials question. CHAP. XXVI ILLNESS OF LADY AUGUSTA 469 ' but my heart is very heavy. All hope departed on New Year's Day, and though there have been most blessed moments since of all that soothe, elevate, and strengthen, the suffering is now so great that we cannot but pray for a speedy release. Yet, as she said to me in one of her fare- well messages, "Do not despair of the Church. Abate no jot or tittle of hope." I still turn now and then to these more public thoughts, as not uncongenial with her own best aspirations.' The sorrow through which he was passing deepened the tenderness of his sympathy with the sorrows of others. To Madame Mohl he wrote the letter on her recent bereavement, to which he refers in writing to M. de Circourt : ' Alas ! what can we say to each other } When I was speaking to my dear Augusta, she said, in the midst of her sufferings, which were then very severe, " I have nothing left but this crushed and miserable body." I said to her, " Yes, you have something besides. There is your undy- ing love." She looked me very steadily in the face, and answered with all her strength, "That is my identity." ' And that is what I feel, and what you may feel of your dear husband. Whatever was best, and most characteristi- cally best, in them is their identity, and that is immortal. More than that I know not : with that I am satisfied. ' I live on, and sleep. I perform my indispensable duties. But the sunshine, the spring, the energy are gone. Will they ever return to me Shall I be able to draw them from the memory of that brilliant, that inexhaustible past ' In January 1876 died Lord Amberley. To his mother Stanley wrote the following letter : 'The Deanery, Westminster : January iith, 1876, ' Dear Lady Russell, — Will you allow one broken heart to say a word of sympathy to another 'The life of my life is ebbing away. The hope of your life is gone. She, I trust, will find in the Fountain of all Love the love in which she has lived on earth. He, I trust, ^ 470 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1876 will find in the Fountain of all Light the truth after which he sought on earth. May God help us both in this sore extremity ! ' Ever yours most truly, 'A. P. Stanley.' To Dr. Liddell he wrote on January i6th, 1876 : ' I knew that you would feel for us. Yo7i joined our hands in one, and gave us the blessing which has been ful- filled a hundredfold into our bosoms. To have had such a mother and such a wife was, perhaps, too much for one man's existence. I have two most loving sisters, and many faithful friends, who will, I know, sustain me when the blow at last falls. But the glory of my life will have departed, and what remains of it will be, perhaps ought to be, but a gathering up of the fragments of the past. 'Since that fatal New Year's Day the whole aspect of her position has been changed. She looks not now life- wards, but deathwards, and the fountains of her great heart seem broken up, and, while her speech continued, over- flowed with love and wisdom. ' Now it is sadly choked ; but her sweet smile still lin- gers, and her spirit is unbroken, though almost all else is suffering or dead. How long it will last no one knows ! ' In the sick-room it was felt that Lady Augusta's death would be a merciful release to her sufferings. Her weak- ness increased daily as her difficulty of taking nourishment became greater. Her power of articulation failed, her voice grew feebler, her speech more and more inaudible. By her side Stanley worked, day by day, at his lectures, read- ing to her, when she was able to bear it, chiefly from the Psalms and Isaiah, or placing some simple hymn, some Christian text, within her sight. ' My dear wife,' he tells M. de Circourt, ' reminds me of a line in Michael Angelo, which you doubtless know in Italian, but which I can only quote in English : "The more the marble wastes, the more the statue grows." ' Throughout her protracted sufferings she showed the same kindly consideration for others which CHAP. XXVI ILLNESS OF LADY AUGUSTA had been so marked a feature in her life. At an earlier stage of her illness a crowd of children gathered to see her slow and difficult removal to and from the carriage ; but she only desired that the servants might not be hurried, as it gave the little ones so much pleasure to watch. Of the nurses she entreated pardon for her impatience. ' Let no one,' she said, ' come to my funeral at any risk to him- self— not even my own brother.' The end was steadily approaching, and it was necessary to choose the spot where she was to be buried. Dunferm- line was, as she herself said to her husband, ' too far from you.' Her own wish was that she might be buried in the Abbey or near its walls. To her inexpressible comfort the Queen desired that the Chapel of Henry VH. should be her burying-place. 'Thank the dear Queen,' she said to Mrs. Drummond. ' I shall be near him now. I shall be with him whenever he takes people round the Abbey, whenever he is at his duty. I shall be where the dear babes were christened.' While Stanley hesitated to place her body beside the tomb of the Due de Montpensier, his doubts were removed by a letter from the Comte de Paris. 'There came,' he tells M. de Circourt, 'a letter full of affection and sympathy from the Comte de Paris, which encouraged me to choose this spot, a choice which he has since confirmed. It is congenial to her fidelity to that family, and to her profound affection for France, the country of her education.' On February 26th the Queen came to see Lady Augusta for the last time. The end was now so near that it could almost be counted by hours. On the night before Ash 25 The special reference is to the children of Lady Augusta's brother, Thomas Ci uce. Their names, ' Charlie,' ' Elsie,' and ' Augusta,' continually occur m her letters. 472 UFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1876 Wednesday (March ist), as Stanley wrote to his old pupil and successor, the present Dean of Westminster, ' she*pronounced my name for the last time. This morn- ing, for the last time, in answer to my urgent appeal, she opened those dear eyes upon me.' It was on Ash Wednesday, the same day on which Stanley's mother had died, that his wife, after he had read to her for the last time, passed away in her sleep. ' On this same dark day the two great lights of my life have gone out,' he says to Pearson in a letter written on March 1st, entreating him to come at once to the Deanery. The two chief sorrows of his life are commemorated in lines that were written shortly before his own end : 0 Day of Ashes ! twice for me Thy mournful title hast thou earned, For twice my life of life by thee Has been to dust and ashes turned. No need, dark day, that thou should'st borrow The trappings of a formal sorrow ; In thee are cherish'd, fresh and deep, Long memories that cannot sleep. My mother ! on that fatal day, O'er seas and deserts far apart, The guardian genius passed away That nursed my very mind and heart ; The oracle that never failed, The faith serene that never quailed ; The kindred soul that knew my thought Before its speech or form was wrought. My wife — when clos'd that fatal night, My being turned once more to stone 1 watched her spirit take its flight. And find myself again alone. CHAP. XXVI FUNERAL OF LADY AUGUSTA 473 The sunshine of the heart was dead, The glory of the home was fled ; The smile that made the dark world bright, The love that made all duty light. Now that these scenes of bliss are gone, Now that the long years roll away. The two Ash Wednesdays blend in one — One sad yet almost festal day ; The emblem of that union blest, When lofty souls together rest, Star differing each from star in glory, Yet telling each its own high story. When this day bids us from within Look out on human strifes and storms, The worst man's hope, the best man's sin, The world's bare arts. Faith's hollow forms — One answer comes in accents dear, Yet as the piercing sunbeam clear, The secret of the better life Read by my Mother, and my Wife. On Thursday, March 9th, Lady Augusta was buried in Henry the Seventh's Chapel in Westminster Abbey. Throughout the interval between her death and her funeral innumerable letters of sympathy and condolence poured in upon him from every side. ' It is impossible,' he says, ' not to be buoyed up for the time by this flood of sympathy and love for her.' To another friend he writes: 'The knowledge that my friends, my dear, unfaiHng friends, knew what she was, and is, must be my enduring solace.' He found a relief from solitary thought in arranging the details of the impressive funeral, which was attended by persons of every rank and every Church, from the Queen to the humblest of the poor in Westminster. ' Do not pity me for Thursday,' he bids a friend. ' What could be more sustain- 474 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1876 ing and inspiring than such a tribute rendered to the life of my life, the heart of my heart ? ' Pearson's absence was, he tells him, ' the only flaw in this day, which is not to me anything so much as the crowning honour of our dear angel. The Queen was, with the three Princesses, in the gallery the whole time, and, full of kind feeling, only thought it too long, in which I partly agreed with her. But the order, the solemnity, the majesty of the whole, were what our beloved one would have wished. ' I gave the blessing at the end, beginning this weary life again without the sunshine that made it tolerable. ' The pall-bearers were the Duke of Westminster (for Westminster), Lord Shaftesbury (for philanthropy), the M.P. for Dunfermline (for Dunfermline),^^ Caird (for the Scottish Church), Stoughton (for the Nonconformists), Motley (for the Americans), Browning for literature (Tennyson being unable to come).' ' For me,' he writes to M. de Circourt, 'there is a consolation in the full tide of sympathy which flows in from every rank, and every country, and every Church. But the sad future still remains of my work to be carried on without the support which hitherto carried me through all obstacles. . . . Was ever mortal man so blessed with such a mother and with such a wife Was ever a union of twelve years so rich in incidents of extraordinary interest and happiness ? May God give me grace to use the few years that may still be granted worthily of such a past — worthily of the hope of reunion with two such angelic spirits ! ' 21 Mr. Campbell Bannerman, who represented the constituency in which Broom-hall and Dunfermline are situated. DEAN STANLEY AT WORK AT HIS DESK AT THE DEANERY CHAP, xxvn EFFECT OF HIS WIFE'S DEATH 475 CHAPTER XXVII 1876-80 THE EFFECT UPON STANLEY OF HIS WIFE'S DEATH — THE THIRD VOLUME OF 'LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF THE JEWISH CHURCH' — TOUR IN PORTUGAL, 1876 — RENEWAL OF HIS WORK AT WESTMINSTER UNDER CHANGED CON- DITIONS—HIS DAILY LIFE — HIS LITERARY WORK— THE QUEEN'S ASSUMPTION OF THE IMPERIAL TITLE — THE EASTERN QUESTION — THE DEATH OF VICTOR EMANUEL AND PIO NONO, 1878 — THE BURIALS BILL, 1877— THE SCOTTISH CHURCH AND MR. GLADSTONE — LECTURES, ADDRESSES, AND SERMONS — DEATHS OF MR. MOTLEY, MISS LOUISA STANLEY, SIR GILBERT SCOTT, THE DUCH- ESS OF ARGYLL, MR. RUSSELL GURNEY, AND EARL RUS- SELL—VISIT TO AMERICA, 1878 — ITS SUCCESS —' MEMOIR OF EDWARD AND CATHERINE STANLEY,' 1879 — TOUR IN ITALY, 1879 — DEATH OF MARY STANLEY, 1879 Stanley never entirely recovered from the shock of his wife's death. The sun of his life was set, and the shadow of a great grief darkened the rest of his career. He re- turned to his house from the funeral of Lady Augusta in Westminster Abbey to be, for the remaining five years of life, with rare gleams of his former happiness, 'a bereaved and somewhat forlorn man.' ' I have now crossed,' he writes to his friend Edward Lear, ' the summit of my life. All that remains can but be a long or short descent, cheered by the memories of the past.' At times he even doubted whether it would not be best for him to leave Westminster. 'With her departure,' he tells Mrs. Drummond, 'the glory of the Westminster life, if not its usefulness, is brought to an end — the mine worked out, and no energy to continue the old routine.' 476 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1876 Loving relations took care that his home should never be wholly desolate ; old friends rallied round him ; new friendships were still to be formed. His mental vigour was not perceptibly impaired, nor the warmth of his enthu- siasms chilled. He grew richer in his stores of anecdote and reminiscences. Something of the vivacity, brightness, and elasticity of former years returned. His youthful love of writing verse was renewed, and exercised on all occasions, both grave and gay. His duties towards the Abbey were diligently discharged ; his interest in public events revived, and he watched with his old eagerness the progress of the questions which agitated the Church. He relaxed none of his former literary energies. Still, day after day, he worked at the desk in the library of the Deanery with his wife's bust placed on the table at which she used to sit. His instinct to stand by the weak was as strong, and his antagonism to what he considered narrow- ness and intolerance as fearless, as they ever were in his most vigorous days. If persons or causes were, as he believed, suffering injustice, no consideration of prudence kept him silent. Though, as he told Pearson in 1877, his ' fighting days ' were over, his eye would still kindle at the suspicion of a wrong, and sparkle at the first mention of a heroic deed. His sympathy with sorrow in every form was deepened in its tenderness, and his interest in his humble fellow- countrymen was widened in its range. Here, above all, he felt that the spirit of his wife was with him. His desire to help working-men had always taken a practical shape. He had done his utmost to promote coffee-houses and libraries ; he had served as president of the Working Men's Club and Institute Union ; he had endeavoured by every means in his power to extend to them the inspiring and elevating influences of the Abbey. Now, however, he found for CHAP. XXVII EFFECT OF HIS WIFE'S DEATH 477 himself a parish in the world of Westminster, carrying on with redoubled energy his work among the people of the neighbourhood — trying, as Lady Augusta had tried, to brighten their lives by the annual flower-shows in the Abbey gardens, or by conducting them over the Abbey, or by entertaining them in the Deanery at tea. It became his delight, to a greater degree than before, to minister to the needs of suffering friends at the Hospital, to support every effort made to raise the unhappy women who were collected at the Refuge, to visit the almshouses in Fenti- man's Lane, on the Surrey side of the river, even occasionally to conduct short mission-services in the low lodging-houses of the back streets of Westminster. His genius for friendship burned with a softer, if not a brighter, flame. His face still lighted up at the apj^roach of a friend, and his hand never failed in that characteristic clasp which gave such warmth to his welcome. His time and thought were as freely spent in the service of others. He watched the career of his friends with the same affec- tionate eagerness, untiring in his efforts to gain for them the recognition or the rewards which he believed that they deserved, seeking and making every possible opportunity to help them forward and bring them into notice. His sympathy, his sound counsel, his fertility of resource, were offered with all his old readiness, not only to friends, but to strangers, whose only claim upon him lay in their anxieties or troubles. No appeal for his advice was ever neglected. In the effort to remove the difficulties of those who sought his aid, he spared neither time nor labour. Lengthy letters were often followed by protracted interviews. If he did not always convince those who applied to him, there were few whom his sympathetic insight into the peculiar circumstances of each special case did not encourage and console. From 478 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1876 every quarter friends and strangers had recourse to him in their perplexities, and tlie frequency of such appeals in- creased as he drew towards the close of his life. Two instances out of many must suffice. The first is the case of a lady who was troubled with doubts of the central Gos- pel truth of the Resurrection ; the second is the case of a clergyman who doubted whether he could conscientiously remain in Holy Orders. Both had recourse to him as total strangers ; and in both cases he succeeded in removing their difficulties by his written or his spoken words. The lady, to use the words of Archbishop Tait, to whom she related the incident, 'had her doubts removed, her faith strengthened, and her heart comforted.' The clergyman retained his Orders, and was able to lead a happy and a useful life. In the first case, the following passage from one of his letters throws valuable light upon Stanley's own faith : ' I think the Resurrection can be historically proved, and satisfactorily so ; but I particularly wish you would try and dwell on John xxi. It seems to me it must satisfy your longing. It appears to me quite impossible to doubt that the whole occurrence is exactly and accurately de- scribed. It appears to me impossible to doubt that it ivas the Lord Himself, and that He was known by the disciples as the Lord ; as strong a proof as can be given by any- thing outside of one's own internal convictions for the life of the person living after death, and the reunion with those whom we have known and loved on earth. As our Saviour Himself said of the general proof of the Resurrection from the idea that " God is not a God of the dead, but of the living," so we may say of the deepening of that proof in the Christian religion, " Christ is not a Christ of the dead, but of the living." ' The following extract from his first letter to the clergy- man is also interesting for its allusion to his own position in the Church of England : CHAP. XXVII EFFECT OF HIS WIFE'S DEATH 479 ' Perhaps I may venture to say thus much : ' I have known one or two instances in which those oppressed like yourself have relinquished their position as clergymen, and have afterwards seen good cause to repent. ' I have known, also, others whom I have persuaded, or who have been persuaded, to remain, and who have found comfort in so doing. I may add that I myself (though, as you know, I have entered much into these subjects, and have, in the judgment of many excellent men, perhaps of the majority of my own profession, deviated widely from the popular views entertained of theology and religion) have found no practical difficulty in maintaining what, in my humble opinion, is at once an honourable and a tenable position. There is so much still left in common with those called " orthodox " — there is so much that they have either abandoned or not apprehended which is open to me — that the field of religious teaching still seems to me unexhausted.' When Stanley was thus asked to remove the difficulties of others, he responded to the call with all his old power, and, perhaps, with an added tenderness. It was in meeting the smaller and more ordinary demands of daily life that the change was chiefly shown. In congenial society he sometimes talked with the animation and cheerfulness of earlier years. In his foreign tours, his expeditions to scenes of interest in England or Scotland, and, above all, his visit to the United States, he threw himself with much of his former enthusiasm and of his old capacity for keen enjoyment. But, even in his most cheerful moments, he was never quite himself, never able to enter eagerly into ordinary occupations. ' I cannot preach now,' he said. ' I can manage to make a sermon for a special occasion. But a common sermon — no ! I cannot do that now.' His thoughts were constantly with the lost treasure that lay beneath the stone by which he so often stood silently gaz- ing. Yet the very richness of his memories of his dead wife brought a peculiar happiness, and added a constant 48o LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1876 sense of spiritual companionship, which lent a new touch of pathetic beauty to his closing years. Every ordinary event of life was at first charged with a remembrance of his loss. The protracted anguish of suspense was as nothing compared to the agony of the final blow. 'All the anxieties,' he tells the Queen in March 1876, 'and cares, and hopes, and fears of the last year and a half seem to me like unmixed happiness, com- pared with that desolation and sorrow which have now fallen upon me.' On March 13th, 1876, he pours out his sorrow to the same fellow-mourner, who had deeply loved Lady Augusta, and whose sympathy, expressed in almost daily letters, was, as he says, his 'unfailing comfort.' Writing to the Queen of the recent Life of Norman Macleod, he says : ' I shall always associate the book with her. The whole of the first volume, which was sent to me in the proof- sheets, she heard with the greatest interest ; the second arrived after she was unable to follow any continuous read- ing. But I felt so strongly her connection with it that, being very urgently pressed to write a review of it in the " Times " as soon as it was published, I consented ; and knowing that any day "the night" might come, when I could do no work of that kind, I wrote it instantly and sent it off, and, strange to say, it appeared in the very same number of the "Times " ^ which announced her death.' It was, perhaps, fortunate for him that he was, at the moment when the blow fell upon him, immersed in work. In its resumption he found the best solace to his grief, and paid the truest tribute to his wife's memory. ' On Monday next,' he tells the Queen in a letter written on April 7th, 1876, 'the Monday in Passion Week — I preach again for the first time. It will be at Sonning,^ where I have preached 1 March 2nd, 1876. 2 Hugh Pearson was Vicar of Sonning. CHAP. XXVII 'THE JEWISH CHURCH' on that day for thirty years without interruption, except in 1853, and 1862, when I was in the East. And then will come the still harder trial of preaching in the Abbey on Easter Sunday. But I must begin some time ; and I could not have a better day than that which speaks of immortality and hope — and it is my official duty to preach on that day.' His third volume of the ' Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church ' was also passing through the press, and was published in September 1876. The work itself, written by his wife's bedside, and read aloud to her as long as she could bear the effort of listening, had been 'the solicitude and solace of her latest days.' To her 'beloved memory' it was dedicated, with the prayer ' that its aim might not be altogether unworthy of her sustaining love, her inspiring courage, and her never-failing faith in the enlargement of the Church and the triumph of all truth.' With it he brought to a conclusion the series of Lectures in which his picturesque sensibility had quickened into life the long suc- cession of patriarchs, kings, prophets, and national heroes. In spite of undisputed defects, his history helped to work the same revolution in the popular view of Scriptural char- acters which ' Sinai and Palestine ' had been instrumental in producing with regard to Scriptural scenes. His vivid portraiture of the human actors in the Old Testament was the best antidote to the mythical and mystical school of thought which treated them as the fabulous creations of fervid religious imagination ; while the evidence which he accumulates of pervasive historical truth affords the best answer to the scepticism of those who, because of trifling inaccuracies in the narrative, rejected the whole history. The period comprised in the third volume of the 'Jewish Church ' includes the five centuries that elapsed between the Babylonish Captivity and the opening of the Christian age. It is the close of the old religious era; it is also the prelude VOL. II 1 1 482 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1876 of the new. It is the epilogue of one reUgious drama and the prologue of another. To most persons the ground which the volume traversed was little known. The stream of sacred history, after running through open and familiar channels, flows, as it were, underground, and reappears on the surface changed in form, scope, current, and direction. But the Exile, the ruin of the Babylonian power, the tran- sient glory of the Persian rule, the restoration of the Hebrews, the contact with foreign nations, the splendid outburst of national heroism under Judas Maccabaeus, the ascendency of the Asmonean dynasty — all combine to form a story which, for variety of detail, richness of picturesque episode, and lasting importance of results, can hardly be surpassed. Stanley himself considered that the interest of his sub- ject was inferior to that of the preceding Lectures. 