creditable nomination; but, having been made, ought, in the interests
of the Faith, to have been allowed to pass _sub silentio_; for, if
opposed, it must either be defeated or affirmed by Convocation--a
choice, _me judice_, of nearly balanced evils. To have defeated it would
have been to invest Stanley with the cheap honours of a petty martyrdom.
To have affirmed it is, I fear, to have given a new impetus to the
barren, unspiritual negations which he represents."

I went up to Oxford well supplied with introductions. Dr. Cradock, the
well-beloved Principal of Brasenose, scholar, gentleman, man of the
world, devout Wordsworthian, enthusiastic lover of cricket and boating,
had married a connexion of my own, who had been a Maid of Honour in
Queen Victoria's first household. Theirs was the most hospitable house
in Oxford, and a portrait of Mrs. Cradock, not quite kind, but very
lifelike, enlivens the serious pages of _Robert Elsmere_. Dr.,
afterwards Sir Henry, Acland, with his majestic presence, blandly
paternal address, and ample rhetoric, was not only the Regius Professor
of Medicine, but also the true and patient friend of many undergraduate
generations. Mrs. Acland is commemorated in what I have always thought
one of the grandest sermons in the English language--Liddon's "Worth of
Faith in a Life to Come."[15] The Warden of Keble and Mrs. Talbot (then
the young wife of the young Head of a very young College) were, as they
have been for 40 years, the kindest and most constant of friends. Dr.
Bright, Canon of Christ Church and Professor of Ecclesiastical History,
was a lavish entertainer, "with an intense dramatic skill in telling a
story, an almost biblical knowledge of all the pages of Dickens (and of
Scott), with shouts of glee, and outpourings of play and fancy and
allusion." But I need not elaborate the portrait, for everyone ought to
know Dr. Holland's "Personal Studies" by heart. Edwin Palmer, Professor
of Latin, was reputed to be the best scholar in Oxford, and Mrs. Palmer
was a most genial hostess. Henry Smith, Professor of Geometry, was, I
suppose, the most accomplished man of his time;[16] yet he lives, not by
his performances in the unthinkable sphere of metaphysical mathematics,
but by his intervention at Gladstone's last contest for the University.
Those were the days of open voting, and Smith was watching the votes in
Gladstone's interest. Professor ----, who never could manage his h's,
wished to vote for t