does not complain much of the want of light and air, indeed there never was a person less addicted to grumbling. In a letter to Mr Shirley (October 15) he says that Mr Ward was his tutor,-Ward notable later as a deserter to the Roman communion, and famous theological disputer. A good many of Northcote's Eton friends were up, and, as there were "two very decided sets" in the College, he flattered himself that he was in the better set of the twain.

Amusements and studies at this period interested him much less than religion, though neither books nor the river were neglected. His mother, Mrs Northcote, was a lady of very decided Evangelical opinions. Her letters breathe a spirit of devotion, testify to an absorption, it may be said, in the things of religion, in the vision of another life, that is not, that never can have been, common. Her eldest son, with an affectionate and gentle character, was likely to see religion with his mother's eyes. We have heard how he read chapters "in whispers" with Carew, when he was a small boy at Brighton. There is a kind of tradition that the sight of one of his eyes was injured by reading at the same closely printed Bible with his mother. In Mr Shirley he had found a tutor who introduced religion on every occasion. In his letter to Mr Shirley we find him deploring, on his own part, a want of what our great-grandfathers called enthusiasm. His beliefs are thoroughly correct, but the state of his religious emotions does not satisfy him. "I almost fear that my heart has never been really touched, but that I have been rather hurried along by the feelings of the moment, than by any serious change of heart, and that the world will yet be too powerful for me." Northcote then speaks of Goulburn, whom he had known at Eton, and who became head-master of Rugby for a season. Goulburn and Waldegrave were anxious that Northcote should join them in reading the Bible statedly, with other religious exercises, on Sunday evenings; but it does not appear that their invitation was accepted.

At the end of November 1836, Northcote was elected to

1836.]

ARTHUR CLOUGH.

19

one of the Balliol Scholarships. It is said that he gave an extraordinary proof of memory at this examination. Several years later, at a scholarship examination, a passage from the old 'Spectator' was read aloud, and the competitors were told to write down as much of it as they could from memory. Mr Woollcombe, so well remembered by old Balliol men for his theological lectures, or "catechetics," was the examiner. Seeing that some of the aspirants looked blank, he informed them that Mr Northcote, when trying for the scholarship, had written all the passage out correctly, after but one hearing. He was second to Arthur Clough, and very curious it is to think how like those boys then were in many ways, and what different courses they had to run. Clough was shy, and they were never very intimate. A dozen years later Northcote mentions some vagaries of Clough's in Paris during the Revolution, and the "intoxication" which he then shared, oddly enough, with the French poet, Charles Baudelaire. But there are no earlier references to Clough in Northcote's correspondence. In several letters he expresses a dislike of Rugby, which he afterwards modified, and perhaps overcame. He appears to have thought that Dr Arnold's liberal tendencies were perilous in religion. Clough was a Rugby boy, but in his school-days, and when he came up first to Balliol, his letters are at least as devout as those of Northcote.

Both young men entered Oxford in one of its recurrent theological crises. As Mr Palgrave says, in Clough's "Biography': "The University was stirred to its depths by the great Tractarian movement. Dr Newman was in the fulness of his popularity, preaching at St Mary's; and in pamphlets, reviews, and verses continually pouring forth eloquent appeals to every kind of motive that could influence men's minds. Mr Ward was one of the foremost of the party, . . . and thus, at the very entrance into his new life, Clough was thrown into the very vortex of discussion." Mr Ward was Northcote's tutor, but the vortex of discussion did not drag him down. Clough harassed himself and wasted his powers and the flying terms on

questions which time, pulveris exigui jactu, has fairly well. settled or stifled. Northcote read and rowed in the College eight, and lived chiefly with the Eton men. One cannot conceive him writing, like Clough, "I believe the Balliol set is truly wise." But he had his own theological difficulties of a very peculiar kind, not solved by the truly wise men of Balliol.