'The interest,' he says to M. de Circourt, ' is less than that of previous epochs, and I doubt not that the whole work will bear the marks of the terrible calamity under the weight of which it was composed.' To this, indeed, the career and character of Judas Maccabaeus were an exception. Shortly after the publication of the volume he was at Oxford. There he met his old friend and travelling companion, the Rev. A. G. Butler. The conversation turned on the third volume of the 'Jewish Church,' and Mr. Butler thanked him for his vivid picture of the noble character of Judas Maccabaeus. ' Yes,' said Stanley, ' I have done my best for him ' ; and then, drawing his slight form together, and looking up, as if he saw the mighty shade of the Jewish patriot approaching, he added, 'I hope he will be kind to me when we meet in another world.' But if the period handled in the third volume excited less interest in Stanley than its predecessors, it was free from the exceptional difficulties of the earlier portions, and CHAP. XXVII ' THE JEWISH CHURCH' 483 even possessed some special advantages for his method of historical treatment. It was less familiar, and, to all but professed students, enjoyed the charm of novelty. It was less sacred, and therefore Stanley was able to clothe with flesh and blood the figures of his narrative, and to present his drama with some of the breadth and variety of human life, and yet to escape the charge that he was forgetting the unique character of the Old Testament narrative. It was also more definite and certain. Portions of the subject bristled with critical difficulties ; but there was no longer the same continuous necessity to weigh the value of the evidence, or to decide between its real and its poetical ele- ments. Standing on firmer ground, he no longer envelops Hebrew traditions in an atmosphere of sentiment, which is too reverent to reject them as fictions, and too truthful to accept them in their entirety as facts. And, finally, the width of the range that he traverses gave him scope for the exercise of some of his most characteristic gifts as a historian. His mind was not critical, but constructive ; it was syntheti- cal rather than analytical. As he glanced over the far- reaching vista, his eye not only detected the literary value of isolated facts imbedded in the involved paragraphs of German historians, or the picturesque capacity of forgotten legends and traditions which lay buried in the masses accumulated by industrious antiquaries ; it also gathered the whole country into focus, generalised its configuration, marked the great watersheds from which descend the currents of national life, and noted the commanding peaks which dominate and determine the national character. The volume opens with an account of Babylon in the days of its greatest glory, ' the golden city presided over by a magnificent oppressor.' The glowing description affords a striking proof of Stanley's literary gifts — his quick per- ception of telling contrasts, his dramatic force of narrative, 484 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1876 his imaginative realisation of men and things, his deft mastery of detail, his bold aird dexterous use of local colour- ing, his artistic talent in grouping and combining facts into pictures. Equally fine in their different ways are the portrait of Judas Maccabasus and the spirited account of his battles, or the discriminating appreciation of the life and work of Socrates. More remarkable than these separate illustrations of literary gifts is the effect of the work viewed as a whole. Stanley's realising, vivifying touch restores, as living persons and real events, characters and scenes which were mere names and forms and shadows. The scattered threads of Hebrew history are gathered together, the tangled skeins of intrigue, discord, and controversy are unravelled, and the whole material is woven together into the fabric of a picturesque, vivid narrative, which is often powerful and always interesting. The third volume of the ' Lectures on the Jewish Church ' was published when Stanley had left England for a tour in Portugal. ' In September,' he writes to Madame Mohl from the Deanery in August 1876, ' I go for a month to Portugal. I wish to try for a few weeks the effect of being where my beloved one was not with me. But I agree with you that there is no place where I am really happy — if happiness it can be called — except in this, her own home, with her presence constantly before me. ' If in October I return through Paris, I will see you. But I almost doubt whether I could face the prospect of inhabiting again those dear rooms.' His companion was Mr. Victor Williamson, of whom, at the end of the tour, he writes, ' he has been most excellent — so attentive, so interested in everything, never, with all the trials from A. P. S. and from the Spaniards, losing his temper for an instant.' The travellers started from Southampton. ' It is impossible,' he says. CHAP. XXVII TOUR IN PORTUGAL 485 ' to imagine anything more luxurious, and it is inexpressibly touching to see in the manner of the captain and the steward, without saying a word, that it is because they know the circumstances. It makes me feel in every act of kindness that it is she who still guards and watches over me. I sometimes hunger for home and for those duties which seemed to bring her so near ; and yet even here I find her also.' At first the experiment of travelling failed. Portugal seemed to him to be a 'marvellously uninteresting country' ; the charm of seeing new places had vanished ; the only result to be hoped for was the increased zest and ardour with which he would return to his duties. ' How thankful I am that I did not undertake America ! ' * I have read,' he tells his sister, turning once more to the favourite poet of his boyhood, ' " Roderick " again with pleasure. A good deal of the scene is laid in Portugal. Look at the first five lines of the second volume : "Count," said Pelayo, " Nature hath assigned Two sovereign remedies for human grief : Religion, surest, firmest, first, and best. Strength to the weak, and to the wounded balm ; And strenuous action next." How true they are, and how I feel the absence of the second remedy noiv.' To Sir Robert Morier, who had been his host at Cintra, he describes himself as ' gorged with the mediocrity of Portugal, in churches, castles, scenery, and wine-vintage — for the very wine-pressers were more like convicts on a treadmill than the inheritors of the most ancient institution of the civilised world. ' After a long internal struggle I have determined to go home through Spain. Hereafter, perhaps, I shall be glad to have seen Cordova for the first time, and Seville and Granada for the second time after thirty years. I feel that she, whose I 486 LIFE OF DEAN- STANLEY 1876 wishes I would fain consult in all things, would not have approved of my leaving any task half done.' On crossing the frontier into Spain his spirits revived. The first Spanish town ' seemed to give me her benediction. Badajos is Pax Atigusta.' With the Mosque of Cordova he was delighted. ' My solution of the Turkish Question is to remove the Sultan, after Gladstone has pensioned him off, to be out of the way of mischief, or of doing mischief, hei'e, re-establish him as Caliph of Cordova, clean out the cathedral, and re- store the Mosque.' At Granada he insisted on taking Mr. Williamson to call upon the Archbishop of Granada, whom, as the lineal successor of the master of Gil Bias, he was most anxious to see. He was greatly disappointed to find that the Archbishop was absent, and still more that the cause of his absence was a pilgrimage to Lourdes. ' Had he gone,' he said, 'to Compostella, that would have been right and proper ; but that he should run after so brand-new a super- stition as that of Lourdes is indeed distressing.' But, in all his travels, the one predominant thought is ever present. 'Oh to stand once more in Henry the Seventh's Chapel ! ' is his exclamation as he looks at the tomb of Isabella, the wife of Ferdinand. On the speech of Mr. W. E. Forster, delivered in October 1876, at Brad- ford, on the Eastern Question, he remarks : * How my dear one would have welcomed its well- weighed language and its dispassionate tone ! What a refreshing contrast to the utterances of Gladstone, Bright, Fawcett, and Freeman ! ' 'It will be a relief to the emptiness of this journey,' he says, as he sets his face towards home, 'to pick up the chain of associations with her at Madame Mohl's.' And CHAP, xxvu ' THE SIX ACTS OF MERCY' 487 yet the visit, when it came, had its painful side. ' How many remembrances,' he writes to the Queen, * were stirred as I walked alone up the staircase in the Rue du Bac, which we had left in such agonising anxiety in the November of 1874.' His personal grief opened his heart with a tenderer sympathy to the sorrows of others. During his absence in Portugal one of the servants of the Abbey, while still in the vigour of life, became hopelessly blind. To cheer and encourage the sufferer was his first thought on his return. His sister, Mrs. Vaughan, found him sitting by the side of the blind man, his own eyes streaming with tears, en- deavouring, by every possible thought and suggestion, to inspire hope into the heart of one on whom had fallen so terrible an afBiction. His efforts were rewarded. Sustained by his constant sympathy, the sufferer gained courage to take the first, and hardest, steps towards leading a useful, happy life. In endeavouring to lighten the trials and troubles of others he felt that he was doing his wife's special work. This feature in her character was commemorated in the window which he erected to her memory above the spot where she lay in Westminster Abbey. One of the compart- ments depicted three characteristic episodes in the career of her ancestor, King Robert the Bruce, and three scenes which were associated with the lives or deaths of her three brothers. Lord Elgin, General Bruce, and Sir Frederick Bruce. The other compartment represented the ' six acts of mercy so suitable to her — tending the hungry, the thirsty, the poor, the sick, the stranger, the oppressed.' On Christ- mas Day, 1877, he writes to the Queen that ' on the anniversary of our wedding-day the window was completed over her grave, and there is now nothing further 488 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1877 to be done in that sweet spot, which Your Majesty has given to her, till I join her.' Nothing gave him greater pleasure than any tribute of affection or respect which was paid to Lady Augusta's memory. Before her tomb was finally closed a little plant was found to be growing out of the earth. The Clerk of the Works at Westminster, Mr. Wright, who, previous to his appointment, was for many years employed by the Queen at Osborne, uprooted it, and brought it to the Dean. Stanley tells the incident in a letter to the Queen, saying that ' the Clerk of the Works, remembering that he had seen in the gardens at Osborne a myrtle which had been brought from the grave of the Duke of Coburg, took charge of this little growth, and brought it to me. It is now on the point of bursting into a white flower — " the emblem " (as he said) " of beauty and purity springing from the grave." I thought that Your Majesty would be touched by the good man's devotion, as I was. The little plant is now in one of my windows, waiting for the sunshine to bring it out.' The incident suggested the following lines, written on the first anniversary of Lady Augusta's death : On the Growth of a Stonecrop from the Grave. ' Earth to earth and dust to dust ' — Thus our dear remains we trust ; Dark and deep the sacred mould Shall the precious charge enfold. Flowers shall strew the ground above. Gifts of reverential love ; Crowning as with deathless wreath Her whose ashes sleep beneath. What is this with life and breath Stealing from the house of death ? Bursting into leaf and flower All unnursed by sun or shower? CHAP, xxvn H/S WIFE'S MEMORY 489 Drawing strength the world to brave Only from the holy grave ; In its lowly simple grace Worthy of its royal place ? Hail ! sweet offspring of the tomb, Shining on our deepest gloom ! Emblem of the better life Dawning after this world's strife — Teach us in each opening leaf Upward how to guide our grief; Bright as spring, and fresh as snow. Pure as she who rests below. It was with the same delight at finding his wife still remembered with affection that he received the Queen's request to plant a tree to her memory at Osborne. ' I went with Lady Ely,' he writes to Mrs. Drummond in April 1877, 'and planted the tree. It was a kind of Chinese juniper. I was glad that it was Chinese, for it connects it with the thought of her interest in China. I remember the only time that I saw her at Oxford before our marriage, when the Robert Bruces were there, she said, as she passed through the Christ Church quadrangle, thinking of Lord Elgin, " My thoughts are at Shanghai." It is a pretty spot near the Swiss Cottage. A bird's-nest was in a bush close to it, and next to it a tree planted by Norman Macleod.' The tree was, in another respect, peculiarly appropriate. A few days later he writes to tell the Queen that he had discovered that ' in China and Japan the tree is regarded as the emblem of everlasting life.' With the same pride in her memory he records every word that his friends speak about her life. ' Old David Morier,' he tells Mrs. Drummond, 'spoke much of "the blessed one who is above." "I reverse," he said, "for you the words of the Marriage Service. It is not till Death us do part, but till Death us do join." ' At the opening of 490 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1877 some Wesleyan schools at Bethnal Green, which he at- tended with the late Mr. W. E. Forster, he met Dr. Rigg, who ' told the story of her letter from Moscow about seeing a Wesleyan girl there in one of the schools. I am so glad when people take courage to mention her name in my presence on these occasions. / cannot do it, and therefore I the more rejoice that tliey should.' His chief thought was to act as she would have wished. In November 1876 he had 'pleasant walks with two young men — a young Montgomery, and a young Wildman, both just such as she would have desired me to cultivate.' The service on Innocents' Day, 1876, was, he says, 'attended by hundreds of children. I was glad, for it was a service in which my Augusta took the greatest delight.' At Christmas in the same year he had asked to dinner some of his ' poorer neighbours.' 'It pleases me, as a continua- tion of her good work.' In January 1877 he twice enter- tained large parties of workmen, to whom he delivered two lectures. ' The last lecture,' he writes, ' is over, and I feel that I have so far carried out her dear wishes.' The choice of a sermon for Easter Sunday, 1 877, gave him great anxiety : ' The difficulty of choice, and the constant craving for the one judgment which could have chosen for me in a moment, wore me to pieces. Yet now I feel that, on the whole, as if by a kind of inspiration, I had chosen, after many waverings, as she would have wished.' But, deep and lasting though Stanley's grief was, it was not of that selfish kind which isolates itself from the world in inactive melancholy. He did not shut himself up from his fellow-men, but took them into the fellowship of his loss, and thus drew out towards himself, with an unusual magnetism, that kindly sympathy which the world so often is at pains to conceal. He endeavoured to restore in the CHAP. XXVII LIFE AT WESTMINSTER 49 1 happiness of those around him the picture of that which he had himself lost, and to interweave the memories of the past with the occupations, the interests, and even the pleasures of the present and future. ' I am trying,' he writes to M. de Circourt after his return from Portugal in October 1876, 'by incessant occupation, not to banish grief — for mine is always at home — but to carry on the work which my dear wife has left for me to accomplish, and to console me in her absence.' His life at Westminster gradually resumed its normal course. Mrs. Drummond of Megginch and her daughter, whose devoted care of Lady Augusta during her illness had won his deep affection and confidence ; and his widowed sister-in-law. Lady Frances Baillie, and her daughter; and his sister, Mary Stanley, took it in turns to be with him at the Deanery. On them devolved the duties which Lady Augusta had so lovingly performed. ' There are,' he used to say, 'two things I cannot do : one is to under- stand arithmetic, the other is to take care of myself.' His frugal breakfast was prepared as Lady Augusta had prepared it, and his 'Times' taken from him and read aloud, lest, absorbed in its contents, he should altogether omit the meal. Throughout the morning one of the ladies remained in the house in case of need. If he did not re- quire a companion to walk with him to the 'Athenaeum,' or to see some new discovery which the Clerk of the Works had made in the Abbey or the Cloisters, there were other duties to perform — some reference to verify, some quota- tion to find, some lost sermon or missing paper to be searched for, some torn manuscript to be pieced and stitched together, some proof-sheets to be corrected for the printer. This last work was often a labour of great difficulty, owing partly to his fastidious ear, partly to the illegibility of his 492 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1877 handwriting. He would go over each line again and again, touching and retouching, so as to avoid roughnesses and secure a cadenced rhythm. On the crop of errors which the character of his handwriting was calculated to produce a comment is supplied by a story which he was himself fond of telling. He had written on business to a trades- man, whose reply was long delayed. At last the answer came. ' Not being acquainted,' wrote the tradesman, ' with the caligraphy of the higher orders, I asked a friend to decipher parts of the note.' After luncheon, if he had no other companion, one of the ladies always accompanied him in his walk or his drive, or was at the house when he returned. He could not bear to be alone, and his parting words when he left the house always were, ' I shall be back at such and such a time. Somebody will be in the way ' Formal calls he never paid ; but besides his visits to any acquaintances who were in sickness or distress, there were certain houses to which he was fond of going. Among those relations and friends whom he most often visited were his sisters-in-law. Lady Lucy Grant and Mrs. Charles Stanley ; his sister, Mary Stanley ; his cousin's widow, the Dowager Lady Stanley of Alderley ; Lord Arthur Russell ; the late Duchess of Argyll ; the Dean of St. Paul's and Mrs. Church ; Profes- sor and Mrs. (now Sir William and Lady) Flower. Many of his happiest afternoons were spent at the Temple with his sister Catherine and her husband. Dr. Vaughan. On their sympathy he placed the fullest reliance. He repeat- edly consulted Dr. Vaughan in his difficulties, though it by no means followed that he accepted his advice. To pass an hour with his old school-friend in his library, or to be cheered and amused by the conversation and stories of his sister, were two of his greatest pleasures in later life. At the Temple there was no fear that the five-o'clock CHAP. XXVII LIFE AT WESTMINSTER 493 tea would be omitted, and it was generally dark before Stanley left the Master's house, and walked from the Temple down the Embankment to the Deanery. Between six and eight in the evening he either worked in the library or brought his work and papers into the drawing-room. If he had no special work in hand, he either talked or read aloud, generally choosing for the latter purpose some history or biography. In reading aloud he too often only skimmed the page, here and there reading a sentence, while his eye, glancing down the lines, gleaned the meaning for himself without communicating it to his hearers. Anything by Matthew Arnold was 'kept as a treat for the evening.' Sometimes extracts from any book on which the conversation had turned during the day would be read, not infrequently a novel of Walter Scott's. Poetry was occasionally chosen, but never travels. Among his favourite books were Keble's ' Christian Year ' and the * Lyra Innocentium.' He never went on a journey without carrying the former volume in his portmanteau, and he always read aloud the poems for Sundays, or for any other special occasion, on the day so commemorated. After 1876 his hospitality, though still generous, was exercised more rarely and on a smaller scale ; yet when he gave a dinner-party he took the utmost pains to select and arrange congenial guests. While the London season lasted he still frequently dined out ; but he was wont to complain that, since the death of Lady Augusta, mixed society had lost its principal charm. When his evenings were spent at home, one or two men were often asked to dine. Sometimes the evenings proved very successful ; sometimes they were much the reverse. If the guest was a stranger, he might be thought a 'man of no intelli- gence,' or he might 'talk too much,' or he 'never uttered.' If he were an old friend, he might be ' not good to-night.' 494 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1878 In these cases Stanley relapsed into silence, involuntarily expressing by his face his disappointment and depression. On quiet evenings, when only the family party was pres- ent, no literary work was ever done, unless a sermon or an article had to be finished. But the hours after dinner were generally spent in readings of Walter Scott or some other favourite author. On Sundays especially, both before and after the 3 o'clock and 7 o'clock services, his friends gathered round him at the Deanery. The Rev. J. D. Boyle, now Dean of Salisbury, and then Vicar of Kidderminster, who was for many years an intimate friend, has recorded his conversa- tion with vStanley one Sunday afternoon in June 1878, before the Special Service at 7 o'clock. When Mr. Boyle entered the drawing-room he found there Miss Mary Stanley and Dr. Vaughan : ' Presently Stanley came in, and pleaded guilty to having been asleep. He had preached twice that day, and had also baptised Sir William Harcourt's son. The Dean and Miss Stanley had lately seen Bemerton, and visited every place connected with George Herbert. It was singular, he said, that no allusion to the scenery, or even to Salisbury Cathedral, could be found in any of H.'s poems. I asked if he had ever seen Olney, a place that had altered hardly at all since Cowper's time. The Dean said he had seen the house where Cowper died, and his grave. He had been asked to write an inscription for a monument to him, and to select a passage from the poems. He could think of nothing, and consulted Hugh Pearson, who sug- gested that adopted : " I was a stricken deer, that left the herd," and the passage that follows. I asked if he could remember anyone who did nothing remarkable before fifty, like Cowper, in literature or history. Vaughan spoke of Cromwell as an instance of a man who had spent the greater part of his life in obscurity. " He began, however," said Stanley, "to be famous earlier than Cowper ; but I do not think he was more than sixty at his death." "There was one man," he continued, "who might have altered things CHAP. XXVII A TALK WITH STANLEY 495 had he died at fifty — Columbus, who was fifty-four when he reached the ' New World.' " ' I spoke of Shairp's lecture at Oxford, and the desire he had created in me to see the Border Country again. He and the Dean had in former years explored the region round Moffat, and he dwelt upon the features of the country with great delight. I said Abbotsford had been a great shock to me — it was so poor, so small, so different from one's ideal. The Dean quite agreed, and said "it was too sad to think of all that might have been had the sacrifice to Abbotsford not taken place." We spoke of the Border ballads, and I expressed a doubt how far those in the " Minstrelsy " could be accounted entirely genuine, when you remembered the wonderful swing of Scott's undoubted compositions, such as the ballad in "The Antiquary." "He meant to be correct," said the Dean, "but his genius must often have overmastered him. He (Scott) once repeated to Lord Houghton eight lines which he said he had heard from an old woman; but Milman always declared that they could come from no one but Walter Scott : Black were the pages, and black were the maids, And black were the banners that waved o'er their heads ; There was mourning, and weeping, and wailing that day. For the fair flower of England is withered away. Black was the charger, and black was the man. Black was the day when King Henry rode on. Prince Edward is living, and bonny to see, But the Lily of England, all withered is she. '"There is but one thing," said the Dean, "to which this can allude. What is it " I was puzzled; so was Vaughan. "The death of Jane Seymour," he said. " Prince Edward is Edward the Sixth." He spoke of the richness of Scott's genius discovering itself more and more to him as he grew older. He reminded me of a friend's saying about Walter Scott being the only man with a bodily infirmity he had ever known free from crotchets. We then spoke of the difference between Scott and Byron, and of Trelawney's new book. " It makes Byron no hero," I said, "and shows Shelley more of a child than ever." The Dean said we had almost enough of Shelley literature. I spoke of the forgery of letters nearly thirty years ago, and how the forgery was 496 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1878 detected by F. Palgrave finding a regular copy from an article of his father's in Florence. The Dean said that " the Pascal forgeries had been greatly helped by the use of the paper of the period, stolen from the Mint, where Sir Isaac Newton was Master." He returned to Shelley, and spoke admiringly of Lord Beaconsfield's " Venetia." "Literary biography," said the Dean, "is, after all, the best. Life is a greater blessing, surely, for Boswell, Lock- hart, and, I think we may add, George Trevelyan." ' I asked the Dean if he knew J. R. Mozley's Essays were to be published immediately. The volume is to contain the essays on Strafford, Laud, and Cromwell, and Blanco White, and, I was sorry to see for Mozley's fame, that on Arnold. This led Stanley to speak of the one on Arnold. He asked me if it had been published before or after the Life. I said it was after the Life, and to me it always seemed a complete failure as regards the conception of Arnold's character. " Exactly so," said Stanley ; " I myself felt if Mozley so failed to grasp Arnold, how could one trust his view of Strafford or Laud " and, turning to Vaughan, "as to Mozley's sermons now ; they have been praised. Will they live Has he added anything to theology of a perma- nent character.''" A discussion followed as to M.'s pecu- liar position. The Dean said, " When M. was writing his Bampton Lectures on Miracles, I exhorted him to grapple with the fact that the history of all religions shows every- where a great growth of miraculous narratives. The time for the old Paleyan argument had passed. It had served its purpose, and the argument from internal evidence had been vigorously wielded. What tests can we apply to our Lord's miracles so as to place them in a category of their own?" Vaughan said, "The character and the miracles stand and fall together." "To me," said the Dean, "a break in scientific order never makes a difficulty, possibly because I have no science in me. A power that makes can unmake or suspend. Looking at mediaeval history, I find hosts of miracles asserted and believed. All of these are gradually discredited, and men see that they were either innocent illusions or inventions. As time proceeds, and the belief in miracles lessens, what hope is there that the miracles of the New Testament will still continue to have a hold on belief } I am not speaking of the great one, on which everything depends, but of the CHAP. XXVII A TALK WITH STANLEY 497 miracles of healing." I said that "the purpose of the New Testament miracles put them in a class by themselves." Vaughan said, " The manifestation of love in the miracles indisposed men to apply the usual tests of historic criti- cism." "To return to Mozley," said the Dean ; "is there anything in the sermons new, anything like Butler's ser- mon on the Love of God, written in the best manner of the eighteenth century, and conveying new ideas " I spoke of the sermon on War, and Vaughan praised that on Human Judgments. M.'s book on the Old Testament he thought poor, with the exception of the lecture on Abraham. "What," said the Dean, "is his notion of Abraham.?" "A great figure," said Vaughan, "thinking nothing of the present, but of the future." "Theology," said the Dean, " if it is to live, must take the form of the best literature of the day. The divine you admire (to Vaughan), Macleod Campbell, is so rugged and provincial that he will not live." I pleaded for the "Thoughts on Revelation" as being better in style than the Atonement book. He ad- mitted it, and said that in his last fragments there were signs of increasing breadth and beauty of style. '"Arnold," he said, "took much of the form of the literature of his time, and his best things survive. Besides, in his sermons on Prophecy he showed an advance and gave new ideas. When writing lately on the Eucharist, and wishing to express what I believe to be the meaning of the words in the sixth chapter of St. John, I could find nothing better or more fit for the purpose than Arnold's words in the first volume of his sermons." I said that in reading the essay I had been particularly struck with the simple purity of the language. ' Newman was then spoken of, and the results of his writing. The Dean recalled his extraordinary theory about immortality in his early sermons. "He made it," he said, " the consequence of frequent participation of the Holy Communion." "Even Faber," he added, "in his Anglican days, used to make game of the notion, and said it degraded celebrations to be so many bread-fruit-trees." Vaughan said he was always struck with a gross materialism underlying much of Newman's teaching, and painfully predominant in some Ritualist writers, even though men of true spiritual life. I spoke of the terrible passage in " Loss and Gain " VOL. II K K 498 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1877 about the Mass : " Quickly they go, ' as when it was said in the beginning, What thou doest, do quickly.' " The Dean said he had "always felt a horror at that passage." " How different," I said, "from Arnold and the last conversation with Lake." The Dean repeated to himself the passage in the Life ending with " My dear L., the words that I speak unto you, 'they are spirit, and they are life.'" It was now seven, and we went into the Abbey.' In incessant occupation Stanley seemed to find a refuge from the sad thoughts of leisure moments. With the cour- age and self-forgetfulness which in such matters were fea- tures in his character, he never relaxed his energies.