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ESSAYS ON LIBERTY
to dissociate religion from learning; and he rated high Daniel's reply to the Provinciales. He esteemed still more the French Protestants of the seventeenth century, who transformed the system of Geneva and Dort. English theology did not come much in his way until he had made himself at hOlne with the Italians and the primary French, Then it abounded. He gathered it in quantities on t\VO journeys in 185 I and I 858, and he possessed the English divines in perfection, at least down to Whitby, and the nonjurors. Early acquaintance \vith Sir Edward Vavasour and Lord Clifford had planted a lasting prejudice in favour of the English Catholic families, which sometimes tinged his judgments. The neglected literature of the Catholics in England held a place in his scheme of thought, which it never obtained in the eyes of any other scholar, native or foreign. This was the only considerable school of divines \vho wrote under persecution, and were reduced to an attitude of defence. In conflict \vith the most learned, intelligent, and conciliatory of controversialists, they developed a remarkable spirit of moderation, discriminating inferior elements from the original and genuine gro\vth of Catholic roots; and their several declarations and mani- festoes, from the Restoration on\vards, were an inex- haustible supply for irenics. Therefore they po\verfully attracted one who took the words of St. Vincent of Lérins not merely for a flash of illumination, but for a scientific formula and guiding principle. Fe\v writers interested him more deeply than Stapleton, Davenport, \vho anticipated Number XC., Irishmen, such as Caron and \Valshe, and the Scots, Barclay, the adversary and friend of Bellarmine, Ramsay, the convert and recorder of Fénelon. It may be that, to an intellect trained in the historic process, stability, continuity, and growth were terms of more vivid and exact significance than to the doctors of Pont-à-Mousson and Lambspring. But when he came forward arrayed it} the spoils of Italian libraries and German universities, \vith the erudition of centuries and the criticism of to-day, he some- times was content to follo\v where forgotten Benedictines or Franciscans had preceded: under the later Stuarts.
