that he had "crossed swords with one who was too strong for him," yet he always felt that the general position which he had taken up against the policy of the Roman Catholic Church, remained unshaken. 1 And among those who watched the conflict there were many, including even some of his personal friends in the Roman Catholic Church, who felt he had right on his side, though they dared not say so openly in face of his powerful antagonist. Private letters, too, of generous sympathy from strangers came to cheer him from laymen-from clergymen even from working-men who having come in contact with the teaching of Roman Catholic priests, knew the truth of his statements. Last but not least, a pamphlet was published by the Rev. Frederick Meyrick, entitled "But is not Kingsley right, after all?" This pamphlet was never

answered.

1 It may be doubted whether any words of Mr. Kingsley's convey a more serious accusation against the Church of Rome, than Dr. Newman's own, when speaking of the professions of Rome he warns those who make advances to her, that "we shall find too late that we are in the arms of a pitiless and unnatural relative who will but triumph in the arts which have inveigled us within her reach . . . for in truth she is a church beside herself... crafty, obstinate, wilful, malicious, cruel, unnatural as madmen are — or rather she may be said to resemble a demoniac — possessed with principles, thoughts, and tendencies not her own; in outward form and in natural powers what God made her, but ruled by an inexorable spirit who is sovereign in his management over her, and most subtle and most successful in the use of her gifts. Thus she is her real self only in name, and till God vouchsafes to restore her, we must treat her as if she were that evil one who governs her." (Prophetical Office of the Church, p. 101.) These words Dr. Newman formally retracted in the advertisement to an "Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine," but when first published, they expressed his deliberate opinion, and as such were accepted without remonstrance by the High Church party.

To the South of France

187

For more than a year past Mr. Kingsley had been suffering from illness caused by overwork of brain, and a thorough rest and change of air had long been seriously urged upon him. At this moment, Mr. Froude, who was going to Spain on literary business, invited him to go with him, and he replies:

I

"DEAREST ANTHONY,This is too delightful. When you propose, what can I do but accept? . have always felt that one good sea voyage would add ten years to my life. All my friends say, go, but I must not be the least burden to you. Remember that I can amuse myself in any hedge, with plants and insects and a cigar, and that you may leave me anywhere, any long, certain that I shall be busy and happy. I cannot say how the thought of going has put fresh life into me."

TO HIS WIFE. · "PARIS: March 25.· -The splendor of this city is beyond all I could have conceived, and the beautiful neatness and completeness of everything delight my eyes. Verily these French are a civilized people. . . .'

BAYONNE, March 26. "A place utterly unlike anything I ever saw-very picturesque, with the yellow and brown jalousies to the windows, and the shipping at the bottom of the street, and the red-legged soldiers everywhere. I have seen so much since I wrote this morning, I hardly know where to begin. At Coutras, the other side of Bordeaux, I felt at once I was in a new world. Everything a month earlier than with us; the fruit trees in full flower; pink and crimson almond trees by dozens everywhere. The air strangely clear, the houses lowroofed, and covered with purple-ribbed tiles like the

old Roman. . . . Into Bordeaux we did not go, but only into the Landes — for which, fancy one hundred miles of Hartford Bridge Flat, with Pinus maritima instead of Scotch fir, and a tall delicate heath unknown to me, among the common heath. Little long-wooled sheep, cows you could put under your arm, boys on stilts tending them, with sheepskin coats (wool outside) and sheepskin pads for their 'poor feet,' else they would have to have them asked after, if there was anyone to ask, which there ain't the only birds magpies. But thrivingness and improvement everywhere; immense new plantations of the pinus, new clearings for cultivation, new smart cottages, beautiful new churches, railway stations laid out with shrubberies of foreign trees. What a go-a-head place France is! It gladdens my heart to look at it. Saw the first cork-trees about forty miles from Bayonne planted, barked all round about nine feet high for the cork. It don't hurt them, in fact they rather like it, and it gives the new wood room to expand. I saw many flowers on the banks I did not know, and maize-fields, with last year's stubble in them, and plenty of our dear English lady's smock' in the wet meadows near here, which looked very homey. Coming off the Landes between Morceux and Dax, saw a low ridge of clouds below the other clouds, which were the Pyrenees. I could soon distinguish the line of eternal snow-could see vast arrêtes and glaciers blazing in the sun one hundred miles off-gorges that faded into infinite cloud land; peaks just cut off by the lower banks of vapor. It was an awful sight for the first time. They were intensely clear in the rainy atmosphere, and clear all but the tops of a few of the highest. After Dax they faded, as we rounded their lower outworks, which run to the sea. I have just discovered a huge vulture chained to a tree in the courtyard in the rain, sulking, and poking and drip

