the isolation of herself from all portions of the Catholic Church which will not bow themselves, because they recognize as their Head only the Church's Living and Divine Head,—to her assumptions of supremacy and infallibility in the Church. of God.

We speak advisedly, when we declare this Book of Dr. Newman's a controversial attack upon the Church of England, and upon the Catholic Church, so far as the Church of England asserts and maintains true Catholicity, against the pretensions and spurious Catholicity of Rome. Dr. Newman intimates, on p. 286 of his book, that from embarking in a controversy, which we would think was a vital and important one, in our day, the defense of our common Christianity against the attacks made upon it through the discoveries of science,—his hands are tied by "recent acts of authority" of the Church to which he belongs. We cannot believe, therefore, that his Present Book has been put forth, sine permissu superiorum, or that those who permitted it to be published, looked upon it as so devoid of all controversial bearing and purpose, as Dr. Newman represents it to be.

And its own contents show that it is not without such bearing and purpose. From beginning to end, there is, in it, the cool assumption that the attribute of Catholicity is one which is not to be thought of as an attribute of the Church of England; the whole story of Dr. N.'s religious opinions is told, with the object steadily in view of demonstrating, that between Atheism and Catholicity, that is, the Catholicity of Rome, there is no tenable middle-ground; the shining lights of the English Church, the great maintainers of its position against that of Rome, are treated with contempt, and accused of unfairness, and of having, for a long time, held in the bondage of deception, in their appeals to Primitive Christianity, the incautious, uncritical, credulous Dr. Newman! and, finally, the Church of England is dismissed from the scene as a Body whose Churchly position in Christendom is "the veriest of nonentities," and only suffered to exist, by the arrangement of an "armed truce," forsooth side by side with the Church of Rome. About the weight and force of the arguments by which Dr. Newman at

tacks the Catholicity of the Church of England and defends that of Rome, we shall have abundant occasion to speak, as we examine his Auto-Biography; but in what we have already said, the animus of this Book is very clearly indicated.

With the particular controversy of Dr. Newman with Mr. Kingsley, we have no occasion to concern ourselves. Mr. Kingsley rushed to the field with rash and unfounded accusations against Dr. N., which have been made to recoil with fearful power on his own head. We know no more perfect specimen of annihilating controversy, than is seen in the correspondence between Dr. N. and Mr Kingsley, which is inserted as the introduction of the Apologia of Dr. Newman. Dr. N. leaves his adversary upon the field, foiled and prostrate, and seemingly dead, under the inflictions of the weapons of a trenchant logic, whose lows cut through all the weapons and defensive armor of his antagonist, and pierced to the very quick of the false accusations with which Mr. Kingsley had assailed him. It had been well for Mr. Kingsley to have lain low in his defeat, and not to have risen again in that field of encounter. But he must need refit his weapons of attack, and renew the assault. In the general answer to Mr. Kingsley, which Dr. N.'s Book contains, he has left nothing behind of his antagonist, or of his personal assertions against Dr. Newman; and Mr. K. is, by this time, himself probably convinced, that, however he may be in his sphere, in writing articles about the poetry of the Puritan life and character; in advocating the principles of a Christian Socialism; in reproducing, in charming fictions, at one time, the days of Early Christianity, at another, in setting forth the beauties of Muscular Christianity, or the Christian heroism of English pluck and fearlessness, and love of bold and rough adventure, however in these departments he may be at home, he mistook his vocation, when he exposed himself, so needlessly and so rashly, to the logical ire and acumen of such a proficient in the arts and processes of logical warfare as Dr. Newman. We leave him where Dr. N. has laid him low, not deeming it in our power to extricate him from the unfortunate predicament, to which, by his incaution, he has been reduced.

But this attack of Mr. Kingsley has been the occasion, Dr. N. tells us, of the Apologia pro Vita Sua; in which he lays open to the inspection of men the course and progress of his religious opinions; in which he takes us through that bewildering scene of speculation, sentiment, Romeward sympathy of advance and retrocession, of certain convictions, overshadowed by courted, enforced doubt and misgiving, amid which his path was taken to the haven, in which he professes at last, and from the moment that he entered it, to have found perfect peace and satisfaction. It was necessary for him, he avers, so to open his heart, so to unfold the whole story of his Romish conversion, that he might give to the world an unanswerable proof of that honesty of heart and purpose, with a want of which he had been charged by his antagonist.

And it is in these disclosures that his bearing towards the Church of England and the Catholic Church, and the value of the inducements which brought him to the Church of Rome, demand our attention.

This Auto-Biography is written with great artistic power, and is most skillfully arranged for wonderful dramatic effect.. It is clear as light in the purity of the English in which it is written, while, through the whole of it, it is pervaded by a golden mist of fancy and speculation and impalpahle sentiment and statement, which involve in mystery and conceal in the dark, the true state of mind and spirit, which, in different parts of the Book, and throughout the whole of it, is disclosed and acknowledged by Dr. Newman.

