In his best known work, Bruges la Morte (1892), he explains that his aim is to evoke the town as a living being, associated with the moods of the spirit, counselling, dissuading from and prompting action.
In acting thus they were merely conforming to the duty of counselling (devoir de conseil) which all the superior authorities had towards the king, and the text of the ordinances (ordonnances) had often invited them to do so.
In 1871, when the Algerians again rose in revolt, Abd-el-Kader wrote to them counselling submission to France.
At first he made a good use of this, counselling economy, decreasing taxation, disbanding 25,000 soldiers and restoring liberty to the persecuted Jansenists.
But he did not lose heart; at once he threw himself into the double duty, which now devolved on himself and Pusey, of counselling the many who had hitherto followed the movement, and who, now in their perplexity, might be tempted to follow their leader's example, and at the same time of maintaining the rights of the church against what he held to be the encroachments of the state, as seen in such acts as the Gorham judgment, and the decision on Essays and Reviews.