no means a safe man in respect to the dissenters. It was in nowise certain that they would not receive from him before the public some inconvenient expressions of personal regard. Breaches of episcopal propriety had been apprehended from the first, and his lordship was at no pains to avoid them. He visited the schools of dissenters. He sometimes made dissenters the almoners of his bounty. He has been found praying by the sick beds of the members of dissenting churches, knowing them to be such. He always hailed with satisfaction the co-operation of dissenters either on the platform or in the committee-room. He selected many of his tradesmen from the anti-state-church dissenters of the diocesan city. He forwarded copies of his ordination questions to the dissenting ministers, and welcomed them to his table with the unfeigned cordiality of a friend.

It happened once that the Rev. John Alexander had obtained the occasional use of an old ecclesiastical building, in Norwich, for his Sabbath services. Mr. Alexander had preached there in the morning of a certain Sunday, and was announced to preach there again in the evening. To the surprise and vexation of churchmen, the bishop was found in that very same pulpit in the afternoon of the same day, preaching to a congregation of the Norwich poor. This incident, in which he rejoiced, threatened rather serious consequences. It brought out his liberal tendencies in a form that was just borne with by his ecclesiastical superiors, and that was all. A communication, we believe, was made to him on the subject, which led him to anticipate 'public censure.' He was quite prepared to meet it, but it never came. His ecclesiastical justification would have been found in the fact, that centuries ago the place had been duly consecrated. His general justification he would have found in the fact, that Mr. Alexander was as much a minister of Christ as himself. Another such an afternoon service in the old Dutch church would have required for him the sympathy of the civic power again; that is, of the State as against the Church.

It has been said that Bishop Stanley's liberality must be attributed, in part, to constitutional temperament. We are not sure that there is not a measure of truth in this representation. He had a strong instinctive liking for freedom. We believe that he detested with his whole soul the remotest attempt to bring him into bondage. He was ever on the alert against such attempts; resenting them, in some instances, from impulse quite. as much as from conviction. At all events, his impulses gave great intensity to his convictions.

On one occasion, the celebrated Father Mathew was about to visit Norwich, and the bishop determined to invite him to make the palace his home during his stay in the city, on the

ground that his mission was one of purest good will. The city clergy no sooner heard of it than they remonstrated against the invitation, then denounced it, and then became most ridiculously rude. The Protestant-Association men came out in great strength, urged on probably by the remembrance of an old grudge against his lordship for having once officially rebuked what he regarded as a virulent attack on the church of Rome. They proceeded to protest against the bishop's appearing on the same platform with Father Mathew. This was too bad; and though he yielded so far as not to press his invitation to the palace, he would go to the platform to meet the apostle of temperance, papist though he was. He did go, and as soon as the cheering would allow him to proceed, he indignantly, if not fiercely, denounced the intolerance and presumption of his clergy. The scene was most exciting. The chairman on the occasion was Joseph John Gurney. When the bishop entered, Father Mathew was speaking. He gave way to his lordship immediately, standing, however, in token of respect. denunciation of his clergy over, Dr. Stanley proceeded to eulogize the benevolence and zeal of the Catholic priest, becoming presently so impassioned as fairly to carry away with him even the cautious and unimpassioned chairman. It was an opportunity for a painter. The place-St. Andrew's Hall; the chairman-an illustrious member of the Society of Friends. On the right hand-the bishop; on the left hand-Father Mathew. Around the chair-the leading advocates of the temperance cause. In the foreground-the citizens of Norwich in crowds, energetically responding to the episcopal assertion of liberty of conscience, liberty of action, and liberty of speech.

The

Somewhat less offensively, but not much less seriously, was Bishop Stanley assailed for his conduct towards Jenny Lind. She also was invited to the palace to lodge there whilst fulfilling a professional engagement in the episcopal city. Opposition was raised by some of the clergy to this act of the bishop's kindness, but it was raised this time in vain. The invitation was accepted, and the Swedish Nightingale became his guest. We learn from the Memoir, (p. 82,) that the bishop's public reception of such a guest provoked strong expressions of disapprobation both in his own diocese and elsewhere.' It was condemned as incautious and unwarranted.' But he was not to be deterred, for on a subsequent visit to Norwich, Miss Lind was an inmate of the palace again; and it was evident to the whole city that she was a guest whom his lordship delighted to honour. He accompanied her everywhere. Even to the orchestra did he conduct her, and thence he received her when she was about to retire. That the lady in question was of unimpeachable virtue we are fully

aware. We yield to no one in our admiration. Her kindliness was, as it still is, most exemplary. But we do rather sympathize than otherwise with the dissatisfaction which was expressed by some of the bishop's sincere admirers at the course which in this instance he pursued. His attentions to the fair Swede might advantageously have been less ostentatious. However, it was like the man exactly. By no consideration would he be held back from doing what he thought right. Whilst, therefore, we gravely doubt the prudence of this and of many other of his doings, we believe they were upright and brave beyond all dispute.

There was a good deal of bravery one Sunday morning in his cathedral, though not an exuberance of discretion in the better sense of that word. On the occasion of a Chartist mob occupying the cathedral, according to the practice which extensively prevailed amongst them in 1839, he undertook, in place of the usual preacher, to expostulate with them strongly and severely on the futile and mischievous tendencies of their principles.' This expostulation was generally thought unwise. It related, in part at least, to the vexed question of machinery versus hand-loom weaving-hardly a suitable topic, and far too wide-reaching to be disposed of with any satisfaction there. The sermon exasperated rather than appeased the men to whom it was addressed. They thought it an unfair thing to school them on that subject when they had no opportunity of reply, and went away with an augmentation of their dislike to professing Christians generally, and to the clergy in particular. Still he meant it well. He believed that a yet larger use of machinery would be generally advantageons, and without much forethought he said so. Other men, under the circumstances, would have tried to conciliate; he tried to instruct.

