belong in truth to her communion, the difficulties of her position may be contemplated with wisdom, encountered with courage, and arranged with justice and success. Come when it may, we are firmly convinced that the way for its happy arrival was in good measure prepared, if not by the far-sighting sagacity, yet by the honest, hearty, self-denying labours and nobly disinterested liberality of the late Bishop Blomfield.

Few books have been published of late years which combine more distinct elements of interest than the Apologia' of Dr. Newman. As an Autobiography, in the highest sense of that word, as the portraiture, that is, and record of what the man was, irrespective of those common accidents of humanity which too often load the biographer's pages, it is eminently dramatic. To produce such a portrait was the end which the writer proposed to himself, and which he has achieved with a rare fidelity and completeness. Hardly do the 'Confessions of St. Augustine' more vividly reproduce the old African Bishop before successive generations in all the greatness and struggles of his life than do these pages the very inner being of this remarkable man-'the living intelligence,' as he describes it, by which I write, and argue, and act.' No wonder that when he first fully recognised what he had to do, he

'shrank from both the task and the exposure which it would entail. I must, I said, give the true key to my whole life; I must show what I am, that it may be seen what I am not, and that the phantom may be extinguished which gibbers instead of me. I wish to be known as a living man, and not as a scarecrow which is dressed up in my clothes. . . . I will draw out, as far as may be, the history of my mind; 1 will state the point at which I began, in what external suggestion or accident each opinion had its rise, how far and how they were developed from within, how they grew, were modified, were combined, were in collision with each other, and were changed. Again, how I conducted myself towards them; and how, and how far, and for how long a time, I thought I could hold them consistently with the ecclesiastical engagements which I had made, and with the position which I filled. . . . . It is not at all pleasant for me to be egotistical, nor to be criticised for being so. It is not pleasant to reveal to high and

Apologia pro Vitâ suâ.' By John Henry Newman, D.D.

low, young and old, what has gone on within me from my early years. It is not pleasant to be giving to every shallow or flippant disputant the advantage over me of knowing my most private thoughts, I might even say the intercourse between myself and my Maker.'

Here is the task he set himself, and the task which he has performed. There is in these pages an absolute revealing of the hidden life in its acting, and its processes, which at times is almost startling, which is everywhere of the deepest interest. For the life thus revealed is well worthy of the pen by which it is portrayed. Of all those who, in these late years, have quitted the Church of England for the Roman communion -esteemed, honoured, and beloved, as were many of them— no one, save Dr. Newman, appears to us to possess the rare gift of undoubted genius.

That life, moreover, which anywhere and at any time must have marked its own character on his fellows, was cast precisely at the time and place most favourable for stamping upon others the impress of itself. The plate was ready to receive and to retain every line of the image which was thrown so vividly upon it. The history, therefore, of this life in its shifting scenes of thought, feeling, and purpose, becomes in fact the history of a school, a party, and a sect. From its effect on us, who, from without, judge of it with critical calmness, we can form some idea of what must be its power on those who were within the charmed ring; who were actually under the wand of the enchanter, for whom there was music in that voice, fascination in that eye, and habitual command in that spare but lustrous countenance; and who can trace again in this retrospect the colours and shadows which in those years which fixed their destiny, passed, though in less distinct hues, into their own lives, and made them what they are.

Again, in another aspect, the 'Apologia' will have a special interest for most of our readers. Almost every page

of it will throw some light upon the great controversy which has been maintained for these three hundred years, and which now spreads itself throughout the world, between the Anglican Church and her oldest and greatest antagonist, the Papal See.

As to the immediate contest between Professor Kingsley and Dr. Newman, we scarcely deem it necessary to speak. The only abiding significance, we may venture to affirm, of that disagreement will be its having given cause for the production of Dr. Newman's volume. The controversial portion, indeed, of these publications can give no pleasure to the friends of either disputant. Professor Kingsley has added nothing here to his literary reputation. Indeed his pamphlet can only hope to live as the embedded fly in the clear amber of his antagonist's Apology. He was undoubtedly rash and uncharitable in his imputations; and, like the burglar who touches unaware the alarum-spring, has awoke around himself a crashing peal which it is quite clear he heartily wishes he had left to slumber in its former repose; whilst, especially in the earlier numbers, the calm dignity of Dr. Newman is painfully ruffled by the angry gusts of personal invective and defence.

There is another branch of this controversy, partly personal, partly of far wider application, on which, though we cannot pass it wholly over, we shall not dwell at any length-we mean Professor Kingsley's charges of want of strict veracity as attaching personally to Dr. Newman, and generally to the Roman Catholic system, and Dr. Newman's laboured argument in defence far more of the system than of himself. Easy and simple in action as are the common moral instincts of a well-constituted mind upon the matter of truth and falsehood, few subjects are more difficult to settle by the laws of casuistic science than the exact limits which part off the one from the other. Dr. Newman has shown that the

difficulty is by no means confined to the school of Roman casuistry; but that, not to name Paley, whose reputation for strictness of principle as a moral philosopher has never stood high amongst his countrymen, the same difficulties are to be found in the rules laid down by Bishop Taylor, Milton, and even by so severe a moralist as Samuel Johnson. No one who has thought much upon the matter can doubt that questions can easily be raised as to the duty of telling all the truth-to the murderer, for instance, who is pursuing his victim; to an enemy in war, and the like;-which it is exceedingly difficult to answer so as to fix any principles which shall agree at once with the laws of charity, of necessity, and of truth. But this seems to prove that it is a subject as to which it is safer to form the practical temper of a community rather upon the acting of a high-toned moral instinct than upon the most exact laws of casuistry; and the meaning of the charge against Rome generally, and pre-eminently against that influential portion of it which bears a name almost equivalent to English ears with dishonesty, seems to us to be that the Jesuits especially, and Roman Catholic divines generally, have taught their disciples to act rather on the principles of casuistry than on the dictates of conscience. Dr. Newman fully admits the existence of this double rule. He reminds us that a man in his own person is guided by his own conscience; but in drawing out a system of rules he is obliged to go by logic;' and he most distinctly states his own rule to be the absolute rule of a sensitive conscience: nay, he ventures so far as to say that ' in this department of morality, much as I admire the high points of the Italian character, I like the English character better.'

Still in his treatment of this subject there are two distinct points on which we think Dr. Newman does not rebut the real gist of Professor Kingsley's strictures. The first of these