talking over his future lectures and get ting his younger companions to help him with drawings and plans for them. The Prince of Wales, then an Undergraduate, was frequently at the Canonry, and Stanley had many more visitors from the outside world at Oxford than at Canterbury--Germans, Americans, and the friends he had made during a tour in Russia.

In the early spring of 1862, in fulfil ment of a wish which had been expressed by the Prince Consort, Arthur Stanley was desired to accompany the Prince of Wales in his projected tour to the East. In looking forward to this journey he chiefly considered with joy how he might turn the travel to the best account for his royal companion, and how he might open for his service the stores of information which he had laid up during his former Eastern tour. But he combined the duties of cicerone with those of chaplain, and his sermons preached before the Prince of Wales at Tiberias, Nazareth, and other holy sites of sacred history, were afterward published in a small volume. "Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost, was his constant teaching in Palestine. "It is by thinking of what has been here, by making the most of things we see in order to bring before our minds the things we do not see, that a visit to the Holy Land becomes a really religious lesson." To Stanley's delight, one great event marked the royal tour in the East; the Mosque of Hebron, hitherto inexorably closed, was thrown open to the travellers.

It had not been without many sad and anxious misgivings that Stanley had consented to obey the desire, not command, of his Queen, in being a second time separated from his mother for so long a time and by so great a distance. He never saw her again, yet he was the only one of her children who received her farewell words, and embrace, and blessings. A few days after he was gone she became ill, and on the morning of the 5th of March, in painless unconsciousness, she died. It was as well, perhaps, that the dear absent brother was not there, that he had the interest of a constant duty to rouse him. He returned in June. Terrible indeed is the recollection of the piteous glance he cast

toward his mother's vacant corner, and mournfully, to those who were present, did the thought occur, what it would have been if she had been there then, especially then, with the thousand things there were to tell her.

Sad indeed were the months which followed, till, in the autumn of 1863, Arthur Stanley was appointed to the Deanery at Westminster, and soon afterward, sunshine again flowed in upon his life with his marriage, in Westminster Abbey, to Lady Augusta Bruce, fifth daughter of the seventh Earl of Elgin.

Of all that his marriage was to Dean Stanley, it is too soon to speak now-of the absolute completeness with which Lady Augusta filled the position of his wife, of mistress of the Deanery, of leader of every good work in Westminster. "By her supporting love he was comforted for his mother's death, and her character, though cast in another mould, remained to him, with that of his mother, the brightest and most sacred vision of earthly experience."

Congenial, as all Stanley's other homes, were the surroundings of the residence under the walls of the Abbey, decorated by much of the old oak furniture, inanimate friends, which had already travelled from Alderley to Norwich, Canterbury, and Oxford. Most delightful was the library at the Deanery, a long room surrounded by book-cases, with a great Gothic window at the end, and a curious picture of Queen Elizabeth let in above the fireplace. Here, all through the mornings, in which visitors, with very rare exceptions, were never admitted, the Dean stood at his desk, and scattered his papers as of old, while Lady Augusta employed herself at her writing-table close by. The second and third volume of his "Jewish Church," his "Address on the Three Irish Churches," his "Lectures on the Church of Scotland," his " Addresses' as Lord Rector of St. Andrew's, and many articles for the Quar terly, the Edinburgh, the Nineteenth Century, Good Words, and Macmillan's Magazine, flowed from his pen in this room; and lastly his" Christian Institutions,' which seem written chiefly to disabuse people of the fancy of Roman Catholic and High Church divines, that they can discover

in the Early Church their own theories concerning the papacy, the hierarchy, and the administration of the sacraments. It was a necessity to Stanley to be always writing something. He often, latterly, returned to the pursuit of his earliest days, and expressed himself in verse, much of which has appeared in this magazine.

