stately and dignified presence, a fearless | the time, determining to wait till his wife and even reckless courage, rare presence came up to town, that we might witness of mind and patient determination, a power- how each loving soul would strive to win ful and subtle intellect, a proud sense of the other. Certainly, they were a favoured the demands of what he considered to be pair. Both gave themselves wholly to honour, a quiet and unselfish enthusiasm, God's service, and the husband afterwards but a keen relish of success, which really in- sacrificed all his property, his liberty, nay, volved unconscious self-satisfaction, though even his life, for God's Church, as I shall it was not inconsistent with a general self- relate hereafter. For that was this Sir depreciatory humility, what might he not Everard Digby, knight, of whom later on have done for England, and for the ad- I should have had to say so many things, vance of every right principle, had his lot if so much had not been already written been thrown among better associations and published about him and his companthan those of the school of Ignatius ions. But never in any of these writings Loyola! When we read his unaffected has justice been done to the sincerity of and evidently unexaggerated account of his intentions, nor the circumstances prophis constancy and self-devotion under the erly set forth which would put his conduct most trying anxieties of mind and bodily in its true light." Such is Father Gesufferings, of the strong faith in his cause, rard's allusion to the part played by Sir and heroic endurance with which he sus- Everard as a Gunpowder conspirator, and tained tortures prolonged for hours, and such was the catastrophe, moral and marenewed with pitiless cruelty, and of the terial, to which the conversion of this unbroken spirit and adroit and daring "favoured pair" was the prelude. How manner in which he planned and carried far the great spiritual influence and guidout his escape from the Tower of London, ance which from that time forward Gerard we should lose every other feeling in one exercised over the weak mind of the young of admiration of the man, if this senti- knight is compatible with a belief in his ment were not modified by little attendant own entire ignorance of the Plot, is a circumstances in which the cloven foot of question of probabilities which every one the System to which his moral nature was must decide for himself. It was asserted sacrificed, peeps through. But when we that the conspirators received the comturn to what he would consider as equally munion at his house, and at his hands; glorious records - the account which he but both Digby and Faulkes acquit him gives with so much satisfaction of his mis- of any complicity with the Plot; and he sionary labours in the heart of English himself asserts that the communion was family life we may still admire the dexter- not administered by himself, but by a ity of the plotter and diplomatist, but we priest who was staying in the house, and can feel little but disapprobation of the without his cognizance. After his escape methods employed, and displeasure in from England, a report gained general cirthe results so triumphantly chronicled. culation and credence abroad among RoAmong the converts thus brought into man Catholics, on the authority of a priest, the Roman Catholic fold were young Sir that Gerard had boasted to him of his preEverard Digby and his wife, into whose vious knowledge and complicity in the household Gerard was introduced in lay Plot, and Gerard took great pains to disguise by a co-religionist," Master Roger deny the statement in repeated letters to Lee," afterwards Father Lee. The wife high dignitaries of his Church. Gerard's was first separately brought over, and own solemn denial of his knowledge of the then the husband equally separately on Plot would go for much from such a man, the occasion of a severe illness. The his- if unfortunately he did not avowedly act tory of his conversion is thus introduced: on a theory of the nature of truth and -"Now it so happened that he had fallen falsehood which is ingenious enough, as it sick in London, and his wife on hearing it appears to us, to render worthless any dedetermined to go and nurse him. We, nial, however seemingly positive and exhowever [himself and Lee] went up before plicit. Mr. Morris has given his own verher, and travelling more expeditiously, had sion of the real Jesuit doctrine of equivocatime to deal with him before she came.' tion, and of the difference in the meaning Then follows the account of his conver- of the word as employed then and now; sion. After his reconciliation, he began but Gerard himself gives us its rationale on his part to be anxious about his wife, more fully and clearly in his account of and wished to consult with us how best to his examination by the Attorney-General bring her to the Catholic religion. We in Elizabeth's reign, and we will give his both smiled at this, but said nothing at own words: interrupted