Oxford, then as now, teemed with intellectual life
and activity almost of every kind, but two movements
were the ruling forces. The authority of Newman
was immense, and his school of thought was perhaps
dominant ; but it was encountered and thwarted by
another school, liberal, half-sceptical, and opposed to
dogma — that which showed itself in the " Essays
and Reviews ; " and Jowett, Temple, Wilson, and other
rising men were doing battle with the Tractarian
theories. I was still too young thoroughly to under-
stand the questions at issue in this fierce conflict, and
in truth I have never weighed with care the confusing
dust of systems and creeds ; I still cling to the philo-
sophy of Pope —

" Hope humbly, then ; with trembling pinions soar ;
Wait the great teacher Death, and God adore."

But I was able to appreciate the great ability dis-
played on both sides in a religious struggle which
has had prodigious results for good and for evil. One



78 MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS OF A LIFE

circumstance brought me face to face with the dis-
putants, and enabled me to judge of their varied
powers. I took notes, I have said, of what was
preached at St. Mary's, and Puseyism and the Liberals
found an arena within its walls. Two sermons exhi-
biting the opposite modes of faith remain engrained,
as it were, in my mind, the one by Manning on the
close relation between intellectual and moral excel-
lence, an indirect plea for the authority of the Church,
the other by Tait on " Division in Unity," breathing
the spirit of Tillotson, of Locke, of Sumner. The
second great movement to which I refer was for
placing the University on a wider basis, doing away
with the old and narrow restrictions which confined
fellowships and scholarships in most cases, and even
made colleges close boroughs, opening Oxford to
Catholics and Dissenters, and making the examina-
tions in the schools more modern. It has wrought
an enormous change in Oxford, but I am not suffi-
ciently acquainted with the place to say if it has made
wholly for good.
