teaching go deep compared with modern standards. Oxford scholars of our
own day question whether there was even one single tutor in 1830, with
the possible exception of Hampden, who could expound Aristotle as a
whole--so utterly had the Oxford tradition perished.[37]

The time was in truth the eve of an epoch of illumination, and in these
epochs it is not old academic systems that the new light is wont to
strike with its first rays. The summer of 1831 is the date of Sir
William Hamilton's memorable exposure,[38] in his most trenchant and
terrifying style and with a learning all his own, of the corruption and
'vampire oppression of Oxford'; its sacrifice of the public interests to
private advantage; its unhallowed disregard of every moral and religious
bond; the systematic perjury so naturalised in a great seminary of
religious education; the apathy with which the injustice was tolerated
by the state and the impiety tolerated by the church. Copleston made a
wretched reply, but more than twenty years passed before the spirit of
reform overthrew the entrenchments of academic abuse. In that overthrow,
when the time came, Mr. Gladstone was called to play a part, though
hardly at first a very zealous one. This was not for a quarter of a
century; for, as we shall soon see, both the revival of learning and the
reform of institutions at Oxford were sharply turned aside from their
expected course by the startling theological movement that now proceeded
from her venerable walls.

What interests us here is not the system but the man; and never was
vital temperament more admirably fitted by its vigour, sincerity,
conscience, compass, for whatever good seed from the hand of any sower
might be cast upon it. In an entry in his diary in the usual strain of
evangelical devotion (April 25, 1830) is a sentence that reveals what
was in Mr. Gladstone the nourishing principle of growth: 'In practice
the great end is that the love of God may become the _habit_ of my soul,
and particularly these things are to be sought;--1. The spirit of love.
2. Of self-sacrifice. 3. Of purity. 4. Of energy.' Just as truly as if
we were recalling some hero of the seventeenth or any earlier century,
is this the biographic clue.

Gladstone constantly reproaches himself for natural indolence, and for a
year and a half he took his college course pretty easily. Then he
changed. 'The time for half-measures and trifling and pottering, in
which I have so long indu