gross idolaters as Egyptian worshippers of leeks,’[48] Nonconformists were ‘fanatics,’ Quakers were ’blasphemers.’[49] From the peaceful researches, on which he built a lasting name, in Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian antiquities, he returned each time with renewed zest to polemical disputes, and found relaxation in the strife of words.  It was no promising omen for the future of the nonjuring party, that the Court of St. Germains should have appointed him and Wagstaffe first bishops of that Communion.  The consecration was kept for several years a close secret, and Robert Nelson himself may probably have been ignorant[50] of the high dignity to which ‘my neighbour the Dean’ had attained.

One other of Nelson’s nonjuring friends must be mentioned.  Francis Lee, a physician, had been a Fellow of St. John’s, Oxford, but was deprived for declining the oaths.  At the end of the seventeenth century, after travelling abroad, he joined[51] one of those societies of mystics which at that time abounded throughout Europe.  A long correspondence with Dodwell ensued, and convinced at last that he had been in error, he not only left the brotherhood and its presiding ‘prophetess’ (it appears to have been a society of a somewhat fanatical order), but published in 1709, under the title of ‘A History of Montanism, by a Lay Gentleman,’ a work directed against fanaticism in general.  He writes it in the tone of one who has lately recovered from a sort of mental fever which may break out in anyone, and sometimes becomes epidemic, inflaming and throwing into disorder certain obscure impulses which are common to all human nature.[52] He became intimate with Nelson, and subscribes one of his letters to him, ’To the best of friends, from the most affectionate of friends.’[53] He helped him in his devotional publications; took in hand, at his instigation, and from materials which Nelson and Hickes had collected, the life of Kettlewell; and took an active part in furthering the benevolent schemes in which his friend was so deeply interested.  It was he who suggested[54] to him the founding of charity schools after the model of the far-famed orphanage and other educational institutions lately established by Francke and Spener at Halle, the centre of German pietism.  In other ways we see favourable traces of his earlier mystical associations.  He had been cured of fanaticism; but the higher element, the exalted vein of spiritual feeling, remained, and perceptibly communicated itself to Nelson, whose last work—­a preface to Lee’s edition of Thomas a Kempis—­is far more in harmony with the general tone of mystical thought than any of his former writings.  During the last few months of Nelson’s life, they were much together.  One of the very last incidents in his life was a drive with Lee in the park, when they watched the sun ’burst from behind a cloud, and accepted it for an emblem of the eternal brightness that should shortly break upon him.’[55]