after miracles, the narrowness of view, are an
extraordinary testimony to the charm with which Newman must have
invested all he did or said. Pattison is even more severe on Pusey, and
charges him with having betrayed a secret which he had confided to him
in confession. It does not seem to occur to Pattison to consider
whether he did not himself mention the fact, whatever it was, to some
other friend.

On the other hand the book reveals an extraordinary intellectual ideal.
It holds up a standard for the student which is profoundly impressive;
and I know no other book which displays in a more single-minded and
sincere way the passionate desire of the savant for wide, deep, and
perfect knowledge, which is to be untainted by any admixture of
personal ambition. Indeed, Pattison speaks of literary ambition as
being for the student not an amiable weakness, but a defiling and
polluting sin.

Of course it is natural to feel that there is a certain selfish aridity
about such a point of view. The results of Mark Pattison's devotion are
hardly commensurate with his earnestness. He worked on a system which
hardly permitted him to put the results at the disposal of others; but
there is at the same time something which is both dignified and stately
in the idea of the lonely, laborious life, without hope and without
reward, sustained only by the pursuit of an impossible perfection.

It is not, however, as if this was all that Mark Pattison did. He was a
great intellectual factor at Oxford, especially in early days; in later
days he was a venerable and splendid monument. But as tutor of his
college, before his great disappointment--his failure to be elected to
the Rectorship--he evidently lived a highly practical and useful life.
There is something disarming about the naive way in which he records
that he became aware that he was the possessor of a certain magnetic
influence to which gradually every one in the place, including the old
Rector himself, submitted.

The story of his failure to be elected Rector is deeply pathetic.
Pattison reveals with terrible realism the dingy and sordid intrigues
which put an unworthy man in the place which he himself had earned. But
it may be doubted whether there was so much malignity about the whole
matter as he thought; and, at all events, it may be said that men do
not commonly make enemies without reason. It does not seem to occur to
him to question whether his own conduct and his own remarks m