me, saying, 'Christ really did not 66 "The Attorney-General inveighed much against this, and tried to make out that this was to foster lying, and so destroy all reliable communications between men, and, therefore, all bonds of society. I, on the other hand, maintained that this was not falsehood, nor supposed as intention of deceiving, which is necessary to constitute a lie, but merely a keeping back of the truth, and that where one is not bound to declare it; consequently there is no deception, because nothing is refused which the other has a right to claim. I showed, moreover, that our doctrine did no way involve a destruction of the bonds of society, because the use of equivocation is never allowed in making contracts, since all are bound to give their neighbour his due, and in making of contracts truth is due to the party contracting. It should be remembered also, I said, that it is not allowed to use equivo- This illustration from Scripture appears to cation in ordinary conversation, to the detri- us to cover a much more serious system ment of plain truth and Christian simplicity, of deceit than that which Mr. Morris is inmuch less in matters properly falling under clined to admit, and the latitude given to the cognizance of civil authority [the original individual judgment in the more ignorant, MS. has "in subornata gubernatione Reipub- and to non-natural constructions in more lica." Mr. Morris conjectures this to be a mis-subtle and informed minds by the canon take for subordinata, and gives the above con- itself, as set forth by Gerard, especially in jectural rendering], since it is not lawful to his extraordinary interpretation of the word deny even a capital crime, if the accused is questioned juridically. He asked me, therefore, juridical," seems to us to prove sufficiently what I considered juridical questioning. I anhow dangerous a doctrine this was, even if swered that the questioners must be really not pushed beyond its theoretical limits. superiors or judges in the matter under exami- Mr. Morris lays considerable stress on the nation; then the matter itself must be some crime warning which Gerard and others (accordhurtful to the common weal, in order that it may ing to their own account) added to their come under their jurisdiction; for sins merely denials of real facts, that they should say internal were reserved for God's judgment. the same even if the alleged facts were Again, there must be some trustworthy testi- true, and appeals to Sir Walter Scott's mony brought against the accused; thus it is the practice in concealing the authorship of custom in England that all who are put on their the Waverley Novels. But, waiving the trial, when first asked by the judge if they are guilty or not, answer, Not Guilty,' before any that writer's theory of Truth as expressed question of Scott's practice, and preferring witness is brought against them, and any ver- in his Jeanie Deanes and elsewhere, it dict found by the jury, and though they answer seems clear from Gerard's own account the same way, whether really guilty or not, yet no one accuses them of lying. Therefore I laid that he did not always give this warning, down this general principle, that no one is allowed to use equivocation except in the case when something is asked him, either actually or virtually, which the questioner has no right to ask, and the declaration of which will turn to his own hurt, if he answers according to the intention of the questioner. I showed that this had been our Lord's practice; I showed him that it was the practice of all prudent men, and would certainly be followed by my interrogators themselves, in case they were asked about some secret sin, for example, or were asked by robbers where their money was hid. They asked me, therefore, when our Lord ever made use of equivocation, to which I replied, When he told his Apostles that no one knew the Day of Judgment, not even the Son of Man; and again, when he said that he was not going up to the festival at Jerusalem, and yet he went; yea, and he knew that he should go, when he said he would not.' Wade here in the case of his denial in the Tower of all knowledge of Francis Page (pp. cix. -xi) there is nothing but the simple lie repeated again and again and in Page's presence, in order, as he says, to put him on his guard against being deluded into admitting their acquaintance by the assertion that Gerard himself had confessed it. And if this "equivocation' was only a strictly defensive evasion of an admission, without any intention to deceive, it is not easy to see what was its practical advantage over a simple refusal to answer at all. No one in either case would be deluded into the belief that the man under question was making an unnecessary martyr of himself, by not speaking out decidedly when he had nothing to conceal. But the whole atmosphere which we seem to breathe when we plunge into all this subtle casuistry about the limits of truth and the survivor. For the truth must be told, falsehood is a tainted