uestionable features of Methodism and Calvinism, denounced with fierce
intolerance everything that deviated from its formulas and watchwords.
And as his loyalty to the Church of England was profound and intense,
all who had shared her fortunes, good or bad, or who professed to serve
her, had a place in his affections; and any policy which threatened to
injure or oppress her, and any principles which were hostile to her
influence and teaching, roused his indignation and resistance. He was a
strong Tory, and by conviction and religious temper a thorough High
Churchman.

But there was nothing in him to foreshadow the leader in a bold and
wide-reaching movement. He was absolutely without ambition. He hated
show and mistrusted excitement. The thought of preferment was steadily
put aside both from temper and definite principle. He had no popular
aptitudes, and was very suspicious of them. He had no care for the
possession of influence; he had deliberately chosen the _fallentis
semita vitae,_ and to be what his father had been, a faithful and
contented country parson, was all that he desired. But idleness was not
in his nature. Born a poet, steeped in all that is noblest and tenderest
and most beautiful in Greek and Roman literature, with the keenest
sympathy with that new school of poetry which, with Wordsworth as its
representative, was searching out the deeper relations between nature
and the human soul, he found in poetical composition a vent and relief
for feelings stirred by the marvels of glory and of awfulness, and by
the sorrows and blessings, amid which human life is passed. But his
poetry was for a long time only for himself and his intimate friends;
his indulgence in poetical composition was partly playful, and it was
not till after much hesitation on his own part and also on theirs, and
with a contemptuous undervaluing of his work, which continued to the end
of his life, that the anonymous little book of poems was published which
has since become familiar wherever English is read, as the _Christian
year_. His serious interests were public ones. Though living in the
shade, he followed with anxiety and increasing disquiet the changes
which went on so rapidly and so formidably, during the end of the first
quarter of this century, in opinion and in the possession of political
power. It became more and more plain that great changes were at hand,
though not so plain what they would be. It seemed likely that power
would