ous sunshine and
stately cheerfulness than during the remaining weeks of that summer. A
spirit of unclouded serenity possessed the place, both indoors and out.
If rain fell, it was only at night. And this, as so much else, Julius
March noted duly in his diary.

For that was the period of elaborate private chronicles, when persons
of intelligence and position still took themselves, their doings and
their emotions with most admired seriousness. Natural science, the
great leveler, had hardly stepped in as yet. Therefore it was, that
already, Julius's diary ran into many stout manuscript volumes; each in
turn soberly but richly bound, with silver clasp and lock complete, so
soon as its final page was written. Begun when he first went up to
Oxford, some thirteen years earlier, it formed an intimate history of
the influences of the Tractarian Movement upon a scholarly mind and
delicately spiritual nature. At the commencement of his Oxford career
he had come into close relations with some of the leaders of the
movement. And the conception of an historic church, endowed with mystic
powers--conveyed through an unbroken line of priests from the age of
the apostles--the orderly round of vigil, fast, and festival, the
secret, introspective joys of penance and confession, the fascinations
of the strictly religious life, as set before him in eloquent public
discourse or persuasive private conversation,--had combined to kindle
an imagination very insufficiently satisfied by the lean spiritual
meats offered it during an Evangelical childhood and youth. Julius
yielded himself up to his instructors with passionate self-abandon. He
took orders, and remained on at Oxford--being a fellow of his
college--working earnestly for the cause he had so at heart. Eventually
he became a member of the select band of disciples that dwelt,
uncomfortably, supported by visions of reactionary reform at once
austere and beneficent, in the range of disused stable buildings at
Littlemore.

Of the storm and stress of this religious war, its triumphs, its
defeats, its many agitations, Julius's diaries told with a deep, if
chastened, enthusiasm. His was a singularly pure nature, unmoved by the
primitive desires which usually inflame young blood. Ideas heated him;
while the lust of the eye and the pride of life left him almost
scornfully cold. He strove earnestly, of course, to bring the flesh
into subjection to the spirit; which was, calmly considered, a sligh