not eventually lift himself to this high and secure position. He gives one always the impression that he has not put forth his full powers, and that there is yet more to come. If, as the years go by, he attains more and more to the philosophic mind, if he sees further into the secrets of life and nature and learns that pessimism and realism do not comprise the last words that art has in store for man; if he gives fuller scope to these poetic powers which are his by nature and which his wide observation and his deep study of the poets have strengthened, it may be that he will put a still greater distance between himself and his contemporaries-some of whom, like Mr. George Meredith, are pressing him closeand that he will yet write his name among the supreme masters of fiction-that is, among the benefactors of the human race.1

1As we go to press we find that Harper's Bazar for October I contains the opening chapters of Mr. Hardy's new novel, "The Pursuit of the WellBeloved. A Sketch of a Temperament."

То

THEODORE OF CANTERBURY.

O estimate aright the place that belongs to S. Theodore in the founding of the Church of England it is necessary to recall the condition of the various Churches there at the time of his arrival (A.D. 669) and the circumstances that led to his summons.

Five years before (A.D. 664) the synod of Whitby had secured the conformity of the Scotch missionaries in England to the calendar of the continent and of South Ireland, but the importance of this step was not immediately obvious. To its actors the synod marked no epoch. Tuda, a Scot, succeeded Colman as bishop, and the Church remained in control of the pupils of Colman and Aidan. But this year that had opened so auspiciously for England closed with a pestilence that carried off half its bishops and a large part of its clergy. Tuda was among its first victims. In Kent the same day (July 14, 664) saw the death of archbishop and king, and the Bishop of Rochester followed them closely to the grave. Of the whole English episcopate there remained only the Gaul Boniface in East-Anglia who had recognized a nominal primacy in Canterbury; the Scot Jarumnan in Mercia, and Wini of Gallic ordination in Wessex, both of whom ignored it. The latter, however, had quarreled with his king and was soon to be expelled.

The ranks of the minor Southern clergy were sadly thinned, and no immediate effort was made to fill their vacant seats. The situation was indeed serious, and both in Kent and Northumbria required extraordinary measures. The Kentish clergy who would have invited a bishop of Rochester to Canterbury ignored Boniface as though to show that he had little connection with Kent. The new king took no steps to supply the see. The clergy hesitated to name a bishop till the royal policy should appear, and for four years the Kentish Church had no leader. In Essex, meantime,

pagan reaction led to political revolution. The heathen temples were restored. The sword of the Mercian king and the devotion of the Scot Jarumnan alone arrested the movement. This king now claimed supremacy over the Church in Essex and sold (A.D. 666) the bishopric of London, whence Mellitus had fled fifty years before, to Wini, just exiled from Wessex, who thus planted the "wicked seed" of simony in England. In Gaul, the land of his orders, the plant had flourished for a century. Wessex remained without a bishop for some four years, for though a candidate was promptly sent from Gaul, he was not consecrated till 670.

The southern Churches, then, were corrupt and paralysed. To the north a pagan reaction was taxing to the utmost the powers of Cuthbert. But the Church of Aidan successfully resisted heathenism, though it sought no aid from without, perhaps because it could have found none, for in Kent there was inaction, in Wessex discord, in East-Anglia an isolation that has left no record. In Mercia and Northumbria alone the Christians were undaunted and the faith unshaken.

Northumbria was naturally the first to act. Oswy made Chad his bishop at York and his son, the petty prince Alchfrid, had Wilfrid elected as bishop of his province.' Canonical consecration could not well be had in England, and Wilfrid sought it in Gaul, where he remained till the spring of 666. Chad, meantime, or possibly before, had accepted the dubious consecration of Wini and two British bishops and was ruling nobly at York when Wilfrid returned to the kingdom, but not to a diocese, for his princelet Alchfrid had fallen from favor. He had a monastery at Ripon, and for three years he made this his headquarters, losing no occasion to form influential connections in Mercia and even in Kent, where King Egbert summoned him to reorganize his acephalous Church.

Though Oswy might be satisfied with the state of his

'That this was the true state of the case, rather than the current version, the writer has endeavored to show in the "Historical Review," 1891, and in the "Church Eclectic,” February and March, 1890.

Church at home, his far-sighted policy could not view with indifference the weakness and disorganization of the south. His own position as Bretwalda, chief of English kings, would naturally suggest to him the possibility of a similar ecclesiastical authority. It is obvious too that from his political point of view this was a most opportune possibility, since it would surely smooth the way for the realization of his ambition, a united England. This he rightly foresaw the clergy would support heartily, for it would favor the growth and assure the stability of the Church. All the Churches were now in English hands, and at Whitby he had prevailed on them to lay aside all important differences in calendar and ritual, but it must have been clear to him that jealous rivalry would prevent the various kingdoms from accepting an English primate unless he came to them with a sanction that all alike respected from the recognized head of Western christendom, who could speak with equal claim to every English Church.' But it would be clear to him from the first also that Rome, following the tradition of Gregory, would most readily sanction a primate with a Kentish connection. Oswy, therefore, "took counsel with Egbert of Kent," and with the election and consent of the Church they chose one of the Canterbury clergy and sent him to Rome to be ordained, "that he might ordain Catholic heads for the English Churches." He died, however, with his companions, in a Roman pestilence.

He had taken with him a letter from Oswy which the pope answered, praising the Catholic faith of Oswy and his essentially Scotch Church, and saying nothing of Egbert, whose part was clearly subordinate. Oswy, in addressing the pope, could hardly, in courtesy, do otherwise than leave it open to him to ordain whomever he thought most fit. The death of the ambassadors prevented the choice of an Englishman.

1 That he, and not Wilfrid, was the moving spirit at Whitby, see Eclectic," February, 1890.

"Church

2 Kent and Wessex were Italian missions; East-Anglia, Gallic; Essex Mercia, and York, Scotch, on whose relations to Rome see "Church Eclectic," February, 1891.

Had he feared that in assuming to choose a successor he was exceeding the discretion reposed in him by Oswy, the pope would have hastened to forestall a second English embassy. He wrote, however, that he had not yet been able to find any priest such as Oswy wished. But that king had every reason to be pleased with the turn that matters had taken. It had been necessary to send a Kentishman to secure the support of the Kentish king, without which no primate could sit at Canterbury. His policy, however, would be far better served by a foreigner with no private grudges and no local prejudices. Besides, Oswy might well hope that Rome would furnish an abler man than Canterbury then afforded. The pope did

nothing that was not expected and approved. Only the blind zeal of partisan controversy will discover "papal aggression" in the pope's careful and repeated efforts to comply with Oswy's request.

It was indeed hard to find a man at once fit and willing to go. At length Adrian, an African by birth, but abbot of a monastery near Naples, suggested the Greek monk Theodore, then sixty-six years old, and not yet in holy orders. He accepted the mission, but wished that Adrian should accompany him, because "he had been twice in Gaul, knew the way, and could provide an escort of his own men." This quite accorded with the pope's desire, who feared that Theodore "might introduce something in the Greek way contrary to the faith," alluding no doubt to the monothelite heresy. His fears were groundless though fruitful. None could asperse the orthdoxy of Theodore. His tonsure was more open to cavil. It was the Pauline, and that Rome might maintain the appearance of uniformity in England to which it did not attain at home, Theodore and the Saxon Church waited four months after his ordination as deacon (November, 667–March, 668) till the old man's hair had grown sufficiently to admit of Roman tonsure. Two months later he set out, but was detained at Arles by Ebroin till the season was so far advanced that Theodore was constrained to pass the winter with Agilbert at Paris. This was of importance to him, for Agilbert