was announced
within a week of his degradation, and which gave the common-rooms
something to smile at after the strain and excitement of the scene in
the Theatre. But that passed, and the graver outlook of the situation
occupied men's thoughts.

There was a widespread feeling of insecurity. Friends did not know of
friends, how their minds were working, how they might go. Anxious
letters passed, the writers not daring to say too much, or reveal too
much alarm. And yet there was still some hope that at least with the
great leader matters were not desperate. To his own friends he gave
warning; he had already done so in a way to leave little to expect but
at last to lose him; he spoke of resigning his fellowship in October,
though he wished to defer this till the following June; but nothing
final had been said publicly. Even at the last it was only anticipated
by some that he would retire into lay communion. But that silence was
awful and ominous. He showed no signs of being affected by what had
passed in Oxford. He privately thanked the Proctors for saving him from
what would have distressed him; but he made no comments on the measures
themselves. Still it could not but be a climax of everything as far as
Oxford was concerned. And he was a man who saw signs in such events.

It was inevitable that the events of the end of 1844 and the beginning
of 1845 should bring with them a great crisis in the development of
religious opinion, in the relations of its different forms to one
another, and further, in the thoughts of many minds as to their personal
position, their duty, and their prospects. There had been such a crisis
in 1841 at the publication of No. 90. After the discussions which
followed that tract, Anglican theology could never be quite the same
that it had been before. It was made to feel the sense of some grave
wants, which, however they might be supplied in the future, could no
longer be unnoticed or uncared for. And individuals, amid the strife of
tongues, had felt, some strongly and practically, but a much larger
number dimly and reluctantly, the possibility, unwelcome to most, but
not without interest to others, of having to face the strange and at
one time inconceivable task of revising the very foundations of their
religion. And such a revision had since that time been going on more or
less actively in many minds; in some cases with very decisive results.
But after the explosion caused by Mr. Ward's book, a cr