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fidence of any of the friends of my youth, I can of his, that it was devout and pure, simple, sincere, affectionate and faithful.

It is time that I should close: already, I fear, I have dwelt with something like an old man's prolixity on passages of my youth, forgetting that no one can take the same interest in them which I do myself; that deep personal interest must, however, be my excuse. Whoever sets a right value on the events of his life for good or for evil, will agree that next in importance to the rectitude of his own course and the selection of his partner for life, and far beyond all the wealth or honours which may reward his labour, far even beyond the unspeakable gift of bodily health, are the friendships which he forms in youth. That is the season when natures soft and pliant grow together, each becoming part of the other, and coloured by it; thus to become one in heart with the good, and generous, and devout, is, by God's grace, to become, in measure, good, and generous, and devout. Arnold's friendship has been one of the many blessings of my life. I cherish the memory of it with mournful gratitude, and I cannot but dwell with lingering fondness on the scene and the period which first brought us together. Within the peaceful walls of Corpus I made friends, of whom all are spared me but Arnold-he has fallen asleep-but the bond there formed, which the lapse of years and our differing walks in life did not unloosen, and which strong opposition of opinions only rendered more intimate; though interrupted in time, I feel not to be broken-may I venture, without unseasonable solemnity, to express the firm trust, that it will endure for ever in eternity.

Believe me, my dear Stanley,

Very truly yours,

J. T. C.

CHAPTER II.

LIFE AT LALEHAM.

THE Society of the Fellows of Oriel College then, as for some time afterwards, numbered amongst its members some of the most rising men in the University, and it is curious to observe the list which, when the youthful scholar of Corpus was added to it, contained the names of Copleston, Davison, Whately, Keble, Hawkins, and Hampden, and shortly after he left it, those of Newman and Pusey, the former of whom was elected into his vacant Fellowship. Amongst the friends with whom he thus became acquainted for the first time, may chiefly be mentioned Dr. Hawkins, since Provost of Oriel, to whom in the last year of his life he dedicated his Lectures on Modern History, and Dr. Whately, afterwards Principal of St. Alban's Hall, and now Archbishop of Dublin, towards whom his regard was enhanced by the domestic intercourse which was constantly interchanged in later years between their respective families, and to whose writings and conversations he took an early opportunity of expressing his obligations in the Preface to his first volume of Sermons, in speaking of the various points on which the communication of his friend's views had "extended or confirmed his own." For the next four years he remained at Oxford taking private pupils and reading extensively in the Oxford libraries, an advantage which he never ceased to remember gratefully himself, and to impress upon others, and of which the immediate results remain in a great number of MSS., both in the form of abstracts of other works, and of original sketches on history and theology. They are remarkable rather as proofs

of industry than of power, and the style of all his compositions, both at this time and for some years later, is cramped by a stiffness and formality alien alike to the homeliness of his first published works and the vigour of his later ones, and strikingly recalling his favourite lines,

"The old man clogs our earliest years,

And simple childhood comes the last."

But already in the examination of the Oriel Fellowships, Dr. Whately had pointed out to the other electors the great capability of "growth" which he believed to be involved in the crudities of the youthful candidate's exercises, and which, even in points where he was inferior to his competitors, indicated an approaching superiority. And widely different as were his juvenile compositions in many points from those of his after life, yet it is interesting to observe in them the materials which those who knew the pressure of his numerous avocations used to wonder when he could have acquired, and to trace amidst the strangest contrast of his general thoughts and style occasional remarks of a higher strain, which are in striking, though in some instances perhaps accidental, coincidence with some of his later views. He endeavoured in his historical reading to follow the plan which he afterwards recommended in his Lectures, of making himself thoroughly master of some one period, -the 15th century, with Philip de Comines as his text book, seems to have been the chief sphere of his studies, and the first book after his election which appears in the Oriel library as taken out in his name, is Rymer's Foedera. Many of the judgments of his maturer years on Gibbon, Livy, and Thucydides, are to be found in a MS. of 1815, in which, under the name of "Thoughts on History," he went through the characteristics of the chief ancient and modern historians. And it is almost startling, in the midst of a rhetorical burst of his youthful Toryism in a journal of 1815, to meet with expressions of real feeling about the social state of England such as might have been written in his latest years; or amidst the commonplace remarks which accompany an analysis of St. Paul's Epistles and Chrysostom's Homilies, in 1818, to stumble on a

statement, complete as far as it goes, of his subsequent doctrine of the identity of Church and State.

Meanwhile he had been gradually led to fix upon his future course in life. In December, 1818, he was ordained deacon at Oxford; and on August 11th, 1820, he married Mary, youngest daughter of the Rev. John Penrose, Rector of Fledborough, in Nottinghamshire, and sister of one of his earliest school and college friends, Trevenen Penrose; having previously settled in 1819 at Laleham, near Staines, with his mother, aunt, and sister, where he remained for the next nine years, taking seven or eight young men as private pupils in preparation for the Universities, for a short time in a joint establishment with his brother-in-law, Mr. Buckland, and afterwards independently by himself. Here were born six out of his nine children. The three youngest, besides one which died in infancy in 1832, were born at Rugby.

In the interval which had elapsed between the end of his under-graduate career at Oxford, and his entrance upon life, had taken place the great change from boyhood to manhood, and with it a corresponding change or growth of character, more marked and more important than at any subsequent period of his life. There was indeed another great step to be taken before his mind reached that later stage of development which was coincident with his transition from Laleham to Rugby. The prosaic and matter of fact element which has been described in his early Oxford life still retained its predominance, and to a certain extent dwarfed and narrowed his sphere of thought; the various principles of political and theological science which contained in germ all that was to grow out of them, had not yet assumed their proper harmony and proportions; his feelings of veneration, if less confined than in later years, were also less intense; his hopes and views, if more practicable and more easily restrained by the advice of others, were also less wide in their range, and less lofty in their conception.

But, however great were the modifications which his character subsequently underwent, it is the change of tone at this time, between the earlier letters of this period (such as the one

or two first of the ensuing series) and those which immediately succeed them, that marks the difference between the high spirit and warm feelings of his youth, and the fixed earnestness and devotion which henceforth took possession of his whole heart and will. Whatever may have been the outward circumstances which contributed to this-the choice of a profession—the impression left upon him by the sudden loss of his elder brother -the new and to him elevating influences of married life-the responsibilty of having to act as the guide and teacher of others-it was now for the first time that the principles, which before he had followed rather as a matter of course, and as held and taught by those around him, became emphatically part of his own convictions, to be embraced and carried out for life and for death.

From this time forward such defects as were peculiar to his boyhood and early youth entirely disappear; the indolent habits the morbid restlessness and occasional weariness of duty-the indulgence of vague schemes without definite purpose the intellectual doubts which beset the first opening of his mind to the realities of religious belief, when he shared at least in part the state of perplexity which in his later sermons he feelingly describes as the severest of earthly trials, and which so endeared to him throughout life the story of the confession of the Apostle Thomas-all seem to have vanished away and never again to have diverted him from the decisive choice and energetic pursuit of what he set before him as his end and duty. From this time forward no careful observer can fail to trace that deep consciousness of the invisible world, and that power of bringing it before him in the midst and through the means of his most active engagements, which constituted the peculiarity of his religious life, and the moving spring of his whole life. It was not that he frequently introduced sacred names in writing or in conversation, or that he often dwelt on divine interpositions; where many would have done so without scruple, he would shrink from it, and in speaking of his own religious feelings, or in appealing to the religious feelings of others, he was, except to those most intimate with him, exceedingly reserved. But what was true generally of the thorough

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