one, and we cannot Patteson was not during his undergradescape the conviction that the moral char-uate career the man that he afterwards acter of the men who were continually grew to be. Though always of high and reconciling their minds to such practices, blameless character, he was at that period and finding plausible grounds for depart- colourless and almost common-place. At ing from the simplicity of Truth, must any rate, he was not in sympathy with the have been insensibly and unconsciously spirit of his College, that spirit which lowered and perverted. At any rate, no made Balliol the most delightful society, one can be surprised that such a practice the very focus of the most stimulating should expose their conduct to the worst life of the University. The man who in construction, and that they should bring later years developed such a remarkable down on their Society suspicions of com- linguistic and philological faculty, the man plicity in many acts from which a more who afterwards took such a keen interest straightforward course would have saved in the theological and political problems of them. As to the complicity of the Jesuit the day, at Oxford never took to the studies Fathers in the Gunpowder Plot, we quite of the place, was a reluctant and half-interagree with the modified judgment passed ested sojourner, was ever looking back to by our last and best historian of the the playing-fields of Eton, or forward to the period, Mr. Gardiner, that a modern jury more congenial sphere of a country parish. would at once acquit them legally, but And thus his influence upon his contemthat there are strong moral presumptions poraries at Oxford bore no relation to the against some of them. We have been able to give within our necessary limits but a very imperfect and faint idea of the interest and value of the volume before us, though we have perhaps said enough to send our readers to the work itself for a more particular knowledge of its contents; but we cannot conclude without thanking Mr. Morris for his intelligent and unobtrusive editorship, or without speaking highly of the moderate and candid tone of his remarks. BISHOP PATTESON.- IN MEMORIAM. TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR." "If the poor savage that struck him down had known who and what he was, we believe he would rather have knelt to him, than have slain him."Daily News. SIR, It may perhaps be permitted to an intimate and deeply attached friend of the late Bishop Patteson to record a few impressions of him as he appeared at Oxford to a Liberal and a Broad-Church man. The first acquaintance of the writer with the Bishop was made at Lord's Cricket-ground, where they played against each other in the Public School's matches, the one as Captain of the Eton, the other as Captain of the Harrow Eleven. Afterwards (though the Bishop was the senior) they were undergraduates together at Balliol College, and subsequently brother Fellows of Merton. There began an intimacy the memory of which will remain one of the most cherished recollections of character of the man whom we afterwards learned to know, and knowing, to venerate and love. At college he was essentially a publicschool man. He had the gifts and qualities which in combination make a boy popular at school, and popular and respected at college. Amongst his Eton friends he always went by the name of "Coley" (Coleridge) Patteson, an infallible test of a man's popularity. He was an excellent cricketer, and at Oxford showed equal skill at tennis. In fact, whatever he did he did well. He showed this faculty in cricket and games. He showed it also in the address with which he afterwards mastered the numerous dialects of the Melanesian Islanders. Let those who minister to the prevailing fetish of Athleticism be content to learn a moral from the example of this admirable cricketer, this adroit tennis-player, this popular captain of the Eton Eleven. With him play was never suffered to usurp the place of work. As a boy, he played as a boy with all his might; but when he became a man, he put away boyish things, or rather, "the boy was father to the man." The expert Eton swimmer uses his gift for carrying the Gospel to the heathen. The captain of the School Eleven becomes the navigator and commander of the mission schooner. During the five years which intervened between his taking his degree (he got a second-class in the school of Litera Humaniores) and his ordination "he read largely, but he found time also for travelling, and took great delight in the picturegalleries of Italy and Germany. But he was not a mere pleasure tourist. At Dres- one of respect for authority, of deference den, for example, where he made a con- towards those who were his superiors in siderable stay, he applied himself to the age. He knew how to differ. He study of Hebrew and German." Well showed towards others the considermay another Balliol_friend, Mr. Edwin ate courtesy which others in return so Palmer, whose words I am quoting, go on abundantly showed towards