Abbot was to pick a quarrel with him. In the spring of 1624 the Clergy in convocation voted four subsidies to the king of four shillings in the pound. For the sake of the poorer clergy Laud wished that the money should be paid by instalments, and spoke to Buckingham about it. The Lord Keeper (for a wonder) approved, but the Primate did not :

'His G. was very angry.-Asked, what I had to do to make any suit for the Church. Told me never any Bp. attempted the like at any time, nor would any but myself have done it. That I had given the Church such a wound, in speaking to any L. of the laity about it, as I could never make whole again. That if my L. Duke did fully understand what I had done, he would never endure me to come near him again. I answered: I thought I had done a very good office for the Church; and so did my betters think. If his G. thought otherwise, I was sorry I had offended him—And I hoped, being done out of a good mind, for the support of many poor vicars abroad in the country, who must needs sink under three subsidies a year, my error (if it were one) was pardonable.—So we parted.' 1

1

The incident is worth recording, for it illustrates another phase of Laud's character; while he was stiff and unbending to his equals, he was kind and considerate to his poorer brethren among the Clergy-always supposing, that is, that they were not puritanically inclined. This will appear more markedly at a later stage. We now pause at the close of an era in Laud's life. On March 27 King James died at Theobalds. He breathed forth,' writes Laud, his blessed. soul most religiously, and with great constancy of faith and courage.' Laud heard of it as he ascended the pulpit 'much troubled' at Whitehall; and 'Being interrupted,' he says, 'with the dolours of the Duke of Buckingham, I broke off my sermon in the middle.' The event changed Laud's position; it placed him at once in the possession of unrivalled power. How he used that power will, it is hoped, be the subject of a future article.

ART. IV. THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF

DEAN CHURCH.

Life and Letters of Dean Church. Edited by his daughter, MARY C. CHURCH. With a Preface by the Dean of Christ Church. (London, 1894.)

THE perusal of this volume is not free from disappointment. Much which might have been hoped for is not contained in 1 Diary, March 29, 1624.

it. Some readers may have looked for judgments on many theological or historical questions on which Dean Church did not express an opinion in his published writings. Some may have anticipated that in the freedom of private letters there would be an absence of the habitual under-statement and reserve which, while they supplied part of his peculiar influence, were also not seldom embarrassing. Some, again, may have expected fuller indications of the Dean's methods of study than are here afforded.

To call attention to this aspect of the present work is to bear testimony to Dean Church's greatness. The disappointment we have spoken of is the result of eagerness to know what he thought on any subject, and those who will feel it are those who have to some extent realized his wide knowledge, his singular cultivation, his great power of using in the formation of practical judgments what he had read and observed.

Yet, if the publication of the book has brought with it disappointment, and if the letters have not as compositions the brilliance of the work of some writers we have known, and do not contain the elaborate discussions which have been characteristic of others, it will be intensely interesting to a large number of thoughtful readers.

In trying to estimate the interest and value of this Life and Letters it is natural to notice first the personal history which it contains. And this personal history is throughout significant. The glimpses of the future Dean's early home life in Lisbon and Florence, Leghorn and Lucca, Lecce and Naples, recall influences on his mind and character which cannot have been small. The story of his school life at Redlands, and his doubts 'whether we really could be so cocksure about the absolute truth of the Evangelical formulæ,' or how, if the right of private judgment' is one of the great watchwords,' we can condemn the Socinians, who go wrongly by using it,' and the picture of the reserved, serious, studious boy, loving books and already beginning to collect them, and with an eye to editions, which he used to search for among the second-hand book shops in Bristol' (pp. 8-9) exhibit in the boy traits which it was easy to observe in the man. So, too, at Oxford, the wish to be properly acquainted with Butler,' the appreciation of Maurice and his master Coleridge,' the 'deep impression' made by Newman's preaching (p. 17), are all instructive, and it is of special interest to observe, in the light of many subsequent events, a passage in a letter written to Mr. (afterwards Sir) Frederic Rogers two

years after Mr. Church obtained his Fellowship at Oriel,' and dated on the Vigil of All Saints, 1840:

Pugin has been staying with Bloxam. . . . The only specimens of Oxford that Pugin saw must have edified him. Jack Morris had invited the rest of the "Mountain" (Newman's name for them), i.e. Ward, Bloxam, and Bowyer, to dine with him in the Tower and "talk strong": and to their delight Bloxam brought Pugin as his umbra. Ward is said to have repeatedly jumped up and almost screamed in ecstacy at what was said, and Bowyer and Pugin had a fight about Gothic and Italian architecture; but what else took place I know not. Morris is not pleased with Pugin, however: I wonder if he has humbugged Bloxam. Do you know Bowyer? I wish he would not come here so much; his line is to defend what everybody else gives up, and he took the side of O'Connell and his friends against Pugin. These theological ovμmóta up in the Tower, where they "talk strong," as Morris says, and laugh till their heads are dizzy, are ticklish things. I met Gooch up there yesterday, and had to defend myself for thinking Hooker not merely a respectable person, but a Catholic divine, and entitled to be looked up to as a teacher' (pp. 26–27).

