It had been more or less a failure as far as regards outward consequences. Of that there seems no doubt. But there is also no doubt that it made its mark in spiritual matters in the minds of many. No doubt that it altered for some their spiritual landmarks and rubicons. No doubt that the subject of this memoir came home seeing religion from a different standpoint.

Archdeacon Wilberforce reminds us in one of his sermons, preached at Westminster Abbey, that the astronomers who built the pyramids of the Nile pierced a slanting shaft through the larger pyramid, which pointed direct to the pole-star. Then, if you "gazed heavenward through the shaft into the Eastern night, the pole-star alone would have met your gaze. It was in the ages of the past; it was when the Southern Cross was visible from the British Isles. Slowly, imperceptibly, the orientation of the planet has changed. Did you now look up into the midnight sky through the shaft in the Great Pyramid, you would not see the pole-star. New, brilliant space- worlds would shine down on you. But the heavens have not altered, and the shaft of the pyramid is not lying, or unorthodox. A new view of the heavens has quietly come, for the earth's axis has changed its place."

Very slowly too, sometimes, the axis of a personality changes its place. It may be that an entirely new point of view faces it. Some other view of life "swims into its ken." The mental eye can no longer see through the old means which served it in years gone by for lens. It is, as it were, looking at a new place in life's sky: for a time it is quite unable to reconcile its old ideas of religious astronomy with the new ones. What then? The sky is the same; but there are many ways of looking at it; and many spiritual atmospheres which cloud the outlook. Frank Newman could not reconcile at this time, nor in those which were coming, his old Calvinistic tendency of thought with new ideas which were forcing themselves in upon him. At the very end of life he saw the star of Christianity again, but this missionary journey which had just, for him, terminated, seemed to be more or less the rubicon which divided him from his old faith, and from the rationalism to which he drifted during the years while he was at Manchester, and University College, London.

CHAPTER IV

HIS MARRIAGE: HIS MOTHER'S DEATH: HIS CLASSICAL TUTORSHIP AT BRISTOL IN 1834

In Francis Newman's diary is this entry:—"On June 27th, my birthday, I first saw Maria Kennaway at Escot." [Footnote: Escot, Ottery St. Mary, S. Devon, now in the possession of the present Sir John Kennaway, M.P.]

Evidently the attraction between them was mutual, for the engagement followed quickly, and they were married the same year.

Maria Kennaway was the daughter of the first Sir John Kennaway, who was born at Exeter in 1758. In 1772 he sailed to India with his brother, the late Richard Kennaway. In 1780 he received his captain's commission, and in 1786 Marquis Cornwallis made him one of his aides-de-camp. I quote from New Monthly Magazine for 1836, which gave an account of some incidents in the first Sir John Kennaway's life at the time of his death. [Footnote: I am indebted for this account to the courtesy of the present Sir John Kennaway.]

[Illustration: MARIA KENNAWAY
FRANCIS NEWMAN'S FIRST WIFE
From a miniature
PHOTO BY MESSRS. WEBSTER, CLAPHAM COMMON
BY KIND PERMISSION OF SIR JOHN KENNAWAY]

"In 1788 Lord Cornwallis sent him as envoy to the Court of Hyderabad to demand from the Nizam the cession of … Guntoor. In this mission he was eminently successful, not only obtaining that which he came to demand, but inducing the Nizam to enter into a treaty of offensive and defensive alliance against Tippoo Sultan. For this service His Majesty was pleased to create him a baronet (1791), and he received a mark of still further approbation from the Court of Directors (East India Company) in a vote which they passed to take out the patent of creation at the Company's expense." Later, Sir John arranged a definite peace between the Nizam's Commissioner and the Mahrattas with those of Tippoo Sultan. From this time forward Sir John remained as Resident at the Court of the Nizam. But as his health had suffered greatly from the Indian climate, he came back to England in 1794, and the East India Company voted him "the unusual grant of a pension of £500 per annum" on his retirement from official duties.