upon him the duty of preaching a funeral sermon over the mortal remains of several very great men. Dean Stanley has preached, after their burial in the national mausoleum, the funeral sermons of Charles Dickens, Grote, and other eminent men. Such a painful task could not have fallen into abler or more friendly hands.
The Dean's prominent figure among the ecclesiastical reformers has subjected him to much severe criticism. In that pretty Church speech at Oxford, in the month of November 1864, when Mr. Disraeli told the world that he espoused the side of the angels, he alluded thus to the labours of Stanley, Jowett, and Maurice:
'I do perfect justice to the great talent, the great energy, and the considerable information which the new party command; but I believe that this new party in the Church will fail, for two reasons. In the first place, having examined all their writings, I believe without an exception—whether they consist of fascinating eloquence, diversified learning, and picturesque sensibility—I speak seriously what I feel—all these exercised, too, by one honoured in this great University, and whom to know is to admire and regard—or whether I find them in the cruder conclusions of prelates, who appear to me to have commenced their theological studies after they grasped the crozier, and who introduced to society their obsolete discoveries … or whether I read the lucubrations of nebulous professors, who appear in their style to have revived chaos … or, lastly, whether it be the provincial arrogance and precipitate self-complacency which flash and glare in an essay or review—I find this common characteristic of all their writings, that their learning is always second-hand.'
Notwithstanding such criticism, the 'new school' still lives, and very likely now Mr. Disraeli himself would be prepared to treat it with more respect.
