FROM OXFORD TO ROME.

LAST week, we had in Trevor the individual Tractarian producing con- fusion in a parish and mischief in a family; the week before, we had in Stapleton an account of the manner in which Tractarian Churchmen can persecute an Evangelical brother. The work before us goes deeper : it exhibits the Tractarian in his inner struggles with himself and with his relations to society as a man ; it attempts to indicate his wrestling,s with the spiritual temptations of the divine to quit the Anglican commu- nion, and his blank disappointment when the excitement of novelty wears off in the Roman Church. In artistical treatment, From Oxford to Bonze is inferior to _that of either of the before-named tales, although their skill was of a formal and rather vulgar kind ; but the book before us surpasses them in inward knowledge and feeling. The writers of Stapleton and Trevor had only seen the outside of what they undertook to delineate, perhaps only heard of or invented it. The author of From Oxford to Rome is obviously familiar with the inward struggles ; and has probably, as he intimates, mingled in the conflict himself. Hence there is a reality and keeping in the substance of his book, which it were vain to expect from the literary craftsman or the amateur religi- ous novelist. To the objection against his want of art he may urge,

that his object was instruction and warning, not amusement; that he re- lied upon truth, not fiction, and did not choose to generalize particular nature in order to produce literary effect. But his truths do not appear as positive facts ; they come before us without authority or guarantee, resting, like those of any other novel, upon internal evidence ; and the writer has thrown them into a fragmentary form, which we suppose he deemed the best fitted for their exhibition. Our objection however, amounts to no more than this—that the book is not so effective as it might have been ; that the elements of the story are not displayed to their best advantage.

The leading subject of From Oxford to Rome is the conduct and fortunes of the A— family. Eustace A— is a youthful clergyman, of good family and ample fortune. Educated at Oxford by one of those divines who assumed a solemn trust in order to betray it, Eustace be- comes deeply impressed with Tractarian principles ; which, as exhibited here, (and it seems to us, admiringly by the author,) involve the supre- macy of the Church over all mundane powers, and the consequent supe- riority of the priest, as holding much the same sort of authority claimed for him by Rome; the benefits of confession, fasting, mortification, and corporeal penance, when self-suggested, not imposed as matter of regular routine ; a nominal denial of transubstantiation, but with an explanation so very mystical, that, to plain people, it almost amounts to the real pre- sence, and a careful announcement that a belief in this doctrine is not matter of censure ; a doubt upon purgatory ; a strong yearning for the mediaeval splendour and symbols of the Church service, with a firm be- lief in some mysterious efficacy in the Church and its sacraments, quite apart from the character of the individual believer and the natural effects produced by any mental operation. To this may be added, the volun- taT celibacy of the clergy, and the doctrine of "reserve," either in con- ceahng your own intentions, or in receiving the offices of the Anglican Church in a manner quite contrary to its intention—for example, par- taking of the bread of the eucharist as actual flesh.

Thus accomplished, Eustace begins his career by breaking off a mar- riage engagement, with the approval of his spiritual father—evidently Newman. He then accepts a curacy, and labours in his parish with a devoted zeal—which, we believe, distinguished many of the Tractarians ; setting apart his fortune to charity, mortifying the flesh, unceasing in his pastoral duties, foremost in schools of all kinds, and, though raising dis- putes by changes in the service, generally beloved by his parishioners. Suddenly (to the reader) it is found that he has doubts ; and these doubts are confirmed by his elder sister, Augusta, who lives with him. A Conti- nental trip, by means of the service at Notre Dame, and an acquaintance with a young Romish priest, complete his conversion. He returns to Oxford a Romanist, to vote on the affairs of the Anglican Church, and then withdraws from it to enter a monastic order abroad.