From what we have said, the reader will be able to form a substantially accurate opinion of the bishop's character. We hardly know where we should end if we went on to give all the illustrations of his character which are at hand. Some of them are very pleasant; as, for instance, his preaching a funeral sermon for Joseph John Gurney in the cathedral pulpit: and some of them very beautiful; as, for instance, his writing an address to his old school-children at Alderley, which purported to be addressed to them from the grave. No eye ever saw it till after his death, when it was found among his papers, with the record of his desire that it might be sent to every individual who had formerly been in his school. We quote a few sentences :—

When I lived I loved you as a parent, and I spared no pains to make you good and happy. Now I am gone down to the grave, and you will see me, you will hear me, no more. But, though dead, I would yet

speak. Forget not, then, the parting words of one who so earnestly wished for your present and eternal welfare. When I lived I spoke to you often of God and your Saviour. You will soon be called from the world to follow me, and then you will, I hope, feel how blessed a thing it was to have known and served them.'

A similar address was prepared for his old parishioners, from which we take the closing sentence.

In life I knew and loved you; in death I would not be divided. My dear parishioners, may we meet again to commence a closer and dearer connexion in the world of blessed spirits.'

On reading these posthumous addresses, we understand a remark of Mr. Alexander's (p. 40)-viz., that sometimes in his speeches, and sometimes in his sermons, he adopted a mode of expression which no man of evangelical sentiments could approve. They certainly did not harmonize with the received doctrine of justification by faith alone.' We believe Mr. Alexander is right. He adopted such modes of expression 'sometimes,' whilst at other times his avowal of the doctrine of justification by faith alone was quite clear enough, as Mr. Alexander says, to put his general orthodoxy' beyond doubt. We quite agree that his public addresses which bore upon theological subjects were not always among his best efforts.' There was too much uncertainty of sound; there was the perpetual indication of a fear lest the doctrine of salvation by grace should lead men to be heedless of good works.

"We are disposed to think,' with Mr. Alexander, that his abhorrence of the doctrine of faith without works led him sometimes to speak as if he advocated works without faith, or as if he united the two in the meritorious ground of a sinner's acceptance with God.' He would have been a better theologian could he have shaken himself free from the formularies of his church, in which, as the minister of Prince's-street chapel honestly declares, 'it seems impossible for any man to have an ex animo faith without believing in flat contradictions.'

6

In one of his examinations of a Lancasterian school the bishop asked the boys, 'What must we do to go to heaven when we die ?' One of them replied instantly, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, sir! With great earnestness the bishop rejoined, ' And what else? Nothing, sir!' We suspect the theology of the boy's answer was better than that of the bishop's question. It looked as though he would have had something else besides belief in Jesus Christ: unmindful, at the moment, that good works are the fruits of evangelical faith, and not its coadjutors in obtaining everlasting life.

As time wore on many of the difficulties of his position

diminished, and he had greatly to rejoice, not only in the general attachment of his fellow-citizens, but also in the manifest improvement of his diocese. In many respects the improvement was obvious. Despite the obstructions which were thrown in his way to the last, he secured an amount of clerical propriety to which the diocese had long been a stranger. He had found it a wilderness, and he left it in comparison a cultivated field.' The following extract from his journal is interesting. Writing at the end of 1842 he says

'More grateful ought I to be at the visible and certain improvement that has taken place in the diocese. For three or four years I had to stem a steady torrent of prejudice, and more or less of opposition: but that current has now changed its course, and I feel gliding onwards with better hopes, supported by, I believe, a great majority of those whose opinion and esteem are worth possessing. God grant that my life may be prolonged until I have effected the great object I had in view, in undertaking the labours imposed upon me. May I live to see the triumph of Christian principles in the Church, uncontaminated and undefiled by the lower, sordid, and worldly passions connected with what has hitherto been called-so falsely and so fatally for its real interests-attachment to the Church.'

But for the fear of being charged with unseemly intrusiveness we should express much regret that Mr. Stanley has not given us larger extracts from his father's journal. The conviction has grown on us, by frequent perusal of those which are given, that we should hold his memory in yet higher esteem in proportion to our acquaintance with the details of his personal and official life. We must revere the man who in simplicity and godly sincerity made this entry in his journal on the eve of his seventieth birthday-the last entry, by-the-bye, that he ever made.

'And now, O my God, whose eye is upon me, and who canst search my heart to the very inmost, hear the prayer I would offer in sincerity and earnestness on my entrance on probably the last division and scene of my mortal life. The threescore years and ten have passed, and the remaining years must be few. Grant that thy Holy Spirit may enable me so to act in the high and responsible vocation in which thy providence hath placed me, that my declining years may be devoted to thy service, and that in all my doings and intentions, the advancement of thy holy religion, and the true vital interests of the Catholic Church of Christ, may be my prominent object, and end, and aim.'

This was written on the last day of 1848. Early in 1849 he was intreated to decline engagements which were felt by his friends to be too much for him; but he was not to be persuaded.' He was found at his post in the House of Lords; he was seen about among the ragged schools and the model lodginghouses of the metropolis; he was on the platform in Exeter