tical religionism. Fairies, and ghosts, and gnomes, were brought before us, with a view of teaching what was called " reverence"; there seemed to be now no shrinking from the principle which Arnold had somewhere stated as a reductio ad absurdum of Dr. Pusey's views-that the mind is more religious in proportion as the object of its veneration is less venerable. consideration of his own evidence, that Mr. Faithful was not, as he would wish the careless reader to suppose him, a confessor in the cause of "Low Church" opinions. Persons who agree with him in doctrine are represented as living on brotherly terms with their "High Church" and "Tractarian" neighbors; whatever, therefore, Mr. Faithful may have suffered at the hands of " High Churchmen," must have been brought on him, not by his opinions, but by something offensive in himself. We speak of this book as a story of actual life; for those who remember the newspaper history of the late parochial mutinies, can have no doubt as to the locality of Steepleton and Cherrydale, or as to the identity of two, at least, of the persons-Mr. Faithful and the incumbent of the parish which is disturbed by his machinations. It is unquestionably intended to pass as, in the main, a real autobiog raphy. In Faithful, the author has embodied at once his idea of a perfect clergyman, and his view of his own character. The scenes described appear for the most part to be founded on fact, although strangely distorted and falsified. And taking the author at his own showing, we should suppose that rightminded people can have no difference of opinion respecting him. In the end of the year 1846, Messrs. Longman announced for publication three works of religious fiction-From Oxford to Rome, Trevor, and Steepleton. It might readily have been supposed that the three-issuing from the same establishment, and advertised in close neighborhood-were written with a common interest, and formed parts of one design; but the event turned out otherwise. Trevor, or the New St. Francis, appeared to be the work of a liberal Churchman of the Whateley school. The hero was a very gentlemanlike and somewhat sceptical personage, strongly reminding us of our old friend Tremaine. There was a vigorous attack on the "Tractarian" system, which had its representative in a curate, by name Malinsey. This gentleman acquires an influence over a most respectable elderly married lady, who declares that she finds his guidance indispensable-that she We cannot discover much talent in the book. must be his Madame de Chantal, and he her We have looked in vain for those graces of St. Francis de Sales (hence the second title of style by which the author tells us that his serthe book.) He draws her away from her so- mons were so largely marked; and the tone is cial duties, estranges her from her family, inconceivably coarse and vulgar. The attempts and at length persuades her to forsake her at wit and humor are dismal indeed; and alhusband for a convent. She is pursued, over- though we can imagine that some passages may taken, and restored to her senses. Mr. Ma- raise a laugh among persons who know the origilinsey becomes a Romanist; and we are told nals of his vilely-drawn caricatures—and yet in conclusion, that he—or, at least, so much more probably among those originals themof him as fasting and the scourge have left-selves the black, sore, disappointed maligmay be seen by any body who chooses to look for him at the Grande Chartreuse. Steepleton is also opposed to "Tractarianism," but is totally different in character from Trevor. The name of the hero, Frank Faithful, and the second title, High Church and Low Church, give token of a work intended to catch the sympathies of our "evangelical" brethren; but we should, indeed, be ashamed if any body of men could be so far perverted by party-spirit from all feeelings of Christian religion, or of common decency, as to relish so infamous a production. Indeed, the title, High Church and Low Church, in the sense which it is obviously intended to bear, is nothing better than a catch-penny misnomer. The book contains sundry hits at "Low Church," which, as coming from a friend, must be doubly severe; and it is clear, from a nity of the writer must render it impossible to read his work without a prevailing feeling of pain. The thing is disgraceful, not only to the perpetrator, but to those who have bought it into a second or third edition; and although we are not inclined to lay down any over-strict rules as to the responsibility of publishers, although, for example, we do not blame Messrs. Longman for the variety of doctrine which is to be found in their three simultaneous publications-we are decidedly of opinion that they ought never to have lent their respectable name to such a malicious and scandalous satire as Steepleton. Books of this kind are, indeed, altogether intolerable. The writer puts his enemy on paper under some fictitious name; and, while everybody knows who is intended, there is no necessity for observing any limits of decency or truth in the representation of him. Let us tem was