More than ever did friends gather around Stanley during his life at the Deanery, as much as ever was he able to enjoy the pleasures of society, growing every year more full of anecdote, of animation, of interesting recollections. And the visitors whom the Dean and Lady Augusta delighted to receive comprised every class of society, from their royal mistress and her children to great bands of working men, whom it was an especial pleasure to Arthur Stanley to escort over the Abbey himself, picking out and explaining the monuments inost interesting to them. Every phase of opinion, every variety of religious belief, above all those who most widely differed from their host, were cordially welcomed in the hospitalities of the Deanery; and the circle which gathered in its drawingrooms, especially on Sunday evenings after the service in the Abbey, was singularly characteristic and unique. At the same time the spare rooms of the house were ceaselessly filled with a succession of guests, to meet whom the most appropriate parties were always invited, or who were urged by the Dean unrestrainedly to invite their own friends, especially the now aged aunt, his mother's sister, long the survivor, as he expressed it, "of a blessed brotherhood and sisterhood."

Greater, too, than the interest of all his other homes, was that which Stanley found in the Abbey of Westminster "the royal and national sanctuary which has for centuries enshrined the manifold glories of the kingdom"-of which he was now the natural guardian and caretaker. There are those who have smiled at the eagerness he occasionally displayed to obtain the burial of an illustrious person in the Abbey against all opposition. There are those who have been incapable of understanding his anxiety to guard and keep the Abbey as it had been delivered to him; wisely objecting even to give uniformity to a

rudely patched pavement, on account of the picturesqueness and the human interest attached to its variations of color and surface; delighting in the characteristics of his choir projecting into the nave, like the coro of a Spanish cathedral ; * carefully, even fiercely, repelling any attempt to show more deference to the existing monuments of one age than of another, each being a portion of history in itself, and each, when once placed there, having become a portion of the history of the Abbey, never to be displaced. The careful collecting and replacing of the fragments of the reredos of St. Michael's altar, the curious bringing together of tiny fragments. of lost screens and altars in the Chapter House, are marks of his tender care for the minutest details of the Abbey, which it was his great object to preserve, to enrich, but never under any false pretext of "restoration" or improvement, to change. How enraptured he was to discover the monogram of Izaak Walton scratched by the angler himself upon the tomb of Isaac Casaubon; how delighted to describe the funeral of Henry V., in which his three chargers were led up to the altar as mourners behind his waxen effigy; how enchanted to make any smallest discovery with regard to those to whom the more obscure monuments are erected; to trace out the whole history of "Jane Lister, dear childe," who is buried in the cloisters, and upon whom he preached in one of his sermons to children; how pleased to answer some one who cavilled at the space allotted to the monument of Mrs. Grace Gethin, with the quotations referring to her in Congreve and D'Israeli. One of his last thoughts connected with outside life was the erection of a monument to mark the "common pit" into which the

*It was painful to those who knew the Dean well to see a letter in the Times a few days after his death, urging that the destruction of the choir-the thing of all others he most deprecated-should be carried out as a memorial of him! Those who wish to know what he

really desired for his Abbey have only to read the preface to his Memorials of Westminster," expressing his anxious suggestion of a cloister for the reception of future monuments, inclosing the Jewel Tower, on the present site of Abingdon Street, to face the Palace of Westminster on one side, and the College Garden

on the other.

remains of the family and friends of the great Protector were thrown at the Restoration.

At Westminster Stanley preached more often than he had ever done before; but two classes of his sermons there will be especially remembered those on Innocents' Day to children, so particularly congenial to one whose character had always been so essentially that of the "pure in heart," and those on the deaths of illustrious Englishmen, often preached in the Abbey, even when those commemorated were not to repose there. "Charity, Liberality, Toleration," these became more than ever the watchwords of his teaching, of his efforts to inculcate the spirit that would treat all who follow Christ as brothers, by whatever path they might be approaching Him, and by whatever hedges they might be divided. His last utterance in the Abbey, on Saturday, July 9th, was on the text, 'Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." One of his course of sermons on the Beatitudes. In everything his precept was that of the aged St. John-" Little children, love one another."

The thought of the Abbey recalls the Jerusalem Chamber and the meetings within its walls of the Lower House of Convocation, in which the dean so frequently spoke, often perhaps in too vehement defence of a cause or a person he thought to be unjustly oppressed, often perhaps incurring the silent censure of many a remote country parsonage by the expression of his opinions, but ever with kindly feelings toward those from whom he differed the most, and who, when they knew him well, seldom failed to love and appreciate him. Through life the exemplification of Christian catholicity in his own person, Stanley could hardly help taking part with those who were attacked, whenever he saw that religious animosity was excited. "Charity suffereth long and is kind" was never absent from his thoughts, and led him to be ever the champion of the persecuted, of Tractarians in early life, as afterward of the writers in Essays and Reviews," and of Bishop Colenso.