^ No trouble, no labour, seemed too great to be bestowed on what he thought to be his duty. With even more than his old readiness he responded to solicitations to preach or lecture, regardless of distance or his own convenience. If obliged to refuse the invitation, he gave his reasons for declining with the same simplicity and modesty as his consent. His literary activity was rather increased than diminished. Always an untiring worker, he threw his whole strength into everything which he undertook. His perseverance was as stubborn as his facility was remark- able. Some of his friends strongly urged him to devote himself to the completion of his ' History of the Jewish Church.' They felt, and not without justice, that his learn- ing and literary powers were frittered away in the mass of disjointed, miscellaneous writing which still flowed from * The following incident is worth recording, as an indication of his courage and of his keen sense of humour, which on occasion could take an unexpectedly practical turn. One day a visitor was shown into the library, who turned out to be a madman. He said, in a threatening tone, as he advanced into the room, ' Mr. Dean, I have a message to you from God. You are to take me to the Queen, whom I am to address on a most solemn matter.' ' In that case,' said Stanley, ' there is not a moment to lose.' Opening the door, he ushered his visitor down the stairs and through the hall, picking up his own hat on the way. When they reached the front door, Stanley opened it, passed his visitor through, and closed it behind him. CHAP. XXVII LITERARY WORK 499 his pen. But such a continuous effort as was required to write the ' Life of Christ ' demanded more strength than he was able to command. It also would have necessitated a partial and prolonged retirement from his numerous engagements, which was practically impossible. Inces- santly interrupted by unexpected calls upon his time, obliged by his personal and official position, not only to conduct a voluminous correspondence, but to compose and deliver numerous sermons, lectures, and addresses, he yet continued to accomplish an amount of literary work which was remarkable both in quantity and variety. For a great part of the concluding period of his life the Committee for the Revision of the New Testament, of which he was a member, was still sitting. In its proceed- ings he took the warmest interest, and regularly attended its meetings in the Jerusalem Chamber, where he pleaded for the retention of every innocent archaism. The work was finished on Stanley's birthday, December 13th, 1878. The coincidence suggested the following lines, which he sent to the Dean of Lichfield in acknowledgment of two sonnets written by his brother-Dean at the commencement and the conclusion of the revision : When dark December's days had reached thirteen Heaven's light first dawned upon a future Dean. What Seer could in that far-off year have guessed How his gray age would in that day be blessed ; A gift to grace with more than gold or gem The chamber of his own Jerusalem, By the skilled hands of kindest friendship wrought, Through nine long years of friendship and of thought ; — On its bright face forgotten splendours shine ; Though old, yet new ; though human, yet Divine ! In the debates of Convocation he ceased to take his former active part ; but scarcely a session passed in which he did K K 2 500 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1877-81 not speak. His letters to the 'Times ' on topics of contem- porary importance, and his obituary notices of distinguished men of the day, attest alike his varied interests and the wide circle of his friends among the leaders of thought or action. The two volumes of his Addresses and Sermons in Scotland * and America^ scarcely represent a twentieth part of his activity as a preacher, lecturer, and speaker. His sermons on Thomas Carlyle ^ and Lord John Thynne were preached in February 1881, (the year in which the preacher died), and that on Lord Beaconsfield ^ so late as the ist of May, two months before his own death. Out of his many contribu- tions to periodical literature special mention may be made of his two articles in the ' Edinburgh Review,' ^ the first on Professor Geffcken's ' Church and State,' the second on the Religious Movement of the Nineteenth Century ; his articles in 'Eraser's Magazine ' on Inverawe and Ticonderoga, and on the Variations of the Roman Church ; his article in the 'Nineteenth Century '^^ on the Creed of the Early Chris- tians; his articles in ' Macmillan's Magazine ' on the English Law of Burial, the Historical Aspect of the United States, the Historical Aspect of the American Churches, Subscription, and the Westminster Confession, the proof of the latter being corrected for the press on what proved to be his deathbed. Besides these articles he wrote prefaces, more or less lengthy, to such books as Greg's ' Layman's * Addresses and Sermons delivered at St. Andrews. London, 1 87 7. * Addresses and Sermons in America. New York, 1879. " ' Thomas Carlyle.' February 6th, 1881. Published in Sermons on Special Occasions. London, 1882. ' 'The Days of Old.' February 13th, 1881. Ibid. ^ 'The Earl of Beaconsfield.' May ist, 1881. Ibid. * The Edinburgh Revieiv for July 1877 and April 1 88 1. 1'' Fraser's Magazine for October 1878 and May 1880. 11 The Nineteenth Century for August 1880. 12 Macmillan's Magazine for March 1878, January 1879, June 1879, January 1881, and August 1881. CHAP. XXVII INTEREST IN POLITICS 501 Legacy,' the ' New Biblia Pauperum,' 1* Lord Stratford de Redcliffe's ' Eastern Question,' and the volume of Sermons on ' Church and Chapel ' ^'^ edited by the Rev. R. H. Hadden. More lengthy products of his literary activity were the two larger volumes which, in their proper place, will require more detailed notice — his 'Memoirs of Edward and Catherine Stanley,' and his ' Christian Institutions.' Nor was he so absorbed in literary work that he ceased to watch with careful attention the course of home and foreign politics. In the Queen's assumption of the Imperial title he was deeply interested, thinking, with Lord Beaconsfield, that it would strongly impress the Indian people. ' I wrote a let- ter on the subject,' he tells the Queen in April 1876, 'to the "Spectator" — not on the merits of the question, but on the agitation against it. A plain statement might, I thought, do good. But the letter was not inserted, partly because it was too long, partly because it did not agree with the opinions of the paper.' A month later he wrote on the same subject to Professor Max Muller : ' I do not feel that we have got to the bottom — if there be any bottom — of the animosity against the Indian Title. The conduct of the Opposition I understand, though I do not admire it, being obviously occasioned by the inadvert- ence of the Ministers in not consulting them beforehand. But what I neither understand nor admire is the conduct '3 A LavmatCs Legacy. By Samuel Greg, with a prefatory letter by A. P. Stanley. London, 1877. 8vo. * The New Biblia Pauperum, with prefatory notice by A. V. Stanley. London, 1877. 4'°- 1* The Eastern Question. By S. Canning, Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe, with preface by A. P. Stanley. London, 1881. 8vo. i« Church and Chapel. Edited by the Rev. R. H. Hadden, with intro- duction by A. P. Stanley, pp. xv.-xlviii. London, 1881. 8vo. Memoirs of E(huard and Catherine Stanley. London, 1 879. 8vo. ^8 Christian Institutions ; Essays on Ecclesiastical Subjects. London, 1881. 8vo. 502 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1877 of the great newspapers, which, having first received the title with enthusiasm, tlien, without any change of circum- stance, furiously attacked it, and repeated all the gossip, which a moment's inquiry might have told them was untrue. I do not suppose that the country at large took any great concern in it, or we should have heard of meetings and the like. On the whole, I place it among the most curious of the panics, theological, ecclesiastical, and political, of which I have seen so many during the last 30 years.' During the closing months of the same year, and through- out the two following years, the Eastern Question occupied a large space in his letters. With all his Russian proclivi- ties, he could not share in the growing feeling which at first prevailed in England in favour of the policy of Russia towards the Ottoman Empire. The gallant struggle made by the Turks for their national existence in Europe power- fully appealed to the chivalry of his nature and to his unfailing sympathies with the weaker side. He felt that the excitement caused in England by the Bulgarian atroci- ties, though it originated * in a burst of genuine indignation against Turkish mis- government, was coloured and perverted as it rolled on, partly by personal and political animosity towards the Ministry at home, partly by various small ecclesiastical influences.' The agitation was, in fact, assuming that unreasoning char- acter which he so deeply deplored in the panics of ecclesi- astical controversies. He resisted with all his strength the * insane delusion ' of exalting popular opinion and popular movements above the judgment of the wise. He depre- cated the decision of complicated political issues by the necessarily ignorant clamour of excited mobs. ' The state of the political world here,' he writes to M. de Circourt early in 1877, ' is very curious. There are very few who love the Russians with the deep gratitude and affection which I entertain for CHAP. XXVII DEATH OF PIO NO NO 503 them. Yet there is sprung up, from various quarters, a poHtical sympathy with them which I can hardly share. At any rate, although the Turkish Empire may be doomed, I cannot regard without respect the last effort of the Otto- man race to defend their homes and their faith. Gladstone is filled with a genuine enthusiasm for the Eastern Chris- tians ; but, combined with this, he has a hold on the masses, and the masses have a hold on him, that makes his future career, now that he is disengaged from the control of his party, a phenomenon at once most interesting and most portentous.' The death of Pope Pius IX. in February 1878, following the death of Victor Emanuel in the preceding January, was a dramatic coincidence which excited his keenest interest. When the King lay on his deathbed, the Pope forgot his ancient enmity, and sent to say that, but for his great in- firmity, he would himself have come to see the dying man. This incident, which revived in the heart of the Roman populace the lost popularity of Pio Nono, vividly impressed Stanley's imagination. From some verses written for the Queen on the occasion the following lines are taken : O'er Tiber's stream, with sweep sublime, A shadow moved by tower and hall ; It smote the Monarch in his prime. The Pontiff in his lingering fall. In each the nation joy'd to see .'^t that dread hour the better part — The patriot, faithful, frank, and free. The prelate's generous human heart. Long, long estranged — united then — In their loved country's mingled woe, Unlikest they of mortal men. Yet not without a kindred glow. With all his old eagerness he gathered from friends in Rome the fullest details respecting the death of Pio Nono and the prospects of change in the policy of the Vatican. 504 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1877 A few years earlier he would have hurried to Rome to hear the announcement in the Piazza of St. Peter's, ' Habe- mus Pontificem,' and the proclamation, by the great bell, of Leo XIII. Now, however, he feels that he has changed. ' In former days,' he tells the Queen, ' I should much have enjoyed being there, and I almost think ive should have attempted it. But now I have not the spirit for it. And Rome especially is a place where I should most painfully feel the absence of the companionship which made everything doubly charming.' But it naturally was in home politics and in ecclesiastical affairs that his interests were most strongly enlisted. The attempt to divorce religion from secular life and to separate Church from State he regarded as a baleful enterprise. He watched its growth, as evidenced in the resistance to civil control which marked the policy of the High Church party, in the work of the Liberation Society, and in the rational- istic repudiation of a State religion, with mingled fear and sadness. He saw the tendency fed by the jealou.sy of Non- conformists, and for this reason, as well as from his desire to promote general goodwill among religious bodies, he promoted every measure which could mitigate their sense of injustice. Such a measure he found in the Burials Bill of 1877.^^ He attended the debates on the Bill with the keenest interest. He signed a memorial, in March 1876, urging the advantage to the Church of settling the con- troversy by ' some reasonable concession to the feelings of 13 The Burials Question had been for many years before Parliament. From 1861 to 1868 a Bill upon the subject had been introduced session after session by Sir M. Peto. From 1868 onwards the question was year after year brought before the House by Mr. (now Sir George) Osborne Morgan. In 1877 the Conservative Government were pledged to introduce a Bill, and the pledge was fulfilled by the Duke of Richmond's Burial Acts Consolidation Bill. The Bill was eventually dropped, in spite of the support which it re- ceived from Archbishop Tait. It was not till 1880 that Mr. Osborne Morgan succeeded in carrying his Bill. CHAP. XXVII THE BURIALS BILL Nonconformists.' He spoke on the subject in Convoca- tion, and he read a paper upon the question before a meeting of clergy and laymen in London on February 7th, 1878. His view was that 'the English law of burial per- mitted the performance of other than the rights of the Church of England in the churchyards and cemeteries of the National Church.' Even if this were not so, he ap- pealed from the eager partisans on either side, to the 'reasonable Nonconformists' and the 'charitable Church- men,' to cease from a struggle in which every victory was 'a loss to charity and to truth.' It was in this spirit that the measure, when three years later it passed into law, was accepted by the clergy of the Established Church, who had most vehemently opposed its principle so long as opposition was possible. It was a question on which men felt strongly on either side, and it was one on which Stanley opposed, not for the first time, the almost unanimous feeling of his clerical brethren. He formed his own judgment independently, and he maintained his opinion with outspoken frankness. But the antagonism in which on this, as on other occasions, he was placed towards the convictions of the clergy never embittered his feelings towards his profession, and he never forgot the provocation which he so often gave by his attitude. In the beginning of 1880 he was present at a meeting of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. An attempt was made to shout him down, on account of the tribute which he paid to Bishop Colenso for his services to the natives of his diocese. A friend commented severely on the unmannerly treatment which the Dean had received. ' I feel very deeply your kind expressions,' replied Stanley. ' You must not suppose that I have any ground of complaint against the clergy in general. On the contrary, I know 2" 'The English Law of Burial.' Published in I\racmiUan''s Magazine for March 1878. 5o6 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY well that these noisy demonstrations proceed only from a few, in whom party spirit has quenched all common-sense and common honesty. From the mass of my brethren, considering the provocation I give, I have met with a generosity and sympathy for which I must always be grateful. But it is truly encouraging to find that anything which I have said is of use to those who, like you, will have to carry on the good fight "when we are dead and gone." ' While he was thus eager, not only to maintain kindly relations with Nonconformists, but to remove all reasonable grounds of jealousy, he was a vehement defender of the Established Church. He championed its cause the more strongly because in the attitude of political leaders towards it he saw the same disastrous inclination to be led instead of leading, and to accept popular opinion as an oracle. 'What revolts me,' he writes to Professor Shairp in 1878, ' more than the destruction of the Scottish or English Church is the shameless want of principle, according to which public men avowedly declare that they will do that f^r which they have no disposition or conviction in order to bring their party into power. This is neither patriotism nor statesmanship. It is corruption ; it is death.' As in former days, the routine of daily life and the pressure of work were relieved by frequent absences from London. Sometimes his main object in leaving home was rest or relaxation, sometimes the delivery of an address or a sermon, more rarely, convalescence after illness. But, whatever the object, it was always combined with visits to scenes of interest, and there were few places which did not yield him some fresh harvest of associations or knowledge. At Keswick, where he lectured on Robert Southey,^^ he traced every spot in the district which was connected with 2' ' Robert Southey: A Lecture delivered at Keswick, March 31st, 1879' (^The Transactions of the Cumberland Association for the Advancement of Literature and Science, Part iv.). CHAP. XXVII LECTURES IN THE COUNTRY 507 the life of a poet in whose verse he never ceased to delight. At Bristol ^ he used the opportunity afforded him of addressing the students of University College to master the history of the Bristol Riots. At Darlington, where he was the guest of a Quaker family, he was keenly on the watch for any religious peculiarities which might illustrate his favourite study of comparative theology. ' He arrived,' writes Mr. Hodgkin, who was one of the guests invited to meet him, ' on a cold March day in 1877, and it was some time before he recovered from the journey. But gradually he came out of his shell. First one quiet little remark, then an- other ; then an anecdote or a passage of delicate drollery — and presently we were all listening and all charmed.' The address which he came to deliver was given in the Town Hall, in connection with the college established by the British School Society. Its subject was the points in the Christian creed which are held in common by all Christians. 'It was,' says Mr. Hodgkin, ' full of his all-embracing charity, and seemed to lift the whole audience into some higher sphere while he spoke. The soul was soothed and cheered by listening to him ; but, perhaps, the intellect was not altogether satisfied.' The acquaintance which Stanley made on this occasion with Mr. Hodgkin ripened into friendship. At one of their meetings the conversation turned upon Buddhism. ' "What a strange alteration," said Stanley, "there has been in the lifetime of one generation ! I remember when the name of Gautama was scarcely known, except to a few scholars, and not always well spoken of. And now he stands — second." There was something very impressive to me in the way in which he said this (as I 2^ ' The Education of After-life ' : An Address delivered at University Col- lege, Bristol, October 27th, 1877. 5o8 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY seem to remember him), with hands and eyes uplifted, and leaving the name of the first unspoken.' ' I scarcely knew,' concludes Mr. Hodgkin, ' how precious was the little fragment of Stanley's friend- ship which I had till I found that I should meet him no more.' His numerous preaching engagements carried him into every part of the country. Preaching for Dr. Cameron Lees at Paisley, or for Dr. Story at Roseneath, he neglected no opportunity of adding to his fund of information. At Paisley he explored every nook and corner of the Abbey ; at Roseneath he was keenly interested in the Irvingite movement, which had originated in the parish, and in the Manse, which was supposed to have become the home of Jeanie Deans. Even when he was recovering, at Torquay, from a serious illness in March 1878, he was still possessed by the same ' grand curiosity,' eager to extract information from the conversation of two antiquaries vi/^hom he likens to Jonathan Oldbuck and Sir Arthur Wardour ; listening with the keenest interest to a description of Napoleon I., whom Mr. Froude, the brother of the historian, had seen in Torbay ; or, fresh from the re-reading of Macaulay's account, identifying the actual spot at Brixham where William of Orange had landed. ' I laid my hand on the stone, and now believe in 1688 ! ' Other expeditions were made, rather for the change and rest which they afforded than for business or for conva- lescence. Such were the visits which he paid, with Mrs. and Miss Drummond, to his cousin at Penrhos, to Alderley, and to Oxford ; or his August round of visits to country- houses in Scotland ; or the more lengthy trip to the Con- tinent which he made with Mr. Victor Williamson in September 1877. The last-named tour began with the CHAP. XXVII DEATHS OF FRIENDS S09 Righi, and ended with Baden and Domremi and Paris. ' After leaving Baden,' he tells the Queen, ' I saw a place which my dear one and I had always wished to see, and had not seen — Domremi, the birthplace of Joan of Arc. I read again the whole story of the Maid, and thought it one of the most interesting and extraordinary mixtures of superstition, heroism, and good-sense on her part, and ingratitude, stupidity, and cruelty on the part of the French and English.' But neither the loving care of relations and friends, nor his many interests and occupations, nor his expeditions at home and abroad, could entirely lift the cloud of depression which hung about him. His physical strength was under- mined by incessant activity, combined with the prolonged strain upon mind and body of his wife's illness which cul- minated in the shock of her death. His recuperativ^e powers showed signs of failure. In the summer of 1877 he had been unwell, and in the early winter of 1878 he had been for several weeks prostrated by a serious illness. During the last two years death had been busy among his friends. In 1877 Mr. Motley, the historian of the Dutch Republic, died, and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, where Stanley read the funeral service. ' In his conversation,' he says, ' I always took the greatest in- terest and delight, and he was bound to me by the strong- est sympathy from our joint sorrow of the last two years.' A few days later he suffered a far severer loss in the death of his cousin, Louisa Stanley, his faithful correspondent, ' the most affectionate of friends and charming of compan- ions.' In the spring of 1878 Sir Gilbert Scott, the architect of the Abbey, died; 'and now a stranger will come, who did not know her.' In the summer of the same year died the Duchess of Argyll, 'always a very faithful, good, and kind friend to me. Both Augusta and I always admired the LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1878 high, grand, almost stern elevation of her character above all the petty, paltry things, both of society and of politics.' Her death was almost immediately followed by that of the only son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and by that of Mr. Russell Gurney, ' an admirable man, and devotedly at- tached to my Augusta.' The death of Earl Russell, though it brought, as he says, ' no sadness with the close of a long and most distinguished career,' yet severed another cher- ished link with the past. 'He was,' says Stanley, ' my first patron, and I had seen him shortly before his death. He was much aged, but the flow of humour, anec- dote, and reminiscence was still there. As soon as he saw me he repeated an old joke of his. " You know that I call you Diy Pope, but I always remind you that you are tiot infallible." He talked a good deal about Mr. Fox, in con- nection with the abolition of the slave trade, of vv^hich he said Mr. Fox was the chief promoter. I asked him what was the prevailing motive. He paused for an instant, and then said, " It was that Fox had a genuine love for the Jiuman race." ' ' The successive shocks told upon his weakened frame. A complete change of scene seemed the only remedy. Various plans were discussed. Jamaica and Cyprus were in turn proposed and rejected. Finally, with infinite misgivings, increased by the alarming illness of his friend, Hugh Pearson, he decided to visit America. Years before, the expedition to America had been planned by his wife and himself. His brother-in-law. Sir Frederick Bruce, was then the British Minister at Washington, and a visit to him at the Legation supplied an additional object for the voyage. After his sudden death, in 1867, the plan had been laid aside. It was now renewed under widely different circumstances. ' My dear Augusta,' writes Stanley to the Queen on August 31st, 1878, CHAP. XXVII VISIT TO AMERICA ' had often wished that we should accompUsh the voyage to America, and I feel that the change of scene would be better for me than anything else. It is a long journey ; but I enjoy the sea, and I have often felt that I could never quite understand Europe till I had seen America. My old and tried friend, Mr. George Grove, goes with me, and also a young medical man, Mr. Gerald Harper, a friend of my sister, Mrs. Vaughan, who is much in favour of my going. The party, consisting of Stanley, Mr. (now Sir) George Grove, and Dr. Gerald Harper, started from Liverpool in the Siberia 0Y\ September 6th, 1878. Every moment of the voyage was used in preparation for the coming campaign. All the books bearing, on America, including not only histories, but the novels of Hawthorne and Fenimore Cooper, were eagerly devoured. Everyone who could give him any insight into American life was questioned ; and, among the fellow-passengers who were thus examined on the tastes and habits of their countrymen, he was fortunate to find in the Bishop of Western New York (Cleveland Coxe) an ' agreeable companion ' as well as ' a mine of in- formation.' 