Dr. Newman's History of his Religious Opinions.

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criticisms that it called forth. Many have shown great incapacity to understand the intellectual grounds of Dr. Newman's course, and have consequently contained severe remarks upon his logic; many have speculated on the supposed morbid tendencies of his mind, his over-sensibility, or his refined subtlety, or his craving for impossible certainties; thus seeking to elude the force of his witness and his example by elevating him into a sphere of his own, and treating him as a being differently constituted from the rest of mankind. There have been some unkind, some ungenerous remarks; but there has been universal agreement among all critics worthy of the name as to the honesty of his purpose and his perfect sincerity throughout. But this, as we said, is a victory gained over the public mind at the cost of the pain and exertion that were expended on the composition of the Apologia; and before that book was written there was an indefinite floating impression of a different kind upon the public mind, the result of many combining causes, most unfair as well as most painful to Dr. Newman, and the chief strength of such assailants as Mr. Kingsley. Dr. Newman tells us that he had always had a sort of tacit understanding with himself that, if an opportunity were ever given him, he would endeavour to remove and change that impression; and that it was in consequence partly of this resolution that the attack of Mr. Kingsley received from him so much more attention than in itself it might seem to have deserved.

The Apologia, as every one knows, was in form polemical and occasional; but it contained under that form the substance of a perfect autobiography, as far as religious opinions make up a man's life. It is very natural, therefore, that now that the immediate occasion of the book has passed away, Dr. Newman should recast it, and take the opportunity to exclude such portions of it as are related simply and entirely to Mr. Kingsley. He has now therefore given us the substance of the Apologia under a new name: the greater part of the Introduction, which dealt with his adversary's line of argument and the way to meet it, is omitted, as well as those wonderfully pungent passages in the Appendix, in which "blot" after "blot" of the pamphlet of accusation was so clearly exposed. The more important parts of the Appendix, such as the passage on the Anglican Establishment, and on the sermon on "Wisdom and Innocence," are retained in the form of notes. Dr. Newman has also added a very interesting note on Liberal.ism, on which we may speak presently; and has taken the opportunity of inserting the prospectus and catalogue issued by him in 1843, when he proposed to bring out the series of the Lives of English Saints, some of which were afterwards published independently. The book has thus taken the shape in which Dr. Newman wishes it to stand among his works for the future; and if the copies of the Apologia were all to be lost, some literary New Zealander, many years hence, who might undertake to illustrate for the benefit of his contemporaries the writers of the nineteenth century, might have to search diligently among the records of what will then be antiquity, and frame ingenious conjec

tures from the comparison of different passages in order to arrive at a certain conclusion as to the name and character of the "accuser" of Dr. Newman.

The note on Liberalism has a twofold interest. Dr. Newman has in various passages spoken of Liberalism in a way that shows the strongest dislike and disapproval of the form of opinion signified by the term, and yet he has a genuine admiration for some who have called themselves Liberals. The description which he now gives of Liberalism removes the apparent inconsistency:

"Liberty of thought is in itself a good; but it gives an opening to false liberty. Now, by Liberalism I mean false liberty of thought, or the exercise of thought upon matters in which, from the constitution of the human mind, thought cannot be brought to any successful issue, and therefore is out of place. Among such matters are first principles, of whatever kind; and of these the most sacred and momentous are especially to be reckoned the truths of Revelation. Liberalism, then, is the mistake of subjecting to human judgment those revealed doctrines which are in their nature beyond and independent of it, and of claiming to determine on intrinsic grounds the truth and value of propositions which rest for their reception simply on the external authority of the Divine Word" (p. 288).

This definition, to which no one can possibly object, points out the thorough unreasonableness of the false Liberalism which infects so large a part of the educated mind of the country in the present day, and is consequently sure to be extremely unpalatable to certain critics in the public press who are themselves labouring under the malady. Some of them have writhed around it, as snakes round the steel that has pierced them. They have tried to raise the question, "But what are first principles ?" and they have fastened upon a catalogue of falsely liberal propositions subjoined by Dr. Newman, in the hopeless endeavour to escape from the keen reason that has transfixed so many of their own favourite opinions. We have even heard Dr. Newman's logical powers called in question because he has not taken the trouble to point out the connection between the general propositions and the particular opinions that he has classed under them. On the whole, this catalogue of liberal propositions, like other passages in Dr. Newman's works, contains in a short space a storehouse of argument against the "Liberalism” he condemns. The propositions that he gives underlie a great portion of the thought and current literature of the day.