transferred; Mr. Newman, the “ undoubted intellectual chief," being revered at a distance; while Mr. Oakeley, the "Preacher of Sympathy," was the immediate oracle and guide. - pp. 190, 191. Next followed the lapse into Romanism; and then the cruel undeceiving which it was the object of the book to set forth under the veil of a fictitious story. suppose, for instance, that one of the persons | type, to which the hero-worship of the late systraduced in this book,-Wheeldriver, Oxonford, Placehunter, Roodstock, Loquax, Macmullen, or some other, should think fit to show up the author of Steepleton in a narrative of the same kind. Let us suppose that all manner of odious and discreditable conduct, all the worst offences which a clergyman can commit against the duties of brotherhood and neighborhood, were imputed in a novel to a pseudonymous person whom every one might know to be meant for the late curate of Cherrydale; and let us suppose, moreover, that the ex-curate were able to deny the truth of the imputations,-what remedy would he have against the injury thus done to him? For the assailant there would be the ready evasion, "You are not named; the book does not profess to be a statement of facts, but a work of imagination. What can you possibly complain of?" And yet, no doubt, something would stick; the victim might not, indeed, be held guilty of the very things which were charged on his representative, but people would learn to think him capable of them. Surely a sort of composition which affords such facilities for spitefulness and detraction, ought to be universally discountenanced and abhorred. There was an appearance of earnestness about this work which won for it considerable attention; and it was extensively recommended to young persons who were supposed to be in danger of imitating the authoress in the false step from which she wished to dissuade others. To us such recommendations appeared to be extremely injudicious. True it was that Miss Harris showed the insufficiency of Romanism for meeting the requirements of a certain state of mind; but then, instead of treating this state as diseased, instead of setting forth the true spirit of the English Church as an antidote to it, she assumed that it was healthy, and congenial to our Church, which she represented as more likely than the Roman to satisfy its cravings. The whole air of the book was like that of a sick man's dream. Some critics suspected that there was a latent design to serve the cause of Irvingism: while others (more correctly) supposed that system to be one of those through which the writer had already passed. The companion of Trevor and Steepleton, the tale entitled From Oxford to Rome, was of a very different character from either. It was the work of a "Tractarian," and something The position which this lady took was very more- —even of a person who had forsaken the peculiar. Feeling that she had done wrong in English for the Roman communion; and the her last change, feeling herself in every way disobject of it was to warn others against a sim- appointed, rebelling violently in heart against ilar course, by expressing the utter and misera- the religion to which she had committed herble disappointment which the author's high self, regarding herself as justified in uplifting longings had met with in the actual system of to the world a voice of protestation and warnRomanism. It seemed not impossible that the ing, she yet considered it a duty to remain book might have proceeded from one of the where she was. She recognized as valid the ruder sex; for in the course of the "develop- engagements which she had contracted to her ment," some young gentlemen of Oxford had new and deceptive communion; she supposed fallen into a curiously feminine style of senti- the claims of her earlier, truer, better Church, mental writing, apparently derived from some to be cancelled by the act of her forsaking it; French model yet the internal evidence she looked on her sufferings under the Romish seemed rather to indicate a really female hand; system as the due punishment of the sin by and after a time the authorship was avowed by which she had attached herself to it, and, a lady of the name of Harris, whom the news- therefore, she held herself bound to endure papers, by a not unlikely fiction, described as them. This was a view which could not but the sister of a well-known Dissenting essayist. astonish most readers. Even the Quarterly The writer's early training had evidently been reviewer, a statesman-theologian of great sectarian; she herself has since told us that it repute for casuistic subtlety, unless report was was "in one of the proudest and most distinct mistaken in naming him, even he felt himforms of Protestantism." On this had been self unable to enter into so strangely paradoxsuperinduced a good deal of ill-understood and ical a refinement. "Such of our deeds as are ill-digested "transcendental" reading, Car- capable of being undone," he said, "it is our dulyle, Emerson, French romanticists, German ty to undo, and that with promptitude." He depoets, theologians, and