...

ping. . . . They have the most exquisite little yellow oxen here, rather bigger than a donkey. They put brown holland pinafores on their backs, and great sheepskin mats on their heads, where the yoke comes, and persuade them as a great favor to do a little work. But they seem so fond of them that the oxen have much the best of the bargain. God bless you all with all Easter blessings.

BIARRITZ: April, 1864." A pleasant day at Biarritz. It was blowing great guns in from dead W.N.W. I never saw a finer sea, rushing through caverns and cracks in a strange sandstone full of nummulities and flat layers of flint. Flowers wonderful. Cliffs covered with white and red stocks, the same as our garden ones, and just as fine. I shall stop here for a week or so, to botanize and breathe sea-champagne. The Basques speak a lingo utterly different from all European languages, which has no analogue, and must have come from a different stock from our ancestors. The women are very pretty-brown aquiline, with low foreheads, and have a quaint fashion of doing up their back hair in a gaudy silk handkerchief, which is cunningly twisted till one great triangular tail stands out stiff behind the left ear. This is a great art. The old ones tie their whole heads up in the handkerchief and look very pretty but browner than apes from wearing no bonnets.

"It has rained to-day, again, marling-spikes and copper sheathing,' and the vulture (whom I have sketched much) has been dancing about trying to dry himself, and expanding great concave wings as big as windmill sails. He must be a glorious bird in his native Pyrenees. . . . The hills here are covered with the true Cornish heath, pale blue vernal squills, a great white Potentilla verna, and a long blue flower, which seems to me a borage or bugloss. I am drying all

I find.

The Spanish mountains are covered with snow, and look magnificent. The rocks are covered with Echinus lividus, a sea-urchin that bores in limestone ! We are going to chisel some out.

". . . A day as pleasant as one can be without you; sea and rocks wonderful. A new and most beautiful God bless you.

seaweed.

and curious zoöphite, ditto I wish I was home again. Yesterday we went to the bar of the Adour, and saw the place where Hope carried the Guards across and made a bridge of boats in the face of 15,000 French. When one sees such things, who dare sneer at old 'Peninsular officers?' Today I was looking through the glass at the Rhune mountain, which Soult entrenched from top to bottom, and Wellington stormed, yard by yard, with 20,000 men, before he could cross the Bidassoa; and to have taken that mountain seemed a deed of old giants. We drove through Landes yesterday, too, and saw the pine trees hacked for turpentine and a little pot hung to each, with clear turpentine running in, and in the tops of the young trees great social nests of the pitzocampo mothcaterpillar, of which I have got some silk, but dared not open the nest, for their hairs are deadly poison, as the old Romans knew. . . . Oh, the blessed, blessed feeling of having nothing to do! I start sometimes and turn round guiltily, with the thought, 'Surely I ought to be doing something-I have forgotten something,' and then to feel that there is nothing to do even if I wanted! It will make me quite well. . . ."

TO HIS YOUNGEST DAUGHTER BIARRITZ. "MY DARLING MARY, I am going to write you a long letter about all sorts of things. And first, this place is full of the prettiest children I ever saw, very like English, but with dark hair and eyes, and none