2

A little later in life came the starting of the Guardian newspaper and the many reviews which Mr. Church wrote for it. During almost the whole of 1847 he was abroad, and the letters he wrote at this time (pp. 65-132) are full of vivid descriptions indicative alike of insight into character and

We notice a slight difference in printing between Dean Church's letter to Dr. Liddon of 1885, describing the Oriel Fellowship examinations in the old times,' as given on pp. 18-21 of this book, and as it is in the Life of Edward Bouverie Pusey, vol. i. pp. 66-69. In the latter the passage It used to be said that when James Mozley was in for the Fellowship he kept on till the last, and when it got dark lay down by the fire and wrote by firelight, and produced an essay of about ten lines, but the ten lines were such as no other man in [Oxford] could have written' has the word 'Oxford' bracketed, implying that it is not in the Dean's manuscript. It is printed without the brackets in the book before us. Possibly the respective editors may have had reasons unknown to us for supposing that Dean Church accidentally omitted the word. In the absence of such reasons, we would suggest that the intended meaning was such as no other man in' (i.e. as a candidate for the Fellowship) 'could have written.' This suggestion is supported by the following sentence in an article entitled 'Dr. J. B. Mozley' in the Guardian of January 9, 1878, p. 53: The story goes that in the examination for the Oriel Fellowship he produced for an essay a fragment of a dozen lines, but a dozen lines which no other man in the examination could have written.'

2 The first number of the Guardian appeared on Wednesday, January 21, 1846.

3 He continued throughout his life to write for the Guardian. He was also a contributor to the British Critic, the Christian Remembrancer, and our own pages.

appreciation of scenery. It is interesting to notice how, while he was in Italy, Dante was his 'unfailing companion,' and that the 'little well-worn volume of the Divina Commedia, which had been laid on Dante's tomb at Ravenna, is filled with marginal notes and jottings, bearing witness to its constant use, and to the associations which had grown up during the journey round numberless passages of the poem, the last entry at the closing canto of the Paradiso bearing the date," Florence, Christmas Day, 1847 "' (pp. 133-34).

Mr. Church had been ordained deacon at Christmas, 1839,' 'in company, among others, with A. P. Stanley, whose contemporary he was' (pp. 22-23). In 1843, two years before his famous veto in conjunction with Mr. Guillemard of the decree for the censure of Tract XC. (p. 56), ‘he had been warned by the Head of his College that in the event of his applying for testimonials for Priest's Orders, they might in the present condition of affairs be refused him' (p. 45), and he was not ordained priest until the Christmas Ordination' of 1852 before leaving Oxford for the country parish of Whatley in Somerset, to the living of which he had been presented by Mr. Horner of Mells (p. 135).

It is easy to understand that a good deal in the life' in 'a little village of two hundred people, wholly agricultural in its occupations,'' was at first unfamiliar and irksome' (p. 137) to one with the antecedents of Mr. Church. His Village Sermons have already shown the love for his work and his people which grew up at Whatley, and there are many indications of this in the present book. It has sometimes been the case that a great scholar and earnest and high-minded man has not been a good parish priest. The recollection of this fact adds to the pleasure with which we have read of the 'simple and unambitious' 'parochial method' which 'suited well the circumstances' of Whatley, of the daily visits to the 'parish school,' of the care for the 'Sunday school,' the 'night school,' and the children generally, of the 'sympathy which honestly and naturally entered into the familiar and homely details of' the 'everyday life' of the parishioners, and of the loyal and affectionate confidence' which succeeded to the hesitating welcome which' 'awaited' Mr. Church ‘as a stranger' (pp. 138-9).

'By the old, and by the sick an dying, his visits were eagerly looked for. It was no uncommon request that he would come and sit by the bedside of the sick, watching with them until the dreaded 'turn of the night" had passed; and in any case of sudden or urgent illness, or to a dying person, he would be summoned in

haste . . . for they longed not to pass away without the help of his presence and his prayers. And among the men of the village his influence was not less remarkable. The roughest and most turbulent of them did not question his authority, or refuse a respect which was never forgotten even in the free and frank intercourse which had grown up in the night schools or the cricket-field. No one took liberties with him, and men were quick to recognize a power which on occasion could flash out in prompt and stern rebuke of faults of conduct in a way that was all the more impressive by its contrast with the gentleness of his usual manner. . .

One who was for many years a parishioner recalls the impression made by his manner in church. "The first thing that impressed us all was the extreme solemnity and devotion with which Mr. Church celebrated the Holy Communion. We had heard nothing then about the Eastward position, but I can see now his slight figure bent in lowly reverence before the altar, giving the whole service a new and higher and holier meaning by his bearing and entire absorption in the act of worship." His sermons, short and clear and practical, carefully written so as to avoid the use of long or difficult words, or of any lengthened thread of argument, had the same simple reality and directness of purpose about them. None could mistake his meaning; but simple as his words were, they had a force and sincerity which made their way to the hearts and consciences of all those who gathered weekly to listen to him in the little village church' (pp. 139–41).

The smallness of the parish allowed time for reading and writing, and for many years' Mr. Church wrote articles and reviews' weekly for the Guardian and the Saturday Review' (p. 141). Letters of great interest, including many to Dr. Asa Gray, 'the distinguished American botanist' (p. 142), belong to this period of the life.

As far as the place in the volume which mentions the appointment of Mr. Church to the Deanery of St. Paul's and his consequent resignation of Whatley, the narrative portion, which is wisely kept in subordination to the letters, is altogether the work of Miss Church, except for a preface written with the graceful skill which is characteristic of the Dean of Christ Church. A somewhat lengthy description of the Dean's work at St. Paul's, vivid and fascinating, and making it easy to realize some of his peculiar powers, is contributed by Canon Scott Holland (pp. 205-35), and serves introduction to the letters which belong to the period from 1871 to 1890. Those who wish to understand how St. Paul's has become what it is to London life, or the singular force of the Chapter of the Cathedral in the years following the Dean's appointment, will do well to read it.

as an

From this description onwards the letters are again