even metaphysicians.clared the writer's position to be "inconsistent, Then came Anglo-Catholicism of the highest and one which might even become immoral." And in no long time we learned that Miss | neighbors thought her husband could not even Harris was herself dissatisfied with it. A let- last till her return, and she was afraid he would ter was published, in which she declared that' die without "the Sacrament." She had been, her story was purely imaginary; that some of she said, to the curate's, but he was from home; and she had spoken to a clergyman whose house its most shocking details were impossible acwas within a few yards of her cottage, but he cording to the laws of the Romish Church; said she was not in his parish, and he had that she repented of the publication, and enough to attend to. The woman bore an ill would recall it if she could; that such feel- character, her husband was known to be a poachings of discontent as she might have experi- er and a drunkard. The excommunicatory enced were wholly to be charged on her own power of the Church was clearly in the hands of waywardness and impatience; and that she the maid-servant, and she used it by shortly disbegged pardon of "the Church against which missing the woman, with the information that she had offended;" by which words (although if he should be going out in the morning, she Mr. Thynne was engaged with a dinner-party; they might well have borne another meaning) would name the person to him. Before midthe context obliged us to understand that the night the unabsolved soul had gone to give its Church of Rome was signified. account to its Maker, and the last instinct of religion had perished from the heart of the widow. — Pp. 83, 84. Then it transpired that there had been some mysterious tamperings in the case; that the "Preacher of Sympathy," having been appealed to in the book for the result of his own experience in his new communion, had caught at the opportunity of entering into communication with the writer, and had influenced her in making her retractation. We do not remember the exact details; if, indeed, it was possible to make them out from the published letters. Mr. Oakeley, we rather think, came out of the affair without having been convicted of direct falsehood, but certainly not without adding one more to the repeated proofs which our late religious history has afforded that, whether the Romish Church be or be not the fountain of true doctrine, a connection with it is by no means generally favorable to moral truth or candor. Miss Harris has lately favored us with another story, Rest in the Church; and a very curious production it is. After a preface, a postscript, and no less than seventy-eight pages of a rambling introduction, the tale begins in three places at once; for we are told of scenes as passing on the same night, towards the end of November 1834, in the parsonage of a Berkshire town, in the chapel of a Spanish convent, and in a "palace-like house" at Calcutta. A shocking case, undoubtedly. But may we venture to ask, whether-even on our authoress' assumption, that the dying man's eternal lot would be determined by his seeing or not seeing the clergyman-the real horror does not consist in his having led such a life that his salvation should depend on a chance of this kind, at least as much as on Mr. Thynne's happening to be engaged with a dinner party while his curate was out of the way? Meanwhile a beggar-boy was looking into the dining-room, through an opening between the curtains: At the same time the poor woman came up, and the bare-footed boy crept to the door, and heard her petition and dismissal. Then he trotted off, having made this conclusion with himself, never to ask alms at that house, for it known God, that, if the presence of a clergywas of no use; and this mental prayer to an unman were necessary to one dying in peace, he might not happen to come to die at the clergy man's dinner-time. - P. 85. Unhappy high-and-dry Mr. Thynne! Popory, Puritanism, and the POOR-dodge" (or Jerroldism), all combine to make you out a monster! Now what is the object of this book? And what is the writer's creed? We really cannot The Berkshire rectora gentleman-like and prosperous specimen of the "old ortho- guess. old ortho- guess. Does she look back to the English dox squire-parson-gives a dinner in honor Church, or is she confirmed in the faith of of his younger brother's preferment to a "rich living;" and, just as the party are leaving the dining-room, a low single knock summons a maid-servant to the street-door :— A woman from the farthest extremity of the parish had come to beg the rector to administer the last offices to her dying husband. In the midst of his work, the poor man had been taken suddenly and severely ill; she had now to walk two miles to get parochial medical aid; her Rome? The affair of the retractation would have led us to suppose the latter; and any thing of a contrary tendency which appears in the earlier part of the volume might be explained by the circumstance that the greater portion was written before