high Catholic party, past or present. | scholar, the divine, and the master of "Catholic schools there may be; but a every note and harmony in the English Catholic university there cannot be. Cath-language. It is natural to suppose also olic education may be excellent in respect that the brother of Sister Dora, at twentyof all the accomplishments, and may em five, was not insensible to the seductions brace many important branches of useful of the spiritual life. In any case, like knowledge. It cannot really embrace Chillingworth, Bayle and Gibbon before science and philosophy. They appear him, he yielded to the combination of logic before the public as teaching science and and sentiment which makes the strength philosophy; but it is a sham science and of Church principles. Every one has a mockery of philosophy. Propositions heard the story how he was only prevented in science and philosophy may be incul- by an accident from following his chief cated in their classes possibly true into the Catholic Church. Where is the propositions. But the learning of true wonder? Doubtless he had often read propositions, dogmatically delivered, is and weighed the words of the "Imitanot science. Science is the method of tion:" "Quiet that excessive desire for scientific investigation, which is one and knowledge, because it brings with it much the same in respect of all phenomena. distraction and delusion. There are many The Catholic authorities, therefore, de- things the knowledge of which is of little mand a separate university, not that they or no use to the soul, and he is extremely may conduct education in it, but that they foolish who turns his attention to such may stop education at a certain stage."* things, rather than to those which would Again, in his life of Casaubon, speaking be conducive to his salvation." Momen. of the Jesuits, he says: "Learned their tous words, if any such were ever written, works are entitled to be called by cour- which have probably turned away millions tesy, for they have all the attributes of from the pursuit of knowledge to the purlearning but one-one, to want which, suit of holiness. They point the difficulty leaves all learning but a tinkling cymbal and sum up the question which sooner or -and that is the love of truth. The later every healthy and vigorous mind Jesuit scholars introduced into philologi- asks itself in one form or another: "What cal research the temper of unveracity shall I do to be saved? Should heaven which had been from of old the literary be my hope and aim, or such earthly habit of their Church. An interested mo- knowledge as may make this world a bettive lurks beneath each word; the motive ter and kindlier dwelling-place for me and of Church patriotism. Jesuit learning is my fellow-creatures?" On that Monday, sham learning, got up with great ingenuity February 23rd, 1846, when Newman left in imitation of the genuine in the service Oxford "for good," and Pattison with of the Church " (p. 521). Similar passages others came to see the last of him, we may abound in his writings, showing how suppose these questions pressed with a warm his feeling was on this subject. painful urgency for an answer. He stood at the parting of the ways. The omnibus which neglected to call, the cab hastily summoned which reached the station after the train had gone, the rainy night which followed and induced him to dine in hall and postpone his journey, the unavoidable delays which succeeded may have kept him lingering at the bifurcation just long enough to renew doubts and hesitations which could hardly have been wholly wanting from the first. He was Newman's junior by thirteen years, and at this moment was only thirty-three years old, whereas his leader was forty-six. The intellectual current in Europe and England, outside Oxford, was set in very different directions from that which had prevailed fifteen or twenty years before, when the Tractarians had settled their first principles of inquiry, if they had not drawn all their conclusions from them. Cardinal Newman, in his " Apologia,"

It was so warm that one would like to trace its origin, if one could do so without indiscretion, or prematurely encroaching on the province of his future biographer.

Pattison, in his early Oxford days, was an adherent of the Tractarian movement, and a disciple of its great leader, J. H. Newman. It was surely wholly to his credit that he could not come within the range of the magic charm and spiritual attraction of the English Bossuet without succumbing to them. The Oxford movement itself, just about the time he went into residence, had acquired such volume and momentum that only those who were well ballasted with dulness and ignorance, found it easy to keep their feet. Pattison's vivid curiosity and openness of mind would especially expose him to the fascination of the incomparable preacher, the

Academical Organization, p. 301.

