BOOKS.

LORD BL IsOFIFORD'S LETTERS.*

LORD BLACHFORD, better known as Sir Frederic Rogers—he was made a Peer after his retirement in 1871—was for nearly thirty years an able public servant. He was appointed Registrar of Joint Stock Companies in 1844, a new office -called into existence by the passing of an Act of Parliament designed to stop the frauds connected with the creation of irresponsible companies. The work was new, the Act was loosely constructed, and the time being that of the first rail- way mania, when new bubble-companies were started every hour of every day, it was no easy matter to administer the law. Rogers remained at the post long enough to pat some method

• into the business, and was appointed within the year Assistant Under-Secretary for the Colonies. In 1860 he became Under-Secretary, and in that capacity served for -eleven years under three Liberal and two Conservative Ministries, his successive chiefs being the Duke of New- -castle, Mr. Cardwell, Lord Carnarvon, the Duke of Bucking- ham, and Lord Granville,—of all of whom he has left graphic .and characteristic portraits, in an autobiographical memoir -drawn up for private circulation, from which Mr. Marindin has had discretionary power to extract illustrative passages for use in the present book. A sketch of the Colonial policy • of England during his term of office dismisses the greater part of its work as a mass of " official details and con- troversies of the most petty kind," in which the main interest was to see that the Colonial Office kept up a reputation for strict justice as a Court of Appeal, with a remainder of larger affairs in which it was possible to watch with a more philosophic interest "the development of principles." The two great principles noted by Lord Blachford as having been developed while he was in office, were that of Colonial self-government and the emancipation of the .Colonial Churches, and he gives an interesting account of both movements. An Under-Secretary's position is not one that leads to signal personal distinction in the case of a man who has little or no ambition, but it is one in which character and ability tell incalculably for the public good; and the fact that Lord Blachford's official record is more sound than brilliant would not warrant the • inference—which, indeed, would be the opposite of true —that his character was one of dull respectability and his written life uninteresting reading.

It is not as the Colonial Under-Secretary of five and twenty years ago that Lord Blachford's individuality is most interest- ing, but as the disciple and collaborator of John Henry Newman in the early days of the Oxford Movement,—the man of whom Cardinal Newman never ceased to regret that he had not gone all the way with him, saying, when near the end of his own life, that of all his friends Lord Blachford " was the most gifted, the most talented, and of the most wonder- ful grasp of mind," and that of all the friendships of his -Oxford days none had approached his intimacy with Frederic Rogers. By an odd coincidence Rogers resigned his Oriel Fellowship, for very different reasons, at the same moment

• The Uteri of Lord Blackford, Under-Seeretary of Slate f r the Colonies, 186)-71„ Edited by George Eden Marindin. London: Jilin Murray.

that Newman resigned his in connection with his secession from the Anglican Communion ; and this coincidence gave rise to rumours V2tit Rogers also had gone over to Rome. But Rogers never was inclined to take that step ; he developed at an early stage an anti-Roman feeling as well as an anti - Roman conviction, and was occa- sionally taken to task by Newman for dwelling too much upon the weaknesses and too little on the merits of the Roman position. When the divergence of opinion between the disciple and the master made it impossible for them to work together any longer, Rogers took the initiative in recognising that their friendship could not continue on the same footing, and he addressed a letter to Newman in which he records the immensity of his debt to hie beloved master, and reveals

very beautifully the earnestness and humility of his own character. After stating his conviction that the time has come when their old terms of intimacy could no longer continue, he says:— "I wish, before the time has passed for such an acknowledgment, to have said how deeply and painfully I feel—and I may say have more or less felt for years—the greatness of what I am losing, and to thank you for all you have done and been to me. I know that it is in a great measure by my own act that I am losing this, and I cannot persuade myself that I am substantially wrong, or that I could long have avoided what has happened. But I do believe, if I may dare to say so, that God would have found a way to pre- serve to me so great a blessing as your friendship if I had been less unworthy of it. I do feel most earnestly how much of any- thing which I may venture to be thankful for in what I am is of your forming—how more than kind—how tender you have alwa3s been to me, and how unlikely it is that I can ever again meet with anything approaching in value to the intimacy which you gave me."

