r
it or adequately to judge it and put it in its due place in relation to
the religious and philosophical history of the time, but simply to
preserve a contemporary memorial of what seems to me to have been a true
and noble effort which passed before my eyes, a short scene of religious
earnestness and aspiration, with all that was in it of self-devotion,
affectionateness, and high and refined and varied character, displayed
under circumstances which are scarcely intelligible to men of the
present time; so enormous have been the changes in what was assumed and
acted upon, and thought practicable and reasonable, 'fifty years since.'
For their time and opportunities, the men of the movement, with all
their imperfect equipment and their mistakes, still seem to me the salt
of their generation.... I wish to leave behind me a record that one who
lived with them, and lived long beyond most of them, believed in the
reality of their goodness and height of character, and still looks back
with deepest reverence to those forgotten men as the companions to whose
teaching and example he owes an infinite debt, and not he only, but
religious society in England of all kinds."

_January_ 31st, 1891.

PREFACE

The following pages relate to that stage in the Church revival of this
century which is familiarly known as the Oxford Movement, or, to use its
nickname, the Tractarian Movement. Various side influences and
conditions affected it at its beginning and in its course; but the
impelling and governing force was, throughout the years with which these
pages are concerned, at Oxford. It was naturally and justly associated
with Oxford, from which it received some of its most marked
characteristics. Oxford men started it and guided it. At Oxford were
raised its first hopes, and Oxford was the scene of its first successes.
At Oxford were its deep disappointments, and its apparently fatal
defeat. And it won and lost, as a champion of English theology and
religion, a man of genius, whose name is among the illustrious names of
his age, a name which will always be connected with modern Oxford, and
is likely to be long remembered wherever the English language is
studied.

We are sometimes told that enough has been written about the Oxford
Movement, and that the world is rather tired of the subject. A good deal
has certainly been both said and written about it, and more is probably
still to come; and it is true that other interests, more