'I can now,' he writes on board the Siberia, 'repeat the names of all the Presidents, and explain the meaning of Republican and Democrat.' As his knowledge of America grew his hope of enjoyment increased. Before he sighted Cape Cod — the first point of land which had gladdened the eyes of the Pilgrim Fathers — he was scarcely less eager in his anticipations than he had been at the prospect of visiting the most ancient historical site in Europe. Nor was he disappointed. Early in the voyage he had felt ' how all the voyage, the passengers, the landing, would have been transfigured if she had been here. Now it is my only wish to see, to have seen, and to return.' But from the moment that he landed at Boston, and ' saw the sun setting behind its harbour, as it does in the window at 512 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 187S Westminster Abbey,' ^ his enthusiasm never flagged. ' Everything is lost in the interest and the sense of con- tinued kindness ; the amusement also is incessant.' He did not close his eyes to the defects of the American people ; but he came, as was his wont, determined to see the best points in the national character. And he saw them. His expedition proved to be one long ovation. The most generous hospitality was everywhere offered him, and it was combined with a thoughtful kindness which he had scarcely anticipated. He had already many personal friends in America ; to many he was known by his books, which possessed that rare power of making the personal life and character of their author real and vivid to their readers. Others knew him by his reputation as an ecclesiastic, a man of the world, or a man of letters ; others welcomed the oppor- tunity of reciprocating many little acts of courtesy done to American travellers at Westminster Abbey ; to others the memory of Lady Augusta or of Sir Frederick Bruce was his passport. Delighted by his reception, flattered by the interest which was shown in him, rejoicing — poor linguist as he was — to find himself in a foreign country where English was the spoken language, exhilarated by a climate which he describes as 'transplendent, translucent, trans- cendent,' he threw himself into his new surroundings with a zest and a sympathy which his hosts could not fail to appreciate. Few could resist the fascination of his brilliant social gifts or the boyish freshness of his enthusiasms. Prompt to recognise and honour every truthful result of inquiry and every worthy act, he warmly sympathised with good, wher- -3 One of the compartments in the stained-glass window placed by Stanley over Lady Augusta's grave in the Chapel of Henry VII. represents the vessel which bore Sir F. Bruce's body back to England leaving Boston Harbour at sunset. CHAP. XXVII VISIT TO AMERICA ever it was found, and however remote it might be from his own tastes or range of thought. In his own person he bridged over gulfs which divide nations, classes, and Churches. His simplicity had resisted the dangerous in- fluences of success. Unassuming, free from pretension or self-assertion, he put himself on a level with the commonest person, without an effort, and without a touch of self-con- sciousness. His natural modesty made him defer to those who were older than himself, or whose position entitled them to respect. No thought of his own dignity or of the value of his time seemed to cross his mind. He responded to the calls that were made upon him on every side as though he were himself the most unimportant of men. His tact was unfailing, and it flowed from the desire and the power to throw himself into the feelings and circumstances of others. To illustrate his gift of sympathy, and the effect which its exercise produced in America, many letters might be quoted from friends in the United States. One instance will, perhaps, suffice. Its triviality constitutes its signifi- cance. Few hard-worked travellers would have been at the pains of visiting a school and making friends with the individual boys. ' Our boys,' writes Mr, Knapp, of Plymouth, Massachu- setts, 'whom you made friends for life by the kindness which you showed them in the short half-hour which you gave them, are anxious to "be taken in a group " as a school, and thus appear to you in England. As soon as the photograph is finished it will be sent for your acceptance. ' When talking about their plan of a photograph, some- one from outside said, " But it is not likely that Dean Stanley, with all his duties and interests, will care to re- ceive such a thing, or will remember you boys, even if you send it." The reply was very decided. " Yes, he will ; you didn't see him. He likes boys, and believes in them ; you can tell that right off ! " VOL. II L L 514 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1878 ' I can hardly tell you, my dear friend, the real joy and gladness which your visit gave to this home of ours — to young and old. We actually forgot that it was Plymouth Rock and Pilgrim memories which brought you down here. It somehow seemed to us as if your visit were on purpose to see us and our boys, in fulfilment of some long-deferred, half-forgotten promise.' It might be supposed that in a country which itself apologises for the absence of antiquities Stanley would have found little to gratify his historical tastes. But the reverse proved to be the case.^ Though three centuries had not elapsed since the colonisation had begun, and though the face of American society was modernised by the civilisation of the nineteenth century, he everywhere discovered traces of the primitive, child-like aspects which are associated with ancient history. In the youth of the nation he discovered its antiquity. American society, by its freshness, showed that it had not emerged from the stage of formation into that of achievement. The independence and diversity of the different States of America recalled to his mind a condition of political society to which the transition of the old Roman empire into the empire of Charlemagne afforded the truest parallel. The delegation of manual and mechanical labour to foreigners, instead of to natives, appeared to him an arrangement which was more akin to the beginnings of States than to the matured development of European nations. The princely munificence of individual benefac- tors like the Ten Worthy Fathers of Yale, John Harvard, or Johns Hopkins, transported him to the Middle Ages, and to the period when the Wykehams, the Waynfletes, or the Wolseys founded some of the principal educational institutions of England. ' Historical Aspects of the United States ' {Macntillan's Magazine, January 1879). CHAP, xxvii INTEREST IN AMERICA And as a consequence of this ' near, closely-present an- tiquity ' of the American States, his imagination was fired with the uncontracted vision of the vast and mysterious destiny which — in a sense that could not belong to older nations — lay before the American people. In political, religious, and social life he felt that the United States contained undeveloped potentialities for unknown good or evil which the Old World no longer furnished, and that on every individual citizen within its borders, as well as on every English subject, lay the great responsibilities of forming the character and directing the future of a mighty child. To the study of American history the mystery of the future contributed new grandeur, and the sense of prox- imity to the beginnings of the State added a novel charm. Though the background of the past might be brought nearer than in Europe to the foreground of the present — though the chronological distances might be less graduated — though the whole picture might be foreshortened, yet the distinctions between ancient and modern history were not less clearly marked than in the most ancient of European monarchies. To Stanley's historical imagination, the era of the founders corresponded to the legendary epoch of other nations. But the first inhabitants and the first chieftains of America were not wrapped in a mist of myth : they stood out as real, living, actual personalities. Each of the early colonies had its tale to tell of primeval, stirring romance. The story of Virginia, for instance, revived for Stanley's picturesque mind the dazzling glories of the age of the Virgin Queen, giving life and individuality to the whole group of brilliant adventurers, and, above all, to the figure of Sir Walter Raleigh, whose nameless grave lies under the shadow of Westminster Abbey, but whose real 516 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1878 monument is the Old Dominion of the United States. And to the first projector of the scheme succeeds John Smith, the life and soul of the early settlement, with whose homely name is associated a career of thrilling romance. To the tomb of John Smith in the Church of St. Sepulchre, in the City of London, and to that of Pocahontas in the parish church of Gravesend, Stanley made pilgrimages immediately after his return to England. The same atmosphere of picturesque antiquity envelops the struggle between the English and the French, when the Lily of Bourbon and the Cross of St. George, the white coats of France and the red coats of England, the provin- cials in their hunting-shirts, the savages with their war- paint, were mingled in romantic confusion along the inland thoroughfare of waters, among trackless wildernesses of mountain and virgin forest In spirit the battle for supre- macy belonged to the thirteenth century, though the actual conflict was waged in the prosaic age of the Hanoverians. The group of American statesmen who, in the War of Independence, rose to the greatness of their country's des- tinies, seemed to him to be cast in an heroic mould ; they formed one of those groups of leaders that mark the creative epochs which usually belong to the infancy of nations ; they appeared in the midst of modern civilisation like the granite boulders of an earlier formation. And, finally, the great Civil War of the nineteenth century, by which America had been so recently convulsed, was a struggle which would have been impossible in more settled conditions of political society, and was comparable only to the wars of York and Lancaster, or at least to those of Cavalier and Roundhead. Nor was it only on past history that his attention was fixed. In the religious aspects of American society Stan- ^ ' The Historical Aspect of the American Churches ' (^Maanillan^ s Maga- zine, June 1 879) . CHAP. XXVII ITS RELIGIOUS ASPECTS ley found another most fruitful source of interest, and one which he, almost alone among Englishmen, was capable of cultivating. Here, too, he perceived the same traces of a 'young, unformed, and, so to speak, raw society.' The barbarous punishments inflicted by theological intolerance, which lingered in America after they had disappeared in England, and the combination of religious opinions with particular strata of society, were in his eyes characteristic of the crudity of newly-formed communities. His interest in the religious development of America was not confined to any one community. The Unitarians, the Quakers, the Episcopalians, the Presbyterians, the Con- gregationalists, the Methodists, the Baptists, the Universal- ists, claimed, and knew that they enjoyed, a share in his sympathies. Whether he spoke to the Congregationalist students of the Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore,^ or to the Presbyterians of the Union Seminary at New York,^'^ or to the bishops, pastors, and members of the Methodist Episcopal Church at New York,^^ or to the Baptist ministers of New York and Brooklyn,^^ or to the clergy of the Protes- tant Episcopal Church at New York^ or Boston,^^ his audience felt that in each instance the speaker was sincere in the effort to discover points of union and of sympathy. Naturally, however, it was in the American branch of the Episcopalian Church of England that his chief interest was manifested, and in its Churches alone he preached. In the devout sailor-hero. Captain John Smith ; in General Oglethorpe, who was the synonym in the mouth of Pope for ' strong benevolence of soul,' and in Bishop White, the bosom friend of Washington, he discovered its worthy pro- ^ Addresses and Sermons in America: Johns Hopkins University. ''■'^ Ibid. ' An American Scholar.' ''■'^ Ibid. ' John Wesley.' 29 Ibid. Reply to an address. ^ Ibid. The Church of England.' 21 Ibid. ' The Prospects of Liberal Theology.' 518 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1878 genitors. To its future he looked with a special and personal interest. The changes which White and his colleagues had made in the English Prayer Book were modelled on those proposed by Tillotson and the latitudi- narian divines of the reign of William III., and in many respects carried out alterations which Stanley himself advocated in England. In the Catechism the American Episcopal Church brought out the spiritual character of the Eucharist ; in the choice of the Psalms they allowed a selection which excluded the more vindictive and Judaic elements of the Psalter; they enjoined the explanation of the Ten Commandments by the spirit of the Two Com- mandments of the Gospel ; they avoided the repetitions of the English Liturgy by introducing the liberty of abridging the services ; they excluded the Athanasian Creed alike from their Prayer Book and their Articles ; they dispensed altogether with any subscription to formularies of faith. To the future of a Church in which he found not only liberal principles, but the ' residuary, secular, comprehensive ' aspect that he considered to be so excellent a characteristic in the National Church of England, he looked forward with con- fidence and hope. He rejoiced to think that all the other Churches regarded it, as they had done in the days of Berkeley, as the second best, and that it was ' still the Themistocles of American Churches.' In his short and hurried visit to America, which lasted less than two months, were crowded a variety of new ex- periences. At Boston, for the greater part of his stay, he was the guest of Mr. Winthrop, whose 'considerate atten- tion could not be exceeded.' Almost on his arrival he was welcomed by ' Longfellow and his brother-in-law, Appleton, with true interest and sympathising affection.' In Mr. Rice, the Governor of Massachusetts, he found a friend who had made all the arrangements for the funeral of Sir F. Bruce. 'Mr. Rice said,' Stanley writes to Mrs. Drummond, CHAP. XXVII BANQUET AT SALEM ' that he could never, to the end of his life, forget the impres- sion when Augusta pressed his hand and said, "This is the first time that I have met you, but it is not the first time that I have known you," and burst into tears. It is for the sake of this that he has constantly devoted himself to us.' Two days after his arrival in America he made a speech at the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the landing of Governor Endicott at Salem. He was surrounded by guests and speakers who derived their names and lineage from the first settlers : on one side sat a descendant of Endicott, the first governor, on the other, the representative of Winthrop, the first actual governor of the colony. ' It was,' he says, ' as if one were sitting at table far back in the opening of English or European history, with the grandsons or great-grandsons of Hengist and Horsa, or of Clovis and Pepin.' Even the immense length of the proceedings 'was not without its compensation, since it showed what a hold the anniversary had upon the people.' But he was most impressed by the strong undercurrent 'of political feeling against the excesses of disorder and corruption in the State, which caused the whole meeting to be like a smouldering volcano. Every allusion to the necessity of order and political purity was received with shouts of applause, and this reached its climax when Story's poem was recited. I thought it quite magnificent in its tone.' It is characteristic of Stanley to find in Story's Ode, and in the reception which it obtained, signs that the country had within it the instruments of regeneration and the germs of future greatness. The gifted poet and sculptor, who was himself a native of Salem, blamed The careless trust, that happy luck Will save us, come what may ; The apathy with which we see Our country's dearest interest struck, Dreaming that things will right themselves — That brings dismay. 520 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1878 He rebuked those who Apart in selfish silence stand, Hating the danger and the wrong, And yet too busy to uplift their hand. And do the duties that belong To those who would be free. Many travellers, and not least those who came from England, might have dwelt on the evidence which the Ode afforded of the vices of democratic Governments. Not so Stanley. He preferred to see in the respectful silence with which the remonstrances were received a proof that America would listen to the voices of the ' few noble souls and high intelligences who rise above the passions of party and the sordid interests of the moment' ' My own speech,' he says, ' was well received. One remarkable circumstance was that, when the health of the President of the United States was given, with the American national Air, the guests remained seated ; but when " Our Old Homes " was given, with my name, and " God save the Queen " was played, the whole audience rose. This, I was told, was always done.' He relates the incident in a letter to the Queen, and adds that he * was much struck by the fact that there was no topic of conversation about which people here are so eager as details of the life of Your Majesty and the Royal Family.' The next day Stanley preached for the Rev. Phillips Brooks (afterwards Bishop of Massachusetts) in Trinity Church, Boston, before a large congregation.^^ * No one,' writes Bishop Brooks,^^ ' who heard it will ever forget the benediction which Dean Stanley uttered at the close of the service at which he 32 Addresses and Sermons in America : 'The East and the West.' 8' Atlantic Monthly Magazine, October 1 881. CHAP. XXVII BOSTON preached in Trinity Church, in Boston, on the 22nd of Sep- tember, 1878. He had been but a few days in America. It was the first time that he had looked an American congre- gation in the face. The church was crowded with men and women of whom he only knew that to him they represented the New World. He was for the moment the representative of English Christianity. And as he spoke the solemn words, it was not a clergyman dismissing a congregation, it was the Old World blessing the New ; it was England blessing America. The voice trembled, while it grew rich and deep, and took every man's heart into the great concep- tion of the act that filled itself.' In the ' Boston Post ' ^ appeared a report of the sermon, preceded by a description of the preacher : 'Soon after the service the Dean was seen near The Brunswick, the centre of a circle of a few friends, among whom was Hon. Mr. Winthrop and Governor Rice, convers- ing in a most animated manner ; and we could not help ob- serving how much, in the expression of his face, although much thinner, he resembled the late Chief Justice Bigelow. He was dressed in a faded and weather-beaten overcoat, and wore, quite on the back of his head, a very disreputable- looking soft hat. Almost immediately, however, he turned, and, with the agility of a much younger man, he ran up the steps of his hotel and disappeared.' Though Stanley considered the newspapers to be 'by far the worst specimens of American life that we have en- countered,' he pleaded guilty to the hat. 'The disreputable hat,' he tells Mrs. Drummond, 'has saved me from the difficulty of diving to the bottom of the box, where the new hat is buried.' On Monday, September 23rd, Stanley met a gathering of the clergy of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Massa- chusetts and Rhode Island at a breakfast given by Bishop (then the Rev.) Phillips Brooks. In reply to their welcome 3* Boston Post, September 23rd, 1878. 522 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1878 he delivered a speech on the prospects of Liberal Theo- logy. As the gathering dispersed, ' the room for an instant growing quiet and sacred, he said : " I will bid you farewell with the benediction which I pro- nounced yesterday in Trinity Church, and which it is my habit to pronounce on all the more important occasions in the Abbey." And then, again came the same words of blessing, with the same calm solemnity.' ' Wherever he went, whatever he did, he carried a bene- diction with him,' adds Bishop Phillips Brooks. Every minute which was not occupied with public entertainments and receptions, or the composition and delivery of sermons and speeches, was devoted to sight- seeing. To him, the hill above the Bay of Plymouth became a sacred spot, as he watched in imagination the Mayjlotver winding her difficult way from promontory to promontory, past island after island, and saw the little crew descend upon the solitary rock. At Salem he traced the story of the ' Scarlet Letter,' and felt the influence of the same haunted atmosphere which had permeated Nathaniel Hawthorne. In Newbury Street, or Commonwealth Street, or Cromwell Street, he read the record of the tenacious recollection which the New England settlers retained of the English Civil War. At Roxbury he stood by the grave of John Eliot ; at Cambridge he compared the American with the English universities ; in the green meadows close to the village of Concord, with Emerson at his side — By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled. Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world ; he realised the beginnings of the War of Independence. On his way to Newport he 'passed into a new State — • Rhode Island — filled with stories of another founder.' CHAP. XXVII NEWPORT 523 The career and character of Roger WiUiams suppHed Stanley with fresh elements of romantic interest, as he followed the eccentric enthusiast through wooded hill and valley, or watched him threading his way in his solitary canoe till he 'unfurled the banner of religious toleration' on the site of the City of Providence. At Newport he was the guest of George Bancroft, the historian, 'a wonderful old man of eighty-two, with all his faculties about him, and driving his two horses up hill and down dale, only restrained by the remonstrances of his negro servant.' At Bancroft's house all the celebrities of the neighbourhood gathered to meet him. * Every person,' he writes, 'that I meet, I examine, and in this way knowl- edge increases like a snowball.' But apart from the living interests of Newport, the place possessed a twofold charm in its associations with Berkeley and with Channing. In the rock overhanging the beach was the cave where Berke- ley composed 'The Minute Philosopher'; his wooden house ('Whitehall') was still standing; the various parts of his organ are used in the Rhode Island churches ; Yale College treasured his portrait and bequest of books ; his chair of state was prized by the College of Hartford. ' Strange,' he exclaims, 'that during my seven years at Oxford I should have stood in the Cathedral over his grave ! ' New- port had also been the scene of Channing's early life. 'No spot on earth,' said the great Unitarian minister, ' helped to form me like that beach.' On his way from Newport to Philadelphia he paid a flying visit, of three hours' duration, to New York, ' to catch the American Revisers of the Bible Version, who were there for that one day only. They received me with the greatest delight.' At Philadelphia he was the guest of Mr. and Mrs. G. W. Childs, lodged 'in a white marble palace with blue-satin rooms, our host and hostess letting us do what- 524 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1878 ever we wished, asking everyone to meet us that they thought we should like to meet, or that they thought would like to see us.' In St. James's Church, Philadelphia, he preached on September 29, 1878.-^ ' I preached,' he says, ' once more than I intended ; but I could not resist the pleasure that it gave to our kind hosts. Grove corrected the proof-sheets of the report. The printing was of the most illiterate kind. The reporters expressed a particular wish to have precisely the passage in which I had referred to Joe Hooker,'^ one of the generals in the war of 1862. It was, of course, Richard Hooker.' On the same Sunday Stanley attended a negro Metho- dist meeting-house. 'The preacher was a mulatto, not wholly illiterate, but with a rant and raving beyond anything I ever heard, to which from time to time the negroes responded by loud shouts. He had, evidently, a confused notion that I was there, for he spoke of defying the arguments of Dean Alford, and then proceeded, without naming him, to denounce the doctrine of Farrar.^'' At every expression of sulphurous torments the old negroes absolutely screamed for joy. It was, I must say, a most hideous exhibition, the more so as from the words he let drop the preacher himself knew better.' From Philadelphia Stanley travelled by Baltimore to Washington. 'Every particle of expense,' he says, 'of trains, of carrying, &c., in spite of all remonstrance, from the moment we entered Philadelphia till we reached Washington, was paid by Mr. Childs or his friends. We cannot help calling him the "Angel of the Church of Philadelphia."' Washington, 'rough and unfinished, yet with all the appearance of an imperial city ' ; Mount Vernon, ' the home and grave of Washington ' ; Baltimore, ^ Addresses and Sermons in America : ' The Holy Angels.' ^ Nicknamed ' Fighting Joe.' Referring to Archdeacon Farrar's sermons on ' Eternal Hope.' CHAP. XXVII IRVINGTON where he addressed the students of the Johns Hopkins University ; Richmond, haunted by the shades of John Smith and Pocahontas, adorned with the statues of the famous Virginians who led the War of Independence, and devastated by the havoc of the still recent struggle between the North and the South — were all visited in rapid succes- sion. 'The passage through these great cities,' he writes, ' resembles the successive slides of a magic-lantern — new scenes, new faces, new incidents in each.' Sunday, October 6th, found Stanley at New York, where he preached for his friend Dr. Washburn in the Calvary Church.