says, referring to the years 1825-26: "A to have been recently engaged, and his certain disdain for antiquity had been letters which still exist, may be expected growing on me for several years. It to throw light on this interesting topic. showed itself in some flippant language This much is already clear, that when he against the fathers in the Encyclopædia once began to move away from Church Metropolitana, about whom I knew little principles he moved rapidly. His eviat the time except what I had learnt as a dence before the University Commission boy from Joseph Milner. In writing of showed that he had cast in his lot with the Scripture miracles I had read Mid-"things of the mind." In the next fifteen dleton on the Miracles of the Early years his most important, if not his most Church,' and had imbibed a portion of his engrossing work, was his sustained effort spirit. The truth is I was beginning to to bring about a thorough reform of the prefer intellectual excellence to moral; I higher education in Oxford; or rather to was drifting in the direction of literalism. create that education which could not I was rudely awakened from my dream at then be said to exist. Besides his evithe end of 1827 by two great blows-dence before the Commission, his article illness and bereavement." At that date on "Oxford Studies," in the first number a deeply religious mind could still hark of the Oxford Essays (1855), ultimately back with honor into the sanctuary of followed by his masterly work, "Suggesfaith, especially in England. Twenty tions on Academical Organization" (1868), years later such a retreat had become are a noble monument of his patient zeal vastly more difficult, perhaps not to be in the cause which he had most at heart. executed even by the great Tractarian The last-named must, I think, be consid himself if he had had Pattison's compara-ered by far his greatest work. Its title is tive youth.

Looked at from any point of view, it was a narrow escape. It would have been a heavy price to pay for moral excellence to have to swallow the miracles of the early Church without a qualm; and yet this is what Pattison had been very nearly binding himself to do. When the immediate danger was over, and he saw himself still safe in Lincoln, not "gone over to Rome," we can imagine he experienced a great revulsion of feelings. Rapidly grow ing knowledge, acquaintance with the results of German research on this very subject of the early Church, must have opened his eyes with no small amazement to the risks he had run. Coleridge used to speak of his having skirted the "howling deserts of infidelity" with a shudder. To such a mind as Pattison's, the recollection that he had nearly plunged into the howling deserts of superstition, must have been even more disturbing. The memory of the shock and its occasion was never effaced, and I trace to it that deep and fervent love of knowledge, as the one safeguard against errors and evils equally disastrous to individuals and nations, which never left him but with his last breath.

One would gladly follow the steps by which he passed through this momentous change, and trace the curve which led him half round the circle to a position diametrically opposite to that which he had previously occupied. At present the materials are wanting or inaccessible. The autobiography on which he is known

unattractive to the general reader, and its arrangement in many respects faulty. But it is in fact a profound essay on the philosophy of education and the advancement of learning. The thoroughness and grasp with which the intellectual side of the problem is discussed are even surpassed in value by the fervent love of all good knowledge which glows like a deep central fire in the heart of the writer and in his book. Tractates on education have been common enough from the time of Milton downwards; but they have been mostly concerned with the education of the individual, and the perennial bone of contention, whether it is better to teach classics or science. Pattison takes up the question in its loftiest and widest aspect, as one involving national well-being, and even something beyond that, the progress and evolution of the human mind. Unless provision is made for a constant supply of the highest culture of which the present state of knowledge admits, unless that knowledge in every department is ever being renovated and vivified by new additions won by unfettered inquiry and research in all directions, the national intellect must inevitably droop and wither like an underfed organism deprived of its proper nutriment. He disclaimed all wish for partial reforms of detail; his object was nothing less than "a change in the aims and objects of Oxford." "Let Oxford once more resume its higher functions, let it become the home of science and the representative of the best learning of the time." The degradation of the

grouped into their various faculties the best scholars and savants the country could produce, all working with generous emulation to increase the merit and renown of their chairs, lecturing to crowds of bright-eyed youths fired with an unselfish love of knowledge, not like our poor slaves at the "schools," fearful to look at any subject of real interest to them, lest they should damage their chances of "a first," but eager for culture for culture's sake, and well aware of its exceeding great reward. If England ever does obtain such a university, it will be in no small measure to Pattison that she will owe it.

