the desire to regain communication with people whom one has loved here; the great motive was to get knowledge of things which one could not get in the ordinary way-especially knowledge of the future-but any knowledge that might be important for practical purposes. Herodotus tells a story about Periander, the tyrant of Corinth, in the seventh century B.C. Periander had hidden somewhere a treasure which had been entrusted to his keeping by a friend and then forgotten the place. In this embarrassment he sent to the oracle of the dead amongst the Thesprotians, in order that the spirit of his dead wife Melissa might be called up and say where the treasure was hidden. We can imagine that in domestic difficulties in former days, when Periander could not remember where he had put this or that, Melissa had been the natural person to whom he would run in a fret. 'Where on earth, O woman, did I put that wretched '— whatever it might be. And now that she was dead, and Periander was bothered to lay his hand on the hidden deposit, he could think of nothing better than calling up poor Melissa's spirit to tell him where he had put it.

Under the Roman Empire it is plain that many people had recourse to necromancy, and that calling up the dead was one of the things which the professors of magical arts regularly claimed to be able to do-' crematos suscitare mortuos,' as the witch Canidia puts it in the catalogue of her accomplishments in Horace. But no writer of classical times that I know gives us any concrete case of the calling up of a spirit which had come within his own experience or the experience of any one known to him, unless we count the case of Apion the Alexandrian grammarian of the first century A.D., whom the elder Pliny as a young man had apparently seen and talked to, and who, according to this same Pliny, used to declare that he had once called up the spirit of Homer and learnt from the ghostly lips of the poet himself in which of the seven cities he had really been born. Some suspicion, however, was cast on the story by the circumstance that when Apion, a blatant self-advertiser, was asked to pass on the precious bit of knowledge, he became coy, and said he felt bound to regard personal information of that kind, when given him by Homer, as strictly confidential. Lucan describes an evocation of the dead

by the witch Erichtho, but she is an imaginary character, and the whole description makes no pretence of being anything but highly coloured poetical fiction, though some of the details-for instance, that the corpse of the man whose spirit was to be called up must have the lungs undecayed-no doubt corresponded with traditional necromantic lore. The most effectual form of necromancy, men thought in those days, was not to procure a filmy ' materialisation,' but to compel a spirit to come back into a corpse newly dead and speak with its fleshly tongue. Servius (on the Æneid,' vi, 1. 149) says that the term necromantia ought properly to be confined to the re-animation of corpses: the calling up of shadowy appearances ought to be called sciomantia. Erichtho in Lucan brings from the battlefield the corpse of a soldier recently slain, but if a fresh corpse was not ready at disposal witches and necromancers were believed to commit murder in order to procure one. Witches were especially believed to kidnap and murder children; probably some of them really did so. And if it might be rather dangerous for people in lower life to commit murder, Emperors, when they wished to consult spirits from the other world, could murder with impunity. Several Emperors went in for necromancy, and we are expressly told of Didius Julianus and Elagabalus that they had little children killed for the purpose. This is a mode of communication with the other world a good deal grimmer than sitting round a table in a drawing-room and asking the spirit to spell out messages by innocent tapping.

When we look at our collection of ancient ghoststories as a whole, one must, I think, pronounce that they are exceedingly badly authenticated. Except Pliny's foolish story about the boys who had their heads shorn, all of them rest on hearsay and popular legend. If the modern evidence for ghosts leaves us unbelieving or sceptical, we are not likely to be impressed by these old stories. If, on the other hand, we regard the modern testimony to appearances of the dead as substantial, we shall naturally regard these old stories as having certain real facts of the same nature behind them. I have known at least one man, universally respected for his learning and common sense, who believed that he had one day, when out walking, met a ghost.

EDWYN BEvan.

Art. 5.-NEWMAN'S OPPORTUNITY.

1. Apologia pro Vita sua. Longmans, 1864.

2. Letters and Correspondence of John Henry Newman during his Life in the English Church. Edited by Anne Mozley. Longmans, 1891.

3. Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman. By Wilfrid Ward. Longmans, 1912.

To the man who would understand Newman-a not impossible task-an excellent starting-point is given in J. A. Froude's famous description, which much pleased Newman when he read it in old age.

'When I entered at Oxford, John Henry Newman was beginning to be famous. The responsible authorities were watching him with anxiety, and men were looking with interest and curiosity on the apparition among them of one of those persons of indisputable genius who was likely to make a mark upon his time. His appearance was striking. He was above the middle height, slight and spare. His head was large, his face remarkably like that of Julius Cæsar. I have often thought of the resemblance, and believed that it extended to the temperament. In both there was an original force of character which refused to be moulded by circumstances, which was to make its own way and become a power in the world; a clearness of intellectual perception, a disdain for conventionalities, a temper imperious and wilful, but along with it a most attaching gentleness, sweetness, singleness of heart and purpose Both were formed by nature to command others, both had the faculty of attracting to themselves the passionate devotion of their friends and followers.