him. And to say, "it was a surprise to me in his this generous forbearance of the seniors later years at Oxford to find so diligent a had its reward. It entailed upon the junstudent of language in one who had shown iors a reciprocity of respect. It was felt so little sensibility to the attractions of by them at the time to be an additional classical philology, and even when the incentive to moderation, to sobriety, to first surprise was over, I was far from sus- desistance from extreme views. The repecting the remarkable aptitude for lin- sult was that the work got done; and what guistic studies which he afterwards dis- was done left no heartburnings behind it. played. In the year 1852-3 he again resided at Oxford as Probationer-Fellow of Merton College. He had become quite another person. Self-cultivation had done much for him. Literature and art had opened his mind, and enlarged his interests and sympathies. The moral and spiritual forces of the man were now vivified, refined, and strengthened, by the awakening of his intellectual and æsthetic nature. Yet it would be delusive to pretend to claim Bishop Patteson as a Liberal in the political sense of the word. He was no such thing. If anything, his instincts, especially in Church matters, drew him the other way. But those who knew the man, like those who have seen the Ammergau Play, would as soon think of fastening upon that a sectarian character, as of fixing him with party names. His was a catholic mind. What distinguished him was his open-mindedness, his essential goodness, his singleness and simplicity of aim. He was a just man, and singularly free from perturbations of self, of temper, or of nerves. You did not care to ask what he would call himself. You felt what he was, that you were in the presence of a man too pure for party, of one in whose presence ordinary party distinctions almost ceased to have a meaning. Such a man could scarcely be on the wrong side. Both the purity of his nature and the rectitude of his judgment would have kept him straight. His early years as Fellow of Merton coincided with the period of active reform at Oxford which followed upon the Report of the Commission in 1852. What part did the future missionary bishop take in that great movement? One who worked with him at that time a time when University reform was as unfashionable as it is now fashionable well remembers. He threw himself into the work with hearty zeal; he suggested every liberal proposal. To his loyal fidelity and solid commonsense is mainly due the success with which the reform of Merton was carried out. And yet in these first days of College re- Bishop Patteson was a plain man. He form the only sure and constant nucleus would not have liked to have had fine of the floating Liberal majority consisted things said or written about himself or his of the Bishop and one other. Whatever work. His life in the Melanesian Archipelothers did, those two were always on the ago, which is poetry and romance to us, was same side. And so, somehow, owing, no prose to him, but prose, nevertheless, doubt, to the general enlightenment which that was written in the grand characters distinguished the senior Fellows of Mer- of simple duty. What that life was can ton under the old régime an enlighten- scarcely be reproduced, "in journeyings ment unquestionably due to the predomi- often, in perils of waters, in perils by his nance in that college of the lay non-resi- own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, dent element the new reforming spirit in perils in the sea, in weariness and painfound itself in the ascendancy. It is to fulness, in watchings often besides those the honour of Patteson, and equally to things that were without that which the honour of the older Fellows of the col- cometh upon him daily, the care of all the lege at that time, that so great an inroad churches." We may indeed picture to upon old traditions should have been made ourselves the annual cruise among the with such an entire absence of provoca- South Pacific Islands, the apostolic Bishop tion on the one side, or of imitation on the himself navigating the Southern Crossother. But Patteson, with all his reform- his palace his yacht-wading over the ing zeal, was also a high-bred gentleman. reef, or swimming across the surf outside He remembered what was due to others the coral strand; getting ashore in wildas well as to himself. His bearing was ish places, climbing up rocks and water 66 courses." Or again, we may take note whom I might learn the language, &c., after of his marvellous facility in acquiring, our wont. In 1863 I could not get to the for practical and for scientific purposes, island, the winds being contrary. We were the manifold Melanesian tongues; in six in ali. Rowing and sailing along the const, the midst of much other business tryI reached two large villages, where I went ing to put together skeleton grammars of ashore and spent some time with the people, some of these dialects, about four or five- great crowds of naked