Time passes : a friend, apparently the writer of the book, visits Eustace just before the day appointed for his profession, and finds him dying of disappointment and physical causes. Always delicate, Eustace had suf- fered from over-exertion in his parish ; and the reaction from the de- mands of a pastoral cure to the stillness and dull routine of the cloister had increased the seeds of disease. But the predominant cause was dis- appointment. So far from finding in the Romish Church peace and satisfac- tion, he was beset by doubts, and harassed by associations which pride and duty alike compelled him to subdue. Nature, however, triumphs in death. His mental wanderings indicate his yearnings for the Anglican Church ; and he startles the brethren, just before his departure, by an annunciation of that doctrine which is most opposed to the Romish

Church, justification by faith.

"In the evening he grew visibly and rapidly weaker; and it was thought expe- dient that he should receive the assistance of his confessor, and partake the Last Holy Communion lest increasing disability should render it more difficult. His friends retired while he conversed with his priest, and returned to find him appa- rently in the last struggle, while the holy father was performing those rites on the body which the Roman Catholic Church directs as, in its judgment, benefit- ing the departing soul. When these were completed, they knelt around the bed, while the priest and a clerk began to recite the Recommendations and Litanies of the dying. As he caught the words of an invocation to the Blessed Virgin, which they were rapidly reciting, he cried, in a voice like an echo from a ruined sepulchre-

• Cursed be he that maketh flesh his arm!'

Had an electric shock been suddenly communicated to the young monk who was acting as the priest's assistant, he would not have started as he did at these words. Even to his English friends they were unexpected; but why should they have been so? How could they think that one so earnest would be left in the dark- ness of dismal error at the last, or that one so true should withhold his testifying declaration to the verity which he had seen so industriously clouded with the veils of tradition and usage? The priest alone appeared unmoved by the inter- ruption, except that a slight flush passed over his pale brow; and he continued his prayers with increased rapidity.

The story of the younger sister, Margaret, is more affecting. She has married a clergyman' also a Tractarian; and is happy in her devoted at- tachment to him and her two children, when she is suddenly stricken by an announcement from her husband that it is the will of God they should part. The fanatic has turned Romanist, and conceits it his duty to leave his wife and family to immure himself in a convent ; and in this scheme he is rather encouraged by Eustace, and scarcely discouraged by the elder sister, Augusta. The upshot is, that partly from wretchedness and exhaustion, partly by persuasion of her sister, Margaret consents to turn Romanist, and enters a convent. Her truthful instinct, however, revolts from its slavery ; but nature gives way in the struggle, and she returns to her friends, to die a "heretic." Augusta, who iemade of sterner stuff, passes from a mild order to one of the severest, where she is left as Sister Mary Agnes. All this is told without any of the literary "effects" of the modern school of novelists : but their absence makes it look more truthful.

Between the death of Eustace and the conclusion of the book there is a digression, in which the writer appears in his own person as a quondam Tractarian, but now a Romish convert, to warn the inconsiderate from following his course, by pointing out in detail the disappointments that will overtake them. There is also an episode of Sister Mary Beatrice; whose story seems to hint at terrible priestly persecution still practised in convents, even in this country. We have spoken of the want of art by which the materials are not made so effective as they might be. The want of sense and logic is equally conspicuous; and this not so much in the individual as the class he represents. There is no theological learning, no critical acumen, no "reason for the faith that is in them," throughout. Some vague longing