Dr. Newman further speaks of a personal and historical matter. His statement in the Apologia, that it was the Liberals that drove him from Oxford, seems to have given pain, if not offence, and he has been urged to withdraw the statement. Instead of withdrawing it, he justifies and repeats it. He gives an interesting sketch of the rise of the "Liberal" party in Oxford, of the stand made against it by Mr. Keble, and of its ultimate modification when younger men than himself, especially the pupils of Dr. Arnold, joined it. He assigns the proceedings of 1841 - when the "Four Tutors" protested against No. 90, and the Tracts were stopped-as the turning-point of the contest in Oxford. Those proceedings were the work of the Liberal party.

No one will venture to question the historical fact, though the Liberals of our time are ashamed of it, because the move which had results so pregnant was, in fact, contrary to the professed principles of their party. It was a distinct appeal to the Protestantism of the country. That power once aroused against him, Dr. Newman's position became hopeless, even if it had not been on other grounds untenable in itself. That power supported the "Liberal" heads and masters in their assault upon him, though Oxford, putting aside the question of Catholic tendencies, is not by tradition "Liberal." It can bear with and honour Dr. Pusey as long as he has no Roman tendencies; it can discard Mr. Gladstone because he seems to it to be too "Liberal."

THE writer of this tale has been struck with the fact that no period of English history presents more ample materials for the better kind of romantic and sensational fiction than the reign of Queen Elizabeth. A sovereign was on the throne whose title was not without a flaw; who was obliged by the necessities of her antecedents to oppress, but to oppress with craft, in preference to open persecution-where that could be avoided-the old religion of the nation, which still remained the religion of the majority; and who was in continual fear of formidable hostilities from without. Such a state of things forced on the government a system of grinding vexation, of insidious eaves-dropping, closet-hunting espionage,-a system that bought the blood of the master from the servant, and sometimes that of the elder brother from the younger, or that of the head of the family from his nearest relation, whose avarice or ambition was tempted by the prospect of taking the place and inheriting the property of his victim. No method of government that has ever existed within the four seas of Britain was more un-English; none even leant to so large an extent upon mendacity, torture, the corruption of judges, and the intimidation of jurors-in a word, upon the employment of the foulest means and the most loathsome instruments. On the other hand, the position of the persecuted was one of great perplexity as well as great suffering; every kind of trap was laid to ensnare consciences, and the most loyal nobles and gentry in the land found themselves stained with the imputation of treason and the charge of corresponding with Spain, because they wished to save their souls in the faith of their ancestors. As the priest-hunter and persecutor passed from house to house, and sought, above all things, to have the way prepared for him by domestic treachery, the most intimate family life was invaded and often desolated by the basest villany. This searching persecution had to be met by secrecy, disguise, feigned names, secret chambers, and all the devices by means of which the wisdom of the serpent could be brought to defend the innocence of the dove; and in many cases the hard circumstances of the time gave occasion for actions of great daring and

valour, as well as the patient exercise of all the virtues that are the special ornament of the suffering and the injured.

The scene of Wild Times is chiefly laid in Dorsetshire, in the year following the defeat of the Spanish Armada. We shall leave our readers to make acquaintance with the plot of the story for themselves. The principal characters are Sir Hugh Glenthorne, a Catholic gentleman, already more than half ruined by the exactions which drained the fortunes of the recusants; his sister Amy, and her betrothed Sir Guy de Montemar, sheriff of the county, who, though a Protestant, is an unwilling executor of the tyranny of the government; and the third member of the family, the younger brother Amadée, who has devoted himself to the priestly life, and whose return from abroad to exercise his functions for the bene fit of souls in England gives occasion to the various complications of which the story is made up. On the other side, we have the Earl of Montemar, president of the western counties, a timeserving aspirant after favour and honour, and his daughter Blanche, the betrothed of Hugh. The dramatis persona are completed by a Gipsy Queen and her adherents, who come in as occasion serves to help the cause of the oppressed, and the odious Topcliffe, who, with the assistance of a traitor in the household of Sir Hugh, brings about all the misery.

