"Yesterday was Sunday, and I groped my way through the dark passages to the evening service in the Catholic chapel, which has always been attached to the house. An old priest, seated on the steps of the altar, preached a kind of catechetical sermon upon Transubstantiation—'My flesh is meat indeed'—'and the poor Protestants have this in their Bibles, and yet they throw away the benefit of the indeed.' The sight was most picturesque—the dark old-fashioned roof, only seen by the light of the candles on the richly decorated altar, and the poor English peasants grouped upon the benches. It carried one back to the time before the Reformation. In his discourse, the old priest described his childhood, when he sat in the east wing of the house learning his catechism, and when there were only two Catholics in Guildford; and 'what would these two solitary ones say now if they had seen the crowd in St. Joseph's Chapel at Guildford this morning? Yes, what would old Jem Savin say if he could rise up and see us now, poor man?'"
To MY MOTHER (after I had returned to my Handbook explorations).
"Aldermaston Hall, Berks, Jan. 14, 1860.—I came here from Newbury. The weather was so horrible, and the prospect of a damp lonely Sunday in an inn so uninviting, that I thought over all possible and impossible houses in the neighbourhood, and finally decided upon Aldermaston as the best, and have taken it by storm.
"It was the dampest and dreariest of mornings as I came from the station, but this place looked beautiful in spite of it—a wild picturesque park, and a large house, full of colour inside, like a restored French château. Mrs. Higford Burr (who seems to live more in Italy than here) wears a sort of Greek dress with a girdle and a broad gold hem.... I was at once, as I rather expected, invited to stay per l'amore d'Italia, and my luggage sent for. This afternoon Mrs. Burr, who is a most tremendous walker, has taken me to Upton Court, the home of Arabella Fermor (Pope's Belinda), a charming old house with a ghost, which the farm-people described as 'coming a clinkerin upstairs right upon un loike.'"
"Christ Church, Feb. 4.—I have had a terribly cold tour to Drayton-Beauchamp, Ashridge, Aylesbury, &c. The pleasantest feature was a warm welcome from Mrs. Barnard, wife of the great yeoman-farmer at Creslow Pastures, the royal feeding-grounds from the time of Elizabeth to Charles II., with a lovely and interesting old house overlooking Christ Low (the Christ's Meadow) and Heaven's Low (Heaven's Meadow). Thence I went to North Marston, where was the shrine of Sir John Shorne, a sainted rector, who preserved his congregation from sin by 'conjuring the devil into his boot.' Buckinghamshire is full of these quaint stories.
"Arthur has just been making great sensation by a splendid sermon at St. Mary's, given in his most animated manner, his energies gradually kindling till his whole being was on fire. It was on, 'Why stand ye here idle all the day long?—the first shall be last and the last first.' 'Why stand ye here idle, listless, in the quadrangle, in your own rooms, doing nothing; so that in the years to come you will never be able to look back and say, "In such a year, in such a term, I learnt this or that—that idea, that book, that thought then first struck me"? Perhaps this may be a voice to the winds, perhaps those to whom it would most apply are even now in their places of resort, standing idle: probably even those who are here would answer to my question, "Because no man hath hired us."'
"Then he described the powers, objects, and advantages of Oxford. Then the persons who had passed away within the year, leaving gaps to be filled up—the seven great masters of the English language,[180] the German poets and philosophers,[181] the French philosopher[182]—'and their praise shall go forth from generation to generation.' Then he dwelt on the different duties of the coming life to be prepared for, and he described the model country-clergyman (Pearson), the model teacher (Jowett), the model country-gentleman. Then came a beautiful and pictorial passage about the eleventh hour and the foreboding of the awful twelfth. The congregation was immense, and listened with breathless interest. When the signatures were being collected for the Jowett appeal, Arthur was hard at work upon them on Sunday when Mr. Jowett came in. Arthur said, 'You need not mind my being at work to-day, for I can assure you it is quite a Sunday occupation, a work of justice, if not of mercy.'—'Yes,' said Jowett, 'I see how it is: an ass has fallen into a pit, and you think it right to pull him out on the Sabbath-day.'"
Arthur Stanley used to see a great deal of Mr. Jowett during this year—far too much, my mother thought when she was staying with him at Oxford; for Jowett—kind and unselfish as a saint—was only "Christian" in so far that he believed the central light of Christianity to spring from the life of Christ. He occasionally preached, but his sermons were only illustrative of practical duties, or the lessons to be learnt from holy and unselfish lives. It was during this year, too, that the English Church recognised with surprise that it was being shaken to its foundations by the volume of—mostly feeble and dull—"Essays and Reviews." But to turn to a very different religious phase.
JOURNAL.