latitudinarianism:-its advocacy of large reforms repelled the sympathy of many Conservatives-its advocacy of the importance of religious institutions repelled the sympathy of many Liberals.

Yet still it was impossible not to see, that it stood apart from all the rest of the publications for and against Church Reform, then issuing in such numbers from the press. There were many, both at the time and since, who, whilst they objected to its details, yet believed its statement of general principles to be true, and only to be deprecated because the time was not yet come for their application. There were many again, who, whilst they objected to its general principles, yet admired the beauty of particular passages, or the wisdom of some of the details. Such were the statement of the advantages of a national and of a Christian Establishment,—his defence of the Bishops' seats in Parliament, and of the high duties of the Legislature. Such, again, were the suggestion of a multiplication of Bishoprics, the creation of suffragan or subordinate Bishops-the revival of an inferior order of ministers or deacons. in the Establishment-the use of churches on week days-the want of greater variety in our forms of worship than is afforded by the ordinary course of morning and evening prayer-all of them points which, being then proposed nearly for the first time, have since received the sanction of a large part of public opinion, if not of public practice.

One point of detail, so little connected with his general views as not to be worth mentioning on its own account, yet deserves to be recorded, as a curious instance of the disproportionate attention, which may sometimes be attracted to one unimportant passage; namely, the suggestion that if Dissenters were comprehended within the Establishment, the use of different forms of worship at different hours of the Sunday in the parish church, might tend to unite the worshippers more closely to the Church of their fathers and to one another. This suggestion, torn from the context and represented in language which it is not necessary here to specify, is the one sole idea, which many have conceived of the whole pamphlet, which many also have

conceived of his whole theological teaching, which not a few have conceived even of his whole character. Yet this sugges

tion is a mere detail, only recommended conditionally, a detail occupying two pages in a pamphlet of eighty-eight; a detail, indeed, which in other countries has been adopted without difficulty amongst Protestants, Greeks, and Roman Catholics, and which, in principle at least, has since been sanctioned, in the alternate use in one instance of the Prussian and English Liturgies, by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London; but a detail on which he himself laid no stress either then or afterwards, of which no mention occurs again in any one of his writings, and of which, in common with all the other details in the pamphlet, he expressly declared that he was far from proposing anything with "equal confidence to that with which he maintained the principles themselves;" and that "he was not anxious about any particular measure which he may have ventured to recommend, if anything could be suggested by others, which would effect the same great object of comprehension more completely." (Preface to Principles of Church Reform, p. iv.)

But, independently of the actual matter of the pamphlet, its publication was the signal for the general explosion of the large amount of apprehension or suspicion, which had been in so many minds contracted against him since he became known to the public-amongst ordinary men, from his Pamphlet on the Roman Catholic claims-amongst more thinking men, from his Essay on the Interpretation of Scripture-amongst men in general, from the union of undefined fear and dislike which is almost sure to be inspired by the unwelcome presence of a man who has resolution to propose, earnestness to attempt, and energy to effect, any great change either in public opinion or in existing institutions. The storm, which had thus been gathering for some time past, now burst upon him,-beginning in theological and political opposition, but gradually including within its sweep every topic, personal or professional, which could expose him to obloquy,-and continued to rage for the next four years of his life. The neighbouring county paper maintained

an almost weekly attack upon him; the more extreme of the London Conservative newspapers echoed these attacks with additions of their own; the official dinner which usually accompanied the Easter speeches at Rugby was, on one occasion, turned into a scene of uproar by the endeavour to introduce into it political toasts; in the University pulpit at Oxford he was denounced almost by name; every incautious act or word in the management of the school, almost every sickness amongst the boys, was eagerly used as a handle against him. Charges which, in ordinary cases, would have passed by unnoticed, fell with double force on a man already marked out for public odium; persons, who naturally would have been the last to suspect him, took up and repeated almost involuntarily the invectives which they heard reverberated around them in all directions; the opponents of any new system of education were ready to assail every change which he had introduced; the opponents of the old discipline of public schools were ready to assail every support which he gave to it; the general sale of his Sermons was almost stopped; even his personal acquaintance began to look upon him with alarm, some dropped their intercourse with him altogether, hardly any were able fully to sympathize with him, and almost all remonstrated.

