1852-1856 229 The only other of our company, to the best of my knowledge, who seceded was named F-. He was a good fellow, but too much given to scoffing at the Church of England as " The Establishment." I kept a caricature of it, which he passed to me one day, as we sat in examination on Ecclesiastical History. This type of man with an eye to the faults and weaknesses in the Church, and none for its strength and endurability, is hopeless. He sank socially, and the last I heard of him was as a sort of clerk in a crockery warehouse, and I fear not leading a very regular life. The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table advises his friends late in life to throw their old friends overboard, much as do seamen to measure advance by logs. We can then look at our old comrades bobbing up and down in our wake, and form a judgment as to our rate of progress. When I, in my old age, nearing my final rest, look back on my ancient comrades of the Society of the Holy Cross, I do not see that any of them, save the two mentioned above, are or have been lagging behind, or shooting ahead. Of all such as I knew and of whom I have kept record, I feel convinced that every one, with the two exceptions above referred to, have retained the same relative position, not indeed ecclesiastically, but in convictions. Where we floated theologically in 1852, the few of us who remain float still in 1922. Such of us as died, fell asleep at the same point in faith and practice. When I look back across a tract of years full of hopes and fears, bruises and wounds, defeats and advances, there seems to me to have been something very pathetic in our little confraternity, animated with so much enthusiasm, such zeal, such readiness to rush into the battle, with so great certainty of suffering and humiliation, with shame likely to cover our faces at the hostility of the bishops and government, and the coarse insolence of the mob. If there had been but three of the bishops who maintained the tradition of the Church, we would have rejoiced, but there was only one, Henry of Exeter, and he died in 1869. The prospect was black indeed ; and yet we were confident—with the confidence of youth—and God be thanked, our confidence has proved not to have been in vain. We were like watchers waiting for the dawn, shivering with cold, hailing every little lightening in the east, every flush in a high uplifted cloud, every twitter of an awakening bird, waiting
