MOZLEY'S REMINISCENCES.* WE are much disappointed with these volumes of

Reminiscences by Mr. Mozley. We fear that, emboldened by the success of his former book, Mr. Mozley has raked together the contents of his diaries and note-books, and connected them by threads out of his own memory. Whatever the process has been, the result is a work of which Mrs. Nickleby, if she had had the vestiges of a literary gift, might well claim the authorship. A carefully-written account of parish work, a series of humble characters well described, a searching investigation into the history of a parish, or even a subjective narrative of a clergyman's own thoughts, hopes, and fears, deserves respectful atten tion. Any book, in fact, to which the author gives his best energies, may deserye severe criticism, but escapes condemna tion. And it is because we believe that a clergyman like Mr. Mozley, who was not only a Fellow of Oriel, but a considerable writer, could have written a far better book if he had taken a little pains, that we denounce his Reminiscences as a collection of idle gossip. If Mr. Mozley likes to tell stories about himself, we have no business to interfere with him. Thus he frankly informs us :—

" I was never fluent or distinct. I was never completely intelligible ; or, indeed, always audible. I was very liable to momentary forgets (sic), transpositions, and misplacings of words As a simple fact I was weak, puny, and I am afraid, fractious and rather mis chievous; as well as shy, absent, and slow I was clearly unfit for business. My serious thoughts ran in the clerical direction."

We pick up the thread of the author's early life again one hundred pages further on. After several chapters devoted to Gainsborough, the Clergy, and Wesleyanism, we have an anecdote of his infancy, told in his usual gossipy style :—

" My brother John, just five, mounted the ladder to save some ripe currants on a tree nailed to the wall. I followed suit on the ground below, stooping, as I remember, and being then three and three-quarters. My brother chanced to loosen a brick, the only wicked thing he did in his life, and it fell, corner-wise, into the crown of my skull, which had happily not quite lost its cartilaginous consistency. The result was a deep indentation, which remains to this day. I was not stunned nor much hurt. I remember walking to a back-kitchen to have my

head washed at the pump The accident made me liable to flushes and leas able to bear sunshine than other children. I may, too, possibly owe to it some susceptibilities and mental activities of an abnormal kind."

But enough of Mr. Mozley's childhood, of which this is by far the most interesting episode ; though it is nearly equalled by the account of Miss Holt, the governess, flogging the author three times round the table till he had swallowed a piece of beefgristle. A few pages are occupied by a description of life at Charterhouse ; but we cannot say that Mr. Mozley gives us much interesting detail about that famous school. We should have been glad to know more fully what the Bell-system was ; but we have only a short extract from Dr. Haig Brown's work on Charterhouse, Past and Present, from which it appears that the Bell-system is more or less the same as the pupil-teacher system which is now in vogue in our Elementary Schools.

The most interesting anecdote of this period is Dr. Mozley's own account of his labours as a prwpositor :—He "had to countersign a dozen exercises every night, and to send in such a report of his flock as would imply a careful comparison of one 'week with another." Ten chapters are devoted to such anecdotes as the following :—

"The boys caught these flies, tied several of them together by the legs with fine cotton thread, and let them go. Iryine, a rough and energetic Scotchman with a rich brogue, had jest been added to the staff, and was bearing one of the higher forms, with much noise and gesticulation. He found himself suddenly gagged; and after a struggle with his difficulties, held up a harnessed team of four flies that had flown right across his open mouth, fiercely denouncing the miscreants who had done the deed."

In the second volume we have sketches, or rather scraps, of Mr. Mozley's clerical life in the parishes, which he successively held, of Moreton Pinckney, Cholderton, and Plymtou. He seems to have worked very hard at Moreton Pinckney, taking three classes every night except Saturday and Sunday. We have details of parochial life given to us which, though sad enough, are told in such a prosaic manner that they do not arouse any interest. They are jotted down one after another like notes in a physician's diary. A chapter is devoted to one John Adams, who was a blacksmith, and who not only worked in the forge, but acted as barber to Mr. Mozley. Another lay figure (in more senses than one) is that of John Stockley, who was a churchwarden and farmer on a small scale. Ho serves, however, as a peg for a story about a cow. Stockley found that the milk of this cow gave no batter and little cream. He told his neighbours, who laughed in his face and informed him that the field where the cow grazed "had always yielded milk, but no cream or butter to speak of." This story leads on to another one about a cow that was always dry, because she milked herself! Then there is Talbot, the well-sinker, the thatch of whose house was "a mass of rot ;" Gilks, the poacher, and Hannah Costlord, the sweetie-dealer. The lives and occupations of villagers are all detailed, but we miss the artistic touch which would make them live. There are two pensioners who beat their wives, but why their sad stories are unveiled in these pages we fail to discover. The page on which their deeds are narrated is headed "Miles emeritus." We may note that many of the left-hand pages are headed with Latin titles. But it is not only with memories of poor people that Mr. Mozley manages to fill his two volumes.

In Volume I., chaps. vi. and vii., we have an account of Archbishop Tait at Powderl3am Castle. Chapter vii. is called "Ritualism," because the Earl of Devon chose to have a chasuble in his private chapel.

