d Lord Granville for correction before publication.

[314] The cabinet of 1892 was his eighth.

[315] Aberdeen, Russell, Palmerston, Clarendon.

CHAPTER IV

OXFORD REFORM--OPEN CIVIL SERVICE

(_1854_)

To rear up minds with aspirations and faculties above the herd,
capable of leading on their countrymen to greater achievements in
virtue, intelligence, and social well-being; to do this, and
likewise so to educate the leisured classes of the community
generally, that they may participate as far as possible in the
qualities of these superior spirits, and be prepared to appreciate
them, and follow in their steps--these are purposes requiring
institutions of education placed above dependence on the immediate
pleasure of that very multitude whom they are designed to elevate.
These are the ends for which endowed universities are desirable;
they are those which all endowed universities profess to aim at;
and great is their disgrace, if, having undertaken this task, and
claiming credit for fulfilling it, they leave it unfulfilled.--J.
S. MILL.

The last waves of the tide of reform that had been flowing for a score
of years, now at length reached the two ancient universities. The
Tractarian revival with all its intense pre-occupations had given the
antique Oxford a respite, but the hour struck, and the final effort of
the expiring whigs in their closing days of power was the summons to
Oxford and Cambridge to set their houses in order. Oxford had been
turned into the battle-field on which contending parties in the church
had at her expense fought for mastery. The result was curious. The
nature of the theological struggle, by quickening mind within the
university, had roused new forces; the antagonism between anglo-catholic
and puritan helped, as it had done two centuries before, to breed the
latitudinarian; a rising school in the sphere of thought and criticism
rapidly made themselves an active party in the sphere of affairs; and
Mr. Gladstone found himself forced to do the work of the very
liberalism which his own theological leaders and allies had first
organised themselves to beat down and extinguish.

FIRST OXFORD COMMISSION

In 1850 Lord John Russell, worked upon by a persevering minority in
Oxford, startled the House of Commons, delighted the