^ ' Dear Dr. Washburn,' he wrote in the spring of 1881, after his friend's death, 'how well I remember preaching in that great Calvary, and my visit to him in the latter days of my stay in New York ! He was of " that small transfigured band whom the world cannot tame" — the band of Falkland, Leighton, Whichcote, Arnold, Maurice. Peace be with him ! ' On the Monday following he became the guest of Mr. Cyrus Field, at Irvington, on the banks of the Hudson. ' Uncle Cyrus, as I call him,' he writes to Mrs. Drummond, 'is perfection.' Here he was surrounded by associations with Washington Irving, and close to the scene of the execution of Major Andre. The genius loci was in one sense peculiarly congenial to Stanley's disposition. From his sunny cottage on the banks of the Hudson Irving had diffused his genial spirit, knitting together by the bonds of domestic and family sympathy two divided nations, teaching America to take pride in Westminster Abbey, and to regard Stratford-on-Avon and Abbotsford as part of their own national heritage. In the intervals of receptions held in his honour Stanley •explored the whole story of Major Andre's capture and execution.' ** Addresses and Sermons in America : 'The Perplexities of Life.' 526 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1878 ' The execution had been on the other side of the river, and Cyrus Field had never been there himself. It was a much more secluded region, the villages and names all Dutch. We found a most intelligent Dutch doctor, who said that he knew Egypt better from " Sinai and Palestine " than from anything he had ^.ever read ; and he took us to an old man of ninety-two, whose mother had been present at the death, and who himself had seen the open grave when the bones were removed in 1824. At Albany, after- wards, we saw the very papers that were drawn out of his boots, or rather his stockings, at the time of his capture. It is astonishing what an interest still attaches to the story here.' At Albany Stanley — for the first time prostrated by the fatigue of incessant travelling, the heat, the round of festivities, and the excitement — was obliged to alter his plans — 'a change which Cyrus Field bore like an angel, immediately throwing himself, though to his great disap- pointment, into our new arrangements.' He decided, after a rest of a single day, to ' proceed straight to Niagara, the climax of our tour.' His description of the Falls illus- trates his constant habit of regarding natural scenery in its historical associations, or as the stage of human action. ' In that memorable hour,' he says in a speech at the Cen- tury Club in New York,^^ * when for the first time I stood before the cataracts of Niagara, I seemed to see a vision of the fears and hopes of America. It was midnight, the moon was full, and I saw from the Suspension Bridge the ceaseless contortion, con- fusion, whirl, and chaos which burst forth in clouds of foam from that immense central chasm which divides the Amer- ican from the British Dominion ; and as I looked on that ever-changing movement, and listened to that everlasting roar, I saw an emblem of the devouring activity and cease- less, restless, beating whirlpool of existence in the United States. But into the moonlight sky there rose a cloud of spray twice as high as the Falls themselves, silent, majes- 83 Addresses and Sermons in America : ' The Century Club.' CHAP. XXVII QUEBEC 527 tic, immovable. In that silver column, glittering in the moonlight, I saw an image of the future of American des- tiny, of the pillar of light which should emerge from the distractions of the present — a likeness of the buoyancy and hopefulness which characterises you, both as individ- uals and as a nation.' Hurrying on from Niagara to see Lord Dufferin, who was on the eve of his departure from Canada, he met the Governor-General at Montreal, and accompanied him to Quebec. In the cathedral, on October 20th, he preached on the 'Uses of Conflict.*' The magnificent view of the St. Lawrence from the terrace of the Citadel seemed to him to symbolise the richness and fulness of Christianity. 'The stream of the highest Christian truth,' he says,**^ * resembles the mighty river, the glory of the Western World, which flows beneath the heights of Quebec, and which derives its force and majesty from that peculiar con- formation of this continent which has made it the depository and the outlet of all that vast volume of waters which, in hidden springs, and immense lakes, and world-renowned cataracts, discharge themselves into its broad channel, and make it the highway of the nations. Such is true Chris- tianity, accepting and including all the elements of life which, from the inland seas of far antiquity, or the rushing torrents of impetuous action, or the dissolving foam of ethe- real speculation, find their way into its capacious bosom.' From Quebec and its thrilling associations, with ' the little, sickly, red-haired English hero, General Wolfe,' and ' his chivalrous adversary, the French Montcalm,' he made his way to Ticonderoga. The ruined fortress stands on a promontory overhanging Lake Champlain. ' It is,' he says, * almost the only ruin in the United States, and the most interesting spot we have seen after Niagara ' — ' the scene of the " Last of the Mohicans," the Loch Katrine of America, the great thoroughfare of last century.' Addresses and Sermons in America: ' The Uses of Conflict.' 528 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1878 For Stanley the spot had two special fascinations. The name, in the first place, was already familiar to him from the monuments in Westminster Abbey to two English officers killed at Ticonderoga in the French and English war in 1758. One monument is to Lord Howe, erected by the ' Province of Massachusetts Bay,' the other is to Colonel Townsend, with the fortress and two Red Indians carved upon it. It was also, in the second place, associated with a Highland legend which he was fond of repeating, and which he told, not for the first time, to his two companions as they approached Ticonderoga in the dim twilight of an autumn morning.*^ In the midst of the scenery described in the ' Highland Widow,' at the head of the river Awe, close to Loch Awe, and in full sight of Ben Cruachan, stands the ancient hall of Campbell of Inverawe. There, towards the middle of the last century, Campbell had entertained a party of guests. The guests were gone, and their host was left alone. He was roused by a violent knocking at the gate, and was sur- prised to see one of his late guests, Stuart of Appin, with torn garments and dishevelled hair, standing without. * I have killed a man,' he said, * and am pursued. I beseech you, let me in. Swear on your dirk that you will not betray me.' Campbell swore the solemn oath, and hid the fugitive. He had hardly done so when he was roused by a second knocking. The pursuers were at the gate. ' Your cousin Donald has been killed ! Where is the murderer.''' True to his oath, Inverawe returned an evasive answer, and sent the avengers of blood in the wrong direction. That night the bloodstained Donald appeared to Campbell as he slept, with these words : * Inverawe ! Inverawe ! blood has been shed; shield not the murderer! " He has told it at length in Eraser's Magazine for October 1878 : ' Inverawe and Ticonderoga.' CHAP. XXVII INVERAWE AND TICONDEROGA 529 In the gray of the morning Campbell hid Stuart of Appin in a cave on Ben Cruachan ; but when darkness again fell the bloodstained figure once more appeared in the visions of the night : 'Inverawe! Inverawe ! blood lias been shed; shield not the murderer.' As day broke he sought the cave on the mountain ; but the murderer had fled. Again Campbell slept ; and again the figure of the bloodstained Donald rose before him, and said, ' Inverazve ! Inveraive ! blood has been shed. We shall not meet again till ive meet at Ticonderoga.'' The triple apparition and its mysterious message sank into the memory of Campbell of Inverawe, though he vainly inquired the meaning of the final rendezvous. In 1758 he went out to America with the 42nd Highlanders, to take part in the war between France and England. On the eve of an engagement the General came to the officers, and said, 'We must not tell Campbell the name of the fortress we attack to-morrow. It is Ticonderoga. Let us call it Fort George.' In the assault Campbell was mortally wounded. As he lay dying, he said to the General, ' You have deceived me. I have seen Iiini again. This is Ticonderoga.' Stanley determined to explore the spot, and, if possible, discover the traces of Campbell of Inverawe. At Hartford, in Connecticut, he had met Bishop Williams, ' the flower of the American episcopate,' who had made a special study of the regions of the Lakes, and told him the story. Through the Bishop he eventually found the object of his search. At the time of his visit to Ticonderoga a mound of grassy hillocks alone marked the graves of the British officers. But in the evening, at Saratoga, he found in Lossing's ' Revolutionary War ' a description of the burial at Fort Edward of Jane Macrea, whose tragical story formed the basis of 'The Last of the Mohicans.' Her grave is near an old brown headstone, on which are inscribed the words : VOL. II MM 530 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1878 ' Here lyes the body of Duncan Campbell of Inversaw (sic), Esq., Major to the old Highland Regiment, aged 55 years, who died the lyth July, 1758, of the wounds lie received in the attack of the entrenchments of Ticonderoga, or Carillon, Sih July, 1758.' ' My first impulse,' says Stanley, ' was to return to the spot. But we were already at Sara- toga, Fort Edward was far in our rear, and we were due at Concord on the following night. We were forced to aban- don the actual visit ; but that day I wrote to Bishop Wil- liams, stating that wp had found the grave, and asking whether any particulars could be procured of the reason or manner of his burial.' From Bishop Williams he received an account of the tombstone, which had been removed to the enclosure of the Gilchrists, a family which claimed Duncan Campbell as a near relation. On his return to England he followed up the story in all its details and ramifications. He iden- tified the actual spot where Stuart of Appin had murdered Donald Campbell ; he traced the flight of the murderer to Inverawe ; he visited the Ghost Room at the Castle ; he sought out every member of the two families who could add fresh particulars, and finally completed his narrative by the addition of a legend which described the appearance of Inverawe, 'in full Highland regimentals,' to announce to his foster-brother in Scotland his death at Ticonderoga in America. The story is told here at length because it illustrates, not only the variety of Stanley's interests, but the pertinacity with which, even in the last years of his life, he hunted down, and realised upon the actual spot, every detail of any incident, legendary, fictitious, or historical, which had impressed his imagination. Till he reached the shores of Lake George, his one disappointment throughout the tour had been the absence CHAP. XXVII STOCKBRIDGE of the autumnal colouring of the American woodland scenery. On the shores of Lake George, however, he found a maple ' like a burning bush ' growing from the same stem as an oak-tree. The growth seemed to him an emblem of the bonds of union which united England and America. ' Of that unbroken union,' he says in his speech at the Century Club,*^ 'there seemed to me a likeness when, on the beautiful shores of Lake George, the Loch Katrine of America, I saw a maple and an oak growing together from the same stem — the brilliant, fiery maple, the emblem of America; the gnarled and twisted oak, the emblem of England. So may the two nations always rise together, so different each from each, and representing so distinct a future, yet each springing from the same ancestral root, each bound together by the same healthful sap and the same vigorous growth ! ' After a day at Saratoga, 'the Sedan of England in America,' he travelled to Concord, to stay with Emerson — 'a very interesting, though melancholy, visit ; his mind unbroken, but his loss of words most distressing.' Re- tracing his steps, he paid a visit to Stockbridge, where the huge boulder which marks the ' grave of the Stockbridge Indians, the friends of our fathers,' placed him on the boundary of those days when the savage and the civilised man still met, like Goth and Roman, ' in the varied vicissitudes of peace or war.' Here he once more became, and for the rest of his stay in America remained, the guest of Mr. Cyrus Field. ' I am,' he writes to his sister, 'extremely glad that I did not lose this place. It is a village buried among the Berkshire Hills, the scene of the first Indian missions, the burial-place of the Indians of this part of America, the residence of the great Calvinist, Jonathan Edwards, the birth- and burial-place of this recent family of the Fields.' ^'■^ Addresses and Sermons in America : ' The Century Club.' M M 2 532 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1878 In the village church of Stockbridge, on October 27th, 1878, he preached his fifth sermon.*^ The rigid statements of Jonathan Edwards, repugnant though his theological system was to all Stanley's strongest feelings, were not to be wholly condemned. ' Nothing, so we sa)'-, can be gleaned from the thorny speculations with which, on this spot, the most famous of the American divines in the previous age laboured to build up the hard system of Calvin ; yet even in that hard system those who most dissent from it may find grains of pure gold ; even in the most unlovely of Christian theologians, whether in Geneva or in Massachusetts, there is still some- thing to invigorate and to stimulate, when we reflect that they were striving to fortify the eternal principles of truth and righteousness against the temptations which beset us all.' The tour in America closed with a visit to New York. 'The last week,' he tells Mrs. Drummond, 'was indeed a whirl. On Wednesday, October 29th, a reception of the Baptists. On Friday, a sermon at All Saints,*^ the Mother-Church of New York, in the morning, and a reception of the Methodists in the evening. On Saturday, a reception at the Century Club, with speeches, and another at a smaller club in the afternoon. On Sunday, a sermon at Grace Church (Dr. Porter's), the fashionable church, in the morning, and at Holy Trinity*'' — popular and Low Church — in the evening. On Mon- day, a reception of the Baptists, and then a reception and a breakfast of the clergy, with speeches ; in the afternoon, the autumn reception at the American Museum ; in the evening, a large party at the Fields'. On Tuesday, a visit to the Episcopal College, and to the fair in the Roman Catholic Cathedral, and an immense reception at the Fields' in the evening. On Wednesday, a visit to the schools, and our embarkation on the Bothnia at 2 p.m. Many of our friends came to see the last of us. Cyrus ** Addresses and Sermons in America : ' There is nothing.' /Md. : ' The Unity and Diversity of Christendom.' « Hid : ' The Nature of Man.' *6 . . The Nature of God.' CHAP. XXVII GENERAL IMPRESSIONS 533 remained to the very end. Words cannot express what he has been in perpetual kindness, and entertainment in every sense of the vi^ord. And so the splendid dream is over ! Not one single day that did not teem with interest.' 'The whole journey,' he tells the Queen in a letter written immediately after his return, ' has given me a deeper impression of the great responsi- bilities of England. The Americans are evidently open to the strongest influence from our example, both for good and evil. They eagerly catch at any failure in public hon- esty, like the misconduct of the Glasgow directors, as an excuse for their own corruptions, and, on the other hand, any high character in the high places of the old country leaves a lasting impression upon them. How very much they honoured my dear Augusta ! ' 'It is doubtful,' says Stanley, 'whether we could, any of us, have carried on the war much longer at the rate of marching we had adopted.' Without the devoted care of the two friends who accompanied him from England his visit, as he himself said in his speech at the Century Club, 'could never have been accomplished.' It was not the first time that he had acknowledged the debts which, on other occa- sions, he owed to Mr. (now Sir George) Grove. Both in his ' Sinai and Palestine ' and in his ' Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church ' he referred with ' unfailing pleasure' to the assistance that his friend had rendered him in all questions connected with sacred history and geography. Now the obligation was of a different kind. ' When, in after-years,' he tells his American audience, 'you read at the end of some elaborate essay on the history of music or on Biblical geography the name of George Grove, you will recall with pleasure the incessant question- ings, the eager desire for knowledge, the wide and varied capacity for all manner of instruction, which you experi- enced in your conversation with him here. And when, also, hereafter there shall reach to your shores the fame of the 534 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1878 distinguished physician, Dr. Harper, whether in England or in New Zealand, you will be the more rejoiced because it will bring before you the memory of the youthful and bloom- ing student who inspected your hospitals with such keen appreciation, so impartially sifting the good from the evil.' The two friends were rewarded for the care which they had lavished on their charge. The repose of the voyage dis- persed any evil effects which his exertions might have pro- duced, and he reached England refreshed and exhilarated by his expedition, stronger in health, and more cheerful in spirits than he had been since the death of his wife. At home he had at times begun to despair of the present generation, and to feel that ' people do not care for anything I undertake or support.' The want of sympathy, fancied or real, depressed and paralysed his energies. In America, on the contrary, his hopes of the future, and with them his own confidence, were revived. He felt in his own renewed vigour the influence of the buoyant cheerfulness of the nation : men and women of all denominations, wherever he went, had hung upon his words ; everywhere he had received that warm appreciation, without which he could not be his best self. Sometimes, indeed, the interest taken in him assumed a ludicrous aspect. ' I consoled myself,' wrote a Baptist minister who had missed seeing him, 'with the hope of a meeting beyond the Resurrection morn, with ample time for more than a hurried interview on the cars.' Awaiting his arrival in America was a letter from a lady, telling him that a farmer in Ohio had christened his eldest son ' Dean Stanley,' and requesting him to contribute liberally to the education of ' the little Dean Stanley.' But he could not doubt that the kindly feeling towards him was as warm as it was general. The result is, that his ' Addresses and Sermons in America ' is one of the most characteristic volumes that he ever published. CHAP. XXVII ' ADDRESSES AND SERMONS ' 535 The volume contains the main features of his own religious opinions, hopes, fears, and ideals. No man, it may be truly said, could have delivered these ' Addresses and Sermons ' who was bred and trained in any narrower ecclesi- astical organisation than the Church of England. They are the special product of the wide, comprehensive, chari- table, national institution which he saw symbolised and represented in Westminster Abbey. They are also, both in their spirit and their form, characteristic of the speaker. From none of his contemporaries could such utterances have fallen with the same beauty and fertility of historical illustration, with the same enthusiasm of conviction and consistency of lifelong practice, or with an equal prospect of sympathetic attention. Those who search the pages of the volume for definite expression of theological opinion will be, perhaps, disap- pointed. Here, as elsewhere, there are the shrinking from theological affirmations, the reticence on questions of doctrine, the reluctance to formulate dogmas, which were sometimes misunderstood, even by his friends. But the ' Addresses and Sermons ' glow with enthusiasm for high Christian spiritual morality ; they are suffused with an atmosphere of simple, personal faith ; they are inspired by a firm, yet humble, confidence in the reality of Christian hopes ; they bear on every page the traca of a deep and reverent love of the Scriptures. Stanley's reserve on many grave theological questions might be misunderstood, if taken by itself, for depreciation of Christian doctrines. Interpreted by his words, it will be seen that the inference is unfounded. His silence rather proceeded from the determination to take for his standard of doctrine the undisputed teaching of Christ and the Apostles, and not the metaphysical subtleties which were the after-growth of subsequent controversies. The Gos- 536 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1878 pel, he insists, is very simple. In the plain statements of Holy Writ the great central truths, which feed the human soul, may be read by the least instructed, written as with a sunbeam. To the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, as expressed in Scripture and the early Creeds, he clung as for his life. By his belief in them all his actions were governed ; on them were based the premisses of all his reasoning on religious and moral questions. But his interest in theology was historical rather than direct. By preference, as in the American 'Addresses and Sermons,' he enlarged on the moral characteristics of Christianity, on the social dispositions which Christ inculcated, on the appar- ently natural workings of God in the world and in history. ' The theology of the Bible,' he says, ' is something beside and beyond, something greater and vaster than the theology of each particular Church or age. It is in the various aspects of the theology of the Bible — which is also the theology of European literature, the theology of great men, the theology of the saints, and the theology of the poor and of little children — that we may hope to see the face of God.' Or, again : '"Who is this," we may once more ask, "that cometh from Edom, that is glorious in His apparel, travelling in the greatness of His strength, leading His people through the deep, as a horse through the wilderness, that they should not stumble } " It is indeed Christ Himself. It is the Spirit, the Eternal' Spirit of His life and of His death, of His acts and of His words. It is those who see in Him something vaster and higher than any single Church, or than any single leader ; who see in truth something greater than any one of the particular forms of truth ; who see in love and charity something grander even than faith or hope, even than agreement in opinion, even than uniformity in worship.' The permanent element of Christianity, which has 'survived the conflicts of eighteen centuries,' 'inspired CHAP. XXVII 'ADDRESSES AND SERMONS' 537 the course of States and nations,' and ' commanded the reverential attention of the highest intellects,' is some- thing wider and fuller than ' the Christianity of Nicaea, or Geneva, or Westminster, or Augsburg, or the Vatican.' The form of Christianity which was ' defended by Paley in his " Evidences," by Lardner in his " Credibilia," by Butler in his " Sermons " and " Analogy," by Pascal in his "Thoughts," and Channing in his "Discourses," was not the Calvinist, or the Lutheran, or the Wesleyan, or the Tridentine, or the Racovian Creed.' It is, rather, the religion which has 'animated the poor, the humble, the child- like, the saint-like of all persuasions.' The perpetual under-current of spiritual devotion is to be traced in the ' elementary graces ' and in the great moral principles which lie at the bottom of ' the barbarous phraseology in which the sentiments of the poor, living or dying, are often expressed.' The theology that exercises a natural ascend- ency over the minds of educated men is one 'which, whilst comprehending all the wholesome elements of thought at work within the world, yet holds that the Christian belief is large enough to contain them ; which insists, not on the ceremonial, the dogmatic, or the porten- tous, but on the moral side of religion ; which insists on the spirit, not on the letter — on the meaning, not on the words — on the progressive, not on the stationary character of the Bible.' 'Religious feeling,' says Stanley, 'religious doctrine, religious ordinances, are of no value except they produce in our lives justice, integrity, honesty, purity, gentleness, modesty.' He records the saying of the old Scottish Meth- odist who, on his deathbed, regretted his denunciations of the heresies of the rival sects on either side of the street where he lived. 'The street I'm now travelling in, lad, has nae sides ; and if power were given me, I would preach 538 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY purity of life mair, and purity of doctrine less than I did.' The principle of Wesley's life, for the maintenance of which he ' is honoured among kings and heroes,' was the 'elevation of the whole Christian world in the great prin- ciples of Christian holiness and morality.' ' Let us keep to this,' urges Stanley, ' leaving a thousand disputable points to those that have no better business than to toss the ball of controversy to and fro ; let us bear a faithful testimony in our several stations against all ungodliness and unrighteousness, and with all our might recommend that inward and outward holiness, "without which no man shall see the Lord." ' ' It is,' he says, 'in the indefinite growth of the spiritual man, as compared with the stationary character of the earthly, natural man, that we gain at once a new insight into the spiritual forces of which we are now composed, and a new hope for our future. And if we ask, What is this spiritual part we must reply. It is the affections ; it is the generosity which embraces the needs of others besides ourselves ; it is the conscience, which is the ruling faculty within us ; it is the faith which moves mountains ; it is the hope which looks beyond the grave ; it is, above all, the love, the charity which never fails — which is at once the homeliest and the loftiest of the virtues of humanity and of the attributes of Divinity.' The stress that Stanley laid on the simplest elements of Christianity, in which all Christian communions agree, the emphasis that he gave to those moral truths which appeal to the sympathies of unbelievers as well as of Christians, made him tolerant, even to excess, of diversities of theological opinion. With any man who, like the Baptist, Havelock, was 'trusting in God and doing his duty,' he found 'grounds of communion which neither differences of rites nor differ- ences of seas and continents could ever efface.' He re- cognised that, 'of all the many-coloured shades, of all the CHAP. XXVII ' ADDRESSES AND SERMONS ' 539 numberless diversities, whether of EngUsh or universal Christendom, none can be regarded as useless or worthless.' He warmly acknowledged the debt which his own church owed to other ecclesiastical organisations for doing the work that it had not done, and perhaps could not do. ' Let each religious communion,' he says, 'endeavour, not to supersede, but to supplement the other. Be it the effort of every Church and every communion not to spend the precious time in needless recrimination or proselytism.' His personal attitude towards religious organisations outside his own taught the possibility of harmonious relations between Churches of different professions. Dis- putes and jealousies strangled the spiritual growth; the genial atmosphere of charity best nourished the plant into life. * It is astonishing,' he reflects, 'how vast a loss we sustain in our spiritual life by thinking only how we can destroy, attack, and assail, instead of thinking how we can build up, define, or edify.' He looked himself, as he urged others to look, 'not for something to attack, but for some- thing to admire ; not for something to pull down, but for something to build up.' Each of the various denomina- tions whose representatives he addressed in America was in turn taught, as it were, from its own poets, with a tact which promoted kindly relations and with a sincerity that rendered differences more tolerable. The Baptists only expressed the general feeling of all classes of American Christians when, in their address, they spoke of ' the uni- formly genial and loving treatment which it is his work to mete out to men of all Christian fellowship, as well as to those of his own.' It may be that in Stanley the poetic instinct which sees resemblances was more developed than the philosophic mind which detects differences. But it must be remem- S40 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1878 bered that, while he scrupulously respected the opinions of others, he sturdily maintained his own. His goodwill towards Nonconformists of all denominations was not more strongly marked than his enthusiastic loyalty towards his own Church of England. Anxious, as he was, to mitigate their inherited sense of injustice, he was not prepared to sacrifice any portion of his heritage of national life to their desire for equality. In the formularies of the Church, reasonably interpreted, he found a closer adherence to the primitive Gospel than he could discover elsewhere. At home he defended that Church against clerical intolerance of civil control, against the jealousy of Nonconformity, against the rationalistic unbelief which resented the State's profession of Christianity. In America he loses no oppor- tunity of enlarging upon its virtues ; he recognises the paramount claim which, through its parent, the American Episcopal Church possessed upon his sympathies ; he hails with delight any common features which he discovers in the characters of the two kindred bodies. Stanley loved his Church for 'the glow of historical and national life ' with which, like Westminster Abbey, it was filled ; for the ' large and comprehensive associations ' which the institution and its typical building fostered ; for the ' union of secular and religious influences ' which both represented; for the 'diversity of gifts' which the one sheltered and the other commemorated — cherishing ' the ecclesiastical, royalist, priest-like phase of the Church ' seen in George Herbert side by side with 'the Puritan, austere, lay phase ' embodied in William Cowper.