to be against many difficulties in the fear of an implacable and unwearied enemy, laid upon all those whose existence seemed to threaten her integrity, will assume a form somewhat different to that which is left on the mind by a first reading of the Dissenting historians.

And I trust that I may say all this without it being thought that I myself am trying to apologise for that which my soul most detests. When I speak of religious intolerance I speak under the influence of suppressed passion. I see the dead hand of the intolerant spirit laying its chilling touch still upon thousands of human hearts-poisoning family life, driving mercy and justice from the hearts of men and women as pure, as gentle, as righteous, as Stillingfleet himself. To do something to remove this spectre of human life, to do something which in one's own mind, or in the minds of others, shall make disagreement a bond of union instead of a cause of coldness-this, now as ever, appears to me a duty truly to be called sacred. But I have read and thought of this phenomenon purely as a student of history; as such I have honestly endeavoured to put aside all such irrelevant feelings as patriotism, desire that virtue shall conquer vice, love of tolerance, or the like; I have but tried to explain, by a reference to what I regard as the proved facts of history, and to the natural feelings of human nature, that which it is otherwise to me hard to explain; and I shall feel glad to know how far, in the opinion of many here tonight who are well able to correct me, my explanation is a satisfactory one.

NOTES OF LECTURE

ON

DEAN STANLEY AS A HISTORIAN.

BY MR. G. J. JOHNSON.

November 23rd, 1881.

I shall take it for granted-that, either from your previous knowledge, or from the numerous articles which have appeared in the reviews and magazines since Dean Stanley's death, you are all familiar with the chief facts in his personal history. As however no man becomes eminent in any branch of literature without natural aptitude, or previous preparation, or both; it may be interesting to notice what were the influences in Dean Stanley's education and experience which made him a writer of history, and decided what kinds of history he would write. Of these influences we notice four.

1. The talent for the picturesque, which is the most obvious quality in his writing was zealously cultivated even in infancy, by his excellent mother. In Mr. Augustus C. Hare's charming article "Arthur Penrhyn Stanley" in Macmillan's Magazine for September, 1881, at page 355 is this paragraph.

"Whilst other children were plodding through dull histories of disconnected countries and ages of which they remembered nothing afterwards, Mrs. Stanley's system was to take a particular era, and, upon the basis of its general history to pick out for her children from different books, whether memories, chronicles, or poetry, all that bore upon it, making it at once an interesting study to herself

and them; and talking it over with them in a way which encouraged them to form their own opinion upon it, to have theories as to how such and such evils might have been forestalled or amended, and so to fix it in their recollection."

2. The historical bent given by his mother's teaching was deepened and widened by his school education, under Dr. Arnold. To Arnold's teaching Stanley owed two things, which colour all his writings. First, the necessary and indissoluble relations of history and geography. Somewhere he says that he can never realise any historical event unless and until he has seen the place where it occurred. Secondly. His theory of the relations of Church and State. To Arnold's influence and example we doubtless owe Stanley's "History of the Jewish Church." The Dean often quotes a sentence from a letter of Arnold's written in February, 1835. "What Wolf and Niebuhr have done for Greece and Rome seems sadly wanted for Judæa." When a quarter of a century afterwards, Ewald had done this work, Stanley took it up, and made it readable and interesting.

3.-The "picturesque sensibility" of his nature which gives so much intensity to his historical descriptions was further fostered by the places in which he lived, which must have compelled a mind like his to the study of history. Even Dr. Johnson who liked better to walk down Fleet street than to do anything else, wrote"Far from me and from my friends be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain grace on the plains of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona." Assuredly Stanley was not such a man. The three places in which most of his life was passed viz. Oxford, Canterbury and Westminster not only left their traces upon all his writings but in fact suggested and produced them. To Oxford we owe the "Lectures on the Eastern Church" and on the "Jewish Church," to Canterbury and Westminster the Historical Memorials of both.

4.-Not only did he live among historical associations but he had the inestimable advantage to an ecclesiastical historian of active participation in the events and controversies of his time. Oxford, as Mr. Matthew Arnold tells us, is the place of movements" and in every movement of his time at Oxford, Stanley took an important part. Soon after he went to the university occurred the Hampden Controversy (1836). The "Tracts for the Times" were being published until they were closed in Feb. 1841, with the celebrated number XC. In 1845 the attempted condemnation of Mr. Ward took place, and in one of the last articles which the Dean wrote, "The Oxford School" (Ed. Review, April, 1881), we have a most interesting account of it-only deficient in concealing the very important share he himself had in the contest, and that he was the author of the trenchant "broadside" signed "Nemesis." "* From the renewal of Convocation in 1854 the Dean took an important part in their debates. His constant intercourse with the best people of his time-his intimate relations with the Queen and Royal Family all helped to interpret the past for him, and gave a reality to his description not to be attained by historians who live only among books and records. Even Gibbon -adverting to his brief career in the Militia says, and says with great truth"The captain of the Hampshire grenadiers (the reader may smile) has not been useless to the historian of the Roman empire."

Such being his preparation and qualification for writing history, what histories did he write? These:

1854. Historical Memorials of Canterbury.

1855. Sinai and Palestine.

1861.

Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church.

1867. Memorials of Westminster Abbey.

Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church,

Vol. 1, (1863.) Vol. 2, (1865.) Vol. 3, (1876.)

This broadside, as the Dean called it, has been since reprinted in Mr. Kegan Paul's Article on Cardinal Newman, in the Century Magazine for June, 1882, p. 279,

In judging a history the first, and sometimes the only thing which interests most people is the style. Adopting for the sake of convenience De Quincey's division into the mechanics of style (i. e. the relation of words and sentences), and the organics of style (the relations of words to ideas and feelings), we may say with regard to the first that Stanley's style is singuarly free from mannerisms. No one well acquainted with the writings of either Carlyle or Macaulay could fail to detect a quotation of any length from either. You might read several pages of Stanley without finding him out by any mechanical peculiarity of style. He is more easily discovered by the constant inculcation of his favourite theories than by the way in which he states them. His style is in literature what good dressing is in fashion, something which sets off to the best advantage that which it clothes, and attract no attention to itself. It is emphatically a "gentlemanly style."

When we pass from the mechanic to the organic quality of style -the relation of words to ideas, we are conscious of one prominent excellence, the faculty of clear intellectual perception. If any of you suppose this to be a common or inferior kind of excellence let me commend to your notice the following passage from Ruskin (Modern Painters iii., pt. iv., ch. xvi.) "The more I think of it I find this conclusion more impresses me-that the greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think; but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one."

Notice that in Stanley the perception is always concrete and intellectual only. In a lecture he delivered in Exeter Hall some years ago to the Christian Young Men's Association, he advised that for those who had little time for the study of history should always study it with reference to a (1) great age, (2) a great event, (3) a great man, (4) a remarkable place. As he wrote history for those who did not study original sources he always had resource to one of these things. His remarkable faculty for localising history is shewn at length in the Historical Memorials of Canterbury and