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COMPROMISES

a rector of Exeter should veil his truths more decently from the eyes of the feeble and profane. The last book to achieve such unmerited distinction in Great Britain was a copy of Mr. Froude's "Nemesis of Faith," which, being discovered in the possession of an Oxford student, was publicly burned by the Rev. William Sewell, Dean of Exeter, in the college hall, on the twenty-seventh of February, 1849. "Oxford," says Mr. James Anson Farrer, "has always tempered her love for learning with a dislike for inquiry." The incident, being at best unusual, gave such a healthy impetus to the sale of Mr. Froude's work—which had won no wide hearing—that it went into a second edition, and became an object of keen, though temporary, solicitude. Well might the Marquis de Langle say that burning was as a blue ribbon to any book, inspiring interest, and insuring sales. There are those who affirm that the "Index Expurgatorius," by which the Roman Catholic church still seeks to restrain the reading of her children, is a similar spur to curiosity. This I do not believe, having never in my life met a Roman