the events connected with the secession of Newman are spoken of with an air of as much reticence and mystery, as if the secession itself had taken place in a corner. Keble, Pusey, and Newman were the originators of the Oxford movement of 1833-they were literally the first "Tractarians"-the responsibility connected with the publication of the famous tract "No. 90," which brought things to a crisis, was avowedly shared by all the three; and to have been obliged to make that part of Keble's life a blank where it mingled with the lives of his two chief friends was, in the circumstances, a lamentable necessity. Perhaps it is too strong to say that it is a new case of the play of Hamlet with the part of Hamlet left out; but we speak within bounds when we affirm that, owing, as it seems to us, very much to the morbid delicacy of his biographer, we are still left without the means of forming a complete estimate of one of the most interesting men of modern times. The facts connected with his external history are easily told. He was born in 1792 at Fairford, in Gloucestershire, his father being at the time the vicar of Coln St. Aldwins, a neighbouring parish. Having received at home from his father the elements of a good education, he went in his fifteenth year to Oxford, and competed successfully for a scholarship in Corpus Christi College. | From that time to his death his connection with the university continued to be exceedingly intimate. In course of time he took his degree with first-class honours both in classics and mathematics. He formed friendships with Arnold, Coleridge, and others, which affected more or less his whole after-life. And at various periods he held the offices of fellow and tutor of Oriel, examining master, and professor of poetry. He was ordained deacon in 1815, and priest just a year after, but for several years he undertook no regular ministerial work of his own. The precarious health alike of his father and sisters made it seem to him right that he should be as much with them as possible, and he was content to labour in a desultory way, sometimes in one place and sometimes in another, but always with Fairford as a centre to fall back upon. The greatest event of his history was reached in the end of 1826, when "The Christian Year" was given to the world. Its value was recognized at once, and it has never lost its hold since. Up to January 1854, 108,000 copies had been issued in fortythree editions; and within nine months of the author's death seven new editions were exhausted, comprising 11,000 copies in all. This great success could not but encourage him to devote more time to literature, and his works came by-and-by to be somewhat numerous. In poetry he published "Lyra Innocentium; or Thoughts in Verse on Christian Children, their Ways and their Privileges," which Sir John Coleridge thinks in some respects superior to "The Christian Year," but the world has not agreed with him in this estimate, and the book is rather neglected. There have also been issued of his, "The Psalter, or Psalms of David in English Verse," and a volume of Miscellaneous Poems. In

prose, his chief works are "The Life of Bishop Wilson," and a treatise "On Eucharistical Adoration." All the others (with the exception of his Latin lectures as professor of poetry) are sermons, or tracts, or articles, many of which might be called ephemeral, but that they have a permanent historical interest in connection with the rise in England of Anglo-Catholicism. The death of Keble's father, at the age of ninety, in 1835, at last broke his connection with Fairford, and he accepted some time after a presentation to the vicarage of Hursley, a parish in the vicinity of Winchester, in which he had previously served for a short time as curate. Here he found his final resting-place. The delicacy of his wife's health and of his own necessitated frequent changes to milder regions, and he occasionally spent long periods at such places as Torquay and Penzance. He travelled, too, now and again, and paid visits to Switzerland and Scotland. But his home was Hursley, and by far the most interesting chapters in his life, to us, are those in which he is exhibited as the earnest and laborious parochial minister. Death came to him very unexpectedly, when he was on one of the many health trips which he had to take for the sake of Mrs. Keble. While he and other friends were watching for her removal, a sudden stroke laid himself low, and he died at Bournemouth on the 29th of March 1866.

It is as a Christian poet that Keble is best known, and that chiefly as the author of "The Christian Year." That book appeared seven years before Puseyism was heard of, and it was a happy circumstance its publication so early. For if the author had delayed issuing it until the time when he became so pronounced an Anglican as to be ready to vindicate a tract so objectionable in every way as "No. 90," there are many chances to one that it would have had a very much stronger flavour of Catholicism than it has, and would in consequence have met with a very much less hearty welcome in evangelical circles. Keble was always a Tory in politics and a High Churchman. Very early he showed a keen animus against Milton because he was a Puritan, and a corresponding preference for others because they were Cavaliers. And "The Christian Year," in its whole construction, reveals the stand-point of the writer. But there are marvellously few sentiments in the book with which Low Churchmen cannot sympathize; and approving itself thus to the Christian heart and conscience everywhere, it is not wonderful that it should have been accepted as a contribution to the literature of the universal Church. About one stanza only has there ever been awakened anything like bitterness of feeling; and we regret extremely that, in the later editions, the version adopted is that which sectarianizes the work. As first issued, one of the verses in the piece, called "Gunpowder Treason" ran thus:

'O come to our communion feast;
There present, in the heart
Not in the hands, th' eternal Priest
Will his true self impart."

