and illustrated again and again as the series went on; and then there came extracts from English divines, like Bishop Beveridge, Bishop Wilson, and Bishop Cosin, and under the title “Records of the Church,” translations from the early Fathers, Ignatius, Justin, Irenaeus, and others.  Mr. Palmer contributed to one of these papers, and later on Mr. Perceval wrote two or three; but for the most part these early Tracts were written by Mr. Newman, though Mr. Keble and one or two others also helped.  Afterwards, other writers joined in the series.  They were at first not only published with a notice that any one might republish them with any alterations he pleased, but they were distributed by zealous coadjutors, ready to take any trouble in the cause.  Mr. Mozley has described how he rode about Northamptonshire, from parsonage to parsonage, with bundles of the Tracts.  The Apologia records the same story.  “I called upon clergy,” says the writer, “in various parts of the country, whether I was acquainted with them or not, and I attended at the houses of friends where several of them were from time to time assembled....  I did not care whether my visits were made to High Church or Low Church:  I wished to make a strong pull in union with all who were opposed to the principles of Liberalism, whoever they might be.”  He adds that he does not think that much came of these visits, or of letters written with the same purpose, “except that they advertised the fact that a rally in favour of the Church was commencing.”

The early Tracts were intended to startle the world, and they succeeded in doing so.  Their very form, as short earnest leaflets, was perplexing; for they came, not from the class of religionists who usually deal in such productions, but from distinguished University scholars, picked men of a picked college; and from men, too, who as a school were the representatives of soberness and self-control in religious feeling and language, and whose usual style of writing was specially marked by its severe avoidance of excitement and novelty; the school from which had lately come the Christian Year, with its memorable motto “In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.”  Their matter was equally unusual.  Undoubtedly they “brought strange things to the ears” of their generation.  To Churchmen now these “strange things” are such familiar commonplaces, that it is hard to realise how they should have made so much stir.  But they were novelties, partly audacious, partly unintelligible, then.  The strong and peremptory language of the Tracts, their absence of qualifications or explanations, frightened friends like Mr. Palmer, who, so far, had no ground to quarrel with their doctrine, and he wished them to be discontinued.  The story went that one of the bishops, on reading one of the Tracts on the Apostolical Succession, could not make up his mind whether he held the doctrine or not.  They fell on a time of profound and inexcusable ignorance