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He was himself startled, but not moved by this continued outery. It was indeed "nearly the worst pain which he had ever felt, to see the impression which either his writings, or his supposed opinions, produced on those whom he most dearly valued;" it was a trying thing to one who held his own opinions as strongly as he did, to be taxed continually with indifference to truth;" and at times even his vigorous health and spirits seemed to fail under the sense of the estrangement of friends, or yet more, under his aversion to the approbation of some who were induced by the clamour against him to claim him as their own ally. But the public attacks upon himself he treated with indifference. Those which related to the school he was in one or two instances at their outset induced to notice; but he soon formed a determination, which he maintained till they died. away altogether, never to offer any reply, or even explanation, except to his own personal friends. "My resolution is fixed,"

he said, "to let them alone, and on no account to condescend to answer them in the newspapers. All that is wanted is to inspire firmness into the minds of those engaged in the conduct of the school, lest their own confidence should be impaired by a succession of attacks, which I suppose is unparalleled in the experience of schools." Nor was he turned in the slightest degree from his principles. Knowing, from the example of those who presided over other schools, that, had he been on the opposite side of the questions at issue, he might have taken a far more active part in public matters without provoking any censure, and conscious that his exertions in the school were as efficient as ever, he felt it due alike to himself, his principles, and his position, never to concede that he had acted inconsistently with the duties of his situation; and therefore in the critical election of the winter of 1834, when the outcry against him was at its height, he did not shrink from coming up from Westmoreland to Warwickshire to vote for the Liberal candidate, foreseeing, as he must have done, the burst of indignation which followed.

And, whilst the clamour against his pamphlet may have increased his original diffidence in the practicability of its details, it only drove him to a more determinate examination and development of its principles, which from this time forward assumed that coherent form which was the basis of all his future writings. What he now conceived and expressed in a systematic shape, had indeed always floated before him in a ruder and more practical form, and in his later life it received various enlargements and modifications. But in substance, his opinions, which up to this time had been forming, were, after it, formed; he had now reached that period of life after which any change of view is proverbially difficult; he had now arrived at that stage in the progress of his mind, to which all his previous inquiries had contributed, and from which all his subsequent inquiries naturally resulted. His views of national education. became fixed in the principles, which he expressed in his favourite watch-words at this time, "Christianity without Sectarianism," and "Comprehension without Compromise;" and which he developed at some length in an (unpublished) "Letter on the Admission of Dissenters to the Universities," written in 1834.

His long-cherished views of the identity of Church and State, he now first unfolded in his Postscript to the pamphlet on “Church Reform," and in the first of his fragments on that subject, written in 1834-35. Against what he conceived to be the profane and secular view of the State, he protested in the Preface to his third Volume of Thucydides, and against the practical measure of admitting Jews to a share in the supreme legislature, he was at this time more than once on the point of petitioning, in his own sole name. Against what he conceived to be the ceremonial view of the Church, and the technical and formal view of Christian Theology, he protested in the Preface and First Appendix to his Third Volume of Sermons; whilst against the then incipient school of Oxford Divinity, he was anxious to circulate tracts vindicating the King's Supremacy, and tracing in its opinions the Judaizing principles which prevailed in the apostolical age. And he still "dreamt of something like a Magazine for the poor; feeling sure from the abuse lavished upon him, that a man of no party, as he has no chance of being listened to by the half-informed, is the very person who is wanted to speak to the honest uninformed."

From the fermentation against him, of which the Midland Counties were the focus, he turned with a new and increasing delight to his place in Westmoreland, now doubly endeared to him as his natural home, by its contrast with the atmosphere of excitement, with which he was surrounded in the neighbourhood of Rugby. His more strictly professional pursuits also went on undisturbed; the last and best volume of his edition of Thucydides appeared in 1835, and in 1833 he resumed his Roman History, which he had long laid aside. It might seem strange that he should undertake a work of such magnitude, at a time when his chief interest was more than ever fixed on the great questions of political and theological philosophy. His love for ancient history was doubtless in itself a great inducement to continue his connexion with it after his completion of the edition of Thucydides. But besides, and perhaps even more than this, was the strong impression that on those subjects, which he himself had most at heart, it was impossible for him to bear up against the tide of misunderstanding and pre