y argument, but, to use the word in
a broad sense, by authority. Conscience is an authority; the Bible is an
authority; such is the Church; such is Antiquity; such are the words of
the wise; such are hereditary lessons; such are ethical truths; such are
historical memories; such are legal saws and state maxims; such are
proverbs; such are sentiments, presages, and prepossessions. It seemed
to me as if he ever felt happier, when he could speak or act under some
such primary or external sanction; and could use argument mainly as a
means of recommending or explaining what had claims on his reception
prior to proof. He even felt a tenderness, I think, in spite of Bacon,
for the Idols of the Tribe and the Den, of the Market and the Theatre.
What he hated instinctively was heresy, insubordination, resistance to
things established, claims of independence, disloyalty, innovation, a
critical, censorious spirit. And such was the main principle of the
school which in the course of years was formed around him; nor is it
easy to set limits to its influence in its day; for multitudes of men,
who did not profess its teaching, or accept its peculiar doctrines, were
willing nevertheless, or found it to their purpose, to act in company
with it.

Indeed for a time it was practically the champion and advocate of the
political doctrines of the great clerical interest through the country,
who found in Mr. Keble and his friends an intellectual, as well as moral
support to their cause, which they looked for in vain elsewhere. His
weak point, in their eyes, was his consistency; for he carried his love
of authority and old times so far, as to be more than gentle towards the
Catholic Religion, with which the Toryism of Oxford and of the Church of
England had no sympathy. Accordingly, if my memory be correct, he never
could get himself to throw his heart into the opposition made to
Catholic Emancipation, strongly as he revolted from the politics and the
instruments by means of which that Emancipation was won. I fancy he
would have had no difficulty in accepting Dr. Johnson's saying about
"the first Whig;" and it grieved and offended him that the "Via prima
salutis" should be opened to the Catholic body from the Whig quarter. In
spite of his reverence for the Old Religion, I conceive that on the
whole he would rather have kept its professors beyond the pale of the
Constitution with the Tories, than admit them on the principles of the
Whigs. Moreove