What Keble meant to say in the third line was, that Christ is present "not (only) in the hands;" and when his attention was called to the inference which was being drawn from his language-namely, that it favoured the evangelical as against the ritualistic view of the Lord's Supper-he was accustomed to defend himself by quoting like usages of speech with his own from the Scriptures and elsewhere. To all appeals, however, to alter the words, he turned a deaf ear; and it was only at the very last, when what he considered to be an unjustifiable controversial use was made of the line in Convocation, that he consented to the change, which was made after his death by his executors. The stanza now runs thus:

"O come to our communion feast;

There present, in the heart
AS IN THE HANDS, th' eternal Priest
Will his true self impart."

There is certainly no doubt now as to the doctrine taught in the poem. It is clearly that of Mr. Bennett of Frome. But we must repeat our regret that the alteration has been made. With the fuller knowledge we possessed of Mr. Keble's sentiments, there was no risk of our misinterpreting his views on the Eucharist; and, for himself, he had all his life-long been content to have the verse stand as he originally wrote it. The only tangible effect of the change actually effected is, that it makes the line needlessly grate on the feelings of many of the devoutest of his admirers.

Those who have attempted to read at one sitting a large section of the "Olney Hymns," will readily testify that one does not need the initial letters at the end in order to be able to say which piece is Cowper's and which is Newton's. In Newton's hymns the piety is generally more conspicuous than the poetry. In Cowper's there is never wanting a nameless charm, which is like the dewy freshness of a flower. Keble had, in a high degree, what appears in the hymns of Cowper. There are some pieces in "The Christian Year" very much better than others, and in not a few of them there are stanzas which are prosaic and flat. But the work, as a whole, is remarkably even, and on very many pages are lines which are so exquisitely beautiful that they lay hold at once on the memory and imagination of all who can appreciatively read them. What, for example, could be finer than these ?

"We need not bid, for cloistered cell,
Our neighbour and our work farewell;
Nor strive to wind ourselves too high
For sinful man beneath the sky;

The trivial round, the common task,
Would furnish all we ought to ask:
Room to deny ourselves; a road
To bring us daily nearer God."

Or this, which has now found a place in every book of praise in the English tongue,

The scent of water far away

Upon the breeze is flung;
The desert pelican to-day

Securely leaves her young:
Reproving thankless man, who fears
To journey on a few lone years
Where on the sand Thy step appears,
The crown in sight is hung.

And this, it seems to us, is exquisite,—
"What is the heaven we idly dream?

The self-deceiver's dreary theme,
A cloudless sun that softly shines,
Bright maidens and unfailing vines,
The warrior's pride, the hunter's mirth,
Poor fragments all of this low earth:
Such as to sleep would hardly soothe

A soul that once had tasted of immortal truth.

"What is the heaven our God bestows?
No prophet yet, no angel knows;
Was never yet created eye
Could see across Eternity;

Not seraph's wing for ever soaring
Can pass the flight of souls adoring,
That nearer still and nearer grow

To th' unapproached Lord once made for them so low."

We can make room only for two more extracts. The first is the opening verse of a hymn for Good Friday,—

"Is it not strange, the darkest hour

That ever dawned on sinful earth
Should touch the heart with softer power
For comfort than an angel's mirth?

That to the Cross the mourner's eye should turn
Sooner than where the stars of Christmas burn."

The other appears in connection with the text, "Nevertheless I tell you the truth; it is expedient for you that I go away."

"My Saviour, can it ever be

That I should gain by losing thee?
The watchful mother tarries nigh,
Should sleep have closed her infant's eye;
For should he wake and find her gone,
She knows she could not hear his moan.
But I am weaker than a child,
And thou art more than mother dear;
Without thee heaven were but a wild.
How can I live without thee here!"

Sir John Coleridge roundly asserts that "The Christian Year" has made Keble "the Sacred Poet of the Nation." It is a big affirmation, and we shall not commit ourselves by absolutely endorsing it. But we cannot hesitate to say that in that collection there are passages which, for purity of thought, and beauty of diction, and elevation of feeling, and true poetic colouring and glow, are unsurpassed in any other volume in the English language. If God sends us our Singers, certainly Keble came with a mission from above.