*'^ Through its broad and open system was admitted the larger air of national life, which to him was more whole- The stained-glass window placed in the Baptistery of Westminster Abbey to the memory of these two Christian poets was the gift of Stanley's host at Philadelphia, Mr. G. W. Childs. CHAP. XXVII 'ADDRESSES AND SERMONS' some than the close atmosphere of more narrow and ex- clusively ecclesiastical organisations. He loved his Church because, with all its shortcomings, it was ' bound up with the very vitals of the English Commonwealth, with the very fibre of English history, with the best issues of the English Reformation, and in its majestic forms, in its sober and refined character, still furnished a model even for those who have parted from it.' He valued his Church for that diversity in unity, with- out which there would be ' none of the variety of Nature, none of the culture of civilisation, none of the richness and fulness of Christianity.' In its diversity he saw the pledge that, 'by argument, by debate, by the intercourse of differ- ent souls, truth would be sifted, and light struck out, and faith tried, and charity perfected ' ; in the comprehensive- ness and the toleration which were necessary to maintain its unity he found the best guarantee against the spirit of party and sectarianism, and therefore the strongest security of freedom of thought and inquiry. 'Truth, not for the sake of any ulterior object, however high and holy, but truth for its own sake,' was the aim which he urged, not only upon the American scholar, but upon every student of theology. ' In using,' he says, ' to the utmost the resources of science, in watching for light from every quarter, in sifting and searching all that comes before us to the very bottom, we are fulfilling the very will of the Redeemer. Whatever is good science is good theology ; whatever is high morality and pure civili- sation is high and pure religion.' And in no other communion, as he thought, could men pursue the sacred duty of free inquiry so faithfully as in his own Established Church. Under the shelter of the law men were, in his opinion, best fortified in the determi- nation * to do and say what is best for their own consciences and the consciences of others.' 542 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1879 ' By the supremacy of laws have the Church and State of England hitherto been guarded and guided to temperate freedom, and wholesome doctrine, and solid unity. And oh ! by the supremacy of law may we all continue to be ruled, by law the passions of individuals restrained, and the liberty of speech and thought secured, and the peace and order of the whole community maintained ! ' Possessed of the ' quiet strength ' of their Church, they were comparatively freed from ' the bewildering, blinding, entangling influence ' of the sectarian spirit ; they were less exposed to the temptation of treating ' sacred and important questions as party flags, to be hoisted up or pulled down according as it suits the ebb and flow of public opinion ' ; trained in a broad, comprehensive Church, they were less likely than those who were nurtured in narrower and more exclusive communions to present that type of religion which comes into fatal collision with the advance of modern knowledge. Stanley came back from America with what seemed to be a fresh lease of life. For the first few months after his return he plunged with renewed vigour into all the varied occupations of his busy life. His 'Addresses and Sermons in America' was published early in 1879. soon as the book was completed he began, with the assistance of his sister Mary, to prepare his Memoirs of his father and mother. The volume appeared almost simultaneously with the Archbishop's Memoir of Catherine and Crauford Tait. In sending his own volume to the Queen he notices the coincidence : ' I am very much pleased to find that Your Majesty ap- proves of the Archbishop's Memoir of his wife and son. When I first heard of the proposal I, in common with many of his friends, was very much opposed to it. I thought that, excellent as she was, she hardly deserved so public a record. But since I read the book my misgivings have quite disappeared. The double tragedy of the death CHAP. XXVII ^EDWARD AND CATHERINE STANLEY' 543 of the five children, and the death of the mother and son in the same year, in a home which was itself so remarkable, almost elevates the subject to the dignity of history ; and the Archbishop's narrative of her life is so well done, and her account of the children so affecting, that it cannot but do good. I venture to send to Your Majesty a book some- thing of the same kind, yet very different. I had long wished to leave on record some of the sayings and writings of my dear mother, and I took the opportunity of a new edition of my Father's Memoir, published long ago, and now almost forgotten, to append them to it. It is the very op- posite to the Archbishop's book, for there is in it hardly anything personal. I had not the nerve, even if I had wished it, to go into details, and the same feeling still further withheld me from adding anything of my dear Augusta, except what I have written on the last page. It will not attract much attention, but a few here and there will be glad to turn from the violence and excitement of these times to so much quiet good sense and wisdom as my mother's observations contain.' But the revival of health and spirits proved to be only short-lived. There was much in the events of 1879 to re- call the depression which he had momentarily shaken off. In the summer an intimate friend of his later life, the Rev. Henry Montgomery (now Bishop of Tasmania), who had from 1877 to 1879 acted as his secretary, accepted a suburban living. ' I am staggering,' he writes to Mrs. Drummond in July 1879, 'under the dreadful blow of Montgomery feeling himself constrained to accept the living of Kennington. I hardly knew before how indispensable he was to me.' 'I went to him,' writes Bishop Montgomery, ' on Sunday morning, July 6th, to hear Lord Lawrence's funeral sermon read over to me, and to suggest alterations. After we had read it, he said, "I feel like Abraham." I said, " Why } " He looked up at me, and took my hand, and burst into tears, saying, " My only son ! my dearly beloved son ! " and could not go on.' Nor did this loss come alone. He was anxious and 544 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY ' upset by the hurly-burly of the Prince Imperial's monu- ment.' He grew depressed and wearied. ' I feel,' he says, ' as I felt before starting for America. All my forces and powers are shattered and withered.' Watchful friends, to whom he talked of the burden of life, noted the change with anxiety, and it was with mingled hope and fear that they looked forward to the effect of his annual holiday. In August he left London, to pay a visit to Dr. Vaughan at Llandaff. 'This place,' he says, 'is Paradise.' Thence he travelled northwards to Scotland. His stay at Megginch with the Drummonds was, ' as ever, perfect rest and repose.' But as soon as he left ' a house which is, I feel, truly my home,' his depression returned. It was with a reluctance very different from the eager anticipation of former years that he prepared to join his sister Mary in Switzerland, and with her to make an expedition to Italy. Before leaving England, however, he paid a visit to ' the Old Man of the East' — Lord Stratford de Redcliffe. 'His memory, his sight, his intelligence,' he tells the Queen, 'are quite unimpaired.' It was almost the last occasion on which he saw the veteran diplomatist. In August 1880 he writes to the Queen of his old friend's death. ' He was,' he says, ' a magnificent example to Englishmen. What he did for the Turkish Empire can never be told. Everyone that had a wrong to redress or a grievance to be set right went at once to him. He felt that he had the Sultan in his grasp, and as the Turks knew that he had very friendly disposi- tions towards them, they could entirely trust him in listening to any reform that he might propose. He was of such incorruptible integrity that the honour of England was always safe in his hands. I had always assumed that there would have been a general wish that he should have been buried in Westminster Abbey, close to his two cousins, George Canning and Lord Canning. His great age, his splendid services to humanity, his high character, all pointed CHAP. XXVII FOREIGN TOUR 545 that way. But there was no single indication of such a wish, either in the pubUc Press or from the Government ... so I did not offer. The consequence was that he was buried quite privately at Frant, in a place with which he had no connection, and where he will soon be forgotten when the family cease to live there.' Fresh from his visit to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, he started on his foreign tour, accompanied by Dr. Gerald Harper, who had been his companion in America. ' Har- per,' he tells Mrs. Drummond, 'is as good as gold. I had the great pleasure of driving him through Paris for the first time.' ' He is as good as ever,' he writes to her a few days later, 'and his enjoyment repays me.' In the same letter, written from Milan, he alludes to his meeting with his sis- ter, and his journey from Lucerne on his way to Venice : 'This is a journey, indeed, over the ashes of the past. It was the first I ever took with Catherine, when all was new. Then, again, with my dear mother ; then once and again with my dear Augusta ; and now I feel that this is for the last time, and that I shall in all probability never again set eyes on these first scenes of my travels. The one object that always seems to me of unfailing interest is Leonardo da Vinci's picture of the Last Supper. The agitation of the several groups who have heard the an- nouncement that one of them shall betray their Master is quite Shakespearean. Those on the right are all bent in one direction, each reaching over the other to get from Peter and from John the dreadful secret. Judas is amongst them, in the shade, with his keen, sharp visage fixed on the Saviour's eyes, to detect whether He will disclose it. ' On the left it is quite a different feeling. Each has his own emotion. Thomas, with uplifted finger, arguing, " You must be mistaken " ; James, with his open mouth, as if spitting out the thought with disgust ; Philip, full of simple devotion whatever happens ; Matthew, as the historian, trying to relate as best he can to Thaddeus and Simon, who listen to him, as their only chance of knowing, what passes at the other end of the table. ' In the midst is the perfectly calm, unmoved figure of the Master. It is brought out by St. John having with- VOL. II NN 546 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY drawn himself to one side, as if to let us see Him, and by the bright light of the window of the chamber behind, through which we look far away into the blue hills of Judeea.' Refreshed by the rest and change, he had hardly returned to England when he was already planning the new book, which afterwards appeared as ' Christian Institutions.' 'What,' he asks Pearson in November 1879, * say you to this for a title to my volume of essays — " Christian Antiquities ? " ' The volume would include three essays on the Eucharist, one on Baptism, one on the Baptismal Formula (the Trinity), one on Absolution, one on the Catacombs, one on the Pope, one on the Clergy.' A few days later he gives Pearson a list of his engage- ments in the last week of the month : ' A sermon at Leices- ter, a lecture at Nottingham, a sermon and a lecture at Peterborough, thus almost rivalling the portentous Meteor in Midlothian.' But on November 24th the alarming, and, as it proved, fatal illness of his sister Mary cancelled all his engagements. Writing to Mrs. Drummond on the 26th of November of his grave anxiety, he says : ' Amongst all my sorrows, this is the only one where I have experienced the distraction of not knowing from hour to hour what the issue may be. My father was in a hope- less condition before I heard that he was seriously ill. My mother was gone before I knew of her death. My dear Augusta's illness was a division of two periods of long- continued hope and long-continued despair. I have always felt that this was the next great calamity in store for me, but it is not the less appalling because of its possibility.' On the same day on which the letter was written his sister died. The shock was very severe. Till he married, Mary Stanley had been his constant companion. To 'my dear Mai ' the home letters were addressed which contain the almost daily chronicle of his life at Rugby and at CHAP. XXVII DEATH OF MARY STANLEY 547 Oxford. Even her change of religion, though it necessarily interposed some barriers to the freedom of their inter- course, had made no change in the deep affection of the brother and sister. ' I knew,' he writes, ' that this would be the next great shock. How, at such a separation, all "the things which are temporal" — all the frets and fumes and fears — vanish away, and "the things which are eternal " — her surpassing love, her strong, almost excessive passion for justice, her widespread affection and sympathy, envelop the whole horizon.' According to her own desire, she was buried in Alderley Churchyard, in a spot which she had herself chosen, under the mingled shade of an old yew-tree and its mass of em-- bracing ivy. The funeral was solemnised by Stanley, Dr. Vaughan, and the Rev. E. Bell, the Rector of Alderley. ' It was,' he says, ' like a dream — the yew-tree, the little white cross, the rough Cheshire accent, quite unchanged.' On the reverse side of the white marble cross already erected over the grave of her mother were engraved her name, the date, and the text which her mother had long before selected to express her indefatigable perseverance : ' Never weary in well-doing.' ' The fourth great calamity of my life is passed,' he writes to Mrs. Drummond. *I feel that the last stage is now to be filled with those works which those who are gone would most have desired that their absence should com- memorate.' To the second edition of his ' Memoirs of Edward and Catherine Stanley' he added a short bio- graphical notice of his sister. It ends with the following lines : The weary heart has ceased to beat ; The journey of those wayworn feet Has led her to the home of Love, Her home below, her home above ; She rests where once her childhood strayed, N N 2 I 548 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1879 By lawn, and brook, and laurel shade. Her gaze undimmed at last shall view The Just, the Holy, and the True. Dear voice of early, happy years. Blending with thousand smiles and tears ; Strong will, that in its fragile frame Through dark and light pursued its aim ; Heart that with sympathetic glow Could cheer the lonely sufferer's woe. Or by some radiant art illume A careworn home, a nation's gloom. O solemn Yew ! whose deathless shade A holy resting-place has made — O Ivy ! whose encircling grasp Has loved the parent-tree to clasp — The sheltering stem, the enfolding wreath. Are types of those that sleep beneath. The Mother's calm, unchanging grace, The Daughter's long and close embrace. Rest gently in this spot retired, The one by wisdom's self inspired, The other by untiring zeal. Both firm as rock through woe and weal. Loved ones there are in loftier shrines, Whose life with wider glory shines ; They too would hail this memory dear Of mind serene and soul sincere. CHAP. XXVIII DESPONDENCY AND DEPRESSION 549 CHAPTER XXVIII 1 880-81 DESPONDENCY AND DEPRESSION — ANXIETIES IN 1880— TOUR IN FRANCE, 1880 — 'CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS,' MARCH 1881 —ITS COLD RECEPTION — HIS INTEREST IN PUBLIC AFFAIRS — HIS SERMONS ON THE BEATITUDES — HIS LAST ILLNESS — HIS DEATH AND BURIAL In the spring of 1880 anxieties and troubles occurred which weighed heavily on Stanley's mind, and caused a con- spicuous failure in health. His frail figure shrank, his hair grew more white and silvery, his voice became enfeebled. These outward symptoms of physical decay were not the only signs that the lamp of life was burning low, though occasional flashes of its former brightness concealed its dimness. As time advanced his old interests seemed to lose their power. In the multiplicity of new scenes and new faces which he encountered in a round of visits he had once delighted. Now he had ' come to the conclusion that visits to country-houses, except as a matter of duty, do not answer. I am out of place, and there is a constant sense of the never to be supplied, never to be forgotten loneliness, which is greater than on any other occasion.' ' I am too old for travelling,' writes the once enthusiastic traveller and sight- seer in September 1880. Without effort, by the sheer force of his varied interests, tastes, and sympathies, he had for years identified himself with all that was best in the move- ments of the times. In 1879 he had rejoiced to meet the Italian statesman, Minghetti ; 'it adds,' he says, 'to my LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1880 failing hold on the outside world.' Now he seemed to feel that ' the outside world ' eluded his grasp. ' My visit to Oxford,' he says in October 1880, 'has filled me with sad thoughts. I feel how completely I belong to another period of existence.' He who had once said ' My heart leaps when I behold an undergraduate,' had now lost his readiness of sympathy with the young. Returning from the triennial dinner of Old Rugbeians towards the end of June 1881, he said, ' I shall never go again. I do not mean that I shall not live, but I feel that I am losing interest in these special and youthful gatherings.' Sympathy was the atmosphere in which he lived, and when he failed to gain it from the public, he was depressed by a sense of discouragement. ' Every- thing I do,' he said in the closing months of his life, 'is sure to fail. The public have ceased to read or listen to anything that I can tell them.' After his sister Mary's death his attitude towards life changed. He seemed to be waiting for his own summons with the feeling that it could not be long delayed. He looked at places as if he saw them for the last time. In discussing plans for the future, he always added, 'if I am alive.' On public occasions, or when relieved from the smaller duties and anxieties of Westminster, his spirits rose, and neither his energy nor his powers of enjoyment seemed to be impaired. His broken engagements to preach and lecture at Leicester, Nottingham, and Peterborough were fulfilled in February 1880, and his intervals of leisure from' sermons and addresses were spent in exploring the scene of the imprisonment of Mary Queen of Scots at Fotheringhay, and the home of Byron at Newstead. In April of the same year he made, with his sister, Mrs. Vaughan, Sir John Has- sard, and Dr. Gerald Harper, a tour through the Channel Islands. The humours of the voyage and the passengers, the quaint ceremonies which accompany the inauguration CHAP. XXVIII THE CHANNEL ISLANDS 551 of a new Bailiff, the points of difference between the dif- ferent islands, their literary associations with Clarendon or with Victor Hugo, are observed with his old quickness, and described with little less than the vivacity of former years. With the house of Victor Hugo he was at once interested and amused. ' It is,' he says, 'a marvel in itself — a bedroom sumptuously fitted up for Garibaldi, who never came ; a dining-room, adorned with pictures representing "the end of the Aristocrat," "the end of the Priest," "the end of the soldier" — each a mur- der— and furnished with an armchair, across which a chain is drawn to prevent anyone sitting upon it, because it is still occupied by the spirit of his grandfather.' When, at the end of April, he returned to London, he relapsed into his former weariness and depression. Public and private troubles seemed to gather thickly round him. The result of the Parliamentary elections of 1880 surprised and distressed him, and he regarded the political future with grave forebodings. Questions affecting the adminis- tration of the Abbey — ' my glory,' as he says — ' the place for which I have given my life's blood,' weighed heavily upon his mind. Difficulties connected with the manage- ment of Westminster Hospital, which he feared might result in ' the destruction of all my Augusta's work,' filled him with anxiety. The agitation against the proposed monument to the Prince Imperial was reaching its height, and he for the first time encountered the storm of popular opposition. Harassed and anxious, he passed 'an agitated and agitating summer.' It was not till August that he could write from the shelter of his sister's home at Llandaff, ' at last I have a moment of repose.' The close of the month found him in Scotland, enjoying his annual stay at Megg- inch Castle. He left with ' a heavy heart ' for his last 552 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1880 tour abroad, spending on his journey southwards three days in the Isle of Man, preaching at Douglas, and finding in the Tynwald ' an ancient mound, like that at Alderley.' His companions on his foreign journey were the Rev. Henry Montgomery, and Dr. Gerald Harper who joined him at San Sebastian. In Paris his spirits revived as he poured out to a sympathetic companion his recollections of the striking events which he had himself witnessed in the City of Revolutions. Waving his umbrella in the Champs Elysees, he declaimed the speech of Lamartine which saved the Tricolour : ' The red flag has made the circle of the Champs de Mars, but the Tricolour has carried the glory of France round the world.' During his stay he attended the service at the chapel of Pere Hyacinthe. ' The Dean, with his goloshes and umbrella, sate inside the Communion rails,' writes Bishop Montgomery, 'and I also, with umbrella and hat ; while alongside of us was a priest in a gorgeous vestment, and the Pere himself in a yellow stole or chasuble.' In the preceding year Stanley had been at P^re Hyacinthe's chapel with Mr. Gladstone. Ac- cordingly, 'we were mistaken,' says the Dean to Mrs. Drummond, 'for the Dean of Westminster and his in- separable companion, Mr. Gladstone.' By Chartres, Orleans, and Blois he travelled to Biarritz. Most of the journey was familiar to Stanley, but in the joy of giving joy to another he regained his almost boyish spirits. At Biarritz he was fired with ambition to bathe. In vain did his companion raise objections. From his shed on the beach he emerged on to the crowded shore, as Bishop Montgomery relates the incident, ' clad in a knickerbocker suit, with the addition of a huge sugarloaf hat, which completely concealed his head. Then he advanced at a hand-gallop across the sands at a dashing pace. He met a wave about two feet high and fell on his CHAP. XXVIII TOUR m FRANCE 553 nose, vanishing, knickerbockers and all, for one brief moment. Then he turned, and, beaming like Pickwick, made for his shed. He was hugely delighted with his achievement, and afterwards, as he sate drinking his chocolate in a cafe, he said with glee, " I feel like a schoolboy who has done something wrong, to whom no harm has happened.'" The proposed expedition into Spain was, after seeing Pampeluna, abandoned, chiefly on sanitary grounds. ' The two young men were not keen for it, and I, therefore, reluctantly gave it up.' It was decided instead to tread old ground in the Pyrenees, to track the French Covenanters through the caves and passes of the Cevennes, to be with the Popes at Avignon, and with Petrarch at Vaucluse. ' I shall end my travelling,' wrote Stanley to Mrs. Drum- mond, 'where I began it — with the Pyrenees.' At the end of October he returned to what he calls his 'gloomy home.' Yet there was much to occupy his mind. His hands were full of work. Not only was he preparing his ' Christian Institutions ' for the press, but, at the request of Lady Stratford de Redcliffe, he was arranging, editing, and writing a preface to the articles which Lord Stratford de Redcliffe had contributed to the * Nineteenth Century.' In London and elsewhere he had many engagements to preach or speak. On the last Sunday of October he was in Oxford. In the first week of November he was at Cheltenham, speaking at a meeting of the Charity Organi- sation Society, and on the Sunday preaching in All Saints' Church and in the College chapel. ' Cheltenham,' he says, ' is a new world. I much enjoyed my expedition with my host, Mr. Owen, formerly a Master at Westminster, and his wife — a very charming person — to Tewkesbury. We ex- plored the scene of the great Lancastrian battle, and in the house where the young Prince Edward was murdered by "false, fleeting, perjured Clarence," I insisted on the carpet 554 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1881 being rolled back that I might see the bloodstains on the floor.' But the year 1880 had, on the whole, been full of gloom, which he could not shake off. His visit to Oxford impressed him, as he told Mrs. Drummond, with ' a feeling of total estrangement from the world moving there — forgetting and forgotten.' When the anniversary of his engagement to Lady Augusta came round, it brought with it the thought, ' What a wretched year this would have been to her, I cannot but feel grateful that she is no longer here.' Even the publication of his volume on the ' Christian Institutions,' in March 1881, failed to rouse him. Its reception disappointed him, and seemed to prove to him that he had lost his hold upon the public. Yet, apart from the pathetic interest which the book derives from the time of its publication, it forms a masterly, striking, and most characteristic work. The essays contained in the 'Christian Institutions' discuss Baptism, the Eucharist, Absolution, Ecclesiastical Vestments, the Basilica, the Clergy, the Pope, the Litany, the Roman Catacombs, the Creed of the Early Christians, the Council and Creed of Constantinople, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. Written at long intervals of time, and touching on a variety of topics, they yet possess a threefold unity. They are united by the bonds of the common institution to which they relate, of