the date of that affair (see pp. viii. and 341.) But, lo! in the very last pages we find our authoress still declaring her Dissent from the dogma, that the Catholic We find her still questioning the Romish doctrines as to indulgences and the intercession of saints (p. 341-2); and, within the last month or two, advertisements announce her as the adapter of a book of Roman Catholic devotion to the use of members of the English Church." But, indeed, the opinions of this unfortunate lady can be of little interest for any one but herself. We can attach no value to the impressions of a mind so unfixed, unbalanced, and distempered; not even to the witness of her own experience. The truth seems to be, that she must give vent to her crudities. Although we have confined ourselves to the narrative, the greater part of the book is occupied by strange, rhapsodical outpourings, on all manner of subjects. Often, as we were reading her two volumes, have we thought of the speech which a worthy friend of ours overheard his Scotch cook addressing to a London beggar, "Oh, my freend, my heart bleeds for your distress, but I canna pity you for your want o' shoon! So, O Miss Harris, is our heart as sorry for you as its reviewerly hardness will allow; but we must remark that you insist on the wrong points, that your woes are very much of your own seeking, and that no small part of them is got up for the sake of an appeal to a compassionate public. It is a relief to turn once more to Lady Georgiana Fullerton. In one respect, Grantley Manor has agreeably surprised us; for Ellen Middleton had left on our memory an impression as of something severe and proud; and knowing that the authoress had since become a convert to Romanism, we were prepared for an increase of such charicteristics, with, very probably, a spirit of bitterness towards the Church which she has forsaken. But, on the contrary, Grantley Manor is mild, tolerant, and unambitious. One only of the leading personages is a Romanist; the rest of the good characters are represented as firmly Anglican. There is no scorn of our National Church, no attempt at conversion or controversy; and we cannot reasonably complain that some of the current objections against the Roman system are introduced to receive what Lady Georgiana considers an ex the evils of religious bigotry, which is supposed 'ville's disinheriting his son. to be carried to a revolting height by Mr. NeWe cannot, however, perceive that any such lesson is enforced. For Mr. Neville is represented as altogether a peculiar man. Even in his college days, the excessive strength of his prejudices on the subject of religion had been a marvel to other young men of his own Church, and a very frightful occurrence had afterwards done much to increase them. It seems obvious that the authoress could not have hoped to convert such persons as Mr. Neville by fiction; and that, if she had aimed at convincing less violent bigots, she would have exemplified the mischiefs of intolerance in some less uncommon character. After all, too, the will is revoked when it is found that the son has entered into the detested connection,-nay, a justification of Mr. Neville is pronounced by his daughter, without any protest on the part of Lady Georgiana Fullerton (vol. iii. p. 243). The idea which we have mentioned as to the moral seems, therefore, to be mistaken; and perhaps a Romanist is hardly the person from whom such a moral would come with the best grace. Last on our list is Loss and Gain, a work originally announced with a second title, which has since been withdrawn, perhaps from a fear that The Story of a Convert might too readily remind us of Lady Blessington's late Story of a Feather. Whether report be correct in attributing the book to Mr. Newman, we would not venture too positively to say. A tale of this kind—a book of jokes and gossip, of eating and drinking, of smartnesses, levities, and most probably personalities appears a somewhat undignified vehicle for the opinions of one who has long been revered as a prophet and a saint; but still it may be Mr. Newman's; for Romanism does not sharpen the sense of propriety. The style in many passages reminds us strongly of the supposed author; while the greater part of the work is so different in character from those writings by which alone we know him, that no likeness of style could be expect ed to exist. It certainly does not come from any one of the other late converts to Romanism with whose productions we have any acquaintance. It is free from the feeble dilettantism of one, from the sickening affectation of another, and from the clumsy effrontery of a third. It is, indeed, marked by an air of experienced shrewdness, which would seem to take it altogether away from the younger members of the party. And while the characters are for the most part taken from among the younger members of the university, it appears to us that the conversation which is put into their mouths is such as would be devised for them by one who regarded them from a considerable height of years and standing, rather than by one who