But there are other lights in which the author of "The Christian Year" must be looked at. He was a parish minister, for one thing; and for another, he played a great part in one of the most momentous movements of the age. As we should like to end this paper with a pleasant impression of the subject of it, we shall notice his work as a controversialist first.

The university system of Oxford and Cambridge makes very inadequate provision for the systematic theological training of candidates for orders. A man who has taken his degree is, ipso facto, entitled to apply for ordination, and although he will be examined, of course, to some extent in divinity, he may always get what he asks without being able to show that he has studied theology as he has studied classics. Thus it is quite usual to find in clerical biographies that their subjects have begun to acquaint themselves in earnest with their own proper science after they have been called practically to apply it. There are some indications that this was the case with Keble. When he entered the ministry he was a scholar in the academic sense; but he did not, or we are mistaken, know much of those great systems which the learning and piety of generations have conspired to construct; and hence we cannot admit for a moment that he was entitled to speak as he did either of the doctrines of the Evangelicals within his own communion, or of those still more unfortunate individuals who are outside the three "Catholic" Churches altogether. The following definition of Luther's "Articulus Stautis aut Cadentis Ecclesiæ," for example, might have been excusable from a layman's lips, but what can one say for it as delivered by a clergyman of thirty years' standing in the ministry:

"The tradition which goes by the name of Justification by Faith, and which in reality means that one who has sinned and is sorry for it is as if he had not sinned, blights and benumbs one in every limb, in trying to make people aware of their real state." If Keble had been a skilled theologian, as he certainly was an honest one, he would never even incidentally have undertaken the responsibility of uttering so absurd a caricature as that. Nor, we believe, would he have expressed himself as he does regarding his fellow-Christians in Scotland. We shall see immediately how tender he could be with the Papists; but it is clear that Presbyterians were viewed by him with a sort of horror as outer barbarians. "The Kirks," he writes in 1853, when making a tour north of the Border, "the Kirks, and the manner in which they defile and insult the sacred places-for example, Jedburgh Abbey-are even more horrid than I had expected. I would not be in one of them at service time on any consideration. They proclaim aloud, every inch of them, 'Down with the altar.' The true churches, except the ruins, seen few and far between......As to Melrose, I like it altogether the best of any ruin I ever saw

...I suspect the Presbyterian Teacher there is afraid of the effect of the abbey on people's minds, as he has built up a high wall in his garden to obstruct the view where he could"! All this is spoken quite seriously, and sounds to us somewhat silly. But it just illustrates the state of ignorance in which he was kept by the sort of training under which he was brought up, and the distortion of vision produced by the prejudices of High Churchism. "The Presbyterian Teacher," as he is contemptuously styled, had, we venture to guess, quite other ends to serve in rearing his garden wall than that of shutting out the light of Melrose Abbey; and as for the "Kirks," at which good Mr. Keble shudders as if they were heathen temples, there were certainly some of them into which God had condescended to enter, and in which there had been an abundant gathering of the fruits of the Spirit. It is not unreasonable to test a theory sometimes by looking at the character of its practical issues. Abstractly, it may sound very nice to talk of a Church Authority received from Christ, and transmitted unimpaired from primitive times; but that theory does not look so attractive when one sees it applied. The narrowness which leads a man to unchurch all but the Episcopal denominations, and to pronounce Father Newman a truer minister of God than M'Cheyne, is something so utterly unlike what one would have expected from the Founder of Christianity, and so repulsive in itself, that, however logically perfect the theory may seem to be, we could not pos sibly accept it on account of the shocking character of its conclusions.

There is indeed, to us, something intensely melancholy in this controversial chapter of Keble's history, and we are heartily glad that we can separate it so entirely from the book which has gained for him so warm a place in so many hearts. It is no mistake

which has made the whole Protestant world claim "The Christian Year" as its own. That book was really written from the heart of Protestantism, and there actually came a time when its author himself became too "Catholic" to sympathize with it. "When I wrote it," he tells Sir John Coleridge, "I did not understand (to mention no other points) either the doctrine of Repentance or that of the Holy Eucharist—as held, for example, by Bishop Ken-nor that of Justification; and such points as these must surely make a great difference." He is arguing in defence of a new volume of poems which he proposed to publish, and which contained a piece in honour of the Virgin Mary, at which even his High Church biographer stumbled. "Why," he pled, "should there be any objection to such a piece in such a work? The new volume is not to be judged by the old. I have advanced beyond it; and the poems of the latter issue may fairly contain what will make that manifest." We admit the validity of his arguments, and we are glad that the question was ever raised; for again we say, it allows us to think of "The Christian Year" as the efflorescence of a mind that had not yet been corrupted by the baleful influence of Tractarianism.