Next to the immediate concerns of his

Abbey was Stanley occupied by the welfare of the poor around him, whom he tried without ceasing to raise, cheer, and enliven, sending many a mental sunbeam into a dismal home by the thought of his annual flower show and its prizes, and taking great personal interest in the neighboring hospital and its work. all his efforts for the people of Westminster, the dean was ably seconded by Lady Augusta. His desire to benefit the working classes was also shared by his elder sister Mary, who, in a direction quite independent of his own, was unceasingly employed in trying to find employment for the poor, to teach them provident habits, and to improve their homes. At one time she undertook the anxiety of a large contract to supply the army with shirts in order to give employment to a great number of poor women. Latterly her wonderful powers of organization always enabled her to deal with vast numbers, but it had taken long years of personal work among the people to acquire her experience, as well as the respect and confidence which contributed so much to the success of her schemes for their good. Of all these, the most important was the Penny Bank, opened once a week in a little court at the back of a house in York Street, Westminster, and managed personally by Miss Stanley for more than twentyfive years; having as many as 1000 depositors at a time. The undertaking was indescribably laborious, especially during the annual audit week in December, when every single account had to be compared with that in the ledger. In itself, this ledger was a study--the dates for the whole half year on one page (to save turning over), the blotting paper stitched in between each leaf (to save blotting), for in dealing with such large numbers every instant of time saved was of importance. No less remarkable was the simple but ingenious device by which the visits of her numerous clients were distributed equally over the three hours that she sat at the receipt of custom, so that each should be speedily served, and that there should be no undue crowding at one time. Mary Stanley would invite four or five ladies, before the people arrived, to come and tie up flowers for them in bunches. Many hundreds of nosegays were thus prepared, and it is

remembered how anxious she was that they should be prettily arranged, for "I want to give my people what is beautiful, and what is worth doing at all is worth doing well." Her invariable patience, quickness, and good-humor with the people rendered what would have been impossible to many, comparatively easy to Mary Stanley; but a brave heart was also required, and a friend who thought of starting a similar bank in another part of London, and came to her with all its dangers and difficulties, recalls the energy with which she closed the discussion: My dear, if you stand counting the difficulties when there is a good work before you, you will never do anything that is worth doing all your life! Only begin, begin, begin, and the difficulties will all disappear.' Un

der other superintendence and in another house the Penny Bank founded by Mary Stanley still flourishes in Westminster, a memorial of her energy, kindliness, and wisdom.

Dean Stanley's marriage with the devoted attendant of the Duchess of Kent, whom the Queen honored with unvaried kindness and friendship, had brought him into constant communication with the court, to which the outward tie had been drawn closer by his appointment of Deputy Clerk of the Closet, Chaplain to the Queen, and Chaplain to the Prince of Wales. He was summoned every year to take part in the services which commemorate at Frogmore the death of the beloved Prince Consort. It was after representing her royal mistress at the marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh in the bitter Russian cold of January, 1874, that Lady Augusta Stanley received the chill from which she never recovered. A long interval of hopes and fears, another year of sad forebodings and farewells, and, on Ash Wednesday, 1876, one of the happiest of earthly unions was severed by her death at Westminster.

"The sunshine of the heart was dead, The glory of the home was fled,

The smile that made the dark world bright, The love that made all duty light."

For five years Arthur Stanley was left to fulfil his appointed task alone. After a time he was full of interest still, his NEW SERIES.-VOL. XXXIV, No. 5;

mental activity was as great as ever, and he was always full of work. Sometimes when he was in the society of those whose thoughts met his, some of his old animation and cheerfulness returned; for a few months the kindly welcome. and friendship shown to him during a visit to the United States almost seemed to make him happy; and he ever gratefully recognized and reciprocated the loving attention with which his home was cared for by his wife's sister and her cousin, who had been more than a sister. But his friends saw him change more and more every year-his hair became gray, his figure became bent, his voice became feeble; and after the death of his dear sister Mary, in the spring of 1880, had loosened another of his closest ties to earth, he seemed to be only waiting for a summons which could not be very far off. In speaking of what he would do in the future, he now always said, "If I am still here," and he looked at places as if for the last time.