Seven or eight years before this date, the celebrated Mr Irving had come upon the stage of London as a popular preacher, and more or less as an unpopular prophet. A man of intense devotion and poetic temperament, Mr Edward Irving had been attracted in Scotland by certain psychological phenomena connected with religious excitement. This is not the place to discuss the young lady who "spoke with tongues" unintelligible to mankind. These, she declared, with some humour, were the vernacular of the Pellew Islands, a statement which it was not easy to disprove at a moment's notice. The adventurous maid was the beginner of that talking "with tongues" in Mr Irving's congregation, which became so notorious. The preacher himself, with his adherents, lived in a kind of new dispensation, in which miraculous gifts were being granted to the faithful, and which might herald some fresh revealing of the councils of Heaven, perhaps the Second Advent. Of Mr Irving himself, Sir Walter Scott has left a sketch which I cannot resist the temptation to quote:

I met to-day the celebrated divine and soi-disant prophet, Irving. He is a fine-looking man (bating a diabolical squint), with talent on his brow and madness in his eye. His dress, and the arrangement of his hair, indicated that. I could hardly keep my eyes off him while we were at table. He put me in mind of the devil disguised as an angel of light, so ill did that horrible obliquity of vision harmonise with the dark tranquil features of his face, resembling that of our Saviour in Italian pictures, with the hair carefully arranged in the same manner. There was much real or affected simplicity in the manner in which he spoke. He rather made play, spoke much, and seemed to be good-humoured. But he spoke with that kind of unction

1837.]

RELIGIOUS OPINIONS.

21

which is nearly allied to cajolerie. He boasted much of the tens of thousands that attended his ministry at the town of Annan, his native place, till he wellnigh provoked me to say he was a distinguished exception to the rule that a prophet was not esteemed in his own country. But time and place were not fitting.1

Mr Irving died on December 6, 1834. But the doctrines of his followers, to which he lent eloquent expression, survived him, and still survive. The Newman Street congregation was the centre of believers in the probability that some strange thing was beginning within the Church. Mrs Northcote inclined very warmly to these ideas: her letters to her son are full of reference to the near and happy future-to the trials of the Church within the Church, as it were-to deacons, angels, and apostles.

Mrs Northcote's tendency towards the opinions of the Church in Newman Street was not shared by her husband. Stafford Northcote was thus in a difficult and somewhat distressing position, in which he conducted himself with much tact and propriety.

On July 18, 1837, he writes thus to his father, on the matter of their theological differences :

I will fairly state to you my opinions on the main subject of your letter, which are-that for the last few months I have felt a conviction of the truth of all that I have heard, so far as that had given me opportunities of knowing the doctrines held by Mr Bridgeman, and others of the same persuasion; but, of course, my knowledge is to a great extent limited, nor could I in any way, were it my business, undertake to answer the objections which might be urged against it. I should be sorry to venture to put my opinion against those of others, and especially of such as are better qualified by knowledge or experience to form a judgment than I can be; but I do not, on the other hand, wish to allow myself to be swayed by men, when I can find a more unerring guide in the Word of God, which I certainly believe to be in accordance with all that I have heard of the doctrines in question. I do not conceive these to be of such a character as in any way to call upon me to desert, or to think less highly than I do, of the form of worship adopted by the Church of

1 Lockhart, ix. 329.

England, neither do I believe that any separation from that Church is advised or recognised by such men as I allude to; but I am not prepared to speak fully on the subject. Be assured at all events, my dear father, that I should never think of taking any steps in the matter without your full concurrence and approbation, further than retaining the belief which I now hold.

And now, having said my say, it remains only that I thank you for the very kind spirit of your letter, and I am sure that we shall not long be left at variance, but be indeed guided into the right path, if we seek it.

In February he wrote to his father on the subject, a subject all the more delicate, as Mrs Northcote's health had given way, and the illness, from which she never recovered, had declared itself. It is indeed curious to note how often the Oxford years of undergraduates are harassed by anxieties about religion, and by domestic

sorrows.

BALLIOL, Feb. 24, 1838.

MY DEAREST FATHER,-I am indeed sorry to hear of mamma's illness; but I do trust, and am sure that it is for good and not for evil, and that she is now recovering from the effects of it. Pray give my best love to her, and assure her that I have not failed to join my prayers to yours in her behalf. Pray write soon to let me know how she is, as one is always most anxious at a distance.

To come to the second part of your letter. I am glad to have an opportunity of expressing some of my views, which you certainly ought to know, though I could not, of course, put them forward unasked. Remember, however, that I have had but little and indirect communication with the Newman Street Church or others of the same persuasion, and cannot therefore be expected to give anything like a statement of their views on the subject. You ask me first what I disapprove of in our National Church as a body. If by that you mean our Church as viewed in her Articles, I agree with you that she is the purest in existence, and there is not one of those Articles (except that of the headship of the king) which a member of the Church in which I believe should object to sign. Not that the Church of England has been hitherto wrong in holding that Article; but if Christ (according to their belief) has more immediately manifested Himself in the Church of late, He is, of course-and as