Mr. Keble, as has already been said, was born and bred a High Churchman, and all his surroundings at college contributed to confirm his early impressions. While, therefore, he continued through life to be a devout student of the Word, the idea of "THE CHURCH" always more or less coloured his ecclesiastical horizon. Hence his study of the Fathers-hence his interest in the apostolic succession-and hence his union with others in 1833 in a movement, the object of which was the restoration of the Church of England to its place in the "Catholic" system. The part he played in this last connection was particularly conspicuous. Newman and others expressly declare him to have been the true and primary author of the movement. Certainly he was one of the originators of the celebrated "Tracts for the Times." And it is allowed, on all hands, that there was no man whose counsel was so much sought in those days, or who did more by his advice to shape the issues of the agitation. We have no intention, of course, of detailing the events of the period here; but it may help to vivify our impressions of the mischievous character of the Oxford "Revival," as it was called, if we look at that revival as it is illustrated in the conduct and teachings of one of those who were affected by it. The result in Keble's case was that he came virtually to adopt the leading doctrines of the Church of Rome, and to view that Church with a kindliness which made him appear quite out of place in any Protestant communion. This is putting it strongly; but the statement can be thoroughly established out of his biography.

For example, he taught that the Bible is not our only supreme rule of faith; but that we are bound also to hear the Voice of Tradition, the "Quod semper, quod ubique, et quod ab omnibus," of the early Church. His views of the Eucharist we have already noticed; and

here is how he applied these views in his own parish. In an address to the newly confirmed at Hursley, he says: "Let nothing tempt you to lose time about IT [the holy communion]; but go directly to your minister, and tell him you wish to be prepared for IT, if you have not done so already; for, depend upon it, that bread is as necessary to your soul's life, as your daily bread is for the life of your body." Again, he says elsewhere: "Our one great grievance is the neglect of Confession." "Mr. Keble's power of fasting was very great, and for many years his own habit was to take no food on Fridays until evening." "He always received the holy communion fasting." Then, when the "Tracts for the Times" were projected, their chief aim was stated to be "the circulation of primitive notions regarding the apostolical succession," &c.,-notions, it will be remembered, which led naturally to the conclusion that all who are outside the Greek, Latin, and Anglican Churches are given over to the uncovenanted mercies of God.

"I remember," writes Sir John Coleridge, "on occasion of some early secessions to Rome, it was reported to have been said by Dr. Pusey, that however much he regretted it, he could not deny that some were to be anticipated. It was," adds Sir John, somewhat naively, "a sensible remark, if I may be allowed to say so." We venture to re-echo the sentiment. The remark was a sensible one-so sensible as to sound in our ears absolutely trite. Secessions to Rome could not but issue out of the Tractarian movement; and, worse than that, it could not but follow that many would be rendered mischievously disloyal who were restrained from taking the final step. It is almost with a feeling of bitterness that we notice the extent to which Keble was shaken. He loved, his biographer tells us, his own branch as, on the whole, a faithful representative of the primitive Church, but "the more she admitted what he called Puritanical doctrines or practices, the less loyal and dutiful could he be." "I deprecate," he says himself, "the word and the idea of Protestantism." "I suppose it is one's duty," he writes again, "to long for and aim at a kind of neutrality in one's judgment and demeanour towards Rome." "Much of our talk," says his biographer, describing a visit, "was respecting the honour due to the blessed Virgin, which it seemed to me he was desirous of raising as much too high as many among us were for reducing it too low." But a still more significant circumstance is mentioned by Dr. Newman, in the only letter which he contributes to the "Life." A remarkable meeting took place in 1868 between the three friends who had done most to Romanize the Church of England-Keble, Newman, and Pusey. Newman by that time was a Popish priest; and he speaks as if the conversation were somewhat constrained. But towards the end of the interview the subject was introduced of the Disestablishment of the Church in Ireland, and the following singular and suggestive incident occurred. "Mr. Gladstone's rejection at Oxford was talked of,” says Newman, "and I said that I really thought that