On Good Friday he preached upon the words, "Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit." He said he had preached the sermon in the same pulpit at that season ten years before, and he would like to preach it once again. The way in which he said, once again" sent a thrill of sadness through all who heard it.

On Saturday, July 9th, during one of his sermons on the Beatitudes, he was taken ill in the Abbey, and though there were few who believed in danger till within some hours of the end, all through the week which followed he was being led gently and painlessly to the entrance of the dark valley, and, on July 18th, just before the Abbey clock struck the hour of midnight, surrounded by almost all those he most loved on earth, his spirit passed away.

In speaking of his dear Westminster, the sense of his last words was, "I have labored amid many frailties and with much weakness to make this institution more and more the great centre of religious and national life in a truly liberal spirit."

This was the characteristic of his existence; thus, in most loving reverence should he be remembered.—Macmillan's Magazine.

39

ONE of our national characteristics, we are told, is a love of sermons of all varieties, from sermons in stone to sermons in rhyme. We have no reason, that I can see, to be ashamed of our taste. We make an awkward figure when we disavow or disguise it. The spectacle of a solid John Bull trying to give himself the airs of a graceful, sensitive, pleasureloving creature, indifferent to the duties of life and content with the spontaneous utterance of emotion, is always ridiculous. We cannot do it-whether it be worth doing or not. We try desperately to be æsthetic, but we can't help laughing at ourselves in the very act; and the only result is that we sometimes substitute painfully immoral for painfully moral sermons. We are just as clumsy as before, and a good deal less natural. I accept the fact without seeking to justify it, and I hold that every Englishman loves a sermon in his heart. We grumble dreadfully, it is true, over the quality of the sermons provided by the official representatives of the art. In this, as in many previous long vacations, there will probably be a lively discussion in the papers as to the causes of the dulness of modern pulpits. I always wonder, for my part, that our hardworked clergy can turn out so many entertaining and impressive discourses as they actually do.

At present I have nothing to say to the sermon properly so called. There is another kind of sermon, the demand for which is conclusively established by the exuberance of the supply. Few books, I fancy, have been more popular in modern times than certain lay-sermons, composed, as it seems to scoffers, of the very quintessence of commonplace. If such popularity were an adequate test of merit, we should have to reckon among the highest intellectual qualities the power of pouring forth a gentle and continuous maundering about things in general. We swallow with unfailing appetite a feeble dilution of harmless philanthropy mixed with a little stingless satirizing of anything that interrupts the current of complacent optimism. We like to hear a thoroughly comfortable person purring contentedly in his arm

chair, and declaring that everything must be for the best in a world which has provided him so liberally with buttered rolls and a blazing fire. He hums out a satisfactory little string of platitudes as soothing as the voice of his own kettle singing on the hob. If a man of sterner nature or more daring intellect breaks in with a harsh declaration that there are evils too deep to be remedied by a letter to the Times, mocks at our ideal of petty domestic comfort, and even swears that some of our heroes are charlatans and our pet nostrums mere quackery, we are inexpressibly shocked, and unite to hoot him down as a malevolent cynic. He professes, in sober earnest, to disbelieve in us. Obviously he must be a disbeliever in all human virtue; and so, having settled his business, we return to our comfortable philosopher, and lap ourselves in his gentle eulogies of our established conventions. I do not know, indeed, that we change very decidedly for the better when we turn up our noses at a diet of mere milk and water, and stimulate our jaded palate with an infusion of literary bitters. The cynic and the sentimentalist who preach to us by turns in the social essay, often differ very slightly in the intrinsic merit, or even in the substance of their discourses. Respondent and opponent are really on the same side in these little disputations, though they make a great show of deadly antagonism. I have often felt it to be a melancholy reflection that some of the most famous witticisms ever struck out-the saying about the use of language or the definition of gratitude-have been made by what seems to be almost a mechanical device-the inversion of a truism. Nothing gives a stronger impression of the limited range of the human intellect. In fact, it seems that the essay writer has to make his choice between the platitude and the paradox. If he wishes for immediate success he will probably do best by choosing the platitude. One of the great secrets of popularitythough it requires a discreet application

is not to be too much afraid of boring your audience. The most popular of modern writers have acted upon the