of the Eucharist.  Mr. Selwyn, not without misgivings on the part of the Whig powers, had been appointed Bishop of New Zealand.  Dr. Arnold had been appointed to the Chair of Modern History at Oxford.  In the course of the year there passed away one who had had a very real though unacknowledged influence on much that had happened—­Mr. Blanco White.  And at the end of the year, 29th October, Mr. Keble gave his last lecture on Poetry, and finished a course the most original and memorable ever delivered from his chair.

Towards the end of the year two incidents, besides some roughly-worded Episcopal charges, disturbed this quiet.  They were only indirectly connected with theological controversy at Oxford; but they had great ultimate influence on it, and they helped to marshal parties and consolidate animosities.  One was the beginning of the contest for the Poetry Professorship which Mr. Keble had vacated.  There was no one of equal eminence to succeed him; but there was in Oxford a man of undoubted poetical genius, of refined taste and subtle thought, though of unequal power, who had devoted his gifts to the same great purpose for which Mr. Keble had written the Christian Year. No one who has looked into the Baptistery, whatever his feeling towards the writer, can doubt whether Mr. Isaac Williams was a poet and knew what poetry meant.  He was an intimate friend of Mr. Keble and Mr. Newman, and so he was styled a Tractarian; but no name offered itself so obviously to the electors as his, and in due time his friends announced their intention of bringing him forward.  His competitor was Mr. (afterwards Archdeacon) Garbett of Brasenose, the college of Heber and Milman, an accomplished gentleman of high culture, believed to have an acquaintance, not common then in Oxford, with foreign literature, whose qualifications stood high in the opinion of his University friends, but who had given no evidence to the public of his claims to the office.  It was inevitable, it was no one’s special fault, that the question of theological opinions should intrude itself; but at first it was only in private that objections were raised or candidatures recommended on theological grounds.  But rumours were abroad that the authorities of Brasenose were canvassing their college on these grounds:  and in an unlucky moment for Mr. Williams, Dr. Pusey, not without the knowledge, but without the assenting judgment of Mr. Newman, thought it well to send forth a circular in Christ Church first, but soon with wider publicity, asking support for Mr. Williams as a person whose known religious views would ensure his making his office minister to religious truth.  Nothing could be more innocently meant.  It was the highest purpose to which that office could be devoted.  But the mistake was seen on all sides as soon as made.  The Principal of Mr. Garbett’s college.  Dr. Gilbert, like a general jumping on his antagonist whom he has caught in the act of a false move, put