e dead
and buried; but he has the good sense and good taste to revive it
again and again. This is one of the places which he has chosen for
it. Let him then, just for a change, substitute Sir David Brewster
for me in his sentence; Sir David has quite as much right to the
compliment as I have, as far as this Life of St. Augustine is
concerned. Then he will be saying, that, because Sir David teaches
that the belief in more worlds than one is a pious opinion, and not a
demonstrated fact, he "does not care for truth for its own sake, or
teach men to regard it as a virtue," p. 21. Blot _twenty-one_.

However, he goes on to give in this same page one other evidence of
my disregard of truth. The author of St. Augustine's Life also asks
the following question: "_On what evidence_ do we put faith in the
existence of St. George, the patron of England? Upon such, assuredly,
as an acute _critic or skillful pleader_ might easily scatter to the
winds; the belief of prejudiced or credulous witnesses, the unwritten
record of empty pageants and bauble decorations. On the side of
scepticism might be exhibited a powerful array of suspicious legends
and exploded acts. Yet, _after all, what Catholic is there but would
count it a profaneness to question the existence of St. George?_" On
which my assailant observes, "When I found Dr. Newman allowing his
disciples ... in page after page, in Life after Life, to talk
nonsense of this kind which is not only sheer Popery, _but saps the
very foundation of historic truth_, was it so wonderful that I
conceived him to have taught and thought like them?" p. 22, that is,
to have taught lying.

Well and good; here again take a parallel; not St. George, but
Lycurgus.

Mr. Grote says: "Plutarch begins his biography of Lycurgus with the
following ominous words: 'Concerning the lawgiver Lycurgus, we can
assert _absolutely nothing_, which is not controverted. There are
different stories in respect to his birth, his travels, his death,
and also his mode of proceeding, political as well as legislative:
least of all is the time in which he lived agreed on.' And this
exordium _is but too well borne out_ by the unsatisfactory nature of
the accounts which we read, not only in Plutarch himself, but in
those other authors, out of whom we are obliged to make up our idea
of the memorable Lycurgian system."--Greece, vol. ii. p 455. But
Bishop Thirlwall says, "Experience proves that _scarcely any amount
of variati