Mr. Mosley himself complains that he is described as half an Arian, half a Papist, half a Rationalist, but that with a little en

quiry his critics might have ascertained that he has had the charge of rural parishes altogether twenty-eight years, and that he has resided an regularly, and stuck to his duties as closely, as any of his predecessors or successors, and that he has always taken pains in preaching and teaching, as to what he should say

in pulpit, cottage, and school. We find it difficult to reconcile this with another passage in Volume II., p. 293, where Mr.

Mozley takes a more humble view of his past work : —

"The retrospect forced upon me reveals more and more what I failed to do, what I failed even to try and do as I ought to have tried. I confine myself to two offices of the Christian ministry which every clergyman ought to be able to look back upon after a good many years with a good conscience. I cannot do that with regard to pulpit ministration, or to my house-to-house visitation. As to the first, I was idle, slovenly, without plan, and ready to avail myself of any shift that offered. I preached more without book and without preparation. I copied, I read Beveridge's notes, I borrowed. Golightly lent me some sermons. What a hypocrite I felt as I preached them ! My sensations were those of a common swindler assuming the name and character of some respectable personage."

Our readers will see from this extract that Mr. Mozley is as merciless in speaking of himself as in exposing the private life and failings of his friends, the Waylands and the Spencers. We

are given another glimpse of the author's mind in a long account of a dispute about pews, which occupies five chapters. He was

deputed by his father to write a letter to the Bishop :—

" The next morning I was ensconced in a room upstairs in the midst of documents and correspondence. At once I found I was not quite myself. It was January ; the days lengthening, the cold strengthening. My face was flushed, my head hot with my hundredmiles walk, plus the excitement of the family meeting. My hands and feet were cold. The action of the heart was accelerated. I felt as if I could write and write for ever, without power of controlling thought or style. The regulator was gone."

There are some chapters at the end of the book which deserve serious treatment at our hands, though we regret to say that they are not written in a serious spirit. We would, however, pause to give credit for a chapter on "Caste," in which Mr.

Mozley dwells on the difficulty which every clergyman must experience in amalgamating the different classes in a country parish. This difficulty is even greater in towns, where gradations of classes exist which are so fine as to be almost imperceptible to an outsider, yet which are just as real as those which are to be found in a cathedral chapter. Thus in a paper-manufactory the girls who sort paper will not join in a picnic with those who sort esparto-grass. Small tradesmen often object to the company of artisans, and artizans look down upon labourers of their own

class. Mr. Mozley's remedy for caste is to recognise it, yet not to infringe upon it, but to put it out of the question; and this, he says, "can be best done by friendly intercourse on the largest possible quantity of common ground."

From caste we pass to "creeds," for no other reason that we can perceive but that they both begin with a c. Mr. Mozley contends that the Church of England is tainted with Sabellianism, because she adopts the expression, "God the Son." No doubt it makes a difference of meaning whether the word " God" is used as subject or predicate. But is not" God the Son "an expression in which the two words are used in apposition to each other? And in any case, though we may explain the Trinity in unity partially to ourselves as we explain the unity of the body, mind, and spirit of a man, is it possible to comprehend adequately either one or the other ? As our author says in somewhat familiar terms, "We are all poor drivelling idiots before the throne of the Incomprehensible." Our main objection to these chapters is the introduction of such unspeakably solemn themes with such subjects as" Village Improvement" and "Parish Gossip." Thus in a chapter on the descent of Anglican tradition Mr. Mozley argues that the Church of England is not strictly Scriptural, because she explains that the sense of Scripture is Scripture; and that this sense is to be gathered from the Fathers, and that the Ante-Nicene Fathers were superseded by the Council of Nimes., and that this was again superseded by the Council of Constantinople, half a century later. So he concludes triumphantly, "We are neither Scriptural, nor Patristic, nor Ante-Nicene, nor Nicene, nor Constantinopolitan, nor of the undivided Church, nor Athanasian, nor anything except it be Anglican, whatever that may mean, for it has long since ceased to mean the faith of the English people." Surely Mr. Mozley knows of the Ephesian, the African, the Roman Churches, each of which has power to decree its own rites and ceremonies ; and if so, why cannot he be satisfied with the simple title, "Anglican Church " ? But in the chapter on "Mysteries," he tramples still more heedlessly on the feelings of believers, and, as we hold, grossly misrepresents philosophy, which be says comes to the rescue of the creeds with these words,—" Say everything is God and God is everything. Who can deny it ? who can fear it ? who can care for it what matters it ?—let that be our creed. All can agree upon it ; all can do what they like with it—shelve it, forget it, coin it into a convenient currency."

Now, though Christianity includes all that is true in Pantheism, it is not true that Pantheism is Christian ; and to any one who thinks, the Pantheistic view is by no means so unimportant as to be dismissed as above in a few short, abrupt sentences. Pantheism, like all systems which confuse God with man, is the negation of Christianity. To our mind, Mr. Mozley would have done better if he had either omitted such subjects altogether, or else had treated them at length and in a reverential spirit. We part from him without anger, but we regret that a man of his age and experience in writing should have written so ill-digested a book.