movement found it, to a pure and unworldly idealism.  And, unlike most other religious revivals, especially in this country, it has remained remarkably free from unhealthy emotionalism and hysterics.  The social atmosphere of Oxford, always alien to mawkish sentiment, penetrated the whole movement, and maintained in it for many years a certain sanity and dignity which, while they doubtless prevented it from spreading widely in the middle class, made the Tractarians respected by men of taste and education.  But these influences could not be permanent.  The goodwill of the Tractarian firm (if we may so express it) has now been acquired by men with very different aims and methods.  The ablest members of the party are plunging violently into social politics, while the rank and file in increasing numbers are fluttering round the Roman candle, into which many of them must ultimately fall.

The progress of the movement between 1833 and 1845 was almost entirely in the direction of teaching the clergy to ‘magnify their office.’  The other part of the scheme, the combat against theological liberalism, fell quite into the background.  The main reason for this was that during those strange years the theologians so completely dominated Oxford that liberalism could hardly raise its head, and was despised as well as hated.  Only after Newman’s secession could the regeneration of the University begin.  Then indeed liberalism came in like a flood, though it was a very shallow flood in some cases.  This was the day of the self-satisfied young rationalist, ’ecarte par une plaisanterie des croyances dont la raison d’un Pascal ne reussit pas a se degager,’ as Renan says—­an orgy of facile free thought which after a generation was chastised by another clerical reaction.

If Newman could have foreseen the victory of his party in the English Church, he might perhaps have been content to remain in it.  We cannot tell.  But it is doubtful whether he would have taken Pusey’s place as leader of the party.  Newman’s influence was disturbing and subtly disintegrating to every cause for which he laboured.  His startling candour often seemed like treachery.  He could not work with others, and broke with nearly all his friends, retaining only his disciples.  He confessed himself a bad judge of character.  It is doubtful, after all, whether he was much injured by the jealousy and almost instinctive fear which he inspired among the Roman Catholic hierarchy.  If he had been allowed to take the place due to his abilities, his character, and his reputation, what could he have done that he was unable to do at Edgbaston?  We cannot fancy him plunged in crooked ecclesiastical intrigue, like that Inglese italianato, Cardinal Manning.  Still less can we fancy him haranguing strikers, and stealing the credit of composing a trade dispute.  No doubt he suffered under the sense of injury; but probably he did what was in him to do.  If the Roman Church would not use him as a tool, it was probably because he would not have been a good tool.  There are some mistakes which that Church seldom makes; it knows how to choose its men.