the common purpose which pervades the whole series, of the insight which they collectively give into the inmost mind and character of their author. They constitute his final legacy to the world as a Christian historian and theologian ; they convey his chief message to his genera- tion ; they summarise his final views on the great topics which filled his thoughts ; they illustrate the character- istic methods of his historical inquiries ; they explain the CHAP, xxviii ' CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS ' 555 secret of his all-embracing toleration and charity ; they strike the key which harmonises all his religious hopes and convictions ; they reveal the source of the serenity with which he regarded the turmoil of ecclesiastical strife. ' Underneath the sentiments and usages,' writes Stanley in his preface, 'which have accumulated round the forms of Christianity . . . there is a class of principles — a re- ligion, as it were, behind the religion, which, however dimly expressed, has given them whatever vitality they possess.' To seize the eternal realities instead of their fleeting shadows ; to catch the notes of the spiritual undersong, without respect to the words with which it is temporarily wedded ; to trace the primal indefeasible truths of religion beneath the forms by which they are overlaid, were the objects which Stanley set before himself. In the common elementary substance of all variations in Christian faith he found that universal religion which makes one Church, not only of conflicting parties, but of separate and even rival communions. In the baptismal formula of * the Name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,' he recognised the foundation on which the whole fabric of Christianity is reared. Each revelation, whether natural, historical, or spiritual, amplifies, extends, and completes the idea of God. Natural religion brings the assurance that ' there is One above us Whose praise is above any human praise — Who sees us as we really are — Who has our wel- fare at heart in all the various dispensations which befall us — -Whose wide-embracing justice and long-suffering and endurance we may all strive to obtain.' But this natural revelation of God may grow vague and abstract. It is the object of the historical revelation — ' the Word, the speech that comes to us out of that eternal silence which surrounds the unseen Divinity ' — to unite 556 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1881 religion with morality, and to declare that, ' in the highest sense, the image of man was made after the image of God.' * To believe in the Name of Christ, in the Name of the Son, is to believe that God is, above all other qualities, a Moral Being — a Being not merely of power and wisdom, but a Being of tender compassion, of boundless charity, of dis- criminating tenderness. To believe in the Name of Christ is to believe that no other approach to God exists except through those same qualities of justice, truth, and love which make up the mind of Christ.' But the revelation is not yet complete. As the natural religion, which makes known the Father, may become abstract, so the historical religion, which is manifested in the life of Christ in the world, may become 'perverted, distorted, exhausted, formalised.' A third revelation is needed, and that is the spiritual religion, which breathes life into forms and facts, which relies on the substance and not on the letter, which gives strength and liberty to moral and intellectual energy. To believe in the Holy Ghost is ' to believe in the Divine supremacy of conscience ; to believe that the spirit is above the letter ; to believe that the substance is above the form ; to believe that the mean- ing is more important than the words ; to believe that truth is greater than authority, or fashion, or imagination, and will at last prevail ; to believe that goodness, and justice, and love are the bonds of perfectness, without which whosoever liveth is counted dead though he live, and which bind together those who are divided in all other things whatsoever.' Such a confession of faith ignored all claims to the exclusive possession of truth ; it denied the vital necessity of any one form of organised system ; it repudiated the principles on which extreme sacramental theories are based ; it cut at the root of the whole fabric of a sacerdotal Christianity. On it was based his large charity and wide CHAP. XXVIII ' CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS' 557 toleration ; all who held it were brethren, and the differences that divided them were differences of names, not of things. Yet in Stanley's mind this confession of faith was not in- consistent with the most sincere and enthusiastic loyalty to the Established Church of England. In his opinion, at least, it not merely satisfied the legal requirements of membership — it expressed the only faith which harmonised with the spirit of the National Church and with the spirit of its Founder. In its doctrine and discipline he believed that the mind of Christ was more faithfully presented, and therefore the living realities of religion were more safely preserved, than elsewhere. But his loyalty was to the spirit, and not the form, of its system ; to the meaning and not the symbols, of its rites ; to the substance, and not the letter, of its formularies. Changes of thought or of language might, as he thought, modify the outward expres- sion ; one age might attach more importance to one sym- bol than to another ; it was the kernel only, and not the shell, for which he cared. Neither did he make an idol of the Church to which he belonged. No one estimated more highly than Stanley the value of a National Church and a National Clergy; no one — to the day of his death — defended both more enthusiastically. But he saw that in the past neither had been indispensable to the continued existence of Christianity, and he recognised that in the future both institutions might pass away. The only en- during realities were the primal, indefeasible truths of religion which they helped to embody, preserve, and diffuse. These opinions were supported in the ' Essays on Christian Institutions ' by the appeal to history. Through- out, his object is to remove unfounded prejudices, to dis- perse causeless apprehensions, to place controversies about names and things on their proper level, to draw out the 558 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1881 abiding moral significance of rites, ceremonies, usages, and systems, and so to force men to turn from combats about shadows to the permanent underlying realities. On these objects are concentrated the multifarious stores of varied learning which his patient labour of years had accumulated. In his Essays he popularises the results which modern inquiry had collected in such works as the ' Dictionary of Christian Antiquities.' He brings vividly before the reader the scenes, circumstances, and practices of primitive Christianity, illustrating them with picturesque descrip- tions of the varied aspects of Christian life and worship with which his unrivalled opportunities of foreign travel had rendered him familiar. Everywhere he endeavours to detect likenesses in things different ; to trace distinctions between things similar ; to separate the substance from the form ; to bring into striking juxtapositions of contrast or comparison offices and ceremonies which seem most closely connected or most widely separated. Throughout the whole series there runs the common purpose which is kept steadily in view. It was not the mere love of literary paradox — still less was it the spirit of wilful provocation — which induced him to represent the Pope as a Protestant, or as a museum of ecclesiastical curiosities, and to discover in the service in his private chapel the relics of the barbaric simplicity of Christian worships or to exhibit the Laudian Anglicans as dis- obedient to the canons of the First CEcumenical Council, and the Puritans as sticklers for the observance of decrees which they despised ; or to show that in the posture of receiving the Eucharist, which had provoked such bitter and unseemly strife, the Nonconformist approximated to the Pope, and the Presbyterian to the Mussulman; or to argue that the vestments, which are regarded as the most characteristic symbols of priestly functions are not only CHAP. XXVIII ' CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS'' 559 devoid of all symbolical, mystical, sacrificial, or sacerdotal meaning, but in fact afford the most convincing proof that no distinction existed in primitive times between the clergy and the laity. The object of all these surprises and dis- illusions was to turn men's attention from changing forms of outward expression to the permanent reality of the inward spirit. The same purposes are pursued in dealing with the variations through which Christian institutions have passed, both in the symbols by which they were expressed, and in the estimate that was formed of their relative importance. Some ceremonies, which were considered vital to the ex- istence of the early Church, have been abandoned ; others are now treated as indispensable which to the early Christians were unknown or indifferent. In Baptism, for instance, adult baptism is practically superseded by infant baptism ; the ceremony is no longer performed by the bishop only; the immersion, the anointing, the white gowns, the kiss of peace, the taste of milk and honey, which in the early Church gave such dramatic force to the rite, have been abandoned. In the administration of the Eucha- rist, the time, and the posture of the recipients, have been changed ; the kiss of peace has been omitted ; the Liturgy has been repeatedly changed ; the uses adopted in the Cop- tic, Greek, Roman, and Anglican Churches vary almost in- definitely. Yet the ordinances themselves have outlived the superstitions which have gathered round them, and survived repeated and radical changes in their ceremonial observance. The explanation which Stanley offers of this continued vitality will strike many minds as partial and inadequate ; but few can deny the force of the argument that he de- duces from the elasticity and variety of the ceremonial. The permanent elements which he discovers in such ordinances as Baptism and the Eucharist are the human 560 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1881 feelings that they embody and evoke. Their vitality is due to their correspondence with, and representation of, the highest and purest instincts of human nature. Passing over in silence the Divine nature of their institution, he lays his whole stress, with winning earnestness of manner and great force and beauty of language, on their moral and spiritual significance. The ceremony of Baptism survives because of the passage from darkness to light, from uncleanness to purity, which it typifies, and because of the natural reverence for a tender conscience, which softens the most hardened in the presence of an innocent, trusting infant. In the Eucharist, the permanent elements, which have withstood the shock of centuries of change, are the moral effort to dwell in the love of God, and the spiritual union and harmony with the Divine Spirit. In both institutions it is the moral and spiritual significance which is the underlying substance and the eternal reality of the institution. Though the explanation of the facts may be narrow and incomplete, the argument which is based upon them is undoubtedly strong. Disputes about external forms are shown to be combats about shadows. The outward expression of an ordinance cannot be of vital importance if the institution itself survives its radical and repeated change. History teaches that the substance has outlived the modifications in practice or in language which successive ages have resisted as matters of life or death ; it also inspires the hope that, whatever changes of the letter may be in store in future, the spirit will still survive with unimpaired and inextin- guishable vitality. The ' Essays on Christian Institutions ' urged the neces- sity of discriminating between things essential and things secondary, and of distinguishing the letter from the spirit ; they showed the religious insignificance of many of the combats which have distracted, and still distract, the minds CHAP. XXVIII 'CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS' of religious men ; they established the groundlessness of many of the fears and forebodings by which they are agitated. In these respects there could be no question of their utility and value. To a large number of persons they bore a real message of peace and hope. Many men, whose lives had been spent in the midst of the ecclesias- tical controversies of the past fifty years, had begun to doubt the moral and spiritual value of forms and institu- tions which were bandied about as the battle-cries of con- tending parties. To such as these Stanley taught the correspondence of Christian systems and ordinances with the most abiding spiritual realities. To them he unfolded the deep affinities which exist between Christian truth and high morality, the moral significance of Christian forms of worship, the living, human quality of doctrine, the natural value of the Church as a means of fostering and diffusing a lofty standard of pure living. The historical and the moral elements of his writing combined to give new life to petrified phrases ; they lightened the burden of many consciences ; they main- tained the fullest freedom of thought and inquiry, together with the fullest reverence for all that was most sacred in religion ; and thus, to quote the words of Archbishop Tait, Stanley 'confirmed in the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ vast numbers of persons who would otherwise have wan- dered from it.' But, except on the human side, the treat- ment of the subject might appear to many thoughtful Christians partial and inadequate. The stress is too ex- clusively laid on the moral atmosphere which sacred ordi- nances engender. To emphasise the moral and spiritual meaning of rites and ceremonies which Christ has founded is one thing ; but to not a few devout minds it is necessarily a shock when Stanley appears to find in this significance the sole cause of the vitality of Christian institutions. VOL. II O O 562 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1881 Stanley's silence on this side of the subject is too habitual to be attributed to exceptional causes. But in this parti- cular instance the reticence is partly due to the special pur- pose which he keeps steadily in view throughout the series of essays. On points of doctrine men of the holiest and most saintly character held conflicting views, and it was his object to take his stand on ground where all agreed. He was combating the prejudices which are engendered by attachment or opposition to outward forms. He was endeavouring to dissipate the apprehensions with which men viewed changes in the letter or the words of ceremonial observances. He was labouring to bridge over the gap which to many minds seemed to separate dogmatic from moral truth. He was fighting against the ' materialism of the sacristy,' which, in combination with the materialism of the philosophic mind, threatened to destroy the spiritual meaning of sacred ordinances. Always cautious in the use of words, and fastidious in the selection of the phrase which exactly expressed the precise shade of meaning, he was deeply impressed with the incapacity of human language to deal with Divine mysteries. He felt, now and always, that to keep the commandments of God in word and thought and deed was to inherit eternal life ; he was convinced that the weightiest matters of the law were justice, mercy, and truth, and that 'truth in action, truth in speech, truth in manner, truth in heart, truth in thought,' were of more value than the ' set phrases and artificial forms ' of verbal ortho- doxy. Neither the darker and sterner sides of human nature, nor their afifinities in the truths or ordinances of religion, fell within the range of his spiritual experience. To him, pure habits came more easily than to other men ; the childlike innocence of his character retained its fresh- ness unsullied, as its cheerful gaiety remained unsoured by CHAP. XXVIII 'CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS' 563 disappointment ; a sunny atmosphere, which he carried with him from his early home, pervaded his whole view of human life. Such a disposition brought happiness to him- self and to others ; it was, in part, the secret of the capti- vating charm, both of his presence and his writings ; but it also, in part, explains the limitations which restricted the range of his theological sympathies. The volume of essays on Christian Institutions was the last important work to which he put his hand, and he could not close his literary labours in more fitting language than in the words which at once conclude the volume and embody the spirit of his whole career : 'Love one another in spite of differences, in spite of faults, in spite of the excesses of one or the defects of another. Love one another, and make the best of one another, as He loved us who, for the sake of saving what was good in the human soul, forgot, forgave, put out of sight what was bad — who saw and loved what was good even in the publican Zaccheus, even in the penitent Mag- dalen, even in the expiring malefactor, even in the heretical Samaritan, even in the Pharisee Nicodemus, even in the heathen soldier, even in the outcast Canaanite. Make the most of what there is good in institutions, in opinions, in communities, in individuals. It is very easy to do the reverse : to make the worst of what there is of evil, absurd, and erroneous. By so doing we shall have no difficulty in making estrangements more wide, and hatreds and strifes more abundant, and errors more extreme. It is very easy to fix our attention only on the weak points of those around us, to magnify them, to irritate them, to aggravate them ; and, by so doing, we can make the burden of life unendur- able, and can destroy our own and others' happiness and usefulness wherever we go. But this was not the new love wherewith we are to love one another. That love is universal, because in its spirit we overcome evil simply by doing good. We drive out error simply by telling the truth. We strive to look on both sides of the shield of truth. We strive to speak the truth in love, that is, with- out exaggeration or misrepresentation ; concealing nothing, compromising nothing, but with the effort to understand 002 564 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1881 each other, to discover the truth which lies at the bottom of the error ; with the determination cordially to love whatever is lovable, even in those in whom we cordially detest whatever is detestable. And, in proportion as we endeavour to do this, there may be a hope that men will see that there are, after all, some true disciples of Christ left in the world, " because they have love one to another." ' The Essays showed no sign of failing powers. Nor did his work seem less fresh or his interests less varied than in early years. His sermon on the death of Carlyle, in February 1881, was as discriminating in its praise and as sympathetic in its insight as any of his earlier obituary addresses. He watched with keen interest the success of the Revised Version of the New Testament. He himself reviewed it in the 'Times,' and in the last letter which he ever wrote to the Queen he notes 'the just dissatisfaction with which the translation of the " Evil One " in the Lord's Prayer has been received.' On May ist, 1881, he preached a striking sermon on the death of Lord Beaconsfield, and subsequently attended the debates in the House of Com- mons respecting his proposed monument. ' The minority,' he notices, 'was much smaller than in the case of Pitt — 89 then, 53 now.' To him it was, both officially and gen- erally, a bitter disappointment that the deceased statesman was not to be buried in Westminster Abbey ; but he fully recognised the paramount claims of the feeling which prompted Lord Beaconsfield to direct his own interment at Hughenden. The following extract, referring to the death of Lord Beaconsfield, is taken from the last letter written to Stanley by the Queen : ' Osborne : April 21st, 1881. ' Dear Dean, — Thank you very much for your sympathy in the loss of my dear, great friend, whose death on Tuesday last completely overwhelmed me. ' His devotion and kindness to me, his wise counsels, his great gentleness combined with firmness, his one thought CHAP, xxviii INTERESTS m LIFE 565 of the honour and glory of the country, and his unswerving loyalty to the Throne, make the death of my dear Lord Beaconsfield a national calamity. My grief is great and lasting. ' I know he would wish to rest with the wife he loved so well, and not in Westminster Abbey, where, however, I am anxious that a monument should be erected to his memory. ' Ever yours affectionately, 'V. R. and I.' In June and the early part of July 1881 Stanley showed no sign of relaxing his hold on life. In the approaching marriage of his friend, the Rev. Henry Montgomery, to Miss Maud Farrar, the daughter of Canon Farrar, he took a keen interest. He discovered that the last marriage in the Abbey of a Henry to a Maud was that of Henry I. to the ' Good Queen Maud,' and intended to notice the coinci- dence in his address. His letters to Mrs. Drummond, who was then travelling in Greece, are full of reminiscences of places which he had not seen for forty years. He had already mapped out an expedition, in company with Dr. Gerald Harper, to Trieste, Pola, and Athens, returning by Rome, where he hoped to meet Hugh Pearson and the present Dean of Salisbury. He attended the dinner of the Burgesses of Westminster in his official capacity as head of the Corporation, a ceremony at which he was often present, because it amused him to find that in his own person, as Dean and ' Mayor of Westminster,' he embodied his cherished union of Church and State. The loss of Ashburnham House, which at the death of Lord John Thynne was transferred to Westminster School, deeply wounded him, and all his energies were strained to retain the historic building as part of the Abbey property. Steadily pursuing to the last his aim of making the Abbey a centre of religious life in the Metropolis, he arranged a 566 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1881 new course of sermons on Saturday afternoons on the Beatitudes, which he hoped might attract worshippers to whom the ordinary services did not appeal. It was hard to associate any thought of physical decay with such activity of mind and body. If those who watched him most closely, at times fancied that they detected symptoms of failing strength, their fears were removed by his joyous laugh and boyish nimbleness of step, or by some fresh example of his bright imagination and unfailing memory. Yet the end was near at hand. On Sunday, July 3rd, he preached to the boys at Green- wich Hospital, and also held a little service for Sunday- school teachers. On his return home he called at the Temple, and with Dr. Vaughan walked back to the Abbey to be in time for the Special Service at seven o'clock. Three intensely hot days followed. On Thursday, July 7th — a cold and wet day — he attended the annual flower-show held in the College gardens by the Society for promoting window gardening amongst the working-classes of Westminster. On Saturday, July 9th, he appeared to be in his usual health and spirits. In the morning he drove with Lady Frances Baillie to the Athen^um Club, and walked home. When Lady Frances returned, she found him at luncheon with Mr. Locker-Lampson. After luncheon he was sitting in the drawing-room, waiting for the afternoon service at which he was to preach the fourth of his sermons on the Beatitudes.^ The butler brought him a paper ; he took it, and Lady Frances noticed that his hand was shaking violently. Shortly afterwards he left the room. Lady Frances followed him, and found him walking up and down the library, with his face drawn and pale, and his hands as cold as ice. She immediately sent for Dr. Gerald Harper, and vainly endeavoured to dissuade him from going into the 1 The course was begun on Saturday, June i8th, 1 88 1. CHAP. XXVIII HIS LAST SERMON 567 Abbey to preach. He, however, insisted that he must go, and went. Before ten minutes were over he came out, faint and sick. Again he revived, returned to the Abbey, and preached his sermon on the words, ' Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.' The short, simple dis- course contained the last words that he spoke in West- minster Abbey. By one of those strange coincidences that seem more than chance, the subject of his sermon was the blessedness of purity of heart and life, which those who knew him best considered to be the distinguishing quality of his character and career. 'The words,' he said, * may bear a twofold meaning — pure, disinterested love of truth, and pure and clean aversion to everything that defiles. Pure love of truth — how very rare, and yet how very beneficent ! We do not see its merits at once ; we do not perceive, perhaps, in this or the next generation, how widely happiness is increased in the world by the discoveries of men of science, who have pursued them simply and solely because they were attracted towards them by their single-minded love of what was true. Again, purity from all that defiles and stains the soul — filthy thoughts, filthy actions, filthy words — we know what they are without an attempt to describe them.' He goes on to give three examples of the blessedness of purity in men whose hearts and writings were pure, and who not only abstained from anything which could defile the soul, but fixed their eyes intently on those simple affec- tions and those great natural objects of beauty which most surely guard the mind from corrupting influences. 