armed men at each. At last about noon, I reached a very large village and-twenty, I suppose [of which] thirteen near the south-west point of the island. I had are done; or, as has been written of him, been there in 1862. After some deliberation I "hunting down a word-a prefix, or an got on to the reef, uncovered, as it was low affix, it may be-up Polynesia, down Mewater. The boat was pulled off to a distance, lanesia, till it comes to earth in Malay." and I waded across the reef, 200 yards or so, to All these things we may note, and we the village. In the boat they counted upwards shall not fail to recognize in the seaman- of 400 men all armed (wild cannibal fellows ship of the Southern Cross, in the mas- they are) crowding about me. But, you know, tery over the barbarous tongues, the linea- I am used to that, and it seems natural. I ments of the old Eton skill in games, of went into a large house and sat down. I know the later Oxford devotion to language only a few words of their language. After a and philology. Bnt for a life-like portrait the people thronging round me. time I again waded back to the edge of the reef, of that devoted life, "going about doing backed in to meet me: it is a light four-oared The boat was good," we must have recourse to the whale-boat: I made a stroke or two and got into Bishop's own description in the following the boat. Then I saw that the men swimming extract from a letter addressed by him to about had fast hold of the boat, and it was evithe writer in the year 1861. And per-dent by the expression of their faces that they haps, when it has been read, whilst in our mind's eye we gaze upon the tenantless canoe drifting with the body of that good man, wrapped in the native mat, palmcovered, towards its last home in the Pacific deep, some will be inclined to borrow his own words, and to say, "Ah! Bishop, you will do more for our conversion by your death, than ever we shall by our lives." I am, Sir, &c., Gledstone, January, 8, 1872. C. S. R. meant to hold it back. How we managed to detach their hands I can hardly tell you. They began shooting at once, being very close. Three canoes chased us as we began to get away on the boat, - men standing up and shooting. The long arrows were whizzing on every side, as you may suppose. Pearce was knocked over at once, Fisher shot right through the left wrist, thought that there was a chance of getting Edwin in the right cheek. No one, I suppose, away. They all laboured nobly. Neither Edwin nor Fisher ever dropped their oars nor ceased pulling, dear noble lads! and they were "I have had a heavy trial since I wrote last as good and pure as they were brave. Thank to you. Two very dear young friends of mine, God, a third Norfolk Islander, Hunt Christian, Norfolk Islanders, of twenty-one and eighteen and Joseph Atkin, an excellent lad of twenty, years old, dear to me as children of my own, the only son of a neighbouring settler near though too old to be children, too young, to be Auckland, were not touched. Not a word was brothers, have been taken from me. Fisher Young said, only my Pull port oars: pull on steadily.' (eighteen) died of lock-jaw on August 22, and Once dear Edwin, with the fragment of the Edwin Nobbs (twenty-one) on September 5, in arrow sticking in his cheek, and the blood consequence of arrow wounds received on Au- streaming down, called out (thinking even more gust 15 at Santa Cruz Island. Edmund Pearce of me than himself), Look out, sir, close to (twenty-three), an Englishman, was also struck; you!' But indeed it was on all sides they were the arrow glanced off the breast-bone, and close to us. In about twenty minutes we were formed a wound running under the right pec- on board the schooner. I need not tell you toral muscle. I measured it after I had ex- about the attempts I had to make at the surgical tracted it, five inches and three-eights of an part of it all. With difficulty I got the arrows inch were inside him. He is, thank God, quite out of Pearce's chest and Fisher's wrist. Edrecovered. Santa Cruz is a fine and very popu-win's was not a deep wound. But the therlous island. The people are large, tall, and mus- mometer was ranging from 88° to 91°, and I cular. It is no doubt a very wild place, know that the Norfolk Islanders (Pitcairners), books of hints to navigators will tell you the like most tropical people are very subject to lockwildest of the Pacific, but such books contain jaw. Oh! my dear friend, on the fourth day that endless myths. In 1862 I landed at seven dif-dear lad Fisher said to me, I can't think what ferent villages on the north (lee) coast, amidst makes my jaw so stiff.' Then I knew that all great crowds, wading or swimming ashore in hope was gone of his being spared. God had the usual manner. They treated me well, and been very merciful to me. The very truthfulI was hopeful of getting some two or three lads ness and purity and gentleness and self-denial to come away with me on a second visit, from and real simple devotion that they ever mani ་ |