first George we count not fewer than six generations. They were generations which had grown up and died with the Bible in their hands, if by that expression be meant-which had lived and died under the sway of a Protestant Government. We should be glad to know which canon of morals Mr. Kingsley prefers-that which sent More to the scaffold, when, by a little allowable lying, he might have saved his own life, and served the interests of his Church; or that which converted the Protestant Palace of St. James's into a stew and taught all classes of English society to laugh at chastity, sobriety, and truth, even among the clergy. But Mr. Kingsley is not content to stop here. "So again," be observes, with the virtue of truth; truth for its own sake had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need not, and on the whole ought not; that cunning is the weapon which heaven has given to the saints wherewith to withstand the brute main force of the wicked world, which marries and is given in marriage. Whether his notion be doctrinally correct or not, it is at least historically so."

For some years previously to the appearance of this not very delicate rebuke, Father Newman had withdrawn himself, as it would appear tenderly, from the strife of tongues, Rumour was of course busy about him, and tales were told of bitter dissatisfaction with the past, and something like an eclipse of hope in reference to the future. Mr. Kingsley has not lived for the last four or five years out of the world, so that probably the stories which circulated elsewhere may have reached him. They were groundless stories, it is true. Dr. Newinan, in the remarkable volume which we shall presently endeavour to analyse, has shown clearly enough that, whatever may have been the amount of his sufferings while travelling up to a great result, with the result itself he is en

tirely satisfied. But this fact, as it could not be known to Mr. Kingsley at the time, so it forms no excuse for the course which he judged it expedient to follow.

Mr. Kingsley's attack upon Dr. Newman was not only cruel, it was injudicious. He could scarcely expect that it would fail to provoke retort; and self-conceit must be in him even stronger than we take it to be, if he ever for a moment anticipated other issue than defeat from a controversy entered into so rashly and on such grounds. Be this, however, as it may, controversy came, and with it not merely the exposure of considerable ignorance and much presumption on the part of the challenger, but on the other side one of the most deeply interesting dissections which has ever been submitted to public gaze, of a mind enthusiastic, sensitive, not always happy in discriminating between reason and imagination, but earnest in its search after light, and sadly missing it at the last. No one, after reading 'Apologia pro Vita sua,' will pretend to say that Dr. Newman was at any time influenced by unworthy motives. That he has attained to what he sought--the truth-we, as honest and sincere Protestants, cannot for a moment admit; but if man ever made himself a martyr in the cause of what he believed to be the truth, Dr. Newman is that man. Let us return, however, to the case before us.

Mr. Kingsley had struck a rude blow at one who gave him no provocation. He was courteously requested either to retract and apologise, or to justify by proof the assertion which had been hazarded. He preferred the latter course, and made reference in general terms to a sermon 'On Wisdom and Innocence,' which Dr. Newman had preached so long ago as 1844 from the pulpit of St. Mary's Church in Oxford. The correspondence which followed bas all been printed, and may be consulted by such as are curious in details; but, for our pre

sent purpose, it will suffice to give the substance of the discn-sion. In his letter replying to Mr. Kingsley's reference, Dr. Newman states that he had gone through the sermon in question with great care; that he could discover nothing therein which, either directly or indirectly, teaches as Mr. Kingsley had affirmed; that Mr. Kingsley would do well to adopt a similar course; and that he (Dr. Newman) is open to correction should the result, after this second investigation, be in any respect different from that at which he had himself arrived. Dr. New man then goes on to explain, that whatever may be the moral obliquity of the teaching in that serinon, if moral obliquity there be, the fault must not be laid to the door of the Romish Church, because the preacher was not a Romanist but an Anglican at the time when the sermon was delivered; and that the sermon itself is therefore a Protestant, not a Romish sermon. Unable to withstand this reasoning, Mr. Kingsley accepted as true his correspondent's affirmation. He acknowledged that the sermon was not beside him when he wrote the offensive passage in his essay, and professed his readiness to believe Dr. Newman's account of the mode and object of its teaching,

As the offence had been given publicly, Dr. Newman considered himself justified in making public likewise the issues to which it led. He therefore printed and put forth the whole correspondence in the shape of a pamphlet, to which he added, as was not unuatural, a few "reflections" and a title-page. It would have been well had Mr. Kingsley submitted quietly to this mortification. He had done a foolish thing, and the punishment, as it could have in no degree injured him in the good opinion of his friends (for it is the offence and not the pun ishment which brings shame on the culprit), so it might have been borte, patiently. But patience is not one of Mr. Kingsley's virtues. The Newmanian lash cut deep; Mr.