had himself lately passed through the earlier stages of academic life. It is, we should say, more probably the work of Mr. Newman, refreshed by young acqaintance, than of a disciple looking up to him, imitating him, and borrowing from his discourse. The story is very slight-little more than a thread on which to hang the sketches of character and the arguments. Charles Reding, the son of a respectable "old orthodox" clergyman, is thrown at Oxford in the way of various influences. He is perplexed and distressed by much that he hears, and takes the very sensible resolution of minding his proper studies and his plain religious duties, without entangling himself in theological controversy. The result is different from what ordinary people would expect; while he plies his Aristotle and Sophocles, a system of religious opinions insensibly grows up within his mind; and at length, on taking an account of his impressions, and comparing them with what is said around him, he finds that he has embraced all the chief points of Roman doctrine without knowing them to be such. 66 We are told in the Preface that this is not the real history of any individual mind;" and we altogether disbelieve the possibility of such a case. Nothing, at least, can be more unlike the progress of Mr. Newman and his friends. They were a party closely banded together, depending much on mutual sympathy and encouragement, pushing and drawing each other onwards, until, step by step, they reached the final point. This story of a solitary mind, therefore, cannot be meant as an apology for them. The title might lead us to expect an answer to Miss Harris in the detail of an opposite experience on the journey From Oxford to Rome. This is not, indeed, given in the history of the hero; for the last page carries him no further than his reception into the Romish communion, and leaves us in ignorance of his after course. But an answer does seem to be intended in the case of his friend Willis, who is described as becoming a Romanist with less of preparation; and very curiously he answers. He owns that there is much in Romanism which must shock a Christian instinct; but this, he contends, is a trial of faith: one who has found the Church must get over all that might lead him to doubt her. I don't know (he said) what is meant by saying that we ought to have faith, that faith is a grace, that faith is the means of our salvation, if against sight; well, then, unless there are sights there is nothing to exercise it. Faith goes which offend you, there is nothing for it to go against.-P. 278. But why, we must ask, should this principle be applied in favor of Romanism alone? Why should not an Anglican, a Methodist, a Quaker, a Swedenborgian, say the same of his church? Why should not a Mormonite plead that, although thievery and polygamy may shock a Christian instinct, yet, since he has found the church at Nauvoo, he may not question anything which Nauvoo sanctions or professes? Why should it not be argued that things are right and true in proportion as they call for faith; i. e. on this principle, in proportion as they are shocking to our best feelings? We cannot afford space to astonish our readers by any further exhibitions of this writer's mingled fanaticism and scepticism, or to amuse them with extracts from the lighter scenes. We must, however, quote the description of the religious order through which Charles Reding is received into the Romish communion; and this, be it observed, is another point of connection with Mr. Newman: for it was to a Passionist that he, too, owed his reception, and the extract which we are about to produce is followed in the book by an account of the individual, "Father Domenico de Matre Dei: " In the lukewarm and self-indulgent eighteenth century, Father Paul of the Cross was divinely moved to found a congregation, in some respects more ascetic than the primitive hermits and the orders of the middle age. It was not fast, or silence, or poverty, which distinguished it, though here, too, it is not wanting in strictness; but in the cell of its venerable founder, on the Celian Hill, hangs an iron discipline or scourge, studded with nails, which is a memorial, not only of his own self-inflicted sufferings, but of those of his Italian family. Their object was as remarkable as their intensity; penance, indeed, is in one respect the end of all self-chastisement; but in the instance of the Passionists the use of the scourge is specially directed to the benefit of their neighbor. They apply the pain to the benefit of the holy souls in purgatory, or they their missions, when their words seem uttered in undergo it to rouse a careless audience. On vain, they have been known suddenly to undo their habit, and to scourge themselves with sharp knives or razors, crying out to the horrified people, that they would not show mercy to their flesh till they whom they were addressing took pity on their own perishing souls.-Pp. 376, 377. How strangely is the world changed upon us! It is not many years since John Styles could find nothing more horrible in heathenism |