of Jesuit privileges which have no other basis than the Pope's mere oral declaration. Gregory XV., by a bull of July 2, 1622, withdrew from all the Orders-and the Jesuits were expressly included-all privileges conferred vivæ vocis oraculo, except those for which the written testimony of a cardinal could be exhibited. Urban VIII., in a bull of December 20, 1631, went a step further, and withdrew even this latter concession. Hereupon there arose a question in the Company of Jesus whether they had, or had not, lost these privileges once conferred by the oracle of the living voice. Four different opinions were given upon the point, three of which are peculiarly interesting as specimens of Jesuit casuistry and sophistry.1 The authors of the first answer contended that as the oral privileges of the Company had been already confirmed by written bulls of Gregory XIII. and Paul V., they could not be included amongst those which were withdrawn by the bull of Urban VIII. Certain theologians asserted, in the second answer, that nearly all the important privileges bestowed by the 'oracle of the living voice' had also been granted in writing. Other theologians said that this was true of all the privileges. It was a 'probable' opinion of some theologians that the Company could hold fast whatever it possessed, without any violation of conscience, in accordance with the rule potior conditio possidentis. Beati possidentes! It was ordered, however, that in using any of the privileges revoked by the Pope, the Jesuits 'should not be too free and ostentatious, so as to avoid giving scandal to bishops, or parish priests, or other Orders.' The author of the last opinion (Quis sit sensus Constitutionis Urbani VIII., &c.), a Jesuit of Ingolstadt, was the most astute apologist for the theory that the Pope's revocation revoked nothing. He handled it as a nose of wax. Gregory XV. had revoked the orally given privileges which were not confirmed by the testimony of a cardinal. This bull was duly promulgated in the colleges, but it was soon after declared that the Pope, at the request of the General, had renewed the revoked privileges. Urban VIII. only revoked those oral privileges which were confirmed by the testimony of a cardinal, but none of those for which there was no such testimony. To decide the question whether the oral privileges 1 The opinions are printed in ii. 274-286. 2 In 1782 the Bishop of Verona prohibited the clergy of the Tyrol. from receiving any Papal indulgences till he had examined them. In 1785 the Archbishop of Mainz declared all future Papal dispensations to be invalid in his diocese, unless they had been examined and confirmed by his own Vicar-General. revoked by Gregory XV. were still in force, one must first know whether they were renewed at the prayer of the General by mouth or by pen. If they were renewed by mouth one must then know whether they were confirmed by a cardinal. If they were renewed by the Pope's mouth, with a confirmation by a cardinal, they do not fall under the bull of Urban VIII. 'In Rome it may be possible,' said he, 'to get replies to these questions; but in the Ingolstadt College we have as yet no answers. So long as we are in ignorance we are also in possessione, and may consequently regard our privileges as still in force' (i. 519, 520, ii. 285, 286). We feel that we have been unable to do justice to this great work, and to the catholic and judicial temper in which it is written, by the few glimpses which we have given of its stupendous contents. It is beyond all doubt one of the few books of our time concerning which it can be justly said that every theologian, every statesman, and every journalist, who is really anxious to discern the signs of the times, ought to make a conscience of reading. To no modern nations are its disclosures more important than to England and the United States of America, and it is devoutly to be hoped that an English translation of it will not long be delayed, ART. V.-MARK PATTISON. Pattison, sometime Rector of 1. Essays by the late Mark Lincoln College, Oxford. HENRY NETTLESHIP, M.A., in the University of Oxford. Press, 1889.) 2. Sermons by Mark Pattison, late Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford. (London, 1885.) IF we attempt to judge the life of Mark Pattison from an ideal standpoint, we must pronounce it a failure-a magnificent failure perhaps, but still a failure. This it was because he not only did not succeed in fully realizing the aim he put before himself, but also because he showed in his own. character and career the inadequacy of that aim. His con ceptions of an elevated philosophic education, of the functions of a University, of the obligations and attractions of the scholar's life, will always be found inspiring by those who are fit to appreciate them; but he only partially succeeded in illustrating by his example what he had illuminated by his learning; and the impression which his Memoirs give us of a life of misery, the intensity of which is only brought into relief by the brilliancy of his attainments, shows us the inadequacy as a guide to life of purely intellectual aspirations. There is no one who has more clearly realized or more accurately defined the final end of the highest education. To attain a cultivated understanding which would enable him to judge fairly, impartially, and correctly all systems and all persons, he devoted years of labour. At the end of his life he wrote the Memoirs, which have since been published, in which he showed that where his personal feelings were concerned he was more biassed and unjust than the controversialist whom he so despised. There are few who have had a more correct appreciation of the obligations under which a scholar labours to advance knowledge, there are few who have so fully realized all that is required to satisfy the demands of scholarship; in his published fragments he has shown that he was capable of producing a work which would become part of the literature of the country. He has left us one admirable book: we have now the opportunity of reading some of his contributions to periodical literature: both make us feel that a more than twenty years' enjoyment of learned leisure as head of an