To have possessed this intimacy, to have known its worth, and, knowing it, to have given it up, and having given it up, to have kept unimpaired and unembittered the mutual respect and affection which were its foundation—so that the two were friends to the end of their lives, and Newman could speak as he did of Lord Blachford at the last—may be said to make a certificate of greatness. And greatness, in a very valuable sense of the word, is the impression we get of Lord Blach- ford's character from the beginning to the end of this extremely interesting and pleasant biography. Though Rogers regretted when, jointly with Mr. S. Wood, he became the treasurer of the Tractarian cause, that neither of them were "clerics," it gives a new interest to the retelling of the often-told tale of the Oxford Movement that the story

this tim.• is that of a layman. A passage from the auto- biographical document already mentioned describes the nature of the attraction the Movement had for Frederic Rogers when he went up to Oriel in 1827 with a brilliant record of character and scholarship won at Eton :-

" In Newman's Sermons and Hurrell Froude's conversation I found an uncompromising devotion to religion with a discourage- ment of anything like gushing profession, which I bad been brought up to dislike and distrust—also a religion which was fervent and reforming in essentials with a due reverence for existing authorities and habits and traditions, all which I had been bruught up to respect—also a religion which did not reject, but aspired to embody in itself, any form of art and literature, poetry, philosophy, and even science which could be pressed into the service of Christianity. And this met my own desires and tastes—not to say my own conception of what man was made for. And lastly I was greatly captivated by the idea that it was possible for a Church not only to teach the truth, but by its dis- cipline to clear itself from impurities and enforce to a certain extent holiness of life among those who belonged to it."

To Harrell Fronde's fascinating character, with its stimu- lating combination of joyous energy and tremendous earnest- ness and even severity, Lord Blachford'a full tribute was paid in a paper of recollections incorporated in Dean Church's Oxford Movement. But the sketch of him as a College tutor given in the present volume adds a few fresh touches to the picture :—

" He was anything but learned. In lecture he gave you the idea of not being, in knowledge, so very much in advance of those whom he taught ; but be had a fine taste, a quick and piercing precision of thought, a fertility and depth of reasoning which stimulated a mind which had any quickness and activity. He had an interest in everything ; he would draw with you, sail on the river with you, talk philosophy or politics with you, ride over fences with you, skate with you,—all with a kind of joyous [sic] enjoy- ment. Mischief seems to have been his snare as a boy, and a con- trolled delight in what was on the edge of mischief gave a kind of verve to his character as a man. This made him charming to those whom he liked."

It was not till after Froude's death in 183d that his most intimate friends knew by how stern a self-discipline the wild

impulses of his character were controlled. The common sorrow for his loss brought Newman and Rogers closer to one another, and "for the next year or two they were together for the greater part of most days."

An account of a visit paid by Lord Blachford to Newman many years later, when Newman was at Birmingham. must be our last extract bearing upon this side of the book. He found Newman warmly affectionate, and full of interest in old friends and old memories, but in spite of the charm of his reception, the predominating impression got by the visit was one of profound melancholy :-

" There he is almost alone in a large house with none of his old friends about him, overworked, and that in a way which is not his own line,—not what he had expected or planned for himself or for which he seemed fitted, thrown away by the communion to which he has devoted himself, and evidently sensible that he is so thrown away."

The division of the party having broken up plans for con- tinued residence and usefulness at Oxford, Rogers came to London in 1842 to read law ; and he gives a racy description of the manner in which he was immediately pressed, almost against his will, into the occupation of leader-writing for the

Times :—

" I dined with Mr. Walter and his son in Printing House Square at five o'clock, and found that I was expected to write an article then and there on one of the subjects of the day. I pro- tested my inability, not supposing myself capable of doing such a thing in less than a week. This was pooh-poohed. I tried, found it possible, and found also that I was expected to repeat the process next day ; same hour, same dinner, short conversation after dinner, then the subject was announced and I was left alone till tea-time, when Mr. Walter appeared, read aloud what I had done, with criticisms, and after correction carried off the copy to the printer. When the article was finished the same process was repeated, and when I was disburdened of the whole article I went home to bed. Gradually it appeared that I was expected to do this (exceptis excipiendis) every evening. And being, though an Oxford Don, not skilful in saying No. or in evading saying Yes, while Walter was an adept in the art of making you believe that you had pledged yourself to do what he wanted you to do, I found myself soon engaged to write a daily article, usually in the manner aforesaid, with a very liberal salary. I neither wanted nor expected one or the other."

