ooting up on every side, whilst all that I see against it
is weak and grovelling.' (Letter to C. J. Vaughan, 1838.)

'I expect,' he writes a year later, 'that the whole thing will have
the effect of making me either a great Newmanite or a great Radical';
and it did end in making him an advanced Liberal. His practical
genius, and his free converse with general society (from which Manning
deliberately turned away as fatal to ecclesiasticism), very soon
parted him from the theologians.

'I think it is true,' he writes to Jowett (1849), 'that we have not
the same mental interest in talking over subjects of theology that
we had formerly. They have lost their novelty, I suppose; we know
better where we are, having rolled to the bottom together, and
being now able only to make a few uphill steps. I acknowledge fully
my own want of freshness; my mind seems at times quite dried up....
And at times I have felt an unsatisfied desire after a better and
higher sort of life, which makes me impatient of the details of
theology.'

In these, and perhaps one or two other passages, we can trace the
development of character and convictions in the man to whom Jowett
wrote, thirty years afterwards, that he was 'the most distinguished
clergyman in the Church of England, who could do more than any one
towards the great work of placing religion on a rational basis.'[9]

But, on the whole, the quality of these letters is by no means equal
to their quantity; and too many of them belong to a class which,
though it may have some ephemeral interest among friends and kinsfolk,
can retain, we submit, no permanent value at all. It is best described
under a title common in French literature--_impressions de voyage_. A
very large part of the volume consists of letters written by Stanley,
an intelligent and indefatigable tourist, from the countries and
cities which he visited, from Petersburg and Palestine, from Paris and
Athens, from Spain and Scotland. The standpoint from which he surveys
the Holy Land is rather historical and archaeological than devotional;
but he had everywhere a clear eye for the picturesque in manners and
scenery. He had excellent opportunities of seeing the places and the
people; his descriptive powers are considerable; and there is a finely
drawn picture of All Souls' Day in the Sistine Chapel, written from
Rome to Hugh Pearson, although a ludicrous incident comes in at the
end