Oxford College ought to have produced more. The ideal of a University at any rate he might have tried to realize. During some few years he threw himself into University life, and it is to him as much as to anyone that Oxford owes the present form of the school of literæ humaniores-one of the most satisfactory portions of the modern Oxford system. Yet the greater part of his life he shut himself off from the teaching and government of the institutions to which he belonged. From absence of tact and selfcommand, by morbidly brooding over the injustice and slights that he had received, he destroyed his own happiness and his influence over others. Had he consistently shown the elevation of character which a devotion to learning ought to give, had he created a great school of followers, had he been a great influence in the University, his failure to produce might have been forgiven. But he failed in every direction. We might repeat of him what Scaliger says of Henri Estienne: : 'His death is a great loss to Greek letters. We may say he might have done much more for them, if he had remained true to them or true to himself. Indeed, I could not but regret his conduct while living, nor can I help regretting his loss now he is goneI grieve that he did not produce what he might have produced.'1 For the cause of his failure lay in himself: in the weakness of his own character and the limitation of his own aim. He has himself sketched for us the terrible picture of a miserable life, illuminated though it may have been by periods of selfforgetfulness, still more by some of those moments when the mind, conscious of its own powers, conscious of its own knowledge, seems to be almost superhuman-those moments which have made many great philosophers feel, as they recall their own experience, that in the life of contemplation lies the greatest elevation human nature is capable of. But whether as the self-conscious undergraduate who fancied that everyone noticed the awkwardness with which he wore his cap and gown for the first time, or as the disappointed candidate for the headship of his college, showing little dignity in the way in which he bore a gross injustice, we find the same morbid selfconsciousness which cut him off from the sympathy and affection which might gradually have cured his nature. For a few years he came under the influence of a stronger mind. It was Newman who drew him out of himself. It was to Newman he owed the spur which roused his intellectual nature. Caught up in the whirl of religious excitement, for a time he lost his self-control. But when the reaction came he rebounded to the opposite extreme. He gave himself up in bondage to his intellect, and cut himself off from the one influence which might have strengthened his character-religion. There are some minds which seem to be able to exist without either religion, or any of those substitutes for it which perhaps satisfy single individuals. They are either minds of abnormal and one-sided or else of imperfect development. To neither of these classes could Mark Pattison belong. Again and again he reminds us of the advantages and the elevating influence of spiritual religion. In Casaubon and Scaliger as Protestants, in Huet among Romanists, he emphasizes the reality of their religion. Spiritual retreats are, he tells us, one of the best creations of the Roman Church. He notes in this respect the deficiencies of Warburton. Into the inner circles of religious belief we do not wish and are not able to pry. We do know that after the religious excitement of early years he cut himself off from most of the influences of 1 Essays, i. III. VOL. XXVIII.—NO. LVI. CC religion: we know that he gave himself up almost exclusively to intellectual activity. Cut off from spiritual life and affection, without the usual motive power necessary for action, he illustrated the barrenness of the intellect per se. His breadth of mind enabled him to realize and to depict the richness of the land he could not enter. He knew the importance of religion and devoted (possibly, it is true, in an injudicious manner) much of his energies to preventing the gulf which he feared might arise between theology and learning. We feel that the loss was all the greater because if his mind had been illuminated and his character strengthened by an object of devotion, his work in the cause of learning and culture would have been infinitely wider, and his influence far more reaching. But our readers will not need to be reminded of the necessities or advantages of religion. We have said enough of the defects of one on whose merits we intend to dwell, and we shall devote the remainder of our space to attempting to illustrate from his own writings those principles of which Mark Pattison constituted himself the prophet and high priest-the importance, the value, and the transcendent dignity of intellectual culture and learning. Among the materials for doing this we must place first the well-known Life of Isaac Casaubon, and his writings on academical organization published in his lifetime. Since his death have appeared his Memoirs, a work in which the writer seems to take a cynical pleasure in presenting to the world many of the worst features of his character; and a volume of Sermons, in some ways most appropriate to a University lecture-room, if deficient in what is ordinarily considered essential to a Christian pulpit. To these we can now add a collection of his miscellaneous writings, edited by Professor Nettleship and published by the Clarendon Press. To all who are responsible for the work we must express our great obligations both for what they have done and the manner in which they have done it. All the essays contained in it, with but one exception, had appeared in print before; but although one or two, such as the somewhat notorious Survey of the Tendencies of Religious Thought in England, were comparatively accessible, the majority of them were lost in the mass of mediocre and ephemeral material which form the staple product of most of our magazines. The majority of the essays deal with two main subjects— the history of learning and scholarship and the history of religious thought. On the former subject they present on a |