lookers-on it naturally seemed that a shattering and decisive blow had been struck at the Tractarian party and their cause; struck, indeed, formally and officially, only at its extravagances, but struck, none the less, virtually, at the premisses which led to these extravagances, and at the party, which, while disapproving them, shrank, with whatever motives,—­policy, generosity, or secret sympathy,—­from joining in the condemnation of them.  It was more than a defeat, it was a rout, in which they were driven and chased headlong from the field; a wreck in which their boasts and hopes of the last few years met the fate which wise men had always anticipated.  Oxford repudiated them.  Their theories, their controversial successes, their learned arguments, their appeals to the imagination, all seemed to go down, and to be swept away like chaff, before the breath of straightforward common sense and honesty.  Henceforth there was a badge affixed to them and all who belonged to them, a badge of suspicion and discredit, and even shame, which bade men beware of them, an overthrow under which it seemed wonderful that they could raise their heads or expect a hearing.  It is true, that to those who looked below the surface, the overthrow might have seemed almost too showy and theatrical to be quite all that it was generally thought to be.  There had been too much passion, and too little looking forward to the next steps, in the proceedings of the victors.  There was too much blindness to weak points of their own position, too much forgetfulness of the wise generosity of cautious warfare.  The victory was easy to win; the next moment it was quite obvious that they did not know what to do with it, and were at their wits’ end to understand what it meant.  And the defeated party, though defeated signally and conspicuously in the sight of the Church and the country, had in it too large a proportion of the serious and able men of the University, with too clear and high a purpose, and too distinct a sense of the strength and reality of their ground, to be in as disadvantageous a condition as from a distance might be imagined.  A closer view would have discovered how much sympathy there was for their objects and for their main principles in many who greatly disapproved of much in the recent course and tendency of the movement.  It might have been seen how the unwise measures of the Heads had awakened convictions among many who were not naturally on their side, that it was necessary both on the ground of justice and policy to arrest all extreme measures, and to give a breathing time to the minority.  Confidence in their prospects as a party might have been impaired in the Tractarians; but confidence in their principles; confidence that they had rightly interpreted the spirit, the claims, and the duties of the English Church, confidence that devotion to its cause was the call of God, whatever might happen to their own fortunes, this confidence was unshaken by the catastrophe of February.