-room at Tamworth, had spoken loosely,
in the conventional and pompous way then fashionable, of the
all-sufficing and exclusive blessings of knowledge. While Mr. Newman was
correcting the proofs of No. 90, he was also writing to the _Times_ the
famous letters of _Catholicus_; a warning to eminent public men of the
danger of declaiming on popular commonplaces without due examination of
their worth. But all seemed quiet. "In the summer of 1841," we read in
the _Apologia_, "I found myself at Littlemore without any harass or
anxiety on my mind. I had determined to put aside all controversy, and
set myself down to my translation of St. Athanasius." Outside of Oxford
there was a gathering of friends in the summer at the consecration of
one of Mr. Keble's district churches, Ampfield--an occasion less common
and more noticeable then than now. Again, what was a new thought then, a
little band of young Oxford men, ten or twelve, taxed themselves to
build a new church, which was ultimately placed at Bussage, in Mr.
Thomas Keble's parish. One of Mr. Keble's curates, Mr. Peter Young, had
been refused Priest's orders by the Bishop of Winchester, for alleged
unsoundness on the doctrine of the Eucharist. Mr. Selwyn, not without
misgivings on the part of the Whig powers, had been appointed Bishop of
New Zealand. Dr. Arnold had been appointed to the Chair of Modern
History at Oxford. In the course of the year there passed away one who
had had a very real though unacknowledged influence on much that had
happened--Mr. Blanco White. And at the end of the year, 29th October,
Mr. Keble gave his last lecture on Poetry, and finished a course the
most original and memorable ever delivered from his chair.

Towards the end of the year two incidents, besides some roughly-worded
Episcopal charges, disturbed this quiet. They were only indirectly
connected with theological controversy at Oxford; but they had great
ultimate influence on it, and they helped to marshal parties and
consolidate animosities. One was the beginning of the contest for the
Poetry Professorship which Mr. Keble had vacated. There was no one of
equal eminence to succeed him; but there was in Oxford a man of
undoubted poetical genius, of refined taste and subtle thought, though
of unequal power, who had devoted his gifts to the same great purpose
for which Mr. Keble had written the _Christian Year._ No one who has
looked into the _Baptistery_, whatever his feeling towards the writer