'And what,' he asks in the words which conclude his last sermon, ' is the reason that our Saviour gives for this blessedness of the pure in heart It is that they shall see God. What is the meaning of this connection } It is because, of all the 568 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1881 obstacles which can intervene between us and an insight into the invisible and the Divine, nothing presents so coarse and thick a veil as the indulgence of the impure passions which lower our nature, and because nothing can so clear up our better thoughts, and nothing leaves our minds so open to receive the impression of what is good and high, as the single eye and pure conscience, which we may not, perhaps, be able to reach, but which is an indispensable condition of having the doors of our mind kept open and the channel of communication kept free between us and the Supreme and Eternal Fountain of all purity and of all goodness.' He left the Abbey for his bed. The next day (Sunday, July loth) he was too ill to bear being read to, and slept most of the morning and afternoon. On Wednesday the feverish symptoms had so far subsided that he left his bedroom in the course of the morning, and went to the library in his dressing-gown. He talked of his illness as a thing that was past, refusing to allow the friends whom he expected to dine with him in the evening to be put off. But late in the same afternoon a rise in his temperature warned Dr. Harper to order him back to bed. He never left it again. Yet in the evening he dictated to Dr. Harper, with all his usual clearness, a lengthy letter on a monument in the Abbey to the Parliamentarian chiefs, which he desired should be sent to the ' St. James's Gazette.' His condition on Thursday, July 14th, showed that some serious illness was impending, and the late Dr. Wilson Fox, who, in the absence of Sir William Jenner, was called into consultation, saw him twice. Very early on Friday morning Dr. Harper observed that an attack of erysipelas of the face had begun, and Sir William Jenner, arriving a few hours later, confirmed his opinion of the gravity of the case. The erysipelas spread rapidly over the face, eyelids, and head, extending down the neck as far CHAP. XXVIII HIS LAST ILLNESS 569 as the chest and the right shoulder. The condition was alarming ; but Stanley himself still hoped that he might be well enough to marry his friend Mr. Montgomery on July 28th. On Sunday, July 17th, he grew so much worse that it was thought necessary to summon Canon Pearson without further delay, and, at the same time, Archbishop Tait was asked to see him, and tell him of his danger. Before the Archbishop came Stanley had rallied, and, by the advice of the doctors in attendance, Dr. Tait left without seeing him. During the night Professor (now Sir William) Flower sat up with the sick man, in order to relieve Dr. Harper. As day broke a great change was noticed. He was told that the worst was feared, and as the Archbishop was too unwell to be summoned at such an early hour, and as Hugh Pearson had, by an unfortunate accident, missed the last train from Sonning, Canon (now Archdeacon) Farrar, who was the Canon in residence, was sent for. Prayers were read to him, and Mrs. Vaughan at intervals repeated the simple hymns in which he delighted. The erysipelas had attacked his throat with such severity that his utterance was feeble and indistinct. But the words which fell from his lips in the early morning of July 1 8th were heard by Lady Frances Baillie and others, and written down by Dr. Farrar. ' I always wished,' he said, 'to die at Westminster. The end has come in the way that I most desired that it should come. I could not have con- trolled things better.' Again he spoke : ' I am perfectly satisfied — perfectly happy. I have not the slightest mis- giving. I always wished to die at Westminster.' Then his thoughts turned in another direction. ' I should like Vaughan to preach my funeral sermon, if he can do it. I have been so very intimate with him. He has known me longest.' Finally he added : ' I wish to send a message of respect 570 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1881 to the Queen. As far as I understood what the duties of my office were supposed to be, in spite of every incom- petence, I am yet humbly trustful that I have sustained before the mind of the nation the extraordinary value of the Abbey as .a religious, national, and liberal institution.' The word 'incompetence' was so indistinctly uttered that it was not at first caught by Lady Frances Baillie, who repeated after him the language of his message. But, care- ful as ever to employ the precise term which expressed his meaning, and to be content with no other, all substitutes were rejected, and he was not satisfied till the exact word was correctly taken down. He sent an affectionate message to Mrs. and Miss Drum- mond. He asked to see the servants, and to each as they came to his bedside he spoke a few words of farewell exactly appropriate to the individual he addressed. The Sacrament, with his earnest assent, was administered by Canon Farrar to him and to those who were gathered round his bed. At the close of the service he interrupted the celebrant, and, gathering all his remaining strength, in a voice which for the moment grew solemn and distinct, himself gave the final benediction. Later in the morning a slight rally and improvement took place. If they were maintained, and if he slept, his life might yet be saved. Dr. Gerald Harper therefore re- mained for some hours in the sick-room with him alone. About the middle of the day his strength became ex- hausted, and he gradually relapsed into unconsciousness. All hope was now gone. During the evening Canon Pear- son and Sir George Grove spent some time at his bedside, and afterwards Archbishop Tait and Dr. Vaughan, who had returned to London, entered the room and prayed near him. His breathing gradually became more and more laboured, until at twenty minutes to twelve on the night of CHAP, xxviii HIS DEATH AND FUNERAL Monday, July i8th, 1881, it ceased altogether, and, without pain, Stanley passed away.^ Hugh Pearson arrived early on Monday morning, during the brief interval of rally and enforced quiet. ' Sir William Jenner,' he wrote to the present Dean of Salisbury, ' said the only chance was sleep, and forbade my seeing him. This lasted till 8 at night, when he pronounced all hope to be gone, and I went into the room at once. I did not see his face — the room was darkened, and his face was covered. Sir W. J. had entreated' me not to see him. He was quite unrecognisable, and he said the sight would haunt me. ' On speaking to him, and taking his hand, he pressed mine, and began talking eagerly. But, alas ! there was nothing to be made out, only a word or two that I could guess at. In an hour or so he became unconscious, and passed away in perfect peace — two long sighs, and not the slightest movement of the head or hand. There was no suffering throughout, thank God ! ' He was able to send some messages on Sunday night, and spoke to Farrar. You will hear all. He asked repeat- edly when I was coming. I cannot write more, but I hope we shall meet on Monday. I desired a ticket to be sent to you for the Jerusalem Chamber. 'What can one look forward to in the future for the Church without him ! For myself the light is gone out of life.' Stanley was buried in Westminster Abbey on Monday, July 25th, 1881. The precedent of Lady Augusta's funeral was, as far as possible, followed in all the details of the ceremony. The coffin was carried by ten pall- bearers : the Duke of Westminster ; the Bishop of Exeter (Dr. Temple) ; Mr. Spottiswoode, President of the Royal Society, representing Science ; Mr. Matthew Arnold, repre- senting Literature ; Professor Jowett and Canon Westcott, ' The account of Dean Stanley's illness has been corrected by Dr. Gerald Harper, who never left the Deanery from the beginning till the end of the fatal attack. 5/2 LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY 1881 representing the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge; Dr. Stoughton for English Nonconformity, Dr. Story for the Established Church of Scotland, Mr. W. H. Smith and Mr. W. E. Forster for the House of Commons, and for the Opposition and the Government. Dr. Vaughan was the chief mourner. The most representative gathering that ever had col- lected within the walls of the Abbey on such an occasion bore witness to the unique position which he had held, and to the bonds of personal friendship, love, and respect by which he had bound to himself the miscellaneous multitude of mourners. Not only did the vast assembly collect in and around the building, as part of a great nation, to lament a public loss and national calamity ; they came also as individuals, to deplore the passing away of a private friend. Leaders in Church and State, the foremost men in science, literature, art, and learning, representatives of all the various Churches in the country, ministers of all denominations, persons of every variety of religious belief, and a great concourse of men, women, and children, whose grief was not the less sincere, nor their loss the less great, because they themselves were unknown, followed him with tears to his grave in the Abbey of which for sev- enteen years he had been the soul, the glory, and charm. He was buried, by the permission of the Queen, in the Chapel of Henry VH., by the side of his wife. Death, as his own lines express with touching beauty, reunited the two hearts which, five years before, Death had divided. "Till Death us part." So speaks the heart When each to each repeats the words of doom ; Thro' blessing and thro' curse. For better and for worse, We will be one, till that dread hour shall come. CHAP. XXVIII HIS DEATH AND BURIAL 573 Life, with its myriad grasp, Our yearning souls shall clasp, By ceaseless love, and still-expectant wonder ; In bonds that shall endure, Indissolubly sure. Till God in death shall part our paths asunder. Till Death us join. O voice yet more Divine ! That to the broken heart breathes hope sublime ; Through lonely hours. And shattered powers. We still are one, despite of change and time. Death, with his healing hand. Shall once more knit the band, Which needs but that one link which none may sever Till through the Only Good, Heard, felt, and understood. Our life in God shall make us one for ever. APPENDIX The following list of Stanley'' s publications, without claiming to be an exhaustive or a scientific Bibliography, may be of assistance to the reader. The most important works are distinguished by italics. The dates given are those of the first English editions ; those of American editions do not in all cases correspond. 'The Gypsies:' a Prize Poem recited in the Theatre, Oxford. i2mo. Oxford, 1837. ' Do States, like Individuals, inevitably tend, after a certain period of maturity, to decay? ' The Chancellor's Prize Essay. Oxford, 1840. *A Sermon preached in the Chapel of Rugby School on the Death of the Rev. T. Arnold.' 8vo. Rugby, 1S42. The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold. 2 vols., 8vo. London, 1844. ' Miscellaneous Works of Thomas Arnold.' Collected and republished by A. P. Stanley. 8vo. London, 1845. Sermons and Essays ott the Apostolical Age. 8vo. Oxford, 1847. Addresses and Charges of E. Stanley, Bishop of Norwich. With a Memoir by A. P. Stanley . 8vo. London, 185 1. 'The Study of Modern History.' A Lecture delivered before the Young Men's Christian Association. 8vo. London, 1854. The Epistles of 'St. Paul to the Corinthians. With Critical Notes and Dissertations. 2 vols., 8vo. London, 1855. 'Foundation and Superstructure.' A Sermon. 8vo. London, 1855. ' The Work of an Evangelist.' A Sermon. 8vo. Norwich, 1855. Historical Mejnorials of Canterbury. 8vo. London, 1855. 'The Reformation.' A Lecture. ('Evening Recreations,' edited by J. H. Gurney.) 8vo. London, 1856. Sitiai and Palestine, in connection with their Histofj. 8vo. London, 1856. ' Life and Death.' A Sermon preached after the Funeral of W. H. Lyall. 8vo. London, 1857. Three Introductory Lectures on the Study of Ecclesiastical History. 8vo. Oxford, 1857. 'The Repentance of David.' A Sermon. (Oxford Lenten Sermons, No. 2.) 8vo. O.xford, 1858. The Unity of Evangelical and Apostolical Teaching. Sermons, jnostly preached at Canterbury Cathedral. 8vo. London, 1859. 575 576 APPENDIX 'Follow Paul and Follow Christ.' A Sermon preached at St. Paul's Cathedral. i2mo. London, 1859. ' Freedom ' and ' Labour.' Two Sermons. 8vo. London, i860. Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church. With an Introduction on the Study of Ecclesiastical History. 8vo. London, 1861. Serfnons in the East, preached before the Prince of Wales during his Tour in the Spring of i%(>2. Svo. London, 1863. ' The Grieving of the Spirit.' A Sermon. (Oxford Lenten Sermons, No. 5.) 8vo. London, 1863. ' Human Corruption.' A Sermon. 8vo. London, 1863. 'The Bible, its Form and its Substance.' Three Sermons on Heb. i. I, 2. 8vo. London, 1863. Lectures on the History of t lie Jewish Church. Part L Svo. London, 1863. 'A Letter to the Lord Bishop of London on the State of Subscription in the Church of England and in the University of Oxford.' Svo. London, 1863. 'Great Opportunities.' A Farewell Sermon. Svo. Oxford and London, 1S63. 'A Reasonable, Holy, and Living Sacrifice.' A Sermon pieached by A. P. Stanley, Dean of Westminster, in Westminster Abbey, on January 10, 1864, being the day following his Installation. i2mo. London, 1864. 'The Encouragements of Ordination.' A Sermon preached in St. Paul's Cathedral, at the Ordination of the Lord Bishop of London. Svo. London, 1S64. 'Thy Kingdom Come.' A Sermon preached at Windsor Castle. Svo. London, 1864. ' The Creation of Man.' A Sermon preached on behalf of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Svo. London, 1865. Lectjires on the History of the Jewish Church. Part II. Svo. London, 1865. 'The Dedication of Westminster Abbey.' A Sermon preached on the Sooth Anniversary of its Foundation. Svo. London, 1866. 'The Crusade of Charity.' A Sermon. Svo. London, 1 866. 'The Coronation of William the Conqueror, and its Consequences.' A Sermon preached in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day, 1866. Svo. London, 1867. 'The South African Controversy in its relation to the Church of England.' A Speech delivered in the Lower House of Convoca- tion. Svo. London, 1867. 'The Authority of Christ.' A Sermon preached to Working People. Svo. London, 1S67. An Address on the Connection of Church and State, delivered at Sion College on Febriiary 15, 1868. Svoi London, 1868. APPENDIX S77 Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey. 8vo. London, 1868. ' A Threefold Call.' A Sermon preached in Westminster Abbey on the occasion of the National Thanksgiving for the escape of the Duke of Edinburgh, and for the success of the Abyssinian War. 8vo. London, 1868. The Three Irish Chirches: ati Historical Address delivered at Sion College on January 28, 1869. 8vo. London, 1869. 'The Spirit within the Wheels.' A Sermon. i2mo. London, 1869. Essays, chiefly on Questions of Church and State, from 1850 to 1870. 8vo. London, 1870. 'The Greek Massacre.' A Sermon preached on May 15, 1870, being the day after the arrival in England of the remains of E. Herbert and F. Vyner, murdered in Greece, April 21, 1870. 8vo. London, 1870. * A Sermon preached in Westminster Abbey the Sunday following the Funeral of Charles Dickens.' 8vo. London, 1870. ' The Athanasian Creed,' with a Preface on the General Recommenda- tion of the Ritual Commission. (Republished from the 'Contem- porary Review.') 8vo. London, 1871. 'The Distress in Paris.' A Sermon. 8vo. London, 1871. 'Let there be light.' A Sermon delivered in Westminster Abbey, January 28, 1872. 8vo. London, 1872. ' The National Thanksgiving for the Recovery of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales.' Three Sermons preached in Westminster Abbey. 8vo. London, 1872. 'The Lifting up of the Everlasting Gates.' A Sermon preached at the Reopening of Chester Cathedral. 8vo. London, 1872. ' The Two Great Commandments.' A Sermon preached in the Town Church of St. Andrews, August 25, 1872. 8vo. London, 1872. Lectures on the History of the Church of Scotland, delivered in Edin- burgh in 1872. 8vo. London, 1872. ' The Prospect of Christian Missions.' A Sermon preached on the Day of Intercession, December 20, 1872. 8vo. London, 1873. 'Purity and Light.' A Sermon preached on the Sunday following the Death of Adam Sedgwick. 8vo. London, 1873. 'The Persian King.' A Sermon preached in Westminster Abbey, before the Queen's Westminster Volunteers, on Sunday, June 22, 1873. 8vo. London, 1873. 'The Marriage Feast.' A Sermon preached at St. Petersburg before the Marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh and the Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna, on January 6, 1874. 8vo. St. Petersburg, 1874. 'Christian Suretyship.' A Sermon preached at Windsor Castle on the arrival of the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh on March 8, 1874. 8vo. London, 1874. VOL. II. pp 578 APPENDIX 'The Character of John Bunyan.' See 'The Book of the Bunyan Festival,' June lo, 1874. Edited by W. H. Wylie. 8vo. London, 1874. 'Charles Kingsley/ A Sermon preached in Westminster Abbey, January 31, 1875. 8vo. London, 1875. 'The Early Christianity of Northumbria.' A Lecture reprinted from ' Good Words.' i6mo. London, 1875. Inaugural Address as Lord Rector of the University of St. Andrews, March 31, 1875. ^vo. London, 1875. ' England and India.' A Sermon. 8vo. London, 1875. 'The Return of the Traveller.' A Sermon preached in the presence of the Prince of Wales, May 14, 1876. 8vo. London, 1876. Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church. Part III. 8vo. London, 1876. Addresses and Sermons delivered at St. Andrews in 1872, 1875, 1877. 8vo. London, 1877. ' Sick Children.' A Sermon preached in Westminster Abbey to Children on Holy Innocents' Day, 1877. 8vo. London, 1878. Addresses and Sermons delivered during a visit to the United States and Canada in 1878. 8vo. New York, 1879. A Sermon preached at the International Agricultural Exhibition, held at Kilburn, London, on Sunday, June 29, 1879. 8vo. London, 1879. 'The Church of St. Cybi.' A Sermon preached at the reopening of St. Cybi's Church, Holyhead. 8vo. London, 1879. An Address delivered to the Friends of the Hon. Sir Arthur Gordon, Governor of the Fiji Islands, in King Henry the Seventh's Chapel, Westminster Abbey, on July 4, 1879. 8vo. London, 1879. ' An Indian Statesman.' Being the Funeral Sermon of Lord Lawrence. 8vo. London, 1879. Memoirs of Edward and Catherine Stanley. 8vo. London, 1879. 'The Sixty-eighth Psalm.' A Sermon preached in Westminster Abbey, before the Corps of Commissionaires, on February 13, 1881. Svo. London, 1881. 'The Days of Old.' A Sermon preached in Westminster Abbey on the Sunday following the Death of Lord John Thynne, Sub-Dean of Westminster. 8vo. London, 1881. Christian Institutions. Essays on Ecclesiastical Subjects. Svo. London, 1881. 'Sermons on Special Occasions,' preached in Westminster Abbey. Svo. London, 1882. ' Sermons for Children,' including the ' Beatitudes ' and the ' Faithful Servant.' Svo. London, 1887. APPENDIX 579 'Proposed Water-supply and Sewerage for Jerusalem.' By J. I. Whitty. With an Introduction by Canon Stanley. 8vo. London, 1863. 'God in History.' By Baron Bunsen. With a Preface by A. P. Stanley. 8vo. London, 1868. 'Facsimile of the Black-Letter Prayer Book printed in 1639.' With a Preface by A. P. Stanley. Fol. London, 1871. ' The Recovery of Jerusalem.' By Captain C. W. Wilson, R.E. With an Introduction by A. P. Stanley. 8vo. London, 1871. ' Impressions of Greece.' By the Right Hon. Sir T. Wyse. With an Introduction by Miss Wyse, and Letters from Greece to Friends at Home by A. P. S. 8vo. London, 1871. 'Letters and Journals of the Earl of Elgin.' With a Preface by A. P. Stanley. 8vo. London, 1872. 'On Missions.' By F. M. Miiller. With an Introductory Sermon by A. P. Stanley. 8vo. London, 1873. 'Catholic Reform.' By C. J. M. Loyson (P^re Hyacinthe). With a Preface by A. P. Stanley. 8vo. London, 1874. 'The Victory of Faith.' By J. C. Hare. With Introductory Notices by F. D. Maurice and A. P. Stanley. 8vo. London, 1874. ' A Layman's Legacy.' By Samuel Greg. With a Prefatory Letter by A. P. Stanley. 8vo. London, 1877. 'New Biblia Pauperum.' With a Prefatory Notice by A. P. Stanley. 4to. London, 1877. 'The Eastern Question.' By S. Canning, Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe. With a Preface by A. P. Stanley. 8vo. London, 1881. ' Letters to a Friend.' By C. Thirlwall, Bishop of St. David's. Edited by A. P. Stanley. 8vo. London, 1881. 'Church and Chapel.' Edited by R. H. Hadden. With an Introduc- tion by A. P. Stanley. 8vo. London, 1881. Articles I . The Quarterly Review ' Grote's " History of Greece."' March, 1850. 'Socrates.' December, 1850. 'Murder of Becket.' September, 1853. 'Sacred Geography.' March, 1854. ' Milman's " Latin Christianity." ' June, 1854. ' Archdeacon Hare.' June, 1855. 'Travels in Greece.' April, 1869. 'Reconstruction of the Irish Church.' October, 1869. 'The Church of France.' July, 1873. p p 2 58o APPENDIX 2. The Edinburgh Review ' The Gorham Case.' July, 1850. Essays and Reviews." ' April, 1861. 'The Three Pastorals.' July, 1864. 'Ritualism.' April, 1867. 'Due de Broglie's "Lower Empire."' July, 1867. 'The CEcumenical Council.' October, 1869. 'The Pope and the Council.' July, 1871. 'The Bennett Judgment.' July, 1872. 'The Church and Dissent.' January, 1873. ' GefFcken's " Church and State." ' July, 1877. 'Religious Movement of the Nineteenth Century.' April, 1881. 3. Eraser'' s Magazine 'Theology of the Nineteenth Century.' February, 1865. 'Gains of the Church in 1865.' December, 1865. 'Variations of the Romish Church.' May, 1880. 'Inveraweand Ticonderoga.' October, 1880. 4. Macmillan's Magazine 'The Ammergau Mystery; or, Sacred Drama of i860.' October, i860. Note on the above Article. November, i860. ' Hymn of the Ascension.' June, 1862. "'Ecce Homo.'" June, 1866. ' Recollections of Philaret, Archbishop and Metropolitan of Moscow.' February, 1868. 'The Late Dean of St. Paul's' (Dr. Milman). January, 1869. 'Dies Irae.' December, 1868. 'JohnKeble.' March, 1869. 'The Pope's Posture in the Communion.' July, 1869. Note to the above Article. September, 1869. 'Hymn on the Transfiguration.' April, 1870. 'Traveller's Hymn for All Saints' Day.' November, 1872. ' Hymn for Advent.' December, 1872. 'Hymn on the Accession (June 20), for National Blessings.' June, 1873- 'Two Addresses:' i. John Bunyan ; ii. Arnold and Rugby. July, 1874. 'Addresses at Cheshunt College.' August, 1874. 'This do in remembrance of Me.' November, 1874. ' The Untravelled Traveller ' (written on the recovery of Prince Leo- pold). March, 1875. 'Richard Baxter.' September, 1875. 'The Hopes of Theology.' May, 1877. ' The Education of After-Life.' December, 1877. APPENDIX 581 'The English Law of Burial.' March, 1378. 'Our Future Hope: an Easter Hymn.' May, 1878. ' Historical Aspect of the United States.' January, 1879. 'Historical Aspect of the American Churches.' June, 1879. 'Manzoni's Hymn for Whitsunday.' May, 1879. ' Hymn for St. John Baptist's Day' (June 24). July, 1879- Note on the American Churches. December, 1879. 'The Divine Life.' May, 1880. 'Subscription.' January, 188 1. ' Westminster Confession of Faith.' August, 1881. 5. Good Words ' On Sunday Evenings.' February, 1861. 'The Songs of Israel.' February, 1863. 'The Last Words of David.' July, 1864. 'The Past and the Future.' February, 1868. ' Palestine Exploration.' March, 1868. 'Some Characteristics of the Papacy.' May, 1868, and June, 1868. 'The Litany.' July, 1868. 'The Christian Rule of Speech.' August, 1869. 'Science and Religion.' July, 1871. 'The Religious Aspect of History.' August, 1871. 'The Religious Aspect of the late War.' September, 187 1. 'The Religious Aspect of Scripture.' October, 1871. 'Frederick Denison Maurice.' May, 1872. ' In Memoriam : Dr. Norman Macleod.' July, 1872. ' Richard Hooker.' January, 1873. 'The Wrestling of Jacob.' January, 1874. 'The Mission of the Traveller.' May, 1874. ' Christian Fraternity.' January, 1875. 'The Religious Aspect of Geology.' April, 1875. 'The Early Christianity of Northumbria.' June, 1875. 'The Religious Use of Wisdom.' September, 1875. 'The Continuity and Discontinuity of the Church.' July, 1876. 'Spiritual Religion.' October, 1876. ' The Children's Psalms.' February, 1877. 'The Gospel of Travellers.' October, 1877. ' Diversity in Unity.' January, 1878. ' The Religious Aspect of Gothic Architecture.' June, 1878. 'The Close of the Mission Services on St. Andrew's Day.' January, 1879. 'St. Christopher.' A Sermon to Children. February, 1879. 'Children's Creed.' February, 1880. 'The Ten Commandments.' May, 1880. * Talitha Cumi.' February, 188 1. 582 APPENDIX 6. The Contemporary Review * Dr. Pusey's Eirenicon.' April, 1866. 'The Athanasian Creed.' August, 1870, and November, 1870. 'Dean Alford.' March, 1871. 'What is Disestablishment? ' May, 1871. 349; 42, 320,351, 371. 'Ihoiiipson, Rev. H. L., ii. 13. Thomson, Archbishop (Yorlv), ii. 41, 288. Thorold, Bishop (Winchester), ii. 288, 373- Thynne, Lord Charles, i. 429. Thynne, Lord John, ii. 154, 500. Tolstoi, Count, ii. 443. Townsend, Colonel, ii. 528. Townsend, Mr., ii. 359. 'Tract No. 90,' i. 291 et seq., 335. 'Tracts for the Times,' i. 142. Trench, Archbishop, ii. 139. Trevelyan, Sir Charles, i. 49. Tulloch, Principal, ii. 297, 558. Twells, Rev. H., ii. 289. Twiss, i. 216, 297. Unitarians, Stanley's views on, i. 116, 204. University Reform, i. 230, 418. Urusoff", Prince, i. 521, 527; ii. 427, 436. Ussher, Archbishop, ii. 244, 272. Vai.lombrosa, ii. 354. Vatican Council, ii. 368. Vaughan, C. J. (Dean of Llandaff and Master of the Temple), Exhibitioner at Rugby, i. 69 ; close friendship •w'xih Stanley, i. 87 ; reminiscences of Stanley, i. 103 ; contributes to 'Rugby Magazine,' i. 140; Craven Scholar, i. 173; his Oxford distinc- tions, i. 179; ' Difference between a Hearing and a Reading Age,' i. 187; candidate for Rugby Head-Master- ship, i. 31 7 ; marries Miss Stanley, i. 421 ; on Bishop Temple, ii. 39; on .Stanley's tour vi'ith the Prince of Wales, ii. 65; visit from Stanley at Llandaff, ii. 544 ; Mary Stanley's funeral, ii. 547 ; Stanley's illness, 570 ; chief mourner at Stanley's funeral, ii. 572. Vaughan, Mrs. C. J., i. 7; ii. 95, 130, 487, 492, 550. Vaughan, Henry H., i. 407. Venice, i. 264. Versailles, ii. 406. Victoria, Queen, coronation, i. 199; Great Exhibition, i. 424; on Mrs. Stanley's death, ii. 70; her interest in Stanley, ii, 120, 121, 123, 338; anniversary service of Prince Con- sort's death, ii. 123-125; her ac- count of her accession, ii. 127; asks Stanley to celebrate Duke of Ediiv- burgh's marriage, ii. 416, 422; her sympathy with Stanley, ii. 467 ; her visit to Lady Augusta, ii. 471 ; letters from Stanley, ii. 480, 488, 504, 508, 510, 520, 533, 542, 544; her letter to Stanley on Beacons- field's death, ii. 564. Villemain, i. 472, 493. Vladimir, Grand Duke, ii. 434. Von Humboldt, i. 331. Von Moltke, ii. 367. Von Ranke, i. 331. Voyekoff, Mdlle., 435, 437. Voysey, Rev. Charles, ii. 374-380. Wagner, Mr. (Hurstmonceaux), i. 117. Wales, Prince of, ii. 64, 91, 125, 358, 407, 424, 427, 428, 440, 464. Wales, Princess of, ii. 126, 424, 440, 464. Walniff, ii. 437. Walrond, Theodore, i. 447. Walsch, Madame, i. 165. Ward, H. G., i. 130, 168, 187, 210, 292, 297, 332-342. Ward, Wilfrid, i. 169. Washburn, Dr., ii. 525. Washington, Captain, i. 480. Waters, Benjamin (Stanley's servant), ii. 66, 87, 145, 338. Way, Albert, i. 476. Welby, Hon. Lady, ii. 123. Wellington, Duke of, i. 131, 438, 439. Welsh, Dr., ii. 390. 6oo hVDEX Wesley, Charles, ii. 244, 284. Wesley, John, ii. 284, 517, 538. West, Hon. and Rev. Reginald, i. 301. Westbury, Lord, ii. 43, 416. Westcott, Bishop (Durham), ii. 39, 40, 57 >• Westminster, Stanley appointed Dean of, ii. 139; his work at, ii. 145, 151, 154. 159. 237, 278, 304, 348, 491. Westminster, Duke of, ii. 474, 571. Westminster, Marquis of, i. 425. Whalley, Rev. J. P., i. 61. Whately, Archbishop, i. 95, 156, 246, 320. Whewell, Dr. W., i. 136. White, Rev. Edward, ii. 449. Wilberforce, Bishop (Oxford), i. 350; ii- 30. 33. 289, 358, 415, 416. Wilkin, Rev. Mr., ii. 449. William I., Emperor of Germany, ii. 366, 413- Williams, Bishop, ii. 529. Williams, Rev. Isaac, i. 305. Williams, Roger, ii. 522. Williams, Dr. Rowland, ii. 30 £•/ seq., 43. 157- Williamson, Victor, ii. 11, 484, 508. Wilson, Rev. H. B., ii. 30 et scq., 43, 157- Wilson, .Sir C. W., ii. 271. Windsor, ii. 123, 447. Winthrop, Mr., ii. 518. Wodehouse, Canon, i. 244, 252; ii. 116. Wood, Mr., i. 21. Woodford, Bishop (Ely), ii. 2S8. Wordsworth, Bishop Charles (St. Andrews), ii. 393 et seq. Wordsworth, Bishop Christopher (Lin- coln), i. 69, 76, 136; ii. 151, 288, 333. 411- Wordsworth, William, i. 100, 101,298. Wright, Mr. (Clerk of Works, West- minster Abbey), ii. 4S8. Wynter, Dr., i. 175, 177. ZwiNGLius, ii. 1 84, 244. NathjooB ^Prras : J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith. Boston, Mass., U.S.A. DATE DUE MO ' 0 ^ HIGHSMITH #45115 I