Kingsley smarted under it, and forthwith set himself to pay back with interest the mortification which he had himself endured. A Reply to a Pamphlet lately published by Dr. Newman,' came out in due time under the searching title, 'What, then, does Dr. Newman mean?' It is a very remarkable production in its way. The writer, affecting to be bound over by the admission which, he more than insinuates, had been filched out of him, proceeds not only to reiterate but to justify, by reference to the ethical teaching of Roman Catholics in general, all, and more than all, that he had previously asserted:

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"My object," he says, alluding to his previous correspondence, "had been throughout to avoid war, because I thought Dr. Newman wished for peace. I therefore dropped the question of many passages of his writings,' and confined myself to the sermon entitled 'Wisdom and Innocence,' simply to give him an opportunity of settling the dispute on that ground. But whether Dr. Newman lost his temper, or whether he thought that he had gained an advantage over me, or whether he wanted a more complete apology than I chose to give,-whatever, I say, may have been his reasons, he suddenly changed his tone of courtesy and dignity for one of which I shall only say, that it shows sadly how the atmosphere of the Romish what is due to himself; and when he priesthood has degraded his notions of published (as I am much obliged to him he appended to it certain reflections, in for doing) the whole correspondence, which he attempted to convict me of not having believed the accusation which I had made,

"There remains for me, then, nothing but to justify my mistake as far as I can.

"I am, of course, precluded from using the sermon entitled Wisdom and Innocence' to prove my words. I have accepted Dr. Newman's denial that it means what I thought it did; and heaven forbid that I should withdraw

my

advantage to myself! But more; I am word once given, at whatever disinformed by those from whose judgment on such points there is no appeal, that en hault courage and strict honour, I am also excluded, by the terms of my explanation, from using any other of Dr.

Newman's past writings to prove my assertion. I have declared Dr Newman to have been an honest man up to the 1st of February 1864; it was, as I shall show, only Dr. Newman's fault that I ever thought him to be anything else. It depends entirely on Dr. Newman whether he shall sustain his re

putation so recently acquired. If I give him thereby a fresh advantage in this argument, he is most welcome to it, He needs, it seems to me, as many advantages as possible. But I have a right, in self-justification, to put before the public so much of that sermon, and of the rest of Dr. Newman's writings, as will show why 1 formed so harsh an opinion of them and of him, and why I still consider that sermon (whatever

may be its meaning) as most dangerous and misleading. And I have a full right to do the same by those many passages of Dr. Newman's writings' which I left alone at first, simply be cause I thought that Dr. Newman wished for peace."

We beg that our readers will give to this curious passage a second perusal, and observe what it states, what it promises, and what it shows that the writer is prepared to do. First of all, we have the acknowledgment-implied, indeed, rather than expressed-that Mr. Kingsley's opinion regarding the untruthfulness of his adversary never, from first to last, underwent the slightest change. He had, indeed, "declared Dr. Newman to be an honest man up to the 1st of February 1864;" but between making a statement of this sort, and believing what is stated, there is all the difference in the world. In spite of this declaration, Mr. Kingsley feels that his original charge is capable of justification; and being goaded to the attempt by Dr. Newman's ungenerous mode of accepting the amende which had been tendered, he resolves to go through with it. But difficulties at once arise. "I am of course precluded from using the sermon entitled Wisdom and Innocence' to prove my words;" and, harder case still, "I am informed by those from whose judgment on such points there is no appeal, that en hault courage and strict honour, I am also

