dictory facts and appearances; and how hard it is for any one to keep all, according to their real importance, simultaneously in view; when we remember also what are the temptations of human nature in great collisions of religious belief, the excitement and passion of the time, the mixed character of all religious zeal, the natural inevitable anger which accompanies it when resisted, the fervour which welcomes self-sacrifice for the truth; and when we think of all this kept aglow by the continuous provocation of unfair and harsh dealing from persons who were scarcely entitled to be severe judges; the wonder is, human nature being what it is, not that so many went, but that so many stayed.

CHAPTER XVI

THE THREE DEFEATS:

ISAAC WILLIAMS, MACMULLEN, PUSEY

THE year 1841, though it had begun in storm, and though signs were not wanting of further disturbance, was at Oxford, outwardly at least, a peaceable one. A great change had happened; but, when the first burst of excitement was over, men settled down to their usual work, their lectures, or their reading, or their parishes, and by Easter things seemed to go on as before. The ordinary habits of University life resumed their course with a curious quietness. There was, no doubt, much trouble brooding underneath. Mr. Ward and others continued a war of pamphlets; and in June Mr. Ward was dismissed from his Mathematical Lectureship at Balliol. But faith in the great leader was still strong. No. 90, if it had shocked or disquieted some, had elicited equally remarkable expressions of confidence and sympathy from others who might have been, at least, silent. The events of the spring had made men conscious of

what their leader was, and called forth warm and enthusiastic affection. It was not in vain that, whatever might be thought of the wisdom or the reasonings of No. 90, he had shown the height of his character and the purity and greatness of his religious purpose; and that being what he was, in the eyes of all Oxford, he had been treated with contumely, and had borne it with patience and loyal submission. There were keen observers, to whom that patience told of future dangers; they would have liked him to show more fight. But he gave no signs of defeat, nor, outwardly, of disquiet; he forbore to retaliate at Oxford: and the sermons at St. Mary's continued, penetrating and searching as ever, perhaps with something more pathetic and anxious in their undertone than before.

But if he forbore at Oxford, he did not let things pass outside. Sir Robert Peel, in opening a readingroom at Tamworth, had spoken loosely, in the conventional and pompous way then fashionable, of the all-sufficing and exclusive blessings of knowledge. While Mr. Newman was correcting the proofs of No. 90, he was also writing to the Times the famous letters of Catholicus; a warning to eminent public men of the danger of declaiming on popular commonplaces without due examination of their worth. all seemed quiet. "In the summer of 1841," we read in the Apologia, "I found myself at Littlemore without any harass or anxiety on my mind. I had determined to put aside all controversy, and set myself

But

down to my translation of St. Athanasius." Outside of Oxford there was a gathering of friends in the summer at the consecration of one of Mr. Keble's district churches, Ampfield-an occasion less common and more noticeable then than now. Again, what was a new thought then, a little band of young Oxford men, ten or twelve, taxed themselves to build a new church, which was ultimately placed at Bussage, in Mr. Thomas Keble's parish. One of Mr. Keble's curates, Mr. Peter Young, had been refused Priest's orders by the Bishop of Winchester, for alleged unsoundness on the doctrine of the Eucharist. Mr. Selwyn, not without misgivings on the part of the Whig powers, had been appointed Bishop of New Zealand. Dr. Arnold had been appointed to the Chair of Modern History at Oxford. In the course of the year there passed away one who had had a very real though unacknowledged influence on much that had happened-Mr. Blanco White. And at the end of the year, 29th October, Mr. Keble gave his last lecture on Poetry, and finished a course the most original and memorable ever delivered from his chair.

Towards the end of the year two incidents, besides some roughly-worded Episcopal charges, disturbed this quiet. They were only indirectly connected with theological controversy at Oxford; but they had great ultimate influence on it, and they helped to marshal parties and consolidate animosities. One was the beginning of the contest for the Poetry Professorship

which Mr. Keble had vacated. There was no one of equal eminence to succeed him; but there was in Oxford a man of undoubted poetical genius, of refined taste and subtle thought, though of unequal power, who had devoted his gifts to the same great purpose for which Mr. Keble had written the Christian Year. No one who has looked into the Baptistery, whatever his feeling towards the writer, can doubt whether Mr. Isaac Williams was a poet and knew what poetry meant. He was an intimate friend of Mr. Keble and Mr. Newman, and so he was styled a Tractarian; but no name offered itself so obviously to the electors as his, and in due time his friends announced their intention of bringing him forward. His competitor was Mr. (afterwards Archdeacon) Garbett of Brasenose, the college of Heber and Milman, an accomplished gentleman of high culture, believed to have an acquaintance, not common then in Oxford, with foreign literature, whose qualifications stood high in the opinion of his University friends, but who had given no evidence to the public of his claims to the office. It was inevitable, it was no one's special fault, that the question of theological opinions should intrude itself; but at first it was only in private that objections were raised or candidatures recommended on theological grounds. But rumours were abroad that the authorities of Brasenose were canvassing their college on these grounds and in an unlucky moment for Mr. Williams, Dr. Pusey, not without the knowledge, but without the assenting judgment of