The appointment to the office of Registrar of Joint Stock

Companies put an end to the work for the Times, and the same year, 1845, saw his resignation of his Fellowship. Two years later he married, and a few months later succeeded to the family baronetcy. Next to the intimacy with Newman, the deepest friendship of Lord Blachford's life was that with Dean Church, and in this case circumstances and character worked together to deepen intimacy as life went on. Some of the most delightful letters in the volume are addressed to

Dean Church. Another friend with whom intimacy began at Oxford and lasted through life—though here again divergence of opinion came at a certain point to hinder collaboration— was Mr. Gladstone. And yet another distinguished friend and correspondent, especially of late years, was Sir Henry Taylor. Family lettere—to his brothers and sisters and, very notably, to his wife—reveal very pleasantly the lighter side of Lord Blachford's character. He had the pleasant habit of ex-

pressing himself fully in correspondence, telling a story well with abundant detail, and opening his heart on all that interested him in art and science and literature, and more especially as to the characters of the people he came in con- tact with. His portraits are admirably vivid, searching, shrewd, but not unkindly. Altogether, one gets from his domestic letters an impression of an exceedingly loveable as well as genial and amusing man. We regret beyond every- thing that limits of space make it impossible to quote in full the letters from Paris, repeating, with infinite enjoyment of the fun, Monsieur Mohl's humorous account of his experiences of service in the National Guard in Louis Philippe's time ; or the curiously interesting account of his meeting at dinner the Comte de Bruce, a survivor of the days before the Revolu- tion, who bad been a page of Louis XVI., and talked out of his personal memories of the things his hearers had just been reading of as history in "Carlyle," giving them the sort of thrill one might experience if a man had started after. dinner conversation with, "I remember Julius Omar say- mg to me just as he was going off to Gaul." A remark of this loyal survivor of the ancien regime to the effect that after all it was to Napoleon Bonaparte that the present existence of Christianity in France is due, fell strikingly upon Lord Blachford's appreciation of the other side of a question. An anecdote of boyhood illustrates well his fairness of mind, and

also his power of distinguishing between the real and the plausible in argument or policy. He was staying with his schoolfellow, James Colville (afterwards Sir James Colville, whose sister he married), at the house of Colville's mother, who wrote of him :—

" He is a clever boy of his age [eleven], up to so much conver- sation of all kinds. He asked James whether he thought John Napper (a schoolfellow) a good arguer. Jem said he supposed he was, for be always got him into a puzzle in five minutes.' Ah ! but that is because be takes unfair advantage. If one makes a real mistake, a palpable one, he takes hold of that, and whatever one says after, throws that mistake in one's teeth. I hold that not to be close arguing.' "

The letters of Lord Blachford's later years have the charm that belongs to an old age singularly free from the regrets and blanks common to the declining years of life. Hie greatest friends all outlived him, as does his wife. The strain put upon friendship by divergence of opinion had been weathered in youth, and age brought him the consoling expe- rience of sympathies unbroken and early aspirations not left behind. He accepted the peerage offered to him by

Mr. Gladstone with characteristic simplicity and candour, not undervaluing the honour, or underrating the probability of his being able to be of use in Parliament. But his keenest interest from the time of his retirement from the Colonial Office was in country affairs,—improvements upon his estate and plans for the welfare of his tenants. He continued to write from time to time for the Guardian, which paper he had founded together with other Oxford friends in 1845, by way of carrying on the work of consolidating the High Church party and spread- ing its influence, and occasionally for the Edinburgh Beview. And his letters to his friends, in spite of a protest that it ie. one of the disadvantages of old age that it has nothing to say, continue to the end fall of interesting, solid, and suggestive comments upon passing events in politics and literature and philosophy. He died on November 21st, 1889, " followed in less• than a year by Cardinal Newman, and a few months later by Dean Church."