sity.

Dr. Hampden took his revenge, and it was not a noble one. The fellows of
certain colleges were obliged to proceed to the B.D. degree on pain of
forfeiting their fellowships. The exercises for the degree, which, by
the Statutes, took the old-fashioned shape of formal Latin disputations
between Opponents and Respondents on given theses in the Divinity
School, had by an arrangement introduced by Dr. Burton, with no
authority from the Statutes, come to consist of two English essays on
subjects chosen by the candidate and approved by the Divinity Professor.
The exercises for the degree had long ceased to be looked upon as very
serious matters, and certainly were never regarded as tests of the
soundness of the candidate's faith. They were usually on well-worn
commonplaces, of which the Regius Professor kept a stock, and about
which no one troubled himself but the person who wanted the degree. It
was not a creditable system, but it was of a piece with the prevalent
absence of any serious examination for the superior degrees. It would
have been quite befitting his position, if Dr. Hampden had called the
attention of the authorities to the evil of sham exercises for degrees
in his own important Faculty. It would have been quite right to make a
vigorous effort on public grounds to turn these sham trials into
realities; to use them, like the examination for the B.A. degree, as
tests of knowledge and competent ability. Such a move on his part would
have been in harmony with the legislation which had recently added two
theological Professors to the Faculty, and had sketched out, however
imperfectly, the outlines of a revived theological school.

This is what, with good reason, Dr. Hampden might have attempted on
general grounds, and had he been successful (though this in the
suspicious state of University feeling was not very likely) he would
have gained in a regular and lawful way that power of embarrassing his
opponents which he was resolved to use in defiance of all existing
custom. But such was not the course which he chose. Mr. Macmullen of
Corpus, who, in pursuance of the College Statutes, had to proceed to the
B.D. degree, applied, as the custom was, for theses to the Professor.
Mr. Macmullen was known to hold the opinions of the movement school; of
course he was called a Tractarian; he had put his name to some of the
many papers which expressed the sentiments of his friends on current
events. Dr. Hampden sent him two