excluded by the terms of my explanation, from using any other of Dr. Newman's past writings to prove my assertion." Ordinary mordone nothing. They might have tals, thus hampered, would have fretted a little over the unpleasant nature of the scrape in which they found themselves, but the sermon and the past writings of their tormentor being sealed books to them, they would have bent to the blast, and thereby saved their own credit as men of honour. Not so Mr. Kingsley. "I have a right," he says, "in self-justification, to put before the public so much of that man's writings, as will show why I sermon, and of the rest of Dr. Newand of him." It is very well to talk formed so harsh an opinion of them of "hault courage" and "strict honour" in the abstract. They would, of course, deter me, if I paid attention to them, from following a certain line, and I assure the public that no man holds them, abstractly speaking, in more profound respect than I; but there is a matter which I hold in more profound respect still, and that is, that I should stand well with the world. Therefore, the exclusion of which I speak, and the fine flourish of chivalrous sentiment which follows, are to be taken for no more than they are worth. Dr. Newman's sermon, and, indeed, all his writings, are fair game to me, and as such I mean to hunt them down. Accordingly, the pamphlet is neither more nor less than series of quotations from Dr. Newman's works, interspersed with commentaries from the pen of the pamphleteer-of the pamphleteer who sets out with the uncalledfor and ostentatious announcement that he cannot, except at the cost of self-respect, make any use of them at all!!!

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We are afraid that this disposition to play fast and loose with hault courage and strict "honour" is a principle scarcely of yesterday's growth with Mr. Kingsley. Not that we charge him, as he charges Dr. Newman, with writing and teaching that

"truth, for its own sake, need not, and, on the whole, ought not, to be regarded as a virtue." But truth, like the chameleon, can change its colour, or appear to do so, when a clever man has an object to serve and is bent on serving it. A good many years ago Mr. Kingsley published a novel which, with much in it that was noxious, and still more that was absurd, attained, as it deserved to do, a large share of public favour. Alton Locke, the tailor and poet, ran, indeed, such rigs as the tailor or poet in real life never did or could run. But he served well enough the purpose which the author appeared to have in view; he was an appropriate hero in a tale which aimed at the inculcation, of Christian communism. It happened that, among other vivid scenes, undergraduate life was described in this novel; and the description gave, as indeed it well might, decided offence to all classes in the University of Cambridge. 'Alton Locke' professed to paint the Cambridge men of 1849. We are not aware that the habits of Cambridge men were very different in 1849 from what they are now; and Mr. Kingsley's account of them, if it was a just account then, may probably be taken as a just account still. But, just or unjust, it made the writer extremely unpopular. That was a circumstance of very little moment so long as the writer rested in the obscurity of a country curacy; but from the obscurity of a country curacy, his own merits, and the favour of a Liberal Ministry, gradually withdrew him. Mr. Kingsley became rector of Eversley. A canonry was next conferred upon him; by-and-by, the honourable office of Chaplain to the Queen; and, last of all, the Regius Professorship of History in the University of Cambridge. Here, then, was a dilemma out of which it would have been difficult for almost any other Christian communist than Mr. Kingsley to find a way. He could not hope to exercise an influence for good over youths whom

He

he had so deeply offended. could not, assuming that he had told the truth, unsay what had been said. Mr. Kingsley, however, is not to be arrested by common obstacles. As he has recently dealt with Dr. Newman, so in 1863 he handled both Alton Locke' and the undergraduates of Cambridge. He prepared a new edition of the book, re-wrote the objectionable passages, and brought them out, in their altered form, with a préface explanatory of his reasons for so doing. The reasons are charming. Under the sunshine of a continuous Whig Government, society has everywhere ripened in the interval between 1849 and 1863. The Church, the army, the manufacturing p pulation, undergraduate life in Cainbridge itself, all acknowledge this power. There was a time when society seemed to be composed of elements everywhere discordant-when the rich oppress ed the poor, and the poor hated the rich. There were days, not very long ago, when the very sports of young aristocrats insulted and of fended plebeians.

"How changed, thank God, is all this now! Before the influence of religion, both Evangelical and Anglican-before the spread of those liberal principles founded on common humanity and justice, the triumph of which we owe to the courage and practical sense of the Whig party-before the example of a Court virtuous, humane, and beneficent, the attitude of the British upper classes has undergone a noble change. There is no aristocracy in the world, and there never has been one, as far as I know, which has so honourably repented and brought forth fruits meet for repentance—which has so cheerfully asked what its duty was, that it might do it. It is not merely enlightened statesmen, philanthropists, devotees, ily as they are working, who have or the working clergy, hard and heartset themselves to do good as a duty specially required of them by creed or by station; in the generality of younger laymen, as far as I can see, a humanity in the highest sense of the term has been awakened, which bids fair, in another generation, to abolish the last remnants