-strung-virtues; it
was contented, for the most part, with the domestic type of excellence,
in which goodness merged itself in the interests and business of the
common world, and, working in them, took no care to disengage itself or
mark itself off, as something distinct from them and above them. Above
all, Anglicanism was too limited; it was local, insular, national; its
theory was made for its special circumstances; and he describes in a
remarkable passage how, in contrast with this, there rung in his ears
continually the proud self-assertion of the other side, _Securus
judicat orbis terrarum_. What he wanted, what it was the aim of his
life to find, was a great and effective engine against Liberalism; for
years he tried, with eager but failing hope, to find it in the theology
and working of the English Church; when he made up his mind that
Anglicanism was not strong enough for the task, he left it for a system
which had one strong power; which claimed to be able to shut up
dangerous thought.

Very sorrowful, indeed, is the history, told so openly, so simply, so
touchingly, of the once promising advance, of the great breakdown. And
yet, to those who still cling to what he left, regret is not the only
feeling. For he has the nobleness and the generosity to say what he
_did_ find in the English Church, as well as what he did not find. He
has given her up for good, but he tells and he shows, with no grudging
frankness, what are the fruits of her discipline. "So I went on for
years, up to 1841. It was, in a human point of view, the happiest time
of my life.... I did not suppose that such sunshine would last, though I
knew not what would be its termination. It was the time of plenty, and
during its seven years I tried to lay up as much as I could for the
dearth which was to follow it." He explains and defends what to us seem
the fatal marks against Rome; but he lets us see with what force, and
for how long, they kept alive his own resistance to an attraction which
to him was so overwhelming. And he is at no pains to conceal--it seems
even to console him to show--what a pang and wrench it cost him to
break from that home under whose shadow his spiritual growth had
increased. He has condemned us unreservedly; but there must, at any
rate, be some wonderful power and charm about that which he loved with
a love which is not yet extinguished; else how could he write of the
past as he does? He has shown that he can understand, th