The characters are carefully drawn, and the author's design in balancing them shows much discernment. The supernatural strength derived from the priesthood shines out more conspicuously in the otherwise somewhat too feminine character of Amadée; on the other hand, Hugh, the elder brother, has far more of the gifts of nature, and is drawn as a pattern of the high-minded, courageous English gentleman; but he fails for a moment characteristically at the sight of the tortures to which his brother is subjected by Topcliffe. There is the same kind of antithesis between the female characters. Some of the scenes are powerfully drawn, and none of the incidents exceed in strangeness real facts of the history of the time; though the author has, perhaps, yet to learn that historical fiction, which represents the ordinary circumstances of a particular period, must often not allow itself to be as strange in its incidents as the more exceptional facts of real history.

On the whole, Wild Times is a very good novel, and we trust that the author may again meet us in the same line of literature. If he should ever have occasion again to introduce the machinery of carrierpigeons, we trust that he will not make the same pigeon go to and fro with messages at the discretion of the young lady to whom it belongs; and, as another morsel of minute criticism, we may add, that although Shakespeare has made us familiar with the expression of "a Daniel come to judgment," it strikes us as a new form of the phrase when we find Lord de Montemar telling his indignant daughter, "Even so; I avow it; you are a very Daniel in the lions' den this evening."

Bubbles of Finance-Gibson's Catechism made easy.

BUBBLES OF FINANCE.

219

As nothing will ever prevent more than half the world from desiring to get rich all at once, and from believing that there are many safe and sure ways of doing so, if only they can hit upon the right speculation, so nothing will ever put a stop to the invention of new financial schemes, decked out in the most attractive colours, each of which may in turn be presented to the unwary as the one safe investment which is to make them millionaires at once. The demand creates the supply; and the class of men who live upon the avarice and gullibility of the public, the men who "promote" and "bring out" new joint-stock companies which they themselves are the first to abandon, seems to be largely on the increase. Under these circumstances, the papers which are collected in this little volume, and which appeared originally in Mr. Charles Dickens' All the Year Round, attracted much attention, and were welcomed as a reasonable addition to popular information. They range over most of the more hazardous departments of speculation. They are cast in the light narrative form, most suited to the pages in which they originally appeared; but there seems no reason to doubt that they contain more solid information on the subjects of which they treat than is elsewhere to be found. These things are matters of experience; and the state of things depicted in these chapters is certainly worthy of very serious attention. The author writes in a lively, entertaining style; but the real worth of his book is not in its writing, but in its facts. There is no reason to doubt the general truthfulness of the representation; and as the victims of the bubbles of finance are often the most industrious or the most helpless of the community-men who have saved up a small competence by the labours of a life and are anxious to provide for their families, widows who have a number of children to bring up, invalids, retired servants, and the like-it is very much to be wished that real information as to the kind of schemes, that are so often presented to the public under false colours, should be as widely diffused as possible.

GIBSON'S CATECHISM MADE EASY.†

OUR present number contains a poem on the Workhouse, the author of which has spoken in strong and severe language of the miseries of workhouse schools. At Liverpool the pauper children have a building to themselves in Kirkdale; and Mr. Gibson speaks highly of the care that is taken of them. They are taught industrial occupations, and ultimately put out to service or apprenticed. Liverpool, we believe, is honourably distinguished among the great towns in England for the liberality with which its institutions are conducted as to the vital

*The Bubbles of Finance: Joint-Stock Companies, Promoting of Companies, Modern Commerce, Money-Lending, and Life-Insuring. By a City Man. 1865. + Catechism made easy: being a familiar Explanation of the Catechism of Christian Doctrine. In 3 vols. ; vol. i. Liverpool, 1865.