for the "ideal of a Christian church," a wretched cowardice which would

escape from its own individuality, and thrust life and its hardens upon somebody else, is at the root of the whole system. The same sort of amiable weakness, of diseased craving for some impossible thing, which induces Young England to masquerade the middle ages, seems to influence the Tractarian converts to Rome. Eustace, his elder sister, and their brother-in-law, are converted, we know not how, or by what reasons; Margaret, the deserted wife, merely sinks into it; Beatrice was originally an ultra Protestant, but felt a "want," which the bareness of Dissenting worship or grace itself could not supply—she turned Tractarian, but still wanted—and when converted to Romanism and a professed nun, then she wanted to get back to Anglicanism. Surely there is in this morbid restlessness and irrational inconsistency an ill-balanced weakness, more akin to monomania than religion, and which needs the physician rather than the divine. In the warning lamentations of the writer himself there is the same utter laxity of principle, as we must call it. He does not doubt of his salvation in the Romish Church ; he believes in its main ar- ticles; but says he might have believed them in the Anglican. His few objections to the Roman discipline are well grounded ; but they are moral, not religious : his troubles mostly resolve themselves into sentimental ones, and those embodied in the opening words of Manager Bann's song, "The light of other days." He misses his old companions, and his okl books, which he has given up at the bidding of his spiritual director ; the Bible he uses now is not the Bible to which he has been accustomed; the first attraction of the ceremonial worship has passed away, and its gauds offend his more sober taste; the summons to worship reminds him of those chimes which called him to the church of his boyhood, youth, and early manhood, with all its endearing associations, but only to make him wretched by contrast.

"Another communion and other modes of prayer are for him. And those bells that erewhile called him each evening and morning to the privileges of the

worshiper or the duty of the pastor, must, peal on now: they are for him no more. But they are not unheeded. He hears them plainly enough; every chime. His ear is keener than it used to be; the wind is contrary, bat still he hears them."

All natural enough, but not very Scriptural ; not enough to make the man look back, like Lot's wife, if he had reason for his new faith. In the remarks on confession there is more of philosophy.

"Confession the young Anglican has been accustomed to regard as one of his secret privileges. Scarcely ever spoken of, even in the most confidential inter- course, it is yet practised very extensively, and, as we believe, most beneficially, in the English Church. But its very reserve and partial character is one chief rea- son of as benefit. And it is the reaction of this benefit which has already lost

the altars and the hearths of England some of her best and loveliest. The young

sanguine striver in religious life imagines, that as the good gained by confession in this form is so great, it must be infinitely enhanced when It ranks among the sa-

craments, and is regarded as the most imperative of all things. He is mistaken: and so he will find himself when he has made the trial, and this earnest privilege has subsided into a dull duty. "The confessional and the pastor's study are very different places.

"He will find it a widely different thing as he has sought the voluntary aid of his pions and single-minded pastor to prepare him for a worthier communion, or correct some crooked tendency; and as he must visit the confessional at his sta- ted seasons to make his formal expiation. A very different thing was it to kneel as he was used always at parting with his beloved minister, and with the anointed right hand laid on his head receive the fervent benediction, The Lord bless thee and keep thee; the Lord lift up the light of His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace '; and now to hear the rapid ' Ego to absolve a peccatis tuis,' and pass away back into the world of work and sin without the faintest shadow of solemn influence remaining from the duty he has performed. •

"The probabilities, too, of sympathy and efficient aid by correction and sug- gestion, how do they stand to us between the Catholic priest and English clergy-

man? It may be said the converts can soon now be supplied with their old con- fessors again. But will they be the same men? The same hands and gait and voice they may have: will they bear the same heart under the long black robe that they took away with them beneath the vest and cassock?

"Spontaneous confession, when the heart feels hardened and the lamp of the Boni barns low, and obligatory confession at all seasons coming between the con- science and its God, are very different matters. "We speak confidently: confession as now used in the English Church is the more perfect, the more aiding to the penitent. In the Roman Church it is as like a matter of worldly barter as can well be conceived: a certain amount of affliction

for a certain amount of sin, arranged as immutably as the value of the exchange in currencies. And the worldly spirit which has overshadowed the rite eats into the penitent's mind. He finds that he is unstrengthened, that his heart has been untouched, so that he feels no purer or better than before: a certain number of sins are pardoned, he must believe, or will be so when he has fulfilled his peni- tential part of the contract; and this is all, and this under the very best of confessors.

"With regard to the moral influence of the Roman confessional, we have only to say that we sinaply discredit the mass of the charges of impiety and impurity lavished on it by the impure and the impious: Michelet has been too much read, and St. John too little studied."