As an author. Pattison has not made the impression which his great powers and unusual attainments might have been expected to produce. He had, indeed, within him so many impediments to large and successful authorship that the wonder is not that he wrote so little as that he wrote as much as he did. First of all he was a victim of curiosity, of his wide and sleepless interest in all manner of subjects about which he cared and read simply for themselves, without any after thought of working up his reading into a salable literary form. With a tithe of his acquisitions an expert young penman would have produced shelves of smooth,

university to the position of a mere class- | learning in which would be collected and school, solely occupied with teaching and testing by examination crammed pupils, lay like a burden on his mind. No one valued good teaching more than he; but he thought it preposterous that vast funds, noble endowments, and princely libraries should have no other object or destination than the driving at high pressure of a number of youths through the "schools," without a thought or an effort devoted to the cultivation and extension of knowledge by mature men. The difficulties in his path were immense. To say nothing of the dead weight of ignorance and conservatism constitutionally opposed to change, the very idea of what a university should be had faded from the popular mind. As he said, people cannot be expected to appreciate the value of an institution, an example of which they have never seen. The first thing, therefore, was to create the idea of an efficient university, to show how far we were from possessing one, and how great and wasteful was the loss of the means and resources at our disposal. And the loss was voluntary and self-inflicted. It was "artificial legislation " which crippled Oxford. As a faulty system of taxation and tariffs may ruin a country's natural growth in wealth, so the spontaneous increase of knowledge may be checked by unwise statutes and hampering regulations. With-readable volumes, and gained a reputation out any statutes at all Oxford would never have come to the pass she had. But that enviable freedom was impossible by reason of the endowments, the distribution of which must necessarily be regulated by fixed law. Any change involved a. new distribution of the fund, and that was to let out the waters of strife. If you want good teachers and learned men for professors, Pattison said, you must make learning a profession. The present system of tutor-fellows which makes teaching a mere transition to a college living, to the bar, or journalism, is hopeless; able men will not undertake it on such terms. The sordid creatures actually expect to be modestly paid for the hardest of all work, the pursuit of science. Here was an opportunity for obstruction. The British Philistine can endure a great deal, but the endowment of research, the paying of a number of comfortable gentlemen to sit and read, perhaps dose over their books, appears to him at once comic and immoral; he really cannot away with it. However, Pattison never lost heart, never ceased holding up his ideal of what a university should be, viz., a metropolis of

- on

in letters, as reputations now go. He had
none of the business author about him,
who has one eye for his subject, and the
other the wider open of the two
the market value of his wares in publish-
ers' offices. He valued knowledge too
highly to make a trade of it, even if paid
only in fame. In the next place he was
fastidious to a fault; his taste was supe-
rior to his power of production. He was
too severe a critic of his own writings.
Then, his scrupulous conscientiousness
was extreme, and he never felt sufficiently
prepared for a literary work. Nothing
could be more deplorable than that he
should have allowed himself to be pre-
vented from prosecuting his projected
work on Scaliger because Jacob Bernays
anticipated him by a small though excel-
lent opuscule. But the truth is, that bold
and vigorous as he was in speculation, he
was seriously wanting in nerve and audac-
ity in all practical matters. He could
plan and prepare on the largest scale, but
setting about the execution of a work was
often more than he could face. I remem-
ber the strange anxieties which troubled
him when he was meditating one of his

