It was not Roman in Dr. Pusey, though he was not afraid to acknowledge what was good in Rome.  It was not Roman in Mr. Keble and his friends, in Dr. Moberly of Winchester, and the Barters.  It was not Roman in Mr. Isaac Williams, Mr. Copeland, and Mr. Woodgate, each of them a centre of influence in Oxford and the country.  It was not Roman in the devoted Charles Marriott, or in Isaac Williams’s able and learned pupil, Mr. Arthur Haddan.  It was not Roman in Mr. James Mozley, after Mr. Newman, the most forcible and impressive of the Oxford writers.  A distinctively English party grew up, both in Oxford and away from it, strong in eminent names, in proportion as Roman sympathies showed themselves.  These men were, in any fair judgment, as free from Romanising as any of their accusers; but they made their appeal for patience and fair judgment in vain.  If only the rulers could have had patience:—­but patience is a difficult virtue in the presence of what seem pressing dangers.  Their policy was wrong, stupid, unjust, pernicious.  It was a deplorable mistake, and all will wish now that the discredit of it did not rest on the history of Oxford.  And yet it was the mistake of upright and conscientious men.

Doubtless there was danger; the danger was that a number of men would certainly not acquiesce much longer in Anglicanism, while the Heads continued absolutely blind to what was really in these men’s thoughts.  For the Heads could not conceive the attraction which the Roman Church had for a religious man; they talked in the old-fashioned way about the absurdity of the Roman system.  They could not understand how reasonable men could turn Roman Catholics.  They accounted for it by supposing a silly hankering after the pomp or the frippery of Roman Catholic worship, and at best a craving after the romantic and sentimental.  Their thoughts dwelt continually on image worship and the adoration of saints.  But what really was astir was something much deeper—­something much more akin to the new and strong forces which were beginning to act in very different directions from this in English society—­forces which were not only leading minds to Rome, but making men Utilitarians, Rationalists, Positivists, and, though the word had not yet been coined, Agnostics.  The men who doubted about the English Church saw in Rome a strong, logical, consistent theory of religion, not of yesterday nor to-day—­not only comprehensive and profound, but actually in full work, and fruitful in great results; and this, in contrast to the alleged and undeniable anomalies and shortcomings of Protestantism and Anglicanism.  And next, there was the immense amount which they saw in Rome of self-denial and self-devotion; the surrender of home and family in the clergy; the great organised ministry of women in works of mercy; the resolute abandonment of the world and its attractions in the religious life.  If in England there flourished the homely and modest types of goodness, it was in