He was the most transparent of men. He told us what he believed to be true. He did not know where it would carry him. No one who has ever risen to any great height in this world refuses to move till he knows where he is going. He is impelled in each step which he takes by a force within himself. He satisfies himself only that the step is a right one, and he leaves the rest to Providence. Newman's mind was world-wide. He was interested in everything which was going on in science, in politics, in literature. Keble had looked into no lines of thought but his own. Newman had read omnivorously; he had studied modern thought and modern life in all its forms and with all its many-coloured passions. . . . What he said carried conviction along with

it.. We came to regard Newman with the affection of pupils for an idolised master. The simplest word which dropped from him was treasured as if it had been an intellectual diamond. For hundreds of young men Credo in Newmannum was the genuine symbol of faith.'*

This is a remarkable picture, and it brings out strongly certain parts of Newman's nature which are often overlooked. Newman, as God made him, was not the shrinking scholar, the cloistered saint, devoted and tender, hesitating and anxious, unfit for the rough and tumble of life: rather he was a born leader of men, an ardent and fearless fighter, unwilling to accept defeat, confident in his own powers and able to win over to his side doubters and opponents. He is compared to Cæsar, that versatile man of the world, equally at home at the street corner, in the senate house, in the study, in the drawing-room or on the field, who carved his way to world dominion out of nothing, who again and again staked his career upon a throw, who bestrode this narrow world like a colossus. But these robust and dominant powers, not finding free scope in his life, were slowly eaten away by a growing weakness and selfmistrust. Herein lies his secret; this it was which took the heart out of him and finally led him into the Roman Church, there to lie high and dry like a stranded vessel.

From his earliest years his splendid abilities made an impression upon others, and this must have been well known to him. He was the quickest learner ever seen at his school, and when he entered at Trinity, his tutor greeted his father with the pleasing words, 'Oh, Mr Newman, what have you given us in your son!' At the University he is ambitious and loves to be first; he resents it when owing to his extreme youth he knows less than the others; he 'disdains to say' his friends go too fast and resolves to catch them up. His belief in himself is not shattered by his nervous breakdown in the schools, and he conceives 'the audacious idea' of an Oriel Fellowship, and is very confident' of success when others think he has no chance. After his election, a friend speaks of him as a future Archbishop or Lord Chancellor, Whately calls him 'the clearest-headed man

* Short Studies,' IV, 272-283.

2

he knew,' and a year or two later he is styled by Blanco White 'my Oxford Plato.' He is invited to join the Athenæum at 23, is requested as a Deacon to preach a University sermon, and at 27 is appointed Preacher at Whitehall. But we need not pursue the story: enough has been said to show that thus early he was known as a coming man.

Indeed it would be hard to praise too highly his splendid talents. His intellect was of the first order, strong and penetrating, remorselessly clear and cool; and in youth he exercised it on many fields. He took, as far as a man may, all forms of learning as his province. He was interested not only in religion, but in philosophy, mathematics, politics, history, science: even abstruse subjects like anatomy and mineralogy were not altogether unknown to him. His mind was as wide as it was powerful.

But he excelled also on the side of feeling and imagination. His emotions were strong and warm. He loved poetry and was no mean poet himself; perhaps he might have been a great one, had he devoted himself to it. His prose style is one of the finest in the language, possessing a singular force and richness. He was devoted to music, sometimes crying out with the pleasure of it; and as a player on the violin he believed that with regular practice he could do what he pleased.' The beauties of nature were an unfailing source of delight; he loved the trees and the green fields, the streams and hills, the birds and clouds and sunshine, and regretted the loss of these glories at Oxford. He could not find adjectives to describe the 'exquisite beauty' of the Isle of Wight, and he sent home glowing accounts of the wonders of his Mediterranean tour.

But if Newman was a thinker and an artist, he was before all a man. He was no Kant, dwelling apart with his philosophy; he was no Wordsworth, content to commune with nature. He might have taken as his motto the old saying in Terence, that he accounted nothing that is human as alien to him. He had very warm affections and sympathies. The death of those whom he loved wrung from him bitter tears and sometimes broke him down. And his friends repaid him with a passionate attachment. W. G. Ward, who was not very Vol. 246.-No. 487.

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