The proceedings about No. 90 were a declaration of war on the part of the Oxford authorities against the Tractarian party.  The suspicions, alarms, antipathies, jealousies, which had long been smouldering among those in power, had at last taken shape in a definite act.  And it was a turning-point in the history of the movement.  After this it never was exactly what it had been hitherto.  It had been so far a movement within the English Church, for its elevation and reform indeed, but at every step invoking its authority with deep respect, acknowledging allegiance to its rulers in unqualified and even excessive terms, and aiming loyally to make it in reality all that it was in its devotional language and its classical literature.  But after what passed about No. 90 a change came.  The party came under an official ban and stigma.  The common consequences of harsh treatment on the tendencies and thought of a party, which considers itself unjustly proscribed, showed themselves more and more.  Its mind was divided; its temper was exasperated; while the attitude of the governing authorities hardened more into determined hostility.  From the time of the censure, and especially after the events connected with it,—­the contest for the Poetry Professorship and the renewed Hampden question,—­it may be said that the characteristic tempers of the Corcyrean sedition were reproduced on a small scale in Oxford.[97] The scare of Popery, not without foundation—­the reaction against it, also not without foundation—­had thrown the wisest off their balance; and what of those who were not wise?  In the heat of those days there were few Tractarians who did not think Dr. Wynter, Dr. Faussett, and Dr. Symons heretics in theology and persecutors in temper, despisers of Christian devotion and self-denial.  There were few of the party of the Heads who did not think every Tractarian a dishonest and perjured traitor, equivocating about his most solemn engagements, the ignorant slave of childish superstitions which he was conspiring to bring back.  It was the day of the violent on both sides:  the courtesies of life were forgotten; men were afraid of being weak in their censures, their dislike, and their opposition; old friendships were broken up, and men believed the worst of those whom a few years back they had loved and honoured.

It is not agreeable to recall these long extinct animosities, but they are part of the history of that time, and affected the course in which things ran.  And it is easy to blame, it is hard to do justice to, the various persons and parties who contributed to the events of that strange and confused time.  All was new, and unusual, and without precedent in Oxford; a powerful and enthusiastic school reviving old doctrines in a way to make them seem novelties, and creating a wild panic from a quarter where it was the least expected; the terror of this panic acting on authorities not in the least prepared for such a trial of their sagacity, patience, and skill, driving them to unexampled