books, and his difficulty in deciding on | looked by connoisseurs. All lovers of
the proper style for a narrative. He told literature must wish that his works should
me he had come to the conclusion that be collected and published. One can only
the clear, unfigured style of Thiers was regret that he did not do it himself. But
the best model to adopt. At that time he one of his weaknesses was a difficulty in
was himself a literary veteran, and one believing that the world or anybody could
might have supposed long past such really care for him or his doings. He
doubts and difficulties. This want of self would pain old and tried friends by ex-
reliance was more painfully apparent in pressions of surprise at their attachment.
common action with other men. No one He could not be brought to believe how
who wished to keep intact his just rever- many loved and regarded him.
On one
ence for the rector should have consented occasion, when I was speaking of the mis-
to sit with him on a committee. He takes we are apt to commit in estimating
seemed abashed, not only by opposition, our importance in the world, he answered
but by the bare possibility of it. I have with his characteristic emphatic "Yes!
had the honor-I should, perhaps, rather Take your worst opinion of yourself when
say the misfortune, considering that the you are in most depressed mood. Extract
result was injurious to my regard for him the cube root of that and you will be get-
to sit with him on various committees, ting near the common opinion of your
and I never heard him make a suggestion, merits." In this he was most unjust to
positive or negative, of the slightest prac- himself. No one had a more prompt and
tical value, and others, with larger expe- generous admiration of what he considered
rience than mine, have told me the same good work: no one to the last was more
thing. It must be admitted that this was open to new personal impressions and to
a grave defect. Valuable as his influence recognize promise of youth. He was free
was in Oxford and elsewhere, it would of the grudging spirit, not uncommon in
have been increased tenfold had he pos- old age, which refuses to believe in the
sessed only ordinary determination and possibility of merit younger than itself.
resoluteness when in contact with others. "C'est un grand signe de médiocrité de
And yet with all these drawbacks he louer toujours modérément," says Vauve-
has produced valuable works which the nargues. Pattison did not fall under this
world would be unwise to neglect. This blight; it was a pleasure to him to ad-
is not an occasion to speak of them in mire, and to admire warmly.
detail. They all bear on the one theme And so the long-expected end has come
on which his whole heart was set the at last, after a painful and protracted
praise and commendation of learning. waiting for the final summons. One need!
No one need fear that in reading the not be in a particularly "wan and heart-
slightest thing of Pattison's he will waste less mood," to fall into a pensive vein of
his time. He never wrote because he had regret over the unequal law which disposes
to say something, but always because he of accumulated wealth and accumulated
had something to say. It is much to be knowledge. The industrious man who
wished that his numerous anonymous has collected his heap of gold can leave it
essays scattered through old reviews were to whom he will. The scholar cannot be-
collected and published in a uniform edi- queath his store to the most loved disci-
tion of his works. The bulk would not ple. The rector is dead, and all the gar
be large, some four volumes, say; but the nered store of a lifetime has vanished with
matter would be weighty and worthy of him. We are all the poorer by his loss.
many perusals. Pondere non numero is Many like myself can say, “Auget maesti-
a maxim especially applicable to all he tiam amici erepti," that his mind never
wrote. The masculine style, so full of seemed more luminous, his memory more
meaning that few have leisure to notice prompt, his insight more penetrating, than
its Spartan disdain of ornament, one sees in these latter days. On the 18th May I
would not be eloquent for worlds. But saw him for the last time. The massive
under its reserve and sobriety of diction a brow, the eagle eye, the fine but powerful
force is concealed and effects are produced nose, were hardly changed, though he was
which the masters of bravura rhetoric wasted to a shadow. Above all, that in-
may well envy. And the grave irony and comparable voice which seemed to repro-
chastened humor, never acrid or exces-duce the richer tones of the cello, was still
sive, but just adding a flavor, the squeeze there undecayed. It seemed that with a
of lemon at the right moment, which gives mind so bright he could not be meant for
that air of distinction and refinement to death. But so it was.
bis writings, will assuredly not be over-
VOL. XLVIII. 2463

LIVING AGE.

JAS. COTTER MORISON.

E

But as the omission of any of the num But at some remote period, the Bud-ber would have been esteemed sinful, and dhists of China and of Japan seem to have the calculation was apt to be inexact, some discovered that even this short act of wor- mechanical aid was desirable, and various ship was of unnecessary length, so they expedients were devised. Thus Palladius substituted the mere reiteration of the records of the abbot Paul, who made a Sanscrit name of the Buddha for whose point of repeating the Paternoster three