The arrangement of the narrative, for dramatic effect, is most apparent. Dr. N. has clearly an eye for the striking and the pic--turesque; and no statuesque posture of his life is, apparently, omitted from his narrative, however little the bearing may seem to be upon the object, for which he declares his religious AutoBiography is written. Such a picture is the meeting of Dr. Copleston on one of Mr. N.'s solitary walks at Oriel, and the cherished remark of the Dr. to Mr. N. (p. 66.) "Nunquam minus solus, quam cum solus." Such is the embalming in amber of the remark of "a shrewd man, who knew me at this time," who said, "Here is a man, who, when he is silent, will never begin to speak;

and when he once begins to speak, will never stop." And so, throughout, the striking positions of his personal life are daguerreotyped, and set before us with taking theatrical effect, till, at last, the curtain drops upon a scene, to which it would be the violation of all dramatic propriety to add another :"I left Oxford for good," (in the copy of the book before us, a friend has underscored "for good," and annotated, “In many ways") but to return to Dr. N.'s closing scene :

"I left Oxford for good, on Monday, February 23, 1846. On the Saturday and Sunday before, I was in my house, at Littlemore, simply by myself, as I had been for the first day or two, when I had originally taken possession of it. I slept, on Sunday night, at my dear friend's, Mr. Johnson's, at the Observatory. Various friends came to see the last of me: Mr. Copeland, Mr. Church, Mr. Buckle, Mr. Pattison, and Mr. Lewis. Dr. Pusey, too, came up to take leave of me; and I called on Dr. Ogle, one of my oldest friends, for he was my private Tutor when I was an Undergraduate. In him I took leave of my first College, Trinity, which was so dear to me, and which held on its foundation so many who have been kind to me, both when I was a boy, and all through my Oxford life. Trinity had never been unkind to me. There used to be much snap-dragon growing on the walls opposite my Freshman's rooms there, and I had for years taken it as the emblem of my own perpetual residence, even unto death, in my University.

"On the morning of the 23d I left the Observatory. I have never seen Oxford since, excepting its spires, as they are seen from the Railway."

Throughout the narrative, there is a perfect unity of design and purpose; the events of Dr. N.'s life are seen to unfold themselves to the final development, and he indicates, in more than one of these events, even of his childhood, a providential foreshadowing, as he seems to regard it, and a preparation of the issue, which at length was reached.

And now, let us mark the salient points of that progress, and ascertain, so far as we may, both the value of the impregnable positions, which he, from time to time, took; and also whether these positions were true or false ones, when estimated from his declared and public position, as an accredited teacher and ordained Priest in the Church of England, who had publicly sworn assent to the Articles and formularies, which that Church put forth, and required her Ministers to accept. These

salient points of Dr. N.'s religious life are stated by him, doubtless, clearly and distinctly, and yet, though thus stated, they are involved in a cloud or mist of sentimentalism, and subtle speculation, or of unmeaning imagery, which, though beautiful, leaves no such definite impression, as would the strict definition of opinion, for which it is substituted.

Now, we cannot divest ourselves of the feeling and the belief, in reading the Book, that Dr. N., in thus wrapping himself in a spiritual and speculative cloud, had an intention of rendering indistinct and hazy, what it might be inconvenient to have plainly seen, and so, while not witholding the full confession, which he professes to give, yet gives it in such a way as to keep in the back-ground the unfavorable impression which it would be justly calculated to produce. We cannot help feeling, that, in writing the history of his religious opinions, he is taking the part of an advocate, and therefore so disposing the damaging evidence, of which he is obliged to take notice, that its true and plain meaning may not be seen, or its full and fair effect may not be felt. And we are all the more inclined to think that the mistiness and the mystery, in which he enwraps himself, are not without a meaning, when we remember how capable he is of plain, straight-forward statement, of analyzing propositions, in their naked truth or falsehood, as he has shown himself to be in his controversy with Mr. Kingsley.

As a specimen of his use of imagination and verbiage, in his explanation of his religious phases of opinion, we instance what he says, p. 229, of the manner in which he divested himself of the idea that the devotions to angels and saints interfered with the "face to face," solus cum solo, in all matters between man and his God." A Book of Alfonso Liguori, sent him by Dr. Russell, President of Maynooth, at the end of 1842, expurgated by "the omission of one passage about the Blessed Virgin," gave him a key to the difficulty, and was the beginning of his conviction, that all the Mariolatry and Saint-Worship of Rome, were no interference "with the incommunicable glory of the Eternal." And then, he adds :

"I am not sure that another consideration did not also weigh with me then. The idea of the Blessed Virgin was, as it were, magnified